Cherry Blossom Girls Box Set

by Harmon Cooper

  My inbox had about fifteen other messages related to my book, but I ignored those for now. Mutants in the Making seemed so far away, so distant compared to my current dilemma. I would have to get back into it later … if we survived this.

  After a few minutes, the phone rang.

  “Glad to hear from you,” Ken said instead of hello.

  “Let’s make this quick: who is Dorian Gray and how is she tracking us?”

  A note of concern was evident in Ken’s voice as he asked, “They sent Dorian?” I heard the sound of rapid typing on the other line.

  “She attacked us last night, right after I spoke to you. Well, not right after, but within a few hours.”

  “I had nothing to do with that,” he said.

  A Volkswagen blazed by on my left, the driver busy talking on the phone as she drove.

  “I’m hanging up if you don’t tell me what you know,” I said.

  “Hey! I’ll tell you all I know, just ask. Let me see if there’s anything in her file. Please, relax.”

  Grace glanced over at me, apprehension on her face. I smiled briskly at her, letting her know I was in control.

  “She just tagged our car as well,” I said.

  “Tagged your car?” Dr. Kim asked.

  “She used her power to burn ‘Mother is watching’ on the hood of our vehicle.”

  “Damn. Okay, I’ll tell you what I know. First, what did Veronique already tell you?”

  “That she trained with Dorian.”

  “I see, and that was a few years back. So, Dorian has learned a couple of new powers since then. They’re remarkable, really.”

  “Like? Time is of the essence here, Ken.”

  And no, time wasn’t of the essence, but I wanted him to speak quickly so he didn’t have time to consider what he was telling me.

  “She can teleport. That’s one thing Veronique probably didn’t know.”

  I activated the Bluetooth and put Ken on speakerphone. “Say that again.”

  “She can teleport.”

  I watched in the rearview mirror as realization flared in Veronique’s eyes.

  “Okay, that explains some things. How is she finding us?”

  “It’s the craziest thing,” Ken said. “She developed this unique ability of premonition that’s tied to her art skills.”

  “What are you saying?” I asked.

  “She can draw primitive pictures of another location, focus on it, and teleport to that location. She only has to get a few of the details right for it to work. Look, you’d be stupid to think MercSecure and the FCG aren’t tracking your every move. They know,” Ken whispered. “And they know about your vehicle switching. But they can’t ever catch you in time. That’s clear. So, congrats there.”

  “Thanks. But that still doesn’t explain how she was so precise.”

  “I’ll get to that in a moment. Whoever you are, Gideon Caldwell, you’ve managed to avoid detection in an era when most data is readily available. I mean, like I said, you’ve made mistakes, but the fact that you’re constantly on the move has made it hard to track you. It’s remarkable, really, but they are following your trail, always about a day behind.”

  “Cut to the chase,” I told him as the Ford slowed on its own to change lanes. “How did she find us?”

  “Dorian has been tasked with finding you.”

  “I fucking know that, Ken. Wait, who tasked her? Mother? Fuck, I need to understand the hierarchy of what’s going on here; the ladies haven’t been so forthcoming … Dammit, Ken, I’m hanging up,” I said, panicking again.

  “Don’t hang up! To answer your question, I don’t have much to say about the person you call Mother. But if it helps you to understand, yes, she’s been tasked to get you by Mother. Dorian knows your general location, and she’s able to sketch where she thinks you might be.”

  “So she could attack us anytime?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thanks, Ken,” I said. I rolled down the window and tossed the phone out. Then I asked Grace for my smartphone and immediately rerouted us a different way. “No hotels tonight,” I told them.

  “Where are we going to stay?” Grace looked over her shoulder. “There’s room in this car, but maybe it isn’t large enough.”

  “Let’s call it a makeshift Airbnb. Dorian is expecting us to stay in a hotel, and she’s tracking us somehow. Shit. I shouldn’t have tossed the phone out the window.”

  Veronique laughed.

  “Yeah, sorry, that was stupid. We’ll talk to Ken later. Anyway, sorry, thinking out loud here. Maybe she has a Cerebro type of thing.”

  “A what?” Veronique asked.

  Grace nodded as she quickly sifted through my thoughts.

  “Never mind. And sorry for relating everything to X-Men. I’m just used to thinking of superheroes and mutants through that medium.”

  “We aren’t mutants,” Veronique said.

  “Technically, we are,” Grace said. “Our powers are from exploited mutations.”

  “Either way, we have to do things that Dorian isn’t anticipating,” I said. “She expects us to stay at a hotel. Once these points line up, she’ll find us. So now we do things a little more unexpected, and we keep on high alert. Dorian could appear at any time.”

  “We should change cars again,” Grace said, “just in case she saw us get into this vehicle.”

  “Good call. We’ll get something at the next rest stop I see. We have to keep her guessing.”

  Chapter Six: Writing, Crawfish, and a Visit to the Local Strip Club

  We switched our cars somewhere near Vicksburg, Mississippi.

  We now had a Nissan Altima with black leather seats and a sunroof. Or was it a moonroof? There was no telling, but it was a nice day outside, so I decided to open it. Grace had eased up some but Veronique seemed like she was still on high alert.

  I put the car into auto drive and finally called Luke on GoogleFace.

  “You there?”

  “Hey!” He was sitting in front of his computer; I could tell because of the glare on his glasses. He stood, and a cat jumped off his lap. “Where have you been?” he asked, concern and kindness in his eyes. “Haven’t heard from you in a day or so.”

  “It’s been a pretty crazy twenty-four hours.”

  “Tell me about it,” he said as he moved to a chair by a window. I saw him lock eyes with Veronique in the back seat and wave.

  “Hi,” was all she said before shifting to the other side so she wouldn’t be in the video.

  What came out of my mouth next was word salad, but Luke was able to parse through it and get an understanding of what had happened.

  “Are you serious? There’s another one, and she’s after you now too?”

  “Everyone is after me.”

  “I’m so glad I’m in Canada.”

  I laughed. “What? You think they can’t get you in Canada?”

  “If they ever asked, I’d say I was a fan who offers good advice. I’m not worried about them coming up here. If I were in a different country, yeah, maybe, but the American government plays nice with Canada.”

  “You’re kind of like our cute little brother.”

  “You’re kind of like our bully bigger brother.”

  We both laughed.

  “Okay, the gamer in me has to ask: Have you had a chance to play with their stats any?”

  “Not as much as I’d like, although …”

  I hesitated to tell Luke about Ken Kim but figured I should put all my cards on the table, especially since he had given me good advice before.

  So I gave him another ‘long story short’ version of Ken Kim and David Butler in Austin.

  Worry creased his brow as he frowned. “I don’t know if I’d trust anyone if I were you, aside from any writer friends you may have in Canada.”

  “I probably should have just come up to Canada.”

  “We’d love to have you! And it’d harder for them to get you.”

  “To further answer your que
stion about playing with their stats: Ken gave me a code that he says will upgrade their abilities. He didn’t say which abilities, and I’m afraid to put the code in. I don’t know if we’re being tracked, and to tell you the truth, just thinking about it gets me biting my nails and looking over my shoulder. It’s not healthy.”

  “I can’t imagine what I would do if I felt my government and a private security company were after me. And this new one – Dorian Gray, huh? She paints energy into existence, and it solidifies and can attack you? What in the actual hell? And she can teleport and has a premonition ability too?”

  “Stranger than fiction, right?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know what to make of it. I mean, I’d love to tell some of our mutual friends. But this story …”

  “No, don’t tell anyone. They can read my book if they want to know the truth. I’m already paranoid as hell. I don’t want to be dealing with a bunch of people asking me questions, nor do I want to defend myself to other authors.”

  “There are hungry wolves watching, always,” Luke said in a low voice. “I wouldn’t be surprised if someone published a book like Mutants in the next few weeks. People see the sales rankings, an open market, and they dive in. Considering that your book is the only one in the creative non-fiction gamer sci-fi genre and that combining sci-fi with creative nonfiction is a big seller, I’d bet good money someone will try to tap your market. Soon too.”

  “Let them try,” I said, thinking of the second installment. “The second book will be out shortly, and it turns everything up a notch.”

  “I’ll bet. Send me a copy ASAP and good luck!”

  It took us about another hour and a half to get to Shreveport, Louisiana. The only thing I could recall from the drive was a shitton of billboards using retired sports celebrities to advertise casinos.

  The roads here were terrible, crumbled, filled with potholes, and faded by the sun.

  Because of the fact I was surrounded by superpowered females, it didn’t matter if we stayed in the good or bad part of town, but since we were living the high life, we drove around until we found a pretty nice neighborhood and a large, two-story home.

  It had a modern touch, with a wall of windows that faced to the east, protected from the neighbors’ prying eyes by a willow tree. There was a touch of old in the house as well, from the swing set out front to the stones that were used to make the walkway.

  It would be a nice place to stay, at least for a night.

  As we got out of the car, and I went to the back to get our bags, Veronique touched me on the arm. I spun to her, a little too quickly, the fear at the back of my mind that she wanted to feed always present.

  “What’s up?” I asked, regaining my composure.

  “I need to feed tonight.”

  I was about to say, ‘You just fed yesterday,’ but decided not to push those buttons. Besides, she was the only thing that may save us from Dorian if we were attacked by the killer artist anytime soon.

  Veronique needed to be well-fed.

  I rubbed my hands together. “Fine, but we’ll need to decide on a place.”

  The idea of a strip club came to me, and I was just about to toss it aside when Grace told me it was a good idea.

  I smirked at her. “Do you really know every single thought I have?”

  “Who says you’re the one having the thoughts? I’ve never visited a strip club,” she said as she moved toward the house.

  There were two cars parked in the driveway so we figured someone was home.

  Now back in her brunette-in-athletic-gear look, Grace knocked on the door, and after about a minute, a middle-aged woman greeted us.

  She wore a low-cut top, jeans with decorative sparkles, and her gray and brown hair was pulled into a loose ponytail. She may have been younger than she looked, but her skin had been severely violated by the southern sun, so it was hard to tell.

  As Grace’s eyes flashed white, I instructed the woman to take her family, wherever they happened to be, and go to a casino in Lake Charles for the night.

  I gave her three grand and told her to have a great time.

  She let us in, packed a bag, and left the house to us. It was a nice place inside, too – spacious, with plenty of furniture, nicely carved wooden decorations, and several rooms upstairs.

  Even if we figured out what to do with Dorian and stopped her from predicting where we would go, staying in nice homes was definitely the way of the future.

  Grace and Veronique seemed to like it as well.

  They walked around the place, commenting on what they would do if they owned it and ended up hanging out for the rest of the afternoon while I worked. At some point, Grace made lemonade, or possibly, the lemonade was already made, and the two chilled in the backyard by a pool, sipping from ice cold glasses.

  Luckies.

  It was strange to think this was probably the most they’d ever relaxed in their lives. I mean, sure, Grace could ‘relax’ in her solitary confinement back at the Rose-Lyle facility, but I wouldn’t exactly call that relaxing, even if she had picked up meditation or yoga, or some other spiritual practice.

  I was glad to see them at ease, and I would have joined them if I didn’t have some work to do.

  Alas, the work of a writer never ends, because no writer ever feels as if they’re done. Also, no writer should use the word ‘alas’ and take themselves seriously. Regardless of my verbiage, I could finish a million-word manuscript and be itching to start the next one, even though I had no idea what I was going to write about.

  There’s something almost painful about an empty page, something that makes a writer want to fill it. And even a page full of words won’t appease all readers. As Stephen King once said, “You can’t please all the readers all the time; you can’t please even some of the readers all the time, but you really ought to please at least some of the readers some of the time. I think William Shakespeare said that.”

  Or Bob Dylan.

  Even now, looking back at all this, and having written everything that I could about the experiments, I still feel there’s more to say. I still feel that I can uncover the truth, however small the truth nugget may be. Digging a little deeper and filling an empty page hardly satiates, but it does scratch that itch.

  Besides, any writer will tell you that what they do is a sickness. Writing is an incredible malaise that sweeps over you, a flaming carrot on a stick, a tree falling in a forest that no one hears but your demented ass. Hopefully, whatever your sickness is becomes contagious.

  Of course, I didn’t write any of this while sitting in the study of our nice Airbnb; I was focused on trying to add as many words as I could to Mutants in the Making part two, beefing up the manuscript as best I could. There was a lot to cover, from what happened at the Rose-Lyle facility to Dorian’s appearance.

  Since it was creative nonfiction with a sci-fi gamer twist, I didn’t need to have the buildups and foreshadowing that I would have put in a fictional title. As fun and harrowing as it was to relive all the shit I’d been through, a writer’s work can be boring, and it took me four hours to get down about seven thousand words.

  There were a few bathroom breaks in between, an occasional jaunt over to the window to check on Grace and Veronique by the pool, a glass of lemonade, and a ten-minute stretch in which I questioned my writing ability. I also had to clean my glasses a few times. Damn things kept fogging up.

  As one does when they are experiencing success, I checked my sales numbers frequently. They were looking good – damn good, actually – and the time to get the second installment out was hot. The reviews weren’t too shabby either. Most were four or five stars, an occasional three stars, and one percent were one star.

  Again, not bad. And fuck the haters.

  “Anyone hungry?” I asked as I opened the sliding glass door to the backyard.

  Veronique, who was relaxed on a lounge chair, slowly raised her hand.

  “We’ll feed you later. Sorry, that came out weir
d.”

  She shrugged. “No, makes sense.”

  “I’d eat something, Writer Gideon.”

  Grace approached me in a tight, two-piece bathing suit. It was something straight out of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, with just a small amount of fabric stretched across her breasts and a nearly nonexistent bikini bottom.

  “Too much?” she asked, her face turning red.

  I laughed. “To eat Cajun food? Yes. To go to a strip club later so Veronique can feed? No.”

  She morphed into a jean jacket, a low-cut blouse, and tight jeans. The final touch was a pair of cowboy boots embroidered with Día de Los Muertos skulls.

  “Where did you hear about cowboy boots?”

  “I didn’t hear; I saw. We looked in the owner’s closet. She has some very cool stuff. Very fashionable.”

  Veronique nodded. “I will get a pair in the future.”

  “What is it about cowboy boots that you like, exactly?” I asked, trying not to grin like an idiot at the two. They were adorable, and at least one of them knew it.

  Grace shrugged as she tried out the pair, walking toward me, stopping just as she reached me, then turning away and looking at me over her shoulder. “They’re sexy, right?”

  I ran my hand through my beard. “Sure.”

  I took my smartphone out, GoogleFaced ‘good Cajun places’ and found one about three miles away. It was a quick drive, and as we pulled into the parking lot, I figured now would be as good a time as any to get another vehicle.

  Goodbye Altima, hello Nissan Rogue.

  It was the newest one too, the plate still a paper tag. The guy driving it, a man in a ball cap with a fishing hook on the bill, waved at us as he drove away in the Altima.

  The people in the South were definitely friendly.

  “Describe this Cajun food to me,” Grace said as we entered the restaurant. It was small and smoky inside, the tables made of wood, a stuffed alligator hanging on the wall. “It smells very spicy and fishy in here.”

  “That is an accurate description. Let’s have an interesting dinner. Just trust me on this.”

  “Welcome!” cried a red-faced woman with a waist like Santa. She sat on a stool, and rather than take us to our seat, she pointed a Vienna sausage finger at the booths in the back. “You and yo’ pretty friends can sit right back thure.”