Cherry Blossom Girls Box Set

by Harmon Cooper

  “Hey,” I said, trying to squirm out from underneath her.

  Luke laughed long and hard, shaking his head, and taking a few deep breaths to chill himself.

  “Whew, that was insane! This is what you do every day?”

  “Pretty much.” I adjusted my glasses. I was damn happy they hadn’t shattered. “But they don’t usually create energy explosions. That’s a new thing. Well, newish; we did do it back in New Haven, but that’s a long story, and it’s in the book.”

  Luke shook his head. “Gideon Caldwell … again, I don’t know if I should be jealous of your life or happy to be about as far away from it as I can be.”

  “Yeah, it’s a life, that’s for sure.”

  Grace appeared in the video and waved at Luke. “Hi, Writer Luke.”

  “Hi, Grace.”

  “How is Canada?”

  “It is … cold.”

  “Can I talk to him?” Grace asked, stooping over to pick up the phone.

  “Sure?”

  She took the smartphone and walked over to where the blast had just taken place, telling Luke about a home improvement show in Canada that she liked.

  “Are you going to let me up?” I asked Dorian, who still had me pinned.

  “Maybe.”

  Veronique stopped in front of me and reached a hand down. As I stood, she drained just a little lifeforce and then let up.

  “Hey!” I said.

  Her lips curled up in a predatory grin. “I need to feed,” she reminded me, heading for the house. “Soon.”

  I’m not entirely heartless.

  I always felt bad for the people Dorian brought to Veronique, but our current system was better than what we did at the McStarbucks in Louisiana, lining everyone up for her to feed on and then having Grace wipe their minds. Our current system was a lot easier to cover as well.

  Still, it was twisted, I’ll admit that. But what could I do?

  Veronique was hungry, and we needed her at full capacity. To satiate the vampiric Super, Dorian teleported downtown and returned with a woman in a cute pink halter top.

  The woman screamed and then stopped just as Veronique took over, draining her lifeforce from a distance. Once she was finished, and the woman was a light shade of purple, Dorian returned her to wherever she’d been found.

  I didn’t ask; better to not know those types of details.

  If Veronique felt guilty for the things she did, the look on her face didn’t say it. And who could blame her? It was literally how she survived.

  “Let’s wash the car,” Grace said as she came into the living room, cutting the tension in the air with her cuteness. “Bathing suit time!”

  “We don’t have suits,” Dorian said.

  Grace cocked her head at the teleporter. “Upstairs,” she said, her eyes white. “The lady who lived here has some, her daughter as well.”

  “I’ll just wear my shorts,” Veronique said.

  “You need a top too,” I reminded her. “It’s America, dammit, and boobs are taboo! Joking, but in all seriousness, we can’t wash the car out front. People will notice. And besides that, the car doesn’t need cleaning. Hell, it isn’t even our car.”

  “It’ll be fun,” said Grace, a black one-piece suit taking shape on her body. It started from her shoulders, the fabric morphing and solidifying as it encompassed her curves. The final suit she settled on held her breasts nicely, pushing them up just a hair. It was sleek and tight enough that I could make out her nipples. She turned, giving me a look at the back of the suit and the way it barely covered her ass.

  “You are ridiculous,” I said, but by the time the words were out of my mouth, Dorian and Veronique had gone upstairs to change. “Okay then,” I murmured, scratching the back of my head. “I can at least try to take some notes and be a lookout for you while you guys are washing the car. If someone comes, you know what to do.”

  “I know what to do. Also, let’s be honest, you’re not going to do much looking out, are you?”

  “I’ll definitely be looking at something!”

  “And relax on the notes, Writer Gideon, your book is selling. People will continue to read it; you can ease up a bit.”

  “That kind of eliminates the point of being an indie writer. Our money comes from constantly publishing.”

  “But you aren’t going to use that money anyway. And didn’t you say both books were less than a dollar?”

  “It’s a good price point!”

  “If you were in it for the money, you wouldn’t need me,” she said and took a step closer to me, her eyes growing to anime proportions.

  “Whoa.” I stepped back, not at all comfortable with the huge eyes now on her face. It was like one of those augmented reality photo filters or something. Creepy as fuck.

  “You don’t like my eyes?” she asked, batting her eyelids.

  “It’s interesting. I’ll give you that.”

  “Okay, no anime eyes. Come on.” Grace lifted her chin and shook her hips a little before moving to the garage. I followed her out and found two buckets hidden behind a stack of boxes.

  The garage door came up with the press of a button, and we went out to the car.

  “I’ll find some soap,” I told her as I turned back to the garage. After looking around and not finding anything, I figured dish soap would do the trick. I had no idea. I hadn’t owned a car in a while.

  I brought the hose around with the dish soap, and just about that time, Dorian and Veronique came out the front door.

  Dorian wore a vintage looking swimsuit that she must have gotten from the daughter of the house, whom we didn’t meet because she was away in Europe or something.

  Veronique wore a sports bra-styled swimsuit top and her shorts, midriff exposed, ribs just barely visible at the sides.

  “What do you think, Gideon?” Dorian asked.

  “I approve!”

  They started up, and it was like something out of a NASCAR dude bro’s fantasy. The curves of the vehicle, the curves of the women cleaning it, their skin glistening as Grace sprayed the other two with water, Veronique using her power to lift the front of the car so she could clean under its grill a little bit; it was definitely a sight to see.

  Too bad I couldn’t enjoy it fully. My phone buzzed; it was a GoogleFace call from a man named Jake Archibald.

  Normally, I wouldn’t have taken the call, but the words ‘EBAYmazon Author Representative’ under his name made me think otherwise.

  “Hello?” I asked, still with some suspicion in my voice.

  “Is this Gideon Caldwell?”

  “It is.”

  “Jake Archibald here, EBAYmazon author representative. I’m the one that sent you the email earlier. I’m just following up because I still haven’t gotten the signed contract back from you.”

  “Oh, I’m definitely going to sign it, I just haven’t had a chance to really go over it. I’ve been a little …”

  Dorian was polishing the hood now, and as she locked eyes with me, she winked.

  “Busy. I’ve been busy.”

  “Not a problem at all; it can take time to get these things filled out and taken care of. That said, how’s the third installment coming along? We’re still going with the plan we discussed, right? You publish it, and then we publish the omnibus. I gotta tell you, Gideon, I love this stuff too. People actually think it’s real!”

  “It is real.”

  “Good, that’s good,” Jake the rep said. “You should definitely think it’s real too, just in case there are interviews and a bit of press; we can play that up a little. I like your thinking style, Gideon! I like what you’re doing with it! Anyway, I’m guessing you’re busy right now.”

  Grace tossed a green bucket of water onto the side of the car, splashing suds on Veronique, who shot her a scowl.

  “Yeah, you could say that.”

  “Great. Okay, Gideon, we’ll talk later. Get me that contract at your earliest convenience.”

  Chapter Nine: Mind Games
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br />   The evening came sooner than I would have liked. We got another car, a Honda CRV, which was now parked along the highway at a gas station.

  Sure, we could do the whole ‘teleport wherever we want to’ thing, but we were operating under the assumption that Dorian would be weak after whatever battle ensued, so it was better to teleport to a vehicle that was already aimed in the right direction: California.

  As I drove toward the Albuquerque facility in the recently polished Mustang, I mentally went over Dr. Kim’s notes regarding the facility.

  The place’s actual name was Dulce Base, but even in the notes it was listed as ‘the Albuquerque Facility.’ It was an extension of the relocated Walker Air Force Base, which used to be in Roswell (aliens!) but was relocated to the outskirts of the Cibola National Forest in 2025. Much of the facility was underground, but it was by no means as vast as the Rose-Lyle Facility back in New Haven.

  “How do I look?” Grace asked.

  I’d been so focused on driving that I hadn’t seen her change forms.

  I glanced at her to find that she was completely naked, her long hair parted around her neck and partially concealing her nipples.

  I almost swerved into the opposite lane. “Dammit, Grace! Don’t mess with me like that – not now.”

  “Sorry.”

  By the time I looked back, she was in her scientist mode; an Asian scientist, because most scientists in America were Asian or Indian nowadays, as these were the guys and gals who actually got STEM degrees.

  Which is the type of degree I should have gotten rather than a bachelor’s in comparative literature (otherwise known as: ‘the basic requirements to getting an assistant store manager job at McStarbucks’).

  “It’s This American Life, and I’m Ira Glass,” Grace said in the radio personality’s voice. “Each week we interview Writer Gideon about his life, the Cherry Blossom Girls, and what he plans to do after all this is over. Hi, Gideon.”

  “Hi, Ira.”

  “Will you go ahead and elaborate on where you got your lab coat and why you are wearing it?”

  “Good question. Basically, Veronique wanted to feed again, and I needed a lab coat so I could blend in, so we did the old ‘two birds with one stone’ technique that we’ve been continuing to master throughout our journey.”

  “Interesting. Veronique sure sounds like a hungry lady.”

  “That’s right, she’s ravenous.”

  “That’s a fun word to say,” Grace said in her own voice. “Ravenous.” She switched back to Ira Glass’s voice. “Can you tell us what happened next?”

  “We then zipped away to a medical supply store, where we dropped the guy off in the back alley and went inside to purchase this wonderful lab coat.”

  “That’s some story,” she laughed.

  “You could say that.”

  Grace continued talking to me as if she were Ira Glass. Things were playing out differently in my head, however, where we sat in a movie theater watching the plan unfold together.

  It was odd having a conversation and a fairly elaborate mental exchange at the same time. I felt like there were two versions of me; one driving the car while speaking to Grace, the other in an old movie theater watching our plan in action – or at least, the best version of it.

  It helped, though.

  It really helped a lot to get my mind off the intensity of what was to come. I already wore my bulletproof vest under my lab coat, and my ballistic helmet was in my backpack, as was Grace’s.

  This was about to get serious, so keeping it light for the time being was key.

  Once we got inside, the only laugh we’d have would be when we broke out, our mission accomplished.

  Grace and I pulled up to the military checkpoint, and she did her thing.

  She also did something new to the man at the checkpoint, evident in the way his eyes remained slightly glazed white as we passed by.

  It was a new part of the plan, something we hadn’t attempted at the Rose-Lyle facility; mostly because we were too shocked once everything went down.

  We drove into the parking lot and parked. I pressed the button to pop the trunk and grabbed my backpack.

  It was the last time we’d see the Mustang.

  Grace and I started up the sidewalk that led to the main entrance, past a few shrubs shaped like gumdrops, and around a minimal landscape arrangement. There were a handful of scientists about, but not many, and most were headed for their vehicles.

  There were plenty of MercSecure goons around though, especially near the entrance, and they greeted us as we came up, offering curt little nods, their eyes flashing white.

  The door slid open and we entered, hanging an immediate left as per the instructions on the map from Ken’s documents. It was like the map was right in front of me as if it had been tattooed on my pane of vision, which was definitely Grace’s doing.

  After a sharp right, we took the stairwell to the lower level.

  To communicate with Dorian, I had my smartphone ready to send a text. She had one of our burner phones back in Santa Fe, and if they somehow cut out, or we were attacked, they were scheduled to meet with us in the next five minutes anyway.

  “Concentrate,” Grace reminded me.

  “Yeah, got it,” I said and tried to steel myself, my nerves suddenly tingling as we continued through the nondescript hallway.

  Grace took the mind of every security guard we came into contact with, and it was the MercSecure man she encountered last who caused the look on her face to change from calm to serious.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “They’re planning something. Get Dorian and Veronique here right now.”

  I took my phone from the pocket of my lab coat and fired off a message to Dorian: GET HERE NOW.

  She appeared with Veronique twenty seconds later, both of them in their body armor and ballistic helmets.

  “Okay,” Grace said, morphing back to her base form and taking her helmet from me. “The children are downstairs.” She had an indecipherable look on her face.

  “Children?” Dorian asked, her eyes going wide.

  “There aren’t supposed to be children here.” I strapped my ballistic helmet on. From the information I’d read about the facility, including some of the stuff I could recall from creepy David Butler’s hoard back in Austin, this place was just for training.

  “Yes, there are four children supers downstairs, one adult,” said Grace. “There is also an ambush waiting for us. That’s why there aren’t many soldiers around.”

  “Is the ambush downstairs?” I asked.

  “That’s unclear.”

  Veronique shrugged. “Then we’ll rescue the children, possibly spare the adult Super, and kill those who wish to ambush us.”

  Chapter Ten: Teenage Mutant Super Prisoners

  There’s nothing worse than knowing you’re going to be ambushed and going ahead with the plan anyway.

  With this in mind, I kept to the back of the group as we took the elevator down to the next floor.

  As soon as the doors opened, Grace made a telekinetic shield to protect Veronique and Dorian when they stepped out.

  With her paintbrush in one hand and two frag pouches in the other, Dorian took a few steps into the new room, prepared for anything.

  Veronique had two circular saws ready to be charged, her posture indicating she was poised and set to strike.

  After a moment, she gave us the signal and we made our way through another featureless hallway until we came upon a boy behind a glass wall. He was sitting on a stool, staring vacantly at the wall.

  “One-way glass,” I said, after noticing he didn’t look at us.

  He’s one of us, Grace thought to me.

  What do you mean one of us? I thought back.

  She pressed a finger to her temple and I knew instantly what she meant.

  “We have to rescue the children,” Dorian said.

  “I was thinking the exact same thing,” was my reply.

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nbsp; “They’re going to get in the way of destroying the facility,” Veronique said with finality.

  She was right, but another thought came to me as we watched the boy: Mother, and whoever else was leading this operation, clearly didn’t care that we were going to destroy the place.

  They must have known we would be going after it, considering our last interaction was in Santa Fe, I thought to Grace.

  Hello? What are you talking about?

  The boy was looking at us now, his head slightly cocked to the right.

  Grace’s eyes flickered and he stood, hesitated, and finally approached the one-way mirror, staring intently at it with hazel-colored eyes, as if trying to see through the glass.

  I didn’t know what type of psychic battle was going on between the two of them, but the first reaction on his face wasn’t joy.

  It was fury, his eyebrows arching above eyes that shimmered white, lips lifting as he showed us his gums.

  But it only took about twenty more seconds for him to relax, for his eyes to settle back into their natural color.

  By this time, I had pulled out my smartphone and opened up Ken’s app. I typed in ‘psychic’ and perused the list of psychics who were either dead or alive.

  However, I could narrow it down between two male names, and from there, birth dates, which was where I found Adam, a psychic born in 2020.

  Adam, Subject Ad

  Build: 009

  Base height: 118 Centimeters

  Base weight: 35 Kilos

  Strength: 2

  Intelligence: 9

  Constitution: 2

  Wisdom: 8

  Dexterity: 4

  Charisma: 3

  Main: Advanced Telepathy

  * Psychic Inhibitor Creation

  * Neurocognitive Deficit

  * Mind Link

  * Thought Manipulation

  * Second Sight

  * Psychokinesis

  “What’s going on?” Veronique asked.

  “He’s with us now,” Grace said matter-of-factly as she went to the door of his enclosure.

  “Hold on a second,” I said, looking over his deets again. Adam’s skills were different than Grace’s, and I didn’t like the fact that thought manipulation was listed as one of his specialties.