He could get through this, but the only way to do it would be to keep his responses incredibly vague.
Chapter Fifteen: Talk to Me, Scissors
Roman stood in a large gymnasium, easily four stories high. There were mats in the far corner, mirrors on one of the walls, a rock climbing wall and sparring equipment.
The woman leading him, the same who had accompanied him into the council room, told him to wait there.
“Just stand here?” he asked.
“Yes, that’s what ‘wait’ means. Ava will be here shortly, and until she arrives, you need to wait for her.”
Roman started to say something, but then realized it was pretty much pointless. He too worked for the Centralian government, and he knew what it felt like as a government employee to be asked a dumb question.
So he waited, his hands in his pockets as he paced back and forth.
He still wasn’t entirely convinced of the power that had been bestowed upon him. It seemed completely useless, and as he paced, he raised his hand and tried to do something to one of the mats on the floor.
“Useless power,” he mumbled when nothing happened.
He was in his work clothes, an off-white overcoat with matching pants and a crisply pressed shirt. Otherwise, he would have lain down on one of the mats. Thing was, Roman was incredibly tired, his previous night filled with sex—and then with the hope that he would be granted a power that was actually useful.
Sure, he could have his house clean itself now, or make a glass of wine go fill itself, but how useful was that really?
A mental message came in, this one from Harper, the waitress who was responsible for the soreness in his thighs.
Hi! Just want to say I had fun. I know we aren’t supposed to contact each other like right after these things happen, or that’s how this usually goes, but I figured I would just give you a little morning message. And that message is this: Whenever you’re free, I’ll try to be free. Just let me know.
She’s sweet, Roman thought, and in a way, he’d dreaded this.
He wasn’t one to get close to people anymore, not after what had happened, and it always pulled at his heartstrings when he met someone who was genuine, who was good, and he knew that at some point he would have to push them away.
And as he had done before, Roman didn’t reply to her message.
Oh sure, he would see her again, but he knew from past experiences that putting a little tension there, especially at the beginning, always made things shift in his direction.
In fact, in a way, Harper had just played her card, and Roman always kept his hand as close to his chest as possible.
“Sweet girl, though.”
“I’m glad you think so,” said the woman standing behind Roman.
He turned to find a hot redhead in a slick white bodysuit. Her hair was in a ponytail, one that reached all the way to the top of her ass, which he noticed because she stood turned to her side, looking at him over her shoulder.
A smile crept across Roman’s face.
Even if he didn’t like his newfound powers, at least he had a hot teacher.
And this fact became even more evident when a spark of flame appeared in her palm.
“A Type II, Class C,” said Roman.
“Close. Type I.”
“A Type I? Makes sense, especially with fire. Congratulations. Also, are you posing right now?”
She still stood with her back to Roman, looking over her shoulder at him.
“It’s always important to make an entrance. Every true exemplar knows this.”
“I’m aware.”
“I’m glad.”
“I met your sister. The one on the council.”
“She’s a ballbuster.”
“Your words, not mine.” Roman had seen some pretty diva-like behaviors from supers. Even if there was supposed equality in Centralia, and in the greater provinces and authorities, this didn’t mean exemplars didn’t know how much stronger they were than half-powereds.
“Anyway, enough about my sister. I’m the one who will sign off on the paperwork that allows you to become one of us. I have seen this take as short as a couple of weeks up to as long as two years—it is really up to you, and how carefully you listen to my training. Also, as I’m sure my sister said, your powers are a secret until you’ve been fully approved.”
She walked away, and Roman zoomed in on her rear and the way her red ponytail bounced between her ass cheeks.
“Well?” she asked. “Are you coming?”
He quickly caught up with her, and he wondered then how she had appeared in the room in the first place. When she had arrived, he had been facing the door, and she had appeared behind him.
Strange, he thought as Ava stopped in front of the table with a few items resting on it. The table was against the wall, and if it had been there earlier, Roman hadn’t noticed it.
“A rock, a sheet of paper, and a pair of scissors,” Roman said as he took in the contents of the table.
There was also something that looked like a watch, although the face was black onyx and it didn’t have a dial.
“Put this on,” Ava said, retrieving the watch. The exemplar stopped before him, dangling it from her thin fingers. “Once you do so, your powers will be activated from here on out. We do this so people aren’t immediately given their powers, as that can be quite jarring. For a power like yours, the power dial is doubly useful.”
“And the watch activates it?”
“Yes, but after that, the power dial is always active. And it isn’t a watch. It’s a power dial, in case you didn’t pick up on that.”
Roman placed the power dial on his wrist and the screen turned on.
He’d never seen anything like it before. He’d heard rumors that the Centralian government had tech the citizens didn’t know about, and this looked to be one of those items.
The face of the power dial flashed.
Roman noticed a red, a green, and a blue indicator, and each appeared to be at their lowest levels.
“We’re going to get into what the indicators mean in a moment. For now, though, I want you to remember the phrase: Red is dead. Green is mean. Blue is cool. Say it for me now?”
“Red is dead. Green is mean. Blue is cool.” Roman glanced from the power dial to Ava, not certain if he was supposed to be feeling something different or not. “Should I be feeling something different?”
“It really depends on your power,” she told him as she turned away again. “Rock, paper, scissors,” Ava said as she examined the table. “Which one of these do you think would be the easiest to bring to life?”
“I don’t know.”
“You were granted the ability to animate inanimate objects, a Type II and sometimes Type I ability, not a Type III or IV, as I’d bet you’re thinking. It is an amazing power.”
“Is it really that high up on the listing?” he asked.
“I don’t want to say, ‘Stick with me and I’ll make you a type I,’ but that is a possibility if you really drill down to the nitty gritty of your new power.”
Roman sighed. “I am grateful for this power, but I just thought it would be something else. It doesn’t sound like such a great power, considering that I’ve done immigration work for supers who could lift trains with their pinky fingers, and that just yesterday I was assaulted by an exemplar who had the ability to manipulate shadows. He was a dick, too.”
“Sounds like it.”
“You get my point, though. I mean, it’s cool to be able to make things that aren’t alive come alive. But I don’t know, I just don’t see how this is such an amazing power. Helpful? Yes. Amazing? No.”
“You don’t?”
“If anything, I would list it as a Type III.”
Ava smirked. “You know, I actually appreciate the skeptic in you. I have dealt with some people who think that they are god’s gift to Centralia after they’ve been given the power to see through walls. Type IVs, you know how they are.”
&nbs
p; Roman nodded, impressed that she knew as much about the various types as he did.
It made sense, sure, but it was still impressive. He almost felt like he was talking shop with one of his coworkers at their yearly retreat in northern Centralia. He’d been to two, and while it was a great time to try to bang an intern, it was also a time to bond.
Thinking of last year’s retreat reminded him of Kevin.
He couldn’t quite say that he and Kevin were close, but last year’s retreat had brought them closer than before, mostly because they’d been roomed together.
At first, Roman hadn’t really liked the fact that he’d been forced to room with Kevin, but the often shy, pudgy man grew on him. And he’d felt bad for him anyways, because Kevin’s wife had sounded like a total bitch.
Ava continued, “I’ll say this one last time: Your power is unique, one of the more unique abilities I’ve come across. And I had to scramble to do some research on how to train you to use it better. Well, I didn’t personally scramble; I had one of our Type IV Class E researchers check it out, transfer the information to a telepath, and forward that along.”
“Ah, Class E, intelligence-based.”
“Exactly, and this guy’s ability is to consume gross amounts of data in the time it takes you to take a piss. He can read four or five books at once and has a photographic memory of all the things that he has already researched. But enough about him. It’s time to get started. Take a look at your power dial.”
Roman did so, noticing the red, green, and blue strips again.
“When you animate small objects, it will increase the size of the blue indicator. Medium-sized objects increase the green indicator, and large objects—or other objects that require a boost of intelligence—the red indicator. This is actually why you are considered a Class A, a telepath, and a Class C, someone who can utilize organic and inorganic objects and power.”
“And what happens if the bars fill all the way up?”
“Good question.” She turned back then and placed both hands behind her back, which jutted her chest forward in a way that caused Roman to glance quickly from her bosom and back to her face. “Shall I continue?” she asked.
“Sorry.”
“If the red indicator fills up, just like I told you in the little rhyme, you die. Red is dead. And the red bar goes up when you animate something that is rather large and needs intelligence to operate. Also, from what our researcher could tell, you can improve over time by animating more objects. So it is a trainable skill.”
“Why would I die?”
“Because to animate these objects, you are giving them a small part of your life. Give too much of your life, and you’ll die. I believe there is a more scientific explanation than that, but let’s just stick with that for now.” She cleared her throat. “The rock. Let’s start there.”
Roman focused on the rock. He didn’t know how he was supposed to use his ability, so after cursing for a moment, he mentally told the rock to move.
The rock scooted forward a little bit.
“You can do better than that. Your ability isn’t to move objects; rather, it is for you to animate them. Turn the rock into something that you would like, or make it do something interesting.”
Roman raised an eyebrow at Ava.
“Go on, give it a shot.”
Roman begin to imagine what Ava’s breasts must look like, and as he did, the rock started to reform like it was made of clay, until it had become a half mound with an areola and a nipple on top.
“Is that supposed to be some type of joke?” she asked.
“Sorry, it was the first thing that came to mind. But I did animate it.”
“Yes, but you don’t have control over it. Look at your power indicator.”
Roman glanced down to his power dial to see that none of the bars had moved.
“The bars move when you officially have the item under control. With the boob rock that you have just created here like a fucking high-school kid, you don’t have it under control, you just briefly took control of it and morphed it.”
“Okay, then what should I do to take control?” Roman asked, eying the boob rock.
“Let’s try the sheet of paper this time; maybe that will give you a better sense of what you can do with this power. Turn this flat sheet of paper into an assistant.”
“An assistant?”
“Do you see that rope over there?” Ava nodded to the other side of the room where a rope hung from the ceiling, clearly used for some type of endurance training.
“Turn this sheet of paper into an assistant who can go over there and climb that rope. Pretend that climbing the rope would save your life. Just follow me here. Give it a shot.”
“Turn it into an assistant—got it,” Roman told her.
The sheet of paper trembled at its corners as Roman tried to fold it with his mind.
Once he realized this wasn’t going to work, an idea came to him as to how he could communicate with this object.
Become human, Roman thought to it, and sure enough, the paper folded in half and jumped up onto its wedge. From there, it crumbled and reformed into something resembling a stick figure.
“That’s good!” said Ava.
The paper figure stood at the edge of the table for a moment, looking over at Roman.
With the flick of Roman’s hand, and while he mentally thought the figure needed to go to the rope, the paper person leapt off the table. It ran towards the rope, and once it got there, it careened its makeshift head back and looked to Roman for guidance.
“Climb it,” Roman whispered, and sure enough, the paper figure uncrumpled itself into a long string of thin paper, and like a cobra enchanted by music, it lifted to the bottom of the rope and latched on.
“Perfect,” said Ava. “Now look at your power dial. Notice anything different?”
“The blue indicator is longer. Not by much, though.”
“Yes, it is, but the other two haven’t moved. Now, on to the scissors, and keep the paper figure active.”
“Got it,” Roman said as he focused on the pair of scissors.
The pair of scissors righted itself and opened, the sharp ends forming two legs to hold its weight up.
Still balanced on the two pointy ends, the curved handle began to gyrate, moving back and forth.
“Okay,” Ava said. “Use the scissors as a weapon.”
“As a weapon?”
Roman instructed the scissors to fly into the wall, which they did. He also noticed that his power dial flashed, the blue line longer than before.
“Great! Do it again—attack your paper creation.”
Using his mind, he zipped the scissors across the room, where they sliced the paper man in half. He was getting the hang of it, and a few more minutes of sending the scissors around the room had him feeling confident.
Ava placed her hands on her hips and cocked her head to the right. “Now animate the table and have it battle the scissors.”
“Are you sure?”
She laughed. “Yes, I’m sure. That’s why we have these items today. I want you to see what it is like to use the various tiers of your abilities. And another thing, I don’t want you to just use the telepathic part of your power as a handicap. Instruct the objects to fight for themselves. Give them life. What I’m saying is don’t just manipulate them telepathically.”
Roman ran his hand through his white hair. He grinned at Ava, offering her the same grin he’d used to win over countless women in Centralia.
“Stop smiling—start fighting,” she said. “I don’t think you’re cute.”
Roman gulped. “Got it.”
She winked at him and stepped aside, again offering Roman the view of her backside.
“Fuck it,” he said, and mentally instructed the table to right itself. To his surprise, it started bucking like a horse, its surface rippling and the wood holding strong as the boob rock flew off it.
“Sorry, little guy,” he said to the scissors as he
instructed them to attack the table.
The pair of scissors kept low as it stalked the bucking table, which caused quite a bit of commotion as its metal feet slapped against the ground. Ava’s hand was covered in flame, just in case things got out of hand.
“Kill the table,” Roman whispered to the scissors.
Without any hesitation, the scissors flew up into the air and straight into the back of the table.
The table’s legs scraped against the gymnasium floor as it tried to buck the scissors off its back. With one shear stuck in the table, the scissors pulled the other shear back, curled it a bit, and stabbed into the table’s surface again, nagging the damn table to death.
“That’s it!” Ava said. “How do you feel?”
“I… I feel fine.” Roman glanced down at his power dial to see the blue line had moved up considerably, and the red line had moved by just a hair.
“Now it’s time to animate something even larger. Actually, I want you to do something else.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“I want you to make the scissors smarter. I want you to make them talk to us.”
Chapter Sixteen: Skipping Lunch
Nadine stepped out of the shower, and even though she’d just bathed, she still felt dirty. There were bruises along her side from where she’d struck a seat in the trolley, and her ankles were sore from being strung upside down.
Who had strung her up anyway? She had this itching feeling that it hadn’t been Paris.
There’d be an investigation regarding the trolley explosion, and she wondered why she hadn’t been contacted yet. The Centralian authorities were pretty good at sniffing out terrorists, which was why there weren’t many in the famed country.
Nadine smirked as she wrapped a towel around her body. She knew damn well the attack would be covered up, that all such attacks were covered up, and that there was little she or anyone else could do about it.
Obfuscation was a way of life when it came to dealing with Centralian authorities.
House of Dolls Page 6
