“You aren’t wrong there,” said Ava.
“But Centralians don’t seem to be able to replicate the power, which is why they think they will eventually reach out to the East. We’re the only country that could pull it off. The North doesn’t have our type of tech, the West has other shit to deal with, the South has their own system and are generally on the warpath in some way or another. So the question then is—why have the healers started dying? And why were the last few rounded up?”
“From what we understand of the situation, there is a virus that was only affecting healers,” said Ava. “They were rounded up to preserve them, to try to keep them alive. But they all died. And now my government is actively looking for more healers, hoping we will be able to figure out the cure for healers through them.”
Ava hesitated for a moment, glancing around the room as if she were mentally communicating with someone.
“I think we need to go…” Nadine started to say. With her mask on, Roman wasn’t fully able to see Nadine’s expression, but he did notice a shift, and he knew instantly that she had received a message, that something had happened.
“What is it?” Roman asked.
“I…”
“Tell me,” said Roman, sensing what this was about almost immediately.
Nadine took a deep breath in. “Margo is on the move.”
“No, she’s not,” said Ava. “We have people watching the building as well. There has been no activity.”
“What do you know about Margo’s powers?” Nadine asked as she moved to Eli, crouching down to one knee. She told the boy that they were going to go, and to hold her hand for a moment.
“What kind of question is that? Her powers are the same as Roman’s…” Ava’s eyes went wide.
“Exactly,” Nadine said, “and Roman doesn’t necessarily have to use the door, now does he?”
“I’m going after her,” Roman said, settling his nerves.
“I’m coming too,” said Coma.
“Me too,” Celia chimed in. She approached Roman, looping her arm into his and depositing Casper in his breast pocket.
“No,” said Ava. “You should not go after her. She will certainly kill you.”
“Plume is right,” said Nadine. “You need to let an exemplar team go after her.”
Roman shook his head. “No, not after what she’s done to me. There isn’t a chance in hell that I’m going to let her get away.”
“Roman…” Ava started to say.
“No. Where is she, Nadine?”
“She exited through the sewer, likely using a wall to guide her body down to the basement.”
Roman nodded, understanding exactly what she meant.
“From what we can tell, she’s heading east.”
“What could be east?” Roman asked Nadine, thinking aloud for a moment. Harper’s home had been east of his, and that was where Hazrat had died. “Oh shit. She’s going to the morgue.”
“Dammit,” Nadine whispered.
While she hadn’t met Hazrat, Roman had explained in detail how his power worked, Nadine recognizing its potential almost instantly. And for Margo to be able to control someone like Hazrat…
It wasn’t going to be pretty.
“She’s going to get the shadow user I killed,” Roman told Ava. “Once she animates him, she will be nearly indestructible. She can already control almost anything, and he can control shadows. Imagine trying to fight that off.”
“Dammit,” Ava said, pacing now. “I can’t go at this alone, I have to go with my team…”
“But I can go at it alone,” Roman said.
“She’ll kill you,” Ava told him again. “Roman, be reasonable here. However quickly you have adapted to your powers, she has had years and years, decades even, to hone her ability. She took part in the Western Plague. I was there too; that’s the kind of experience you can’t get from simple training. You may be able to put an air bubble in her brain, but by the time you do, she’ll have your flesh separating from your bones, your muscles tearing, whatever gross, fucked-up thing you can imagine.”
“Ava, I appreciate your concern. Yours, too,” he told Nadine, “but this is something I have to do. And I have a plan, a way I can pull it off. So I’m going to need you both to trust me.”
“You are not authorized to do anything,” Ava said.
“This woman has tried to kill me, she has tried to kill people I care about, and she has done things to my wife’s dead body that…” Roman took a deep breath in, pinching the bridge of his nose, aware he was losing his temper. “I have to go. Whether you come with me or go get your team,” he told Ava, “I don’t care. This is now.”
A teleporter appeared, and before Ava or Nadine could stop him, Roman grabbed the hands of his dolls, disappearing in an instant.
The teleporter reappeared on 48th Street, the woman gone in a dazzle of white sparkles.
Once she was gone, Roman took a quick look around, pondering the best way to go about doing this. He saw the morgue at the end of the street and made a split-second decision to give himself a little perspective.
Stepping into an alley, Roman formed steps in the bricks and walked up them, Coma and Celia following him to the rooftop. Roman didn’t know if Margo would take the sewers all the way to the morgue, but he had to trust his instinct that she wouldn’t. She’d been cooped up in his house for some time, and she probably wanted some fresh air.
It did make him wonder how she had figured out she was being watched, but he could deal with that part later. For now he needed to trust his instincts.
“If she sees me, she’ll kill me,” Roman told the two dolls, ignoring messages coming in from both Ava and Nadine. “And if what she has done in the past is any indication of what she will do in the future, she will also turn me into one of her slaves. I don’t know what she’ll do with either of you, but she has animated the other doll we got, so perhaps she would keep you animated, although you would lose your personalities.”
“Then we have to move quickly,” Coma said, looking out over the roof, her pigtails slightly beating in the wind that had picked up.
“You’re right; I’ll have to send you in to do the fighting for me,” Roman said. “As soon as she sees me, it’s all over. Shit. I wish I had a hood or something—something that would make me blend in more.”
“She’s going to see your head full of white hair,” Celia said, an alarmed look on her face.
“I just don’t think I’m powerful enough to attack her without physically seeing her,” Roman said, “regardless of what I’ve done in the past.”
He was referring to the needle in the haystack test.
As much as Roman wanted to trust his powers in the moment, that he would mentally be able to take Margo out by moving into her body with his power and ballooning her blood vessels, he also knew it wouldn’t be this simple.
One glance down at his power dial and he could see that his adrenaline was spiking it; the apprehension he had was already getting to him.
But now wasn’t the time to second-guess what he was about to do.
Looking at Coma, Roman stripped some of the metal away from an exhaust unit on one of the rooftops, the metal coming under Coma’s arms, forming two large blades that she held using a bar crossed over her palms.
For Celia, he brought up some of the concrete from the rooftop, coating her fists, reminding her that Coma was to make the lead attack and that she would follow up, engaging anyone or anything that had come with Margo.
This is it, he thought, the real test of the day.
Roman was expecting the other doll to be there, and all he needed was an opening to be able to take Margo out.
That was it.
If Coma and Celia could distract her long enough for Roman to take her down, this situation would be over.
In a way, he could get his life back, a life he hadn’t even started yet. Here he was an exemplar, a registered exemplar, and he had yet to celebrate—yet to take advantag
e of his newfound power.
Instead he was on a rooftop, stalking the person who had apparently been stalking him.
He ignored more mental messages from Ava and Nadine, focused on any movement in the streets below, hoping that Margo would show her face, and praying the sick woman felt like taking a mid-afternoon stroll.
He wondered why she had chosen this time, when the morgue would be fully staffed.
The only thing he could think of was that she wanted to make a statement, that her godlike powers had gone to her brain, that she truly thought she was better than everyone around her, exemplar and non-exemplar alike.
Roman planned to prove otherwise.
Roman was going to kill her.
Chapter Twenty: A Light at the End of the Turmoil
Kevin Blackbook was too late. He held his brother’s body in his arms as he pleaded with the old healer to do something, anything.
“Save him,” he seethed, “do your fucking job.”
The woman with stringy hair was dazed and confused, her condition having worsened over the last day, the expression on her face one of dementia and momentary sadness peppered with brief glimpses of cognition.
Kevin set his brother’s body down, feeling the ache in his back from carrying him for so long. His brother was smaller, lighter, but Kevin wasn’t used to carrying people, especially dead people, their weight different than people who were still alive.
Turquoise was next to Kevin, running her fingers along her prayer beads, muttering in some language Kevin didn’t quite understand. Obsidian was there as well, less enthusiastic about what they were trying to do. James Tew and Scarlett had already left, telling Kevin they would join them later, once he sobered up.
Yes, Kevin was drunk.
The fat man had guzzled down two bottles of cheap wine after killing his brother, and had started on another one when the bartender kicked them out, the bartender suspicious of the two cat girls and annoyed with Kevin’s blubbering ass.
That was night, and now it was late morning, Kevin still feeling the effects of the alcohol.
And to be fair, James had telepathically tried to stop Kevin from going back for his dead brother, but Kevin’s alcohol-soaked brain still had an instinct to avoid telepaths, all those trainings Kevin had attended coming to his aid.
So that was how Kevin had come to possess his brother’s corpse, Turquoise not saying anything, Obsidian with an indecipherable look on her face, one that post-drunk Kevin could tell was not as forgiving as the way Turquoise was looking at him.
“Heal him!” Kevin bellowed at the healer, and the woman brought her hand to her mouth. She started coughing, and when she moved her hand away, Kevin saw there was blood covering her palm.
“What’s wrong with her?” Kevin asked, as if Obsidian or Turquoise would know.
“I think…” Obsidian whispered something to Turquoise in another language.
“What did you say?” Kevin asked.
“It’s time for death rituals,” said Turquoise, and as soon as she mentioned this word, the old healer started to shake her head, terror coming into her eyes.
“She can’t die,” he started to say. “I need her to heal…”
Kevin knew he had bitten off more than he could chew when he’d decided to turn heel, to falsely parade around as an exemplar, to kill people indiscriminately—including his own brother, his wife, and the exemplar she’d been banging.
It hit him hard in that moment, but not as hard as seeing his brother’s corpse.
It was too much.
Kevin had gone too far, and that was before he had taken his brother’s life.
He wanted to sob, but he knew now wasn’t the time for that display of emotion. He was the leader of sorts in this operation, and if there was one person to blame for his actions, it was Margo.
Kevin still hadn’t put together why she was in Roman’s place, but if she was there, she had likely killed Roman as well.
“I don’t know how we can keep her alive,” said Turquoise. “We can try to ease her suffering, but she may just die during that process. Even if she’s healing herself.”
“What do you mean by ease her suffering?” Kevin asked.
“I believe we could help some.” Obsidian's claws pressed out of her fingers. “But we will have to be careful and try not to give her too much.”
“Yes,” Kevin said, an idea coming to him of how this could play out. “We can keep her alive temporarily, using your neurotoxins to slow her death. If we need more healing, we may be able to get it out of her if we let her rest a little more, if we don’t put pressure on her.”
The woman gasped as Obsidian came closer.
The black-haired cat girl lifted the woman’s trembling hand and pressed her claws into it, dragging her nail down until she reached the woman’s pointer finger, a bright line of crimson appearing, beading up, and falling toward the woman’s thumb.
Obsidian was just about to bring the woman’s hand to her mouth when Kevin stopped her.
“Just do it with your nails,” Kevin said. “We don’t know what sickness she has, and it would be best not to have that sort of contact. So just your nails.”
He looked over to his brother’s dead body, regretting that he’d brought the body here, a wave of emotion again rising in his chest that he barely managed to choke back down.
“I’ll call Scarlett to get this out of here,” Kevin finally said.
With that, he turned to the other room, Turquoise following him, her hand looping into his.
“I really need to get some rest,” Kevin mumbled to her as soon as they were away from Obsidian and the healer.
“You’ve had a rough night,” Turquoise said.
She closed their bedroom door and took Kevin to the bed, helping him lie down, bringing his hands onto his chest.
“None of this is going to be easy.” The cat girl got on top of him, straddling Kevin now and looking down at him as she spoke. “But I think it will be worthwhile in the end. We will need the healer if we try to go after Margo.”
“There is no try,” Kevin said, placing his hands on her hips.
“I know you intend to kill her, but it’s not going to be that easy, Kevin. We’re going to have to move quickly and strike her when she’s least expecting. Otherwise we all die.”
“Then that’s what we’ll have to do.”
“There are other people in this equation,” Turquoise reminded him as she unzipped the front of her exemplar uniform, her breasts slowly falling out. She pulled her arms out of the sleeves and brought the uniform down to her waist, gyrating her hips ever so slightly over Kevin’s member.
“I’ll make a deal with you,” Kevin finally told her, feeling aroused even though he was tired and drunk. “We do this, we survive this, and I’ll do whatever you want or go wherever you want. Is there any place you want to go? Is there anything you want to do that we haven’t done?”
“Obsidian and I would like to go home, to the Western Province, but we know if we are home that we will never be able to come back here.”
“Then that’s where we’ll go. Once we finish this, we will go to your home. I will live there. I’m done with Centralia anyway. I am a wanted man here, and there are people actively looking for me. So we go home, to your home.”
Turquoise bent over so her lips were now inches away from Kevin’s, her breasts falling onto his chest.
“You’d do that for me?” she asked.
“In a heartbeat,” Kevin assured her. “Let’s see this through, and then let’s disappear forever.”
“I like that,” she said, opening her mouth, and Kevin’s opened as well, their tongues touching and Turquoise lightly biting down on his, releasing a small amount of her neurotoxin.
“I love you,” came the last words out of Kevin’s mouth before he fell into a deep, uninterrupted sleep.
Chapter Twenty-One: Against the Grain
It didn’t take long for Coma to spot Margo.
R
oman had correctly predicted that the woman wouldn’t keep to the sewers the entire way, and Margo had come up in an alley using a bubble in the concrete, the doll that was supposed to be Casper at her side.
Roman peeked over the parapet and saw Margo casually stroll toward the morgue, the hood covering her face, people milling about, the sick woman holding hands with Roman’s former doll.
He ducked down again, seconds away from acting when he stopped himself. He didn’t know what kind of range he had, and now wasn’t the time to test it.
He grabbed Coma’s wrist, imbuing her with his power as he said, “You know what to do. Do not hold back; give me the opening I need. This is it, Coma.”
Coma nodded, Celia following her as she made her way to the opposite side of the roof, his combat doll forming a set of stairs in the brick that took her back down to the alley.
Celia looked at Roman once more, and Roman simply gave her a nod, letting her know that this was what he wanted, that there was no other solution.
They had to take Margo out.
The two dolls started to move down the steps, Roman waiting for them to reach the alley before using the same stairs Coma had formed out of the bricks.
He needed a better vantage point.
The rooftop wasn’t going to cut it, and once all this went down, he only had a few seconds to make his mark on Margo.
Either way, one of them was dying in the next five minutes.
Roman got into a crouching position next to a dumpster, waiting with bated breath for his dolls to move into action.
The moment dragged on and on, but eventually, Coma and Celia burst out of the alley, and Coma immediately erected a barrier that shattered like it was made of glass.
Roman’s heart sank, and it took everything in his power to stifle a cry of panic once Celia exploded, melted plastic spraying into the air, her head the only thing not caught up in the explosion.
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