House of Dolls 3

by Harmon Cooper

  Over the course of the day she had grown more and more reluctant to go after Margo, the beautiful cat girl telling Kevin some of the rumors she had heard in the West about the woman and how ruthless she was to her enemies.

  “We’ve already talked about this,” Kevin reminded her. “This is it, the last thing we do in Centralia. Then we are out; I promised you this. But we can’t let this woman live. She tried to kill us, remember?”

  “You know, normally I would agree with Turquoise,” said James the telepath, “but I was good friends with Zelda, and Ray didn’t deserve to go down like that,” he said, referring to the way Margo’s team had killed the two other exemplars who had helped Kevin and company to assault the prison.

  “We have to time it just right, then,” said Scarlett.

  Kevin had noticed their teleporter had been in and out all day, but he assumed this was just how teleporters were; he didn’t blame her for moving around so freely with that ability of hers. “Agreed. We should do something before Centralia or the Eastern Province moves in, before our window of opportunity closes.”

  “And why Roman’s condo?” Kevin wondered aloud.

  Everyone in the room knew that Kevin and Roman were former coworkers. Kevin had felt James try to dip into his mind a few times to see if there could be any ulterior motives, and Kevin had let him, realizing that all James would find were some of the conversations he’d had with Roman and the time they’d stayed in the cabin together.

  “I tried to scan the apartment,” James said, “which was dangerous because I had to get closer. I actually went into the building after getting something from the bodega on the bottom floor, and I moved up to see if I could pinpoint something through the ceiling.”

  “Impressive,” Kevin said, which was how he genuinely felt about James’s power. There were a variety of telepaths, and James seemed to be one of the more powerful ones. The fact that he could use telepathy as easily as he used telekinesis only made Kevin wonder why he wasn’t on an exemplar team.

  But being on an exemplar team wasn’t the path for everyone, and while it was generally possible as an exemplar to work for the Centralian government, not everyone wanted a government job when there was money to be made exploiting the city’s underbelly.

  “I didn’t pick up anything in the apartment, not even someone trying to block telepaths,” he said.

  “But you think she was there?” Kevin asked him.

  “There’s really no telling. If she was there, she should be classified as a telepath as well because there was nothing at all inside—a dead silence, if that makes sense.”

  “Maybe she used a teleporter to temporarily go somewhere else.”

  “Maybe.” James shrugged. “But I think we should operate on the assumption that she will still be there. The Centralian and Eastern Province forces wouldn’t be in the area if they thought she’d left.”

  “How do we do this quickly?” Kevin asked aloud.

  “Circling back, maybe we should try a teleporter,” Scarlett suggested. “And by teleporter, I mean me.”

  “You’d be willing to do that?” Kevin asked.

  “If it’s what I’m called upon to do, and you have a good enough plan, then sure.”

  “I still think this is a terrible idea,” Turquoise said. “I know we made an agreement, Kevin, but Margo is…”

  “She’s beyond any of our powers,” Obsidian chimed in, the black-haired cat girl crouching on the couch, picking at one of her nails. “And our healer isn’t doing so well.”

  “I know she’s something else,” Kevin said, “but that doesn’t mean we won’t be able to stop her.”

  “If we teleported there and you activated your power nullification quickly enough,” Scarlett said, “maybe Obsidian or Turquoise could get to Margo before her zombies get to us.”

  “Wait, what do you mean?” Kevin asked. “I was under the impression that taking her power away would take away their powers well.”

  “You weren’t paying close enough attention during the fight at the prison,” she said. “Margo’s power was temporarily taken away, but the big man with the spikes jutting out of his body was still fighting.”

  “You mean her power can linger in another object?” Kevin asked, covering his gasp by placing his hand over his mouth.

  “I think we need to operate under that assumption,” said Scarlett. “But that could be a strategy. Teleport there, you activate your power, and you try to get to her before her companions get to us. If you came,” Scarlett told James, “You could help hold them back with telekinesis.”

  “Shit,” James said, massaging his forehead for a moment. “It’s a crazy idea, it really is.”

  “Is it a crazy idea you’re willing to give a shot?” Kevin asked point-blankly.

  “Let me think about it.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six: You’ve Got A Friend in Me

  If Roman thought Emelia, the gray-haired empath who worked at the sex doll shop, would treat him any differently than her other clients, he was sadly mistaken.

  They were in her element now, and he knew this as soon as he entered the place and was instructed by a passing female wearing a tight black dress to take a seat.

  The female employee did give him a funny look when she saw that he was holding a jacket under his arm, and that the person with him, Coma, looked strangely like a sex doll. But she didn’t say anything, moving to the back room instead to let Emelia know Roman was here for his appointment.

  They had changed the furniture at the sex-doll shop, going for red leather sofas this time that really stood out in the minimal space. As Roman sat there, his elbows on his knees, his hands tangled in his white hair, he stared down at the polished wood floor wondering how it had come to this.

  Even with Coma sitting next to him, he felt entirely alone in the room, exhausted, aware of the fact that he needed some sleep.

  It had been an exhausting day, both emotionally and somewhat physically, although it had been Coma who had done most of the heavy lifting. He looked over to the masked doll and smiled at her, Coma returning his smile, a sparkle behind her red eyes.

  “I can never thank you enough,” he started to tell her.

  “Mr. Martin,” Emelia said as she entered the room, interrupting their moment. “I’m so glad you could join us. Can I offer you some tea?”

  Emelia was as beautiful as ever in her business attire and emerald-green heels. She wore a blouse with an extra button opened at the front, the flowing fabric tucked into an emerald-green skirt.

  Once Roman declined her offer, she sat, crossing one leg over the other and pointing her foot at the ground.

  “I see,” she finally said, staring deeply into Roman’s eyes.

  “Dammit.” Roman was too late to stop the telepathic tendrils pressing forward into his face, pushing out the back of his skull.

  In the end, he decided not to let the fact that she had already mind-scanned him bother him, realizing it was easier than having to explain himself.

  “And that’s her head?” Emelia asked, nodding toward Roman’s bundled-up jacket.

  “Yes.”

  “This certainly isn’t the place to be having this type of conversation,” she told him. “I would have preferred if we’d met and discussed these things over coffee.”

  “When do you get off?” Roman asked.

  “Not for…” Emelia’s eyes darted left and right. “I suppose I could get off sooner rather than later. My replacement should be here in an hour.”

  “Should we go somewhere else then?”

  “We can finish part of this discussion here; then you can take me to dinner after. How’s that?”

  “Sure,” Roman said, looking at her suspiciously for a moment, making sure she hadn’t implanted this idea. “I’ve just eaten, but it was just a snack, so sure.”

  He recalled that when she had shown up to his apartment with a bottle of champagne, there had been a spark between them, and in that moment, he instantly cast t
he thought aside, realizing that the telepath who paraded around as an empath would be able to decipher what he was thinking.

  “So you have a doll head and you need a doll body, am I understanding this correctly?” Emelia asked.

  “That’s right,” said Roman. “And I want to see if you can make some adjustments as well.”

  “Is her breast size not to your liking?”

  “You know what I mean,” Roman told her, tapping on his temple.

  “You want me to make her smarter? Because that’s your job. Please spell out what you’re looking for, Roman.”

  “Why should I spell it out when you can just read my mind?”

  “Because, what we do here has to be official,” she said.

  “I want you to put metal in her body.”

  “That will make her heavy, Mr. Martin.”

  “Not a lot of metal, but I want you to put it along her forearms, here,” he said showing her where he meant on his own arm. “I want the metal to be cut into two-inch slits, and stacked on top of one another like gills…”

  “So she can use it as a weapon if she wants, correct?”

  “Yes, and of course this would be under her skin, so it wouldn’t be visible at all.”

  “That’s going to be a pretty unorthodox order…”

  “Just say something like it’s for weight, and that I like to pretend my doll is hitting me and I want to put some weight behind it when I control her arm. Something like that. Sounds fucked up, but most kinks are. Or just use your powers.”

  “You realize my powers don’t work long distance, correct?” Emelia asked.

  “Aware.”

  “And I will have to special order this from our supplier in the Northern Alliance.”

  “Please, special order it then.”

  “If I’m going to special order that, would you like me to order something similar for your other doll?” Emelia asked, nodding her chin at Coma.

  “Hadn’t really thought of that…”

  “In the meantime, we can get Celia’s head placed on another doll’s body, one that’s already here in our facility. Actually, let me check out the head first, to see how much work will need to be done before I make that promise. But regarding the custom bodies, what you have just described has to be special ordered, and if I ordered two, it might make it more worthwhile for manufacturer.”

  “Coma?” Roman asked as he unwrapped his bundle, carefully handing Emelia Celia’s head.

  Rather than leave his jacket lying on the couch with Casper’s lifeless body on it, Roman put the jacket on, placing the tiny doll back in his pocket.

  “There are some portions that are melted here,” said Emelia as she turned Celia’s head over in her hands.

  “I can smooth those out now,” Roman told her. “What should this look like? Can you have a doll’s head brought in from the back? I should be able to get it into whatever shape you need to reattach it to a body.”

  “Yes, but…” Emelia’s eyes lit up. “Congratulations, I didn’t pick that up earlier.”

  “Yep, I’m an exemplar now, and I can use my powers whenever I want,” Roman told her.

  “In that case, yes, I can have my assistant fetch a head.”

  It was only a few moments later that the back door opened and the same woman Roman had seen earlier entered, carrying a doll’s head in a plastic bag.

  “Thank you,” Emelia told the woman as she took the head from her.

  The empath removed the plastic and showed the head to Roman just as her assistant stepped back out of the room.

  The doll’s head was shaped differently than Celia’s, her skin darker, her eyes wider, her hair black. But the neck was the same, and he saw immediately what he needed to do to Celia’s neck to make it match the other.

  Placing both hands on the coffee table before him, Roman lifted his hands, reshaping the plastic flesh of Celia’s neck until it perfectly matched the example doll’s head.

  “You know, if you decide not to become a spy for Centralia, you could always get into this type of business.”

  “Sex dolls?”

  “It pays the bills, and it keeps me out of trouble,” Emelia told him. “And your ability to repair them would give you instant leverage with some of the manufacturers, especially for damaged dolls.”

  Roman cringed. “I really don’t think that’s for me.”

  “Just a suggestion,” Emelia said. “In any event, we will get you a temporary body for Celia while we have one or two bodies manufactured.”

  “Two,” Coma said. “It would likely be more useful for me than it would be Celia, but it’s good for her to have one as well.”

  “Good, then two it is. Now, about that dinner. I know a good spot not so far from here, but the wait time can be up to an hour. It’s so sweet of you to agree to book a table for us right now while I finish up here.”

  “Yeah,” Roman said, not aware that the words Emelia had said had been both verbal and mental at the same time. “I’ll go get in line.”

  It was only after Roman made the reservation and took a seat in the waiting area alongside Coma that he realized Emelia had used her power on him. He wasn’t very annoyed by this; after all, he needed something to do to get his mind off what he actually wanted to do, which was immediately go for revenge.

  So maybe it was a good thing that a distraction had presented itself, and once he got the custom bodies made, Roman’s two dolls would be more powerful in the future.

  He wanted to animate Casper, but he decided to refrain from doing so for the time being, realizing that sitting in the waiting area of a fancy restaurant and speaking to a tiny person in his pocket would probably elicit some curious looks. He already felt underdressed seeing the men and women enter the restaurant in nice suits and elegant gowns, and he felt bad for Coma as well, who wore a ruffled blue dress with a few tears in it from the earlier fight.

  She had cleaned up some of the scruff marks in the bathroom, and she had also brought her hair into a single ponytail rather than pigtails, but the two still looked out of place.

  Roman had even entertained the idea of going home quickly and changing his clothing, only to remember, yet again, that he didn’t have a home.

  Not any longer.

  Eventually, Roman was led to a table for four, where he ordered a bottle of chilled champagne. This wasn’t like him either, to start ordering before someone arrived, and he wondered yet again if this had been something Emelia had instructed him to do.

  “This place is really nice,” said Coma, who sat to his right, allowing for Emelia to sit in front of Roman once she finally came.

  “You’re right about that,” Roman said. “It is not the type of place I normally eat at. Although, Ava might enjoy it here.”

  “You keep going on dates like these, and you’ll have to manufacture more money,” Coma said matter-of-factly.

  “Yes, that is something I will need to do later. It’s not very hard, though. It just requires some paper and cash for me to copy.”

  Until Roman became whatever it was he was going to become next, he would have to live on cash. This would require a little more work on his part, but he was up for the challenge.

  “I bet Celia would like this place,” Coma said.

  “Yes, she most certainly would,” Roman told her. “That would be a cheap date…”

  Coma laughed. “I get it, I get it, we can’t eat.”

  “But I can, and I will gladly eat for both of you. Sure, let’s take her on a date sometime.”

  “But no Casper,” Coma said. “Not that I dislike her…”

  “She may be useful—at some point anyway,” Roman said.

  “Yes, if we ever need to crawl into a small hole, Casper will be useful.”

  “There are other things she can do, although I can’t really think of any at the moment,” Roman said, grinning at his masked doll.

  Emelia came into the restaurant wearing a different outfit than before, a fox-fur scarf wrapp
ed around her neck.

  “She’s so fancy,” Coma said as the empath spotted Roman.

  “That she is. A little too fancy sometimes, but fancy nonetheless.”

  “Great, you ordered chilled wine,” Emelia said, smiling from Roman to Coma as she undid her scarf and gave it to the waiter. “Sorry, I meant to leave this up at the front,” she told him, the man simply nodding as he stepped away.

  “Yes, I ordered it,” Roman said, raising an eyebrow at her.

  “It was your idea, wasn’t it?” she asked. She had a fresh coat of makeup on, her lips glossy now, her cheeks just a bit redder than they’d been the last time he saw her, which was only about forty-five minutes ago.

  “You had time to get changed?” Roman asked.

  “I always have a change of clothing in my office,” she said. “You never know when you’ll have to meet a client after agreeing to manufacture dolls for him with metal in their skeletons.”

  “Well, you look great,” Roman said.

  “Thank you, and I can’t say the same for you, but I do know you can clean up nicely.”

  “Yeah, I don’t have a lot of clothing options right now, considering the fact that someone trying to kill me is living in my home.”

  “You’d think someone would do something about that,” Emelia said as she started looking through the menu.

  “Someone is trying to do something about it,” Roman snapped back.

  “Why don’t we just use names?” Coma asked.

  Both exemplars turned to Coma and then looked back at each other, and Emelia started to laugh. “Your doll has a point.”

  “She usually does,” Roman said, a wry grin stretching across his face.

  Emelia closed the menu and placed it on the table. The waiter came by, stopped, nodded, and turned away again.

  “Is that how telepaths order?” Roman asked her.

  “Yes, when we don’t feel like talking to the waiter.”

  “And you ordered what I wanted as well?” Roman asked, glancing down at the menu once more.

  “Of course I did. You wanted the Eastern grilled chicken with sweet potatoes and green beans cooked in butter. It looks like someone is becoming more diverse in the foods they like.”