House of Dolls 3

by Harmon Cooper

  “I guess that comes with travel,” Roman said. A different waiter stepped past and took their menus, replacing them with porcelain plates decorated with fine blue etching. The same waiter uncorked the bottle of chilled wine and filled each of their glasses.

  Emelia took her first sip. “But as I was saying, it appears that you are alone in all this, aside from your dolls. Am I right?”

  “You know, rather than read my mind, you could just ask me questions…”

  “Do you know how much time people waste going over details that are easier to share mentally? Do you really want to hash out what happened today? Wouldn’t you rather me just know, and be able to talk to you about it as if I were already there?”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  “And you are aware that if you go about doing this, you could face some serious repercussions. Correct?”

  “I’m aware,” Roman said after his first sip of champagne. “But I personally don’t feel like I have a choice. Do you? Or better, would you?”

  Emelia shrugged. “I’m fairly certain that I will never be in your situation, but if I were you, I think I would let the appropriate people handle it.”

  “Okay, sound advice, but what if you didn’t think the appropriate people could actually handle it? What would you do then?”

  “Now there’s a good question,” she said, toasting Roman. “I apologize; we probably should have toasted before we had our first sips, but we can’t turn back time,” She said as their glasses clinked together. “And to answer your question, if I was stubborn enough to do this alone, going against the wishes of my government and the people who have granted me an amazing power, I would at least recruit a team.”

  “A team…” Roman thought of all the exemplars he knew and came up empty-handed.

  “You don’t know anyone that would help you out?”

  “I haven’t really kept close with many exemplars,” Roman said, thinking of every one he had met who had a power. Of course, there was Ava, but she wouldn’t go along with anything that went against the government. He was sure of this. There was also Emelia, but Roman didn’t know how helpful her powers would be against Margo.

  “You just assume I wouldn’t help?” Emelia asked. “You know, telepaths can be helpful, especially from a distance. I wouldn’t even have to be actively involved. And who is this other one?” She asked, her purple eyes sparkling. “This… Catherine. Yes, Catherine. A young wind user who you did some immigration paperwork for. I see. Oh Roman, you shouldn’t use her like that.”

  “Who said anything about using her?” Roman asked.

  “It’s clear she has a bit of a crush on you, even though she assumed you were a non-exemplar, but to ask her to do something like this…”

  “I didn’t ask her yet,” Roman said, looking to Coma for support. The masked doll glanced between the two, clearly not aware of just how strange it was for Emelia to be answering Roman’s thoughts before he could fully conceptualize them.

  “This could be interesting,” Emelia said, “a telepath, a wind user, and a guy who can animate inanimate objects. You may have to really sweet-talk her to get her to agree to something like this, especially because she has already faced difficulties with her immigration status. But I’m sure a charming, orange-eyed man like you can figure that one out.”

  “What other options do I have?” Roman asked.

  “You mean besides using people?” Emelia smiled at him. “I’m kidding—well, sort of. You are using people, but at least it is for an interesting cause. I will give you that.”

  “I don’t know,” Roman finally said, finishing his glass of champagne. “I just don’t know…”

  “No, you do know. If there is one thing I can tell you as a telepath, it is this: people need to accept their thoughts. That doesn’t mean they need to act on them, but they do need to accept them. And when a thought pushes its way past the membrane into a willable action, they need to accept this as well. I would say contact Catherine first, and see if she’s up for something like this. I’ve already agreed to help you in whatever limited capacity you need.”

  “Why are you helping me?”

  “Sometimes I’m glad that I’m the only telepath in the room,” Emelia said, biting her lip. “But to answer your question: I’m offering to help because I can sense how much this is hurting you. And it’s toxic. It makes me want to crawl up in my skin, if that makes any sense. It follows you around like a ravenous ghost, and I’m afraid it may eat you alive if you don’t do something about it.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Healing Long Shot

  “There were other options, but I thought that this would be more up your alley,” Oscar told Nadine. “After all, it’s something you are already familiar with.”

  The two were on the bottom floor of the safe house, eating porridge that Oscar had been working on all afternoon. Nadine hadn’t tried this particular style of porridge before, which had to slow cook for hours and hours, but she was definitely enjoying it.

  “I just wasn’t expecting this…” Nadine looked down at the tech she had been gifted from the East.

  It was still in its box, displayed as if it were a wedding ring, and part of her wanted to put it on and try it out, yet she was trying to maintain her composure, to act a little less excited than she truly was.

  And Nadine didn’t know why she was doing this.

  She was comfortable enough with Oscar around to somewhat be herself, but ever since coming back from the East and wading through the aftermath of the dilemma that had unfolded there, Nadine knew she needed to keep her cards close to her chest.

  “Aren’t you going to try it on?” Oscar asked.

  “I will, later,” she said as she took another bite of her porridge. “What else did you want to discuss?”

  Nadine had been training at a gym near the safe house when Oscar had called her for a late dinner. She’d known she was going to receive some type of new tech, but she wasn’t expecting Oscar to have something else to discuss with her.

  “I’ve made an executive decision,” he started to say.

  “You’re retiring?” she asked.

  Oscar laughed long and hard. “And give up all this?” He swept his hand at the dingy room. “Who would want to give up such a luxurious life?”

  “I thought you had some plans for when you finally went back East,” Nadine said.

  “There are always plans. Ask anyone who is about to retire what they want to do, and you’ll get a different answer every day.”

  The two were interrupted by Lisa Painstake, who shuffled down the stairs with a bored look on her face.

  “I kind of want to go out,” Lisa said.

  “We would prefer if you stayed here,” Oscar started to tell her.

  “Or I could go with her?” Nadine offered.

  “Yes, I suppose that would work, but please, not too far. Oh, listen to me… I really have become like an old man, haven’t I?”

  Nadine shrugged, a smirk stretching across her face. “You’re the one talking about retirement, not me.”

  “What kind of porridge is this?” The pink-haired exemplar was standing near the stove peering into the pot, a curious look on her face.

  “It’s an old family recipe. Just taste it, and if you like it, get yourself a bowl and join us. If you don’t, find something else to eat.”

  “So what are you saying?” Nadine asked, returning her focus to the conversation they’d just been having. “What else did you want to discuss?”

  “Fetch Eli, will you?” Oscar asked Lisa.

  “He was playing with those toys you gave him last I checked.” Lisa tasted the porridge, considered the flavor for a moment, then nodded and filled her bowl. Once she set it on the table, she moved up the stairs rapidly to find Eli.

  “It really is strange having young people around,” Oscar said. “Makes me feel even older, but they give me energy, too. Heh. I’m sort of like a vampire in that regard.”

  “Vampi
res, huh?” Nadine asked.

  “You read the briefing?” Oscar asked.

  “I always do,” said Nadine.

  The briefing she had read involved a rumored outbreak of vampirism in Centralia.

  Oddly enough, Mister Fist and his crew had a part in unraveling the mystery. From intel Eastern spies had gathered, children were being shipped in from the West and the South using facilities owned by the Knight Corporation, which was one of Centralia’s richest and most powerful corporate entities.

  A bad situation all around.

  “Smells great,” Eli said as he came down the stairs, Lisa’s hand on his shoulder.

  She led him to the table, to the spot where she had planned to sit. Lisa went to the kitchen again, got another bowl of porridge and rejoined everyone at the table, now sitting directly next to Oscar.

  “Anyhow, I guess I should cut straight to the chase,” said Oscar. “Eli, it has been a pleasure having you around here, and I hope you can stay for a while longer.”

  “It’s not so bad here, but I miss nature,” Eli said. “There’s no nature here. And Lisa took me to a park, but not in my real body.”

  “We will go out soon, I promise you,” said Nadine.

  “Eli, I know that you did a good thing back in the East, when you helped our friends with the power you haven’t really told anyone about,” Oscar said.

  Nadine swallowed hard until Oscar continued, her handler now talking about Eli’s healing power, not the telepathic ability he’d displayed at the Eastern Province military complex.

  She hadn’t told him about this.

  It was sort of her secret weapon, and knowing that Oscar could be clever, she had also completely wiped it out of the forefront of her mind.

  In fact, sitting at the table was the first time she had actually recalled the thought in front of him, and Nadine immediately cast the memory away for something easy to focus on: Roman.

  She was a bit worried about him, but she didn’t want Oscar to know this, nor was she interested in getting much closer to him.

  Nadine already saw a future in which Roman was a Centralian operative, a future in which they worked together at times but were ultimately enemies. It pained Nadine in a way to think of Roman as a future enemy, especially with all that he had done for her.

  Which was why she was already trying to detach herself from him a bit, and had reminded herself several times over the last two days that sleeping with Roman would only complicate things.

  Better to keep things simple.

  “…and we want to know more about your power, Eli,” Oscar said, Nadine’s attention cutting to him. “So I’ve invited a few friends to run some tests on you starting tomorrow. They’re going to set up a small laboratory in the room Roman was staying in. I promise it’s not going to hurt or anything.”

  “Oscar…” Nadine started to say, feeling the urge to kick him under the table.

  “Yes, Nadine will be here too. And Lisa, so don’t worry. You see, there aren’t many of your kind left. Nadine told you that, right?”

  “Yeah,” Eli said as he spooned more porridge into his mouth.

  “And that makes you unique, but we don’t want people with your power to die. We need people with the ability to heal.”

  “Oscar…” Nadine said again.

  “That’s right,” Oscar said, finally looking to her. “I had made an executive decision based on a number of things, including the fact that from what we can tell, there are only two healers left in our entire world. And we’re looking at one of them. We have to be able to replicate this power.”

  “It won’t be so bad,” Lisa told Nadine.

  “This conversation doesn’t involve you,” Nadine snapped back.

  “I’ll be okay, Nadine,” Eli said, placing his little hand on her arm.

  “I just…”

  “We will be careful with him,” Oscar assured her. “But it is important that we get a handle on this. If something happens to him or the other healer, that’s it, unless another one is born. And we can’t just make that happen. So we must learn to replicate it. You’ll be helping a lot of people, Eli.”

  “But it has never worked before,” Nadine reminded him. “Of all the powers we replicated, we haven’t been able to replicate healing. If we could, we would have done it a long time ago.”

  “They have some new techniques they would like to try, the same that they used on Roman. It is hardly invasive, and it may prove fruitful.” Oscar lifted his napkin and wiped his mouth. “It’s worth a shot.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Tension Buildup and Release

  “You came back,” Ava told Roman. He stood before her, Coma at his side, Casper deactivated and tucked in the front pocket of his jacket.

  Roman could feel the alcohol now; the bottle of wine had hit him as soon as he’d gotten up from his table at the restaurant.

  And seeing Ava stand before him with her fiery red hair, her cute house shorts, the tank top she was wearing that bared her midriff…

  Roman took a deep breath in and let out an audible exhale.

  “Are you okay, there?”

  “Yes,” he said softly. “I think so.”

  “And you took care of Celia?” Ava asked, genuine concern in her eyes.

  “She should be up and running tomorrow, at least temporarily. I’m having new bodies commissioned.”

  “New bodies?” Ava asked as she led him into her apartment, Roman taking in a cinnamon scent that seemed to be wafting from her bedroom.

  “I want to have them designed with some metal in their bodies, along their arms,” he said, showing her exactly what he meant. “It could be useful for a number of things, from a hedgehog-like attack, if you can imagine that, to forming metal gloves for them at a moment’s notice.”

  “Customizing your dolls…” Ava considered this for a moment, licking her lips as she did so. “Well, it seems like a promising idea to me,” she finally said as she led Roman over to the couch.

  She had a small fire going in the fireplace, which Roman figured she must have lit with her power. He chuckled at this, not sure why it was funny, concluding that he would have done the same thing if he had the power to command flames.

  “So you return to my home drunk?” Ava asked.

  “Something like that,” Roman mumbled. “It wasn’t my intention, but the employee at the sex-doll shop insisted, and she’s doing me a favor, so I obliged. Anyway. Let’s talk tomorrow. Do we have training in the morning?”

  “You will have training every morning now until your future role in Centralian society is agreed upon. And then you will have training after that. The training will never stop. Part of my training is training you. You hated your nine-to-five, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, now training is your nine-to-five.”

  “It sounds like a real job,” Roman said, cringing at the thought. But he was being playful at the moment. Even with all the bullshit he had experienced that day, he was feeling playful for once, like joking around.

  Ava smirked at him. “You don’t want to work?”

  “I got out of that line of work the other day,” he said, laughing at his own bad joke.

  “You know, I have some champagne, if you’re interested…”

  “I think I’ve had way too much as it is,” Roman told her.

  “Nothing wrong with a little nightcap,” she said as she turned to the kitchen.

  Roman looked at Coma and shrugged. The doll sat in the same chair she’d sat in earlier, when Ava and Roman had made out. She nodded at Roman, and for a moment he just stared at her curiously.

  “What is it?” he whispered.

  “Go for it,” Coma said.

  “Go for it?” Roman mouthed.

  Coma nodded, her hands coming to the arm rests so she could brace herself to be deactivated.

  “Are you sure?” Roman asked, his voice just a little bit louder this time.

  “Yes, a nightcap,” Ava called from the kitc
hen, assuming he was speaking to her.

  Coma smiled at Roman, a mischievous look behind her red eyes. She was a part of him that he didn’t let out often enough, at least not lately.

  And Coma knew what Roman was planning to get into the following day, and even if she wouldn’t comment on whatever conversation he would inevitably have with Ava, maybe he would feel less pressure if she was knocked out for the time being.

  So he deactivated her, his power dial flashing as all his his power returned.

  “So the champagne might be a little flat,” Ava said as she handed him his glass. “I kind of opened it a few days ago.”

  “Whatever, as long as it tastes good,” Roman said, never one to be a snob when it came to alcohol. He took his first sip of the champagne as Ava sat, and he noticed it was indeed flat.

  “How is it?”

  “Not bad.”

  “But not good, right?”

  “It’s not good or bad. It just is.”

  “Now that you’re an exemplar, are you going to get a master’s degree in philosophy too?”

  Roman laughed. “My powers would make it a little bit easier to cheat…”

  “When are you going to learn you can’t just cheat your way through all of this?” she asked, and by her tone, Roman couldn’t tell if she was being serious or not.

  They hadn’t known each other for a long time, but Ava had already done so much for him. She really had put her neck on the line to help him, not only with his power but to cover up mistakes, like what had happened at the immigration office…

  The thought of Kevin Blackbook came back to Roman in that moment, and he briefly wondered what the chubby bastard was up to. Would Roman never see him again? How had Kevin come to be associated with cat girls? Did he know Roman possessed the power designated for him?

  Roman took another sip from the champagne, drowning the thought, his mind returning to Ava and how much she had helped him.

  She had pushed for him to have his power, even after his confession…

  This thought triggered a conversation he had been part of earlier regarding his future role in Centralian society. Roman knew that if he was approved to work as a spy, he would be actively working against Nadine at times.