“I’ll see if I can figure out what team of exemplars just attacked us,” Nadine said once she got tired of the silence growing between them.
Roman nodded. “As far as their powers, one was a Type III Class F, the female offensive teleporter. The beast morpher was a Type II Class C, as was the woman with the stone fists. The other guy… I’d say Type I Class A. That’s just my guess, but this is usually how Centralia classifies a telepath with hallucinatory abilities. Especially one that powerful.”
“You’ve experienced something like that before?” Nadine asked.
“Something like that, but nothing that intense. It was at one of the telepath trainings I had to attend. That was…” Roman remembered the fair, the warmth of Celia’s hand. “I don’t know how I broke free from that one,” he finally said. “With a power like that, you can pretty much do anything and take anyone down, which was why I’m guessing the rest of the team wasn’t as strong.”
“Not a bad theory. But it doesn’t seem like they’re coming after us now. It seems like the tracking device was in the power dial, or your clothing. But if they did plant something on you, they would’ve done it with your outerwear, not what you wore to bed tonight. So that rules that out as well.”
“It was the power dial,” Roman assured her. “I saw it blinking, and I’ve never seen it blink like that before. I mean, I’ve seen it blink a couple of times, but not this particular light on it. What bothers me about that, though, is that they’ve been tracking me this entire time. Or, at least they could have if they’d wanted to.”
“You’re an asset to them,” Nadine reminded him. “As soon as you got that power, someone must have given the order to watch you closely. It’s not a normal power to have, and it’s one with unlimited potential.”
“This fucking power,” Roman said, looking down at his hands.
“Be thankful you have that power,” she said. “It’s what saved us tonight; it is what continues to save you.”
“I would argue that my power has only brought me closer to death,” said Roman. “Well, then again, I would have been Paris’s double agent, or whatever, without this power. Or dead. She may have killed me.”
“Just don’t discredit it,” Nadine said, moving closer to him.
She placed both arms around his neck and looked up at Roman. She wasn’t much shorter than him, just a few inches, and as he lowered his hands to her waist, he was glad no one could see them on this rooftop.
Both were in their sleep clothes, both barefoot, both covered in dirt, Roman’s hair a mess and Nadine’s tangled.
“I don’t know how we keep surviving these things,” Roman told her.
“It is exhausting, isn’t it?” she said, lifting herself onto the tips of her toes.
They were just about to kiss, their lips inches away from pressing together when a different teleporter appeared, this one a thin woman with a short mohawk. “Your new place is ready,” she said. “But I can come back if that’s what you would like…”
“No,” Nadine said, regaining her composure almost instantly. “We’re good to go.”
Chapter Forty-One: Now or Never
“I’m glad you’re okay, Mister,” Eli said as he ran forward and hugged Roman, Roman not expecting this sort of affection from the young boy.
“I…”
“Do you need healing? What about you, Nadine?” the kid asked, looking between them. Once he let go of Roman, he gave Nadine a hug as well, the Eastern spy dropping her hand onto the back of his head.
“They were tracking us all along,” Oscar said, not exactly angry, but not happy they’d had to move in the middle of the night.
Nadine’s handler was in a silk pajama set, the material an off-white color that matched his stylish sleeping cap, something Roman had only seen older people wear.
“We think it was his power dial,” Nadine said.
“It was definitely my power dial, there’s no other way…”
“There’s always another way,” Oscar told him. “But, in this regard, you’re probably right. Sorry. I am irritable right now. I don’t like being woken up in the middle of the night.”
“I’m sorry for all that,” Roman said. “I’m sorry we all had to move.”
Roman saw his dolls lying on the ground, and it annoyed him a little, but he knew they’d probably been transported relatively quickly, the teleporter assuming they weren’t living beings. He brought them to life. Casper hopped out of a pocket on Coma’s dress and ran to Eli, who scooped her up into his arms and let the doll sit on his shoulder.
“What happened?” Coma asked, looking around the room, her shoulders bristling.
“We were attacked, and I couldn’t activate you in time.”
“Why not?” she demanded.
“Yeah, why not?” asked Casper.
“Because they were attacked by Team Saint,” Oscar said.
Nadine looked to Oscar. “Team Saint?”
“Yes, I’ve gotten intelligence based on the information you forwarded me. Team Saint has four members, like a normal Centralian exemplar team. There is Saint, who specializes in telekinesis and creating hallucinations within a person’s mind. Blue, a man who morphs into a large, blue wolf creature. Banish, a teleporter who specializes in offensive teleportation. And Thalia, who can turn her skin to stone.”
“I’ve heard of them,” said Lisa Painstake, who sat at the table sipping from a cup of tea. She seemed content, less anxious than she should be. Roman assumed this was because she’d gotten her Soul Speed power back and she didn’t really care what happened now.
Which was naïve.
While her power was interesting, if something happened to her physical form, that was it, and she had no defensive skills, a Type IV if Roman had ever seen one.
“We got lucky,” Nadine said. “If I hadn’t had my ring, the teleporter would have ended it.”
“No, I would have fought back,” Roman started to tell her.
“Have you ever fought a teleporter trained in offensive teleportation?” Oscar asked. “No? I thought not. They are brutally fast, and able to do things like teleport behind you; then teleport you into the sky; then teleporter you away just before you hit the ground, then teleport you back to the sky; then maybe let you hit the ground; then teleport you away again; then teleport next to you with a blade; then stab you in the kidney, teleporting away before you can swipe at them. Imagine the possibilities.”
“I get it,” Roman said.
“I’m guessing that the location they teleported you to was just the staging area, and that they had plans for what they’d do with you from there. But you stopped that, Nadine.”
“All thanks to you,” Nadine told Oscar. “I wouldn’t have this ring if it weren’t for you.”
“That’s beside the point. Right now we need to discuss what happens tomorrow and from that point forward. I know you said you’re going to sleep on it, Roman, but I need to know now. Are you with us? Or are you going to turn yourself in? Or perhaps you plan to run away. That was an option as well. The point is, I need to know now. If we’re going to be targets, we have to change things up around here.”
Roman looked from Nadine to Coma and from Coma to Celia, who wanted to come forward so bad and embrace him that it was practically written on her face.
“I’m going to…” Roman swallowed hard. He didn’t want to bring harm to these people, and he knew that a life on the run would eventually catch up to him. For once, he was going to do the right thing, even if that right thing was the wrong thing for his livelihood and well-being.
“Well?” Oscar asked.
Roman cleared his throat. “I’m going to turn myself in. Tomorrow.”
“You fool,” Nadine said, stepping away from him, her arms coming across her chest.
“I don’t know what will become of me, but I don’t want to live a life on the run, and…”
“What?” Lisa asked after a moment of silence.
“I am Centralian.
I appreciate everything the East has done for me, but I think if I started working for the Eastern Province, or if I became a citizen through whatever means you would invent for me to do so, I would eventually be exploited. Or killed. Or some strange combination of the two.”
“After everything we’ve done for you…” Oscar mumbled.
“I can’t express how much I appreciate what you have done for me,” Roman told the man. “But I’m not from there—I’m from here—and I don’t follow orders very well. Have you not noticed that yet?”
“Idiot,” Nadine whispered.
“And maybe I could follow orders better, but I won’t be able to take orders from your government very easily, especially when I see how you have treated some of your own people. And I know this sounds harsh. I’m not trying to sound harsh here. But you yourself are still in Centralia. Why haven’t you gone back to the East? If it’s so great, why don’t you go there?”
“I think it’s time you go, Mr. Martin,” Oscar said, a vein appearing on the side of his forehead.
“I’m not saying your country is bad, that I wouldn’t want to visit again, or anything like that. But you guys have a way of making people disappear—hell, you almost did it to Nadine here. She can’t even contact her family; she told me on the train about all that. And your country would have probably done something to her family, too. I can’t live with that. I don’t have a family, but a country that behaves like that is not a country for me. And I have earned this. I’ve earned whatever punishment I’m given. I disobeyed a direct order, I brought down a goddamn city block, and I don’t know how many people are dead, but all their deaths are on me.”
“Roman…” Nadine said, scowling at him.
“Mr. Martin, I believe it is time that you order a teleporter. I don’t care where you go, but you can’t stay here,” Oscar said firmly. “Not any longer.”
“I don’t want Roman to leave,” Eli said.
“Quiet, boy, this conversation doesn’t involve you,” Oscar told the kid. Casper stuck her tongue out at Nadine’s handler as he turned his attention back to Roman.
“I understand, and I appreciate your hospitality and all you’ve done for me,” Roman told the man, reaching his hand out. Oscar looked at Roman’s hand for a moment, debating whether he should shake it or not. In the end, he simply placed both his hands in the pockets of his sleep pants, giving Roman a tight smile.
“But I don’t want them to go,” Eli said, stamping his feet. “I like them.”
“It doesn’t matter now,” Nadine told the boy, stopping him from approaching Roman. “What he’s doing is practically suicide.”
“What about us?” Celia asked, coming forward. “If they take away your power, that means…”
“He doesn’t give two shits about us,” Casper hissed, the tiny doll still perched on Eli’s shoulder. “If he cared, he would cozy up here with these Easterners, and we’d live a life of crime. Damn, do you realize how crazy our life could be if we stuck around with them?” Casper asked him.
“Aware,” Roman said, feeling the tension in the room.
“Are you sure about this?” Lisa asked.
“I wouldn’t say it if I wasn’t sure,” he told the young woman. “And I would suggest you think about this as well. At some point, you’re going to have to decide if you want to go back to the Northern Alliance or work solely for the Eastern Province. I don’t know the best option for you. I don’t know what it’s like in the North.”
“Enough,” Oscar told him. “You’ve said your piece. Now it’s time to leave.”
“Will we ever see him again?” Eli asked Nadine.
“I don’t… No. No, we will not,” she said, a resolve in her voice that Roman had never heard before. “No, we absolutely will not.”
“But what will happen to us?” Celia asked again. “I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want you to leave us.”
“We will figure it out,” Coma told Celia, her hand coming around Celia’s waist. “But for now, we have to see this through.”
“I’m ordering a teleporter now, and while I disagree with the way your country treats its citizens, this doesn’t reflect on how I feel about each of you,” Roman said, looking directly at Nadine. “I will never forget any of you, and I don’t know what happens next, but it has been nice. I only wish I could have done more to show my appreciation. Take care, Nadine, Oscar, Lisa, Eli—and thank you.”
Chapter Forty-Two: The End of the Road
“Please, there must be something else you can do,” Celia told Roman.
They were in a love hotel room near the red-light district, not too far from Centralia central. It was a cash-only type of hotel, a place Roman had frequented during the darker days after his wife’s coma.
For the first several months, he just couldn’t find it in himself to bring women back to the home he had shared with his wife. So he had come to this hotel, enough times that the older woman at the front desk recognized him, asking him why he hadn’t stopped by in a while. She didn’t bat an eye at him showing up with not one but two beautiful women, one in a dark-blue dress and the other wearing superhero tights.
The room was quaint, recently painted, the bed a bit springy but otherwise comfortable. Casper had already chosen a pillow, and Coma sat in a chair near the door while Roman sat on the edge of the bed, Celia in his lap.
“I know I sound crazy,” he told her.
“You’re so powerful. You could get away with anything, and you’re just going to give in to them? I just don’t understand it. There are other places we could go. I don’t know enough about your world to tell you where these places are, but they have to exist. We saw how big this world was when we headed east. We could disappear, Roman.”
“Yes, we could,” he said, looking down at his bare feet. He had teleported away from the safe house in a hurry, leaving his clothes behind. And he was lucky that the lady at the front counter recognized him, that she’d let him take the room on credit with the promise that he would pay later.
This sort of hospitality and trust used to be a staple of Centralian society, something that had changed over the years as the country’s population doubled and people from other countries moved in, ways of life replaced with xenophobia and suspicion.
It didn’t matter anyway—Roman would never see this hotel again. He wished he had better clothes, but there was nothing he could do about that either, not if he wanted to just hurry up and get it over with.
Once he turned himself in, he would be barefoot.
He had thought briefly of making himself a pair of shoes out of something in his surroundings, or robbing a store by simply having the clothing walk out. But in the end, he decided this was the least of his worries.
He had whales to fry.
Roman stretched out, his hands coming behind his head. Eventually he got onto the bed properly, Coma helping Celia out of her exemplar uniform.
Careful not to disturb Casper, Celia found a place next to Roman, now only wearing black panties.
Coma also undressed, keeping her leggings on as she got onto the bed, her hand coming to his chest.
“I really wish there was a different way for this to happen,” he told them, Celia now placing her head in the nook of his arm, Coma close to him as well, her hand moving from his chest to his stomach as she settled in.
“You have to do what you have to do,” Coma said.
“I just don’t see what good can come of this,” said Celia.
“There is no good that will come of this; but not a lot of good has come from my life over the last couple of years, especially since I got this power. Aside from you two. You both are the good in my life. And I only wish it was easier for us to exist without all the pressure and the turmoil.”
“You’ve done your best,” Coma said.
“No, I have been mediocre, hasty, and I should have listened to all the people around me.”
“Yet you won’t listen to us right now, and we are around you,”
said Celia, quickly pointing out the flaw in his argument.
“I don’t want to run,” he told her. “I don’t want this to be how I live my life. And I don’t want to work for the East. And those are my two other options aside from turning myself in.”
“Do you think it would be that bad to work for the East?” Coma asked.
“I really don’t know,” said Roman, “but there’s no telling what they would have me do. It might start off relatively easy, but eventually, I would be compromising whatever morals I have left.”
“I think you’re right,” Coma said. “They were going to kill Nadine, even though she had discovered the healer. And now they have the healer, and I’m sure they have plans for the boy as well.”
“Eli is such a sweet boy; he doesn’t deserve to be a pawn in their game,” said Celia.
“No, he doesn’t, but maybe it’s better for them to dissect his power. Maybe they will be able to find a way to replicate it, so we don’t have to worry if there are exemplars with the ability to heal or not. Nor would we have to worry about something wiping all of them out, as seems to be the case at the moment.”
Coma moved even closer to Roman, her head now on his chest, Celia on the other side. Roman knew that they had a relatively strange relationship. But he was happy with it. He tried not to think about what would happen to the dolls after he turned himself in, knowing full well that he would likely be stripped of his power and imprisoned.
It was his last night of freedom, but all Roman could think about was sleep.
And he wished that he could wake up and all his problems would be gone, his slate scrubbed clean, but he knew this wasn’t the case; he knew there was no coming back from the dark places he had gone.
At least he had killed Margo.
He could go to his grave knowing that he had killed the woman who had disrespected his wife’s corpse, and that he had also buried his wife, all in the same night.
So maybe it wasn’t as bad as he’d originally thought. Maybe it was a good end to his story.
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