“I thought it was a business associate?” Ava asked.
“Same difference. She didn’t say anything about this,” he said, shaking the box secretly.
“You don’t even know what it is yet,” Ava said.
“I’m pretty sure I know what it is.”
“Maybe it’s just a head,” Coma suggested. “But that would be a little strange, wouldn’t it?”
“Open it already!” Ava said.
“Fine, fine.” Roman sat the box on the bar stool. Rather than fiddle with the locking mechanism, which wasn’t completely locked but still snapped shut in a clever way, Roman simply waved his hand over it, and the metal lifted on its own. When he removed the lid, his eyes widened once he saw what was inside. “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”
Chapter Three: Two Down, More to Go
It was the last time Kevin Blackbook would ever see his home.
It used to be the place he loved to be the most, a place he’d put his personal touch on. From the paint in his study to the built-in bookshelves, Kevin had worked pretty hard to get the place up to his standards. Well, and the standards of Susan.
But Susan’s standards no longer applied.
This soon-to-be deceased wife was on the floor, frothing at the mouth, the cat girls’ poison surging through her veins.
Obsidian and Turquoise had done the dirty work—Kevin was aware of that—but he had plans for their next arrival.
“Shhh…” The fat former immigration advisor told Susan, placing a hand on her head. He felt tears come, memories of their time together flashing across his mind’s eye.
They hadn’t been unhappy, but what Susan had done was unforgivable, and Kevin’s response had led him here with Obsidian and Turquoise at his side, both crouched, Turquoise admiring her claws.
“She was beautiful,” said Obsidian, her prayer beads falling from her wrist to her hand. She stood poised on the balls of her feet, her hand naturally running through the prayer beads as she whispered some ancient mantra, her perky ears flitted backward.
Kevin found the cat girls incredibly fascinating, and it only made him want to visit the Western Province more, to uncover the secrets it held. In doing so, he was fairly certain he would discover new types of exemplars Centralia had never encountered.
“When will he be here?” Kevin asked again, his voice a low growl.
“Please…” Susan whimpered, true terror in her bloodshot eyes. “Please don’t.”
His wife’s face was pressed against the floor, her hair matted to her skull and her cheeks, arms, neck and throat covered in slashes.
It was a wonder she wasn’t dead already, and Kevin had to ignore every instinct ingrained in him to look the other way. She was suffering, clear in the way her body was hunched forward, stink all around her as she could no longer control her bowels, her legs spasming and fingers twitching.
“Let me have a little,” said Kevin, extending his arm toward Turquoise. He needed a dose to calm his nerves, remind himself this was all part of the plan.
Kevin kept his ringed hand close to his side, away from Turquoise and her quick reflexes.
The cat girls hadn’t quite figured out how he had come to have the power to turn off their abilities, but they respected it, practically worshiped him now—and in turn he would take care of them, their relationship formed of mutual respect and circumstance.
“Please,” Kevin said, losing his nerve as he heard more of Susan’s whimpers.
Turquoise took Kevin’s beefy finger in her mouth and bit down onto it, drawing blood. He felt her poison almost immediately, and it wasn’t long before he rolled his head back, sighing as it swam through his bloodstream.
Kevin was a large man, overweight, with a bald spot at the back of his head barely covered by his blondish-brown hair. He had lost a few pounds since being kidnapped by Obsidian and Turquoise, but not much.
Turquoise’s ears twitched, a wicked smile forming across her delicate, soft face. “He’s here,” she said, tensing with excitement, quickly wrapping her prayer beads around her wrist again.
Obsidian silently made her way to the side of the door and crouched, her black tail lifting into the air above her and forming a hook shape.
“We’ll go with the plan,” said Kevin, his thumb on the bottom notch of his ring. “And move a little further away,” he reminded Obsidian, who obediently did as she was instructed.
With a deep breath in to steady himself, and another to gather his wits, Kevin approached the door and waited for the knock. Once he heard it, the sound seeming to ricochet across the quiet room, he reached for the handle and stepped to the side, then activated his ring as soon as the flying exemplar stepped in.
“You!” the man said, his brazen good looks at odds with the shock forming on his face as Kevin’s ring took his power away.
The man was muscular and fit, something Kevin stupidly hadn’t considered, and his first response after Kevin had deactivated his powers was to swing his fists wide, catching Kevin in the cheek and sending him to the floor, where he accidentally pressed the bottom of his ring twice.
Deactivating it.
“Kevin!” Obsidian hissed, springing into action and missing as the super burst into Kevin’s old home.
“Susan!” the man shouted once he’d landed and spotted the woman on the floor, her hair sticky with spittle.
He moved toward her just as Obsidian leapt into the air and looped her arms around the flying man’s neck, her nails immediately digging into his shoulders as she tried to hold on and released her toxin.
The flying exemplar managed to buck her off, sending Turquoise straight into a wall.
He stumbled forward, and within seconds, Turquoise was back in action, holding on to his leg and biting into his flesh. Obsidian joined her, the cat girl seeing her opening and darting forward. She used an ottoman to launch herself into the flying exemplar, who was attempting to fly free of their grip.
Both cat girls kept their grips on the man, their tails poised and flickering, both ignoring any action he took to throw them off—even when he kicked Turquoise into the wall again and tried to throw Obsidian over his head.
“He’s mine!” Kevin said, lumbering towards the man, his finger in the bottom grip of his ring, ready yet again to activate his power-negation ability.
Delirium was already sinking in. The flying exemplar had fallen on one knee, Turquoise wrapped around his arm going to work with her claws, blood streaked across her face and staining her teeth as Obsidian anchored his other arm with her claws digging into his bicep.
“You’re… Kevin?”
Kevin paused, waiting for more of the poison to move through the man’s bloodstream.
He pulled the man’s hair back and punched him as hard as he could in the face.
His knuckles still stinging, Kevin activated his ring. Both cat girls dropped to the side, their claws exposed as they glared at the flying exemplar.
Revenge was his. And as Kevin brought his fists back and punched the man again, he let out a howl of sheer animosity, a sound he had never made before.
A primal utterance from a man who was now in control.
Kevin stepped back and the man dropped, his chin cracking against the wooden floor, his eyes rolling into the back of his head.
For a moment, Kevin wondered what the man’s name was, aware he’d never gotten it. He could ask Susan, but one glance over to her told him she’d stopped breathing. Her eyes were glued shut, the side of her face resting in her own vomit.
“Make sure they’re dead,” he told Obsidian and Turquoise, his heart thumping in his chest as he deactivated his ring.
Kevin slouched forward in his old lazy chair, the one he’d bought from a flea market and restored. This was just the start of the havoc Kevin hoped to levy on those who had hurt him in his previous life.
Two down, more to go… he thought, not looking as Obsidian tore into the man’s throat.
Chapter Four: The Man
Made of Light
Nadine Under took a deep breath in, her dirty-blond hair cushioning her head against a hardened pillow. The Eastern Province spy knew better than to return to her apartment—not after the muscled red man with the terrible skin condition had taken her. Not after she’d been so blatantly targeted.
No, she would have to find a new place, and that meant she would spend time in temporary housing provided by Oscar, the Eastern Province communicator she had met with earlier that night.
The scars running up and down the side of her body ached, remnants of a fight she’d had with an exemplar long ago, a man whose arms turned into sharp blades made of hardened bone.
The scar hurt sometimes, but she was used to the pain by this point and glad to be healed.
Lying next to Nadine was Lisa Painstake, the 19-year-old exemplar from the Southern Alliance, the one Nadine had persuaded to come under her wing after she’d been caught smuggling for her brother.
Lisa wore a bodysuit this evening, the dark colors of which offset the shocking brightness of her pink bouffant and blond bangs. It was formfitting, in the fashion of those under the age of twenty, cute with a shade of inappropriate.
Lisa had a power that made her invaluable to Nadine’s operation.
The young woman’s Soul Speed ability allowed her to peel her soul away from her form and travel long distances, her soul always attached to her body through a light linked to her umbilical cord.
Even more unique was the fact that Lisa could increase the tangibility of her light body no matter how far away she was from her actual body, which meant she could do things like open doors, look through papers, and even lift things.
It was an entirely unique power, something that would cause Lisa to be exploited for the rest of her life.
And Nadine had qualms with the fact that she too was exploiting the young woman.
Lisa had been caught doing something illegal, and she could have been deported had Nadine not intervened. Nadine was starting to like Lisa. Once the young woman had accepted her role as an asset, she had lightened up some, realizing this was her fate.
These were the most valuable assets.
“Are you ready?” Lisa asked.
“Let’s do this. And thank you for coming here tonight.”
“Your new place is a lot smaller,” said Lisa as she locked hands with Nadine.
Nadine sighed. “Not my favorite place to be, but I won’t be here much longer.”
“Why’d you switch homes?”
“That’s another story entirely.”
Lisa considered this for a moment. “Does this have anything to do with the bruises and scrapes on your face?”
Nadine didn’t say anything; instead, she closed her eyes, immediately skipping to being attacked by the big red man, dragged up a flight of stairs and knocked out, her ring stolen from her.
She had tried her damnedest to recall the face and voice of the person who had taken her Zero Ring, but it was all but impossible. Her mind was at the point where it had started replacing the face with other people’s faces, acquaintances and closer associates.
Useless.
At one point in the afternoon she’d even been convinced Roman Martin had taken the ring, which she knew wasn’t the case.
She would have to return to the Eastern Province and physically get another device, as they didn’t normally smuggle them into Centralia—too dangerous, and there was no telling what Nadine would be given anyway.
She would also have to file several reports, two of which she’d already started working on when she’d met Oscar earlier this afternoon.
And what was there to tell, really?
Nadine had been ambushed by Ian Turlock, an ambush orchestrated by Paris Renata, the elastic spy from the West who would probably come for Nadine again.
But she’d be ready this time.
Nadine was so concentrated on her thoughts that she didn’t feel her spectral body lift from her actual form.
She was suddenly standing in the room next to Lisa, both attached to their real bodies via umbilical cords of light. Lisa had a soft, yet solemn smile on her face.
Before she could say anything, they appeared near the entrance of Prison South. The prison was on the southeast side of Centralia, a no-brainer for storing captives from the Eastern Province considering the border was less than ten miles away.
“Thank you for doing this,” said Nadine as their forms took shape. The string attaching her spectral form to her real body had twisted until it was at the small of her back, allowing her to go forward.
Nadine didn’t need to thank the young woman for her work, but she wasn’t the type to abuse an asset, to treat them as a lesser human being.
She had learned in her training that the best asset was one who trusted their handler as much as their handler trusted them, and even though this couldn’t always be the case, she approached the subject with this in mind: respect and consideration equated to better cooperation.
Lisa took a few steps forward, motioning for Nadine to follow.
The two passed easily through the security checkpoint, which consisted of a wall covered in razor wire at the top. There were also security measures meant to stop exemplars, one of which being other exemplars on patrol.
It wasn’t always easy to tell an exemplar from a non-exemplar, but these patrols actually wore uniforms marking their status with the letter E on their sleeves, which Nadine felt was a poor choice on behalf of the Centralian government.
Nadine bristled.
She got the feeling someone was watching her, but a quick look around confirmed that no one had moved, nor had anyone made an action to indicate they’d spotted intruders.
The building before them had been built from a material that was impossible to teleport into, but this wouldn’t stop Lisa, whose power didn’t work the same as a teleporter’s.
They easily passed through, as if it had never existed.
While Centralia claimed to have invented this special type of metal, Nadine knew it had come from the East. After all, the East’s technology surpassed the tech of the other countries.
The East’s problem was that it had never leveraged its tech in a good way. They sold new technological breakthroughs or kept them for military use only, and the people remained poor.
Case in point: the metal used to prevent teleporters from infiltrating the prison.
Nadine was sure there were more examples of Eastern technology within Prison South, but it wasn’t like she would have time to catalog them—she had come here to see what Centralia was doing with the kidnapped citizens of the East, which was mission enough.
“Let’s move up,” said Lisa, her hands lifting at her sides.
She was floating in a matter of seconds, Nadine next to her, both of them gravitating to the ceiling of the main building.
The next floor contained a series of long, clean hallways of white marble. The place looked opposing in a bureaucratic way, showcasing Centralia’s wealth.
And to think such a stunning series of hallways would be in a prison…
Nadine wanted to physically see the prisoners from the East, but she needed to know what cellblock they were being held in first. That normally would have been tricky with the sentinels at each end of the hallway, likely exemplars with ranged and heat-seeking abilities, their arms crossed over their chests as they watched the space through thin visors over their eyes.
Nadine smiled.
Some Class Cs had the ability to turn themselves invisible, but they would still give off heat patterns, unlike the spectral forms Nadine and Lisa had taken.
Nadine knew this from when they had broken in to the administrative building, as she had seen the heat sensors in the corners of the room beaming down, and none of them had been triggered by Lisa’s ability.
And now, sure enough, the exemplar standing guard saw absolutely nothing as Nadine and Lisa passed in front of him.
As they moved into the next room, Nadine co
uldn’t help but imagine her parents being taken. Even though she hadn’t had contact with them for years, if Centralia forces were simply taking people from their homes in the East, who was to say they wouldn’t eventually take her mother and father?
It was something she couldn’t risk.
Nadine and Lisa continued forward into a waiting area for the warden’s office; the prison rolls would be here somewhere.
She paused when she saw a single exemplar in the room, a man sitting in a chair, looking straight at them. He wore a white, collarless shirt that extended all the way down to his ankles.
“So there are two of you,” the man said, rising.
Lisa gasped, a hand coming to her umbilical cord of light, ready to yank herself back to her actual body depending on the outcome of this conversation.
“You can see me?” she finally asked, fear trembling her voice.
“I can do much more than that.” The man’s body turned to light in an instant, a blistering oscillating energy radiating around his form.
“Let’s go!” Lisa said, grabbing Nadine’s wrist.
But the man was too fast, and within a moment, he had chopped through Lisa’s umbilical cord with a blade of energy.
The young woman cried out in pain, instantly falling to the floor, her form not passing through as it should have, her spectral body tangible.
“Lisa!” Nadine shouted.
“I was wondering how you were able to check the files in the administrative office,” the man said, moving menacingly toward Nadine yet speaking calmly. “And now I see. Spectral body—it’s genius. But there are so few of you, aren’t there? You may actually be helpful to us.”
“Not another step,” said Nadine, steeling herself even though she had no way to defend Lisa. “The people I work for will find out who you are, and they will kill you. And if you have family, they will kill your family. And if you have children…”
The man started to laugh, energy filtering out from his open lips.
Nadine couldn’t remember what he’d looked like before taking this form; all she could recall was seeing him sitting there, then seeing his body blazing with power.
House of Dolls 2 Page 3
