Celia, the real Celia, came into Roman’s arms.
Twilight all around him, the grass blowing in a subtle breeze, cosmic rays moving overhead—he couldn’t decide if he should keep his eyes open or closed.
“Why do we have to keep meeting in this place?”
“Is there another place we should meet?” she asked.
The sinister presence made itself known. The ground folded beneath him, soil giving way as a crevice opened up, Roman freefalling, his hands out before him as Celia moved in the opposite direction.
He awoke with his heart pounding in his chest, an electric shock roiling his body. His nerves on fire, Roman turned to Celia the doll to find her awake, eyes open, a soft smile barely visible in his darkened bedroom.
He brought her into his arms as she lifted her neck to him and their lips met, the sensation entirely real. His hand dropped to her waist as he let go, a sob starting to rise from his chest, the world around him falling away again.
Roman was better in a moment, able to control himself, always in control, his regret surfacing, making itself known and then filtering away as quickly as it came.
Another soft kiss from Celia had him analyzing the doll. She tasted like something; even her kissing style reminded him of something he’d experienced in the past. She held this kiss a little bit longer, her tongue flickering against his lips.
Roman felt something stir inside him, but he suppressed it.
Instead, he pulled her into his arms, kissing her, running his hand along the contours of her body. He could feel Coma resting next to him on the other side and knew she wasn’t asleep, but the more aggressive doll didn’t say anything, gave no indication that she was awake.
Casper was also in the room, sleeping on Coma’s pillow.
It was odd, really. The first two didn’t need rest, but Casper liked to sleep, and Roman couldn’t help but wonder if this was just another one of his traits, although he couldn’t remember any time he’d liked to nap as much as Casper did.
Maybe when I was younger, he thought as he moved away from Celia, pressing some of her red hair to the other side of her forehead.
As Roman held her, he thought of the dream he had just had, the sensation of falling indefinitely, the twilight meadow, the sinister force.
Sometimes he wished he could just stay awake.
Chapter Fourteen: Brotherly Love
“I need money.”
Kevin Blackbook gasped, shocked to find his fatter twin brother of the same name crouched before him, one of his cat girls standing to his right.
“Kevin?” his brother asked, startled to see he’d gotten past the added security—even more startled because he was wearing a fucking eye patch (also his fatter brother’s fault) and his perception had been off ever since losing half his vision.
But rather than call for telepathic backup, the muscular man pressed off his bed only to be whipped back down as a force landed on him, claws sinking into his trapezius.
Kevin cried out as a pair of claws dug deeper into his flesh, the neurotoxins entering his bloodstream and quickly rushing to his head. He felt woozy all of a sudden, his jaw loosening, the tension in his muscles waning.
“I need money,” his heavier twin brother told him again.
Kevin hated his twin, had hated him since they were young. Fat Kevin had always been a tagalong, not entirely stupid but shortsighted, aloof at times.
He hated that they shared the same name, and he blamed his parents for doing something as stupid as naming a pair of twins the same damn name, all to honor their grandfather, a famous Centralian politician.
“I don’t have any money,” Kevin finally said, not able to focus any longer. He still hadn’t turned to look again at his brother and the cat girl standing next to him, didn’t know how his brother had even got involved with these people in the first place. At least he hadn’t come with the two from last time, the big red man and the beautiful spy.
“We both know that isn’t the case,” his twin growled. “We both know you can access funds I’m not able to access due to our family’s trust and the way it was structured. Stopped fucking with me, Kev. I need that money now.”
“Do you see what you’ve become?” he asked, finally turning his head to the other Kevin—Fat Kevin, as people had called him in secondary school to make it easier to distinguish them. Kev and Fat Kevin.
“I am a product of the world that birthed me,” Fat Kevin said with a sneer. “And now I’m getting what’s mine. Obsidian, deeper.”
Kev cried out again as the cat girl on top of him scraped both her nails down his back, stopping just above his ass.
“What are you going to do with the money?” he asked, his thoughts suddenly cloudy, broken, diaphanous.
Fat Kevin paused, dropping his hand onto the ass of the cat girl standing next to him.
Even with his semi-blurred vision and the small amount of light entering Kev’s darkened bedroom, he could still make out the other cat girl’s features.
Short in stature, in a tight-fitting black outfit with turquoise highlights, a V open over her chest that showed her cleavage, a cute face, dark oval-shaped eyes, furry ears peeking out of her turquoise hair, which was pulled off into a short side ponytail—this was the psycho bitch who had taken his eye.
Kev licked his lips as the neurotoxin took effect and claws dug into his back, scraping down a second time, less painful this go around.
For the first time in his life, Kev felt jealous of his brother and how he had landed these two beautiful women. And this feeling made no sense to him. One had taken his eye and the other was eviscerating his back, yet the feeling was there, no matter how he tried to suppress it.
Fat Kevin had never had much luck with women, aside from Susan, and anyone could have had luck with Susan—hell, including Kev. But here he was before his twin brother, more powerful than Kev had ever seen him, accompanied by two dangerous foreigners.
That much Kev could tell, even in his delirious state. He had never seen exemplars like these two, and the odds of them hailing from Centralia were low. No, they were from somewhere else, probably the West, home of some of the strangest breeds of exemplars that had ever been documented.
“What I plan to do with the money doesn’t concern you. I just need it here now.”
“It’ll take… until morning…” Kev said, his voice barely audible. “Teleporter… can deliver… morning.”
Fat Kevin looked between the two cat girls and shrugged. “Fine, then we’ll stay here until then. Give him just a little more, Obsidian, and then let off for a minute. We can’t have you getting too high, brother.”
Chapter Fifteen: Lighting the Way
“The approval for your request has come through,” Oscar told Nadine, who sat on a futon with her back against the wall. She could have slept while they’d waited to get word from the Eastern Province, but she truly felt bad for Lisa, the young exemplar stuck in her damn Soul Speed form.
As Oscar ate dinner and met with another asset, Nadine sat with Lisa in an upstairs room of Oscar’s reporting station. She was familiar with the room, having stayed here when she’d first been assigned to Centralia, and she was aware of how rare her case was considering they’d given her this precise room to wait in.
Special cases only was what Oscar had told her when he’d first led her to the room, and that perfectly described Nadine’s predicament and request.
It was unorthodox to take people to the Eastern Province—virtually unheard of, as immigration usually only flowed one way.
Besides, most people, or Centralians at least, didn’t want to visit the East.
It was so rare, in fact, that the East’s border security was lax at best—no telepaths, no advanced measures—allowing for the East to be an opportune location to disappear from authorities, and to be exploited by other countries.
There simply wasn’t a protocol in place to stop them, and the personnel they did bring boosted the economy, the bribes they like
ly paid more than enough to keep whoever let them in quiet.
“Roman too?” Nadine asked.
Over the last several hours she’d brought Lisa Painstake up to speed on Roman and how he related to their ultimate mission of discovering what had happened to the world’s healers.
Oscar took a deep breath in. “Yes, but only because of extra information you’ve relayed to me, namely his power.”
“His power?”
“They’d like to look at what he can do in action.”
Nadine hesitated for a moment. “I don’t know if he’ll agree with those conditions in place.”
“Why not? And does he even need to know? It’s not like they’re going to dissect him,” said Oscar. “They just want to see what he is capable of, and possibly take some tissue samples.”
“Possibly?”
His smile thinned. “Most likely.”
“Okay,” Nadine said, realizing she was arguing with the wrong person here. Right now, the point was just to get there. They could figure out how the pieces fell into place after they’d arrived and done their research.
“And aside from that, you still haven’t asked him if he’d be willing to go, have you?”
“Not yet,” Nadine finally said.
“He may say no.”
“I can be persuasive.”
Lisa interrupted them. “Will we go soon? I can’t be in this form any longer. It’s just so jarring. I can’t rest, and looking at my real body…”
Lisa’s physical body lay on a table near the door, still warm to the touch. Oscar and Nadine had moved it up here hours ago so it wouldn’t distract others reporting in.
Until they were able to reattach the young woman to her body, staying in the room was like hanging out with a floating lightbulb and a corpse.
“And about the other part?” Nadine asked.
Oscar’s eyes shot to the door. Nadine pressed herself off the floor and followed him into the hallway.
“I can float through the wall, you know,” Lisa called after them, but there was no life in her voice. It wasn’t quite haggard, but Nadine could tell she was losing energy.
“They want you to see how things shake regarding Paris Renara, especially seeing as how the Western spy has now formed an alliance with Roman,” Oscar said once they were clear.
Nadine shook her head. “That woman tried to kill me twice.”
“And she failed both times,” he reminded her. “There may be something we can gain through their alliance. For now, let Roman continue to work on it.”
“Did you get any information on the man made of light?” Nadine recalled the exemplar who had separated Lisa from her umbilical cord of energy; whatever he was, it would be good to know more about him in case they encountered him again.
For some reason, she got the feeling they weren’t done with him yet.
“No, no information,” Oscar admitted. “I will have a few of our moles reach out and see what they can uncover.”
“Another thing,” Nadine said, nodding at the opposite room. “Lisa seems to be losing power fast. We need to find a way to feed her body.”
“Feed her body? We don’t have any exemplars like that here, at least not readily available.”
“No, not one of them. I’m talking about physically feeding her, offering her some type of beverage with nutrients,” said Nadine. “They have all sorts of things here in Centralia.”
“And how do you suppose we get the body to swallow it?”
“Tilt her head back and keep her mouth open, that’s how. I think it will help.”
“Well, then let’s test it.”
Oscar turned to the stairs and Nadine reentered the room, where she found Lisa sitting in the corner with her knees to her chest.
“We’re going to try to help your real body get nutrients. Who knows? It may give you more energy as well. Also, maybe you should reduce your brightness a bit; that could help some too.”
“Both forms expend the same energy, so either I’m transparent, bright, or somewhere in between—it doesn’t really matter. But I can dim my body some,” she said, the intensity of her form lessening.
Nadine crouched before the woman and placed a hand on her knee. “I appreciate everything you shared with me over the last few hours. I know nothing of the South, and I would love to visit one day.”
The way Lisa’s light-bathed face twitched made Nadine think she was smirking. “Be careful what you wish for. The South is very different from here, and I’m guessing it’s very different from where you’re from. The Southern Alliance is very cold, but also very rich. It is a place where exemplars and non-exemplars are truly separate, not like here where they share basic rights. Let me put it this way: you wouldn’t have your job if you were from the South.”
“I’m aware of the Southern Alliance’s class system.”
“Aware of and taking part in are two different things, but I’m not trying to teach you anything here; I’m sure you had to learn about all this stuff in spy school, even if you are pretending to be ignorant of it.”
“You’re quite clever, you know that?”
“I’m sorry, I’m just feeling bitter right now. And I don’t want you to think I blame you, even though this is technically your fault.”
“Excuse me?” Nadine sat, then brought her legs in so they were crossed.
She wore loose-fitting clothes, nothing like her usual dresses. It was nice to be comfortable, but she knew as soon as she headed east that she would have to change her appearance yet again to something warmer, something less flashy and Centralian.
“Why should I hold back now? I wouldn’t be in this position if it weren’t for you recruiting me,” Lisa said.
“You wouldn’t be in this position if you hadn’t broken immigration law, let’s not forget that. I know you’re upset, Lisa, but I’ve told you a dozen times now I’m going to do everything I can to help you return to your body, that body right over there…” Nadine gestured to the body with her chin. “I will go to great lengths to help you because I don’t believe you deserve this, and you were very helpful to me, and…”
“I will be indebted to you in the future. Is that what you meant to say?”
“Here it is,” Oscar said as he entered the room, the old man shuffling over to Lisa’s actual body. Nadine joined him at the table and helped sit her up. She tilted Lisa’s head back and opened the woman’s lifeless mouth, allowing Oscar to slowly drip some juice down her throat.
They were very careful about it, allowing the liquid to completely dissolve away before pouring in more. It took a few more minutes for them to pour all the juice Oscar had brought, then a few more for Lisa’s spectral form to flare up, evidence that it was actually working.
“We have other options in the East,” Nadine assured Lisa. “Exemplars who can return nutrients to someone’s body. Now, these aren’t healers like the ones I told you about, but they should be able to help us until we can reattach your forms.”
“Thank you,” Lisa said quietly, now focused on her feet, wriggling her toes. “When do we leave?”
“A day from now,” said Oscar. “It’ll take us that long to get transportation in order. Unfortunately, we can’t just teleport there; we’re going to have to go for the border. Plus, we need to see if this Roman fellow is interested in going,” he said, glancing to Nadine.
“You’re going with us?” asked Lisa.
“Me?” Oscar laughed until he was hoarse. “Absolutely not. I’m much too old to get involved in something like this. But I’ll be here if and when you return.”
Chapter Sixteen: Missing
Roman rushed to put his clothing on, swiping Celia aside when she came to help them.
“What’s wrong?” she cried. Coma was beside her, also getting dressed quickly.
“I’m sorry,” Roman told Celia. “I just need to go now—now!”
“Why is he so loud?” Casper asked. The tiny doll stood in the doorway, her hair a mess and her cat e
ars crooked.
“I can’t deal with this right now,” Roman said, waving his hand at Casper.
“Wait!” the tiny doll started to say, but the life came out of her in an instant and she fell to the ground, where she clipped her shoulder and landed sideways.
“Celia, grab Casper and take her back to the living room. Sit her on the couch. I want you to sit on the couch next to her. I need all the power I can get right now. Coma?”
“Almost ready, Roman.”
“This is all so terrible, all so terrible!” Celia said, still topless and in her panties. She moved to the living room with her head bent forward, just about the saddest look Roman had ever seen plastered across her face.
With the doll in her hand, Celia set it on the couch and went to grab some of her clothing, which was strewn over one of the armchairs.
“I wish I could cry,” she said, sniffing.
“It’s not your fault,” said Roman, “and I will handle this.”
“I want to go with you. Don’t just take Coma; you can take me too.”
Roman showed her his power dial. The red bar was nearly at the top, even though he only had two of them animated now, and the green bar had risen past the halfway point.
“I am incredibly stressed out right now,” he said as he pulled his jacket on, buttoning the front two buttons. “So no, just one person can come.”
Roman thought back to the mental message he had just received that had practically catapulted him out of bed—the same message that now had him whipped into this frenzy. “I’m afraid I could push myself over the limit if I take on too much, so just Coma, just in case it’s…”
Roman and Coma exchanged glances. She knew exactly what he was thinking, and he knew that she knew because he would have thought the same thing.
“But I want to be helpful,” Celia said in a soft voice.
“You are helpful. You are the most helpful, so kind, sweet, and beautiful—just please stay here for now and relax, because you really have no other choice. I have to do this.” Roman took a deep breath in. “I have to go there now.”
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