It made him wonder what traits the next doll he animated would take.
Then again, maybe three is enough, he thought as he pocketed the tiny doll.
Roman followed Nadine and Lisa out of the store and to the platform. The train was already there, and he turned once to confirm the coffins were indeed being loaded. Once he was sure, he did as Nadine instructed, following the spy through one of the train cars.
Nadine, who normally wore tight dresses that accented her figure, now wore a flowing emerald-green blouse, a disguise of sorts. She was still beautiful, and with her blond hair up in a bun, Roman remembered how they’d come to know each other in the first place.
From there, his thoughts moved to Kevin on the rooftop—how Roman had pulled a dick move by choosing that opportunity to flirt with Nadine rather than talk his co-worker down.
It was too bad what had happened to Kevin Blackbook, and the fact that Roman now had this superpower because of his overweight officemate only made him feel guiltier.
“Here’s our cabin,” Nadine said, Roman nearly colliding with her.
“Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.” He stepped aside to let Lisa into their private cabin. The bright Type IV, Class C & F took the top bunk on the right, allowing for Roman to take the bottom bunk on the left. Nadine took the bunk next to him, and once their tickets were checked and the door shut, she quickly switched gears.
“You said you were attacked. What happened?”
Roman, who had set Casper on the pillow so she could rest, pinched the bridge of his nose as he began his story. “You know Dante in HR?”
“Bald guy?” Nadine asked.
“That’s him. I was in his office filling out paperwork when a Type II, Class I-don’t-even-know cat girl with turquoise hair attacked me.”
Nadine bit her lip. “A cat girl?”
“I should clarify—she was just about to attack me when I used my power to…” He thought about how he could describe this. “I used the cubicle wall to wrap around her body and slam her into the ground, then through the ceiling from there.”
“You used your powers in public?”
“Yes, but that’s already been handled, and only Dante saw anyway. I did see some of my other co-workers, Phil and Tara, if those names ring a bell.”
“From our retreat; I remember.”
“But by that point I had a mask on. Anyway, I followed her up through the hole I created, where I took on another cat girl, this one with black hair. They all disappeared pretty quickly through the use of a teleporter, and I jumped out the window to escape.”
“You jumped out the window?” Lisa asked from her perch on the top bunk. “How are you still alive?”
“I used the glass to form a hand that carried me to the ground. I was fortunate enough for this to work, because it would have been a disaster if it hadn’t.”
“An understatement,” Nadine finally said.
“Speaking of which, do two cat girls ring a bell to you?” he asked the Eastern spy. “One with turquoise hair, the other with black?”
Nadine nodded. “As a matter of fact, they do. Paris had two of them in her employ. Now, I should say, I never actually met them; this was just intel another agent had gathered.”
“They were affiliated with Paris?”
“They were, but that doesn’t mean they work for her or anything. From what I gathered, they are freelancers, not really working for any set Western entity.”
“Shit,” Roman said, running his hand along his chin line. “You think Paris orchestrated the attack?”
Nadine shook her head. “As much as I dislike the bitch, no, she wouldn’t do something in such a public place. It goes against how Western spies operate. They wouldn’t want to bring attention to themselves in that way.”
“So it was someone else?”
“Yes. And maybe, just maybe, that person is the same person who stole your wife’s corpse.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Roman said.
“Who steals a corpse anyway?” Lisa asked from the top bunk.
Nadine shrugged as the train started up. “I don’t know. But it looks like there may be a new actor on the scene, and whoever they are, they are willing to go to lengths we’ve never seen before.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Have Healer? Will Kill.
“I need a healer,” Kevin told the woman who sat before him, one leg crossed over the other.
The dark-haired female started to laugh, throwing her head back as she exposed her throat to Kevin.
“You have some nerve coming back here,” she said, her arms elongating.
“I’d be careful if I were you,” Kevin told her as his thumb pressed into the notch on the bottom of his ring. “You won’t like what happens next.”
“Is that a threat?” Paris asked, her eyes narrowing on Obsidian. The cat girl stood next to Kevin ready to engage if need be. Scarlett the teleporter was behind both of them too, just in case things got out of hand.
“Turquoise needs your help,” Obsidian blurted out, baring her canines. “She doesn’t deserve this!”
Paris rolled her eyes and sighed deeply. “Your group was attacked while assaulting a public institution. All of you are as good as dead. The Centralians will hunt you for this, and they already have a lead considering you were trying to kill some of your coworkers, Mr. Blackbook. Healing the other cat girl is the least of your concerns. There’s nothing I can do for you.”
Red in the face, Kevin took a step closer to Paris, whose arms naturally elongated, ready to move into action. They were on her turf, in her warehouse, but that didn’t matter much to the former administrator. His only thoughts were on Turquoise and rescuing her from certain death.
“I’m fucking serious,” Kevin seethed, a vein pulsing at the side of his head. “I will fucking kill you if you don’t let me know what you know. Do not test me!”
“First, I’d step the fuck back if I were you, you fat piece of shit. And threats from a non-exemplar? Regardless of the whores you’ve brought here with you, you do realize how easy it would be for me to end you, right? I will snap your spine,” she said, her voice hardening, “and leave your paralyzed body to the street dogs in Western Centralia. Don’t test you? Please, Mr. Blackbook, I am the test. I suggest you think carefully about what you’re going to say next.”
Kevin took a deep breath in, steadying his voice. “We can do it together. I want a healer for personal reasons; you want a healer to help the people of the West. Is this not the case? We can do this together, but I need to know what you know.”
Paris raised an eyebrow at Kevin. Of all the people she’d encountered recently, the look of utter conviction on Kevin’s face had her on edge. Sure, he looked like a fucking idiot in his exemplar clothing, but the maniacal glare he was giving her made her second-guess what she planned to do next.
“Goodbye, Mr. Blackbook.”
As Paris’s arms extended, her powers suddenly came to a halt, her arms going limp at her sides. The other exemplars were also affected by whatever had happened, but not Kevin.
No, the portly middle-aged administrator had already stepped on one of Paris’s loosened arms and instructed his two assistants to grab her.
Her eyes wide, fear washed over Paris as she tried to break free from their grasp. The Western spy made a last-minute plea to Kevin as he approached. “Please, whatever you’re doing, I’ll help! I’ve changed my mind. I know things. There are other forces at play—please! Forces that are stronger than you. They can help you. I can lead you to them.”
“Is this information somewhere in your office?” Kevin asked as he took a cursory glance around.
Paris tried to kick free from her chair, but Obsidian and the teleporter now held both of her arms back, pinning her down.
“This is a mistake,” she whispered to Kevin as he grabbed a purple scarf from the coat rack. “Think before you do this!”
“I doubt she left anything sitting out,” Kevin said, a grimace st
retching across his face. “But we can search the place after I’m finished.”
“Wait!” Paris shrieked. She fired off a handful of mental messages as Kevin approached, her last message intended for a Western Province spy named Margo, her handler and her former lover.
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Double Down
There was a lot Hazrat didn’t know about Margo, the hooded woman he’d found himself working for.
Hazrat didn’t know Margo was a spy from the West who was an on-and-off-again handler for a now-dead woman named Paris.
He didn’t know the two had been lovers in the past, that Margo’s current actions were instigated by Paris’s failures, or that the handler had gone out on a limb to make sure Roman Martin paid for what he’d done to Ian Turlock.
Then there was Margo’s competitive streak, another thing Hazrat couldn’t possibly have known. Upon learning of Roman’s powers, the woman felt threatened, and when Margo felt threatened, she acted.
And that was yet another thing Hazrat didn’t know about the woman who stood before him, now trembling: she’d been through hell and back in the West during one of Centralia’s proxy wars, she’d been a fucking vampire hunter with dozens of kills under her belt, and after all the mayhem, she’d come out the other end with a nearly unquenchable thirst to extinguish life when the opportunity presented itself.
Life simply didn’t matter to someone who could animate the dead, but if there was one person to test this theory, one person Margo hoped to never see reach the other side, that person was Paris.
The walls trembled.
Hazrat mentally reached to the shadows, preparing to provide shelter for himself in case Margo brought the place down.
“What’s wrong!?” he cried, his heart skipping a beat when the red man and Celia’s corpse collapsed, their arms and legs splayed out.
“She’s…” Margo swallowed hard and removed her hood.
Hazrat wasn’t expecting her to be quite as beautiful as she was, at least from what he could see. Her skin was a light shade of peach, one of her eyes blue and the other green. Affixed tightly to the front of her face was a swath of black fabric that stopped just over the tip of her nose, hiding the rest of her features from the bridge of her nose down.
The other thing that immediately caught his eye was her hair, which was completely white.
“She dead,” Margo finally said.
“Who’s dead?”
Margo took a deep breath in, gathering her strength. As she did so, Celia pressed her pale body off the ground, later to be joined by the big red man, whose eyes were black again.
“Someone close to me, someone murdered by…”
“By who?” Hazrat asked, taking a step back.
Since he’d met the woman, he’d seen nothing but intensity. Now, seeing her in a vulnerable state didn’t do what Hazrat would have assumed. No, seeing her this way didn’t make him feel like she was weak—seeing her this way made him even more afraid of her.
There was something about the way she stood, her hands curled at her sides, his shadows barely able to keep the space from collapsing upon itself. She was vulnerable, sure, but she was also furious, and Hazrat was glad he wasn’t the man or woman she would eventually aim her fury at.
“Please, Margo, tell me who did this. I implore you.”
Margo’s hand returned the hood to her head as she said a name Hazrat had become all too familiar with. “Roman Martin. He did this, and he will pay dearly for what he has done.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine: All Lifeless Objects
Roman couldn’t sleep.
There was nothing unusual about this for him, and he’d gone through bouts of insomnia for most of his life. A decade ago, his insomnia would have been caused by anticipation for the fights he liked to take part in. Roman would have been up the night before, exercising and psyching himself up.
As a non-exemplar, he hadn’t had a superpower, but he’d still had enhanced strength and stamina, which he’d been able to augment with more calisthenics.
Over the last few days, his insomnia had been caused by the fever dreams of Celia, the strange plateau they would find themselves on awash in the moonlight, flowers wavering in the wind, stars galaxies away.
The twilight meadow.
Of course, with the dream came the inevitable fall, flailing through nothingness, darkness on the perimeter, Roman reaching out to stop his dissent only to wake up with a gasp, his heart in his throat, the bed sheets covered in sweat, one of the dolls next to him wondering if he was okay.
But there were no dolls on the train; they were back in storage along with Lisa Painstake’s body, all lifeless objects.
So when Roman woke up this time, there was nothing to grab on to. He remembered where he was instantly and turned to see Nadine sitting in her bunk, her back against the wall. There was a small amount of luggage on the bunk above him, and one of the straps from her bags hung down to his own bunk.
“Are you okay?” she whispered.
“I’m fine.”
“I couldn’t sleep either, if that helps any.”
Roman buttoned his shirt and turned to her, sweeping his legs out from the bunk. He reached for sleeping Casper, took her life away, and put the lifeless doll on the top bunk.
He noticed the faint glow coming from Lisa, but if she was awake, she didn’t say anything. And he had never asked if she was able to sleep in that form anyway.
“I should come over there,” Nadine said, taking Roman off guard.
“To my bunk?”
“We have to seem believable, Roman, and this is one way we can make that happen.”
She shifted out of her bunk and stood, her legs spreading out a little as the train hit a bump and she caught her balance. A strand of Nadine’s blond hair fell into her face and she swept it aside, looking up at Roman with a mischievous smile.
“You act like you’ve never been in a bunk with a woman before.”
“Well, not on a train,” Roman said as he scooted over to make room for her.
“And this doesn’t mean anything is happening between us,” she reminded him. “It’s part of the plan—you are aware of that, right? You’re supposed to be my husband.”
“Yeah, sure,” Roman said as he pushed his body into the wall, making as much room for Nadine as he possibly could.
The bunks were designed for one person, and it was going to be hard for both of them to squeeze in without spooning.
But rather than go over the logistics, Nadine simply turned to him and pressed her rear into his side, forcing him to move into a spooning position.
He could smell her hair now, a fresh hint of mint and lavender. He felt her breathing as well.
This was one thing he had noticed about the dolls. Their bodies didn’t mimic the physiological act of breathing, so if he cuddled one, it was simply a stationary object, even if it was slightly warm.
Anyone touching or looking at one of the dolls would think it was alive, but if they got close enough to its face, they would notice that while their nostrils were flaring, no air came out of them.
“I didn’t think we would end up cuddling tonight,” Roman started to say.
“Please, this is hardly cuddling. Your clothes are on, and I’m wearing my pajamas,” Nadine reminded him as she moved in closer.
“You can cuddle with clothes on, you know.”
“I’ve already told you why we’re doing this, Roman.”
“Yeah, sorry.”
He tried to get comfortable, ease his breathing some, but being in such close proximity to Nadine, her body pressed into his, had his nerves firing. He’d had a serious crush on her when she’d first started at the immigration office; his crush had all but disappeared once they’d got into the thick of it.
Yet being this close to her was bringing it back in a way he hadn’t expected.
“Don’t get too excited,” Nadine told him.
“I’m definitely not.”
“Sure, soldier.”
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“I’ve never been a soldier,” he reminded her.
“That’s not what the passport I gave you says,” she said. “The passport you’ll show the guards who check us later says you were a former Centralian soldier, and that I am your doting and beautiful wife. Nice, huh? We are visiting the Eastern province to meet relatives of mine and see about a treatment for our dear daughter, Lisa.”
“It’s a little strange you have to assume a fake identity to visit your country on a mission given to you by your own government.”
“You’d be surprised what the various players do to gather information,” Nadine said. “So yes, I’m an Eastern spy sneaking back into my country to spy on your country and gather information for my country. Okay, you’re right. It sounds crazy.”
“And I’m guessing this has something to do with not being able to trust Eastern leadership?”
“Bingo,” she said softly, bringing his arm around her waist. “Now that’s how you cuddle.”
“I’m just going to trust you know what we’re doing here.”
“Good.”
“I figured since all this is in your hands, you’d have a game plan for how we’re supposed to go forward in any situation. You just let me know what role I need to play, and I’ll play it.”
“Sounds great, dear,” she said with a soft laugh. “I’m sorry, it’s not often I get to act like someone’s bride.”
Conversations on matrimony would normally leave Roman with a sour taste in his mouth, but the click clack of the train was lulling him to sleep, it was a bit cold and Nadine was warm.
Plus, it felt nice to be close to someone.
She was a good actor as well. He didn’t tell her this as he made more pillow talk with her, but she’d sure assumed the role of a wife quite readily, which made him wonder what kind of acting she’d had to go through in her training.
He imagined she’d been trained in a variety of things, from interrogation to how to hold a hostage, but had there been a class on how to play a convincing role?
Roman thought back to when he’d first seen her at the office, how confident she’d looked, how he’d wanted her the instant they locked eyes.
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