“I understand,” she said.
“In fact, I think only you and I should go on the excursion,” Nadine told Roman.
“Coma will come with us. If we run into any trouble, she is the one most trained for combat.”
“I don’t believe we’ll run into anything, but it’ll be easier with less people.” Nadine lifted her purse from the back of the chair and rummaged through it for a moment. She pulled out a wrist guard made of an interesting shade of silver, dark upon first glance.
Nadine clicked it onto her arm and finished by snapping the bracelet around her wrist.
“I’d love to see what that does,” said Roman.
“Hopefully, you won’t have to.”
The tailor took their measurements quickly, discussed styles with Roman and Nadine, then left just as quickly as he’d come. He was some type of Class E, an intelligence-based exemplar, evident in how much detail he took in without making a single note.
And if what he had been wearing was any indication of his skill, Roman knew they were in good hands.
“Are you ready for our excursion?” Jorgen asked as he also clipped something to his wrist. It was a bit shorter than Nadine’s armband, but Roman figured it was equally powered.
He had expected to see some tech in the East that was beyond what they had in Centralia, and thus far, he hadn’t been disappointed. Roman also knew that they were just scratching the surface here, and there was a lot more they would encounter over the next few days.
“Another thing,” Jorgen said as he tossed a cloth mask to Roman. “In case we’re seen.”
“A mask?”
Jorgen smiled. “This isn’t just any excursion.”
“Got it.” Roman pulled the black mask over his head, keeping it on top like a beanie, and nodded to Nadine. It dawned on him in that moment just how strange this operation was becoming. Their host clearly didn’t know they weren’t a married couple, but he did know enough about why they’d come to take precautions.
“And a mask for you as well,” he told Coma. The beautiful doll with red eyes removed the mask she was wearing, a black piece that reminded Roman of a bat’s wings.
As they left their hotel, Roman looked back at Celia and Lisa.
Celia sat before the bright woman, allowing Lisa to braid her hair. At first, Roman thought they were acting, trying to pretend they were sisters, but in the way they were speaking, he came to the realization that Celia really had made friends with the generally mopey exemplar.
Another testament to just how friendly and caring she was.
“Once we get into the forest,” Jorgen said as he moved ahead, “I will tell you more about our excursion.”
“I’m looking forward to it.” Nadine now wore a hood over her head that was attached to her blouse. Roman hadn’t noticed it before, but then again, he was always taken off guard by women’s clothing and the secrets it held.
He took a deep breath of fresh air, feeling completely rejuvenated.
A couple more minutes and it was like the city never existed. Even turning around and looking in its direction didn’t produce any sights or sounds Roman was used to. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been out for a nature walk, or the last time he had been out of the city for that matter.
It must’ve been some time before he’d gotten married to Celia, sometime in his youth.
And now, as he moved over fallen leaves, securing his footing with roots and stones, the sound of a gargling stream somewhere off to his left, Roman wished he had spent more time outside.
How different would his life have been had he stayed outside more? What if he and Celia had been nature people rather than those who liked to make public appearances and enjoy the finer things of civilized life?
It would have turned out differently, he knew that much.
The disaster may not have happened, Celia wouldn’t have fallen into her coma, Roman never would have met Paris, and who knows, his situation with Kevin might have been different as well.
He sure as hell would not have been flirting with Nadine while Kevin was attempting to jump. He’d never been great friends with his cubicle mate anyway, but he could have been more concerned. And even if Kevin had jumped and Roman had taken the hero ticket from his desk, things may have turned out differently.
His wife, Celia, always a soft yet controlling figure in his life, may have made him tear the ticket up, or he may have forgotten about it completely. It hadn’t been his power to win in the first place.
But it only took a single finger to set off a string of dominoes, and once they fell there was really no way of knowing where the trail would lead or who it would leave in its wake.
And more importantly, them being nature people wouldn’t have changed some of these things.
But things could have been different, Roman thought as they moved into thick underbrush, small trees with sharp limbs catching their clothing at every turn. They passed through this section to a new space defined by a high canopy and a sea of deep red leaves on the forest floor.
Jorgen turned to them. “Okay, it’s about a mile in this direction. Centralians have a makeshift base in the cliff walls of one of these hills. It’s hard to tell, but this entire area is simply a long range of rolling hills. The trees make it hard,” Jorgen said, looking up at the orange, yellow, and red leaves, a few of which floated in the air down to the ground. “But I’m guessing your feet can tell we’ve been moving upward. Yes?”
Roman nodded. “Is there anything else we should know about this area?”
“The hills naturally turn into a series of pretty big mountains, and while I haven’t personally seen them, the reindeer people live in those foothills and mountains,” Jorgen said. “Also, masks on.”
“Reindeer people?” Roman asked as he pulled his mask down over his face.
“There are groups in the Eastern Province that don’t associate with those who have bunkered down in the cities and towns,” Nadine explained. “They live more remote lives, and this particular group rides reindeer when they come down for medical supplies and things they can’t produce on their own. Hence the name.”
“So a tribe that rides reindeer?” Roman had never heard of such a thing. He’d heard of riding horses, and he’d seen pictures of some of the stranger beasts they had in the Western Province, but never reindeer.
“That’s why they stay so high up the mountain. The reindeer are quite furry, and they don’t like the warmer climate closer to the hills,” said Jorgen.
“Good to know,” Roman said as he followed Jorgen into a small clearing, the leaves beneath him wet and sticky, the smell of slightly damp soil overpowering.
It was there they came upon four Centralian soldiers, one several heads taller than Roman.
A blast of air tossed Roman to the right, spinning him toward a cluster of trees.
It surprised him sometimes how quickly his powers went into effect, and before he could crack into the line of trees, their branches came down and caught him.
It was still a rough landing, and he was a little winded by the time he could get to his knees, but it was better than what would have happened had he not had a superpower.
With a flick of his wrist, he transferred some of his ability to Coma, who lifted both hands into the air while pulling the roots up from the soil to her fists.
Rather than go with the boxing-glove motif, Coma pulled her fists back and used the roots as thick whips to take the feet out from under one of the Centralian soldiers.
The other two, not counting the strongman, had their staffs pointed at Jorgen and Nadine.
They each fired a shot, which did little to the shield Nadine had activated with her wrist guard.
It was incredible tech, a shield made out of some type of green energy that completely deflected the blasts, forcing the energy into the tops of the trees and starting a fire in the branches.
Jorgen’s wrist guard did something entirely different. As he brought his arm back,
a green force appeared alongside the outer edge of his hand, a large scythe-like formation.
Jorgen chopped his arm at the soldiers, sending a bolt of energy in their direction.
The strongman took the brunt of this, the Centralian soldier jumping forward with his armored chest exposed. The blast did little to the armor he wore, nor to the helmet on his head or the visor covering his face.
Not even a black mark.
“Stop them!” the strongman shouted as he pulled his hand back and fired off a blast of concentrated air at Nadine. The gust slammed into her shield but she held strong, skidding backward as she maintained her footing.
So he’s the one who blasted me into the trees, Roman thought as he got to his feet. The strongman, a Type II with some sort of wind elemental ability and enhanced strength, a Type C and D merged.
Rather than continue to classify his target, Roman formed a whirlwind in the soil beneath the muscular Centralian man. For anyone watching, it would have looked like the man had stepped into a deep hole, quicksand even, which immediately moved all the way up to his neck when he fell in it.
The strongman struggled, the ground lifting, dirt flying into the air as he tried to use his power to blast out of Roman’s hold.
But Roman continued to focus his power, a bead of sweat forming on the side of his head as Coma tossed the man whose feet she had lassoed high into the air. The soldier hit the ground with a thunk! that made Roman cringe.
With the strongman incapacitated and one of the soldiers likely dead, the other two still fired their powered staffs at Nadine and Jorgen. They were clearly non-exemplars—three non-exes on patrol with the strongman—and with their powerhouse incapacitated, it wouldn’t be long before Roman’s side pushed for victory.
A slice of energy cut one of the soldier’s arms off, courtesy of Jorgen. Blood gushed everywhere as the man fell.
The final soldier standing took off in the opposite direction.
He met a similar fate to the soldier that had been flung into the air, except this one was tossed sideways into a tree, where Jorgen cut him down with a bolt of green energy.
“You won’t get away with this!” the strongman cried out, his neck tensing, veins crawling up the side of his head.
His helmet was gone now, knocked off as he’d tried to free himself from the soil. He was a big guy with a beard and a sharp face, his eyebrows dipped in anger but his eyes spelling fear.
“I’ll handle this,” Nadine said, stepping forward. “We will get away with this,” she started to tell the man. “You are patrolling on foreign soil, and you attacked government officials. No one will hear about this, of that I can assure you. But even if they did, it would be considered self-defense.”
“What about our bodies?” he asked, his eyes twitching as he saw his comrade, the one whose arm had been cut off, trying to get his bearings and crawl away.
“We have our ways of getting rid of them,” the hooded Nadine said. “Now, two of your comrades are dead, but one may still be saved. Well, if you had a healer, which you don’t. So he’ll probably die as well.”
“Fuck you, lady!” the Centralian strongman cried out.
“I’ve heard that one before.” Nadine pointed her wrist guard at the armless soldier and fired a powerful blast at the man.
Roman swallowed hard.
Nadine’s shot cut the man’s other arm off at the elbow, leaving the armless soldier rolling and wailing, something that would be morbidly comedic if it weren’t for the fact that this was real life—that Roman had just taken part in the deaths of several Centralian soldiers.
“Fuck!” the buried strongman screamed.
“You attacked us on our own land, which is an act of war,” Nadine reminded him.
“You don’t know anything about what we’re doing here…” he started to say.
Nadine sat before him with her legs crossed, just a few feet away from his face. “Jorgen, drag the other bodies over to the armless one. Roman, I’m guessing you’ll be able to handle this?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Roman said, not quite able to make eye contact with her.
He’d buried bodies before—well, at least one big red man—so he knew how it worked. Still, it was odd to think he had attacked his own countrymen, and this would need to be one of the memories he would have had removed whenever he got some one-on-one time with the telepath.
Launching into Nadine’s order, Coma whipped one of her vines forward and caught one of the men she’d flung up into the air. The vine retracted, the man’s body flopping against the ground as she dragged him over.
“So, why are you here?” Nadine asked the muscular wind user. “You’ve entered our country, probably paid off some governor or high official to patrol our land—so the question is why. Why are you here?”
“I’m not going to tell you shit,” the strongman said, gritting his teeth. The soil shook as he tried to free himself.
“I know, you keep saying that, but I think you will tell me something. Otherwise, I’ll leave you out here and let the wolves find you. You did know there were wolves in this area, right? Large ones too, bigger than the pathetic dogs you have in Centralia. However, tell us what we need to know, and I will let you go.”
“They’ll kill me,” he whispered.
“Not if you were flung so far away from the area that you were knocked out, and your companions mysteriously disappeared. That’s just one of the excuses I can think of; I’m sure you’ll be able to think of more as you walk back to the Centralian camp. So, let’s start with your camp. How many?”
“Fifty,” he said under his breath.
“Okay, and how long have you been in this area?”
“Just arrived yesterday, transported by teleporter.”
“I don’t suppose you know anything about visa approvals, do you?”
“Lady, I just take orders,” he said.
“Well, if that’s the case, do you know why you’ve come to this region in particular?”
The man looked from Roman to Jorgen to Nadine. “Something about reindeer people, something about looking for someone. That’s all the information I have.”
Nadine looked to Roman and nodded, confirming her suspicion. “I really wish you hadn’t attacked us, and since you were using lethal force, we had to do the same.”
“Fuck you,” the strongman whispered. “We were told to attack anyone in this area, civilian or soldier. Didn’t matter, and doesn’t matter now.”
Jorgen finished moving the second body over to the writhing armless man, who was still alive but just barely. Their Eastern Providence “guide” nodded to Roman, and he started sinking their bodies into the ground.
“He’s an elementalist?” the strongman asked.
“Something like that,” Nadine said as she reached for something in her side pocket. She brought out a small syringe and smiled at the man.
“What the hell is that?”
“This, my strong friend, is going to make you forget the last two hours. You will never see us again, and even if you do, you will not remember who we are. There is no lesson to learn here, only that war is hell and you should consider yourself lucky.”
The man cried out as Nadine pressed the contents of the syringe into his neck.
By this point, Roman had finished sinking the bodies about three feet into the ground. Upon Nadine’s instruction, he freed the strongman, who looked just about as drunk as Roman had ever seen someone.
“How far you think you can throw him?” she asked Roman.
“I guess there’s only one way to find out. Coma, take a seat real quick.” The masked doll obeyed as Roman lifted his hands, more roots pulling from the soil and wrapping around the strongman’s legs.
Chapter Thirty-Four: More Evidence
“I need answers, and I need them now,” Fat Kevin told his twin brother.
“I told you everything I know!” His brother waved a stack of documents at him. “I even had the docs you asked for prepared
. You’ve taken my fucking eye, and for some reason you still think I’m holding back on you. After this meeting, I’m tripling my security.” One-eyed Kev sat behind the large mahogany desk, no indication on his face that he was scared of Kevin, Obsidian, or Scarlett.
“I need to know where the healer is,” Fat Kevin said, his fists clenched at his sides.
“Look, if I had access to a healer, I wouldn’t be sitting here with my face bandaged. What makes you think you’ll get access? You’re overweight and wearing a glittered turquoise mask on your face, the sorriest attempt of a non-exemplar impersonating an exemplar I’ve ever seen. You aren’t getting access to the healer, Kevin.”
“I like my mask,” Fat Kevin said, suddenly hurt by his brother’s statement. His brother hadn’t really commented on his costume before, and now that he had, Kevin was feeling insecure.
One-eyed Kev always looked better in his clothing than Fat Kevin. It was hard to believe they had both come from the same woman at roughly the same time.
“Unless it’s something else, you three can see yourselves out.”
“I could teleport him three-hundred feet up into the air, if you’d like,” Scarlett said. “That would be worse than a shitty eye.”
“Don’t let him bother you,” Obsidian hissed. Completely buoyant on her feet, she casually moved over to the desk and began drumming her nails against its surface, a crooked smile on her face. “Paris isn’t around anymore to stop us from taking your other eye,” she reminded him in a soft voice.
One-eyed Kevin raised his arm, partially covering his face.
“It’s funny you think that would stop me from doing whatever the hell I wanted,” she said as she lifted her hips onto his desk, crossing one leg over the other.
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