House of Dolls 2

by Harmon Cooper

  “When do you think she’ll come back?” Eli asked as they made their way back to the meeting point.

  Roman had marked it with a tree formation, but he was pretty certain Eli could have found it anyway. The kid was at home in the forest, clear in the way he moved along the path, his gait different than that of a boy raised in the city.

  “I don’t know,” Roman told him. “But if it’s much longer, maybe we should go to her.”

  “What if she comes back a different way, and then we’re not here?”

  “You’re right; maybe it’s a bad idea,” said Roman. “Let’s just play it by ear.”

  “You’ve got it, mister.”

  They stopped at the meeting point and Eli sat on the ground, his legs crossed under his tiny frame. Roman started to form a chair, but he figured he could just sit on the ground too.

  He relaxed there, Celia naturally finding a place at his side.

  Once he grew tired of supporting his lower back, he pulled up some soil and hardened it to give him something to lean against.

  He was getting better and better at using organic materials, and he knew this would come in handy when he started training with Ava again.

  Hard to think that his journey to the East was coming to a close, that within a few days he’d be right back in Centralia, where all roads pointed.

  With Nadine’s help, he would discover what happened to his wife and continue training. Plus he had to start work again, which he found to be quite irksome.

  How was he supposed to go from this life back to working a menial job?

  Maybe he would ask Ava about an early retirement, but he had a feeling she wouldn’t spring for it.

  And this annoyed him in a way, because Roman knew she had the power to grant him exemplar status—yet from what he could sense, their training was going to take a lot longer than he would like.

  Plus, there were the H-Anon meetings. He would have to start going to those again, dealing with Bill and probably hearing more of Sam’s strange stories. Paris would probably be there too, wondering what he’d learned. And then there was Harper; Roman was actually looking forward to seeing her.

  It was too bad his mental messages didn’t transmit all the way to Centralia.

  “Do you want to play a game?” Eli asked Coma, who was still standing.

  The masked doll tilted her head to the right as she considered his request. “You want to play a game with me?”

  “Sure, I’ll teach you one.”

  For the next thirty minutes or so, Roman and Celia watched as Coma and Eli played a game that involved tiny twigs and round rocks.

  A mischievous side of Roman wanted to play around with their game mechanics by animating the twigs and rocks, but he decided against it, letting them have their fun.

  Somehow, another couple hours passed, Roman growing hungry at some point and Eli gathering more edible roots and berries, tiny Casper riding on the boy’s shoulder.

  “It’s almost afternoon,” Roman said, putting words to a concern he hadn’t quite processed yet: What was Nadine’s game plan and why were they going about things this way?

  “Are you saying we should go to the city? Because you know I’m game,” Casper said from her perch on Eli’s shoulder. “Now give me back to Roman.”

  Eli approached Roman, turning his shoulder to the white-haired man. Casper hopped into Roman’s palm, and Roman swiftly deposited her in his breast pocket as usual.

  “Good, nice and cozy,” the tiny doll said.

  “I’ve never been to the city before.” The young healer used his sleeve to wipe berry juice from his lips. “Are you sure it’s safe for me?”

  “If we go, you’ll need to stay behind and let me do the talking. I’ll protect you.”

  “You don’t want to wait for her any longer?”

  “We had a hotel in the city; maybe we can start there. Or maybe we could wait there for her. It would be nicer.” Roman looked up at the canopy above. “It might be more convenient for Nadine.”

  “Well, we need to leave her some type of message here…”

  Roman grinned. “That’s the easy part. Collect as many white rocks as you can, tiny ones, from over there by this stream. Unless you want me to do it…”

  “I’ll collect them.”

  It took Eli a few minutes to find all the rocks, but eventually Coma joined him, and the pair brought over several handfuls.

  “Are you going to build her a little house?” Casper asked. “Because that’s kind of cute, if you ask me.”

  “No, I’m going to write a message for her.”

  “I can help,” Eli said.

  “No, I’ve got this,” Roman told the kid.

  With a wave of his hand, the fallen leaves began to move away, leaving a dark-brown patch of soil. Now focused on the rocks, Roman moved the tiny white stones over and began forming them into a message: We went back to the hotel. We will wait for you there, and I will get a room if necessary. –R

  “Why don’t you put a heart around it too?” Casper joked.

  Eli laughed at the joke, Celia not so much.

  “Can I hold her again?” Eli said, nodding at Casper.

  “First of all, I am not a toy,” Casper snapped from her position in Roman’s pocket. “And second, Roman does not hold me. In fact, considering how emotionally unstable this guy is, it’s more like I hold him, despite my size!”

  Roman grinned. “Hey, play nice,” he told Casper. “Please?”

  “Fine, fine, but only because you said please.” Casper lifted herself out of Roman’s pocket. She latched on to his sleeve and slid down, where she ran along Roman’s arm as he turned his palm around, giving her a place to stand.

  From there, she made her way to Eli’s shoulder again.

  “Okay, let’s go,” she announced.

  “You know the way, right?” Roman asked Eli.

  “Follow me,” the young healer said, turning to the southeast.

  Eli led the way to Brattle, and once they got closer, Roman took over, following the cobblestone street that led back to their hotel. After reminding Eli to stay behind just a little bit and Celia to protect him just in case, Roman took the stairs to the entrance and let himself in, Coma at his side.

  “Hi,” he told the man at the front desk, who was already giving Roman a look of horror. “Waiting for our friend—have you seen her? She was with us the other day.”

  Two men entered from the dining area, both with charged staffs aimed at Roman. “Are you Roman Martin?”

  “What’s the meaning of this?” Roman asked, his eyes jumping from the men’s staffs to their feet. The two men were clearly members of the Eastern Province military, their uniforms emerald green, scuff marks on their boots.

  “You are under arrest for illegally entering the country,” the first man started to say.

  “Oh shit!” Casper said, who was now back in his pocket.

  “Illegally entering the country?” Roman took a deep breath, his hands lifting to the ready.

  “Do not attempt anything, Mr. Martin.”

  “How do you know I’m Roman Martin?”

  “We can have a telepath look into that,” the second military man said, “but you’re going to need to come with us.”

  Roman glanced left to Coma just as two more soldiers came down the stairs of the hotel, their staffs trained on him. He knew exactly what those staffs could do, and a blast from one of them would be completely debilitating.

  “These guys are so fucked,” Casper whispered.

  “Mr. Martin…” the first soldier said again. “This is your last warning.”

  Coma sprang into action, moving the trajectory of their energy blasts away from Roman as she bolted to the left, all four soldiers instinctively tracking her and firing, the electricity melting her skin and sending her flying backward, giving Roman the chance he needed to act.

  “Coma!” Eli screamed from behind Celia at the entrance of the hotel.

  “Get back
outside!” Roman shouted, bending the staffs of the two men before him and forcing them to shoot themselves.

  Their bodies hit the floor and then Roman lifted the floor, blocking a blast from the men on the stairs, the energy from their weapons hitting the ceiling and fizzling out as they sank into the stairwell.

  The hotel clerk screamed out and scrambled over the desk, just about to push through the front door when Celia grabbed him by the collar, brought him back, and slammed him into the ground, much to Eli’s horror.

  The two men who had sunk into the stairwell scrambled to free themselves, one of them again firing their weapons at the ceiling, the only place he could freely shoot.

  Roman was just about to force their heads to crack together when he decided to keep one conscious. For the other, he simply used one of the railings from the stairwell, swinging it into the back of the man’s skull like a club.

  He approached the other man, his eyes narrowing as he started to tighten his hold of the stairwell around the man’s shoulders and neck, forcing him to sink even further.

  “I’m only going to ask you once,” Roman growled, his orange eyes blazing with fury, the dots connecting in his head by this point. He knew full well that someone, likely her own government, had taken Nadine. “Where is she?”

  “Who?” the soldier asked, his eyes twitching with fear as the ground tightened around him. Roman heard one of the soldiers who had blasted himself moaning, trying to press his body off the ground but ultimately failing.

  “I’m serious,” Roman said. “Your window of opportunity is shrinking. Where is Nadine Under?”

  “I don’t know much about where they took her.”

  “Lying!” Casper shouted. “Clearly lying.” The tiny doll stood on his shoulder now, her finger pointed at the man. “Do something with his bones,” she suggested.

  “Not a bad idea,” Roman said, and the man’s face turned red as Roman began putting pressure on his skull.

  “Stop! Please!” the man cried, agony written large on his face. “The military base on the eastern side of the city. She’s there! But I don’t know from that point... they could have teleported her somewhere else. I really don’t know.”

  “Then that’s where we’ll have to start.”

  “You’re going to go there by yourself?” The man looked even more shocked than he’d looked just moments ago when he’d been swallowed up by the floor.

  Instead of responding, Roman used his power to turn the tip of the man’s staff so it pointed at his face.

  “Pull the trigger,” he instructed the soldier.

  With a whimper, the man did as he was told, the energy blast striking him in the neck and knocking him out immediately.

  Roman turned his attention to Coma, who lay on the floor, her body smoldering.

  As he approached the injured doll, he noticed that the blast had melted just a small amount of her skin; most of it had gone right through her. Crouching before her, he placed his hands on Coma and started to heal her form.

  Roman felt his heart palpitate as her skin began to reform. Breathing in deeply now and realizing adrenaline was surging through him, he took a quick look at his wrist to check his power dial and saw that he was way further in the red zone than he would like.

  “Celia, take a seat somewhere,” he said, his chest feeling congested. “Eli, sit next to her.”

  “You’re going to keep me animated, riggghhht?” Casper said before her head fell forward, the tiny doll dead to the world. As instructed, Celia took a seat on the floor and indicated for Eli to sit next to her.

  The boy did so, bringing his knees to his chest and gasping as Celia’s head fell to the right, her life gone.

  “Sorry you had to see that,” Roman said, a euphoric sensation rolling over him as he relaxed, “but it’ll only take me a moment to heal Coma up. Then we go for Nadine. And I’m probably going to need your help to do that.”

  Chapter Fifty: Future Grave

  “Did you really think this was going to work, Agent Under?”

  Nadine ignored the woman’s question. The Eastern spy sat in a metal chair, her hands spread wide, each wrist cuffed to a corner of the table, her legs shackled together as well. Dried blood covered Nadine’s lips and chin, her left eye was puffy and bruised, and there were nicks and scrapes all over her.

  “I’ve told you why I did what I did,” she said softly, her energy waning.

  “She’s lying,” the man named Jorgen said. “And don’t forget she attacked me.”

  “That’s right, she poisoned you,” the female interrogator said, “a crime in itself. And now, everything you hold dear will be taken away from you. We can’t have our operatives disobeying direct orders…”

  The female interrogator wore the uniform of someone who had spent a considerable time the military—her clothing pressed, a ton of stripes on her sleeves, her short hair tucked back into a cap.

  It was different than Jorgen’s, who was in civilian clothing, his wristband the only indication that he was a government official.

  “I’m trying to help the country,” Nadine said again. “I have real leverage now, before…”

  The female interrogator took a step closer to the bound woman. “It isn’t your job to decide what the country needs or wants. We want to know how the Centralians are granting powers to non-exemplars. We’re aware another exemplar is doing it, but we want to perform tests to see if it is replicable. You knew this from the beginning, since Roman told you what happened, and you reported it. You brought him here, we helped you with your other asset…”

  “Where is she?” Nadine asked, her eyes widening.

  “Lisa will be safe,” the woman assured her. “She didn’t do anything aside from break immigration law in another country. Well, I suppose she broke immigration law in this country as well, considering she had forged documents. But that’s on you.”

  “Forged documents the government provided me,” Nadine said through gritted teeth, glaring from the woman to Jorgen.

  “You have no evidence of that,” the woman said, a deadness in the way she was looking at Nadine. “It really is a pity, because I know you are one of our better-trained operatives.”

  “You don’t know shit,” Nadine said.

  The woman laughed, Jorgen joining her once he got her approval in the form of a terse nod. “I was in the class a couple of years before yours,” the female interrogator explained. “I heard about your class, and I heard about you. I was hoping we would get to meet each other under different circumstances.”

  “The Centralians are after all the world’s healers. Our government already knows this, and I have a ton of evidence that supports it anyway. There aren’t many left, maybe only a handful…” Nadine began. “Maybe only two. But if there are more, we have to secure them.”

  The woman nodded. “Aware. You’ve told us, and you’ve told Oscar.”

  “Healers aren’t our concern,” Jorgen reminded Nadine.

  “With a healer, we could develop tech…”

  “There is no ‘we’ in this scenario any longer,” the woman said. “You will be put to death, and we will see to it that your family…”

  “Please hear me out! I believe we’d have more leverage with a healer than we would trying to dissect Roman Martin.”

  “Again,” the woman said, kicking her boot against the table leg. “These aren’t decisions for you to make.”

  “It just seems so shortsighted, especially since people will figure it out. The hospitals in Centralia are clearly covering it up, and I know the West is actively pursuing healers as well. We have one—we found one—and we can use this…”

  “You sicken me,” the woman said as she stepped in front of Nadine. She brought her fists back and sank one into the side of Nadine’s head.

  “Careful,” Jorgen started to say.

  Nadine’s vision flashed, blackness spilling over. She shook her head, trying to ignore the pain.

  Stay awake, she reminded hersel
f.

  But it was impossible to keep her eyes open after the woman punched her again, Nadine’s body going sideways and then yanked upright again by her cuffed hands.

  She saw her mother and father in that instant, envisioned herself reaching out for them, watching as they were taken away, oblivious to why they were even being taken away in the first place.

  She recognized the coldness of her government in that moment.

  What was the point in snuffing the lives of a pair of innocent people? Her parents had gotten their minds wiped once she’d become a spy, and she knew this threat was a way to hold spies in line, keep them in check. But the coldness of it…

  Nadine tried to pull her wrists free from the table, even though the cuffs kept her pinned down. She imagined she had Roman’s power, that she could animate the cuffs, extend them, wrap around the woman’s neck and choke her to death. Move to Jorgen from there.

  Become the interrogator.

  Break free from the table and smash through the wall, killing everyone who tried to get in her way.

  And even though these thoughts gave her some comfort, Nadine knew she was doomed.

  She was aware that her time was coming, almost up, that her own country would wipe her off the face of the planet. But she still tried to stand. She slapped her legs against the chair, trying to pull herself free again.

  And that was when the ground rumbled.

  Jorgen and the female interrogator ran to the door, Jorgen shouting to someone outside the room.

  Nadine sucked in a deep breath of air, ignoring the pain, focusing all her attention on her ears and listening for any indication that her story wouldn’t end here.

  Chapter Fifty-One: Trade Off

  With a wave of his hand, Roman swept away the outer walls protecting the Eastern Province military outpost. It wasn’t a large affair, a simple collection of low-key buildings, but there was plenty for him to work with, including the metal he had just ripped from the gate to form armor on Coma’s body and metal gloves over her fists.