Felix was angry. He’d hoped they’d find out who was behind this whole mess. It seemed now, though, that it was only going to get worse. To keep going. To keep draining his patience and resources.
Lily pulled the car into the garage. There’d been no one on the streets during their trip home, mercifully empty of onlookers or would-be heroes.
Lily sighed as the garage door closed behind them.
“I’m going to bed,” Lily grumbled, opening the driver-side door.
“Good work today, Lily, Kit, Ioana, Miu. All of you did great. Thank you,” Felix said sincerely.
Positive reinforcement for a job well done was always a good thing.
Kit, Miu, and Lily abandoned the car, stepping out and shutting the doors after themselves.
Felix and Ioana were left in the vehicle alone. For himself, Felix only wanted to sleep. He was exhausted and felt like he’d been running around far too long.
“Thank you,” Ioana said, a grumpy frown showing up on her face.
“For what?”
“Fixing me. Again. Didn’t have to.”
Felix shrugged his shoulders. “No worries.”
Ioana nodded at that, then slid over and left the car.
Sighing, Felix opened his door and dragged his feet to his bedroom. It took more concentration than he had available, but he managed it.
Crumpling into the bed, Felix was asleep instantly.
Only to be woken up too soon.
“Tomorrow would still be too soon,” Felix mumbled, his eyes opening slowly.
Something squirmed against his side and then fell still.
Lowering his eyes, he found Andrea pressed up into his side. Her mismatched eyes were wide open and staring at him.
“Good morning,” she whispered.
Felix let out a slow breath. “Morning. Something wrong?”
Andrea shook her head, her ears twitching atop her head.
“Weren’t you sleeping in your own room?”
Andrea nodded her head.
“Why aren’t you still there?”
The Beastkin wrinkled her nose and gnawed at her lower lip.
“You’ve seen me,” Andrea finally said. Her tail lay limp against her legs.
“Often. Frequently making pancakes. And?”
“No, you’ve seen me. It won’t be the same anymore. It’s different when the… when the walls aren’t up. When the Others and I are me.”
“Okay? And?”
“You don’t care? That I’m practically two different people?”
“I can’t deny it’s kinda schitzo, but whatever. It doesn’t actually change who you are.
“Anything else? Long day ahead, I’m betting. Going to need to call Dimitry and see where we stand. I can’t imagine he’ll be happy that we gutted their organization last night.”
“My Others returned last night. They absorbed everything from the Others who died,” Andrea said, turning her head to the side. Her tail had lifted up a few inches and swished slowly back and forth. “None live who stood against you.”
“Grand. Can I get up now? Could probably use a shower. And breakfast.”
“So… you don’t care? At all?” Andrea pushed herself up and stared down at him, her hands pressed to his shoulders.
“No. I don’t care that you have multiple personalities. That was obvious, though, after talking to some of your Others. They’re not all exact copies of you.
“So Andrea Prime has a military side to her. What about it? Seems useful. You all seem to have relatively the same intelligence and disposition. Only varying shades of it.”
Andrea didn’t let him go. She stared at him, her head tilting one way and then the other.
“I don’t understand you. We will talk more about this tomorrow morning.”
Andrea got up out of the bed, moving to the door.
“What do you mean, tomorrow morning?” Felix asked, sitting up in the bed.
“I’m your night guard, remember?”
Andrea opened the door and went out of his bedroom, pausing on the other side.
“Pancakes!” came the shout from an Other, probably in the kitchen.
The Andrea outside of his door smiled back at him. “Pancakes are ready, dear.”
Chapter 14 – Speeches and Uniforms -
“There’s only one entrance,” Felicia said, pointing to the blueprint. “That entrance has several settings for it, from simply being open to requiring biometrics. Can change the sucker depending on the situation.”
Felix nodded his head, chewing on the mouthful of pancake.
“More?” Andrea asked happily crowding over his shoulder.
“Yes, more?” asked the other Andrea, leaning over the blueprint with a pan in one hand and a spatula in the other.
“Sure, cake me,” Felix said, holding out his plate. “Now, this is good, Felicia. But we have an entire boatload of people that’ll be arriving today. Need somewhere to put them.”
A blueberry pancake flopped onto his plate and he smiled up at the Andrea who had given it to him. “Thanks.”
“Nn!” Andrea chirped happily and spun back to the stove top.
“Well, I looked at the ownership papers. We don’t have permission to dig down too deep. Maybe a single basement’s worth. So everything is going to end up needing to be shielded in lead and we’ll have to be careful with who we tell. Will help keep discovery down. This’ll be illegal.” Felicia flipped a few sheets down on the rather large stack of blueprints.
How many levels is she planning? I admit I asked for a fortress, but…
“Okay, but what will be done? Is it a dorm? Individual rooms? A giant single room?” Felix forked up a chunk of pancake and shoved it into his mouth.
Felicia waved off his question with an annoyed hand gesture.
“Pah, it’s more like a hotel. Everyone will have their own space. Once I decided we would dig downward, it made it easier. The annoying part will be building fast, strong, reliable elevators. But that’s my problem, not yours.
“For now, I have a team of Andreas working on the whole thing. You’ll need to go through and use some points to make it habitable, but… should be done by this evening.”
Habitable. I wonder what she’s thinking.
“Yeah. Picking up that many people is definitely going to raise the cost of food. We’ll also need to put in places that we can have them all eat in, relax in, and train in.” Felix shook his head. Suddenly he wasn’t so keen on the idea of purchasing the sheer number he had.
“Already there. I assumed you’d need those. That’ll be complete this week. The Andreas have really got a knack for things once you show ‘em how to do it. Fastest build team I’ve ever seen.”
“We just absorb each other and resplit over and over,” Andrea said, working on more pancakes. “It shares our experiences and our energy. Every half hour, we have to make a few new Others from Andrea Prime to get the energy levels up,” she said, pointing to the Andrea behind Felix.
Felix nodded his head and finished up the delicious pancake.
“Thanks, Felicia. That’s great. Suppose I’ll need to get working on making money tomorrow. Our current finances won’t hold up under this massive number of people.”
“Especially when you start paying salaries,” Andrea said happily from behind him, clapping her hands together. “I want to buy some dresses. And some guns. I really need some rifles. Did we put in a gun range?”
“Yeah, a few. Also training rooms for hand-to-hand,” Felicia admitted. “We’ll need our security forces training in both. Can’t have what happened yesterday ever happen again.”
Felix couldn’t argue that point. He didn’t want a repeat of the situation either. And the best way to do that was to be prepared and trained.
“How are you two doing, by the way? I dialed everyone back to one hundred percent of their power, except you, Felicia. You’re still at three hundred.” Felix smiled at another Andrea who picked up his plate and whisked i
t away.
“Fine!” the three—or was it four?—Andreas in the room replied.
“I’ve got a wicked headache, but I’ve never had so many ideas before. I borrowed your portable terminal and started typing them all in.”
“Mm. Purchase one in the pawn shop side of things and I’ll upgrade it, then hand it over to you. Probably need one of your own anyways.”
“You should buy the storefronts across the way and turn that into the pawn shop. This would then become our head office,” Andrea enthused into his ear, suddenly hanging off of him. “Then we can turn this into a skyscraper in time and base everything out of here. Open pawn shops everywhere. Have them send everything here for distribution, and we ship it back out to other locations.”
Felix froze. Those were great ideas. Great ideas that he probably should have thought of. It’d help disguise what they were buying and from where. It’d also increase their ability to take in other items.
All I’d have to do is give people an appraisal type of superpower for each location and they could judge if it was worth buying and shipping back in.
Brilliant.
“Or so Lily said. She’s smart. I like Lily. She woke me up this morning and reminded me to watch over you,” Andrea said.
Lily? Why didn’t she come to me with that?
Felicia grunted and stood up, downing the rest of her coffee. She gathered up her blueprints and set off. “Going down to check in with my people. Send a new team down soon.”
Felix raised his eyebrows at that.
Kit and Eva passed Felicia in the hallway with a brief nod of heads. Kit glanced over her shoulder to confirm Felicia was gone.
“She likes being in charge of a project like this. Sees it as something monumental. A fortress by her design with an unlimited workforce and budget. She’s not a full-blooded Dwarf, but she certainly thinks like one.”
Felix looked up to the mind reader and gave her a small smile.
“You poking around in everyone’s head?”
“Not at all. In fact, everything is blessedly quiet unless I try. It’s… serene. Now, we have a problem.”
Kit turned and gestured to Eva continuing before Felix could say a thing.
“Eva is fourteen. By law, we’re required to provide basic essentials for all minors, even if she is property.”
Felix made an inarticulate noise. “I see. Any other minors we picked up last night?”
“Just Eva.”
The girl in question ducked her head, looking at her feet. “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault. Whatever. Uh… so what do we need to do?”
“School. She needs to go to school, you idiot,” Kit said exasperatedly, swatting Felix on the head with her palm.
“Oh. Alright. So go enroll her and—”
Kit interrupted him before he could finish.
“You have to do it. You’re her legal guardian now. I’ve already arranged the meeting for you. It’s tomorrow at one in the afternoon. You’ll meet with the principal at the school and get all the paperwork filled out. Lily’s going with you.”
Felix sighed and shook his head. “Fine. Eva, what… grade are you in?”
“I’m a freshman,” the girl said, shuffling her feet around. “I would have started school last week.”
“High school? Ugh. Alright. Fine. Need to figure out how you’re getting to school, too.”
“I’m going to drive her!” the Andreas shouted as one.
Kit looked pleadingly at Andrea.
“We’re going to use one of the cars and drive her to school. Kit said I even get to wear a uniform if I want,” the cooking Andrea said, flinging her pan to the side. A pancake whipped out of it and splatted into a plate a different Andrea held up.
“Uniforms! I want a uniform for our personal assistant position, Felix. Wait, would I have had a uniform as a secretary? I might be willing to take that position now, especially if it had a sexy or powerful uniform,” Andrea Prime shrieked, shaking him roughly.
Kit pressed one hand to the side of her own face and gave Felix a weak smile.
Apparently they’d already taken care of everything. He just had to sign the paperwork and be done with it.
“Okay, fine, whatever. Stop shaking me, Andrea,” Felix grumbled, reaching back to grab at Andrea.
His hands passed over her ears, landing in her thick hair. Her entire body shuddered at the touch.
Instead of stopping, she lifted him bodily up from the chair and started giggling, swinging him around. “Uniform! I want a uniform!”
Felix managed to wiggle free and glared at Andrea, clenching his fists.
“Fine, we’ll get you a uniform. Just… don’t do that again,” Felix grumped, folding his arms in front of himself.
“Ah, also, the new recruits will be arriving in about an hour and ten minutes. I went ahead and reserved an audience hall in the hotel across the way. It should hold everyone comfortably. Ah, I had it catered as well,” Kit said, glancing to a notepad she held in one hand.
The Andreas were chirping happily at each other in high-pitched squeals and words he couldn’t quite make out.
It was hard to stay angry with her when she was so happy over a simple uniform.
“Alright. That’s a good move, Kit. Thanks for that. It should help get everyone on the same page quickly. How long did you reserve the conference hall for?” Felix slowly relaxed, his discomfort at being manhandled going away.
“All day. I also booked enough rooms to have two people to a room for tonight. That’s in case Felicia isn’t done by tonight.
“We can cancel at any time before seven tonight for a credit refund, but not a cash refund,” Kit said apologetically.
“Wow, that’s… actually pretty good. Well done, Kit.” Felix smiled at her, genuinely pleased with the work she’d put in. “Remind me to reward you somehow. You seriously took an entire worry and a half off my plate with that one.”
The Andreas stomped their collective feet and pouted. “I helped! I want a reward too,” they said in unison.
“Uhm, what would you want?” Felix asked slowly.
“A unif—”
“Other than a uniform,” Felix hurriedly interrupted her.
“Oh,” Andrea prime said.
“I didn’t think about it,” a different Andrea said.
“Think on it, then. Alright, I’m going to go shower real quick and get dressed, then head over to the hotel,” Felix excused himself from the room before it could get any weirder.
Heavy feet clomped up behind him.
Felix didn’t have to turn around to know who it was.
“Hey, Ioana.”
“Morning,” said the warrior woman. She stopped somewhere behind him. He imagined she had her sword belted on and was staring out over the empty hall filled with chairs. It’d be filled with people soon enough. They only had about ten minutes left before everyone was due to be delivered.
At that point, an Andrea would escort them over here.
“So,” Ioana elaborated intelligently.
“Mm?” Felix tilted his head back and looked up at the big woman behind him. “Spit it out. Whatever it is, it’s easier if you say it directly. I’m not any good at subtlety.”
Ioana’s nostrils flared and she shifted her weight from one foot to the other.
“You’re not a warrior,” she said finally.
“Nope. I’m not. Probably the furthest thing from it,” Felix agreed.
“You should let me train you.”
“I should. I agree.”
“With only a litt—wait, what?”
“I agree. You should train me. I’m about as useful as a kitten in a fight right now. You and Miu both should train me.”
Felix looked back to the hall.
That was easy.
“Oh, okay. Yes. That’d… yes. Good.”
Felix chuckled. He imagined she had had some grand speech prepared. He scratched at his cheek, trying to keep himself calm. �
��Gonna be a lot of people here.”
“Any of them you plan on taking to your bed? Slip ‘em the sausage?”
Felix guffawed at that, shaking his head with a grin. “No. I’m a slaveowner, a bad man, and I let an evil sorceress rip people’s souls out of them and then feed you their ground-up corpses. I’m not taking any women to my bed who I own.
“It’d be rape.”
Ioana let out a slow, deep breath. “I guess you’re right. What if they wanted to?”
Felix shrugged at that. “Hasn’t happened yet, so I dunno. Why?”
He glanced over his shoulder at the woman again.
“Oh, not me. Sorry, you’re not my type. I guess… I guess I was wondering if Felicia was…” Ioana turned a faint red color and frowned.
“Ah. She’s all yours if you want her. Not my type. Her personality is a bit much for me,” Felix admitted, turning back to the hall. “You have my blessing or whatever, if you need it. Go get her, tiger.”
“Thanks. I think I will,” Ioana said, sitting down heavily in the seat next to him. “So… Lily, hot or not?”
Felix smirked at the sudden change in the woman and the conversation.
“Very hot, and very soul-sucking evil.”
“She could suck me, I wouldn’t complain,” Ioana said casually, turning her head to face Felix.
Laughing, Felix shook his head. “Yeah, me too. Except the part where, you know, my soul goes away.”
“What about Kit? She’s got those legs that—”
“Yeah, I’ll refrain from responding to that one. Forgive me, but she’ll pop your head open like a piñata and look for the candy inside to get my opinions. She can’t read my mind.
“Let’s just say, Kit is pretty. Yes.”
“Good point. I forget that. They’re both pretty, but I don’t think I’d want anything lasting. A quick romp and stomp, sure,” Ioana said, shifting in her chair.
“Been there, got the t-shirt. Don’t think I’m looking for anything fling-like anymore.” Felix let his thoughts drift backwards in time for a second.
“Yeah, getting old. Not sure what I want, but it’s not a fling.”
“What about those dating sites? I hear there’s a supervillains one.”
“I’m not much of a villain. Or a hero. A civilian with a power that he can only use to influence others.
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