At some point in the night, Roman began to feel lonely. Unable to fit on the bed with his wife, he gave life to Celia the doll. She approached him and crawled into his arms.
He sat now in the single chair in the room, Nadine and the doctor not disturbing him, Coma powered down with her back against the wall.
Roman held on to Celia the doll, his eyes closed, imagining she was someone else.
It helped. Roman had come into this world alone, and now that he could give pieces of himself to his creations, he would never be alone again.
“What are you thinking about?” Celia whispered, the only other sound in the room being an ink pen scratching on a piece of paper, monitoring his wife’s vitals.
“The past, and the future.”
“What about the present?”
Celia pressed back, a strand of her red hair falling into her face. She swept it aside and offered Roman a soft grin, a grin that reminded him of the way…
He swallowed that last thought. “The present dies every minute.”
It was time to move on. Sure, there would be a period of mourning, but as he said, the past and the future were all that mattered.
And for Roman to ever make good with himself, and with what had happened to his soon-to-be deceased wife, the future was his only refuge.
“Rest, if you can,” said Celia, hugging Roman. “You deserve it.”
“I don’t deserve anything.”
Chapter Forty-Three: Will the Real Kevin Blackbook Please Stand Up?
“You’re late,” Paris told Ian Turlock.
The dark-haired Western Province spy stood a block away from Kevin Blackbook’s brother’s sizeable home. The mansion was in the Amor District, where the wealthiest non-exemplars lived, and while his home wasn’t the largest she’d seen in Centralia, it was definitely one of the newest and nicest.
“Sorry,” said Ian, a not-so-sorry smile on his face. “I got in a fight, and I had to teleport home for new clothes.”
Paris sighed, the slight hint of alcohol reaching her nose. She took in Ian’s form: big, red, wearing all black, his necklace the only thing gleaming on his hardened, crusty body. She liked having a typical strongman around, but his appearance made him stand out, which was a terrible thing. “Why are you fighting?”
“Men are supposed to fight.”
She rolled her eyes. “Spare me the macho bullshit.”
“It wasn’t a fight I could get in trouble for. I was at one of the fighting bars, and like I said, men are supposed to fight.”
“Kevin’s security has been handled, and we were supposed to be in twenty minutes ago. Now we are running out of time before the next security apparatus arrives.”
“It still bothers me that they share the same name.”
Paris paused. “What?”
“Our Kevin, and his brother, also Kevin. Just confuses me.”
“Why is this important right now, of all times?”
Ian burped. “Yeah, you’re right. Their parents should have handled it years ago. Let’s do this.” The big man turned towards Kevin’s gate, stomping down the street, oblivious to everything around him. He was a terrible spy—but then again, he wasn’t a spy, just more or less a muscled mule for spies from the West.
Still, Paris was glad the district was quiet, and the only thing on the street was an occasional trolley.
The two stopped in front of Kevin’s gate and slipped inside. It was already open, from the earlier siege, a siege Paris hadn’t taken part in but had overseen, and after they were in the courtyard, she was sure to make sure the gate was locked behind her. It was attention to detail like this, a sense of cunning, that had helped Paris move through the ranks.
“All right, I’m bringing his brother here, and the girls.”
“As long as they don’t get in the way.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Paris asked. “The whole point of coming here is to leverage Kevin against Kevin.”
“Why the hell did their parents give them the exact same name?”
Rather than respond, Paris fired off a mental message to Turquoise.
The Western Province teleporter appeared moments later with the two cat girls surrounding Kevin, all of them in matching superhero outfits. Turquoise had her hair in pigtails, her large cat ears peeking out from her locks. The outfit she’d chosen—a black spandex piece with armor up and down the sleeves—showed off her hardened nipples and seemed entirely impractical to Paris.
Obsidian had on a similar outfit, except the colors were reversed.
Where Turquoise had light, blue-green hair with a black outfit, Obsidian had her black hair in a ponytail and wore a matching turquoise outfit. There were some differences, including the fact that the bottom portion of Obsidian’s outfit nicely framed her ass, and Turquoise had white tennis shoes instead of boots, but they were clearly going for the duo look.
Kevin’s outfit was a combination of the cat girls’ colors. A typical superhero getup, a turquoise triangle across the chest with black weaving throughout to slim the fat man down.
He was also wearing a fucking mask, a black one, with glittery turquoise around his eyes.
Paris dropped her head into her hand as Ian snickered at their getups.
This was her fault; she’d given Kevin permission to wear exemplar clothing. And as long as he did what she wanted, the fat bastard could wear whatever the hell he wanted.
“We’re at my brother’s place?” Realization and confusion came to Kevin all at once as he tried to figure out what the hell was going on.
“You know what to do,” she told Ian, curtailing his laugher.
With a grunt, Ian approached Kevin, a menacing look cracking across his chiseled face. The cat girls scrambled to get out of his way as he dropped one hand on Kevin’s shoulder, leading him forward.
“We’re going to pay a visit to your brother, and you are our leverage.”
“Leverage?” Kevin tried to cover his shock by coughing. He coughed for a good fifteen seconds until Paris told him to shut up, Ian nearly clapping him on the back.
“I thought… I thought I was one of you, now,” he said, looking to Turquoise and Obsidian for support. Both their ears were down now, the two cat girls showing obedience to Paris’s demands.
“One of us?” Ian chortled. “You?”
“You will be one of us if you do what we ask you to,” said Paris, ready for all this to be over. Security would be here soon; timing was important. “What you need to know is we’ve brought you here as a hostage.”
“A hostage?”
“That’s right.” Her frown turned into a look of understanding. “You’re serious right now, aren’t you? You actually thought we didn’t know the difference between you and your brother? Have you ever even seen your own brother? He’s fit, successful, professional. You’re a fat slob, a lowly immigration administrator.”
“Advisor,” he whispered.
“Same difference. Do you seriously think the Western Province is dumb enough to confuse the two of you?”
“They said I was Kevin Blackbook,” Kevin said, nodding at the cat girls.
“I can’t believe I really have to go over this,” Paris mumbled to herself. “You are Kevin Blackbook, and so is he, your brother. He’s the one who has political power, your brother, not you. You are a fat piece of shit. We’re only using you to get to him.”
“He’s not the real Kevin Blackbook?” Obsidian asked. Turquoise looked like she understood a little more what was going on, but not much.
Kevin cleared his throat. “But I thought you thought I was Kevin Blackbook.”
“You are Kevin Blackbook, dammit,” said Paris.
He shook his head. “Ah, you led me to believe you thought I was my brother. Am I following this correctly?”
“Paris, we need to wrap this up,” said Ian, squeezing his big paw around Kevin’s shoulder.
“Thank you, and you’re right. Fuck all of this. Now, there are couple ways we ca
n do this, Kevin. You can either play along, or I can instruct the cat girls to poison you.”
Kevin might not have been particularly bright, but he wasn’t that stupid.
He’d figured out that the cat girls were able to poison him with their bodily excretions. Their poison made him delirious, susceptible to things he wasn’t proud of. But most of those things had ended in pleasure in some way, even if the pleasure came from an object being inserted in him by Obsidian, or a little scratch torture.
The truth was, Kevin really had been starting to enjoy the two, with or without their poison.
No matter how sadistic they were, there was a sweetness to them, and he really wanted to know more about them. They hadn’t opened up yet, but he could tell that they would, as long as he stayed alive.
And this was also on his mind as he looked at Paris. He needed to prove to her that he could be useful, because he had the itching feeling that Paris would just as easily kill him as keep him alive.
Kevin nodded, ignoring the pain from Ian squeezing his shoulder. “I’ll do whatever you need me to do, and if there’s a way I can help with your leveraging, I’ll do it.”
“Good, because if you don’t, we will kill you in front of your brother.”
He gulped. “Got it,” he said, his reply barely audible.
They approached the entryway, and Kevin wondered for a moment how they had gotten the security detail to leave.
Kevin’s brother didn’t have a family—he’d always been too hard of a worker for anything like that—and even though the house was large, it was empty, devoid of life in a way that made it feel small.
“I can tell you right now that he’s upstairs,” Kevin said in a faint voice. His brother usually worked until late every evening. If he wasn’t in his office downtown, he was definitely in his home office.
“Get him,” Paris told the two cat girls.
Obsidian and Turquoise dropped to their haunches, their tails lifting into the air. They scurried up the stairs, their heads bobbing and their ears flitting as they made it to the second level.
They turned right, and a few seconds later there was a brief sound of a struggle.
“We’re good,” Ian said once the sound had died down.
Paris moved up the stairs followed by Kevin, with Ian close behind.
They turned left and entered a large office to find Kevin’s more successful brother cowering behind his desk. Turquoise was crouched on the desk, perched on it and overlooking Kevin’s brother, hate in her eyes. Obsidian was on his left, and every time he tried to move, she hissed or lightly flicked at him with her tail.
“Thank you, girls,” Paris said.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Kevin looked nothing like—well, Kevin. The successful brother was fit, with a full head of hair, good skin, and even though he was at home, he was still in the suit and cravat he had worn that day.
“Kevin?” He gulped when he saw his brother. “Why are you wearing that outfit? What’s the meaning of this? Get away!”
He pushed his rolling chair toward Obsidian, who scrambled over it, and used the chair as a springboard to tackle him. She leapt off him again, this time cornering him from the other side, a sinister smile on her face.
“As you can see, we have your brother. And unless we get answers and assistance, we will kill him.”
Both Kevins cried out as Ian punched a hole in the brick wall, leaving a small crater and sending up a cloud of debris.
“Kevin, are you okay? What happened? I thought you’d died! Your funeral was supposed to be this weekend…”
“You wouldn’t care if I died or not,” said costumed Kevin, feeling emboldened by the way Turquoise was looking at him. He liked the cat girls, and he would say whatever he had to say to keep them around, even if he was just a pawn in their game.
“That’s not true! This is about your wife?”
“My wife?”
“Yes, is this about Susan? Don’t touch me!” he cried as Obsidian took a playful swipe at him.
“Why would this be about my wife?”
“I’m sorry, Kevin, I’m fucking sorry!”
“What are you sorry for?”
The color drained from his brother’s face. Kevin could see a sheen of sweat on his brow, and he watched as his brother loosened his cravat, his hands shaky. “She came on to me, I swear! I didn’t mean for it to happen—it was at a party, about a year ago. We don’t see each other that often. Just, like once a week. Sometimes twice a week if I’m feeling stressed.”
Kevin’s heart dropped. It was hard enough see his brother cowering, but to hear him confess to screwing his wife filled him with a mixture of anger, shame, and jealousy that he didn’t know how to manage. “You’ve been fucking Susan this entire time?”
“Yes! I’m so sorry, please… please don’t let them kill me!”
“This isn’t about that,” Paris finally said, glaring at the government official. “This is about healers.”
Kevin, who had just whipped his cravat at Obsidian, lowered his hands. “Did you say healers?”
Paris nodded. “I’ll be quick about this. The Western Provinces need more healers. Centralia has been holding out on these healers. We were promised a dozen, and they never came. Because Centralia is waging their war in the West with rebel groups, you should be providing healing to those caught in the crosshairs. But you aren’t, and of the branches in the Centralian government, your branch is the one that should be providing them.”
“This is about healers?” he asked, his chest moving up and down.
“Have some compassion,” costumed Kevin said to his brother, going with whatever words came to him first. “These people are suffering—I know for a fact they’re suffering. I have advised so many exemplars from the Western Province. I know what they’re going through over there; I’ve heard it firsthand. So help them, dammit. You are supposed to help them! That’s your fucking job as a diplomat. All the war that Centralia has brought to the other countries—your one job is to help them.”
Kevin was getting worked up. He felt his heart pounding in his chest, his hands shaking as he raised his voice even more.
“And another thing—did you just say you were fucking my wife? What the fuck is wrong with you? What is wrong with all of Centralia? Why would you do something like that? You’re my brother, dammit! Why is everyone fucking my wife!?”
“I’m not fucking your wife,” Ian started to say.
“It just happened,” Kevin blurted out. “We were at a government function, she was there with some flying superhero she was doing PR for, I don’t know his name. Anyway it just happened. She wanted to compare sizes—her words, not mine. You’re bigger. There. Want to hear that? But I have more stamina. Fuck, this is not the conversation I want to be having right now. Please tell these cat girls to leave me alone.” He started sobbing. “They’re scaring me!”
“Do you want us to do something to him?” Turquoise smiled as costumed Kevin started to nod.
He brought his hand to his chin, considering this for a moment. Finally, with a flick of his wrist, Kevin gave his orders. “Take his eyes out.”
“No!” his brother cried.
Ian let go of Kevin’s shoulder. He brought his arms over his chest, interested to see where this would go.
“I need more answers before we do something like that,” Paris said.
“You Westerners are too desperate!” Kevin said, a look of sternness splashing across his face. “It’s you who brought the war, and now you want assistance from the very people you are fighting against. Look at you right now—you’re here in my office, both of you, all five of you. And you’re asking about healers? Look how you operate! What type of government is funding these types of operations when they could be funding recovery and hospital assistance?”
“That’s not what this is about. And you and I both know that the rebels aren’t from the West, at least not entirely.” Paris paused, letting her words sink in. “This vi
sit is about the fact that we need actual healers. Recovery and hospital assistance won’t do anything when the hospitals have been destroyed and there’s nothing left to recover. We need healers. Healers.”
Costumed Kevin nodded. “Give us healers, you fucking asshole!” His heart was racing; he’d never felt more alive in his life than right now, coming face to face with his brother.
“Don’t we all need healers?” his brother asked, a wicked smile forming on his face. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? Is your intel really that terrible?”
“You’re not answering our questions,” costumed Kevin told his brother. “Turquoise, take one, now.”
Kevin tried to cover his face, but Turquoise’s tail grabbed his free wrist, pulling it to the side as she used the momentum of his swipe to circle around, latch on to his back, and drive her clawed fingers into his right eye socket, ripping it out.
“Fuck!”
She hopped away before he could slam his back into the wall, his only defense against her.
Obsidian moved in and took his legs out from beneath him, slamming his bloodied face into the edge of his desk.
“Fuck!”
The sound was sickening, and costumed Kevin felt something rise in his stomach. But he kept it down, so tired of being bullied, overshadowed, belittled. Sick of people fucking his wife.
For her final act, Turquoise returned to her perch on his desk, throwing Kevin’s eye over her shoulder.
“There are no healers,” Kevin said, sobbing now as he tried to get back to his feet, blood oozing down his face. He glared over at his brother and the company he’d chosen. “All of you are dead. I will make sure all of you die. Fuck!” He brought his hand to his face again. “What did you do to my eye? I can’t fucking see. Can’t see…”
“What do you mean there are no healers?” Paris asked.
“We killed all—all of them but one,” Kevin said between gulps of air. “They’re all dead. It’s a terrible thing; they could fix my eye. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It wasn’t supposed to be like this!”
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