And he didn’t want to.
He wanted to work with Nadine, regardless of what countries they were from. He liked being around her, he’d risked his life for her, and she had gone above and beyond to help him as well.
So many pieces, an endless puzzle, Roman’s life tangled to the point that he no longer knew how to unravel it or put it back together. All he could do now was move forward and ignore the debris, and moving forward meant looking back and honoring his wife.
He finished the glass of champagne and set it on the side table.
“You’re supposed to sip it,” Ava said, a curl of her red hair falling into her face. “At least when it’s this flat…”
“I’ll get some more.” Roman tried to push himself off the couch, and he failed miserably.
“You never do stop causing trouble, do you?” Ava finished her glass as well, wincing as the cheap champagne trickled down her gullet. She went to the kitchen and rather than bring his glass this time, she simply brought the champagne bottle over to them.
“You need to pour it yourself,” she told him. “That’s how I’ll know how drunk you are.”
“Definitely tipsy,” Roman said, the urge to burp coming to him, and he pressed his hands onto his stomach to push it back down. He felt something move inside him and he remembered that he needed to be careful, especially in the state of mind he was currently in. He could accidentally animate an internal organ and cause an issue if he wasn’t careful.
“Clearly.”
“You don’t have to let me stay here,” Roman said.
“You already are here, and I’m definitely not letting you leave my place. Not in your condition.”
“A teleporter can get me, take me back to where I’m supposed to be staying…”
“If that’s where you wanted to go, you would have already gone there.” Ava poured herself half a glass of champagne. “Am I right?”
“Why do you help me?” Roman asked, confusion coming over his face.
“Roman…”
“Why?”
“Just have another drink,” Ava told him as she poured more champagne for him.
“I thought I was supposed to pour,” Roman said, his words slurring ever so slightly.
A voice at the back of his head told him to get ahold of himself, to not say anything stupid, to not mention the fact that he had already figured out how he was going to go after Margo, how Emelia had agreed to help them, how he planned to ask Nadine, how Emelia had offered to come meet Catherine with him…
No, he wouldn’t let that happen—he wouldn’t let Emelia simply use her telepathic powers on the young wind-using super.
With his glass of champagne now shaking a bit as he raised it to his lips, Roman tried to remember what Catherine looked like.
Shit, he was going to show up and ask the wind user for help and he didn’t even remember what she looked like.
He’d only met her once…
No, twice.
Once in his office, and once outside the immigration office. He remembered her being normal, kind of mousy, but that was all.
He had sensed that Catherine had an adventurous soul, though, and maybe after he told her his story, she would agree to help out. He could now forge any documents she needed, so he could help her in that regard.
An even exchange?
Maybe.
No.
Absolutely not an even exchange. He had to remind himself of this as the flat champagne met his gullet. What he would be doing for her would not be life or death, and what Catherine would be doing for him was the very definition.
“You have that dark look on your face again,” Ava said, scooting a bit closer to Roman.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” he mumbled.
“I know I shouldn’t like that side of you,” Ava said, looking past him now.
“What side of me?”
“The side I know I won’t be able to tame.”
“Tame, huh? Maybe that’s the fun of it,” Roman said as he drunkenly set his wine glass down.
“Maybe that’s why I help you.” Ava was practically on his lap now, her hand behind his head, fingers moving through his white hair.
“We’re not supposed to do this,” Roman told her.
“I’m the one who’s supposed to say that.”
“Ava…” Roman said.
“It’s probably best that we just get this over with.”
Ava came alive, Roman falling backwards as she lunged for him, kissing him passionately, Roman trying to perform as best he could given the circumstances.
For one, he was off balance. His back now pressed into the armrest of the couch, Ava leaned her weight against him in a way that would have been uncomfortable had Roman not been drunk.
His hands were moving up the sides of her body, cupping her breasts, his thumbs pressing into her hip bones, his glass of champagne now a puddle on the floor.
“Take off your shirt,” she told him in between kisses, biting his lip, a warmness about her that he had never experienced in another woman.
Her skin was on fire, almost hot to the touch, the heat moving over the bottom half of his face as they made out.
“Maybe we…”
“Shut up,” she said as she ripped his shirt open, Roman going from bumbling idiot to drunkenly in control of the situation as he flipped around, pinning Ava on the couch now, his shirt torn open, his hands pressing the wall as he looked down at her.
“Fuck me,” she whispered, her nostrils flaring open, a fire igniting behind her eyes yet staying contained within her pupils.
“I plan to.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Orange
“I see you are taking care of yourself,” the man said, sarcasm heavy in his comment as he looked around Roman’s living room counting four corpses and an animated doll.
The well-dressed man with black hair had worked with Margo before; he knew what she was capable of, and he knew how to recognize one of her creations. There weren’t many exemplars that the Western Province could send to deal with Margo, which was why he’d been chosen to be her handler of sorts.
“Everything is fine,” Margo said, not making eye contact with him.
Like many in the Western Province, the man was named after a color. Orange had been there during the Western Plague, his power helpful in clearing contained areas, the deaths of hundreds of vampires under his belt.
It didn’t pain him as much as it bothered him to see Margo this way. She’d always had a screw loose, and while many considered her to be the most powerful exemplar from the West, Orange knew that her psychosis would be her downfall.
And it was weird to see it playing out so soon. He figured Margo would have another year or two, maybe more, before her power finally went to her head.
Orange couldn’t help but smirk remembering what she’d looked like a decade ago, beautiful and fierce, fond of wearing white clothing that matched her hair and different-colored earrings to match her eyes.
My, how far she had fallen.
Current-day Margo was a mess, rail thin, dressed in all black, scars and black ink completely coating her face from the nose down, her hair dirty and stringy.
Life had really done a number on her.
But Orange didn’t feel bad for Margo and how she had clearly been affected by PTSD. There were others he had worked with, and most had made it through. Against impossible odds, really, considering what many had seen.
Orange himself had made it through, transitioning from a predator to someone who could serve in any capacity. He had climbed the ranks and made something of himself despite the horrors he’d been privy to. And even after all he had seen, from corruption to poor choices, he was still loyal to his country, to the Western Province, which meant he was loyal to its overall mission: to shift some of the power away from Centralia, one brick at a time.
“Thank you for standing there and quietly judging me,” Margo said. The sex doll next to her—which Margo had already
told Orange was named Paris—bent forward and whispered something into Margo’s ear.
“Thank you,” Orange told Margo, “because I was really hoping to avoid confrontation in this meeting.”
“There’s not a lot I can do if you take all the oxygen out of the room,” Margo reminded him, her white teeth now visible as she smiled.
“I’m aware that your creations can hold power for a limited amount of time after you’ve given it to them,” he reminded her. “We worked together for a while. You know what I’m capable of, and I know what you’re capable of. I am sad to do what I have been instructed to come here and do.”
“It’s just a ranking,” Margo told him.
“It is a ranking that you have spent your career building.”
“It has been partially stripped before,” she reminded him.
“It has, but that was years ago, and up until the last few weeks, you were sticking to the mission. But now this, now all of this.” Orange waved his hands at the two corpses that stood at the door, gesturing toward a female corpse in the kitchen cooking something while another corpse, a man from the South, deanimated at the moment, sat in a chair with his head bent forward.
“It’s not as gruesome as it seems.”
Orange started to laugh. “You have a sick sense of humor, you know that?”
“You are the one that’s laughing,” Margo reminded him.
“So, as you know, your rankings are all being stripped from this point forward. This means you will have to come back to…”
“I have a better idea,” Margo said.
“A better idea?” Orange asked as Paris again leaned forward and whispered into Margo’s ear. He stared at the two curiously for a moment, almost wishing he had brought a telepath with him but knowing it would be little use against Margo, and definitely worthless against a plastic doll.
“One of the teams after me is Mister Fist and his crew, and I am suggesting we make a trade-off here.”
“A trade-off?”
Margo nodded. “Not all exemplar teams are created equally, and Mister Fist’s team is one of the most famous in Centralia, one of the more popular as well. If I were to kill them all for you, for the Western Province, it would be a hit in public morale. I would also be taking a powerful team off the streets—a team, if you recall, that has thwarted our operations several times before.”
“And what’s in it for you?”
“Nothing. That’s not what I’m trying to trade here. All I’m asking is for you to bring me an amplifier. I won’t be able to do it without a power amplifier. I am already strained animating the bodies I have here in this room. At full capacity, I would have a shadow user, a strongman, a doll I can put power into, and an absorber, all of whom would be fighting for me at their maximum power levels.”
“So the trade-off would be I don’t take you now, and instead, you rid us of Mister Fist’s exemplar team. But I would have to provide a power amplifier, correct? Is there anything else that would be part of this trade-off? And what would happen after you theoretically took out their team?”
“I would return to the West and face any additional charges the government would like to bring against me. Although, I may prove useful in other capacities, possibly along the border, where Centralia continues to encroach as a proxy war between the North and the Southern Alliance takes place.”
“Why do I feel like you have a hidden motive in what you are requesting?”
“No hidden motive. I promise.” Orange laughed. “Margo, I’m not that stupid…”
“I don’t think you’re stupid at all, but I know that you are considering my offer because if you weren’t, you would’ve already disposed of me by now.”
“That’s not why I came here…” he said, but Orange had never been great at lying.
And it was somewhat true, he hadn’t come here with the goal to kill Margo, but he had come with the realization that there was a likelihood this would happen, and that he would have to choke her out quickly, dealing with whatever she threw at him until she died.
Because the things Margo animated tended to linger, Orange really had no idea how long they’d be alive after their host was gone. He was prepared for additional combat, two sleek wrist guards tucked under the sleeves of his jacket and a backup team standing with the teleporter now, ready to come at his signal.
“I will just pretend like you’re not lying to me,” Margo said after Paris the doll whispered in her ear again.
This was starting to annoy Orange a bit, but it was also par for the course. He knew coming here to expect the unexpected, so to see an animated sex doll sitting on the couch wearing lingerie and whispering in Margo’s ear wasn’t exactly outside his range of expectations.
But it was strange, and he didn’t like the fact that the doll was probably plotting his death somehow.
Still, if Margo had wanted to make a move by now, she would have, the dangerous exemplar not one to waste words.
“You know I don’t make those decisions,” Orange finally said.
“But you can run them up the chain of command, can’t you?”
“I’m already in the process of doing that,” he told her.
Orange paced for a moment as he started firing off mental messages.
As he moved back and forth in front of Margo, he felt sorry for the man who owned this apartment.
He had read up enough on the situation to know that the owner was a man named Roman Martin, and that he had almost been an asset but that this had fallen through after he had won a superpower and eventually knocked the real Paris off.
Speaking of which…
“You are going to get sidetracked, aren’t you?” Orange asked suddenly. “What about the person who killed the real Paris?”
“I am the real Paris,” Paris the doll said.
“You heard her,” said Margo, nodding at the doll.
“That’s not funny,” Orange said. “Paris was one of our own, and while she may not have been through some of the things you and I experienced, she represented a new generation and she was talented in her own right. I think she would’ve gone on to do some amazing things for our cause.”
“My statement stands,” Margo said. “I no longer care for the man who killed Paris because now I have Paris with me.”
She leaned her head to the right, locking lips with Paris the doll, the two of them kissing passionately for a moment while Orange watched on.
“Margo, how I wish you weren’t crazy,” he mumbled to himself as he started pacing again, waiting for a response from his superiors.
“Would you like me to make you something to drink?” The zombie woman in the kitchen asked.
Orange knew who she was as well, and it was one of the more gruesome details of this little situation. This was Celia Martin, Roman’s deceased wife, who appeared to be boiling water at the moment.
From the sounds she’d been making earlier, the woman was also cutting something.
“I…”
“Don’t be shy,” Margo told him. “A dead woman can make tea as well as a woman that is alive, trust me. I wouldn’t have asked her to man the kitchen if that weren’t the case. Although I haven’t been eating so well lately.”
“That’s why we’re having Celia cook for you,” Paris reminded Margo. “You need to start eating better, sleeping more too.”
“Yes, I felt like I haven’t slept in ages.”
Orange rubbed his hand over his face for a moment, hoping to forget all this one day, possibly even sooner if he put in for a telepathic mind wipe. This was something he had done before, mostly to forget some of the more grotesque memories he had of the Western Plague.
Sometimes it was good to keep one’s memories of past traumas. Most of the time, it was not.
“I’m fine,” he told Celia after she again asked him if he wanted tea.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Orange assured her.
The messages started to come in, the chain of comman
d also needing to check with their chain of command, and since these telepathic messages were encrypted to prevent Centralian intelligent forces from getting them, they took even longer to be relayed.
Orange was growing uncomfortable.
He was severely outnumbered, even if he had a teleporter with backup exemplars on standby, even if he could kill Margo faster than she could kill him.
That was something that took some time to master. Not only could he control oxygen levels, Orange had spent years honing his power so he could actually control a person’s lungs, and he already had his grip on Margo’s lungs, the woman likely aware of this fact.
Margo was fast as well, able to do things like collapse veins or disturb bones or muscles, and there very well could be a draw between the two, both of them dying in the process.
One scenario that had already played out in Orange’s head was him exploding her lungs at the same time she did something to one of his vital organs, perhaps blocking blood flow to his heart or reducing the size of his skull and crushing his brain.
But in the end, this wasn’t how it would play out; a mental message came in and finally gave him the okay.
“Your request has been approved,” Orange told Margo. “Take out Mister Fist and his team, and once you’ve done so, you will be returning to the West. Your ranking is still stripped, and we have a team ready to eliminate any future threats you may cause. Your target is no longer Roman Martin. Your target is Mister Fist. Are we clear?”
“Clear as the night is long,” Margo told him. “I will not let my country down.”
“Good,” Orange said, turning away from her. “Try to get some rest, and we’ll be in touch.”
“Bye,” Celia called from the kitchen as his teleporter arrived, whisking him away.
Chapter Thirty: Strange Request
Roman’s eyes fluttered open. It was morning and he was in Ava’s bed, the fire user’s body next to him warm to the touch.
He stayed lying on his back for a moment, a haze of images coming over him. He could barely remember if they’d had sex or not, but he was pretty sure it happened.
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