House of Dolls 3

by Harmon Cooper

  Scarlett bit her lip for a moment as she looked over at the healer, who seemed to be losing more steam by the minute. “I’m afraid that’s not up to me.”

  “She’ll be fine,” Kevin said. “We’ll make it through this, get her to your guy, and then the three of us will head West.”

  Chapter Forty: Blink and You Die

  Roman wasn’t surprised to find himself in the twilight meadow. He knew as soon as he drifted off to sleep that he would end up there, his reoccurring dream a constant disrupter of good rest.

  Abby, the psychometrist, sat on a tree stump, one leg crossed over the other.

  “Back in my dreams, it seems,” Roman said as he approached her, his hands deep into the pockets of the trench coat he hadn’t been wearing just moments ago.

  “So you made your decision,” she said.

  “I’m still undecided.”

  “Not about that, about attacking Margo. You made your decision, and you acted on it.”

  “It doesn’t matter now; she’s dead.”

  “And you are a fugitive.”

  “Have you been talking to Nadine or something?” Roman asked.

  “I told you I could read your mind in here,” she said, looking around. “Also, I believe this is the last time you will visit this place, this beautiful meadow.” Abby glanced around again, a few of the stars above her fizzling out.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Regardless of how your actions are going to affect you in the coming days, you were able to bury your wife, and I believe that this dream will be buried with her.”

  “No more falling…”

  Abby laughed. “Falling may be the least of your concerns. At least when you’re falling, you don’t know exactly when you’re going to stop.”

  “Yes, you do,” Roman told her. “You stop when you hit the ground.”

  “But do you? Or does your soul keep falling further?”

  “Don’t play spiritual word games with me.”

  “I’m not playing spiritual word games with you, Roman, I’m just here to let you know that, well, I’m here.”

  “In my dreams? Are you a man or a woman in here?”

  “Does it matter? If you turn yourself in, they will strip your powers from you.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Your actions took out an entire city block. I know that you haven’t been checking the news recently, but it is quite the scandal. I don’t see this going away quietly; then again, Centralia has used mass telepathic actions to…”

  “To what?”

  “Centralia has used mass telepathic actions to adjust public perception. Surely, you are aware of this. Why do you think the majority of the public always agrees when Centralia goes to war? How do you think Centralia has maintained a representative democracy while others have failed? It isn’t hard, you know, to brainwash thousands upon thousands of people at once. It just takes a good amplifier.”

  “There are loads of conspiracies out there,” said Roman, “and I’m not interested in them. Their veracity will not affect the outcome of my life, not now. I am the person who has the ultimate say in how this plays out, and the decision I make next will be one I will have to live with forever.”

  “Well, it’s good that you recognize that,” Abby said, the tree trunk she was sitting on starting to expand. “Care to sit? I have powers similar to yours on this plane. I can adjust pretty much anything. I may even be able to help you meet with Celia again.”

  “But I thought…” Roman gulped as he sat down. “I thought you couldn’t do anything like that. Not after someone dies.”

  “It wouldn’t be the real Celia, it would be an amalgamation crafted from the memories you have of her. It would take me just a little time to formulate that, and I would have to spend some of that time in your head to make it happen. It’s really up to you, if you want to go through with it.”

  “Of course I do,” Roman said, almost cutting her off. “If I could just meet her one last time…”

  He recalled that this was one of the original promises Nadine had made him, before Celia had passed. In fact, it had been Abby who would have been the one overseeing this connection.

  “Then I will see what I can do, and for now, I will leave this place to let you get some rest.”

  Vines started to lift from the ground, moving up Roman’s body over his shoulders and down his arms.

  “Goodbye, Roman,” Abby said, her hand now on his cheek, the woman inches away from kissing him. “Good luck in whatever decision you finally make, and I will see you here again someday soon.”

  Roman awoke with Nadine curled next to him, his dolls sitting on a bench at the end of the bed.

  They startled him for a moment, Roman initially feeling like he was being watched. This thought quickly settled once he realized they were deactivated, simply sitting there.

  Nadine’s forehead was pressed onto his shoulder, and her hand on his chest, his arm around her and partially numb from the pressure. He didn’t want to disturb the woman who had saved him, so Roman simply lay there, staring up at the cracks in the ceiling.

  He hadn’t given her as much credit as he should have, and it was something he wanted to correct.

  Nadine had seriously taken on Mister Fist’s exemplar team by herself, no small feat. He had initially been curious as to how she’d kept taking out William’s clones, the clones approaching her and then suddenly filtering away. It was an uncanny thing to see, but now he knew it was due to the ring she wore on her ring finger.

  Her new Zero Ring.

  Roman had an idea of the decision he would make later this morning, his subconscious mind pushing him forward, telling him that in this scenario, flight may be better than fight.

  And it was true, he was happy here with Nadine, and he enjoyed working with her. They had a connection, clearly, and if their connection simply stayed as it currently was, both of them looking out for each other’s, Roman knew they would go pretty far as a team.

  Regardless of what Centralia thought of his actions, a Margo-less world was one that everyone could get behind. The woman was toxic, killing everything she touched, and hell, reanimating their corpses.

  And part of Roman wished he could have said a few final words to her, maybe even asked her enough questions that he could have understood her motives, but he knew she was better off face-first in a pool of blood.

  If Mister Fist and his team hadn’t shown up, one could argue that Roman wouldn’t have had the chance to take a shot, that the battle would only have gotten that much worse.

  Roman was not certain of what Centralian authorities would charge him with, but he knew it wouldn’t be pretty. He knew he wouldn’t be able to mount a legal defense, and that he would eventually be taken out by the system.

  But still…

  A new message came in from Ava, pleading with him to come to her apartment, to turn himself in.

  Regardless of the fact that they had fucked, Roman felt a strong connection to her, a connection that was distorted because he had disobeyed a direct order. And he absolutely hated ignoring his teacher’s messages. He could feel her sending these desperate messages, and he knew that she wanted to help him, but in the end, her loyalty had to lie with the state. Ava wouldn’t do anything like harbor him to safety or prevent the authorities from getting to him.

  And he didn’t want her to. That wasn’t her role in this. She had tried to mold him, aid him in every way she could, and he’d rejected it.

  Roman didn’t want to fight back against anyone that came for him, but he was worried that his instincts could take over, even if he was trying to resist it.

  Roman looked down at his power dial, noticing that everything seemed fine for the time being.

  He was just about to look away when he saw something blinking on the side of the device, a light he’d never seen before.

  If only Roman had seen the light earlier.

  A spiral burst of energy was the last thing Roman s
aw before appearing in a wide-open space, not unlike the twilight meadow, but the grass in this space was dead, the trees on its perimeter withering, the moon enlarged to a size Roman had never seen before.

  He barely had a moment to blink before he felt something lurch in his stomach as he fell, Nadine next to him, an unknown woman falling alongside them.

  “Roman, do something!” Nadine shouted, her hands pressed together as she rolled to the side.

  Roman hadn’t put all the pieces of this puzzle together yet, but he was aware of the fact that there had been a teleporter, that the teleporter had taken them somewhere, and that no, this wasn’t a fucking dream.

  Still in a sleepy haze, he tried to use his power on the teleporter, attempting to explode her brain. But she was already getting up to her feet, his powers weren’t working, and Roman recalled in that instant that Nadine had a power nullification ring.

  So he went with the only thing he knew.

  Roman knocked the female teleporter out cold, the woman hitting the ground just as a loud roar met Roman’s ears.

  There was something stalking him along the perimeter of the field, just outside of the range of Nadine’s ring, snarling, the moonlight telling Roman that it was some type of beast with the face of a wolf, the body, arms and legs of a man, and the claws of an animal.

  “Let me have my power back,” Roman said, catching his breath.

  “I’m ordering a teleporter,” said Nadine.

  “Stay behind me,” Roman said, his arms wide now, tracking the beast.

  He felt his power come back to him, and once it did he erected a giant bubble of rock around them, the beast smashing into the outside of Roman’s barrier, immediately trying to dig its way in.

  “Okay, okay,” Nadine said quickly, her hand on her head, her sleep shirt hanging open a little, her chest heaving up and down as she took a deep breath in. “Okay, shit.”

  “An offensive teleporter?” Roman asked, looking down at the dark-skinned woman who lay at their feet. A white mask covered her face, the woman on her side, not moving at all.

  Just to be sure, Nadine dropped two fingers on the side of the woman’s neck, confirming that she was still alive.

  “Yes, an offensive teleporter. They’ve sent an exemplar team after us,” Nadine said, coming to a quick conclusion.

  “How did they know?” Roman asked.

  “They must have been tracking you,” said Nadine. “Yes, tracking you, that’s the only way this can happen. But how? We even changed safehouses.”

  Roman looked at his power dial, which was currently blinking.

  “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that,” Nadine said, grimacing. “Destroy it. Destroy it or they will continue to hunt us when we port away.”

  Roman stripped off his power dial, the first time it had been off since he’d gotten it. He threw it into the rock wall he had created, the power dial liquefying and merging with its surface as the beast morpher continued to pound on the structure.

  “Just hang tight,” Nadine said, “the teleporter should be here any moment.”

  “Got it…”

  But suddenly, the wall was gone, Roman was standing at the fair with Celia, the band was playing, and the line was forming at the Ferris wheel.

  “How did I get here?” Roman asked, looking to his wife, a curious smile moving across her face as she glanced at him.

  “We came here on the trolley, don’t you remember?” Celia asked, a dreamy look in her eyes.

  “No, I don’t. I was…”

  Where was I? Roman thought. Even though he knew this couldn’t be real, a thought came to him, a concept he had never really examined before. What if everything that had happened after this moment in time wasn’t real?

  What if this moment was real, happening now, time a balloon slowly filling with air, nothing linear about it?

  What if everything he’d experienced after this moment was a long nightmare?

  What if he was the one who was about to die?

  “I can’t go anywhere,” Roman told Celia, still mesmerized by her dreamy eyes. “It doesn’t matter if… I just… No, this isn’t real—no, it is, it really is.”

  “Are you okay?” Celia asked, his wife coming forward and taking his other hand. “Roman, I think you’re having a panic attack.”

  “A panic attack?”

  Roman looked around. Everything was normal, the sun was setting, there was music playing in the distance, the sound of a crowd. Normal. The world was a perfect sphere, nothing was out of the ordinary, the Ferris wheel was spinning, a man selling cotton candy greeting a seated woman, children running, a young couple heading toward the fun house.

  What if everything that had happened after this moment wasn’t real?

  Celia never went into a coma; Roman never sought the embrace of strangers to fill a deep void in his life; he never got his power; he never animated his dolls; he never met Nadine or Paris; he never went East; he never returned triumphant but broken; he never became an exemplar; he never betrayed his country.

  “We can’t go to the Ferris wheel,” he told her, starting to cry. Roman wiped the tears away, his muscles tensing as he turned away from his wife, not wanting her to see his display of emotion.

  “Honey, what has gotten into you? Let’s sit; let’s go sit somewhere.”

  “We can’t go to the Ferris wheel,” Roman told her again.

  “Roman, we don’t have to go to the Ferris wheel. It doesn’t matter. None of this matters.”

  “You’re not Celia,” he screamed, more tears coming, the wave of angst he was feeling replaced by sheer anger. “This isn’t real!”

  Everything flashed away, Roman falling to the ground, the snarl of the terrible, wolf-like creature reaching his ears just as he was tackled.

  This was it. He had been captured, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  “Roman!”

  Nadine’s scream broke him from his reverie, Roman’s instincts kicking in, the ground morphing around him, latching on to the beast morpher and pulling the monster off him, slamming the creature into the soil, Roman back on his feet in a matter of moments looking to kill—anyone, anything…

  But then he remembered Ava.

  And in that moment, he knew that any damage he did would affect her in some way, even though none of this was her fault.

  Neutralize, he reminded himself as he turned to see a man wearing all black, a mask on his face that completely covered his eyes, a glowing jewel on his forehead.

  Roman didn’t know who he was, but he assumed that this was the man who had created the hallucination, the one he had somehow broken free from.

  And as much as Roman wanted to end the man’s life right then and there, he knew this would only complicate things further, so he simply used the ground to sweep the man off his feet, the soil lifting up in bands and zigzagging across the man’s body, wrapping around his face, concealing the jewel, where Roman assumed his power originated.

  This was something he hadn’t encountered before at the immigration office; and he didn’t have time to process it now, but he had heard of exemplars in the North perfecting the usage of stones and ancient runes to augment their powers.

  It didn’t matter now.

  This exemplar was neutralized, which left only one more, one that must have arrived on the scene after Roman had created his structure.

  The muscular woman hesitated for a moment as she lifted her fists, stone forming around her hands.

  “Okay, we’re going,” Nadine said. “Oscar knows too.”

  “I’ve beaten everyone on your team,” Roman told the woman with the stone hands. “I suggest you stand down, unless you would like to find out what I can do with rock!”

  The woman hesitated for a moment.

  “I don’t want to hurt any of you,” Roman said, “and I’m sorry for what I’ve already done to your teleporter. But if you come any closer and you try to use your power on me, I will have to engage you. And it w
on’t be very hard for me to do. I could have already done it in the time it has taken me to give you this warning. Don’t make me do this.”

  “Roman,” Nadine said, close to him now, her hand wrapping into his. He didn’t even see her approach, so focused was he on addressing the woman with fists made of stone.

  A teleporter appeared behind them, startling Roman, but he was in control enough to know not to act, that this was an arranged teleportation.

  “Don’t come after me again,” Roman told the woman.

  The teleporter confirmed something with Nadine, and their forms pixelated away just as the male beast morpher got to his feet.

  Roman and Nadine’s forms pixelated back into existence on a rooftop somewhere, Roman immediately assuming they were in eastern Centralia, some of the taller buildings lighting up the horizon.

  “Why here?” Roman asked Nadine as soon as the teleporter was gone.

  “Oscar is getting everyone else to safety, and we’ve been teleported here to make sure no one else is coming after us tonight.”

  “And my dolls?” Roman asked.

  “Yes. We have contingencies in place for an attack like this. The East has a team of teleporters whose job it is to move bodies quickly, be they dead or alive.”

  Roman smirked.

  “What?” Nadine asked.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “It’s something,” she said. “Tell me what it is before we unpack what happened back there.”

  “It just seems like the East spends all the money they have on spies here in Centralia,” he said, breathing heavily. “Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing, but from some of the conditions I saw there, it must be incredibly expensive to have all the safehouses, teleportation teams ready, that kind of thing.”

  “Yes,” Nadine finally said. “I know what you’re saying, but that’s not something we should discuss right now. Later, though. Maybe.”

  “Yeah, later,” Roman said, finally able to catch his breath. His breaths had been pretty short there for a moment, and he was almost glad they didn’t have the power dial to tell him he was close to the red.