House of Dolls 4

by Harmon Cooper

“They even gave me metal arms,” Casper said. “That was the plan, right?”

  “Anything they get, you get,” Roman told her.

  “In that case, are you going to let me try them out or not?”

  “Sure,” he said as he took some of the power away from Coma and transferred it to Casper.

  The tiny doll formed her right arm into a sharp needle and waved it around. She jabbed at the air and swung her arm around like a rapier.

  “I’m going to stab the hell out of somebody with this,” she said. “I’m really going to fuck someone up. Just you wait and see.”

  “That’s the plan,” Roman told her, “that’s the plan.”

  Roman and his dolls appeared in front of the Centralian Intelligence Agency at one of the numerous designated teleportation spots. There was nothing strange about the teleporter this time. The man had simply placed his hand on Roman and they were standing here one flash later, the man gone before Roman could thank him.

  Not that he would have.

  While there were parts of Centralia, especially closer to the border, where manners were appreciated, in the city it was considered polite not to engage in conversation with someone unless absolutely necessary. This was one reason Centralia could be pretty quiet, even if it was so densely populated.

  Roman mental messaged Ava to let her know he had arrived.

  He didn’t know if she was going to be there or not, but she had asked him to message her, so he did.

  A gust of wind blew past, and as it settled, he looked up at a large installation piece in front of the building.

  He remembered learning about the symbol when he was a boy, that it had to deal with the truth and the way information was given to the public by the government. With as much news and important things going on at once, the Centralian government wanted to be as efficient as possible in what reached the public; they always wanted to have a clear and decisive answer.

  The upside-down arrow represented that, but seeing it at this height, some two hundred meters tall, only drew attention to all the information they were holding back.

  Roman passed under it, stepping around a few agents in dark suits who looked as stereotypical as they possibly could.

  He had dealt with these types of suits before, most of them coming from the elite schools in northern Centralia. Many were non-exemplars, but there were exemplars in their midst, and all of them were highly trained and usually carried concealed weapons.

  Or not.

  That was the rumor, propagated to all ages and bolstered by fantasy novels, comic books, and other forms of escapist entertainment.

  For all Roman knew, the men and women dressed this way were simply pencil pushers, no different than him when he’d worked back at the immigration offices.

  A large glass door slid open and Roman made his way inside, where he came to a circular front desk and a woman with her hair combed to one side.

  When she looked up at Roman, he instantly felt the telltale signs of a telepath scraping at the back of his mind.

  A frown formed on her face as she looked at his dolls.

  “They are with me.”

  “They are not approved for entry,” the woman said.

  “Well, you’ve already confirmed my identity, so you might as well take it to the next step and confirm what I can do, and the unit I’ve recently been forced to join. Go on. I’ll wait.”

  The woman smiled curtly at Roman as she looked him over again.

  “Are we good?”

  Her desktop drawer opened on its own. An identification card floated out one of the files and touched down on the table between them.

  “For now. Be sure to wear your identification.”

  “Thanks,” Roman said as he clipped it to the front of his jacket. “Just so I don’t get lost in here and discover some secret even I don’t have clearance for, can you point me in the right direction?”

  The woman smirked. “Sure. Your meeting has been scheduled on the second floor, room two twenty-three.”

  “Thanks,” Roman said just as a message came in from Ava telling him the same thing.

  “And you are late,” the woman called after him.

  “Thanks.”

  He moved around a waterfall in the center of the room cut into polished lime in the shape of the downward-facing arrow. Roman took the staircase to the left, and once he got there he located a sign pointing to room two twenty-three.

  He entered without knocking, and Rafner’s team all looked up at him at the same time.

  “I see you brought company,” Rafner said, raising an eyebrow at Roman.

  “You’ll get used to them.”

  Roman didn’t normally feel so cocky, nor did he normally act this way, but part of him was annoyed he had to be here, and he wanted to make the point known that he did not agree with what he was being asked to do, even if he had agreed to do it.

  “We can get some chairs,” Rafner suggested.

  “No need to,” Coma told him as she stepped to the left of the door, Celia joining her.

  Casper was just about to say something when Roman deactivated her, realizing she may be just a little too much for the room, especially since three of the four women seated before him were already scowling.

  He recognized the one with blue hair as the telepath, Miranda, and then there was Ava. Roman had seen the two other women before, but he probably hadn’t been introduced to them.

  One had messy blonde hair and was a few pounds overweight. She was pretty and voluptuous in a way that caught Roman’s attention.

  The other woman had dark purple skin, slicked-back hair, and a pierced nose. Of the three, she was the least impressed with Roman, glaring at him.

  There was also a second male with stringy hair and a lantern jaw. Everyone except Ava was in the same black Centralian Intelligence Agency outfit that Roman hadn’t been given yet, somewhere between tactical gear and military clothing, with high collars and crisp lines.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Roman said as he took a seat at the end of the table.

  “We figured you might be,” Rafner told him. “I suppose I should introduce everyone. You’ve already met Miranda,” he said, gesturing toward the blue-haired telepath.

  Miranda glanced at Roman, and he felt her telepathic power creeping at the back of his skull. She stopped, as if to remind Roman that she could still have power over him if she wanted.

  “This is Scott,” Rafner said, referring to the man on his right. Scott rose and offered Roman a thin smile. “Jess,” he said, nodding to the woman with dirty-blonde hair, “and Naomi.”

  The one with purple skin looked from Roman to his dolls and back to him, hardly concealing her skepticism.

  “Glad to meet all of you,” Roman said, ready to be done with the meeting.

  He could feel that it was awkward, that he had been invited into this mission by a higher authority to the chagrin of most of the people in the room, aside from Ava and Rafner. “This is Coma, Celia, and Casper,” Roman said, tapping on the doll in his pocket and almost giving her life.

  “You have a doll in your pocket?” the woman named Jess asked.

  “That I do. Care to meet her?”

  “There will be time for further introductions later,” Rafner said, taking control of the meeting. “Everyone here already knows our mission, but since you are new to the team, I’m treating this like a first briefing. Normally, you would also receive paperwork with this information, but this particular mission is too classified to put down on paper, as are all initiatives under what we call Streamlined Removal, which is part of the Centralian government’s aggressive new policy when it comes to people guilty of federal crimes.”

  “Are we still referring to Kevin here?” Roman asked.

  “That we are. Aside from being responsible for numerous deaths, Kevin also broke Centralia’s only healer out of a maximum-security facility.”

  “Which facility?”

  “Prison South. He is also responsible fo
r this healer’s death.”

  “Kevin killed the healer?” Roman asked.

  “She was already on her deathbed, to be fair, but his actions expedited her passing, which we are considering a crime against humanity because the government’s goal of holding her was to get to the bottom of her healing power and replicate it,” Rafner explained. “There are other agents investigating the fact that Kevin had a Type II Class E replicate her power and create a rumored serum from it, a man named Dr. Hamza Grumio, but that investigation is being handled by a different team here at the Centralian Intelligence Agency and an exemplar team known as Team Saint. However, we would like that serum, and we believe he may have had another serum created as well.”

  “Got it.”

  “But to summarize: this is why the government has chosen Streamlined Removal for Kevin Blackbook and anyone in his entourage, including two Western Province Type II Class Cs known as Turquoise and Obsidian.”

  “Do you have any idea of his whereabouts?” Roman asked.

  “I’m getting to that. As part of this team, you will be responsible for removing Kevin Blackbook. We do not want him alive, and you will be expected to engage when given the option in the quickest way possible.”

  “Doesn’t all this seem a bit fast to you?” Roman asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  Roman looked to Ava for support, and when he didn’t get it, he continued.

  “A month and a half ago, I wasn’t even allowed to use my powers in public; now you’ve asked me to join this group and use my powers to kill a former coworker. Am I missing something here? I feel like there’s a whole lot of training I’m going without, and also a complete and utter disregard for standard protocol. I could be wrong, but there’s no one here to tell me I’m wrong, and I don’t believe if I brought any of this information to a government lawyer they would be able to justify what is happening here through civil law.”

  “You are being given a second chance, Roman, and you’re off to a bad start,” Ava reminded him.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t help but feel like something is off here, that we’re going against standard procedures.”

  “Let me worry about that,” Rafner said firmly. “And let’s be honest: if we offered you several months of training, would you even want to take it? Something you should know, and something you will soon learn to understand as you become eligible for higher security clearances, is that the government rarely works in the way people outside of it think it does. Surely, you’ve come to the same conclusion on your own.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “So to review: the government has let you off without any charges regarding the city block you helped destroy, and I have been an advocate for you behind the scenes. Our ultimate goal is for the good of the people. Now, this isn’t what this briefing is about. If you want to have a more drawn-out conversation, we can do so later. What this is about is Kevin Blackbook.”

  “Where is he anyway?” Roman asked. “You mentioned something about extraction.”

  “That is another piece of this puzzle that makes it a little more complicated than normal.” Rafner placed his hands on the table. “He is in the Western Province, in the city known as Ravja, which it turns out was ground zero for the Western Plague. We’ve already made an agreement with the Western Province government to allow us to extract him, but it isn’t going to be easy, and it is not a mission we decided to add you to without carefully considering the repercussions, regardless of how others in this room may feel.”

  Chapter Twelve: New Horizons

  Kevin Blackbook was in over his head.

  To go from an immigration advisor to a wanted man guilty of fratricide and somehow end up as an up-and-coming kingpin in the Western Province city of Ravja was a story arc even Centralia’s most brazen comic writer wouldn’t touch.

  Kevin was keenly aware of this, and sometimes at night as he lay there with his cat girls, he would think about the sheer circumstance that had brought all this together, how at points he’d played a role in what was happening and that other points he’d been far removed, his story etched in the sand oblivious to his whim.

  It had been one hell of a month since Kevin had left Centralia.

  Getting over the border had been relatively easy, especially after trading a single vial of the healing serum he’d had created. It only worked temporarily, but consuming even a milliliter of the substance gave a person the power to heal both themselves and others. The only downfall of ingesting the serum was its short-lived nature, and that it made a person drowsy.

  That wasn’t the only serum Kevin had, even if his supply was limited.

  While he didn’t know exactly how it would play out, the strange doctor Scarlett the teleporter had introduced him to would definitely catch the attention of Centralian authorities, if the man hadn’t already. Dr. Hamza Grumio would either be killed or, more likely, exploited for his powers.

  But that matter didn’t concern Kevin any longer, especially now that he was in the Western Province.

  He would have to make his supply last until a new scheme presented itself.

  Luckily, there were still several crates, not only of the healing serum but the other one, the addictive cat-girl toxin currently giving Kevin the power to influence others.

  It really was amazing how it all had come together.

  The Brownlock District was one of Ravja’s eight districts.

  It was practically ground zero for the Western Plague, a vampiric infection that had nearly spread over the Centralian border a decade ago.

  The city had partially recovered, but since there had been so much destruction in a few of the districts, property values had never stabilized, and slowly, over the last decade, the Brownlock District had morphed into a place that harbored criminals, a place where people from other districts came to sin.

  Having now visited all eight districts of Ravja, Kevin felt like he had a sense of the Western Province city, a place that reminded him of Centralia with its sprawl, and also its class separation between some of the nicer districts, like the Garden Edge District and its beautiful buildings with cozy verandas and flower-filled gardens, or the Turnstone District, which was where most of the military installations, diplomat apartments, and contractors were located.

  The citizenry mostly kept to themselves, yet they were friendlier than the people of Centralia. There was a willingness to help that Kevin hadn’t experienced in his home country, strangers not afraid to come to someone’s aid, exemplar or non-exemplar alike.

  Of course, this naivety made people easier to exploit, which was how Kevin had first come into possession of his current turf.

  Kevin and his cat girls had arrived in the Brownlock District looking to gain a foothold. He didn’t think gaining a foothold would mean he would take over a pleasure house, but it was the first opportunity that had come to them, and one he’d gladly taken.

  The original owner had been easy to dispose of.

  It was shocking to Kevin that it would be so easy to simply claim another person’s illicit business as his own, but that was how it had played out in the end, even if there were a few skirmishes with local gangsters not happy with how Kevin had moved in.

  Anyone questioning his authority had succumbed to his cat girls. While the healing serum was helpful in terms of bribery, it was the second serum, the one based on the cat girls’ toxicity, that really gave Kevin an advantage.

  The twenty women working in the pleasure house were all addicted to it, no longer accepting payment in cash. Instead, they were each given one dose a day, doses that had been cut with a water solution. An added bonus of the serum was that it made them more docile, something that kept Kevin’s more barbaric customers coming back.

  Managing the serums was something Kevin actually enjoyed. By his calculations, they had a year’s supply before they would need to figure out a way to create more of the stuff.

  By then, he hoped to have saved enough money and influenced enough people
to move on to bigger and better things. After all, being the owner of a pleasure house, while profitable, came with a whole slew of management issues Kevin had already come to despise.

  Aside from the potential enemies in the area and the fact that he had to keep the place guarded, there were the women who worked in the establishment, all with their own attitudes and complications arising from their fucked-up backstories and the sometimes terrible things the clients did to them.

  The power to heal had come in handy on more than one occasion, especially when one of his more violent clients had gotten ahold of one of Kevin’s women. While he could heal their wounds, something he would never be able to heal was the psychological impact of what they had been asked to do.

  This was why a female telepath now sat before Kevin, an apprehensive look in her eyes.

  “I’ve let you browse freely.” Kevin leaned back in his chair and brought his hands to his lips in a prayer position. “Do you think this is something you will be able to do?”

  He could feel her at the back of his mind, and while he knew the steps to inhibit a telepath’s ability, he wanted her to take a look; he wanted her to know what he was planning before she joined.

  He also wanted her to see some of the things she would be responsible for erasing.

  “I don’t know,” the redhead started to say.

  The woman’s name was Sandy Gray.

  She wasn’t telekinetic, nor was her ability to read minds as strong as Kevin had hoped it would be. If it had been, she would have tried to run out of his room after taking a peek into Kevin’s skull.

  No, she was but an empath, a Type IV Class A with a small amount of telepathic skill, and she had come to Kevin through the recommendation of one of his clients, who knew her father.

  “Obsidian,” Kevin said, calling over to his favorite of the two cat girls.

  The woman slowly made her way toward Sandy, who was shaking now, just about to get out of her seat. Obsidian placed a hand on Sandy’s shoulder, her nails growing from her finger as she dug into it.

  “What are you doing to me?” the red-haired telepath asked, a frightful look coming over her eyes.