“Miranda, try to guide as many people away from the hotel as you can. And remember,” she said, also looking at Jess, “if you see Kevin or Turquoise or Obsidian leaving, do not let them get away. Also, Roman, Coma…”
“Yes?” Roman asked.
“How are you two supposed to book a hotel room wearing masks?”
Jess giggled.
“Makes sense,” Roman said as he quickly removed his mask. “I suppose I probably shouldn’t look like an assassin, right?”
“You’re catching on,” Ava said, flashing him a rare smile. “Throw a trench coat on. And Coma, you should be fine as long as you’re not wearing your mask. Just look like you’re with Roman. Imagine yourself as eye candy. I’m sure that won’t be very hard.”
Chapter Seventeen: Room Service
“Don’t worry about her,” Roman told Coma as they entered the hotel.
“I’m not.”
“And you’re doing an excellent job of looking like ‘eye candy,’ as she said.”
“As good as Celia would do?” Coma asked, looping her arm in Roman’s.
“Obviously.”
A bellhop to their right pointed them in the direction of the front desk.
And while it didn’t look like much from outside, the inside of the Magnificent Hotel and Bar did its moniker justice. There were frescoes painted on the high ceilings above, a backlit waterfall in the corner, and just about every amenity available through a stand of neatly arranged brochures to the right of the hotel clerk.
It was grand, the furniture comfortably lush, the hotel clearly catering to an exclusive clientele.
The clerk, a woman in a button-up with just enough cleavage showing to draw attention, quickly took Roman’s payment and told him his room was two floors up.
“Let us know if you need anything,” she said with a tight smile, “and please, enjoy your stay, Mr. Strong.”
“Please, call me Marcus. When does the bar open?” Roman asked, enjoying the opportunity to roleplay a little.
“It will open in about thirty minutes,” she told him. “We have a band playing tonight as well.”
“Great, we’ll try to make it down,” Roman said as he escorted Coma to the elevator.
Once he realized that getting to the presidential suite would require keycard access, Roman quickly led Coma toward the stairs.
“Is everything all right, sir?” the hotel clerk called over to them.
“Yes, we just feel like taking the stairs.”
“Right. Please let us know if you need anything, Marcus,” she said as she offered him another tight smile.
“Will do.”
I am moving into position, Roman thought to Ava.
As they reached the second floor, a message appeared at the back of his head: Let me know when you’re ready; I will also engage if I sense activity.
Definitely.
Roman wondered for a brief moment about his time in the Eastern Province and how mental messaging didn’t work there.
Had that really been the case?
He couldn’t really remember, the thought fuzzy, but it felt like it had been the case, which meant he and Ava and he must have been messaging over a private channel, or that the Centralian government had worked something out with the Western Province.
Most likely the latter.
They reached the third floor, then the fourth floor, and as they turned to the stairs, Roman noticed two men standing in front of it, both of them rather large and wearing black shirts with loose, flowing pants.
Rather than even speak to them, Roman simply took hold of their throats, the men dying as he exploded the blood vessels attached to their hearts.
The two fell to their knees, and straight to the carpet from there.
Roman and Coma stepped over them. As they made their way up the next stairwell, Coma’s arms started to morph into long blades.
Get ready to engage, Roman thought to Ava.
When they reached the fifth floor, the presidential suite, the door was guarded by two men with flashy wrist guards.
Roman disposed of them quickly, and both collapsed forward.
“Why do I have a feeling this is going to be a little more difficult once we get inside the room?” Coma whispered.
“Because you’re right, that’s why.”
An ear-piercing screech tore the door down, tossing Roman backward.
Roman shot forward a ripple in the floor, which slammed into a woman whose hair was standing on its ends.
He focused on her, just about to take control of her heart when an arm came out of nowhere, wrapped around Roman’s throat, and drove him up into the ceiling. He was slammed to the ground, bits of plaster falling on his head.
Roman had dealt with this type of exemplar before, instantly recalling the woman named Paris and how she’d been able to stretch her limbs. As Coma ran forward, he addressed the arm that was wrapped around his neck, quickly taking control of it.
Roman started to drag the man toward him, only to see that this let out more of the man’s arm, and Roman was just about to go for another attack when thousands upon thousands of cockroaches scuttled out of the room.
They engulfed the floor, all coming toward Roman at once, his only response being to send up spikes from the floor, hoping to prevent them from reaching him.
A gust of fire blasted into the hallway, signaling Ava’s arrival.
The cockroaches were followed by wasps, more than Roman had ever seen before, coming right at him.
He morphed the material directly in front of him into a solid wall, preventing the insects from coming through, the man’s outstretched arm still around his body.
It started to give way, Roman finally able to free himself.
He stepped to the side, closer to the stairs as the long arm tried to reach for him again, the man’s hand flailing.
He was just catching his breath when the wall came tumbling down, destroyed by a bone-shattering sonic boom.
Roman raised his hand in the direction of the sound manipulator, and her bones tore out of her flesh.
She fell forward, her skeleton hitting the ground followed by flesh and viscera, Roman momentarily taken off guard.
He had killed before, but to rip someone’s skeleton from their own body…
Roman didn’t have time to process what had happened.
The exemplar with elastic body parts came for him again, and as he did, Roman saw Coma slam into one of the outer-facing walls.
A man with rippling muscles charged toward her, his feet rumbling the floorboards with each step he took, a typical strongman.
Coma rolled out of the way just in time and came back around, leaping at him with her blades drawn.
The strongman swatted her to the side; Roman was about to engage him as well when a fist cracked him in the jaw.
He could tell the elastic man was hiding in the room to the right, and since there were no more insects, which he still hadn’t quite figured out yet, Roman decided to finish the job.
He pressed the walls and the floor forward, hopping on a portion of it as if it were a surfboard.
The surface lifted him up and Roman sailed into the other room, his creation striking the man with elastic body parts in the chin.
Roman didn’t waste any time.
He pinned the man down using the building materials, ignoring his pleas.
He let the building materials finish the man off, a combination of concrete, plaster, wood and metal diving into the exemplar’s mouth and killing him.
“You are done,” Roman said, and as the words left his lips, the strongman to his left fell to his knees, his eyes rolling to the back of his head.
Coma went in for the final strike, jabbing her blade arm under his throat, the tip pressing out the back of his neck.
“We good?” Roman called out, and the only reason he did this was because everything was silent, which he took to mean that Ava had already apprehended Kevin.
He took a brea
th and stepped into the next room, Coma right behind him, where he found Ava standing over a charred body, the smell of burning flesh in the air. Coma stepped over to a sofa chair, retrieved one of the throw blankets on it, and wiped the blood off her blade.
“We’re good,” Ava said firmly.
Roman realized he wasn’t wearing his mask, and as he looked at Ava, he pulled it over his face.
The fire user started laughing. “You were supposed to be wearing your mask the entire time,” she told him.
“Aware. Don’t tell the others,” he said. “And what was with all the insects?”
“That would be him,” Ava said, nodding to the corner, where Roman saw another charred body with mangled hands. “Ever fought someone who could conjure and command insects?”
“I can’t say that I have,” Roman finally told her.
“If you ever do, kill them as quickly as you can possibly kill anyone. The things they can do…” She shuddered. “That’s a story for another day. Does this man look familiar to you?” she asked, turning one of the bodies over with her foot.
Roman could tell it wasn’t Kevin Blackbook, even though the man was burnt to a crisp.
“Nope, not him,” Roman said. “Kevin is way fatter, and definitely not as tall.”
He knew what Ava was capable of, but seeing her work in this way, as an assassin, stained the image of her he had his head. She was an exemplar on a team with Mister Fist, of all people, someone celebrated in Centralia.
He never expected her to be so barbaric.
A teleporter appeared as the forms of Miranda and Jess took shape in the room.
The teleporter, a petite female with braided red hair, took one look around the place and cringed. She stepped away, her back now to the charred bodies.
“ID him,” Ava instructed the telepath.
Roman watched as Miranda took a knee in front of the dead man, biting her lip as she looked over his body.
She then glanced around the room, to the place where he had ostensibly been sitting when the attack had started. Moving to the spot, Miranda opened the drawer to find a piece of paper and closed her eyes as she touched it. She then checked several other items in the room, touching them and closing her eyes.
“His name is Marlow Teal,” she finally said.
“I’ll run it,” Ava told her, stepping away, her arms crossing over her chest as she started pacing.
Roman looked at Jess. “Any activity out there?”
“I don’t know. Have you ever cosplayed as a fucking dumpster before?”
“What?”
“You heard me—have you ever cosplayed as a dumpster before? You know what happens in and around dumpsters, right? Some trash was thrown into me, and a homeless man took a runny shit near one of my wheels.”
“All that happened since we got here?” Roman started to grin but stopped, registering the irritable look on Jess’s face.
“Okay, I’ve got info,” Ava announced. “Marlow Teal was a criminal. In the scheme of things, he wasn’t much more than a low-level thug, but the Western Province has both federal and local warrants out for his arrest. He was definitely one of the bad guys.”
“So our license to kill came in handy,” said Miranda.
“Yes, and we probably shouldn’t think of it that way. This does leave us with a problem, however. At least for now, this was the only lead we had. Devil has been looking into this one for a few days now, which means we may need to start all over.”
“Or, you could let me talk to Devil,” Miranda said, a blue curl of hair falling in her face. “Maybe I can discover something he’s not telling us. I have a way with informants…”
Ava considered this for a moment. “Actually, yes, let’s do that. You can pay him a visit tomorrow. But try not to fillet his mind. We don’t need him to suddenly exhibit a formerly buried exemplar power.”
Miranda looked at Roman. “No, no we don’t.”
“Good. Let’s head back and call it a night. The Western Province relay team will be here shortly to wrap this up.”
It wasn’t long before their forms reappeared in the apartment they shared in the Turnstone District, Celia activating immediately and bringing everyone refreshments.
However it looked during the day, their digs were even more stunning at night, the lights of the city stretching as far as the eye could see. Some of the larger buildings nearby showed life inside, some people winding down while others were already asleep.
Still with his mask on, Roman took a step to the window, remembering Centralia and its endless expanse of skyline.
It was different here; he could actually see the contours of the city of Ravja, the areas that were less densely populated than others, buildings on the horizon proof that some other district was flush in development cash.
“Say that again?” he said, turning back to Ava, who had been speaking while he was gazing out the window.
“I would like this mission wrapped up over the next two days. I don’t want to be in Ravja any more than any of you. To motivate our group, I have temporarily disabled our ability to teleport back to Centralia. I know,” she said as Jess groaned, “I was planning to go back tonight as well, to take care of Bonbon. But this is important; I think we’ll focus better if we’re stuck here suffering together.”
“So we can’t travel back now?” Roman asked, recalling that Catherine wanted to meet with him.
“That’s what I just said. We find Kevin, and then we go back together, hopefully never coming back to the Western Province again. I’m sorry, I know none of you were here during the Plague, but believe me, there are some things you can’t unsee, and just being here reminds me of those things. See you all in the morning.”
Ava turned to the bedroom, her mask limp in her hand as she walked away.
Chapter Eighteen: Raises All Around
Kevin Blackbook wasn’t as fast as his cat girls, but he didn’t need to be.
The three, alongside their telepath Sandy, were in Meriday Heights at the security company that had visited their establishment the other day.
The company’s receptionist was dead, the two men in the lobby—presumably future customers—were frothing at the mouth, and the last line of defense, an exemplar with the power to harness electricity, was currently groveling at Kevin’s feet.
He wasn’t the only one.
The owner of the security company, an older man with a star-shaped scar on his cheek, was next to the exemplar as well, both of them with their hands behind their heads.
“So, let me get this straight,” Kevin said as he looked the two over. “Your plan was to attack and then offer me your security services to better protect my business, correct?”
“You don’t have to confess anything to him, Chap,” the business owner hissed. “Don’t answer him.”
“That’s pretty terrible customer service, if you ask me. Besides, I have money for you.” Kevin lowered a bloodied duffel bag before the owner. “I hope you’ll take a human head and a couple body parts as payment.”
Obsidian crouched next to Kevin and unzipped the bag. The business owner and the exemplar security guard named Chap both looked away once they saw its contents.
“These parts belong to the team you sent after me. I thought you would want them back. Also, I really could use a security company after all.”
“You… You could?” the owner asked, looking up at Kevin. The mask of horror on his face was quickly replaced by curiosity.
“It’s true, I really could.”
Kevin raised his wrist guard and shot the owner in the chest, the blast tearing out of his back.
The exemplar next to him gulped, trying to maintain his composure. He was unable to use his power to control electricity, not with Kevin’s Zero Ring activated, and Kevin could tell by the look on his face that the cat girl’s toxin was also starting to take effect. The man’s eyes were slightly glazed over.
“Don’t worry,” Kevin said as he lowered his wrist guard.
“Chap, was it?”
“Y-yes.”
“I’m not going to kill you, Chap. Like I said, I could use a security company. However, I have a task for you.”
“Y-yes?”
“If you value your life, that is.”
“I do,” Chap said with a short exhale. “I do very much.”
“Since this can’t be all the employees, considering I only really killed a receptionist, I would like you to bring all the employees here. Now. There is a company teleporter, is there not?”
“Yes, there is,” Sandy the telepath said.
The redhead was beside Kevin, fully clothed this time and handling herself surprisingly well. She had gotten better in her role over the last twenty-four hours, the toxin definitely helping.
“Good, contact the teleporter and have them gather the best employees. I’m assuming you know who the best ones are, right?” Kevin asked.
“I do, sir,” Chap said.
“And have you mental messaged any of them yet?”
He shook his head.
“He’s lying,” Sandy said.
“Good, good,” Kevin said as he patted Sandy on the ass.
He was keenly aware that Obsidian had seen him do this, but Kevin was on a power trip, and he really didn’t give a damn.
The cat girls were going to have to get used to Kevin taking what he wanted.
And at the back of Kevin’s mind, he knew it wouldn’t be like this forever. He wouldn’t be able to maintain power indefinitely, which only made him want to control it and those around him even more.
It was inspiring, really, the amount of power he currently possessed, to be the most important person in the room.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine, Chap. Have the teleporter gather the company’s best employees now. Bring them all here. But do so one at a time. Can you handle that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t believe you. Sandy, make sure he can handle that.”
The telepath came forward, biting her lip as she narrowed her focus on Chap. It wasn’t long before he was nodding at her, putty in her hands.
Oddly enough, the toxin had made Sandy much stronger than she had been when she’d auditioned for this role.
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