House of Dolls 5 Read online

  House

  of

  Dolls V

  By Harmon Cooper

  Copyright © 2020 by Harmon Cooper

  Copyright © 2020 Boycott Books

  Edited by Allison Erin Wright

  Audiobook by Tantor Media, Narrated by Neil Hellegers

  www.harmoncooper.com

  [email protected]

  Twitter: @_HarmonCooper

  Harmon Cooper’s Patreon

  All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Recap

  This is the fifth book in the bestselling House of Dolls series, so if you’ve missed the first few, you can find the links here:

  Book One: https://geni.us/HouseofDolls

  Book Two: https://geni.us/HouseofDolls2

  Book Three: https://geni.us/HouseofDolls3

  Book Four: https://geni.us/HouseofDolls4

  Child of Chaos (House of Dolls Prequel): https://geni.us/ChildofChaos

  Continue for a recap of the fourth book.

  (Contains spoilers!)

  The world is known as Centralia, which is also the name of its largest country. Centralia is a heavily populated country, the center of all civilization, with buildings and development as far as the eye can see.

  To the west is the aptly named Western Province, a once-popular but currently battle-torn country where proxy wars are fought. To the east is the Eastern Province, which is the poorest country in the world and the producer of the best technologies.

  To the north is the Northern Alliance, a country located in the hottest region of the world and whose people are isolationists. To the south is the Southern Alliance, the coldest country in the world, rich in history but very exclusive and backward in many of their views.

  Exemplars and non-exemplars make up the world of Centralia. Exemplars are people with known superpowers that have been classified, and each country has its own classification system. Non-exemplars have a propensity for superpowers, but they are half-powered at best. Non-exemplars are treated differently in some of the countries, most notably the Southern Alliance.

  In the fourth book, Roman gets his powers back and finds out he’s related to Margo. He is told that charges will be brought against him unless he works to help the Centralian government kill his former co-worker Kevin Blackbook, who has escaped to the Western Province. Meanwhile, Nadine destroys Oscar’s safehouse by putting explosives in it, which are triggered by Eli, the boy healer. She also catches the attention of the Centralian government, which tells Roman to kill her once he’s done in the West. Margo is also still alive and, while killing her former teammate Orange, she learns that Roman is her half-brother.

  Now, start reading!

  -Harmon Cooper

  Prologue: Progress Report

  “I’m still working on it,” Nadine told Lydia, her new handler. “Some things have come up. Namely, the Centralian government.”

  Lydia took a sip of her tea. “Their streamlined removal program?”

  Nadine nodded. “Are you aware of this or something?”

  “I am.”

  “Yet you call me out into the open?” Nadine asked, trying not to glare at the younger woman.

  They were in a different trolley station at yet another tea shop, a typical meeting location for her handler. The place was semi-secluded; no one there aside from a waiter.

  Even though they were in a booth in the back, it was still way too visible of a place for Nadine to be.

  Especially at the station.

  Nadine had been forced to walk through the food section just as a trolley arrived and more people spilled out into the space. Not at all ideal.

  “It’s good to get fresh air,” Lydia said as she took a deep breath through her nostrils, “and I wanted to get an update from you directly on your project. I thought it would be more personal that way.”

  Nadine tried not to scoff at her remark. “I believe Eli and Lisa may have headed to the southern border. I was able to locate a hostel they stayed at, and one of the employees there said he overheard them talking about going to the South. That’s about all the information I have. It will be impossible to track them without additional resources.”

  Lydia’s brow furrowed. “What kind of resources would those be?”

  “For one, a passport to go to the Southern Alliance. That would be helpful. Funding, perhaps a telepath to check common Centralian communication channels, that sort of thing.”

  “So you want money, a passport, and a telepath?”

  “Among other things, yes,” Nadine told Lydia, trying to keep the edge off her voice. She had much bigger concerns now that she was being hunted, and for her handler to put her thumb on her like this—to have the gall to bring her out in public, no less—only made things worse.

  And Lydia was just getting started.

  “I have a theory, if you’ll bear with me. Let’s say, based on your files, that you have become somewhat of a rogue agent. Just follow me here. That term doesn’t completely describe you, I know, but we will use that word for now. Rogue agent. Anyway, going along with my theory, you would have decided that the will of the Eastern Province government didn’t align with your own aspirations, so you used your cunning to make things easier for the people you care about.”

  “Excuse me?” Nadine asked.

  “Just follow along. I’m sure you can comprehend this. While you originally went to our country in search of the healer, Eli, once you found him and it became clear to you that our government would have to exploit his powers for the good of humanity, exemplar and non-exemplar alike, this bothered you. You were never able to have a child, correct?”

  “What’s your point?”

  “And you never will be able to have one. You took a liking to Eli, so you devised a way to free him by exploiting his power.”

  “Come again?”

  “Stop playing coy with me. The number of explosives that went off in Oscar’s home would tell me someone was planning to entirely demolish the place and knew the perfect catalyst. This is just me thinking out loud here. I’m not accusing you of doing this, I’m just saying it could be a scenario. There are plenty of other similar scenarios. But if this is the scenario that’s closest to the truth, if this is more or less how things happened, then it would be safe to say you know where Eli is, and through an extension of that, you know where Lisa Painstake is as well.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Nadine bit her lip and instantly felt the clawing hand of a telepath at the back of her skull. “Is this a setup?” she asked, resisting the telepathic creep.

  “No.”

  “Do you have a telepath hidden around here?”

  “Our waiter is a telepath,” Lydia said, nodding to the kitchen on the other side of the tea shop. “To be fair, I knew this wouldn’t work on a seasoned operative like you, but at least I can put in the file I’m producing that I tried to do things the easy way. You know how they are back home. They expect us to exhaust all options. So we tried a telepath, but you were too strong. That’s fine. To be expected. This is the last thing I’ll say about this, and then I don’t want to discuss it anymore.”

  “Okay.”

  “I have something else I’d like to talk about, to show you as well.”

  “Okay.”

  “But before I do… Right now, I am the only person that can truly elaborate on this little theory I have about Oscar’s death and Eli and Lisa’s disappearance, this theory of you being a rogue agent. As I’m sure you can already imagine, I can certainly connect all the dots. But I don’t want to. I would prefer you return Eli and Lisa to our custody. I don’t care abo
ut Oscar’s death, and I don’t care how you have to do it, but we need Eli and Lisa. Up until recently, you have been a dedicated agent, which has netted you many supporters. That could all change. And I would like for it not to change. We all make mistakes, even a more seasoned agent like yourself.”

  Nadine forced a smile.

  “Deliver Eli and Lisa to me. Now, moving on. I wanted to show you something.”

  The waiter came forward, wearing a cummerbund and a white bowtie. He placed a couple forks on the table and quickly stepped away.

  By this point, Lydia had taken a square box from her briefcase. She set the box on the table and opened it, revealing a necklace with a red gem on it.

  “What is it?”

  Nadine had only seen something like this in a laboratory back East. Generally, these were hooked up to larger power sources, and from what she knew, they were used for telepathic means.

  “I thought I would demonstrate something to you, yet another thing our higher-ups have attributed to your excellent service. Without you, we wouldn’t have this.”

  Lydia placed the necklace on, the gemstone flashing after she touched it twice.

  “It allows you to practice telepathy?”

  “Hardly,” Lydia said as she lowered her hand over one of the forks.

  It began to bend, and then the fork split in two.

  “No…” Nadine said, her eyes wide now. She had seen Roman do something like this before. “That quick? They did this that quickly?”

  Lydia waved her hand over another fork, which flipped up and rolled toward the wall of their booth.

  It splashed into it like paint, metal dripping down under the table.

  “It’s a prototype,” Nadine’s handler finally said, a smile on her face. “But I thought it was something you would like to see. If you can bring Eli and Lisa to me, I will see to it that you not only get rewarded for your discovery, but you also get one of these.”

  There was a flash at the far end of the tea shop as an enormous fireball erupted into the air, cracking into the booth behind them.

  Nadine dove out of the booth.

  She activated her Zero Ring just as a teleporter appeared in front of her, a scrawny man she immediately brought to the ground who yelled in shock once he realized he couldn’t use his power.

  She punched him twice in the face, covering her knuckles in blood, before the telepath tried to raise his wrist guard and shoot her.

  His shot just barely passed over her right shoulder.

  The telepathic waiter ran by screaming, his entire body on fire as he tripped over a table and faceplanted in the center of the restaurant.

  Nadine went for her attacker’s wrist with both hands and slammed it to the ground. She elbowed him in the side of the face, eventually scooting her knee up to put pressure on his neck as she unstrapped his weapon.

  She quickly turned the wrist guard on him, shooting the man twice in the chest.

  A table caught fire next to her; Nadine looked up to see what was clearly a Type II Class C fire user, his hands engulfed in flames.

  Another fireball nearly reached her as she rolled to the side, suddenly realizing her assailants were wearing Centralian uniforms.

  She knew then that it was a unit meant to kill her; that there would be more coming if she didn’t hurry.

  With this in mind, Nadine knocked the table over and got behind it. Flames rose on the other side of the table, the inferno reaching the ceiling before settling.

  She glanced to her left to see that Lydia had tried to slip under the table but had apparently smacked her chin in the process, the woman now on the ground trying to recover.

  Nadine heard heavy footsteps coming her way.

  She jumped up just in time to fire her wrist guard at a woman with scaled arms and legs, organic armor made of a thick material that absorbed her attack.

  The woman dove toward her. Nadine couldn’t get out of the way as she was tackled, both of them slamming through another table as the woman scrambled to the top. Her power was immediately taken away by the Zero Ring even as Nadine’s breath was knocked out.

  The woman gasped; Nadine responded with a blast of her wrist guard that took a section of the woman’s head off.

  Blood spritzed into the air as portions of her skull were disintegrated by another shot, the blast striking the roof as well and causing a support beam to land in some of the flames licking off the carpet.

  Still straddling Nadine, the woman blinked for a moment and slowly reached her hand to her head, unable to comprehend what had just happened.

  Nadine fired another shot through her attacker’s chest.

  She pushed the woman off her, again staying low as she avoided an incoming fireball from the exemplar on the other side of the room.

  Diving for cover in the form of an overturned table, Nadine returned fire, her shots going a bit wide because of the smoke.

  With the realization that she wasn’t going to be able to hit the fire user, she focused on what was above him—another support beam.

  She blasted it with her wrist guard, a part of the ceiling giving way and falling on top of him.

  The exemplar managed to get out of the way, but in doing so he lost his balance and fell into another table.

  The telepath who had been working with Lydia finally ran out of the kitchen, ready to help.

  In response, Nadine shot the telepath in the face before making her way over to the fire user, who was just pressing himself up, flames still lifting off his forearms. She shot him twice in the side, the man gasping as he hit the floor.

  With a deep breath out, Nadine checked the power supply on her wrist guard to see she still had plenty of juice. As the man started to turn over, she delivered a lethal shot that split his head in two.

  The plumes around her started to grow; Nadine knew she was within a minute of more people showing up.

  She moved over to Lydia, crouching before her young handler.

  “Are you okay?” she whispered.

  “Nadine?” Lydia looked up at her, a dazed look on her face and fire dancing across her pupils.

  Nadine’s focus fell upon Lydia’s necklace, the jewel also reflecting some of the flames.

  “You had it coming,” Nadine said as she raised her wrist guard, killing her handler with a single shot to the head.

  She retrieved the bloody necklace, put it in its case, and grabbed Lydia’s briefcase as well.

  Her only option being to exit through the kitchen, Nadine ran to the other side of the restaurant as the flames lifted higher and higher. She got to the end of the room, turned, and began firing at anything flammable—curtains, tablecloths, more of the support beams. Anything.

  Nadine took off the wrist guard and tossed it as far she could.

  After shouldering through a sliding door, she ran to the back of the kitchen and found an emergency exit.

  The exit door opened; Nadine was gone.

  Chapter One: Dinner Date

  Emelia ran her hand through her light gray hair, her violet eyes lowering to Roman as he took a seat before her.

  “Always this place, huh?”

  “You followed orders for once,” Emelia said.

  Roman shrugged. “You asked for me to come alone, so I did.”

  “I see…” she said, playfully double-checking to make sure that Celia or Coma wasn’t hiding behind Roman.

  Roman felt something inside his skull. “Stop. No need to pry. I will explain everything. More than I’ve told you previously, I promise you that.”

  The waitress stopped in front of the table, an unopened bottle already in her hands. “Will the two of you be having any wine?”

  “I believe so,” Emelia told her. “Please wait until after we’ve finished the bottle to bring food.”

  Once the glasses of wine were poured and the waitress was gone, Roman started from the beginning, even though Emelia already knew some of the details. He explained how he’d gotten his power back, how he’d been
asked to join the Centralian Intelligence Agency, how his power hadn’t come naturally to him and how it had been forced into him by Ava’s sister.

  His voice dropping, he admitted that Margo was back. Emelia gasped at this revelation, but Roman didn’t give her a moment to jump in with a question.

  He told her how he had been sent to the West to kill a former coworker named Kevin, how he had mixed feelings about what they were doing and what the Centralian government had been doing as a whole with their streamlined removal program.

  He told her about Miranda, the blue-haired telepath, and Jess, who could morph her body into inanimate objects. Roman then went into detail about the party Kevin had hosted and how they had used the distraction as an opportunity to attack. As he sipped his wine, Roman admitted he had disobeyed orders by engaging exemplars at the party when he was supposed to have been operating on the periphery.

  Kevin had escaped, but Roman had sent his tiniest doll forward. Casper had hidden in Kevin’s things and savagely killed Kevin and his assistant in a hotel room before Roman and the other operatives could show up.

  Speaking of Casper, Roman backtracked a bit to explain why he had been placed on the periphery for the final fight and how Ava had discovered through Casper that Roman had gone to the East in search of Eli and had traded his own power to save Nadine, Lisa Painstake, and the boy healer.

  “At that point—I mean, after we got Kevin—I thought they were going to do something like strip away my power, or remove me.”

  “I see,” Emelia said, now halfway through her second glass of wine.

  “Then I go back to the agency and have a meeting with the guy who’s in charge of my little group, a guy named Rafner. I mentioned it to him earlier. He tells me my transgressions will be expunged from my record if I’m able to do three things, all related.”

  “An ultimatum,” Emelia said. “And those things are?”

  “For one, I have to find Eli,” Roman finished his first glass of wine and Emelia quickly filled it.

  “You never mentioned what happened to him,” she said once she was done.