House of Dolls 3 Read online

  A teleporter appeared with William Bottorf, the exemplar who could replicate himself. He looked the same as when Roman had last seen him—blond hair, tan, two heavy black batons latched to his belt.

  “What are my parameters?” Roman asked, looking around the room, ready to animate whatever he needed to make this quick.

  He was getting used to the materials the gym had been constructed of—concrete, steel, wood, plastic—and this time he figured he would meld Coma’s arms with some of the metal, forming two large blades for her to slice through clones.

  “Your parameters?” Ava asked, smiling at him. “This isn’t going to be a fighting test. Well, not really. Close your eyes for a moment. You too, Coma.”

  Roman did as he was instructed, and a sound met his ears that reminded him of hands rubbing together.

  Once he was instructed to do so, Roman opened his eyes to find a line of William Bottorfs, at least fifty of them, all standing with their arms over their chests.

  “Your next scenario is simple,” Ava said, stepping to the left of the clones. “You are part of a risk management team, but you are told there is a traitor on another team that you will be working with. You’re meeting this other team for the first time. You will need to go down the line, greeting each of them and shaking their hands.”

  “That’s it? How would this ever happen in real life?” Roman asked.

  All of the William Bottorfs laughed at the same time, which was startling, and also kind of loud.

  “I told you before that I have to make up scenarios for you because of your unique power,” Ava said, slightly annoyed. “Do you know how hard that is? Sitting around in my free time, sipping wine, thinking up ways to challenge you?”

  “Sounds more like fun to me,” said one of the clones, or perhaps the real William.

  “This is one of the scenarios we use in actual exemplar team training,” she said, ignoring the clone’s remark, “but I tried to modify it to fit something you could theoretically encounter. The point is to see how quick you are on your feet.”

  “And can I use Coma?” Roman asked.

  “No, I want you to do this on your own. And there’s only one rule,” she said as Coma moved to the sideline.

  “What’s that?”

  “You can’t just kill everyone,” she said.

  “What makes you think I would do that?” Roman asked.

  “I’ve seen this exercise played out with a replicator before; it can be quite frustrating.”

  All the William Bottorfs smiled at the same time.

  “Okay,” Roman said as he approached the first clone. As stupid as it felt, Roman stuck his hand out and shook hands with the man.

  The handshake felt normal, so he moved to the next William, who also had a normal handshake, and the next, and the next.

  Once Roman got to the thirtieth William Bottorf, he started to feel a hint of frustration at how long this task would likely take, especially as new William Bottorfs continued to appear at the end of line, or at least it felt that way.

  And this was when the eleventh struck, lunging at Roman with a fake knife. He managed to “stab” Roman, and Ava clapped her hands together to let them know the exercise was finished.

  “Alright, start again.”

  “So it could be any of them?” Roman asked as he made his way back to the first William.

  “That’s right, it could be any one of them.”

  “Got it.”

  Roman extended his hand to the first clone, who shook Roman’s hand, a smile on the man’s chiseled face. Roman kept his eyes on this William as he moved to the next one, and continued to try to keep his eyes on the previous two or three Williams as he moved down the line.

  This time, it was the eighth William Bottorf who came for him, fake stabbing Roman in the gut before he could react.

  The attack had no pattern, and its lack of rhythm and predictability only made Roman appreciate his teacher even more. Roman knew then that getting frustrated would only draw this out.

  Not only did he have to be prepared for any William to act, he also had to manage the tension he experienced as he moved his way down the line.

  Somewhere in the twenties, two Williams attacked him at once. Roman, taken off guard, was able to defend against one, which left him open to the other, and the fake knife stabbed into his side body.

  “Remember, there are no healers,” Ava said, tapping on her temple.

  Roman stopped dead in his tracks.

  Everything from the last few days came to him at once. Eli, Nadine, Lisa Painstake, the deal he had made with the Eastern Province, the fact that they may be able to replicate his powers…

  “Is everything all right?” Ava asked as one of the Williams helped Roman to his feet.

  “What do you mean by there are no healers?”

  He wanted to see how much she knew about the situation, with the caveat being she probably wouldn’t be telling him about it if she did.

  “They’ve simply vanished; it’s common knowledge,” she said, nodding toward the end of the line of Williams. “Please, let’s go again. I’m hoping this doesn’t take all day.”

  As Roman walked back to the first William, he fired off a mental message to Ava.

  Dinner later?

  As he was stabbed by the second William Bottorf this time, a response appeared in his head.

  How did you know? Let’s go somewhere nice this time, and you’re buying a bottle of wine.

  Only if we can talk about healers. Roman made his way back to the end of the line of clones. And I have something important I have to do in a few hours.

  Let’s just start with a bottle of wine. Also, focus on the clones, not messaging me.

  Roman never quite won the challenge against William Bottorf and his clones, but he did eventually come up with a solution that impressed Ava.

  He had been at it for close to an hour when he’d simply focused on all of the clones, his hand stretching out before him.

  “And what are you doing now?” Ava asked, a look of concern coming across her eyes.

  “I think I got it,” Roman said, his eyes closed. “I’ve latched on to the blood vessels in their brains, and I can swell them to kill everyone if I want to. Well, I don’t know if the clones have brains or not, but you get the picture.”

  It wasn’t quite what Roman was trying to go for, but he figured it would work, aside from the clone anatomy question.

  “Impressive,” Ava said, “but you may end up killing all of them.”

  “Not if I focus my control,” said Roman.

  One glance at his power dial and he saw that the green bar was higher than it normally was, but he still had plenty of power left. She was right, it would be hard to maintain control over so many objects at once, these objects being brains. But it was something he could definitely work with, even if it was rather extreme.

  Roman immediately let the sensation go and his power dial flashed, indicating that everything had returned to normal.

  William’s clones all compressed together, forming one man.

  “That’s a technique I personally wouldn’t want to risk,” William told Ava. “Even if he is bluffing.”

  “I can assure you I wasn’t bluffing,” said Roman. “It would have been messy, but it’s something I’m pretty sure I’m able to do.”

  “It seems then that we need to get more rats so you can test this theory out,” Ava said.

  “I’d rather not kill innocent animals today…”

  Ava shrugged. “My only issue is that doing this would truly be a scorched-earth tactic, and you’d have to have incredible control to make sure you didn’t give an innocent person an aneurysm.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  “Better to be tested and continue to test your power than to be careful,” she reminded him. “Anyway, you’re definitely on your way to becoming an exemplar, and if you keep thinking outside the box like that…” Ava cleared her throat. “Well, let’s not specula
te.”

  It was a bit cocky to think he should be approved so quickly, but after what had happened in Eastern Province, Roman couldn’t imagine going back to a normal life.

  Really.

  And the fact that this normal life would be starting up again, once he was back to his nine to five, only made him feel worse.

  “What’s next?” he asked, momentarily forgetting he had to go back to work.

  “Thanks, William,” Ava said as a teleporter appeared, taking William with her. “And to answer your question, Roman, we’re going to work on your speed of animation.”

  For the next forty-five minutes, Ava barked out orders for Roman, telling him what she wanted him to animate.

  From a wall to a coin in her pocket to one of the kettlebells at the other end of the gym, Ava continued to keep Roman on his toes.

  She gave him complex commands, too, like give the kettlebell feet and make it flip into a hole he formed on the floor, which then shot the kettlebell out the other end of the hole, where it bounced off a wall, only to be caught by a hand extending down from the ceiling.

  Crazy shit like that.

  By the end of their session, Roman was feeling a little manic, his heart beating a bit faster than it normally did.

  Ava told him to get changed and as Roman walked to the locker room, he arranged teleportation for Coma to go back to his apartment, planning to grab her later before rendezvousing with Nadine.

  After a quick shower, Roman met with Ava, who wore a dark-blue dress with a small jewel resting between her breasts, attached to a glittery silver necklace.

  “I like your dress,” Roman said as they stepped out.

  “I’m glad it meets your standards.”

  “We should just go on the date in our gym clothes.”

  Ava snorted. “To this restaurant? They wouldn’t seat you if you did.”

  A short female teleporter appeared, tattoos crawling up her neck barely hidden by her long hair. She wore the customary Centralian teleportation outfit, and paid little attention to them as she whisked Ava and Roman away into a spinning vortex, the three of them reappearing in front of a bar with outside seating near a busy outdoor shopping area.

  Ava greeted the host and told him she had a reservation. After confirming their reservation, the well-dressed man led them to the back of the outdoor seating area, where they found a bottle of wine already waiting for them.

  “You really had this planned out, didn’t you?” Roman asked, offering her an appreciative smile. “Thanks for taking care of it.”

  “Well, you certainly weren’t going to do it, right? Not with your big adventure to the East.”

  Roman wanted to tell Ava everything that was happening.

  He knew she wouldn’t be happy about it, but he hated having to lie to her, especially because he considered her an ally. She had covered for him back when the cat girl had attacked the immigration office.

  Ava had his back.

  And he knew she was batting for him, even with the fact she was taking longer than he would have liked to approve his new power.

  He nearly confessed over the course of their meal, the wine flowing, his tongue loosening. Roman wanted to tell her about Eli, about rescuing Nadine and taking on the Eastern Province military by himself.

  By himself.

  He hadn’t really considered just how astounding that was, and it only gave strength to the argument that Roman’s power was out of this world, possibly a Type I once he was trained properly.

  While Ava told him a little about her family, and her sister who sat on the lottery counsel, Roman wondered if she would be proud of him, aside from the fact that he had used his powers illegally. She was, after all, his teacher, and while his actions in the East had been driven mostly by loyalty to Nadine, he knew Ava’s training had played a part as well.

  That was the thing about training. The more a person had, the more it operated in the background, allowing them to pivot and adjust for any solution.

  Even if he had told her, there would have definitely been pieces he left out, like the part about the East taking blood samples from him. This worried Roman. He knew the Eastern Province government to be desperate and despotic, clear in the way they sometimes treated their people, and if they were able to crack his power…

  What’s done is done, he thought, filling Ava’s wineglass again.

  She was on her third glass, Roman still on his first.

  “You know, we’re not supposed to be doing this,” she said at one point, catching his attention. Roman had been listening to her, and he enjoyed her company, but there was so much going on in his secret life that it made it hard to focus on stories about her family, or when she’d been on an exemplar team.

  “Sometimes it feels good to break the rules,” Roman said, realizing after he said this how stupid it sounded.

  “Maybe you’re right. Sometimes breaking the rules does feel nice. You always kind of struck me as a guy who went out of his way to at least bend the rules.”

  “I’m more of a bender than a breaker. No, probably more of a breaker than a bender,” he admitted with a shrug. “But it’s not something I’m proud of.”

  Eventually, the check came, and Roman went for it, Ava insisting that this one was on her and he could pay for their next meal. Roman paid anyway—it was money he’d counterfeited, so no harm to his pocket book.

  Ava asked him if he wanted to go to a bar closer to her place, but Roman told her he couldn’t, that he had another appointment that night. She started to pout but stopped almost immediately, remembering the power dynamics between them, that she was his teacher.

  “Another time then,” she told him, the fire calming behind her eyes.

  They stepped out to the streets, Ava a bit closer to him than normal.

  “Do you at least want to go for a walk through the shopping area?” she asked.

  “Sure, I’ll walk you to the end,” he offered, “but then I have to go.”

  As they walked and Ava continued to talk, Roman sent a mental message to Nadine, letting her know he was still on to meet at the agreed-upon location and he was ready to uncover the truth about his wife’s kidnapping, however harrowing it may be.

  Roman was ready for answers.

  Chapter Two: Questions for a Telepath

  The scar on Nadine’s side paled in comparison to how close she’d come to death back at her own country’s military base in the Brattle region.

  She could still see the female interrogator now, her time almost up, Nadine Under, a traitor to her country. She would be executed, and with her execution would likely come the death of her family, regardless of the promises her government had made to spare them.

  But then Roman Martin came, and he came in force, disrupting the interrogation and eviscerating the facility.

  Eli was with him, and somehow, likely due to a dormant telepathic power that resided deep inside the young healer, the three were able to negotiate a way out and carve a direct path to safety, even if that safety meant they would be living in a foreign country, all three exploited in varying ways.

  And the pressure was on even though she’d rested most of the day as Oscar dealt with Eli, Nadine actually trusting him, which she knew was a double-edged sword.

  Centralia had done something to an entire class of people. The shining city on a gilded hill that pretty much ran the world had taken hope from the exemplars and non-exemplars alike, one healer at a time.

  Yet it was the safest place for Nadine, safer than her own goddamn country.

  And the irony of this lingered in the air around her as a waitress returned with a basket of buttered bread and a glass of cucumber water for Nadine.

  What was the end game here? How would she ever be able to right any of this? Was that even important at this point? Shouldn’t she be more interested in saving herself by now?

  Roman was the first to appear at the Eastern Province–themed restaurant, his white hair a bit disheveled, his cheeks slig
htly flushed, eyes orange as ever.

  Nadine couldn’t help but smile at him; Roman was a troubled soul, but he was loyal, and a big part of her liked being close to him, nestled in his arms, regardless of either of their pasts, where they came from, or the potential tragedy that lay ahead.

  “Where would you prefer I sit?” Roman asked, his scent meeting her nostrils. He smelled clean, masculine, like he’d been outside for just a bit.

  “Next to me is fine,” she said.

  A different waitress came by this time, offering Roman cucumber water, which he gladly took. He chugged it down and asked for another glass.

  “Thirsty?”

  “Trying to wash a little wine out of my system,” he told Nadine. “I went out with my teacher, and she likes to drink wine. She’s quite, um, fiery.”

  “Is she?” Nadine asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

  “Literally. She’s a Type II Class C who can go full flame in a matter of seconds, and she can do some pretty crazy things with her power. I believe she’s held back with me a little; it wouldn’t surprise me if she were able to do something like simply increase the heat in the room without turning to flames, and I’m pretty sure she can take all the oxygen and just hasn’t shown me this power yet. But yes, she’s dangerous, and she likes to go out with me after we train.”

  “Is it common for Centralians to date their teachers?” Nadine asked, reaching for a piece of bread.

  Roman shrugged. “Definitely not dating, and I don’t think it’s common. But she’s the one that will approve my exemplarness, so I would rather stay on her good side. How’s Eli?”

  “He’s with Oscar now, and once we get some of the paperwork from you, we can at least have some documents available for him. Right now, it’s best he lays low.”

  “Yes, it really is.”

  “You’re going to work tomorrow, right?”

  “Unfortunately,” Roman finally said. “But I don’t know how much longer I can take. I have this power, and now I’ve had some experience in using it. I’m not doing anyone a service by sitting at the immigration office dealing with all that bullshit.”