“Tomorrow would still be too soon,” Felix mumbled, his eyes opening slowly.
Something squirmed against his side and then fell still.
Lowering his eyes, he found Andrea pressed up into his side. Her mismatched eyes were wide open and staring at him.
“Good morning,” she whispered.
Felix let out a slow breath. “Morning. Something wrong?”
Andrea shook her head, her ears twitching atop her head.
“Weren’t you sleeping in your own room?”
Andrea nodded her head.
“Why aren’t you still there?”
The Beastkin wrinkled her nose and gnawed at her lower lip.
“You’ve seen me,” Andrea finally said. Her tail lay limp against her legs.
“Often. Frequently making pancakes. And?”
“No, you’ve seen me. It won’t be the same anymore. It’s different when the… when the walls aren’t up. When the Others and I are me.”
“Okay? And?”
“You don’t care? That I’m practically two different people?”
“I can’t deny it’s kinda schitzo, but whatever. It doesn’t actually change who you are.
“Anything else? Long day ahead, I’m betting. Going to need to call Dimitry and see where we stand. I can’t imagine he’ll be happy that we gutted their organization last night.”
“My Others returned last night. They absorbed everything from the Others who died,” Andrea said, turning her head to the side. Her tail had lifted up a few inches and swished slowly back and forth. “None live who stood against you.”
“Grand. Can I get up now? Could probably use a shower. And breakfast.”
“So… you don’t care? At all?” Andrea pushed herself up and stared down at him, her hands pressed to his shoulders.
“No. I don’t care that you have multiple personalities. That was obvious, though, after talking to some of your Others. They’re not all exact copies of you.
“So Andrea Prime has a military side to her. What about it? Seems useful. You all seem to have relatively the same intelligence and disposition. Only varying shades of it.”
Andrea didn’t let him go. She stared at him, her head tilting one way and then the other.
“I don’t understand you. We will talk more about this tomorrow morning.”
Andrea got up out of the bed, moving to the door.
“What do you mean, tomorrow morning?” Felix asked, sitting up in the bed.
“I’m your night guard, remember?”
Andrea opened the door and went out of his bedroom, pausing on the other side.
“Pancakes!” came the shout from an Other, probably in the kitchen.
The Andrea outside of his door smiled back at him. “Pancakes are ready, dear.”
Chapter 14 – Speeches and Uniforms -
“There’s only one entrance,” Felicia said, pointing to the blueprint. “That entrance has several settings for it, from simply being open to requiring biometrics. Can change the sucker depending on the situation.”
Felix nodded his head, chewing on the mouthful of pancake.
“More?” Andrea asked happily crowding over his shoulder.
“Yes, more?” asked the other Andrea, leaning over the blueprint with a pan in one hand and a spatula in the other.
“Sure, cake me,” Felix said, holding out his plate. “Now, this is good, Felicia. But we have an entire boatload of people that’ll be arriving today. Need somewhere to put them.”
A blueberry pancake flopped onto his plate and he smiled up at the Andrea who had given it to him. “Thanks.”
“Nn!” Andrea chirped happily and spun back to the stove top.
“Well, I looked at the ownership papers. We don’t have permission to dig down too deep. Maybe a single basement’s worth. So everything is going to end up needing to be shielded in lead and we’ll have to be careful with who we tell. Will help keep discovery down. This’ll be illegal.” Felicia flipped a few sheets down on the rather large stack of blueprints.
How many levels is she planning? I admit I asked for a fortress, but…
“Okay, but what will be done? Is it a dorm? Individual rooms? A giant single room?” Felix forked up a chunk of pancake and shoved it into his mouth.
Felicia waved off his question with an annoyed hand gesture.
“Pah, it’s more like a hotel. Everyone will have their own space. Once I decided we would dig downward, it made it easier. The annoying part will be building fast, strong, reliable elevators. But that’s my problem, not yours.
“For now, I have a team of Andreas working on the whole thing. You’ll need to go through and use some points to make it habitable, but… should be done by this evening.”
Habitable. I wonder what she’s thinking.
“Yeah. Picking up that many people is definitely going to raise the cost of food. We’ll also need to put in places that we can have them all eat in, relax in, and train in.” Felix shook his head. Suddenly he wasn’t so keen on the idea of purchasing the sheer number he had.
“Already there. I assumed you’d need those. That’ll be complete this week. The Andreas have really got a knack for things once you show ‘em how to do it. Fastest build team I’ve ever seen.”
“We just absorb each other and resplit over and over,” Andrea said, working on more pancakes. “It shares our experiences and our energy. Every half hour, we have to make a few new Others from Andrea Prime to get the energy levels up,” she said, pointing to the Andrea behind Felix.
Felix nodded his head and finished up the delicious pancake.
“Thanks, Felicia. That’s great. Suppose I’ll need to get working on making money tomorrow. Our current finances won’t hold up under this massive number of people.”
“Especially when you start paying salaries,” Andrea said happily from behind him, clapping her hands together. “I want to buy some dresses. And some guns. I really need some rifles. Did we put in a gun range?”
“Yeah, a few. Also training rooms for hand-to-hand,” Felicia admitted. “We’ll need our security forces training in both. Can’t have what happened yesterday ever happen again.”
Felix couldn’t argue that point. He didn’t want a repeat of the situation either. And the best way to do that was to be prepared and trained.
“How are you two doing, by the way? I dialed everyone back to one hundred percent of their power, except you, Felicia. You’re still at three hundred.” Felix smiled at another Andrea who picked up his plate and whisked it away.
“Fine!” the three—or was it four?—Andreas in the room replied.
“I’ve got a wicked headache, but I’ve never had so many ideas before. I borrowed your portable terminal and started typing them all in.”
“Mm. Purchase one in the pawn shop side of things and I’ll upgrade it, then hand it over to you. Probably need one of your own anyways.”
“You should buy the storefronts across the way and turn that into the pawn shop. This would then become our head office,” Andrea enthused into his ear, suddenly hanging off of him. “Then we can turn this into a skyscraper in time and base everything out of here. Open pawn shops everywhere. Have them send everything here for distribution, and we ship it back out to other locations.”
Felix froze. Those were great ideas. Great ideas that he probably should have thought of. It’d help disguise what they were buying and from where. It’d also increase their ability to take in other items.
All I’d have to do is give people an appraisal type of superpower for each location and they could judge if it was worth buying and shipping back in.
Brilliant.
“Or so Lily said. She’s smart. I like Lily. She woke me up this morning and reminded me to watch over you,” Andrea said.
Lily? Why didn’t she come to me with that?
Felicia grunted and stood up, downing the rest of her coffee. She gathered up her blueprints and set off. “Going down to check in with my people. Send a new team down soon.”