Taylor Hebert: PRT Operative

[Ack]

Taylor Hebert: PRT Operative

Part One: Brand New Day

[A/N 1: This story is a direct sequel to Taylor Hebert, Medhall Intern.]

[A/N 2: This chapter commissioned by @GW_Yoda and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]



Saturday, October 9, 2010

Hebert Household

Taylor

"It's been three days."

Greg said it, but I'd been thinking it, so I couldn't exactly snap at him.

"Yeah, I know." I put down the book I'd been trying to read for the last thirty minutes, without getting past the first two lines. This was kind of scary; I liked reading. "We didn't imagine the whole thing, did we? That all happened, right?"

He raised one finger, and a globule of liquid black metal flowed out of his sleeve and spun on the tip of his finger. "Well, unless we both imagined the same thing, and I'm imagining this right now, I'd go with 'yeah'." A moment later, it flowed back out of sight again.

I sighed. "Okay, so it happened. Then what's going on? Why hasn't she contacted us?" At first I'd thought being a secret undercover cape for the PRT would be cool and exciting, but the lack of anything at all going on was paradoxically making me jumpy.

Greg's face expressed the same sentiment as his spread hands. "No idea. She wouldn't have just forgotten about us, would she?"

I snorted indelicately. "We uncovered and mopped up the Empire Eighty-Eight in a day." Well, the Protectorate and PRT had had a hand in that, but not a huge one. "Nobody's gonna forget that in a hurry."

"Especially not Kaiser." Greg chuckled. "The look on his face when Armsmaster was putting the cuffs on him was amazing. And to think I wanted to grow up to be Max Anders."

"Yeah." I leaned back in my chair. "I think I wanted to grow up to be Ms Harcourt. Say 'do this', and people would jump to do it." Willingness to work with Nazis aside, her command tone had been impressive.

"That woman was legit scary." Greg shook his head. "And not in a good way. I can't believe she was willing to kill Tracey just to protect Medhall, even knowing she was working for Nazis."

"Yeah, well, she's going down too. The footage of her attacking Tracey put the nails in that coffin." I got up from the table where we'd been pretending to study. "Want some juice?"

"That'd be nice, thanks." Greg reached out and briefly grabbed my hand on the way past. "If I was gonna get powers and be a cape, I'm glad it was with you."

I grinned mischievously over my shoulder at him. "Me too. Even if Brian is majorly good looking."

"And I'm not?" He clutched his chest in the general region of his heart. "Agh! A fatal wound!"

"Dork." I rolled my eyes as I poured his glass of juice. "Brian might have muscles on muscles, but he doesn't have what we've got. He never loaned me his phone on a bus when I was stressing out about calling Tracey. He never crash-tackled a psychotic bitch in the certain knowledge that he'd lose, just to save me from two more bitches. You were willing, on zero explanation, to come sneak me out of Medhall through the walls. And you took down Shadow Stalker, something he was never able to do."

"Oh. Wow." He blinked a couple of times as he accepted the glass from me. "Damn, you're making me sound like some kind of action hero, even before I got powers. Keep talking that way, and I won't be able to fit my head out the door to go home."

"You were pretty damn impressive after you got powers, too," I reminded him, turning back to the bench to pour my own glass. "Just saying."

He saluted me with his glass. "Says the girl who figured out who the Empire was. And figured out the plan to get back in and save Brian's folks."

"That first bit was Tracey. I just—" The phone on the wall rang. I froze, then carefully put the juice bottle down. "Shit, is that her?"

"Either that or it's your dad calling to say he'll be working late." Greg made a go-on motion. "Well, it's your phone. You answer it."

"Yeah. Yeah." Leaving the juice bottle on the bench, I ducked across the kitchen to where the phone was. "Hello, Hebert residence, Taylor speaking."

"Good afternoon, Miss Hebert." Director Piggot's voice was unmistakeable. "Am I correct in assuming that Mr Veder is there as well?"

"Uh, yeah, he is." I glanced involuntarily at Greg. "So, is this … are we …" I trailed off, unsure of the exact wording.

"I have a task for you, yes. An unmarked car will be outside your house in precisely five minutes. You and Mr Veder will get in this car. The security password is 'bratwurst'. Another vehicle has been dispatched to fetch Ms Grimshaw. Do you have any questions?"

"N-no, ma'am. Five minutes. Password is 'bratwurst'. Got it."

"Good. Four minutes fifty seconds." The call ended. Director Piggot, it seemed, was not big on extended goodbyes.

By now, Greg was on his feet. "So, what'd she say? Are we on? Say we're on."

I went back over to the bench and finished pouring myself the glass of juice. "We're being picked up. We've got four and a half minutes to be outside."

"Awesome!" He checked his watch, then closed the book he'd been staring at the same page of for the last three-quarters of an hour and stuffed it in his backpack. "Should I leave my bag here, or take it with?"

I shrugged. "Leave it here, I guess. Even if they drop you off at yours, you can come over tomorrow and pick it up." I put the cap back on the juice bottle and returned the bottle to the fridge. Then I started on the glass, drinking it down as fast as I could without spilling or choking.

"Okay, um, what if your dad comes home and we're not back?"

I hated that he was right. "Yeah, good point." I finished the juice, put it in the sink to rinse, then grabbed a piece of paper and scribbled a note:

Going out for a while with Greg. I'll call and let you know if we're going to be out late. Taylor.

"That'll do," I decided, dropping the pen on top. "Let me just grab my sneakers and we can go."

Greg checked his watch again. "Two minutes. Might want to put your sneakers on in the car."

"True." I headed through the living room into the entrance hall, flicked a shadow-blot to the top of the stairs, and teleported up there. Another shadow-flick got me to the end of the corridor, to where my room was. My sneakers were right where I'd left them, so I grabbed them and repeated the process to get back down to Greg.

"Damn," he said admiringly. "That took fifteen seconds, tops."

I grinned, soaking up the praise as was my due. "It's all in the wrist."

We headed outside and I made sure the front door was locked, then I sat down on the steps and started putting my sneakers on. Just as I was doing the laces up, a car came rolling along the street. It wasn't sleek and black with heavily tinted windows (which would absolutely have drawn unwelcome attention) but it was about as anonymous as a car could get; a neutral brown in colour, there were no stickers, dents, scratches or other identifying marks on it. Walk past it on the street and you'd never even remember it was there.

I nodded toward the car as I stood up. "Bet you ten bucks that's our ride."

"No bet." Greg followed me down the path. "I was gonna say exactly the same thing."

The car came to a stop at the curb and the passenger side window lowered itself. Strolling over, I leaned down to look inside. "Hi. Can I help you?"

"Sure." The driver held up a PRT badge. "Password 'bratwurst'. I'm Lieutenant Forrester. Let's go."

"Excellent." I got in the front, while Greg climbed into the back seat. Barely had I closed the door and put my seatbelt on than Forrester started the car moving again. "Is there anything you can tell us about what the Director wants us for?"

Eyes still on the road, he shook his head. "Sorry, kid. I don't even know who you are. Operational security. Understood?"

"Ah. Yeah. Totally." It made sense once he said it, and I could've kicked myself for not seeing it sooner.

"Wait, 'bratwurst'?" That was Greg in the back seat. "Is that the Director telling us that we're brats and we're the worst?"

I waited for Lieutenant Forrester to deny it, but he merely looked thoughtful. "You know, I'm not even going to get into that one. The Director has reasons for everything she does."

Now, that I could believe.

<><>​

Greg

The PRT undercover garage was familiar to Greg, but this time around things felt much more relaxed as he and Taylor got out of the car and looked around. Not bothering to wait for the PRT lieutenant, Taylor caught Greg's eye and headed for the elevator. He followed along, of course; his personal policy of 'when in doubt, let Taylor take the lead' had served him well more than once.

Just as they got there, the roller-door rumbled upward and a second car entered the parking garage. To Greg's discerning eye, it looked just as carefully anonymous as the one that had conveyed them there, and he waited to see if his suspicions were correct. Beside him, Taylor had a slight smile lurking in the corner of her mouth, which said to him that she'd had the same idea.

They were proven correct when the car door opened and Tracey got out. "Taylor! Greg!" The pleasure in her voice was evident as she started in their direction. "It's good to see you again!"

"You too." Taylor met her midway with a rib-squeezing hug. "Did the Director say anything more than to come in?"

"Nope. You too?" Released from the hug, Tracey gave Greg a smile and a side-hug. "Sounds about right."

"It does," agreed Greg, returning the gesture. Tracey had been nice to Taylor from day one, long before they'd figured out what Medhall really was, and he held her in just as much regard as Taylor did. "What say we go up and find out what that is?"

Taylor grinned. "Sounds like a plan."

<><>​

Taylor

As we stepped into the elevator, Lieutenant Forrester handed out visitor tags. He also gave Tracey a high-vis vest. "For you, ma'am."

Greg and I glanced at each other in confusion; the visitor tags were one thing, but the vest didn't seem to belong. "Uh, what's that for?" I asked.

"Teacher's aide." Lieutenant Forrester hit a button on the panel, then keyed his radio. "Bratwurst, coming up."

Teacher's aide? The look of puzzlement was shared between all three of us this time, but Tracey put the vest on anyway. As Greg and I already had, she slung the visitor tag around her neck.

The elevator opened onto a hallway as a line of chattering kids strung past, all wearing visitor tags, and accompanied by a couple of adults in the same high-vis vests. Oh, I realised as the penny dropped with a deafening clang. Protective camouflage. I stepped out of the elevator and merged with the group, with Greg following (of course) and Tracey bringing up the rear. Lieutenant Forrester emerged last and moved up past us as though he had someplace important to go.

The tour group seemed to utterly ignore the fact that two new kids and a teacher's aide had joined the herd; they wouldn't so much as meet our eyes. In fact, even the chatter seemed entirely artificial and meaningless when I actually paid attention to it. There was a red-headed kid in the middle saying, "blah blah blah" over and over, while apparently nodding in agreement with the guy next to him.

Lieutenant Forrester headed up to a door marked 'Conference Room C' and opened it. Casually, he stepped inside, leaving the door open. Tracey met my eyes as well as Greg's; we both nodded in silent agreement. As the 'tour group' passed by the door, we drifted to the back then stepped inside.

Inside the room were Director Piggot and Armsmaster; at Piggot's gesture, Forrester left once more, closing the door behind him. Greg, Tracey and I moved forward by unspoken agreement, pulling out chairs to sit down. "Interesting charade out there," Tracey observed. "Are you so sure you've still got moles?"

"I don't know that we haven't." The Director had lost none of her dour intensity. "Which means I have to assume that some are still active."

"And thus, the pretend tour group." I nodded. "I'm guessing those were the Wards."

Greg straightened a little in his chair. "The Wards? I thought that was a real tour group."

I ticked points off on my fingers. "They never paid us any attention. That one kid was literally just saying 'blah blah blah'. And Lieutenant Forrester called ahead before we went up in the elevator. Pretend tour group. Where can you find a bunch of teenagers in this building who can be guaranteed to follow orders? The Wards. QED."

Director Piggot's lips tightened fractionally. "The PRT would prefer you kept that knowledge to yourself."

"Sure." I laced my fingers together. "So, if it's not to find the rest of the moles, what do you need us for?" I knew this had to be the case, because she would've called just me in if it was about any more moles in the building.

"Coil." She said the name bluntly. "He had people inside this building until you unearthed enough of them that we were able to find the rest, and we uncovered his true identity as well."

The set of her jaw and the glint in her eye gave me the hint, and I followed it up. "He was one of yours, I'm guessing. The one you were talking about, just before we went up onto the roof? Calvert?"

"Yes." The admission clearly pained her. "Not totally surprising; the man had about as chequered a career as anyone could have and not wind up in Leavenworth. He had the good fortune to be off sick that day. Raiding his home got us nothing except a lot of questions."

"And you want us to find him." Tracey wasn't saying it as a question. "He still poses a problem to you, and you need him located."

Piggot slowly nodded. "You'll have access to all the files we had on him, many of which we suspect have been altered after the fact. He also did a little damage before we shut him out for good, so you're going to have to piece some of it together, then determine what's viable and what's been made up out of whole cloth."

Greg cleared his throat. "This is probably a stupid question and I'm almost certainly going to wish I hadn't asked it, but why the focus on him now that he's been outed?"

Before the Director could answer, Tracey did it for her. "Because of what he knows. Not the day-to-day passwords and such—I'm pretty sure those were changed within the hour—but his familiarity with the deeper institutional procedures and information that outsiders just don't get access to. Plus, he's probably got dirt on a lot of PRT personnel that he hasn't used yet. Given enough time, he'd probably rebuild his mole network and go straight back to what he was doing before."

"Ms Grimshaw is correct." Director Piggot's expression suggested that she'd just bitten into a lemon. "We're on a time crunch right now. We need to find him and bring him down before he insinuates his tentacles back into our system."

I leaned back in my chair. "Well, if that's the case, we're going to need to bring Tattletale in on this." Under the table, I took Greg's hand and squeezed it. The answer to his question might have been obvious to us, but it had still needed to be asked.

The Director's hypothetical lemon appeared to become extra tangy all of a sudden. "I'd really rather you didn't."

"And I'd really rather we did." I faced up to her without blinking. "I'm good at seeing patterns in what's there. Tattletale is good at piecing together what's not there. If anyone can help us get an insight on Coil, it's her."

Armsmaster, silent up until now, stirred from his place by the wall. "Ma'am, while Tattletale can be irritating, and possibly poses a security risk, she's very good at what she does, and is still less of a security risk than Calvert himself."

She shot him a side-glance—Et tu, Bruté?—then looked back at me. "Fine. Bring her in."

"Yes, ma'am."

<><>​

Undersiders Base

Grue

Brian gave Lisa a dubious look. "How can you be so certain they'll call on us today?"

Her grin was a masterpiece of smugness personified. "Because they're the good guys and we're the bad guys. First day, they would've been all 'we don't need them, they're villains'. Second day, it would've been 'figure out a way that we can do this without them'. And on the third day, 'okay, fine, but don't let them know how much we need them'."

"Okay, I'll bite." Alec didn't look up from the widescreen TV as he blew away his opponents with electronic rifle fire. "How do you even know they're going to need us?"

Lisa never hesitated. "Because we've already worked for them, and every problem looks like a nail when all you've got is a hammer. Before you ask, 'but what if they don't have any problems?', they'll have a problem because the PRT always has problems. And the very moment one crops up that Piggot's in-house team can't cover, that's when she'll start thinking about the amazingly versatile group that cleaned up the Empire for her. Even if she's unwilling to admit it to herself."

Brian frowned. Her logic sounded good, but she'd talked herself down more than one rabbit-hole before. "I dunno. Piggot did not like having us there. Personally, I think she'd need a gun to her head before—"

Lisa's phone rang. The look she gave Brian as she swiped to answer made her previous smugness look downright humble and self-effacing by comparison. With the tap of her finger, she put the phone on speaker.

"Hello, Tattletale speaking."

"Hi, Tats. It's Taylor here." The voice was both familiar and cheerful.

"Oh, hi, Taylor." Lisa put on an artificially bright tone. "How are you doing today?"

Now Taylor sounded amused. "Just fine, how about you?"

"We're all fine, even Brian." She ignored his indignant Hey! "So how can I help you today?"

Taylor sighed. "I'm at the PRT and we kinda need a hand here."

The look Lisa gave Brian could've launched a rocket to the moon, powered by sheer told-you-so energy. "Oh, you do? Really? The PRT?"

"Yes, the PRT." Taylor paused. "What's up? Why are you repeating what I'm saying?"

"Because someone didn't believe the PRT was going to call us today." Lisa was enjoying this far too much.

"Wow, this is the first time I've ever heard someone roll their eyes before. And it's not really the PRT. I'm the one who insisted on calling you in. So, do me a favour and don't make me or Director Piggot regret this."

As Lisa's shoulders slumped a little, she steadfastly avoided Brian's eyes. "Ah, okay. So, what's the deal?"

"It's about what you probably expect. Director Piggot has given me a problem and I'm thinking you're the best person to help me unravel it."

Lisa brightened. "Well, of course I am. What's the problem?"

"Ah, sorry, the Director just gave me a note saying, 'no details, opsec'. I guess that means you have to come in before we tell you anything about the situation."

"She does realise that I could probably solve it over the phone if I had enough details, right?" Lisa had regained some of her poise and all her self-confidence.

"As far as I can tell, she doesn't give a damn. She wants everyone who's working on this to be directly under her eye."

"Plus, she doesn't trust me." Now, Lisa sounded amused.

"I'd like to say that you're wrong, but we both know I'd be lying." So did Taylor.

"Well, at least we're all on the same page. So, how are we gonna do this?"

"Okay, the Director just handed me another note. You can be masked but not in costume. Give us a location near to you, and we'll have a car there in thirty minutes. You will hand over all phones and other electronics as soon as you get in the car. I'll be in the car to make sure everyone plays nice. Sound okay?"

Lisa grinned. "I'm guessing that last bit was you, not the Director. And she's not thrilled about it."

"Wow, it's almost like you've got the power to figure out stuff from minimal cues or something." Taylor's sarcastic drawl should've left scorch marks on the phone. "So where do we pick you up from?"

Lisa's lips pursed for a moment. "Corner of Parker and Brock. Opposite the convenience store." It was a couple of blocks from the hideout: close enough to be walked easily, far enough that she couldn't be backtracked.

"Okay, got it. See you soon."

"See you soon." Lisa ended the call, then raised her eyes in Brian's general direction. "So, are you going to say it, or do I have to force it out of you?"

"Force what out of me?" He met her gaze, stare for stare. "You were wrong. They didn't waffle for three days before asking you. Taylor called you as soon as they brought her in on it."

"But they still called on us after three days." Lisa's air of superiority could've bounced bullets right then. "Doesn't matter how or why. Three days. I was correct."

"Just give up now." Alec still hadn't looked around from his game. "You know she'll never admit it."

As much as Brian hated to admit that he was right, Lisa had that set to her jaw that told him she'd argue the point until Doomsday and forever afterward. "Fine, whatever you need to make yourself feel better. Now, you'd better get going. I doubt they'll wait too long for you if you're late."

She gave him that same irritating smile as she picked up her domino mask from the coffee table. "Well, they already waited three days. Mwahahaha." And then she was out the door.

Gritting his teeth, Brian debated banging his head against the wall a few times. At least it would be less painful than arguing with Lisa. "Is it just me, or has working for the PRT made her even more of a pain in the ass than normal?"

Alec shrugged. "I can't see the problem. Now they've got to spend hours dealing with her."

Brian considered that. Yeah. Good point.

<><>​

PRT Building ENE

Greg

It was quiet in the conference room. Director Piggot had left shortly after Taylor had, citing a need for her presence elsewhere. Armsmaster remained, still standing against the wall.

"Uh, hey, you know it's okay to sit." Greg motioned to one of the chairs. "We won't tell anyone."

"I appreciate the offer, but those chairs aren't rated for my armour." Armsmaster smiled briefly. "Thanks for the consideration, though."

"Allow me." Greg grinned as he let the metal he'd been wearing flow out of his sleeve and onto the chair. Wrapping around the legs and plastic seat, it turned the mundane piece of furniture into a stylish (and extremely sturdy) work of art. "Voila; one Armsmaster-rated chair."

Tracey stared at him. "Wait, you were carrying that with you all this time?"

"Well, yeah." Greg shrugged. "To me it's as light as foam padding. I'm never gonna be caught without the ability to make basic armour if I can help it." He turned to Armsmaster. "Go on, try it out."

"Hm. Very well." The armoured hero lowered himself onto the chair, which didn't so much as creak. "I knew your darksteel was strong, but I'm impressed. Thank you. I can lock my leg joints to stand for a long period of time, but sitting is more comfortable."

"Can I ask you a question about Director Piggot?" Tracey leaned back in her chair with her fingers laced in front of her.

Armsmaster paused for a moment before responding. "You can ask. I might not answer."

Tracey nodded. "That's fair. It's just that when she was talking about this Calvert guy, it sounded like it was about more than just a PRT officer betraying his oath. Like it was personal between the two of them."

Greg frowned. "Yeah. She said he had a really chequered career, whatever that means."

"Ah." The Protectorate hero hesitated for a moment, then seemed to come to a decision. "This is all in the files you'll be looking at, so I don't see the harm in telling you ahead of time. Commander Calvert was one of the two survivors of Ellisburg. The Nilbog event. He was a lieutenant at the time."

"Whoa," breathed Greg as dots connected inside his head. "I remember Mr Gladly covering that in World Affairs. He was there?"

Tracey tilted her head slightly. "And not only him. You said there were two survivors. Would the other one have been Director Piggot?"

Armsmaster nodded. "It's a matter of public record. However, while the Director fought to the last, Calvert shot his captain in the back so he could get up the ladder onto the helicopter faster. In the aftermath, he was dismissed from the PRT, but because they decided there were extenuating circumstances, he wasn't legally banned from having anything to do with the service again. He became an analyst contracting to the PRT, then managed to slide his way back in as a strike squad commander."

"And at the same time, he was doing the supervillain thing." Greg shook his head in wonder. "Gotta say, the man seems like a real dick."

The door opened and Director Piggot entered, carrying three folded laptops and a stack of folders. "I'm going to assume you're referring to Commander Calvert. I never liked him, and I never trusted him. But there's many people I don't like or trust that I still have to work with, so that wasn't actually a factor in my treatment of him." She nodded to Armsmaster, who had risen as she entered. "Lieutenant Forrester just got back with Tattletale and Miss Hebert." A moment later, she paused and looked more closely at his chair. "… ah. Mr Veder's work?"

"Yes, actually." He lowered himself into the chair again. "It's a useful field test, and there aren't many chairs in this building rated for my armour."

"I see." The Director placed her burden on the table, then sat down. "I'll brief you all in a moment, when Miss Hebert and Tattletale get here."

Greg nodded. "So, just making sure that we're all on the same page, as soon as we locate Coil, we're going after him, yeah?" He was pretty sure that was the case, but it was always a good idea to make sure.

Also, it was so weird to say that sort of thing in total seriousness.

Director Piggot looked around. "Yes—"

The door opened and Tattletale (wearing a visitor badge to go with her mask) burst in dramatically. "Never fear, the answer to your problems is here!"

Taylor followed her in, grinning. "Hey, all. Yes, she's been like this the whole way over. Now she's your problem."

The Director didn't quite roll her eyes, but Greg suspected that it was a close-run thing. "Thank you so much. Sit down, Tattletale."

"Sure thing." Tattletale grabbed a chair, spun it around, and sat down with her arms crossed over the back. "So, what's got everyone's undergarments in such a knot that you had to pull me in on it? Is the Director's morning Sudoku giving problems?"

"No." The Director stood and handed Taylor, Tracey and Tattletale a folder and laptop each. Greg didn't mind being excluded from the immediate selection; he worked better as a sounding-board for Taylor, anyway. "The other day, after you teleported to the Medhall building, we followed up on the clues Taylor had unearthed. Among other things, we discovered Coil's secret identity. Specifically: Thomas Calvert, a PRT strike squad commander."

It was clear to Greg that Tattletale was trying to hide her reaction, but even her domino mask couldn't conceal the widening of her eyes, much less the sudden tension in her posture. Her voice, when she spoke, was filled with apparent nonchalance. "Okay, so you figured this out. That's cool. What do you want us to do about it?"

"For shame, Tattletale." Director Piggot's voice was slightly drier than Death Valley at noon during high summer. "You're supposed to be the one with all the answers. I need him located and captured, before he can make use of his inside knowledge to cause more problems for us."

"… right." Tattletale's eyes flicked around each member of the group before returning to the Director. "He's got a rep for being slippery as hell. Did you have any leads on what his powers might be?"

<><>​

Taylor

"Powers?" Tracey leaned forward intently. "This is the first I've ever heard of him having powers. What have you heard?"

I wasn't sure what she'd seen, but I was pretty sure the Director had picked up on Tattletale's change in attitude, just as I had. With all of us paying her more attention that she'd probably bargained for, Tattletale seemed to wilt a little. "Uh … maybe reality alteration? Also, he's apparently got an underground base, like an Endbringer shelter, and he's got a bunch of mercenaries working for him."

"I'm impressed." Director Piggot didn't sound impressed, but her sarcasm didn't seem to be the 'facetious' type. Tattletale flinched, indicating that she'd noticed it too. "Your power is no doubt supplying you with all sorts of details now, that you didn't know before. I'm assuming you didn't know them before, because if you had, the reasonable thing to do would be to fill us in as soon as you learned we were going after him."

"Okay, okay, okay." Tattletale held up her hands in surrender. "You got me. I work for him. Or rather—"

The Director's voice could have shaved steel. "Armsmaster, place Tattletale under arrest immediately."

"Whoa, whoa, wait a minute." Tracey held her hands up in protest. Greg and I echoed her words.

Director Piggot stared at us; I got the impression that if it had been just one of us, she would've ignored the reaction, but as it was, she stopped. "What? She's literally in his pay. The man we're seeking to bring down."

"But she didn't even know about that until we brought her in here." Tracey spoke urgently: I knew that every word counted. "Can you just hear her out? Please?"

The Director gave Tracey a hard look, then favoured Tattletale with one that should've given her a medium sunburn. "Talk fast."

Tattletale took a quick breath. "The Undersiders currently work for Coil. But I'm totally willing to pull that ripcord if we can be certain of grabbing him and shoving him into the deepest, darkest hole you've got access to."

Tracey shared a quick glance with me, then spoke up. "Director Piggot, that kind of attitude change is something I'm really familiar with. I'm willing to bet it's not because she discovered in the last thirty seconds that Coil's equivalent to Kaiser. There's something else going on."

That was my cue to jump in. "What'd he do? To you, I mean. I could assume you were loyal to him, but the moment Director Piggot called you on it, you pivoted straight to 'he can die in a fire'. That means he had some kind of hold over you. So, what did he do?"

Tattletale searched my face, then glanced at the Director, who paused for a long moment then gestured back at me. "Answer the question."

Tattletale's shoulders sagged slightly. "He more or less put a gun to my head. Made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Then he proved he can spoof my power. Sometimes I know he's about to pull a gun and shoot me, and he doesn't. I can't plan a way around him, because he always knows what I'm about to do, and I never know what he's about to do."

There was an immense amount of subtext behind what she was saying. With her pride, she hated being someone else's catspaw, so she hammed it up hard while in costume to give the impression it was all her own idea. Her pride also factored into her pure hatred of Coil; she liked to be seen as the smartest person in the room, and she knew she was smarter than him, but his power could outmanoeuvre hers all day long. Finally, she was still scared of him, but his loss of the Calvert identity had weakened his position, so she was betting on us being able to bring him down for good before he had someone put a bullet in the back of her head.

At least, with his moles gone for the moment, she was safe inside the PRT building.

Director Piggot gave her a hard glance. "I'd have more sympathy for you if you hadn't already chosen to be a villain before he ever coerced you into his service. Now, that information you were holding out on us before. How many mercenaries, where is his base, and what's the easiest way to get in?"

"Please," I added. "You did say you'd help us."

"And this is your best chance of getting out from under his thumb," agreed Greg.

She wrinkled her nose. "If it was just Director Hardass there, I'd tell her to shove it and take my chances. But you make some good points, and you did say please. So, at the last count he had fifty mercs with laser undermounts for their rifles, and I can give you map coordinates and make a good effort at sketching out a floor plan. I'll even give you the pass codes for each of the entrances, or at least the ones I've been given. No guarantee that they haven't been updated since."

"Just a quick question." That was Tracey. "How are the rest of the Undersiders going to react to you turning against Coil?"

Tattletale grinned. "They honestly won't care, so long as you don't actually tell them that he's our real boss. I've been the go-between all this time, but Grue's the leader. That way, when he's talking to other groups, he can't accidentally let slip who's really paying our bills. He never could lie worth a damn."

I shook my head. "Huh. So we didn't even need all these files and laptops and stuff. All we had to do was call you in and ask a few questions."

"Hardly." Tattletale snorted. "I knew where his base was, and information about it. His name and cover were new to me, but if he was moonlighting as a PRT strike squad commander, he had the pretence of a normal life. That means a house of record. Which you've already raided, yeah?"

The Director nodded curtly. "We have. Go on."

"From the general air of pissiness when you're talking about it, you got nothing. It was clean as Scion's bodysuit. Barely any furniture, bed slept in maybe once a week. So what you raided was a decoy house, which means he's got a second one."

"That doesn't necessarily follow," objected Armsmaster. "He could be living out of his base."

"Could be, but I doubt it." Tracey's tone was thoughtful. "I've seen pictures of Coil in the Medhall induction document. Head to toe morph suit. That, and the fact that he's maintained a supervillain career for the last few years while also holding down a job as a PRT strike squad commander, tells me that he's somewhat paranoid and extremely detail-oriented. There's no way in hell he'd give the rank and file a look at his face—mercenaries are at least as greedy as the rest of us, by definition—so he wouldn't drive his car there, or walk in unmasked. Tattletale, where is this base, anyway?"

"Downtown, under a half-constructed office building." Tattletale didn't seem inclined to interrupt Tracey when she was on a roll.

Tracey nodded, as though this had been what she expected. "For want of a convenient volcano to build it into, right. Basically, a hop, skip and a jump from here. His decoy house is in the suburbs, and I would bet my non-existent employment chances that his gas mileage reflects driving out there and back every day. As Tattletale said, what we're looking for is a second house, one that's very much lived in."

"Exactly." Tattletale gave her a round of light golf applause. "And the clues to where it is are hopefully somewhere inside that pile of information you just handed us. So, shall we get to work?"

I shrugged. "Well, I'm convinced." Handing the folder off to Greg, I opened the laptop and started looking over my options.

<><>​

Greg

"… and pages thirteen through seventeen are also made-up crap." Lisa shook her head. "Honestly, did nobody audit Calvert's access to your system? He was flat-out making blatant changes to your records about him, and inserting sheer bullshit wherever he felt like it."

As Greg went through Taylor's and Tracey's folders to remove the offending material, he noted that Armsmaster looked distinctly uncomfortable. Director Piggot had departed once more to carry out her duties as Director, leaving him holding the bag. There was a feeling of camaraderie—they were all very much on the same side—but Lisa's scornful assessment of PRT security procedures had Greg feeling somewhat embarrassed on his behalf.

"It's not really their fault." He felt his experiences at Medhall gave him some insight into the matter. "Sure, he ran rampant through the system once he was in, but he was legitimately given the position of a strike squad commander. It's not like he faked his credentials. That bit's on whoever let him back in, not on Director Piggot."

"Greg's right." Taylor raised her head from the laptop she was currently combing through. "Once you've got the clearance, you're assumed by definition to deserve the clearance. Even when you've got the best of intentions, having to stop every five minutes to get permission from above to do anything of note would drastically impact efficiency and make it impossible to get anything done in a viable timeframe. Basically, at some point you have to trust your people not to be bad actors. And talking about bad actors, I think I've found something."

"Well, that's more than I have." Tracey looked across at her. "Share, please."

"Incoming." Taylor clicked the menu option that shared her screen across the other two laptops (and, Greg had learned, with Armsmaster's HUD), then used her mouse to highlight a line. "See that? That payment shows up several times, over a series of weeks. Always the exact same amount to that contractor, except for the very last one. I tried to chase down the contractor, but they don't exist. There's no hint as to the service they actually supply. And the total amount paid would about cover the cost of a house."

Lisa frowned. "It could be something, or it might just be standard military contractor bullshit."

Taylor made one more mouse click. "Have a look at the invoice numbers. They're sequential. Separated by weeks."

Tracey shook her head as she smiled. "Haha, yeah. That's a thing he does, isn't it?" Reaching across, she gave Taylor a high-five. "You go, girl."

Staring at the numbers, Lisa facepalmed. "And I was looking straight at it. Goddamn it."

Greg could feel the answer to the problem tickling his brain. "I know there's a way to find his house from that, but I just can't add it up."

"I can." Armsmaster was now sitting up, his gauntlets making typing motions in the air. "Accessing house sales in Brockton Bay over that period, cross-referencing with the total price … three houses, one of which is too close to Downtown, and one which has had numerous noise complaints of dogs barking in the yard morning and night. The third is the correct distance away, and has had no disturbances. It's also within line of sight of the decoy house."

Taylor and Tracey glanced at each other, and Taylor spoke first. "He wouldn't draw attention to himself. No barking dogs."

Tattletale nodded. "No, he's very much a 'security by obscurity' sort of personality. He's in the quiet house, for sure. And the line of sight would let him see if someone was raiding the premises."

"I concur." Armsmaster smiled. "A search of DMV records just got me his fake ID. The photo is literally Calvert with a moustache and a beard."

"Excellent." Taylor stood up and stretched. "So, let's go gather the troops and hit the house. If he's there, we've got him. If not, he'll be in his base."

Armsmaster's satisfied smile morphed into a frown. "Why the house first? Hitting it will almost certainly alert him, and put his base on alert. If you're going to hit a fortified location, it's best if they don't know you're coming."

Tracey nodded. "Also, if we hit the house and he's not there, what's stopping him from leaving the base before we can get there, and going on the offensive with his mercenaries?"

Taylor raised her eyebrows. "There's a quote I read once: 'if the enemy has an impregnable stronghold, see he stays there'. If he wants to lock himself away in an underground concrete bunker, then who are we to argue?"

Greg grinned. Taylor had the best plans.



End of Part One

 

[Zeushobbit]

Taylor raised her eyebrows. "There's a quote I read once: 'if the enemy has an impregnable stronghold, see he stays there'. If he wants to lock himself away in an underground concrete bunker, then who are we to argue?"

Click to shrink...

I see Taylor has been studying her Tacticus.

 

[Lokdal75]

Woo! Been waiting for this continuation. Best Taylor/Greg interactions by far.

 

[macdjord]

Woo! Sequel!

 

[Crazael]

Well, I look forward to seeing what Taylor decides to do about Coil.

 

[Ostentatiousnessness]

Fucking spectacular work, Ack. I just finished the MedHall one and you did outstanding work on that and I can't wait to see where you go with this.

 

[Ack]

Taylor Hebert: PRT Operative

Part Two: Deep Thinking

[A/N: This chapter commissioned by @GW_Yoda and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]


Taylor

Tracey held up her hands in a time-out gesture. "Seriously, before we get carried away with our own cleverness, I really think we should take a step back and consider the factors we haven't really covered yet. For starters, Tattletale, you've alluded to his powers twice. Do you know for a fact that he has powers?"

"Or were you hoping one of us would connect the dots for you," asked Greg thoughtfully, "so you could tell yourself you weren't sticking the knife all the way into his back?"

I didn't say a word; it was far more effective just to look at her and raise my eyebrows. Greg and Tracey had covered what I wanted to say anyway.

Lisa grimaced. "I don't know for a fact what they are, but I've seen them in action … I think. Sometimes when he talks to me, I get the impression he's considering consulting me about them, which suggests he himself isn't one hundred percent sure how they work, but he hasn't opened up yet."

"Well, okay. Seeing them in action is better than nothing." Tracey leaned back in her chair. "Tell us what you do know. If there's anything we're ridiculously good at, it's brainstorming."

Greg smirked. "And kicking Empire ass, but there's no Nazis in the room, so I'm willing to settle for brainstorming." It wasn't all that witty, but I gave him a low-five anyway.

Lisa took a deep breath. "Okay, so before he coerced me into working for him, I was living more or less on the streets. But I was totally aware of the dangers—teenage girl, nobody I could trust, et cetera—so I never took the same routes twice, never scammed the same people twice. I was careful. But he still tracked me down, had his people waiting where I would be."

Armsmaster shook his head. "The Director could accomplish that, just by spreading enough people around. Not evidence of power use."

Lisa looked like she wanted to argue the point for a moment, then visibly dropped it. "Okay, granted. He's got enough people working for him. Maybe I was careless and didn't realise it. Anyway, so I'm face to face with him and he pulls out a quarter and starts flipping it. He's talking to me at the same time, which means he's absolutely not focusing on flipping it a certain way. Ten heads in a row. I watched, and checked the coin a couple of times to make sure he hadn't slipped in a ringer. Honest flips, honest coin."

"Okay," I said thoughtfully. "So that's a thing. Like you suggested, reality manipulation? Making sure his men would be where they needed to be, making sure the coin flipped heads each time."

"However it works," Greg mused, "it's got limits. Maybe the number of times he can use it per day, maybe how much reality he can shuffle around in a given time. Because someone who's willing to kidnap a teenage girl and force her to become a villain for him isn't going to lurk in some underground bunker if he can make bullets miss him in midair."

"I've never heard of him doing that," agreed Lisa. "But the operations he sends us—the Undersiders—on are always successful. Never a bad call, never bad intel. The heroes never get the jump on us. Same goes for the things he sends the mercenaries out for. Sure, there are snags, but never of the type that call for aborting the op."

"Okay, now you've lost me," I confessed. "That doesn't sound like the same kind of reality manipulation you'd use to flip ten heads in a row. People aren't coins. Unless he's massively changing the landscape of Brockton Bay, and our memories with it, he can't arrange for heroes not to be there, or for bad intel to magically become good intel."

"Wait." Tracey seemed to be thinking hard. "Are you saying every single time you went out, you just had the red carpet rolled out for you?"

Lisa shrugged. "The jobs he sent us on, sure."

"Oooh." Greg gnawed on a knuckle, a sign he had something almost in sight. "Oooh. Did he send you on a mission every time you prepped for one, or just some of the time? And when he flipped the coin, did he just do it bam-bam-bam-bam, or did he spend time talking between flips? Because you said he talked."

"Yeah, sometimes he's called off missions. And no, he didn't flip the coin ten times straight away. Why? What've you figured out?" Lisa looked at Greg curiously.

Greg leaned back in his chair. "I think he's a precog. He's got maybe a couple of hours up his sleeve, but he can ask himself, 'what happens if I send the Undersiders to rob this convenience store?' or whatever, and if it turns out badly, he can just not send you. Same with the coin flips. He would've been asking, 'what's it going to be?' and if the answer was tails, he just didn't flip. Waited a few seconds or changed hands, and asked again. Does that fit what you know of him?"

"It would, yeah." Lisa seemed to be tasting the words.

"So, where are the limits?" Tracey nodded toward Greg. "Suppose he uses his precog to check out a robbery, figures out there are heroes or cops in easy intercept distance, so … what? He says no go, doesn't just check out another location? Just a simple precog like that, you'd never get a no-go call. He'd just say, 'hit this other target instead'. Did that ever happen?"

Lisa was already shaking her head. "No, it didn't. He usually wouldn't call on us again until the next day."

"Some kind of cool-down effect," I realised. "Maybe he can't precog the same interval of time twice in a row, or something."

"More likely he gets Thinker headaches, like I do." Lisa tapped the side of her head. "If I overwork myself, it's migraine central." She frowned and shook her head. "Not Thinker headaches. I'd pick it up. So Taylor's probably got the right idea, some kind of cool-down."

"Okay, then." Tracey dusted her hands off. "It's a good working theory. Tattletale, is there anything you've seen or heard that would invalidate the idea? Anything at all?"

"I think I might have something." Greg shot me an apologetic glance. "If he can see the future well enough to give a robbery a go/no-go call, why isn't he just betting on racehorses and stuff, and absolutely rolling in money for no effort at all?"

He'd made a very good point, I realised immediately. "Uh … maybe he can't see fine details, like who won a race? Just 'it went bad' or 'it went well'? Or maybe he just likes doing crime? I mean, he had the money to bribe people to build him a whole Bond villain base. What if he is that rich, and being an asshole supervillain's just his hobby?"

Armsmaster's head came up. "I don't know Commander Calvert well, but in my limited experience, he didn't come across as someone who was slumming it, and could walk away from the job tomorrow." His jaw hardened in a grimace. "Of course, he was active as a supervillain while also playing the role of a strike squad commander, so the man had serious deceptive capability."

"When he was flipping the coin, he would've needed to know whether it was going to be heads or tails." Lisa looked around at us. "That's a pretty fine detail, right?"

"Dammit, you're right." I ran my hands through my hair. "Okay, so how do we reconcile being able to read a coin with not being able to read sporting results? Or are we going with 'mega-rich asshole villain hobby'?"

"Give me a moment," Armsmaster said. "I'm going to consult with the Director. She knows him better than I do."

As he mumbled to himself, Tracey looked at Greg and me. "It's got to be some flavour of precog. Too many factors point toward it. But like Taylor said, what exact limitations would prevent him from calling a horse race while allowing him to call a coin flip?"

Greg was gnawing on a knuckle again. "Maybe … he can only precog stuff around people or things he's been in direct contact with? Has met personally? If he's never been near a racehorse in his life, he couldn't call the race. But he's met Tattletale, and he's in contact with his mercenaries all the time."

I snapped my fingers. "And that's what's stopping him from raking it in on the lotteries. He's not actually physically present when the numbers are called."

Tracey nodded slowly. "I think you've got it. Tattletale?"

"Yeah." Lisa echoed the gesture. "Yeah. Everything fits. He needed to meet a member of the Undersiders so he could precog for us all. I've been on every mission. That's gotta be it."

Armsmaster cleared his throat. "Director Piggot concurs he's not playing the role of a supervillain for the fun of it. Her exact quote was: 'if he was that rich, he'd be either sitting in the Mayor's office, or in mine'."

"Well, that simplifies matters a lot." I frowned, thinking. "So, do you think it's possible he's got precog capabilities for his house and his base, just because he's spent time in both places?"

"Doesn't need 'em." Greg spoke up just before Armsmaster could. "He could have remote alarm systems in both that feed to his phone."

"No." I shook my head. "Precog, allowing him to know ahead of time if someone's about to hit his house or his base. Electronic surveillance is a given."

"Even if he could, I doubt he would," Tracey observed thoughtfully. "If he can't survey the same time interval twice, or he's got any other type of cool-down, I suspect he wouldn't be using it willy-nilly for that purpose, especially when electronics are almost as good."

"So … he's not at his home of record." I reached into my backpack and took out a pen and pad. As I spoke, I scribbled notes. "He'd know for a fact you've just raided it. While he might consider himself safe in his real house, I'm thinking he'll feel more secure in his base, just in case we stumble on the other location by accident. Or, you know, use logic and computer skills to figure it out anyway. Tattletale?"

"Base, for sure." Her tone was confident. "The other house would be a tripwire. A warning for him to go to ground. The moment that front door got kicked in, he would've grabbed his go-bag and jumped in his car."

"So … we ignore the other house?" asked Greg dubiously.

"Haha, nope." Tracey shook her head emphatically. "While he would've done his best to wipe it clean of anything remotely incriminating, there's a lot Director Piggot's forensic techs could find there. All they'd need is a search warrant. Armsmaster?"

"It's in the pipeline," he reported. "As soon as we have it, I'll be taking troopers to surround the house and, as you say, kick the front door in. Do you have any insights about that, or the base?"

"Only two," I said. "First, are you certain he hasn't booby-trapped the house to remotely detonate once you're inside?"

He paused. "No. But I can jam all incoming signals before we go in. Next?"

"This one's for Tattletale." I pushed the pad across the table. "Please give me a rough floor-plan of the base, and of the exits you know about."

She raised an eyebrow, but began drawing anyway. "You think there's more?"

"I think Coil's sufficiently paranoid he wouldn't tell everyone all his secrets, and that includes exactly where all the exits are to his secret underground base." I watched as the image grew under her confident strokes.

"Ooh, I just had a thought." Greg sounded unhappy. "Everyone Coil's been in contact with, he could've precogged to find out our plans before we've even made them."

Armsmaster stood up. "I've definitely been in contact with him. I'll be leaving now, and sending someone else in."

"What about me?" asked Tattletale. "If Armsmaster's got a problem, then I definitely do."

"Finish up the floor-plan, then go," I advised her, then turned to Armsmaster. "Has Calvert been in the habit of socialising with the troopers from other strike squads?"

I saw his lips tighten. "Not that I'm aware of, but he could've made a point of meeting each of them at one time or another." He paused, then the tension left his posture again. "I know exactly who to call in. Someone Coil's guaranteed to never have come face to face with."

"Really?" asked Greg. "Who?"

Tattletale grinned, suddenly looking very smug indeed. "I bet I know."

"Don't say it." Armsmaster held up his hand in a 'stop' gesture. "If Coil has precogged you or me, we don't want to give him any extra information."

"Fine, spoil my fun." She rolled her eyes, but completed the sketch anyway. "Okay, done. All yours."

"Excellent, thanks." I accepted the pad back as she got up from the table. "You heading back home now?"

"Not yet." She shrugged. "He hasn't called me since we took down Kaiser, but that's probably because he precogged what I'm up to, so he knows I've jumped ship. I think I'll stay right here in the building until I know he's in custody." Giving me a fingertip-wave, she headed for the door behind Armsmaster. "Wreck his day for me, will you?"

I grinned. "That's the plan."

The door closed behind them, and Greg looked at Tracey and me, the question evident in his eyes. We shrugged in near-unison, as much in the dark as he was. Whatever Lisa had known, she had access to information we didn't.

That was when the screen taking up the entire wall at the far end of the room came to life. We all turned to look at it, and at the face which had shown up on it. It was a woman's face, masked, but I had the faintest suspicion that it was computer-generated all the same.

Maybe it was the sheer normalcy of her visible features, with no defining characteristics. An everywoman, who could walk past on any street from London to New York to Sydney, and not be out of place. Or maybe I was just looking too hard for something out of the ordinary.

"Hi," she said cheerfully. "In case you were wondering, I'm Dragon. I hear you've got a plan to capture Coil?"

<><>​

Coil

Something was amiss. More than the current situation, even.

When the alarm went off to alert him of the raid on the decoy house, he'd done his best to clear the area. Unfortunately, his car had been pulled over by a PRT checkpoint, where an alert trooper had recognised him. So, he'd had to drop that timeline and revert to the one where he'd been in his base all night. It meant losing a night of sleep, but that was hardly a first for him.

It also meant he hadn't been able to arm the proximity switches for his home office (these were very much analog tech, for safety reasons) so he was going to have to trigger the explosives remotely. That was fine: the booster for the radio signal had been installed months before, disguised as a component of the electricity meter. All he had to do was dial a specific number, already saved on a burner phone in his desk drawer, and the issue would be solved.

He hadn't done it yet because he didn't want to draw attention to the house. There was still a strong possibility the PRT knew nothing of it, and he was damn sure Tattletale was equally in the dark regarding its existence.

He growled under his breath when he thought about the betrayal perpetrated on him by that ungrateful little bitch. Days earlier, his moles had reported to him on how the Undersiders had sought refuge with the PRT, along with Taylor Hebert and her little coterie of escapees from the Medhall building. This had come just before his moles started being exposed, and he himself was forced to drop the timeline where he'd even been in the building at all.

The fact the Undersiders weren't arrested on the spot led inescapably to the conclusion that Director Piggot had found another use for them: a conclusion borne out by the sudden cessation of all activity by Empire Eighty-Eight capes anywhere in town. Bad news travelled fast, even when mixed with good news. The Empire has been captured, the grapevine said. The white supremacists are behind bars. But who's next?

While he would've been thoroughly interested in getting his hands on Tattletale and interrogating her in depth with regards to what was going on in the PRT building, Calvert had had his own problems to deal with. Mainly, he'd been working on moving all the things he didn't want to part with from his house to the base, while maintaining a timeline that would allow him to not be caught on the back foot. Any attempt to grab her, or even just check to see how closely the PRT were guarding her, would involve use of timelines he couldn't spare right then.

Some may have seen it as short-sighted to prioritise his own skin and possessions over access to a powerful Thinker like Tattletale. He saw it differently; his experiences in Ellisburg had left him with a deep and abiding need to never be without an exit strategy ever again. Besides, he could always retrieve her later, once everything had calmed down somewhat and he was ready to start expanding his operations once more.

This wasn't to say he was about to reward Tattletale for such a minor act of loyalty, of course. That sort of thing was expected of villainous minions, and Tattletale had better damn well remember her place, or he'd know the reason why not. He decided he'd probably only torture her lightly in the alternate timeline instead of going all-out; she'd earned that much, at least.

As it was, he was safe in his base, there were cameras watching every exit, and he was ready to blow the house as soon as the first PRT or Protectorate boot crossed the threshold. Nobody suspicious had come sniffing around over the last three days, which suggested Tattletale had balked from betraying him that far. There hadn't even been an overly-fit dog walker or jogger.

So why was there an itch in the back of his mind no amount of rational thought could scratch?

<><>​

Taylor

I examined the sketch Lisa had left us. It was pretty damn detailed, and showed Coil's office as well as the exits, with neat little notes showing where they came out to. "Dragon, can you see this?"

"I can," she confirmed, and threw an image of it up on the screen to prove it. "Is this to plan our attack?"

"It's part of it." Tracey was still on the same page as Greg and me. "He's got to have a bolt-hole somewhere. Can you correlate this to the street map, and maybe utilities?"

"I can." A satellite map of Downtown appeared on the screen, then zoomed in to a specific area. Then she overlaid a standard street map as a transparency so that we could see details of both. Finally, the sketch appeared on top of that, rotated slightly, then clicked into place. "The tunnel exit on the construction site appears to correlate to this hatch here." The view zoomed in to show a metal hatch on the aforementioned construction site. "Which means the parking garage exit would correlate to this wall."

"Bingo." My eyes searched the sketch. "Zoom in on his office. If he's got a secret way out, then it'll be from there."

The map shifted, then steadied. We were looking at the penned-in square marked 'Office', with buildings and a street nearby.

Greg frowned. "Would he use this exit regularly, or is it a get-out-of-Dodge situation?"

Even before I could ask the question, I realised where he was going with it. "A regular exit implies a building, that he can just walk in and out of without any questions asked. Emergency exit would require something less involved."

"Sending query to Armsmaster," Dragon reported.

"Wait, no, no!" Tracey threw both hands up to stop her. "He can't hear the question!"

Dragon blinked. "Please explain."

I took a deep breath. "Okay, so we've brainstormed Coil's power, and the odds are that he's a precog. Given the observed limits of the power, we've figured out that he can only use precog on people that he's actually met. He's met Armsmaster, but he's never met you … has he?"

"No, he has not." She sounded quiet, contemplative. "I suppose there are benefits to my situation."

Tracey grimaced. "The problem is, he's also met Tattletale. So, if we communicate with her and he's using his precog on her—and to be honest, why wouldn't he be—he'll know what we've just learned. And it's a really bad idea to assume your opponent won't figure information out from first principles, such as how we're planning to deal with him."

"Got it." Greg snapped his fingers. "Give me a second, here." He pulled out his phone and woke it up. "Just checking to see if I saved her number … yes, yes, I did. Okay, let's see now …"

I watched with interest as he carefully typed out a message, backing up and editing it a few times before he was finally satisfied. "Well, don't just leave us in suspense," I said half-jokingly. "If you've got a genius idea, feel free to share it with the class."

He gave me the Greg Veder smile that was really beginning to grow on me. "Ask, and ye shall receive." Then he showed me the phone screen.

To my confusion, it was all emoticons. First was a sleeping person (with little z's hovering over him), followed by a DNA strand. Then there was a tree, a dollar bill (actually a little green rectangle with the dollar symbol on it), a very obvious spy in sunglasses, fedora and trenchcoat, and an open door.

I read the whole thing through again, and all I got was 'something something sneaky door'. "Okay, I don't get it. Dragon? Tracey?"

"You've lost me," Dragon admitted candidly. "Some kind of steganography?"

Tracey raised her eyebrows. "Greg, I know your mind works in mysterious ways, but you've outdone yourself here. Mind explaining for we mere mortals?"

His grin merely widened. "Doze. DNA is coiled. Make like a tree and leave. Buy. Secret. Door."

Tracey facepalmed. Dragon looked like she wanted to headdesk. I just grabbed Greg and kissed him hard, leaving him looking dazed. "You're a genius. My boyfriend is a certified genius."

"Whoa. Okay. Wow." He shook his head, apparently to clear it. "Did not expect that. So, good to send?"

I nodded. "Hell yes, it's good to send."

"Excellent." He hit the correct icon, and the message was launched into the electronic ether. "Okay, so what else do we need to do while we're waiting?"

Tracey pointed at the screen. "Well, if it's a regular affair, we can check the ownership of those four buildings. But if it's a one-and-done … is that a manhole?"

Dragon zoomed the image in. It was indeed a manhole cover, right there near where the office showed up on the overlay.

I nodded slowly as the scenario came together. "If he made sure to have a car parked nearby, and moved occasionally, he could climb out of the manhole, get in the car, and be gone in seconds."

"Or walk out of a building and do exactly the same," agreed Tracey. Greg's phone pinged, and she looked expectantly at him. "Is that her?"

"It is." He flicked the screen to open the message. "A fire, a thumbs down and a red traffic light. Sounds like a no to me."

Tracey nodded. "The manhole it is. Though, I'm curious about how fire comes into it."

He smirked. "It's a regular meme. The best way to un-want something is to set it on fire."

I rolled my eyes as the last piece of the puzzle fell into place. "Because of course you and Tattletale use the same memes. Okay, then. We're all agreed on the plan of attack?"

Tracey nodded again, as did Greg. Dragon's face, on the screen, registered puzzlement. "Plan of attack? I thought we were still getting to that."

Greg frowned. "We've been discussing it the whole time. We block everything except the parking garage exit and bottleneck them that way. And we do it after Armsmaster and the PRT hit the house, to see how he reacts."

Dragon shook her head. "You didn't mention any of that until just now."

Tracey chuckled. "Sorry, we're used to thinking on the same channel as each other. Most of the time, anyway. That's why we got the information on all the exits, so we could lock them in. And if he's not there at the time, their morale's gonna nosedive as soon as we do it."

Dragon didn't look totally convinced. "And what about the mercenaries? I understand that they carry rifles with undermount lasers that can cut through steel."

I spread my hands. "That's what Grue's for. He's never met Coil, and his darkness stops all light, including Tinkertech lasers. And if they want to shoot ordinary old bullets at us, Greg and I can return those to sender, all day long."

"And if he's not in the base?" Dragon raised an eyebrow. "We have to address that possibility too."

Tracey took up the ball. "As Tattletale said, if he's on foot, we can track him. Armsmaster and the PRT are going to be hitting his house shortly before we hit the base, so if he's there, they'll get him. If he's not in either the house or the base, it'll mean he's at large but we'll have deprived him of a huge chunk of his resources." She nodded toward the screen. "And I'm sure you'll be able to comb through his computer system and deal with the rest of them. Precog or not, he won't be able to do a hell of a lot without his base, his mercenaries, or his bank accounts."

"Exactly," I said. "He'll go from a fully equipped supervillain to one on the run. And as soon as he starts doing anything with a pattern to try to rebuild what he's got …"

"Boom." Greg smacked his fist into his palm. "We'll be on him like aggro on a tank."

Dragon seemed to ponder that for a few moments, or maybe she was trying to figure out his gaming slang. Finally, she nodded. "Alright then, let's do this."

<><>​

Coil

Thomas Calvert considered himself a hard-headed realist. Had anyone uttered the phrase 'it's too quiet' in his hearing, he would've scoffed at it and them. Yet … it was too quiet.

Days had passed since his moles had been uncovered as a serendipitous outcome of the Empire's actions. The trail had inevitably led back to him, and his decoy house had been raided … but nothing had happened since. And while this was technically a good thing, it was also problematic.

Emily Piggot, despite her many shortcomings, was not a stupid woman. Anyone lacking in intelligence would have been long since overwhelmed by the ongoing crime in the city (especially with his behind-the-scenes manipulations making it harder for her to handle matters). Likewise, Armsmaster was no slouch at investigation.

Long story short, they should have been doing more, but … weren't. And he didn't like it in the least. The feeling he got was that a very large, very heavy shoe was due to drop at any moment. And that the longer it delayed, the more devastating the impact would be.

He was running two different timelines, of course. In one, the base was on full defensive alert; sentries prowled the exterior perimeter in plainclothes, masquerading as ordinary citizens while keeping a sharp lookout for incursions. In the other, the mercenaries were packing to roll out as soon as the order was given, while a sharp eye was kept on the exterior cameras.

The longer he waited, the more insistent the itch between his shoulder-blades became. His usual precaution was to be in two different places at once, but that presupposed the existence of two equally safe locations for him to bunker down in. His big problem was, he couldn't move anywhere with the mercenaries and hope to keep it under the radar. Likewise, if he headed out on his own, there was a moderate chance they would assume he was abandoning them to save his own ass (which he absolutely would, if the need arose) and their morale would collapse.

There was one bolt-hole he could technically seek refuge in. It wasn't so much a secondary site as a storage dump for supplies that he hadn't yet had the chance to ferry into his main base. While it lacked the facilities to handle fifty people, one person could subsist there quite well, though the crates of MREs would likely become very boring after a while.

He wasn't enamoured of the 'ready to evacuate' posture, mainly because it put the idea of defeat and escape into the minds of the mercenaries, and they might just jump the gun and disappear into the tall timber at the slightest provocation. Even though the security of the base was more symbolic than actual—Calvert had no illusions about the ability of the PRT and Protectorate to winkle him out of his lair once they got the idea to do so—nothing wore away at morale faster than the idea of being forced to abandon a prepared fortification.

Still, it was one of the very few options he had, so he kept walking among the men, allowing himself to be seen, while the people watching the outside cameras had orders to alert him the instant a PRT vehicle came into view. In the other timeline, morale was actually higher, with sandbagged positions set up covering each of the exits. Sheltered by the sandbags were heavy machineguns and all the ammo he'd stockpiled over the years. Between the machineguns and the undermount lasers, anyone attempting to mount an attack would be bottlenecked and cut down before they made it any distance into the facility.

Taking one last glance over the defenses, he nodded and strolled unhurriedly back to his office. The door slid shut behind him as per normal; the fact that he immediately locked it behind him was not so normal, but this would only become apparent if someone came looking for him. Moving with careful haste, he stripped out of the bodysuit and put on blue-collar working gear from where he had it stored. As a final touch, he added a hardhat and a high-vis vest.

It was only when he was halfway along the corridor to the manhole exit that his phone pinged with an alert that the door alarm on his house had just gone off. He'd been half-considering the idea of swinging past on the way to his intended destination, but this was no longer an option. Stopping just inside the swinging slab of concrete that would let him out into the storm drain, he accessed the camera images for the house. Still frames were all he was going to get, he knew, given that the house had been wired to blow at the first sign of incursion.

Instead, he found himself watching live footage of Armsmaster prowling through his living room, followed by PRT troopers who were splitting up to check individual rooms.

What? No, this can't be right.

Pulling up another specialised app on his phone, he accessed the bomb's remote circuit … or tried to. Despite the fact that there was a booster nearby, when he requested a ping-back from the electronic detonator, there was no reply. Frowning, he tried again, with equally negative results.

It was possible that the ping-back wasn't showing up for any one of a number of reasons, so he pressed the override icon, sending out the detonation signal. Then he flipped back to the camera app, and was gratified to see that the camera was no longer transmitting an image.

Yes! Got you! He didn't mind admitting, after the fact, that he'd been a little worried. But it had only been an equipment problem, easily bypassed. With a slight smile on his face, he checked for the last images of the Protectorate and PRT personnel who had been caught in the blast … and saw, on the screen, Armsmaster's halberd very close indeed.

Hastily, he flicked through each of the other camera feeds; they were all down, their final images showing how they'd been destroyed.

"Well, shit." The words echoed hollowly in the corridor. As he tucked the phone away and swung aside the slab to let himself out into the storm drain, he thought hard about what they would find there.

Not a huge amount, he decided. Nothing that would lead them directly to his base. There was quite a bit of material that would serve as proof of his criminal activity, but they already had that. As far as he could recall, there was nothing that would give them new information.

Still, it would've been nice to blow the house anyway. I wonder how they did it. Jammer?

Still musing over that, he climbed the ladder and pushed open the manhole in the middle of the sidewalk. His clothing was the next best thing to an invisibility power; as soon as anyone saw the hard hat and high-vis vest, he would no longer be an oddity. Climbing out, he let the cover drop back over the manhole, then strode toward the car parked at the side of the road.

The car wasn't there all the time, of course. Sometimes it was another car. There was another one that he kept in the parking garage. Every few days, he would have one of the mercenaries take one out on a snack run, park on the street, and drive the other one back. This ensured that he'd always have a getaway vehicle (his keyring had a key for each car). The snack run aspect, on the other hand, ensured that he always had ready volunteers for the chore.

The car unlocked as he pressed the fob button on the key itself, and he removed the vest and hard-hat before climbing in. Now, he was just an ordinary man in an ordinary car. Starting the car, he eased out onto the road and drove off, scrupulously sticking to the speed limit. Nothing to see here.

With the window down, he could listen to the outside environment; no choppers, which was good. Likewise, there were no cars, unmarked or otherwise, following him. He hadn't been certain that there were no clues to the location of the base within the house, but this seemed to bear that assumption out. The way was clear to head to his off-site storage area, check it out, then decide what he was going to do from there.

<><>​

Taylor

When my phone rang, I checked the caller ID. It read GRUE. Thumbing the answer icon, I held it to my ear. "Taylor here. What's the news?"

He sounded both impressed and respectful when he answered. "You called it. He climbed out of the manhole that you pointed out, got in a car, and drove away. Bitch and Regent are following him now."

I had no problem with that. They'd been given careful instructions that boiled down to 'follow, do not engage, report where he goes to'. Unfortunately, due to her association with Coil, Lisa couldn't be in on the shadowing aspect, but Rachel was an intelligent person. She understood clear instructions. Alec was more of a wild card, but he was invested in making himself useful to the PRT, now that Coil's operation was teetering on the edge of disaster. I trusted him to attend to his own self-interest, if nothing else.

The good thing about Rachel's dogs was that they could trail him on the rooftops. Also, once Coil got to wherever he was going and left the car, they could get his scent and have the dogs trail him that way. None of which involved confronting him: while such a scenario could still happen, I wanted to find out what else he had going on before jumping on him with both feet.

At the same time, of course, I fully intended to separate him from his base and everything in it. Allowing a snake like Coil to retain access to money or armed mercenaries would be a mistake of the highest order, so I had no intention of doing it. This was one of the reasons I'd had them schedule the house raid before the base raid, to see if we could stampede him out of his own base.

"There he is," Tracey noted, slowing the car and pulling over to the side of the road. Brian wasn't immediately recognisable as Grue, but there weren't a huge number of six-foot-plus buff black guys in Brockton Bay, so even wearing a baseball cap pulled down over his eyes, he wasn't hard to spot in general.

Greg and I were in the back seat by choice—it was easier to hold hands that way—so he got in the front. I'd already made sure it was all the way back, because he had the longest legs I'd ever seen. Making him sit with his knees up around his ears would be a funny prank once, but there was a time and a place for that sort of thing, and this wasn't it.

"He should be far enough away by now." I took out my phone and rang Alec's number. Rachel had a phone, but she tended to 'forget' it at every opportunity.

"Taylor, hi." Alec sounded as cheerful as he ever got. In the background, I could hear the steady, repetitive sound of gigantic dogs galloping across rooftops. "Nothing weird to report."

"Excellent. Has he turned back toward the base?" This was important. We needed him far enough away that if he was keeping precog tabs on any of the PRT troopers slated to hit the base, it would be too late for him to turn around.

"Nope. He's headed for the industrial areas. Man with a mission, that's him." He had to be feeling comfortable for that kind of snark to creep in.

"Excellent. Call me if anything changes." I ended the call. "Good news. He's not reacting to anything we're about to do."

"Neat. So, Operation Sardine Can is a go?" Greg already had his phone out.

Tracey sighed. "I'm pretty sure we're not calling it that, but yes. It's a go."

"Excellent." Greg glanced at me. "Can I make the call, or do you want to?"

His eagerness was almost palpable. I grinned and shoulder-nudged him. "Oh, what the hell. You do it. The plan's mostly yours, anyway."

"Sweeeeet." He called up a number on his phone and tapped the icon. "Yeah, hi, it's us. Elvis has left the building." He paused. "Yes, that means Coil is out of his bunker. Sorry, I thought a code phrase would sound cooler."

I grinned, shaking my head. With all of his competence upgrades—and he'd come a long way since our first days at Medhall—Greg would always be a dork in some ways. But that was okay: he was my dork.

"Okay, yeah, we're waiting for everyone else to move in. Right, gotcha." Greg looked up as the call ended. "She says the first truck will be coming past in two minutes. We'll tuck in behind them."

I nodded. "I'll keep in touch with Regent." We didn't think Coil would do anything untoward, but there was thinking and then there was making sure.

There was only one person we could really trust to run this mission: Dragon. Armsmaster knew her well enough to make the case that she could coordinate the men to assault the base in the way we'd planned, and Director Piggot trusted Armsmaster enough to sign off on the idea. That way, even if Coil was precogging any of the officers involved, he'd only get a small part of the picture, not the whole strategy.

The Undersiders (minus Lisa) had been in charge of watching to see which way Coil would jump once Armsmaster and the others had hit his house. It had triggered him into going somewhere, and we wanted to know where. This in turn had opened the way to go all-in on denying him the base (and everything in it) altogether; if we managed to fully take it, they were authorised to swoop in and grab him up.

Still, we were almost literally playing with fire. Coil was an unknown factor in many ways; for all I knew, we'd totally misread his power and were depending on protective factors that didn't exist. The idea of a cape sandbagging with his powers to throw his enemies off-guard was so pervasive that at least two cape sitcoms had been written around the concept.

But I didn't think that was the case. Coil was hugely ego-driven, and I doubted very much that he would hold back on any aspect of his power that could possibly make him look more powerful or get him more money. If he could leverage his power in a way to get an extra advantage, he'd absolutely be doing it that way.

However, the fact of the matter was that we were committed now. The plan was going ahead, and it was our job to make sure that it worked. If imperfect information was all we had to go on with, that was what we'd use.

It was time to kick the doors in, and let the dice fall where they may.



End of Part Two

 

[Ash Craig]

It's pretty funny how wrong they are about why Coil has the limitations he does, but to be honest, bringing Dragon in isn't exactly a problem if they're wrong, so it's a win win! Also, getting around a precog by communicating via emojis and memes is both an original and hilarious idea.

 

[Robert Stadler]

Would somebody mind posting a summary of the powers of the new trio (Taylor, Greg, and Tracey)? Or a link to an existing summary, if there is one.

Their powers are complicated enough that I had trouble following the descriptions in the first story.

Thanks.

 

[macdjord]

This wasn't to say he was about to reward Tattletale for such a minor act of loyalty, of course. That sort of thing was expected of villainous minions, and Tattletale had better damn well remember her place, or he'd know the reason why not. He decided he'd probably only torture her lightly in the alternate timeline instead of going all-out; she'd earned that much, at least.

Click to shrink...

This makes no sense. Did you mean 'act of disloyalty'?

 

[Ack]

This makes no sense. Did you mean 'act of disloyalty'?

Click to shrink...

Dammit, good catch. Will fix.

 

[Crazael]

It's pretty funny how wrong they are about why Coil has the limitations he does, but to be honest, bringing Dragon in isn't exactly a problem if they're wrong, so it's a win win! Also, getting around a precog by communicating via emojis and memes is both an original and hilarious idea.

Click to shrink...

It's fun when the all the guesses are wrong, but still correct enough to reliably predict outcomes.

 

[Ack]

Taylor Hebert: PRT Operative

Part Three: Deep in the Weeds


[A/N: This chapter commissioned by @GW_Yoda and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

Coil

Thomas Calvert was uneasy, and he didn't know why.

As he got closer to the backup site, he checked his rearview regularly for anything that resembled a covert tail. Thankfully, he never saw the same vehicle twice, and the traffic was so light that nobody was hanging back behind a covering car. There was likewise no sound of choppers overhead, even with the window open, so the PRT wasn't following him from the air.

In the other timeline, he was surveying the prep for a coordinated bug-out; the men were steady, but only because of his presence. If he'd ducked out like this in that timeline, there would've already been leakage of personnel from the base. In this timeline, they were busy fortifying, and morale was higher as a result. Something that was designed to keep out Endbringers had a reasonably good chance against the PRT, after all.

So why did he have an itch between his shoulder-blades?

He pulled the car to a halt at the side of the road, turned off the engine and got out. Under cover of locking the car then stretching his back muscles from one side to the other, he looked around, seeking anything that might have triggered his instincts. There was nothing immediately apparent; no blur as Velocity rocketed out of sight, no flyers hovering in the sky above.

But still, he didn't feel secure.

He was wearing a light coat, as befitted the time of year, which also allowed him to wear a holdout pistol in a clip-on holster at the small of his back. While he didn't draw it, he took the time to casually hook his right thumb into his belt, where he could reach it easily. A van approached and he eyed it dubiously, but the driver cruised on past without more than a cursory glance at him.

As the van disappeared around the corner, he allowed tension to ease out of his lungs in a long sigh. It had been a trying day already, and he didn't need to pile any more stress on himself. Maybe I'm overreacting. There was any amount of incriminating evidence in his house—he had too much respect for Armsmaster to assume the man would've missed any of it—but nothing gave any pointers toward the location of this offsite base, or even to any aspect of his primary base.

His phone pinged, with a very specific tone. He knew this one: it was linked through to the intercom that would allow people to communicate with him when he was locked in his office. He pulled it out and answered it. "Yes?"

"Sir, we've got movement on exterior cameras." The mercenary sounded calm but tense. "Looks like the PRT."

"Understood. I'll be out shortly. Let the men know we've got this under control." Three statements, one of which was a blatant lie, but he didn't care.

"Yes, sir."

After ending the call, Calvert called up the camera views for himself, and saw the PRT vans pulling up near each of the exits, except for one: the parking garage. "Interesting …" In the other timeline, he ducked back into his office and keyed through the camera images, finding exactly the same result. Including, and this was important, the failure to cover the parking garage.

Are they pulling a Sun Tzu and leaving it as a trap? Or do they just not know about it?

The question was unfortunately a toss-up of the highest order. Tattletale had been in his base more than once, but exactly how much of it had she analysed with her deductive ability, and how much of that had she memorised? Teens were notoriously flaky at the best of times.

One thing was certain: there was zero benefit in his returning to the base immediately. Far better to carry out his original plan and evaluate the status of the offsite facility, while testing the waters with his other timeline. If he and his men escaped, then they could set up elsewhere; if not, he would cut his losses in this timeline and destroy the base before the invaders could find out anything of use.

The fact that said destruction would also kill his own men wasn't even a factor. He was just irritated that he was going to have to rebuild at all.

The first thing I'll do when I get the chance is put a bullet in the back of Tattletale's traitorous skull. There was such a thing as giving someone too many chances, and she'd had all of hers.

In the end, of course, he'd win. It was the natural order of things.

<><>​

Regent

"I could go down there and grab the skinny fucker right now." Rachel leaned forward, peering over the edge of the roof.

"We could, sure, but Taylor and Brian both said to just watch him and see where he goes." Alec wasn't even looking at Calvert. "Make sure he doesn't suddenly react to the PRT rolling up on his base."

Rachel frowned. "Well, he just answered his phone and talked to someone. And now he's looking up something on it. Does that count?"

Alec thought about that for a moment. "I don't … think so? Anyone can use a phone. But if he starts back that way, then we might have to do something."

"Can we kill him? I don't like assholes who fuck me around."

Alec considered it, but shook his head. "Eh, maybe once he's done whatever he came here to do." Anything else sounded too much like work. While Alec might be one of the good guys right now, he'd learned long ago that it was always better to let someone else put in the actual effort.

<><>​

Armsmaster

Colin disliked not being at the forefront of the action, but was also aware that if Coil was precogging his actions, he needed to be doing something that wouldn't tip the renegade PRT strike squad commander off about the upcoming incursion. And so, he was leading the raid on Coil's house, every piece of analytical gear he'd ever built giving him chapter and verse on what they were looking at. So far, they'd found and disabled a dozen cameras, six booby-traps (as well as three separate pieces of suspicious electronics, just in case), and three safes that had been rigged to incinerate their contents if tampered with.

As foolproof as the booby-traps and the safes may have been, they weren't Tinkertech, which meant that any moderately competent Tinker had a better than average chance of dealing with them. Colin knew he was more than moderately competent, and had indeed dealt with all of the problems in short order. While tech-trained troopers went through the contents of the safes, recording every document and bagging every piece of electronics in a Faraday-shielded pouch, he was currently engaged in cracking Calvert's home computer.

Or rather, Dragon was cracking it, while he assisted where he could. Because he knew who was the better hacker between them, and it wasn't him.

"Oh, good," she said in relief as the subsidiary windows clicked off and he was left with a single login screen along with a notepad app listing a series of passwords. "We're in, and not a moment too soon. Kicking off the other operation now."

He knew he couldn't ask for details until they'd succeeded or failed (he was betting on success) but that didn't prevent him from wishing he could ask for them anyway. "Good luck. Kick his ass for me."

She smiled. "That's the general idea."

Her avatar vanished from his HUD, and he took a moment to refocus. Coil's system may have been opened up, but it was up to him to find all the relevant data on it. All the arrest warrants in the world were useless without the evidence to put the man away for a good many years.

Flexing his fingers, he got to work.

<><>​

Portal

We pulled up short of the parking garage. There were quite a few cars already parked in there, and we had no way of telling if any of them were booby-trapped to blow when someone walked past. The last thing we wanted was to walk into their trap while trying to capitalise on our trap.

The four-by-four stacked with ingots of metal, driven by a PRT trooper in plain clothes, pulled up alongside us. Most times, we'd probably just wear the metal to the mission (once converted to blacksteel, it was basically weightless for Greg) but on occasions like this, it was easier to bring it with us and costume up once we got there. In fact, the PRT wasn't even having to foot the bill for it; aside from a couple of samples that Greg had courteously given to Armsmaster for analysis, the ingots were the blacksteel from our last outing.

Greg nodded to me, then started covering us with the armour we were already getting used to. The PRT would come in after us and secure the place, but we were the tip of the spear, the first into the belly of the beast. Nothing against the heroes of the Protectorate, but I'd seen them on TV and they couldn't do teamwork like we could.

By now, the other exits would have been surrounded, forced open, and blocked with copious amounts of containment foam. The PRT could go in through any of them if necessary, using the right spray to dissolve the foam, but until they did that, nobody was getting out through any way other than the front door.

We, however, were going in.

<><>​

Coil

Calvert frowned. The PRT wasn't attempting to come into the base. In fact, they'd blocked all the exits bar one, leaving that one wide open. Even across town, he could taste the trap.

On his phone screen, he could see the fuzzy image of a couple of vehicles, too far away from the camera to get a good picture. There were people standing on the other side of the vehicles, doing … what? The best he could tell was that there were three or four teenagers and three or four adults. Not enough to mount any kind of serious attack on the place … unless they were capes, of course, and then all bets were off.

As he unlocked the front door of the off-site facility, he decided that it was time to see what was actually going on. In the other timeline, he began to give orders. His men checked their weapons, then headed out through the parking garage entrance in full combat array. There was to be no fucking around here; if they could clear the way to get him away safely, then that was what would happen.

That was when things went sideways in a very specific manner. The mercenaries were still advancing through the parking garage when he saw a black cloud rolling outward from the parked vehicles. A very familiar looking black cloud. If it wasn't the same type as generated by Grue, then it was a close cousin to it.

He's in on this, too? He'd assumed that when Tattletale betrayed him, the rest of the Undersiders had gone their own way. Why indeed would they hang around if they no longer had access to their ongoing income stream?

Now, everything was becoming more clear. Not only had the Hebert girl defected from the Empire camp to the PRT when she found out their true colours (super white) but somehow she'd managed to catch up the Undersiders in their wake …

Oh. Oh, I see. Grue was working security in Medhall, and she called on him for assistance, and he brought the Undersiders in on it, and with the Empire after them, they fled to the PRT.

This revelation certainly reframed the events of that day in a way that made a lot more sense. Not that he would've taken them in if Tattletale had led them to his base. The Undersiders had been useful assets, but so was the security (and obscurity) of his primary facility. Having the Empire beating on his door would've done his operation no good at all.

When she'd cut contact after that, he'd assumed that she'd seen the writing on the wall following his being outed and had jumped ship like the rat she was. But now it was starting to look like she'd had a direct hand in betraying his operation.

And after all he'd done for her! She'd been a starving guttersnipe on the street, and he'd lifted her up and given her everything: a team to support her, money to buy trinkets, and a place to call her own. The level of sheer ingratitude was stunning.

He gave the order to open fire into the cloud as it rolled toward the mercenaries. Grue was good at what he did, but that didn't include being bulletproof. Moments later, one of his men fell and two more reported bullets passing them by, even though they'd heard no shooting apart from their own. Silenced weapons? Grue's darkness muffled sound, but didn't nullify it as it did light and radio waves. There was something more at play here.

In his timeline, the cloud had only just started to form and move toward the parking garage, at least a minute later than in the other line. That told Calvert that the incoming attackers, whoever the fuck they were, had been meaning to assault his base (with the assistance of the PRT, no less) from the beginning, and he'd just sped them up a little. As a data point, this didn't help him a hell of a lot.

In the other timeline, the mercenaries spread out, and a couple tossed grenades into the approaching cloud. Calvert had just nodded approvingly when the grenades reappeared, flying out of the cloud back toward the startled throwers. One of them exploded near the exterior camera, and he lost the feed.

He ordered the surviving mercenaries back into the base, though not all of them got the message; the cloud had rolled over them, cutting them off from radio contact. Nor did they emerge of their own free will, even though they should've known that retreat was the best (and only) option. As the door slid shut, locking the base down, the all-hands alarm went out and the booby-trapped cars were activated.

On his timeline, the doors were already locked down, with the exterior keypads shut out of the circuit. Even if they had the passcodes from Tattletale (and he had zero doubt that she would've spilled all as soon as she decided to betray him) they would have to force their way past the doors. And the mercenaries had enough ammunition to last them for a lengthy siege, or at least long enough for him to arm and set off the self-destruct if the base looked like falling.

With that assurance in mind, he began to check over the offsite facility, ensuring that it was still supplied with power and that all the entrances were secure. The last thing he wanted was to have to retreat to it and find out that some squatters had broken in and were living large on his emergency supplies. That would truly be the last straw.

<><>​

Portal

Lisa moved along behind Brian, one hand on his shoulder to keep in touch with him. I needed no assistance through the darkness, but Greg and Tracey did, so each of them had a hand on one of my shoulders.

Greg was having fun pulling bullets in to be part of his armour, and Tracey was literally immune to them—if they reached her skin, they splashed like water—so I didn't have to worry about them being hit by random fire. Anything that hit Brian or me—even the eyeslits had metal mesh too fine for an assault rifle round to pass through—was automatically teleported back the way it came, via the surface of Brian's darkness cloud. The grenades, I'd simply redirected with my darkness orb.

Two of the cars exploded as the darkness cloud reached them—I figured laser tripwires—but it was well ahead of us, so we just kept moving. Shrapnel wasn't an issue, and the cloud killed radiant heat in the same way as it killed light and radio waves. The fire could've been a problem, but we just stepped around it.

If they'd blown up every car in the parking garage, that could've made things difficult for us, but it probably would've been suspicious if every car spot was filled with decoy vehicles all the time. The law of diminishing returns was very much in play here. They could totally make it impregnable, but doing that while simultaneously making it easy for their people to get in and out and keeping it hidden from the average man on the street was basically impossible.

Once past the burning wrecks, we faced the blank concrete wall that Lisa had assured us would slide aside to allow us into the base, once the correct passcode was entered into the concealed keypad. I didn't bother with the keypad and neither did Lisa; Coil absolutely knew we were here, so I highly doubted that it was even functioning anymore. Instead, I tapped Greg on the shoulder and raised my voice to get past the muffling effect of the darkness cloud. "Hey."

"Hey." He was grinning under his helmet, I could tell. This was just his way; since getting powers, he'd dived head-first into being a cape. "What's happening?"

"Two things." I grabbed his hand and pointed it directly ahead. "The concrete slab's right there. But behind it there's a bunch of Claymore mines, if I'm reading the collections of ball-bearings correctly. So, we're gonna need you to air-hammer the slab until it breaks, and when the Claymores go off, collect the ball-bearings before anyone gets hurt."

"Well, shit." That was Lisa, on my other side. "I'm still not sure exactly what I signed up for, but it wasn't that." From what I could see, she was huddling behind Brian, to get what cover she could from him.

"We do our thing, so you can do your thing." Tracey's tone was almost nonchalant. She'd come a long way since we'd rescued her from that room under the Medhall building. But then, hadn't we all? "Ready when you are, Alloy."

"Let's do this thing." Greg had used the time to absorb the kite shield into the rest of his armour, and he held out his hands. The left generated his circular absorption shield, while the right prepped his air hammer. I brought up my teleport orb in front of Brian and Lisa and shielded my eyes with my arm.

It took three hits of Greg's air hammer before the concrete cracked, and two more before it shattered. As it came apart, the Claymores detonated, but I was already teleporting the shrapnel that hit my armour elsewhere. Greg and Tracey were fine due to our precautions, as were Brian and Lisa.

Brian allowed the darkness to dissipate, just enough so Greg could see the metal frame the mines had been attached to. He pulled it away to add another layer to our armour, then we stepped through and faced the main door to the actual base. Thick and strong enough to withstand anything short of a tank cannon, it had undoubtedly been chosen by Coil with the expectation that it would hold off would-be attackers for hours if not days.

Greg took it out in seconds.

Just as he placed the last of the ingots in a neat pile alongside the doorway—there was only so much he could add to our armour before we looked frankly ridiculous—a brilliant red laser lanced out of the base and hit his absorb-all shield. He looked down at it, then moved his hand in the way. I put my hand up at the same time, and set up a portal from his hand to mine, sending the beam back the way it had come.

There was a yelp that devolved into a scream at the far end of the beam, then it shut off altogether. I couldn't see who'd tried lasering us, mainly because there were too many sandbags in the way. Briefly, I wondered where exactly they had gotten sand from in an underground concrete-lined bunker, but then I decided that was a 'later' problem, whereas the 'now' problem was right in front of us. I glanced over at Brian, then at the others. "Time to do our thing."

As we stepped forward, fully visible for the first time, two separate machine-guns opened up on us. One bullet hit me and one hit Brian, but after that Greg was vacuuming most of them up and I was returning what he missed to sender. The sandbags they were hiding behind started taking an awful beating.

I figured I'd skip the preliminaries (it was starting to get boring anyway) and threw a shadow on the wall right beside me. A matching one went onto the wall behind the mercenaries at the barricade, and we darted through it.

Lisa wasn't the physical type, so she hung back while the rest of us piled in. The mercenaries were pretty well versed in close-quarters work, which meant we were too. Brian had his metal staff (Armsmaster wasn't here, but he wasn't bad with it anyway), I could cheat like a motherfucker with my teleportation, Greg had his air hammer, and Tracey just pulled the life-force out of anyone who seemed good enough to stand up to us anyway. They were down in less than thirty seconds, and Greg was repurposing the metal of their guns into secure cuffs in another ten.

"Okay." I was panting a little; despite our earlier showing against the Empire Eighty-Eight, I wasn't as fit as I needed to be for that kind of fighting. "Which way to his office?"

Lisa pointed. "Down that way."

"Right. As before. Brian, if you will?" I was pretty sure they were going to try the lasers again, and I didn't feel like wading through a wall of that shit.

"On it." He generated a cloud of the darkness, filling the corridor just as a bunch of mercenaries dashed around the corner. In the normal run of things, they would've gotten there while their buddies were still hosing down the attackers at the door, but we were far from the normal run of things.

While they were still trying to figure out what was going on with the utter blackness that was rolling down the corridor toward them, I yelled, "Hammer!" On cue, Greg unleashed his air-hammer. It punched the blackness forward, covering them with it at the same time as they were slammed back, sprawling awkwardly on the floor.

Brian and I bolted forwards, coming up on the mercenaries before they had a chance to get to their feet. I couldn't hit as hard as a grown man, but I was wearing steel gauntlets, and I knew how to fight as well as all of them put together plus Brian. This let me keep them on the ground until Brian—who could absolutely hit that hard—got around to them. Greg, Tracey and Lisa followed us up, and again Tracey took the last of the fight out of them.

"Okay." I checked up and down the corridor. It seemed clear for the moment. "That's two lots down. I wonder how many more to go?"

"Ten, so far." Lisa, at least, had been keeping count. "About forty to go. Plus Coil."

Tracey gave her an approving nod. "That's good to hear."

I tilted my head at the sound of clattering boots. "Won't be so good in a minute. I hear more coming now."

<><>​

Regent

"He still in there?" Alec hadn't moved from his comfortable spot on the rooftop.

Rachel didn't look around. "Yeah. Car's still there. Only road out of this area comes back this way. Do you think he's just left them behind?"

Alec shrugged. "Wouldn't surprise me. From the way Lisa was talking, the asshole wouldn't think twice before leaving someone to die. Hell, he wouldn't think once."

"I feel the same way about him." Rachel's expression was a snarl. "Fucker wants to hide behind a phone call and tell me what to do, instead of to my face? Fuck him." Abruptly, she stood up and whistled Angelica over.

"What?" Alec got up as well. "Where are we going?"

"You're not going anywhere." Rachel climbed onto Angelica's back. "You're going to make yourself useful, and watch the front door and the car. I'm circling around the back to make sure he isn't sneaking out the other side."

"Ah. Okay." Alec knew better than to protest. Rachel could totally kick his ass if he tried to push back about it, and Brian would probably high-five her for doing it. Grumpily, he settled down at the roof's edge where he could see both the car and the door, while Rachel guided Angelica off across the rooftop.

Nobody said I'd actually have to do anything.

<><>​

Coil

On immediate inspection, nothing seemed to be out of place, which was a relief. It was perhaps the only bright spot in the whole situation. In both timelines, the intruding group had breached the base in an insanely short time, but he didn't have enough tactical data on how they were doing it (and how they were taking his men out) to advise the mercenaries on how to beat them.

The lasers were apparently useless against Grue's cloud of darkness, while anyone who shot at them very soon had bullets whizzing past their own ears. But there was more to it than that. There had to be. While Grue was good at hand to hand, unless Hebert and the Grimshaw woman were secretly ninjas (they weren't; he'd checked) they couldn't beat up his mercenaries in that short a time.

He frowned. In a city overloaded with capes such as Brockton Bay, wild gossip propagated around the city on a regular basis. As such, the rumours about a bunch of new capes taking the Empire apart with a surprise strike were on par with the ones about the Merchants acquiring a new cape who was going to propel them into the big time, or Lung preparing to retire and turn over the ABB to Oni Lee. This time, however, it seemed to be true.

He was reluctantly willing to admit that, just this once, he might have to shoulder some of the blame for the mixup. He'd made an assumption based on the rarity of Thinker-Brutes (even Alexandria was far better known for punching out bad guys than out-thinking them) and it had bitten him on the ass. The problem was, what could he do to fix it?

There were several potential solutions, all boiling down to 'kill them'. Unfortunately, the most efficacious way of killing them involved losing his main base, and he had a lot of money and time invested in that. The PRT, in both timelines, was moving in behind the invading capes and making sure the cleared sections remained cleared, which ruled out the idea of moving mercenaries around to catch them in a pincer movement.

In the other timeline, he made sure the office door was securely locked before he changed into civilian clothing. A few mouse-clicks on the computer set up the timer for the self-destruct sequence. Turning the screen off but leaving the computer running—arranging for a self-destruct without a way of walking it back was just asking for trouble—he opened the escape passage and let himself in.

The first sign of a problem came when he went to open the swinging slab that would let him out into the sewer system, and it utterly failed to budge. Frowning—it had worked perfectly well less than an hour ago—he tried again. Nothing happened.

He wasn't exactly the strongest person in the world, but the slab had been carefully balanced so that even a child could push it open. Not that he could imagine any circumstance in which a child would even be in the tunnel in the first place, but those were the facts. And yet, even unlocked, the slab was refusing to move.

He glanced at his watch. He had a certain window of time to stop the countdown, and that window was narrowing fast. Leaning his shoulder against the slab, he threw all his weight against it, grunting with the effort.

The slab still refused to move.

What's going on here?

<><>​

Current Timeline

On the Street Above

Corporal Joe McKenzie, PRT

Joe looked around as a well-dressed lady approached the barricade they'd put around the manhole. Containment foam bulged up through the open hole, but he and Trooper Ballinger had been tasked with guarding the hole all the same. The Director was taking no chances with this one.

"Excuse me, ma'am. Please keep back." His words were polite, but the tone was firm enough to make it clear that it wasn't a request.

"But what are you doing?" The woman looked concerned, for which he didn't blame her. Fully armed PRT troopers didn't usually stand around on the street. "Is there something we should be worried about? A supervillain attack?"

"No, ma'am." He didn't relax his vigilance; female supervillains were very definitely a thing. Ballinger, he knew, would be keeping an eye out in case she was some kind of decoy. "This is a sanctioned PRT operation. You'll be able to watch it on the news tonight. Please move along."

"Alright. Thank you." With a single backward glance, she did as she was told. Joe didn't relax as he passed on a verbal report to his sergeant, including a quick description.

Once she was gone, and the street was clear in both directions, Ballinger turned to Joe. "Uh, Corporal, I was just wondering. Why didn't we just go down there and find out how he got out? A back way out of his base is the same thing as a back way in, right?"

Joe nodded. "I asked that question myself at the briefing. Coil's known for being tricky, and there might be booby traps down there. So that's why our orders were to drop a bunch of confoam grenades down the hole, then guard the foam. Nothing goes in or out without our say-so. Understood?"

"Understood, Corporal."

They went back to guarding the manhole. It was a boring job, but someone had to do it.

<><>​

Portal

"Wow, damn." Lisa leaned against the side of the corridor, panting. "When I see Regent again, I'm going to let him know exactly how big an idiot he is for liking games like this, where they just keep throwing wave after wave of bad guys at you."

Greg slapped her on the shoulder with a muted clang. "Hey, you kicked that one guy in the head real good. Put him out for the count."

I couldn't see inside Lisa's helmet, but I was pretty sure she was rolling her eyes. "That's my whole point. I'm not a head-kicker. I'm more the cerebral type."

"Me too." I shrugged. "But you don't see me complaining."

This time, I somehow knew she was giving me the filthiest look imaginable. "Yeah, but you lucked out with a grab-bag of cluster powers. Skill-sharing, metal sensing, seeing in the damn dark, and fucking teleportation. How is that even fair?"

Tracey sighed. "Oh, quit your whining." She gestured, and a glowing tendril of energy earthed itself in Lisa's shoulder. "Better?"

If I hadn't experienced Tracey's replenishment power for myself, I wouldn't have believed the change in Lisa's entire attitude. "Hell, yeah! Bring 'em on, I'll kick their asses all by myself!"

Brian chuckled. "Steady on there, Trigger. Leave some for the rest of us."

"Yeah. Whew. That was a serious rush. If you could bottle that, we'd all make a fortune."

"Nope." I shook my head. "The government would totally put a hold on it until it could be tested for every possible side effect known to mankind. If it came up clean, then they'd regulate it and tax the crap out of it, until it's almost not worth it to sell the stuff. NEPEA-five, remember? Product of cape powers, can't be allowed to force anything similar off the market."

"Well done." Tracey gave me an approving look. "You've been paying attention."

I felt a small glow of pride at the praise. "Well, I sorted enough of that type of paperwork at Medhall. Some of the wording had to stick eventually."

Greg snorted. "As bad as they were there, we actually learned some stuff, didn't we?"

As I opened my mouth to reply, there was a muted chunnggg … chunnggg … chunnggg, the sounds fading into the distance. Everyone else looked around, so I did too. "What was that?"

"Shit," Brian muttered. "Lights just went out."

"Does that actually matter for you?" Greg tilted his head. "You can see in your darkness, right?"

"Yeah, but not in regular darkness." Brian's tone was dire. "I can't see a damn thing. Portal?"

"I'm fine." I honestly couldn't tell that the lights had gone out, unless I looked directly at them. "Brian, fill the whole area with darkness and bunker down with Tracey. Greg, Lisa, you're coming with me."

"I am?" Despite his questioning tone, Greg turned toward me. "I mean, sure, I am. But what can I do?"

"I was just going to ask the same question." Lisa sounded dubious in the extreme. "I reiterate for the hard of remembering, I'm not a head-kicker."

"I'm sure I'll think of something." I grinned, not that either one could see it, and grabbed them each by the hand. "Let's go."

<><>​

Current Timeline

Offsite Facility

Coil

Okay, let's see if this works.

While heavy wind had been known to displace Grue's darkness clouds, there was no mechanism inside the base that could simulate air movement of that scale. The air filtration system was efficient, but it wasn't particularly high-powered. Which left Calvert with a significant problem, and no solution in sight.

Well, he had one solution. It wasn't a good one, but it was better than no solution at all. He wasn't quite sure why he'd set it up so the base lighting could be controlled via his phone, but now he was blessing the level of paranoia he'd been feeling at the time.

Unfortunately, it hadn't extended to tapping into the base announcement speakers; that was a different system. In the other timeline, where he was still in the base, he could (and did) warn the mercenaries that the lights were about to go out and for those night-sight goggles to deploy them. In this one, the lights were just going to turn off, leaving them to figure it out for themselves.

The logic was simple enough. Grue's darkness clouds gave him a significant advantage over the mercenaries, one that couldn't be reduced or eradicated by any means Calvert had at his disposal. However, the boy still needed light to see by, and turning out the base's illumination would at least serve to put them on an equal footing.

Who knew: Grue might even be rattled enough to turn on a flashlight and make himself into a target. Calvert wouldn't know until he tried.

Until it was sorted out one way or the other, Calvert was stuck across town in the off-site facility. He wasn't exactly pleased at the situation he was in, but it had one significant advantage. No matter how it turned out, he was out of the line of fire.

Nobody knows I'm here. And that's exactly the way I like it.

<><>​

Regent

"How long do you think he's going to be in there for?" Alec was getting seriously bored. This was the longest he'd been outdoors in one consecutive stretch for as far back as he could remember. He was sure that daylight was terrible for him, and he badly missed his controller and the big screen.

"Don't know. Don't care." Rachel didn't seem capable of boredom. So long as she had her dogs to commune with, she was happy. Or at least, not pissed off.

"Do you think he knows we're here? I mean, how long does it take to count all the tins of beans or whatever he's got in there? How do we know he's not making a run for it while we're around this side?"

Rachel glared at him. "I left Brutus on guard over on that side. If anything happens, he'll let us know. Now shut the fuck up before I make you walk home."

Alec subsided. He was still bored, but she made a few good points. Especially the part about making him walk home. She would totally do that.

Lisa had the right idea. Sitting out the combat until it's time to do her thing.

<><>​

Tattletale

Taylor had a plan, Lisa knew, and she'd even figured out most of the salient points. But that didn't mean it was a great plan, or even a good one. Any plan that exposed Lisa to unnecessary danger was by definition a terrible plan.

(She also held strong opinions on what constituted necessary danger. Specifically, that it didn't exist when it came to her.)

Grue's darkness was something she was used to; it was almost palpable in nature. The fact that Taylor could see through it was thoroughly unfair, but at least one of them knew what was going on. Twice now, on the way to Coil's office, she'd stopped them in order to deal with an errant mercenary. While Lisa couldn't see what was happening, the repeating scream of terror followed by the bone-breaking thud indicated that Taylor was pulling what she cheerfully called the bottomless pit routine.

Privately, Lisa sympathised with the mercenaries. Pitch darkness was bad enough, but to have the floor vanish from under them without any visual cues had to be terrifying on a whole new level. It also bespoke a level of ruthlessness that she had trouble equating with the slender, quietly-spoken Taylor.

They came to a halt again, but instead of the sound of falling terror, Lisa heard Taylor's voice. "Okay, Greg, you're going to have to remove our armour. Metal catwalk up ahead, and steel on steel will be noisy no matter what we do."

"On it." Greg sounded totally matter of fact about it, which Lisa couldn't understand. If one of those mercenaries started spraying random fire around, the blacksteel armour would be the only thing keeping them alive. She'd already undergone the experience of feeling several bullets ricochet off it, and was quite happy to hold onto it for as long as possible.

All too soon, alas, the armour vanished from her ken, seeming to simply evaporate away from her costume. "Okay," Taylor murmured in her ear. "Walk forward with me, onto the catwalk. Try not to make any noises. There are guards on the catwalk."

Well, that didn't help Lisa's state of mind at all. Carefully, she trod forward, feeling the difference under her feet as the concrete gave way to steel mesh. Taylor's hand guided hers to the rail, and she grasped it gratefully.

Moving carefully but smoothly, they proceeded along the catwalk, Lisa's heart thumping so loudly in her ears that she was sure Piggot could hear it back in the PRT building. She heard a shout up ahead, muffled as normal by Brian's darkness, but it sounded way too close all the same. And then the shout came again, not more than two yards ahead.

Taylor guided her movements then, flattening her against the rail and helping her slide along. She held her breath, unwilling to risk even that slight chance of alerting the guard. Her imagination painted a lurid picture of having the muzzle of an assault rifle jammed into her stomach before the trigger was pulled, and she wanted to throw up.

And then they were past the guard, who called out to his fellows again. Taylor moved them on with the surety of the sighted man in the kingdom of the blind, and Lisa began to wonder if this was what it was like to be everyone else around her. Greg was making no noise of protest, which bespoke either nerves of pure tungsten carbide, or maybe just a total level of trust in Taylor.

It was probably the latter; Lisa had seen them together.

<><>​

Coil

It had been too long. Something was going on, and he didn't know what it was. There was no information coming in from the base on his timeline, and the version of him in the other timeline was similarly blind, not to mention trapped in his office. He'd tried opening the door once and that damned darkness had curled in, cutting out all light until he shut the door and waited for it to dissipate.

He used his phone to access his computer, and brought up the remote self-destruct sequence. This was possible to do, but he was absolutely paranoid about it being used against him, so he'd made sure it required three separate passwords keyed to the date, plus the fact that it could be easily reversed by a mouse-click on the appropriate screen of his base computer. Just in case someone got the passwords anyway.

Painstakingly, he double-checked the dates, generated the correct passwords, and began to enter them into his phone.

He didn't have to send the destruct signal straight away, but it was good to have it in reserve in case he needed it.

Fuck you. I win.

<><>​

Tattletale

After roughly two and a half centuries of creeping along the catwalk, during which time they passed another guard—Lisa was fairly certain half her hair was now grey instead of blonde—Taylor guided her around a corner on the catwalk. "It's his office," the murmur came. "Greg's dealing with the door right now."

Lisa had seen how Greg dealt with doors. The door wouldn't stand a chance.

She was right; about thirty seconds later, Taylor was guiding her forward again. They stepped into what sounded vaguely like a smaller space, then after a few moments light began to impinge on her eyes. She looked toward the doorway, to see that Greg had rebuilt it as a solid metal barrier, shutting out Grue's darkness. Blinking a few times—after so long in pitch darkness, any light was too bright—she headed for his desk and his computer setup.

As she did, it let out an urgent beep. Alarm flushed through her. Dropping into the chair, she grabbed the mouse and twitched it to wake up the screen. There was a red border all the way around, and words were marching across the bottom: SELF DESTRUCT ACTIVATED. YOU HAVE [29] SECONDS TO COUNTERMAND. As she watched, the number ticked downward.

"Um." That was Greg. "Self destruct? That's … not good."

"Shh." Lisa was in her element now. Fuck you, Coil. Not today.

<><>​

Coil

The first sign that he'd passed the point of no return was when the door to the office in the other timeline came apart, and an armoured figure stomped in. That version of him raised a pistol, but the weapon came apart in his hand. Then a massive hammer of air slammed him against the wall. He lost consciousness at that point.

And then a motion alert ping came from his own office, on this timeline. He flicked to that screen, and saw the metal door being deconstructed, like watching corrosion in fast-forward. Darkness filled the office, but he didn't care; flicking back to the other screen, he finished entering the self-destruct codes and hit ACTIVATE.

They now had one minute to live.

I win. I always win.

<><>​

Alloy

"You got this?" Taylor asked as she flicked a switch marked BASE LIGHTS. Outside, Greg heard all the lights coming on again.

"I got this." Lisa assured her.

If that was good enough for Taylor, it was good enough for Greg. He watched as Lisa's eyes scoured the screen, looking for something that he couldn't even see, and wouldn't recognise if he did see it. Taylor's hand squeezed his reassuringly.

The beep sounded again at the twenty-second mark, then Lisa let out a 'hah!' of triumph. She moved the mouse, clicked, moved, clicked, then moved and clicked at one last point. Greg still had zero idea what the significance of those points were, but the red border vanished and the beep did not come at the ten second mark.

Lisa leaned back smugly in the chair. "Am I good, or am I just that damn good?"

Taylor nodded. "You are just that damn good." She eyed the computer system. "What's to stop him from sending the detonation code again?"

"Oh, I shut the link down." Lisa managed to increase her level of smugness. "Fucker wants to blow me up? Fuck him."

"Good." Taylor took her phone out and dialled Piggot's contact number. Impressively, the call went through. Greg suspected Coil had a booster antenna somewhere in the office. "Hi, yeah, it's Portal. We're in Coil's office. Feel free to grab him."

Greg could hear Piggot's voice in the silence. "Copy that. Good work. Is the base secure?"

"Not yet, but we're working on it." Taylor grinned as she ended the call. Then she picked up the microphone for the base address system and turned the volume all the way up. "Now hear this. Your boss has been arrested. I repeat, Coil has been arrested. There is no way to escape. We can see you. You can't see us. Your call."

<><>​

Coil

Calvert was still staring at the image—fucking Tattletale!—on the screen, when the wall of the building burst in. Two of the Undersiders were there, seated on their trademark monster dogs. He instinctively went for the pistol at the back of his waistband, but a spasm in his wrist sent the weapon flying.

"Hi," said Regent flippantly. "We're the good guys, you're the bad guy, you're under arrest or something, blah blah blah. If you resist, Bitch here will get her dogs to use you as a chew toy."

On the other dog, Bitch cracked her knuckles. "Resist. Please."

Calvert chose not to resist.

As they herded him out the front door to where a PRT van was already pulling to a halt, he had just one question crowding through his mind.

Where did I go wrong?


End of Part Three

 

[kenlon]

I have a soft spot for Taylor/Greg fics, and Medhall Intern was damn good on top of that. Good to see this continue.

 

[Ack]

Taylor Hebert: PRT Operative

Part Four: Villains

[A/N: This chapter commissioned by @GW_Yoda and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]



Three Days Ago (Evening of October 6, 2010)

Purity

As Kayden came to, she sat up in bed. Or at least, she tried to, but only managed to get her head a few inches off the pillow before she hit the limits of her restraints. Flopping back again, she became aware of several things at once.

First, she was strapped down to the bed, her hands locked into metal shells. Second, her head ached abominably. Third, the right side of her face was swollen, and she was sure a couple of teeth were loose; her eyelids were barely able to open on that side.

The room was unfamiliar; no windows, and a total lack of decoration on the cream-painted walls. There was a black security camera dome in the corner of the ceiling, and an IV tree beside her had a line feeding into her forearm. Apart from that, it could've been a hospital room or a prison infirmary, but she was leaning toward the latter.

"Owww …" she mumbled, but she was already pushing through the fuzziness in her head to figure out what had happened; and more importantly, who had her prisoner.

The last thing she recalled was dropping in from the sky and prepping to unleash a devastating blast against the black-armoured capes. Even in her self-appointed role as a hero, she hadn't had a choice there. If they'd had information that could out her and endanger Aster, she couldn't let them get it to the PRT.

And then … something had happened. She hadn't been shot again, or at least she didn't think so; to have the bullets come out of the darkness and put her on the ground had been a hell of a thing, but she'd dealt with worse. Likewise, she was pretty sure she hadn't had her own blast reflected back at her again. She was basically immune to the damaging aspect of it, after all. It wouldn't have left her with what she suspected to be a concussion.

So what the hell had happened?

"Good afternoon." The voice coming from the speakers was tantalisingly familiar. "You're awake, I see. Your face looks painful. Would you like an analgesic for that?"

That actually narrowed the field down quite a bit. Most people would just say 'painkiller' and be done with it. "Armsmaster?" she hazarded. It definitely sounded like something he would say.

"The same," he confirmed. "Just so you know, it would be a bad idea to power up. I have precautions in place."

She nodded cautiously, looking directly at the camera dome. "Understood. Mind filling me in on what happened? I've got a mental blank, here. Also, did they really have information that could out us?"

"They did, and it has." His tone was quietly satisfied. "The Empire is under lock and key. As for what happened to you; Alexandria."

"Ah." That one word provided all the explanation she needed. A single punch from the leader of the LA department of the Protectorate would absolutely leave her with short-term memory loss, a concussion, and loose teeth. In fact, she supposed she should count herself lucky, as Alexandria had been known to put her fist through people she was truly angry at. "What was she doing here?"

"I never actually got to ask her, but I'm pleased she showed up when she did." Armsmaster didn't actually sound smug, but neither did he try to fake sympathy.

Connections finally clicked together in her brain, and her eyes opened wide. "My daughter. What did you do with Aster?" She wasn't naïve enough to believe they hadn't gone straight to her apartment after unmasking her.

"Your daughter and stepson are in good health and being well cared for. We've allowed them to stay together for the moment."

"I want to see her." While she didn't personally believe the PRT would deliberately mistreat a child, in her heart of hearts she knew that she was the only one who could take care of Aster properly. "Please let me see her."

It was a long shot, but it was also the only one she had. If they brought Aster into the same room as her, she could brave Armsmaster's precautions, break free, and blast her way out with Aster. Risky? Definitely. Worth it? Absolutely.

"That's not going to happen, and we both know it." His voice was gently reproving. "We're not about to allow Kaiser access to young Theo, either."

"That's different!" She hated the sound of pleading in her own voice, but this was Aster. "Kaiser never saw Theo as anything more than a failed copy of himself. Aster's my heart, my light. My life. Please can I at least talk to Theo, make sure she's okay?"

There was a long pause, and she thought she heard mumbling off-mic. Then he returned. "Yes, but audio only. And no digging for information."

"Okay, fine." She would've agreed to anything right at that moment. "Just let me talk to him, please."

"Patching you through … now." There was a series of buzzes, humming and clicks, followed by dead air.

"Hello?" she ventured. "Theo?"

"Kayden?" He sounded tense and worried; not totally surprising, under the circumstances.

"It's me," she confirmed. "Can you hear me?"

"Yeah. They said you were alive, but nothing more than that. Are you okay?"

She couldn't help smiling at the relief flooding into his voice. "Apparently I got punched out by Alexandria, so I could be a lot worse off. But what happened with you? How's Aster?"

He took a deep breath, audible over the comms. "Aster's fine. She started crying when the PRT troopers kicked in the door, but they let me calm her down again. They also let me take all her stuff from the apartment when they took us away. I just fed her a little while ago, and she's sleeping right now."

Kayden's heart ached at the mental image of her little angel asleep in her crib. "Is she happy? Does she miss me?" Belatedly, she added, "And how are you? They didn't rough you up too badly, did they?"

She knew damn well Theo wouldn't pose more than a minor inconvenience to a PRT trooper, but that wouldn't matter to those stormtrooper wannabes. If they'd even imagined any kind of resistance, he would've been on his face with cuffs on his wrists and a gun to the back of his head. For his sake, she hoped he'd been the cream puff Hookwolf had always derided him as.

"No, they just held me until they'd searched the place, then they let me go to Aster. She settled right down again. They even sounded happy that I was there to take care of her."

She didn't know how to feel about that. For ten years, the PRT had been the enemy; she'd been shot at by them more than once, and a couple of times she'd even been grazed by their bullets. Since she'd set out on her course to become a hero, they'd technically been on the side she was trying to establish herself as being part of, though she had yet to convince them of that. However, now that she was their prisoner and Aster was also in their hands, her brain kept trying to paint them as the enemy again.

"Well, that's good. I'm glad you're okay, and that you're there for her." In this, at least, she was sincere. Theo genuinely cared for Aster, and Kayden had had zero misgivings about leaving her daughter in his care any time she'd gone out seeking to bring down the ABB. If she couldn't be there for Aster, then he would be her next best choice.

Of course, that still made this situation a long, long way from being alright.

"I'm glad you're okay, too." There was a pause, then he asked the question that had been dwelling on her mind from the moment she'd had it confirmed that she was in the hands of the PRT. "What's going to happen to us?"

Armsmaster cleared his throat as he weighed in on the conversation. "Nothing immediately, son, but as soon as Purity is fit to take the stand, she will undergo trial for her crimes, and most likely be sentenced to an appropriate facility to serve her sentence. In the meantime, you and your sister will be assigned to foster parents so that you'll be well taken care of in her absence."

"No." Kayden had intended to maintain a cover of meekness until she spotted a chance to escape, but that all went by the wayside. "You can't take my baby away. She means everything to me. Everything."

Theo spoke up, impressing Kayden. Normally, he tried to keep his head down and avoid attention, especially if Max was talking. "Uh, she really does. Mr Armsmaster, sir, would it really hurt anyone if Kayden got to have Aster with her?"

Armsmaster cleared his throat. "The law is the law, young man. As you are no doubt aware, your stepmother is a well-known villain, and it's not PRT protocol to allow people to take their infant children into incarceration with them."

Kayden was about to interject, but Theo spoke up first. "But she's a hero now! Ever since Aster was born, she broke away from the Empire and she hasn't been committing any crimes! She's been trying to stop the ABB instead! " She had to hand it to him; pure earnest intent shone through with every syllable.

"That may be true, and it may not." Armsmaster didn't sound convinced. "Either way, we have no proof. Also, she did assist the Empire Eighty-Eight just today by attempting to murder a group of teenage capes; not once, but twice. That's definitely criminal activity, and even on its own, it would be enough to send her to trial."

Theo didn't even hesitate, this time. "Hah, yeah. I know why she did it, too. My father put her up to it."

Armsmaster was equally quick to answer. "It doesn't matter why she did it. It's that she did it. Even if Kaiser was the one to give the order."

"You wouldn't say that if you'd ever spent any amount of time under his thumb." Theo sounded like he was enjoying himself. Maybe it was because he wasn't face to face with the Protectorate Tinker? "Max has always been good at manipulating people. Before he put me in the cab to go over to her place and watch Aster, I heard him gloating to Krieg about how he knew exactly how to pull Kayden out of her 'stupid hero act' so she'd come help the Empire Eighty-Eight. That's a direct quote, by the way. All Max ever has to do is threaten Kayden's custody over Aster, and she'll do most anything he says."

Kayden wanted to argue about that, but it wasn't as though Theo was wrong. When it came to Aster, Max's hold over her was (or had been) absolute. The only reason she'd been able to go hero (or attempt to do so) in the first place was that Max hadn't cared enough to tell her not to.

And why would he need to? Allowing her to indulge her 'hero act', as he called it, kept her happy until he needed to drag her back into his business again. Not for the first time, she grudgingly acknowledged the man's manipulative genius.

"Be that as it may." Armsmaster was back in full law-enforcement mode. "She has many, many crimes on the books for which she can be tried. And she's welcome to attempt a coercion defence for her latest activity. I can't see it working, not with her prior record."

She decided it was time to stand up for herself. Though the next time she saw Theo (if she ever saw him again) she was going to give him the biggest hug. "But I really have been trying to be a hero. Doesn't that count for anything?"

"Not enough to offset years of criminal activity. And to be honest, we never really noticed. You were still attacking minorities. Ms Russel, you didn't even try to rebrand. What were we supposed to think?"

Well, when he put it that way, it didn't sound nearly as cut and dry as it had in her own mind. Was this why Max never had a problem with it? Because he knew the Protectorate wouldn't take it seriously?

Still, she had to keep trying, for Aster's sake. "Okay, so I didn't think it all the way through. But I promise you, I've been trying to be a hero. I want her to grow up in a city that's better than it is right now."

"If you'd turned yourself in and served your sentence, there would be nothing stopping you from rebranding and being a hero for real." Armsmaster sounded so self-righteous, so sure of himself. "And in the meantime, depriving the Empire of your support—"

"Did nothing, when I was actually trying to be a hero!" Couldn't he see she'd already been through these arguments? "I didn't see the Protectorate or PRT stepping up against them until today. Anyway, if I'd done that, Max would've grabbed Aster and I never would've seen her again. Because he's a vindictive prick like that."

"And if you'd turned the Empire in as well, he'd be in the next cell down."

She barked a harsh laugh and shook her head. "Never happen. If I snitched on the Empire, much less went up against them, the best outcome for Aster would be if she vanished forever into some extended white-supremacist family. Worst outcome? I get body parts for months, to punish me, before someone shanks me in the shower or something. You honestly have no idea how these people operate, do you?"

"Again, be that as it may. As bad as your situation is, you chose this path for yourself. The consequences are yours to suffer. Now, if—"

Theo spoke up again. "So that's it? You're just gonna toss Kayden away like a busted piece of Tinkertech because she doesn't fit your view of who a hero is? I thought the Protectorate and PRT were all about second chances. Wasn't Shadow Stalker a violent vigilante before she went into the Wards?"

Armsmaster cleared his throat once more. "Shadow Stalker didn't spend years as the heavy hitter for a supervillain gang, just to make that clear."

But Theo wasn't finished. "No, she just bullied people relentlessly in high school while the PRT was presenting her as a hero, to the point that she had to be stopped from murdering someone. Then after she was arrested for that, she did murder someone in cold blood, then invaded the Medhall building and tried to murder other people before Void Cowboy clocked her with a fire extinguisher. If you're gonna give someone like her a second chance, why not someone like Kayden, who actually wants to make a difference for good?"

Kayden blinked. It seemed that Theo had been listening when she was ranting about Shadow Stalker. As for the Void Cowboy bit, that had apparently gone viral across PHO.

"If our information is correct," Armsmaster replied carefully, "the victim and most of the other people she tried to kill were Empire personnel."

"And that doesn't matter." Kayden was getting sick of his double standards. "She didn't know it at the time, so mens rea says she was deliberately trying to kill innocent civilians. And she didn't even need to be threatened with losing the person she held the most dear."

"We're beginning to argue in circles," Armsmaster decided. "Purity, you've spoken with your stepson and been given an update on your daughter. I'm cutting the link now. I'll look in on you later. Goodbye."

With a subdued beep, the call ended, leaving Kayden alone in her cell. But no longer alone in spirit: Theo was taking care of Aster, and he was solidly on her side.

It was the shot in the arm that she'd needed. She decided that she'd get through this, that she'd get out (somehow) and that she would get her daughter back.

Whatever it took.

<><>​

The Next Day
PRT ENE Director's Office

Armsmaster

"I'll look in on you later. Goodbye."

Director Piggot looked up at Colin as the recording ended. "Alright. I've listened to it. What point did you want to make?"

He wasn't good at body language, but he had software for that. His helmet HUD pointed out tension in her shoulders and jawline that indicated potential pushback against what he intended to say. Twitches in her hands indicated that she wanted to fold her arms; another sign of rejection of his words.

"Ma'am, you said you'd keep an open mind." Not that he thought this alone would change what was coming, but every little bit helped.

"My mind is open." Her gaze was flinty. "And I'm saying no."

"What if I could demonstrate that she was genuine in her desire to be a hero?" He was playing dirty pool now. Every PRT Director wanted all the heroes they could muster under their command.

Her eyes flickered, but she showed no other sign of wavering. "I thought that lie-detection software you were working on was a long way from completion?"

"It is." He admitted it readily enough. "But I can bring Gallant in on it; with your permission, of course. If I interviewed Purity with him observing her emotions, I'm confident that I can either verify her claims or prove them to be lies." He didn't think the latter would happen. Between her own insistence and Theo's support—the boy might be Kaiser's son by blood, but he was in no way a believer in the Empire's ideals—they had gone a long way toward convincing Colin of her sincerity.

"Even if she's telling the truth, she's already poisoned the well with her years of highly visible work for the Empire, and you know it." Director Piggot's tone was implacable. "There's no way in hell the PRT could place her anywhere, even in LA or Seattle, where she wouldn't be recognised. Rebranding would take more than just a costume change and a dye job."

Colin nodded unhappily. "Worse. Gesellschaft's people in the States and anyone else who knows about Purity's daughter would know to locate and target her, either for purposes of blackmail or to punish Purity for abandoning her so-called comrades."

The Director raised her eyebrows speculatively. "Did you intend to start arguing my side of the matter, Armsmaster? Because you're not doing a bad job of it."

He shook his head. "There's a bet you're missing. I found Ms Hebert's group, especially with the Undersiders as a force multiplier, quite impressive to work alongside. If we added Purity to their number, three separate win conditions would be met."

By now, her expression had frozen, but she spoke anyway. "Explain."

"First, we could totally bypass the problems inherent in trying to integrate her into the Protectorate, while still getting use out of her. Second, Ms Hebert's group would become that much more effective. And third, we'd be able to hold her to her professed intent of being a hero."

Director Piggot hesitated for a long moment. "And you believe we'd be able to hold her to whatever agreement we come up with? Shadow Stalker signed all the paperwork, but she still went rogue on us."

Colin had already thought this through. "I will admit, there are several parallels. However, Purity has two separate reasons to cooperate with us that Stalker did not. Also, while she has indeed been a villain for years, she's still less arrogant and cocksure than Stalker is, by several orders of magnitude."

The Director's eyebrows raised again, this time thoughtfully. "One of these reasons being her attachment to her daughter?"

"Correct." Colin nodded. "She's less attached to young Theo, but there's affection there too. If she had a cast-iron guarantee that we would keep her daughter and stepson safe, and give her the chance to keep cleaning up Brockton Bay, I believe she'd play ball."

"And what about the other problem? Specifically, what makes you think Grue would agree to working with her?"

"I don't see why—oh." Colin paused, the ramifications of her question finally hitting home. He was more used to dealing with machines than people, and beyond the fact that Grue and Purity were both (or had recently been) villains, he hadn't given any thought toward how they'd react toward each other. "I didn't consider that aspect at all," he finished lamely. "Yes, that could be a potential problem."

The Director could've replied with biting sarcasm, but she didn't. "You're invested in turning her around, aren't you?"

It was his turn to raise his eyebrows, unseen as they were within his helmet. "Well, wouldn't you be? She was a serious powerhouse for the Empire for years. Imagine the sheer level of capability we could achieve with her working for us behind the scenes, like Ms Hebert's team did against the Empire. And to be brutally honest, she's considerably more suited to taking on Lung than the majority of the Hebert team."

She tilted her head questioningly. "You wouldn't want to bring her in on the Coil bust?"

"No." He'd already thought it through. "That's not a job for a high-end Blaster like her. Besides, she's still suffering from a concussion. When Alexandria hits someone to put them down, she doesn't play patty-cake."

"I'll take your word for it." Her tone was dry. "So you believe she would be an asset for the Lung bust, once we bring that operation online?"

"Undeniably, ma'am. She's been trying to do it for years as it is, both before and after she split from the Empire. This is something she will absolutely get behind with everything she's got."

"Hmm." She leaned back in her chair with an unreadable expression. "Alright, then. I'll give you a fair shake in the matter. It's up to you to talk them into accepting her into their team by the time we're ready to give them a crack at Lung. If you can do that, I'll okay it."

He hesitated, trying to parse her words. "Uh, talk them into it, ma'am?"

"Yes, talk them into it." Her smile held no humour whatsoever. "Despite the fact that they're directed and paid by the PRT, they're not our employees. At best, they're independent contractors. Any or all of them could walk away tomorrow, and we wouldn't be able to do a damn thing about it. And if we make conditions untenable for them, they'll do just that."

He tried to find some crack in her logic. "Surely they won't all walk."

Director Piggot shook her head slowly. "If Grue goes, the rest of the Undersiders will almost certainly follow. Even if Hebert and her two friends stayed—and there's no guarantee of that—they're good, but they're not that good. So, as far as the current lineup goes, we don't rock the boat. Trying to force Purity on them against their wishes would be an exceedingly bad idea. Don't do it."

He already knew she was better at handling people than he was, so he didn't argue anymore. "Understood, ma'am. I'll talk to her first, see if she's open to the idea. If she's not, then we don't have to worry about approaching the team with it."

"She'll be open to it." The Director chuckled grimly. "Right now, her back's against the wall like never before, and she'll be looking for any way out at all. She'll probably agree before you even finish asking."

"Copy that, ma'am."

<><>​

Purity

Kayden's head was feeling better, and her facial swelling had gone down, but they still hadn't let her see Aster. No longer strapped to a bed, she'd been escorted to an interview room, with just heavy metal modules attached to her forearms as a reminder that she was a prisoner. And now Armsmaster was in the room with her, offering a startling proposition.

"You want me to what?"

"What I want isn't important." She couldn't see his eyes behind his helmet visor, but she was pretty sure they were fixed on hers. "I do believe you could do a lot of good. But more importantly for you, it's your only option that doesn't involve separation from your children and incarceration, and allows you to prove yourself as a hero."

"Well, when you put it that way …" She thought it over. "Working undercover with a bunch of kids. Teenagers. More than half of them villains. Who's going to be in charge?"

"That would be Portal. But before we can get into that, I need to know the answers to two questions. First question: do you have a problem working with Grue?"

Kayden considered the question. "I've never fought any of the Undersiders before this week. Why are you singling him out in particular?"

"He's black." Armsmaster said it bluntly. "You're ex-Empire. Do you have a problem with that?"

"Ah." She'd known that, but for some reason she hadn't connected the dots. Now, she took the time to think the question over. Her future with Aster was at stake, so there was only one possible answer. "If he can handle it, I can handle it." She paused. "Is he okay with it?"

"And that's the second question." Armsmaster leaned forward in his reinforced chair. "Director Piggot isn't in favour of this, but she's signed off on you staying out of prison if you can make it work. Which means you and I need to figure out how to get them on board with it. And before you ask, no, just telling them that's how it's going to be is not going to work."

"Oh." Well, shit. She was aware of yet another level of karma being laid on the ongoing shit sandwich she was currently having to ingest. All of her bad choices were coming back to bite her on the ass, in no uncertain terms. "Do you have any suggestions?"

Theo chose this moment to interject, from the speaker Armsmaster had set up in the middle of the table. "Um, I might. Mr Armsmaster, sir, would it be okay if I talked to these people? And took Aster along? I've met Taylor and Greg and Brian, and I get along pretty good with them. If I explained about Kayden and Aster, maybe they'll give her a chance."

Despite the fact that Armsmaster's helmet hid most of his expression, Kayden could see that the armoured hero was taken aback by Theo's offer. "That's probably not a bad idea. However, I'm going to need you to sign an NDA. Revealing their secret identities willy-nilly is not the way you want to be going on with this."

"Oh." To his credit, Theo sounded contrite. "Basically everyone in the Empire knew their real names. I thought Kayden knew them, too."

Kayden nodded to back him up. "I've been in touch with Othala from time to time, and I heard those names from her. Not in that context, though."

"I see." One corner of his mouth tightened in a momentary grimace. "Please don't spread them around. Are you alright with Theo taking Aster to meet Portal's group, and seeing what he can do there?"

She hesitated for a long moment. "… I can't come along?"

Armsmaster grimaced again. "Not until we know what their reaction to you is going to be like, via Theo and Aster. I would truly hate to have to try to defend you from them if they really wanted to kill you."

"I wouldn't be a fan of that, either." Especially since the last time I met them, I was about to kill them at Kaiser's orders. Looking at him, she wondered how hard he would really try to protect her, if it came to that.

"Good; we're in agreement, then."

She didn't like the idea of not being there, but Armsmaster's point had been well made. "Looks like it."

<><>​

The Evening of the Coil Takedown (October 9, 2010)
Palanquin Nightclub

Faultline

"I tried getting close to see what was going on, but the troopers were giving me the eye." Circus leaned back in their chair. "Plus, they'd covered all the exits, even the one I'm pretty sure Coil was using as a secret way in and out. A little bit later, they just went right in. So yeah, looks like they got him."

Melanie rubbed her chin under her mask, thinking. "What do you know about the Empire thing? Do you think they've been taken down as well?"

Rumours abounded about the Empire. There had been the battle near the Medhall building, then the pursuit toward the PRT building, both of which had featured a cloud of blackness very strongly reminiscent of Grue's capabilities. Though when the Triumvirate showed up, they'd allowed the Empire to back off—necessarily minus Purity—nothing more of the villain gang had been seen after that.

Melanie personally would've expected Kaiser to have done something in reaction to whatever it was that happened. Even a show of force that accomplished nothing of real value would've been in character for him. But there was just radio silence.

"… maybe?" It seemed Circus didn't want to commit themselves one way or the other. "I hear they were chasing the Undersiders plus a few extras toward the PRT building. And I think I spotted a cloud of Grue's darkness just before the PRT took Coil's base."

The dots Melanie was connecting made up a bizarre image, but she didn't discount it because of that. "Interesting. So, why did you come to me with all that?" Not for an instant did she consider that Circus might have just seen it as their civic supervillain duty.

"Well, Coil was signing my paychecks, wasn't he?" Circus rolled their eyes. "If he's out of the picture, I'm gonna need someone else to work for. I've heard good things about you and your Crew."

"Ah." All became clear now. "I'm sorry, but I don't just take on new recruits at the drop of a hat. I personally vet any potential new members before I even approach them. Also, my Crew tends toward people with problematic powers. Case fifty-threes and the like. The ones who would have trouble getting employment elsewhere. This evidently doesn't describe you."

"Wait." Circus sat forward again. "You're rejecting me because I'm too qualified? How the hell does that even work?"

"It works because I say it does." Melanie didn't get defensive or raise her voice. There was nothing to be defensive about, and she held to the view that authority didn't depend on shouting over the other person. "My Crew, my rules. I don't take walk-ins. I believe I've made myself clear."

She was fully aware that Circus had a volatile temper, and that there was a non-zero chance of violence in the next few minutes. With this in mind, she'd made her preparations before ever allowing the independent villain into her office. Gregor was just outside the office door, while Newter was lurking in the ceiling space, next to a hatch that would allow him to drop on top of Circus if need be.

For a moment, Circus glared at her, then subsided, their shoulders relaxing. "Okay, if you don't want me, you don't want me. I just thought your Crew would be perfect to work with. Don't suppose you'd know of anyone else who's hiring?"

Melanie didn't relax altogether, but she unbent enough to shrug casually with one shoulder. "You could try Uber and Leet."

It was basically a joke, but Circus grimaced. "Fuck, no. Nobody's desperate enough to sign up with them for more than one job. And that's if they're into video games. I'd rather go it alone, thanks." They got up from their chair. "Thanks for at least hearing me out."

"Not a problem." Melanie casually slid one hand under the edge of her desk and pressed the buzzer there twice in quick succession, then once more after a pause. This was the signal for Gregor to back off so it wouldn't be blatantly obvious that he'd been ready to burst in if events went sideways. Circus would probably figure it out anyway, but Melanie wasn't obliged to spell it out for them.

She watched the office door open then close, and heard the rumble of Gregor's voice as he politely offered to escort Circus from the premises. The ceiling trapdoor opened, and Newter crawled out through it. He stayed stuck to the ceiling long enough to close the trapdoor, then dropped to the floor and landed in a crouch.

"That went pretty well, I thought," he observed as he straightened up bonelessly. "Any particular reason you didn't want to take them on?" He sounded curious rather than judgmental.

"Several." Melanie had no problem with her Crew asking questions like that. Some bosses objected to what they saw as being second-guessed, but she figured that people were more likely to go along with a directive if they understood the reasoning behind it. She flicked the switch that fed the security camera feed to her computer monitors. So far, Circus seemed to be behaving themselves, but security was all about checking things even when nothing was wrong. "For a start, all signs point to a rough patch coming up. That's the worst possible time to take on a new recruit, especially someone who's used to an entirely different way of doing things."

Opening a desk drawer, she pulled out an electronic bug scanner. When Newter saw it, his eyebrows hitched up. "Plus, you never really trusted them, did you?"

"Let's just say, I know how tricky Coil can be. I wouldn't put it past him to go quiet for a few days so his people can infiltrate other groups and pick up intel about them that way." As she spoke, she watched the screens until Circus was out the back door and Gregor was securing it again. Then she came out from behind the desk and began passing the scanner over the chair that Circus had been sitting on. No telltale beeps sounded … so far.

Newter watched her carefully, moving out of the way to let her check where he was standing. "You really think that's what's happened? That it's a trick?"

"I make no predictions." If she let herself settle on one particular explanation, there was a good chance she'd subconsciously reject evidence to the contrary, so she was keeping her options open for the moment. "But I'd prefer to assume a problem and be wrong than assume everything's fine and be wrong."

"Yeah, well. In this city? Totally." He backed up onto the wall, to give her more space. "So, what are we gonna do about this whole thing, if it turns out Coil and Kaiser have really been taken down?"

Melanie had been rolling that around in her mind as well. It was unlikely, but if it was indeed the case, better to be prepared than otherwise. "Just in case, we're going dark. Keeping our heads down for the next few days. See which way the wind's blowing. We're not prime targets in the way the Empire or Coil were; we don't do high-profile crimes, and we don't do them here in Brockton Bay. So if something's going on, the next target will be Uber and Leet, or the Merchants, or maybe Lung."

He nodded to show he was following her logic. "And if they get taken down too?"

She grimaced. "Then we assume that the PRT's pulling a full sweep, and we go all the way underground. Put someone in charge of Palanquin and run it from the shadows."

"So … we don't leave town?" He frowned, as though confused.

"No." She started running the scanner over the door-frame, as meticulously as she'd done the chair. "I've put a lot of effort into establishing us in this town, and I'm not going to just throw it all away. Besides, the last time the PRT and Protectorate cleared out a city, it only served to open up the floodgates for a bunch of new villains to come pouring on in. If that happens, we'll already be in position, and law enforcement will be too busy chasing the newcomers to bother us."

He nodded. "Sounds like you've got it all figured out."

Flipping up the mask so he could see her face, she gave him a raised eyebrow. "What sort of a boss would I be if I didn't?"

"True."

<><>​

Around the Same Time
The PRT Building

Portal

We were still riding the high of our success when we trooped into the conference room, a couple of hours after the PRT had finished clearing out Coil's base and Coil himself had been taken away to secure holding. Greg wore a huge grin, Tracey was quietly pleased, and Lisa's level of smugness would've been visible from space. Even Brian, as reserved as he normally was, looked quite happy with the situation.

I glanced over at Rachel, who had brought her dogs into the room with us. This wasn't even a surprise to us anymore; Rachel without dogs would be more unusual than Rachel with dogs. "Did they enjoy the run today?"

She nodded. "They did. They enjoyed fucking Coil over, too. Not being shot at by the PRT was different, but good."

Alec rolled his eyes. "Nobody told me we'd have to be outside in daylight. What sort of a covert operation is this, anyway?"

Brian gave him the side-eye. "You could always go back to being shot at by the PRT."

"Yeah," Lisa added. "Or head back to Montreal."

Alec gave them both the finger. "Fine. I'll buy sunscreen."

Armsmaster chose that moment to open the door and enter. Behind him trailed a teenage boy whom I recognised after a couple of seconds of puzzled frowning. However, I didn't recognise the infant he was carrying at all. "Theo? What are you doing here?"

When I said his name, Greg's confused look cleared right up. "Holy crap, man!" Greg stood up immediately and offered his chair. "Wow, I didn't think we'd ever see you again. Everyone, this is Theo, um, Theo Anders. Yes, he's Kaiser's son. No, he's not a Nazi dipshit."

Brian nodded to acknowledge Theo, then switched his attention to the baby. "Okay, I'm officially intrigued. What's this about?"

"Everyone." Armsmaster cleared his throat for our attention. "These are Theo and Aster Anders. They're both the children of Max Anders. For context, Theo is the son of his first wife, and Aster is the daughter of his second wife. This will become relevant in a moment. Greg is correct in that Theo doesn't share his father's views."

Brian snorted. "No kidding. You learn a bit about someone when you're teaching him self-defence. Tammi was full of that sort of crap but Theo, no way."

"This is about the second wife, isn't it?" Lisa's intuition was firing on all cylinders today. "Purity, right?" Her eyes widened. "Haha, hell nope. That ain't gonna fly."

From the way Armsmaster's helmet turned toward her, I could well imagine that he was giving her a dirty look. "If I can finish before you skip to the end of the briefing, Ms Wilborn …?"

"Fine. Go ahead. Don't be surprised when you crash and burn, though." She leaned back in her chair, grinning smugly—if there was there any other way for her to grin, I hadn't seen it—and waved for him to continue.

"Thank you." He didn't sound pleased with her, but there wasn't a hell of a lot he could do about it right then. If he'd been a PT teacher, she would've been already doing push-ups. "As Lisa has so ably figured out, this is indeed about Kaiser's second wife, Purity. Otherwise known as Kayden Russel. Some months ago, after she gave birth to Aster, Kayden decided to give up the villain life and go hero, in an attempt to make the city a better place for her child to grow up in."

"Really?" snarked Alec. "So when she showed up and tried to kill us, I guess we were all imagining that?"

"Twice," added Greg. "Just saying." He reached over and gave Alec a high-five.

Brian frowned. "Wait. If she went hero, and Aster was Kaiser's kid … just going to say, custody hearings are a total cast-iron bitch when the deck's stacked against you."

"Mr Laborn has put his finger on the crux of the matter," Armsmaster announced. "Purity couldn't do anything definitive to distance herself from the Empire Eighty-Eight, because Kaiser was holding her daughter over her head at all times. If she'd specifically opposed the Empire, or tried to take Aster out of the city, he could've taken Aster away." He nodded toward Theo, who had accepted the seat Greg was offering.

"'s'true," Theo confirmed. "She might've kinda done a half-ass job of it, but she totally tried to go hero for the little munchkin here." He gazed fondly down at the peacefully sleeping face of his half-sister.

"Okay, so she loves her kid." Rachel spread her hands. "Why are you telling us? What's got Tattletale grinning like Regent when he gets a high score?"

Armsmaster took a deep breath. "Because thanks to you people and to Alexandria, we have Purity—Kayden—in custody. And instead of just dropping her into the prison system, I think there's a chance she would make a useful addition to your team." He nodded toward me and Tracey. "Under your leadership, of course."

Cue instant uproar. The Undersiders started objecting, all at once. Greg also spoke up, but when he saw Tracey and I were sitting quietly, he closed his mouth again. I was about to raise my voice and ask everyone to quiet down when Aster did it for me with an impressively loud wail.

The dogs looked in that direction and whined, and Rachel stopped shouting long enough to shush them. Brian also shut up, looking a little embarrassed, while Lisa read the room and quietened down as well. "… villains, but there's a limit …" Alec said, then trailed off. "Just saying."

Meanwhile, Theo hunched over Aster, murmuring to her in a way that said to me he'd done this many times before. Once he had her settled, I cleared my throat gently. "Can we not do that again, please?" My tone was mild, but I absolutely meant what I said. Beside me, Tracey nodded in agreement.

"Okay, we'll keep our voices down." Brian seemed to be speaking for all the Undersiders. "But you can't possibly expect us to be willing to work with a Nazi."

"She's working on that." Theo's voice was soft, in deference to the infant in his arms, but I could hear the conviction in his voice. "She really does want to be a hero."

"Heroic Nazi." Alec snorted in derision. "Right. Those two things are not the same. Trust me, I've got the video game experience that says so."

Tracey, who'd kept quiet until now, raised her chin. "What happens to you and Aster if we say no? You're not old enough to be made her legal guardian, are you?"

"N-no." Theo shook his head. "I'm only fourteen." He took a deep breath. "They'll likely put us into foster care. I want to take care of her, but I'm pretty sure the type of family that's willing to take a baby isn't the type that wants a kid like me, so they'll probably split us up."

Rachel sat up. "Fuck that. The foster shit's fucked. Everyone takes all your shit, and when you try to get it back, you're the bad guy." She nodded toward Theo. "You know how to fight?"

Brian shook his head. "No, he doesn't." He paused for a second, apparently assimilating what she'd just said. "Wait, you're on their side now?"

Rachel stood up and moved around to where she could see Aster properly. Her dogs stayed where they were. "They're not Nazis. They don't deserve that shit." She looked over toward Armsmaster challengingly. "What happens if we let Purity in?"

He replied so smoothly he had to be reading it off his helmet HUD. "Aster and Theo move into PRT housing with Purity. Theo takes care of Aster and does in-home schooling with a PRT tutor. Purity wears an ankle monitor when she's not out and about with your team. We will be keeping a close eye on her and any people she comes into contact with."

"Okay." Rachel went back and sat down. "I'm good with that."

"Huh." Alec seemed to be thinking about this. "I know shitty dads. How they can get in your head. Brian, you're saying Theo isn't like Kaiser?"

"Nope." Brian shook his head. "A bit of a wimp, but he's alright."

"Still right here," Theo reminded him.

"Huh." Alec turned to Armsmaster. "If Purity tries to fuck us over, can I make her fly into a building or something?"

I thought I caught the slightest quirk of a smile on Armsmaster's mouth. "If she does that—but only if she does that—then yes, you can."

"Excellent. Okay, I'm in." Alec pulled out his phone and started scrolling.

Brian frowned. "Theo, you're sure you'd be separated from your sister if we turned Purity down?"

Theo nodded earnestly. "They brought in a lady from CPS, and she told me it was really unlikely that we'd be kept together. Especially since we've got two different moms, and we're so far apart in age. Also, the whole supervillain thing."

"And you totally care for her. I get that." He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I don't believe I'm about to say this, but fine, you win. I guess we're recruiting a former Nazi." He shot Armsmaster a glare. "But she changes her name. I refuse to work with Purity, the Empire Eighty-Eight Blaster."

"I'm sure that can be arranged." Armsmaster turned his helmet toward Lisa. "And you?"

"Well, shit." Lisa went to run her hands through her neatly braided hair, then clearly thought better of it. She sighed. "If you're all in, and I say no, I'm the asshole." She glanced at Theo and Aster, then back to Armsmaster. "So what happens if I still say no?"

"Then it doesn't happen." Armsmaster's tone was inflexible. "It has to be unanimous."

She tilted her head. "What assurance do you have that Purity's genuine about this? I mean, I could go have a talk to her."

Armsmaster cleared his throat. "I interviewed her, with Gallant watching. He picks up emotions. There was nothing but sincerity in her intent."

"Hm." Lisa pursed her lips. "Okay." Then she looked over at where I sat with Tracey and Greg. "What about the goody-two-shoes contingent? You haven't had much to say."

Greg nodded toward me. "Whatever Taylor decides is good enough for me."

Wow, way to put me on the spot. I looked at Aster's tiny, peaceful face and took a breath, heavier than I meant to. "I … think we should at least give her a shot at it. Not all the villains we run into are gonna be Coil's level. Tracey?"

Giving me a sideways glance, Tracey nodded. "I'm not thrilled with working alongside such a notorious supervillain, but I'm going to trust Taylor's judgement on this. She gets one chance." She held up a finger for emphasis. "One."

"I see. Thank you." Armsmaster nodded to us all. "I'll go and start setting up the arrangements." He turned and headed for the door.

As it closed behind him, Theo looked around at us all. "Um, I just want to say thank you for giving Kayden this chance. It means a lot to all of us."

"Not a problem." Brian raised his eyebrows briefly. "Of course, you do know what this means."

"Uh, no …?" Theo frowned, evidently uncertain as to where this was going.

Greg, on the other hand, grinned. "It means he's gonna be kicking your ass every weekend, until you know how to fight."

All of a sudden, Theo looked a lot less sure about the whole thing.



End of Part Four