Interlude, Coil


In the dubiously credited words of Sir Winston Churchill, "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."

Coil would readily admit to being an optimist. Hope for the best while making a few preparations for the less ideal outcomes, the glass was half-full and the quarter would land on heads. It was easy to be positive, when one can choose their current reality.

In one, he was safely tucked away in his underground base, costumed, with no less than twenty armed soldiers between himself and multiple sets of blast doors rated for massive concussive force. A stalling tactic. He had spent his night following the news and checking his stocks. By all accounts, Richter had outdone himself. His specialty helped in making exponential leaps in progress and he was intelligent enough to take advantage of it. He and Dragon would be busy for the upcoming months. Good.

His location was on a need-to-know basis with those who worked for him. A full psychological report, background check and a few assurances for each, with one special case.

In the other, he was enjoying a mild Saturday afternoon in a restaurant downtown that had adequately spaced private booths, a fine wine list, and he had developed a particular taste for their basil-lime grouper dish. He was dressed nicely in a button-up shirt and dark-gray dress suit with a checkered silk tie. He chose one of the cheaper, palatable red wines and splurged a little with his dessert order of New York cheesecake. It was a carefully crafted image of a gainfully employed salaried business man, quintessential white collar.

The seat across from him was already set up with a beverage menu, forks and knives and a covered hotplate of lemon-pepper shrimp scampi. The napkin was still artfully arranged in its pyramid of creases and he waited.

His guest was a man in his late twenties although the stress marks on his face tended to increase age estimates. He wore khakis and a short sleeved button-up shirt with a plain blue tie. He moved carefully, as if expecting the very air to push back against him.

He sat down with a bit of a nervous twitch, running a hand through prematurely thinning dark hair and casting his eyes about the room. He lifted the lid from the plate and stared at his shrimp.

"Have you already eaten?" Coil asked.

"No, sir." The lid was set aside on the fold out tray sitting beside their table for that purpose. The green napkin pyramid was shaken out and a fork picked up as if it was a knife. Pause. "Did you receive my report?"

"Yes. Excellent work, Daniels. Prospects for this month are looking up," Coil praised. He was never sparing with compliments when they were deserved. To do otherwise was to invite resentment. He delicately speared a piece of fish and roasted tomato. "I trust everything is going well with your new supervisor?"

"She's not used to command but she has potential." Daniels followed suit and began eating. "I'm looking into other channels, see if we can't get some more transfers."

A schism, as with anything, weakens. Coil wished he could take the credit but at the same time, it was most of his work done for him. Marital problems; the prelude to the fall of an empire.

The lunch conversation continued, a boss and his subordinate. As far as Daniels was concerned, that was all it was. The name 'Coil' was a background detail. The man he was meeting was another like him, someone who had been contacted for a job. Innocuous phrases were used but not too many. The obscurity was hardly necessary, in many ways, it was just business. Cutthroat competition in a different medium and he was intent on coming out on top. Everyone had their price. It was only a matter of deciding if it was worth paying.

Daniels had a past that needed cleaning, a fresh start. Regrets, stubborn addictions. Whether it was a conscious acknowledgement or not, Brockton Bay was a city that everyone knew was already written off. But a chance at putting it under new management, stable leadership and working to subvert a criminal gang from within? Getting the papers signed was as easy as handing the man a pen.

Everyone had a hook, a vice or something they needed on a primal, desperate level. At times, they were unaware of it until it was brought out and nurtured, so it could later be hand fed. Those people who were driven by such things, that craving lurking close to the surface, were among Coil's favorite people. They came a very close second to the people who were useful and those who were both?

To do anything less than stockpile them as valuable assets would be criminally incompetent.

Coil was not incompetent.

Daniels didn't have dessert. Coil ordered a large cinnamon bun for him anyway. He had looked at the paper bag and it's pine green bakery logo with a thoughtful grimace but held on to it. As Coil knew he would. Daniels didn't have a sweet tooth.

Kayden Russel did.

Setting up covert agents was more than telling people to do something and hope they don't get found out. It was identifying the result you want, the best person who can accomplish that and then finding a close facsimile. Shore up the rough spots, provide a bit of motivation and then let them loose.

The Trojans celebrated their victory by wheeling the giant wooden horse into the gates of the city.

An elegant solution for a complicated problem.

He observed the cape scene of Brockton Bay much like one would peer into a cage of howling monkeys at a zoo. Detached; with the gentle amusement that came from watching lesser creatures go about their day in ways that are easily understood, a pleasant surprise. At times they flung poo at each other, costing the city hundreds of thousands of dollars repairing the collateral damage. They had their little playground and most couldn't see the rust on their gilded cage for what it was.

Max Anders was a snake in the cage of primates. Dangerous, but that danger was in the ideological poison. The man either broke his followers, or he made true believers of them. Of no use to anyone else either way.

Waste.

Prowling the corners was Lung. Coil would liken her to a tiger in the little analogy of his. The PRT kept their eyes on her, the more immediate, flashy threat and wore little masks shaped to look like a face on the back of their heads when they had to deal with distractions, as if simply watching meant she would do nothing.

He couldn't fault Emily for that, if he were to be completely honest. A kill order on an S-rank cape willing to 'play ball' was a very hard sell to Costa-Brown and anything less had a high risk of failure.

He had no such restrictions.

Coil's cheesecake arrived soon after he paid the bill and polished off the last of his grouper meal. It was topped with a few fresh strawberries and a moist sugary crust with slivers of almond baked in. The fork slid in smoothly and he lifted it to his mouth.

In the other reality, the phone in his underground office rang urgently.

The Coil there answered it. "What?"

"Sir, we have a situation." The crisp, military tones sank both of their stomachs. The bite of cheesecake was turning to ash in his mouth.

"Report." His other self barked into the receiver.

"Boardwalk spotted Tattletale leaving with Amy Dallon and another unknown individual. We just lost sight of her."

For a long moment, Coil was simply confused. His Tattletale wasn't an idiot even if she tried his patience on multiple occasions. He'd commissioned her device specifically for dealing with Panacea, on several levels. She knew none of the failsafes, none of the trigger conditions and this was far too reckless of her. She was a schemer and unless she managed to slip one by him, possible but unlikely, then this was exactly what it looked like.

"Lost sight of her how?"

"Unknown teleporter, sir."

Now that was a good girl. She was revealing new, vital information about ABB without even trying."I want eyes on her, yesterday."

"Yes, sir."

And his Tattletale wasn't dumb so that meant this had a decent chance of actually working somehow. His personal cell-phone was stubbornly quiet as he sat in the restaurant, mechanically eating his dessert as he waited in the other reality for updates.

He had hated the moments when he felt the most vulnerable, when he'd just started a fresh use of his power and his selves were too close to one another. He'd strived to keep both lives as separate as possible, made Choice A and Choice B distinct. He could still only choose one or the other. And here he was, downtown and at least a half hour away from the base in the civilian persona, carefully fabricated, eating cheesecake.

Choice A was to continue with his Saturday afternoon and risk his Tattletale slipping out from underneath his fingertips, and with her every scrap of information about him and his operations that she had ferreted out.

Choice B was to move early and spring the trap he had been priming her for. Neither were ideal.

And it all came down to the girl's irritatingly unfortunate sense of timing.

Coil palmed his face, checked his phone for any messages and finished his cheesecake. He got up and headed back to the parking lot, nodding in farewell to the manager of the restaurant and made a beeline for his off-white four year old Prius.

The Coil in his base got up and felt a rush of sensation trickle back into his feet. He padded back and forth and then sat down again. He keyed an intercom and the accompanying screen of a boy's bedroom, complete with blue wallpaper, legos and books as well as Mr. Pitter on standby for a calculated dosage.

Pitter was small, unassuming and ordinary. A registered nurse with an eight year record as a nanny and caretaker to a pair of very ill children. Had an absolute mess of a divorce, the kind where his loving wife employed scorched-earth tactics using allegations of child molestation. The woman disappearing and his name cleared were all he wanted. Both useful and bought with something stronger than currency.

"Reggie, I have a few questions for you." Coil spoke into the microphone.

Reggie looked up from his Lincoln Logs. Trailing on the left side of his neck and the back of his hands were pockmarked burn scars.

"Again?"

"The usual first."

"Five people know Coil's civilian identity. Seventy Two people know the primary entrance to this building. One hundred and thirty four people know the secondary entrance to this building."

The answers were the same as they had been that morning.

"How many know you are here?" He asked.

Reggie blinked. "Nine people."

"How many in this city know how to physically find Coil?"

"Two hundred and seven."

He turned the questions towards his ambitions. "Are my spies in the PRT compromised?"

Reggie stared at the screen for a moment and squinted. "No," he said eventually.

"Does Kaiser know what I am planning?"

The boy concentrated and few, faint traces of backlash bled onto his young face. "No."

"Does Lung know what I am planning?"

He bodily winced this time. "An...idea? Sort of?" He looked down, away from the lights. "Can I have candy now?"

Good enough. Coil collapsed the world where he had went out for lunch. That reality swiftly faded, leaving only the world where he drank far too much coffee staying up all night, needed a new office chair and had an unruly subordinate to deal with. Only the memory of cheesecake and strawberries on his tongue remained.

He went back to the phone. "You found her." It wasn't a question. His men were at least competent with a pair of binoculars and behavior patterns of targets were well documented. Where would Amy Dallon go with a problem? "Primary target is Panacea. Is she in close proximity?"

"Yes, sir. Extraction is commencing."

"Detonate."

Then he divided the realities once more, less than a minute between the erasure of one existence and the creation of another.

In one reality, he headed out of his office into the exterior wings of the base and down the metal staircase to the lower level. The base was still in development but nearing completion. Empty crates and boxes were being stacked, bunk beds for soldiers on call, a fully equipped medical bay, stocks and facilities for the kitchens, weapons. He could easily recall the two-dimensional blueprints, having spent hundreds of collective hours pouring over it and to see it taking shape had been a treasure.

He owned the company that had built the underground shelters in Brockton Bay and neighboring cities. Hiding the details on his base in-construction was a matter of intercepting information, paying with his own money and controlling what was reported and to whom. The boy's power was invaluable in making sure no-one noticed the disparity. A few words, exchanged bills and he relieved the burden of parenthood from someone who didn't want it. His best investment.

The only drawback was its sensitivity to the phenomenon known as Thinker Interference. Knowledge gained via the use of parahuman abilities never seemed to register quite right. That was where his Tattletale had come in handy.

His other self remained in the office with another screen, another intercom. "Bakuda."

The half-asian woman bent over her table jerked and swore profusely as something sparked. Coil tensed and eyed the screen suspiciously, waiting for reality to start warping. This was the reason she was off-site, far off-site and under 24/7 surveillance.

He didn't fancy a black hole in his base.

"What, what, what?" She scowled at the video screen. Bakuda's unmasked face was distinctive in that it subverted expectations. Unconventional. A bit darker-skinned into an ambiguous tone and pale blue eyes.

"I am moving up the schedule for your special projects. We move soon."

The woman's face split into a wide, almost manic grin. "Finally."

A promising response. In the other world he made contact with the captains of his troops, informing them of the changed schedule and ordering the beginning of several contingencies. Check the PRT reports, the hospital records, confirm the result.

"How soon can I expect you to be done?" He asked over the intercom.

Bakuda waved back at her lab. "The big one is already done. The others," she chewed on her lip and looked upward, running the estimate in her head. She had attended Cornell for two years before her Trigger for Chemical Engineering, 'dumb' was not a word that could be easily used to describe her. Other words fit more readily. "A week tops for all of them."

Bombs were not delicate problem solvers but with his 'jury rigged' delivery system they were superb for provoking a response.

"I have a few targets in mind."

The E88 would be easy to handle, getting easier by the day. The growing chasm in the gang between members and their relative frailty. Given the chance to run the Empire into the ground like cats scurrying after mice, the PRT had no choice but to take it. Their reputation was already in tatters, public opinion shedding percentage points each passing year.

Nitta Noriko was simply annoying to try to work around. So he wouldn't.

He entertained a brief fantasy of being able to land a preemptive strike before the transformation and having the glass statue as a trophy. The only problem would be where to put her. It wouldn't match the decor.

He'd figure it out.

Next on his list of capes to contact were Trickster and Grue. He didn't like interacting with people, especially not subordinates as important as the Travelers or Undersiders, without the ability to create or banish the reality if the discussion didn't go his way. Here, he was safe. His other self was with the troops updating priority targets, individuals to watch out for.

It was a momentary setback, now that he thought about it. He was already close.

One step at a time.

Just a little optimism.