There's one audio file attached to this chapter, underlined in the normal way.
The URL is www dot youtube dot com / watch?v=uYMpMcmpfkI
Sergeant Owens, glow stick in his off hand, waved it sharply behind his back, the rest of his team immediately coming to a halt. He was the one in front at the moment with the rest of his men bringing up the rear. All seven of them also had glow sticks attached to their vests so they could see each other in the pitch-dark underground base. Considering the damn thing sneaking around the place could obviously see in the dark or something, there was little point not using them.
The chemical lights spread enough light around them that they could barely make out the walls of the corridors up to around eight feet off the ground, but the ceiling was still in shadow. Their sole remaining night-sight was on McMicheal's head at the moment and the man was peering around in a manner most would think betrayed nervousness.
Owens knew better.
It was sheer terror.
The thing with the horrible voice had been popping up randomly for the last twenty minutes, sometimes on the ceiling, sometimes in a corridor they were passing, once or twice on the other side of a door. None of them had got a good view of it yet although there was definitely an impression of teeth and scales.
It seemed to be enjoying itself.
None of them were in any way at all.
After using nearly half their ammo and all but two grenades, Owens had told them to stop firing, as it was only wasting the stuff and putting them at risk of ricochets. Trevino was already limping a little from catching part of a shattered bullet in the shin and was currently quietly bitching about it somewhere near the middle of the pack of nervous mercenaries. They were all half deaf as well, which wasn't helping.
"Shut up, Trevino," he hissed, holding his P-90 with the muzzle up, the laser emitter powered and whining faintly. At one point, when the thing that was either chasing them or herding them had given them a short break, they'd all fixed their flashlights to the relevant mounting point on the weapons, so they could see what they were firing at.
It hadn't helped. He was certain they'd hit the fucking thing at least once, but not only had it not caused any apparent damage, they still hadn't actually seen it properly. The team, or what was left of it, so far hadn't lost any more members, had managed to make it back through two security doors, but still had two to go and were feeling both very tired and very hard-done-by. Being the protagonists in a monster movie wasn't what they'd signed up for…
They were now, somehow, in a part of the base he didn't recognize. 'Must be the dark,' he thought uneasily, looking around with the aid of his flashlight. 'I don't remember this maze of twisty passageways. They're all alike, too. Weird.' It was proving very difficult to find a way through.
Turning back to what had caused him to bring their squad to a halt, he peered suspiciously at the faint light coming around the corner ahead of him. Thirty feet or so away the corridor bent to the right sharply enough that he couldn't see around it. After a few more seconds of thought and an internal sigh, followed by gritting his teeth, he pressed himself to the wall and slid along it, weapon at the ready. His men followed, possibly out of a morbid sense of curiosity, since not a one of them really wanted to.
Reaching the corner, he stopped, holding his gun at port arms, his finger on the trigger, then took a deep breath and quickly looked around the edge. Pulling his head back a second later, he tried to make sense of what he'd seen.
"What is it, Sarge?" one of the mercenaries whispered anxiously.
Owens looked again.
Again he retreated and puzzled over the scene, which was lit by a solitary working emergency fitting in the roof. "What the fuck?" he mumbled.
He glanced back at the remains of his squad, two of whom were staring back the way they'd come with weapons ready, two of which were doing the same to the roof in both directions, and the remaining ones who were watching him. After a moment or two, he looked around the corner for the third time, then very slowly stepped out into the corridor to get a better view.
Trevino and McMicheal followed him with a certain amount of caution, stopping on either side and also staring.
"Well, that's definitely a trap," the former finally said after a long silence.
"You think?" Owens asked in a low, very sarcastic, voice. "What gave it away? The neat pile of P-90 mags on the floor on a very suspicious-looking piece of canvas painted, not very well, to look like the ground? Or was it the little sign sticking out the top that says 'Free ammunition, help yourself?'
"The way the emergency light is spotlighting it and leaving everything else in shadow is a nice touch," McMicheal commented with black humor.
"Personally, I'm more worried about that big cardboard box over in the corner of this large room I don't remember ever seeing before," Owens sighed. "The way this side is a few inches off the ground and I can see two glowing eyes in the darkness under it is…" He trailed off.
"Hee hee hee," something sniggered. Something under the large box, which was big enough to contain a deep freeze and had the words 'This Side Up' written on it, along with an arrow. Which was, naturally, pointing downwards.
"Nope." Owens shook his head. "Just fucking nope." He backed up around the corner, the other two doing the same, then turned around. "Back to the last junction, everyone. Move it."
As his squad headed back the way they'd come, he could have sworn he heard a faint voice say "Awww..."
"I fucking hate my life sometimes," he grumbled under his breath, shivering a little. They kept moving, looking around. When he looked back the light had gone out.
"They didn't want the ammunition, Brain," the Varga said with amusement. "I'll put it back in the armory."
Taylor was internally giggling too hard to answer. She got back to work on the next part of her 'How to wind up Coil' plan. It was a good one, she thought.
Captain Smith was not a happy camper either. He was down two men who had disappeared without sound or warning, they'd simply vanished when everyone took their eyes off them for a couple of seconds. One of them had been at the back of his squad, but the other one was right in the middle and had still somehow been taken. Each time, Kowalski had told them that the 'score counter' had shifted in favor of the enemy, whoever that was. His remaining men were starting to make mistakes, they were definitely demoralized, and they were beginning to piss him off.
Not to mention they'd used up a large amount of their ammunition on shadows without a single body to show for it.
When he found out who was behind all this he was going to take particular pleasure in showing them their own spleen before he slit their throats.
The radio system had stopped working a couple of minutes ago, the mysterious enemy having apparently decided to cut power to the leaky feeder system running across the ceiling. Without that to relay the radio waves, the range of the handsets underground was severely restricted. They could just about hear Kowalski with a lot of static, but they had no contact with Owens's group and apparently the others couldn't raise them either.
That might mean they'd all been taken, but he suspected it was more likely that the comms were simply down. The enemy seemed to like playing games and in his opinion for whatever reason, despite some frankly disturbingly effective stealth abilities, probably couldn't take them on in a fair fight. That was why they were being whittled down one by one, that and the psychological aspect of the entire thing. It was brilliant in its own way, something he'd appreciate a lot more if it wasn't aimed at him.
They still hadn't heard anything from their employer. That didn't really bother Smith all that much, he'd never liked the fucker anyway, not trusting Parahumans at the best of times. The man paid well and there were some good perks, but on a personal level if he never saw the villain again he wouldn't care in the least. As long as he got paid, at any rate.
If the enemy infiltrator or infiltrators had taken Coil out, that solved one problem. Assuming they got out of this alive, he was sure his tech experts could extract enough data from Coil's computers to make up any outstanding payment. If not, it didn't matter anyway.
"Captain!" One of the men in front called out in a low tone, the chemical illumination on his vest jerking as he turned and waved. "Found something… strange."
"Strange?" Smith asked as he moved forward, scanning the scene with his weapon and eyes. "Strange how exactly?"
The mercenary pointed. "Like that."
Both of them stared at the ground in front of them. There was a large black circle apparently painted on it, with the words 'Caution, deep hole' neatly lettered next to it in blue-glowing pigment. "What in god's..." Smith, after a long pause, trailed off in bemusement, then knelt down on one knee and gently touched the black surface. He raised his finger and held it in front of the light from his flashlight. "It's still wet."
"What's the point of this?" the mercenary asked in a puzzled tone. "No one is going to fall for it, it's so obviously a fake. This isn't a cartoon."
"These people are insane," Smith growled, wiping the black paint off on his pants. "Playing mind games. This is really fucking annoying me." His voice was low and dangerous. "But if it's still wet they must be close." He fixed a half-open door thirty feet away down the corridor, past the painted 'hole' and just visible in the light from his weapon-mounted illuminator, with a gimlet eye. He turned and waved up a couple more men. "Murtaugh, you go left, Jackson, right." At his quiet orders both men nodded and headed in the relevant direction, sidling along the walls on either side of the hallway.
The first mercenary watched them get into position then glanced at his superior, who aimed his gun and made a signal. Both the scouts opened fire on the door, then Jackson kicked what was left open and dived through, his colleague right behind him. The first mercenary moved across the paint on the floor to back them up.
He got about half-way before screaming in shocked horror and disappearing downwards. Smith leaped back with a surprised curse, watching as his man fell into a hole that wasn't, couldn't, be real. They were on the lowest level of the base aside from anything else, there wasn't anything under them except rock. The four men behind him were stunned silent, gaping at the sight.
Moments later there was no trace of anyone. At the scream, both the scouts had come back out of the room they'd entered with their weapons to their shoulders, flashlight beams waving around frantically as they looked for a target. Running back, they skidded to halt as Smith shouted 'STOP!' in a hoarse voice.
Not taking his eyes off the paint on the floor, Smith reached into his pocket with one hand and pulled out a handful of small change, which he tossed onto the black circle. All the coins tinkled to the ground, a couple of them rolling a little then falling over.
Not one of them fell into a hole.
"What the fuck happened, Captain?" one of the mercenaries behind him said in horror. "Where did Young go?"
"I… don't know," Smith admitted, more scared than he'd ever been under fire. "I… just don't know." Motioning to the two mercs to walk around the painted feature on the floor, he waited for them to arrive next to him. "Fall back to the canteen," he finally ordered, deciding that there was no way carrying on was a good idea when they didn't have enough information. "We need to regroup and think this through some more. I really don't like the situation. There's something very wrong about all this."
A crackly voice came through the radio. "Captain?"
"What is it now, Kowalski?" he replied wearily.
"Thirty nine to eight, sir. And it just went to 'Level Three'." The voice sounded very worried. "One more thing though."
"What?" Smith was just about at the end of his rope.
"It says 'Deathmatch...'"
"Fuck." Smith pinched the bridge of his nose in fury. "We're on our way back," he added a few seconds later. "Keep trying to contact Owens and his squad. If you get through, have them fall back to the cafeteria as well on the double."
"Yes, sir," the distant man replied obediently.
"And get those grenade launchers loaded."
"We did that half an hour ago, sir," the merc admitted. Smith merely nodded to himself, putting the radio away.
"Come on. And for fuck's sake, keep alert for anything funny on the floor and go around it," he sighed. The squad turned around and started heading back to the center of the base, looking around everywhere. He glanced back at the paint on the floor for a moment, aiming his weapon and attached light at it, and wasn't entirely surprised to see it was gone.
So were all his coins.
Shaking his head in worried disgust, he kept walking, trying to look everywhere at once and wondering what the next idiotic but terrifyingly effective Parahuman trick was.
God, he hated Parahumans. There was a very good reason he had every one of his men checked for the presence of the brain structures that indicated one and only hired normal people. You just couldn't trust them. Every last one of them was nuts and dangerous with it.
After this, he was going to make sure they only got hired by sane people...
"I made two dollars and sixty-three cents," the Varga noted with a smug grin as he gently laid the latest captive down next to the others.
"You can buy the eggs later, then," Taylor said, appearing next to her other aspect. Both of them smirked at each other, looked around in satisfaction, and vanished again.
Thomas jerked awake, frantically looking around and grabbing for a weapon. Where was he? The last he remembered…
His breathing nearly stopped as he recalled something horrible. He was almost on the point of passing out when he managed to recover. He peered at the walls and floor with enormous suspicion, seeing nothing other than light-gray painted poured concrete. It took several seconds before he realized that he could actually see it properly. Looking up he noticed that the emergency lighting was on, seemingly back to normal. A glance both ways showed a familiar curved passageway. He was sitting on the floor leaning against something hard, which when he checked turned out to be the partly open door to his office.
'What the hell?' he thought in confused disorientation. 'How...'
His pack was, he now noticed, lying on the floor next to him. After a long moment he reached for it, only then also realizing that his P-90 was clipped to his tactical vest as it had been when he left the office. A quick check showed five loaded mags, both pistols, all his grenades… In fact, all the stuff he could remember equipping himself with. All apparently unused and ready.
Checking his pack he found it had everything in as well.
By now confusion had turned to complete disbelief, and extreme worry. What in god's name was going on?
A very faint sound somewhere off to the right made him twitch violently and grab his gun, then freeze and listen intently. It didn't repeat and after over three minutes of listening he decided it had been his imagination.
Eventually, he slowly stood up, finding that somewhat to his surprise he felt fine. He had distinct memories of running, running for what was obviously far too long to be possible, and through areas that simply didn't exist on the base. Or, he suspected now, anywhere.
But they were so vivid…
'Fucking Saurial is playing mind games, somehow. Hallucinogens in the air, or she got me with a dart full of LSD or something,' he finally decided, turning around and running one hand over the surface of his door. It was entirely unmarked, no sign of the deep clawmarks he'd thought he'd seen on it. Another hallucination.
'I'm going to figure out how to kill that scaly bitch,' he snarled silently, picking up his pack and swinging it over his shoulders. A check of his watch showed it was only five minutes after the time he remembered leaving the office. She'd obviously jumped him outside and drugged him, or used some weird Tinker device on him. God alone knew what. But it had worn off, as far as he could tell, and now he had a chance.
Screw Smith and his men, and forget the base. It was too dangerous now to try to make contact or save anything else. Who knows what she'd try next? He had his data, his talents, and contacts no one but him knew about. He'd set the self-destruct and get out, with any luck the blast would catch the lizard by surprise and possibly even kill the damn thing. In the confusion he could escape. By the time the PRT turned up, he'd be long gone.
Looking both ways down the corridor once more, listening for any trace of Saurial, he turned and started walking rapidly, the weapon held ready and his thermal sight active. Even in his hurry he didn't stop scanning the area, including behind him, for traces of the reptilian horror, but she never made an appearance. Reaching the stairs in a couple of minutes, he cautiously looked over the edge, then up at the ceiling, before making his way down them as quietly as he could. Faint metallic sounds echoed around him in the process. Reaching the bottom he swept the area, then exited the stairwell onto the lower floor. Some of the backup lights were out and a couple were flickering every now and then, but overall he could see pretty well.
Moving along the lower corridor, he stopped as a memory struck him. Somewhere along here there was an auxiliary HVAC control room and if he remembered correctly, there was a computer terminal in it that was connected to the main system.
Nodding to himself he went past the closet that concealed his tunnel and kept going, walking another fifty yards until he reached a door labeled 'ENVRNMNT 2,' which he opened. Going inside he looked around for a moment, orientating himself. He hadn't been in here in at least two years, and it looked like no one else had either. Two small battery-powered lights were on, one on either side of the fifteen foot square room, and he was gratified to see that the main power other than the lighting was working based on the blinking lights on some of the equipment. There was also a pervasive deep hum coming from somewhere in the stacks of industrial equipment filling much of the space.
Moving to the right he circumnavigated the large mass of pipes and valves in the middle of the room, spotting a keyboard half-protruding from a shelf on the back wall of the room. Above it was an LCD monitor with a small green light on the bottom edge. He went over to it and prodded a key, smiling when the screen flickered a couple of times and lit with the familiar login prompt for his computer network.
Quickly typing in a password, then another one, he flipped through innocent-sounding menus until he reached one listed as 'Cleaning Services,' which he selected. Under that was a sub-menu item called 'System Purge.' Selecting this brought up another password prompt. He entered the relevant string of characters.
'Operations issued from this level cannot be halted once active,' the screen helpfully informed him, along with a fourth password box. He typed in the nine characters and hit return.
Enter supervisor command... the machine requested.
'Purge immediate' he typed.
Purge initiated. Time to completion 5 minutes 29 seconds...
'Destruct, delay twenty minutes, no alert' This command was also accepted.
Set.
Quiet mode active.
00:20:00
00:19:59
00:19:58
Thomas watched the countdown for a few seconds, slightly despondent about all his hard work of years going for nothing like this, then exited the menus and cleared the screen. Now there was nothing to see or hear to let anyone know that in just under twenty minutes there was going to be one fucking enormous explosion in the middle of Brockton Bay, followed by a sudden downward adjustment of nearby properties.
Satisfied, he left the room and headed for the closet, still looking around for any signs of Saurial. Reaching it he opened the door, then peered in. A few mops and buckets, all bone-dry, met his view, along with a couple of shelves full of paint, solvents, and random maintenance items. Kicking the things on the floor out of the way he felt around under the lowest shelf until he found a hole about three quarters of an inch in diameter in the wall, which he knew looked like a place there had once been another bracket attached. Removing his right glove he inserted his index finger into the hole as far as it would go and waited. A moment later there was a faint warmth on the digit, followed by a beep, then a click as the entire wall moved a little.
Removing his finger from the hidden biometric sensor he grabbed the shelves and pushed, the concealed door swinging away from him on well-oiled hinges. Closing the door to the closet he entered the tunnel, lights coming on as he did so, then also closed the disguised door when he was through it. It clicked back into place, locking solidly.
Taking a breath of relief, Thomas checked the screen next to him that had lit up when the door was closed, seeing the status of the tunnel systems shown on it. He made sure than nothing was indicating an error, then tapped in an override code. When it was accepted he nodded. He had ten minutes to reach the other end, just over a mile and a half away, before the traps came back online. There was a rebreather system cached there that would let him exit the submerged termination of the escape tunnel and swim to a place he could get out of the water. Once he was clear, he could head for the safe house, some dry clothes, and a vehicle loaded with cash, weapons and fuel.
Once he was in it, he was out of here so fast… And he had no intention of ever coming within a hundred miles of the whole fucking state never mind the city for the rest of his life.
Settling his primary weapon comfortably across his chest, Calvert began jogging down the tunnel, looking around for any signs of lizards, while feeling that he just might have made it.
'Huh. He actually did it. He's perfectly happy to kill everyone in the place and the buildings above it,' Taylor said with deep disgust, watching the tall skinny man head deeper into the tunnel. She was currently in the form of the tiny dragon, perched on the back of the well hidden door that let into the base. She'd shadowed the man the entire time, much closer than he'd have been happy about considering she'd been sitting on his backpack and grinning to herself.
"He is a man of no ethics at all," the Varga agreed with sadness and irritation in his voice. "The only one Thomas Calvert cares about is Thomas Calvert. I know the type all too well, I'm afraid. His mercenaries may be criminals but they are far better people, they at least have loyalty to their comrades and would probably draw the line at the murder of hundreds if not thousands of innocents, by and large." He sounded amused for a moment. "I am becoming rather fond of Sergeant Owens. He is quite intelligent. Pity he's on the wrong side."
'Make sure none of them get killed,' Taylor said. 'The ones that helped Coil need to go to prison, and there may be some who can be returned to society.'
"I will do my best. Enjoy your little amusements with our friend there," he snickered. "I am looking forward to seeing what happens."
'Me too,' she laughed, jumping into the air and winging after the disappearing super-villain, going over her plans as she flew. 'Tell them to come in, but do the other thing first.'
"Already in progress," her friend said, with a definite grin in his voice. She watched and listened through the other aspect as he did the other thing.
Owens twitched as he heard a click echo around the entire area. He worked out what it was it just before a sound started, one that everyone recognized instantly. The noise rattled their eardrums and made them all exchange a disturbed look, then peer around with even greater worry.
"Endgame," that horrible voice said with a laugh underlying it, before the speakers clicked off once again.
Two seconds later there was a huge blast from somewhere below them, which Owens was pretty certain was the direction to the main door.
"Oh, fucking hell, now what?" Trevino moaned.
Owens had no answer, but merely waved them onward as they tried to get back to the rest of their group. He could swear he could feel eyes on the back of his neck the entire time.
In the cafeteria, Kowalski and Foltz exchanged uneasy glances. That voice was horrible. Kowalski looked at the tablet that was on the table next to him, which now displayed an extra score column labeled PRT.
"Shit," he sighed, before picking up his P-90 and making sure it was loaded and cocked.
The two men manning the 50 cal kept their eyes on the door, while the ones with the grenade launchers got ready.
"Chen, set up the rest of those claymores," Foltz said. With a certain amount of skittishness the armorer did as ordered, two of the other mercenaries disappearing out the door with him. The ones left behind looked at each other, then went back to listening to the sounds coming closer from two different directions. Not long after that, the gunfire started.
Ianthe turned to Legend, her finger to her earpiece. "Raptaur says get ready."
Paul nodded, taking position and raising both arms. On either side, Dragon and Colin readied their weapons, while behind them Assault and Battery were poised to attack, the latter glowing brightly with a full charge. Surrounding them were twenty-five heavily armed PRT assault troopers, all looking like they were ready for anything.
The purple reptile held up a hand, all the fingers extended. She started counting down, folding each clawed digit away. "Four… Three… Two..." On one she pointed at the door and grinned.
"After you."
"Thank you, Ianthe," Paul replied politely, then blew a hole large enough to drive a car through in the wall and the two meters of laminated titanium and chrome-vanadium steel that was behind it with a couple of massive blasts of his laser fire. The blue light vaporized much of the metal and scattered the remainder around the inside of the base in a shower of sparks and glowing fragments.
"Impressive," the lizard noted, watching with interest. He smiled at her, nodded to his colleagues, and headed inside. The rest of the assault team followed, splitting up to head down each corridor as they encountered them. Ianthe strolled in behind them, looking amused and anticipatory.
It didn't take very long before the first shots were fired.
Hannah watched as Metis nodded, then said something in the Family language. Turning to her and the rest of her team, she switched to English. "We can go in any time. Legend just kicked the door in, Raptaur says the mercs are looking pretty upset about it. Half of them are in the cafeteria and setting up claymores, the rest are in the corridors surrounding the area and digging in."
"All right. Thank you," she replied, looking around at her team. Craig, Rory, and Robin were tense and ready for action, while the troopers were all holding their weapons and looking like they were also looking forward to the next part. Even though the smell was still horrific, she was as well. Soon this whole thing would be over and it would be time for the next part, interrogating Calvert and his men and finding out how deep his operation went.
She was fairly sure she wouldn't like the answer, but she needed to know.
"Would you like me to do the honors, or do you want to do it?" Metis added.
Looking at the large metal obstruction, which their scanners had shown was over four feet thick and made of a number of layers of extremely tough metal alloys, Hannah stepped aside. "Go ahead," she said, curious to see what the armored reptile would do.
With a nod, Metis reached over her shoulder and grabbed the handle that suddenly was protruding from an opening in her armor that hadn't been there before and shouldn't be able to be there now. Drawing a sword nearly seven feet long, with a blade six inches wide at the hilt yet so thin in cross-section it vanished when seen edge on, she simply pushed it through the door like the metal was butter and ran it down the middle where the two halves met. Hannah gaped as the creature removed whatever locking mechanism was in there in seconds, then repeated the operation on either side of the door sections through the hinges.
Apparently satisfied, Metis put the sword away with a quick motion, then dug her claws into the door surface and the concrete floor and pushed hard.
A good twenty tons of metal grated across the concrete with a shriek, before tipping over and crashing down in a cloud of dust. She repeated the operation on the other side, leaving a gap eight feet wide in the middle. Turning to the watching people she waved at the gap. "There you go."
"Ah… thank you, Metis," Hannah managed after a few more seconds. She waved her people into motion, all of them heading cautiously but rapidly into the underground base with their night vision gear active and the UV illuminators on. Metis, when she looked back, had vanished, but she was fairly sure the lizard was in there somewhere.
"Tekeli-li"
Thomas nearly crapped himself. Skidding to a halt, he whipped around with his gun raised, peering back into the depths of the tunnel in the direction that lead to the base, listening intently as the echoes of his footsteps died away. He was, according to the marks on the wall, about a third of a mile from the entrance, which was too close to survive the blast wave from the self-destruct system. It would be channeled by the tunnel like a cannon barrel, so he needed to be at least twice as far away before it went off.
Not to mention that if he stuck around long enough for the traps to rearm, his base going up would be the least of his problems. He wouldn't live long enough to be killed by the shockwave.
Swallowing and hoping desperately that his ears and mind were playing tricks on him, he turned back to his original direction and resumed jogging. The tunnel had gone down about fifty feet so far and then leveled off, putting it only slightly above high tide level on the floor. He knew from the last time he'd checked that the last hundred yards of the underground passage was normally flooded, but only the final fifty or sixty feet was under serious amounts of seawater.
He wasn't looking forward to the cold water, March was way too early to go swimming in the bay, but he had no choice in the matter. On the up side it would make it very difficult for anyone to track his movements. Armsmaster probably had some widget or other that would do the job in the end but by then he would be five hundred miles away and looking entirely different. The safe house had a lot of disguise material in it and he was pretty good with the supplies, having practiced extensively for just this sort of thing.
He thought ahead.
Every now and then he tried splitting off a new timeline, not really expecting anything. Sure enough, each time he did he got the void instantly. Whatever was causing it seemed to be spreading. Hopefully once he was well clear of this hellish city his abilities would go back to normal. He was going to have difficulty if not, but even so, he'd persevere and succeed despite the goddam Family. Just somewhere else a long, long way away.
The distance to the end of the tunnel and his escape steadily shrank. A couple of minutes later a pressure wave went over him, a distant echoing explosion accompanying it. He glanced over his shoulder with wide eyes, speeding up. After a moment he realized it couldn't possibly be his base going up, it was far too soon and nowhere near large enough. Wondering what it was he kept going. Probably something Smith's people had done.
The tunnel was slowly turning left, heading more directly to the shore of the bay now. He'd spent a hell of a lot of money having this dug, covering it up with a number of infrastructure upgrades to the city nearly a decade back. No one alive knew about it other than him, and he'd gone to a lot of effort to keep it that way.
Suddenly he slowed, staring into the dimly lit distance. Thomas frowned, dropping to a walk, as he approached the apex of the curve. 'That… should not be there,' he thought in a very worried fashion.
There was a door in the wall of the tunnel.
There couldn't be a door in the wall of the tunnel. There hadn't been a door in the wall of the tunnel the last time he'd come down to check the place out about two years ago. He was absolutely certain of that.
But now… there was a door in the wall of the tunnel…
Part of him urged caution and suggested he should keep going and ignore the anomalous door. Perhaps it would go away if he did.
Another part of him was worried that something horrible would jump out of it and follow him if he didn't check it out.
Yet another part of him was convinced that something horrible would jump out of it if he did check it out, but it was shouted down by the first two parts.
After a period of indecision, he checked his watch again. He'd used half his time, but he knew from previous tests he only needed three minutes from this point to make it to the end, two and a half if he pushed himself. He could spare a few seconds to check it out. And it was entirely sensible to do so.
He kept telling himself that as he approached the door with his gun ready.
Standing in front of it, he inspected it, seeing a door exactly like the ones in the rest of the non-secure parts of his base. Metal frame and door, heavy duty hinges, a lever handle over a high security lock. Nothing out of the ordinary aside from the way it had appeared somewhere it shouldn't be.
A few seconds passed, while he listened carefully. Then he put his ear to the door and listened again, just to be sure.
Nothing. Not a sound from the door, or the tunnel, aside from the faint lapping of water coming from the direction of the seaward exit.
Eventually, he cautiously stood to one side and reached for the handle, pushing it down, then pulling the door open.
He stared at what was on the other side of it, the blood draining from his face. He felt light headed.
The glowing yellow-orange reptilian eye, considerably larger than he was, that was peering back at him blinked. The slitted pupil widened with interest.
A faint hiss came from his throat. A couple more seconds passed in silence before he very carefully took a step back, seized the door handle, gently closed the portal, then leaned his forehead against it for a moment.
He took a deep breath. Then another.
Then he screamed like a little girl and ran for his life.
Behind him he heard a deep, deep laugh, which spurred him on.
"I hate this city!" he screamed, running as fast as he could towards the sea and safety.
Dragon motioned to the four troopers that were accompanying her. All of them looked around at the distant boom of a grenade detonating, but it was on the next floor and some distance away so not currently relevant. She also heard a crackling zap sound which she easily identified as one of Colin's taser projectiles going off. "Keep watch, I won't be long," she told her escort.
"Ma'am," the corporal leading the group nodded, turning to scan to the right with his weapon. One of the others did the same, the other two turned in the opposite direction. Each of them was armed with both a foam projector and a more lethal sub-machine gun as a backup, along with foam grenades and a pistol. One of each pair was wielding the foam gun, the other one had the firearm held ready.
Satisfied that if any of the mercenaries made it past the others, the Guild cape entered the server room and looked around. The lights were on although they were out in the rest of the base, Saurial and Raptaur's work she knew. Moving to the relevant server rack after identifying all the equipment present, she pulled a high-bandwidth optical cable out of a port in her left arm and plugged it into the now totally compromised network switch, making contact with her program that was running on the system hacker unit she'd given to Saurial.
Under a minute later she was downloading the entirety of Calvert's system into her onboard storage at several gigabytes a second, quickly looking through it for anything that stood out.
One thing immediately caught her attention, and caused her do her version of sucking in a breath of horror. 'Oh, hell, you fucking idiot,' she thought to herself as she found a set of files that detailed the civilian identities of hundreds of Parahumans. 'If this gets out...'
It would be absolute chaos. Possibly to the level of civil war.
She'd instantly closed the file when she recognized what it contained, before scanning more that a few names. Unfortunately her internal programming wouldn't let her wipe the memory of what she'd seen, although she was able to bury it deeply enough she had no conscious knowledge of it and set some very unlikely conditions for the recovery of it. If directly ordered, she'd have no choice but to retrieve it, but if no one knew it was there they hopefully couldn't make that order.
Encrypting the rest of the files without letting them come near her consciousness centers she did the same thing to them, then after a short period of thought erased the originals and overwrote them with random data. She was very hesitant about doing so, as it was destroying evidence, but that evidence was far too dangerous to leave lying around for any PRT computer technician to come across.
'I just hope this wasn't on the backup sites,' she thought to herself, very worried. Certain things shouldn't be spread around and she was fairly certain that there were people in the PRT who would quite happily use that data if they thought they could get something out of it. The PRT already had a lot of the information, but certainly not all of it, and she didn't see a good reason that they should acquire it.
If it became a necessity, she could pass it on, but there were damn few scenarios she could come up with where letting such vital and sensitive information out was better than not doing so.
The AI spent thirty seconds or so checking for the automatic backup scripts to see if this particular file set was replicated somewhere else. It was with some relief that she worked out that it wasn't copied over to either of the remote sites, since apparently Coil felt it was too important to risk as well. The last access to the files appeared to be from his personal computer based on the ID codes, the data suggesting he regularly read the files. It was likely that he maintained his own personal backup of them, probably to a portable storage system based on other access logs. That would either be on his person or in his office.
Hopefully she could find it first. Her simulations of the chaos that would be caused merely by the release of the first dozen names she'd read before she could stop herself were enough to make her very uneasy, and that was the tip of the iceberg.
Calvert had obviously been collecting this information for a long time, and she very much doubted it was for any reason other than to use as blackmail or simply to cause trouble. It wasn't something she wanted to see someone else try, and she could think of a few names that wouldn't balk at such actions.
'No, let's try not to make the entire Parahuman population of the country panic all at the same time,' she thought with black humor. Satisfied that for the moment she'd done what she could to prevent that, she scanned the files for anything else similarly sensitive. Nothing quite that bad jumped out, but there was a lot of data present that should never have left the secure PRT systems. If they hadn't found out about Coil when they did… She didn't like to think about how bad it could have ended up.
When the data finished copying, she contacted Director Piggot. "I've located and cloned Coil's servers, director," she reported. "Saurial's bypass prevented his automatic data purge working, but as we suspected he did try it. He's also set the self destruct system, it's going to try to blow the base in about six minutes. I can stop it if you want, but even if it goes off there's only going to be a few loud bangs from the detonators. The main charge is inert."
"Bastard." The blonde woman sounded coldly furious. "Abort it, there's no need to take any chances," she added.
A few seconds later, she said, "Done. I can't find any other traps, he seems to have relied on the main base destruct system to wreck this in combination with a system purge."
"Good. Leave the rest of it for the forensics team," Piggot told her. "Go and help the others, we still haven't found Calvert himself."
"I suspect Saurial is still worrying him, Director," Dragon chuckled as she left the room and sealed the door. Motioning to one of the troopers, she watched as he buried the entrance in containment foam, which would prevent any of the mercs getting inside if they managed to slip past. The evil laugh she got as a response made her grin inside.
"I sure hope so. Couldn't happen to a more deserving fucker."
Amused, she went with the troopers, deeper into the base to where the sound of fighting was getting louder.
Thomas kept running, hearing the sound of water slapping against rock get closer from the front, while there were unnerving sounds coming from behind him. When he risked a glance back, he saw to his horror that the lights were going out one by one.
"Oh, Christ, not again," he moaned. Stopping for a moment he turned and emptied his P-90 back down the corridor, then threw two grenades into the shadows. Neither one of them went off. "Fuck." He turned back and resumed running. "Fuck, fuck, fuck," he mumbled under his breath, panting for air as he ran.
The sounds from behind seemed to be keeping to a constant distance, but that didn't make it any better. When he heard that horrific "Tekeli-li" cry somewhere back there he yipped and ran faster. He was beginning to wonder if it had been a hallucination after all…
Rounding the final corner, he kept going at breakneck speed, looking for the alcove where his rebreather was stored. Just as he was passing the point that he thought it should be, he heard a different sound from behind, which made him look over his shoulder. It had sounded like a footstep.
Misjudging his footing, he slipped on the damp stone and slammed into the wall, almost knocking the wind out of himself. Gasping for breath, he leaned one hand on the cold stonework and tried to recover, then stood up.
He screeched in shock when he saw Saurial standing ten feet away watching him, motionless and with her head cocked to the side inquisitively.
"Why are you doing this?" he screamed. "How are you doing this?"
She slowly smiled at him in a manner that made his blood run cold. "Why?" She chuckled, a low dangerous sound. "Let's just say that a mutual acquaintance suggested that you needed to be stopped. Someone else I met agreed. She wants to meet you very much, Thomas." The lizard-girl tipped her head the other way as he stared at her, sweating wildly. "I expect you'll have a lot to talk about. Oh, by the way, your base isn't going to go bang, we've got your computers, your backup sites are also intact and being ripped to pieces by the PRT, they've arrested all your spies, and all your mercenaries are either captured or about to be."
She shrugged as he stared in horror. "You're fucked." After a moment, she snapped her fingers. "Oh, right. I also have this."
He stared at the very familiar-appearing external drive unit she was holding up with a smug look on her scaly face, then frantically patted himself down, before sagging. It was gone.
"Thirty seconds before your traps come online again, by the way," she noted calmly. "You can run if you want. It won't help."
Roaring with rage, he pulled the gun around and opened up on her. She simply stood there, the drive in one hand behind her back, while the rounds pinged all over the place. When the gun clicked empty, he lowered it with trembling hands, staring at the demonic creature which was smirking at him.
"Run, little human," she whispered.
He did.
Expecting every second to feel teeth and claws sink into his back, he ran like he'd never run before.
Calvert made it about a hundred feet before he abruptly realized that the surface under his feet was much too soft to be stone. It made him stumble and catch himself on the wall of the passageway, which to his horror was also too soft and the wrong texture. The sound of the lapping water had also stopped, now that he thought about it. Pulling out his flashlight he flicked it on and waved it around, then cautiously prodded the nearest wall with a finger, his heart hammering.
Turning around, he spotted Saurial standing a little way back, still smirking at him.
The other thing he spotted, with a level of terror that completely dwarfed anything he'd so far experienced, was the array of enormous needle-like teeth, as long as he was tall, that were slowly closing and blocking off the view of the reptilian cape. He looked down again, finally realizing that he was standing on a forked tongue large enough to carpet his living room.
"Tattletale sends her regards," Saurial laughed as the huge mouth closed completely.
Dropping to his knees, letting go of the useless gun, Thomas despaired. He never even felt the prick on the back of his neck but he was very glad of the darkness that took him.
"I believe that is probably mission accomplished in every major aspect," the Varga said with satisfaction. Taylor, feeling Coil slump on her Umihebi form's tongue, smiled faintly.
'I think so,' she agreed. 'Lisa will be pleased and sorry she missed it. The video should be good though.'
"I think we'll have to remove parts of it or the PRT will get a little over-excited, but I'm sure she can edit together a good version for them," he replied with a grin of his own. The Saurial aspect looked very pleased. "I'd better get back, they've nearly finished. I'll let them know we have Coil safely contained."
'Think I should bring him back as Raptaur, or Umihebi?'
"Well, We need to formally introduce her to the PRT sooner or later. We may as well do it now when there's no one around to get too worked up."
'OK. I'll be waiting.'
"I'll get them to come down to the shore," he told her, watching as she carefully backed the enormous sea-serpent form up into the bay, having stuck her entire head and mouth into the end of Calvert's tunnel to set up their little trap. When she was clear and submerged, he disappeared silently. Taylor swam away to their agreed meeting point, wondering how the PRT was going to react and trying to suppress her giggles before she accidentally swallowed the villain in her mouth.
Sometimes it really was good to be her, she thought happily.