Everything was going wrong. Coil liked to think that he was always in control of whatever situation he was in. Through a combination of judicious use of his powers and his planning, he always was. Years of plotting and scheming, tens of millions of dollars, living a literal double life. Everything for power, to be in control. And in a single day it was dropping away from under his feet.
His perfect view of the future gone like smoke in the wind.
In one reality, submerged underground, the entirety of his base shook around him. Distantly, the sound muted through the thick metal doors of his office, gunshots echoed down corridors accompanied by bellowed orders. All of it was buried under the incessant wailing of the alarm system. Sequestered in his office, Coil couldn't do anything but watch as a towering man advanced through cramped corridors. Bullets ricocheted off of his skin and helmet a like, a trail of flattened ammunition and broken mercenaries left behind him. Even the arsenal of tinkertech weaponry he'd acquired for a small fortune did nothing.
As the Cape advanced, he cursed and shot away from the computer, heading for the nearest emergency exit in the opposite direction of the base invader. The countdown in the corner of the monitor ticked downwards, the shattered remains of a radio thrown in a fit of rage burbled static from a corner of the room. It didn't matter. He always had more, but no matter what instructions he gave his men, nothing slowed the Cape down.
In the other reality Thomas Calvert struggled to keep the panic off his face. Already, he'd received confirmation from his men through their encrypted line that the base was under attack by the same Cape. Tyrant, easily identified by his crude helmet and giant frame. He hadn't given much thought to the boy when the PRT got the report of the Cape's debut against Glory Girl. The Dallon girl was powerful of course, but he'd long since learnt how limited her vaunted 'invulnerability' was. Having teams of skilled snipers was so useful at times.
But knowing who was attacking him so brazenly didn't help him, not here. Tyrant, Ashton Grave according to the report that was far above his clearance level, had thus far proved impervious to anything he'd tried. The file the PRT had gathered on the boy gave Thomas less than nothing. The only positive he could take out of it was that Tyrant didn't know where he was but even that was cancelled out by the fact that his base was under attack in both realities. If it was just one then he could collapse it and use the other, the loss would sting his pride, but he'd swallowed it enough times coming this far that it would only be a passing annoyance; one that he'd pay back many times over once he worked out how to hurt the damn child.
He'd excused himself from the meeting he was in, citing a headache. It wasn't far off from the truth and, luckily or unluckily, he was clearly rattled enough that the PRT staff he'd been meeting with had bought the excuse easily. It hadn't been an important meeting, merely a perfunctory review of the active players inside the city. Ironic, that Coil was often brought up, though Thomas' poker face had long since grown past the point where hearing the name of his alter-ego would make him react. Still, it did bring him some pride seeing how blind the PRT were to the real threat right in front of their faces.
The much more interesting meeting was happening a few floors up, one that his Tattletale was still watching right this moment. The subject of the meeting was Tyrant, and what had originally been his normal cautious monitoring of any newcomer to the Cape scene or Brockton Bay in general, had suddenly become his number one priority. He'd been watching it through the security cameras live in his bunker, until the Cape in questions had burst through the ceiling like it was made of wet cardboard.
If he could only get in contact with her, maybe he could salvage something from the situation. A weakness, something he could exploit, something she'd seen with her oh so useful power that he hadn't-
Back in the first reality the doors to his office were blown inwards, taking large chunks of solid concrete with them from either side. They fell slowly but with an inexorable momentum, almost silent until they crashed with a great boom into the floor. Blown wind from the fallen debris brushes against his costume, the material thin enough that he could feel it moving over him.
Outside in the corridor, the hulking form of Tyrant stood hand outstretched. He was lit sporadically in red, the swirling emergency lights casting sharp shadows across broad shoulders and the jagged helmet. Distantly, he noted how the cameras had undersold his size. The cameras watching from above and the PRT reports had told him Tyrant was large, but if the doors hadn't taken part of the wall above them with them when they fell, he would have had to stoop slightly to be fully visible.
He stepped inside.
"That was satisfying," a youthful voice echoed slightly from inside the helmet, calm and unconcerned.
Coil side-eyed the secret escape route over his shoulder, unwilling to turn away from Tyrant. The teenager's stance was relaxed, though that meant little when dealing with Capes. Half of them could kill you without moving a muscle, a lot of the rest could do it before you'd realised they had move at all.
"Don't," Tyrant said, voice flat. It rang as a command, the tone familiar to the Villain as one he frequently used.
He tore his eyes away from the disguised number pad but couldn't stop them settling on a twitching hand peaking out from the 'expanded' doorway behind the Cape.
Not that there's much to command anymore.
Was he that obvious? Or were Thinker powers backing up Tyrant's observations? Thomas desperately wished that he could split the timeline again without giving up either of his current realities, or that he'd spent more time investigating the boy. Without it, he was flying as blind as a regular human against a force of nature. The thought brought back memories, ones he'd rather avoid.
"What do you want?" Thomas asked, the tremor of fear in his voice not completely faked. Even when he could split timelines his power wasn't combat oriented and the crumpled forms of his men out in the corridors stood testament to what chances he had in close combat.
What else did that leave him but bargaining. His pride wasn't worth his life after all.
Tyrant ignored him, he leant over Thomas' desk. The large wooden piece of furniture looked like a middle-schooler's, it came up to barely above his knee. Thomas swallowed.
"Thirty minutes?" Tyrant clicked his tongue, sounding oddly disappointed.
He moved around the desk, shoulders so wide they almost brushed against Thomas as he did. For a moment, Thomas forgot to breath as he passed. He'd been in the same room as Alexandria before, bore her glare. He'd been scared then, powerless, he was terrified now. There was almost a gravity to the boy, the man, like he sucked the oxygen out of the room and Thomas was left floundering to breath.
Keyboard keys clicked, and his gaze snapped to his computer. Hunched forwards in order to reach, Tyrant tapped away at the tiny looking keyboard. His fingertips covered multiple keys, pressing each of them every time he typed. If it was anyone else, in any other situation, Coil would have found the image funny.
Instead all he felt was panic wrap it's cold fingers around his heart. He didn't doubt that in both realities, whether he be staring helplessly at the Cape while he typed, or fumbling with a phone, this was happening. After every press of random letters and numbers, he pressed enter. Warnings and errors flashed across the screen each time as the password was entered incorrectly. The timer halved, then halved again, and again. Fifteen minutes, seven and a half, three and-
Thomas drew his pistol, fired. Once, twice, the sounds oddly far away over his harsh breathing. The bullets steamed in Tyrant's open palm, raised out to cover the computer. Shit, shit, shit. Idly, he pressed enter again. The timer clicked down to just over a minute.
Despite the tremors of terror thrumming through him, he liked to think of himself as a logical person. Losing the base wasn't the issue, not by this point. This reality was doomed, but the longer he could keep it going the more chance had at gaining information, and through information any kind of edge.
"None of that now," Tyrant chided, like an adult might a child, "I just have a simple question for you. Where are you?"
In the second reality, Thomas stared at his phone held in a trembling hand. He tried to tell himself that it was the violent shaking of the ground. No doubt his base going up in flames. On the screen, a single message glared back at him.
[They've got his mom, but Piggot's pretty sure that's not enough to force him into anything. New trigger, because of him. She doesn't think he cares. 90% sure she's right, from that Armsmaster footage I can see his powers are doing something to his emotions. I've got nothing we can use, he'll be antagonistic if we approach him, whether we grab his mom or not.]
He wanted to throw the phone against the wall and scream. If he could've split reality again, he would have, just to work off some stress. As far as Tattletale knew he hadn't been watching the meeting at all, though he was certain she'd at least guessed some aspects of his power. It was unavoidable with a Thinker of that level. All the more frustrating then that she still hadn't given him anything that he could use. Of all the times for the PRT's blindness and ineptitude to strike back at him, it had to be now?
Thomas stuffed the heavily encrypted phone back into his pocket, looking every bit the same as the standard issue phone the PRT gave their consultants, before turning and pacing across the clean white tiled floor of the bathroom. Nobody else was inside, leaving him to his thoughts and frustrations, though he at all times he felt the creeping awareness of the three-hundred-and-sixty-degree security camera above his head, embedded into the ceiling.
It was still salvageable; in this reality he hadn't called back the cells of mercenaries he kept stationed around the city in the smaller bases. Losing the main base wasn't ideal, the blow to his pride hurt more than the tens of millions of dollars he'd invested into the place. Money wasn't the issue, with his powers and time then he in practice had a near infinite supply of the thing that kept society rolling. No, money could be regained, he could build more bases.
The issue was the apparently unstoppable Brute coming for his head. Fuck.
Underground, in the other reality, Coil floundered for words briefly, racking his mind on how to reply. Could he still bluff his way out of this? He knew when to cut his losses, often because he could check in real time what one course of action would cost him over another.
For now, he had to prioritize keeping this timeline open for as long as possible. He needed information and ending it would leave him vulnerable. Even if he were to split realities immediately after closing this one, in both he'd still be too close together and trapped inside the PRT Headquarters. A risk he avoided as much as much as he could on any day, doing so while actively hunted? He hadn't gotten this far by being stupid. As futile as it was to stand up to Tyrant in close quarters, as terrified as he was, he wouldn't end this reality yet.
Coil's mind scrambled for ideas, searching through back up plans and tactics for just this moment. A physically unassailable foe, base burning around him. No resources, just himself.
"Where am I? I, I don't understand," Coil stammered, playing into the fear, "Please, you've got to understand, he locked me up here. Threatened to hurt my family, please, you have to get me out of here-"
Something cracked against the wall right next to his head, scattering concrete dust over his shoulder, standing out against the dark skin-tight costume. A bullet? Tyrant's handheld only a single bullet now, dwarfed between the two fingers it lay perched between. The index finger was pushed straight out above the curved thumb.
He flicked it, Coil thought to himself, a little numb to the fear now. Adrenaline still surged through him, his heart was still beating like a jackhammer, but the all-encompassing terror was passing.
No man was immune to fear, but he'd long since inured himself to it. Across countless timelines, he'd died countless times. There was reassurance in knowing that there was always the other reality, knowledge that let him think when the Merchant or Empire thug would soil themselves.
"It's a wonder you've fooled the PRT for so long," Tyrant drawled, confident, "with acting like that Mister Calvert."
Coil carefully didn't freeze up, clamping down on his body's natural reaction to flinch away. The Unwritten Rules were unwritten for a reason, and he was no stranger to exploiting his power to his advantage, the database full of Capes' secret identities and information on their personal lives attested to that. If word got out about that, Coil would be the target of every parahuman faction in the city and beyond.
None of which mattered, as the hulking parahuman in front of him casually admitted to knowledge nobody could have. He'd been meticulous. There was nothing linking Thomas Calvert to Coil, of his men only Creep would have any idea of the link between the two identities. But Creep wouldn't betray him, the man's base desires wrapped him too tightly in a web of Coil's making.
"Who?"
Tyrant loomed, his sheer size and presence pulled Coil's attention in as if it had its own gravity. Nothing about the boy was professionally presented. This close it was obvious that his clothes were the cheap kind sold in the Market rather than the Boardwalk, and that was before wear and tear had torn holes in the fabric and faded whatever had been emblazoned on it into an illegible smear of color. It stretched across Tyrant's torso; the holes pulled wide into tears bearing unmarked skin. A soft breeze would pull the thing apart.
And yet bullets had done nothing. A field then? A physical empowerment that extended to his clothes?
"Playing dumb doesn't suit you. Aren't you the 'James Bond' villain, everything planned out to a T? Surely you didn't spend so much time finding out other Capes' secrets without thinking that someone would do the same to you?"
It was the people that did know that worried him.
That Woman…
Every time he pushed too far against Cauldron's interests, or came even remotely close, he was brutally shut down, always by a woman with black hair in a suit and a hat. He'd seen her, while meeting with the Doctor, though she'd stayed silent and hadn't even looked at him for the entire duration. He held no illusions that he wasn't being closely monitored, someone with his powers would have to be, but it still irked him fiercely whenever they pulled his reins. Only fools were so transfixed by the gold of their gilded cage that they did not see that they were trapped.
He'd had to approach them in his civilian identity, they couldn't accurately predict the powers that their vials would give, not enough to build a Cape persona before their extensive power testing. They knew who he was, that weakness a heavier debt than their monetary payment, despite the agonizing years it hadn't taken him to pay it off. And now another, unaffiliated, unknown Cape blitzed his organization and knew his secret identity.
Was he wrong? Could Tyrant not be independent, but another agent, just like that Woman? It would be near impossible for a Cape of this caliber to go unheard of for so long, but if anyone could manage it, it would be them.
"I have no idea what you're talking about, please-"
The pain came a moment before the crack of the bullet splitting the air. Coil collapsed, a ragged scream tearing itself free of his throat. His hands snapped to his knee, ignoring the pain the pressure caused. Viscous liquid seeped between his fingers, only visible where it spread over the white snake that wound around his suit.
A smooth hole gaped at the front of his knee, and he didn't need to see it to know the bullet had gone right through. It burned, an all-encompassing pain that clawed its way through his entire leg and up, settling over his mind. The bullet had gone right through his kneecap, likely shattering it. He'd seen enough injuries in his time on the PRT special forces to know the likelihood of walking normally again after an injury like this without immediate or parahuman attention.
Concrete scraped across the floor as trainers brushed the shattered remnants of the wall aside in confident strides, but Coil could barely hear it over the rushing of blood in his ears. He hadn't been hurt like this in a long time, a benefit of being a behind the scenes supervillain rather than any run of the mill Brute. Even in the few timelines where he'd been killed, it always happened quickly, or he closed the timeline before he could be hurt.
Fingers wrapped around his head and yanked. His neck creaked, protesting the sudden movement, but it was lost under the flood of searing heat coming from his knee. The hand was so large that the bottom of the palm covered his eyes even while he could feel fingertips digging into the back of his head.
Fabric tore away, the entirety of the material covering his head ripped roughly from the rest of the bodysuit. The teeth of the zipper scattered, bouncing over the floor, the noise of their fall covered by the siren. A startled cry slipped from between his grit teeth, something between a gasp and a yell.
The timer ticked down in background.
Cold air, pushed by the extensive ventilation system of his base, flattened against his clammy skin like a wet cloth. Tyrant stared down at him, shadowed, silhouetted by the spinning strobe light of the alarm; the crudely poked out eye holes impenetrable as they bore into Coil's suddenly revealed eyes.
Briefly unsupported by the Brute, he sagged forward, as much with the weight that the exact same thing was almost definitely happening in the other timeline, only without his presence, as it was due to the physical exhaustion. Before he could fall face first from his knees, another large hand snaked around his face, this time the digits wrapped around just below his ears; covering his mouth and nose tightly enough for him to feel hot air blow back into his face with every breath.
"There, was that so hard Calvert?" His voice dripped with derision, for all that it was still largely monotone, "Now, the question. Where are you? I'm sure you'll get rid of this 'timeline' soon, but I'm curious how long you'll be able to scurry away for. Did you know this place was the easiest to find? All I had to know to look for was a construction facility and listen for one with far more activity than there should have been underground."
His hearing is enhanced too?
"Don't answer, it'll be a waste of time." Tyrant's grip on his face tightened, the palm covering Coil's mouth the only thing that muffled a pained scream. Coil swore he could feel the fingertips grinding into his skull a little at a time, "Just know Calvert, there isn't a place in this city, or a rock you can crawl under, where I won't find you. There's no room in this city for you, and you'll be dead before you can even reach the border. Slither away little snake."
A flash of searing pain, of his jaw shattering like glass, then nothing. Sheer, blissful darkness as the timeline closed abruptly. Thomas Calvert took a long, long pause, though his eyes darted around the corridor blissfully empty of towering Brutes.
He had long since evacuated the bathroom, but his course swerved away from returning to the meeting room. Instead, he set an aggressive pace upwards, towards where most of the Protectorate Capes were still stuck in the same meeting he'd been watching in his base. He'd been forced to make a decision, split between the urge to escape into the street, try to disappear into the city, and heading towards the Heroes.
Or if he was anyone else he would have been.
The world split into two, an experience that had once disorientated him but was now a welcome feeling, like a safety net visible at the bottom of a great fall. Hurriedly, he near-ran to the nearest stairwell in both timelines, only diverging when in one he followed the flights of steps up and in the other, down. In both, he took the steps two at a time, practically flying downwards while rising at a steady rate.
Halfway between floors, he was nearly shaken off his feet as it felt like the whole building jumped around him. A half second later the air shook too, the boom of an explosion rippling across the city and through the building. Even dampened by the solid walls of the PRT Headquarters, built to withstand far more than a normal building, he could tell that the explosion was huge.
And almost definitely his base.
The building surged to life around him. The PRT HQ was never quiet, even in the dead of night it was staffed and ready to respond, but now shouts rang down the corridors and echoed through the staircase as Thomas moved. People rushed around him, what had once been near empty flights of stairs now teamed with people moving between floors in a rush.
Most were making their way up, a distinct lack of fear on their faces. Like him, a lot of the people employed at the HQ were former front-line troops, trained for situations exactly like this. First as the first responders, then again as the cogs that kept the machine running. The only signs that they were more harried than usual were the roughly unbuttoned collars and uneven suits, ties flung over the shoulder to stay out the way.
As one Thomas crested the stairs onto the floor dedicated near entirely to conference rooms, the other came face to face with the empty lobby; Cape knick-knacks and toys lay abandoned on the floor of the empty store where they'd been shaken from their shelves. The more than life sized Ward portraits stared down at the crowd, chins raised as if about to burst to life any moment and give a heroic speech but instead remaining in damning silence as the receptionists at the front desk talked rapidly over the phone.
PRT troops swarmed around the room, establishing positions in the corners and spreading out into the street. Others would already be moving out in the vans, if they'd successfully managed to ascertain that Tyrant was behind the explosion. They were kitted in their full combat gear, reflective helmet and Kevlar chest piece mixed with a chainlike mesh that wrapped around their body.
Thomas remembered wearing armour like that, the memories ingrained in his head. Eyes just as reflective as the helmet, twisted faces and bodies like they'd walked straight out of an abstract painting, sick parodies of people.
There was a time when he'd wished that he'd triggered in Ellisburg, that he'd gotten something out of that place other than a short stay in prison and enough trauma for a lifetime. But then the PRT would have sunk their hooks into hip, trapped him inside their failing system as one of their parade capes.
It was better this way, he told himself every time he donned his suit and got to really live as Coil. He wasn't suited to front-line work like these soldiers, even if he'd been good at it, enough to survive.
Better that he work from the shadows until he was ready to step into the light. And he'd been, still was, so close. Years of planning, and millions of dollars invested in that base, down the drain because a freshly triggered teenage Brute of all things throws a tantrum in his city.
Calvert took a deep breath to settle his nerves, stepping out into the street. Outside was much the same, an eerie quiet against the whistle of police cars and fire trucks in the distance. His ears felt like they were still ringing from the base's alarm.
For all Brockton Bay was a hotbed for Cape conflict, most action was small-scale. The explosion of his base would constitute far more than 'small-scale' and it being located downtown only increased the panic.
People liked to ignore the problems the city faced, those that could at least, and there was nowhere in the city that was better at than downtown, barring maybe the Boardwalk. Here the buildings were clean and well cared for, the streets weren't filled with more potholes than actual roads and you wouldn't see a gang sign on every corner. It gave them a false sense of security, let them pretend that there was no gang war, or that the Protectorate was actually in control of the situation. Idiots and fools, the lot of them.
The explosion shattered that false confidence, and he almost felt like he could feel it in the air. The world knocked from its axis in a single night. Someone would right it again, they always did, and sometime soon it would be him doing the righting.
But not tonight. He hurried away from the PRT Headquarters, heading North towards the Docks and the nearest of his side bases. At least here, unlike the forcibly closed safe timeline, his men had never been called in to try to stop Tyrant after he lackadaisically tore through the force garrisoning the main base.
That was it, deep breaths. He still had resources, he still had men, he still had time and most importantly he still had his power.
Calvert snuck one last look towards where his main base had been. In the distance, smoke rose through the oily darkness of the sky in tracts of soot, only visible in the light that shone off it from the streetlamps below. Undisturbed.
Tyrant burst out of it. A speck that shore a hole through the canvas of the smoke, shattering it momentarily.
Thomas turned and ran. Business shoes slapped against the concrete sidewalk, rigid sides chafing against his ankles. Of all the days to where a suit.
A whistle, a boom-
Darkness
It takes a split second for him to come back to himself, hand halfway raised towards the door handle to the meeting room, the window walls of the room blurred to give the interior privacy. Cut down to a single timeline again, and now trapped multiple floors up from any escape route. He flexed his power again and a new timeline snapped into focus.
Immediately, the Thomas in the new reality turned to bolt away from the door. He stumbled, in both timelines, as he felt the outward facing wall inside the room crumple and explode inwards a moment before he heard it. Pieces of the outer wall, glass still connected to metal bars, crashed into the translucent sides of the conference room.
Some shot straight through, flying with enough momentum that they stuck into whatever solid surface they hit. One piece, an almost fully intact metal pole if not for how it was bent out of shape, pierced the door in front of him and stuck, quivering, barely a foot from his face.
A large shadow loomed on the other side of the door, made starker by the emergency light whirring to life in a way oh so similar to his base. Thomas could just make out the rush of bodies swarming toward it, yelling interspersed with the whine of the alarm. A voice slithered through the cracks in the glass, cold as ice and more piercing than the still shaking debris.
"Where is Thomas Calvert?"
He didn't waste a second. His shoes kicked away tiny pieces of debris as he turned and tore off in the same direction as his alternate self had Away from the room full of highly trained Heroes, away from him.
In the other timeline, he was already flying down the stairs. PRT troopers swarmed the staircase, rising up them like a tide towards Tyrant. As if they could do anything his mercenaries couldn't, or as if nearly the entirety of the Protectorate ENE team wasn't already in the room with him.
It was almost laughable, if the Brute wasn't there for him.
As it was, Thomas found himself yelling for them to make way. He stumbled over armored shins and between bodies, both of his selves jostled as the other finally reached the stairs.
He tried not to listen to the sounds of fighting emanating through the glass walls. Deadened by the material it still leaked out. Armsmaster yelled something, gunshots from inside the room followed, someone else screamed, far louder than normal-
A body broke through the door, shoulder impaled straight through by the broken bar that had been stuck in the door. For a split-second Thomas saw the world in the slow motion. Glass splintered into hundreds of pieces, clinking into each other and clattering against the floor.
The figure's garish red costume, racing stripes along the flanks were easy enough to recognize. Velocity. He skidded and bounced across the floor, landing among a bed of shattered class. Whatever his Mover power did to him, it was clearly still in effect as he fell in what looked like fast forward. Where he hit the ground, tumbling, the shards of broken glass on the floor barely moved.
Velocity rolled to a stop, writhing at an accelerated speed, a hand clasped around the jagged end of the metal. He knew enough to not pull it out, either from his training or his history with the military.
Coil barely spared him another glance, already dismissing him from his mind. No, what was far more pressing was the towering figure in the room the Hero had just been thrown out of.
The door had taken large parts of the glass side of the room with it, enough to reveal most of the scene of devastation within. The table was gone, scrape marks on the floor leading towards the open night air the only indication as to where it had gone. Another hole in the adjacent wall opened up into the neighboring room, a pair of khaki combat boots hanging off the end of the table inside the only thing visible from his vantage point near the stairs. All of it was lit by the still flickering light embedded in the ceiling and the spinning of the alarm light.
Standing under the strobing crimson, Tyrant stood tall. The giant body of the teen almost a mirror image from just minutes ago, all the way down to the swirling shadows and broken architecture left in his wake. Behind him, the cityscape of half of Brockton Bay lit up the dark in small beacons of electronic light. Some were still blotted out by the smoke.
Crumpled forms lay scattered around his feet. Nearly the entirety of the Protectorate team twitching and groaning on the floor. Assault and Battery were nowhere to be seen, but a white glove still wrapped limply around Tyrant's ankle spoke to Triumph.
"Ah. There you are."
Coil struggled to say anything, to turn, to run. Old training kicked in. The moment that felt like it had lasted minutes ended, and his body spun without being told-
The timeline ended.
He staggered again, one level above the foyer. The corridors were quieter now, he'd passed the main press of PRT troops already in his flight downward. Only individual squads remained now, holding positions and corners, the corridors of the HQ enough to bottleneck the large number of troopers.
Already he heard gunshots echoing down from above, followed by shouts and the sharp bang of flashbangs. He suppressed a shudder and pushed down the memories of unblinking, too large eyes. Being chased through the dark, pursued by the skittering of legs and the slowly dwindling sounds of his squad's gunfire.
He blinked the memories away, so vivid and real that it took a few seconds to reorient himself in the well-lit corridor. A few seconds where Tyrant would be getting closer.
Pushing himself forward, Coil opened another new timeline, the action so second nature by now that he almost did it automatically. Without wasting a moment, he chose a different direction in the new timeline, splitting off and arcing towards the attached hospital. If he was lucky, Tyrant would go for the front entrance and not watch the side exits of the hospital. He didn't feel lucky.
No, as tremors passed through the corridor around him and the sounds of gunfire from higher up petered out under the warble of the alarm, there was nothing lucky about today.
He fumbled with his pocket; his fingers shook as he reached for his phone. It slipped into his fingers in both timelines, but the jolt of each stride combined with the inconsistent lighting made it impossible to make out anything as he ran. Cursing, he tucked it away again.
What could he use it for anyway? Even if he could call in his own men, not only would it practically throw away his public identity, but it would also just be throwing wet tissue paper into a meat grinder. He wasn't convinced it would even slow down the rampaging Cape, and while he had always known that his role as a PRT consultant and as a civilian would be thrown away eventually, it would be like this. It would be on his terms, not something that he'd be forced into by a jumped-up teenager.
Not for the first time Coil lamented his inability to make more than a single timeline. His power was incredible, worth every cent of debt that it had put him into, even worth the favor that group had demanded. But if he could have just one more, then he'd have been safe. In the time that it would take Tyrant to clear out his base and the PRT HQ then he could've gone to ground, a Brute by himself wouldn't be able to find him. It would have stung, but not nearly as much as this setback ached.
Hell, if he'd just pulled the trigger on the abduction of the Alcott girl just a week earlier, then he would've known better. The little girl's power was strong enough that any timelines he used to abduct her was thrown off and useless. He'd thought he had time, and he had.
Enough to set up the charity event outside of town through one of his shell companies, enough to build up the Undersiders to pull off a job of the size he needed to distract the Wards who would be left behind. With the recruitment of the bug girl, a far too innocuous name for someone that hampered Lung, they were finally ready. He'd 'raised' the idea with his Tattletale already; more of a command and she knew it too.
If everything had gone according to plan he would have pushed the idea soon, maybe even tomorrow. The fabricated event wasn't until Thursday, but she wanted time to talk her team around.
If everything had gone according to plan.
It should have been his moment of triumph, his safety secured through the capture of Alcott and with it his plans. Brockton Bay was his for the taking. It should have been.
Tyrant came bursting through the ceiling in a shower of dust and rubble. Tiny stone pieces clattered against the floor of the corridor in front of Calvert. In both timelines. He came down feet first, and the masonry parted around him like paper. The swirl of the red alarm light cast a sinister edge around the giant Cape.
Dimly, he heard shouting and gunfire. Bullets flattened themselves against his skin and his clothes, but the helmet never turned away from him, eyes boring into his despite the darkness. In the secondary timeline, the corridor to the PRT hospital was empty except for the two of them, whatever the concentration of troop, there either hadn't been any stationed here or they'd pushed up minutes ago.
Or, Calvert mused to himself in a numb kind of apathy as he watched one squad then another peel back in a staggered retreat, they were cutting their losses. It was Ellisburg all over again. The squad leader, he couldn't make out the name on his armour or his designation, took one last look at him before backing around the corner. Maybe he was contemplating whether there was any point going back in to try and retrieve him, maybe it was a look of pity, his expression was blocked by the opaque visor. Either way his decision was clear.
Calvert was left alone with the Brute. Again.
"Skittering around like a rat, why am I not surprised?" Tyrant said, echoing himself in both timelines. Floating an inch or two above the floor it looked as if his head could almost brush against the ceiling, "or would that be slithering like a snake?"
In both timelines, Tyrant was between him and escape. His enormous body took up a large part of the corridor. Easily enough that to get past he'd have to get within the Brute's reach. Reach. As if he was in any less danger just because he was a few feet outside of Tyrant's arm's reach.
"Do you even understand what you've done?" Asked the Calvert near the hospital, scathingly. There was no point in playing the scared fool, that guise had gone up in flames with his main base, "Attacking the PRT? Your actions have consequences, and you have no idea what you're calling down on your head. The only chance you have of getting out of this is to let me go before it gets even worse."
Just because he couldn't reuse the act didn't mean he could be honest, Coil thought, as he eyed the discretely placed security cameras that would cover just about every square inch of the building. There could be no slipping here. It was something that he was used to, a comfortable suit that he could slip into with ease. Just another layer of danger.
"I've got money," said the other Calvert, calm and collected despite his pounding heartbeat, "However much you want, I can get it for you. Just let me go."
Of course, neither was the truth. Just the idea that he'd capitulate like that was disgusting, beneath him. Tyrant would never see a single dollar note from him and he sure as hell wasn't going to help him. But lying was like a second skin, and the words slid out smoothly.
Hospital Tyrant shook his head lightly, "Annoying thing, your power. How do I force you into a situation when you do everything twice?" He asked himself, as if Thomas hadn't said anything, "I've got to close your timelines, one at a time. But which one when I catch you?" He paused, as if expecting him to answer but kept going before he could even try, "The funny thing about guys like you is that everybody you really interact with is a mercenary. Everything you do, every shred of loyalty you 'inspire' comes back to money. So, what's the one sure fire thing you'll offer? Every. Single. Time."
"Wha-"
The timeline went black.
Calvert snapped back into focus; a single reality left in his head. With practiced ease he fought down any reaction, keeping the mask of firm resolve and entirely genuine fear.
"There it is."
Tyrant's cold voice blew through him like a gust of icy wind.
"Not the bargaining, I was expecting that. You wouldn't be Coil without trying to bargain, right until the end." The boy's body was unnaturally still, hanging in the air as if hung by a string, "What was it? Money?"
He stiffened. He couldn't help it. Cold reading? In this horrendous lighting? And he knew he hadn't slipped, that he'd clamped down on his reaction in time.
"It's just us now, little snake." Slowly, but with the inevitable weight of an avalanche, Tyrant floated towards him. He took a step back instinctively, before steeling himself. An extra foot or two would make no difference. It was like staring down an apex predator and thinking that a step or two would make a difference, "No more mercenaries, no Heroes to hide behind. The PRT have left you here, to me, and the Protectorate too. Brings back memories, doesn't it? Nostalgia?"
Damn if it didn't, but he wouldn't give the arrogant teen the satisfaction of responding. Tyrant just nodded as if he'd said the most meaningful thing in the world.
He split the timeline, the sensation of looking through two pairs of eyes at once not bringing any of the normal feelings of security.
It's followed a moment later by darkness, instantly wiped out.
Tyrant's monotone is laced with a hint of mocking, "None of that now. I'm tired of that trick. Next time you think to use your power, you die. I'll know."
Coil floundered, the support strut of his power pulled away from him.
"What do you expect to gain from this?" He asked quickly, gesturing with more surety than he felt at the flashing red alarm and broken ceiling, while his mind raced a mile a minute, "Provoking the PRT? We'll have to respond in kind, this is escalation beyond the norm, even I don't know what it'll look like, but it will come."
Tyrant was silent for a moment, crude helmet as unmoving as the rest of him. A Thinker power too. There was no doubt in his mind about it now. It had taken extensive training to force any hint of his power use out of his body language; enough to fool the PRT for years. One of the reasons he'd chosen Brockton Bay was because of the lack of Thinkers in the Protectorate ENE, a necessary precaution. But of course, Tyrant spat in the face of it.
"It's interesting."
"Interesting?" His voice came out partially strangled, incredulous.
"There's nothing more boring than watching a movie you know the script for word for word. Not when you can change it," Tyrant sounded as if he may as well have been reading a weather report, not discussing blowing up his base and attacking the PRT, "This is like knocking down the dominoes, but I've always been too impatient to wait for things like that so I'm flipping the table instead."
"You're insane," Thomas said with a dread certainty, icy water shivering down his spine. Decades of planning ruined by a mentally deficient teenager.
He'd seen the reports, read how Ashton Graves had treated his adopted mother. It had been low enough priority that he hadn't dug any further than he did for any new Cape on the scene, there had been no rush. Even the PRT as a whole wasn't looking into it, just another local Cape in the city with the highest Cape per capita on the Eastern Seaboard.
"Says the man that dresses up in a skintight suit and plots in his underground base to kidnap pre-teen girls. The PRT will respond, and then they'll fail and then they'll do it again and again until they give up. Ellisburg, Eagleton, Brockton Bay."
Calvert stared at Tyrant disbelievingly. Dear God, he actually was insane. His heart thundered inside his chest, his breath coming faster and harsher. It was barely audible over the alarm.
"That's not how it works. A single Cape, a single Brute doesn't get to just claim a city. You don't understand the scale you're trying to fight at," 'my scale' went unsaid. This city was his. He'd claimed it already, even if the gangs didn't know it yet.
What sick joke was this? A twisted, naive parody of his dream and goal of decades thrown in his face by the boy who had burnt it all down.
"I'd say watch me but that won't be happening. Goodbye Calvert, Coil."
He stumbled backwards, nearly tripping over chunks of fallen ceiling. Tyrant didn't move again, even his gradual forward drift had stopped as he just stared at Thomas.
"No!" He yelled, a thousand plans and a thousand dreams flitting through his mind, "No! This isn't fair! Everything I did just for a Brute like you to snatch it away?"
"We both want the city," Tyrant spoke, his voice a wall of ice, "You just started climbing the ladder first but you're not fast enough. And this time, you're not the one with the gun."
A crack.
Thomas spun, momentum carrying him around one hundred eight degrees. Or did it? No…
Why were his feet facing the wrong way? And his body?
He tumbled into blackness.
A/N: So... I'm alive? And also as ever not happy with the chapter. I've deleted the whole chapter and started again a few times but I finally decided to post something. Please note this has only had a very brief read through, so there are undoubtedly a lot of mistakes and things that probably don't make sense. There are probably points where it's clear where I've finished writing one day and started another but hopefully it's not too wonky. When I have time I'll try to go back through it again.
Also, in what I expect is one of the most well-known things in the Worm fanfic community, writing Coil's power is a pain in the ass that I really struggled with.
But yes anyways, I'm not dead. The fic isn't dead, neither is EUST(S)W. I am still away at the moment for around another month, so I'm not sure how much more progress I'll actually make. I went on a bit of a blitz today after not getting any sleep last night and got a large chunk of this chapter out in one setting... I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse.
I appreciate everyone sticking with it, even when I haven't posted an update in... wow 3 months, I really suck at this huh? Hope everyone's had a good first half-ish of the year. Thanks for taking the time to read my nonsense, hope it was somewhat enjoyable.
Excuse me while I go collapse.