Chapter 19

-Coil-

I checked the reports again. Taken individually, they were each mildly alarming. Together they painted a… most unsettling picture.

My assets within the Empire were all passing along reports about a new cape. One who, if what I was being told was to be believed, had Mastered Hookwolf. While the man was not known for having any particular resistance to such things, what he was known for was making short work of most fights. So not just a new Master, but one whose power worked far quicker than Hijack's.

Said Mastering had happened while this mysterious Master was reportedly hitting the same dogfighting ring as Miss Lindt and her hounds, although it was unclear whether it was happenstance or deliberate foreplanning. However, now the agent I had keeping tabs on the Undersiders was reporting having seen that same girl at the loft they operate out of.

In my other timeline, I settled into my seat at the new French restaurant on Grove Street. As I opened the menu in my other timeline, I dialed my Tattletale's number from the 'Coil' landline in my base. If my Tattletale had pounced on an opportunity to work her magic on recruiting the newbie, then that was all well and good. If this was another attempt on her part to sever ties… Well, we couldn't have that. I would likely need to make this call twice, or possibly more, to ensure I'd be able to catch her off-guard on any inconsistencies.

She let the phone ring four times before picking up, a sign that she was either busy or deliberately made me wait. I spent the time reviewing what I already knew: based on the descriptions I've received, and a now discarded skim through the PRT's database of recent potential Crisis Points gave me an idea as to the identity of the mysterious new cape already, but that, too, was something I could have Miss Wilbourn verify herself. When she finally did pick up the phone, the silence that stretched on lacked the usual sassy quality to it. She'd done that enough that I knew the difference well.

"Tattletale. I just received the most interesting report from yesterday." I remained calm, speaking slowly and evenly, aided somewhat by the need to keep track of two separate conversations as I simultaneously placed my order with my server: a promising chicken paté selected to best offset the filling but somewhat bland meal I prepared for myself using the kitchenette in my base's office. It always paid to be careful with what I ate in at least one timeline - I had slipped up on that once already, though thankfully it had only been spoiled food, rather than a poisoning attempt.

"Oh? What kind?" she asked, feigning innocence. I suppressed a snarl. Once more, the need to keep my features controlled in the restaurant helped control my ire as well. Smiling thankfully at the waiter as he poured me my one glass of wine of the day. I always had to restrict my indulgences in case I found myself forced to keep a particular timeline. That was also discounting the fact that if I allowed myself to become sufficiently inebriated in either timeline, my judgement of which timeline to keep could suffer. Thus far I've only had such a situation occur once. That… had been more than enough.

"The kind where your teammate ran into a new cape. What do you know about them?" I held back the additional questions I had. Her power no doubt penciled the blanks in in her mind anyway, and entertaining her misleading sense of superiority often led to her slipping up in ways I would be able to capitalize on when I re-made this phone call after dinner.

It was at that moment that my personal phone rang. Only in the restaurant. Unknown caller ID, but I recognized the number as the one that I had just dialed in the other timeline. Tattletale's phone. Hesitantly, I picked it up, because if she somehow unmasked me, I had to know. Especially since she hadn't betrayed any hint of knowing that in the other timeline...

At the same time, an unfamiliar chipper voice yelled into my ear in my base. "The bell tolls for Cassandra!" a girl's voice, teenage, maybe late teens.

"Hel–?" I said into the phone in the restaurant before being overwhelmed by the exact same voice.

"Hi, Cassandra! It's Cassandra!" it chirped. I thought I heard my Tattletale protesting loudly in the background of both calls as the blood drained from my face.

"Hello me! What have I done?" the Cassandra on my base phone asked. A thought struck me that she was play-acting, like a dramatic reading of a relatively dull book on one of those moronic 'comedy' TV shows. None of the inflection in her voice, either of her voices, felt genuine, like a text-to-speech program set to 'caffeinated'.

"The twinned serpent is making a nuisance of himself," the Cassandra on my private cell in the restaurant replied with a huff, driving my sense of paranoia to the full. I cast a look around me, in both timelines, trying to check whether I was being watched. I was having a disconcerting sense of deja-vu from when I'd purchased my powers from Cauldron. This felt a little too much like the conversation I'd had with that woman in the hat after I'd thought I could get clever with a loophole in our contract for mere coincidence.

"Should he learn a sharp lesson, then?" the first one growled, making me shudder as I recalled the report from my Empire spies. The girl, if this was the same one I'd been getting reports on, had weathered off several blows from Hookwolf before causing the hallucinations which reportedly made him act like the animal he styled himself after. Was I being Mastered? Would I wake up in an ABB torture dungeon? Was this too the woman in the hat's doing?

"The Madmen haven't decided on a lesson plan yet. But do be a dear and tell Alec he's very pretty," the second girl told the first– told herself? –making me wonder briefly if it was actually me who was going insane. I was suddenly aware that I'd stood up from my seat and drawn my service pistol in both timelines. Alone in my office, this was no issue. In the very public restaurant, where I was pointing it at a girl talking on her phone however, things were unravelling. Rapidly. The girl's red hair fell from her face as she looked up at me and saw my pistol, her face paling in fear.

"I see." The first Cassandra's voice returned to its original over-caffeinated state, "Then send me the bag of madmen's words if you find it, while I deliver yours to their chosen ears!" Belatedly, I began to type in the commands on my base's terminal that would take me to the interface for the remote cameras in and around the Undersiders base.

"Will do!" There was a hum of agreement over both lines followed by the sound of phones being tossed through the air, apparently back to my Tattletale, as it was her I heard next.

In my base, I heard Tattletale fumble the phone and then put it to her ear. Her silence and abortive breathing suggested she was equally as baffled by what had just happened as I was. "...Boss?" the Tattletale on my private cell said, her tone sounding equally confused and curious, but with just enough smug that I knew she'd learned too much. I couldn't keep that timeline.

With a sigh and a swallow, I tossed the restaurant phone aside, emptying the pistol's clip into the pretty redhead and her family to bleed off at least some of the stress over my now-ruined dinner, before dropping the timeline and splitting again.

"Tattletale," I said in one timeline as the other simply hung up and left the room towards the vehicle bay to secure an alternate location ASAP in case this was a Master effect that I'd just experienced, "Care to explain what just happened?" I cursed myself for letting my voice give away some of my unease about this whole situation. There was little chance that Tattletale wouldn't catch it.

The outside camera view showed a very fluffy pidgeon's behind. One of the indoors cameras was obscured by a bottle of cheap whiskey, while another had an odd blurry blob obscuring a vaguely humanoid figure interacting with Regent on it.

"...Yeah, that's the new girl you were asking about. She's…" she paused, obviously at a loss for words, normally a treasured rarity but currently frustrating, "...like that. My power can't get a good read on her her, but I think she kind of adopted us?"

"Adopted?" I couldn't help but ask. That particular choice of words would be a very unusual description for a relationship between capes… then again, it had already become clear that I was dealing with a very unusual cape.

"Something like that," Tattletale chirped in my ear. I didn't even have it in me to call her out on that. "Apparently she really wants friends. Are we done?"

I hung up and laid back in my chair, massaging my temples. I could have repurposed my "escape" timeline to do an impromptu security inspection, but on second thought, if the Hebert girl could somehow interact with both of my timelines, that could end up revealing some of my surprises to her.

Realizing that letting the escape continue would instead reveal the location of one of my safehouses if her tracking me was really a possibility, I discarded that timeline. If she was going to come after me, down here was as safe as it would get for the time being.

The Undersiders reporting success, even if it came at the cost of their nominal leader getting hurt, was a welcome bit of news. The information they procured would not only likely allow me to complete my dossier on the Empire's capes' civilian identities and provide a few more avenues of financial attack on their resources but would also get rid of around 80% of the traces of the kickbacks Stronghold Inc. received from Medhall itself over the construction of that 'hidden' section beneath Anders Memorial Hospital.

If I were to pull the switch tomorrow, the Empire that Richard Anders had spent decades building, starting from before he'd received his own powers, would topple, burying his son and his cohorts underneath, and not a speck of dust would land on me or mine. Just the way I wanted it, and all it took was nudging my Tattletale in the correct direction. Letting her keep a semblance of freedom was a justified decision after all.

I savored the taste of fresh Boston crab in the timeline where I was reading a newspaper article on the daring attack by forces unknown on Iron Bastion Security as in the other I was poring over the blueprints for the mayor's mansion in order to prepare another contingency plan. It was time to plan the next big operation, and I needed to make sure my portfolio of potential distractions was up-to-date.

Perhaps I could spend a day or two running dress rehearsals of an abduction of the mayor or one of his family members in spare timelines.

The first go-around would be a recon in force. Now, are any of the Christners allergic to tear gas?

Deputy Director Renick was a difficult man to corner. My troops followed his footsteps, time and again, but were always foiled at the last moment by some sort of backup plan. The man could probably give Accord a run for his money in terms of how prepared he was for the unforeseeable.

Too bad that Accord considered chess, Barry Renick's one true strength, a pitiful waste of time.

"Thomas, this isn't Global Thermonuclear War," he chuckled, taking a sip from his mug of cuffee, "You won't win if you won't make a move."

In my other timeline, I was offsetting Renick's awful taste in coffee blends with Irish Coffee of my own making and a chess reference book. Even if I had to cheat using my powers, I was determined to win against this smug bastard at least once. No matter what tricks I had to resort to.

"Shall we play a game?" I quoted in a robotic monotone, moving a rook to bait his queen out. He grinned in response, losing himself in weighing the pros and cons of trading a queen for a rook. If he did, he's be exposing his king, but if not...

Either way, I could take him.

As I realized my Coil phone in the timeline where I was alone had been ringing for some time, the vibrations of the silenced phone barely audible over the Alan Parsons Project I had on in the background. Cursing inwardly for the gaffe, I picked it up.

"Tattletale. I trust this is important," I said, trying to bite back my irritation. Of all the times and timelines she could have called. At least Renick seems to be thinking too far ahead to force me to play right now. I took another sip of the Deputy Director's overly-bitter brew, taking the time to salute him with my mug when he looked up from the board towards the source of the sound.

"Grue's sister was attacked by Empire thugs earlier today," my Tattletale said as if that was supposed to tell me something. I promised him support with the brat, not help babysitting. Unless she was dying - and "earlier today" implied otherwise - I failed to see any way that this was any of my business.

"The Black Knight sallies forth to smash the Pale Windmill!" a voice I almost dreaded hearing yelled into my ear suddenly, making me flinch in both timelines.

"Sorry, neck cramp," I told Renick, thankful for the fact that I managed not to spill any of my coffee, either coffee, onto myselves.

"Uh, sorry about that. As my eccentric friend said, he's planning to go on the warpath once the wound he got from Shadow Stalker is healed, if I don't manage to talk him out of it. Just thought you should know."

While that made the phone call make more sense, my thoughts turned to a different subject altogether than Grue's sudden desire to commit suicide by Nazi and the fact that Tattletale apparently wanted to allow it. Taylor Hebert, Cassandra, Brute: Maybe and Thinker: Pre-cog, would likely be aiding the Undersiders in this endeavour. Would this invalidate my entire plan with undermining the Empire and looting its coffers? Or would it… save me the effort? The potential insights into both her character and her powers that could be gained if I kept an eye on the action were tempting just by themselves...

"I see," I finally said, "Do what you think is necessary, but be careful - the help I can offer in this is limited."

Mainly because everything I could do to the Empire without it coming back to me were things I was already doing. That knowledge would be of little use to Mr Laborn's personal crusade, not that I expected either of them to see it the same way.

"Fine," she said dryly before hanging up, allowing me to return my attention to the game.

During my distraction, Renick had finally made up his mind and was now looking at me expectantly. I sat there for another moment, frozen, with my black knight in hand.

...Wait, what? What did Cassandra say about the white windmill? Ah...ha!

Renick's face slowly shifted from feigned disinterest to shock as I took his queen with my knight instead of the bishop as I'd originally intended. It left my other rook wide open, but now my bishop and knight could work together to box in his exposed king over the next few moves.

I slid the bishop I'd left in place earlier forward. Check and mate?

"Check and mate!" I announced cheerfully, letting go of the little wooden figure. Renick shook his head in astonishment, then stood up to shake my hand.

"Well played, Thomas," he said with a smile. "See you next week?"

"I'll make sure to find time," I confirmed, then grabbed my jacket and headed towards the parking lot. I smiled all the way to my house, while the me back at base returned to today's reports. A girl was sitting on the fence of my house. As I was removing and placing my shoes on the drying mat, she followed me in through the open door.

I hung up my coat and headed towards the bathroom. It was a sad fact of my life that certain unpleasant necessities needed to be handled twice on occasion. That settled, I went to the kitchen to set the kettle to boil, and promptly stopped. I stared at the kettle, already full of boiling hot water. There was a girl sitting at my kitchen table, dunking a tea bag in one of my fancy porcelain teacups that I never actually used. She leaned forward, kicking out the chair across from her, and suddenly I recognized her.

Cassandra.

I barely suppressed the urge to drop the timeline then and there. Forcing myself to smile, I sat down at the table, opposite the seat the girl had taken. In my base, I paused my work to order a full sweep for any didn't seem to be any, and none of the security systems had been tripped, but… Stranger.

In my home, I took a deep breath, and started talking. "Hello, Miss Hebert. Or do you prefer Cassandra, now?"

There was a brief pause before she nodded slightly. "The name of the Girl is an ill fit for the Seer," she answered, smiling faintly over her teacup as she took a tentative sip. "Especially on a forked tongue."

I briefly wondered whether the girl's - Cassandra's, apparently - insanity made her more or less dangerous to deal with. I had an uncomfortable suspicion that it was the former. A similar contemplation regarding drawing my gun was discarded as I recalled the girl was not easily deterred by small arms fire - quite the contrary, it made her angry. An odd thing to be thankful to the Empire for, demonstrating this to the world.

"And to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?" I asked her carefully. It would not do to end this conversation before I gleaned all I could from it by provoking her early.

As my men began reporting in, all claiming they hadn't seen anyone come past them, I sighed; Strangers make such bothersome opponents. Fortunately, this particular Stranger had tipped her hand, so I made my way towards the main security office where I would be able to watch all of the security feeds at once for any sign of distortions.

"The Coiled Serpent likes to play his games. But unlike the the little wooden men, methinks he'll find my pieces object most strenuously to being sacrificed." I noted with some alarm that she'd managed to pull a handful of chess pieces seemingly out of nowhere and started playing with them idly before setting them down on the table in front of her one by one. Two bishops, two knights, and a rook, all in a rather distinct blood red rather than white or black. "Should you... try... to choose their doom, I will choose yours." Her smile turned slightly feral. "Perhaps I'll feed you to my hat?"

If it had been anyone else - Almost anyone else, I amended, her choice of threats reminding me of the woman in the hat once more - I'd have made the promise without hesitation - after all, they would never know. Cassandra, however, had clearly demonstrated that this would not be enough.

"I can't make such a promise without getting—" I concentrated on not wavering as Cassandra's gaze turned to a glare - did her eyes always glow red? - "something… in…"

I felt my jaw go slack as the room gradually darkened, Cassandra's red eyes pulling. She was speaking again.

"Every shadow hides—"

I dropped that timeline like my life depended on it - for all I knew, it did - and took a seat in the security office. Staring at the bank of monitors while the former sergeant who headed up base security began walking me through our security protocols. I split my timelines, but spotted movement in the corner of my eye almost immediately. In one timeline, I dove out of my seat, drawing my pistol, while the in the other I snapped my head around to look at it and saw it jump behind me. Completing my dive-roll in the first timeline, I found myself glaring down the barrel of my pistol at my own shadow. With a groan, I collapsed the timelines back down to just the one where I'd merely turned my head to look before resplitting so that one of me could endure the sergeant's report with my back to the corner of the room.

Strangers really do make such bothersome opponents.