A/N: Chap 29 Review Responses are in my forums as normal.
Chapter Thirty: Interlude and Toccata in D Minor
Thomas Calvert, newly appointed assistant director of the PRT East North-East, did not believe that he could ever truly be paranoid. Paranoia to most meant delusional thoughts of persecution, jealousy or even exaggerated self-importance.
For the man who stood on the brink of ruling the city's most powerful law enforcement agency as Thomas Calvert, and the criminal world as Coil, there was no overstating his self-importance. Nor would it be possible for him to be too cautious regarding potential persecution if he were caught, or the jealousy of his peers even if he were not. He had enemies in both worlds, and if ever those two worlds came into contact, the entire empire he'd worked for over a decade to build would collapse like a house of cards.
Thomas always felt his greatest power was not being able to exist in two realities at once, but to balance all the pieces he had in play in both.
In one reality, Coil woke up to the driving, unrelenting piano of Prokofiev's Toccata in his primary underground base behind a vault door and twenty soldiers in state-of-the-art body-armor and tinker-tech weapons.
In the second reality, Thomas Calvert woke up in his perfectly normal, slightly rundown townhome in the southwest end of the downtown section of the city to the same driving notes of Prokofiev's organized chaos of a piano piece, at the same moment. He ate a simple breakfast of a single fried egg, toast and half of a grapefruit sprinkled with sugar while reading the daily alerts and schedule on his PRT-issued phone. Though a Saturday, his new position did not give him the luxury of a weekend.
Carol Dallon and her sister Sarah Pelham, the two leaders of New Wave, requested a meeting with him first thing that morning to better coordinate their efforts with the Protectorate schedules. According to a note his assistant added, Carol was also planning to ask about negotiating a contract for both her daughters to formally become Wards.
That got his attention. As the assistant director, one of his primary duties was coordinating with the Protectorate Wards team, which with the recent deaths of Shadow Stalker in January, and more recently Gallant in the Endbringer fight, needed all the help it could get. If he could also bring a full Alexandria package and the most powerful healer under his influence, that would make him the envy of the East Coast.
If he as Coil and he as Calvert were able to time the release of his special guest properly, he would be the director before summer was out. With Quintessence in his pocket as Coil, and Panacea and Glory Girl in his pocket as the PRT director, nothing would be able to stop him from rebuilding the city the way it was supposed to be.
With a young girl who could see the future, timing Noelle Meinhardt's release into the city would not be a problem.
In the first reality, Coil showered and donned a clean costume before opening the door to his office. He was met by his squad captains and Mr. Pitter, a nurse with features bland enough even Coil had trouble remembering his face.
"Mr. Pitter," Coil said. "How are our pets this morning?"
"Agitated, sir," Mr. Pitter said.
"Let's go see, then."
In the second reality, Thomas Calver left his townhome and walked down the sidewalk to the unmarked cream-colored sedan with the armed PRT soldier in the driver's seat. Fortunately, his neighborhood was not too badly damaged by Leviathan and was far from his base.
"Good morning, Director," the driver said. Thomas tried and failed to remember the man's name.
"Good morning. Looks like we're going to be getting some more rain this afternoon."
"Looks like, sir."
The drive into the PRT office took three times longer than it should. The newly established temporary PRT building occupied what used to be the Brockton Bay Petroleum company's headquarters, built before the collapse of international shipping and the strike which saw the blockage of the docks by the boat graveyard. On the way they passed through a maze of collapsed buildings, washed away roads and haphazard construction, much of which was being handled by his own construction firm.
Thomas's stocks looked good that morning.
Through the secure entrance, he was met by Ms. Cornell, a young, attractive blonde with a degree in business administration and a willingness to do whatever needed to be done to ensure she climbed the ladder with Thomas. She'd already picked out the color of her upholstery in the executive office manager position for when Rennick was forced to retire and Thomas took his place.
"Brandish and Lady Photon are already in your anteroom," she said. She handed him a cup of coffee and a stack of files.
"Thank you, Tiffany. Anything else on the books?"
"You have a meeting with Mayor Christner at 2:00 pm, and Director Rennick wants you on a conference call with the Chief Director at four."
He appreciated the fact she stressed the last. It would be his first call with the Chief Director since his appointment as assistant director. "Well, let's go see what the inestimable New Wave wants to talk about," he said as he walked toward his office.
In the first reality, Coil followed Mr. Pitter through the narrow, easily defendable halls of his primary underground base to the rooms where he kept his special guests. Circus, for instance, lived in that wing.
For security purposes, the other Parahumans he employed were housed at his Beta facility.
A slight man with slumped shoulders and an unassuming posture and voice, Mr. Pitter provided a good example of how effective Coil's methods were. He was a victim, first and foremost. A compassionate pediatric nurse, Mr. Pitter discovered his wife was unfaithful. When he attempted to divorce her, she began accusing him of molesting his patients, to an extent of even falsifying evidence.
The courts and media automatically assumed he was guilty. One local anchorwoman even made a point of saying how he looked just like a child molester, which was nonsense. Child molesters looked just like everyone else. All it took to win Mr. Pitter's undying, absolutely loyalty—loyalty strong enough to even drug a kidnapped child—was to make Mrs. Pitter disappear.
The two of them reached his pet's room and stepped inside.
The girl wore loose shorts and a t-shirt. The room smelled strongly of sweat. He didn't bother mentioning it, though, because he could see Mr. Pitter's nostrils flaring. The man would take care of it.
"Good morning, pet," he said gently.
A head of tousled hair rose up from the pillow. Her eyes were ringed and half-lidded. Her face looked shallow and thin, and in fact her whole body looked emaciated. "It's morning?" she whispered. "Why?"
What an odd question. "It is morning. Can you tell me what the chances are of any problems here in the next hour? Before lunch?"
"Candy?"
"It's too early for Candy, Pet. Answer the question, please."
She winced. "Head hurts. Need candy."
"Answer the question, please."
Recently, he'd noticed that his pet's face became oddly blank when she accessed her power. Perhaps, he reasoned, it was her effort to overcome the pain her power caused her.
"Zero point five, five six percent chance there's any problems right here in the next hour. Two point eight eight nine before lunch."
The numbers sounded good. He considered the odd phrasing, but dismissed it. Her power demanded she answer, but she was too young and now too addicted to attempt circumlocution. "Pet, will Quintessence cooperate with my plans today?"
"It hurts," she whimpered.
"I know. Perhaps you can have some candy later. Answer the question, please."
"Ninety four percent."
"Good, very good. One last question, Dinah. Chances of trouble with any of my other assets today."
"Ninety-two percent chance of a problem." A brief wince broke the dull look on her face.
Coil, though tensed. He quickly went through possible scenarios. He'd been working hard to play the remnants of the Empire against Lung and so far the fighting had kept both gangs off balance, but neither should have been aware of his meddling.
Coil frowned. "Chances of it being at the PRT?"
She whimpered. "Two percent."
"Chances of it being at the Gamma site?"
"One point five eight two."
"Chances of Alpha site?"
"Ninety-nine point eight," she said. She sobbed. "It hurts bad."
Alpha site was the location he held Echidna and the Travelers. It was, in fact, his primary base for many years. It was only because of his need to house and maintain the monstrous creature that Noelle Meinhardt had become that he'd moved his command operations to his Beta site. Still, only a few people even knew about it.
He wasn't ready to release Noelle on the city, not yet.
He dismissed the first timeline entirely. He was just Thomas Calvert, assistant director of the PRT, walking through the halls of the PRT's temporary headquarters. He immediately branched off a second timeline. In the original remaining timeline, he continued toward his meeting with New Wave. In his second, he reached into a pocket and activated his phone's ringer. He paused and pulled out his phone.
"Blast," he said with not entirely feigned annoyance. "Tiffany, I'm sorry, could you let New Wave know something came up? Offer them the first available slot on my calendar."
"Of course, sir," Tiffany said obligingly.
Thomas, meanwhile, slipped his PRT phone back into his pants and removed a second, tinker-made phone whose encryptions could not be deciphered by anyone without the second, keyed phone. He waited until he heard the answering code to speak.
"Captain, I have reason to believe Site Alpha may be attacked. I don't have the numbers or disposition of the attacking Force, but we can't risk any possible exposure. You're authorized to take at least fifty men to defend that location at all costs. Please encourage the other guests there to cooperate, and then afterward prepare Theta site for a transfer."
"Understood, sir."
~~Quintessence~~
~~Quintessence~~
"She's coming," Taylor said.
Lisa opened her good eye and stared at her, scarred face blank. To sell the illusion that Taylor was falling under the wounded woman's influence, they'd taken to sharing the bottom, full-sized bunk. Both found it ironic that Coil, despite being a dangerous supervillain, was still such a man that he couldn't believe two girls could share a bed without being intimate.
Perhaps it was wishful thinking on the monster's part.
Regardless, Taylor rolled smoothly out of the bed and, blushing in a deep rage with the knowledge that she was being watched, pulled on a functional pair of shorts and a top. She then walked to the little bathroom in the corner, just out of the scope of the camera.
Yuki appeared just behind her, flat against the wall. She had a few droplets of sweat on her brow from the effort of carrying what looked like a lightsaber in her hand.
"Hey, lover," she whispered with a brilliant smile. "Got your second message yesterday afternoon."
She handed the saber to Taylor, who accepted it with a raised brow. "You finished it?"
"Yeah. What do you think?"
"I think it's brilliant."
"So, um…are you sure it should be me doing this and not Panacea?"
Taylor shook her head. "Dinah and I are sure. Panacea has to be at the other location. But I know you can do it. If you were able to carry this, you can do it. Your power is Manton limited, but the bomb in my head isn't organic. Now open your mind to mine, like we're meditating."
Across the room, Lisa Wilbourne made a point of slowly getting dressed for the camera, giving the mercenaries behind it a show to distract them. Unfortunately, it was distracting Yuki too.
"Concentrate," Taylor said.
"Yeah, right. Okay."
The two quickly fell into a practiced, mutual meditation. As their powers merged, Taylor directed their gestalt mind deep within her own body. And there, within the Force-infused flesh and blood of her own skull, she could see the pea-sized mass lodged in the back of her left sinus cavity.
What if I mess up? Yuki's thoughts and worries infused their bond.
You won't.
Not words, not precisely. Instead, Taylor infused the thought with confidence, faith and utter trust. She felt Yuki lean over her and then fade out of existence. She couldn't even feel her in the Force, such was the power of her breaker state.
A moment later, she stood in front of Taylor with a brilliant grin and a bloody, pea-sized marble in her hand.
"Now Lisa," Taylor whispered. She stood and walked back into view of the camera. "You're turn," she said loudly.
Lisa snorted. "About time."
As Yuki worked to remove the bomb, Taylor reached out in the Force to Dinah. Be ready.
She felt the girl's fear, eagerness, but also an even more intense level of trust than what Yuki felt.
Meanwhile, Yuki had the bomb out of Lisa's head. She handed them to the wide-eyed Thinker before disappearing again. Taylor made a point of stretching for the cameras, flushing even as she very intentionally bent over so the cameras could see her ass.
Not two minutes later, Yuki returned with a third silver pea. "Got it," she said, not bothering to whisper. She tossed it to Taylor, who caught it telekinetically.
"Lisa, if you will?"
The burned girl tossed the two small bombs from her and Taylor, which Taylor also levitated. With the Force, she could feel the mechanisms inside, miniaturized in a way she couldn't understand. What she could understand, though, was the tiny emergency trip switch that would have allowed Coil, his chosen surrogate, or the bomb maker herself, to set the bombs off.
She levitated the three marbles to the two thick dead-bolts that secured the door, despite Coil's assertion she could walk out at any time, and activated them, two at the bottom, one at the top.
In retrospect, her Dinah Alcott-infused visions of the future did not quite capture just how powerful the tiny explosives were. It was only the warning in the Force that gave Taylor the chance to summon her most powerful Force shield. The shield acted as a directional charge of the explosions, which didn't just blow out the deadbolts, but which vaporized the door and its surrounded frame, and liquified the mercenary just beyond it.
Alarms went off as Taylor rushed out, Yuki's saber in hand. Another mercenary stood near Dinah's door. The explosion was so powerful he was just at that moment picking himself up off the floor.
Taylor didn't bother with the stun setting, not for men who would willingly let a child be treated the way these men did. She'd already sliced through the door deadbolts by the time the man's head hit the floor. Dinah tried standing weakly as the heavily reinforced door fell.
"Can you walk?" Taylor asked.
"I…I…why won't my legs work right?" the girl said. Her eyes were dilated and her hands shook.
A second later Lisa was there, rushing past Taylor to pick the precog up. "The drugs Coil gives her," she said, by way of explanation.
"Yuki, stay with her. I feel like my lightsabers are here, on the base."
"If they are, they'll be in Coil's safe," Lisa said. "I know where it is."
Taylor led the way down the hall. Three swipes of Yuki's smaller, lighter but no less effective lightsaber had the door freed from its hinges, with a Force-push to blast it into the hallway beyond.
They emerged in what looked like a small gymnasium or high-ceilinged garage. She saw railings for a balcony that ran around the entire square space. The entire garage was bathed in a pulsing red light, and the air shivered with the sound of a grating siren.
Just inside the door set in the wall opposite, she spotted a glass-enclosed control room that had a perfect angle to view both the far exit from the garage, and the door form which she just exited. Inside, two men in uniforms that could have come right from a PRT armory rose from their seats in alarm.
Rather than attack with her borrowed saber, Taylor raised a hand and pushed.
The glass wall imploded. Like the glass, the two men within shattered as they first hit the wall behind them, and then were hit in turn by the giant desk and then a shower of shattered, shatter-proof glass. Both crumpled insensate to the floor, possibly not to rise again.
Overhead, alarms that before were a low whine suddenly increased in pitch and volume. Taylor walked calmly into the middle of the tidy, immaculate two-story garage. Crates of weapons and ammunition were neatly stacked along the walls under the second-floor catwalks, and black tire marks showed where vans came and went, but the floor at that moment was empty. She was aware of Yuki, Lisa and Dinah scurrying further down the hall away from her, but the Force assured her they would be safe as long as she remained the center of attention.
She switched the blade to its highest training setting.
A long moment passed where all she could hear or see were sirens and flashing lights. The moment ended when soldiers began spilling out of the second-floor rooms and lining up on the balcony with their weapons at the ready. The bulky weapons began barking out short bursts of barely visible red light.
Taylor was no longer the terrified, angry escapee. She was Bendu. She had a saber, and the Force was hers.
She exploded into motion, launching herself in a Force-powered leap onto the second level. A quick telekinetic toggle put her blade back in training mode, but with the stun setting at its highest. She immersed herself completely in the Force and let it guide her movements. Her blade deflected the Tinker-tech lasers and vaporized the bullets at speeds she could not have consciously followed.
She made no attempt to, surrendering herself so completely to the Force it felt almost as if she'd stepped outside of herself—almost like she stood within a dream, watching as saber-wielding Taylor wreaked havoc through the base. The floor of the garage looked as if it were carpeted with barely moving bodies of groaning men and women.
Taylor felt a surge of danger in the Force behind her. She cart-wheeled over the railing of the balcony, twisted mid-air, and came to her feet back on the first level in one of the few spots not covered by men. She then back-flipped out of the way of a massive hammer that struck the concrete floor hard enough to break it.
A new cape faced her, this one wearing an elaborate harlequin costume as if he…or she were the jester in some long-forgotten king's court. The figure of Circus stood grinning angrily at Taylor, her Harlequin-inspired clown costume hiding her gender.
"Oh, look at the little dear!" she said. "Don't you just look so adorable, thinking you're all tha…Umph!"
Taylor gripped the villain with her power, squeezing hard enough for his eyes to bulge in pain. "Shut up, please.
The cape screamed when Taylor slammed her repeatedly not against the floor, but the ceiling, before bringing him/her back down to the floor so hard the villain lost all sense of her hammer. Taylor then spun and struck the cape twice on the head with her saber.
"Wow."
Yuki walked back out of the hall, clad in her neoprene breaker suit with a bright pink robe thrown over her shoulders. She carried a pair of familiar lightsabers in her hand. "You kicked their asses."
"Your saber helped. It's an excellent blade, Yuki, you...hmmm."
Whatever else she might have said was lost in Yuki's searing, desperate kiss, and the shorter girl's arms around her neck.
"I told you not to go," Yuki said when the kiss parted. She backed away. "I told you not to go! Nothing good comes from Leviathan. What if you'd died! Now everyone knows who you are and…and…you left me! You fucking left me! I thought you loved me but you left me, and…and…Obsidian came and almost killed me! But he didn't. And Entourage called and said she…they broke her knees, Taylor! Because of us. And…and…"
"And she saved our lives," a new, tired voice said from behind them.
Yuki and Taylor both turned to see Lisa walk out with a passed-out Dinah Alcott in her arms. With her horrid scars and the skin-and-bones look of Dinah, the two looked as if they'd just escaped from hell. Which, Taylor admitted, was close to the truth.
"Where's Pitter?" Taylor asked.
"The sad guy with glasses?" Yuki asked. "I hit him a few times with your sabers. He's sleeping. Oh, yeah, your sabers."
They switched, and Taylor couldn't help but feet relief with the blades in hand. She turned to Lisa. "Anything else you need here?"
"No, I took care of everything while you were fighting," Lisa said with a somber expression. "We need to get out of here."
Taylor took Dinah from Lisa's trembling arms. Though the girl was actually taller than Yuki, she was so malnourished she felt like a paperweight in Taylor's arms. They walked toward the far exit of the garage.
"Yuki?"
Yuki activated her saber with a snap-hiss, switched it to blue, and easily cut a passage for them. Beyond was a steep, curving ramp. They trudged up slowly, exhausted from their long captivity or, in Yuki's case, the long drive to save them.
"Yuki?"
"Yeah, Taylor?"
"Thank you. You were pretty awesome."
"Yeah, I know. Can we go home now, you think?"
They emerged from the garage onto an average-looking street in the edges of downtown Brockton Bay. The buildings across from them were no more than three or four stories tall, brownstones for the workers who used to run the textile factories. But what caught her attention was the police tape and PRT transport vans that formed a hemisphere around the mouth of the garage. Dozens upon dozens of PRT agents and police officers stood behind their various vehicles with weapons pointed at them.
Just beyond them, Taylor counted no less than a dozen television cameras.
What really caught her attention, though, was the figure floating a few feet off the ground directly in front of them. The cape's costume was composed of a segmented platinum chest plate over a tight green body suit, with a voluminous green robe dancing in the slight breeze that blew down the street. His mask looked almost like glass, growing less opaque and more solid as it went from his chin to his eyes. The mask was partially hidden by a large green cowl which seemed to carry a glow.
The most powerful cape in the world floated directly in front of them.
"Is that Eidolon?" Yuki asked with a startled squeal. "That's so awesome! Do you think I could have his autograph?"
Taylor ignored her girlfriend and instead turned to glare at Lisa. The burned cape seemed to shrink in on herself, her smile turning bitter.
"Sorry, kiddo. Trust me, it was the only way this could end."
~~Quintessence~~
~~Quintessence~~
Coil collapses the timeline in which Brandish received a phone call and then immediately arrested him. In the new primary timeline he is talking on his phone, ordering the team defending Alpha Base to break away at first availability and to activate the S-Class contingencies while walking quickly toward the garage.
"Unable to comply!" one of his captain's yells. "The fuckin' capes turned on us. Echidna has been neutralized by Panacea! Repeat, Echidna has been neutralized by Pana…Arrghhh!"
At that moment Coil branches off a new timeline, in which he instead runs toward the armory. In the first timeline, he runs into the garage to acquire a transport to escape the PRT building. His path is blocked by a squad of PRT soldiers accompanied by Assault and Battery.
"Hello, there, Assistant Director, Sir!" the former villain turned hero says with a hungry grin. "What's the hurry, there? Legend's coming in, says the Chief Director wants to have a word with you."
Coil dropped that timeline. He is now running to the armory. He branches off a tertiary timeline and makes the secondary his primary path. In the armory, the quartermaster asks a question only to receive a bullet through his forehead for the trouble. Coil quickly and efficiently dons full PRT armor with helmet and mask before running toward the garage. He dumps his PRT issued phone down a recycling bin in the hallway.
In his secondary timeline, he veers off and runs toward the roof, instead. The PRT has Blackhawk helicopters on loan from the National Guard for quick deployment. The last message he had on his phone before it was locked out of the network was a call for deployments to both the Alpha and Beta site, and that Eidolon was in play. His entire operation had been compromised somehow.
In his secondary timeline, he reaches the roof. Armsmaster stands at the door to the roof, one-armed, waiving from exhaustion and unhealed injures, while asking every single soldier a single question: "Are you Coil?"
Though it isn't widely known, the Tinker has a fairly effective lie detector built into his helmet.
Coil makes a show of stopping and placing a hand on the helmet near his ear.
"Sir?" he says aloud. "Very well, I'm going now."
It seemed convincing to the other soldiers. It does not, however, convince Armsmaster. Coil has only a moment's notice before he feels a sharp prick through the fabric of his pants in the back of his thigh, followed by a terrifying flood of cold that sweeps up through his veins.
He drops that timeline.
He runs into the garage in full armor, flanked by twenty other PRT agents in gear. Mouse Protector stands by the van, sword and shield in hand. After her fall from grace with her public show of brutality, she was forced to join the Protectorate. Unlike Armsmaster, she doesn't have the ability to detect lies. He splits the timeline up and heads to a different transport in each timeline.
In each timeline, a male voice shouts: "That one."
Thomas frowns—the voice sounds just like that post-cog Thinker, Nutcracker, who Alexandria brought in from Seattle to investigate Quintessence.
Mouse Protector, for all her occasionally cruel, child-like sense of humor, also happens to be a powerful cape. In the blink of an eye, she teleports to his secondary timeline's persona. In desperation he tries to deploy the foam sprayer he carries.
He drops the timeline shortly before her sword cleaves off his head. The Protectorate, for some reason, has authorized lethal force. He realizes with a chilling clarity that if he does more than run—if he fights back or resists in any way—he will die.
Back in his remaining timeline, when Mouse Protector teleports right in front of him, he drops his sprayer and holds up his hands.
"I surrender," he says quickly. For some reason, the Prokofiev Toccata from that morning continues to ring in his mind.