"You know you don't actually live here, right?" Amy asked, giving the large black bird a hard look. Edgar cocked his head to the side and made a quizzical sound, then snapped his beak a couple of times, before snagging a pencil out of the cup of such things that was sitting on her desk. As was he.
"Hey!" She grabbed for the pencil, which the bird quickly pulled out of reach with a definite look of amusement in his glittering eyes. She wasn't entirely sure how she knew this, but she damn well did. The raven was much too smart for his or anyone else's good and had a weird sense of humor. Making another attempt at retrieving her pencil, she sighed as Edgar flapped over her head while sounding like he was laughing, only to vanish out the door to her bedroom. Seconds later a crash from downstairs was followed by a shriek, then a lot of swearing.
"AMY! Get this damned bird of yours out of my kitchen!" Carol shouted.
"He's not mine, he's just a pain in the ass!" she yelled back, but went to see what was happening even so. "Stupid ravens, think they're so smart, do they?" she grumbled as she stomped downstairs. At the bottom she found both her sister and her father peering through the living room towards the kitchen from where a lot of angry muttering was emanating. Both were visibly suppressing laughter.
"Your raven is hilarious, Ames," Vicky said in a low voice, causing Amy to glare at her and their dad to snicker.
"He's not my fucking raven, Vicky."
"Has anyone told him that?" Mark commented with a grin. She sighed heavily.
"Yes. Repeatedly. He won't listen. I even took him outside twice. One time he just flew back in Vicky's window which someone left open…" Amy glared at her sister who looked mildly embarrassed but more amused than anything else "And the second time he sat outside the front door until I went to get the mail and dived inside before I could stop him."
"Kronk!"
"Fucking raven!"
All three of them looked to see Edgar fly out of the kitchen with a beak full of bacon followed by a fuming Carol Dallon. The bird flew right at them, closed his wings just before they could react, shot through the small gap, then flapped away up the stairs to Amy's room and vanished into it. They looked after him, then exchanged glances.
Carol slammed to a halt next to them and waved a pencil under Amy's nose. "Did you teach that thing to open the fridge door with a pencil as a lever?"
Impressed despite herself, Amy shook her head. "No. He must have worked that out himself." She took the pencil out of her mother's fingers and put it in her pocket, partly out of self preservation as Carol looked like she wanted to stab someone with the implement.
Putting her hands on her hips, the older woman glared. "Keep that damned pest out of my kitchen. And preferably the house."
"I'm trying, OK?" she growled. "He doesn't want to go."
"It's cold outside and he's having more fun indoors," Vicky helpfully added, before flinching when both of them snapped their heads around with almost identical expressions. "Um…"
"It's been four days. If he was going, I think he'd have left by now, dear," Mark put in. "Vicky's right, the bird likes it here."
"Of course he likes it here, he's got all the food he can steal!" Carol snarled. "I, on the other hand, do not like finding raven footprints in the butter when I come down in the morning!"
Amy desperately tried to suppress the giggle that threatened to come out, biting her tongue nearly hard enough to draw blood. The sound of utter outrage in the older woman's voice was absolutely hilarious despite her own annoyance with Edgar's antics.
"I don't even know how that damned thing got the lid off the butter dish in the first place!" Carol ranted, waving her arms. "And two of my cream eclairs vanished when I took my eyes off them for a second."
Vicky looked guiltily away as Amy gave her a suspicious look. Her sister had been eating a cream eclair only an hour ago. And hadn't shared with her…
She thought back, before scowling. Edgar had also had cream on his beak, now she considered the matter more carefully. They were working together!
Throwing her hands in the air, Carol finally said, "Just… keep it out of the kitchen. Even if you can't evict the fucking thing." Turning she stomped away, her husband and daughters watching her disappear back into the kitchen. Angry dishwashing sounds came to their ears a moment later.
"You two didn't think to steal an eclair for me?" Amy hissed when she was sure Carol couldn't overhear.
Vicky grinned. "Edgar and I came to an arrangement. You weren't there."
Mark started snorting with laughter while Amy folded her arms, fixed her sister with a stern look, then shook her head. "Just remember who heals who," she muttered. Raising her voice she called up the stairs, "That goes for you to, you feathery menace."
"Kronk!"
"Don't you talk back to me, Edgar Dallon-Poe!"
Vicky stared at her, as did Mark, before both of them nearly collapsed in howls of laughter. Amy blushed slightly since she'd not meant to say the name she'd come up with for the raven. Edgar made a reappearance a moment later, gliding down the stairs to land on her shoulder, something he'd apparently decided was his place, then gently poked the side of her head with his beak while making a deep churring sound.
"Edgar… Dallon… Poe…" Vicky gasped, leaning weakly on the wall before sliding down it to sit on the floor.
"Oh, shut up," Amy snapped, then went back upstairs with as much dignity as one could have while wearing a raven on one's shoulder.
Laughter followed her, and when they couldn't see her face, she smiled slightly, reaching up to stroke the raven's head. "You're a pain in the ass," she said to him very quietly. "Good thing you're cute."
He bit her finger, then flew into her room making a sound like a giggle.
"Fucking RAVEN!" she howled before pursuing.
Armsmaster inspected the surroundings, then walked forward through the six inches of snow covering the road where tire tracks didn't displace it. This particular area of the city wasn't traveled much, especially at this time of year, and as a result the roads didn't get plowed. Hence they were still largely snow-filled, with only a few sets of tracks showing where people had passed through. Probably going to work somewhere in the Docks area, he assumed, as there wasn't much else in the direction the road ran, and in the other direction it was mostly residential zones.
He stopped next to the fence separating the sidewalk from the lot containing a rather decrepit office block, which he knew from having looked up the records earlier had been functionally abandoned for at least five years now. Looking at it he wasn't surprised; even from a hundred and fifty feet away he could clearly see signs of how badly maintained and constructed the building was, which matched what he'd found out about it. Likely directly due to the corruption the Mayor was currently rooting out wholesale, he thought. That was certainly what the stories he'd heard suggested.
Scanning the outside of the place he spotted a number of obvious indications that the building was almost certainly dangerously unstable, and decided that complete collapse was only a matter of time. Presumably the city would arrange to have it demolished before that happened, although he felt they probably didn't have very long to do so. Storm damage would do the job perfectly well sooner or later. 'Sooner' seemed likely if the cracks from frost damage around the second story were anything to go on.
He made a quick note to mention this in his report and make sure the city administration got the information, because he wasn't sure they'd actually checked recently. They did somewhat have their hands full at the moment with a lot of other things.
At least as far as he could tell there were no signs of squatters in the place. Probably because even homeless people had standards, and weren't necessarily stupid. No sane person would want to risk staying in something that rickety unless they had absolutely no other choice…
Looking around, he turned in a complete circle, taking in the whole area, before walking back to the PRT APC parked next to his bike, the occupants of which had been watching him. "You've got the documents," he stated to the five man squad, accompanied by Assault, who were waiting for him. "Sergeant, you take two men and find the vehicle entrance. Assault, take Vasquez and look for the hidden exit on the south side. Hicks, you're with me, we'll check the other escape route to the west."
"Sir," Tech Sergeant Kowalski replied with a nod, motioning to two of the squad. The three of them picked up bags of equipment and jogged away towards the location the mercenaries had pinpointed as the disguised main entrance to a not as unfinished as it should be former Endbringer shelter that lay beneath the abandoned office block.
Assault made a lazy salute, then tapped Vasquez's shoulder, the short but very strongly build woman grabbing her own equipment and going with him. Hicks, a tall young man who was very competent in his field, turned to Armsmaster having retrieved some gear from the APC. "Ready when you are, sir," he said calmly.
Armsmaster nodded, then after double-checking his exact location on his HUD which was overlaying a map of the area with all the underground services laid out in different colors, started walking in the direction of what was supposedly a former telecoms room under the street, with an unauthorized addition not shown on any paperwork the city had.
"How could someone have managed to build something this size in secret, sir?" Hicks asked after a short time. He sounded curious. Armsmaster glanced at him, then shook his head.
"A combination of bribery, breathtaking corruption among the relevant officials, sheer audacity, and from what we can find out some strategic assassinations when all else failed," he growled. "Despite his many failings, Calvert did not lack ambition. And had the skills combined with a suitable power to achieve something I would have personally thought extremely unlikely. However he did it, we need to see what is down there."
"Do you think there are any traps or anything of that nature?"
He shook his head. "Not according to the mercenaries. Calvert himself is still not lucid so we can't directly ask him, but based on their testimony we're unlikely to encounter anything immediately dangerous. That said I wouldn't put it past the man to have arranged a self destruct system, as he strikes me as the sort of person to whom denying someone else something is nearly as important as possessing it himself. However I have scanning equipment that can detect any plausible such mechanism, so we should find it fairly straightforward even if something of that nature exists."
"Understood." Hicks nodded. They kept walking for another couple of minutes until they arrived at the large underground access cover sunk into the road. A yard across, the heavy steel plate bore the logo of one of the older telcos, a company that had gone out of business at least six years ago to Armsmaster's certain knowledge. He studied the cover as Hicks knelt in the snow and brushed it away from the metal, quite a lot sticking to it and forming a layer of ice. "We'll need to pry it up, sir," the trooper reported, running gloved fingers around the edge. "It's solidly iced up by the looks of it."
Nodding, Armsmaster accepted the crowbar the man pulled out of his tool bag, Hicks taking another one, then they spent a minute or two clearing the ice away, before jamming the tools in on opposite sides and heaving. His armor made the job easy and Hicks wasn't exactly a weak man even without such aid, so the cover popped off readily. Reaching down as soon as there was a sufficient opening, Armsmaster grabbed the edge of the steel plate and lifted, servos whining as he shifted the cover away to the side. Hicks stepped back out of the way until he'd finished, then pointed a flashlight down into the hole revealed. A ladder built into the wall on one side descended about ten feet to a dry concrete hole, which disappeared under the street.
Kneeling down again the other man leaned into the hole, almost slipping until Armsmaster grabbed his shoulder and steadied him to the sound of muttered thanks. Sweeping the flashlight around, Hicks finally sat back. "Some old telecom gear, a dead rat, and lots of dust. I can't see anything else obvious."
"The exit would be well hidden, I suspect," the Tinker replied. He bent down to look as well, then shrugged and started climbing down the ladder, the rungs creaking under his weight but holding. Hicks followed him down into the ten by twelve foot room, which was lined on three sides by equipment racks, the fourth side being covered in cables neatly bundled into groups and disappearing into conduits at either end. It was obvious that much, if not all, of the old equipment was no longer connected to anything important, although his armor sensors detected a few hot spots in it indicating some was still powered.
Looking around, he studied the surroundings. Hicks was tapping his foot on the floor experimentally as if to locate any hollow spots, without luck. Eventually Armsmaster pointed. "That rack is not connected to the ones on either side, unlike the rest," he remarked.
Hicks followed his finger, then knelt down and peered under the rack. "It's not quite touching the floor either," he reported, standing up again. "It must be fixed to the wall. A hidden door?"
"Probably," Armsmaster replied with a nod. They spent a few minutes looking for some sort of access control, but couldn't find anything after considerable effort. "I suspect it's remote controlled for security reasons," he finally said. "Or simply doesn't have any way of being opened from outside. If it's purely intended as an emergency escape route that makes sense."
"How do we open it?" Hicks asked.
"Vigorously," he replied with a very small smile, unshipping his Arms-cutter. Turning the plasma blade on, he started making an entrance while Hicks stepped back and shaded his eyes with his hand. A shower of sparks bounced around their feet for sixty seconds or so, until something in the wall finally gave up and the rack moved slightly towards them. Grabbing it, he heaved, the entire thing sliding towards them then starting to rotate to the side. "That's got it. Now we should be able to…"
As the hidden door fully opened, his voice cut off in surprise.
A rattling sound made both of them look down as some small bits of stone and earth fell out of the hole behind the rack. They exchanged a glance, before looking back at the wall of solidly packed concrete and soil that was the only thing visible.
After some seconds, Hicks cleared his throat. "Ah… Sir? That doesn't look like an escape tunnel to me."
"No. No, it doesn't." The Tinker turned his tool off then prodded the exposed surface with the end of it, dislodging a few more small pebbles from what looked like decades-old concrete. Rubbing his chin with armored fingers, he stared at the problem before him. "Odd."
After a moment, he turned to his companion. "We're going to need the big scanner."
Hicks nodded and climbed out of the access room, Armsmaster following, the pair of them then heading back to the truck for more equipment.
"What."
Emily's voice was flat.
Colin looked completely puzzled in a rather irritated way, an expression that wasn't something she often saw on the man. "There is no hidden base there," he repeated.
"That's what I thought you said," she replied, leaning back and tapping her fingers on the desk. "The only minor problem is that all the prisoners claim there is. And the records show that something was definitely built there nearly twenty years ago."
"Agreed."
"So where is it now?"
He, very reluctantly, shrugged. "I have absolutely no idea."
They stared at each other for a few seconds. Mike Renick was listening off to the side with a thoughtful expression as were Miss Militia and Assault.
"That doesn't make any sense at all," she finally said.
"No, it doesn't, but the evidence is clear. We spend nearly nine hours thoroughly scanning the entire area plus an extra radius of one hundred yards around the reported location of Calvert's base with every technique we had available, including thermal, ground penetrating radar, terahertz radiation, and even core samples. There definitely isn't any void under that entire location larger than a shoebox according to everything we could find. We did find concrete, rubble, rebar, and other construction materials, but no Endbringer shelter, finished or not." He sounded annoyed, but there was also an underlying note of distinct confusion.
"Me and Vasquez found the other place there should have been an escape tunnel, and it was the same thing," Assault put in. "A hidden door, and when we got it open, a wall of solid concrete and rubble. Nothing behind it at all other than that. And Kowalski's team located where the vehicle entrance should have been, but all it they could find was a collapsed garage with nothing under the floor aside from more concrete."
Emily looked at them, then her deputy, who was clearly thinking hard. "There were hidden doors, correct?"
"Yes," Colin replied.
"So someone had to have put them there. Why would anyone build a hidden door over nothing?"
He shrugged again. "I don't know. The only thing I can think of is that there was something there, or alternatively there was intended to be something there but it was never finished. If the second is true, why did the mercenaries all, to a man, tell us the same location for the base they've apparently spent months in? And if the first is true…" His voice trailed off.
"What the hell happened to it?" she finished for him.
"Indeed. We were handed the prisoners on the twenty sixth. Five days ago. I can't think of a single possible way anyone could destroy a construction that large, fill it in, without disturbing the building on top, remove all traces of any form of connection to it from power lines to sewage pipes, and leave not one clue or witness behind, in five days. Even if we extend the time to the point we assume our mysterious group caught Calvert and his people, that still only leaves a matter of weeks, which is no more plausible than five days is. It would take months of work to do such a complete job of erasing the existence of such a construction and that's assuming the office building wasn't in the way. I can think of no possible way to do it surreptitiously. People would definitely notice."
He looked disturbed by his own words, and she herself was feeling mightily confused and not a little worried. She could see on their faces that the other three were too.
"A Parahuman power?" she suggested, grasping at straws.
He shook his head. "It would require multiple Parahuman powers, and they would need to be very potent. A high end Shaker, possibly, combined with some form of Stranger ability, might conceivably perform the task. But it would still be quite a time consuming process. That base was very large, Director, even if we assume it was only a standard-pattern Endbringer design. Some two hundred and fifty thousand square feet on three levels at a minimum. From what the mercenaries stated, Calvert had significantly enlarged it from that specification, which only makes the problem worse. And leaving that aside I don't know of any Shakers capable of doing what we've found, or any Strangers powerful enough to make everyone ignore the whole situation while it was being done."
"Any Stranger that powerful probably wouldn't be known about at all," Renick commented with a small but worried smile, causing Armsmaster to glance at him, think for a moment, then nod.
"A valid point, but it doesn't fundamentally change the problem. Yes, in theory it could be done with Parahuman powers, but in practice it would be very hard to arrange. Certainly in such a short period of time with complete secrecy."
"But if you eliminate Parahuman powers, what does that actually leave?" Hannah asked.
Colin shook his head slowly. "At this point in time I don't know. The most likely thing I can think of is that the location is, somehow, wrong. Possibly Calvert managed to arrange some sort of insurance policy via methods we don't yet know to manipulate the memories of his people so they couldn't find his base if they got caught. That's still a tricky problem but it's less unlikely than an entire underground facility that size simply vanishing."
"Seems a stretch, and that doesn't account for the hidden doors you found," Emily noted.
"I realize that, but as I said at this point in time I can't think of anything else even vaguely plausible. Unless you assume someone stole Coil's base when he wasn't looking, it seems more likely to believe it was never there to begin with. The anomalies in the evidence are, so far, unexplained."
Snorting, Emily shook her head. "This entire situation is ridiculous. If it turns out someone did steal his fucking base I'd almost laugh at this point."
"I honestly don't think that's likely, Director." Colin sighed. "Until and unless Calvert regains lucidity and can answer questions we probably can't determine the truth. I can arrange for Dragon's aid with more comprehensive scanning equipment just in case there are some clues we missed, but that will take a few days."
"Do what you can but don't waste too much time on it," Emily replied after thinking it over. "One way or the other I don't think we're going to find anything particularly useful in his base even if we can find the actual base. I suspect our sneaky friends have made sure of that."
"I'm forced to agree," he replied, frowning a little. "It's very irritating."
"And kind of impressive," Ethan added, making his superior give him a look. The man grinned, while Armsmaster simply sighed and ignored him.
"All right. We'll table that issue until some new evidence come to light, if it ever does. We've got more than enough to be getting on with other than this mystery." She picked up the report she'd been given, scanned the top page again, then filed it in her desk. The conversation moved onto other aspects of the Coil problem, but she was still wondering what had happened to his base when she went home that night.