Thomas had been a busy man these past few days. Understandably so, what with half the city burning two days prior. His operations had almost burned to ground with it, but in the end it was inevitable that he would come out on top.
The event that people were calling 'The Burning of Brockton Bay' had closed many doors for him. A lot of those had been crucial parts of his plan for the city. But as they say, when one door closes, another one opens.
The early acquisition of his pet was definitely one of the doors that had opened.
It had been much easier than it would have been if he created a distraction himself. Instead just one team of mercenaries was all he had needed to storm the Alcott residence and acquire the young precog. Not only that, the disaster had put the PRT in a delicate position. He had taken some of that blowback in his civilian identity but that was nothing compared to what the upper echelons were feeling.
Unfortunately, this all meant that several windows of opportunity had unexpectedly moved up, while he didn't have all his pieces in place. If only all this had happened just a week later, he'd be able to capitalise on the instability to truly clean house. But with crucial information missing and Tattletale dragging her feet, he just wasn't ready to take advantage.
Once the Bay stabilised once again, it'd be considerably more difficult to upend the balance. Some of the pressure building up over the years had been released with this event. If he couldn't act now, his later plans that relied on that pressure simply wouldn't work. On the other hand, if he could blow the top of the mountain now, he just might end up in the PRT ENE Director's chair by the end of the month, or the week after at the latest.
The truly frustrating part was that he knew where the information needed was stored. It wasn't a matter of security clearance – with his moles and backdoors in the PRT, such a thing wasn't even necessary – rather, the information simply wasn't stored in an electronic form and he had no operatives in place that could get at the physical files. Getting them himself was out of the question. Even trying would raise suspicions beyond what was acceptable.
He was considering his assets, going through now defunct plans that may be able to be repurposed, when the idea struck him.
The Alcott plan. It had been designed for retrieving a closely guarded item. Moreover, unlike the precog, these files weren't a living asset he'd need to keep alive. In fact, he wouldn't need to take the original files at all. A single operative could sneak into the facility and copy the information he was after. In the chaos of multiple, seemingly unconnected, parahumans wreaking further havoc in the city, a potential security breach would largely fly under the radar.
It was truly fortunate that he had acquired such an operative recently in the form of Trickster, a member of the Travelers. His teleportation ability would prove invaluable for infiltrating the storage facility, while his team could add to the chaos elsewhere in the city.
Coil would have to expedite the Travelers' trip to Brockton Bay, something that would cost a small fortune in itself, but the potential rewards would be well worth it.
Furthermore, the Undersiders would require a heavy hitter to accompany them for the high profile job that would serve as one of the necessary distractions. A role that could perhaps be fulfilled by Circus, though he would have to ask his pet if they'd be a good fit.
He frowned, thinking of the precog again. She was all he'd hoped for and more, though the fact that he couldn't ask his questions in a split timeline was somewhat disappointing. Beyond that, she'd also been having trouble with some of her predictions. She described it as the numbers being in flux when asked about certain topics. Her exact words were that her power was uncertain – some external factor that was hard to account for.
It was vexing and something to keep in mind for the future. If Dinah's precognition abilities could fail due to this 'external factor' then there was a good chance his own abilities were at risk. He would have to be careful, especially when it came to acquiring new parahumans, but ultimately it was nothing he couldn't overcome with time.
Solidifying the plan in his mind, Coil split the timeline. In one he went about his day as normal. In the other, he picked up a disposable phone and dialled his other pet's number. Once she picked up, he didn't wait for her greeting.
"Tattletale. I have a job for your crew."
Darkness. No matter where she turned, that was all she could see. Her bare feet trudged through something soft and grainy. The air was dry and hot. As she breathed, she could feel something flow into her lungs, almost like a powder. A scorching gust blew into her, threatening to push her back. She kept moving forward, aimless.
A bright light broke through the darkness, naught but a faint glimmer somewhere in the distance. She turned to it. The wind carried with it whispers, too quiet for her to understand. That beautiful light, shining alone in the suffocating dark, it called to her.
She walked. For hours. Days. Months. Years. Not once getting any closer to that distant star.
She walked, until the abrasive wind left nothing of her behind.
Taylor woke up. She didn't gasp for air, or fly out of her bed. Her eyes opened slowly as awareness chased away the remnants of her dream. It had been different than the ones she'd been having the past four days, ever since she triggered. She felt as if something had finally settled. A precarious balance, but balance nonetheless. Yet with it came an unease she couldn't fully explain.
She stretched, feeling around the bedsheets. There was ash all over them again, just like all days prior. It seemed that, even when not actively using her power, small amounts would come off. Perhaps whatever force held her together now was just weak enough at the edges of her 'skin' for some grains to detach from her body periodically.
Getting up was a chore, needing to be careful not to sweep all the ash onto the floor. It'd be easier if everything remained on the sheets, so she could air them out and throw it all outside. She looked to the clock on her nightstand. Almost noon. She was waking up earlier and earlier, slowly adjusting to a new life and a strange body.
She made her way to the kitchen. The house was empty. Lacey was at work, but Kurt had taken the day off to do some work around the house. A note on the fridge answered her unasked question.
"Gone to the bank to run an errand. Be back at around noon," she read it out loud. She shrugged, ignoring the twinge of worry welling up inside her. It showed up every time either of them were out in the city but she was gradually growing used to it.
A phantom sensation of hunger was slowly settling around where her stomach used to be. She knew she wasn't actually hungry, hadn't been since…then, but the habit of eating breakfast was hard to break. She turned on the TV in the living room, the volume high enough for the noise to reach the kitchen. The channel didn't matter, it was the background noise that she needed. It helped distract her enough to not notice the lack of a heartbeat in her chest.
Breakfast was simple, just some cereal, fried eggs and bread. She ate slowly. There was no taste and only a hint of texture. Even that was masked by the grainy feeling of ash. It clumped with the moisture in the food. That was part of why she'd be eating the cereal dry and why she hadn't drunk any water in four days either. She was glad that at least she'd be spared from the taste of wet ash in her mouth.
Swallowing, she briefly wondered where it all went. There were no organs. No stomach, no intestines. Hell, she didn't even know how far her esophagus went, just that the food simply vanished at some point. She tried not to think about it. Much like the matter of her breathing, it was best left unexplored.
"We interrupt our usual program to bring you breaking news from Downtown Brockton Bay with an ongoing situation in Brockton Bay Central Bank. Authorities have responded to a silent alarm triggered by one of the employees inside. Details are sparse but the perpetrators are suspected to be part of a small-time parahuman gang known as the Undersiders. No demands of ransom have been made at this time."
The broadcast went on but she'd stopped listening. She tried to convince herself that Kurt already left the bank. He was late because of traffic. He stopped to get some coffee. Anything but the possibility that he was still there, held hostage so a gang could hit it big.
She was out of the house barely a minute later, running barefoot down the street, a black jacket thrown over her pyjamas. Instinctively, her face smoothed out, leaving behind a grey, featureless visage. She ran, faster and faster, until wisps of ash streaked behind her as loose particles were shorn off by the wind.
The bank was in sight within only a few minutes. A police cordon had been set up outside. She slowed down. The lack of a pounding heartbeat and her normal breathing were throwing her off but she didn't have time to deal with her body's weirdness.
"Hey, you can't pass through-"
She shook the officer off of her, marching straight to the costumed teens she assumed were the Wards. They turned to her as she approached, appearing apprehensive. The one with clocks on his costume went to address her, but she cut him off before he could even begin.
"I'm here to help. What's going on?"
A question lingered in her mind, about how she was talking with no mouth. She shook it off mentally. It was really not the right time. He paused. Taylor got the impression that he was listening to someone else.
"Thank you for the offer, miss, but I can assure you we have everything under control. Please just step aside and let us work."
He went to lead her away by the shoulder.
He stopped before them. The knight in shining armour. He looked at them both, deemed them worthless and abandoned them.
She shook off the 'hero', violently. He took a step back, while the rest of the Wards tensed.
"No! My…friend is in there. I'm not going anywhere until I make sure he's safe."
The teen – was it Clockblocker? It didn't sound like him – stared at her. They remained in that standoff for a few more seconds, before their attention turned to the bank's doors opening. A deep darkness billowed out into the street. She heard the barking of dogs, booming and vicious, before the cloud swallowed her and the Wards.
Suddenly there was no sound. No light. Nothing. Something struck her from behind, then the side. She fell to the ground. Even though she felt no pain, she was completely disoriented. What felt like an oversized paw stepped on her chest, holding her down. She struggled but could get no leverage in all the confusion. She stayed pinned, barely able to keep track of how long it had been.
The weight on her chest disappeared and the darkness slowly dissipated. The Wards were in various states of injury. The bank's glass front was shattered to pieces. She could see another cape inside – Glory Girl? – checking on the hostages, an ugly bruise already forming on her cheek.
The Undersiders were nowhere in sight.
Carlos, or rather Aegis now in his regular costume, faced the – new? – parahuman that had confronted them before shit had hit the fan. He would be lying if he said he wasn't angry at her. Her distraction had given Grue enough time to catch all of them in his darkness and they'd been taken down with ease from there.
Only the fact that the girl was a casualty alongside them stopped him from thinking she had been sent to deliberately distract them. Part of the blame was on him and the team as well. Getting caught off guard like that was a rookie mistake, as was devoting all their attention to the new arrival.
Speaking of, she stood in front him, fidgeting in place and occasionally looking behind him as civilians exited the bank. He cleared his throat and her attention snapped to him.
"So what, exactly, was your plan here? Because if you meant for the Undersiders to trounce all of us and then escape, you did a great job."
Maybe going off on a newbie like this was unfair. The girl was still in her pyjamas after all; he wouldn't be surprised if this was the first confrontation she'd ever been in. Still, she needed to realise that trying to butt in like this when things were already being handled would usually only make the situation worse.
"No, no that's not-"
She folded her arms across her stomach. He remembered, from an interrogation training course he had taken as part of the Wards program, that this was a defensive posture. The girl was embarrassed; her actions prior had likely been entirely on impulse.
"I heard on the news that the bank was being attacked by parahumans, and I knew my…friend was in there so I rushed here. I just wanted to make sure they'd be ok…"
She trailed off, unsure of herself. Perhaps doubting her capabilities? He noted her hesitation when disclosing the identity of whoever she'd come here to protect. Someone important in her personal life, perhaps a parent or guardian. She wouldn't want them to be linked with her cape activities then.
He sighed. What happened, happened and at the end no one had been seriously hurt. At least they might be able to recover something from all this.
"Got a name at least?"
"Oh, I'm T- Uhm…"
He raised an eyebrow, something the girl could probably see. So, she was very new then, because he was pretty sure she'd been about to give him her real name and only caught herself at the last second.
"I don't have one."
Well, that was certainly a better answer than accidentally unmasking in public.
"Better come up with something soon before you get stuck with something terrible by someone else. Better yet, if you join up with us, the Protectorate will take care of most of that stuff for you."
She looked even more uncomfortable at the suggestion, if that was even possible.
"Ah, no. I'm not planning to- Kurt!"
She rushed off past him, shouting at a man exiting the bank. She ran up to him, giving what looked to be an almost painfully tight hug. The man, Kurt apparently, hugged her back with a wince. He said something and the girl eased off but didn't let go. His previous assessment seemed about right, though he thought it was somewhat silly that she would run up to the man while still masked. He wondered if he'd also been like this when starting out and just never realised.
"Hey Aegis! You done talking with the newbie? Come on, we're being called back to base. Bet Piggot's already itching to chew us out," Dennis called out to him, standing by the doors of a PRT van that'd take them back to HQ. He took one last look at the departing pair, before joining his team.
Darkness. No matter where she turned, that was all she could see. She cried out but couldn't hear herself. The barking of dogs drowned out even her thoughts. At last, light broke through but it offered no salvation.
She stood in a ruined lobby, rubble and bodies scattered around her, the concrete painted red with blood and viscera. Shards of glass crunched beneath her bare feet. The barking of dogs was replaced by the roaring of fire. She turned, running towards two bodies she recognised. A collapsed pillar held them to the ground. She tried to free them but the pillar refused to budge, no matter how hard she pushed herself.
The heat scorched her skin, burning deep. She fought through the pain, desperate to save these two. Their faces kept changing, from Annette and Danny to Kurt and Lacey, then back again. Even as the flesh melted off her hands, leaving behind a charred skeleton, she kept trying. Until the flames consumed it all.
Taylor woke up, the nightmare already slipping away but leaving a sense of restlessness in its place. She looked at the clock next to her.
03:00
She buried her face back into the pillow, feeling the ash grating against her cheeks and just laying there for what seemed like hours. Still, sleep eluded her. She looked at the clock again.
03:01
A deep groan, filled with frustration, echoed in the room. Just barely, she managed to remind herself that throwing her pillow at the clock was a bad idea, what with all the ash currently on it. Creating a mess wouldn't make the night better. Instead, she got up, once again careful not to disturb the loose ash too much.
Wandering around the house wasn't something she was overly keen on. Kurt and Lacey still had to work tomorrow, and the last thing she wanted was to wake them at three in the morning. Staying in her room and doing nothing didn't seem all that great either. She looked out the window. Even if her breathing was just an act, getting some fresh air sounded good to her. Throwing the same jacket from earlier in the day over herself, she slowly and silently made her way to the front door, checking the pockets in the meantime. Her keys were in there, alongside something she had honestly forgotten about.
Faultline's burner phone.
She shook her head but decided to take it with her anyway. A phone could be useful for things other than calling parahuman mercenaries. A hasty note was scribbled and left on the kitchen table, proclaiming her quest for fresh air. The door opened and closed, as silent as the rest of her trip through the house.
It was just a block of mindless wandering later that she realised she'd forgotten to wear shoes again. In her defense, it was a hard thing to notice when your feet are rougher than the sidewalk you're walking on. She kept walking, not really caring enough to go back.
There were a lot of small things like that. Little habits and necessities that she simply forgot sometimes, even though it had only been a few days. She wondered where she'd be in a month. What about a year? A decade? Would she eventually forget that she was ever human to begin with? How long until she just woke up one day and decided to stop eating or breathing?
Something crunched under her foot. It was hard to see in the low light, but looking at it closer revealed it was a piece of charcoal. She looked up, suddenly aware of her surroundings. The burnt ruins were familiar. The husk of a building loomed over her.
It was her home. Her old home. Only the first floor remained, and even that was barely more than a ruin.
The feelings that bubbled within her at the sight were too complex to untangle but she could tell surprise was one of them. Her feet had carried her here all on their own, but for the life of her she couldn't understand why.
She moved towards the door, now nothing but a charred frame. The half-rotten step was gone, just like the rest of the porch stairs. Clambering up onto the porch caused the whole structure to let out a groan. She froze, realising she'd need to be very careful if she were to go any further.
With careful steps, she passed under the frame, sparing a look at what remained of two discarded fire blankets. Images of what used to be filled her mind, but the smell of burnt wood and drywall brought her back to the present. The damaged floor creaked loudly as she traced the steps they had taken that night while fleeing their burning home. Through the blackened hallway, into a ruined kitchen and down the battered steps that led into the false safety of the basement.
A discarded cylinder at the foot of the stairs caught her attention. She picked it up and set it aside, moving further in. The walls were caked with soot, almost entirely black. Below a sturdy, concrete support were the supplies they had brought down, untouched but covered in soot like the walls. She realised then that, had they stayed, they would have choked to death from the smoke. The basement had never been safe. Maybe they would have had a better chance if they made a run for it from the start, but with how fast the fight had reached them…
She sat down on the dirty sleeping bag, next to the shattered camping lanterns, seeing her dad sitting right across from her, a soft smile on his face that promised they would get through this. He was gone when she blinked. An all too familiar pressure rose up behind her eyes but it amounted to nothing. Another thing that had been taken away from her that night.
Ash softly swirled around her feet, as she subconsciously called on her powers. Using this part of it, without actually pushing herself to create more, didn't cause her any discomfort – or at least, not anymore. In fact, it was almost soothing. If she couldn't shed tears, she could at least channel those emotions into something else.
She wondered what her dad would think, about all of this. What would he make of his daughter being a parahuman? Would he approve of her rushing off with barely a thought for herself, to go save someone important to her? She huffed, a tiny smile pulling at her lips. He certainly wouldn't like it, the fact that she was putting herself in danger, but he would be proud all the same.
Different thoughts about the robbery began to swarm her mind. Kurt had gone downtown to run a simple errand, yet was caught in the crossfire anyway. Arguably the safest part of Brockton Bay, wasn't actually all that safe. Maybe that was just this city being a shithole, but she suspected things weren't much better anywhere else. Even if they left – if she somehow managed to convince Kurt and Lacey to move out of the Bay – as long as there were parahumans and Endbringers, nowhere would be truly safe.
It was a pipe dream, wanting to live a peaceful life. A dream she wanted desperately to pursue, but she knew, in her non-existent gut, that she wouldn't be allowed to do that. But at least she had the power to protect what she cared about now. To not take advantage of that would be a mistake. She didn't want to lose any more to mistakes.
Her thoughts drifted to that night again, superimposed over scenes of the bank robbery. The barking of dogs, a patch of darkness deeper than the night sky. The Undersiders had been there. They were the ones fighting Lung. They were the ones Lung had chased into her neighbourhood.
Lung.
It was him, ultimately, that lit the fire. That stared her and dad down and burned them alive. Just because she couldn't feel hot and cold anymore didn't mean she didn't remember what it had felt like. A lot of things were blurry about that night. But this? Blood boiling, flesh peeling off bone. Her screams. Her dad's screams.
She would take that memory to her grave, no matter how long it'd be before that time came.
About the Undersiders and the PRT, she wasn't sure what was the right thing to do. The sin of the Undersiders was fleeing for their lives, uncaring for where they ran to. The sin of Armsmaster was callousness. She could, and did, loathe them for that, from the bottom of her ashen heart. But Lung? Lung was the one she hated. She didn't care what was right when it came to him. Lung needed to die and she needed to be the one to carry out the sentence.
He hadn't been seen since the Burning of Brockton Bay. It was all the news talked about. A kill order on him was being processed, but no one knew where he was. Assuming he was still in the city, she would need help finding him.
And she would need to train with her powers. All aspects of it.
The ash swirled erratically as her thoughts shifted to her limited power testing. Her mind was split; one part assuring her that she was in complete control, while the other screamed at even the idea of pushing further.
She shook her head. The ash stopped dead and slowly fell to the ground. Lung had built a reputation of a monster. While he had been driven off multiple times, each one of those incidents had brought death and destruction on a scale unmatched by other parahumans. He taught Brockton Bay to fear fights between capes and to hide when he took the scene.
She would need all of herself to face that. It meant working on being able to use her powers without freezing up. Losing against him, like she did against the Undersiders, could not be allowed. And to protect those she cared about she would need to keep on winning, against anyone that tried taking more from her.
There was one person that could help. A crew of mercenaries that could help her find Lung. A group of experienced parahumans that could help with training her powers. All she'd need to do, was become one of them.
She stood up, taking the burner out of her pocket. She breathed in, and out. Once. Twice. She flipped it open and dialled the number. The phone rang briefly, then was picked up.
"Hey, Faultline, it's Taylor. About that offer."
