Hannah, known to the general public as the Protectorate hero Miss Militia, felt something was off. Receiving a call from dispatch in the middle of the night was nothing out of the ordinary. This was Brockton Bay. A night without an attempted robbery or mugging would be an anomaly. Being the only Noctis cape in Brockton Bay, she more often than not found herself being called up to deal with these nightly occurrences. She was called tonight, but she wasn't the only one.

The call came in just past midnight. According to dispatch, there was a potential kidnapping involving the parahuman villain Coil. Very little was known about Coil. Going by some of the PHO threads about him, some people didn't even think he existed, or that if he did, he wasn't actually a parahuman.

Whether Coil was or was not a parahuman wasn't exactly something they could test anymore. When Hannah was called to respond to the call with Armsmaster, Assault and Battery, they arrived to find a scene out of a horror film. A secret underground facility controlled by a parahuman villain. Bodies were strewn about the ground, their blood pooled beneath them. Bullet holes and scorch marks from tinker guns riddled the walls, as if the men had been shooting at something they couldn't hit. Medical facilities within the base hosted a number of illicit substances whose purpose was hard to determine.

Emily Piggot, Director of the PRT ENE, sat behind her desk with bags under her eyes. Unlike Hannah, Emily Piggot still required sleep. She'd been roused when the underground facility had been discovered along with most of the PRT's higher ranking individuals.

"Armsmaster, your report?" Piggot said, not letting her obvious exhaustion color her voice.

Standing at her side in front of the director's desk, Armsmaster nodded. "Yes, director. At 00:23 this morning, dispatch received a call from a distressed woman claiming to have been kidnapped by Coil. Dispatch heard gunshots in the background of the call. Miss Militia and I were the first on the scene with PRT troops and Assault and Battery arriving two and four minutes after us respectively."

Armsmaster walked over to the large screen on the wall and connected a plug from his armor into it. On the screen, a video began playing of Armsmaster's helmet camera. "As you can see, the interior of the facility resembles that of an underground Endbringer shelter, albeit heavily modified."

"Were there plans to build a shelter in that space?" Piggot asked.

Armsmaster nodded. "I recovered documents dated several years ago. Fortress Construction, a private construction company, was contracted to build an Endbringer shelter in the space, but the project was officially scrapped less than a month after it was undertaken. The reasoning was the ground was too unstable and would not be suitable to defend against Endbringers."

"I'll have someone look more in depth." Piggot said. "Continue."

Armsmaster nodded, working a control on the forearm of his suit. On the screen, the video advanced until it came to where Miss Militia and Armsaster encountered the first of the bodies. Armaster paused the video.

Piggot frowned. "Did either of you detect any sounds or traces of fighting while you were in the facility?"

"No, director." Miss Militia said. "There was clearly a conflict, but whatever that conflict was ended before we arrived."

Piggot leaned into her desk, steepling her hands under her chin. "Was there any evidence to suggest who either side was?"

"Yes, director." Armsaster said. He advanced the video through the facility until he and Miss Militia stopped inside what appeared to be a small office space. There was a man laying on the ground with a hole through his chest where his heart should be. The body was garbed in a dark suit and a serpent mask.

"Coil." Piggot said.

"Yes, director."

"He was confirmed dead?"

"Affirmative. We attempted to apply first aid, but his heart was missing. There was no way to bring him back. Additionally…" Armsmaster touched a control on his wrist.

Piggot glared at the screen on the wall, her hands balling into fists. "Is this a poor attempt at a joke, Armsmaster?" On the screen, Coil's unmasked face was displayed to the world. Piggot recognized the man. She'd fought with him while she was in the PRT's Strike Teams. In recent years, Thomas Calvert had worked closely with her on a number of projects in Brockton Bay.

"I'm afraid not, ma'am." Hannah said. "Dragon and Armsmaster both confirmed Thomas Calvert's identity."

"Keep this as quiet as you can. When we're done here, I want you to run over everything he touched with a fine-tooth comb, Collin. If we really had a rat in our house, then we need to fumigate."

"I wrote a script to go through secure files on the ride back, director. I'll look more in depth once I return to my lab."

"Currently, only Armsmaster, Dragon, myself and now you know about Coil's identity." Hannah said.

"Good, keep it that way." Piggot said. "Do not let the press get a hold of this. We need to clean house before some headline chaser airs our dirty laundry. Now where are we with figuring out what happened before you two got there? A complex that large and hidden should have had some form of surveillance system. Were you able to recover anything?"

Armsaster's lips pulled down into a frustrated frown. "Whoever was there before us destroyed all of the servers and the cameras. I was able to break into Coil's computer with Dragon's assistance, but the bomb the initial caller warned us about started counting down and we focused our attention on disarming it. Had we not, I fear multiple city blocks would have been lost."

Piggot glared at nothing. "That maniac had a nuke underneath my city?"

"The PRT bomb squad is still examining the device, but initial reports suggest it was not nuclear. There are clearly Tinker components to it, but I believe we will not have to worry about radiation. I will submit a final report on the device once it is safely disassembled."

"Good. You mentioned the initial caller. Were you able to locate her?"

Miss Militia shook her head. "No, director. We met no living individuals in the facility. The only people we came across had all been killed."

Piggot sighed, rubbing her forehead. "The caller said Coil told her he was going to ransom her to her father, correct?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Do we know anything about that woman or who her father is?"

"Unfortunately, no." Armsaster said. "Using the damage wrought in Coil's base, I have developed several theories, but I have nothing to prove any of them. When Miss Militia and I departed the scene, the only blood traces were from the mercenaries or Coil himself. If the techs are unable to uncover any other blood traces, this would suggest the intruder was never hit by the Mercenary's weapons. I expect the man possess some form of breaker ability that allows him to phase similar to Shadow Stalker."

"Wait," Piggot said, raising a hand. "You said 'intruder', singular. You also said he was a man."

Armsmaster nodded. "Yes. While the camera feeds were either useless or unrecoverable, cameras were not the only method of surveillance Coil employed. There were microphones hidden throughout the facility in every space but Coil's office. Most of the microphone data was unrecoverable, but I was able to recover this file." Armsaster pushed a button on his wrist, and the screen went black. A male voice spoke through the speakers, crackling with static. It was hard to make out what the man was saying.

'–n't need to…we go our…shouldn't ha…'

Armsmaster stopped the recording.

Piggot frowned. "That isn't much to go on."

"No, it isn't, but it is better than nothing." Armsmaster agreed. "While it is hard to hear, Dragon and I have analyzed the recording and were able to detect gunshots in the background. Whoever this man was, he was fighting Coil's men."

"Is it possible he wasn't working alone?" Piggot asked.

Armsmaster nodded. "Given the lack of evidence in either direction, it is possible that he worked with an accomplice."

Piggot leaned back in her chair. "So Coil kidnaps a girl. Girl panics and calls the PRT emergency line. At least one other cape, possibly more, arrives and slaughters his way through Coil's men. Said cape is likely a powerful Breaker or Stranger or a combination of the two. By the time we get there, all of Coil's men are dead and the woman is nowhere to be seen. What are the odds Coil kidnapped the unknown cape's daughter?"

"Again, there isn't much evidence, but I would guess the odds are high. Since the woman first called us instead of the cape, it would also be safe to assume the woman did not know her father was a parahuman. It is also possible the cape works for her father and was sent to retrieve her." Armsmaster said.

"Have we had any engagements with an individual fitting the loose description of this man in the past? Failing that, was there any evidence of a man with his abilities operating in the city before now?" Piggot asked.

"No, director. I cannot recall anything that would suggest that." Hannah said. With her perfect memory, she would have remembered.

"So a probable villain that can avoid bullets and laser blasts just emerged from hiding to save his or his boss's kidnapped daughter? Did Coil kidnap someone from out of town?"

"It is also possible the man was a recent trigger and has not gone out yet. If Coil discovered his abilities before he showed himself and tried to leverage the woman against him, it would make sense that he responded so violently." Hannah said.

Piggot sighed. "All we have right now are guesses. Armsmaster, see if you can dig up anything else from Coil's surveillance network. I'll have the techs dig through the base and see if they can turn up anything else useful. Militia, I want you on site at the base until I say otherwise. I don't want some villain's cleanup crew going through and destroying any evidence we haven't found yet. And lock down anything that could tie Coil's identity back to Thomas Calvert."

"Understood, director." Hannah said, turning around and leaving the office.

Sharing a respectful nod with Armsmaster, Hannah turned and headed towards the elevator. She needed to get to her bike in the garage so she could return to the facility. With how little they knew about the situation, it was vital they uncover as much as they could. She needed to be there to prevent any unsavory elements from obscuring details.