Sitting at his desk, Coil watched the external camera feed over steepled fingers, unable to shake a feeling that something untoward was going on. He was staring at half a dozen views from different angles of several work crews busily engaged in repairing the road a quarter of a mile away from his base, a dozen or so people in hi-viz gear currently unlimbering a quantity of heavy equipment from three large trucks. His security people had alerted him when one of the long-range cameras on the mostly abandoned Jackson Print Works building had spotted the three vehicles approaching, one stopping to block the road with diversion barriers while the other pair moved to their current position.

Shortly afterwards the third one had joined them, the crew in it quickly unloading a couple of jackhammers and connecting them to the compressor on the back of the truck, which was currently rumbling away as two men worked on one of the potholes which that stretch of road had sprouted in quantity over the last couple of months. A couple more were shoveling the debris into a wheelbarrow and moving it to the side. Three more of the workers were wandering on foot up and down the road, brushing slushy snow away from other potholes then spraying cryptic markings on the road with fluorescent green paint, while making notes on a clipboard and taking photos.

The rest of them were clearly setting up to patch the hole being prepared, a tar boiler having just been unloaded and started. Fumes were already beginning to rise from the thing, and even though it was impossible from his underground position, he could almost swear he could smell the stuff. It brought back memories of his childhood and hot roads…

On the face of it, everything looked entirely above board. The trucks were all marked with DWA identification, which matched what he knew to be true, that the Dock Workers group often did remedial work for the city, especially in this sort of area. They had a lot of skilled and experienced workers and had been doing this type of operation for years. He'd seen such crews out and about many times in the past, and thought very little of it.

So why was the back of his neck tingling like it was?

Tapping the tablet next to his right hand with a finger, he scrolled through the camera views, then flicked another one towards the big monitor across the room. The image popped up there, looking at the scene from a camera at right angles to the first one. Sliding his finger on the right icons, he panned it around a little and zoomed in, until one of the trucks nearly filled the picture. Examining it closely with some suspicion he searched for any signs that it wasn't exactly what it appeared to be, without success. Moving to the other two in turn he did the same, again seeing only three rather battered and heavily used if well maintained trucks full of road maintenance equipment.

After a few minutes, he studied each worker in turn, watching as they did their jobs, a couple standing to one side inspecting a set of printed documents and pointing at various parts of the road, others now shoveling hot tar and gravel into a black-stained cement mixer to produce the matrix to fill the hole, still more now using the jackhammers to prepare another hole. Again, nothing seemed to be anything other than what it clearly was, a professional road repair crew efficiently doing their jobs.

But his neck was still tingling…

Turning to his computer he thought for a moment, then clicked a few icons, typed in a password, scrolled, clicked some more, put in another password, scrolled again, and finally found himself looking at the City Hall administrative works schedule. Poking through it for a couple of minutes while muttering to himself about why couldn't people organize things more effectively he eventually located the section for road works in this part of the city. Sure enough, there was a work order, added first thing that morning, for the DWA to repair this road, exactly where they were. He cross-referenced the name of the city employee who had added the order to the system, checked his schedule, and saw that the notes the man had put in showed the potholes had been reported at about six AM by someone on their way to work.

Pausing that line of inquiry, Coil quickly went back to the external security camera archive and looked at the recordings made at that specific time, scrolling backwards through them until he found a car that had driven down the same road at about half past five that morning, bounced hard enough into one pothole that was hidden under the snow that it made him wince just watching it, then stop. A large and clearly very annoyed man had got out of the vehicle with a big flashlight, checked his car, then wandered around for a minute or two looking at the road, taking a few photos with his phone, before he drove off.

Leaning back, the super-villain also known in his civilian guise as Thomas Calvert tapped his chin with his finger and pondered the matter. He couldn't find a single plausible reason to suspect this was anything other than exactly what it looked like. Someone had reported a pothole to City Hall, probably rather angrily based on how hard the car had bottomed out in the damn thing, City Hall being heavily overworked as usual had passed that onto the DWA for repair before someone else got all worked up about it, and the DWA guys had duly arrived to do the work. Already they were halfway through filling the first hole with a vigorously steaming mix of gravel and bitumen. They certainly worked quickly, he mused with a certain amount of respect.

Maybe he was just being a little too paranoid? If there even was such a thing in his line of work? The disappearance of his mercs and their target a couple of days ago had spooked him badly, and he was still very distracted by trying, completely in vain so far, to come up with a sensible and believable explanation of what could have happened to them. The disappearance had been so complete and so traceless he was half-way towards believing that aliens had got them.

He hadn't been able to satisfy himself that it was any local Parahuman, although he'd considered every possible combination of known and suspected powers he could think of. It certainly hadn't been the PRT, he was sure of that, nor the Protectorate. Not unless someone from well outside the ENE area had wandered through very quietly indeed, just happened to interfere without then mentioning it at all, before wandering off again completely without notice.

Much the same applied to most of the independent or villain capes he could think of. Even if any of them had a reason to do whatever it was that had happened, they probably wouldn't have done it quietly. Sure, it was possible, but he had enough sources in enough places that he'd probably have got wind of something like that beforehand, or since. But no one knew anything, quite a few discreet inquiries had shown that all too well.

Almost immediately he'd considered if it was the work of whoever or whatever had happened to the old ship in the Bay, which had also vanished under mysterious circumstances, but at least that had the decency to leave traces. Lots of them, looking like billions of teeny tiny teeth had eaten the reef. He'd seen the reports from Armsmaster, who had clearly had no more real luck explaining what had happened than anyone else had, merely finally noting it to be the work of some previously unknown Parahuman, likely a Tinker, for reasons unknown. And yes, that was an interesting coincidence when you took the girl's vanishing into account, but he'd discounted a connection after a lot of thought both because of the time between the events and the complete lack of evidence in her case. There had been no scrapes on the surroundings, no damage to anything, merely a profound absence of Thinker, mercenaries, and van.

If whoever had taken the ship had used the same technique on his property, presumably the same traces would have been left behind, and if whoever took the girl had taken the ship, why were there any traces at all? He just couldn't really reconcile those things, and had finally decided that they had to be separate events. The ship disappearing was almost certainly a test of something, probably a weapon, as well as a statement. The girl disappearing was someone stealing something of his, and his mercs going as well was adding insult to injury.

Which, of course, was why he hadn't left his base since then, and why he was right now squinting suspiciously at a group of entirely normal road workers repairing the road as if he expected to be attacked at any moment.

Sighing, he shook his head. This was getting ridiculous. He was jumping at shadows, spooked by circumstances he couldn't explain then extrapolating to enemies behind every chair. He'd wasted nearly a week so far trying to work out who had taken his Thinker, completely unsuccessfully so far, and had allowed all his other plans to lapse while he tried to achieve something useful. Obsessively checking and rechecking everything over and over again in case he'd missed something had reached the point of uselessness. Those DWA guys were completely ignorant of his existence, weren't anywhere near any of his secret entrances, and showed no signs whatsoever of being anything but what they appeared to be. Everything checked out and he was wasting time and effort now.

He clicked the mouse and closed the various taps into city databases he had open, abruptly deciding that he needed more coffee before he got back to serious work. The case of the missing Wilbourn girl would keep. He'd move onto his plans for recruiting the other Parahumans he'd selected while keeping his eyes open for any further clues or signs of interference, but without more data he was just wasting time.

Dropping the spare timeline which had him locked in his office with a gun in his hand, just in case, he spun up another one in which he started looking through his files on a number of minor villains in the city, starting with the one calling himself Grue. He'd rework his plans for getting the young man under his thumb now he didn't have access to the Thinker he'd planned on, before approaching him with an offer he couldn't refuse. It was extremely annoying but Coil knew he was nothing if not flexible. Shit happened, you had to eventually adapt and move past it.

In his original timeline, he got up, glanced one last time at the monitors and saw the work crews were now running a vibrating compactor over the filled pothole to level it, and headed for the coffee machine. After that he'd probably take a little time to himself and inflict some severe pain on a suitable individual, just to cheer himself up, before getting on with his day.

That always worked.

"That's an awful lot of weapons," Taylor commented with awe, staring through beneath into what was obviously an armory. Nearly eighty feet underground, right where the map showed the filled in remains of an unfinished Endbringer shelter should have been, a very much not filled in and capped structure that was more than a little impressive in size was easily visible to her and her father. Spread across four levels, and over a hundred yards from side to side, the place was a maze of rooms and corridors, at least sixty people moving about inside it.

What she was observing right now was a room at least sixty feet square which was absolutely stuffed with guns, what looked like rocket launchers, more of those laser widgets, enough ammunition to fight Vietnam all over again, grenades, plastic explosive in blocks, electronic equipment cases piled to the ceiling, and a crap load more things she didn't recognize at all. It was like a scene out of an action movie. There had to be tens of millions of dollars worth of stuff there, she thought with amazement. Where had the guy got it all from? And how?

"Christ, isn't it?" her father mumbled, sounding shocked. "Someone has a lot to answer for. There's no way he picked that up on the street, most of it has to have come from the army, and there's so much it's not just one corrupt supply sergeant. Someone is going to get shot for this."

"We already knew he was getting his weapons from military sources," Lisa commented, her voice thoughtful, with the slight change to it that Taylor had noticed it got when she was communicating with her power in the background. "He's got contacts that are more highly placed than we assumed they were… National guard probably, like Matt thought." She couldn't see what they could, but both Taylor and her father were describing what they were seeing and Lisa was rapidly typing whenever they spoke.

"Yeah, but the sheer amount of this is insane," Taylor's father commented. "It looks like he was gearing up to take over the city."

"I think you're closer than you'd be happy about," Lisa replied slowly.

"Should we take it?" Taylor asked.

"Don't touch anything yet, we don't want to alert Coil," the blonde quickly replied, even as Taylor's father shook his head.

"No, Lisa's right, we need to do this right, and all in one shot, or we'll have no end of problems. We have no idea what he'd do if we miss," he advised.

Taylor nodded, moving her point of view past the armory to the next room. They were counting people, most of whom were obviously more mercenaries. All of them were armed, and wearing the same military pattern clothing as the groups she'd acquired had been. "Ah. Found the garage," she announced a moment later. "Just there to the right, see? On the upper level. We were right, there's a tunnel right up into that structure we thought was the main entrance, with a hidden door in the floor of it. Looks like the whole thing lifts up."

"Ah, yes. I see," her dad nodded. "Very secret agent. This guy watched too many spy movies."

"It would make a dandy base for U.N.I.O.N. once we clear out the pests," she remarked with a mischievous grin, making Lisa snicker. He sighed a little.

"Stop trying to steal everything, Taylor."

"I'm not stealing it, I'm just saying we could probably make better use of it than he can," she protested, grinning more widely. "Ooh. He's got a cafeteria and everything!" A dozen mercenaries were eating at tables in the facility, which had a huge kitchen separated from the main area by a long countertop. She told Lisa how many people she could see, the girl adding it to the tally.

"I can almost hear your mind working on a way to keep the place, don't try to deny that," her dad grumbled. "Stick to the plan."

"Yes, dad," she replied innocently. He sighed faintly once more. For some reason he was doing a lot of that recently…

"Aha. I think I found him," he said a moment later.

"Where?" Taylor scanned further to the west, having noted another two mercenaries for Lisa's total.

"Second level down, towards the bay in the direction of that phone exchange Lisa spotted on the map," he replied. "Looks like there is a tunnel going to it, she was right. One guy in a self contained office with a lot of computers, separated from the rest of the facility."

"Oh, yeah… That's got to be our guy."

"Well, he's wearing a costume, so I'm pretty sure he's the villain of the piece," her father chuckled. "Either that or he's got a weird choice in leisurewear."

"Hmm… What's he doing?"

Both of them concentrated on the tall skinny guy sitting at a desk working on a very expensive-looking computer, occasionally glancing up at a series of half a dozen huge monitors mounted on the wall facing him. He was dressed in a black costume with a white snake emblem coiled around it all the way up one leg to his head, with not a patch of skin visible. It didn't actually hide his face from either of them, of course, not that Taylor recognized the man. He was black, but so were a lot of people, so that didn't help with his identity.

"Watching us, by the looks of it," her dad said after a moment, sounding somewhat amused. "While hacking into the city admin systems. I'm pretty sure that's not supposed to be accessible to just anyone…"

"He really is a paranoid little weirdo, isn't he?" she queried rather rhetorically.

"Well, to be completely fair, we are out to get him," Lisa laughed. Taylor giggled, nodding, and her father grinned.

"Now what's he up to?" she said a moment later as their quarry, who was obviously Coil himself, started closing documents on the computer. "Did he see something that worried him?"

"Looks like he decided it was fine and he's going to do something else," her dad replied after a moment. "He doesn't seem in a hurry, or worried. Just thoughtful." Both of them watched as the man got up having finished doing whatever he'd been doing and walked across the office to a complex coffee machine, which he fiddled with for a little while. Eventually producing a cup of coffee, he picked it up and went back to his desk, where he leaned against it and idly watched the monitors which were still showing various views of the outside of the secret base, mostly cameras aimed at the DWA crews. Pulling his mask off and dropping it on his desk, Coil sipped his coffee and pondered the view.

Taylor wondered what he'd say if he knew that they were watching him watch them without knowing it…

She doubted he'd be happy.

"Hmm…" Her father made a thoughtful sound in his throat, causing both her and Lisa to glance at him, then each other. "I know that guy. I think. I've met him, or at least had someone tell me who he was. Somewhere."

"Really? Any idea where?" she asked, glancing back at Coil and drawing a complete blank again. To the best of her knowledge she'd never seen him before in her life.

"It was years ago…" Her dad was tapping a finger on the table, his gaze fixed hundreds of yards away and tens down, an expression of concentration on his face. "Something to do with a job the DWA was quoting on, for repairing a building downtown… I'm sure I saw him there. What the hell was it…?"

Neither girl said anything while he thought. Finally he snapped his fingers. "Got it! I remember now. I was at City Hall, trying to negotiate a better price for the work, and that guy was there too, with a couple of the councilors. They were discussing a proposed new office building, one that never got built in the end because it would have been far too expensive. The ground was completely unsuitable for that sort of construction and the foundation work needed to bring it up to code would have cost a fortune. He was one of the people who was financing the thing, I think. I remember I got the impression that he was working with… um… yeah, it was Councilor Jones, who was one of the most corrupt bastards I've ever met. Don't miss him. That guy was a friend of his, or at least someone who was using him. The man was easily bought and this guy seemed to have money."

He thought some more, then added, "Come to think of it, Councilor Jones was also one of the key people in charge of the abandoned Endbringer shelter project…"

"So perhaps our friend down there was bribing him to look the other way," Taylor suggested.

"Oh, I think we can guarantee that," her father replied with a nod. "Everyone was bribing Jones to look the other way on everything. I'm surprised there was anywhere left he could look, he took so many bribes. Man must have spent his time walking around with his eyes shut. I wouldn't be even slightly shocked to find out he's the cause of the asbestos problem we have now, for that matter. He was up to his armpits in construction fraud. But he was a slippery bastard and no one was ever able to pin anything on him well enough to make it stick. People tried, but…" He shrugged. "Very difficult to get anywhere with that sort of thing in those days. Most of the administration was on the take one way or another, or just directly working for one of the gangs. Some of them still are, even now."

"So who is this guy?" Lisa asked. Taylor saw she'd brought up a web page showing previous administration personnel of Brockton Bay and was searching through it, finally stopping on an image of a rather unhealthily obese and shiny man who appeared to be Councilor Jones in all his somewhat slimy glory, from about ten years back. He certainly looked like someone you could pay to do almost anything if you gave him enough money, she thought to herself somewhat distastefully.

"I'm trying to recall his name," her dad replied, tapping the table again. "Started with a C, I remember that much. Calvin? Cameron? No… Calvert! That was it! Something Calvert."

Lisa stared at him for a second, then quickly worked on the computer, keys rattling furiously. "Thomas Calvert?" she said after about ten seconds.

Taylor's dad nodded immediately. "That's the name I remember, yeah."

The blonde had gone very quiet, and was looking at the laptop which she'd rotated enough that Taylor couldn't see much more than a sideways blur, her eyes rather wide. As far as Taylor could tell, Lisa's power was dumping information at her at quite a rate, if one went on her expression. After a few seconds, Lisa's eyes narrowed and she swore under her breath in a vicious manner, before resuming typing at a ferocious pace. Half a minute later she stared at whatever she'd managed to get access to.

"This guy here?" the girl queried, spinning the laptop around so both Heberts could see the screen. Taylor studied the image shown, which was indeed of the man who was currently a few hundred yards away refilling his coffee cup.

"That's him," she confirmed. "So who is he?"

"This fucker is ex-Strike Commander Thomas Jackson Calvert, former PRT special forces, and current PRT civilian consultant, with a top level security clearance and contacts all through the government from working for the PRT for nearly twenty years," Lisa said through gritted teeth. Without looking she reached over the screen and hit a key, the image changing to show a PRT issued identity card, which Taylor was fairly sure wasn't the sort of thing you were supposed to be able to access over the internet. It did indeed reflect what her new friend had just said.

It was her father's turn to swear under his breath with significant feeling. "He's PRT? Jesus."

"He was PRT, technically he's no longer working for them, but it looks like he spends a lot of time there even now," Lisa grated, turning the laptop back to herself and working on it some more. "Teaches, if you can believe it, top level security operations with an emphasis on data handling. And I can guarantee is stealing any data he can lay hands on in the process. Not to mention recruiting insiders for himself. Looks like he went into business as an independent villain after leaving the PRT about five years ago."

"He'd have had to have started all this while he was still actively working for them, in that case," Taylor's dad commented. "This shelter project was iffy right from the start and if he was behind that… God, yes, I can see what you mean, he probably started laying the groundwork for his Coil ID right back while he was still a PRT operative, which would have given him access to everything he'd need. And let him find out if anyone suspected there was something going on. Probably also let him bury that if it happened."

"Depending on what his power was, he was probably using it to make things work in his favor too," Taylor pointed out.

"That's what my power is telling me, yeah," Lisa confirmed, still working on the keyboard. "Hold on, I'm nearly in… got it. OK, let's see… Bank records, payments, purchases… no, you'll need to route it through a lot more cut outs to keep me from finding it, you bastard…" Her voice sank to an aggrieved mumble as Taylor and her father exchanged glances. Apparently the girl was taking this personally.

Taylor kept an eye on Coil, just in case any alarms went off, but he was placidly working on his third cup of coffee and reading a report of some sort, flipping through pages covered in diagrams. Apparently he'd had quite the thirst going.

"Aha. Yes. Here we go." Lisa's pleased comment made her return her attention to the other girl. "Hell, this guy is loaded. He's got assets worth at least two hundred million, another three hundred and ten in liquid reserves spread all over the place, stocks worth another fifty… Found his home address, yeah of course he lives in the rich part of town. And I bet the PRT don't know he also owns five… six… nine other houses in that area. And an apartment building. Fuck me, how much is he charging for rent? Is that place made of platinum or something?" She shook her head in surprise. "And he also owns three commercial properties scattered around the city, a Ferrari, a yacht down in Boston…"

"Where on earth did he get all the funds from?"

Lisa looked across at Taylor's father. "As far as I can see he basically stole or embezzled quite a lot of money around ten years ago. By the looks of it he put in a lot of effort building a decent sized nest egg, then managed to multiply that by playing the stock market, buying and selling property, and some very dodgy-looking transactions in Boston… Fuck, I just bet some of that was something to do with Accord. My power seems to think so, anyway. Then he left the PRT when he'd got enough funding in place to start up doing whatever it is he's up to full time, but he kept an in with them as a consultant. Probably mostly to make sure that he could stop them interfering, but he's made a hell of a lot of money from them as well. I guarantee his power was behind how successful he was."

She shook her head in wonder. "I can't see any way anyone without powers could have managed to achieve this much that fast. It should have taken him at least twice as long even if he was a genius. Looking at the records he was picking stocks with damn near a hundred percent accuracy for years. No one is that good."

She looked down at the screen, then whistled through her teeth a moment later. "Huh. That's… possibly interesting. He was one of two survivors of the Ellisburg disaster."

"Was he now?" Taylor's father looked at her intently. "I wonder if that's where he Triggered?"

"Wouldn't be surprised. Considering how badly that whole debacle went." She hesitated, then added, "The other survivor was Director Emily Piggot…"

All three of them looked at each other for a moment. "I don't know if that's useful or not," Taylor finally admitted.

"Me either, but for what it's worth there it is."

Taylor and her father returned their attention to Coil, or Calvert, who had just finished his coffee, put the cup down, cracked his knuckles, and pulled his mask/hood back on. With a determined tread he headed for the door, hitting a few buttons on the security lock, then stepping through as the portal slid open. They watched him walk down several corridors, greeting mercenaries who saluted as they passed him, then descend stairs to the lowest level of the bunker complex. Below that, there was only a huge septic tank, and much of this level was machinery that clearly supported the entire facility, including HVAC gear, a big power room, water treatment, and several other things Taylor was vaguely familiar with from the dockyards.

Once on the bottom level Coil proceeded at a pace that showed he was following a familiar path, ending up at a room that was about fifteen feet on a side, with…

"Fuck. That's a torture room," her father said even as she gaped in horror. Sure enough, it was like something out of a horror movie. Manacles on the walls, a stainless steel table in the middle which looked like it came straight out of an abattoir, racks of gleaming instruments that were only vaguely medical and not even slightly fun to contemplate, and even a somewhat Igoresque figure apparently whistling to himself as he cleaned the place. Coil opened the door and walked right in looking casually at home and said something to the other man, who was wearing surgical scrubs. The man nodded happily.

Nodding back, Coil went over to an intercom panel and pressed a button, then spoke. He listened to the response, seeming satisfied, before returning to the instruments and perusing them like someone picking out his favorite flavor of ice cream, his hands behind his back and rocking slightly on his heels in a relaxed manner.

Taylor tore her appalled senses away from the sight of someone apparently waiting for a victim to arrive and started quickly scanning the bunker. It didn't take her long to spot two huge mercenaries towing a considerably smaller and obviously totally terrified man of about thirty or so through the corridor, heading towards the stairs leading down to the level where Coil was. It would take them a few minutes to get there, but she had little doubt what was awaiting the guy. He looked like he was probably one of the far too many homeless people who filled parts of the city, wearing ragged clothing and giving the impression of being physically fairly worn out.

Was Coil literally grabbing people off the street and torturing them for kicks? It sure looked that way. She felt a wave of absolute fury go through her and barely restrained herself from seeing if she really could grab his brain and leave the rest of him behind…

Feeling her father hold her hand and squeeze it, she looked to see him watching her. "Don't do anything too fatal just yet, Taylor," he said very quietly.

"He's going to torture that poor guy, Dad!" she protested.

"I know, but don't worry, we won't let it get that far. It's going to take them a little while to get him there, let's make sure we've found everything important before we do anything, then we stop the bastard."

Not happy about it but knowing he was probably right, as they had to make sure they could do everything in one operation, she nodded sharply and started scanning everything she could see, rapidly describing them to Lisa who was typing so fast now it was a continuous rattle of keys. Her dad put in his observations when she paused for breath. After a couple of minutes, he held up his hand. "Shit."

"What?" both girls said as one.

"There's a lot of explosives built into the walls in some key areas," he replied, drawing Taylor's attention to a couple of locations. Sure enough she could see block after block of what looked like the same stuff that bomb in the van had consisted of, with multiple detonators throughout it. Matt had explained how they worked and what to look for and she could see them all over the fucking place.

"Holy crap, that's got to be tons of the stuff," she said in horror.

"Yeah, he pretty obviously planned on bringing the entire thing down if he had to run," her father replied grimly. "And killing anyone left inside at the time. He sure doesn't actually care about his people."

"I think he only cares about himself," Lisa remarked. "He's a psychopath."

"Probably."

Checking back on the two mercs and their captive, Taylor noted they were less than two minutes from where Coil was waiting, idly polishing a shiny tool she didn't want to think of the use for. Returning to the job in hand, she finally finished. "I make it thirty six obvious mercenaries, two medical guys in what looks like a sick bay, and that little bastard in the torture room. It matches what we were told, and no one seems to be missing."

"Agreed, my count matches." Her father nodded. Lisa did as well, making some more notes.

"We got lucky, I think. He's present, all his guys are too, and he has no idea we're here. I doubt we'll ever have a better opportunity," she said.

"It's nearly two, so we need to work fast, but I agree," Taylor's dad said. "No time like the present. I have to admit I didn't expect we'd get him first time out, but sometimes things work in your favor."

"Yeah." Taylor grinned darkly. "Well, time to fuck with Coil." She concentrated, taking the mercenaries and their prisoner with a flicker of will. Inside the base, the corridor that had echoed with swearing and someone begging to be let go was abruptly silent.

Then things got very strange for those left…

Glancing at the clock on the wall, Coil frowned under his hood. His relaxation target was late. Putting the dental pick he'd been inspecting down in the tray next to him with a faint clink of stainless steel, he stalked over to the intercom and pressed the right control. "Simmons, where is the prisoner?"

"On the way to you, sir," the reply came back a few seconds later. "Haven't they arrived yet?"

"No. Find out where the hell they are, I haven't got all day." He released the switch with a growl of irritation. Considering how much he was paying these people he expected them to be a little more professional about their time estimates.

"On it, sir," the other man replied crisply, before the intercom went quiet.

Thirty seconds passed as Coil waited impatiently. He was starting to wonder what the hold up was when the device spoke again. "Sir?"

"Yes."

"Um… They're not responding to their radios." Simmons sounded nervous and worried.

Calvert stared at the intercom, feeling highly aggrieved. This was no time for a smoke break, he had plans. "What? Try again."

"I tried twice, sir. I've sent a squad to look for them. There are no intruder alerts and the security board is completely clear, so no one has left the base, but…"

Suddenly worried himself as his paranoia roared back to life, in the timeline in which Coil was still working through a pile of possible Parahuman recruitments he dropped everything and turned to his computer, pulling up the base status program and quickly checking everything. While he was doing this he kept an eye on the road work teams that were now on their third pothole, not one of them showing any evidence that they were paying attention to anything other than their tasks.

As Simmons had reported, nothing at all had changed on the internal or external security sensors, and by all appearances everything was exactly as it had been earlier. But two of his men and an involuntary guest had somehow vanished from sight.

If this was their idea of a joke they were going to find themselves in the shit, possibly literally as the septic tank under the base was a dandy place to dispose of bodies into, but he had a strong feeling that it was nothing of the sort. If nothing else, mercenaries weren't generally noted for a whimsical outlook on life.

In the timeline where he was in the play room, he hit the intercom button again. "Run a manual security sweep, check everywhere."

"Yes, sir."

Even as the intercom went quiet he caught a snatch of background noise consisting of someone in the control room shouting orders. Satisfied that they'd do what he'd told them to, he pulled his sidearm from the holster at his waist, checked it was fully loaded, and opened the door. "Stay here," he said over his shoulder to the small man behind him, who had been silently listening to the conversation. The man simply nodded. Annoyed with himself that he hadn't brought the radio that was sitting on his desk, Coil started walking back through his base in the direction of the stairs, down which his two mercenaries and their payload should have come.

He'd gone about thirty feet when there was a strange phoomph sound from behind him.

He stopped dead in his tracks, then turned around and looked back at the closed door he'd just left, wondering what the hell it had been. Wary and puzzled, he sidled back to the door and inspected it. Nothing seemed amiss, and when he cautiously put his ear to it, he couldn't hear anything. Holding his pistol ready he reached for the door open button and prodded it, standing to the side as it slid open.

There was a faint rattle, like pebbles on concrete.

Coil looked down at the pebbles lying on the concrete around his feet, then raised his eyes.

"What… the fuck?" he breathed in disbelief. Instead of the inside of the special room, he was looking at a wall of earth, as if the door had opened into the side of a hill. After a long moment he reached out with one finger and poked the exposed surface, in complete shock, finding that it was entirely real. How it was entirely real he had absolutely no idea. But his play room was missing.

"WHAT THE FUCK?!" he shouted, gaping in horror. This was not right. And he was very suddenly aware that he was under attack.

After a moment longer he turned and ran to the nearest wall intercom, swearing to himself that he would never leave his office without a radio again. He'd gotten sloppy having been sitting down here so long. Hitting the button, he yelled, "Simmons! What's going on?"

"I don't know, sir," the other man replied immediately in a harried voice. "We're missing people all over the base! Half the squads I sent out have stopped reporting, and the ones I sent to find them are missing too! I've got someone checking the armory just in case…" His voice faded, as he had a conversation with someone just out of mic range. When it strengthened again, he sounded extremely shaken. "Sir? Coil? The armory… it's completely empty."

"Empty?"

"Empty. Nothing left. Not even shelves."

"Empty?" Coil roared in fury.

"Yes, sir. No trace of how it wa…" Mid word, the other man's voice stopped.

"Simmons?" He prodded the button several times. "Report! Simmons!"

There was no answer.

Finding himself feeling very worried, trapped, and if he was honest somewhat scared, Calvert thumped the intercom with his fist, swore violently, and started running for his escape tunnel, the secret one no one but himself knew about. Since he'd had the people who built it killed, at any rate.

At the same time, in his office in the other timeline, he was still frantically checking the internal sensors trying to work out who was attacking him and how they were doing it. He brought up the screen for the motion trackers that covered every corridor and room in the entire base studied it. Motion was being shown in three places, the barracks, the cafeteria, and one of the rest rooms.

Then only the barracks and the cafeteria.

Then only the barracks.

Then there was no motion anywhere in the entire base outside his office.

In a matter of no more than two minutes since he'd initially called Simmons, as far as the sensors were concerned every single person in his base other than himself had silently vanished into thin air, without any signs at all of how this was achieved. No sensors had triggered anywhere, not heat, or motion, or radio, or optical, or even radiation. Nothing. All the doors still read as being locked down, all the vents were clear, absolutely everything was completely normal aside from the total lack of people and weapons.

Utterly confused and at the same time in a towering rage at how suddenly his fortunes had changed without warning, in that timeline Coil slammed both fists down on the keyboard as hard as he could, screaming in fury. "FUC…"

In his original timeline, nearly at the unused room which contained the access hatch to his escape route, Thomas Calvert stumbled in his dead run as his backup timeline simply disappeared. It was the weirdest effect he'd ever encountered from that point of view. Nothing at all like when he deliberately dropped a timeline, nor was it the same as the few cases where one of his higher-risk plans had gone awry and he'd ended up dead or captured in a throwaway timeline. This time it had just… popped.

Shocked, he caught himself against the wall, wondering what the hell had happened. There was no one in the base but himself according to his own instruments, which encompassed every anti-Stranger detection method he'd been able to come up with, and all the external sensors also showed no one was nearby, not to mention the base itself being sealed completely. If someone was attacking him, how had they gained entry? Was someone teleporting around capturing his people? It was the only thing he could think of that might explain what had happened, but it was so fast it would have needed a whole squad of teleporting capes. And how had they found everyone that quickly either?

He was very much feeling hunted all of a sudden, and extremely worried. Without any idea of who was behind all this, he didn't have a clue how to alter the situation in his favor. A thought struck him and he swore again. It seemed likely that whoever was doing this was the one behind his Thinker going missing. Which didn't get him any closer to knowing who that was but it showed it was a deliberate attack rather than random chance.

Pushing away from the wall he took the few steps needed to get to the door he was aiming for, deciding then and there that once he was well away from Brockton Bay and safe he'd put in any amount of work required to find out who was doing this and make them regret it for as long as they had left to live, he grabbed the handle and yanked it do…

"Got him, and his little minions too," Taylor stated with satisfaction.

"And his armory."

"Yeah. Seemed like a good idea."

"And his office."

"Also a good idea."

"And all his booby traps too."

"Hey, you never know when a few tons of explosives might come in handy, right?"

Her father gave her a long-suffering look, which made her grin, and Lisa started laughing. "I see we need to discuss a few things," he sighed. "At some point. For now, though, well done."

"Anything else we should take while we're here?" she asked, looking back Beneath at the underground base.

"Don't go getting ideas, Taylor," he warned without heat. "If you steal the entire place, the ground will collapse, and anyway, where would you put it?"

"Yeah, we can always come back and get it later," Lisa put in gleefully, making him give her a look too, and Taylor to giggle.

"Please don't give her ideas, Lisa. She has far too many of her own already…"

Taylor looked pleased with herself in an obvious way, causing him to shake his head and grin. "That wasn't necessarily a compliment."

Laughing, Taylor shrugged. She looked at her watch. "Three minutes to nab a Super-villain and his entire gang, along with all his toys."

"That's probably some sort of record," Lisa commented with amusement. "Especially since you did it without going anywhere near him. The PRT would be kind of embarrassed if they found out."

"Which we are trying to avoid, so that's another good reason not to leave a massive crater behind," Taylor's father pointed out. "We got lucky, definitely, but I think we can put this down as a success. Now we have to work out what the next step is. But that can keep for the moment, I think."

"There's no real hurry, no, Dad," Taylor replied with a nod. "We've got time to think what to do with him now though, and he's no threat to Lisa anymore. Or anyone else." She scowled. "I can't help wondering how many other people he's tortured or killed before that poor guy we rescued."

"Even one would be too many, but I agree," her father sighed. "We'll have to let him out as soon as possible and get him to somewhere safe."

"We can sure give him some money as compensation," Lisa said. "From what Taylor said his safe had a lot of cash in it."

"Yeah, it's full of bundles of bills," Taylor replied, nodding. "Like this one." She held out an inch-thick wad of cash, which made both her father's and Lisa's eyes widen.

"Holy shit," the disguised blonde said in an awestruck voice, taking it and flipping through it. "There's… ten thousand, four hundred dollars here. How many more like this were there?"

"Um… twenty one," Taylor reported. "Guess he liked having plenty of petty cash around."

"Well, money certainly isn't a problem, then," her father said in a slightly stunned tone. "I'm not sure we can really keep it, but giving some to that poor man is the least we can do."

"Can't see why we can't keep it," Taylor remarked, grinning. "We stole it fair and square."

"It bothers me that you don't seem to understand the problem with what you just said," he responded, sighing again, but in a good natured way. "I thought your mother and I brought you up to be more honest."

"I'm honest, Dad," she protested, smiling. "More or less. But when you catch a super-villain, it's traditional to loot him to the bedrock, right?"

"In games, Taylor. Possibly not in real life. But we can discuss that later." He checked the time. "We're on schedule but we do have the PRT to talk to shortly." Picking up the radio that was next to the laptop, he pressed the transmit button three times, all of them looking at the camera monitor. They saw Matt, who was standing next to Harry watching one of the crews prepare another pothole, look at the radio in his hand, say something to the other man, then walk back to the truck. It tilted a little as he got in and the sound of the door closing came through the wall, before the intercom clicked.

"Yeah, Danny? How's it going?"

"We're done," Taylor's father replied.

"Done as in you learned what the next step is, or…"

"Done as in we have Coil and everyone else in his base, along with anything shiny that took Taylor's eye," he said.

"Holy… OK, I'm impressed. Agent Gimme is even more effective than I thought. U.N.I.O.N. obviously recruited some good people." He chuckled as her father sighed heavily. Taylor and Lisa were heaving with quiet laughter. "All right, we're nearly finished with this current pothole, so we can stop after that and pack up. Give us about fifteen, OK?"

"That's fine, Matt."

The intercom clicked off. All three of them exchanged glances. "That was almost anticlimactic," Lisa finally said. "I was half expecting a whole series of bizarre problems and lots of running around, but we succeeded on the first try." She sounded a little confused, but very pleased.

"Sometimes thing work out like that," Taylor replied with a shrug. "It's usually only in fiction where everything goes horribly wrong at the last moment just to build dramatic tension. In real life that doesn't happen nearly as often as some people seem to think it should."

"True enough," her dad agreed. "If things line up properly, like they did this time, you can get the job done with a minimum of drama. Don't expect that to happen every time though."

"Are we going to make a habit of stealing super-villains?" Taylor queried with an intrigued look.

"No. No, we are not. Get that expression off your face, it's making me nervous," he sighed.

"U.N.I.O.N. will save the day!" she replied, grinning. "Very, very discreetly and with a smile."

"You won't even know we've been there until someone notices a villain is missing," Lisa agreed, smirking.

"Oh, lord," he said under his breath, shaking his head. "Why do I feel so much apprehension?"

"No idea, Dad," Taylor laughed. "No idea at all."

Lisa raised a hand. "I've got an idea," she said helpfully.

He gave both of them a hard look, then deliberately turned to watch the monitor, while Taylor and Lisa exchanged amused smiles.