Let us step back. Let us turn our gaze away from the girl and her tragic overconfidence and the boy propelled by an absent past.
We peer back through time to investigate why a once prideful man—as notorious as he was yearned for, and always coiled to strike at enemies whence they least foresaw—left the gloomy darkness of Brockton Bay in search of respite.
It begins on an early fall afternoon.
An all-out confrontation, orchestrated by our subject, has two sets of capes throwing caution to the wind right at this moment. Lung is easier to provoke, his ire kindled by the flick of the metaphorical match. Faultline and her crew, however, have required a more careful maneuvering—a steady hand to guide them toward the edge, where they see no way out but to leap into the fray.
A third group lies in wait, ready to pick up the ashes, not aware that they will be the ones held responsible for the conflict and the encroachment. To be hunted and cursed, lives all but forfeit. All according to plan.
And so, Coil is ecstatic. He doesn't show it. He hasn't all day and he won't now.
Thomas Calvert has followed his routine today, a reliable man with a firm grip on his affairs for those who claim to know him.
Now he gets out of the car and walks towards his safe house, mask in place, costume draped. A personification of calm purpose, mere blocks away from the scene of his masterpiece.
Behind, his adjutants hurry as they follow him to his office to learn of next steps.
"No breaks in recon," he instructs. "Reports every six hours. We cannot afford surprises."
They both nod. One is chewing his lip. "We will need to pull two squads from the security detail," he says.
Coil's main compound houses important guests. He waves his assent.
Once his men take their leave, he settles down in his chair. He deserves some rest. A man gets tired having his fingers on the pulse of the city while keeping a knife on its jugular. A dozen guards outside are enough protection against any unanticipated threat.
He starts his travels through the timelines.
In one, he opts for shock and awe. To overwhelm his remaining rivals by swooping in and taking control of the majority of the now unclaimed territory.
The job is complete within two days. He faces some push back from the newly revamped Merchants and Marquis's Carvers. The splinters of the Teeth still dormant in Brockton Bay aren't happy either.
It is a matter of pride for them, and a matter of consolidation and defense against counter punches for him. He has to be careful though, no one wants a vengeful Butcher coming to Brockton Bay to settle scores or lay claims. That is a mad man, and madness corrupts. This city doesn't need more corruption in his view, rather the opposite.
Simultaneously, he opts for subtlety in another timeline.
He holds his position and plays the long game. A slow removal from the scene of all the remnants and the pretenders jumping up to fill the newly made power vacuum. Until the vacuum is so big only an organization like his can sufficiently fill it. The Merchants are not a big issue. And the bigger obstacles, the Carvers and the Teeth have clashed before. They will again. He can make sure of that.
He decides, and collapses the first timeline. He chooses the second while he is at a dinner with the mayor of Brockton Bay city. He savors the moment. This is the power of the gods; dominion over time itself. Worlds created and discarded by his decisions alone. Who else can boast such? He wouldn't either, not openly, for a while. But one day, one day everyone will—
"Aaah…" He exclaims as he is jerked back and hits his head on the wall.
He looks around and his breath catches. He is in his office? Sitting in his chair? He thinks rather incredulously. How did he get here? The bewilderment is warranted. Where is the mayor?
He's lost time somehow. Did someone attack him? But something feels familiar about this moment.
He has his computer and he has his phone. He checks the latter, there are no messages that need his attention. But then he sees something that stills him.
September.
Last he checked, it was October 2011, not September. How is he blacking out and losing time, and also has a wrong date on his cellphone?
Not much makes sense to him. He stands up and takes out his trusted Glock from the holster. The weight of the weapon is comforting. Time to investigate what is going on.
Ten minutes later, standing in the courtyard of his safe house, watching afternoon turn into evening, he has a lot to think about.
His guards are clean. None of them is suspicious beyond what's expected. He has ordered all of them to take positions somewhere outside of the safehouse but they have been doing exactly what they were supposed to today. And therein lies the problem.
Everything tells him today is September 28. A week ago, when ABB and Faultline's crew clashed.
But how? Is he now traveling back in time too? Instead of merely one way?
Did he choose wrong and so now gets a second chance?
Was he attacked during his lunch with the mayor and his power saved him? Is his power evolving? Did he have a second trigger?
He tries to recall every bit of the timeline in his future past from start to finish. Something must be different. But his theory about his power saving him makes most sense to him.
He doesn't know a lot more than everyone else about how the powers work, but he has heard some murmurs about the agency of the powers themselves.
Genuine excitement takes hold in his heart. He feels giddy. This is new. It opens new possibilities to him. His brain starts going at a hundred miles per hour.
Now, let's pull back—just a short distance to the west. Let's go back to the girl who has just triggered with a power so paradoxically potent, it threatens to disrupt an ancient cycle of growth and destruction and growth and destruction… a cycle going back eons.
It has not been easy on her by any means, to be lost in the labyrinthine hellscape full of tangible nightmares, conjured by the clash of powers between two capes who on their own can be terrifying to anybody: Bakuda and Labyrinth. The latter having a nervous breakdown at the loss of a friend and the former throwing everything in her arsenal in all directions, in abject panic more so than defense.
The triggering girl has lived long years in only a short span. She has faced what no one should face, and has come through at a cost nobody can imagine.
Now she lays there, slumped against a wall. Physically uninjured, safe from any errant powers by virtue of what she has become. But only time will tell what damage and what trauma this experience has caused. What changes it has brought. What it means for the world known as Bet and all its sister worlds.
We go back to Coil, who wants to test his new power, to see what he can do now.
A quick decision this time. To go to this room or that one? Yes, that is best, he thinks. And to see if he is able to come back to this moment again, to learn how to control this new aspect of his power.
He tries. He fails.
No split in the timeline.
Habitual paranoia tries to take hold of him. It has saved his life many times, he would be foolish to ignore it.
He does so just once. His excitement churns too much.
He takes a deep breath. Cracks his neck, and tries again.
He fails again.
No split in the timeline, again.
He forcibly calms himself. Focus.
He fears interference. He knows he has blind spots. He suspects one of those entities is nearby. But usually he gets a headache if he tries to use his power in their presence. That is not what is happening. Physically, he feels perfectly fine.
He calls one of the squad leaders inside.
"Take some men, sweep the entire block, something's off," he orders.
The mercenary doesn't want any attention. And the houses here, dilapidated they may be, have people living in them. He tries to say that, "Sir, this is a residential block—"
"I don't give a flying fuck." Coil barks. "Everyone's staying inside, they know what capes fighting sound like. Get on with it."
Minutes later, he is settled in his chair, having a glass of water and getting constant reports. All is normal. He has checked the news on his computer, no Endbringer attacks or Scion sightings anywhere in the world, let alone in his immediate vicinity. And again, he has no headache.
He tries again to create two separate timelines.
Nothing changes.
This time, blind panic threatens to unravel his nerves. No matter what he does, he cannot access his power. Has someone done something to him? Was he only hallucinating about being successful in taking over more than half of Brockton Bay?
No! He rejects any such idea.
There must be a cool down time to his evolved power. These gifts of power come wrapped in thorns, he knows better than anyone.
He waits, and decides to give himself five more minutes. He will try again.
He doesn't know. How can he? But the girl who is the source of his misfortune is awake. She is confused, she doesn't remember coming to this place or what it exactly is, all her memories since the morning a haze of nonsensical impressions. But she knows which direction her home is. She starts a slow walk back.
The next time Coil tries to branch time, he does. A triumphant laugh is heard by his guards in both timelines. Will he be able to see this "new" aspect to his power again?
Not immediately. Not by his choice. But it will happen.
Let's see.
Thomas Calvert is standing outside his office, holding an umbrella to shield from rain. He and his alter ego haven't had a good October as he reflects on the recent weeks.
The plans to get rid of ABB and Faultline have turned out to be a bust even if PRT has apprehended their fair share from both. There is increased Teeth activity in Brockton Bay which is concerning even with Marquis and his people being suspiciously absent. And there are increasing reports of random glitches in cape powers and tinker devices.
Most of all, his prized possession, the unstable weapon from Aleph, is now gone, and with her, his leverage over her friends. In the basement of his compound, there is now an enormous amount of fleshy dead matter, the only remains of an absent cape, with a human sized hole where the upper half of the cape used to be. Did she die? Did she somehow run away? He doesn't know.
Much is outside of his control and fills his heart with dread. He doesn't like feeling unbalanced. He doubts whether he even had a breakthrough in his power. Was it just another glitch?
"Hey!" He hears a greeting from Tim; the liaison from the Suits across the pond, who comes up to stand beside him. "Proper pissing down tonight innit?" he laughs. "Reminds me of home."
Calvert only nods. He has no desire to spend any more time with this man. The PRT's request had been to make contact in Europe and bring the Suits in for a discussion. They've sent this man, who has spent the past few hours talking Calvert's ear off with stories of Endbringer attacks.
This is another matter rankling at him. Despite his efforts, he is no closer to understanding why this new alliance is taking shape. He takes his leave and drives home.
In a quiet room, he splits the world. He keeps his actions as Coil the same in both worlds, but as Thomas Calvert, he tries to find out what the PRT are up to. At the same time, he sends one of his men to Europe to find out anything he can on this new development.
Before anyone at the PRT can tell him anything, before his man even reaches Europe in the other timeline, Calvert finds himself back in his seat. Reliving that wet night, sitting in solitude, surrounded by the pounding cacophony of rain.
His heart skips a beat at the familiar déjà vu. He tries to exercise his power again but again déjà vu strikes.
He lets out a frustrated yell to cover up the growing fear of losing his powers.
"No!"
He tries again to split his timeline and this time it works.
Once again, what he doesn't know is that just a few blocks away, another man is driving his teenage daughter home from a shopping trip. And for a brief minute, Thomas Calvert ended up too close in proximity to the teenage girl, the same one who happens to be the real protagonist of this story.
And finally, the turning of this chapter in Thomas Calvert's life is incomplete without the straw that breaks the camel's back.
Coil, in a pinch, is thwarting a combined assault by the Carvers; Marquis' group, and the Merchants, who the vile old villain has managed to string along. Coil is resourceful, however. With the glitches in cape abilities throughout the city, he has assembled as deadly a fighting force one can muster, without them being capes. It maintains a high floor for the combat capability of his forces.
And yet he needs capes to truly push ahead in direct confrontations. That is why he has temporarily aligned with some splinters of the Fallen and a couple of cape heavy hitters who offer their services for a handsome payment.
The battle takes place on the far side of the city's southern suburbs. Once again, he has manipulated his adversaries into fighting on his chosen ground, but he now suspects that Marquis knew about the trap and took his chances.
And Marquis did know—and has decided to flip the trap. That's what makes this a pinch for Coil. Marquis has the Merchants. They are a surprise for Coil, and almost all of them are here, forming a big part of this ambush.
Surprise notwithstanding, Coil is still confident; relatively safe behind a moving screen of four hired hands, never still and finding the best vantage points to take shots at the leaders of the enemy forces, he sees victory coming.
He is splitting time with every important decision: what to shoot, where to go, who to radio, when to push and how to retreat. A tinker headache looms, faint throbbing at the edge of his senses, but exhilaration coursing through his body more than makes up for it. He feels alive.
He will win. His instincts, honed by years and years of experience, and big dash of hubris, assure him.
That is until everything turns into a confusing mess. First, his side begins to rout the opposition's flank at one end of the street. One of the abandoned warehouses goes up in flames. Then, his own blaster—Sphericoal, gets struck by a constant volley of compact trash balls, unable to blast it away with his own explosive beams on account of losing his powers.
Coil doesn't know what's coming. He curses the stupidity of an average mercenary cape and tries to escape two different ways in two different timelines.
Tragically for him, he loses any parahuman ability just as he is getting started. As he is failing in his attempt to get away from the barrage of wayward offensive projectiles, Squealer's container sized vehicle is coming apart just up the road, heading straight to the spot Coil had the ill-fortune of stopping at a few seconds ago.
He is disoriented. His hired hands are not. They try to drag him away from the debris of a collapsing tinker truck. They only succeed half way.
A sharp piece of scrap metal embeds itself in Coil's shoulder, jagged edge protruding out the other side. Then a heavy bolt glances off his leg, fracturing the bone beneath.
One unlucky mercenary is now a bloody paste. His three colleagues will live longer. Coil himself is in immense pain, so much that it breaks him out of the daze and disorientation the malfunctioning timelines have caused him. He almost passes out again, but his survival instinct is intact.
"Get me out of here," he shouts and beckons the discombobulated soldiers to pick him up.
As they get away—from the mess and from PRT who are surely on their way here—he is tying a bloody cloth around his wounds to stop the bleeding. But more importantly, he is trying to reconcile with unbidden thoughts of Brockton Bay no longer being a safe haven to operate in. He despises feeling so unpowered and vulnerable. And he is having a hard time rejecting the idea that this place may be a curse for him, however irrational it feels.
Nearly a mile to the north, another figure is departing on her bicycle, journeying further north towards her home.
She does not find the courage on this day to confront those she believes are making a mockery of the common people and their taxes, having abandoned her quest halfway and turning back. Yet, only a month hence she will, as she "exposes" to the world the hoax of the Parahumans and the Endbringers, by capturing on film the true reality of the Kaiju model known as Behemoth.
But this chapter isn't over just yet.
The coup de grâce comes a few months later.
Coil has established himself as a player in the Boston underworld. He is gradually spreading his influence and sizing the remaining competition, having made successful moves already.
It did take sacrificing his Thomas Calvert persona and donning another. Temporarily if luck is with him and permanently if not. He isn't worried though. He has his plans.
Presently, he travels from his lair in Salem, Massachusetts to Downtown Boston. He has a meeting with a PRT contact and later another with a potential ally. He risks splitting the world again to give himself more options. The circumstances require him to be active with his power more than he prefers, but he is no stranger to toiling in the trenches.
He starts. In one world, he tries to bribe and blackmail the PRT contact as a representative from a rival villain gang. In another, he reveals his identity as Thomas Calvert and tries to get some information. Before he gets any further in any world, he snaps back to his car, both timelines shattered, car moving on the highway, and the world gone back a few hours in the past.
Coil is lost for words. He is lost for thoughts. He had left all this behind in his mind. The last two months have been without incident; he has been using his power with no interruptions—like always. No glitches.
Until now.
He doesn't even try to test his dominion over time again, his subconsciousness is convinced it is futile.
Coil doesn't know what to do anymore. He just starts sobbing.
His bodyguard slowly turns his head away from the window to look at him, eyes wide. He glances up at the rearview mirror, where the driver has the same expression. None of them make a sound as sobs continue to reverberate in the car.
Reader, you can guess what happened just now—the gist, if not the detail.
The girl named Taylor Hebert is on her way from Brockton Bay City to meet a villain named Jack Slash near Lynn Woods reservation, north of Boston. She has briefly crossed paths—once again—with the cape named Coil.
For the fourth time only has she been close to him, and has given yet another shock to his system.
A series of chance "encounters" with our protagonist has potentially reformed a career criminal, possibly leading him toward a life without crime.
Can the same happen to the most infamous villain of them all? We will find out in the next installment.