It Gets Worse Pt 8 (Patreon)

“I want no distractions for at least the next five hours.” Coil's voice was firm. “Is that totally understood?”

The mercenary captains nodded. “Understood, sir,” one of them replied. “What circumstances will warrant us contacting you?”

“Only something that threatens this base,” Coil said. “Anything less can wait.”

“Roger that, sir.” The mercenaries trooped out. Coil shut the door behind them, then sat down in his office chair. It had been custom built to accommodate his height, allowing him to lean back and enjoy the comfortable padding.

Moving the mouse on his computer, he clicked the unobtrusive icon that locked the door. Now it would take heavy equipment – or high explosive – to get through it. They could contact him from outside, and he could always call out, but nothing could physically reach him unless and until he willed it.

I have to be very careful about this.

<><>

From the start, he had been intrigued by the possibilities of Butterfly's power. Director Piggot had been annoyingly imprecise about its exact limitations and parameters but then, he supposed that she hadn't spent any time figuring them out. He suspected that she hated capes so much that she didn't actually stop to think about how to better make use of their powers.

If she had her way, all capes would lose their powers tomorrow.

To him, that was amazingly short-sighted. Powers existed for a variety of reasons. The best reason, of course, was 'to further the aims of Thomas Calvert'. With his power, he could improve the utility of virtually any other power by at least a factor of two, by giving any cape a second chance at whatever they were trying to do. Of course, that cape would have to be working for him at the time; what would the point be, otherwise?

Inserting a thumb drive, he called up what little information he had gleaned on Taylor Hebert, and began digging through publicly accessible files for more. Where she lived, what school she went to, family situation, and so forth.

Once he had all the information he could get about her, then he could begin planning on how to best make use of her power. For his benefit, of course. There would be no real point, otherwise.

<><>

The rain system which had disrupted the smooth running of American 732 had been moving north. As it did, New York got intermittent showers, Boston had its gutters cleaned out and Brockton Bay began to undergo the first of several days of torrential downpour. Fortunately, being Brockton Bay, it wasn't totally freezing.

At first, all went well. The stormwater drains initially handled the load while the freshwater reservoirs filled to capacity. But the rain kept falling. Captain's Hill and the surrounding high ground captured water and directed it downhill, into Brockton Bay. This also went into the stormwater system, which began to find itself a little overwhelmed. Just about the time that the first minor flooding began to be reported – a few streets had up to a foot of water on them – the storm intensified and there were a few lightning strikes. But then it settled down, and the rainfall lessened slightly.

<><>

Coil looked around as the lights flickered off and on again. He waited; the flicker did not happen again. Opening a new page, he checked the local weather bureau and discovered for the first time that it had been raining for the past four hours.

Although his base was well below the local water table – anything below cellar depth threatened to reach the water table – he had ensured that it would take a great deal of flooding to reach any of the access points. Lightning shouldn't be a problem either, given that he had surge protectors in place. His computer might pick up a minor spike with a big enough lightning strike, but that was a hazard with any computer, anywhere. In any case, all of his files were backed up in secure storage.

He went back to work, carefully planning out a series of stimuli with which to apply to Butterfly and test out the limits and reactivity of her power. After all, this was not someone he could simply have grabbed off the street; that would be the absolute height of stupidity. The Empire Eighty-Eight had amply demonstrated that. He would have to be more subtle about it.

In the meantime, let it rain. It wasn't his problem.

<><>

The section of the stormwater system under the building where Taylor had been taken by the Empire Eighty-Eight was not so very near Coil's elaborate underground base, but it wasn't so very far off it, either. More to the point, the impact of one point two tons of blue ice had damaged the drain that ran under the building. After a few hours of being filled to capacity, the rushing of the water through the concrete conduit loosened a slab which promptly fell into the flow, blocking a good deal of it. Water backed up, hard.

An interesting fact about water is that it is almost totally incompressible. This is why an underwater explosion will kill fish and people alike; the shockwave is not absorbed by the water itself. That particular fact gives rise to the phenomenon called 'water hammer', which is why a rattle of water in the plumbing can actually cause pipes to burst if not treated carefully.

Some of the water gushed up into the ruins of the building from which Hookwolf and Kaiser had been rescued not so long ago. Manhole covers also popped off as water forced its way upward to relieve the pressure. But this was a minor part of it. Most of the water pressure went another way, down a spur line. Which led, as matters would have it, directly toward a large underground base which the city planners had no idea was there.

In building the base, Thomas Calvert's construction engineers had had to reroute several sewer lines and storm drains; it would have been astonishing if they did not. But in this particular instance, a stormwater line had been altered so that it turned almost ninety degrees and also reduced somewhat in diameter. It hadn't been seen as a problem at the time; it was on a spur line, while a much higher capacity storm drain was able to reroute flow safely past the base.

Or it would have been, if a concrete slab hadn't inconveniently blocked it.

Even then, disaster did not strike immediately. The fast-moving water hit the turn with the force of a thousand high-pressure fire hoses every second, eroding away at the concrete. It was tough material; it could take a lot. But it could not hold out indefinitely. And just a few yards away were the lower sections of Coil's base.

If the rain kept up, if the water kept flowing, the consequences could be … interesting.

<><>

That night, the rain continued to fall. Thomas Calvert, in his base, gave orders for all of his other operations to be put on standby; he didn't want anything to go awry if he had to unexpectedly abort a timeline. Double-checking to ensure that his directives had been followed, he split the timelines.

In one timeline, he stayed in the base, monitoring events in and around the city. He was a man who believed that one could never be too careful.

In the other timeline, he went home, ate a light meal while watching TV, then went to bed early.

Timeline A

Morning dawned, although the residents of Brockton Bay would have been hard put to notice it. The rain had only eased slightly overnight, and seemed to be invigorated with the coming of the new day. He drank his sixth cup of coffee as he continued to keep an eye on what was happening around Brockton Bay. His endeavours had not been overly hampered by the slowdown; everyone was staying indoors, due to the rain.

Timeline B

Thomas Calvert rose bright and early, as was his habit. He ate a filling breakfast, then drove into the city. Parking in the underground carpark, he reported in for duty. Nothing was scheduled for his strike squad today, so he decided to catch up on the never-ending paperwork.

He was unaware that a flaw had developed with the air-conditioning and drainage systems in the PRT building overnight. Water running off the flat roof was supposed to be directed into downpipes and thus flushed into the stormwater drains. However, a tiny seam had split, and all night, water had been dripping into the interior spaces of the building, finding its way down between the walls and through openings between the floors, to pool on top of a particular ceiling tile in a particular office.

Due to the humidity, the air-conditioning had been hard put to remove all the moisture from the air. This water was also dripping into the interior spaces. By a staggering coincidence, it was collecting in the same place as the water from the leak was. Nobody had yet noticed that the ceiling tile in question was starting to develop a distinct bow. Amazingly enough, it had not yet begun to leak through.

Timeline A

Calling up the Butterfly file, Coil noted the first point to deal with.

Find out if her effect extends to others.

If, for instance, her luckiness did not protect her father, then there would be little reason to ingratiate himself with her. She would still be a potential stumbling-block to his plans, so a scholarship to one of Boston's more prestigious schools – it wasn't as if she had many ties in Brockton Bay any more – might be the way to go.

Overhead, although he didn't hear it, the storm intensified. The lights flickered again, then settled down. Another power spike tested his surge protector. For the most part, the electrical surge was absorbed. But just enough got through to play a very specific type of havoc with his computer. Among other things, the links to sensors in the very bottom levels of his base were cut.

Timeline B

Thunder rolled; Thomas Calvert heard it clearly. He didn't know it, but in his base, in his office, where he was not, his computer had just woken up in response to a power surge. Almost of its own accord, it began to set up a connection, to the last system that he had been connected to. This happened to be the PRT building, where he had been accessing privileged information from the servers.

Picking up his phone, he sent an innocuous text message. The man who received it had gotten strict orders the night before. Danny Hebert is to be roughed up, but not killed. No permanent damage. The content of the text was irrelevant; the fact that it began with one letter of the alphabet and not another meant Go rather than Abort Mission.

<><>

Danny Hebert shrugged into the rain poncho. “Just going out to walk the rounds,” he told his secretary. Not much was going to get done in rain like this, but he liked to make sure that nothing untoward was going on anyway. Too much equipment disappeared at times like this.

Stepping out into the rain was like walking head-first into a vertical ocean with slots in it. It wasn't just pouring; it was hammering down. Within two paces, his glasses had fogged over. He took them off and put them away; it wasn't as if he was going to be inspecting anything closely anyway.

His route took him along the side of the docks; he looked over the ships and the equipment as best he could. The rain hampered his vision as much as his lack of glasses, but he did his best anyway.

He was peering under a shading hand at one particular crane when a dark figure approached him stealthily from behind. The man could have been dancing the macarena and waving lit firecrackers and Danny still would not have seen or heard him, but he approached stealthily anyway. In his hand was a short length of pipe; he considered a broken collarbone to be non-permanent.

The man was just three feet behind Danny, arm raised to deliver a carefully calculated blow, when lightning struck the crane that Danny was examining. The current had plenty of water and metal to conduct it, but one minor tendril of electricity still managed to arc out, miss Danny by mere feet, and ground through the pipe into the would-be attacker.

Fortunately for the man, the current was attenuated by all the water, but the shock still knocked him off his feet and over the side of the dock. Danny didn't even hear the cry of alarm and pain, let alone the splash, given that a lightning strike had just occurred within yards of him.

Louise looked up as Danny staggered back into the office. “Are you all right?” she asked. “I just heard the most godawful crack of thunder.”

“What?” Danny replied, loudly and nasally, holding his hand up to his ear. “Sorry, I nearly just got struck by lightning. My feet are still tingling, and I can't hear a thing.” He pointed at his office. “I'll be in there if you need me.”

<><>

As Thomas Calvert awaited the report on the assault on Danny Hebert, he saw a very dim flash of light through the heavy rain, in the general direction of the Docks. He never heard the thunder, for at that very moment, the ceiling tile above his head gave way under the weight of water. He was deluged from head to toe; part of it sluiced into his computer, which gave up the ghost in a crackle of sparks. This arced out and knocked him off his chair, leaving him flat on his back, wondering what had hit him. It was only when he went to get up that he found that there was something seriously wrong with his right arm; any time he tried to move it, there was a stabbing pain from the shoulder, radiating in all directions.

Timeline A

Wait, what the hell just happened?

Coil leaned back on his chair and considered the ramifications of what had just occurred in the other timeline. Help had arrived in response to his strangled cries for assistance; his other self was being half-carried to the infirmary.

Either that was a most spectacular piece of bad luck right on cue, or that was Butterfly's power rebounding on me, even though I wasn't the one about to harm her father.

Piggot didn't mention this. He gritted his teeth. And I can't even complain about that, because I'm not supposed to be interacting with the girl.

Leaning forward to the keyboard, he started typing. Initial testing indicates that Butterfly's power will seek out those who initiate hostile action against her, even at a remove. The results of the attempt to cause minor harm to Danny Hebert are as yet unknown, but I suspect that it will be unsuccessful, and that the attacker will have suffered a mishap of unknown magnitude.

Further tests will have to be carried out with th

There was a frantic pounding on the door; he looked up with irritation. Moving the mouse, he brought up the base security feeds. One and all, they refused to load.

A frown creased his brow. That's not right.

Clicking on another icon brought up a speaker symbol; he picked up the microphone from his desk and spoke clearly, “Identify yourself. Who is this?”

There was no response, not even a crackle on the line.

The pounding continued as he got up. Lifting his pistol belt from the back of the chair, he buckled it on then drew the pistol. Carefully, he tapped in the code to open the door. Nothing happened.

That's really not right.

More carefully, he tapped in the code again. The lack of result repeated itself.

Doing his best to ignore the chill that was running up and down his spine, he opened a panel beside the door and engaged a manual crank, proceeding to unlock and wind the door open with muscle power. There's no such thing as being too cautious.

Gradually, the door cranked open. Coil recognised his head of security, face wearing an expression of extreme agitation. He kept cranking. “What's the matter?”

“Sir, we have a bad problem.”

Shit. Shit shit shit. “What is it?”

“The base is filling with water, sir.”

“What?” But even as he asked the question, he could hear the sound, in the background, of swirling water. This was a noise that he never wanted to hear inside an underground facility.

“How?” he grunted, continuing to crank.

“Not one hundred percent sure, sir. There's a hole in one of the lower level rooms, with a lot of water coming through at high pressure. If I had to guess, I'd say a stormwater line has ruptured, and burst through the wall of the base.”

“What's the rate of rise?” He nearly had the door open by now.

“About a foot every two minutes.”

He stopped cranking. “Say that again.”

“About a foot every two minutes, sir,” the security chief repeated. “The lower level is about half-full.”

“Christ.” He stopped cranking, dashed back to the computer. A click brought him over to the sensors that were supposed to detect excess dampness in the lower level of the base. Nothing was coming back from them. Then he called up the command menu for the drainage pumps that he'd had installed. A click of the mouse sent the signal for them all to start pumping. On the screen, a row of green dots popped up, indicating that pumping had begun.

He'd only just begun to relax when the 'all stop' command popped up on the screen. One by one, each pump flicked from green to red. Frantically, he clicked the 'all start' command once more. They all started then, about ten seconds later, the 'all stop' command repeated itself.

He began to swear; three more times he sent the 'all start' command, only for the pumps to turn themselves off at the spurious 'all stop' command once more. On the fourth time around, he didn't click anything; sure enough, every eleven seconds, the 'all stop' command popped up anyway.

Stepping over to the door, he finished cranking it open and stepped outside. Looking over the catwalk rail, he saw the water, roiling with the force of the stream pushing it into the base.

Good thing I hadn't dropped the other timeline quite yet. But there's still stuff I can try.

Dashing back to his room, he hit the power button on his computer. Maybe if I reboot the system, the pumps will also reset themselves and get rid of that recurring command.

It seemed to take forever for his computer to restart. After a minute, he started fidgeting. After two, he lost patience and hit the power button to manually restart.

Absolutely nothing happened. Not even the power light came on.

God dammit. He squeezed out through the door and went to the rail. The water was noticeably higher. The money I spent on this fucking place.

A thought struck him. I wonder …

Timeline B

Thomas Calvert stirred and groaned.

“Hold still, sir,” the medic warned him. “I'm just setting your collarbone. You've got a nasty break. The edge of that roof tile hit you just so.”

“Phone,” he mumbled, head made fuzzy by the local anaesthetic. “Need my phone.”

“Sorry,” the orderly standing by reported cheerfully. “It got totalled.”

“Borrow yours,” Calvert told him groggily.

The orderly looked at the medic, who shrugged. Calvert read the look as if it'll shut him up, sure. Whatever the orderly read it as, he also shrugged and dug out a battered smartphone. Entering the PIN code, he handed it over.

Clumsily, Calvert entered the number one-handed; twice he slipped up and had to go back. But finally, he had the number dialled in. Holding it to his ear, he waited as it rang.

“Who is this?” demanded the watch operator in his base. “How did you get this number?”

“It's me,” Calvert stated. “Sigma three Alpha zero.”

There was a pause as the operator checked the code book. 'Sigma three' meant 'commander/lost normal means of communication' and 'Alpha zero' meant 'hurt/safe'.

“Right, sir. Got it. How can I help you?”

“Status report,” mumbled Calvert. “Complete status. Any problems?” Is the base flooding?

“Status nominal, sir. No problems.”

“Please repeat. I copy you as saying 'no problems'.”

“That is correct, sir. I have the head of security with me now. He concurs.”

“Understood.” Calvert fumbled with the phone until the number had been wiped from memory, then handed it back to the orderly. “Thanks.”

“No problem, sir.”

Calvert let himself relax as much as he could. The base is flooding in the other timeline but not this one. I have a broken collarbone in this timeline but not in that one. This is also the timeline where I tried to have Butterfly's father harmed.

Timeline A

The water was lapping at the catwalk and showing no sign of slowing its rate of rise when he came to the conclusion. My collarbone will heal a damn sight faster than trying to rebuild this base. And in the meantime, I've learned my lesson. I don't try to affect Butterfly by harming her father.

He dropped the timeline.

<><>

When Deputy Director Renick tapped on the door to Emily Piggot's office, he heard murmured voices inside, then her raised voice. “Come in.”

Opening the door, he looked into the office to see one of the techs from Analysis sitting half-behind Piggot's desk on one of the guest chairs, open laptop balanced awkwardly on the corner of the desk. He was tapping away intermittently at the keyboard.

“Oh, Renick,” Piggot greeted him almost cheerfully. “Come on in. You might want to see this.”

Curiously, he came all the way in, closing the door behind him. The tech – an acne-scarred twenty-something with zero social skills and more computer science doctorates than Renick had imagined possible – barely glanced up as Renick rounded the desk.

“What am I looking at?” he asked, glancing from the tech's laptop to Piggot's computer screen.

“Over here,” the Director said, gesturing at her screen. On it, a wireframe diagram was displayed; she tapped a key and it rotated to a new alignment.

“What is it?” he asked.

“An underground supervillain base, if you can believe it,” she informed him with some satisfaction. “Right here in Brockton Bay.”

He took a long moment to assimilate that. “Please tell me you're kidding.”

“Not in the slightest. We only stumbled across it through the weirdest kind of luck. Their computer system started trying to handshake with ours. A prompt actually popped up on my screen. At first I thought it was some sort of virus, so I had Johannsen here run some tests. He said it was a genuine contact, so I had him trace it back and start digging through their files. We've got base plans, mercenary payment information, body armour, details on Tinkertech weaponry. Everything except the name of the villain, and I'm pretty sure we can make an educated guess on that.”

“Coil,” Renick agreed immediately. “No-one else hires mercenaries, and we're pretty sure that he does.”

“Exactly.” The Director seemed to be almost bubbling over with secret amusement. “And what's more, I think I know why this fell into our laps.”

“Okay, you've got me there.”

Emily stretched her arms out before her, fingers interlaced. “Tell me, who's been causing a series of unfortunate events around town for people trying to mess with her?”

It only took Renick a moment or so to connect the dots. “Coil's been trying to do something, and her power has objected?”

“That's my guess.” Now Renick could understand her amusement and satisfaction. “God, it's good to see karma happen to someone else.”

“True,” he agreed. “Talking about a run of bad luck …”

She looked up alertly. “I'm listening.”

“You know how you asked me to see if anyone from that meeting suffered any mysterious ill-fortune which might indicate that they were going against orders?” He didn't need to explain exactly which meeting, or what orders.

“Yes … ?”

He cleared his throat. “Just a little while ago, Commander Calvert was sitting at his desk when a large amount of water which had apparently accumulated on the ceiling tile directly over his chair … came down. Along with the ceiling tile. He was soaked, his computer was shorted out, which then zapped him clean off his chair, his phone was destroyed, and the ceiling tile broke his collarbone.”

She blinked. “That's a pretty definitive run of bad luck. Anyone else report water leaks?”

He shrugged. “I asked around and checked with Maintenance. Nothing.”

“So he'd be in the infirmary now?”

“Last I checked, they were setting the collarbone,” confirmed Renick. “He expressed a wish to go home once they were finished.”

Piggot showed her teeth as she stood up. “I think it might be a good idea to go and ask Commander Calvert some serious questions about his activities in connection to Butterfly, before he leaves the building.”

<><>

I looked up from the sofa as Dad paused at the back door and folded his umbrella. “Hi, Dad. Good day at work?”

“Wet,” he grunted. “We had some idiot sneak on to the docksite. He got turned around and fell in the water. Idiot managed to break his collarbone. We caught him trying to sneak out again and handed him over to the police for trespassing.”

“Wow,” I marvelled. “We just had a few pop quizzes. And a library period for World Affairs. The cops are asking the teachers a lot of questions, and I don't think they like the answers.”

“Good,” Dad said with feeling. “Oh yeah, you want to tell your power to be a bit more careful. I nearly got struck by lightning. It came so close I could smell the ozone.”

“Jeez, are you all right?” I jumped up off the sofa and went to him.

“Yeah, I'm fine. My feet tingled for about the next half hour, and I couldn't hear anything for about ten minutes afterward, but I'm good now.” He paused. “Oh, and my hair was standing on end for most of the day.”

I smirked, then tried to hide a chuckle. “Sorry. But it's kinda funny.”

“Not if you're on the receiving end,” he assured me.

“But you're not hurt?” I asked.

“Nope. Just scared the bejeebers out of me.” He paused, then added, “I have to say, it was quite a shocking experience.”

I groaned but hugged him anyway. “That was bad. But I'm glad you're okay. And hey, what if you were going to get struck by lightning and this was my power saving you?”

“Huh.” His voice was thoughtful as he hugged me back. “I never considered that.”

“Yup.” I was in no doubt at all that this was what had happened. “Because my powers are awesome.”

He ruffled my hair. “No argument here.” 

Part 9