Alea Iacta Est Pt 14 (Patreon)

Part Fourteen: Turning the Tide

[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

Water.

It is a substance rife with paradoxes.

A lack of it will kill within a week, while too much of it will kill in minutes.

Its life-giving properties (for both hygiene and imbibing) are well-known, and indeed it is the most abundant compound on the surface of Earth Bet (and in the universe at large). Yet, while the oceans support an unimaginable spectrum of life, that very water is unpalatable to humans until the salt and other impurities are filtered out of it.

On oceans and rivers and lakes, it supports watercraft of all types, ranging from the strictly business to the entirely frivolous; despite the more-than-trivial number of drownings per year, people swim and disport themselves in water wherever they find it.

Water is piped into cities and sprayed over farmlands, to allow life to flourish where it would normally wither. People dam off rivers so that it will collect there, to be used when they need it. Sometimes, they even make their dwellings downstream from the dam itself to make use of the water pressure thus garnered, despite knowing that if (when) water breaks free of its bonds (and its banks) it is a cruel monster with mercy for neither man nor beast.

Another oddity of water is that, despite being both transparent to light and entirely fluid, it is tremendously resistant to being compressed. This leads to the ‘water hammer’ phenomenon, which can be either extremely useful or extremely inconvenient, depending on the situation.

Once in a while, depending on perspective, it can be both at the same time.

<><>

Coil

On the occasions that Thomas Calvert deliberately collapsed a timeline and opened a new one, he preferred to be in his base, on the principle that it was the safest place in Brockton Bay to do so. Everyone who could reach him here was by definition loyal to him; he paid their quite generous salaries to ensure this state of affairs. After he split the timeline, one instance of him would usually leave the base and go home to enjoy a good night’s sleep, while the other would stay back and pull an all-nighter, gathering information from all over and seeing what there was to be seen.

On this particular instance, he intended to stay in for a while and do some information-gathering from his Tattletale. She liked to tweak him as much as she could get away with, and sometimes he enjoyed reeling her in and finding out what she really knew; a process that occasionally involved testing to destruction. Not that she was ever really aware that this was going on; throwaway timelines were useful like that.

To this end, he had already contacted her to come in. In one reality, they would sit and talk like employer and employee; she would update him on team needs and he would make any necessary arrangements. In the other, the questioning would be somewhat more stringent. Torture on its own was less useful for gaining crucial information than commonly supposed, but it was an invaluable resource when the subject could also be questioned without torture, and the answers compared in real time.

And besides, it was fun.

It wouldn’t be the first time he’d coerced answers from her without her knowledge, and it certainly would not be the last. One day, he supposed, he would wring one final fact from her then dispose of her, not bothering to keep a timeline in which she would have survived unscathed. But that would be sometime in the future, once she had ceased to be useful to him. Not today, my Tattletale.

Frowning at the clock on his computer, he picked up his phone to call her yet again. The guards had not yet reported her entry into the base, and she should have arrived by now. If she was just tweaking him by dawdling, he would make the torture session extra painful and more drawn-out than usual. Not that this would teach the surviving version of her any kind of lesson, but it would make him feel better.

Just as his finger touched the button to call up her number, a tremendous crash and rumble shook the entire base. He was thrown from his chair by the shock-wave; his phone, dislodged from his hand, skittered across the floor and ended up in the corner. Looking around dazedly, he saw that the back corner of the room had collapsed entirely, throwing up a cloud of concrete dust.

“What in the name of …?” Old reflexes came to the fore, and he was on his feet with his pistol in his hand before he knew it. Earthquake? He very much doubted it; before he’d ever broken ground for his base, he’d checked the tectonic stability of the area. Besides, Endbringer shelters (which his base effectively was) were rated to handle up to a certain magnitude on the Richter scale. Behemoth had seen to that.

He got two steps toward the door to his office when another shockwave hammered through the base. This one was less intense, or perhaps a little farther away. He managed to avoid landing on his ass by the expedient of grabbing on to his desk, but it was a near thing. As it was, there was nothing hanging on his walls anymore; it had all ended up on the floor, including his computer monitor and a few more chunks of concrete.

The door to his office juddered open and he looked out into the main area. Alarms were screeching stridently, with red and yellow flashing lights everywhere. Here and there, he saw his men picking themselves up off the floor; the more alert of them were already checking their weapons and looking around for potential attackers. More concrete dust was in the air out here. Looking up, he saw new cracks radiating across the roof. Nothing serious, not yet. But if this were an Endbringer shelter, he’d be decommissioning it for assessment and repair.

He’d paused in the doorway for a reason; one shockwave had been a very nasty surprise and two even less pleasant. But with the second tremor, the chance of a third had become much more likely, and so he was braced when it actually came.

What it was about, he could only make the vaguest of guesses as he rode out the unpleasant sensation. The Endbringer sirens had not gone off, so it wasn’t Behemoth seeking to bring the place down around his ears. But capes were almost certainly involved. The only one of the required power level in Brockton Bay was Purity, but why she’d be blasting the ground around his base, he had no idea.

Oh, crap. His eyes opened wide behind his mask as a disquieting thought occurred to him. The only cape in the city with the potential to take on Purity one-on-one was Lung; if they were engaged in a cape battle directly above his base, this could be very bad indeed. Both from the potential damage to the base itself, and the possibility of discovery by the authorities after the fact.

Thinking of Purity, something else occurred to him. Scuttlebutt had it that the Empire cape had been hospitalised after Kaiser’s death; or at least, a woman suspected to be Purity had been stabbed by Max Anders, posthumously identified as Kaiser, and had ended up in Brockton Bay General. The word was that the PRT were making overtures to her, with a view toward potential recruitment and rebranding. How that was going, he wasn’t certain; it wasn’t something he was officially read in on. And it certainly didn’t explain why the flying blaster was currently wrecking the landscape around his base. Maybe I should’ve tried recruiting her instead.

Putting the matter out of his mind, he stepped out on to the catwalk, grasping the rail tightly in case another quake came through. The alarms ceased shrieking, but the red and yellow lights continued to flash. “Guards to the entrances!” he shouted. “Damage reports! I want to know what happened, and I want to know yesterday!”

As he’d expected, the voice of command steadied his men; with defined duties to carry out, they headed off in various directions. Looking around, he could see that one length of catwalk had collapsed altogether. Fortunately, it didn’t seem that anyone had been on it at the time.

Yet another rumble passed through the base; his grip tightened convulsively on the catwalk rail, but it didn’t seem anywhere near as severe as the first three. In fact, even the sound of it was different, as was the feel. It was more like a jackhammer than a series of explosions. And it felt like it was coming up from below, rather than down from above.

A different alarm began to shrill. This was one he knew about, because he’d overseen its installation. Flooding alarm; an unfortunate necessity in a port city where the entire base was below the water table, and where Leviathan could not be ruled out from visiting. Fortunately, he’d also overseen the installation of a series of high-powered pumps that could be relied upon to shift a large amount of water from inside the base to outside the base in a very short time.

In another moment, he felt rather than heard the bone-deep reverberation as all ten pumps kicked in. Why the base was flooding—or rather, had been flooding—he wasn’t at all certain. Yes, Purity was insanely powerful. But the idea that her blast had tunneled all the way down to the lower parts of the base and then breached the concrete was ridiculous. Not to mention that there was somehow enough water coming in to activate all ten pumps. The only place where there was enough water to do that was a high-pressure main, and he’d made certain to keep a certain distance away from the nearest one when laying out the construction of the base. The last thing he’d wanted to do was draw attention by interrupting city services.

Turning, he went back into his office and rescued his monitor. There was a crack across the screen now, but it seemed to be functional for the most part. It was a good thing Tattletale was coming in; he had questions for her.

<><>

Danny

“Hm.” Janet didn’t say more than that; with her hand (and stump) in her jacket pockets, she seemed to be doing nothing more than staring into the middle distance.

“What’s up?” Lisa didn’t even try to shift the smirk she’d been wearing since Dinah gave the order. As Kayden landed beside them and turned her glow off, she gave the mousy-haired woman a high-five.

“I set up a resonance in the nearest high-pressure water main to burst out of the pipe and tunnel through the intervening rock and earth, using water hammer,” Janet explained almost pedantically. “I even managed to break through into the base without much trouble. But it appears Coil is nobody’s fool.”

Lisa nodded sympathetically. “Let me guess. Pumps?”

“Pumps.” Janet frowned. “Strong ones. I’m having trouble putting more water into the base than they’re pumping out. Even with the water main.”

“Don’t try.” For a moment, Danny wondered who’d spoken, then he realised it was himself. “You’ll just wear yourself out.” He looked to Dinah. “Ideas?”

Dinah grinned. “Just one.”

<><>

Coil

Calvert had barely settled down into the routine of checking damage reports when the flooding alarm went off again. With an irritated frown, he called up the pump status feed. If any of them had gone into default mode, he could start them up again.

But what he found was much more concerning. One pump had failed utterly, and from the fluctuations coming from the second one, it was on the way out as well. This was extremely problematic; he’d accounted for the possibility of pump failure, but never two at once, especially with this kind of flooding crisis. As he watched, the second pump’s flow rate dropped to zero, and the green status light flipped to red.

And then a third pump started having difficulties.

<><>

Taylor

“You can jam pumps with your water control?” Taylor shook her head. “That’s just bullshit.”

“I would’ve said the same thing, except that I’m actually doing it.” Janet’s distant expression had been replaced by bemusement. “Ever since I got my powers, I’ve been terrified of using them. Terrified of water in general. This—since I got to Brockton Bay—is the first time I’ve ever deliberately used them.” She smiled tightly. “Four down, six to go.”

“Coil’s gonna be figuring out this whole thing’s been an attack on his base any time now,” Lisa observed. Right on cue, her phone rang. Hitting the button, she answered it. “Hey, boss,” she said cheerfully. “Yeah, I’m nearby. No, I can see there’s been some sort of attack. I can see the craters. Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s Purity. I’m looking right at her.” Grinning broadly, she gave Kayden a fingertip wave. The woman rolled her eyes and waved back. Taylor had to put her own hand over her mouth to prevent a giggle from escaping.

The ex-Undersider stopped speaking then, except to give brief noises of acknowledgement. Coil seemed to be quite upset about something; Taylor didn’t have to be either Dinah or Lisa to figure out exactly what that was. Given Lisa’s commentary about the man, she couldn’t bring herself to feel much sympathy for him either.

“Yeah, sure, right, boss.” Lisa seemed to be turning red in the face for some reason. “I’ll see you soon. Right. Yeah. See you soon.” She hit the button to end the call. “Enjoy your swim, you son of a bitch.” Then she collapsed on her ass, howling with laughter. Both Andrea and Annette seemed to share her sense of humour, because they were laughing just as hard; Andrea leaning on Danny for support, and Annette on Taylor.

Trying hard not to let the giggles overtake her, Taylor looked around as the first sirens became audible.

<><>

Armsmaster

Colin led the convoy of PRT vehicles toward the location they’d been given. It seemed to coincide with the epicentre of a series of explosions that had been reported in the area; dust was still rising in the air. Several buildings had been demolished and a parking garage utterly trashed, following no pattern he could see. How the chirpy message was related to this, he couldn’t be sure, but the chance to bring in Coil was too good to ignore.

“Keep an eye out for threats,” he said over his helmet microphone. “We can’t assume that whoever did this damage is out of the area yet.” Or that they’re friendly, he added silently. This could yet be an elaborate trap for whoever responded to the call. If it was, they’d soon find they had bitten off more than they could chew.

“Copy.” That was the officer in charge of the detachment, a man called Prendergast. Colin listened to the man rattling off orders as he stopped his bike and climbed off. The fence around the construction site was tall and sturdy-looking, but there was a gate, chained shut. A swipe of his halberd dealt with that, then he pushed open the gate and strode in.

Right where the email had indicated was an innocuous-looking hatch, set into a concrete seating and marked ‘Drainage’. Logically enough, it was locked. He looked up and around at the unfinished high-rise building towering over him, checking to ensure the ground shocks hadn’t destabilised the structure. While he wasn’t an expert on the matter in the way that someone like the Chicago Wards leader Tecton would be, it all seemed to be holding together for the moment.

Prendergast moved up beside him as his men deployed. “So what do you think?”

Colin gestured toward the hatch. “I think if they’re coming out, they’re coming that way.” But that was already blatantly obvious. “Though I’m curious about the ‘waterlogged’ aspect. If it’s correct, how does the tipster know that there’s water involved? And how is it involved? There are unanswered questions here.”

“True, but if the tip’s on the level, I don’t care if they used Thinker powers, consulted a ouija board or got a personal text from God.” Prendergast chuckled briefly. “I’m happy to field obscure messages all day long if we get results out of it.”

He had a point, though Colin preferred things to be more cut and dried than that. There was also the question as to where Purity had gotten herself to; just as with Hookwolf’s demise, the damage patterns in the local area were very familiar-looking. If there’d been a cape battle, who had Purity been fighting? Certainly not Lung; nothing was on fire. Were there members of the Empire Eighty-Eight lying in the rubble? Had the entire mention of Coil been a red herring to get them out here and capture Purity’s victims? It didn’t make sense; he would’ve come out for that, just as readily.

He forced himself to step back from the situation and look at it from the outside. An anonymous tip had been called in by what sounded like a teenage girl. The only teenage girl he knew of whom Purity would have been associated with was Rune. Had she made the call? There were too many variables there. He shook his head and moved on. Either just before or just after the call, Purity had attacked random buildings, then disappeared again. Were the two incidents connected?

Wait a moment …. He contacted his bike and had it send up a small drone, then called up an overlay map of the area. Once the drone was at sufficient altitude, he marked his own position, then used the visual feed to fill in the positions of the damaged buildings. The four marks formed a rough oblong shape, as if surrounding something.

She was cutting off escape routes. The conclusion was as inevitable as it was unexpected. And what’s the best way of driving someone out of a no doubt heavily fortified underground base? You flush them out, with water. Water didn’t care about bullets, or Brute strength. He didn’t know how Purity had arranged for Coil’s theoretical underground base to fill with water, but he would’ve bet his halberd he was right.

“Someone’s coming up!” It was a soldier, crouching over the hatch, holding one of his sonophones to the metal. Something he’d come up with in a casual moment, they had proven useful in picking up the sound of people walking over hard surfaces.

“Positions.” Prendergast spoke the order instead of barking it, but his men snapped to action all the same. Some crouched with rifles at the ready, others held containment foam sprayers, and three prepared grenades to be tossed if necessary. Colin recognised the munitions as flashbangs, which would be devastating to the senses if used in a confined space such as an escape tunnel.

The lock clicked, and the hatch began to raise.

<><>

Coil

Calvert swore profusely and bitterly as three things impressed themselves upon him with ever-increasing clarity.

The first was that the pumps were somehow being sabotaged. One after another, they had failed, burning out their motors despite there being no good reason for this to happen. The water in his base was rising at a horrifically impressive rate. He had a backup base, but it was in no way as prepared as this one. Most of his supplies were still crated up, some of the crates beginning to float around on the lower levels. This was going to be a tremendous setback in both resources and planning. If he even got out, which wasn’t necessarily a given; it wasn’t as simple as that.

Because the second thing was that Tattletale had betrayed him. It was becoming more and more obvious that she had no intention of showing up to be questioned and/or tortured. Whether or not she was simply taking advantage of the situation or whether she was complicit in the attack had yet to be determined.

This was the third conclusion he had reluctantly reached. He—his base—was under attack. Purity’s blasting run had neither been at random, nor was it part of a cape battle. The shockwaves had been the result of two of the main exits of the base being collapsed. The entrance to his escape tunnel had been in the corner of his office that had collapsed in the first attack. This was the tunnel that nobody was supposed to know about. Even the men who’d installed it without ever knowing what it was about had been disposed of in subtle and ‘accidental’ ways.

Only one exit had been left clear. With the rising water mere inches below the upper level catwalk, their options were rapidly vanishing. The trouble was, every instinct he had was screaming at him that this was a trap; if your enemy leaves you one safe way out, it’s not a safe way out. Someone was waiting out there for his men; whether it was Purity, some other group or even the Protectorate, his men would be in a supremely vulnerable position as they emerged one at a time.

The one good thing was that this exit was being left to them. If the unnamed enemy wanted them dead, it would’ve been all too easy to close off the last exit and leave them to die as the water inexorably rose and they used the last of their trapped air pockets. Getting out alive meant capture and unmasking was a near-inevitability.

Of course, he had a backup plan. It hadn’t been formulated with something as dire as this in mind, but when his back was to the wall, he had to use every available resource. In this instance, the resource was a man called Hocking. Hocking was unremarkable in every way; not overly bright, physically unimpressive, and possessed of a distinct overbite. But he was over six feet tall and almost as skinny as Calvert himself. On the occasions Calvert had required a body double, Hocking had been invaluable, which was why he’d already transmitted the order for the man to report to his office.

Water was just starting to swill gently over the floor of his office when Hocking showed up at his doorway. “You wanted me, sir?”

“I did. Come on in, Hocking.” Calvert hit the control to close the door, then held out Hocking’s copy of the costume he was wearing. This one had been made to the man’s measurements; Calvert certainly wasn’t going to be wearing something that someone else had sweated into and breathed through. “You know how I’ve always rewarded you heavily for standing in for me? This will be your command performance.” Turning back to his computer—fortunately, none of the electrical connections were at floor level—he typed in a command, transferring two hundred thousand dollars to Hocking’s personal account.

Hocking’s eyes widened. “Sir, yes, sir!” he blurted. His boots splashing in the steadily-deepening water, he pulled off his balaclava and began to strip out of his uniform.

Calvert did the same with his own costume; this was no time for modesty. They swapped out clothing, Calvert donning the mercenary’s gear with the ease of long practice. Hocking was less sure with the costume, taking several attempts to get it to zip up. This was somewhat hampered by the fact that the water was nearly ankle-deep by the time he got it right. As the zipper travelled down the seam, with Hocking concentrating on not jamming it, Calvert wandered around behind him, to where the rubble lay on the floor. Picking up a double-fist sized chunk, he waited until Hocking had tucked the tab away next to his ankle, then struck.

Hocking never saw it coming. The concrete had a hard edge, which made a meaty chunk sound as it contacted his temple; the man collapsed bonelessly into the rising water. Calvert dropped the concrete at his feet and turned Hocking face-down into the water. There were a few brief struggles as the semi-conscious man tried to avoid his fate, but then he went limp. Calvert checked for a pulse; there was none.

Turning back to the computer, he reversed the transaction—Hocking had been too dazzled by the number of zeroes to realise that he hadn’t actually hit the final command to carry it through—then pulled up another screen altogether. This one connected to the base self-destruct mechanism. He told it to mute all warnings and alarms, and blow in fifteen minutes. Then he pressed the hard-shutdown button. Even if his computer survived the upcoming flooding event—which was unlikely—nobody who got to it could reverse the countdown, or would even know it was happening.

Slinging Hocking’s rifle over his shoulder, he hit the control to open the door, then dragged Hocking out, carefully keeping his head above water this time. “Help!” he called out in his best imitation of Hocking’s drawl. “Boss hit his head! Help!”

Mercenaries came running, two of the beefier ones taking over the burden of Hocking’s body. One of them—Brooks—asked, “What happened?”

“Boss called me in ta gimme orders,” Calvert said. “Bit o’ concrete fell outta th’ ceilin’ an’ beaned him. Figure we need ta git him ta medical help.”

“Right.” Brooks looked in through the door to Calvert’s office and saw the pile of rubble. “Shit. Okay. We can’t treat him here. Only one way out. If we can fight our way out, we do, otherwise we just surrender, okay? We’re no good to the boss dead.”

“Hell, we’re no good to us dead,” quipped the other mercenary, a South African called Holt. “Best we get outta here first, figure out what happens next after that, yeah?”

Calvert nodded. “Sounds good to me.”

As Brooks and Holt sloshed off along the walkway—the water was well past ankle-deep now, with crates floating in the middle of the open area—he fell into line behind them. He’d done his best to make certain that nobody knew of Hocking’s secondary role in the mercenary group, so nobody would be able to betray him, even by accident.

“Everyone, keep your rifles dry.” Brooks seemed to be falling naturally into the leadership role. Calvert made a mental note to watch the man in future, if they both survived the situation. “They’ll fire wet, but the lasers will have problems with water.”

Under the balaclava, Calvert grimaced. It was really something he should’ve considered, but an attack on the base combining above-ground bombardment and underground flooding hadn’t featured in the situations he’d anticipated. As it was, the lasers worked well even in humid conditions but if they actually got wet, they shorted out very rapidly indeed. With this in mind, as the water climbed toward his waist, he unslung his rifle and held it over his head. Several of the mercenaries around him mimicked the action.

<><>

Taylor

“Lisa …” Janet was frowning again. “What does it mean when henchmen hold their hands up like this, when there’s no enemies in sight?” She lifted her arms so that her good hand was above her head, with her elbows slightly bent.

“Weapons.” Lisa’s voice was firm. “Definitely weapons. They want to keep them dry.”

Danny raised his eyebrows. “Wait, you can tell the posture of a person from this distance? Underground?”

“It’s not as easy as it sounds, but when a lot of them are doing the same thing, it gets my attention.” Janet chewed her lip. “Weapons, huh?”

Leaning against the hood of the car, Taylor steadied the small tray her father had made, and rolled a couple of dice. “That’s interesting,” she murmured. She rolled again, and the numbers unfolded in her head. “Really interesting.”

“If you say ‘interesting’ one more time without explaining, I am going to punch you,” Lisa said, mock-severely. “I’m supposed to be the one who makes obscure comments without including context. Get your own schtick.”

Taylor smirked and gathered her dice up. “No, you won’t. I don’t even need to roll to figure that one out. Okay, guys? I just asked the dice if this will blow up in our faces if we walk away now. Seventy-three percent chance of that happening. Second roll was for the chance of Coil getting away even now. Seventy-eight percent.”

“Oh, really.” Janet put her hand—and stump—back in her pockets. “Let’s see about that, then. If they want their weapons to stay dry, they’re shit out of luck.”

Lisa turned to Danny. “Can we get closer? I need eyes on the situation. Whatever Coil’s planning, if I can’t see it, I can’t screw him over.”

“That way.” Dinah pointed. “And we’re going to need the binoculars you keep in the trunk.”

Danny blinked. “I’d totally forgotten about the binoculars. How did you know I had a pair?”

Dinah considered that, then shrugged. “My power told me your job was to supply Lisa with the binoculars she needs to carry out her job of surveilling Coil?”

“Total bullshit,” muttered Lisa as she climbed into the back of Danny’s car. “Other Thinkers suck.”

“I guess you’re used to being the smartest person in the room,” observed Taylor as she got in as well. Dinah and Annette got into the back of Andrea’s car, while Janet got in the front. Kayden climbed into the front of Danny’s car. Personally, she thought Lisa was overreacting. “I’m just glad you’re working with us on this one. I mean, would you rather Coil got away, to soothe your pride?”

Lisa stuck out her tongue at Taylor. Taylor giggled.

<><>

Coil

Calvert currently had two timelines running; one where he was toward the back of the pack, and one where he was up near the front. In neither one was he actually helping carry the costumed body of their supposed leader; the last thing he wanted was for someone to see them next to each other and come to the right conclusion.

Neither placement helped very much when the next unexpected event occurred. Startled yells were all the warning anyone got, before a massive surge of water came along the tunnel from the base. He tried desperately to hold his rifle out of the inundation but it reached clear to the roof, drenching everyone in the tunnel as well as everything they were holding. And then he felt the push from behind. It wasn’t just a wave, it was a current. A second later, he revised that estimate upward; it was a torrent. Lifted off the floor and spun around, he lost his grip altogether on the rifle, not to mention any idea of where up and down were.

Fuck. I’m going to drown in my own base.

<><>

Armsmaster

The hatch clicked and began to rise. Every man took a pace forward, aiming their rifles and readying their other munitions. And then there was a sound from below, somewhere between a rumbling and a whooshing. The hatch flipped up and back to the accompaniment of startled yells from inside the tunnel. Colin had just enough time to register that it had been forced upward by a blast of high-pressure air … then the water arrived.

Erupting straight up in a square pillar shaped by the hatchway itself, the water formed a fountain ten feet high. He was drenched in a heartbeat, along with every soldier there, as men shot up out of the hatch one after the other, flailing wildly. They rained to the ground—along with the rain of water, of course—within the perimeter of soldiers, almost as if they’d been carefully placed there.

And then it was over. The vast majority of the water drained back into the hatch, though he could’ve sworn some of it had to run uphill to do so. Not all of it went, of course. The PRT soldiers’ uniforms were still soaked, and there were droplets on his visor, but the tons of water that had gushed up out of the hatch were simply not present anymore. He decided to worry about it later. The involuntary exit had apparently knocked the fight out of Coil’s men, but they would recover.

 His main goal was to lay hands on Coil himself, and he smiled grimly to himself when he saw the costumed figure lying among the other men. “Secure them!” he called out, and headed for Coil himself. It was only when he got close that he realised Coil wasn’t moving, and that there was red staining a white section of the part of his mask covering his head. Leaning down, he placed his hand on the skinny man’s neck. Sensors in his gauntlet told the story; there was no heartbeat, no respiration.

Coil was dead. This wasn’t a capture, with the kudos that would come along with it. It was just a matter of bagging and tagging a corpse. He grimaced, knowing that Piggot would be far less impressed with a dead supervillain than a live one.

“What happened here?” He grabbed the nearest one of Coil’s men, and pointed at the deceased villain. “How did he die?”

“Rubble hit him on the head,” the man mumbled dazedly. Pulling off his balaclava, he turned away and threw up water.

Colin’s lips thinned. It looked like all of the other men had survived, though some were probably suffering from broken arms or legs. A clean sweep, marred only by Coil’s death.

Which brought him back to the original query. Who did this? An outside agency had planned this entire situation, from the bombardment (Purity) to the phone call to Piggot (an unnamed teenage girl) to someone emulating Leviathan to drive Coil and his henchmen from their base. Their motives were probably pure but their actions had resulted in the death of Coil, a man who hadn’t even earned a Birdcage sentence yet, much less a kill order. Even accidental, that made this death into a case of manslaughter, or perhaps negligent homicide.

That’s the last thing we need in Brockton Bay. Another bunch of loose cannons.

A flash of light some distance away caught his attention, but when he looked there was nothing there. When it didn’t recur, he sent the drone in that direction and went back to what he’d been doing.

<><>

Tattletale

Kneeling on the roof of the building with her elbows resting on the parapet, Lisa steadied the binoculars. Behind her, she knew Kayden was trying to see what was happening as well, but they only had the one pair of binoculars.

She watched as they took the mercenaries into custody, disarming them and zip-tying their hands behind their backs. Coil himself lay unattended, arms and legs askew in a manner that would’ve been highly uncomfortable if he was still alive. But he was dead now, and with him went the most direct threat to Lisa’s life.

The drone was the next thing she spotted; it was headed in their direction, and would get there in another couple of minutes. This, she knew, could be problematic for everyone, so she prepared to wrap up and get out of there. But as she performed her last sweep, something made her narrow her eyes and tighten her lips.

Tall mercenary next to Brooks, walk is familiar. Trying to disguise it, glancing up at the building under construction. Planning to make a run for it.

Walk is what Coil’s would be if he was wearing armour and had his arms fastened behind his back. Scared of building collapsing on him.

Is Coil. Switched costumes with another mercenary. Murdered his body double to fake his death. Knows building will collapse. Arranged for building to collapse. Explosives. Explosives in base. Base is going to self-destruct. Intends to escape in the confusion.

“Shit,” she muttered. “Shit, shit, shit.” She scrabbled for her phone.

“What?” Kayden leaned down beside her. “Tattletale, what?”

Lisa paused, then eyed the unassuming-looking woman. “How precise can you be? With your blasts, I mean?”

“They tend to spread out, but I can usually keep them on track.” Kayden frowned. “Why?”

Lisa grinned a tight grin, and told her why. Then she made a phone call.

<><>

Coil

Calvert knew his internal countdown wasn’t perfect, but it had to be getting close to time. While he’d been disarmed and zip-tied, he had ways and means of getting out of zip-ties. He didn’t know which way the half-built construction would fall, but his power would help avoid that as well. And while all that was happening, if one of the mercenaries happened to slip away, would they try all that hard to find him?

For the fifteenth time since he’d been spat out of his base, he split time and made a run for it. This time, he was clotheslined by a soldier who stepped out from behind one of the vans and held out his arm. He dropped that timeline and split off another one.

“You.” A hand fell on his shoulder. Gauntleted; Armsmaster’s. “Come here.”

Again, he made a bolt for it. Taser wires spiked into his back and he fell over, twitching uncontrollably.

In the other timeline, he nodded. “Uh, okay?” He stumbled a few steps in compliance, trying to slouch so that his height wasn’t so immediately apparent. “What do you want? I can tell you all about what Coil did, stuff like that. Easy-peasy.” While he was speaking, he refreshed his timeline.

Armsmaster seemed to be staring at him as if he were aware of the repeated attempts to escape. Then he reached out and yanked the balaclava off.

In one timeline, Calvert shoulder-charged Armsmaster in an attempt to push him off balance, while in the other he turned away, ducking his head to shield his face.

He was foamed before he made it two steps. As with all the other timelines where he’d been irrevocably captured, he started fresh. In the timeline where he’d tried to hide his face, Armsmaster gripped his shoulder again, servo-assisted fingers digging into his flesh. The hero’s other hand forced Calvert’s head up and around. There was a long moment, then Armsmaster’s lips thinned. “Commander Thomas Calvert, I’m arresting you on suspicion of—”

That was the moment when the self-destruct went off. The ground rumbled and shook and water blasted up out of the hatchway again, this time in a column that reached over a hundred feet in the air. Fissures and cracks opened up here and there, more water fountaining up out of them.

Above them, ominous groans and creaks heralded the oncoming danger. Calvert looked up involuntarily, to see the half-constructed building beginning to sway back and forth in a most alarming fashion. “Run!” he yelled, entirely genuine fear in his voice. “It’s coming down!”

Before Armsmaster could react, a brilliant-white streak came boring in from nowhere. Spiralling curls of energy lashed out from Purity’s hands, striking the top of the building and smashing it backwards, away from the PRT contingent. She slowed to a halt and continued her assault, working her beam down the imperilled construction. With each floor that was shattered and blasted away, the swaying from the remainder became less and less pronounced.

When the last of the building collapsed, it did so more or less straight down, with barely any rubble making it to the freshly-drenched PRT soldiers. Purity hovered for a moment, as if looking over her handiwork, then turned and accelerated away. As she did so, the remains of some sort of drone fell to the ground nearby.

Despite being knocked around a little by the impromptu fountain, the PRT soldiers were still well in charge of the situation. Worst of all, Armsmaster had maintained his grip on Calvert’s shoulder. If his fingers dug in any deeper, Calvert suspected that his shoulder joint would begin to separate. And while he’d kept in training with his CQC, he knew that fighting an armoured opponent (especially one as competent as Armsmaster) was a losing proposition.

“As I was saying,” Armsmaster stated. “Commander Thomas Calvert, you are under arrest for suspicion of carrying out criminal acts, and inciting criminal acts, under the guise of the supervillain Coil while serving as an officer of the Parahuman Response Teams. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be taken down …”

Calvert grimaced as Armsmaster droned on and on. He barely reacted as the armoured hero fitted heavy Tinkertech cuffs on him to replace the zip-ties. They knew who he was, and they had him in custody. However, there was one faint ray of light. With the destruction of his base, there was no direct evidence to link him to being Coil. All he had to do was deny it and admit to a lesser charge.

One niggling question still bothered him, though.

How did he even know?

<><>

Director Emily Piggot

A Few Minutes Earlier

Watching the ongoing bust through Armsmaster’s helmet-cam wasn’t quite as satisfying as being there, but it was nearly as good. She watched the mercenaries being disarmed, secured and herded together. And then her phone rang. Looking at it, she frowned as the unknown number popped up again.

“Hello?” she said cautiously.

“Yeah, hi.” It was another teenage girl. “Enjoying the show?” This one sounded altogether too cheeky for her own good. Somehow, she knew Emily was watching the bust, but that wasn’t the important part.

“You got Coil killed.” Emily’s tone was flat. “That was careless of you.” The subtext was clear; whoever this new team was (because she had no doubt it was a new team) they would have some yardage to make up before the PRT gave them any sort of trust.

“So sure of that, are you?” She could hear the smirk in the voice. “That’s not Coil. That’s his body double. Coil swapped out with him, then murdered him so he could get away in the confusion.”

“Really.” Emily was still dubious, but she was listening. “So which one’s the real Coil?” It was worth a try, anyway.

“Near the van. The tall one who just looked up at the building. You’ll note that he’s the same body type as the dead guy. Also—”

Emily dropped the phone and grabbed up her radio microphone. “Armsmaster, I’ve just gotten new information. Coil may not be dead.”

He sounded surprised, even affronted. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but he is. Negative life signs. My sensors—”

“There’s a strong chance that’s not Coil. The one to your right, the tall one. I’ve just been informed that he’s really Coil. The other one’s supposedly a body double.”

“On it.” His voice, previously resigned, went up several notches in energy. He strode over to the tall mercenary. “You.” His voice sounded over the radio link as he slapped one gauntleted hand on the man’s shoulder. “Come here.”

“Uh, okay?” The mercenary stumbled a few steps toward Armsmaster. “What do you want? I can tell you all about what Coil did, stuff like that. Easy-peasy.”

Emily gripped the radio mic. On her desk, the phone rang but she ignored it. The mercenary’s voice sounded familiar. Where have I heard that voice before? “Take his balaclava off. I want to see his face.”

It only took a second or so for Armsmaster to respond to the order. His free hand came up and pulled the waterlogged balaclava from the man’s head. Almost immediately, the guy twisted away, trying to hide his face. Armsmaster didn’t need an order to force his head around to where Emily could see his features.

“Son of a bitch. That’s Thomas fucking Calvert.” Immediately, she started running the numbers in her head.

If he’s really Coil, this explains so much.

What if he’s not? What if he’s just a peon?

She shook her head. That wasn’t the Thomas Calvert she knew and disliked. Calvert hated being ordered around by others. He’d shot his own captain in the mess at Ellisburg, all those years ago. She would personally bet a year’s salary that even if he hadn’t started out as Coil, he would’ve murdered the man and taken over.

“Commander Thomas Calvert,” Armsmaster pronounced. “I’m arresting you on suspicion of—”

A loud rumble cut through the sound, and the view shook. Water suddenly poured down over everything, then Coil’s voice cut through the confusion. “Run! It’s coming down!”

Armsmaster’s helmet tilted upward, and Emily saw that the partially-constructed building that had overshadowed the bust was swaying like a tree in a high wind. Creaks and groans were audible over her speakers. Oh, shit. There was a self-destruct. And then the bright light burst on the scene.

“Fuck,” muttered Emily. “Purity.” As if things hadn’t been bad enough before.

And then, as if the universe was conspiring with itself to fuck with her, she watched incredulously as the flying blaster blew the building away, floor by floor, until it no longer threatened the PRT troopers and Armsmaster. Shaking her head, she stared as the glowing cape flew away again. “Bullshit,” she said out loud. “Utter bullshit.” It wasn’t Purity’s demonstrated power level she was objecting to; that had already been adequately calculated. It was the fact that she’d saved PRT troops.

Armsmaster’s attention turned back to Calvert. “As I was saying. Commander Thomas Calvert, you are under arrest for suspicion of carrying out criminal acts, and inciting criminal acts, under the guise of the supervillain Coil while serving as an officer of the Parahuman Response Teams. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be taken down …”

Emily was absolutely certain that the mysterious tipster was indeed correct, but there were problems still to be surmounted.

The courts are going to need more than my assessment of the man. They’re going to need more than a gut feeling. And I suspect he’s going to go for a plea deal, claim to have been infiltrating the gangs or some other bullshit ploy. I need to be able to nail him to the wall.

And then she smiled. It was not a nice smile. As a strike squad commander, he had an office in the PRT building. In that office, he had a computer. He might have high security on that computer, but I have two Tinkers to call on. More, if necessary. And nothing that ever goes on the internet goes away. Calvert, prepare to have every secret of your life laid bare.

“Stick with him every minute of the way,” she directed Armsmaster over the radio link. “I don’t want even the slightest chance of him getting away. And after you get back, I’ve got another job for you.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he agreed.

Cutting the call, she leaned back in her chair. She didn’t know how the irritating girl had known Coil was using a body double, or how she’d pinpointed that one henchman among all the others. But it was a win, all the same. I’ll definitely take it.

The other things that still lacked explanations—the rationale behind Purity’s actions, and the identity of the water-controlling cape, just to name two—could be dealt with in good time. All that mattered was that one of the gangs in her city was dealt with, once and for all.

<><>

Taylor

“Welp, that’s that.” Lisa jumped down from the fire escape and dusted her hands off. Unslinging the binoculars from around her neck, she handed them over to Danny. “Thanks for that. We just averted a major crisis. Even if she didn’t stop to listen to me about the base self-destruct.” Pausing, she glanced over at Taylor. “We did avert it, didn’t we?”

“Let me check.” Taylor let the dice run over her palm a couple of times, feeling her heart rate increase. She didn’t want to roll, in case the numbers came up bad. Finally, as Kayden came in for a landing, she tossed them gently across the tray. One by one, they tumbled to a stop. She smiled and looked up at the others. “Less than one percent chance of him getting out and causing problems.”

“Woo!” Annette grabbed her and spun her around, then kissed her in the general vicinity of her left ear. “Taylor for the win!”

“Pfft, get off, you lunatic.” Laughing, Taylor fended off her overly demonstrative friend. “It wasn’t just me. It was everyone. We all get this win. This is our victory.”

“Definitely.” Danny, with his arm around Andrea, looked over the group. “We did good. We did really good. All of us.”

Andrea nodded. “I agree. So where do we go with this next?”

Lisa caught Dinah’s eye. Their smirks were almost identical. “Oh, don’t worry—” said Lisa.

“—we have ideas,” Dinah finished.

“Oh, god, there’s two of them,” groaned Janet.

“Two Lisas, or two Dinahs?” asked Taylor.

Annette smirked as well. “Yes.”

 Part 15