The Owl in the Abyss - Chapter 14

The address we had been given was for a defunct car dealership called Bridge Auto.

It sat in the south-west of the city, what was known generally as Downtown South and a large portion of this was held as Coil’s territory of the Brockton underworld. It figured he would want to maximize every possible advantage and minimize the chances of any interference in this operation from his rivals.

My flight to the area took me a precious three minutes at top speed.

Then another frantic minute of zig zagging to find the dealership from the air. I ended up finding Thatcher Street by sheer luck and following it until I found the building.

It took all the willpower I had not to just bust in there, but I calmed myself down from my anger at myself for bungling the search. I knew I was being irrational, I didn’t have photographic memory and while I could read and interpret maps, keeping them in my head and matching what I was seeing from the air wasn’t happening.

I selectively materialized my hand holding the Snitch and let it go.

It fell for a second before powering up, stopped its own fall, hovered and vanished from conventional sight.

Now I needed a place that was relatively close to reappear and wouldn’t get me spotted by any public traffic cameras or the snipers.

I started a looping search pattern from the air, drawing an ever increasing spiral, also trying to spot the possible sniper perches Uber had pinpointed. It was frustrating, as I needed to demist to get my bearings from the HUD device…

It both helped and hindered me that there were still hardly anyone on the streets. It meant that my True Sight wouldn’t find a lot of false positives, but on the flipside it meant that Coil’s snipers had an easier time to potentially spot me.

I finally found a spot in an alley between two tall buildings, about eight hundred meters from Bridge Auto, that had no cameras, people and had two large dumpsters that had a neat gap between them, in which I could reappear. I was shielded from sight in all directions.

The moment I demisted, Uber’s voice began speaking.

“Oh, thank goodness. Let’s see… Reasonably good hiding spot, Escort.”

“Thank you,” I dryly whispered, trying to not breathe through my nose. The smell from the dumpsters were quite pungent and overpowering. “Found anything?”

“First possible sniper spot was a bust, nothing there. Snitch is on its way to the next.”

“How long?”

“Under twenty seconds. I’ll send you its feed.”

The HUD over my right eye lit up and it took a few moments for my eye and brain to adjust to having a screen so close.

The feed was directly from the Snitch’s point of view and there was a graphical HUD overlay on it as well. It was imaging everything around it in 3D, drawing wire-frames on buildings, objects, anything of interest and analyzing it, presenting its findings in crisp to point shorthand English text. I couldn’t help but let out a soft whistle seeing it in action, feeling very impressed.

“Pretty good, eh?” I could hear Uber’s smirk.

“It’s amazing, yeah.”

The Snitch’s target soon came into view. A six floor building that had a few shops on the lowest floor but rented out apartments on the upper five. The flat roof was scanned and found no sniper hiding or camped out.

“Figured that would be too easy,” Uber commented.

The Snitch now zipped lower passing to the sixth floor exterior and scanning through the windows that faced in the direction of the dealership.

“Why search lower?”

“First rule of fighting a Thinker, always assume they know more about you than what you think they know. Coil wouldn’t put snipers on the roof because they’d be easy to spot if you flew overhead. You might think, he only thinks that you teleport, but you shouldn’t assume that.”

The Snitch went lower to the fourth floor and finally it spotted something.

It did its analysis on the vague shapes through the glass and it resolved to show a prone sniper, aiming down the length of a truly big rifle, the Snitch quickly identified it as a ‘M82-A1 Anti-Materiel Rifle’. Next to the sniper was a spotter, looking through a high power set of binocs mounted on a stand. Both men were armored and outfitted almost like PRT troopers, but the urban camouflage pattern and armor pattern was different, looking more angular and high tech.

“Wow, if this is the latest gear Coil’s mercs are packing, it’s no wonder he’s holding this part of town so well. Your average PRT trooper would give their left nut for some of that gear. Miss Militia would need to break out the heavy duty guns to penetrate that body armor. Their helmet’s are fully teched up as well, HUDs, infotech and aim assists.”

“Okay, so I go there and Master them, get them to lead me to Coil?”

“No,” Uber said shortly. “If Coil’s even half the Thinker and planner we know he is, then what we have here is just the first layer in a matryoshka plan.”

“You mean there’s yet another layer of trap on top of this?” I asked incredulously.

“Exactly, hang on a sec, let me get the Snitch a better view.”

The view shifted to the left and Uber found a slightly ajar window in an adjoining apartment. He steered it in and found that he was in a bathroom. It was unoccupied but the door was also open. This led to a small hallway, through which was a living room, also unoccupied but definitely lived in. The state of the place looked like whoever the owners were had hurriedly left.

“Okay, engaging microwave mode, you’ll love this…”

The view suddenly changed colors and instead of just seeing a wall, now we were somehow seeing right through it. The two mercenaries were odd white human shapes on the floor and other shapes - that the Snitch was dutifully analyzing. It was like a more limited tech version of my own True Sight that could see through stuff.

“Bingo, see that large case behind them?”

“Yeah.”

“It probably held the rifle, but there’s more than just styrofoam padding in there. Hidden inside are explosives.”

“You’re kidding!”

“Nope.” The Snitch dutifully brought up its own analysis and displayed a bunch of chemical names, but the one that caught my attention was ‘RDX’. That was a common explosive that was used in the demolition of buildings. “My bet is that these two are being watched carefully. There’s probably a camera in there and even biometric sensors that they’re wearing, keeping a close eye for abnormalities. The moment you Master them, boom!”

“Okay, so how do we penetrate this layer of the trap?”

“Give me a sec… Ouch. Yeah, switching skill sets so quickly is not fun.”

“I’ll give you a kiss and make it all better after this,” I said with a grin, delighting at finding an opportunity for a bit of levity.

“The reward will need to be more substantial than that, Escort. My Thinker headaches are no joke when I get them. Anyway, I’m scanning the airwaves and radio frequencies in the area. Hopefully, I can find the freqs these guys are using, then I can get an RDF bearing.”

“How long? Coil is expecting me to appear within ten minutes in his main trap.”

“Given what I’m seeing here, you’re going to have to disappoint him.”

“But my dad-”

“Escort, despite what he may have said or implied, he’ll not kill your dad. It’s the only card or leverage he has against you should his primary plans fail, and he has planned for their failure. If he does kill your father, then your gloves come off. That’s something that no one who has any inkling of your abilities would want, Escort.”

I didn’t want to go down that road.

I didn’t even want to think about it.

Going full SCP on Coil…

“Just… just find them, Uber.”

“Busy with that. Okay, I think I’ve got their frequency… proximity is really helping. We don’t need to know what they’re sending and receiving, so no need to spend a whole day decrypting. Whew, got a bearing.”

“Which way?”

“We really need to find another sniper team, so I can refine it and triangulate better…”

“We can’t afford the time, Uber,” I hissed. “Just give me direction. I can use my own Thinker powers from there.”

“Fine, sending it to your Scouter HUD. You’ll see it as an overlay…”

“I got it,” I interrupted him. The direction to the south-south east, it was overlaid like a giant line in the sky, only in my HUD vision. “Wow.”

“Augmented Reality rules, eh? You’re probably looking for a mobile command post, probably a truck or large van. I’ll send the Snitch to you, it’ll sniff them out, follow it.”

The Snitch stopped above my position within a minute. I became immaterial and shot into the air, following it as it zipped away.

The rate it could move at was quite impressive for such a small thing, it was just below highway speeds at the moment. I hadn’t outright told him how fast I could move but he had long since deduced that I didn’t just ‘teleport’ somewhere and had to actually move through the intervening distance.

We flew for a full minute in a northerly direction and had moved into the Downtown area proper when the Snitch stopped abruptly and reversed course, almost flying right through me.

It zoomed down to a building that was a multi-floor car park that served the area.

Then moved slowly down, briefly stopping at each floor. The car park was reasonably full as it was a place where people parked on a long term basis and it had minimal exterior covering, allowing sightlines for vehicles from within. In other words, the perfect place to put a mobile command center with a high direct sightline towards the snipers encircling the dealership.

The Snitch stopped on the fifth floor and zipped forward passing into the building proper and stopped at what had to be the vehicle we were looking for.

From the exterior it just looked like a large FedEx delivery van, sitting merrily parked in its spot. There was no driver or passenger visible in the front, but I could hear that its air conditioning was on inside, including the hum of other smaller fans. The engine of the van wasn’t running so they were probably powering everything with batteries or some other long lasting silent power source.

I took a deep non-existent breath and hovered over the roof of the van, before slowly lowering myself until I could stick my head through.

Inside were two armored mercs in the same style as the snipers, though these did not have their gloves or helmets on - though there was a thick circlet of metal around her heads. They were seated in front of large screens and various devices with a dizzying array of knobs and controls that only made sense to them. The screens were interesting as it neatly showed an overhead map and real time positioning over every sniper covering the dealership.

“Alpha Charlie, no sign of target.” A crackling voice reported over the radio.

“Roger Alpha Charlie,” acknowledged the merc on the left, who was manning the radios.

These guys were built like bricks and had necks that were thicker than my thighs. The radio guy had a typical military buzz cut, whilst his partner had longer brown hair, but was also styled like he had also just come off a military base. Their auras further supported the conclusion that they were former military; the barbs, motes and flares actually moved in a recognizable pattern over time; it was rather fascinating to watch. I didn’t know whether to be impressed that military training could give rise to this type of orderly aura or be horrified.

I gave a brief thought about whether to Master these guys, to get info out of them on Coil, but discarded the idea. The same problem Uber had identified still applied. This was just another layer of the matryoshka doll.

I hovered and ghosted all around the van, looking everywhere I could and sure enough found a cunningly hidden device near the fuel tank, which I was sure was another bomb.

When I looked at the Snitch, it was bouncing up and down in the air weirdly and was probably Uber trying to signal me in agitation.

I found a spot to hide between two cars at the other side of level and demisted.

“Oh thank goodness. You know…”

“Yes, it’s just another layer, Uber. I’m inexperienced, not stupid.”

“Of course, just… I’m sorry. Anyway, I’ve got the next link in the chain. Follow.”

The Snitch left the car park and now we were headed east across Downtown and towards the ocean.

Two minutes of high speed flight brought us to the old abandoned southern Ferry Station. Parked just outside the high fencing of the property, was another large van, this time with a UPS logo stenciled on its side. Did Coil have a thing for shipping companies or was it just a random selection he went through?

We didn’t spend long at this van. I only poked my head inside to check that Coil wasn’t inside it. Not that I had any idea how he looked, but no parahuman could hide from me.

As we now flew back west, following the electronic trail, it made me wonder how Coil would appear in costume. Would he even have one? If he was the mastermind type that never put themselves directly in danger, he could dress up like any typical ordinary Joe off the street, so you wouldn’t look twice at him. However, the pageantry and culture of cape life made me doubt that even Coil could resist the urge to get in some sort of obvious costume.

The Snitch now turned abruptly south, and we were back in Downtown South, but more in its eastern parts.

There were a lot of tall high rises here, mostly office parks that focused on finance and tech industries.

The Snitch finally came to a stop directly over a building that was still under construction, only about halfway done. There were no work crews busy due to the lockdown, but I did spot two security guards on the perimeter, one actively patrolling, while another was just sitting in a small booth near the main entrance of the site.

We moved lower until the flying spy device was hovering right next to a fairly substantial antenna array. Anyone looking at it would just assume it was meant to service the construction site. At its base a whole trunk of cables snaked along the exposed ribs of the building, plunging deeper and deeper down into it.

The Snitch began bobbing in agitation again, but I dare not reappear here yet. We had definitely arrived at our final destination. Coil was here, somewhere. That meant he had to have extensive surveillance on the property.

Uber began moving the Snitch in a distinct pattern.

Moving in a wave like motion vertically. Then a straight line horizontally, a straight line vertically, a circle, then it finally clicked.

He was spelling STOP.

I really needed to sort out this communication problem.

I could selectively materialize parts of myself, but I had never had the courage to apply the same principle to my entire head.

If dad’s life wasn’t riding on this…

I hovered lower, putting myself at the corner of the unfinished building, twenty meters of air below me and the building’s outer skin to my right.

Focus Taylor, carefully… I thought hard.

My will turned to my right ear, around which the scouter was sitting.

I imagined I was pulling a film of plastic, but that plastic was my ‘power’, wrapping the right side of my head…

Abruptly I felt the entire right side of my face blasted with wind and updraft.

Wow, this was entirely weird… It was like my world had split in half, yet hadn’t.

“Got your signal… Uh, Escort, why does this say you’re in mid air?”

I materialized my lower face properly. “Because I am in mid air.”

“That’s new… oh, you’ve figured out something new with your powers. That’s so awesome. Ah, the good old days. Treasure these moments, Escort.”

“Sure, now what’s going on?” I didn’t want to imagine what I looked like from an outsider’s perspective right now.

“The problem is this. I said this was a trap on many levels. I’m now thinking that Coil has also accounted for you finding his base. I’m still not sure if this is the real deal. If it’s real and he’s down there, then I think he wants you down there.”

“Uber, your logic is going in circles.”

“Listen, these are the sorts of traps that are Mastermind Thinkers bread and butter. Plans within plans, contingencies, backdoors, fallback points. Think of it this way, he’s thrown down a gauntlet for you. How you perform in it will determine his response and which contingency he uses. If you had fallen for his original first trap, then you’d be dead to a sniper bullet or explosion, his problem is solved. If you avoid the trap and manage to follow the electronic trail he left on purpose, then it just bumps up his estimation of you and he uses another contingency.”

My brain felt like it stuck in gear as I tried to sort out the levels of thinking going on here. “He put this trail on purpose?”

“Yes. There is no other explanation for how easy it was to find and follow. Escort, I can name a dozen techniques and ways off the top of my head to scramble this signal so no one could find it without a hundred years of encryption breaking. He could just route it to a server and have it bouncing around the world a few dozen times before it comes back to Brockton. Yet he’s done none of that.”

“So what do you think he has down there waiting for me?”

“Honestly, I have no idea, Escort. It could be anything. He wouldn’t want to blow himself up, so he probably has your dad wired with an explosive or he has an out of town cape down there with some bullshit-tier power that will take you out.”

I dearly wanted to hit something in frustration right now.

Yet, in the end, whatever was waiting for me… I had to face it. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t at least try to save dad.

“Uber, thanks for your help.”

“Still going in, eh? Well, can’t fault you for that. A final bit of advice - don’t hesitate and don’t let him speak. You take him out quick and quiet.”

“I will.”

“Good luck.”

I misted completely and returned to the antenna array, found the cable trunk and began tracing it.

If a wall got in my way, I went through.

If it went through the floor, I sank through it.

Down I went, through floor after floor until I definitely reached ground level, considering I was now moving through the earth itself.

I saw compacted earth, all sorts of creepy crawlies, worms, residual roots, rocks.

The cables kept going deeper.

I lost all perspective of how deep I was going and for a brief terrifying moment thought I would never find my way out again.

Then I was moving through thick reinforced concrete, nearly two meters of it and emerged into a large room.

It was filled with computer servers. Large steel and glass cabinets, with racks and racks of computer mainframe blades. The overhead lights were off, giving the room a very eerie feel with the only illumination coming from the various LED strips and flashing tiny lights coming from the servers.

How deep in the earth was this?

I hadn’t really been paying attention due to the claustrophobic feeling, as I was practically entombed by the earth on all sides. It was something that was only hitting me after the fact. If I’d been back in my fleshy body I’d be shaking like a leaf and freaking out considerably. In my mist form, I was simply riding out the emotional turmoil as it battered my psyche relentlessly.

When the tides of emotion finally subsided I gathered myself together, focused and found the door, before phasing through it.

Beyond was a narrow arched corridor, with solid concrete walls and rugged lighting, including independently powered emergency lights that had their own power packs. The whole setup was for some reason prickling something in my memory.

There was no signage at all, on the floor, walls, or the door leading to the server room. I heard nothing save the distant machinery of a HVAC system, with the exposed ducting mounted on the ceiling above me. I materialized my nose and only got back the smell of concrete dust and very faintly those of multiple humans, a few days old.

Figuring it was a start in trying to make sense of the place, I remisted my nose and chose to follow the trail towards my left.

I soon came to an intersection, then briefly tested the air again with my nose - they went straight ahead.

It soon became apparent that if I didn’t have the ability to phase through matter, then I’d be faced with the prospect of being utterly lost and stuck in the place. How did Coil’s mercs and whoever else he employed actually work here? They couldn’t all have perfect memory. Did they walk around with maps or some sort of guidance device? If so, it was a neat trick to secure his own base against conventional infiltration or assault.

It was when I stopped at the next intersection to get my bearings and smell for the trail, that I picked up a fresh one, something that was hardly minutes old. I smelt cologne and the honey-like sweetness of two, no three men.

I turned right immediately to follow the new trail and sped up.

Within seconds I found them.

Three mercs in full armor, urban camo and casually cradling weapons in their arms that also hung from their tactical harnesses. I wasn’t much of a gun expert, but they definitely looked like military issue M4s? They also had a bunch of extra bells and whistles attached. My true sight was even seeing some very weird effects going on in some of those attachments, but it was clear that these things did more than just shoot bullets.

Their auras were also interesting, they were generally relaxed but there was background tension and alertness. They were also talking to each other according to their body language but had to be using internal radios, because no sound was issuing from their helmets.

I kept on their trail and eventually I concluded this was just a standard patrol they were conducting. There was no hurry or goal, they just kept walking a route with a moderate pace.

The problem now was I could be following these guys for hours and not come any closer to my goal. My only hope was to keep my nose perked for other trails or smells that would indicate a better direction to go.

The longest most frustrating time of my life so far followed as I trailed these three for ten, twenty, thirty... minutes?

Finally, the smell of a kitchen hit me. The agglomeration of meats, sauces, vegetables, milk, eggs, the smell of cooking meat, all confined in one place was something I was well familiar with by now.

I turned immediately in that direction and soon passed into a relatively large mess hall. It had roughly a dozen mercs with their helmets off, also wearing silver circlets, eating and raucously talking to each other as only a group of men in a shared occupation could.

I tried to make sense of it but I had come in halfway through a retelling of some sort of story involving an old drill sergeant who had discovered that there was a single apple missing from a crate that had been ordered to be delivered to the kitchens.

“So eventually, another DI finds the missing apple in the barracks,” said the merc, his face split wide in a smile as he retold the story. “So he calls the entire platoon downstairs, forms them up, and asks the entire formation about the apple in his hand. The poor sob who stole it knows what’s coming if he doesn’t confess, so he immediately stepped forward as the guilty party.”

All the mercs groaned and smirked knowingly.

“The DI asks him, ‘Why soldier?’. He replies, ‘I was hungry, drill sergeant.’ The DI retorts, ‘Private, I’m going to make sure you don’t go hungry to bed. Eat this apple.’ The DI brings him to the front of the entire formation, then turns around to address the platoon. He absolutely lets them have it with fire worthy of Ron Ermey himself. Then has them do push ups, jumps, the whole kit and kaboodle to waste the crap out of the platoon. The DI then tells him to eat the apple and the platoon will only stop when he is finished eating. He has no choice, so begins eating, the DI yells ‘Take your time!’. The DI turns around to continue to dust the platoon and I shit you not, barely seconds later the guilty recruit yells, ‘Drill sergeant, I’m done!’.

“The DI immediately asks where the apple’s core is. ‘I ate it, drill sergeant!’ The DI can’t believe it and searches around within throwing distance but can’t find the core anywhere. He asks him why he ate the core. ‘Because you told me to eat the apple, drill sergeant!’ The private had been so terrified that he literally ate everything; stem, leaf, seeds, all of it went down the hatch! The DI was so impressed and simultaneously pissed off that he just ordered them all to piss off.”

It was one of those stories that really depended on the audience. It didn’t really land on my funny bone, but I could see how others who’d been in the armed services could relate to it. The majority of the mercs chuckled in appreciation, but soon it was another’s turn to share some sort of funny or weird story from their own time.

Seeing them all like this really made me somewhat pissed off and even sad. The regular armed services had taken a real beating in terms of funding ever since the new reality dawned with capes revealing themselves to the public in 1987. That was hammered even further with the arrival of Endbringers - everyone could see that an army with tanks and gun wielding men would mean less than nothing against them.

At this point the armed forces and national guards existed only as a deterrence force and extra bodies that could be called in during S-class emergencies to support evacuation and policing in the aftermath. What was left of the navy was always kept close to shore. The only force that still got some level of significant funding was the Air Force, as they did have potential utility against some threats, to send satellites into space (about the only thing the Simurgh allowed humanity to keep doing in orbit) and to keep the nuclear deterrent in place.

It didn’t take the young enlisted soldiers, airmen, marines and sailors long to realize that the glory days were long past. The attrition rate in the services was high and naturally the villains were all too delighted to recruit such highly trained men and employ them as mercs. Coil probably paid them a much better salary than they’d ever gotten from the US government.

Halfway through another story, one of the mercs looked at his wrist and quickly got up, grabbing his helmet. “Sorry guys, shift time.”

“Hey Myers, you got any scuttlebut on how the op is going?”

“No, just guarding the boss’ office doesn’t mean I hear everything, Collins.”

“Man guard duty sucks!”

“We had our fun with the Empire in the last op, now we must pay for our sins.”

Myers drank the last of his coffee, stood, put on his helmet and gloves, then gave everyone a half-wave and walked towards the door of the mess hall.

I was already hovering over his head by the time he reached the door and retrieved his weapon from a nearby rack.

He left and after a few turns and walking down a corridor, approached the first elevator I’d seen so far in the base.

Inside the car, I could finally see how many floors this place was designed to have; fifteen.

The scale of the place, its design, and the idea that somehow a villain had built this deep without anyone noticing finally clicked it in my head what this place had actually been.

An Endbringer shelter.

I had gone on a school outing in elementary to an Endbringer shelter, every child in America did the drills and was at least taken to a shelter once.

How did Coil manage to take over an EB Shelter?

They were well maintained and looked after by the PRT and the city authorities.

Just another question to add to the list when I mastered the bastard.

Myers tapped on the button for the lowest floor and I nearly forgot to fly downward with the elevator. I ended up over-correcting and flew straight through him with my misty form.

He shuddered slightly from the sensation and I could see his aura coloring with confusion.

Then he shrugged it off, muttering, “Someone walking over my grave.”

The lift pinged annoyingly that it had reached its destination and he walked out, immediately turning left down a short hallway, before turning right. The corridor here had a guard post including what looked like automated machine guns hanging from the ceiling, steadily turning left and right, scanning for targets.

Myers walked past them without fear and was soon knocking on the first door he found.

The door buzzed and it unlocked itself.

I phased myself through the wall as Myers entered.

Inside was a large room that was dominated by a wooden desk that looked like it could’ve been lifted straight out of some museum. It looked old in design but was varnished so well it might as well have been carved yesterday by some master carpenter. Contrasting this was numerous modern computer monitors mounted on it and a number of keyboards. Sitting behind the desk on a high back chair of leather was someone who could only be Coil.

The man wore a skintight black bodysuit which was stenciled with a white snake curling around his chest twice and finished with the snake’s head ending right on the forehead. Two holes were cut for his eyes and a large one that just let his mouth free to breathe, talk and eat. The thing looked like a repurposed gimp suit that you’d expect to see at a BDSM club.

He was also not the only cape in the room.

Sitting in one of the guest chairs was a young, blonde haired woman, wearing a golden yellow evening gown that looked like she was ready to go dancing at a formal ball. Her identity was protected by a very expensive looking, gem studded masquerade mask. She even went so far as to wear yellow lipstick to complete the overall theme.

My attention was immediately drawn to both their auras.

Both were definitely parahumans, but there was something about the giant metaphysical channel from their brains that led into nowhere that was… different, including the expression of their ability on the world around them. It looked less active and energetic than any of the parahumans I had seen so far. It was like the difference between a firehose plugged into a hydrant and a garden hose - both pushed water and achieved their effect, but the latter was way more economical about it. The metaphor broke down at that point, because when you dealt with transdimensional anything, I couldn’t imagine the scale of energies involved - it was probably just my brain interpreting things as best it could for me.

Coil’s power also didn’t extend to anything on his body, but what it did do was to occasionally flare and pulse onto everything in the room and beyond. That made sense if it was a Thinker power, maybe scanning something. That pulse was also going right through me and not reflecting. So was I invisible to this power?

The unknown cape’s power was also interesting and rather pretty to see in True Sight. It bled over her entire body and into the space around her, but ended just a centimeter from her skin, following its contour. It was colored yellow to my brain and was definitely altering something in the environment, it almost made her look like a brilliant golden statue of power. So, definitely a Shaker of some kind. Her human aura at the moment was dulled into colors of boredom.

Coil regarded the changing of the guards in his office with barely a moment of attention and returned his focus to the numerous screens in front of him.

Miss Yellow, as I dubbed her in my head, reached into a jewel encrusted purse and pulled out a smartphone and began swiping at it with a thumb.

Coil didn’t even look at her, but said, “Your time and services has been paid for, Citrine.” His voice was a silky low hiss that felt ever so slightly unnatural. It was well practiced but he was clearly not speaking with his natural tone.

“The deadline passed twenty three minutes ago, before that I was waiting for hours,” she retorted in an even tone. Even the pronunciation of her words felt… perfect, almost unnaturally so. “It seems your target is smarter than you thought.”

“Perhaps,” Coil admitted.

“How much longer?”

“I will give it another ten minutes.”

“The hostage?”

“That is no concern of yours, Citrine.”

“No, I suppose not. You’ll have to excuse me, I have no opportunity to express such curiosity in my standard line of work.”

Coil only nodded in understanding.

Citrine was a name that definitely poked at a memory. I’d definitely run across her in my research and she wasn’t local to Brockton, but beyond that my recall was failing me. The only thing I could do now was to regard her as an unknown cape and assume the worst - that I should under no circumstances engage her directly with any of my powers. That Coil had hired her here as his ‘ace in the hole’ definitely meant that he thought something about her powers would counter mine, so she was also some form of Trump.

I regarded the three people in the room.

Myers the merc, I couldn’t master him, not without his armor potentially sending out an alert to Coil.

Citrine, even if my own powers were outside context and she couldn’t neutralize them, mastering her as a woman would require a battle of wills. She could either be an easy pushover or utterly outclass me in that department. Finding out what happened when I lost such a battle was not something that I could afford in this situation, not when dad’s life depended on it.

Coil, the obvious target to begin with. It didn’t look like he had any system on his person that monitored his brain activity, but if it was some sort of Tinkertech device, it could be small and not easily found. If he could afford to clad his troops in advanced armor and issue them Tinkertech at this scale, then he definitely wouldn’t skimp on getting something that would protect himself.

I hovered closer, stopping directly over Coil’s head and gazed at him with True Sight.

My attention was ripped away though by one of the screens.

Dad.

A live feed from a camera in a barren room, that had a steel chair in the middle, in which dad was chained and handcuffed to. A few feet from him was a stainless steel tray on a push trolley that had numerous filled syringes placed orderly next to each other.

The camera angle was from an upper corner of the room, and I could see that Coil had not faked the image he had sent me.

It boiled my blood in anger.

He’d pay for this.

The question was just how far I was willing to go.

I turned my sight to Coil and began picking apart everything odd. Now that I was this close I could definitely see he was wearing some kind of circlet around his head, that was distorting the gimp suit around his forehead. Same as what his mercs in the mess hall had worn. It was definitely technological in nature as there was a radio frequency being emitted from it.

Mastering him would definitely trigger something then, but what? An alert, some contingency, maybe even a self-destruct? I wasn’t going to rule out anything.

There had to be a way.

There was no perfect defense.

No plan could cover every angle of attack.

Movement on the screen cut off my increasingly panicked and racing thoughts.

Someone had just walked into dad’s cell.

A relatively small man, wearing a sweater, brown pants and round-rimmed glasses. He was carrying a tray with food, presumably breakfast. I nearly pushed my non-existent eyes through the screen as I strained to see every detail of the man.

One thing became clear though, I needed to find him.

He was not wearing a circlet.

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Finding my dad’s cell had certainly easier than finding Coil’s office. It wasn’t exactly next door, but it was on the same level of the base. It required me just zipping through the walls and rooms as fast as I dared and a few minutes later I had found it.

I resisted the stupid urge to just grab him and roll the dice on whether I could safely mist him and carry him with me.

Even if I could do that, which wasn’t certain, it didn’t solve the fundamental problem.

Coil was a threat. Someone who had broken the Unwritten Rules for some reason to get at me. I needed answers and I needed to be sure that he wouldn’t be able to attack us again. He had made his bed and now he would lie in it.

The man, who I assumed was some form of assistant or even a nurse, given how competently he was handling and checking the tray of syringes in the single overhead light of the cell, was diligently watching dad eat with a single spoon. He had released only my father’s right hand and was at least allowing him the dignity to feed himself.

“What are in those?” Dad asked, as he ate some scrambled eggs.

“A variety of substances, Mr Hebert,” replied the assistant in an almost friendly, informative tone. “With varied purposes.”

The assistant’s aura was a normal human one, he was well into his forties, nothing stood out as odd or extreme in his emotions. I could walk past the guy in the street and not look twice at him. Yet, here he was working for a supervillain and participating in kidnapping and everything that went with working for someone like Coil.

“Is death among them?”

“Certainly,” he said as if he was discussing the weather. He tapped a syringe on the far end of the tray. “This one. It’s quite painless, Mr Hebert. You simply nod off and will never wake up again.”

Enough!

My mind web shot out and I pulled the assistant in.

Aware of the camera looking, I had him keep doing what he was doing. The only indication that something was different was a slight twitch of his mouth - moving from a smile to a more neutral expression.

Using only my thoughts and will to direct someone in my mind web was not an exact science. I had to be very careful with my intentions.

I focused on the tray of syringes.

What else is there? What else is there? Answer. Act normal. I thought over and over.

The assistant pointed at the next syringe. “This one is rather unpleasant. It hyper-stimulates the nerves. Even just the feeling of clothes on your skin or a slight breeze is turned into agony. This one is a drug that makes you feel utterly euphoric, an LSD derivative. Deadens pain and makes you feel like you’re on Cloud 9, so to speak. It is highly addictive though. Next, we have a short-term memory dampener - nasty business this one since it’s primarily used by unsavory individuals who force themselves on women.”

It didn’t take me long to make my choice.

Pick up the memory damper and the Cloud 9, subtly and carefully put in your pockets with your back to the camera.

Repeating that thought a few times seemed to do the trick and the assistant managed it rather skillfully, in a way that told me he had sneaked medication like this before.

Dad definitely noticed the event, confusion spiking in his aura, but thankfully didn’t comment, dipping his head to continue eating.

I had the assistant patiently wait for dad to finish before ordering him to re-cuff dad to the chair and deal with the tray as he normally would.

He picked up the tray with a smile and his eyes were starting to get an eager glint in them as usually happened to those who I mastered.

He left the room and I took careful note of how it was secured; exterior numbered keypad lock and there was a merc on guard who was armed with a stun baton.

The assistant easily navigated himself through the corridors from memory alone and he was soon in a well stocked kitchen that was also entered with a keypad code. The food in the adjoining pantry and fridge was top shelf quality - guess Coil didn’t settle for anything but the best.

He began washing up the cutlery dad had used. The question was now that I had this guy and the syringes of drugs, how did I best use it?

Okay, Taylor, break it down into small steps. I needed to be able to speak to this guy.

My thoughts and intentions had leaked across to the assistant and he finished off washing the plate, before purposefully striding into the pantry and then looked straight at my invisible form and made a come-hither gesture.

Okay, my thralls could at least know where I was, even when I was invisible.

I followed him into the food pantry, he pointed at the ceiling, then his right ear and shook his head.

Was he implying Coil didn’t have any surveillance in his own food pantry?

That was crazy. This was the food he ate… surely he would have a camera at least recording what went on in here?

The assistant smiled and merely shook his head at me. “Mistress, Coil trusts me. Well, as much as someone like him can. You see he used to have my complete loyalty, as he arranged to have my ex-wife assassinated when she wanted to take everything from me in the divorce.”

Looking at his aura, yes he was telling the truth as he knew it and that utterly devoted expression… Well, I had this guy hook line and sinker.

I demisted in front of him and folded my arms. Trying to keep the distaste from my expression at what he had confessed. His own expression turned into wide eyed adoration.

“Thank you, mistress, for gracing my eyes with your beauty.”

I rolled my eyes, suppressing the deep urge and instinct to feel satisfied that I had reduced him to this state. “I need to free my father and… master Coil, so he can’t come after me again.”

“That will not be easy, mistress, but should be doable. He has taken considerable anti-Master precautions and enacted numerous contingencies. Even should you master him, there are a number of events, orders and programs that are counting down on a timer. If something should happen to him, those timers run out and great calamities will occur.”

“Ask him what those calamities are, Escort.”

I twitched as Uber’s voice spoke from the scouter on my right ear. I had nearly completely forgotten that I was wearing the thing.

“You’re still there?”

“Of course, I knew at some point you’d find a safe spot to appear.”

“Well, thank you. Assistant guy, what’s your name?”

“Frank Pitter, mistress.”

“Okay, Frank, what calamities?”

“I’m not aware of all of them, mistress. The one I do know about is an information release, which includes the true identities of a number of villains and heroes.”

“Oh crap, that’s a pretty solid ‘fuck you’ to the cape community of the Bay,” Uber said.

“Another is the complete destruction of this base.”

“Could’ve figured that one out.”

“Tell me about that piece of tech Coil is wearing on his head,” I ordered.

“It is a device that monitors his brainwaves and constantly compares it to a baseline, mistress. Should anything abnormal occur to the rhythm and alert is sent to the central computer system. In his case, it would trigger the base self-destruct on a silent three minute countdown.”

“His mercs have this too?”

“Yes, mistress. If they are mastered, it will alert Coil immediately. He will then order other mercenaries to detain the affected individual. If too many are mastered though, the ‘halos’ they are wearing will release a lethal electric charge directly into their heads.”

“Fuck, Coil is a paranoid bastard, isn’t he? That’s cold.” Uber commented.

“Do they know they’re wearing devices that are potentially lethal?”

“They simply know that it will stun them, mistress.”

“Okay,” I rubbed my forehead, trying to stave off the headache as I searched for the next step. “Now, I assume if we dose him with the memory damper or the Cloud 9, it will also trigger Coil’s halo?”

Frank shook his head, “The memory damper should not be detected, Mistress. The problem is that it needs to be injected, which he will feel and he will immediately react by killing me, mistress.”

“How will he do that?”

“There is a pistol holstered near his legs, under the table.”

“Escort, question. Have you found your dad?” Uber asked.

“Yes. I did, he’s battered but okay.”

“Is Coil planning on doing anything to him yet?”

“No, but that could change at any moment.”

“Mistress, I don’t know who you are speaking to, but if Coil intends to kill your father, he will ask me to do it via lethal injection.”

“Are you sure? He won’t just go up to dad with a pistol and…” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

“Coil is not one to get his hands dirty when he can help it, mistress,” Frank explained.

“There you go, Escort. You have another thing on your side. You have time,” Uber emphasized.

“So we wait, let him assume things, he’ll drop his guard at some point? What about Citrine?”

“Mistress, if I may, Coil takes a power nap every six hours for half an hour, especially on a day like this. He also has morning tea at eleven. As for Citrine, she will be dismissed within the hour as her services were only retained as a contingency for your arrival.”

My mind raced as I latched on that possibility. “Do you have something that you can drop into his tea? ”

“Of course, mistress. I am a fully qualified medical nurse after all. There’s a fully stocked medical dispensary on base, usually for treating any wounded mercenaries in Coil’s employ.”

“What about the halo, will he sleep with it?”

“No, the devices are temperamental when slept with. I’m not sure of the specifics given this is Tinkertech, but dreams have the potential to give false positives. Coil won’t take the risk of the base blowing up, just because he had a nightmare in his sleep.”

“Okay… Here's what I want you to do.”

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Eyes blinked open and Thomas automatically yawned as he stretched in his bed. He gave a brief look at the clock on the table nearby and with annoyance noted that he had overslept by twelve minutes. He reached for his power in a similar automatic mode, splitting the timelines - in one he returned to sleep, in the other he got up with annoyance.

Then just as quickly, his mind turned to anger and he dropped the useless timeline of staying in bed.

It was incredibly tempting to use it again, but he resisted.

Just as he resisted lashing out in pointless anger that his plan had failed. He could split off a timeline for a nice shooting spree through the base, seeing how long he lasted against his employees, but that had been done before and was again a pointless waste. Perhaps a session with Pitter, the small man did make for such satisfying deaths.

No, he thought.

He walked over to his closet, firmly keeping himself in one timeline, before dressing into his costume. He returned to the bedside table and considered putting on the halo lying there…

Miss Hebert had turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. All that planning, all those contingencies, even reaching out to Toybox for this bit of anti-Master technology and spending close to a quarter of a million on outfitting all his troops with them, all for nothing.

Well, not totally for nothing. Troops that weren’t as vulnerable to Masters was something well worth investing in.

He finished pulling the costume’s mask over his head and emerged from his quarters, heading for his office.

Only when he was seated behind his desk again and did a quick survey of the base status monitors for anything unusual, did he lean back and turn his mind toward the problem of what to do next.

It somewhat baffled him that any child could just… abandon a parent and loved one like that. Escort’s psych profile didn’t indicate any hint that this was possible. This psychological lever was almost as old as humanity itself.

His computer system blared an alert that the timers on his contingency programs had reached thirty minutes remaining on the clock.

He sighed and began the process of entering the four distinct passphrases and keystroke sequences which would push on the timers forward another twenty four hours. He also disabled the halo integration into the system as well. Now that the potential danger had passed it wouldn’t do to lose men to unforeseen false positives.

The screen on his left pinged as the computer matched keyword activity on the airwaves. It brought up the local news feed with an update on the ‘Tinker Train from Hell’. It was an apt description. Any timeline he ran related to that infernal train became unreliable, unstable and outright ‘made mistakes’ that were so laughably easy to spot. Something about that train confounded his power and in the process had revealed to Thomas that he himself was operating under the false idea of what his power actually was.

Two timelines, indeed.

More like one timeline and a hyper-realistic simulation of another timeline. A simulation that had been so good, that it had for the longest time convinced him he was a special being who was living in two universes who could jump between them at will and discard the unwanted one at will.

Then the first errors began to crop up, around the time he had later traced that one Taylor Hebert aka Escort had triggered.

No matter what he did in the other timeline to move against her, that timeline would literally start to fall apart at the seams as ‘errors’ manifested. In one timeline, she would seem to have no powers at all, easily being killed with a simple gunshot by an orchestrated home invasion. In another attempt, she literally tore the disguised mercenaries limb from limb, drinking their blood, becoming stronger. He ran it three more times, constantly getting different results and displayed powers.

The revelation of the truth of his power had sent him reeling and necessitated a completely different modus operandi with regards to his plans and activities. He took a leave of absence from the PRT and scaled back his operations, until he could find his feet again.

Then that damn train arrived and just like with Escort, any timelines he ran against it produced random results, ranging from plausible to outright farcical results that even a five year old would say was utter nonsense.

Its arrival had caused him to rather foolishly enact his plans to eliminate Escort to see if it would allow his power to flow correctly again. It was the one thing he could destroy, whereas the train had thus far shown to be able to repair itself from any damage. It would at least be leaving the city soon and if Escort was out of the way… then…

What is wrong with me? Thomas thought, staring at his own hands. How could I possibly have thought…

How could I have ever contemplated trying to kill such a beautiful woman?

He felt a slight movement of air behind him.

She was there, mere feet away.

His chair was slowly pushed to swivel and turn around.

His eyes widened as her beauty hit his brain and he couldn’t look away.

He didn’t want to.

Long perfect legs, fit beautiful thighs coming together into rounded hips and nestling in the center of that vision, a womanhood that seemed to shine with ethereal pink light. The hint of abdominal muscles, showing strength but not to the point of grotesqueness. Breasts shaped perfectly to be cupped and played with in palms, topped with glowing pointed nipples. Only the hint of her face was visible, partially hidden by long curly dark hair that reached to her shoulders.

Then the angel began to speak.

“Hello Coil, time we sort out this beef you seem to have with me.”

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No new SCPs in this chapter.

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A/N: Yes, Coil, its always in the little details and in this case, the least important person or element on your board, that your perfect plan goes balls up. Hope y'all have a good weekend.