There are quite a number of papers on the subject, it appears.
Vespa
- Thread starter mp3.1415player
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FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
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People have, I guess, been researching it for a long time now. In large part because modern concrete is not as long lasting as what the Romans came up with, but the actual Roman Concrete formula got lost over the millennia.
And because the question isn't just how to make it, but why it worked.
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
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- The Internet
The irony is that it may no longer even be possible thanks to all the atomic testing done in the latter half of the 20th century.
That also seems extremely unlikely. Is there any reason to believe extreme isotopic purity is or could be relevant?
There are applications where it matters, but concrete?
EDIT: Additionally, radiological contamination has dropped a lot these days, apparently, because atmospheric atomic testing ended in the early 1960s.
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Wouldn't be surprised if the key part of the "blood makes it good" equation turned out to be the salt level in the end. While it isn't quite as salty as seawater, it's still more saline than even most mineral waters.
Also, wasn't it recently determined that the Roman piers were cast by sinking piles and a casting form into the seabed then pouring the dry aggregate and cement straight in, without bothering to drain the mould?
- Location
- Iowa
So there's a lot that goes into the chemistry of concrete, and there's a lot of reasons why modern concrete is often considered a better option than the Roman methods, and there's definitely been a mythology built up around the actual strength of the Roman stuff.
Veritasium had a pretty interesting video about concrete, there was some interesting niche cases and some things that were done a little better with the Roman methods on the whole modern concrete just does it better. There is a massive difference in the viscosity and pourability of modern concrete allowing for far more complex shapes and much better reinforcement. Roman concrete was mixed very dry and usually formed by mechanical compacting and was installed in a fairly similar way that pounded dirt walls would be manufacture. A form was created the mix was dumped in then workers would use logs to pound it for several hours if not days to reduce or remove and voids in the structure, and to get it to fill in the corners of the molds.
Modern concrete flows much easier, and often fills out areas with only some vibratory assistance. it has several different methods to increase strength that isn't usually utilized due to it making the final forming more difficult. Portland cement recipes do run stronger when mixed with less water, and the thicker mix can often be offset by the use of plasticizers to increase the flow of the mixture. The size and shape of the aggregate also heavily impact the final results. Using jagged and irregular aggregate and fill can increase strength as it can interlock with other pieces. Some recent experiments have seen massively improved strength and load bearing when mixing in fairly small amounts of carbon fiber. Both of which act in similar ways to steel reinforced or prestressed concrete, which also wasn't available to Roman designs due again to a much drier mixture and requirements to mix and pour onsite. Modern concrete is also able to be formed, strengthened, and cured offsite in much better more controlled conditions then installed onsite later.
Roman concrete was never expected to be exposed to the stresses that we expect modern construction to undergo. Roman law pretty much capped loads on their roads to horse drawn wagons carrying less than half a ton. Bridges and other freestanding structures just weren't of the size we expect now, and the load requirements for infrastructure was more than an order of magnitude less. The modern interstate freeway in the US handle 10 tons/axle and 40 tons gross, per vehicle. Special permits and exceptions for oversized freight can go higher than 50 tons
The weather Roman concrete was expected to handle is far more mild and less extreme than much of North America and northern Europe for that matter. Most freestanding Roman ruins are still entirely focused around the Mediterranean, where the maritime weather and warmer temps meant less structural stress as the ground froze and thawed. Average lows even in January aren't expected to go below freezing in Rome, and snow isn't usually a yearly occurrence. And it's almost always gone in less than 48 hours due to the ground never getting below freezing. One of the major reasons that North American continental climate is so rough on both freestanding structures and road is that the freeze thaw cycle disrupts the foundation and small crack and expand explosively if the water is confined and then freezes. Average temperatures in much of the area have ranges that can exceed 15-20C over the course of a year, with large portions of the winter being significantly below freezing.
The self repairing aspects of Roman concrete was because they couldn't properly mix and hydrate their dry mix with the recipe and methods they used. There was a lot of clumps of unreacted calcium oxide that would react with the water that entered cracks that would then cure again later.
There is some truth that in certain maritime uses there was some additional reactions that occurred after the concrete cured that would allow certain minerals to replace atoms in the concrete's structure that does reinforce the strength. It's actually fairly similar to other mineralization processes like petrified wood, but it's not really something that's necessarily unique to Roman concrete and there are many different modern concrete mixes that use specialized chemistry to provide extra strength in maritime applications.
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- Location
- Maine
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- They/Them/Theirs
It's the iron oxide and the increased salinity, as far as modern science can tell. Adding iron oxide in the form of rust suspended in water during the curing process seems to help, but to my knowledge no one has tried specifically rusty salt water, and I'm not in the market for a new deck, so I'm of no use there when it comes to testing. But it's specifically an aqueous solution of Iron Oxide while Curing, which is such a wild fucking thing that even the folks talking about ferrocrete in Sci-Fi didn't come up with it.
Granted, that one's a pretty new thing that they're still testing so who knows, in five years they might have found it was something else. Like, the study of concrete is somehow still maturing and producing weird results.
MWKillKenny84
Lurking from the Trauma Switch.
- Location
- Vado Ligure
@mp3.1415player , our WordSmith, a question: given the amount of bugs and experiments with combos Taylor is doing with her powers, could she be able (perhaps with Parian's help into making costume and accessories) to pull off the look at the link below (pinterest link, bee-girl, I hope that no prude will lynch my account for "sexualization of minors"):
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Archeo Lumiere
The Prince's Archivist
- Location
- Lumiose City, Kalos
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They/Them
... That's hardly sexual. If anything is charmingly cute.
- Location
- Europe
If concrete behaves similar to plaster...., then salt would make it dry quicker, while milk would keep it in a liquid mass, for quite a while, if ever.
So them using salt water or should I say, seawater.....
I can see uses for that, if doing big structures with long curing times.
Or many, thin layers of concrete.
No, that isn't the real thing folks should look at, I think.
Plaster, in the dental industry, has several qualities, the higher ones, stay at the same size, hardening doesn't cause it to become smaller.
How does the Roman Concrete version hold up to that?
And as for the Roman formula, might the Bible give a answer there?
The short story one almost told us about the Pyramides in Egypte and stuff from Rome.
Is there a bigger version (behind lock & key) that would go into more details?
One place might still have the wanted info, the Vaticaan.
But good luck getting it and then understanding what is written down, in something that most certainly, ain't English.
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Taylor would probably look similar but with armour instead of a dress... maybe an armoured dress.
Kinsfire
Verified {Redacted}
- Location
- New Jersey
Yeah, but it makes sense to mention that it's not meant that way, because ... well, some people look for things to complain about. I don't see it often on the threads I follow, but I've yet to find a forum that doesn't have those types.
And I agree - very cute. I can just imagine Taylor doing something like that and getting a request to tone down the cuteness because of the sudden rash of diabetes cases ... *laugh*
Ace Dreamer
Verified Reality User
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For me... it'd need more effort to be properly 'cute'... Probably more work on the face, which seems a little... bland.
Tooth-decay issues? Diabetes? If that's a bucket of Taylor-grade honey, or worse, royal jelly...
Nitramy
Oddlooping in Abydos
- Location
- Home of Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage
We already have a schematic for what Bee!Taylor would look like: Q-Bee from Darkstalkers.
12. Vespa 12... Things happen. There is no stopping it.
- Location
- The general area. Possibly behind you.
'So what are you doing down there, Mr Calvert?' Taylor thought as she sat at a computer in the library, one that faced the wall at the far end of the row so no one else could see the screen. Her range was now easily enough for her to watch the skinny black guy in his underground office from here, and in fact covered a significant fraction of the commercial core of the city too. Mike's exotic pet shop was off to one side, familiar creatures going about their business in their tanks, and she could sense a vast number of ants, cockroaches, centipedes, and other common arthropods becoming more and more active all over the place. Thousands of people went about their business, all of them within her awareness although she didn't particularly pay all that much attention to them for the most part. They were seen, they were heard, but they were pretty much ignored.
Except for two muggers and a burglar, all of whom had close encounters with various unexpected insects at critical junctures… One of the muggers accidentally inhaled a fly just as he was about to grab at an older woman who passed his hiding place, instead ending up coughing so hard he threw up by which time the old lady had kicked him in the nuts and left. Which might have added to why he threw up, of course. The other one had put his hand on the side of a building to steady himself as he peered around the corner at a young boy, his eyes on the kid's phone, felt something tickling him, looked down, and found the biggest centipede he'd ever seen running up his arm. This had quite put him off his game to the point that by the time he stopped screaming and waving his arm around to get the thing off he had a fair sized crowd of Brocktonites watching him with interest and phones out.
Needless to say, he didn't get a lot of mugging done, and Taylor was having great difficulty trying to avoid falling about laughing hundreds of yards away.
And the burglar had bent over to inspect the lock he was about to try to pick, around the back of a store that was apparently closed due to a family illness, frozen as something landed on the back of his neck, and discovered he was now playing host to a couple of large and inquisitive cockroaches which disappeared down his collar. Taylor was rather pleased with how easy it was to distract people from all manner of activities by simply applying cockroaches. You hardly needed any of them to get some really gratifying results, she thought with an internal grin, monitoring the man as he fled swearing violently and in such a hurry he forgot to retrieve his lockpicks.
Fighting minor crimes from the comfort of the library was definitely quite a perk of her powers, she decided. Much safer than running around hitting people, and far less damaging to the surroundings. Keeping part of her multifaceted attention on the lookout for anything else she could interrupt with a bug or two in the right place, Taylor went on with her musings over Coil's activities.
Having returned the last set of books and picked out new ones on subjects she needed to learn more about, including both inorganic and organic chemistry, math, biology, and computer programming, she'd retired to the computers to do some online research while investigating the mysterious underground facility and its costumed inhabitant. Since her dad's revelations of the tunnels underlying the city all over the place a little over a week ago she'd been making sure to actually pay attention to things beneath the streets. This had already paid dividends as she'd mapped out a number of routes between the old agri store down the road from her house and a fair number of places other than her warehouse.
By this point she could navigate her way entirely underground to much of the docks as a whole, very close to Winslow although she had no interest in the place itself at all, and had two different routes to get all the way from her street to within about two blocks of the library. She'd found the older tunnels extended far further than even her dad had suspected and was well on the way to constructing an accurate map of all sorts of really interesting things she'd found down there, including more streams than she'd ever have believed, two underground ponds, and something that was more accurately thought of as a lake it was so huge.
It had surprised both of them, and her dad had done some research of his own, digging through dusty records at the union building, which might well have been the only documentation still in existence about a lot of what she'd found. Eventually after a couple of days of effort he'd turned up a report from the early eighteen hundreds claiming that there was evidence of a flooded cave system to the north of the city, underlying parts of what was now the expensive sector where rich people like the Stansfields and the Anders lived. It was built on a significantly higher part of the landscape overlooking the bay, and it seemed that no one these days realized that deep below that hillscape were caves partially or wholly filled with water.
He'd commented that these probably formed part of the system of springs and underground rivers that supplied quite a large proportion of the city's water, although he hadn't been able to find any indications that the part she'd discovered had any wells drilled into it. But it quite likely flowed to places where the wells were drilled decades ago, and indeed she'd found there was a slow current throughout the really big one, heading more or less south-east which would match up with his thoughts.
Interestingly she'd also found traces that people had been there before her, a long, long time ago. Including the fragmentary remains of some sort of small wooden boat, rotted almost to nothing where it lay on what was sort of beach right beside the underground lake. She'd also turned up some old coins, what was probably the remains of a coil of rope, a few unidentifiable iron and copper bits, and a small glass bottle the size of her thumb, miraculously completely undamaged after what had to have been at least a hundred and fifty years in the mud. It was now sitting on her windowsill next to the coins, after she'd spent a while carefully cleaning out the dirt it was packed solid with.
Taylor still wondered how someone had got an actual boat into the cavern, but it was long enough that her range hadn't yet reached to the other end, which she suspected was the point of entry. The tunnel she'd followed from the other direction had started off as one of the nineteenth century drainage ones, then connected to a covered stream that had less than a foot of clearance between the water and the roof, which eventually became an obviously natural tunnel, more of a cave in truth, that finally entered the big cavern. There was no way anyone had pulled a rowboat or anything even close to that large through the route she'd taken, so obviously there had to be at least one more entrance somewhere.
She was pretty sure, in fact, that it would take modern scuba gear and an experienced cave diver to retrace her path, and even then they'd find it a very tight squeeze in some places. Her power made it quite simple, of course, and the hybrid form she'd come up with, a sort of crab-centipede, could not only swim really well but handle cold water and long gaps between air pockets with no problems at all. On her return journey after poking around for a while and deciding that she'd come back when she had more time, she'd actually swum the entire distance underwater, at least partially to see if she could.
It had turned out to be easy, which pleased her a lot.
In between doing her schoolwork and experimenting with her power, exploring and mapping the tunnels had been a nice exercise and fun too. But the mystery of Coil had kept digging at her, so when she'd read the books and decided what the next block of information she needed was, she'd set aside some time to do some proper investigation into the guy. Taylor was very curious about what on earth he was up to down there, and rather concerned about some of the things she'd noticed the first time. And twice since when she'd checked on his actions while in the area.
The more she watched, the more concerned she got, too.
At first she'd thought that possibly this was some sort of undercover or top secret PRT thing. That idea didn't make all that much sense but it had at least a veneer of reason to it. She'd read that people like the CIA had black sites and operations, so maybe the PRT did too?
The problem with that concept was that if it was the case, and when she'd talked about it with her dad he'd agreed it was certainly not impossible, why on earth would they have a PRT officer dressed up in a costume like a cape? And if he was a Parahuman, why would he he have been working for the PRT rather than the Protectorate? From what she'd read during her general research into Parahumans, the PRT specifically banned them from their ranks. It was basically illegal for several reasons and the organization seemed to be serious about that.
But this guy was definitely part of the PRT, according to everything she'd been able to find out about him from sources she had access to. She'd tracked him leaving his base and taking a circuitous route to the actual PRT building itself, while wearing a PRT uniform. He had what looked to be a genuine-issue PRT ID badge in his desk, along with various other things that seemed official. So if he wasn't a PRT officer he was doing a very convincing cosplay of one, good enough to fool the PRT themselves. While her opinion of the organization was at an all time low after she'd figured out Sophia Hess was a Ward, she didn't think they were completely inept. Surely they had security mechanisms in place to weed out spies and that sort of thing?
It was a puzzle, she mused as she simultaneously looked up how an ALU worked and watched Mr Calvert get very annoyed about something he was reading on one of his computer screens. His office was full of them, including an impressive array that seemed to be some sort of security system right out of a spy movie. The man was muttering obscenities to himself in an aggrieved voice as he clicked through a document, his mask off exposing his face which had an expression of someone who was not even faintly pleased with what he was looking at. Curious, she moved the half dozen small wasps she'd flown into his base through the ventilation system as they had better eyes than most of the other insects already there, aligning them so she could see the screen.
He was studying a document full of legalese, which after a little thought she realized was some sort of court filing. From what she could make out it was relating to the lawsuit the hospital was bringing against several individuals in the state government.
Why was he so interested in that? And how did he get the document in the first place? Taylor pondered the matter while she took notes on her computer search results. Surely this sort of document for a private lawsuit wasn't publicly available? The one against the school board, yeah, that made sense, but this wasn't the same thing as far as her very limited knowledge of the legal system would suggest. Which implied that he probably shouldn't have it. Further implying that he had connections that weren't precisely above board.
Which did fit the super-villain theory nicely, though.
No, she was pretty sure that Coil wasn't actually a secret asset of the PRT. There were far too many things that didn't add up for that. It was entirely likely from what she'd seen so far that the PRT had no idea he was a Parahuman, assuming he actually was. So far she'd seen no signs of him using a power, or at least anything she could recognize as that. The information online about Coil mentioned that no one was certain whether he had powers or not, and there was almost no information about him at all for that matter.
So either he didn't have powers and was pretending to be a Parahuman for reasons of his own, which might add credence to the undercover PRT operation idea although she could see so many holes in it she thought it highly unlikely, or he was pretending to have powers for some other reason not connected with the PRT, or he actually did have powers but they were possibly subtle in their action.
Assuming for the sake of the argument that he was in fact a Parahuman, as it seemed to make more sense than anything else she could come up with, what did that indicate his powers were?
Almost certainly not a Tinker. There were various devices around the base that she was near enough sure were Tinker-tech of one sort or another, including some weapons in the armory they had, some sort of scanner equipment, and couple of larger devices in one room that she had no idea of the function of but looked so weird they had to be the result of a Tinker. But there was no sign anywhere of anything she'd have considered a Tinker's workshop, the nearest to that being a bench in the armory with neatly arranged tools and parts that was obviously there for weapon maintenance. Several of the mercenary guys had used it while she'd watched for servicing their guns and stuff, but none of the Tinker stuff had been touched at all.
So overall either he wasn't a Tinker or he didn't do the usual Tinkering things she'd read about. Adding to this was how none of the Tinker equipment was in his office or on his person either.
Taylor was fairly sure he wasn't a Brute because she'd seen him get incredibly angry about something, slam his hands on the desk, knock a mug of hot coffee into his lap, scream, and flail about in a way that made her both wince slightly and stifle a giggle because it was hilarious. The stream of invective that he emitted was quite educational too.
She hadn't seen Calvert involved in any sort of fighting, so there was always the possibility that he had a Blaster or Striker power of some sort, or some other combat related ability. The problem was that a lot of powers weren't apparent until they were being used, she thought as she made more notes, scrolling through the ebook on the screen while watching the man swear to himself and open another document that seemed to make him even less happy. Just look at her. No one would ever realize what she was capable of without seeing her do it, or her telling them, while she was in a form that was outwardly human. Even though under the skin in a very literal sense she'd made some really major changes. Panacea would presumably discover it if they touched but she didn't know the girl aside from in passing and that was unlikely to happen. Other than that, Taylor's ability was not at all obvious. Without the Changer part, in fact, the rest of it was so subtle she could probably hide it from everyone without any trouble as long as she was careful, except possibly some Thinkers. And why would one of those even notice her?
So he could be a Striker, or Blaster, or Breaker, or most of the other categories, and sitting there in his office she'd be unable to tell just watching him. He certainly hadn't shown any indications of flashy powers even when he thought he was in private, which might mean he didn't have them, she mused. If you had, for example, a convenient telekinetic ability, you'd probably use it just around the house because it would be useful. Or any other power with mundane utility. He wasn't super strong, or if he was, he was going to a lot of effort to avoid displaying this, since she'd seen him move his desk a little for some reason and grunt at the weight. The coffee incident suggested Brute, or at least enhanced durability, wasn't likely either. And he hadn't punched a hole in the desk when he'd hit it either, although he'd looked angry enough that she suspected he'd wanted to. No signs of him taking on other forms and causing her to avert her eyes, like she did with her dad…
A couple of memories made her grin for a moment. Then she went back to puzzling over the problem represented by the distant man in his bunker.
There were too many possibilities, she finally decided. Without some overt indication that a power was in play, she didn't have enough data to do more than guess, and provisionally eliminate a couple of categories as unlikely if not impossible. She didn't even know for certain that he had powers, although the balance of probabilities suggested strongly that he did.
Her gut feeling, for whatever that was worth, was that he was most likely to be a Thinker of some form, but she certainly had no way to prove it. Yet.
The thing she was damn near sure of was that he was up to no good.
There was simply too much evidence in the massive underground facility to prove that. The mercenaries, fifty seven of them by her count so far, were well armed, trained, and going on the look of it, experienced, to be just window dressing. She knew enough people at her dad's place of work, people she'd been around pretty much her entire life, who had military training that she easily recognized the signs. The way they walked, talked, held themselves… These guys were not actors. Neither were the vast array of weapons they had in their armory props. There were enough guns down there to fight a small war and sufficient ammo to keep it going for days. Not to mention those Tinker weapons, whatever they were, and even half a dozen actual rocket launchers of all things. And several huge machine guns on tripods, like something out of a Hollywood action production.
Where the hell did they get all that stuff? Taylor was deeply curious about that.
And unlike the PRT, there wasn't a single trace of anything non-lethal. No containment foam, no tasers, no net cannon… Nothing she'd seen used on the news. Plenty of hand grenades, not one of them the sort that went pop and sprayed quick-setting foam around the place, rather being the type that went bang and sprayed death instead. Just like what had happened to those Merchants and E88 idiots the night she saved Vista. What seemed to be demolition explosives too, and all sorts of other stuff more or less familiar to her at least in passing from TV and reading.
No. Whoever these people were, they didn't appear to be equipped for or interested in non-lethal actions. And there were enough of them to be a major problem if they got involved in something. It fitted the details on PHO about Coil, limited as they were. Nothing on the publicly available information even hinted at him having this much firepower at his disposal though. Idly wondering if she should update the documentation so it accurately reflected what she was studying and hiding a small grin at his reaction if she did, she kept investigating every nook and cranny of the bunker.
Her notebook steadily filled up with observations, ideas on what they might mean, and a surprising number of bits of information the owners would doubtless be absolutely incensed to know weren't private. By now she had the passwords to Coil's computer, his security system, several of his bank accounts, the armory door lock, the server room door lock too, and a number of systems scattered around the base. Whether any of this would be useful she had no idea but it was right there so she wrote it down. You never knew when something might come in handy, after all.
She also counted all the weapons and made a list by type and size, looking them up on the computer as she went. Again, it might prove useful one day, she thought as she documented how many M16 rifles were present. The thought that she could by now not only update PHO with far more information about Coil that he'd be even slightly happy about, but damn near draw a map of his bunker and post that too, made her suppress a chuckle. She wondered what the reaction of the PRT would be if she actually did that… They might well get even more worked up than Calvert would.
Another hour and a half of careful investigation and she was certain she'd located all the entrances to the massive bunker, including two separate apparent escape tunnels, one leading from the lowest level of the bunker into one of the storm drains nearly a quarter of a mile from the place via a very circuitous route which seemed to have been designed to avoid the foundations of any other buildings, and the other one entering a main sewer about ninety degrees around from the first. That particular tunnel was probably the absolute last resort, Taylor thought as she looked at the contents of the large sewer pipe with distaste. You certainly wouldn't want to wade through what was in there, that was damn sure.
There were also three different entrances that seemed to be the ones the bunker's inhabitants actually used regularly. The two long tunnels were carefully hidden from both inside and outside, but the three other exits were only hidden on the outside. One was a vehicle entrance that led from the lower parking garage of an office block that seemed to be mostly vacant to the north of the bunker, one was a door disguised as an access panel to an electrical control room in a different building on the other side of the street, and the third was a fake wall down an alley behind yet another old office building. Whoever had built this place had put in one hell of a lot of effort and money, she mused as she drew a couple of sketches of the last door. The whole outer layer of it looked like a brick wall, complete with bricks that perfectly matched the old ones the rest of the building was made of. Yet on the inside it was a solid steel door with huge hinges and a serious lock, the whole thing probably weighing tons.
One thing she particularly liked was how the bottom of the external part of the hidden door even had a section of old concrete sticking out like a shelf, complete with a couple of garbage cans sitting on it, dented and slightly rusty. If you didn't know it was there you'd just walk right past without any clue of something being amiss.
The insects found it almost instantly, of course.
She so liked her power. And her power clearly liked her just as much, she could tell. As well as finding her deeply confusing, which was still hilarious.
But she had to admit that Calvert, assuming he'd done all this himself, had really, seriously, put the effort in. Somehow. Someone certainly had, if it wasn't him. Where he, or they perhaps, got the money she wasn't sure but from recollections of things she'd heard her dad talking about this must have cost tens of millions of dollars and taken years. Even now there were parts of the place that still seemed to be under construction, implying it was a work in progress.
Yet even as she mapped out his underground base, she was not really any nearer to working out what he was up to aside from getting furiously angry about the documents he was reading. Apparently the legal cases causing so much commotion in local and state politics had seriously interfered with whatever he was actually doing and he wasn't even slightly pleased about it.
A little later, she found something that made her stare in growing horror as she realized just what she was looking at, or rather, what a lot of insects were looking at and smelling. Right down in the foundations of the bunker, below the inhabitable parts where the service infrastructure lived, she found a number of plastic tubes that wandered off from a central location in various directions behind a large amount of electrical switchgear. Each tube came out of a box mounted on the wall, in a position you'd never reach or even be able to see without removing half the equipment in front of it. Based on the dust on it, the box had been there since before the switchgear had been installed, probably a number of years as far as she could tell.
The tubes were thin, only about an eighth of an inch in diameter, and bright yellow in color. They disappeared into a channel in the floor which was stuffed with cables.
On the surface innocent, the problem was that she'd seen exactly this same tube before. Once, about three years before, back when her mom was alive, the dock workers had needed to remove an old wharf that had got so badly decayed it was dangerous. Made of steel and concrete back in the forties from what she recalled, they'd decided in the end that the quickest and safest way was to cut all the pilings at once with explosives, rather than try to dismantle it piece by piece where it was. As the union had quite a few people with experience in demolition, they'd been able to do the job themselves rather than call in a demolition company. She'd spent a couple of afternoons in the middle of summer watching them fit the pilings with explosives at low tide, her dad explaining to her and her mom what they were doing. Each block of explosives was wrapped around the piling in a couple of places, then when that was done, they were all connected together and back several hundred yards to a control box with this exact same stuff. It was shock tube, she'd found out when she asked what the funny rope was for. You set off one end and it sent a tiny little explosion down the inside at some stupid speed, finally detonating a blasting cap in the actual main charge, which could be miles away.
They'd fired the charges at high tide, and she distinctly recalled seeing a spark of light shoot down all the tubes so fast it was only visible for a fraction of a second, before the water had erupted with a whole series of thuds, causing the wharf to collapse into the bay and break apart in the process.
Then they had a barbecue to celebrate, which was one of the best bits, she thought with a fond smile for the memories of better times.
Doing a quick search on the computer, she confirmed that she had remembered it correctly. There was even a manufacturer's name printed on the stuff she could look up.
The implications were terrifying. This idiot had mined his own base? Was he that stupid? If he had some sort of self-destruct system, what would happen to the buildings above the place if he set it off? There were currently one thousand three hundred and sixty two people in the four buildings that were in the area she guessed would be affected if the bunker blew up. It would depend on how much explosive he'd used, of course, but the whole idea struck her as completely insane.
Sending insects into the duct work, she followed the shock tubes, finding that all of them eventually terminated in horrifyingly large quantities of what she suspected were probably quarrying explosives from the brand names on the bags the stuff was in, long thin sausages of nylon fabric. They were all over the lower levels under the floor near key load-bearing walls, in obviously purpose-built holes that had been part of the original construction. It wasn't some add-on he'd fitted later, this had been built right in from the start.
Looking up the company, she read the brochure on the explosive with growing dismay. There was several tons of it present when she counted up all the bags, and according to the website, that was more than enough to probably collapse the entire fucking place.
Yeah, Coil was a nutcase, there was no doubt about that.
Deciding that aside from whatever else she did, she wasn't going to stand by and let the asshole possibly kill hundreds of people, either on purpose or just accidentally, she spend a while reading up on how the shock tube worked and how it could be safely made to not work. Fiddling with the detonator control box seemed like a really bad idea. She didn't know anything remotely like enough about electronics to even begin to understand what would make it safe and what would make everyone have a very suddenly bad day, so that was right out. Resolving to add electronics to her reading list, she thought for a bit then decided the best method was probably to simply just cut all the shock tubes. Checking the data on the stuff, she confirmed that was safe to do without any risk of detonation, as you could basically just snip it with wire cutters when installing it. It needed a special percussion initiator to fire it, which was presumably inside the control unit.
Five minutes later she'd had an army of cockroaches nibble through the shock tube in multiple places for each length, then drag the cut ends well apart just in case. While she'd been doing that she'd also been very carefully indeed looking for more of it, in case he believed in redundancy. Sure enough, she'd found a completely different system connected to charges under the diesel fuel tanks for the backup generators, which she also thoroughly disabled in places no one would ever be able to see without digging into the floors.
There was another much smaller one in the bunker server room, each rack of computers mined with small charges that were probably still more than enough to render them into tiny fragments. Studying these, she hesitated, then left them alone for now. It wouldn't take more than a minute to disconnect them as well, but there was at the back of her mind the idea that perhaps those charges might be best left untampered-with for the moment. The thing that also lived in the back of her mind, and had been watching all this with as much interest as she had, seemed to agree.
Running one last sweep for anything else so irresponsibly dangerous as a self-destruct system and not finding it, at least as far as she could recognize, Taylor relaxed. She also made sure to clear her browser history just in case, although in theory it was cleared when she logged out anyway, and it wasn't like she'd done anything illegal. Like log into Coil's bank accounts and move all his money somewhere else…
The idea was looking more tempting by the minute though, she thought with a mix of irritation and amusement. The man was clearly not deserving of all those riches and she had a few ideas for where it could be much better used. But that could wait, and doing it from a public library wasn't a bright idea anyway. So she resisted the urge to see how far she could get with all his passwords and just kept watching, making notes, and looking up things on the computer for her other projects at the same time.
Her ability to multitask to a completely ridiculous level was one of the best parts of all this, in her view. Along with all the other parts of course.
By the time she was just about ready to call it a day and head home, then do some more experimenting and exploring, having mapped out the entire bunker and all that lay within it, Calvert snarled, "Fucking goddamn bastards!" Clenching his fists, he seemed on the verge of punching the shit out of his monitor, but oddly, seemed to pause for several seconds, then relax like he'd had half an hour to get over whatever had set him off. Taylor, more than a quarter of a mile away, watched him with interest and puzzlement. She'd seen the same thing happen at least five times now and had no idea what he'd done, but whatever it was, it seemed to calm him right down. Not that he was calm calm, he was still clearly boiling with fury, but he wasn't ready to snap someone's neck if they looked at him funny. At least based on what she could see and hear, and for that matter detect through her insects.
The chemosensors arthropods had in various forms made human scent abilities pale into insignificance, as one example. She was intimately aware of this not only through her Master power, but directly via her Changer one. In her super-hornet form she was probably at least as good at following a scent as a bloodhound and she suspected considerably better. There were a lot of other sensory systems available to her that didn't have any direct equivalent in human terms and explaining them to her dad had proven remarkably difficult. But the end result was that she could easily detect all manner of interesting information about people from things like pheromones emitted on their breath and through their skin, indicating stress level, overall health, and a whole slew of other parameters.
She was still learning, of course, and it would probably take her months if not years to delve into that one minor aspect of the whole thing never mind everything else, but it had already given her an insight into the emotional state of people that would be very hard to get in any other way aside from an actual empathic power like that Ward Gallant had. And this insight told her that Calvert had been incredibly angry then suddenly… became far less so with no obvious reason. It was like he'd flipped a switch.
Was that his power? The ability to have super-emotional control? Was he Calm Man?
Taylor grinned a little as she watched. Probably not. Calm Man would be calm. It was in the name even. Calvert was Very Angry Man for the most part but he definitely had some sort of trick that let him lose a lot of that anger remarkably quickly. She was curious to know what it was. Perhaps just rigid self control? She knew a bit about that….
The underground villain, and having found his explosives, Taylor was certain now about what he was, was interrupted from his ruminations by his phone going off. Grabbing it he looked at the display, then rapidly tapped the screen, sending a text, which Taylor's wasps were able to read. 'Collect her and bring her to me,' he'd written. That sounded… ominous.
Taylor kept her attention on the man, who was tidying up his desk and putting files away, then closing most of the windows on the monitors. Standing, he went into the small bathroom attached to his office and washed his face, rubbing it a few times in a rather stressed manner, before he dried himself and put his full head mask back on. Making sure it was straight in the mirror, he nodded then went back to sit at the desk, tapping the keyboard a couple of times while looking at the impressively large array of security camera screens. His attention seemed focused on one particular one, which when she checked it, was from a camera pointing down James Street, the one that ran past the building his bunker was mostly under. He seemed to smile under his mask when a large van, dark blue and completely anonymous in among all the other commercial traffic, rolled into view at the far end.
Taylor used more insects to study the van for herself, and when it came into range, got some more wasps onto it. It only took a few seconds to have a couple enter the vehicle through the air vents, then lurk just inside and peer out.
The driver was another one of Coil's mercenaries, one she recognized from the last time she'd watched his actions a few days back. In the rear there were two more, bringing the total up to a nice round sixty, assuming there weren't any more out and about. Between them on the seat was a girl about her age, with a bag over her head, her breath carrying the telltale markers of stress and some fear although not panic, as far as Taylor's little helpers could detect. She had her head slightly on one side and seemed to be listening carefully if body language was anything to go on.
Now more than a little concerned, since a blindfolded teenaged girl in a windowless van with three armed men didn't seem entirely kosher in her opinion, Taylor wondered what to do. Should she intervene? It wouldn't be hard to intercept these guys before they got to Coil's lair. Presumably the girl was the one he'd referred to, and clearly was anticipating with some eagerness.
Deciding to wait for now, since she had no idea what was actually happening yet, Taylor still prepared just in case. More wasps flew into vents in the van, until there were over a hundred of them just out of sight, ready to boil out and attack if required. She had at least as many clinging to the underside of the van too as backup. While this was going on, she was packing her books away into her pack and saving her downloads, then logging out of the computer. She was done anyway and had been nearly at the point of leaving before whatever this was started so it didn't cause any harm to her plans.
Heading for the exit, she waved to the librarians behind the desk and called out a cheerful, "See you next time!" to the three women and one man, all of whom were very familiar to her.
"Next time, Taylor," one called back. "Stay safe!"
"Always, Miss Green," Taylor replied with a grin, then she left the library and trotted down the stairs to the sidewalk. Turning right she started walking, not too fast and not too slow, just merging in with the fairly large number of people on the street, but heading more or less towards James Street.
The van, still many hundreds of yards away, turned out of the light traffic into the parking garage that had the secret entrance to Coil's place in its depths. By the time the vehicle reached the second level and slowly drove towards the hidden door, Taylor was nearing the location she'd been aiming for, a narrow service alley that led around several corners and finally dead-ended at a three story brick wall, the rear of some of the shops along the same street the library was on a couple of blocks away. Above her were fire escapes, wall mounted air conditioners, ventilation fans, and other such urban outcroppings, leading up to the roof on all sides. Much of it was covered in grime, not having been touched for years, decades in some cases by the looks of it.
She'd found a lot of little hidden nooks and crannies like this in the city infrastructure over the last few weeks, her ability perfect for discovering all sorts of hidden in plain sight things of this type. It was surprising how many buildings had been built and rebuilt over the decades in ways that led to plenty of almost inaccessible areas buried in, under, on top of, and beside them. Or possibly it wasn't so much surprising as just not considered by most people.
This particular little corner of nowhere in particular, close at hand to the bustle of the commercial district but somehow isolated from it, the sounds of the street muted and distant, hid a neat secret she was fairly sure she was the sole holder of. Certainly none of the city infrastructure maps she'd got through her dad showed what she'd found. Double-checking just in case, but already knowing there were no cameras either in this area or covering the entrance from the main road, Taylor looked up, made sure her backpack was secure, then launched herself at the wall. It took her mere moments to use her enhanced strength to jump straight up twenty feet, grab the underside of an old fire escape that didn't actually go anywhere these days, flip over the top of the wall, and drop to the ground on the other side.
Grinning at how easy this sort of thing was and how much fun, she walked two steps and pulled open the absolutely ancient half-height iron door that was embedded in the stone and brick wall on the other side of the seven foot square space she'd landed in. Her best guess was that it had once been some sort of air shaft for a long-gone building, only parts of the structure left which had then been incorporated into newer construction. By the looks of it that had happened at least twice, and the door she'd opened was likely dating back to the late eighteen hundreds or even earlier. Made of riveted iron it only came up to the middle of her chest, and had been completely rusted solid when she'd found it from the other side.
Very obviously no one had used it for many, many years.
Having found it, though, Taylor had made sure to put some grease on the hinges once she'd forced them to operate, brute strength overcoming many decades of disuse with quite a lot of creaking sounds and a shower of rust. Now, properly lubricated for the first time probably since before World War Two, the door moved quite easily albeit requiring a lot of strength as it was very heavy. And one also had to be able to remove the locking pin that fitted through a hasp on the inside, from the outside. A good trick for most people, but she could use a number of large spiders to yank it out via the silk thread attached to it.
Ducking through the door Taylor closed it behind her and put the pin back, then sprouted some glowing antennae to light her path. Bright green illumination showed brick-faced stonework heading down at a slight angle, a small trickle of water running in a narrow stream in the middle of the floor. The walls were damp in places, which was where the water was coming from, and the ceiling was covered in lime excrescences from a century or so of drips percolating through.
All this was familiar to her from her explorations over the last week or so, but still really cool, she thought as she walked along the hidden path that led under the streets and buildings above. She could hear running water ahead of her, and having rounded a few corners as the ancient tunnel rather randomly changed direction, and passed the signs of long since blocked off other paths, she reached the source of the noise. In front of her was one of the once above ground and now buried and forgotten streams that rambled about beneath the unknowing feet of Brocktonites. It ran in an obviously artificial channel, stone under a couple of feet of silt, the ceiling above made once more of brick and very old concrete slabs in a few places, along with cut stone. The water didn't fill the entire tunnel, it was constrained to the middle two thirds, with either side having a narrow pathway about a foot above the water. Overall it was about ten feet from side to side, the water taking up about seven feet of that on average, and the ceiling was around six feet above the sides. Marks on the walls showed that the water level sometimes ran nearly at the ceiling, presumably after a hard rainfall.
She'd been fascinated to find heavily rusted iron rings set into the stone and brick every now and then, looking exactly like the ones she'd seen on the waterfront at the docks. It indicated to her that this stream had once had people using it, probably utilizing rowboats, and there was further evidence of this in the form of a few doors made of iron bound oak beams sunk into the walls here and there. As her dad had mentioned, these led into the foundations of some of the oldest buildings in the city, but most of them had either been filled in on the other side, or the entire area they accessed had been capped off. Very few buildings had cellars at all in this area due to the high water table, as she'd always been told and now had direct experience of, and most of the ones that did seemed to have stopped using them a long, long time ago.
The best guess Taylor could come up with was that this had been a stream that had gradually been redirected in the early years of the city, then eventually covered over decades later and built on top of. Her dad had said basically the same thing. But between the point it had been put in a culvert and the covering over of that, it had apparently been a useful method of transporting things around this part of the city.
Now it was basically just her that even knew it was here. And her dad of course, but he hadn't seen it yet. It wasn't the one he'd claimed he'd heard existed, she thought, as it wasn't all that large and didn't really go anywhere very interesting these days. At the bay end it vanished into one of the storm drains through several smaller tunnels of various ages and construction methods, and at the inland end it emerged, very similarly to the one that she'd gone through to access the underground lake, from a wide but shallow crack in the bedrock. It might well even connect to the same lake in fact, but she hadn't traced it that far yet. At one point it must have gone all the way to the shore but that was a long time ago and nothing of that end existed any more.
But the bit between those points was over a mile of twisty passageway which led under quite a big part of the commercial area, and she'd discovered ways to access other tunnels from this one. The end result was her own private route that ultimately led almost all the way from here to her own house through a maze of tunnels. And if she could figure out how to dig from the agri store to her basement, it would be even more convenient…
Now, having reached the stream, she turned left and kept walking, all the time monitoring the progress of the van full of mercenaries and teenaged girl, that had by this point gone through the hidden door which opened silently via a massive hydraulic mechanism, then closed once they'd driven through. She kept watch as the three men got out, the two who had been in the rear escorting the hooded girl fairly gently but quite firmly towards Coil's office while the driver went in the other direction. A minute later the girl had been seated in front of his desk, and the hood removed to reveal a freckled blonde girl of about sixteen or thereabouts, wearing a smug grin that hid nervousness.
Both mercenaries left the office and took up stations outside the office, as the door closed with a click. Coil flicked a switch on his desk that produced another click from the door, presumably locking it, then rested his elbows on the desk and steepled his hands in front of him. "Ah, my Tattletale, how good of you to join me," he said in a voice that made Taylor want to hit him, it was so reminiscent of Emma in one of her more vicious moods.
She immediately developed a distinct dislike for Coil. If the explosives hadn't done it, his voice did the job.
As far as she could tell through her wasps, the girl, Tattletale, felt exactly the same thing but far more strongly. Her pheromones told Taylor she hated the man, but there wasn't a hint of it on her face. Which was kind of impressive, really.
"Your command is my wish," the blonde chirped, for all the world sounding entirely relaxed and cheerful.
"Quite," he responded dryly. "Do remember that, my dear girl. Now, to business. What do you have for me?"
Tattletale, who from what Taylor knew having recognized the name was a member of that gang of young and remarkably effective thieves known as the Undersiders, shrugged insouciantly. Coil's muscles tensed, visible though his skin-tight costume, but other than that he didn't move. Taylor could sense he'd become rather irritated even so.
"Can you be more specific? I've done a lot of investigating after all. It would help to know what you would like to hear about. Or should I just start at the beginning and keep talking until I hit it? I'm good either way." She smiled winningly at him. Under the glib exterior she was still sweating nervously, and Taylor's wasps could see her eyes examining everything in the entire office.
It seemed likely that the girl didn't actually want to be where she was right now, Taylor thought, turning the corner and reaching a set of iron rungs fastened to the brickwork. Climbing them rapidly, she checked no one had disturbed the other side since she'd last come here a few days ago, then lifted the old manhole cover over her head with one hand and put it to one side. Climbing out, she put it back, then walked through the dark and silent corridor she'd emerged into, probably an old alley that had been covered over but left in place many years ago. At the far end, another iron door lay. On the far side of this one was a gap between two buildings, not even an alley as such, just a place where they'd been built almost touching, at an angle so that they formed a narrow triangular space open to the sky several stories up but otherwise inaccessible. Even the open to the sky part was a little subject to opinion as there were quite a few obstructions protruding from the roofs of the buildings that stuck out into space over the gap, so from above it was almost invisible unless you either knew it was there or went and had a good look at close range.
Removing the pin from the hasp, Taylor dropped her backpack onto the floor just inside the door, exited, closed it again, then had some spiders lower the pin back into place on a thread. She was now only about a hundred and thirty feet from Coil's bunker, and more crucially the hidden door in the alley. It was on the other side of the building next to the one on her right. And, if necessary, she could reach it in about ten seconds and be through the door in another ten.
Her super-wasp venom would make short work of the bricks and steel, even if she couldn't simply smash her way through, which she was pretty sure she could. Settling down to watch, she leaned on the wall and waited to see what happened next. She also absently applied more cockroaches to someone who burst into a convenience shop a couple of hundred yards behind her waving a pistol, making him screech and drop it in favor of slapping at his face. The guy behind the counter watched with disbelief before shrugging and pulling out his phone with one hand and a pistol-stocked shotgun from under the counter with the other.
Satisfied that things were under control in that situation, Taylor kept most of her attention on Tattletale and Coil, very curious about what was going on.
Calvert's jaw clenched slightly under his mask at the comment his guest made, but he didn't otherwise show any emotional response. His pheromone output betrayed his irritation despite that. "You were given a task. I want to know if you have succeeded in that task. Don't try my patience, my Tattletale. You do not want me to be… irked."
The predatory tone of his voice as he nearly hissed the words at him turned Taylor's stomach. There was something very wrong with this guy…
Tattletale clearly felt the same, but she didn't show it on her face. Nodding brightly, she merely replied, "Got it, Boss! No patience trying today!" Her voice sounded chipper and relaxed and it was only the bug senses that let the distant observer know the blonde was neither. "You want to know about the HOUS?"
Taylor's attention sharpened instantly, all the insects she now had in Coil's base stilling for a moment, then the ones still on and in the van sitting in the now-abandoned and dark vehicle bay streaming out of the vehicle and into the air ventilation system overhead. She wasn't sure if she'd need them, but it was always a good idea to have options available, and a few hundred wasps were one of the better options. In her opinion anyway.
She didn't know what exactly this was but it had her interest.
Coil sighed almost inaudibly. "I wish to know about the HOUS, yes," he growled. "What have you discovered?"
Tattletale spread her hands. "Almost nothing."
"Not good enough."
"Well, I'm sorry, but it's hard to find out something about a giant hornet that just vanishes, you know," the girl shot back, for the first time sounding a little peeved. "Your access to the PRT servers is good, and I dug through everything I could find, but they don't have any clues either. Sure, there's all sorts of information about the fucking thing making it very, very clear it's hideously dangerous, but that's about it other than a lot of speculation. I need at least something to work on, you know that, Boss. My power is amazing but I still need some sort of starting point."
He tapped his fingers together as he observed her, then nodded once. Leaning to the side he opened a desk drawer and pulled out a handgun, which he put on the desk. Tattletale's eyes flicked towards it even as Taylor tensed and silently moved about a hundred wasps to the edge of the air vent directly over and behind Coil.
"You wouldn't keep anything from me, would you, my dear?" he asked silkily, his hands returning to their pose. The blonde shook her head and Taylor could see her attention was drawn by the gun sitting innocently near Calvert.
"Of course not, Boss," she replied immediately. "I always tell you everything. But I don't have much to tell you. You've read the PRT reports same as I have. They're guessing. That insect doesn't match anything on record, and sure, some of their conclusions are probably wrong, if only due to the bias the ENE division has from previous experience, but I honestly can't tell you which parts are wrong. The scientific reports on its capabilities are probably accurate as far as they go but who the hell knows where it came from, where it goes, or even what it really is? They certainly don't."
"And what does your… special insight… suggest to you? Indulge me." He lowered a hand and toyed with the gun, moving it back and forth on the desk, never quite pointing it at the girl. Taylor checked on the whereabouts of all the mercenaries, seeing that most of them were going about their various jobs elsewhere and the two still outside his office were looking bored and talking quietly to each other about what they were going to spend their money on the next payday. While she was doing this she strategically positioned her remaining wasps around the base, and moved lots of cockroaches into it too, since they were absolutely everywhere and easy to collect even in very early spring. Tattletale swallowed slightly and thought, her eyes flicking from side to side as if she was reading an invisible book.
"It's alive, not a projection," she said, talking fast after a pause of a few seconds. "It's… probably not the work of a Biotinker. I think. It's very smart. Human level at least, intelligent human level, and likely well above average human level in fact. It really doesn't like Nazis. Or at least Hookwolf, but I'm guessing Nazis in general."
She paused again for breath. "Go on," he invited, his hand leaving the gun, and making her glance at it, then look faintly relieved for a brief moment.
"Changer is… possible. But if it is that it's nothing like anything on record. Panacea gave a good estimate of mass, she knows a lot about this sort of thing, and the PRT scientists agreed with her conclusions. If it's a Changer it's doing something really different from all other known cases. It's almost certainly not a Case 53, if only because again it doesn't match known cases, and it's a perfect if much, much too large copy of an existing hornet. No Case 53 on record mimics a real creature like that."
Coil was nodding thoughtfully now, as he listened. "Is it an enhanced but real insect, perhaps?"
She shrugged. "I have absolutely no idea, and can't think of any way to prove it one way or the other. The thing that the reports agree on, and other information I dug up does too, is that you can't simply enlarge an insect like that. There's a hard limit to how big anything close to normal insect biology can get, apparently. It couldn't even breath let alone fly, but that sure didn't stop it doing both. I think it's probably a Parahuman, or at least a Parainsect, if that's even a thing."
He went still for a moment, then appeared to think hard. "Can something not human Trigger?" he muttered almost to himself. Tattletale shrugged again even so.
"No clue. We don't know what Triggering does in the first place. If it is a Para-whatever, it's the first time anyone's ever run into something other than a human getting powers. But it definitely does have powers, that much I'm sure of. And under the exterior I can guarantee it's not just a much much too large hornet. It might look like one, but it definitely isn't." She shivered for a moment as he listened and watched. "That report on the venom… Boss, I'm serious, don't upset that thing. One drop of that fucking venom and you'd die in agony in seconds. The PRT report read like the people writing it were trying not to scream in horror the entire time."
Leaning back in his chair he clasped his hands together over his chest and regarded her. "You believe there's no route to… persuading… it to work for my benefit? It would be quite useful to have such a potent force multiplier available."
"Don't." Tattletale shook her head rapidly, her face somewhat pale. "Seriously, don't even try. I have no idea what it would even want, and if you somehow tried to force it to cooperate, I'm completely certain it would react… badly. It's the only thing I am certain of where that bug is concerned. It's not a human, it won't act like one, and if you expect it to, bad things will happen."
The distant Taylor was simultaneously amused and mildly annoyed. She was mostly human! Most of the time… But Tattletale was certainly right, she thought as she watched the pair unknown to either. If someone tried to threaten her, force her to go along with something she didn't want to do, there was going to be trouble. She'd had way more than enough of people pushing her around and now she had ways to push back, she was not going to let it happen again.
And if anyone like this asshole ever went after her dad to try to control her… bad things was a serious understatement. The blonde wasn't wrong there.
Calvert seemed to tense up as the girl's voice became quite harsh in the final statement and he gave off anger and stress chemicals as he sat forward again. "You presume to tell me what I can do?" he asked smoothly, his hand landing on the pistol. Tattletale's eyes cut to it for a second, then resolutely back forward again. "Recall who works for who, and why. Don't make me do something you'll regret and spoil our happy working relationship." Taylor could hear the vicious smile in his voice right through his mask. "Or would you prefer to change that relationship? I'm sure we could come to an arrangement…"
He trailed off in a manner that made Taylor and Tattletale both wince, albeit for different reasons. "I don't think that will be necessary, Boss," the blonde girl replied after a moment, in a careful way, her voice betraying no emotion. "So far things are working well, aren't they? I was merely pointing out the hazards of a possible idea you might be considering. That's what you pay me the big bucks for, right?"
Coil's anger appeared to rise, then as Taylor had seen several times so far, just vanished like it had never been. He went back almost immediately to merely somewhat annoyed, even his tone of voice changing slightly. Tattletale clearly picked up on it even as Taylor did, making her wonder how the other girl managed it. She had powers, that much she herself had mentioned only a minute or so ago, but no one seemed to know much about them from Taylor's research on PHO. Thinker of some sort was the prevailing opinion and from what she'd overheard, this seemed to be the case. It still left open just what sort of a Thinker she was.
Lifting his handgun Coil examined it with apparent interest, wiped a small speck of dust from the gleaming metal, then slipped it back into the drawer it had come from, Tattletale following it with her eyes the whole time and him obviously aware of this and enjoying it. "It is, yes. And as long as you continue to provide me with a useful service," he said as he stood up and rounded his desk, leaning back on it and watching her, "We shall enjoy a fruitful and friendly relationship. Just as we are now. Thank you for your… analysis. I will have further tasks for you shortly."
At the dismissal a certain tension went out of the blonde, not really visible from her body language but Taylor's wasp could scent it. She nodded, then stood up, turning towards the door. Just as she reached it, he spoke again.
"One more thing, before you leave, my Tattletale." She stopped, then turned, as he pushed himself erect and moved to stand much too close to her. Before she could react he put one hand around her throat and squeezed slightly, the girl freezing. Bending close, from his considerably greater height, he whispered, "Do not disappoint me, hide anything, or speak out of turn again. Remember that."
She nodded wordlessly, her eyes wide. He squeezed hard enough to make the flesh around his fingers pale. A hundred plus yards away, Taylor decided she'd had enough and this bastard needed a swift kick in the balls to remind him that bullying wasn't nice.
Unfortunately she was too far away to do that. Fortunately she could arrange the next best thing.
Coil yelped in pain when a wasp stung him right in the nuts. Then again when it zipped up and repeated the process on the back of his neck. Releasing the blonde teenager he slapped at his neck with one hand and at his crotch with the other, the latter move a mistake as he managed to make much harder contact than he'd probably been aiming for and his spandex body suit didn't have an awful lot of padding.
Tattletale stared as he collapsed to his knees and made an agonized little sound before he fell over sideways. "What the fuck?" she whispered in stunned amazement. Her eyes lifted to where the wasp had flown back into the air vent, then her face paled dramatically. "Oh, shit," she added almost inaudibly. "Oh, shit, shit, shit."
Turning she put her hand on the door handle, then found it was still locked. Quickly looking around, she zeroed in on the desk, moving quickly past Coil to it and inspecting the switches. Just as she reached for the one he'd used to lock the door, a choked sound from the man on the floor made her, and Taylor who had been watching, look at him.
He was grabbing at his own throat and making weird sounds. Sounds that really didn't convey a sense that all was well.
Staring at him for some seconds, Tattletale finally grinned maliciously, apparently forgetting whatever had spooked her for the moment. Pulling open desk drawers one after another, she finally spotted something in one of them and reached in. Removing the object she held it up and studied it, between glances at Coil who was thrashing around now, gasping for breath.
"Huh. An epipen," she mused out loud, sitting on the edge of the desk and watching the man on the floor who Taylor realized, somewhat guiltily, was going into anaphylactic shock. Apparently he was allergic to wasp venom.
Whoops.
Looking up at the vent where Taylor's wasps lurked, the blonde girl thought for a few seconds, her face showing concentration. Then she looked back at Coil, who was flopping around like a dying fish, making sounds like an unwell bagpipe being played by an asthmatic piper. "Now, do I stick you with this and see if it saves your life, or do I just watch the fucker who's forced me at gunpoint to work for him and do all sorts of things I hate for nearly a year slowly drown as his lungs fill with fluid?" she commented idly.
Taylor got the distinct impression that the question was entirely rhetorical…
Kneeling down next to Calvert, she grabbed his hood and yanked it off, revealing a face with bulging eyes streaming with tears, and swollen lips surrounding a mouth frantically gasping for oxygen. "Ah. Thomas Calvert. I wondered if it was you, you bastard." His hands grasped for the epipen she held just above his chest, moving it out of range when he nearly touched it. "I also wonder how many times you killed and raped me in your fucking simulations." Even through his pain he jerked in surprise. "Oh, yes, I know what your power is," she added as she looked down at him. "I worked that out months ago. I just couldn't quite figure out how to take advantage of that fact. I'd have done it sooner or later, I guess, but it looks like I won't be shooting you in the stomach."
She shrugged. "At least I get to watch your face as you die. It almost makes up for having a sadistic monster like you ruining my life for over a year. How many people have you tortured to death over the years? More than a few, from what I could find out. I bet any of them would have loved this too." Standing she wiped the epipen on a tissue she took from his desk, holding it in another one, then dropped it on his chest, where he weakly grabbed at it. The device rolled to the floor next to him. Stepping back, she sat behind his desk and put her feet on it, before pulling out her phone and taking a couple of photos. "I'd say I'm sorry you're going out so hard, but I'd be lying to you," she chuckled, "And you just got through telling me you didn't want me to lie to you."
His fumbling for the epipen slowed, then his arm stilled. Taylor watched, her feelings mixed. She certainly hadn't intended to kill the bastard, although that had certainly been an option once she figured out how callously he'd set things up and how he'd obviously been fine with causing massive death and destruction. On the other hand, from what this girl was saying, and her own guesses from what she'd seen and heard, the man was definitely a ghastly person who likely deserved whatever happened to him. She was still wondering about that room on the next level down with all the blood traces… The only real conclusion she could come to made her feel that if anything this guy deserved to have met a sticky end a long time ago.
Still… accidentally offing a super-villain because she didn't like bullies was something that might give her a weird reputation. On the other hand her inner hornet was finding this entirely acceptable for several reasons.
Coil gasped for one last breath, then stilled. Tattletale let out a long breath of her own, looking incredibly relieved suddenly. Taylor shook her head. Her dad was never going to believe this, and he was likely to be a little ticked. She was supposed to tell him before she did something major.
Oh well.
Life was tricky sometimes.
"Good riddance, you piece of shit," the girl at the desk said softly. Dropping her feet to the floor with a quick glance at the door, she pulled the keyboard closer and started prodding it. The two guards outside hadn't heard a thing, Taylor knew, since the door was thick and entirely soundproof, but sooner or later they'd probably wonder what their boss was up to for so long.
Or, more worryingly, they wouldn't.
She couldn't help thinking about how perhaps they were used to people going into the office and not coming out for a long time. Or other rooms in the bunker. Like the one with the blood and the tools…
Coming to a decision, she pulled out her burner phone and dialed a number she'd seen recently. Coil's desktop phone, right next to Tattletale's elbow, rang and made the girl nearly hit the ceiling. Staring at it, she seemed to think very hard, then slowly and carefully, reached out to pick up the handset, putting it to her ear and not saying anything. Taylor, who had let enough hornet out to change her head and her voice, said, "Hello, Tattletale. We need to talk."
The girl yanked the phone from her ear, gave it a very suspicious glare, then put it back. "Who is this?" she asked warily.
"Call me… Vespa," Taylor said after a moment's thought of her own. It was in her opinion a suitable name and the real Vespa wouldn't mind. Her hornet, now sitting on her shoulder, waved its antenna making her grin internally.
"Vespa…?" Tattletale seemed to think hard, then paled dramatically.
"No need to look so worried, I'm not planning on hurting you," Taylor hastened to say. This didn't seem to have the desired effect as the other girl quickly looked around the room as if she expected to see someone else in there with her, but the only other inhabitant was the ex-Calvert, who no longer appeared to have much interest in the proceedings.
"You can…" The blonde stopped mid-statement and glanced up at the air vent, looking worried. "Where are you?"
"Nearby," Taylor assured her with a faint chuckle. "Incidentally, I've disabled his self-destruct system."
"You've… He actually had a self-destruct system?" Tattletale yelped. Then she looked quickly looked at the door.
"Yes, he did. About five tons of explosives buried under the lowest level. They're safe enough now. The guards aren't paying any attention to you, by the way, the door is entirely soundproof, so don't worry right now."
"How are you doing that?" Tattletale demanded, sounding and looking somewhat irritated now.
"Trade secret." Taylor stifled a giggle, as she was trying to sound reasonably professional in a very strange way. "I notice you seem to be trying to steal Coil's money. Would you like help with that?"
"Stop being Clippy. No one likes Clippy," the girl grumbled, glancing at the computer she'd been working on, having quickly brought up Coil's financial documents with an ease Taylor could only admire.
Snorting with laughter, Taylor said, "I've got codes. You've got the computer. Shall we discuss a deal?"
Tattletale peered over the desk at Coil, then up at the vent once more, before shrugging. "What did you have in mind?"
"Something that will probably be mutually beneficial. I'll even tell you how you're going to get out of here without being stopped."
"I'm listening." Taylor smiled in an insectile manner and began explaining her idea, which made the other girl start smiling very slowly in a much more human, but still rather odd, way. Once they'd settled on the details, Tattletale put the plan into operation.
It took a while, but the end result was more than worth it. And by the time Taylor got home, she had a lot of things to explain to her dad, along with some useful byproducts of the day she had not expected.
He was even more surprised, of course, but not as much as the PRT were a little later that evening…
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Captain Henries of the Brockton Bay Police department inspected the scene, then turned to the BBPD lieutenant standing next to him. "How many?"
"Sixty. Just like the call said. We were waiting outside when they all came running out like they were on fire, some of them still pulling their pants on. Damndest thing I've ever seen. You can't even see the door from this side if it's closed. Fuck knows how long it's been there, but there's an entire fucking bunker the size of an Endbringer shelter down there. Armory, computer room, barracks, you name it. I have no idea at all how no one noticed. It's like something the CIA would be jealous of."
"Jesus." Henries slowly shook his head, watching as over half the available cops in the city, including two SWAT teams, dealt with a crowd of extremely upset obviously military-trained people, almost certainly mercenaries, and put them into a whole fleet of vans in cuffs. There were two more large trucks being filled with enough weapons to hold off the Viet Cong for a month as well, which was deeply worrying. The bomb squad that was coming out of the formerly hidden door looking concerned didn't bode well either. "Who was it? Empire?"
"Coil. Dead in his office, behind a locked door we had to cut our way through. Doc says it was an allergic reaction to something, probably an insect sting. There was an unused epipen on the floor next to him. Looks like he didn't manage to get it into himself in time." Lieutenant Warner looked at him, then back to the huge crowd of cops and fire department personnel dealing with an unprecedented operation right in the middle of the city. The entire street was blocked at both ends and onlookers were videoing everything from all over the place. "Guess who Coil really was?"
Captain Henries gave his subordinate a careful look. The other man was wearing a slightly dark smile. "Who?"
"Ever met Thomas Calvert?"
The name seemed familiar, but it took him a few seconds to remember why. When he did… "Commander Thomas Calvert? From the PRT?"
"The very same."
"Oh, Christ. Do they know?" Henries had a feeling things were about to get even more complicated than they already were, and it was bad enough right now. Warner grinned somewhat nastily.
"Oh, no, that would be a matter for the Captain to deal with. I, a mere Lieutenant, couldn't take it on myself to liaise between the BBPD and a federal…"
Sighing, Henries raised his hand. "Enough. I get it. Stop enjoying this so much."
Snickering under his breath, Lieutenant Warner subsided. "So walk me through it. What actually happened here? I've heard at least three different stories since I arrived and none of them match." The captain kept watching, but glanced at the other man, who shook his head.
"We got an anonymous tip about an hour and a half ago claiming that a super-villain had a base under that office building," he began, nodding at the largest and newest of the buildings on the street. "And we were told that due to an imminent emergency evacuation due to a faulty warning alert sixty mercenaries were about to leave in a hurry, so if we wanted to have a discussion with them, we should probably arrange to be waiting outside."
"Who gave the tip?"
"We don't know. Young, female, sounded like she was thoroughly enjoying herself, but that's it."
"Parahuman? Vigilante, maybe?"
"The operator asked but the girl didn't confirm or deny it. She just passed on the message, and hung up. The phone number was traced to somewhere near here but we don't know exactly where. The techs think it might actually have come from inside that bunker but so far we can't prove it. They're checking into it right now."
"What do the prisoners say?"
"Not a lot. We got a couple of them to tell us that the internal alarms all went off, indicating a gas leak, a fire, a flood, the self-destruct system about to go off, and for all I know death, pestilence, and famine too. They didn't waste time trying to figure out what part of it was real and what wasn't, they just legged it. Something exploded on the bottom level while the alarms were sounding and I guess that made them think that at least part of it was really happening. The timing was very convenient, we'd only just arrived and got everyone in place then we were up to our asses in mercenaries. A couple of them looked like they wanted to try their luck, but we had a lot more guns pointing their way than they had pointing ours, so that didn't last long."
The captain nodded slowly, then his mind seized on the most important part of what he'd just heard. "Self-destruct system?" he echoed incredulously, his head snapping around to fix on the other man's. Lieutenant Warner nodded.
"Yeah. Honest, it's got a self-destruct system. Tons of explosives buried under it, from what the bomb boys said. But it was disabled somehow, and they claim it's basically inert now. Good thing too, it would probably have collapsed at least one building if the fucking thing went off."
"Holy fuck."
"That was my reaction too." Warner shrugged. "This guy was nuts. Even by Parahuman standards."
"Any signs of whoever it was that called in the warning?"
"No. Not a trace. Coil's office was wiped clean, not a single fingerprint left as far as we can find so far, but the techs are still working on that too. Two of his computer drives are missing as well, apparently. Everything else is still in there, except for one computer rack in his server room which looks like someone blew it up on purpose. I'm guessing it had incriminating evidence on it and whoever kicked all this off didn't want anyone getting their hands on it. But there's still a whole hell of a lot of stuff down there which will keep everyone busy for months." He handed the other man a document, which Henries accepted and glanced at. His eyes widened slightly.
"The Mayor will want to see this," Warner added.
"Yeah, I think he will," Henries breathed in shock. "Christ, this is going to get messy. The governor is going to have a stroke…"
"Glad I'm not involved in politics," Lieutenant Warner commented. "Good luck with the PRT."
"Oh, just fuck off and stop being sarcastic," Henries sighed as his subordinate gave him a small devious grin. "Go do your job."
"As you wish." The lieutenant saluted with two fingers, smirked a little, and headed off to talk to some of the other cops, while Henries looked at the document in his hand once more with a deep sigh. He knew a can of worms when he saw one and the one he was holding had some enormous worms in it...
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Emily Piggot clicked on the PHO link her deputy, a very strange expression on his face, wordlessly indicated over her shoulder, while sipping from her coffee mug. A moment of incredulous reading later the mouthful of coffee exploded out of her. She stared open-mouthed at the screen.
Coil (deceased) – Parahuman alias of Thomas Calvert, a super villain who had a hidden underground base just off James Street in the commercial district of Brockton Bay. The base, on two floors with a third level for infrastructure (see map) was equipped with facilities for supporting up to two hundred staff, but at the present time only sixty people plus Coil were resident. The armory (see inventory) contained a large quantity of weapons ranging from hand guns to heavy machine guns, as well as rocket launchers, ammunition, grenades, and other equipment. Of particular note are the Tinker-made laser projectors, purchased by Coil from an unknown source (see pictures) but presumed to be of Toybox manufacture.
Coil's power was a potent Thinker one, specifically a precognitive ability allowing him to essentially experience two versions of events, which seemed to work via simulating a period of time then letting him choose which version he wished to keep. He used this power to among other things avoid detection by the PRT, who he was working for even while he was simultaneously running a villainous Parahuman organization employing trained mercenaries. His organization is implicated in at least eighteen murders, nine kidnappings, dozens of blackmail plots, embezzlement and fraud on a massive scale, interference with political and business entities across much of the eastern seaboard, organized crime, and numerous other illegal activities the full scope of which may not come to light for months.
At the current time the BBPD is involved in dismantling Coil's operation and…
Lifting her eyes, Emily gaped at Renick, who shrugged helplessly. A moment later her phone rang.
Swearing under her breath and wishing that Calvert was alive so she could shoot him a few times, she picked it up and fielded the first of an awful lot of phone calls. By the time she finally went home that night, she was exhausted, but at least had the luxury of knowing that someone she heartily hated had come to an ignominious end. Pity it couldn't have happened many years earlier.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Why's she grinning like that, Brian?"
"I have no idea, but it's making me very nervous…"
"Hey, Tats? You get laid or something?"
"Better. Way, way better."
Lisa grinned even more widely, then went to bed secure in the knowledge of a job well done. And still trying to work out what the fuck 'Vespa' really was, although she for one wasn't going to dig too deeply in case she found out…
Yeah. Today had started somewhat worryingly, and ended far more so, but overall she felt the results were worth all the confusion and chaos.
And she had quite the nest egg now, but she'd wait until tomorrow to tell the others.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Lying in bed, Taylor made her plans, laughing quietly to herself occasionally. So many options now seemed viable that she was having trouble working out what to do first.
"Taylor?"
"Yeah, dad?" She looked around to see her dad peering in at her, the light from her antennae casting his face into relief against the dark of the hallway. On top of her head, Vespa watched him too.
"Any chance you could stop plotting world domination quite so… happily? Because I need my sleep and that laughing is a little creepier than you probably realize…" He smiled a little at her as she flushed with embarrassment. "It's nice to see you enjoying yourself so much, don't get me wrong, but if you could keep the mildly insane and quite disturbing giggles inside your head I'd be able to go to sleep."
"I'm not plotting world domination," she protested with a grin.
"Just the city, then?"
"Only bits of it. Bits no one else is using."
Shaking his head, he fondly replied, "I knew showing you those maps was a mistake."
"It was fantastic, and thanks so much," she told him cheerfully. "I'll be quiet."
"That's all I ask. Sleep well."
"You too, Dad." He withdrew and a moment later she heard his bedroom door close. Smiling to herself, she went back to writing for a while, before finally putting the pad to one side, closing her eyes, turning off the bioluminescent glow, and falling asleep.
It had been a long but worthwhile day even though it hadn't ended at all like she'd planned on. But that was life sometimes.
You just had to roll with it and move on.
Except for two muggers and a burglar, all of whom had close encounters with various unexpected insects at critical junctures… One of the muggers accidentally inhaled a fly just as he was about to grab at an older woman who passed his hiding place, instead ending up coughing so hard he threw up by which time the old lady had kicked him in the nuts and left. Which might have added to why he threw up, of course. The other one had put his hand on the side of a building to steady himself as he peered around the corner at a young boy, his eyes on the kid's phone, felt something tickling him, looked down, and found the biggest centipede he'd ever seen running up his arm. This had quite put him off his game to the point that by the time he stopped screaming and waving his arm around to get the thing off he had a fair sized crowd of Brocktonites watching him with interest and phones out.
Needless to say, he didn't get a lot of mugging done, and Taylor was having great difficulty trying to avoid falling about laughing hundreds of yards away.
And the burglar had bent over to inspect the lock he was about to try to pick, around the back of a store that was apparently closed due to a family illness, frozen as something landed on the back of his neck, and discovered he was now playing host to a couple of large and inquisitive cockroaches which disappeared down his collar. Taylor was rather pleased with how easy it was to distract people from all manner of activities by simply applying cockroaches. You hardly needed any of them to get some really gratifying results, she thought with an internal grin, monitoring the man as he fled swearing violently and in such a hurry he forgot to retrieve his lockpicks.
Fighting minor crimes from the comfort of the library was definitely quite a perk of her powers, she decided. Much safer than running around hitting people, and far less damaging to the surroundings. Keeping part of her multifaceted attention on the lookout for anything else she could interrupt with a bug or two in the right place, Taylor went on with her musings over Coil's activities.
Having returned the last set of books and picked out new ones on subjects she needed to learn more about, including both inorganic and organic chemistry, math, biology, and computer programming, she'd retired to the computers to do some online research while investigating the mysterious underground facility and its costumed inhabitant. Since her dad's revelations of the tunnels underlying the city all over the place a little over a week ago she'd been making sure to actually pay attention to things beneath the streets. This had already paid dividends as she'd mapped out a number of routes between the old agri store down the road from her house and a fair number of places other than her warehouse.
By this point she could navigate her way entirely underground to much of the docks as a whole, very close to Winslow although she had no interest in the place itself at all, and had two different routes to get all the way from her street to within about two blocks of the library. She'd found the older tunnels extended far further than even her dad had suspected and was well on the way to constructing an accurate map of all sorts of really interesting things she'd found down there, including more streams than she'd ever have believed, two underground ponds, and something that was more accurately thought of as a lake it was so huge.
It had surprised both of them, and her dad had done some research of his own, digging through dusty records at the union building, which might well have been the only documentation still in existence about a lot of what she'd found. Eventually after a couple of days of effort he'd turned up a report from the early eighteen hundreds claiming that there was evidence of a flooded cave system to the north of the city, underlying parts of what was now the expensive sector where rich people like the Stansfields and the Anders lived. It was built on a significantly higher part of the landscape overlooking the bay, and it seemed that no one these days realized that deep below that hillscape were caves partially or wholly filled with water.
He'd commented that these probably formed part of the system of springs and underground rivers that supplied quite a large proportion of the city's water, although he hadn't been able to find any indications that the part she'd discovered had any wells drilled into it. But it quite likely flowed to places where the wells were drilled decades ago, and indeed she'd found there was a slow current throughout the really big one, heading more or less south-east which would match up with his thoughts.
Interestingly she'd also found traces that people had been there before her, a long, long time ago. Including the fragmentary remains of some sort of small wooden boat, rotted almost to nothing where it lay on what was sort of beach right beside the underground lake. She'd also turned up some old coins, what was probably the remains of a coil of rope, a few unidentifiable iron and copper bits, and a small glass bottle the size of her thumb, miraculously completely undamaged after what had to have been at least a hundred and fifty years in the mud. It was now sitting on her windowsill next to the coins, after she'd spent a while carefully cleaning out the dirt it was packed solid with.
Taylor still wondered how someone had got an actual boat into the cavern, but it was long enough that her range hadn't yet reached to the other end, which she suspected was the point of entry. The tunnel she'd followed from the other direction had started off as one of the nineteenth century drainage ones, then connected to a covered stream that had less than a foot of clearance between the water and the roof, which eventually became an obviously natural tunnel, more of a cave in truth, that finally entered the big cavern. There was no way anyone had pulled a rowboat or anything even close to that large through the route she'd taken, so obviously there had to be at least one more entrance somewhere.
She was pretty sure, in fact, that it would take modern scuba gear and an experienced cave diver to retrace her path, and even then they'd find it a very tight squeeze in some places. Her power made it quite simple, of course, and the hybrid form she'd come up with, a sort of crab-centipede, could not only swim really well but handle cold water and long gaps between air pockets with no problems at all. On her return journey after poking around for a while and deciding that she'd come back when she had more time, she'd actually swum the entire distance underwater, at least partially to see if she could.
It had turned out to be easy, which pleased her a lot.
In between doing her schoolwork and experimenting with her power, exploring and mapping the tunnels had been a nice exercise and fun too. But the mystery of Coil had kept digging at her, so when she'd read the books and decided what the next block of information she needed was, she'd set aside some time to do some proper investigation into the guy. Taylor was very curious about what on earth he was up to down there, and rather concerned about some of the things she'd noticed the first time. And twice since when she'd checked on his actions while in the area.
The more she watched, the more concerned she got, too.
At first she'd thought that possibly this was some sort of undercover or top secret PRT thing. That idea didn't make all that much sense but it had at least a veneer of reason to it. She'd read that people like the CIA had black sites and operations, so maybe the PRT did too?
The problem with that concept was that if it was the case, and when she'd talked about it with her dad he'd agreed it was certainly not impossible, why on earth would they have a PRT officer dressed up in a costume like a cape? And if he was a Parahuman, why would he he have been working for the PRT rather than the Protectorate? From what she'd read during her general research into Parahumans, the PRT specifically banned them from their ranks. It was basically illegal for several reasons and the organization seemed to be serious about that.
But this guy was definitely part of the PRT, according to everything she'd been able to find out about him from sources she had access to. She'd tracked him leaving his base and taking a circuitous route to the actual PRT building itself, while wearing a PRT uniform. He had what looked to be a genuine-issue PRT ID badge in his desk, along with various other things that seemed official. So if he wasn't a PRT officer he was doing a very convincing cosplay of one, good enough to fool the PRT themselves. While her opinion of the organization was at an all time low after she'd figured out Sophia Hess was a Ward, she didn't think they were completely inept. Surely they had security mechanisms in place to weed out spies and that sort of thing?
It was a puzzle, she mused as she simultaneously looked up how an ALU worked and watched Mr Calvert get very annoyed about something he was reading on one of his computer screens. His office was full of them, including an impressive array that seemed to be some sort of security system right out of a spy movie. The man was muttering obscenities to himself in an aggrieved voice as he clicked through a document, his mask off exposing his face which had an expression of someone who was not even faintly pleased with what he was looking at. Curious, she moved the half dozen small wasps she'd flown into his base through the ventilation system as they had better eyes than most of the other insects already there, aligning them so she could see the screen.
He was studying a document full of legalese, which after a little thought she realized was some sort of court filing. From what she could make out it was relating to the lawsuit the hospital was bringing against several individuals in the state government.
Why was he so interested in that? And how did he get the document in the first place? Taylor pondered the matter while she took notes on her computer search results. Surely this sort of document for a private lawsuit wasn't publicly available? The one against the school board, yeah, that made sense, but this wasn't the same thing as far as her very limited knowledge of the legal system would suggest. Which implied that he probably shouldn't have it. Further implying that he had connections that weren't precisely above board.
Which did fit the super-villain theory nicely, though.
No, she was pretty sure that Coil wasn't actually a secret asset of the PRT. There were far too many things that didn't add up for that. It was entirely likely from what she'd seen so far that the PRT had no idea he was a Parahuman, assuming he actually was. So far she'd seen no signs of him using a power, or at least anything she could recognize as that. The information online about Coil mentioned that no one was certain whether he had powers or not, and there was almost no information about him at all for that matter.
So either he didn't have powers and was pretending to be a Parahuman for reasons of his own, which might add credence to the undercover PRT operation idea although she could see so many holes in it she thought it highly unlikely, or he was pretending to have powers for some other reason not connected with the PRT, or he actually did have powers but they were possibly subtle in their action.
Assuming for the sake of the argument that he was in fact a Parahuman, as it seemed to make more sense than anything else she could come up with, what did that indicate his powers were?
Almost certainly not a Tinker. There were various devices around the base that she was near enough sure were Tinker-tech of one sort or another, including some weapons in the armory they had, some sort of scanner equipment, and couple of larger devices in one room that she had no idea of the function of but looked so weird they had to be the result of a Tinker. But there was no sign anywhere of anything she'd have considered a Tinker's workshop, the nearest to that being a bench in the armory with neatly arranged tools and parts that was obviously there for weapon maintenance. Several of the mercenary guys had used it while she'd watched for servicing their guns and stuff, but none of the Tinker stuff had been touched at all.
So overall either he wasn't a Tinker or he didn't do the usual Tinkering things she'd read about. Adding to this was how none of the Tinker equipment was in his office or on his person either.
Taylor was fairly sure he wasn't a Brute because she'd seen him get incredibly angry about something, slam his hands on the desk, knock a mug of hot coffee into his lap, scream, and flail about in a way that made her both wince slightly and stifle a giggle because it was hilarious. The stream of invective that he emitted was quite educational too.
She hadn't seen Calvert involved in any sort of fighting, so there was always the possibility that he had a Blaster or Striker power of some sort, or some other combat related ability. The problem was that a lot of powers weren't apparent until they were being used, she thought as she made more notes, scrolling through the ebook on the screen while watching the man swear to himself and open another document that seemed to make him even less happy. Just look at her. No one would ever realize what she was capable of without seeing her do it, or her telling them, while she was in a form that was outwardly human. Even though under the skin in a very literal sense she'd made some really major changes. Panacea would presumably discover it if they touched but she didn't know the girl aside from in passing and that was unlikely to happen. Other than that, Taylor's ability was not at all obvious. Without the Changer part, in fact, the rest of it was so subtle she could probably hide it from everyone without any trouble as long as she was careful, except possibly some Thinkers. And why would one of those even notice her?
So he could be a Striker, or Blaster, or Breaker, or most of the other categories, and sitting there in his office she'd be unable to tell just watching him. He certainly hadn't shown any indications of flashy powers even when he thought he was in private, which might mean he didn't have them, she mused. If you had, for example, a convenient telekinetic ability, you'd probably use it just around the house because it would be useful. Or any other power with mundane utility. He wasn't super strong, or if he was, he was going to a lot of effort to avoid displaying this, since she'd seen him move his desk a little for some reason and grunt at the weight. The coffee incident suggested Brute, or at least enhanced durability, wasn't likely either. And he hadn't punched a hole in the desk when he'd hit it either, although he'd looked angry enough that she suspected he'd wanted to. No signs of him taking on other forms and causing her to avert her eyes, like she did with her dad…
A couple of memories made her grin for a moment. Then she went back to puzzling over the problem represented by the distant man in his bunker.
There were too many possibilities, she finally decided. Without some overt indication that a power was in play, she didn't have enough data to do more than guess, and provisionally eliminate a couple of categories as unlikely if not impossible. She didn't even know for certain that he had powers, although the balance of probabilities suggested strongly that he did.
Her gut feeling, for whatever that was worth, was that he was most likely to be a Thinker of some form, but she certainly had no way to prove it. Yet.
The thing she was damn near sure of was that he was up to no good.
There was simply too much evidence in the massive underground facility to prove that. The mercenaries, fifty seven of them by her count so far, were well armed, trained, and going on the look of it, experienced, to be just window dressing. She knew enough people at her dad's place of work, people she'd been around pretty much her entire life, who had military training that she easily recognized the signs. The way they walked, talked, held themselves… These guys were not actors. Neither were the vast array of weapons they had in their armory props. There were enough guns down there to fight a small war and sufficient ammo to keep it going for days. Not to mention those Tinker weapons, whatever they were, and even half a dozen actual rocket launchers of all things. And several huge machine guns on tripods, like something out of a Hollywood action production.
Where the hell did they get all that stuff? Taylor was deeply curious about that.
And unlike the PRT, there wasn't a single trace of anything non-lethal. No containment foam, no tasers, no net cannon… Nothing she'd seen used on the news. Plenty of hand grenades, not one of them the sort that went pop and sprayed quick-setting foam around the place, rather being the type that went bang and sprayed death instead. Just like what had happened to those Merchants and E88 idiots the night she saved Vista. What seemed to be demolition explosives too, and all sorts of other stuff more or less familiar to her at least in passing from TV and reading.
No. Whoever these people were, they didn't appear to be equipped for or interested in non-lethal actions. And there were enough of them to be a major problem if they got involved in something. It fitted the details on PHO about Coil, limited as they were. Nothing on the publicly available information even hinted at him having this much firepower at his disposal though. Idly wondering if she should update the documentation so it accurately reflected what she was studying and hiding a small grin at his reaction if she did, she kept investigating every nook and cranny of the bunker.
Her notebook steadily filled up with observations, ideas on what they might mean, and a surprising number of bits of information the owners would doubtless be absolutely incensed to know weren't private. By now she had the passwords to Coil's computer, his security system, several of his bank accounts, the armory door lock, the server room door lock too, and a number of systems scattered around the base. Whether any of this would be useful she had no idea but it was right there so she wrote it down. You never knew when something might come in handy, after all.
She also counted all the weapons and made a list by type and size, looking them up on the computer as she went. Again, it might prove useful one day, she thought as she documented how many M16 rifles were present. The thought that she could by now not only update PHO with far more information about Coil that he'd be even slightly happy about, but damn near draw a map of his bunker and post that too, made her suppress a chuckle. She wondered what the reaction of the PRT would be if she actually did that… They might well get even more worked up than Calvert would.
Another hour and a half of careful investigation and she was certain she'd located all the entrances to the massive bunker, including two separate apparent escape tunnels, one leading from the lowest level of the bunker into one of the storm drains nearly a quarter of a mile from the place via a very circuitous route which seemed to have been designed to avoid the foundations of any other buildings, and the other one entering a main sewer about ninety degrees around from the first. That particular tunnel was probably the absolute last resort, Taylor thought as she looked at the contents of the large sewer pipe with distaste. You certainly wouldn't want to wade through what was in there, that was damn sure.
There were also three different entrances that seemed to be the ones the bunker's inhabitants actually used regularly. The two long tunnels were carefully hidden from both inside and outside, but the three other exits were only hidden on the outside. One was a vehicle entrance that led from the lower parking garage of an office block that seemed to be mostly vacant to the north of the bunker, one was a door disguised as an access panel to an electrical control room in a different building on the other side of the street, and the third was a fake wall down an alley behind yet another old office building. Whoever had built this place had put in one hell of a lot of effort and money, she mused as she drew a couple of sketches of the last door. The whole outer layer of it looked like a brick wall, complete with bricks that perfectly matched the old ones the rest of the building was made of. Yet on the inside it was a solid steel door with huge hinges and a serious lock, the whole thing probably weighing tons.
One thing she particularly liked was how the bottom of the external part of the hidden door even had a section of old concrete sticking out like a shelf, complete with a couple of garbage cans sitting on it, dented and slightly rusty. If you didn't know it was there you'd just walk right past without any clue of something being amiss.
The insects found it almost instantly, of course.
She so liked her power. And her power clearly liked her just as much, she could tell. As well as finding her deeply confusing, which was still hilarious.
But she had to admit that Calvert, assuming he'd done all this himself, had really, seriously, put the effort in. Somehow. Someone certainly had, if it wasn't him. Where he, or they perhaps, got the money she wasn't sure but from recollections of things she'd heard her dad talking about this must have cost tens of millions of dollars and taken years. Even now there were parts of the place that still seemed to be under construction, implying it was a work in progress.
Yet even as she mapped out his underground base, she was not really any nearer to working out what he was up to aside from getting furiously angry about the documents he was reading. Apparently the legal cases causing so much commotion in local and state politics had seriously interfered with whatever he was actually doing and he wasn't even slightly pleased about it.
A little later, she found something that made her stare in growing horror as she realized just what she was looking at, or rather, what a lot of insects were looking at and smelling. Right down in the foundations of the bunker, below the inhabitable parts where the service infrastructure lived, she found a number of plastic tubes that wandered off from a central location in various directions behind a large amount of electrical switchgear. Each tube came out of a box mounted on the wall, in a position you'd never reach or even be able to see without removing half the equipment in front of it. Based on the dust on it, the box had been there since before the switchgear had been installed, probably a number of years as far as she could tell.
The tubes were thin, only about an eighth of an inch in diameter, and bright yellow in color. They disappeared into a channel in the floor which was stuffed with cables.
On the surface innocent, the problem was that she'd seen exactly this same tube before. Once, about three years before, back when her mom was alive, the dock workers had needed to remove an old wharf that had got so badly decayed it was dangerous. Made of steel and concrete back in the forties from what she recalled, they'd decided in the end that the quickest and safest way was to cut all the pilings at once with explosives, rather than try to dismantle it piece by piece where it was. As the union had quite a few people with experience in demolition, they'd been able to do the job themselves rather than call in a demolition company. She'd spent a couple of afternoons in the middle of summer watching them fit the pilings with explosives at low tide, her dad explaining to her and her mom what they were doing. Each block of explosives was wrapped around the piling in a couple of places, then when that was done, they were all connected together and back several hundred yards to a control box with this exact same stuff. It was shock tube, she'd found out when she asked what the funny rope was for. You set off one end and it sent a tiny little explosion down the inside at some stupid speed, finally detonating a blasting cap in the actual main charge, which could be miles away.
They'd fired the charges at high tide, and she distinctly recalled seeing a spark of light shoot down all the tubes so fast it was only visible for a fraction of a second, before the water had erupted with a whole series of thuds, causing the wharf to collapse into the bay and break apart in the process.
Then they had a barbecue to celebrate, which was one of the best bits, she thought with a fond smile for the memories of better times.
Doing a quick search on the computer, she confirmed that she had remembered it correctly. There was even a manufacturer's name printed on the stuff she could look up.
The implications were terrifying. This idiot had mined his own base? Was he that stupid? If he had some sort of self-destruct system, what would happen to the buildings above the place if he set it off? There were currently one thousand three hundred and sixty two people in the four buildings that were in the area she guessed would be affected if the bunker blew up. It would depend on how much explosive he'd used, of course, but the whole idea struck her as completely insane.
Sending insects into the duct work, she followed the shock tubes, finding that all of them eventually terminated in horrifyingly large quantities of what she suspected were probably quarrying explosives from the brand names on the bags the stuff was in, long thin sausages of nylon fabric. They were all over the lower levels under the floor near key load-bearing walls, in obviously purpose-built holes that had been part of the original construction. It wasn't some add-on he'd fitted later, this had been built right in from the start.
Looking up the company, she read the brochure on the explosive with growing dismay. There was several tons of it present when she counted up all the bags, and according to the website, that was more than enough to probably collapse the entire fucking place.
Yeah, Coil was a nutcase, there was no doubt about that.
Deciding that aside from whatever else she did, she wasn't going to stand by and let the asshole possibly kill hundreds of people, either on purpose or just accidentally, she spend a while reading up on how the shock tube worked and how it could be safely made to not work. Fiddling with the detonator control box seemed like a really bad idea. She didn't know anything remotely like enough about electronics to even begin to understand what would make it safe and what would make everyone have a very suddenly bad day, so that was right out. Resolving to add electronics to her reading list, she thought for a bit then decided the best method was probably to simply just cut all the shock tubes. Checking the data on the stuff, she confirmed that was safe to do without any risk of detonation, as you could basically just snip it with wire cutters when installing it. It needed a special percussion initiator to fire it, which was presumably inside the control unit.
Five minutes later she'd had an army of cockroaches nibble through the shock tube in multiple places for each length, then drag the cut ends well apart just in case. While she'd been doing that she'd also been very carefully indeed looking for more of it, in case he believed in redundancy. Sure enough, she'd found a completely different system connected to charges under the diesel fuel tanks for the backup generators, which she also thoroughly disabled in places no one would ever be able to see without digging into the floors.
There was another much smaller one in the bunker server room, each rack of computers mined with small charges that were probably still more than enough to render them into tiny fragments. Studying these, she hesitated, then left them alone for now. It wouldn't take more than a minute to disconnect them as well, but there was at the back of her mind the idea that perhaps those charges might be best left untampered-with for the moment. The thing that also lived in the back of her mind, and had been watching all this with as much interest as she had, seemed to agree.
Running one last sweep for anything else so irresponsibly dangerous as a self-destruct system and not finding it, at least as far as she could recognize, Taylor relaxed. She also made sure to clear her browser history just in case, although in theory it was cleared when she logged out anyway, and it wasn't like she'd done anything illegal. Like log into Coil's bank accounts and move all his money somewhere else…
The idea was looking more tempting by the minute though, she thought with a mix of irritation and amusement. The man was clearly not deserving of all those riches and she had a few ideas for where it could be much better used. But that could wait, and doing it from a public library wasn't a bright idea anyway. So she resisted the urge to see how far she could get with all his passwords and just kept watching, making notes, and looking up things on the computer for her other projects at the same time.
Her ability to multitask to a completely ridiculous level was one of the best parts of all this, in her view. Along with all the other parts of course.
By the time she was just about ready to call it a day and head home, then do some more experimenting and exploring, having mapped out the entire bunker and all that lay within it, Calvert snarled, "Fucking goddamn bastards!" Clenching his fists, he seemed on the verge of punching the shit out of his monitor, but oddly, seemed to pause for several seconds, then relax like he'd had half an hour to get over whatever had set him off. Taylor, more than a quarter of a mile away, watched him with interest and puzzlement. She'd seen the same thing happen at least five times now and had no idea what he'd done, but whatever it was, it seemed to calm him right down. Not that he was calm calm, he was still clearly boiling with fury, but he wasn't ready to snap someone's neck if they looked at him funny. At least based on what she could see and hear, and for that matter detect through her insects.
The chemosensors arthropods had in various forms made human scent abilities pale into insignificance, as one example. She was intimately aware of this not only through her Master power, but directly via her Changer one. In her super-hornet form she was probably at least as good at following a scent as a bloodhound and she suspected considerably better. There were a lot of other sensory systems available to her that didn't have any direct equivalent in human terms and explaining them to her dad had proven remarkably difficult. But the end result was that she could easily detect all manner of interesting information about people from things like pheromones emitted on their breath and through their skin, indicating stress level, overall health, and a whole slew of other parameters.
She was still learning, of course, and it would probably take her months if not years to delve into that one minor aspect of the whole thing never mind everything else, but it had already given her an insight into the emotional state of people that would be very hard to get in any other way aside from an actual empathic power like that Ward Gallant had. And this insight told her that Calvert had been incredibly angry then suddenly… became far less so with no obvious reason. It was like he'd flipped a switch.
Was that his power? The ability to have super-emotional control? Was he Calm Man?
Taylor grinned a little as she watched. Probably not. Calm Man would be calm. It was in the name even. Calvert was Very Angry Man for the most part but he definitely had some sort of trick that let him lose a lot of that anger remarkably quickly. She was curious to know what it was. Perhaps just rigid self control? She knew a bit about that….
The underground villain, and having found his explosives, Taylor was certain now about what he was, was interrupted from his ruminations by his phone going off. Grabbing it he looked at the display, then rapidly tapped the screen, sending a text, which Taylor's wasps were able to read. 'Collect her and bring her to me,' he'd written. That sounded… ominous.
Taylor kept her attention on the man, who was tidying up his desk and putting files away, then closing most of the windows on the monitors. Standing, he went into the small bathroom attached to his office and washed his face, rubbing it a few times in a rather stressed manner, before he dried himself and put his full head mask back on. Making sure it was straight in the mirror, he nodded then went back to sit at the desk, tapping the keyboard a couple of times while looking at the impressively large array of security camera screens. His attention seemed focused on one particular one, which when she checked it, was from a camera pointing down James Street, the one that ran past the building his bunker was mostly under. He seemed to smile under his mask when a large van, dark blue and completely anonymous in among all the other commercial traffic, rolled into view at the far end.
Taylor used more insects to study the van for herself, and when it came into range, got some more wasps onto it. It only took a few seconds to have a couple enter the vehicle through the air vents, then lurk just inside and peer out.
The driver was another one of Coil's mercenaries, one she recognized from the last time she'd watched his actions a few days back. In the rear there were two more, bringing the total up to a nice round sixty, assuming there weren't any more out and about. Between them on the seat was a girl about her age, with a bag over her head, her breath carrying the telltale markers of stress and some fear although not panic, as far as Taylor's little helpers could detect. She had her head slightly on one side and seemed to be listening carefully if body language was anything to go on.
Now more than a little concerned, since a blindfolded teenaged girl in a windowless van with three armed men didn't seem entirely kosher in her opinion, Taylor wondered what to do. Should she intervene? It wouldn't be hard to intercept these guys before they got to Coil's lair. Presumably the girl was the one he'd referred to, and clearly was anticipating with some eagerness.
Deciding to wait for now, since she had no idea what was actually happening yet, Taylor still prepared just in case. More wasps flew into vents in the van, until there were over a hundred of them just out of sight, ready to boil out and attack if required. She had at least as many clinging to the underside of the van too as backup. While this was going on, she was packing her books away into her pack and saving her downloads, then logging out of the computer. She was done anyway and had been nearly at the point of leaving before whatever this was started so it didn't cause any harm to her plans.
Heading for the exit, she waved to the librarians behind the desk and called out a cheerful, "See you next time!" to the three women and one man, all of whom were very familiar to her.
"Next time, Taylor," one called back. "Stay safe!"
"Always, Miss Green," Taylor replied with a grin, then she left the library and trotted down the stairs to the sidewalk. Turning right she started walking, not too fast and not too slow, just merging in with the fairly large number of people on the street, but heading more or less towards James Street.
The van, still many hundreds of yards away, turned out of the light traffic into the parking garage that had the secret entrance to Coil's place in its depths. By the time the vehicle reached the second level and slowly drove towards the hidden door, Taylor was nearing the location she'd been aiming for, a narrow service alley that led around several corners and finally dead-ended at a three story brick wall, the rear of some of the shops along the same street the library was on a couple of blocks away. Above her were fire escapes, wall mounted air conditioners, ventilation fans, and other such urban outcroppings, leading up to the roof on all sides. Much of it was covered in grime, not having been touched for years, decades in some cases by the looks of it.
She'd found a lot of little hidden nooks and crannies like this in the city infrastructure over the last few weeks, her ability perfect for discovering all sorts of hidden in plain sight things of this type. It was surprising how many buildings had been built and rebuilt over the decades in ways that led to plenty of almost inaccessible areas buried in, under, on top of, and beside them. Or possibly it wasn't so much surprising as just not considered by most people.
This particular little corner of nowhere in particular, close at hand to the bustle of the commercial district but somehow isolated from it, the sounds of the street muted and distant, hid a neat secret she was fairly sure she was the sole holder of. Certainly none of the city infrastructure maps she'd got through her dad showed what she'd found. Double-checking just in case, but already knowing there were no cameras either in this area or covering the entrance from the main road, Taylor looked up, made sure her backpack was secure, then launched herself at the wall. It took her mere moments to use her enhanced strength to jump straight up twenty feet, grab the underside of an old fire escape that didn't actually go anywhere these days, flip over the top of the wall, and drop to the ground on the other side.
Grinning at how easy this sort of thing was and how much fun, she walked two steps and pulled open the absolutely ancient half-height iron door that was embedded in the stone and brick wall on the other side of the seven foot square space she'd landed in. Her best guess was that it had once been some sort of air shaft for a long-gone building, only parts of the structure left which had then been incorporated into newer construction. By the looks of it that had happened at least twice, and the door she'd opened was likely dating back to the late eighteen hundreds or even earlier. Made of riveted iron it only came up to the middle of her chest, and had been completely rusted solid when she'd found it from the other side.
Very obviously no one had used it for many, many years.
Having found it, though, Taylor had made sure to put some grease on the hinges once she'd forced them to operate, brute strength overcoming many decades of disuse with quite a lot of creaking sounds and a shower of rust. Now, properly lubricated for the first time probably since before World War Two, the door moved quite easily albeit requiring a lot of strength as it was very heavy. And one also had to be able to remove the locking pin that fitted through a hasp on the inside, from the outside. A good trick for most people, but she could use a number of large spiders to yank it out via the silk thread attached to it.
Ducking through the door Taylor closed it behind her and put the pin back, then sprouted some glowing antennae to light her path. Bright green illumination showed brick-faced stonework heading down at a slight angle, a small trickle of water running in a narrow stream in the middle of the floor. The walls were damp in places, which was where the water was coming from, and the ceiling was covered in lime excrescences from a century or so of drips percolating through.
All this was familiar to her from her explorations over the last week or so, but still really cool, she thought as she walked along the hidden path that led under the streets and buildings above. She could hear running water ahead of her, and having rounded a few corners as the ancient tunnel rather randomly changed direction, and passed the signs of long since blocked off other paths, she reached the source of the noise. In front of her was one of the once above ground and now buried and forgotten streams that rambled about beneath the unknowing feet of Brocktonites. It ran in an obviously artificial channel, stone under a couple of feet of silt, the ceiling above made once more of brick and very old concrete slabs in a few places, along with cut stone. The water didn't fill the entire tunnel, it was constrained to the middle two thirds, with either side having a narrow pathway about a foot above the water. Overall it was about ten feet from side to side, the water taking up about seven feet of that on average, and the ceiling was around six feet above the sides. Marks on the walls showed that the water level sometimes ran nearly at the ceiling, presumably after a hard rainfall.
She'd been fascinated to find heavily rusted iron rings set into the stone and brick every now and then, looking exactly like the ones she'd seen on the waterfront at the docks. It indicated to her that this stream had once had people using it, probably utilizing rowboats, and there was further evidence of this in the form of a few doors made of iron bound oak beams sunk into the walls here and there. As her dad had mentioned, these led into the foundations of some of the oldest buildings in the city, but most of them had either been filled in on the other side, or the entire area they accessed had been capped off. Very few buildings had cellars at all in this area due to the high water table, as she'd always been told and now had direct experience of, and most of the ones that did seemed to have stopped using them a long, long time ago.
The best guess Taylor could come up with was that this had been a stream that had gradually been redirected in the early years of the city, then eventually covered over decades later and built on top of. Her dad had said basically the same thing. But between the point it had been put in a culvert and the covering over of that, it had apparently been a useful method of transporting things around this part of the city.
Now it was basically just her that even knew it was here. And her dad of course, but he hadn't seen it yet. It wasn't the one he'd claimed he'd heard existed, she thought, as it wasn't all that large and didn't really go anywhere very interesting these days. At the bay end it vanished into one of the storm drains through several smaller tunnels of various ages and construction methods, and at the inland end it emerged, very similarly to the one that she'd gone through to access the underground lake, from a wide but shallow crack in the bedrock. It might well even connect to the same lake in fact, but she hadn't traced it that far yet. At one point it must have gone all the way to the shore but that was a long time ago and nothing of that end existed any more.
But the bit between those points was over a mile of twisty passageway which led under quite a big part of the commercial area, and she'd discovered ways to access other tunnels from this one. The end result was her own private route that ultimately led almost all the way from here to her own house through a maze of tunnels. And if she could figure out how to dig from the agri store to her basement, it would be even more convenient…
Now, having reached the stream, she turned left and kept walking, all the time monitoring the progress of the van full of mercenaries and teenaged girl, that had by this point gone through the hidden door which opened silently via a massive hydraulic mechanism, then closed once they'd driven through. She kept watch as the three men got out, the two who had been in the rear escorting the hooded girl fairly gently but quite firmly towards Coil's office while the driver went in the other direction. A minute later the girl had been seated in front of his desk, and the hood removed to reveal a freckled blonde girl of about sixteen or thereabouts, wearing a smug grin that hid nervousness.
Both mercenaries left the office and took up stations outside the office, as the door closed with a click. Coil flicked a switch on his desk that produced another click from the door, presumably locking it, then rested his elbows on the desk and steepled his hands in front of him. "Ah, my Tattletale, how good of you to join me," he said in a voice that made Taylor want to hit him, it was so reminiscent of Emma in one of her more vicious moods.
She immediately developed a distinct dislike for Coil. If the explosives hadn't done it, his voice did the job.
As far as she could tell through her wasps, the girl, Tattletale, felt exactly the same thing but far more strongly. Her pheromones told Taylor she hated the man, but there wasn't a hint of it on her face. Which was kind of impressive, really.
"Your command is my wish," the blonde chirped, for all the world sounding entirely relaxed and cheerful.
"Quite," he responded dryly. "Do remember that, my dear girl. Now, to business. What do you have for me?"
Tattletale, who from what Taylor knew having recognized the name was a member of that gang of young and remarkably effective thieves known as the Undersiders, shrugged insouciantly. Coil's muscles tensed, visible though his skin-tight costume, but other than that he didn't move. Taylor could sense he'd become rather irritated even so.
"Can you be more specific? I've done a lot of investigating after all. It would help to know what you would like to hear about. Or should I just start at the beginning and keep talking until I hit it? I'm good either way." She smiled winningly at him. Under the glib exterior she was still sweating nervously, and Taylor's wasps could see her eyes examining everything in the entire office.
It seemed likely that the girl didn't actually want to be where she was right now, Taylor thought, turning the corner and reaching a set of iron rungs fastened to the brickwork. Climbing them rapidly, she checked no one had disturbed the other side since she'd last come here a few days ago, then lifted the old manhole cover over her head with one hand and put it to one side. Climbing out, she put it back, then walked through the dark and silent corridor she'd emerged into, probably an old alley that had been covered over but left in place many years ago. At the far end, another iron door lay. On the far side of this one was a gap between two buildings, not even an alley as such, just a place where they'd been built almost touching, at an angle so that they formed a narrow triangular space open to the sky several stories up but otherwise inaccessible. Even the open to the sky part was a little subject to opinion as there were quite a few obstructions protruding from the roofs of the buildings that stuck out into space over the gap, so from above it was almost invisible unless you either knew it was there or went and had a good look at close range.
Removing the pin from the hasp, Taylor dropped her backpack onto the floor just inside the door, exited, closed it again, then had some spiders lower the pin back into place on a thread. She was now only about a hundred and thirty feet from Coil's bunker, and more crucially the hidden door in the alley. It was on the other side of the building next to the one on her right. And, if necessary, she could reach it in about ten seconds and be through the door in another ten.
Her super-wasp venom would make short work of the bricks and steel, even if she couldn't simply smash her way through, which she was pretty sure she could. Settling down to watch, she leaned on the wall and waited to see what happened next. She also absently applied more cockroaches to someone who burst into a convenience shop a couple of hundred yards behind her waving a pistol, making him screech and drop it in favor of slapping at his face. The guy behind the counter watched with disbelief before shrugging and pulling out his phone with one hand and a pistol-stocked shotgun from under the counter with the other.
Satisfied that things were under control in that situation, Taylor kept most of her attention on Tattletale and Coil, very curious about what was going on.
Calvert's jaw clenched slightly under his mask at the comment his guest made, but he didn't otherwise show any emotional response. His pheromone output betrayed his irritation despite that. "You were given a task. I want to know if you have succeeded in that task. Don't try my patience, my Tattletale. You do not want me to be… irked."
The predatory tone of his voice as he nearly hissed the words at him turned Taylor's stomach. There was something very wrong with this guy…
Tattletale clearly felt the same, but she didn't show it on her face. Nodding brightly, she merely replied, "Got it, Boss! No patience trying today!" Her voice sounded chipper and relaxed and it was only the bug senses that let the distant observer know the blonde was neither. "You want to know about the HOUS?"
Taylor's attention sharpened instantly, all the insects she now had in Coil's base stilling for a moment, then the ones still on and in the van sitting in the now-abandoned and dark vehicle bay streaming out of the vehicle and into the air ventilation system overhead. She wasn't sure if she'd need them, but it was always a good idea to have options available, and a few hundred wasps were one of the better options. In her opinion anyway.
She didn't know what exactly this was but it had her interest.
Coil sighed almost inaudibly. "I wish to know about the HOUS, yes," he growled. "What have you discovered?"
Tattletale spread her hands. "Almost nothing."
"Not good enough."
"Well, I'm sorry, but it's hard to find out something about a giant hornet that just vanishes, you know," the girl shot back, for the first time sounding a little peeved. "Your access to the PRT servers is good, and I dug through everything I could find, but they don't have any clues either. Sure, there's all sorts of information about the fucking thing making it very, very clear it's hideously dangerous, but that's about it other than a lot of speculation. I need at least something to work on, you know that, Boss. My power is amazing but I still need some sort of starting point."
He tapped his fingers together as he observed her, then nodded once. Leaning to the side he opened a desk drawer and pulled out a handgun, which he put on the desk. Tattletale's eyes flicked towards it even as Taylor tensed and silently moved about a hundred wasps to the edge of the air vent directly over and behind Coil.
"You wouldn't keep anything from me, would you, my dear?" he asked silkily, his hands returning to their pose. The blonde shook her head and Taylor could see her attention was drawn by the gun sitting innocently near Calvert.
"Of course not, Boss," she replied immediately. "I always tell you everything. But I don't have much to tell you. You've read the PRT reports same as I have. They're guessing. That insect doesn't match anything on record, and sure, some of their conclusions are probably wrong, if only due to the bias the ENE division has from previous experience, but I honestly can't tell you which parts are wrong. The scientific reports on its capabilities are probably accurate as far as they go but who the hell knows where it came from, where it goes, or even what it really is? They certainly don't."
"And what does your… special insight… suggest to you? Indulge me." He lowered a hand and toyed with the gun, moving it back and forth on the desk, never quite pointing it at the girl. Taylor checked on the whereabouts of all the mercenaries, seeing that most of them were going about their various jobs elsewhere and the two still outside his office were looking bored and talking quietly to each other about what they were going to spend their money on the next payday. While she was doing this she strategically positioned her remaining wasps around the base, and moved lots of cockroaches into it too, since they were absolutely everywhere and easy to collect even in very early spring. Tattletale swallowed slightly and thought, her eyes flicking from side to side as if she was reading an invisible book.
"It's alive, not a projection," she said, talking fast after a pause of a few seconds. "It's… probably not the work of a Biotinker. I think. It's very smart. Human level at least, intelligent human level, and likely well above average human level in fact. It really doesn't like Nazis. Or at least Hookwolf, but I'm guessing Nazis in general."
She paused again for breath. "Go on," he invited, his hand leaving the gun, and making her glance at it, then look faintly relieved for a brief moment.
"Changer is… possible. But if it is that it's nothing like anything on record. Panacea gave a good estimate of mass, she knows a lot about this sort of thing, and the PRT scientists agreed with her conclusions. If it's a Changer it's doing something really different from all other known cases. It's almost certainly not a Case 53, if only because again it doesn't match known cases, and it's a perfect if much, much too large copy of an existing hornet. No Case 53 on record mimics a real creature like that."
Coil was nodding thoughtfully now, as he listened. "Is it an enhanced but real insect, perhaps?"
She shrugged. "I have absolutely no idea, and can't think of any way to prove it one way or the other. The thing that the reports agree on, and other information I dug up does too, is that you can't simply enlarge an insect like that. There's a hard limit to how big anything close to normal insect biology can get, apparently. It couldn't even breath let alone fly, but that sure didn't stop it doing both. I think it's probably a Parahuman, or at least a Parainsect, if that's even a thing."
He went still for a moment, then appeared to think hard. "Can something not human Trigger?" he muttered almost to himself. Tattletale shrugged again even so.
"No clue. We don't know what Triggering does in the first place. If it is a Para-whatever, it's the first time anyone's ever run into something other than a human getting powers. But it definitely does have powers, that much I'm sure of. And under the exterior I can guarantee it's not just a much much too large hornet. It might look like one, but it definitely isn't." She shivered for a moment as he listened and watched. "That report on the venom… Boss, I'm serious, don't upset that thing. One drop of that fucking venom and you'd die in agony in seconds. The PRT report read like the people writing it were trying not to scream in horror the entire time."
Leaning back in his chair he clasped his hands together over his chest and regarded her. "You believe there's no route to… persuading… it to work for my benefit? It would be quite useful to have such a potent force multiplier available."
"Don't." Tattletale shook her head rapidly, her face somewhat pale. "Seriously, don't even try. I have no idea what it would even want, and if you somehow tried to force it to cooperate, I'm completely certain it would react… badly. It's the only thing I am certain of where that bug is concerned. It's not a human, it won't act like one, and if you expect it to, bad things will happen."
The distant Taylor was simultaneously amused and mildly annoyed. She was mostly human! Most of the time… But Tattletale was certainly right, she thought as she watched the pair unknown to either. If someone tried to threaten her, force her to go along with something she didn't want to do, there was going to be trouble. She'd had way more than enough of people pushing her around and now she had ways to push back, she was not going to let it happen again.
And if anyone like this asshole ever went after her dad to try to control her… bad things was a serious understatement. The blonde wasn't wrong there.
Calvert seemed to tense up as the girl's voice became quite harsh in the final statement and he gave off anger and stress chemicals as he sat forward again. "You presume to tell me what I can do?" he asked smoothly, his hand landing on the pistol. Tattletale's eyes cut to it for a second, then resolutely back forward again. "Recall who works for who, and why. Don't make me do something you'll regret and spoil our happy working relationship." Taylor could hear the vicious smile in his voice right through his mask. "Or would you prefer to change that relationship? I'm sure we could come to an arrangement…"
He trailed off in a manner that made Taylor and Tattletale both wince, albeit for different reasons. "I don't think that will be necessary, Boss," the blonde girl replied after a moment, in a careful way, her voice betraying no emotion. "So far things are working well, aren't they? I was merely pointing out the hazards of a possible idea you might be considering. That's what you pay me the big bucks for, right?"
Coil's anger appeared to rise, then as Taylor had seen several times so far, just vanished like it had never been. He went back almost immediately to merely somewhat annoyed, even his tone of voice changing slightly. Tattletale clearly picked up on it even as Taylor did, making her wonder how the other girl managed it. She had powers, that much she herself had mentioned only a minute or so ago, but no one seemed to know much about them from Taylor's research on PHO. Thinker of some sort was the prevailing opinion and from what she'd overheard, this seemed to be the case. It still left open just what sort of a Thinker she was.
Lifting his handgun Coil examined it with apparent interest, wiped a small speck of dust from the gleaming metal, then slipped it back into the drawer it had come from, Tattletale following it with her eyes the whole time and him obviously aware of this and enjoying it. "It is, yes. And as long as you continue to provide me with a useful service," he said as he stood up and rounded his desk, leaning back on it and watching her, "We shall enjoy a fruitful and friendly relationship. Just as we are now. Thank you for your… analysis. I will have further tasks for you shortly."
At the dismissal a certain tension went out of the blonde, not really visible from her body language but Taylor's wasp could scent it. She nodded, then stood up, turning towards the door. Just as she reached it, he spoke again.
"One more thing, before you leave, my Tattletale." She stopped, then turned, as he pushed himself erect and moved to stand much too close to her. Before she could react he put one hand around her throat and squeezed slightly, the girl freezing. Bending close, from his considerably greater height, he whispered, "Do not disappoint me, hide anything, or speak out of turn again. Remember that."
She nodded wordlessly, her eyes wide. He squeezed hard enough to make the flesh around his fingers pale. A hundred plus yards away, Taylor decided she'd had enough and this bastard needed a swift kick in the balls to remind him that bullying wasn't nice.
Unfortunately she was too far away to do that. Fortunately she could arrange the next best thing.
Coil yelped in pain when a wasp stung him right in the nuts. Then again when it zipped up and repeated the process on the back of his neck. Releasing the blonde teenager he slapped at his neck with one hand and at his crotch with the other, the latter move a mistake as he managed to make much harder contact than he'd probably been aiming for and his spandex body suit didn't have an awful lot of padding.
Tattletale stared as he collapsed to his knees and made an agonized little sound before he fell over sideways. "What the fuck?" she whispered in stunned amazement. Her eyes lifted to where the wasp had flown back into the air vent, then her face paled dramatically. "Oh, shit," she added almost inaudibly. "Oh, shit, shit, shit."
Turning she put her hand on the door handle, then found it was still locked. Quickly looking around, she zeroed in on the desk, moving quickly past Coil to it and inspecting the switches. Just as she reached for the one he'd used to lock the door, a choked sound from the man on the floor made her, and Taylor who had been watching, look at him.
He was grabbing at his own throat and making weird sounds. Sounds that really didn't convey a sense that all was well.
Staring at him for some seconds, Tattletale finally grinned maliciously, apparently forgetting whatever had spooked her for the moment. Pulling open desk drawers one after another, she finally spotted something in one of them and reached in. Removing the object she held it up and studied it, between glances at Coil who was thrashing around now, gasping for breath.
"Huh. An epipen," she mused out loud, sitting on the edge of the desk and watching the man on the floor who Taylor realized, somewhat guiltily, was going into anaphylactic shock. Apparently he was allergic to wasp venom.
Whoops.
Looking up at the vent where Taylor's wasps lurked, the blonde girl thought for a few seconds, her face showing concentration. Then she looked back at Coil, who was flopping around like a dying fish, making sounds like an unwell bagpipe being played by an asthmatic piper. "Now, do I stick you with this and see if it saves your life, or do I just watch the fucker who's forced me at gunpoint to work for him and do all sorts of things I hate for nearly a year slowly drown as his lungs fill with fluid?" she commented idly.
Taylor got the distinct impression that the question was entirely rhetorical…
Kneeling down next to Calvert, she grabbed his hood and yanked it off, revealing a face with bulging eyes streaming with tears, and swollen lips surrounding a mouth frantically gasping for oxygen. "Ah. Thomas Calvert. I wondered if it was you, you bastard." His hands grasped for the epipen she held just above his chest, moving it out of range when he nearly touched it. "I also wonder how many times you killed and raped me in your fucking simulations." Even through his pain he jerked in surprise. "Oh, yes, I know what your power is," she added as she looked down at him. "I worked that out months ago. I just couldn't quite figure out how to take advantage of that fact. I'd have done it sooner or later, I guess, but it looks like I won't be shooting you in the stomach."
She shrugged. "At least I get to watch your face as you die. It almost makes up for having a sadistic monster like you ruining my life for over a year. How many people have you tortured to death over the years? More than a few, from what I could find out. I bet any of them would have loved this too." Standing she wiped the epipen on a tissue she took from his desk, holding it in another one, then dropped it on his chest, where he weakly grabbed at it. The device rolled to the floor next to him. Stepping back, she sat behind his desk and put her feet on it, before pulling out her phone and taking a couple of photos. "I'd say I'm sorry you're going out so hard, but I'd be lying to you," she chuckled, "And you just got through telling me you didn't want me to lie to you."
His fumbling for the epipen slowed, then his arm stilled. Taylor watched, her feelings mixed. She certainly hadn't intended to kill the bastard, although that had certainly been an option once she figured out how callously he'd set things up and how he'd obviously been fine with causing massive death and destruction. On the other hand, from what this girl was saying, and her own guesses from what she'd seen and heard, the man was definitely a ghastly person who likely deserved whatever happened to him. She was still wondering about that room on the next level down with all the blood traces… The only real conclusion she could come to made her feel that if anything this guy deserved to have met a sticky end a long time ago.
Still… accidentally offing a super-villain because she didn't like bullies was something that might give her a weird reputation. On the other hand her inner hornet was finding this entirely acceptable for several reasons.
Coil gasped for one last breath, then stilled. Tattletale let out a long breath of her own, looking incredibly relieved suddenly. Taylor shook her head. Her dad was never going to believe this, and he was likely to be a little ticked. She was supposed to tell him before she did something major.
Oh well.
Life was tricky sometimes.
"Good riddance, you piece of shit," the girl at the desk said softly. Dropping her feet to the floor with a quick glance at the door, she pulled the keyboard closer and started prodding it. The two guards outside hadn't heard a thing, Taylor knew, since the door was thick and entirely soundproof, but sooner or later they'd probably wonder what their boss was up to for so long.
Or, more worryingly, they wouldn't.
She couldn't help thinking about how perhaps they were used to people going into the office and not coming out for a long time. Or other rooms in the bunker. Like the one with the blood and the tools…
Coming to a decision, she pulled out her burner phone and dialed a number she'd seen recently. Coil's desktop phone, right next to Tattletale's elbow, rang and made the girl nearly hit the ceiling. Staring at it, she seemed to think very hard, then slowly and carefully, reached out to pick up the handset, putting it to her ear and not saying anything. Taylor, who had let enough hornet out to change her head and her voice, said, "Hello, Tattletale. We need to talk."
The girl yanked the phone from her ear, gave it a very suspicious glare, then put it back. "Who is this?" she asked warily.
"Call me… Vespa," Taylor said after a moment's thought of her own. It was in her opinion a suitable name and the real Vespa wouldn't mind. Her hornet, now sitting on her shoulder, waved its antenna making her grin internally.
"Vespa…?" Tattletale seemed to think hard, then paled dramatically.
"No need to look so worried, I'm not planning on hurting you," Taylor hastened to say. This didn't seem to have the desired effect as the other girl quickly looked around the room as if she expected to see someone else in there with her, but the only other inhabitant was the ex-Calvert, who no longer appeared to have much interest in the proceedings.
"You can…" The blonde stopped mid-statement and glanced up at the air vent, looking worried. "Where are you?"
"Nearby," Taylor assured her with a faint chuckle. "Incidentally, I've disabled his self-destruct system."
"You've… He actually had a self-destruct system?" Tattletale yelped. Then she looked quickly looked at the door.
"Yes, he did. About five tons of explosives buried under the lowest level. They're safe enough now. The guards aren't paying any attention to you, by the way, the door is entirely soundproof, so don't worry right now."
"How are you doing that?" Tattletale demanded, sounding and looking somewhat irritated now.
"Trade secret." Taylor stifled a giggle, as she was trying to sound reasonably professional in a very strange way. "I notice you seem to be trying to steal Coil's money. Would you like help with that?"
"Stop being Clippy. No one likes Clippy," the girl grumbled, glancing at the computer she'd been working on, having quickly brought up Coil's financial documents with an ease Taylor could only admire.
Snorting with laughter, Taylor said, "I've got codes. You've got the computer. Shall we discuss a deal?"
Tattletale peered over the desk at Coil, then up at the vent once more, before shrugging. "What did you have in mind?"
"Something that will probably be mutually beneficial. I'll even tell you how you're going to get out of here without being stopped."
"I'm listening." Taylor smiled in an insectile manner and began explaining her idea, which made the other girl start smiling very slowly in a much more human, but still rather odd, way. Once they'd settled on the details, Tattletale put the plan into operation.
It took a while, but the end result was more than worth it. And by the time Taylor got home, she had a lot of things to explain to her dad, along with some useful byproducts of the day she had not expected.
He was even more surprised, of course, but not as much as the PRT were a little later that evening…
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Captain Henries of the Brockton Bay Police department inspected the scene, then turned to the BBPD lieutenant standing next to him. "How many?"
"Sixty. Just like the call said. We were waiting outside when they all came running out like they were on fire, some of them still pulling their pants on. Damndest thing I've ever seen. You can't even see the door from this side if it's closed. Fuck knows how long it's been there, but there's an entire fucking bunker the size of an Endbringer shelter down there. Armory, computer room, barracks, you name it. I have no idea at all how no one noticed. It's like something the CIA would be jealous of."
"Jesus." Henries slowly shook his head, watching as over half the available cops in the city, including two SWAT teams, dealt with a crowd of extremely upset obviously military-trained people, almost certainly mercenaries, and put them into a whole fleet of vans in cuffs. There were two more large trucks being filled with enough weapons to hold off the Viet Cong for a month as well, which was deeply worrying. The bomb squad that was coming out of the formerly hidden door looking concerned didn't bode well either. "Who was it? Empire?"
"Coil. Dead in his office, behind a locked door we had to cut our way through. Doc says it was an allergic reaction to something, probably an insect sting. There was an unused epipen on the floor next to him. Looks like he didn't manage to get it into himself in time." Lieutenant Warner looked at him, then back to the huge crowd of cops and fire department personnel dealing with an unprecedented operation right in the middle of the city. The entire street was blocked at both ends and onlookers were videoing everything from all over the place. "Guess who Coil really was?"
Captain Henries gave his subordinate a careful look. The other man was wearing a slightly dark smile. "Who?"
"Ever met Thomas Calvert?"
The name seemed familiar, but it took him a few seconds to remember why. When he did… "Commander Thomas Calvert? From the PRT?"
"The very same."
"Oh, Christ. Do they know?" Henries had a feeling things were about to get even more complicated than they already were, and it was bad enough right now. Warner grinned somewhat nastily.
"Oh, no, that would be a matter for the Captain to deal with. I, a mere Lieutenant, couldn't take it on myself to liaise between the BBPD and a federal…"
Sighing, Henries raised his hand. "Enough. I get it. Stop enjoying this so much."
Snickering under his breath, Lieutenant Warner subsided. "So walk me through it. What actually happened here? I've heard at least three different stories since I arrived and none of them match." The captain kept watching, but glanced at the other man, who shook his head.
"We got an anonymous tip about an hour and a half ago claiming that a super-villain had a base under that office building," he began, nodding at the largest and newest of the buildings on the street. "And we were told that due to an imminent emergency evacuation due to a faulty warning alert sixty mercenaries were about to leave in a hurry, so if we wanted to have a discussion with them, we should probably arrange to be waiting outside."
"Who gave the tip?"
"We don't know. Young, female, sounded like she was thoroughly enjoying herself, but that's it."
"Parahuman? Vigilante, maybe?"
"The operator asked but the girl didn't confirm or deny it. She just passed on the message, and hung up. The phone number was traced to somewhere near here but we don't know exactly where. The techs think it might actually have come from inside that bunker but so far we can't prove it. They're checking into it right now."
"What do the prisoners say?"
"Not a lot. We got a couple of them to tell us that the internal alarms all went off, indicating a gas leak, a fire, a flood, the self-destruct system about to go off, and for all I know death, pestilence, and famine too. They didn't waste time trying to figure out what part of it was real and what wasn't, they just legged it. Something exploded on the bottom level while the alarms were sounding and I guess that made them think that at least part of it was really happening. The timing was very convenient, we'd only just arrived and got everyone in place then we were up to our asses in mercenaries. A couple of them looked like they wanted to try their luck, but we had a lot more guns pointing their way than they had pointing ours, so that didn't last long."
The captain nodded slowly, then his mind seized on the most important part of what he'd just heard. "Self-destruct system?" he echoed incredulously, his head snapping around to fix on the other man's. Lieutenant Warner nodded.
"Yeah. Honest, it's got a self-destruct system. Tons of explosives buried under it, from what the bomb boys said. But it was disabled somehow, and they claim it's basically inert now. Good thing too, it would probably have collapsed at least one building if the fucking thing went off."
"Holy fuck."
"That was my reaction too." Warner shrugged. "This guy was nuts. Even by Parahuman standards."
"Any signs of whoever it was that called in the warning?"
"No. Not a trace. Coil's office was wiped clean, not a single fingerprint left as far as we can find so far, but the techs are still working on that too. Two of his computer drives are missing as well, apparently. Everything else is still in there, except for one computer rack in his server room which looks like someone blew it up on purpose. I'm guessing it had incriminating evidence on it and whoever kicked all this off didn't want anyone getting their hands on it. But there's still a whole hell of a lot of stuff down there which will keep everyone busy for months." He handed the other man a document, which Henries accepted and glanced at. His eyes widened slightly.
"The Mayor will want to see this," Warner added.
"Yeah, I think he will," Henries breathed in shock. "Christ, this is going to get messy. The governor is going to have a stroke…"
"Glad I'm not involved in politics," Lieutenant Warner commented. "Good luck with the PRT."
"Oh, just fuck off and stop being sarcastic," Henries sighed as his subordinate gave him a small devious grin. "Go do your job."
"As you wish." The lieutenant saluted with two fingers, smirked a little, and headed off to talk to some of the other cops, while Henries looked at the document in his hand once more with a deep sigh. He knew a can of worms when he saw one and the one he was holding had some enormous worms in it...
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Emily Piggot clicked on the PHO link her deputy, a very strange expression on his face, wordlessly indicated over her shoulder, while sipping from her coffee mug. A moment of incredulous reading later the mouthful of coffee exploded out of her. She stared open-mouthed at the screen.
Coil (deceased) – Parahuman alias of Thomas Calvert, a super villain who had a hidden underground base just off James Street in the commercial district of Brockton Bay. The base, on two floors with a third level for infrastructure (see map) was equipped with facilities for supporting up to two hundred staff, but at the present time only sixty people plus Coil were resident. The armory (see inventory) contained a large quantity of weapons ranging from hand guns to heavy machine guns, as well as rocket launchers, ammunition, grenades, and other equipment. Of particular note are the Tinker-made laser projectors, purchased by Coil from an unknown source (see pictures) but presumed to be of Toybox manufacture.
Coil's power was a potent Thinker one, specifically a precognitive ability allowing him to essentially experience two versions of events, which seemed to work via simulating a period of time then letting him choose which version he wished to keep. He used this power to among other things avoid detection by the PRT, who he was working for even while he was simultaneously running a villainous Parahuman organization employing trained mercenaries. His organization is implicated in at least eighteen murders, nine kidnappings, dozens of blackmail plots, embezzlement and fraud on a massive scale, interference with political and business entities across much of the eastern seaboard, organized crime, and numerous other illegal activities the full scope of which may not come to light for months.
At the current time the BBPD is involved in dismantling Coil's operation and…
Lifting her eyes, Emily gaped at Renick, who shrugged helplessly. A moment later her phone rang.
Swearing under her breath and wishing that Calvert was alive so she could shoot him a few times, she picked it up and fielded the first of an awful lot of phone calls. By the time she finally went home that night, she was exhausted, but at least had the luxury of knowing that someone she heartily hated had come to an ignominious end. Pity it couldn't have happened many years earlier.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Why's she grinning like that, Brian?"
"I have no idea, but it's making me very nervous…"
"Hey, Tats? You get laid or something?"
"Better. Way, way better."
Lisa grinned even more widely, then went to bed secure in the knowledge of a job well done. And still trying to work out what the fuck 'Vespa' really was, although she for one wasn't going to dig too deeply in case she found out…
Yeah. Today had started somewhat worryingly, and ended far more so, but overall she felt the results were worth all the confusion and chaos.
And she had quite the nest egg now, but she'd wait until tomorrow to tell the others.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Lying in bed, Taylor made her plans, laughing quietly to herself occasionally. So many options now seemed viable that she was having trouble working out what to do first.
"Taylor?"
"Yeah, dad?" She looked around to see her dad peering in at her, the light from her antennae casting his face into relief against the dark of the hallway. On top of her head, Vespa watched him too.
"Any chance you could stop plotting world domination quite so… happily? Because I need my sleep and that laughing is a little creepier than you probably realize…" He smiled a little at her as she flushed with embarrassment. "It's nice to see you enjoying yourself so much, don't get me wrong, but if you could keep the mildly insane and quite disturbing giggles inside your head I'd be able to go to sleep."
"I'm not plotting world domination," she protested with a grin.
"Just the city, then?"
"Only bits of it. Bits no one else is using."
Shaking his head, he fondly replied, "I knew showing you those maps was a mistake."
"It was fantastic, and thanks so much," she told him cheerfully. "I'll be quiet."
"That's all I ask. Sleep well."
"You too, Dad." He withdrew and a moment later she heard his bedroom door close. Smiling to herself, she went back to writing for a while, before finally putting the pad to one side, closing her eyes, turning off the bioluminescent glow, and falling asleep.
It had been a long but worthwhile day even though it hadn't ended at all like she'd planned on. But that was life sometimes.
You just had to roll with it and move on.
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GreydonCreed
Man of Culture
- Location
- United States
Oh no, Thomas Calvert aka Coil has passed away from anaphylaxis shock from wasp stings.
Such a shame. 😐
No, really. 😑
Anyways, moving on... 🤓
Such a shame. 😐
No, really. 😑
Anyways, moving on... 🤓
Well, that is one way to take out a supervillain!
i propose a check to see if any nazi's might have similarly issues, just for science you see
i propose a check to see if any nazi's might have similarly issues, just for science you see
- Location
- Somewhere
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Dragon wonders why she has a sneezing subroutine.
You know I like how ambiguous it is if coil couldn't simulate Taylor or if he dropped them before she got to him in all the torture and kill throw away timelines
2. Guest Omake - There and Back Again, A Vespa's Tale
Loki Thorson
The Iron Wordsmith
- Location
- The Land of Maple Syrup, Midgard
There and Back Again, A Vespa's Tale
- - - -
Extract from Chapter 16 - Riddles In The Underside -
... And there, deep, deep under the dark mountain city, where all light had been forsaken, was a black lake that carried streams of brackish waters to and from the nearby seas. Upon the rock pitted shores of the lake there were the broken remains of a smuggler's raft, a century shattered and half drowned. For it's former occupants had no more use of the thing.
A shear wind blew threw the expansive cavern, that no eyes could see the ends of, that stirred little waves that splashed and sploshed across the dreary scene. But if one were to listen closely, over coming the loud beating of their chest, they could hear those waves lapping, lapping against something deep in the darkness.
For in the middle of this black lake was a jagged black rock that spiked sharply up from the lake bed that the black waters lapped against. And from this rock, something whispered.
"It sings to us, my pet," a slimy horse voice echoed over the water, "Yes, yes. Sings to us it does. Shiny things it has, it does. It owns. It's mine! Yes my precious pet, brings it to us it will. Takes it, we will! All mine, mine! Cal-Drum; Cal-Drum," the creature croaked.
- - - -
"Taylor!" Danny cried out to his daughter in exasperation. Putting the pages he had been reading down on the table.
"Yeah Dad?" chirped Taylor with a small laugh. "Is there something wrong with that report you wanted?"
Danny sighed at his currently glowing child. "Yes. When I asked you to write up a report on the state of Brockton Bay's underground, for use by the city workers to find cracks in the foundations, among other things. I didn't expect you to try and butcher Tolkien!"
Taylor snickered under her breathe.
"And the characters," Danny complained. "Vista, as a bearded wizardess, which is not a word, leading a bunch of dwarven dockworkers and an insect girl on an adventure to reclaim their ancient city home back from a dragon called Shmee-Lung... I honestly can't picture Zyphron being that short in the first place."
His daughter just started to giggle harder.
"New Wave as the elves, you got to close to that Goody Girl didn't you?" Danny pointed out, flipping randomly through the papers now in hand, "The nazis as an infestation of evil frogs, the French won't forget the insult. The Merchants as goblins... I'll give you that." More pages were flipped, "You have the PRT down as the Men of The West who only show up in the last chapter to say there's nothing to see here."
Taylor was now just openly laughing.
"And that Thomas fellow, you have him as a paranoid schizoid who spends his days plotting to steal everything not nailed down and eating coiled eels he pulls out the water and bashes on rocks. What do you have to say to this young woman?"
Taylor gave her father a big grin, "You didn't say I couldn't write it in the style of Tolkien!"
- - - -
Extract from Chapter 16 - Riddles In The Underside -
... And there, deep, deep under the dark mountain city, where all light had been forsaken, was a black lake that carried streams of brackish waters to and from the nearby seas. Upon the rock pitted shores of the lake there were the broken remains of a smuggler's raft, a century shattered and half drowned. For it's former occupants had no more use of the thing.
A shear wind blew threw the expansive cavern, that no eyes could see the ends of, that stirred little waves that splashed and sploshed across the dreary scene. But if one were to listen closely, over coming the loud beating of their chest, they could hear those waves lapping, lapping against something deep in the darkness.
For in the middle of this black lake was a jagged black rock that spiked sharply up from the lake bed that the black waters lapped against. And from this rock, something whispered.
"It sings to us, my pet," a slimy horse voice echoed over the water, "Yes, yes. Sings to us it does. Shiny things it has, it does. It owns. It's mine! Yes my precious pet, brings it to us it will. Takes it, we will! All mine, mine! Cal-Drum; Cal-Drum," the creature croaked.
- - - -
"Taylor!" Danny cried out to his daughter in exasperation. Putting the pages he had been reading down on the table.
"Yeah Dad?" chirped Taylor with a small laugh. "Is there something wrong with that report you wanted?"
Danny sighed at his currently glowing child. "Yes. When I asked you to write up a report on the state of Brockton Bay's underground, for use by the city workers to find cracks in the foundations, among other things. I didn't expect you to try and butcher Tolkien!"
Taylor snickered under her breathe.
"And the characters," Danny complained. "Vista, as a bearded wizardess, which is not a word, leading a bunch of dwarven dockworkers and an insect girl on an adventure to reclaim their ancient city home back from a dragon called Shmee-Lung... I honestly can't picture Zyphron being that short in the first place."
His daughter just started to giggle harder.
"New Wave as the elves, you got to close to that Goody Girl didn't you?" Danny pointed out, flipping randomly through the papers now in hand, "The nazis as an infestation of evil frogs, the French won't forget the insult. The Merchants as goblins... I'll give you that." More pages were flipped, "You have the PRT down as the Men of The West who only show up in the last chapter to say there's nothing to see here."
Taylor was now just openly laughing.
"And that Thomas fellow, you have him as a paranoid schizoid who spends his days plotting to steal everything not nailed down and eating coiled eels he pulls out the water and bashes on rocks. What do you have to say to this young woman?"
Taylor gave her father a big grin, "You didn't say I couldn't write it in the style of Tolkien!"
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- Location
- <CLASSIFIED>
At first I thought that's a funny way to spell Det Cord but it turns out that not only is shock tube a real thing but for a self-destruct system it's much better/safer then Det Cord or electric blasting caps.
That sounds like Coil used ANFO as the primary explosive in his self-destruct. Which is odd since ANFO has a really short shelf life once mixed up and ready to explode. I would've expected him to use C4/SEMTEX or PETN.