Kapitel 1262: 23
Volition 3.1
I dragged Coil's unconscious body through the portal and back to the cave, where I quickly blindfolded, gagged, restrained, and stripped him, then put him inside an empty crate that I secured to some bolts I planted in the ground and cave walls.
It went surprisingly smoothly, but I couldn't be certain of my victory yet. The possibility existed that Coil wouldn't be keeping this timeline and he would merely be alerted to an attack. I had to wait a bit longer before I could be confident that I had won.
Earlier, when I observed that he was testing the Cauldron vials, I knew he was probably at base in both timelines, and I thought it was very likely he had stayed there for the conversation with Tattletale and Faultline as well. Even if he didn't, he needed to choose the timeline where he stayed if he wanted to keep his results from negotiating with them.
By then I had decided it was necessary to attack Coil as soon as possible and formulated a plan.
I would wait until late night to see if he went to sleep. If he did, I would wait until I was sure he had fallen asleep, then strike.
If he didn't go to sleep, I would observe for clues that he had a sleep timeline going. If I were Coil, I would be planning to keep a sleeping timeline to ensure my good health, so in the other timeline I couldn't be doing anything too important as it would be discarded after waking up in the morning.
Finally, if he didn't go to sleep and I couldn't deduce whether he had a sleep timeline going, I would strike after a set amount of time had passed no matter what.
So when I saw Coil doing what seemed to be general research and information gathering, without any active operations going on, and having finished with the calls earlier, I thought he probably had a sleep timeline going.
If I was right, then it was my victory.
If I was wrong and he was off doing something else, then because Agate would still be observing him, the me in that other timeline would know if he knew that he had been attacked in this timeline, and respond accordingly by rushing to attack before he could surround himself with guards.
If he managed to get to guards before I attacked, I would have to deploy area sedation bombs through the portal to try and knock all of them unconscious while Agate attacked them physically on the other side.
If I judged it too risky to strike for whatever reason and decided against attacking at the pre-determined time, then it would become a waiting game. I would camp at the cave, essentially immune to any threat that couldn't reach across dimensions, until there was a chance to strike. I was ready to stay camped here for days if necessary.
Tonight was my best chance to defeat Coil before he knew too much about me, and my success in capturing him seemed to prove that.
But the conditions hadn't been ideal. The biggest problem was that the portals lasted 21 minutes each because we didn't have enough time to refine it further. The portal I had used to capture Coil was still open, in fact.
Because the portal stayed open for too long, I could be pursued through it. Moreover, it limited me to attacking Coil in an isolated place where nobody else would go, like his base or his house. If he simply stayed in public, my plan would fail.
The second problem was how to manage Coil's imprisonment. Because I had ended up attacking so soon after Agate acquired the ability to open portals, I couldn't explain this to Amelia or Taylor.
I suddenly captured a man who was Coil, demonstrating a new power to use portals and attack people from anywhere? That was highly suspicious. We were a team, after all. Why didn't I include them in this operation, and how did they even know the man I captured was really Coil?
Originally, I had been thinking about revealing the portals to Amelia and Taylor first, then planning to defeat Coil when he went for Dinah. I was quite certain that he would be using his powers to guarantee the success of that operation. That way, we would have indisputable proof of Coil's evil nature, allowing me to justify capturing him.
But because he hadn't actually kidnapped Dinah yet, he hadn't yet committed any truly despicable crimes. If I let him talk, he might even convince the girls that he was a misunderstood hero trying to fight against a corrupt system.
That was also why I couldn't include them on this operation. I was going to attack even if he went to sleep as Thomas Calvert, but I couldn't share what I saw through Agate with the girls, which meant that from their perspective, we would be kidnapping a PRT official in their civilian identity that I claimed to be a villain purely based on my "precognition" and "projected senses" that they couldn't verify in any way.
But that was something to think about later.
I switched on Coil's costume and went back through the portal with a smirk.
O O O
Coil's costume was a decent fit for me. Not perfect, as I was slightly taller, but other than that it was surprisingly fitting. The way that the costume apparently clung to Coil's ribs was actually an illusion created by the costume's structure. Coil wasn't that skinny—as a commander in the field, he was quite fit and lean, muscled but not bulky.
I waited for the portal to close and got to work.
The first order of business was to get familiar with Coil's computer. I had already observed him using it through Agate, and managed to catch a number of important passwords, but it would take time to sort through all the information he had and truly understand his organization's operations.
One of the things that helped me significantly, and I imagine Tattletale when she took over as well, was that Coil didn't use biometric keys for anything. In order for his body double to handle his affairs when he was away, and to leave no evidence of Thomas Calvert being Coil, absolutely nothing in his organization required biometric scans.
Tattletale's power to just give her passwords was ludicrous but that would certainly allow her to take over most of Coil's operations and hack her way into his funds as well.
On the other hand, it also wasn't enough to find the compartmentalized accounts he had under various other identities that he didn't normally access by himself, instead using intermediaries to manage. There were also the accounts that couldn't be touched due to legal restrictions, like Fortress Constructions and various other companies, trusts, and real estate he owned.
As a result, Tattletale had only managed to steal a fraction of the funds I realized Coil had access to during the time I observed him.
Not having Tattletale's power, it would definitely take some time for me to seize all of Coil's assets, and I still needed more information out of Coil before I got everything I wanted.
That was why he was still alive.
After about an hour, I had a passing familiarity with what was available on his computer. I found his base construction blueprints and had Agate map it what had already been constructed in person as well. I found how to contact Circus, Chariot, Faultline's Crew, the Travelers, etc. I found how to make purchases from Toybox, equipment inventories and distributions at base, personnel listings, dossiers on every cape in Brockton Bay, and much, much more.
Too much information, really, it was a little overwhelming.
I also found out how to get in touch with the Number Man's banking organization to launder funds, which was critical. It seemed like such a minor thing, but I hadn't been able to find out through PHO or other public places. This would certainly put me on Cauldron's radar, but there was nothing I could do about it—everyone used Number Man's services.
Once I had that, I spent the next hour setting up some new accounts for myself, and moving funds from the accounts I observed Coil accessing before. It was an open question whether someone like Tattletale could hack into these new accounts, but I didn't think so.
If she could, she would have been able to simply hack any account of any villain organization in the world, giving her vast resources long before she took over from Coil. There were requirements and conditions to how her power generated passwords that I didn't fully understand yet.
But one thing I suspected that was her power couldn't pull computer generated random passwords. I suspected that despite what it looked like to me, Coil's passwords weren't truly random, and he didn't realize just how powerful Tattletale's ability was.
He must have used a custom password construction system that only appeared random, but allowed Coil to memorize the non-random keys associated with each account, and then the hash algorithm that he could mentally calculate each time in order to produce a unique password from each key. I did something similar myself for my own digital security measures back on my Earth, but the algorithm wasn't nearly as sophisticated as what Coil had to be using.
This meant that Tattletale was able to use her power to analyze Coil each time she met and interacted with him, until it was sufficient for her power to give her one of his password algorithms. Or maybe she used a keylogger, found a password manager somewhere, etc. I was fairly confident that she had to be exploiting an actual security vulnerability that Coil couldn't defend against once he was dead, while the PRT passwords she supposedly figured out were actually supplied by Coil to a certain extent.
For myself, I could now use actual computer generated passwords, and—
'The most secure password manager ever!' Agate finished for me.
And just like that, I was $30 million richer. The rest of the money would take some more work to acquire.
O O O
Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
-- Power-
Rangliste 
-- Power-
Stein