章 1255: 16
Discretion 2.3
"Hmmfuhe, muahahaha…haHAHAHA!"
When I ended the phone call, I just couldn't resist laughing. It was premature, but like any proper devious mastermind, it was necessary. Laughter reduced stress after all.
I went back to the apartment and checked on the portal. It was still open.
As I tracked Sophia's movements with Agate, I began to feel nervous. If I arrived in Brocton Bay I could have potentially done much more preparation. Although that may have caused unexpected butterflies, it was hard to deny that the current situation put me under a lot of pressure.
Agate could only be in one place at a time, and there were several other things I wanted to know. The location of Coil's base, the Undersiders, what was happening in PRT HQ and their review of Thomas Calvert, Taylor's status, etc. If I could have tracked the people I sent to mislead any of Coil's men tracking me down, that too would let me feel more secure, give me clues as to whether Coil had been successfully cut off from my real tracks. Too many things and not enough resources to monitor it all. I had not even the time to try and set up secret bugs like I did with Winslow, though of course those wouldn't work in the PRT building or other secure locations.
This portal was making me anxious too. I couldn't rely on it yet as an attack vector or escape mechanism yet. I was…extremely vulnerable right now.
But then again, the thrill was undeniable. From the moment my life changed in that park. I've felt more alive than ever before. How could I be bored anymore, when my life was on the line?
It wasn't really all that different from poker, really. The stakes were higher, sure, but ultimately, the biggest wins could only come from big risks. You can't make any money by waiting for pocket Aces all day. Caution was a choice that carried a price of its own.
I wanted to win everything. It wasn't enough to kill Coil. I wanted all his money and his capes, his entire organization.
Lisa was able to take it over, so why couldn't I? Her power barely worked for five minutes a day. The more I thought about it, the more I became confident that I was not as helpless as I originally thought when I first arrived on Earth-Bet.
With Calvert stuck at PRT, he could at best move by proxy. A body double with nowhere near Coil's own prowess, and obviously none of the true access that would give him control over the actual organization if he betrayed Calvert.
He couldn't even risk ending this timeline and not going to the PRT, unless he was ready to come under even more suspicion by being conspicuously absent when Shadow Stalker called in.
That was in fact one of the advantages I realized I had. Everyone else had a history, relationships and assets, a base of some sort that they had to defend. They could be attacked and forced to move the way I wanted them to.
Simply put, even though my schemes didn't appear to have much to do with Coil so far I'd already placed him in a discovered check, to borrow chess terminology. Now I just had to keep checking him until I won.
I switched phones and called Taylor. She picked up after several long rings.
"Hel—"
I shouted into the phone and cut her off as soon as she picked up.
"Taylor we have an emergency your father is in danger I've been keeping tabs on Sophia throughout the morning and she suddenly ran off after getting a call from some PRT commander who ordered her to capture your father!" I said the whole thing without any pauses and ran out of breath.
"What? Sophia—dad's in danger?!"
"I'm tracking her right now, and it looks like she's headed straight for the dockworker's union!"
"Wha—why?!"
"Taylor, where are you right now? Are you still at school?"
"I'm in the girls' room right now. I was just about to go to the principal's office after they called me. They called Emma and Sophia earlier too, but my bugs noticed Sophia leaving when they called her. I thought she was just dodging the police! Why would the PRT want my dad?!"
"I'm not sure what's going on. The guy who called her called himself Thomas Calvert, PRT commander, but she also called PRT HQ and deputy director Renick told her it was an imposter. She didn't believe Renick though, because he wouldn't let her talk to Piggot, Armsmaster, or Miss Militia. The Calvert guy convinced Sophia that your dad Mastered everyone in the PRT. "
"That's ridiculous! My dad doesn't have any powers! We have to stop them!"
"I'm heading over right away. We won't let anything happen to your dad. You, on the other hand, should stay where you are."
"The hell? No! I'm not staying here while my dad is in danger! Why are you treating me like a kid all of a sudden? Didn't we take down Lung together? I can help!"
"That's not it, Taylor. Listen to me. That Calvert guy ordered Shadow Stalker to capture your father, not kill, and the deputy director had no idea what was going on. That means the PRT didn't officially sanction this operation. There's two possibilities here, either the Calvert guy is running a secret PRT black op, or he's a villain trying to take a hostage. In both cases, they'd have to do it without anyone noticing, so Shadow Stalker would have to look for the right opportunity. Abducting him out of his office would be very hard. The best time would probably be when he's alone, on his way back home. You get what I'm saying?"
"So what? If I come now, we have better chances of preparing for it!"
"Yes, but the police are working your bullying case right now at school, while Sophia has, from their perspective, conveniently ditched school right when they're investigating her. The best thing for you to do is cooperate with them for now. Moreover, think about why the PRT or a villain would go after your dad in the first place. He's not a cape, so whoever it is must be trying to get leverage over you, maybe because they figured out you're a cape, or they hope that they can draw you out to confirm their suspicions of you being a cape. Either way, if you conspicuously leave school now, you'd be playing into their hands. Better to pretend like you don't know anything yet, put more pressure on Sophia and the PRT through the police investigation, and rendezvous with us after school is over. You'll still be in time to help us stop Shadow Stalker, because your dad shouldn't go home from work until late afternoon, right?"
There was a few seconds of silence on the line.
"You said you can see the future didn't you? Do you know for sure that she won't do anything before then? Can you guarantee my dad is going to be okay?"
"My precognition doesn't really work that way. I'll explain the details later, but basically I can't see any future that continues from the present, only some possible futures that branched off from some divergence point in the past. Unfortunately I haven't seen this situation happening before now, so I can't give you the answer you want to hear. I can only say that I believe we can protect him."
Another silence followed.
"Fine. I'll trust you. I'll wait until school is over. But you better tell me if Sophia makes a move!"
"I will. Don't worry, everything will be fine."
Of course it would. Naturally, I didn't leave Sophia to her own devices in this operation.
I left a note for Panacea in case she woke up. Half an hour later, I was back at the abandoned warehouse, and Sophia had confirmed that she picked up the burner phone I put in a dead drop after discarding her traceable PRT phone.
I recalled Agate and opened a few more test portals to the same empty world after I moved some of the crates and things around so that none of them would be easily found by people randomly coming in to this warehouse. I didn't dare open a portal to a random world yet because having people come through would be very bad.
This warehouse I was going to make a temporary base until I could establish a base off-world. It was only ten minutes away from the apartment and didn't have any squatters. There was no decent furniture left behind, no working utilities, and a ton of debris all around. It wasn't secure either so I couldn't use it as real base, but it was good enough to keep some stuff stashed.
The new group of portals were opened using some different parameters in order to test what could be adjusted to affect the decay rate.
'No signs of animal life near here. There's a few mountains nearby and a river, but that's about it,' Agate reported after going through.
There was nothing dangerous to me, so I also opened one at ground level so I could go through.
This new world was a strange one that seemed devoid of either animals or complex plants. There were no longer any signs of the Cauldron compound that the Simurgh attacked, except for some wrecked land and grass. I did not have the time to waste exploring far, so I went back to the warehouse after having Agate look for any Cauldron vial remnants, which we didn't find either. On the other hand, we did find a suitable mountain cave to be a future base of sorts.
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