章 1261: 22
Interlude 2.x (Coil)
As the PRT vehicle exited the building, his men were in position to track it. He had several agents observing from far away, and some much closer, following by car.
This sort of tracking was by no means simple to accomplish. In an urban environment, buildings frequently got in the way of visual observation, and he could not deploy helicopters without being noticed. Remote-control drones were possible, but still had a high risk of discovery, at least when dealing with the PRT.
It would be much simpler if one of his agents had managed to placing a tracking device on the PRT vehicle but unfortunately there was no opportunity to do so.
The result was that his men were in multiple locations and moving strategically on other streets in anticipation of where the PRT vehicle could make turns, while one vehicle followed from behind. The one vehicle following behind would periodically switch with another vehicle. He did have one drone tracking from very high overhead, high enough that it wouldn't be easily detected without a focused search in the air. Although the PRT could still theoretically detect it fairly easily, he did not expect them to put in the effort.
They were only transporting unaffiliated capes, after all. Assuming, of course, that the three new capes hadn't joined the Protectorate or Wards. That was very unlikely, Coil thought, given his observations of their behaviour before, and Polychromic's claim to be an as of yet unnamed new hero team.
Even in PRT operations, it was not usual to take many precautions to look for anything spying on them. That was because the villains they dealt with did not usually use such spying tactics, nor was there any particular reason to be secretive about operations which were not meant to be secret. Unaffiliated, even registered heroes and rogues, who were not part of the Protectorate or Wards proper were responsible for their own anonymity.
As soon as the PRT vehicle made some distance away from the HQ building, he split the timeline.
On one timeline, his men moved cautiously, staying well away. In the other, the van following from behind began moving closer.
Shortly after, one of his moles in the PRT informed him that a PRT group had been deployed to tail a vehicle suspected of tailing the vehicle carrying the three capes.
He closed that timeline and split again, repeating the order to get closer.
After a few times, he determined that they were detecting the vehicle he ordered to follow from behind at around one and a half blocks.
Previously, he had learned from Tattletale in a discarded timeline that the bug cape who named herself Skitter on Polychromic's suggestion could sense things through her bugs. That was the likely reason they had been able to find Tattletale's position so quickly in the timelines where he ordered the Undersiders to make contact after the Lung fight.
Now he knew that Skitter's power was probably limited to less than two blocks.
When the PRT van dropped of the three capes and they went to a dark alley, he split the timeline again.
In one timeline his men stayed back out of range. In the other, he ordered them to move in and capture them.
As he expected, the following battle went little better than the Undersiders' own approach.
Once his men were within one and a half blocks, large masses of insects attacked them and still more covered the three capes' escape.
His men were not outfitted to effectively deal with the bugs, their armor not fully sealed, so they quickly went down, while Coil's drone lost track of them in the darkness created by the bugs.
He had to re-evaluate the threat and value of the bug controlling cape. Her power did not seem impressive at first, but it was proving surprisingly versatile and effective. Her performance lent credence to Tattletale's theory that Polychromic's group wanted to recruit her by all means.
He closed the timeline after his mole at the PRT informed him that they were deploying troops in response to a report of an attack by an organized group with Tinkertech weapons close to where the three capes had been dropped off. That was his men, obviously.
The mention of Tinkertech weapons was curious. While his men did carry Tinkertech rifles, it was surprising that the bug cape could recognize them as such, when they had not used widely by his mercenaries yet during other operations.
In the other timeline, he waited until the three capes split up and ordered his men to keep following. Two teams were assigned to follow Skitter while three were assigned to follow Polychromic and Araliac.
Once again he tested them using discarded timelines, determining that the bug girl was indeed detecting his men at around one and a half blocks, while Polychromic and Araliac had no apparent reaction.
Next, he split a timeline to test how Polychromic and Araliac responded to an attack without the bug cape.
This time the battle went much better for his troops. The two capes did not appear to sense the incoming assailants until they were attacked, and their attempts to escape on foot were entirely ineffective.
Polychromic demonstrated no powers whatsoever, and went down easily from the stunning rounds his men fired.
Araliac, or Panacea if Tattletale was right, fared only a little better. She launched some kind of small organisms from her sleeves that released a rapidly moving airborne sedative, but they were unintelligent and clearly not under her control once they were launched. Her jet spray and organisms were simply outranged by Coil's men's guns, and she was easily defeated.
The only problem was that even after she was defeated, Coil's men that tried to approach her and Polychromic's bodies to capture them fell unconscious once they got close.
Gas masks apparently were insufficient to stop whatever was bringing down his men.
He closed that timeline and in the other, his men had followed the two to a warehouse.
Just as he was about to order his men to enter the warehouse, Polychromic and Araliac exited again.
In one timeline, he ordered two teams to keep following and one team to stay behind. In the other, the allocation was reversed.
The teams that stayed behind observed more people in civilian attire exiting from the warehouse several times. There were five different individuals or groups that left the warehouse at different times, going in different directions over the span of ten minutes.
Even in the second timeline, Coil didn't have enough men deployed to keep tracking all of them, as he did not expect to have to deal with so many people.
He began to suspect that there was something wrong. He quickly made the decision to close the first timeline and split again, ordering his men to tail the people who exited in one timeline, and ordering his men to capture them in the second.
In the first timeline, his two teams that stayed behind split into six individual agents, five to follow and one to stay behind and keep watching the warehouse.
In the second timeline, all six of his agents deployed to attack and capture the enemy agents. None of them showed any powers or weapons. They were easily subdued and gathered up in the two vans the two teams were driving.
A short interrogation and body search turned up nothing useful. The captured people did not seem like trained agents, they simply didn't know anything. They all had the same story: a masked and cloaked man had paid them earlier in the day to wait for two individuals in motorcycle outfits to arrive. Then after the two individuals left the warehouse, they would leave the warehouse in turns, go to a specified location, and leave a coded note there.
He collapsed the timeline and ordered his people back to the warehouse. He had been played, he realized. All the people who left after Polychromic and Araliac were just decoys—distractions that would also reveal the existence of somebody targeting them, if they failed to deliver their notes.
He was dealing with a rather paranoid group. Fortunately Coil could simply discard the timeline and leave no evidence behind.
Suddenly his agent who remained to observe warehouse reported that a black van drove up to the entrance. It had been nearly twenty minutes since the last person left the warehouse.
Two figures in hoods and cloaks now exited the warehouse and entered the van, which drove off at a high speed.
Alarmed, Coil split the timeline and ordered his last agent to follow in one of them. His other agents were still returning to the warehouse from their cancelled tailing of the decoys.
Meanwhile, in both timelines, the team tracking Polychromic and Araliac—no, those may have been decoys too, Coil realized—reported that they had stopped in an alley and waited until a hooded figure appeared before them.
"He's got a suitcase with him, and he's opening it. It looks like they're checking the contents."
"Can you see what's inside?" Coil asked.
"Not from this angle—wait is that a vial? Damn, they're done, they're leaving now."
"Keep following them on car. One of you move out and follow the one who gave them the suitcase."
When his men arrived back at the warehouse, he collapsed the timeline where his last agent stayed behind instead of following the van. In this way, he ensured that he was able to keep the warehouse under observation without any gaps.
Then he split again, and ordered the other team to capture both the agent who handed over the suitcase as well as Polychromic and Araliac.
This time the two in costume went down without a fight. And once unmasked, the girl revealed was certainly not Amy Dallon, the publicly known identity of Panacea. They were fake.
A short interrogation once again revealed noting useful except that they'd been hired for a one-time job. They received their costumes from the actual Polychromic and Araliac that arrived in the warehouse. After that they were to pick up a package and drop it off. The one who gave them the package also knew nothing.
On the other hand, through a video feed, he was able to see the contents of the suitcase, which was revealed to be three vials that looked remarkably like the vial he had once purchased from Cauldron, along with three sheets of paper. On each was a different label and code, along with qualities indicated by a letter category and a number.
Were they real, Coil had to wonder. The vial he had purchased from Cauldron came with a set of instructions, disclaimers, and warnings, but nothing about its properties. Before he made his purchase, Cauldron had verbally told him what his potential choices were, in terms of possible powers, the strength of the power, and unwanted side effects. But nothing as clear cut as what he was seeing here. He looked closely at one of the sheets.
25% C0072/60% M1020/15% Foreign Element
R: 6
O: 8
P: 2,7,11
Then again, it was not particularly clear what any of the codes and properties referred to, despite being numeric and more precise compared to an estimate of "high" or "low". He had no idea what any of these referred to.
The best way to find out was to have someone drink it. His mercenaries were loyal, but not loyal to the point that they would drink a suspicious liquid taken from enemies on his orders, so he told them to force feed the captured fakes. Both of them fainted about half a minute after drinking the vials.
That was supposed to happen, Coil remembered. He had also fainted shortly after drinking the vials, and woke up not long after. Just like he did, the two fakes also woke up after another minute.
There were no clear signs that anything had changed, but many powers were not obvious or even instinctive. The only way to be sure was to scan their brains for the Corona Pollentia, and that could only be done at his base. He would also have to find a test subject who didn't already have a Corona Pollentia, otherwise the test would be inconclusive. Coil was aware that those with the potential to trigger naturally all had Corona Pollentias, which could not be easily distinguished from those who were actual capes.
He closed the timeline and decided to find an opportunity to take the vials later. For now, he would let the team continue tracking the fakes to see where they were taking the vials.
He checked back with the agent following the van. A snarl of frustration escaped his lips when the agent reported that the van entered a private condominium underground parking lot with security guards at the entrance.
He lost them. Once in the building, they could easily hide and mix with the residents or switch to another car. He split a timeline and ordered the agent to break through by force, but it was useless. Breaking through the guards by force put the two capes on alert, and in the enclosed space of the parking lot, his agent was easily defeated by the true Polychromic and Araliac.
O O O
By the time he exited the PRT building, Thomas Calvert was in a foul mood. He didn't show any of it on his expression during his meeting with Piggot, but he had been infuriated by the day's events. Not only had he completely failed to track down Polychromic to his base in the morning, he had been locked down the entire day at the PRT while his other timeline where he skipped work to stay at base produced nothing useful in his investigation into Polychromic.
Worse yet, there hadn't been an opportunity to check the top secret classified related file referred to in the Panacea disappearance file. Because his power was being used the whole day, and he was being heavily monitored, there was no chance to access the physically stored files.
Then there was the disappearance of Shadow Stalker and his supposed imposter, which made him feel all the more threatened. He didn't believe that it could be a coincidence that they chose to use his name—whoever did it had to be targeting him. What truly infuriated him was that it almost seemed like something he would have done himself, except it wasn't him.
In the other timeline he had closed where he stayed at base, he had found out that Sophia Hess was wanted for attempted murder by the police in her civilian identity due to a new witness that came forward to testify on the locker incident from several months ago. Madison Clements had apparently confessed to the police— suspicious, Calvert thought—and Sophia escaped from school when the police investigators arrived to arrest her.
Only then did his imposter conveniently warn her about a supposed new Master, playing on her paranoia and leading to her disappearance.
It was a beautiful plan that Coil might have used to recruit Shadow Stalker to his own villain organization, except for the fact that his name was exposed and the PRT broke into his house when he was also suspiciously absent from work, forcing him to choose this timeline and using his powers again to navigate the PRT's interrogation of him at HQ.
It was maddening that he could lose control and be a piece in someone else's game. It was a feeling deeply unfamiliar to Coil ever since he had acquired his powers.
And his instincts told him Polychromic had something to do with it.
The only saving grace was that the Cauldron vials had been retrieved to base, and he had also identified Skitter as Taylor Hebert after his men tracked her to her house.
As soon as he got home he split again, using one timeline to connect to PRT networks to access the latest information on the Shadow Stalker disappearance case, and the other to make preparations for dinner. He had a lot to do tonight.
O O O
He ended the successful call with Faultline and closed the other timeline where he hadn't called her.
It wasn't easy to negotiate with Faultline. He rarely hired Faultline's Crew because he didn't want to rely on a mercenary team that wasn't subordinate and loyal to him, but in this case he didn't have any better options.
His Tattletale was a useful source of information, but he couldn't deploy the Undersiders in this kind of reconnaissance operation. Not yet, in any case. They lacked the skills and the mindset for it.
The vials had turned out to be fake as he had expected, but then that raised the question of why Polychromic had arranged for the transport of fake vials. He had racked his brain trying to figure out why and the only thing he could think of was that it was a message. Nobody had picked it up, and leaving something like that for a long time was very insecure. But like the notes that the other homeless people from the warehouse had been instructed to leave at specified locations, merely leaving the vials would be enough to deliver a message. But to who? If it was simply to check whether somebody had been following and intercepting them, they wouldn't have needed such an elaborate ruse, a simple note or other random object would have been fine.
So then it wasn't just the fact that it was successfully delivered that had to be communicated, but also that they were fake Cauldron vials. From this, Coil deduced that the message was meant for somebody who could recognize them. Somebody like himself, in fact. Was it a warning, a threat to stop, lest he incur the wrath of that organization? He thought it unlikely. Cauldron had other means of warning him.
Then was it an invitation to a curious person that wanted to know what links Polychromic had to that organization? Or perhaps there was a coded message embedded in the papers?
To these questions Coil had yet no answer. But it did give him the idea to use Cauldron as bait to entice Faultline. She might even find a real link there, in which case she would be a useful buffer to protect himself from retribution.
He wouldn't normally want to antagonize Cauldron but after he found out that somebody used his name to contact Shadow Stalker, Coil decided that he had to take a more aggressive approach. Polychromic, the Stranger or Mover that worked with him, and CRUCIBLE had proven themselves very dangerous, and now there was somebody actively targeting Thomas Calvert's civilian identity, so the situation merited a tougher response.
Done with everything that needed his power, he split the timeline again and in one he went into his secret room attached to his main office at base. In here, he would be fully secure as he slept.
In the other timeline, he stayed up and did his usual routine, looking into important news around the city, other PRT operations, checking his stocks, Fortress Construction's business, etc.
It was a strange sensation when he was asleep in one timeline and awake in the other. He had gotten used to it by now, but the dissonance of being blissfully asleep yet also aware of being asleep from the wake timeline was always noticeable.
It was especially strange when he was dreaming. As long as he was awake in one timeline, he could be distinctly aware of when he fell asleep, and when he was dreaming. This also meant that all of his dreams were lucid.
If his power's discarded timelines could be likened to a dream for the Thomas Calvert in the true timeline, then his dreams could also be likened to a use of his power. After all, he could do whatever he wanted with no consequence except the same limitation that time would always pass, and their lucidity made them so vivid as to be real.
That too was one of the reasons he tried not to use his power frivolously too often. If he did anything he absolutely could not tolerate in the true timeline, yet accidently closed the wrong timeline, that would be most unfortunate. If he wanted to relieve stress, it would be simple to do so in a dream instead, where there was no risk.
So while he worked in one timeline, he was relieving his stress in the other, with violent, destructive fantasies, like—
A shock tore through his body—he tried to grab for his gun—
Taser—paralyzed—
Something sprayed into his face, and he desperately tried to stop breathing, but his muscles spasmed with current and he couldn't control himself.
When the taser was removed from his back, his vision was already blurring, and something was roughly shoved onto his face, covering his nose and mouth.
Just before he blacked out, he tried to wake up in his secure sleeping timeline while he was still lucid, fearful that he would be truly unconscious for the first time in years.
He didn't wake up.
O O O
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