21

Discretion 2.8

Coil sat down in his main office room, which was isolated from the rest of the base and equipped with multiple computers and monitors. The first thing he did was to review status reports from his body double about his organization's operations, illegal businesses, base renovations, equipment purchases, while he was away.

As he was only gone for one day, it was done quickly. Satisfied that things were running smoothly and there were no significant issues, he moved on.

He brought up a file holding all the information he had on myself, Araliac, and Skitter. Then he called for one of his men to bring the vials recovered in the morning from where it was being stored to a closed room. He watched from his monitor the man go to the room and lock it.

Then he simply ordered the man to wait in the room.

Coil sat there without apparently doing anything for almost ten minutes.

Finally he ordered the man to dispose of the vials.

From his behaviour, I judged that Coil was at his base in both timelines. While he was doing nothing, he had to have been testing the vials in discarded timelines.

The easiest and surest way to determine whether the vials were real, or perhaps what powers they would produce, would be to simply have somebody drink them. But doing it in a throwaway timeline would also ensure that he wouldn't waste any vials on somebody unworthy in case they were real.

I did not know for sure if Coil's power was actually spitting and destroying timelines somehow—

'I don't think so. Not the destroying part, I mean. I can't detect when somebody else is transferring memories between parallel realities, but I should be able to detect if a reality that another version of me is in gets destroyed,' said Agate.

—or he simply simulated two timelines, but based on the test just now, he certainly believed that his power could accurately determine the outcome of a Cauldron trigger.

After that Coil added a few notes to his file.

:: Arranged fake Cauldron vials to be left at a drop-off point; no attempts to pick up after over 12 hours

:: All agents used in drop-off transport were one-off hires, no extended affiliation, unaware of purpose

:: Possible purpose—message?

O O O

"I can't believe that just happened," Amelia said as soon as we shut the door behind us.

"Well, we were just a bit lucky today with that full house," I said, sitting down on the couch.

"A great hand can be a terrible curse if your opponent has a better one, because it's so hard to give it up. And then when you lose, you just want to win it back because of how unfair it is. Then when you're in a losing streak, you think to yourself that it can't last, chances are things will even out if you stick it through…but that's not how probability works."

I reached into my bag and took out two thick wads of cash, placing them on the table. "That's how most people fall into the trap of gambling everything away."

"Shit. How much did we start with again?" Amelia picked up the wads, flipping through them for the novelty.

"Well, we went in the casino with $1200. After Blackjack we had $2900. Then I lost a bit and you had $2500 when we sat down with that guy."

"Wow. I'm starting to understand how people can get addicted. If you can go in with one thousand and walk away with twenty after a few hours…"

I took the cash out of her hands and wagged a finger in front of her. "Hey, don't be fooled. This sort of thing doesn't happen often. I was doing this for a week before you joined up with me without this kind of payout, remember? Besides, this money is nothing compared to what you could be making with your power. Do you have any idea how much the super wealthy would be willing to pay for you to cure their diseases, or a touch up to help them live a little longer? This right here was just pocket change to the guy that lost it. Just a little bit of fun for a night."

"But…it's wrong to charge for healing," she said, still staring at the cash in my hands.

"Why? Doctors have a perfectly respectable, well paid profession. Nobody expects them to work for free, so why should you?"

She looked away with a frown. "It's different. They have to go through years in medical school to learn their skills. I was just lucky and got a power that lets me heal people."

"Yeah, it's not really fair that we got lucky and won all this tonight. Maybe we should give it back." I nodded and started walking towards the door.

"What? No, that's completely different!" She grabbed my arm, as I knew she would. People naturally have an irrational tendency to overvalue the things they view as their possessions, and are generally far more reluctant to "give something up" than to decide turn down an opportunity to acquire something of equivalent value, but which they don't yet consider their own possession.

That was a form of psychological bias that was the basis behind why making a girlfriend or boyfriend jealous works, why kids refuse to throw away old toys they never play with anymore, why people hoard vast amounts of things in their garage even after years of not using any of it.

This bias is so powerful that sometimes it can be used in negotiations, where the mere framing of a trade-off in terms of "loss" instead of "potential gain" can change people's minds.

By making Amelia play and win, she viewed the money earned as rightfully hers, and became susceptible to this bias.

I turned to her and sighed.

"New Wave and most other hero teams accept donations, right?"

She gave me a doubtful look, unsure of where I was going with this. "Yes?"

"Imagine that you cure somebody of cancer. This person turns out to be rich, net worth over ten million, and after their cancer is cured, they try to give you $10,000 in thanks, because they knew they would probably have spent much more than that on conventional medical care trying to cure their cancer by all means. You refuse to accept it, and after arguing with you for an hour, they give up. The next day, you find $10,000 on your doorstep, with a note from your patent explaining that they felt miserable and needed to give this to you. Would you insist on returning it, making them miserable again?"

"I…probably not. If they felt that strongly about it…" Amelia admitted.

"So you were paid, your patient is happy, and nobody was hurt by your decision to accept the money. You haven't charged anything. So do you agree that there's nothing wrong with accepting payment from your patient if they decided on their own to give it to you as thanks?"

"I guess I can agree with that."

"So you agree that there's nothing fundamentally wrong with being paid, because when you get paid, its not about whether you deserve it or not, but whether or not your patient wants to pay you. So the problem is not being paid, but the fact that when you charge a price, not everyone can afford it. And refusing to heal somebody just because they can't afford to pay you, I think you'll agree with me, is wrong, at least if it doesn't really cost you anything to heal them. If you had to sacrifice something to heal somebody, that'd be different."

She nodded.

I had to convince her of these things little by little. I also couldn't let her come up with new rules that were too strict, which is why it was necessary to add these little exceptions. It would be best for her to stay morally flexible until she formed a very strong attachment to me.

"So instead of only healing for free, why don't you just do what all the good doctors do? Charge your patients, but when there's somebody that can't afford to pay you, heal them anyway. You can even let your patients decide how much they want to pay you."

She was silent this time. I put the wads of cash back into her greedy hands and sat back down.

"You don't need to charge an arm and a leg for people that are dirt poor, but there's nothing wrong with charging the people that can afford it."

"Is it really…okay?" She asked quietly, looking at the money in her hands again.

O O O

Eventually Coil started planning his kidnap of Dinah Alcott, and he called Tattletale to discuss the bank robbery job.

Tattletale was a bit hesitant at first, citing concern about the possibility of fighting the Wards, but Coil offered to arrange for Circus to join the robbery.

"One more thing," Coil said, after Tattletale agreed to persuade the Undersiders.

"I want you to find out whatever you can on Polychromic and whoever else he might be working with."

"Already on it, boss."

"Good."

That was about what I expected. This Thursday would be his best chance to get Dinah, and her power would be immensely helpful to him. It was only after he had access to Dinah that he became comfortable enough to risk housing Noelle and revealing himself to the Undersiders.

The next part, I wasn't expecting.

"Faultline, I have a job for you and you crew," he said, making a call to the leader of a local mercenary team called Faultline's Crew.

"I'm listening."

"The new cape in town, Polychromic. You've heard of him, yes?"

"Yes. Leader of CRUCIBLE, responsible for taking down Lung and Oni Lee. I saw their video on PHO not too long ago. Quite an impressive debut."

"I suspect he has ties to that group you've been investigating."

"What gives you that impression?"

"That doesn't matter. What matters is that I'm paying you to investigate him."

"If you want me to investigate him, it would help if you shared your intel first to give me a lead."

"I don't want to give you any biases based on uncertain intel."

"Fine. I want $100,000 up front. $100,000 for confirmation, and $200,000 for a detailed report."

"Come on, Faultline. You and I both know that you would be looking into him even if I didn't pay you. $25,000 up front, $50,000 for details on his power, $50,000 for each cape you find that is working for him but not publicly part of CRUCIBLE, $50,000 for determining the nature of his ties to that secret group, and $100,000 for his civilian identity. Anything else you find, we can discuss the price for when you have it."

"You're breaking the rules. I can't help you ID him."

"And if that's the only way to find out what you need from him? How much progress have you made while following the rules?"

"…"

"$200,000 for his identity. Unless I find out through other means first."

"This job is risky. You don't even know what his power is yet. $50,000 up front and you have a deal."

"Deal."

How did I miss this? I should have expected he would hire Faultline's Crew. I knew he did so for the canonical alliance against the ABB and the villains' meeting, so it wasn't a big surprise.

The only problem was, my fake Cauldron vials apparently gave him the idea to take a different angle in negotiations with Faultline.

If he had simply hired them normally, it wouldn't be a huge threat, but regarding the secret of the Case 53s and Cauldron, it was another matter. Faultline's Crew had several Case 53s on the team, who all wanted to know the truth behind their origins. They took that stuff quite seriously and in the original timeline kept investigating it until Contessa, Cauldron's ace in the hole and feared boogeyman, personally came out to deal with them.

If she believed I had information on Cauldron, I could expect Faultline to hold nothing back. But what could I tell them? Unlike Amelia and Taylor, she was highly professional, experienced, and intelligent – no obvious weaknesses to manipulate.

This only reinforced my earlier thoughts on the need to move quickly. Although it wasn't ideal yet, the conditions were already more than adequate for me to take the next pivotal move.

O O O

Late at night, we stripped Shadow Stalker's costume off of her, then Amelia changed the state of her body to appear as though she had been drinking. We brought the unconscious Sophia in civilian attire and unmasked to Madison's backyard before retreating stealthily.

Then I called Madison after equipping my voice changer. I had to call several times before she picked up.

"Hello?"

"I promised that if you repent and confess, you need not fear anything from Sophia Hess." I said.

I heard a gasp from the other side of the line.

"You're the—"

"You held up your side of the bargain. Now I deliver on my promise."

"Wait, what do you mean? What are you going to do to her?"

"Look in your backyard. Call the police and don't mention me."

"My backyard? Oh my god, did you kill her?"

"She only got what she deserves." Then I hung up before she could say anything more, and turned on airplane mode so that I wouldn't be able to receive any attempts to call back.

"You're awful," Amelia said. "You sure you're not secretly a mob boss?"

"Hm…if I told you, I'd have to kill you."

"Right…"

O O O

Once Amelia went to sleep, I headed to the warehouse base. I recalled Agate for a few minutes in order to make a portal to the other world, specifically the cave that we found before. Agate flew back to Coil while I began moving supplies and equipment over to the cave. When the portal expired, I was ready and geared up.

'I'm in position.' Agate said.

'On three. Three, two, one!' I thought back.

A portal opened right in front of me and I rushed through.

O O O