13

Wednesday Morning, January 19th, 2011

Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, Earth Bet

Hebert Residence

​I found myself answering my phone before I'd even properly woken up. "Hmrr. Hello?"

"Taylor, it's Carol Dallon."

Oh no, I'd told the PRT to call my lawyer, hadn't I? Carol wasn't exactly happy when I'd last seen her, as a result of me dumping so much on her, and I'd just gone and dumped another mess in her lap.

God dammit.

"Ah, hello," I answered, somewhat awkwardly.

"Taylor, are you and your father alright?"

Instead of the angry tone I was expecting, Carol sounded positively concerned.

"...Yeah, we're fine. Dad was inside the whole time and I was able to handle things. I...thought you'd be upset, though. After yesterday."

I heard a sigh over the line. "Taylor, it's...what's important right now is that you were attacked in your home, and however complicated everything else is, New Wave does not take that lightly."

Oh. Of course. Fleur's murder in her civilian persona years ago left the group with enduring scars. What happened to me would remind New Wave of their own trauma, even if I wasn't strictly a member or a public cape.

Hypocritical of them considering how they went after Marquis, but it worked in my favor.

"Thank you," I said. "For having my back."

"You did hire me, Taylor," she said.

I laughed. "Yes, I did. I assume the PRT want me to come in and talk to them again?"

"They do. Miss Militia called me a few minutes ago and filled me in. It sounded like you handled them rather thoroughly," she replied, a note of disapproval in her voice.

I groaned. "It was one against four, and they were suited up while I was barefoot in my pajamas. I had to be a bit...decisive. The immediate options were broken knees or dead, so I did the best I could. It's more restraint than a police officer would have had."

Carol sighed. "I suppose you're right, but if you were a hero it wouldn't be a good look."

"It's something I can work on, then. I can build tools that give me better options once I get a workshop," I said. "In any case, do you think I could get away with a written statement instead of going in? Armsmaster has a lie detector built into his visor and I'm not sure how well I can dodge direct questions."

"He what?!" Carol growled. "That's completely unacceptable, he-"

"It's nothing we can do anything about because I'm not supposed to know about it," I interrupted. "I've damaged my deniability enough already."

I could hear Carol grit her teeth over the phone. "True. In any case they can't compel you to do an incident interview, although it would look a little uncooperative."

Downstairs, the doorbell rang. I froze.

"Taylor?" Carol asked.

"Someone's at the door."

"Stay on the line," Carol said, her voice taking on an authoritative cast.

"Yeah, good idea," I said, and raced downstairs in my pajamas. If it was trouble I did not want Danny answering.

Was he still in bed? How early was it?

With difficulty - and after a moment's help from the other side - I managed to pry open the bent front door to find a woman in her late thirties with brown hair and a far too enthusiastic smile. She wore a winter coat and was carrying a clipboard. "Hello! Goodness, that's some damage to the door, there. Are you Taylor?"

"Yeah?" I said, blinking bleary eyes, phone still in my hand.

The cheerful woman promptly seized upon my free hand to give it an enthusiastic shake. I could feel enough through the contact to notice that she was in excellent physical shape. "Hello! Hello! I'm here from the door to door saleswomen of America. I just wanted to ask if you've purchased any vacuum cleaners lately."

What?

"What?"

After an awkwardly long shake she finally let go to throw her hands up in the air, narrowly avoiding the loss of her clipboard while she was at it. I saw that there were no papers on the clipboard.

"No vacuum cleaners, that's fantastic! We've been having trouble with them exploding, you see. Also eating cats. There was rogue tinkertech snuck inside a whole batch. Is your Dad home? I'd like to ask him too just to make sure, and then I can be on my way."

I was not awake enough for this.

"Eating. Cats," I said, trying to process that.

The woman's expression changed from jubilant to serious on a dime, and she nodded gravely. "Eating cats. It's awful. The vacuums get all quiet, then sneak up behind the cats and get them tail first. It makes this horrible sound. Like 'MRRREEEOWWWWZZZERRRRT!'" she finished, arms flying up in the air again to accompany her enthusiastically improvised sound effects.

"But never you mind that, I just need to make sure your dad didn't buy any and then I can be on my way!"

Wait a minute.

She knew my name, and that I had a dad, and hadn't mentioned my mom. This was not a random crazy person. She had the developed arm and core body strength of an athlete. She'd been strong enough to push open the door that we couldn't get open earlier.

This was clearly a cape.

"Taylor, who are you talking to?" Carol's voice was low and dangerous, although I didn't think it was directed at me. I could imagine how crazy this sounded to Carol.

"I don't-" I started. Who would be at my door being so ridiculous that-

"Oh," I said out loud, the answer suddenly obvious. "It's okay, just hold on a second." I turned to the stairs. "Dad! Someone's at the door!"

Danny made his way downstairs in his night clothes, and blearily shook hands with the woman at the door. He replied in the negative to her question about whether we'd purchased any vacuum cleaners lately, then she beat a hasty retreat.

With Danny's help I got the door mostly closed again.

"Well, that was...strange," he said.

I switched my phone to speaker. "That was Mouse Protector in her civilian ID," I said.

"What?!" Danny's and Carol's voices blended into one perfectly timed expression of confusion.

"Someone may have anonymously given her the idea that we were potential kidnapping targets of a supervillain in the coming months and suggested she tag us with her teleportation power just in case," I explained.

"Taylor, you shouldn't manipulate heroes like that," Carol chastened. Danny looked too flabbergasted to respond.

"It wasn't a lie, we are at risk. Along with the other people on the potential kidnapping target list I gave her. And I didn't coerce her or anything. I just gave her some information and left her the choice of whether to help or not," I offered in my defense.

Carol sighed.

"I also saved her life. She was going to be attacked by the Slaughterhouse Nine and turned into a Bonesaw experiment soon. Now that she's forewarned and somewhere else hopefully that won't happen," I added.

Danny shivered.

"Taylor, you know what the Slaughterhouse Nine are going to do?" Carol asked slowly.

"A few things that I intend to prevent," I said. "More importantly I know their weaknesses. How their powers really work. How to exploit those weaknesses to kill them all."

Silence from Danny and Carol.

"Clearly we have a great deal to talk about," Carol said after another moment. "I want to know what else you know."

I sighed. "A great many dangerous things, which is why I have to parse them out very carefully."

"Taylor, you don't have the experience to handle all of this. Trying to do it alone is foolish. You need to share what you know so we can best decide how to use it," Carol admonished.

I frowned. "I respect you as a hero, and your experience, but you don't fully understand what you're asking. I could tell you secrets that would literally kill you. Even if we set that aside, I'm doing things the way I'm doing them so that I can guide events onto a better path for as long as possible."

"Taylor, you're fifteen, you need someone experienced helping you make these decisions. You're too young to be playing god. And no secret is going to kill us," Carol explained gently.

I had to cut this reasoning off. "There are powers out there - vicious powers - for keeping secrets. I've already told you everything that applies to you. For the rest, my answer has to be no."

"Taylor-"

"I really can't, Mrs. Dallon."

She huffed in frustration.

I knew I'd gotten through to her then, so I decided to soften the blow. "I know it's hard being in the dark, but it won't last forever, and this is the best way for me to ensure that everybody lives. You're going to have to choose whether to trust me, the girl who saved your life and just defeated an entire group of villains in her pajamas, or not. That choice is up to you, but I want to help.

"That said, I don't think it would be productive for us to continue this discussion right now. I'll write up a statement to send the PRT. And thank you for being concerned about us being attacked, I'm genuinely touched."

Carol sighed, and there was tension in it. She likely wanted to keep talking, but was willing to honor my request to end the conversation for now. "We're glad you're alright. Goodbye."

"Goodbye," I said, and hung up.

"That was really Mouse Protector?" Danny asked.

I just nodded.

"I'm not prepared for how strange this is getting," he remarked. "Is this just going to keep getting worse?"

"I think Mouse Protector might be something that nobody is ever prepared for," I reflected. "As for things continuing to get more...everything, I think they probably will."

Danny's face went through a complex set of expressions.

"I'll keep us safe," I said.

"You shouldn't have to, you know. That's supposed to be my job," he said, his face settling on sad.

"I know. But needs must, right?"

He sighed. "Yeah, they certainly do."

"Think of it as us protecting each other," I tried.

He scoffed. "Thanks, but I see how things are going. I'm sorry I can't help more."

"I'm sorry too. But you're still there, and that's what matters," I reassured him. "Otherwise I'd be doing this all alone."

The words seemed to help, judging from how his expression lifted.

But there were some things even I couldn't really fix.

I put my remaining leftover charge into biology, and spent the rest of the day writing and coding.

First was a report for the PRT on what happened the previous night, edited to leave out my conversation with Tattletale, who I 'let run when she didn't attack me, and had no means of chasing down'. The law of self-defense was pretty restrictive about situations where you were allowed to shoot someone in the back, so it neatly covered me there.

I also glossed over the details of how I'd fought, exactly. No sense in giving them any more reason to think of me as excessively competent.

When it was done I emailed it to Carol to check and send on to the PRT.

Then I wrote a letter to Director Piggot from Scientia with some crucial information, running it through Prometheus' writing style scrambler.

But before I felt comfortable opening the can of worms actually delivering it would cause, I spent the remainder of the day writing some more digital warfare packages for Prometheus. I tapped the best of my enormous mental library of attacks, defenses, and diversions, going with the most elegant and the most innovatively vicious approaches.

A VI might be fundamentally less capable compared to a proper AI like Dragon, but if the PRT asked Dragon to find out where the mysterious message came from and that led Dragon to Prometheus, and somehow she found him, I'd be damned if I left him without every weapon I could give him. He'd be able to hold his own for a while, probably. Until she had time to build tools to deal with all the tricks I gave him.

With him concealing himself from her I sincerely hoped it wouldn't ever come to that, though. And the tools would still be useful against non-AI systems. There might be tinkers out there with unpredictably advanced digital security.

While I worked Danny went out and came back with a new door, which he installed. One less thing to worry about.

Before bed I ordered Prometheus to deliver Scientia's letter to Piggot.

Director Piggot,

Please do not be alarmed. I am an independent hero by the name of Scientia. I'm contacting you because I have a great deal of critical information relating to Brockton Bay to provide you. I cannot go through regular channels because the Protectorate ENE's security has been compromised by a supervillain threat I will now explain.

You are familiar with the supervillain Coil. I believe you are aware that he hires heavily armed mercenaries, but do not know much else. He is a thinker, a precog of sorts, with the ability to simulate two timelines in which he makes different decisions and then chooses which one he 'keeps'. He makes ruthless and creative use of this power, doing things like kidnapping and interrogating targets in simulated timelines (or even torturing people to death for his personal entertainment), attempting operations and only 'keeping' them if they are successful, playing the stock market, deciding whether to go to a meeting personally or send his unpowered body double, or deciding whether or not to go into work in his civilian ID.

His power is strictly binary; he cannot run more than two timelines at a time, one of which becomes 'real' when, from his perspective, he makes a choice to close the other. Simulated timelines also close automatically if he dies in the simulation, forcing him into the other one. He is almost never not running his power for some purpose or other, but rarely goes more than a day or two without closing a timeline and opening a new one.

Coil 'recruits' parahumans by a variety of means, all of which involve acquiring leverage over his targets. Sometimes this is providing them something they want. Other times he simply threatens to kill them if they do not comply, a threat he is quite willing to carry out. He especially values thinkers and will go to any lengths to acquire them, as he believes their powers synergize well with his own power.

He has turned a partially constructed and abandoned Endbringer shelter under downtown Brockton Bay into what can best be described as a supervillain lair. This is where he keeps most of his mercenaries and other staff. It has at least one escape tunnel and is rigged to explode on his command, taking out the base and the high rise office building over it.

No, I am not kidding.

Coil's real name is Thomas Calvert.

Yes, that Thomas Calvert. The PRT consultant and your fellow Ellisburg survivor with access to inside PRT information.

His ultimate goal is to dominate the city's villains in his Coil persona and to achieve the PRT ENE Directorship in his civilian persona, cementing effective control of the city under his personal rule.

Obviously he's nuts. Unfortunately, he's a very competent strain of nuts that could have plausibly pulled it off if you did not have the benefit of this forewarning.

His plan is to manipulate events from the shadows to destabilize the city as opportunities arise. This serves two purposes; firstly he wants to play the gangs against one another until they are weak enough for him to take over. Secondly, he wants so much uncontrolled chaos that you are removed by the Chief Director and he can subsequently replace you.

Arresting him is tricky because of his power. You can't just seize him tonight in his civilian ID because he'll have a spare timeline where he is somewhere else, and you'll have warned him that you're on to him. He will likely flee at that point and you're unlikely to ever catch him.

To capture him you need to somehow put him in a situation from which there is no escape.

There are a variety of ways this might be done. Tracking his movements no matter where he goes and then going after him at some date and time chosen in advance should work to prevent him from escaping with his power no matter what he does with it.

If you do assault his base I will provide what assistance I can. I will also see about defanging his contingency plans for you. Some are rather nasty, like the release of the secret identities of the Empire's capes just to cause chaos.

Coil is your most pressing problem, but not the only useful bit of information I have to pass on.

I noticed that you've captured two of the Undersiders. The group's sponsor is Coil. He uses different levers to control each of them.

Tattletale, real name Sarah Livsey, he captured at gunpoint and controls with the threat of death. She hates him utterly, and will do almost anything to be safe from him. The only reason she didn't go to the PRT is because she believes, correctly, that Coil would have her turn up dead in her holding cell. She is also justifiably afraid of her emotionally abusive birth parents. Address those two concerns and you could likely turn her into a hero, or at least an extraordinarily valuable PRT consultant.

Her thinker power, essentially a highly amplified form of inductive reasoning, is extremely strong. Because it relies on passive analysis of data she is even capable of using it on otherwise Thinker-resistant targets, including Endbringers. You would find her very useful for interrogation, building dossiers, and operational planning. She is also excellent at detecting moles, which the PRT ENE is unfortunately not short of. Her only major personal failing, aside from being somewhat amoral, is that her power nudges her to blurt out unpleasant truths about people to rile them.

Regent, real name Jean-Paul Vasil, alias Hijack, works for Coil for the money and because he wants safety from his family, Heartbreaker's brood of terrifying sociopaths. Regent isn't psychologically normal due to the scars left by his upbringing, but he's nothing like the gleeful depravity of his father and siblings. Offer him safety and a small degree of comfort and he could likely be turned.

Grue, real name Brian Laborn, is a villain because he wants to get his sister out from a neglectful home life situation. Coil offered to fake a history of steady employment to facilitate getting his younger sister transferred from his druggie/drunkard of a mother and into his care. Offer to take care of this situation and he will likely be enthusiastic about changing sides.

Depending on how events progress, the sister has a high probability of triggering as well. If she does she'll likely have a very effective stranger power.

Bitch, real name Rachel Lindt, PRT designation Hellhound, is a tragic case. Her power grants her no special control over her dogs; she relies completely on mundane training to control them. She thus had no control over the untrained dog that killed to protect her during her trigger event. She is not responsible for that tragedy.

Her power replaced standard human psychology with something far more attuned to dogs. She understands social relationships and interactions through a dog's mentality of pack loyalty and dominance. This makes her the finest dog trainer in the world, but it means she does not interact in a normal fashion with humans. She can function, but works best at a remove with less human interaction than usual. Practice interacting with people in a positive fashion will likely improve her social capabilities over time, although it will be necessary for them to understand her unusual perspective at first.

Coil controlled her by offering money to take care of her dogs, whom she views as family members every bit as intensely as you or I view our human families. Help Rachel with her legal problems, look after her dogs, and give her an opportunity to work with dogs day to day - she would be an unequaled trainer of police dogs or seeing eye dogs, for instance - and she will likely be willing to change sides. Although you might need someone to do something like win a fistfight with her to establish dominance first. Alternatively, and preferably, recruit Brian Laborn first and use him to talk her into it, since she already recognizes him as her pack leader.

I have nothing much to offer to assist you with the Merchants. With respect to the ABB, Lung is unlikely to participate in future Endbringer fights because he believes them to be hopeless after trying and failing to do much to Leviathan. He is not wrong; there are only a handful of capes in the world that are anything remotely like a threat to the Endbringers. The present strategy of flooding them with bodies in the hopes of getting lucky is breathtakingly wasteful and pointless.

Oni Lee's teleportation power needs line of sight to teleport, so things like smoke or Brian Laborn's darkness are good counters. Anything that will blind him.

It is possible the ABB will recruit a bomb tinker by the cape name of Bakuda in the coming months after her trigger and subsequent attempt to hold Cornell University hostage over an exam grade. Bakuda, if she still triggers despite the changes I am making to the timeline, is psychotic and extremely dangerous. Her bomb speciality can be used to create utterly lethal exotic effects that ignore the Manton effect, including things like contained singularities, spacial disruptions, turning everything in the radius to glass, or inflicting so much pain that people go mad.

If she triggers please do your best to keep her from getting recruited by the ABB. That will not end well for anyone. There's at least one potential timeline where she plants bombs in hundreds of people's heads and blows up a fair portion of Brockton Bay. In that timeline the chaos attracts an Endbringer attack and the Slaughterhouse Nine.

If you can turn her, or at least put her to work, her bombs have real utility for hurting Endbringers and putting down S-Class threats like Ellisburg in a way few parahuman powers can. But as I said, she's psychotic, with a deep need to prove her intellectual superiority over others with bigger and more extreme weapons. It is likely that her power will take a pre-existing psychological weakness and amplify it. Despite her promise it is quite possible she is more trouble than she is worth.

I also have something to offer on the Empire. Kaiser's real name is Max Anders, CEO of Medhall. Yes, Medhall is effectively an Empire money laundering operation.

I realize you won't want to openly break the unwritten rules, but nudging Watchdog's financial crimes unit to take a close look at Medhall might severely limit the gang's ability to sustain large scale operations.

I can make all the Empire bank accounts disappear for you if you ask, but that would be illegal, unsubtle, and probably make Kaiser dangerously desperate. Without Watchdog cracking down on Medhall first it would also just lead to the gang pulling more money out of Medhall to cover their shortfall.

I can offer you one other possible lever on the Empire. Purity, real name Kayden Anders (Kaiser/Max Anders' ex-wife) hates Max/Kaiser and the gang after having a child caused her to have a crisis of conscience. She now sincerely wishes to defect. As long as she gets to raise her child she would be willing to accept a probationary Protectorate position elsewhere. Do not under any circumstances attempt to separate her from her child. She will stop at absolutely nothing to get the child back and it will be a disaster. There is a potential timeline where Calvert deliberately contrives the issuance of such an order to create chaos.

If she does defect she'll need help dealing with racist views that she picked up in the Empire. I suggest a good therapist.

Max/Kaiser's son Theo would be pleased to go with Kayden. He hates the gang's ideology and wants nothing to do with his father, who is disappointed in him. He considers Kayden effectively his only parent. Theo has a high probability of triggering and would happily join the Wards or Protectorate and make an excellent hero.

Finally, I can offer you some insight on personnel issues. I hope you will not take too much offense at this, but it is too important for me to stay silent out of respect for your feelings.

First, Armsmaster. Colin (don't worry, I will keep heroic identities safe) is a superb tinker and highly skilled combatant. However, he is generally uninterested in looking after other people, his focus firmly fixed on other things. While his adult colleagues can largely look after themselves, his neglect of the Wards has caused some issues. If he applied the social skills and invested the time he likely could have noticed something was wrong with Shadow Stalker, Sophia, before things went so badly with her, or uncovered Kid Win's, Chris', tinker specialty. (It's modularity, by the way. Everything his power does wants to be swappable and easily modified. Please tell the poor child. He'll be much happier and more effective. It will also serve as a degree of confirmation that the information I'm providing is original and genuine.)

I recognize that it's not my place to tell you how to run your department, but perhaps it would be beneficial if Miss Militia, Hannah, were to take on a deputy position looking after the Wards. I know she doesn't seek positions of authority, but she is well suited to them.

One final issue. Your distrust of people after Ellisburg, particularly capes, is entirely understandable as a reaction to such a traumatic event, buttressed by the observation you've likely made by now that most capes are off, in one way or another.

They carry the scars of traumatic events too.

They're just people, and you will be more effective at your job if you can weigh them on their individual merits. People can often tell when someone doesn't like them even through a veil of professionalism, and I think you know that it doesn't inspire great loyalty or trust in a subordinate if they think their boss doesn't trust them.

More to the point, the issue is going to lead to a particular tragedy if you don't find a way to get over it. If your refusal to get your kidney disease fixed finally pushes you out of the office after Calvert is dealt with, your replacement will be Director Tagg.

As you may have noticed in meetings, Tagg is a lunatic. He sees every potential threat as an actual threat that must be met with maximum force immediately. That attitude works for running a containment zone, but not a regular department. If he takes over Brockton Bay it will be in metaphorical and literal flames within two weeks, and his insanity will alienate the otherwise loyal personnel that would be critical to containing the mess he makes.

Please don't let that happen. Talk to someone, or do whatever you've got to do. You're too tough, too stubborn, and too competent to let something like PTSD win. You can overcome your mental and physical scars. It will dramatically improve your effectiveness in the job and your ability to enjoy life.

Moving on, and just in case it needs to be said, your present information security simply isn't in good shape. Don't go passing any of the information in this letter around more than you have to. Definitely don't put it on any PRT computer systems where Calvert or other infiltrators could get at it. Assume the internal camera and microphone system is compromised, too, for now.

I can at least confirm that all of your capes are trustworthy. If I get the time I'll try to ferret out your moles for you.

You could ask Armsmaster and possibly Dragon for help with a security review, but Coil is very paranoid and might suspect something is up. I could also just handle it for you if you ask, but that would be even more suspicious and I don't expect you to trust a stranger who hacks into your phone to leave alarmingly detailed messages when all you have is their word that they're on your side.

Hopefully I can prove my good intentions over time with deeds, but building trust is an extended process.

The electronic copy of this message will now self-delete for security's sake. A hardcopy of this message is waiting for you in the tray of your home office printer, along with a second hardcopy that omits the section on personnel information for you to share with Armsmaster and any other employees you deem necessary. If you have to keep the copies, keep them somewhere excessively safe.

-Scientia