25

Armsmaster dropped a manila folder onto the Rig's interrogation room table with a slap. "The district attorney is willing to offer you a reduced sentence if you cooperate," he said, bracing his hands on the table and leaning forward. "If you don't take the deal she's going to be seeking the Birdcage. If you would prefer to live out your days in a safer facility, you know what we want."

Thomas Calvert's gaze flicked from the folder to Armsmaster's visor.

He hesitated for a long moment, then sighed in defeat, and spoke.

"It started when I was informed that Shadow Stalker escaped from you at Winslow High School," he began.

"This would be using your authority as a consultant, or through paid moles?" Armsmaster interrupted.

Calvert sighed. "The former, and for your information you've successfully arrested all of my informants. But we both know the means by which you've arrested them all and what you really want from me are the same thing, aren't they?"

"Scientia," Armsmaster stated.

"Quite," Calvert remarked. He took a moment to regard the orange sleeves of his prisoner jumpsuit before continuing.

"Your escaped Ward was practically rabid. When I extended an invitation for her to join my service, I started by pitching her on the freedom she would have to take out the real supervillains of the city."

Armsmaster's mouth flattened in disapproval. "You used PRT psych reports to recruit a Ward into villainy."

Calvert scoffed. "Of course I did. Only a fool lets a resource go to waste. But while freedom had a certain appeal to her, the thing she really cared about in the short term was getting revenge on a certain teenage girl."

"Taylor Hebert," Armsmaster said.

"Yes," Calvert affirmed. "I saw no reason to forbid it. If the Hebert girl was just a mundane who got lucky, well, crushing her would win me some loyalty from a new operative. If the girl was a cape she would be unlikely to prevail against the Undersiders, and if her power was too dangerous to deal with it was unlikely she could also prevent the Undersiders from escaping. I believed the girl would be injured, dead, or at the very least unmasked if she was a cape. And so every foreseeable outcome was one I could turn to my advantage. I told them to go ahead."

"The incident at the Heberts' residence," Armsmaster prompted.

"Yes. 'Incident' is one word for it," he said, repeating the word slowly and with distaste. "The one thing I had not expected was for the girl to handily win against a team of capes, even if they were missing a member, and for it to cost me Shadow Stalker and the Undersiders in one fell swoop." Coil clenched a hand, knuckles whitening. "It was a safe bet. I made the mistake of forgetting that even safe bets are still gambles. Foolish."

Armsmaster gestured for the supervillain to continue.

Calvert relaxed his hand. "Shadow Stalker returned several hours later seriously wounded. I'd used my power in the meanwhile for another matter, and as a result I was unable to make it so the disaster never happened. If only the idiot girl had just called me instead of-"

Armsmaster tapped a gauntleted finger on the table with a heavy clunk.

Calvert sighed before continuing. "I sent her to a black market surgeon-"

Armsmaster's helmet tipped downward, conveying the impression of a leveled glare.

"-whose name and address I will of course provide," Calvert said, voice conveying annoyance.

"Where is Shadow Stalker now?" Armsmaster demanded.

Calvert offered an expansive shrug. "She returned to the Undersiders' hideout after my surgeon finished with her. That's the last I know of her whereabouts. My men found the Undersiders' van missing and a number of Regent's personal items were conspicuously absent from the Undersiders' lair. Regent and Shadow Stalker might have left together or separately, I don't know. My files should identify the particulars of the van, but if they're not idiots they would have ditched it by now."

"Let's move on to what you did next," Armsmaster prompted.

"As you wish. Naturally, I was curious about the teen girl that had cost me an entire team of parahumans, so I attempted to find out what I was dealing with. Perhaps I could find a way to turn a powerful new cape to my service."

Calvert's gaze unfocused. "It was...frustrating," he said, and began recounting the many times he'd tried to deal with Taylor Hebert. His tone progressed from anger to despondence as he went on, and on.

The door to Coil's escape tunnel burst inward without warning, giving way before the boot of a hastily modified suit of Armsmaster's power armor worn by a grim Taylor Hebert.

"The men you sent to kidnap me are dead," she said, her voice tight with restrained fury as she leveled a rifle. "Danny Hebert was a good man. He did not deserve to die just because you didn't want witnesses."

Coil drew his sidearm and the armor's faceplate closed instantly, leaving the bullets to ping off uselessly until his pistol clicked empty.

"Now you're next. Goodbye, Thomas."

She pulled the trigger of her rifle, and the timeline ended.

Coil was working at his desk when the coughing started, and wouldn't stop. Then came the muscle spasms. He fell out of his chair and twisted helplessly on the floor in what quickly became agony, unable to master his limbs enough to even call for help.

"I was wondering to myself what the weakest part of a heavily fortified underground base was," said the familiar voice of a teenage girl over the intercom, loudly enough for Coil to hear over his own choking screams. He tried and failed to focus enough to close off the timeline.

"Then it struck me. That fancy ventilation system doubles as an excellent delivery system for nerve gas. The one you're breathing right now is a little something I mixed up. Don't try to kidnap Danny Hebert to get to me again, or next time I'll do worse. Goodbye, Thomas."

Coil's convulsions broke his own back, and the timeline ended.

Thomas Calvert listened over an encrypted earbud in his PRT office as another attempt to capture Taylor Hebert went awry, only two members of an eight man snatch team escaping.

At least that was an improvement over the previous attempts. Progress was being made, and it was just a matter of time until he got kidnapping the infuriating girl right.

The locked door to his office opened and Armsmaster and Miss Militia entered abruptly with a squad of four fully armored troopers behind them.

Miss Militia's power took the form of an oversized pistol that she kept pointed at the floor but ready to raise in a blink, muscles tensed. Armsmaster had his halberd gripped in both hands, his balanced stance showing that he was ready to move.

"Mr. Calvert," began Miss Militia, "The Director has just received some disturbing information. Our orders are to take you to the MRI lab."

He swore viciously and with an exertion of his will ended the timeline.

Thomas Calvert knocked on the door of the Heberts' residence, and offered his most convincing fake smile when the current object of his ire answered the door. Hopefully he could gather some intelligence by interacting with the girl under the guise of his civilian persona, then find a way to deal with her.

"Hello, are you Taylor? My name is Thomas Calvert, I'm from the PRT and-"

When the self in that timeline woke he recognized the armored walls of an E-type PRT containment cell around him. He hadn't even known it was possible for a human to strike another in the throat that quickly, and he'd been completely unable to stop the followup kick to the skull that must have knocked him unconscious.

With gritted teeth he exerted his will and ended the timeline.

Riding to a safehouse to debrief the survivors of his latest failed kidnapping attempt, all at once Coil found the world spinning and tumbling with a horrible screech of twisting metal.

When he came to his senses he was greeted not by the front half of the black SUV he'd been riding in, but by the masked visage of Faultline standing in the road just out of his reach. She'd evidently stopped him by using her power to cut the vehicle in half while it was moving.

She was also pointing a gun at him.

Past her he saw the unmistakable form of Gregor the Snail covering the mercenary who'd been driving him in some sort of adhesive goo, sticking the insensate form to the driver's seat.

"Hello, Coil. A little bird told me that you know where Case 53s come from," Faultline said, her tone flat and dangerous, "and gave me directions. Nice of them, really. You were practically gift wrapped. They must not like you very much, but as long as we get the answers we want, I don't particularly care what your drama is."

The lizard-like Newter stepped into Coil's field of view, and crossed his brightly colored arms.

Coil gritted his teeth. "You don't know what you're asking. I can't tell you anything."

Faultline let out a humorless chuckle. "So you do know something. Good. The little bird told me you'd protest, you know. Don't worry, we've got ways of letting those defenses down and getting your tongue wagging. Don't we?" she asked, tilting her head towards Newter.

"That we do," he said, grinning in a way that was not at all friendly.

"Tag him and carry him to the van, we'll interrogate him back at the Palanquin," she ordered.

Coil watched Newter reach for him with an outstretched hand, and with an effort of will he ended the timeline.

Coil stopped running long enough to turn and fire down one of the long concrete hallways in his underground lair, his shots catching just one of the swarm of crude drones that had somehow infiltrated his base in large numbers.

They were little more than toy quadcopters with pistols attached, but whatever software was operating them was horrifyingly effective and coordinated.

He turned to continue running while he ejected the spent magazine of his pistol and slid his last spare in with more force than was strictly necessary.

The crack of gunshots echoing through the halls told him that his men were busy with fights of their own. If only one of the infernal machines hadn't missed him and hit his radio early on he could at least coordinate the defense.

The swarm behind him wasn't currently shooting at him. Was it because he was outside the software's designated range? The things were sluggish while carrying the heavy guns, so if he could keep ahead of them and meet up with his mercenaries he could deal with this, and then deal with Taylor Hebert. This had to be her doing.

He turned a corner and was blindsided by a punch to the throat followed by some sort of twisting wrist grab that sent his sidearm clattering to the floor and then a kick to the solar plexus that sent him sprawling on the ground and gasping for breath.

Taylor Hebert, wearing a shirt and jeans, picked up the loaded gun. She hefted it and straightened, pointing it unerringly at Coil's head.

"Goodbye, Thomas."

She pulled the trigger and the timeline ended.

Coil was done trying to co-opt the girl. She was a threat to him and his dominance of his city.

She had to die. The problem she presented would be permanently resolved, and he could return to his plans.

"Operation is a go. Don't try to capture, just kill the girl. Overwhelming force," he ordered over the radio from his underground base where he was overseeing the assault.

"Yes sir," said the ground commander.

Coil waited a tense minute as the forty men ran quietly through the night to positions at the front and back of the target house, with a third group moving to take care of the PRT security detail.

They breached, and then the screaming started.

"AUGH!"

"MAN DOWN!"

"She's got my-"

"HELP!"

"How did she-"

"MEDIC! OH GOD HELP, MEDIC!"

"Where-"

"GET DOWN!"

"GRENADE, GREN-"

"NEED SUPP-"

"Where's the bit-"

"LEFT! JESUS, SUPPORT LEFT!"

"HEAVY WEAPONS, LEVEL THE LEFT SIDE OF THE BUILDING! NOW!"

Coil waited, tense. "Commander, report," he ordered.

"The commander has a kitchen knife up to the hilt in his chest, sir. This is Johnson."

"Is the target dead?"

"Heavy weapons teams finally got the bitch, sir. If you'll pardon me. The rocket team had to level the house. The fireworks drew a lot of attention, judging by police chatter on the scanner we need to evac. There won't be time to load all the bodies in the vans."

"You'll have to leave them behind. Bring the girl's corpse, I want to have it examined."

"Yes, sir."

Eighteen minutes later a bone-shaking boom shook the base. Coil was crushed by countless tons of rock and reinforced concrete as the ceiling collapsed in and the timeline ended.

Commanding the same operation from his home, Coil barely had time to perceive the heat and light that came twelve minutes after Taylor Hebert's death before the timeline ended.

Commanding the operation from his private office in the PRT building, the emergency alarm prompted him to look out his window to see a swarm of cruise missiles flying low over the Bay in tight formation. They turned southwest towards downtown as one and gained enough altitude to avoid the low buildings of the docks. He had just enough time to realize they were all going to hit the PRT building before the first impacted and the timeline ended.

On the move in a convoy outside the city as the operation happened, Coil had just enough time to see a blinding white light in the distance before the vehicle's windows exploded inward and the timeline ended.

Hands shaking, Coil direct dialed Director Piggot with his civilian persona's phone.

"Calvert, this had better be good," Piggot answered, sounding like she was in a foul temper.

"Director, I have reason to believe that Taylor Hebert is a parahuman with access to United States nuclear command and control," he explained.

"...Why on God's green Earth would you call me and tell me you're a supervillain?" Piggot asked, her tone baffled. "You never had a sense of humor. What's going on, Calvert?"

"What? Director, that's not what I said!"

"Where are you? Whether this confession of yours is serious or you've been mastered, I'm sending someone to bring you in."

"I'm not a supervillain!" Coil shouted, shrill. "Director, I think something's doctoring the connection. You're not hearing what I'm actually saying."

"You WHAT?!" Coil heard Piggot slam a button on her intercom. "ARMSMASTER! There's been a threat to detonate a structure under the Snyder building, I need-"

Something cut the phone connection, and a flashing red light on the status board next to Coil's computer terminal caught his attention.

With sinking horror he saw that something had activated the self destruct system and locked down all the exits along with the control system itself.

With an effort of will, the timeline ended.

Thomas Calvert stood in person in Piggot's office, explaining to her that according to his sources, Taylor Hebert was a parahuman with access to U.S. nuclear command and control.

Seven minutes later he was being led to a Master/Stranger containment cell when one of his two trooper escorts shot the other.

"Sorry, Boss," said the surviving trooper.

Calvert recognized that voice. It was Castle, one of the PRT agents on his payroll. "Nothing to be sorry for, you needed to pick your moment," he said. "Let's get out of here."

The helmeted trooper shook his head, and turned his pistol on Calvert. "Not what I'm apologizing for, Boss. The money for this was just too good to pass up."

With a gunshot, the timeline ended.

Coil felt only defeat after Velocity planted the containment foam grenade on him. In other timelines he had been repeatedly wounded or killed trying to resist.

He hadn't even done anything to that blasted demon of a girl this time.

Armsmaster listened to the traitor's tales of alternate timelines, growing more ashen faced as Calvert went on.

DRAGON: Colin, Director Piggot has been listening in. She's on the phone with the commander of USSTRATCOM, and the Joint Chiefs and the President are being summoned. The ability to penetrate security in Mr. Calvert's description could be consistent with what we've observed about Scientia's capabilities, as is her evident ability to organize assaults. Scientia is either protecting Taylor Hebert, or, more likely, Taylor Hebert is Scientia.

Armsmaster used precise eye movements to rapidly type in his visor.

ARMSMASTER: If she's willing to destroy the city in some of Coil's timelines, we might already be too late. Check the early warning satellites.

DRAGON: They were retasked years ago for Endbringer monitoring. One moment…

The constant low thrum that could always be felt through the floors of the Rig suddenly stopped.

"What was that?" Calvert asked, abruptly stopping his recounting of another closed timeline.

"The shield generator produces a small amount of vibration while in operation," Armsmaster told him, distracted by his eyes flicking rapidly through menus.

Calvert sighed. "It really is hopeless..." he said, and began to sob hysterically, hunching in on himself.

DRAGON: Colin, there's a thermal bloom consistent with a Trident ballistic missile launched from the Northwest Atlantic headed for Brockton Bay, and something in the Rig network has shut down the shield. It's fighting me.

Armsmaster watched the Rig network log file scroll too fast to read or fully understand, even for him. Dragon was reacting with astonishing speed, skilled in the digital realm in a way he'd never fully appreciated before now.

And whoever it was on the network that had shut down the shield generator was even faster and more sophisticated. It looked like Dragon was adapting as best she could, but her adversary kept pulling out new tricks.

ARMSMASTER: It?

DRAGON: It's reacting much too fast to be human, and it's more sophisticated than almost any software I've ever seen. I think it might be an AI, but it's hard to tell. It's throwing things at me I've never seen before. I can't even get a good look at its files to understand what I'm dealing with. The encoding and encryption schemes it's using internally don't match anything I recognize. It's- sorry Colin, I need to focus."

Armsmaster left the room behind and sprinted for the room that contained the shield generator. He hoped Dragon would succeed in getting the shield back online, but there was a chance he could manually bypass the involved hardware. There would be no point in trying to flee the rig; judging from the satellite telemetry there simply wasn't enough time to get an aircraft in the air, much less out of the blast radius.

Dragon spoke in his ear before he reached the generator room. "Colin, there's no time. I don't think I can-I...I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Colin, I-"

The timeline ended.

Armsmaster dropped a manila folder onto the Rig's interrogation room table with a slap. "The district attorney is willing to offer you a reduced sentence if you cooperate," he said, bracing his hands on the table and leaning forward. "If you don't take the deal she's going to be seeking the Birdcage. If you would prefer to live out your days in a safer facility, you know what we want."

Thomas Calvert's gaze flicked from the folder to Armsmaster's visor.

He said nothing.

Thanks to @Corvus Black for proofreading and contributions.

This wasn't the chapter I expected to post, but here it is thanks to popular demand. I hope it's as fun to read as it was to write.

Next time on Scientia Weaponizes the Future, Taylor and Danny finish a project, a visitor, and news.