I usually held firmly to the philosophy that one couldn't be too paranoid. Every moment of every day was a delicate balancing act, anticipating unseen threats from every possible angle ever since I took on the mantle of Coil, whether I was speaking with my subordinates or simply rising to meet the day.

  Such things are as important as breathing to me.

  I had spent the night reading, following the news, and checking my investments. My location was known only to those who worked directly for me, individuals I personally paid well enough that even if one of them developed the inclination to attack me, their coworkers would have ample incentive to stop them first.

  In the first reality, I was waking up in an ordinary, slightly rundown home in the southwest end of the city. I prepared and ate breakfast, then stepped outside in my bathrobe to retrieve the paper and the mail.

  I paused to wave to the neighbours as they ushered their two daughters out the door. The flooding hadn't affected our neighbourhood as badly as others, but the schools were still closed, so the parents were taking their girls to work with them for the time being.

  I headed back inside, showered, and dressed in a button-up shirt, khakis, and a silk tie and sat in the living room, while my other timeline-

  In the second reality, I was heading to my underground base,

  Over there, I will be safely ensconced in my underground base, packed my costume, and with no fewer than twenty armed soldiers positioned between myself and multiple sets of heavy metal doors when I arrive there.

  Just…needed to get there first.

  I climbed into my four-year-old Prius and drove toward the city

  What was normally a ten-minute commute stretched into forty-five minutes as I detoured around destroyed roads, collapsed buildings, and reconstruction zones, inching along with the rest of the city's traffic from the moment I left the cul-de-sac.

  To all appearances, I was an ordinary man heading to work. My identity is carefully fabricated and was fullproof: a real job at a real company, with records going back ten years covering health, taxes, dental visits, mortgage payments, and more.

  The soldier who met me was known among the others as Creep. No captain would tolerate him in their squad; his predilections made him unemployable in the public sector. The fact that I was the only person who could and would provide him with the particular 'payment' he craved made him as loyal as a man could be.

  Everyone's got a weakness, a hook. Been in this long enough to know where to twist and turn around people's desires. Sometimes that need had to be cultivated or manufactured so it could later be fed by hand.

  People driven by such cravings wore them close to the surface, and they were among my favourite types of people to deal with, second only to those who were simply useful. Those who were both useful and desperate for something I could provide?

  They were the Creeps, the everyday, desperate marionette I get to manipulate.

  For everyone else, wealth would have to suffice.

  Creep remained the one individual who might glimpse me without my mask, which made purchasing his loyalty worthwhile. He waited in the front seat of the white van, eyes forward, until he heard three knocks on the rear door. He pressed a button, opening it to allow me inside.

  Once in the back of the van, hidden from Creep's view by the barrier between the seats, I removed my clothes and folded them neatly. I donned my costume, my second skin. A zipper was hidden in the image of a long white snake that wound around the body of the suit up to the head. I drew it closed around myself and tucked the metal tab into a flap at my ankle. The fabric allowed me to see and breathe through it, while remaining opaque black-gray to outside observers except under the brightest light.

  I was spending less and less time in my civilian identity these days, to the point where I was considering abandoning it altogether. Once the base was fully operational, I could be Coil full-time. For now, though, as long as I needed a bed and a refuge from the constant noise of construction, the ruse remained necessary. I seated myself in the lone chair at the back of the vehicle.

  To any observer, Creep was merely a labourer driving an electrician's van to a construction site. My underground base lay just under the tallest building in the city. One of those truly expensive high-rise buildings that could fetch any of the upper class living in luxury. No one will ever thought that out of nowhere here in the west there would be an underground facility.

  Creep guided the van down the ramp and into the parking garage. He remained behind with the vehicle as I disembarked and proceeded onward alone.

  I collapsed the world where I had stayed up all night studying the news, following international business trends, tracking even the most minor details of my troops' operations in the night before, after torturing Tattletale for information on the Docks. Not much can be garnered from that side of things. The investment I have started towards the Undersiders is starting to take shape.

  That version of me had nudged outcomes, quietly ensuring the success of the major manoeuvres with my power; even if a couple of new upstarts decided to make some moves on the Bay, it wasn't an issue as long as it didn't concern me.

  The reality dissolved cleanly, like mist burned away by sunlight, leaving only the world where I had slept a full night. Only the memories remained. The knowledge carried over, as it always did, shooting her in the head never gets old.

  Today, I simply open two timeline, One where I just stay at home, eaten a hearty breakfast, and the second where I ride to the base with Creep.

  Standing before my employees and soldiers, there was scarcely a heartbeat between the erasure of one existence and the creation of another, but it always left me with palpitations, yearning for a good killing to take the edge off.

  I often wondered whether I was truly creating realities at all, or if this was merely perception, an ability to foresee futures so precisely that they bent around my choices. I had asked my pet once. Tattletale hadn't been able to give me an answer; I hated these moments. I always had, before I'd acquired her and the assurances she provided, my latest, newest pet. Always wanted a pet after all. It's been an amusing couple of weeks.

  These were the times when I was most vulnerable, when a fresh use of my power left my selves too close together, overlapping at the edges. It was inevitable, unless I found a way to expand to a third world or a fourth. But it's impossible.

  In the first reality, I was watching TV, checking up on the news, signing off on some work with the PRT forms I've brought back for review, Piggot's been rough with the agents lately due to a certain Tinker that lived at the Trainyard. He and that smug woman who calls herself Monica. She claims to be his second in command, an adjutant who oversees his operations. I suppose she mirrors what I do at the PRT. Not much to say about the first reality.

  In the second reality, however...

  "Captains, with me. A new faction has taken its place at the Abandon Trainyard, and I'm going to direct a series of strikes to ensure we deal as much damage as possible before this new menace can instigate the Bay and overturn the board."

  "I wish to survey the base as well. Captains, as you were."

  The two groups peeled away in opposite directions. I descended with the troops down the metal staircase to the lower levels. The other group crossed the metal walkway, two employees hurrying to keep pace with my long strides. In this timeline, I would send my men to check on our menace at the Trainyard. Hopefully, there's some intel to be gleaned from that soiree I sent. A couple of dozen mercenaries with my best man should be adequate, even if it ends up in a massacre.

  I studied the base as it continued to take shape. Crates and boxes were being unpacked in massive quantities. Bunk beds were assembled for soldiers on call. A fully equipped medical bay stood ready. Creep has been complaining about the lack of variety. I can see that someone deserves a bullet to the head.

  Kitchens were stocked, armouries filled, weapons catalogued and racked. Where there had once been nothing but stark right angles and neatly stacked boxes, fine details were emerging. The place was becoming lived-in. Functional. Real. I hardly care if they have to eat the same thing from Monday to Sunday. The company usually tend to these.

  I owned the company responsible for constructing the underground shelters throughout Brockton Bay and the surrounding cities. Hiding the specifics of my base within the larger construction effort had been a matter of intercepting information at the right points, paying out of my own accounts instead of municipal funds, and controlling what was reported and to whom.

  My latest pet's power had assured me that no one would notice any discrepancies anytime soon.

  I disliked interacting with people.

  Especially subordinates as significant as the Undersiders, a group I newly created without the option to abandon reality if the conversation went poorly. Here, I was safe. My other self was already issuing orders: movements, targets, warnings. All informed by the long night spent tracking Protectorate and Ward patrol patterns. While my main timeline is at home. Running two simultaneous timelines is harder than it looks.

  I let Mr Pitter to lead as we walked toward my new pet's torture quarters in the second timeline.

  Mr Pitter was a small, unassuming man, utterly ordinary at a glance. A registered nurse with an impeccable eight-year record caring for two severely ill children. Then his wife had cheated on him. When he attempted divorce, she decided that was unacceptable and dismantled his life piece by piece, his career, friendships, family ties, burying him beneath accusations of the worst imaginable kind.

  Accusations a male nanny could never afford to take lightly.

  Mr Pitter was one of my favourites: both useful and purchased with something stronger than money. He would ensure Tattletale would be well taken care of as my connection to the group.. More importantly. All he had required in return was that his wife disappear. The chaos she had caused resolved itself neatly in the aftermath of her death.

  He had gone from a broken man to someone so steady and unflinching in his duties that even I had paused to take notice.

  Mr Pitter knocked on Tattletale's door. We waited. Nearly a full minute passed before the door opened as formality, it keeps the tension rising on the otherside for my pet. Fear is often a delacacy one must truly savor over time rather than rush things.

  Then I died.

  I die screaming.

  The timeline collapses.

  I was hit back at the sofa in my home. I died? How?

  I return to the decision point.

  The sensation is always the same at the end, pressure turning into heat, heat turning into absence. The bunker doesn't collapse so much as cease, annihilated in a white roar that cuts off every thought mid-syllable. One moment I am standing in command, ready to meet my pet, then-

  Dead. Obliterated into oblivion by an explosion within the Underground base.

  Breathing hard. Hands steady by force of habit. Heart rate elevated but manageable. I've died often enough that the shock no longer lingers, but this is different. I do not like this at all. A variable.

  Because it keeps happening- a multi-variable that I have no control of, I activate my power again. Two timelines split, smooth and familiar, like slipping into well-worn gloves. Timeline A remains the same, I do nothing for now.

  Timeline B: I retrace what I did the samething from before, I remain in the bunker, initiate lockdown procedures, reroute power, and isolate all external connections.

  The explosion comes from below this time, not above. Not an airstrike. Not a breach. The very bedrock ruptures, energy blooming upward as if the earth itself rejected my presence. The bunker, my bunker, hardened against Endbringers, sealed against all incursion, invisible to the PRT, dies with me inside it.

  Timeline B lasts one minute and twelve seconds.

  I make it halfway through the escape tunnel before the corridor warps. Not collapses warps. The reinforced walls glow, then shear apart as if cut by an invisible blade. The blast catches me from behind, lifts me off my feet, and I die thinking, impossibly, that wasn't aimed at the exit. That was aimed at me.

  I snap back again.

  Cold sweat now. That's new.

  I try again. And again. Variations, different routes, different timing, different orders barked at faceless subordinates who die alongside me in most timelines. Sometimes the explosion is kinetic. Sometimes thermal. Once, horrifyingly, the bunker simply goes dark, and then everything inside it is crushed inward, as if gravity itself spiked for a fraction of a second.

  The other timeline didn't survive at all.

  This is not a probability. This is not a coincidence. My power explores the branches of causality possibility space. There should be at least one survivable outcome. There is always one. Except there isn't. Which means something is constraining the future so tightly that all branches converge on the same endpoint.

  My death.

  I stop splitting timelines and sit there, breathing slowly, forcing logic back into my head. Panic is a luxury. I do not indulge.

  Think, Thomas. Think.

  The PRT does not have this capability. Dragon does not have this capability. Even the Endbringers do not act with this level of precision against me personally. This is not a random catastrophe; it is targeted, repeatable. I try one last test, hands shaking despite myself.

  I split the timeline and do nothing. No orders. No movement. I simply sit in the chair and wait. The explosion comes sooner.

  I don't even see it this time. When I return, I rip the newspaper in my hand and hurl it across the room, something dangerously close to hysteria clawing up my throat.

  "Why?" I whisper to the empty house...

  For the first time since I imbibed the vial from Couldron, my power gives me no advantage. No leverage. No escape hatch. Every future I can see ends the same way, as if reality itself has decided I am no longer allowed to exist. As I die again, the last thought that crosses my mind is not anger, or fear, or even regret.

  It is the cold, sick realisation that for the first time in my life, I am not the one choosing which futures are allowed to exist.

  Someone else is.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  I don't go to the bunker.

  That is the only change. No clever branching, no hedging my bets. I remain topside, in my own home, drinking coffee, I wait for the familiar pressure in my skull, the warning tremor that precedes annihilation. While the other was just standing at the outskirt of the garage to the entrance of the underground bunker.

  Nothing happens.

  Five minutes pass.

  Ten.

  I am still alive. The realisation settles slowly, like frost creeping across glass. It isn't me. It's the bunker.No, it was more precise than that. It's the moment I enter it, I die regardless of what I do.

  I test the theory with the caution of a man defusing a bomb he designed himself. I don't go anywhere near the main entrance. I don't issue orders. I don't even put on the mask. I sit, drink lukewarm coffee in my dumb Prius, and observe the clock tick forward with infuriating normalcy.

  The future does not collapse.

  My hands tremble anyway.

  I split the timeline.

  Timeline A: I remain where I am, doing absolutely nothing.

  Timeline B: I step into the car and begin driving toward the bunker, stopping short of the perimeter.

  Timeline A survives.

  Timeline B survives until the exact moment my foot crosses the invisible boundary line I had once been so proud of installing at entering the garage with Mr Creep. I died, Instant death.Just an abrupt termination, like a switch flipped from on to off.

  I snap back, gasping in my room again, the simulation collapsed, and I'm starting to get a headache.

  My power confirms it with brutal clarity: the bunker is a kill zone. That possibility alone is horrifying. The implications are worse. Because if the bunker is the trigger, then the attack is not reactive.

  I pace the room, stripping layers off the problem like a surgeon cutting away necrotic tissue. No Endbringer does this. No cape I know can lock a location into a guaranteed fatal outcome regardless of timeline variance. This isn't brute force; it's engineering. Planning. The infrastructure is laid down so thoroughly that my power can't route around it.

  And that brings me to the thought I've been avoiding.

  A betrayer.

  I replay every recruitment, every promise, every quiet conversation held under layers of assumed secrecy. The mercenaries. The technicians. The thinkers I paid to ask questions without knowing why. Anyone could have talked. Anyone could have sold information they didn't even realise was lethal.

  But the more I consider it, the less it fits. A leak would result in an ambush. An airstrike. A raid. Something conventional. This is not that. As if someone looked at my greatest stronghold and decided it was easier to turn it into a mousetrap than to bother hunting the mouse. Did my pet do this? Will she willingly commit suicide if she's there?

  I split the timeline again, driven now by a colder curiosity than fear.

  Timeline B: I order all bunker personnel to evacuate immediately.

  Timeline A: I do nothing and observe remotely.

  Timeline B shows them leaving safely. No explosion. No collapse. No retaliation, the timeline is still intact, it shows the bunker sitting there, inert and harmless, like a sleeping beast.

  It doesn't kill them.

  Only me.

  I stop pacing.

  My mouth is dry.

  That narrows the field uncomfortably. This isn't about the organisation. It's about Me, Thomas Calvert the individual. My power. My influence. My continued existence.Which means whoever did this understands me far better than I ever anticipated, or possibly knew my Identity.

  All my contingencies. All my careful compartmentalisation. Reduced to irrelevance because I made one assumption I never questioned:

  That I was the smartest man in the room.

  Now I'm afraid to go underground. Now I'm afraid that somewhere out there, someone decided my bunker was no longer a sanctuary, but a gravestone waiting for me to lie down in it.

  I don't like making calls from home.

  Home is supposed to be the one place that isn't layered with lies, contingencies, and kill switches. A place where I can pretend briefly that I'm just a man with a career and a future, not a spider at the centre of a rotting web. I drop Timeline B, and my coffee is empty.

  What to do..what to do…

  Today, it feels like that bunker seems a little more dangerous. Paranoia seeping in again, I can feel myself panicking. I thumb the secure line and wait, listening to the soft click as the encryption handshake completes.

  "Report, I want a perimeter check to see if there are any bombs or explosions," I say, keeping my voice even.

  "Alright, sir, give us a moment", and he dropped the call. Half an hour later, a call came in,

  There's a pause, then I answer. "All clear, sir. Power's stable. Structural integrity nominal. No signs of intrusion. Sensors are green across the board."

  I close my eyes, picturing the underground complex as I've memorised it: reinforced corridors, redundant life support, false dead ends. A masterpiece of paranoia.

  "And the perimeter?" I ask.

  "Quiet. No unusual traffic. No electronic anomalies. No one's even sneezed too close to the outer fence."

  Another voice cuts in, Marissa, from surveillance. "We ran diagnostics twice after the evacuation order earlier. Nothing tripped. No delayed charges. No foreign code in the systems."

  I swallow.

  "So the bunker is fine," I say slowly.

  "Yes, sir," Creep replies. "If you're worried about it, why don't we evacuate earlier? Morale's should be steady, even if some guys might ask some questions. I dont think there's any problem at the base sir."

  Of course, there isn't. Why would there be? From their perspective, it's just another odd directive from a boss who pays well and asks few questions.

  "Good," I say. "Resume standard operations. I'll… check in later."

  The line disconnects.

  I lower the phone and stare at it, half-expecting it to explode in my hand. My reflection stares back at me from the dark screen, tired eyes, too much tension in the jaw. A man who knows something is wrong but can't point to where the knife is coming from.

  Everything is fine.

  That's the problem.

  I pace my living room, steps measured, controlled. The furniture is tasteful, expensive, chosen to project stability. It feels like a stage set now. A cardboard fa?ade that could collapse if I lean too hard on it.

  If the bunker isn't compromised… then why can't I enter it?

  I imagine myself walking down those familiar steps. The echo of my boots. The way the air cools as I descend. I don't even get that far in any timeline. The moment my presence intersects with that space, I die.

  Not the bunker.

  Not my men.

  Me.

  My chest tightens, and I have to stop pacing before it turns into something uglier. Panic is useless. Emotion clouds judgment. I've survived worse than this by staying methodical.

  But the restlessness won't go away.

  Because this isn't a problem I can solve with leverage or threats or careful scheduling. This is a blind spot, a hard limit imposed from outside my model of the world. I think again unbidden, I sink into a chair and exhale slowly, forcing my heart rate down. Tomorrow, I tell myself. Tomorrow I'll observe more. Gather data. Identify the variable I'm missing.

  Still, my eyes drift to the floor, as if I can see through it, down through layers of earth and concrete to the bunker waiting below the city.

  Waiting.

  I check on my other timeline, the one where I sent to attack at the trainyard. Timeline A was still open; I had anticipated resistance. I had even anticipated failure. What I had not anticipated was annihilation. From the safety of my living room, I split realities as I always did. I still wanted to attack the Trainyard, presumably it's Dreamhack's stronghold.

  This will probably be the last timeline I split today; the headache is getting worse.

  In this new timeline,

  I watched through live feeds on my personal computer at home as my mercenaries mobilised. Veteran professionals, armed, disciplined, well-paid. Trucks rolled out under false construction permits, weapons concealed, routes plotted to avoid patrols. The target was the structure at the trainyard, the so-called Command Centre. An eyesore. A provocation. A cancer growing in Brockton Bay that refused to behave like a proper tinker nest.

  In the other reality, I waited. Calm. Detached from reality, even if I did die a couple of times today. Ready to collapse whichever world proved less favourable, I doubt it would be this one, just drinking another batch of coffee.

  The first signs of trouble came three minutes in. My power just fizzled out. Hmm? Seems like something is preventing my power from observing directly within the Area. I recreate the timeline again, but this time switch the Point of view towards the outer Sniper unit. I suspected my sniper is a cape with how accurate he always is, but there isn't any evidence that shows he isn't one either.

  A very competent person under his employ.

  Very useful for something like this, the command Centre seems to deploy some sort of anti-precog shield and prevent my power from working.

  In any case, my mercenaries moved forward.

  The perimeter didn't react like a perimeter. There were no alarms, no spotlights, no scrambling guards. My men crossed the invisible boundary and simply… vanished from the feed. Not exploded. Not shot. Removed. Signals cut mid-heartbeat.

  I leaned forward as I watched from afar from the Sniper Unit afar, away from the chaos.

  Drones are deployed next. High-altitude, passive sensors. They didn't even finish their first sweep before something reached up and crushed them out of the sky.Just mechanical arms swatting them like flies.

  Then the ground moved.

  The trainyard came alive.

  What I had dismissed as construction equipment unfolded. Walkers stood up. Steel plates shifted, locking into place with obscene speed. Turrets emerged where there had been scaffolding. The earth itself seemed to obey that place, reshaping to provide cover and firing angles, armor piercing bullets pierced into my mercenaries like butter.

  My mercenaries fired anyway. Professionals always do. Firing off purple lasers that could cut steel in half, but it didn't work.

  The lasers sparked uselessly against alloy that wasn't tinkertech, its worse. They are laser-resistant, too. Mechs of various size move autonomously and reacts accordingly to combat protocol. I gritted my teeth at the absurdity.

  I had underestimated them most of all.

  Some of them weren't combat units, and they didn't need to be. They boxed my men in with walls grown out of nothing, sealed exits, and cut off retreat paths. Plasma cutters flashed, not to kill, but to disarm. Legs shattered. Weapons melted in hands. Vehicles were flipped, pinned, and dismantled.

  When the real combat units arrived, it was already over.

  Soldiers in power armour advanced in disciplined lines, visors glowing, rifles humming with restrained lethality. Not one wasted motion. Not one shouted command. They fired stun rounds where possible, live ammunition where necessary. The distinction was made faster than any human could manage. Giant metallic cats with sawlike razor weapons in their mouth, two-legged mech with autocannons locked to my minions.

  My forces broke.

  They always did, eventually, but never this fast.

  In less than seven minutes, it was done. Every operative neutralised. Captured or incapacitated. No survivors with the capacity to report back to me because there was nothing to report except failure so absolute it bordered on parody. Everyone is dead except his sniper, far away from the combat zone. I've gathered all I needed in this timeline.

  I collapsed the reality.

  The current world remained. Me alone in my house, heart steady, breath controlled…too tired to even use another one. I replayed the data in my head. Again. And again.

  I had not attacked their base, but it was a futile effort. I had attacked a forward operating headquarters. And for the first time in years, a thought settled in my mind that I did not like at all.

  I had to make a call. Not here.

  I headed to the PRT building as a consultant. The PRT building is probably the safest place for me if there's ever a blowback on this. Can't stay here.

  Driving the Prius again as I guided it through Brockton Bay's broken streets, the sound so mild, so forgettable, that it felt like an insult to the thoughts crowding my head after what just happened today, along with this massive headache, my eyes started to swell as well from overusing my powers.

  I kept my face neutral at every stoplight. Hands steady on the wheel. Thomas Calvert, mid-level PRT administrator, is commuting to work like any other man. No tells. No tension. Inside, my mind was anything but calm.

  The assault on the base was a failure. My mercenaries hadn't been defeated, they'd been handled, the way one dealt with an inconvenience. All that money paid for tinkertech weapon, the best equipment money can buy, and all of it were obsoletely useless against such a base.

  That distinction mattered.

  I replayed the engagement again, trimming away emotion, isolating variables. The man simply is a one man army with a specialisation to produce an autonomous unit. It reminds me of that dreaded Elisburg. The similarities are uncanny and disturbing. Dreamhack is a far more dangerous entity than lung. That's how high I would rate him right now.

  Even if I did manage to destroy one unit, what then? He could build again. Anywhere. Faster than I could respond.

  The Prius rolled over a patched stretch of road, suspension barely complaining. I exhaled slowly, letting the motion ground me, giving me some time to think for myself as we arrived near the red light stop.

  I sigh a breath of relief as I ponder about that troublesome cape. If Dreamhack chose to expand, the city wouldn't be able to stop them. The PRT certainly couldn't, not without escalating in ways that would draw attention from places even I preferred to avoid. And escalation was exactly what their presence invited, whether intentional or not. He's already buying up the area around the Docks.

  Which raised the most troubling question of all.

  Was this even an invasion?

  What kind of Cape is giving away free Housing projects?giving away Employment and provide jobs and proper Food distribution. All the things governments struggled to provide, delivered with obscene efficiency. If I were looking to destabilise a city, I couldn't design a better long-term strategy. Most of his profits are offshore in European investment plans and short-term stacking and the investment portfolia is artight as well. Everything above board done legally or atleast appear to be legal to those who knew where to look.

  Or maybe I was projecting.

  Maybe there was a man at the centre of it all, someone like me and yet I failed where that upstart Garage wonderkin builds it and succeeds. The thought made my grip tighten on the wheel.

  I considered alternatives. External assets. Thinkers.

  Accord came to mind, unbidden and unwelcome. A perfectionist to a pathological degree, but terrifyingly effective when properly motivated. If anyone could model Dreamhack's expansion, predict their next moves, it would be him. He could craft me the perfect plan to take him down.

  But information on Dreamhack was thin. Dangerously thin. No known leadership structure. No psychological profiles. No clear ideology beyond extreme industrialisation, philanthropist and claims to own several Financial Investment companies. A corporation owned by a Cape, not the other way round.

  Bringing Accord into this without sufficient data would be like handing a razor to a man obsessed with symmetry and asking him to carve marble in the dark, or carve my face if he's agitated enough.

  And Accord was not someone you consulted lightly.

  Debts followed him. So did expectations.

  I merged into traffic near the PRT building, the familiar concrete bulk rising ahead of me. Safe ground. Bureaucracy. Paperwork. Masks within masks.

  For now, my role was simple: observe, advise caution, and bury concern under procedure. Let others underestimate the threat while I learned more.

  But one truth had already settled in my bones.

  Dreamhack was not a problem that could be solved with force alone. There's also the issue with my underground base. This has been severely set back by the capacity to move around the city. Fortunately, he has options.

  His pet Tattletale.

  Traffic ground to a near standstill three blocks from the PRT building when I'm so close to my destination. I eased my foot off the accelerator and let the Prius roll forward a few feet before stopping again, boxed in by battered sedans and a delivery truck with a crooked rear door.

  A perfect time to make a call.

  I reached into the centre console and took out the burner phone, the cheap plastic warm from sitting there too long. I didn't look at it as I powered it on. I already knew the number by heart. Muscle memory, like everything else worth trusting.

  It rang twice.

  "Wow," Lisa's voice answered, bright and amused even through the tinny speaker. "Either I just won the lottery, or someone's about to ruin my day. Let me guess? You need my help? What's the siche boss?"

  "It's me, Coil," I said. No preamble. No games. "I need information."

  She snorted softly. "You always do. This one feels different, or is it just my imagination?"

  "It's different."

  That earned me a pause. Lisa was very good at noticing pauses.

  "Oookay," she said, tone shifting, interest sharpening. "That's usually the part where you tell me I should sit down."

  "Dreamhack," I said. "I want you close to his crew. Embedded if possible. I want habits, personalities, internal tensions, command structure. Anything that tells me how he thinks."

  There it was. I could almost hear the mental gears spinning on her end, her power chewing on the word, on my tone, on everything I wasn't saying.

  "Oh," she said quietly. Then, more lightly, "That Dreamhack. The mech guy that took out the Merchants alone?. The one making half the city look incompetent by accident? That guy? Sure…I'll stroll right to his base and ask him myself"

  "This is serious" I corrected.

  "Mmm. See, that's already interesting." A beat. "You're not asking me to spy on a gang. You're asking me to poke someone with a backing like that, I think the Undersiders are a little undercooked for this job, we're just thieves, boss.."

  I watched a man two cars ahead lean out his window and gesture angrily at nothing in particular. The jam didn't budge.

  "Yes,I understand the nature of what I'm asking" I said. "And I want you to do it without provoking him."

  Lisa laughed this time, unsure, "You're serious, boss? When you say impossible things, I thought you were joking."

  "This is not optional."

  "I figured." Her voice softened, just a touch. "You worried he's gonna be an issue?"

  I didn't answer immediately. I checked my mirrors, though there was no one who could hear me. Old habits. Necessary habits.

  "I'm cautious," I said at last.

  "That's a yes," she replied cheerfully. "Okay. Ground rules?"

  "You don't antagonise them. You don't test them. You don't try to outthink Dreamhack directly."

  "Ouch. You wound me."

  "Just report back anything to me"

  "And if I get the feeling they're onto me?"

  "You disengage. Immediately."

  Another pause. Longer this time.

  "Wow," Lisa said. "You are worried."

  I tightened my grip on the steering wheel as traffic finally lurched forward a few feet and simply drove off, the carpark is getting nearer as I close into the parking lot.

  "We have an unknown parahuman operating as a far more powerful faction replacing the Merchants with a Military background," I said. "A group like that didn't pop out of nowhere. That should not be possible. Scrape the net if you can, see if you can find anything with your powers"

  "Ah," Lisa murmured. "Yeah. That'll do it."

  "So you understand why this matters? I have another intel for you. All of his inventions aren't exactly tinkertech. They are replicable."

  "Oh, I-I..what the fuck? Wait..you're telling the truth, boss?" she said, knowing what I justt said to be the truth after she verified it herself "And hey, uhh, good news? You picked the right girl. These people? They're loud in all the wrong ways. If there's a secret, I'll hear it screaming."

  "Be careful, Lisa."

  She smiled through her voice. I could hear it even if it wasn't genuine. "Careful is my middle name. Well. One of them."

  "I'll expect regular updates. Tread carefully."

  "You always know that I do…shit, I…hmm, I might have something soon, boss, catch up on you later," she said. The line went dead.

  I set the burner phone back into the console just as traffic began moving in earnest. The PRT building loomed closer, grey and familiar. Sending Lisa in was a risk. I knew that.

  As I pulled into the parking structure, one thought repeated itself, steady and unwelcome. If Lisa came back unsettled…Then I would know just how deep this problem truly went. A cat came by at the car park, looking towards me pitifully.

  "Meow" it asked, and I stared.

  So I kicked it in the head, sending the cat sprinting away in confusion. Today was not a good day for me. Couldn't even have my torture session with my favourite pet.

  But not knowing was worse.

  Dreamhack was a void in my projections, a blank space where certainty should have been, and I had learned long ago that the fastest way to die was to assume a blank space was empty. I do not like variables in my projects.

  Having control is absolute in this kind of city; I can't have that with him mucking up the board.

  ----

  Meanwhile- Monica-

  [URL unfurl="true" media="youtube:hQOtVhqu_RA"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQOtVhqu_RA[/URL]

  towards the coil underground base in those collapse timelines-

  **********************

  A/N

  and there you have it. Coil.