Orb Weaver: Within the Serpent's Coils: Chapter 7

Coil didn’t split his timelines. In both he was working, with some highly encrypted lines keeping him in touch with the tracking team he was using to keep track of Dinah. If only I had three timelines, he thought. But “safe” timeline was a misnomer when you had two, especially if you had to work in both timelines.

He’d learned that, nearly the hard way, more than once in his early career. Killing a person in a throw-away timeline was a simple, easy way to work out stress—unless a drunk smeared you over the pavement in the other one.

His first lesson—two chances to get something right meant that you had a chance to fail twice.

Especially if you let someone get even a hint of what you could really do. Not unless they were absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, under his control. Which was why he’d spent so much time and effort obtaining the tinker-based drugs.

But now, she had encountered Krewe and The Investigator.

The Investigator was in truth, too minor of a thinker to be worth the risk, especially given her experiences with the Teacher’s Pet.  That kind of thinking on her feet was the kind of thinking that divided PRT strike team members who didn’t live to retire and those who did. The kind of thinking that not even drugs might be able to completely compensate for.

As for Krewe… a non-entity. Oh, good enough for the media to coo over and the way some E88 members ground their teeth at her name was amusing in and of itself, but she was no threat to him or his plans—would make a good figurehead for the Wards or even the Protectorate, once he took over and started to clean up the Bay’s racist contingent.

“Glinda, I’ll be taking my lunch how,” he told his secretary. She nodded, and left, as Coil put on his bubblegum pop track, just loud enough to be heard. It was a silly thing, something that he let drop he was a bit embarrassed by, and so nobody would question why he locked his door when he played it.

If I ever rule the world, I’m feeding this recording company to Behemoth. He thought, smile on his face never shifting.

“Sir, they’ve gone into the Diner.” He was told in both timelines.

“Take your team and go into the diner. Do not attack.”

“Remain in the vehicle and wait.”

Coil watched view the helmet cam as his mercenary’s entered the diner. Several people scooted away, and there they were at the back of the diner.

Foolish. They hadn’t considered that they might be hidden from passerby, but they couldn’t see his forces until they were right on top of them. Krewe stared at him, then her hand lanced out for her phone and—

Coil collapsed the timeline.

They were inside the Diner, and they were on edge, which meant that they knew something was up.

Well, it was too much to expect that they wouldn’t believe something was up. Krewe was streetwise, The Investigator was clever, and it didn’t take a genius to realize something was terrifying the young girl.

Running her to the Protectorate would be ideal. It would require Coil to burn several sources, including a few that might be hard to replace, but given the chaos in the city, it would be doable, and would put another target on Piggot’s back. Renick was a career bureaucrat, good at keeping things running, but not nearly as driven as Piggot.

The kind of man who would be more interested in working with the new mayor, as opposed to making life difficult.

He finished his lunch, and let the secretary know he was taking an early day. What were they doing in the diner?  Calling for help? Fine. He’d let them. That would make it easier to delay another such call in the future.

But no… There was no sign of activity from the PRT. Nothing from his taps.

In both timelines, Coil ordered several other teams to move in. They had all the equipment they needed in their armored vans, vans that didn’t stand out.

The  Investigator wasn’t armed, and Krewe was just an ordinary girl, beyond her mover and master abilities. If he had—

Suddenly, three Numbers came bombing out, each one wearing an… Eat at Joes?  What the hell, that joke was old when her mother was a kid and the place  wasn’t even named Joes!  Worse, one of them actually jumped on the hood of the tactical vehicle.

“Take no action!” Coil said, in both timelines.

Krewe kept up her irritating patter, a laughing crowd joining her, until she bowed, and “Thank Yew! Thank Yew!” she said, before vanishing. Suddenly, Coil had a very ugly thought.

“Check the diner, now!” he snapped. Moments later, the bad news came back. They were gone. The men pushed through to the rear, even as the crowd started muttering, more than a few cell phones out.

“They must have hit the alleyway, moving fast.”

Coil collapsed the timeline, splitting it again.

In both timelines he ordered the team to head out. One to the right, one to the left.

“Uh. Sir?”

“What?”

“The vehicle won’t start.”

Coil blinked. They’d said that in both timelines.

FUCK!  There were still people around, chatting. If the team debarked, that would draw attention.

“Remain where you are. I’ll have a tow truck sent.” Of all the bad—Coil stopped. Every truck was checked out before every mission.

And now it decided to fail, right after Krewe jumped on top of it?  Could she have…

He shook his head. Maybe, maybe not. It didn’t matter. He contacted the other vehicle in the area, told them to start a grid search while he vectored other units, but they were further out, and he couldn’t risk too many.

It doesn’t matter. I have time.  Dinah would have to go home, sooner or later.

But as the day continued, Coil started frowning.

In one timeline, his teams went right.

In the other, they went left.

He had people watching, and there was no sign of Krewe’s numbers—in fact, one of his people reported that Krewe was returning to the diner.

Which meant…

No matter which way his people turned, either The Investigator or Dinah was seeing them. Dinah could, but she had limited use of her powers—he’d verified that. That was why he was keeping her scared, keeping her asking her power, so that she couldn’t just blitz him with it.

Which meant the investigator. But she’d never demonstrated such a long-range power…

He kept looking.

But he found nothing until… “Sir?”

“Yes?” Coil said. The sun was sinking, the sky turning red in his windows.

“I sent a team into the airport. They have a report.”

The airport, how the hell—Then he looked at the video feed from the hidden camera of one of his mercenaries.

A wheelchair, in a bathroom and—FUCK!  Coil remembered seeing the same wheelchair, a young woman pushing her mother down the street, as they’d passed. Just a typical pair in the Bay, but now that he thought about it, he hadn’t seen the older woman’s face.

“Orders?”

In one timeline, he sent one of his men with fake FBI credentials to the security office. It wouldn’t work for long, but he had to be certain.

In the second timeline, Coil had his people start scouring the airport for The Investigator.

Coil watched the security guards, made a little nervous by the demand that they immediately show his agent the surveillance footage, did exactly that. He wasn’t about to use this timeline, of course, because the guard had already notified his superior. But his man kept going through the information and…

There. There she was. The Investigator, her Father, and Dinah…and her father and Dinah were boarding a plan to LA?

Coil collapsed the timeline.

The other team reported no sign of the Investigator.

He just stared at the wall. He could inform them that Dinah had been kidnapped.

Which would mean that Dinah would be taken in hand by police in LA, and they would arrest the Investigator’s father…but he had no influence over the LA cops, or the feds, and that would mean that as soon as Dinah proved her power, she would come under the aegis of Alexandria.

Coil was many things. Suicidal was not one of them. Trying  to get Dinah now risked getting on Alexandria’s radar and…

Like thunder came after lightning, the real disaster hit.

The Investigator knows I have the PRT compromised. That was the only explanation. He’d kept Dinah running, kept her in fear by occasional calls to her house when she was there. He’d learned of her power from his intelligence agents, really people who just monitored the Bay, and he’d used it, keeping the foolish girl too afraid to take charge of her own life.

And then the Investigator had walked in, the girl PHO had, until the explosion, barely talked about save for her victory over Leet.

And now, in a single day, she’d derailed months of planning, taken a tool away from Coil.

Just like the investigator, a few days after being asked to look into the causes of an explosion, not only discovered the master responsible, but defeated him and by the unofficial chatter, made it look easy.

Not a minor thinker. Not a minor thinker at all.

And for her to do everything she had done… she had to know about Coil. Maybe not all the details, but enough to slip through his net and make it look easy.

She just threw down a gauntlet.

Very well. Coil would respond, but at a time and place of his choosing.

But for now, he was too furious to effectively plan his actions. So he would do the thing that had come to be just as good at shooting someone for calming him down.

He had a little refrigerator. He opened it, pulled out the chocolate syrup, ice cream, bananas, and whipped cream. For a moment, Coil considered pulling his normal cheat and splitting the timelines, keeping the banana split as a memory.

Fuck it. Given how miserably this day had turned out, Coil had earned his banana split.

In both timelines.