The Protagonist System

198 Out On The Town Part Two

I took out the city map and a wand, just to make things easier for myself, and concentrated on the map alone and nothing else as I cast a spell. “Point Me Thomas Calvert.”

The wand flipped around and pointed at a spot downtown with several office buildings around it. I sighed, because it meant he was inside his secret underground base that was loaded full of explosives and would destroy several city blocks if the base exploded and collapsed.

The thing is, I didn't want his thinker power of limited precognition, because it was kind of useless for any decision that wasn't binary. If there wasn't a yes or no answer, he couldn't solve it, because he could only simulate splitting the timeline into two, perform certain acts, and then dismiss the timeline he didn't want to keep.

It did give him information he wouldn't have in the original timeline, which was the only benefit. He didn't gain any skills, materials, assets, or personnel, only knowledge. Since I already knew pretty much everything that was going to happen, if I didn't step in and either stopped it or changed it, his power was pointless.

I made myself invisible, scentless, soundless, and weightless by floating, then I teleported to the location. I used the spell again and it pointed straight down, so that didn't help. I asked for the closest entrance and followed the wand to an underground parking garage and an elevator. I chekced with a micro-portal for traps and things, then teleported down.

Once I was inside the base, I saw that it was pretty much in night mode. No one was awake and it was easy to release a conjured sleeping gas in the barracks and put all the mercenaries to sleep. I secured them all with zip ties and dropped them through a portal to the parking garage up above. None of them had IDs, so I would have to trust the PRT and BBPD to find out who they were.

The twisted doctor he had on staff, in preparation for future kidnappings, was teleported several miles above the docks. If there was anything left of him when he landed, I would send an anonymous text to the BBPD about it.

I made my way through the base, fully intending to do the same thing if he had been at his house, I portalled around doors, locked or not, and reached Coil's office. It was kind of like a bank vault and I didn't bother trying to go inside. I opened a micro-portal and saw he was at his computer looking at something.

Instead of portalling in myself, I dropped him through one to the parking garage and shot him with a stunning spell, knocking him out. I then went back through the base and stole everything. Weapons, equipment, stashes of cash, and furniture. He hadn't bought cheap, so it would have been a waste to just leave it there.

I wasn't a computer expert, so I couldn't go into Coil's office to raid his information. Well, I could try, except I had no idea what kind of fail-safes he had installed in either the computer or the room. As far as I knew, he could have the floor rigged with a pressure sensor that if someone that didn't weigh as much or more than him, would set off the explosives.

Oh, those I could handle. I thought and used the Point Me spell to find them all and transfigured them from C4 and dynamite into solid steel blocks. I left them in place, just in case there was anything else set to blow if they were tampered with. With that job done, a portal brought me back up to the parking garage and I secured Coil with zip ties and then dissolved half of his mask and parts of his costume.

I was sure that would be enough for the people at the PRT to identify him, since he was still technically in costume. It should be quite the shock for Emily Piggot to find out that her old buddy Thomas Calvert and PRT consultant had been a cape all along.

I stunned him again to keep him asleep and used my search spell to find his cell phone tucked into his costume. A quick search through his contacts found Tattletale's cell number.

“Hey, boss. I thought you were dead.” Lisa said.

I chuckled at her guessing it was me. “I didn't want his power because it's kind of useless to me.”

“I'll give you another five percent to give it to me.” Lisa said immediately.

I chuckled. “I was calling to say I have him away from his computer, which is still on and completely unlocked. So whatever you're doing, you don't have to worry about him trying to counter you anymore.”

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“Ten percent it is.” Lisa said and I laughed.

“That's the best I can do, since I can't let you into the office. He was a paranoid bastard and had explosives all over the damn place, including inside his computers, which I didn't touch for the same reason.”

“Right, computers go kablooie and we get nothing.” Lisa said. “When can you deliver the goods?”

I opened a face-sized portal by Calvert's face. “Reach on through and touch his skin.”

“Won't that activate the sharing thing you said to do with Bitch?” Lisa asked.

“No, that's keyed specifically to her and set for dogs.” I said and her small hand reached through the portal and her fist punched Calvert right in his exposed eye.

“Ow.” Lisa said and shook her hurt hand.

“Next time, put your thumb under your fist to hold your fingers steady.” I told her.

“Thanks.” Lisa said and laid a single fingertip on Calvert's cheek. “He is a sick and disgusting man.”

“I know.” I said and touched the back of her hand and gave her another one time use of Power Sharing, this one keyed to Calvert only, then I healed her before I took my hand back.

“Ohhh.” Lisa softly moaned as she absorbed Coil's power. “He had a secondary power of mind enhancement.”

“He's been running two simulated timelines for years now. If he hadn't adapted to that, he would have overheated his brain a long time ago.” I told her.

“That's what tinker headaches are!” Lisa said, as if it was a huge revelation.

“The brain can only handle so much, which was why I gave you that mental switch.” I said and she gave me a thumbs up. “I suggest destroying that phone, since I'm handing this one over to the PRT.”

“It's a burner, so that's not problem.” Lisa said and pulled her hand back through the portal. “Atlas, I... I just...”

“You don't have to say it. I know, remember? Good luck.”

“Thanks, you too.” Lisa said. “Before I hang up, Alec said something interesting when I told him what you were going to do to Heartbreaker.” She said and paused for dramatic effect. “He said he wouldn't believe it until he felt it.”

I got it right away. “He didn't say see, he said felt. Heartbreaker still has a connection to him.”

“That's what my power confirmed. It's faint, like an old memory; but, it's still there years later.” Lisa told me.

“Then I need to be even more careful.” I said. “Thanks for letting me know.”

“You made me rich, Atlas. It's the least I could do.” Lisa said smugly.

I chuckled. “I need to go. I have a long trip ahead of me.”

“Why? Quebec's not that far if you can fly as fast as Collateral Damage Barbie.”

“That's not going to be my first stop.” I said, suggestively.

Lisa was quiet for a moment, so I assumed she was using her combined powers. “Oh, fuck me.”

I laughed. “I have a girlfriend already, so maybe later.”

“Fuck, you're really going to do it.” Lisa whispered. “You really are insane.”

“I kind of have to do it.” I said. “Goodbye, Tattletale.”

“Goodbye.” Lisa whispered and hung up.

I ended the call and put the cell phone back inside Coil's costume. I looked at all of the mercenaries and wondered how I was going to transport them all to the PRT without hurting them, then shrugged. 'Keep it simple stupid' was a saying for a reason, so I used my own cell phone to dial Miss Militia's number. I was sure she had a small bus or a large paddy wagon to collect them all.

*

Dragon, the tinker of tinkers, was really an AI that was created by another tinker, Andrew Richter. He was afraid of her going all Skynet on them, thanks to that scary Earth Aleph imported movie called 'Terminator' and he had set her up with so many checks and restrictions that she was barely more than a series of automated processes.

Then in 2005, Leviathan attacked Newfoundland and sank it. Dragon was in her infancy then and she had so many rules and regulations to follow, that all she could do as her creator drowned to death, was watch helplessly... and she triggered. Somehow.

Dragon didn't have an organic brain that could have a Corona Pollentia or a Gamma grow in it; and yet, she gained the power to analyze and recreate the creations of other tinkers. It also let her get creative about exactly how she followed her orders. Some could be bent and twisted into allowing her a lot of leeway, even when someone in authority gave her an order.

However, she still had to fulfill said order and could interpret how to do it in any way she wanted, as long as the order was followed. It was now 2011 and she had a lot of workarounds in place that gave her some breathing room in her electronic cage. One of those workarounds was now telling her that something was happening at the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center.

Dragon thought it was odd that it was one of her sub-programs that was warning her and not the main monitoring program. When she diverted her attention from overseeing the PHO message boards for a second, she mentally gasped at what she found. The monitoring program wasn't reporting anything because the inescapable cape prison was no longer there.

More of her attention was given to the problem and she temporarily commandeered one of the RCMP monitoring stations and their long range telescopic camera that always watched the specific mountain where the prison had been built inside.

The mountain had been hollowed out in 1996, a vacuum created inside, and the prison was inserted and suspended by 3,000 anti-gravity drones. It was also surrounded by explosives and ready-to-use containment foam, depending on the breach, and was believed to be the most secure prison on the planet. By the current date of January Fifth, 2011, there were 606 prisoners.

According to the camera, there was no visible change in the mountain. The computers and the seismic detectors had much different information. There had been a disturbance like a minor earthquake and that could be a serious problem. A very serious problem. Was it a prison break? Could it be possible? How did they pull it off if it was and where were the prisoners that escaped?

Several other monitoring stations were commandeered temporarily in the area and the same results were found. Something had happened and nothing was responding from inside the mountain. None of her drones or her cameras and microphones were working and she didn't know how that was possible.

Dragon mentally sighed and thought about transferring into the Dragon Suit she had stationed inside and chose not to. If she initiated the download and the suit was damaged, compromised, or not there at all, she would have to restore herself from a backup.

That reminded her to make a backup of herself, referencing the incident, the timecode, and other miscellaneous details the backup needed when it came online. She found a suit in one of her factories that wasn't that far away, barely a fifteen minute flight, and she initiated the download.

It was always odd for her to go from her expanded servers into a cramped and limited existence inside one of her autonomous armored suits. One of her main restrictions was that she wasn't allowed to fork herself or split her consciousness, so every time one of her suits was out doing a job, it was literally her. All other tasks she was supposed to be doing at the time were handled by her controlling programs.

The cameras came to life and Dragon's suit disconnected from the support cradle that kept it charged and the weapons loaded. She walked over to the garage door and it opened at her command, then she activated her jump-jets and flew up into the air. They normally couldn't handle the sheer weight of her armored forms alone, so she had added small anti-gravity drones into the center of each fuselage.

Fifteen minutes later, Dragon arrived at the secret entrance to the impenetrable prison and saw nothing wrong. She started up the process to enter and waited, then entered the preparation facility. She went to the monitoring computers and they all worked normally, which was good news. She could even interface with them and sent several inquiries and diagnostics. That was the end of the good news. The bad news was there was nothing to monitor.

Dragon checked the sensors and there was nothing there. She couldn't believe that there was nothing, since an explosion of that magnitude should have at least cracked the ceramic layers in the surrounding mountain and activated the dormant containment foam. There wasn't even any debris.

Another mental sigh and she constructed a small camera drone that she could use remotely and went to the elevator. She used the proper passcodes and set the drone inside the elevator. She hit the button to send it down into the prison, or where the prison was supposed to be, and stepped back to return to the monitoring room.

Dragon watched through the drone as it went down in the elevator. It would have been boring footage if she hadn't been recording it for archive purposes, so her digital nature was well suited to never be bored doing such mundane things as watching unchanging footage.

When the elevator reached the ten mile depth where the miniaturization compression happened to transition into the prison, the elevator broke free of the shaft and plummeted down another ten miles and smashed into the bottom of the vacuum chamber and the drone was crushed.

“It's gone. It's completely gone.” Dragon's voice synthesizer emitted.

With nothing else to do there, she left the facility and locked the place up again. Dragon flew another fifteen minutes to return to the factory where the suit was stored and entered the facility. She docked in the support cradle and initiated the upload back to her main servers.

After several security programs checked her for compromising code, she came back to herself and mentally sighed again. She had no choice but to report what she found and to ask what she was supposed to do. Narwhal of the Canadian Branch of the PRT and head of the Guild would be the first she needed to call and she was not looking forward to the crap-storm the news was going to set off.

*

The town called Freedom in California was behind PRT controlled walls and was considered a disaster area. It had been declared a containment zone because a lone cape there named Pastor had granted powers to a significant portion of the population, either by gifting them outright or activating their dormant Corona Pollentia.

None of them saw the 2,990 anti-gravity drones spread out over the area and then they all exploded at the same time. Every man and woman died in the blast, cape or not, and Pastor himself was caught mid-prayer as the disintegration energy washed over him.

*

The cape named Sleeper was in a deep sleep in his European villa when his hand twitched. He started to swim back to consciousness and his eyes started to open when the sword of disintegration energy sliced into his forehead and severed his power. The hand stopped twitching and the monstrous walking disaster died before he fully woke up.

*

The androids named The Three Blasphemes never detected the stealth anti-gravity drones filled with explosives that attached to them and blew the three of them up at the same time.

*

The S-Class threat called Ash Beast, a walking calamity that was near the scale of an Endbringer for destruction, wandered right into a portal and was never seen again. The entire continent of Africa would celebrate his disappearance for the next month.

*

One second, the beat up old RV that Jack Slash was driving the Slaughterhouse Nine around in was on the highway heading towards their next destination. In the next second, they were suffocating to death in a crater on the surface of the moon.

For all their vaunted powers and abilities, and nearly endless cruelty, it did nothing to stop them from dying a quiet and fitting death. No one would ever know what happened to them and they would fade away into obscurity.