Web of the Weaver: Interludes of Plots and Love

“Boss, I don’t understand. You want us to take on the Empire, after we lost Grue to Lung?”

“Tattletale, I have assurances that there will be no capes at this site. Only normal soldiers.”

Confident. Believes he has things under—Lisa got her power back under control. Of course Coil was confident, he wasn’t the one who was about to piss off the Empire.

“So, uh, can I have a reason for this?”

“Of course. Recent events at Winslow have bulked large in the Empire’s propaganda lately.”

“And?”

“And I think a minor setback should balance out their good luck. Kaiser can either fail to follow up on his promises, or buy new refrigerators.”

“And that’s it.”

“There may be a drug shipment… If you were to destroy some of the packets, I wouldn’t mind.”

“That’s gonna really piss them off.”

“And might see them act out, yes.”

Not about the refrigerators. About sparking a reaction from the Empire…

“And if Hookwolf drops by?”

“I will compensate each member 10,000 dollars for the risk. If necessary, I can arrange to have you stay out of town until this blows over.” The phone went dead.

This doesn’t make any sense. Lisa tried to bring the pieces together.

Wait a minute. We’ve pissed off Lung, and don’t have Grue. Could this be a way of confirming that we’re not Empire affiliated? No, that’s stupid. Coil’s up to something else. But what?

Her power was annoyingly quiet on that, or rather, too noisy with conclusions that just didn’t work. By the end of the night, LIsa was no closer to a clear conclusion—even though she was in bed with a raging headache.

Fucker. Coil knew too much about her power and that meant he knew when to not give her the information she needed.

Which meant that she might not like the truth when it came out.

“But when you’ve got a gun pointed at your head…”

*****

Coil leaned back at his desk. In his other timeline, he was finishing up reports, reading briefings, everything that he needed to remember, but didn’t actually need to take an action that might impact others.

Of course, he was doing that well off base. After a few terrifying near-misses, Thomas Calvert had learned that splitting the timeline wouldn’t help you if say, someone just obliterated the area with a bomb.

The first thing he did when he created a new timeline was to put distance between where he was in each timeline.

“I wonder how bad her headache is?” Thomas mused. She would wonder about drugs and the refrigerators, and spin her mind down endless lines of thought, but in truth neither thing was important. The key to dealing with her power was to feed it just enough to set it off, and not enough to give her any hard information to work with.

Thomas couldn’t take credit for that understanding—but it helped having the kind of access that let you read PRT case files and dossiers on how to deal with thinkers, both to support your thinkers and keep the enemy off balance.

And it didn’t hurt that he had been telling the truth, sort of.

Thomas wanted the Empire pissed off. He had people in the Empire, after all. People ready to whisper the right word.

Like, for example, that they’d heard of a girl bragging how she’d told the Undersiders about the Empire’s operation.

Aisha Laborne.

Grue wouldn’t come back on his own, and it didn’t matter if this would bring him back or just send him off on an ultimately suicidal rampage. Coil would make very certain that no Empire Cape, or for that matter anyone intelligent enough to bring it up to a cape, heard about his plant’s words until it was too late, and the sister of a Ward was unfortunately dead.

And losing another Ward, be it to prison after he went after her killers or death after he failed to survive would be another black mark against Emily Piggot, and the response would weaken the Empire. Kaiser might not have ordered it, but well, given the subject of his speeches, he could hardly claim innocence, and the Empire would be weakened.

Maybe best case, he could get Grue back to the Undersiders, or take him on as an independent.

In truth, the only person who was going to win was Coil.

As usual.

*****

“Bro, it’s not a big deal.”

Brian tried not to shout. Apparently, he had anger issues, at least according to one of his PRT mandated Shrinks.

No shit. I live in the Bay.

“Aisha, you were allowed to go to Arcadia, but you have to keep your grades up!”

“Who the fuck cares about grades. Dad didn’t, you don’t—“

“Yeah, and look where Dad is, and the only reason I’m not on the street working some shithole job is I got powers.” Brian shook his head.

“Yeah, school isn’t my thing,” Aisha said.

“It’s going to be. Arcadia has tutoring sessions for some of the Winslow Kids on Wednesday.”

“That must suck—oh no. You’re not making me go to any fucking tutoring session.”

“Yeah. I am. Because I don’t have you for certain Aisha, and remember Mom? She’s trying to get you back.”

“Wait, why?” Aisha’s stutter was almost impossible for anyone but Brian to notice.

“Because she wants your aid so she can keep getting high!”

“So… Tell ‘em to drop Alexandria on her head.”

Brian stared. “Me. A probationary Ward, tellthem to send in Alexandria.” He shook his head. “No, you’re going to the tutoring session and… if they say you’re not trying, there’s another tutoring session… Saturday.”

“What? No way!”

“Yep,” Brian lied. “So what’s it going to be?”

“I’ll go to the stupid session.” Aisha grumped.

Brian sighed. That had gone a little easier than he’d thought.

I hated to pull out the Mom card, but Aisha needs to know how serious this is.Brian was on probation and everyone from Youth Guard to CPS were keeping him under observation. As was Director Piggot.

Fuck you, Sophia Hess. Any chance of anyonebeing able to do stuff on the sly had gone right outof the window.

Hell, Vista wanted to break into where ever they were keeping Hess and murder her because someone had found out she’d been taking more time than she should and then had asked why. Now she had biweekly meetings with her parents and a counselor. When she came back from them, she was reallymotivated in their spars.

Which was another thing. Director Piggot could assign duties to “enhance his integration into the Wards.” One of them was training them in self-defense, only Assault had let Brian know that it was because Youth Guard didn’t want them to take full-scale hand to hand courses.

But Brian wasn’t doing that. He was just doing something to fit in.

Vista really liked it, even if she needed a taser or something, but that wasn’t allowed.

I miss being on my own. You didn’t need to deal with half the shit you had to deal with here.