We found Coil at the end of the walkway, talking to four people who most definitely weren’t soldiers.  Each wore a suit, and none seemed the type to carry a gun.

Like, actual businessperson suits? Interesting.

There was a heavyset woman, a man who must’ve been fifty or sixty, a man who stood no more than four feet tall and a blonde woman who barely looked out of high school.

Tag yourself, I’m the smol man.

“Cranston, can you have it for tomorrow?”

“Yes, sir,” the blonde woman replied.

Cranston? Seems like an uncommon name. All the better to remember, though, hopefully.

“Good.  Pearse, the soldiers?”

Seems like an alternate spelling of Pierce, but I can’t help but imagine it being pronounced like “pears”.

“Squads Fish, Nora and Young are suited up and ready for your okay,” the short man spoke.

I like the squad names. I wonder if there’s some sort of system to it? Maybe it’s based on the squad leaders’ names, or something.

“And the replacement recruits?”

Pearse handed Coil a set of folders, “I’ve put post-its on the most promising.  We need two to make up for one soldier that was recently injured, and one that decided to skip town.”

A deserter, huh? I wonder how much the soldiers know about the bigger picture goings-on.

Coil tucked the folders under one arm, “Good.  Duchene, I’ll talk to you later tonight about our preparations.  The rest of you, I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

I’m gonna take a 50/50 guess that Duchene is the heavyset woman.

The suits marched off, with all but the fat lady passing us to go the way we’d come, along the metal walkway.  The woman headed down the stairs to the lower area with all the soldiers, and a group of people that weren’t in uniform flocked to her.  People with clipboards and crowbars.  The construction crew?

Definitely seems Coil is in charge of this construction, not just hiding underneath it for some reason.

The man who had opened the door for us inclined his head in the direction we were to go.  We traversed the metal walkway, and passed more of Coil’s soldiers.  I saw one squad of six below us was gearing up, pulling on masks and checking their guns.  Five seconds later, we passed Circus on the walkway, in a costume and makeup of red and gold.

Oh, hi there.

Oblivious to us or our passing, she was leaning against a wall by a stack of cardboard boxes, standing intimately close to a young soldier with close-cropped red hair and an ugly scar running down one side of his neck.

Hmmm… ❤

The interior of the sub-basement had none of the smell of the previous chambers, and consisted of two tiers with walls of poured concrete.

So if Coil has a base under the skeletal building and a way to provide Tattletale with keys to the construction site, is the building commissioned by him?

The upper level we stood on was an arrangement of metal walkways that extended around the room’s perimeter.  Crates and boxes filled the level below, and I could see fifteen or so of Coil’s people down there, sitting on crates or leaning against them, talking among themselves. 

Sounds nice. I mean, it seems like we’ve got plenty of people around here acting casually and like they’re enjoying each other’s company – it just sounds like a nice place to be right now, despite the looks.

Each soldier was outfitted in a matching uniform: shades of gray and some black, hard vests with raised collars to protect their necks.

Neat.

Only a few wore their balaclavas, and I could see a variety of nationalities in a group that was mostly men.

Unlike the Amorphous Basket Balls and some other gangs in the area, Coil’s plan isn’t really tied to any sort of national or racial identity, so there’s no reason to discriminate.

The male domination is probably just tied to demographics elsewhere. Wasn’t there a thing about Coil’s soldiers mostly being ex-military? It seems to me that his soldiers would inherit the demographic imbalances from the military in that case.

All of the soldiers had assault rifles somewhere nearby, slung over shoulders with straps and leaning against walls or crates.  Polished steel attachments on the underside of each gun’s barrel contrasted with the dark gunmetal tone of the rest of the equipment.

I don’t know enough about guns to tell what these attachments could be.

The skeleton of a building loomed over us.  Girders and beams joined together in what would become one of Brockton Bay’s high rises, twenty stories tall.

Oh, nice, an unfinished building that is actually still under construction.

At the base of it was a sea of crushed stone, with innumerable bulldozers, piledrivers, loaders, mixers and graders standing still and dark.  The only light came from the buildings and streetlights on the surrounding streets.

Dark, darker, yet darker.

Tattletale put key to lock and let us through the fence that surrounded the site.

Hm, now how did she get that key?

She held the gate open as Grue, Regent, Bitch and I filed through, followed by Judas and Brutus.  The two dogs were nearly normal in size, nothing that would raise alarm if someone saw us at a distance.  When we were through, Tattletale shut the gate and reached through the gap to put the lock back in place and click it shut.

Is this where Tattle’s half of the team have been staying? I’m not completely sure (I may have misinterpreted that “would” up there), but it sounded like this place was still an active construction site, so it seems like an odd choice.

Also, where’s Angelica? Is she already inside?

Gravel crushed underfoot as we made our way to the unfinished high rise.  Tattletale pointed to a hatch, surrounded by a rim of concrete.  The hatch itself had a yellow warning sign reading ‘Drainage’, sporting images beneath of a man wearing a hazmat suit and a man wearing a gas mask.  She fiddled with the keyring to get the right key, undid the lock and raised the hatch.  Stairs led down into a darkness that looked and smelled very much like a storm drain.

Ah, so this is like that shortcut from the end of Hive, is it?

As we descended, the smell got stronger.  We passed through a door with metal bars, and then traveled down a long hallway.  The room at the end of the hall was small, with one other door and a small surveillance camera in one corner.  The door we faced had no handle, forcing us to wait.  It took about twenty seconds before someone opened the door for us.  One of Coil’s men.

Hm. Well, hello there.

Is this one of Coil’s own bases of operations?