I swallowed hard.  My heart had climbed up so far into my throat that I almost couldn’t breathe, and my heartbeat felt oddly distant and faint for how terrified I was.

If this is indeed the Slaughterhouse, that’s probably appropriate.

And/or of parahuman origin. Maybe Shatterbird’s power is like Glory Girl’s, but supercharged?

Although, I mean, it’s not like getting bombed or otherwise attacked this hard isn’t reason enough to be terrified regardless of who did it.

Coil’s base was deserted.  I knew his men were out on patrols, that the only people in here were a handful of the capes that were working for him.  He’d left it almost undefended.

Well, shit. That didn’t exactly work out for him, did it.

What about his power? Is he not using it at the moment, or did the other timeline turn out worse?

If I was going to act, I’d have to do it now.

My costume’s feet lacked hard soles, so I should have been nearly silent, but the interior of Coil’s base was deathly silent and my feet were slamming down on the metal walkway as I ran.  The noise of singing metal filled the dark space, echoing, seemingly louder with each step I took.

Wait.

What??

Taylor did you knock them down?

That would explain why she “didn’t have to worry about” people who would typically be on her side.

Shit, Taylor, what are you doing? Are you trying to break in and counterkidnap Dinah???

Are you on your own? Because there’s no way in hell the others agreed to this if that’s what’s going on.

Trickster, Ballistic and Circus lay in front of me.  Another cape had fallen over the railing and lay on the concrete floor below, unmoving.

Alright, definitely got some new action.

Between the metal walkway and the people present, it seems we’re at Coil’s HQ, or one of the similar bases. Apparently there’s also someone Taylor doesn’t know the name of involved, but that could just be Coil having more protegés than just the Undersiders, Trainwreck (not Roadblock), Circus and the Travelers, or capes working directly under him.

The big question is who’s attacking. One likely option is the Slaughterhouse Nine, in which case we’ve got some serious trouble. Also quite likely is Fenrir’s Chosen, which fits well with the gash Taylor has.

…then again, it just occurred to me is that this was probably a bomb. We’ve got plenty of capes here and whatever just happened knocked down this many of them, and Taylor’s in shock? Sounds like a bomb to me.

At least we (unfortunately) know it’s not Bakuda, I guess. Could be some of her tech, though, if someone managed to get into the PRT’s confiscated weapon reserves somehow, or to a Bakuda bomb storage the PRT never found. But it’s not like she’s the only one who can make a good old-fashioned explosive.

They were all either unconscious or hurting badly enough that I didn’t need to worry about them.

Ouch.

I stared down at the metal walkway as I caught my breath.  I had one gash at the side of my head, and another trickle ran from beneath the armor of my shoulder, down my arm and to my fingertip, where it dripped almost in sync with the head wound.

Welp. Looks like we’re diving right into Taylor being hurt. Is this right after where we left off, as she finally examines her wounds from Miss Militia shooting her with a shotgun?

It should have hurt, but it didn’t.  Maybe it would when the shock wore off.  If so, I didn’t look forward to it.

Then again, it seems she’s still in shock about this, suggesting it’s a lot newer. Are we in the middle of combat?

Hell, did the Undersiders manage to run into the Slaughterhouse Nine before we even got into the Arc?

Also, Wildbow showed recently that he’s willing to do flashbacks. Maybe he’s continuing to experiment with that, trying his hand at an in medias res retrospective, in which we get dumped into the action and then look back at what led up to this moment.