#chapter 11.1

Thanks for your patience! Like I said, things have been wild lately (hence why I’ve been MIA a lot), and I’m barely holding on to life life-ing at the moment. 😵‍💫

Loves and kisses 💋

Ahh, I see. You’ve got the first floor for employees, second floor for the boss’s offices and such, and third floor where the boss can be her civilian self without risking (too much) that the employees come upstairs and catch her unawares.

It still needed more than a few things to complete it.  I flipped a switch in the stairwell, and tinted flourescent lights lit up on the undersides of the shelves that ran along two adjacent walls, floor to ceiling.

Nice.

Each shelf was lined with terrariums and backed by strategically positioned mirrors so that the light filtered through the front of the terrariums and into the room.  Only a few were occupied, but they each had the same general contents – a layer of dirt and pieces of irregularly shaped wood.

I like this. Seems fitting to surround the bug girl with decorative bugs like this. :)

I walked through my new base of operations wearing an oversized t-shirt and a pair of underwear.  Not exactly fitting attire for a supervillain.

Oh jeez, this makes it so Taylor’s gonna need a lot more time to change in and out of her costume, doesn’t it. Her mask lenses are prescription - where before she could just take off her regular glasses, she now needs to start wrangling contact lenses in order for the mask lenses to not be all wrong.

Anyway, more to the point - looks like we’ll be spending some of this chapter exploring the Skittercave.

No... the Hive.

My new abode was three stories tall, which made it taller than Grue or Bitch’s places, which were the only ones I’d seen thus far, but it was narrow.

Nice.

It’s not shaped like an S, right?

A cafe had stood here, before, but it had been flattened by one of the first waves to hit the city.  

Now the only thing on the menu is pancakes.

Coil owned at least one of the companies that was managing the restoration and reconstruction efforts, and over the past two and a half weeks, as his crews had started clearing and rebuilding on the Boardwalk, he’d had them set up some buildings, all squashed together.  When the Boardwalk was fixed up, these same buildings would be at the westmost edge of the same block that had the stores, restaurants and coffee shops.

Huh, neat.

If the Boardwalk ever got going again, they would be prime real estate.

Any minute spent taking it easy is a minute spent not working to save Dinah?

Depending on what happened, it might be a long, long time before I could relax again.

This really isn’t healthy, Taylor.

What worried me more than anything was the idea that I might save Dinah, only to find that Coil had broken her spirit or her will to the point that she couldn’t go back to her old life.

Oof, yeah.

I worried that, like in my nightmare, I would be too late.

This is pretty cool!

I had hopes that the effect would be suitably impressive and intimidating once all of the terrariums were full.

It sounds sweet.

It would be doubly impressive once Coil’s special effects technician stopped by and outfitted a case with a series of switches that a large bug could move – a beetle or something.  If I could direct the beetle to release the bugs, turn the lights on or off or even open the lids of the terrariums, all while appearing to sit motionless in my chair, it would be that much more effective for any audience I happened to have in the room.

Let’s find out how he’s holding up.

He stood on the ledge above me.  He was more tanned than I was.  He wore a short-sleeved button-up shirt and khakis and held a clipboard.

Oh, huh. I suppose he would end up working as a manager for a part of the rebuilding. I probably should’ve seen that coming, but I never thought about what his job situation would be after Extermination.

It set him apart from the other laborers, and the man who stood just behind him, wearing a gray t-shirt and jeans.  I knew in an instant, my dad was in charge around here.

Yep! The clipboard alone made that clear.

Looking at him, I couldn’t imagine how I might have thought he was Coil.  Even in a dream.

Hehe. Yeah, he’s not quite that bony, is he.

“Just out for my regular run.”

Oof, ow, ouch...

Who let Wildbow coat his words in bone hurting juice?

As he’d done with his own underground base, Coil had set my lair up with a discreet entrance and exit.

Makes sense. Never know when enemies might be blocking off the front door.

Leaving through the front door would be conspicuous, if I started working with anyone beyond my teammates.

That too. As I mentioned, surveilling the building for a while would quickly reveal that Taylor worked for Coil if she’d kept using the same door as the more obvious of Coil’s folk.

Skinny teenage girl with black curly hair entering and leaving the same building that the skinny teenage villain with black curly hair was operating out of?  No.