The Dark Edge Chronicles - Hardwire

Nighttime Recon

"Just about ready?" Mordecai asked softly, knowing that even over the water, Jeriko's enhanced hearing would be able to hear his words.

"Yup," she replied just as softly, Mordecai's own powerful auditory system easily picking up her words over the sound of the shower. "Just about out. I'll towel off and change." A moment later the shower sounds stopped and he could hear his colleague clamber out of the shower stall to dry herself off.

The Arm's perky little desk clerk that had signed Mordecai in when he had first arrived, hadn't been too thrilled to see the stunning Jeriko accompany him upstairs to his room a couple of hours ago, her bag over her shoulder. It didn't take much of an imagination to assume that she would be spending the night, though Mordecai hadn't booked for double occupancy.

That, of course, meant any chance she may have had to court the man in black was abruptly shot. Unless ... unless the woman was his sister. Mordecai had smiled when he caught sight of the thoughtfully calculating expression appear on Marcie's face as they stepped into the elevator, her thoughts almost transparently evident.

He and Jeriko indeed had spent the day together, going to the zoo and eating lunch at the top of the Husky Tower, among other things. But, though he knew the blonde Swedish lone gunman had a thing for him, he had carefully kept the conversation banal and away from romance of any kind. That is, when they weren't talking strategy. No use in complicating things even more than they needed to be.

Jeriko was good. Not just marginally good, but outstandingly so. Her skills were well honed and her power massive. He couldn't have asked for a more powerful hardwire to help him root out the Brotherhood. She was the perfect ally. But, like Mordecai himself, she was dispensable. If Jeriko had to die to protect the Shield, she would die. Just as Mordecai would. To get emotions unnecessarily involved only provided the opportunity for hesitation, which could jeopardize their objectives. Ultimately, to be successful as a lone gunman, no hesitation must exist, none.

And that was why he stood without hesitation when Jeriko stepped from the bathroom, sealing the edge of her snug fitting neuron armor. That done, she finished drying her hair with a small towel. She nodded to him as she threw it back into the bathroom to proceed in braiding her hair. After finishing the tightly woven braid, she pulled on her last item of clothing before striding towards the big man.

Her nighttime wardrobe now complete, Jeriko was dressed much like Mordecai: in a snug black turtleneck, black khaki pants and hiking boots. She would add a black leather vest with multiple pockets for various instruments and devices as Mordecai already had, to complete her kit.

Which she did, as soon as she was in range of Mordecai's arm. Jeriko caught the vest the man in black tossed to her and quickly slipped it on.

"Ready?" Mordecai asked softly and, smiling slightly, Jeriko bobbed her head in yet another quick nod. "Then let's do this." With a flicker of light, a teleportal sliced into being and, without a backward glance, the two lone gunmen stepped through and vanished.

Stepping out the portal on the other side, Mordecai and Jeriko found themselves in the heart of the city, several metres from the front door of the big office building Braddox had lead the man in black to before. With a hand on her shoulder, Mordecai pulled Jeriko back into the shadow of a nearby building as he looked up at the shadowy giants looming over them.

Here and there he could make out an office with its lights still on. 'Working late.' A glance at the sky showed a cloudless, starlit night. The temperature was almost 20 degrees Celsius. Uncomfortable, if he had been a normal.

As it was, Mordecai nearly had to rub his arms as a rippling of goose flesh announced a chill.

"Low local temp," Jeriko quietly noted, speaking what he was thinking. "Could mean high psi activity. Although somewhat unusual, considering the time of day!"

Because of the relatively high amount of ambient energy present during the daytime, with the warmth of the sun giving the air a large amount of potential energy, most psi activity took place during the day. That allowed more powerful psionics to leech energy out of the air, as Mordecai and the other psionics had done before, both at the airport and at Curly's. That also explained the tendency of most powerful psionics to locate in warm climates, like Bermuda, Hawaii and South America. Only those psionics powerful enough to generate high amounts of neural energy with their own metabolisms, a draining venture at best, worked at night.

Psionics like Mordecai and Jeriko.

"Looking for me, no doubt," the man in black replied and Jeriko nodded in mute agreement, her eyes hooded as she studied the buildings in front of them. "Hopefully that'll pull their attention away from their heart."

"I hope so, too," the blonde hardwire husked, frowning. "Are all of these buildings around here, property of the Brotherhood?"

Mordecai frowned before shaking his head.

"I'm not one hundred percent sure, to be honest. But, according to the info gathered by my probes, almost all of these surrounding buildings have some level of psionic ability being carried on." He pointed to the building in front of them, with its concrete porch and statues. "That one, however, showed the greatest amount of activity, orders of magnitude higher than any of the others. At times there was enough activity to indicate over a hundred wireheads of considerable talent holed up somewhere in that glass and concrete tower. If these buildings do belong to the Brotherhood, that one is likely their headquarters." A slight smile touched the big man's lips. "Hopefully it's empty with most of them out and about the city looking for me."

"Which would be a perfect time for a penetration." Jeriko grinned. "Are we going physical? Or psionically in?"

"Depends on the protection the Brotherhood has thrown up," Mordecai said thoughtfully. "And how high in the tower the protection extends."

"That mean's a scan." Jeriko's grin tightened as she focused her meta-senses on the building in front of them. "You take the top half, I'll take the bottom."

"Right." Mordecai began focusing his own senses.

As they crouched in the shadows, both made a scan sweep through the building in front of them, making sure their scans were low enough in power to avoid setting off any wards or active detection grids. If Mordecai was right and the majority of the Brotherhood's softwires were scattered throughout the city in a desperate attempt to find him, then the wards and detection grids would be more sensitive than usual to make up for the loss of support.

Almost immediately his scan found a tight block of heavily warded offices occupying the top four floors. Additionally, as he watched for a brief moment, he saw several localized scans methodically sweeping through the office floors. By the pattern and strength of the scans, he estimated that at least eight strong telepaths were projecting them.

"Here we go," he noted softly. "I read a heavily warded and protected block of offices at the top."

"The rest of the building has light wards and intermittent activity, as far as I can tell," Jeriko whispered in reply, looking over her shoulder at him. "If I were a judge of these things, I'd say that such a heavily protected location means they have something to hide up there."

"And I would be inclined to agree with you," Mordecai replied, refocusing a slightly stronger scan. He quickly found the signatures of several movers working to reinforce the wards among other wireheads.

"Especially since there seems to be movers, burners and more teeps heavily concentrated on the second and third floors from the top to keep things nice and tight."

"The key?" Jeriko's eyebrow climbed as she gazed into Mordecai's thoughtful expression.

"Probably. If not the plan in its entirety. Either way, it's worth taking a look." His face hardened. "But, considering the psionic protection that's up there, I think a physical sneak would be the best way to go."

Jeriko nodded, already scanning the surrounding buildings for a weak point to establish a beachhead at.

"We can try coming in from the top, using that building there." She pointed to a slightly taller skyscraper than the Brotherhood headquarters just to the west. "As a place to establish a penetration point."

"Good call." A teleportal irised into being. "Let's go."