The Dark Edge Chronicles - Hardwire

Chapter 8: Unlocking the Door

"What?" Preacher hissed softly, his mind whirling in stunned shock as he stared at the still groggy assassin. He had just arrived a few seconds ago from his estate on the outskirts of town via teleportation, having been alerted that the security of the building, and his office, had been compromised.

"They managed to penetrate the wet banks? HOW, ... THE, ... FUCK, ... DID, ... THAT, ... HAPPEN?"

"Don't worry, Preacher," Duchesne managed to grunt around a medical mover's hands as she worked on his broken nose. "I didn't give him enough time to download any information before I yanked his probe out of your little wet bank there."

"Really," Preacher growled tightly, clad only in a night robe. The alarm had interrupted a tryst with a rather beautiful woman that he had managed to coerce into his bed, a woman that had happened to be the wife of the mayor of Calgary. It had taken some time to get her in the right position of compromise and now it was completely wasted. So rushed was he to answer Henry's summons that he had left his home without re-dressing.

"And what about the renegade's partner, hmmm, Mr. Duchesne? Oh, right, . . . you didn't see the second one! Did you even bother to read the report from that werewolf, Silvermane?" Duchesne threw Preacher a hard, tight look at that question. "Never mind answering; I can obviously see that you didn't." He spun away, barely resisting the impulse to burn Duchesne to ash. As much as he wanted to, the Inner Council wouldn't be very happy getting their silver arrow so summarily destroyed, regardless of how badly he had just failed.

"Well, much to your disappointment I'm sure, Mr. Duchesne, Lisa tells me that the renegade had a full 20 nanoseconds in her interface chamber before she became aware that he wasn't me. TWENTY NANOSECONDS! Do you know how much information our little teep turncoat that we took down at the airport had managed to steal in 20 nanoseconds? Almost a full gigasect! And he was just a softwire teep with no more ability than I have in my little finger. You've seen what this hardwire can do before tonight, and now he's not only penetrated our wards, gotten hold of my personal access codes to the wet banks despite our best security, and penetrated the wet banks for over 20 nanoseconds. But he withstood four of your close range shockwaves, managed to remain conscious enough for his partner to knock you on your ass, then translocated out of here without even as much as a trace. WITHOUT A FUCKING TRACE, DUCHESNE!"

Preacher leaned in close until he was almost nose to nose with the battered assassin.

"He could have the whole fucking thing in his cortex, right now," he whispered harshly. "The coup, the assault, the whole shit load! And you let him walk out of here with only a scratch. Then have the balls to tell me that he didn't get anything out of my wet banks." Preacher leaned back and walked away, angrily pushing aside the handful of softwire protection that was allowed this deep into his inner sanctum, leaving behind a dazed yet angry Duchesne.

Watching the lean Brotherhood leader stride away, Braddox folded his arms across his thick chest and glanced over at a frowning Henry.

"This is not good," he said in a low, intense voice and Preacher's assistant silently nodded his head in agreement.

Jeriko pursed her lips in concern as she lightly probed at a massive bruise on Mordecai's left shoulder, just one of many bruises and cuts Duchesne's ambush had left the man in black.

"This one's deep, Marty," she noted softly. "I'm going to need to go in and see if there's any tendon, muscle or cartilage damage."

"Go ahead," Mordecai growled thickly, barely resisting the impulse to grind his teeth in rage. His head still ached from the brutal attack that had caught him completely unprepared and almost unshielded. Only Jeriko's timely intervention and extension of her own shields had saved him from being burnt out.