The Dark Edge Chronicles - Hardwire

Chapter 14: Into the Lion's Den

The Air Canada 747 touched down lightly at Charles de Gaulle Airport and began rolling towards the terminal, its metal skin glinting in the early morning sunshine. It had reached its destination after an exhausting all-night flight across the Atlantic, making its final stop over in Toronto after leaving Calgary the day before. Taxiing, it quickly reached the massive, rambling terminal building and was guided to its final resting-place by an orange-vested crewman.

The crewman's lighted batons waved the 747's pilots to their parking space beside one of the many moving walkways that led directly into the terminal itself, fingers of steel jutting from the disjointed body of the terminal. Working with crew on the outside of the plane, the head stewardess opened the outer hatch and began deplaning the passengers.

"Bienvenue au Paris, monsieur," the stewardess, a perky brunette, said with a hopeful smile as Mordecai strode by. During the flight she had been one of a handful of stewardesses that had dropped a napkin into Mordecai's lap during the flight, with the suggestion that he meet her in the forward washroom to join the Mile High Club.

And the stewardesses weren't the only ones. Within the space of a few minutes after take-off, he had received more than fifteen other proposals, most from women in first class seating. But he also managed to get a few from others sitting in coach, who had seen him step on board.

As usual, he had ignored them all, dropping each proposal into the garbage. Just as he ignored the stewardess and her hopeful thoughts as he stepped by her, concentrating instead on getting inside to retrieve his bag.

Striding along the corridor leading into the terminal itself, Mordecai found his thoughts turning to the flight in. He had half expected Paris to be engulfed with the same sort of chaos that he had glimpsed on the way into Calgary, since he had discovered that France was home to the Brotherhood. 

But, as he had stared out his window, the city looked just the same as it had the last time he was here. Even the people on the flight appeared relatively normal, the death head mask not appearing on any one of them.

He could, however, see a glimpse of it if he looked at any one person long enough. Soon they all would be wearing the same leering skull that the Normals of Calgary had worn when he had arrived there. It would just take time for the node to expand this far. That thought, in itself, made the man in black frown. The node was expanding, and fast. He could feel it.  If they didn't do something soon, it would engulf the world and Humanity would never be the same!

Reaching the end of the corridor as it emptied into the terminal, Mordecai paused, letting his eyes scan the crowds that now surged through the building in front of him. There, almost ridiculously easy to spot, a handful of Brotherhood movers and burners, glaring through their sunglasses as they examined each person coming off a plane. Mordecai suspected that each gate had its knot of psionics, with orders to scan every person that went past them.

It didn't take a great leap in logic to assume that the Brotherhood, having lost a major North American city to a renegade hardwire of incredible ability, would be just a bit edgy. Especially when it came to the country they called home. The man in black had expected such a welcoming committee, informed of what had happened in the Calgary airport several hours ago.

Guardians or not, he still had to get out of the building. 'Time to blend in!' he thought, gathering the energy he had been hoarding since he got on the plane back in Calgary.

Scanning the nearest psionic in the knot of Brotherhood wireheads standing and watching the arrivals gate, Mordecai made note of his signature. Then he turned his attention to his own. While he couldn't hide the fact that he was a psionic, at least not until he somehow learned Samson's trick with the psionically invisible thing, he possessed the ability to mimic other minds with his own.