The Dark Edge Chronicles - Hardwire

Sanctuary

A couple of days later found Mordecai staring hard at the gray wall that was rising smoothly right before his eyes, seeming to grow right out of the ground itself. In reality he had created a psyken robot that had charged the molecules of densified cement that he was using to construct the shelters.

The robot, yet another construct of psyken and biomagnetic energy, then plotted a path for the charged particles to follow by building a magnetic framework based on the blueprints Mordecai had loaded into its memory. Forming a magnetic pole at the top of the structure-to-be, the robot made use of the attraction between opposite poles to draw the cement upwards. The process was somewhat slower than using pure psyken, but much, much faster than using standard building techniques.

Using such robots as well as other psyken constructs and building techniques, it had taken the determined man in black only two short months to procure the land and build the eight safe havens currently scattered across the face of North America. Havens that were strong enough to resist even the most concerted Brotherhood attack!

Those eight, plus this ninth he was currently building just south of Anchorage, would serve as shelters. Shelters for not only members of the Assembly, the name Avalon had given to the group of women he had rescued from the Brotherhood breeding facility, but for any other survivors of nations being subsumed by the Brotherhood as well. According to the latest lone gunman reports, that number was steadily climbing.

That was the reasoning behind building the havens away from population centers: to keep them out of sight of the urban-dependent Brotherhood. The Anchorage facility was being built out in the middle of the wilderness even as the middle of October slipped by and chill weather was beginning to settle all over the continent. The other shelters were similarly remote, though fully furnished and equipped with full facilities and power, as well as remote telecommunication arrays.

Hopefully they would be both strong enough and equipped enough to do what they were constructed for: protect the innocent from the rage of the Brotherhood thwarted in their design to dominate the world. 'Not to mention protecting the survivors of the battles that'll be soon launched in the counter-offensive against the Armageddon Project!' Mordecai thought as he nodded in satisfaction, his eyes tracking the wall as it rose to completion. At the top, the robot signaled the end of its task with a mental 'beep'.

Activating the last robot in the prefab construction set he assembled for each haven site, he set it to its task of growing the final wall of the 'barn', the largest building in the haven complex, which acted as a general storage area. It also housed a nuclear bomb shelter in its foundation.

The densified concrete, created by using psyken to bring the individual concrete molecules several orders of magnitude closer together, was strong enough to resist even a nearby nuclear detonation. It was also close to the density of lead, providing protection from radiation as well.

As the robot, a shimmering mass of light-bending substance about the size of a man's head, began its task of charging the concrete particles, sitting in a metal trough at the wall's base in a thick, gray slurry, Mordecai felt a light telepathic touch on his mind. Instead of his shields slamming into place, however, he continued to work, unconcerned.

It was the prearranged signal the other lone gunmen had decided to use to alert the big man to their approach, along with a set time to the opening of a teleportal. He glanced over his shoulder and casually watched as such a portal irised into view, opening wide enough to let a slender, dark-skinned woman step out. She was dressed in the customary black of the lone gunmen, her features a ravishing vision of Native American beauty, shoulder length hair knotted into a practical braid that lay over her shoulder.