The Dark Edge Chronicles - Hardwire

Chapter 24: Shadows Revealed

Dee frowned as the intern slowly finished tying off the stitches that he had been putting in her scalp. The careful knots were the last of the repair work being carried out on the tall detective after Hawkes' RRT had finally managed to extracted her from the OR core. She now sat on a gurney down in the Foothill's ER with Duffy sitting directly across from her, an ice bag pressed against a massive bruise forming on the side of his haggard face.

All around them the hospital seethed with almost frantic activity as flak-jacketed and helmeted RRT officers, both from the CPD and the RCMP went floor to floor to determine if any more of the mysterious Brotherhood intruders still lurked in the hospital. For his part, Mordecai, the final survivor and now wearing a name, was under heavy guard in the ICU. There he lay under close supervision, doctors stunned that not only had the bullets had been removed from his body but his internal injuries were also mostly repaired during the chaos that had reigned supreme for close to an hour within the hospital's venerable walls.

Dee had hesitated at that point to tell them it had been some sort of energy field that had done the healing, projected by the yet unknown third party who had intervened in time to save Mordecai's life. Events surrounding the Brotherhood's penetration of the hospital already smacked of the Twilight Zone. No use muddying the waters with additional information to further weird the situation.

"Odd that our good Councilor Simpkins hasn't yet made an appearance," Duffy deadpanned as he pulled the ice pack from his face with a grimace. Which immediately produced a wince of pain, the muscles of his face badly bruised.

"This sort of thing seems made for the 6 o'clock news."

Dee could only grimace in reply as the intern finished his stitching and turned away without a word to attend to another one of the RRT officers that had managed to survive the initial assault on the hospital. Two had not, including the one that had been struck by the lightning bolt up in the OR. The other had died of a broken neck, received when he was roughly thrown into a wall by one of those shimmering walls of energy.

Still, Duffy made a good point. Simpkins should have been all over this one, with her taskforce toadies following in her wake as they made vain predictions about having the case solved any day now. And she hadn't even smelled as much as the woman's perfume wafting through the septic atmosphere of the ER, its heavy and cloying scent irritating even in memory.

"At least we have some tangible stuff to go with now, Duffy," she rasped, her throat dry from the painkillers the doctors had poured into her to counteract both her low-grade concussion and the various cuts and contusions her body now sported.

"Perhaps," Duffy husked in reply, pressing the ice bag back against his face. "A couple of rather cryptic names and a label for our half-dead witness upstairs." His eyes abruptly narrowed. "We do know now, however, the methodology behind most of the destruction on 16th Avenue, the Sheraton and the other sites in the city. If we could just determine how those destructive forces are generated ..." He raised bleary eyes to Dee's frowning face. "Or the relationship this 'Brotherhood' has with the rest of the world and what its ultimate purpose is in stirring up all this trouble."

Abruptly the grizzled Brit groaned and rubbed the back of his head with his free hand as he closed his eyes in a grimace of pain.

"Bloody hell, I feel like a hot spike is being driven into my brains!" He popped open one eye. "Can we swing by Callahan's for a bit o' the liquid painkiller after we're done here?"

Despite her own pain and discomfort, Dee had to chuckle out loud at that. Figures the sodden Brit would turn to the bottle as soon as they were out of immediate danger.