The Dark Edge Chronicles - Hardwire

Inversion

With that said, he switched the polarity on the British hardwire's psionic cortex.

Melanie immediately staggered, forcing the man in black to reach out with a hand to steady her. Thanks to her renovated systems, however, she wasn't staggered long.

"I'm okay," she said, pulling away from the big man's helping hand. "Bloody hell, you weren't kidding about ..." Her voice trailed off as she looked over at a concerned Mordecai, her eyes flying wide in astonishment.

For good reason. The man in black was glowing from within with a dark sort of light that, nevertheless, was almost blinding in its brilliance!

"You ... you look like you're about to explode!" she exclaimed in a hoarse whisper.

Mordecai's brow lifted in silent question as he looked down at himself. But it was Jeriko who spoke up with the explanation.

"Melanie, what you're now seeing is the result of having your psionic cortex inverted," she said, earning her a quick look of incredulousness.

"That ... that's possible?" she stammered.

"Indeed it is," the Scandinavian hardwire confirmed. "It's like switching the poles of a magnet. Once switched, the flow of energy through your cortex is reversed, creating the inversion effect."

Melanie pointed at a grinning Mordecai.

"So Mordecai is inverted," she stated.

"Yup."

"And I'm inverted."

"You sure are," Jeriko replied. That was when Melanie noticed that the other blonde was also glowing with dark light, though nowhere near the levels that the man in black had seeping from every pore.

"And you are inverted."

"I am," Jeriko confirmed.

"But you're not, Raven." At the Native American hardwire's negative head shake, Melanie looked back at Jeriko.

"So how many of these inverted psionics are there? And why does Mordecai look like he's holding enough energy, he could level a city?"

Jeriko's smile broadened slightly.

"Well, counting you now, there are five of us," she said. "Lisa and Samantha, who you met in Avalon's conference room, are the other two. As for why Mordecai looks like he's holding so much more power than all of us combined, that's because he is."

"To get ready for this hunt of yours?"

"No. That's his natural state."

Melanie hazarded another look at the big man, who now looked amused that he was the topic of conversation without anybody actually talking to him. Before she could ask why, however, Jeriko was already offering an explanation.

"Because Mordecai is a psi lord, the first of his kind."

'Psi lord,' Melanie silently mouthed as not only Raven turned to stare at Mordecai, but Dee and Duffy as well.

"Nor will I be the last," a thoughtful Mordecai added, smile fading somewhat, not bothering to deny the title Jeriko gave him. He had seen the future, and in every version of it, they had called him that. And that was before he increased in power, thanks to the inversion. The inversion proved without a doubt that he had always been the first of Psionic-kind's newest iteration in every version of Reality. The first and perhaps its most powerful.

But the future had also shown him that, while psi lords would continue to appear going forward, albeit infrequently, they would also be responsible for some of the most violent episodes in Humanity's future history. As he thought that, his vision of Raven as a Brotherhood destroyer floated in his mind's eye for a brief moment.