The Dark Edge Chronicles - Hardwire

Epilogue: A Parting of Ways

Mordecai frowned as he looked up at the television monitor sitting high up in a ceiling corner of the departure lounge deep in the belly of Calgary International Airport's south terminal. On the color monitor some sort of Normal ceremony was taking place, one that featured his old friends, Dee McMaster and Cal Duffy. 

Dressed in formal attire, they were receiving some sort of award for the part they played in the events that had swirled around the convention center during the Normal conference of world power finance ministers. 'Had that truly been only five days ago?' the man in black silently wondered as he watched the tiny figures on the screen go through the motions.

Five days removed from an event that nearly saw the beginning of the end for the entire Human Race. Five days from a battle that had seen many of their allies killed or critically injured, including the almost complete destruction of Lash's Qos Viran team. A battle that also saw the emergence of the Storm Wolves as a vital fighting force, one that could be used in the continuing war against the Brotherhood and their plans of genocide and domination.

It was in that same battle that one of their closest allies, the human Cal Duffy apparently suffered a strange sort of injury that left him comatose and catatonic. He had been evacuated along with the delegates and taken almost directly to the hospital following the battle.

As it had turned out, Duffy hadn't suffered a physical injury during the final minutes of the tumult that had surrounded the convention center before its destruction at the hands of the Brotherhood hardwire, Ravage. Instead, he had suffered a psychological wound, one that had played upon deeply repressed memories from his days at Interpol a number of decades before.

A telepathic probe at Duffy's bedside had revealed that during an investigation in Belgium, over twenty years ago, Duffy had accidentally stumbled into a Brotherhood subsuming operation that was swallowing a local nation. A local nation that just happened to be resisting the Brotherhood psionics sent to conquer them.

Bearing witness to the subsequent battle, a strange and wonderful event that was easily beyond anything the then young Duffy could comprehend, had rendered a great blow to his psyche. A blow that he never truly recovered from.

It was that original memory of the fantastic battle between the Brotherhood and the dying psionic nation in Belgium that had driven Duffy into the bottle, destroying his career at Interpol and eventually finding him in Calgary, struggling to stay sane as a CPS detective. As deeply as he tried to bury and repress it until it no longer haunted his dreams, he still tried to drink himself into a stupor every day so he no longer saw the flashing lights and the gouts of fire that burnt people to a crisp in a heartbeat that filled his eyes every time he opened them.

Eventually the pressure of that memory coming to the surface, triggered every time Duffy witnessed psionic energies at work during their war against the Brotherhood, pushed the old Brit's psyche past the breaking point. Watching the trigger team launch its attack against the security forces around the convention center was the straw that broke the camel's back. As pyroken flashed wildly about, Duffy had felt his mind give out and, with a groan, had slumped to the ground, catatonic.

Long used to repairing psychological as well as neural damage as a lone gunman, Mordecai had strengthened his telepathic probe and, carefully and adeptly, had put Duffy's mind back together again. The old Brit had abruptly awoken to find himself staring up into the man in black's smiling face, his psychiatrist nowhere to be seen. Mordecai had left him and Dee to live their lives as Normally as they could, all things considered. Since they had served as such valuable allies, the man in black had decided to leave their memories of the events intact. Who knew? Perhaps he would be in need of their services again, sometime in the future.