The Dark Edge Chronicles - Hardwire

Preacher

The neatly bearded East Indian cab driver jerked in surprise when his back door abruptly opened to allow a big man to slide in, the newcomer dressed head to toe in black.  He looked with wide eyes into his rearview mirror.  How did he ...?  He could have sworn he was watching in every direction.  A man that big and dressed like that in the middle of the summer, he would have spotted instantly.  Still, a fare was a fare.

"Uh, where to?" he asked, twisting to look over his shoulder, his English near perfect.

"The Alec Arms," the big man directed softly, glancing at the horde of police, both Calgary Police Service and RCMP, flooding into the terminal's front doors.

Nodding his understanding, the cab driver turned on his meter and, with a smooth, practiced motion, shifted into drive.  With a soft whine of rubber on asphalt, the yellow painted vehicle pulled away from the curb and left the horde of police vehicles, along with their flashing lights behind.  A moment later it left the airport all together and quickly slipped into the stream of traffic making its way into town.

It was sometime later that found the stranger sitting quietly in a small coffee shop facing a street that ran right through the heart of the Chinook City.  From where he was sitting, the big man had an incredible view of the nearby Rocky Mountains in between the great skyscrapers that dominated the city's downtown core, the Husky Tower, known more simply as the Calgary Tower, standing just off to the right.  He had just finished a brief meal of a carrot muffin and orange juice to replace the sugars he had burned in his efforts at the airport.  And he was thinking.

There was definitely something going on here, he silently mused, staring at the distant mountains, purple in the early morning sun.  And whatever it was, it was being perpetuated by a powerful group of psionics that had little fear of reprisal from open displays of their abilities.  Whether these psionics, led by the mysterious Preacher, and their activities would lead to the destruction in his vision or not, he had yet to determine.  But determine it, he would.  The big man's face darkened.  Or, in the very least, attempt to restore some semblance of protection in a city that could quickly dissolve into chaos if the population of normal humans saw more psionic activity out in the open.  The man in black scratched his head thoughtfully, then signaled a waitress for another orange juice.

As she poured, he mulled over the information the telepath had slammed into his mind before dying.  It was dense stuff, heavily encrypted with complex algorithms.  He grimaced slightly.  It would take more than a little time to decode, time he wasn't sure he could afford.  A whisper across his sensitive mind announced the waitress was done pouring and, after admiring his looks, was about to draw away.  He looked up quickly and pushed a smile onto his face, despite the death's head leer abruptly was staring down at him.

"Could I have my check, please?"  he asked softly and the waitress, a fading brunette beauty in her late thirties, flashed him a quick smile and nodded before moving off.  Temporarily alone, the stranger swiftly returned to his pondering.

He could only hope the encrypted data contained information on the goings on Preacher and his cohorts were involved with.  Enough, anyway, to connect it somehow to the cataclysmic event of such magnitude it pulled him out of the Bahamas and halfway across the planet to investigate.  He sighed and reached for his wallet.  It looked like he'll be spending some time here, in the mountains!

As the powerful stranger paid his bill, another man in black was pacing the floor of his luxurious 35th floor corner office, with its north and western walls made of thick glass to reveal a magnificent view of the Rockies stretching from one side to the next.  Below his feet was a thick, very expensive carpet of the finest crimson pile, the non-glass walls of the office paneled in rich mahogany and hung with beautiful and quite rare paintings from some of the world's finest master artists.  A small wet bar sat in the far corner and a great bookshelf filled with hard covered collectors' editions dominated the south wall.  A skylight in the ceiling allowed the late summer sun to pour in, although expensive atmosphere conditioners worked to keep it an even 20 degrees Celsius in the room.  All spoke of power and wealth, opulent without being garish, the office of a man in a position of great authority.