The Dark Edge Chronicles - Hardwire

Underbelly

A soft thrum of barely audible sound leaked out of Mordecai's pocket and, with a start, he realized that the sunlight that now spilled into the room through the slight crack between the heavy curtains protecting the window, was that of late afternoon.  He had lost several hours in his reverie, hours he couldn't afford to lose.  Eyes narrowed in frustration, he spoke out loud, his voice froggy from the state of partial consciousness that he had slipped into.

"Paladin?"

"Yes, Mordecai.  I have completed a comprehensive search of all stated databases, as per your instruction."

Mordecai cleared his throat.

"Very well.  Format for reading then pipe to a screen."  A flicker of light danced across the space directly in front of the brooding Mordecai.  Then, with a shimmer of energy, a line of blue light bisected the space before drawing out in both directions to form a sheet of glimmering blue, as thin as a hair and glowingly transparent.

As the man in black focused on the screen, hanging suspended half a metre in front of him and at a perfect 45-degree angle, a ripple of light raced across it before a line of text appeared at the top.  Spotting the text as soon as it appeared, the dark blue eyes scanned up the holographic screen and began to devour the information as it was displayed.

Dusk, several hours later, was spectacular, spilling luscious reds, vibrant scarlets and pulsating oranges across the sky as the sun, its light alloyed with floating dust in the air from the day's work in the fields, slowly slipped out of sight.  As it did so, the shadows stretched long and luxuriously, unchained from their daytime prisons to roam at will on the darkened streets of the city, undeterred by the bright lights cast by the street lamps.

Standing in a darkened room as he gazed down on the street that ran in front of the Arms, Mordecai nodded in satisfaction.  Finally it was night.  He'd had enough waiting.  It was time to spring into action.

The information Paladin had managed to winnow from the massive encounter database that he and his fellow defenders of the Shield had gathered was sketchy, at best.  There was no mention of any person by the name of Preacher any where in any of the databases that were polled, so that was a dead end.  As for the search for the Brotherhood, there were only two mentions of an organization that called itself that, both very old, one of the few entries from the beginning. 

The first was a brief entry about a nation called les Habitants, in northern France that suffered what the observer only noted as a 'catastrophic' disintegration, resulting in its complete destruction.  The observer managed to interview the survivors and one of them reported that an organization called the Brotherhood had caused the nation's destruction.  A subsequent investigation had yielded nothing.

The second entry, made only ten years after the first, was even briefer.  The observer had come across what had looked like a battlefield in southern Germany, bodies everywhere, each of them showing signs of psionic attack.  The observer had called in a clean up team to preserve the Shield and, in their policing of the battle site, a scrap of paper was discovered on which was scrawled 'Brotherhood', in German.  While it was enough to be noted in the database, the singular clue wasn't enough to generate an investigation of any kind.

And so the Brotherhood, for now, remained a mystery.  And that meant that Mordecai had to continue with his investigation on all levels, going into it completely uninformed.  The big man shrugged as he turned away from the window.  It wasn't as if this was the first time for that.

Earlier in the evening, shortly after he had finished Paladin's report, Mordecai had launched several probes in preparation for the investigation he would launch as soon as night fell.  Each probe was a self-propelled miniature robot no larger than a man's hand, using tiny electric propellers to keep themselves aloft.  Nuclear batteries serving as energy sources enabled the tiny flyers to remain in the air indefinitely.