The Dark Edge Chronicles - Hardwire

Chapter 3: Shadow Runners

As Mordecai had suspected, Braddox was indeed higher up the Brotherhood food chain than the hapless Cal, although exactly how far he had yet to determine.  Following the blocky man and his cohorts for the rest of the night, he watched from the shadows as they made meeting after meeting with individuals just like the telepath and his whore, pressing them for details about what they had seen and heard over the last 24 hours.  It seemed like a job that underlings would be burdened with.  Despite that, Mordecai got the impression that Braddox and his associates were anything but underlings.

That, of course, suggested an escalation in their urgency to find him.  Whatever the telepath at the airport had passed to him before he died, must've been much more important than he first guessed.  Which also suggested to the man in black he needed to discover exactly what it was, as quickly as possible before things got out of hand.  A definite possibility that grew with each encounter Braddox and his team had with the Brotherhood's widely scattered eyes and ears, several resulting in people face down on the ground, moaning and bleeding from nose and ears from the violence of the telepathic probe that dug in their brain for what Braddox wanted.  Three of those that went down, didn't move and the powerful softwires moved on without concern, leaving the dead bodies to the Normals and their law enforcement.

Seeing that had clenched Mordecai's jaw with frustration and anger, and nearly sent him running out of the shadows, shockwaves flying at the blatant disregard for the Shield.  Only knowing that adding the bodies of the Brotherhood lackey and his associates to the growing body count would only focus additional Normal scrutiny on the situation kept him in the shadows, hands clenching in barely restrained emotion.

Mordecai did, however, take something positive out of his covert surveillance.  With each body left behind, he gained a greater sense of the Brotherhood's power here, in this city of Normals.  They moved at will and struck with impunity, with no fear of reprisal despite the Normals' overwhelming numerical superiority.  Logically the man in black could go in only one direction: the Brotherhood was big, and powerful, most likely extending far beyond Calgary's boundaries.  And, if that was the case, then the finger of accusation for the cause of the probability explosion was pointed firmly at them.  Only something big and powerful could've initiated an event that could cause the probability chaos he had witnessed in bound.  Which was consistent with the two pieces of information Paladin had found earlier on Brotherhood encounters in Europe, as fleeting as they were.

Unfortunately those conclusions also left Mordecai with only one choice: he needed to take the Brotherhood out before they damaged the Shield any further.  Just the airport encounter and Braddox' heavy-handed dealings with the Brotherhood eyes and ears alone had moved the situation far beyond a standard suppression and clean up.  And that wasn't taking into account the obviously troublesome data wad the telepath Constantine had dropped into his mind.  Its decoding could demand even more aggressive action.

In that moment, and with that decision, the man in black moved from investigation to reconnaissance, studying the Brotherhood trench coats as an enemy instead of a curiosity, looking for any weakness.  And in doing so, found himself following them into the city core where his probes had illustrated massive psionic activity.  Mordecai paused in the shadows as he waited for the lingering energies of a translocation; dancing motes of light curling about his body, to dwindle so he could step out relatively unnoticed.

Looking around a nearby corner, he peered into the glittering heart of the city, brightly lit with streetlights, the destination of Braddox and his cohorts.  With the same air of danger they had worn all night, they carefully extracted themselves from the back of an armor-plated limo, which they had summoned upon completion of their rounds.  Using their psionic auras as focal points, he had extrapolated their path and jumped in ahead of them.