The Dark Edge Chronicles - Hardwire

Chapter 9: Fall of the Preacher Man

Jeriko looked over at Mordecai as the big man suddenly stirred from his trance state. She had pulled on a sport bra and a pair of shorts herself and had curled up in the chair to go over some of the material she had skimmed from Lisa's data store. As the big man's intense blue eyes refocused, she cleared her throat.

"Did you find it?" she asked softly.

In reply Mordecai reached out and Paladin flew through the air and into his hand. Immediately he pushed an empty data crystal into the top slot.

"Paladin, receive the following file from my mind and immediately record and lock the crystal to prevent wipe or over recording."

"Confirmed, Mordecai," Paladin replied. "Link established. File downloaded. It is now recorded and the crystal has been locked to prevent erasure."

"The key??" Jeriko pressed, springing up from the chair to join Mordecai on the couch, unable to contain her excitement. The man in black grinned tightly.

"Yup," he replied. Then: "Paladin, apply the algorithm in the file that was just recorded on the crystal to the encrypted file, marked 'Armageddon One."

"Running algorithm, Mordecai," Paladin confirmed after a slight hesitation. "Decryption has been initiated."

"Excellent. Transfer output to holo-reader and display." A blue flicker of light and the holographic reading display appeared. And was almost immediately filled with data, now clear and understandable.

As the information began to scroll up the display window, Mordecai turned to the banks sitting still on the nightstand. Even though they had yielded what they needed, the two diamond brains and their resident gatekeepers were still a valuable resource they could continue to use against the Brotherhood, if they played their cards right. And so they needed protection.

A miniature teleportal winked open and he used a tendril of psyken to slip the black bag into the pocket of Reality he created there, in subspace. He then let the portal close behind it. To ensure that he maintained contact with the two gatekeepers, Mordecai had formed a permanent link to normal space and the gatekeepers, much like the ones he had made for his tiny spies in the Brotherhood building. He then placed his end of the link into the space left in his mind by the removal of the simulacrums.

He also made the link two-way so that both Lisa and Samantha could connect to the outside world as well. That way they could be aware of the outside world and not remain isolated, as Preacher had kept them. Not only would that help maintain their newfound loyalty to him, but would help in keeping them sane at the same time. He nodded in satisfaction after checking the integrity of both the pocket and the links.

Mordecai then turned to Jeriko with a smile.

"Let's get room service. That way we can finally take a look at the Armageddon file completely unencrypted.

When the lone gunmen sat back a few hours later, it was well into the morning, the streetlights outside flickering off as dawn's first light began to tumble through the window. By that morning light, one could see that both of them wore almost identical grim expressions. 

Rubbing her tired face, Jeriko dropped Excaliber onto the bed where she sat, looking at her copy of the Armageddon file.

"Can it get any worse than this?" she groaned, flopping back to stare up at the ceiling.

It was a good question. According to the decrypted file, the Armageddon Project was set to initiate on the first day of the year 2001, the supposed true beginning of the new millennium. A date now only a half year away!