The Dark Edge Chronicles - Hardwire

Wet Banks

Seeing that he was discovered, the man in black politely inclined his head in greeting.

"You're not Ethan!" the woman exclaimed softly, eyes wide in astonishment. Yet there was no panic, or even anger in her voice. "Has he divulged the access codes to you? Why have I not been informed?"

"As you know, Mr. Preacher's reasons for doing what he does, are his own," Mordecai answered smoothly, a half smile playing on his lips. "I won't be here long. I'll get what I'm looking for and I'll soon be on my way!"

"Answer me!" The perfect face hardened. "Has Ethan granted you access?" she demanded.

Mordecai's smile vanished. At first he had thought this apparition as some sort of virtual hostess, to keep Preacher company while he rummaged through the data stored in the bank. But now he was getting the sense that it was much more than that, a gatekeeper or guardian of the data, perhaps. That meant he would have to go through it to get the key, or even to just take a look.

"Look, I don't have time to play twenty questions with you, guardian," he bluntly stated, gathering himself. "I gave you the proper access codes, ... "

The sky blue eyes erupted with fury, becoming twin suns of energy and, in the blink of an eye, she grew to fill the whole sky.

- Intruder alert, intruder alert! Wet bank security has been compromised. All systems, go to full alert status! Intrusion in Ethan Preacher's office! - The telepathic alert was almost strong enough to rip Mordecai's head apart. But, as he felt himself being pushed away by the suddenly threatening entity, he slammed tight shields into place and cushioned himself at the last instant before the power of the alarm washed over him. Then he was being tossed like a chip of wood on a stormy sea, thrown to and fro, without any power to stop himself. 'Fuck! I'm trapped!'

Lashing out desperately with everything that he had, Mordecai tried to sever the thread of consciousness that had been pulled inside the bank by the gatekeeper entity. But, as he visualized the link, he could see that the bank's guardian consciousness now held him too tightly for his probe to withdraw without a fight. A severing at this point would cause a neural backlash, possibly damaging his mind and brain. She had him locked in hard!

For a brief instant, the man in black's mind whirled as it sought for solutions and possibilities. Then it occurred to him: if he can't get out, might as well go in! So, with a rush of psionic energy, he pushed harder into the wet bank's mind.

Blowing past the massive form of the gatekeeper entity, he reached out for the millions upon millions of lights that flickered in the darkness beyond, filling the vast space with their diamond-like brilliance. They were a metaphysical representation of all the memories that had been artificially implanted into this woman's brain.

Just before his straining fingers could brush the star-filled heaven of this place, he found himself floating in a great sea of black an eye blink later, as if some great switch had been thrown somewhere. In the darkness before him, the absolute inky blackness was broken by two glowing images of light.

As he peered closer, Mordecai could see that the images were exact duplicates of the two brains floating in their nutrient baths! Somehow he had managed to flee the interactive mode of the accessing mechanism to some kind of meta-access mode that showed the overall wet bank system as it was connected to Preacher's network. That meant he had managed to be granted super user access, access generally reserved for system administrators and engineers. He could still tap into the data, despite the gatekeeper's attempts to cut him out of her system. 'Damn, another stroke of luck!' he thought.

But he could feel the telepathic alert sweeping through the building, stirring Preacher's legions of movers, burners and teeps. They would be on them within a few minutes; no time for in-depth data retrieval. Mordecai had only one chance now to get the data from these banks: make copies of the wet banks' files at this level and search through them later!

Partitioning his own memory, the man in black created two spots for the simulacrums that he was about to create. For only an absolute duplicate would be enough to retain all the data crammed into the living brains of the wet banks. It was risky, but he could see no other choice.

With the space created, Mordecai then did an intensive telepathic scan of the two banks in front of him, duplicating every thought pattern, every memory, every cycle in the two brains. No use in trying to hide now: everybody in the building already knew they were there. He then took the information he had gathered and did a point to point mapping onto the two identical simulacrums now residing inside his mind.

Mordecai was about to make a quick confirmation sweep when, with a brilliant flare of bioenergetic discharge, he found himself back in the office and down on his knees, his head swimming with pain as his body ached from a thousand blows. His shields were up tight, but barely holding as a shockwave finished detonating by taking out the back wall with a snarl of release.

"My, my, but we've been busy little beavers, haven't we?" a soft whisper rose out of the tumult accompanying the collapse of the back wall. As Mordecai groggily shook his head to clear it, a lean shape pulled away from the shadows along the left-hand side of the office to advance on the kneeling hardwire. For an instant a wolf's head leer was visible as the figure passed through the light shining out from inside the wet banks' holding area and then again it was shadow.

"Duchesne, I presume," Mordecai managed to groan thickly as the shadow paused in front of him. Ears ringing from the explosion and blood trickling down his nose from the neural backlash that had hammered his brain, the big psionic used what was left of the wet bar to pull himself to his feet. There he swayed a moment, unable to focus in the dark, his goggles gone and most of his thermal suit head piece torn away, as the room seemed to sway back and forth.

Without warning the shadow shifted and a lean fist snapped out of the darkness to crash into his face. Mordecai went down hard, stars dancing in his vision. As he lay senses rattled, he became vaguely aware of a form standing over him in triumph.

"One in the same. You must've read my dossier that Preacher so carelessly left sitting on his desk." A smile tightened Duchesne's lean features. "He's a fool. Why the Brotherhood let a softwire failure like that, guide the western North American operation, I'll never know. At least my little trick with the wards worked; you came traipsing in here almost right on schedule!"

The hand lashed out again, this time grabbing Mordecai by the front of the thermal suit to pull him roughly to his feet. Duchesne's hardened face suddenly loomed close in his blurring vision.

"Don't like being yanked out the hard way, I see. Well, my little intruder, that's going to be the least of your worries by the time I get through with you! And I'm going to, . . UHHHHHHH!"

Duchesne's face, as well as the rest of his shadowy body, abruptly disappeared, the shimmering wall of a shockwave sweeping him aside like so much debris. Groaning, Mordecai slumped back to the floor as a grim Jeriko appeared out of the shadows, her thermal suit hood down to reveal a mask of anger.

"Brotherhood fool!" she snarled tightly. "You talk too damn much, instead of looking for the renegade's partner!" Smoothly she knelt to pick up the half-conscious Mordecai.

Slinging him over her shoulder, Jeriko could feel the telepathic scans sweeping through the building as its guardians raced towards the breached office. It was definitely time to go. With a thought, she ripped open a teleportal and translocated.

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