The Dark Edge Chronicles - Hardwire

Retribution

As Debra slid bonelessly to the floor, instantly dead, Mordecai closed the bore portal, useful since its massive amount of psyken and translocation power could literally bore through a ward webwork to deposit its user inside. It didn't, however, keep the wards from sounding after that user was inside.

As he took a step forward, his mind tightly shielded against psychic backlash, the wards sounded the alert: a high-pitched sonic blast that would render even heavily shielded Normals unconscious in seconds. It was coupled to a psionic explosion designed to fry any neurons it came in contact with.

But Mordecai was unfazed. Shielded against the psionic blast, he had also plugged his ears against the sonic counterattack, being forewarned to Preacher's defenses by files in Samantha's database. He paused as the air was filled with the alarms' shriek to tug on a pair of black leather gloves, matching the heavy leather jacket he already wore, his sunglasses hiding the intensely grim light gleaming from his eyes. The air swiftly chilled around him, fast enough to condense ice onto his jacket as he slowly looked around.

Then three tight shockwaves, blasted in quick succession, ripped Preacher's office door apart like it was made out of matchsticks, despite being heavily shielded. Mordecai stepped inside, a shield gelling around him to deflect anything that Preacher could throw at him.

Only to find, much to his surprise, that the Brotherhood commander wasn't there. As he made a quick telepathic scan of the room, he could detect traces of a recent teleportal having been opened just over by the desk. 'Gone,' he thought darkly. 'No matter, I'll get that sonovabitch later!' He began ripping shockwaves off to the left and right without regard, tearing the interior of the office to shreds.

Before he could render the room a-shambles, however, he found himself staggering forward without warning as several high-powered shockwaves pounded into him from the direction of the secretary's office. The man in black, however, had very, very good shields. Combined with his neuron armor, and properly set, they could handle just about anything. Including a sneak attack from behind.

Quickly recovering, Mordecai slowly turned to look out the shattered portal accessing Preacher's office. Then he was counterattacking, his expression never changing as he used psyken and pyroken together to create a plasma bolt. With the amount of energy already surging through his cortex, it didn't take long for the shimmering mass of superheated plasma to be ready.

Instead of firing it as one mass, however, Mordecai machine-gunned it, or broke it into multiple segments, each moving as fast as its companions in a scan from left to right. The slashing plasma bolts cut through what was left of the wall and doorway.

The man in black was quickly rewarded by screams of pain. But he wasn't done: stepping forward, Mordecai ripped out the wall immediately behind the secretary's desk with a massive surge of telekinetic power, overcoming the wards and psyken reinforcing in the blink of an eye. Roaring with discharge, the wall blew outwards, catching the survivors of the plasma bolt totally unawares. Shields hummed in protest, if they didn't collapse outright, as jagged chunks of plaster, metal and wood scythed through the psionics on the other side.

"Surprise," Mordecai hissed in tight mockery of the psionic that had ambushed him and Jeriko at the hotel. Then, tightening his shields even further, he leapt through the gaping hole left by the destruction of the wall, narrow probes sifting through the dusty air in front of him for EM residue to warn of traps and otherwise still active enemies.

There; two still-standing movers, staggering through the rubble in the aftermath of the wall's destruction. A tight beam of pyroken cut the first one down, slashing aside battered shields to cut her in half in a thin spray of fluids. The second one managed to tighten his weakened shields before Mordecai could scythe him down as well. But the man in black simply punched a probe through the shaky stuff. It was then simplicity itself to locate his heart and translocate it out onto the street outside.