The Dark Edge Chronicles - Hardwire

A Dark Future

With a sonic 'boom', it streaked overhead, its target the dying city in the distance. A missile, the Normals' greatest weapon of mass destruction. And then it was dropping into the city.

The mushroom cloud was born in a brilliant flare of sun-bright light, the very nuclear crown of Sol itself, the light lashing past the man with a flicker that left his retinas melting with the devastating afterimage. A heart beat later the shockwave rolled over the killing field, washing over the marching armies, which continued on without hesitation, the weapon's lethal radiation sleeting through them even as its annihilating power shredded what was left of the city into fragments.

Still the soldiers marched on. Focusing on them, the man could see why they didn't fear death. Skeletons were marching in those uniforms, men already well dead and beyond desiccated corpses, each wearing a death's head mask for a face as they stared mutely out of empty sockets into the distance.

"NOOOOOOOOOOO!" the man screamed, pushing aside his agony, both body and soul, to reach for the molten energies boiling inside his mind.

Screaming as they tore through the air, scintillating psyken tendrils hammered into the silvery bonds that held the man to the stone. Time and time again, the energy ripped at the metallic clasps that held him firm to the granite. Only to be turned away, time and time again.

Bioenergy rippled over the man as he struggled, playing over his body as he tried to tear free. Then finally he sagged limply to the stone, exhausted.

"There'll be no freedom from this burden, titan," a low voice rumbled in counterpoint to the whistling wind that carried the nuclear explosion's superheated dust slashing over the man's bared flesh.

Looking to the sound, the man watched as a shadow folded from the seared and dust-choked air. That shadow took form and the man found himself looking at a great figure, towering over the trees themselves, cloaked in gray. Within the hood lurked only shadows, long and slender hands projected from the voluminous sleeves to fold over themselves as the apparition approached.

"What do you mean?" the man managed to ask against the pain in his throat.

"Do you not see, Prometheus? The fire you have given to Mankind!" One of the hands swept expansively out towards the battlefield and its chaos. On the crest of that chaos, the lone gunmen advanced.

Untouched by the nuclear pulse, the blue eggs of destruction continued to ravage the marching hordes of soldiers, filling the air with the actinic snarl of discharge.

"I ... I gave no fire!" the man hoarsely protested. Then, in an eye blink, he realized he was as massive as the cloaked figure striding towards him.

"You have sinned against the gods, titan," the cloaked figure rumbled, coming to a halt beside the massive boulder that held the man prisoner. "And now they wish to punish you." A long fingered hand began to reach out towards him.

Feeling fear wash through him, the man shrank away from the hand, feeling its cold fire brush against his aching flesh.

"They want your heart." With a sharp 'she-rack' of discharge, the hand was enveloped in a gold ball of energy. Then that energy was lashing down into the man's chest, cutting deep into his body to take hold of his living heart. As the pain washed through him, the man could feel his heart being torn free of his body.

"And they want your soul!" The golden light flared and the man could feel the pain racing through his entire body, pulling at that which made him aware. But his body wouldn't give it up easily. The resistance brought him pain. The pain, the PAIN!

With a gasp, Mordecai jerked awake, heart racing like a caged animal in his chest, images of cloaked giants ripping out his heart dancing in his mind's eye. For a long moment he stared into the darkness, willing his heart to slow, and the vision in his mind to fade.

But, while his heart eventually slowed and the man in black found himself breathing normally, the vision would not leave him. Somehow, by directly attacking the ESETs at the Sheraton, he had altered Probability. Not, however, for the good. If he could infer anything from the vision, the probability of all-out war between Normals and psionics had just exponentially increased.

Even as he lay there, Mordecai could feel the change in the node of change Calgary had become. A slow, sluggish shifting of probability and reality that tugged at his meta-senses with disturbing strength. Then, with the same shifting of perception, he became aware of Alex's warmth in the bed beside him, her scent in his nostrils, her taste on his lips.

As a stream of images depicting Alex's seduction of him abruptly raced across the stage of his mind's eye, Mordecai frowned as he carefully rolled away from the sultry Spaniard, who was still sleeping peacefully on her side, facing away from him. That frown only deepened as his eyes slowly made their way down the sensuous curve of her back to her buttocks, against which the man in black had just been snuggled.

There was little use in trying to figure out why his control had abruptly crumpled in the face of Alex's determined seduction beyond the pheromones and battle fatigue knockout combo. All he could do now was accept that it happened and hopefully manage the fallout from the event without some messy emotional entanglement. The man in black grimaced at that thought as he eased out of the bed, pulling the covers over Alex so she wouldn't get cold.

His experience had taught him that emotional entanglement was the standard result of physical intimacy, whether anybody wanted it or not. So he was going to face it in this situation regardless of what happened. And, if Alex's own emotional state was a measure of how she was feeling, there was going to be a lot of entanglement from these few hours of physical pleasure.

Mordecai sighed as he stepped away from the bed. That's all he needed right now, when he neither had the time nor inclination to deal with emotions. If the vision was any hint, they had to work even harder to prevent the destruction of Mankind at the hands of the Brotherhood.

For a brief instant, Jeriko's bloodstained face danced in his mind's eye. Ruthlessly he pushed it aside. There was absolutely no room for emotions now!

With a thought, a blue streamer of psyken danced silently over his body, freeing the particles of dirt and waste he had accumulated in the last few hours. A quick pass with a pink streamer of pyroken then burned the waste material away and Mordecai felt cleansed and refreshed. A second thought sheathed him in his customary black. This time, however, he put neuron armor beneath the snug black turtleneck. There was something about that dream, that vision that was making him feel a little uneasy. Better safe than sorry.

Clothed and cleansed, Mordecai focused his mind. Time was slipping away, so he could no longer afford to waste any. Time to get back to work! With a thought, a teleportal irised into being and the man in black vanished.

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