The Dark Edge Chronicles - Hardwire

A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

Satisfied herself that they were ready to go, Dee reached out to give the grill connecting the cab with the back of the van a hard knock. She sat back as the engine roared back to life and the van began to move.

The distance to the airport was covered in tense silence as the members of the transition team, which now included Mordecai, complete with RCMP credentials Dee's CSIS security access had created for him. But it wasn't idle silence. In turn, Mordecai felt himself being examined by each member of the team, measuring, weighing and evaluating him with every glance.

It was understandable: if they were all aware of his escape attempt and what he had done to their fellow officers, they had a right to be wary of him. He certainly would be, if he were in their places. Abruptly he smiled thinly as he realized the irony of that thought.

Thanks to the loss of his abilities, Mordecai now was in their place! He was a burnout, a Normal, no longer the incredibly powerful hardwire he was before. It was only the foresight of his mentor that saw the big man with the physical abilities that he still had, for use when his mental abilities were exhausted in battle. Or injured. 'Thank you, my teacher,' he silently said, sighing softly as the depth of what he had become began to descend onto him. 'For giving me the tools to remain alive!'

Alive, so he could continue the fight against the Brotherhood, thanks to this small group of people that had extricated him from what was surely a one-way trip to a Brotherhood assassin waiting for him on the other end. The Normals' version of the lone gunmen? Only time would tell him that.

Tires whining softly across concrete, the van moved passed a security checkpoint before driving onto the concrete of the runways themselves, heading directly to a small De Havilland Challenger jet with RCMP markings waiting for them by itself a short distance from the terminal building. There the van stopped as a number of armed and armored constables in black special ops uniforms and gear stepped from the plane, its boarding door and built-in staircase extended to the ground. One of them came up behind the van to open its door just as the jet's twin engines began to spin up.

"Constable McMaster?" the officer opening the door asked as he made a cursory examination of the van's interior, satisfied to see the transition team intact and the witness/prisoner firmly secured.

Dee nodded and handed the officer the clipboard with the documentation from the hospital as well as their own authorization and protocol documentation, naming her and her team as the transition team. She stepped out of the van and turned to watch as Davinder and Morgan, one of the male members of the team, unhook the blindfolded man from the van wall and lead him out.

"Any trouble?" the constable looking at the paperwork asked casually. Dee shrugged.

"Not really. But he got verbally abusive so we blindfolded him with the shroud. He's currently under a verbal command to restrain himself under threat of gagging."

The constable nodded in understanding as he looked up to visually examine the prisoner.

"I don't blame you, after what he did at Foothills," the officer dryly commented. "How many CPD officers did he take out there before they shot him? Eight? Nine?"

"Something like that." Dee watched as the officers from the plane took custody of Mordecai's replacement and hustled him up the staircase and into the plane.

By this time the plane's engines were revved up to full power, filling the air with their tight snarl as hot exhaust spewed out to heat the air into a thousand dancing eddies of translucent movement. Thankfully a chinook wind had blown in the night before to warm the air to tolerable levels or they would've felt an uncomfortable wave of heat washing over them from those self-same engines.