The Dark Edge Chronicles - Hardwire

Mopping Up and Taking Measure

"Clever of them," Raven conceded with a smile. "And quite well suited to you, I might add."

"So it is," Mordecai agreed. "We may have been underestimating them this entire time! They might be the key to this whole thing!"

"Won't that be a change!" Raven grinned fiercely before stepping in to give Mordecai a final hug and a light kiss on the cheek farewell.

"Damn good to see you in one piece, Mordecai," she said softly, stepping back. "And this time I'll do my best to keep in touch. Avalon and I will close the city up tight so you and the Normals can do your thing. As for Katengaur and Sonja ..."

"Leave them to me," Mordecai growled tightly with a frown. "If our loose cannons don't settle down and let me work, I'll take them out. Permanently!"

"Careful," Raven said as a teleportal irised open behind her. "They just might come after you first, if they discover you're still alive."

"Don't worry." Mordecai grinned tightly. "They won't find me as easy to take out as they think! Take care, Raven and I'll talk to you soon!"

"Yes, you will. You take care too, Mordecai." And then she was gone, the teleportal close behind her.

With a look of determination on his face, Mordecai then turned to stride firmly back towards the fire escape he had come up on. There was a crime scene that he had to check out!

"Any survivors?" Dee looked up at the low rumble to see Mordecai pushing his way through paramedics and uniformed officers towards her as she bent over a still form on a stretcher. She had already seen the chopper pilot and his co-pilot into the back of the first ambulance to leave the scene, leaving the FD to hose the broken craft down in fire retardant foam.

"A couple," she replied, also keeping her voice low as she looked back down at the battered form of the woman on the stretcher in front of her. "Mostly from our attack. They'll need a little surgery to repair the damage we did, but they should be okay. Thinking of questioning them?"

"Not to elicit information we already know." Mordecai frowned as he came to a halt beside Dee and looked down at the obviously-dead psionic on the stretcher. "However, it'd go a ways in confirming our continuing roles in this charade."

"That, it would." Dee confirmed with a nod. "The big question is what do we do to make sure they don't cause trouble once they're conscious again? They don't have brain injuries to take their abilities offline like you did."

Mordecai smiled thinly at that, pausing long enough for a couple of paramedics to wheel the stretcher in front of them away before speaking.

"I have the solution to that," he said softly. "We'll just need to get to the hospital so I can administer it. In the meantime ..."

"In the meantime, let's do some police work, hey?" Dee smoothly continued for the big man, already knowing what he was going to say. "We can get to the hospital within the next 12 hours to do whatever you need to do."

Mordecai nodded.

"So we can. Lead on, detective!"

It didn't take them long to find Duffy, already well engrossed in the actual work of trying to determine what happened. In the face of their effective counterattack, the two high-powered psionics that had ambushed the Brotherhood heavies had fled the scene without bothering to cover up what they had done, unlike Mordecai's thorough ravaging of the last crime scene by fire. And so it was relatively easy to determine just what had taken place.

"Ah, Constable Kelly, Tragedy," Duffy acknowledged them as they stepped up beside him, keeping in character as a number of CSI constables swarmed all around them. He handed them each a pair of latex gloves.

"Good of you to decide to actually do some work on this one." At Dee's grimace, Duffy chuckled softly before turning to what the CSI investigators were doing. "It would appear that we have a virtually intact crime scene on this one. What appears to be some sort of gangland battle."

Knowing the old detective was obviously mugging for the CSI team, Dee nodded.

"Right. Triads you think, Duffy?"

"Maybe. Although it looks more like the Russian Mafia. We had reports they were moving this way." Duffy tugged on his lower lip as he leaned closer to one of the bodies the investigators were carefully examining. A more detailed examination would be carried out by the pathologists, including a post mortem autopsy, but they were gathering as much information as possible on how the woman fell, how she was displayed and what, if possible, brought her down.

"However, that's a most unusual weapon burn. Almost like a flame thrower or something had struck her. Highly focussed." His rheumy blue eyes came up to look at Dee. "Have you seen anything like it?"

"Nope," Dee frankly admitted.

"I have." Mordecai interjected quietly and several heads turned to look at him, including Dee and Duffy. "That looks like some of the burns on the bodies that the allied forces recovered during the first Gulf War. Some sort of napalm weapon; witnesses said that it literally hosed people down with ignited napalm." He knelt beside Duffy to let his fingers carefully explore around the wound.

"But the first burst, when it was only a focussed bolus of napalm, would produce burns like this." He looked up and Dee then over at Duffy. "That sort of weaponry could go a long way towards explaining the devastation caused by fire at the 16th Avenue site as well."

"Perhaps." Duffy nodded, his agreement causing a wave of interested murmuring amongst the CSI team grouped around them. "Does this liquid napalm evaporate quickly?"

"Almost instantly." Mordecai stood and dusted off his knees. "According to the RCMP briefs I read, it also burned with almost negligible residue. Something to do with high volatility. We could go to the FD pyro boys to find out if they know anything more about it."

"Right." Dee nodded, grinning tightly. "And follow up to find if it's a controlled substance or easily created from household chemicals, like the Oklahoma Federal Building bomb."

Mordecai nodded himself.

"I'll hit the FD to see what I can shake up there."

"Cool." Dee turned to Duffy. "Then you and me should hit Customs to see if we can download a list of controlled substances and see what we can dig up!" She smiled widely.

"Do we actually have a break in this case?"

"Heaven forbid." Duffy chuckled softly. "Well, me mates, let's go do some police work, hey?"

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