The Dark Edge Chronicles - Hardwire

Unwanted Small Talk

"Whatever it takes," Duffy murmured from the other side of Dee, his own be-jowled face a mask of determination.

Glancing at Duffy then back at Mordecai, Dee could feel her own fear and trepidation wash away before the undeniable flood of determination that surrounded her. It became a rod of iron that she found her hand gripping firmly, drawing her through her own doubt and indecision.

"Whatever it takes," she tightly muttered, unconsciously squeezing her left arm tight against the uncompromising bulk of the Shiva holstered in a shoulder rig there. The ceramic weapon and its non-metallic parts easily breezed through the metal detectors at the security checkpoint leading into the departure gates.

While it had been a risk to wear the weapons on the plane, subjecting them to discovery, all three of them knew that if Toronto was indeed a Brotherhood stronghold, they ran a pretty high chance of running into Brotherhood psionics at Pearson when their flight arrived. And there was no possible way that they could allow themselves to be taken! So all three now wore the high-powered weapons beneath their coats.

As did the dark and grim Qos Viran commander, Lash standing silently at the gate's mouth, boarding pass already in hand as he waited for his newfound comrades to join him. The big vampire was little changed from what Dee saw that morning, dressed in the same clothes and wearing the same pair of sunglasses.

The only thing that was different was the expression: gone was the happy, almost playfully smug look that the big man had worn when he had delivered the updated dossiers to Dee at the station that morning. In its stead was a hard mask of determination, much like the one that the three humans now wore, seemingly chiseled out of cold stone to hang without motion on the big vampire's face.

"Hoi, e'laudi," he said as they stepped close, the softly spoken vampiric words a greeting to comrades-at-arms before they were about to go into battle. "Are we ready to vault into the midst of this madness?"

"We are, indeed," Mordecai replied, handing his ticket to the attendant standing at the entrance to the boarding tunnel. She quickly separated it from his boarding pass and handed the pass back to him before taking Dee's ticket.

Nodding his understanding, Lash led the way onto the plane where, scattered amongst the rest of the passengers, were the rest of his team. There would be mass panic if the humans that were traveling to Toronto on that particular flight realized exactly the number of night people that were traveling amongst them. But, skilled in the art of blending with their prey, the vampires were unnoticed amongst the other passengers.

Dee frowned as she stepped into the passenger cabin. She knew the rest of Lash's team were already there, closely packed in amongst the humans they considered prey. It was a good thing that there were no psionics on the flight, or the vampires would've been revealed almost immediately in the close quarters.

As it was, the tall redhead wasn't pleased with the amount of room she was being afforded in the close-set seats on the charter flight. Sighing, she pushed her irritation to the side and began to search for her row. At least it wasn't an extremely long flight. That would've made the close quarters unbearable! Besides, she thought as she flopped into her seat, smiled faintly at the man beside her as he looked up from peering out the window which he sat next to, she had greater things to think about other than her lack of leg room.

With Dee and Duffy both settled in their seats, a couple rows apart, Mordecai found his place near the front of the cabin, in an emergency exit row. Excusing his way past the woman that was occupying the aisle seat, he settled into the middle seat, taking a brief moment to orient himself before securing the seat belt around his waist. If the big man had done anything in his long career as a lone gunman, it was flying. And extensively too, having traveled the globe several times over in the years since his final tests were completed and the Mentor granted him lone gunman status. This little hop over to Toronto was nothing to him.