The Dark Edge Chronicles - Hardwire

Polarity

Immediately Mordecai reset himself, regaining his balance to draw himself erect. Just in time to block a whistling kick to his head. Taking a half step back, he grimaced as he stared hard at the flushed and sweating Kendrick a handful of steps along the tabletop from him. It would seem that he wasn't the only one that recovered quickly. 'Here we go!' He thought darkly. Then they were both stepping in close to trade lightning-fast blows.

A rapid-fire combination of tight, lashing fists and wickedly fast kicks pushed Kendrick back a couple of steps before he reset and counterattacked. In a smooth blur of motion, a dozen martial arts styles combined to present a lethal mix of defense and offense that both men employed with equal ferocity.

Mordecai was forced to slap aside a number of chops to his head and neck before he leaned to the side to block a roundhouse kick aimed at removing his head from the rest of his body. Ducking the next kick, a blistering reverse heel kick, he stepped inside Kendrick's defenses and, planting his foot behind the blocky mover's, he hammered an open palm into the big man's chest.

The blow, a sledgehammer of force that combined with the foot behind Kendrick's leg, sent the big mover flying backwards to land heavily on the far end of the table. Only Mordecai's weight near the table's center prevented it from flipping over.

It didn't take Kendrick long, however, to shake off the effects of the flat palm. Snapping his body back erect, Kendrick took a step forward before slinging his body around in a spinning toe kick, whistling it just wide of a hastily ducking Mordecai.

Before the Brotherhood psionic could launch his next attack as he landed lightly on the tabletop, the man in black attacked from his crouched position, driving a rapid series of fists and chops into the mover's body. Each elicited a grunt of pain and driven air from the blocky Brotherhood commander, slammed home with exacting force and precision. Then, with a sweeping reverse toe kick launched from his crouched position, Mordecai drove his extended foot against the side of Kendrick's head, slinging the blocky mover off the table and roughly into the chairs beside it.

It was as he watched the heavy set man hit the chairs and fall awkwardly to the floor between them, sending a number of the heavy wooden constructs tumbling in all directions, that Mordecai felt a strange surge pushing out of the pain still roiling through his brain. Letting his breath whistle out between his teeth in astonishment, he frowned as he felt the surge wash through his brain like a wave of warmth, pushing aside his pain and filling his senses with a sensation that was both completely new and oddly familiar.

"What the hell ...?" he began to mutter, staring hard at the tabletop in front of him as the sensation began to dominate his perceptions.

Without warning a shockwave hammered into him, the shimmering wall already with the speed and inertia of a runaway train by the time it folded itself around his crouched body. Mordecai had barely time enough to grunt in surprise and pain before the shockwave was driving him irresistibly against the back wall.

From where he peered just over the top of a couple of broken chairs, Kendrick grimaced briefly in triumph before he levered himself painfully to his feet. Getting dropped bodily onto a number of rather unyielding wooden chairs had done nothing to improve the injured state of his body. In fact, as he moved, he could feel the broken ends of a handful of ribs grind painfully against each other and the torn tissues surrounding them as well as deep tissue contusions and a number of impact injuries that made moving both laborious and sapping.

Whoever the Normal all in black had been, he was very good. Every punch and kick he managed to land had exacted maximum damage and each had been placed where they would do the most injury to Kendrick's body. The blocky Brotherhood commander was lucky he was able to move at all! Any number of those blows would've disabled a less powerful man.

As it was, Kendrick was moving very gingerly himself, nursing the broken ribs he had on his right side from the collision with the chairs as he moved around the table. As he went, he mentally gathered psyken to hurl another shockwave at a Normal who, by all rights, should've been taken out by that last shockwave. But, as he had quickly learned during this short but furious battle with the mysterious intruder, he couldn't take anything for granted. He had to make sure the Normal was down and completely out before he could heal his injuries and move into the hallway to see what the hell was going on in the office outside.

So Kendrick was less than surprised to come around the table and find the space where he knew the Normal had fallen completely empty. Still he felt his jaw abruptly knot with tension as a cold pulse of uncertain fear washed through him. The mysterious man in black had proved incredibly resilient; the powerful looking human had seemingly shrugged off blows that would've killed men bigger.

The question now wasn't how the Normal had managed to survive the shockwave. But where the hell he had managed to get himself to in the few seconds between getting rammed into the wall by the shockwave and Kendrick finding the strength to get up and take a look for him!

Grimly Kendrick generated a telepathic sweep, scanning the room for any neural activity, Normal or otherwise. And quickly, much to his chagrin and puzzlement, ran into a complete lack of both.

"What the hell?" he hissed tightly, mind whirling in confusion as he stared around the battered office. Nobody could've slipped out of the room without leaving at least some sort of neural activity trail. And if the Normal was injured as badly as he was supposed to be, he should've been leaking fear and anxiety all over the place!

But, as a second sweep confirmed the findings of the first, it appeared that the mysterious man in black had completely and utterly disappeared!

"That's not possible!" Kendrick growled, a hand clutched to his broken ribs as he spun in place, eyes darting into every corner of the room. Not possible, unless ...

"Looking for me?"

The husky voice sent a cold stab of fear ripping through Kendrick as he felt himself freeze in place, his abruptly realized fear suddenly coming true. According to his experience, there had been only one individual that was able to hide his neural signature from a telepathic sweep.

"The renegade." He whispered lamely, unfreezing enough to slowly look over his shoulder and find the powerful-looking man in black standing there, arms crossed over his chest as he gazed silently at the Brotherhood commander. Another chill of fear raced through him as he saw that the renegade wasn't just standing just behind his desk, but was hovering nearly half a metre off the floor. Yet no aura of psionic energy surrounded the man in black, no telltale ripple of psyken was visible, holding the man's body aloft. Nor were there any psionic fields in play, renegotiating gravity to allow him to float weightless.

In fact, if Kendrick wasn't looking at the man with his naked eyes, he could've sworn that he didn't exist! Scan after scan found nothing but telepathic emptiness, as if the man existed in some sort of psionic shadow, completely invisible to the mover's psionic senses.

"So you're the famous Kendrick," the man in black said softly, a tight smile appearing on his lips. "You look exactly how I thought you would." 

"You're ... you're supposed to be dead," Kendrick hissed in reply, instantly dismayed that the renegade knew him by name. Had he somehow managed to get into his brain without him knowing it?? "In the plane explosion over Saskatchewan!"

The man in black shrugged without uncrossing his arms.

"What can I say?" he said in light words that belied his taut readiness. "I missed my flight!"

Snarling soundlessly, Kendrick let fly at the hovering man in black with everything that he had, already knowing that it was useless. If five ESETs couldn't kill this man, then nothing he hurled at him would.

As he suspected, Kendrick watched with a sinking heart as his shockwaves and plasma bolts slammed unrestrained into the man's body, only to slide down and away, shed as easily as a duck shed water. And his heart sank even further as, with the last shockwave rippling into the floor to discharge harmlessly, the man in black's smile widened slightly.

"Now, former commander of the Brotherhood's former North American Command, it's my turn!"