The Dark Edge Chronicles - Hardwire

Time to Trigger

His jaw muscles rippled as Mordecai clenched his jaws hard together, staring without seeing at the flickering monitors in front of them. Thankfully the increased control that came with the inversion of his psionic abilities prevented the probability visions from filling his waking vision. Else the room itself would be a theatre of the mind on whose stage they would walk in plain view, leaving room for nothing else in his consciousness.

Despite that control, however, he could feel them lurking on the edges of his awareness, waiting for the slightest slip in that iron-fisted control to explode in Technicolor into his mind. Swallowing heavily against the flicker of the visions dancing just out of sight and the increasing pressure on his mind announcing the probability shockwave's imminent arrival, the man in black shook his head slowly as both abruptly become much more powerful. The event was upon them.

"Here we go!" he muttered softly. Armageddon was finally about to happen!

Dee slowly eased her Shiva free, the weapon already set on autofire, the second setting that would allow it to fire bursts of ordinance only when a set target fell into its sights' scan pathway. As she did, she watched the delegates rise from the chairs to move towards the stage, Secret Service, MI:6 and other security services moving to cover them. 

That set target, of course, were the Brotherhood moles, many of them rising as well along with the delegates and their security detachments, even if they weren't required to be on stage for the photo opportunity.

'Damn! There's too many for us to cover all at once!' she realized with a start after doing a quick head count.

But it was already too late to do anything about it: as the delegates, ministers of finance and leaders from across the world, assembled on the stage and turned to face the battery of video and still cameras placed to capture their images and beam them across the world, she heard a soft 'beep' coming from her wrist. It was the monitor that Mordecai had equipped each member of Alpha Team with, set to detect the incoming pulse of telepathy that would activate the moles and send them lurching on their deadly missions.

That soft sound meant only one thing: the wave of telepathy that would launch the moles had just swept over her!

"Shit!" Dee hissed, snapping the Shiva up to take aim at the moles down on the floor.

And she was in time to watch all of them moving in odd synchronization as they reached into pockets to draw out pieces of what could only be special weapons, crafted for the specific purpose of breaching security. Dee felt a chill travel up her spine as she watched them move as one to fit the pieces of the disassembled weapons together until every last one of them held what was clearly a pistol in their hands.

Her jaw clenched as the remaining moles still sitting, now stood to slowly bring their already assembled weapons up to bear on the knot of delegates at the chamber's head. At the same time the remaining audience began to stand as they clapped and cheered in appreciation for their leaders' efforts while camera flashes went off in a cacophony of strobing light. Dee groaned at that: the weapons' discharge would be perfectly hidden by the discharging camera flashes. The delegates wouldn't even know what hit them!

Ironically it was one of the Normals in the audience that caught sight of the moles and their weapons that finally raised the alarm. The pretty wife of one of the delegates, she happened to look across the table at the woman that had been her husband's personal secretary. And she found a creature transformed, without expression as she pointed a massive pistol up at the stage.

Her reaction was immediate: she screamed. And the result was instant pandemonium.

"Shooter!" snarled one of the Secret Service agents covering the American president jerked free his weapon, a heavy mini Uzi as he and the rest of his detail, along with the MI:6 agents and others, caught sight of the weapon-wielding moles. A shout that, of course, in combination with the woman's earlier scream made everybody in the building stand up and try running for the exits.