The two hunkered down amongst satellite dishes, radio antennae and heat vent outlets on the neighboring skyscraper's flat roof some seconds later, the object of their scrutiny the Brotherhood's headquarters directly across from them. They now peered out of snug fitting masks that covered their faces entirely except for two narrow eye slits.
"Hmmm. I suspect they don't think their facility can be penetrated from the roof," Jeriko commented softly. "It would appear that they're unprotected there. I don't see any active detection nets, only passive wards."
"Those are easy enough to get by." Mordecai grinned abruptly as he opened a small portal into a fold of space cut off from the rest of reality in a pocket of psyken. From it he swiftly removed a large duffel bag. The portal to the pocket winked out of sight as he dropped the bag to the asphalt and gravel roof to pull the zipper open with a steely hiss.
The first out of the duffel was a crossbow in black metal and plastics. Sitting on the back of the crossbow's stock was a heavy wheel and winch assembly, made to winch in the line of high tensile strength plastic monofilament cord that hung from a special hook beneath the bow apparatus. The cord was attached to a heavy bolt, armed with a piercing point, already loaded.
Unhooking the free end of the cord, he turned and tossed it to a waiting Jeriko, the end weighted with a metal clip hook. The blonde hardwire caught it easily and held it in her left hand while her right dipped into the duffel bag. An instant later it came back up with a piton gun, a device for powering climbing pitons into solid surfaces like rock and concrete, its penetrating power provided by a removable explosive charge.
With a piton already in the gun and the gun charged, she held the line in her hand as she stepped to a nearby satellite dish to place the gun's muzzle against the dish's concrete base. There was a sharp 'crack' and a puff of dust as the gun hammered the piton's metal alloy tip deep into the concrete. Then Jeriko was stepping back to clip the monofilament's hook into the piton's eye hook. Once the line was set, she gave it a hard tug to make sure it was set. That done, she looked over at Mordecai and gave a short nod.
Smoothly Mordecai stood and, sighting through the night vision scope set on the crossbow's spine, he set the stock against his shoulder. There: the concrete shell of the elevator shack, rising above the flat plain of the roof and at a decent down sloping angle from where they stood, a perfect anchoring point for the line. He applied light pressure to the trigger and the bowstring released with a 'twang', hurling the arrow and its monofilament passenger silently out into darkened space.
A dark and ignorant messenger given purpose by its user, the crossbow quarrel darted across the intervening space with single minded intent, biting deep into the concrete shell of the elevator shaft with a flash of sparks. Feeling the impact traveling up the cord and into the crossbow with a gentle vibration, Mordecai nodded in satisfaction as he lowered the crossbow from his shoulder.
Then, with quick and nimble fingers, he was pressing the releases for the winch, freeing it from the stock as the cord's slack twisted slightly in the air. Winch in hand, he stepped away from the roof's edge and to where Jeriko had anchored the cord in the dish base. Feeding the cord through the winch's mechanism, he snugged it up to the piton before uncoiling a small, secondary cable about a hand's length in size, also equipped with a clip hook, from a storage compartment in the winch's rear.
The smaller hook quickly joined its larger companion on the piton, securing the winch in place. A stud was depressed on the side of the winch then and, with a soft hum, the tiny but powerful electrical engine began to take up the slack.
As they waited for the tiny winch to do its task, the two hardwires swiftly returned to the duffel bag to pull additional equipment out, either attaching it to their utility belts or putting them into one of the many pockets and pouches on their vests. The winch was just taking up the last few metres of slack when Jeriko pulled two odd looking devices from the duffel before zipping it closed, the crossbow secured inside once more.
They were like flattened black metal boxes, each possessing a large eye hook on one edge, just in front of a pair of flexible fabric loops, the loops themselves approximately a hand span and a half long. The box itself was only a finger thick, about a hand's length long and half as wide.
Their purpose, however, quickly became apparent as the winch pulled the line taut. Hearing the soft whine of the line drawing tight, Jeriko stood and, touching a hidden stud somewhere on one of the box's edges, she swung one of the sides off, revealing a compact set of free-turning wheels attached to what appeared to be the top inside edge. The wheels fitted smoothly and easily on top of the monofilament, running through an opening in now what was the front and back of the box.
The wheels in place on top of the cord, Jeriko then 'snicked' the metal plate back into place, sealing the entire device closed once again. As Mordecai stepped back to the winch to deactivate it and put a small brake in place to insure the line didn't go slack again, she took a medium sized metal alloy cable from a pouch and attached one end to the eye hook on the box's bottom. The other end attached to a metal loop on her belt, creating a safety line. Her hands then were opening the loops to slide inside, taking a good grip before, without looking back at her companion, she flung herself off the edge of the roof and into the growing darkness.
Hearing Jeriko launch herself into space, Mordecai pulled open a small hole in space and lightly tossed the duffel bag into it before closing it to pick up the second metal box where Jeriko had left it for him. He swiftly followed Jeriko's example, attaching the device to the cord and hooking in a safety line before he too was flying into the darkness, eyes intent as they focussed on his target in the dim distance.
Lubricated by a space age blend of colloid gel and micro ball-bearings, the wheels silently and effortlessly spun in their housing. That allowed the combination of inertia, the downward slope and Mordecai's own weight to carry the hardwire quickly and quietly along the cord with enough speed to make his clothes flutter in the breeze. And then he was touching down on the concrete roof on the other side, using psyken to slow him down.
Jeriko was already working to neutralize the few wards that were in place on the roof by the time Mordecai came to a full halt. The flows of psyken she was using to block the wards' sensory nets were visible to his heightened senses as a spidery dance of wispy light stretching out from her to caressingly move over the roof. The man in black nodded in satisfaction and unhooked himself from the slide, immediately moving to a nearby ventilation shaft.
It was the most logical point of penetration: with the amount of air and loose debris that regularly spun up and out a ventilation shaft, it would be difficult to set anything other than the most basic ward. Anything more sensitive would be constantly getting triggered by airflow and whatever flew up the shaft.
He paused to pull a small cordless screwdriver from a pouch then Mordecai began undoing the anchoring screws that held the vent's massive metal grating in place. Psyken could do it just as well and quite a bit faster, but he didn't want to run the risk of discovery if he didn't have to.
The eight anchoring screws, heavy and several centimetres long apiece, were quickly removed to drop silently into a pouch. Mordecai then eased the louvered grating out of the way just as Jeriko came up behind him, already preparing a suction anchor for climbing to be placed inside the duct. As he moved the grating out of the way, she stuck in her head and peered down into the darkened shaft, her meta-senses stretching into the darkness.
As soon as the blonde hardwire was satisfied that the defenses were either negligible or non-existent, she slide the suction anchor into place, pumping the vacuum valve with her thumb without bothering to confirm it with Mordecai. Which suited the man in black just fine; one of the reasons he liked working with Jeriko so much is that she already knew what needed to be done, and went ahead and did it, without worrying about making sure it was okay with him. Powerful he may be, but Mordecai hated to micromanage those he worked with.
Instead, he took the coil of climbing rope that was attached to the back of his vest and fed the loose end to the Swedish hardwire. Who promptly tied it to the now secured vacuum anchor before dropping the rest of the coil down into the darkness.
Both lone gunmen then gave the carabiner clips attached to their belts a quick tug to make sure they were secure. Then Mordecai was stepping forward to feed the loop of rope Jeriko had held back from the coil through his clip. With the rope in place, he clambered into the vent shaft, turning to face Jeriko as he readied to descend, the rope in his now gloved hands.
"Tally ho," he whispered hoarsely with a grin then dropped out of sight with a soft rasp of cabled nylon against leather.
The big man dropped perhaps ten metres before he pulled up by tightening his hands on the smooth rope as it passed across his palms. With a soft whine, he slowed then stopped. Leaving one hand holding the rope against his hip, the cord looped beneath his buttocks to hold him dangling in place, he used the other hand to first pull out a small flashlight then a pair of UV-sensitive goggles.
The goggles went over his head and masked face to settle snugly over his eyes. Then he was switching on the tiny flashlight, which immediately threw a cone of dim UV light over the inner wall of the shaft in front of him. But to his now-enhanced vision, the interior of the shaft exploded into sharp relief. Fixing the UV lamp to a holder on top of the goggles so that it would point wherever his vision fell, Mordecai pressed on downwards. They still had about ten metres to go before they were at the level of the offices they had detected from the street.
Silently the big man marked the space as the wall of the shaft slide upward past his point of view. There: ten metres. Again Mordecai came to a halt, using his gloved hand to brake against the rope.
This time, however, his free hand drew out a small, pen-sized device from a utility pouch. A simple twist of one end and the other began to glow a bright blue. Jeriko dropped out of the darkness to come to a halt beside him as Mordecai pressed the glowing end against the sheet metal of the shaft's wall directly in front of him.
Immediately a brief spray of sparks showered back towards the man in black as the energized tip, a fine bore cutting laser, burned its way through the metal. Then Mordecai was drawing it smoothly to the right, the laser easily cutting through the metal, leaving a slightly glowing line of red behind it.
Using the cutting laser like a pen, Mordecai quickly drew a large square, needing to give them enough room to slip through, gear and all. Just as he was finishing the last line, Jeriko reached past him to press a vacuum anchor onto the cut out square, pumping the stud on its side to create the seal. Then she was drawing the square back via a recessed handle in the anchor after Mordecai severed the final piece of metal holding the square in place.
As soon as the sharp edged chunk of metal was safely out of the way, Mordecai slid his head into the opening to take a look around. And instantly hissed in dismay.
"What do we have?" Jeriko asked softly from her position just above him. The big hardwire carefully drew his head back into the shaft to glance up at her.
"We've accessed some sort of maintenance corridor," he replied, returning his gaze the square opening. "Physically deserted, but literally walled in with wards. They're so thick I could hardly see across the corridor to the far wall. It's going to be next to impossible to slip our way through without setting something off!"
Jeriko snorted softly.
"Sometimes being so powerful is more of a curse than a help, huh?" she said lightly. "Can't think of a delicate way to do things. Here, anchor to the wall and let a woman by. I'll get us out of here in two shakes!"
With a grin, Mordecai took a vacuum anchor from the smirking Jeriko and anchored it to the wall of the shaft with several quick pumps before clipping a line into it and the carabiner on his belt. Thusly secured, he detached himself from the mainline still dropping down into the darkness beneath them and, with a slight bow, waved his comrade forward.
The smirk dissolving into a smile and a wink, Jeriko slid into place in front of the hole he had cut. A heartbeat later he could feel a surge in bio-energy as Jeriko extended her senses into the gap. Abruptly his breath was pluming whitely from his nostrils as, apparently satisfied with what she saw, Jeriko sucked in the ambient energy in the shaft to fuel the tight weave of psyken she began to create.
Almost immediately the blonde hardwire's beautifully perfect face tightened into a rictus of effort as she carefully worked her weave into the tightly latticed ward lines that filled the space in front of her. She had to bend the ward lines out of the way, without breaking them, in order to create a space large enough for her and Mordecai to stand in so they could then turn and advance along the corridor.
But keeping track of so many ward lines along with her weaves was an incredible task. If she hadn't been a hardwire, it would've been impossible. Still, it was the better part of an hour before she looked over her shoulder at the big man hanging casually from the anchor, her face flushed with her exertions.
"I've cleared us a space," she husked, her voice gravelly with fatigue. Mordecai nodded and, as he reached past her to put a hand on the edge of their entry point, he handed her an energy bar, a food supplement created for athletes to provide quick energy. She nodded mutely in thanks and tore off the foil wrapping as the big man eased his way through the opening, unclipped his safety line and dropped lightly on the concrete floor of the darkened maintenance corridor.
By the time he was up and slowly scanning the careful weave of psyken Jeriko had created to push the wards back, his UV goggles pushed up onto his forehead, she had joined him. Jeriko dropped lightly onto the floor beside him as she stuffed the last mouthful in, chewing and swallowing quickly as she felt her energy return.
"Nice work," he commented softly and a smile quickly bloomed on Jeriko's face. "Do you have enough juice to extend it to the door?"
The Swedish hardwire nodded, reaching up to rub her forehead with her finger tips, using the fabric of her concealing mask to absorb the perspiration that was still beading up there.
"Now that I've wedged open this space, it should be easier to continue down the hallway," she indicated in a whisper. "Like tearing a piece of fabric; it's much easier once the first tear is made."
"Then, by all means young lady, continue your tearing." A slight smile danced on Mordecai's lips as once again he waved Jeriko forward. "I'll take care of the penetration once we get passed the door."
"It's a deal." A roguish grin turned up the corners of her mouth beneath the mask. "Figures the man would take the easy part of a penetration."
"Nice." Mordecai's smile couldn't resist swelling larger. "Just do your job, gunman, and leave the sexual innuendos in the bedroom."
"Only if you join me there," Jeriko playfully replied, lightly hip checking him as she stepped past him. Mordecai's smile couldn't resist swelling larger. He reached out and lightly smacked her on her firm and athletic buttocks.
"Bad, bad hardwire," he said and she threw a look over her shoulder as she playfully wiggled her bottom in response.
As he caught her eyes, Mordecai felt a hot surge race through his body as he found her electric blue orbs smoldering with naked desire.
"You make me want to be bad, Mordecai," she husked, the tone in her voice no longer only playful, causing the big man to swallow heavily.
"Damn it, Jeri," he hissed tightly. "Pay attention to what you're doing. We can't afford to fool around here!" And, as he silently raged inside his skull, he knew he didn't need to be reminded by this beautiful and completely desirable woman how long it was since he had enjoyed the sensual pleasures of a woman's intimate company.
Abruptly Mordecai found Jeriko's proximity uncomfortable as the heat from her closeness combined with his own surging lustful thoughts and he had to grit his teeth hard to keep from reaching out for her. Savagely the big man quashed the sensuous contemplations and thrust his desire into the back of his mind.
That's all they needed right now: interference in a delicate operation from emotions and base desires and wants. If they got caught, they were as good as dead. And, by everything he held dear, Mordecai wasn't about to let that happen!
With a smile dancing on her lips, Jeriko returned her attention to the glowing lines of the ward lattice in front of her. According to what she had observed in the big man's abrupt change in body posture, she knew the seed had been planted. And, in contradiction to Mordecai's hope, she was aware of the last time the big hardwire had known the pleasures of being in a woman's bed.
Despite his habit of being cold and aloof when dealing with other members of the lone gunmen, the women in particular, there were a lot of them that cared about the big man. Even if he himself couldn't admit it, they openly acknowledged that he was their master, the most powerful of them all. So devoted to him, the other lone gunmen wanted to protect Mordecai, save him from himself. And so they watched him, very carefully, ready to intervene if he showed signs of trouble.
So far the big man had remained solid. And, from all indications, he would most likely remain so to the day he died. But he had other needs, other concerns beyond those surrounding his mental health. Like satisfying the needs of the flesh.
There were no shortage of willing volunteers to fill the man's bed, lone gunmen or otherwise. But the big man had been less than willing to let anyone warm his sheets for longer than a night's heated pleasure. That, of course, stirred concern amongst the lone gunmen. With his mind filled with visions of death, destruction and the future, being alone was probably the last thing that Mordecai needed.
Still he resisted, and still the gunmen looked for the opportunity. Jeriko's smile warmed. This just might be the one they were looking for. Then she too was pushing her thoughts to the back of her mind to renew her concentration on the task at hand. The opportunity to fill her bed with Mordecai could wait. The penetration of the Brotherhood building would not!
Thusly rededicated, it only took Jeriko a half-hour to extend her protective psyken shell the rest of the way down the corridor. With the naked bulbs that hung from the pipe-filled ceiling over head casting their shadows long over the plain metal door that terminated the corridor, Mordecai stepped passed Jeriko to put his hand carefully on the flat, painted steel.
"Not warded," he murmured softly after extending his senses into the door. "Either they're confident that the wards in the corridor will prevent penetration of their security, or, . . ." With a soft 'whoosh' of air, he pulled the door open, in towards them. And his eyes and mouth immediately tightened at what his senses saw in the open space beyond the maintenance corridor's door.
It was a web of glimmering lines of light woven by a spider mad on the energies of the universe. It easily stretched from ceiling to floor, from wall to wall, filling every nook, every crevice with lines of gold, blue and red. There was not one square centimetre of the space in front of them that wasn't filled with a ward's glowing boundary. It was a virtual wall, impassable except by force.
"Or they're so covered by another ward boundary that they're not concerned about a minor security failure," he finished grimly.
* * * *