It was the better part of three hours later that finally saw the two men make their way through the narrow, congested streets of the French capital. As he looked out his window at the distant Eiffel Tower, close to the center of the city, Mordecai spoke.
"Where exactly are we going, Seiji? Paris geography has never been one of my strong points."
"The Gare de Lyon, on Boulevard Diderot," Seiji answered with a nod. "It's the station with south-bound trains making for southern France and the coast." He looked over at the big man. "I've got you booked on a train directly to Lyon."
"The TGV, I hope," Mordecai said, referring to France's bullet train, which could travel at extremely high speeds across the landscape. If the lone gunman had to travel like a Normal, he wanted to go as fast as physically possible. Seiji grinned.
"The Train a'Grande Vitesse? But of course! It isn't translocation, but the closest thing you're going to get while staying on the ground around here. Once you get to Lyon, you can catch the bus or a local train to the town you tracked the Brotherhood to, Neuville-sur-Saune, on the banks of the Saune River."
"Perfect." Mordecai grinned lopsidedly for the briefest of moments before becoming grimly serious once more. "The faster I get there, the better chance I have to intervene before the Alliance survivors are seriously harmed beyond what happened in Calgary."
A few more tight corners and crowded streets found Seiji and Mordecai finally pulling to a halt in front of the majestic old Lyon Train Station, built around the turn of the century and opened in 1901 for both commercial and passenger service. As they piled out of the car, Seiji spoke once more.
"I've got local currency, food and supplies waiting for us in a locker inside, on the main floor of the terminal. We'll collect those and get you on the train!"
"Right," Mordecai acknowledged and, after retrieving his shoulder bag from the Citroen's trunk, he followed the compact hardwire inside, pushing through the thronging crowds of midday travelers as he kept a careful eye peeled for any Brotherhood heavies.
A day later found the man in black stepping off a local train at Neuville-sur-Saune, a small town just north of the city of Lyon, in southern France. Pausing on the wooden, old style platform as people piled off the train behind him, he pulled a map out of a side pocket on his shoulder bag and opened it.
'According to the trace I did on Quick Poison's signatures, they dropped Tabitha off in Toronto where she was met by a special transport team of hard softwire movers. The movers then flew her to London's Heathrow and from there took the Chunnel train over to mainland Europe,' he thought as he tapped a small red circle marked on the map. 'The trace finally ended in this little town in the middle of southern France. I've a feeling that the Brotherhood is particularly strong around here. I wouldn't be surprised if this breeding facility is right in the heart of the enemy territory!'
Quickly marking out a route on the map with his finger, Mordecai tapped the red marked spot where the trace ended, a chunk of farmland west of town. It looked like he was going to do some walking, since it would be virtual suicide to attempt a translocation so deep in enemy territory. They would detect him as soon as he began to pull energy out of the air.
Shrugging, mostly to himself, Mordecai folded up the map and slipped it back into the bag. Walking into the middle of enemy territory; it was beginning to be quite the habit this time around. Not to mention, it was probably a trap. But how many traps had he walked into, in Calgary? And now the Brotherhood's western network was in a shambles. Of course he wanted to try and rescue Tabitha without bringing the whole place down, but if he had to, he would in a heartbeat.
Slinging the bag over his shoulder once more, Mordecai stepped off the platform and into the station itself, a quaint little building that had managed to remain untouched through both world wars. A handful of steps and he was through it and outside onto the cobblestone street beyond. The man in black then began to do something he didn't do very often. He began to walk.
It took Mordecai a little over three hours to traverse the town, as quaint as the train station with its cobblestone streets, tiny shops and stores, and street-side cafes, and slip into the countryside undetected. That was a feat in itself, considering the town was literally crawling with psionics, a large percentage of them hard softwires and most likely security belonging to the Brotherhood. The man in black was forced to keep his neural activity at an all time low and his fake mental profile pasted over top just to walk down the sidewalk.
Quickly finding a country road that led in the general direction he wanted to go once he was outside of town, the big man set out with a will, his bag still slung over his shoulder. Now that he was clear of all the background noise the psionic-packed town had made in his mind, it was simplicity itself to follow the trace to Tabitha's exact location.
Not because her trail had become clearer. Because her location shone like a psionic beacon in his mind's eye, confirmation that he was nearing one of their centers of power. With every step he made down the tree-lined back road after leaving the town behind, he could literally feel the psionic energies crackling in the air. That sensation only grew stronger as he closed in on the Brotherhood facility.
By the time he crested the last hill, the man in black expected to find a sprawling complex stretching out to the horizon in front of him. It needed to be that size to be big enough to produce the psionic energies thick enough in the air around him now that he could have cut them with a knife. He figured at least a thousand psionics, hard softwires all, were needed to generate such a field, maybe even a handful of hardwires. And that amount of people also needed a good-sized town to house them.
So he was quite surprised to come over the ridge and find himself staring at, . . . a whole lot of nothing. A small French country cottage there, off the road to the right, was the only sign of human habitation for kilometres in any direction.
"Huh," he snorted in surprise. It wasn't quite what he had expected. He found himself even more astonished when a quick scan yielded that the massive psionic field seemed to be centralized around that tiny little cottage down there. Whatever it was, cottage or not, it bore a closer look.
With a glance around to make sure nobody else was about, he resettled his bag and turned up the narrow lane that ran towards the house, every sense tuned to maximum capacity.
'Doesn't look like much,' he thought, quite underwhelmed as he pushed aside some leafy boughs and bush to peer at the small cottage that sat on the edge of some cleared land, an unidentifiable crop of some sort greening the brown of the tilled soil. An even smaller barn sat off to the side, with a sway-backed horse peacefully cropping grass just beyond and two or three cows grazing in the yard. The idyllic picture was completed with the presence of two chickens sitting on top of the tiny cottage's peaked roof.
It was such a perfectly innocent-looking scene, the big lone gunman knew that it couldn't possibly be real. The postcard-perfect image was hiding something, something that was generating that massive field out there. But it was so cleverly crafted, that he couldn't make out any clues from where he was standing.
That meant he needed to study it from up close. With that goal in mind, Mordecai eased off the lane into some nearby bushes, in case they had more standard surveillance set up to watch the entryway to the cottage. It was from here that he then worked his way through the undergrowth and up onto the crest of a small hill that overlooked the yard. Finding a suitably shielded spot, he hunkered down and studied at length the seemingly innocent looking building.
A quick glance at his watch yielded a time of 2 pm local. He almost wished he could afford to risk a brief scan of the building. From the outside, it was still the picture of pastoral innocence, even from this close. Yet, the EM field that was warping his senses didn't lie. There was something there, perhaps buried underground, that screamed 'psionics'.
'Should I wait or go blasting in?' he idly thought as he gazed at the cottage from his vantage point. 'On second thought, waiting is the better option. If this is what I think it is, they're going to have security ten deep in their weakest spot.' He frowned as he stared at the house. 'That's probably what's generating that EM field: active scans, wards and watchers up the ass!'
Another thought put a grim half smile on the man in black's lips. 'It's almost too bad the Normals can't detect electromagnetic disturbances; this EM warp in front of me here would set off so many alarms, they would send in Special Forces to sort things out!' As the thought continued, Mordecai's smile faded.
Not only would the Normals send in the troops, but they would likely do so after dropping something highly explosive on the site first. Just to make sure nothing was moving to get in their way, a couple of bunker busters for instance. If the Brotherhood understood that fact about the version of Humanity they so reviled, they would know the only true way they could protect a high value facility would be to, . . .
Mordecai's eyes narrowed as his logic served to only confirm what he had earlier suspected. He wasn't seeing anything because the bastards had put their facility underground! 'Burn me to ash,' he thought darkly. 'Time to come up with a plan on how to get underground!'
Abruptly his train of thought was derailed by the distant sound of an approaching helicopter. The man in black quickly hunkered down out of sight, going brain dead. Perhaps it was the facility's keepers, returning from wherever they had gone. If so, there was the possibility that he could learn something by observation. As long as they didn't spot him first, of course!
On noisy blades, the helicopter swung into view over the trees, painted red and green, its lines of obvious European design. Passing overhead, it flew over the cottage, the downdraft from its prop enough to send the chickens scattering in every direction. The horse and the cows, however, continued to munch grass as if this was an everyday occurrence. Which, in all respects, it most likely was.
Reaching a spot directly over the house, the chopper paused and almost immediately Mordecai felt the tingle of a telepathic scan sweeping over him. Thankfully he had correctly anticipated that and the sweep didn't reveal his position, failing to pick up any activity from his shut down core processes.
But the helicopter remained hovering as a side door swung open to let several men peer out to make a secondary visual scan of the surrounding area. 'Careful bastards,' Mordecai grimly noted as the men, finally satisfied that nothing threatened them, closed the door and let the helicopter descend the rest of the way to the ground. With a soft whine, the landing gear extended out of the craft's belly and the red and green vehicle slowly settled onto the ground.
As soon as the wheels were solidly planted on the spongy grass-covered ground, the sliding door in the chopper's side reopened and several men in dark clothing emerged, holding a young, blindfolded woman tightly in their hands. They swiftly made a beeline for the house.
The instant the small group was clear of the blade wash, the helicopter leapt off the ground to spin tightly on its axis about ten metres up before it quickly returned in the direction it had come in. Mordecai found himself frowning as he watched the helicopter dwindle into the distance for a moment before returning his attention to the group of men with their captive. Considering how much tech psionics, and the Brotherhood in particular, had their hands on, he had almost expected the cottage to be sitting on a massive door, which would've slid out of the way to let the chopper drop down through. Having the men disembark then run to the cottage seemed a little, ... low key for what they were doing.
Then he was pushing that thought aside. The men had just reached the house, the woman struggling futilely in their tight grasp. Time to see what they would do.
Upon reaching the small, battered-looking door, one of them jerked it open and the group stepped inside, closing the door behind them. Again, strangely low key, all things considered. Unless, of course, there was a massive sentinel webwork in play, like there was around Preacher's office. They were going in the front door to avoid throwing their ward webwork out of alignment, like Duchesne's teleport had done to Preacher's webwork.
Logic also dictated that anything that opened large enough to admit a helicopter could be visible to spy-sats hanging in orbit. If the Brotherhood was anything, it had shown itself to be carefully paranoid in revealing itself on a large scale to the Normals, even though they didn't seem to have a problem with it on an individual basis.
If he hadn't come to the conclusion already, here was more confirmation that the Brotherhood had buried their base nice and deep where Normals couldn't touch it. Seeing the wireheads and their routine had also given him an idea on how to penetrate that hidey-hole. With that now established, Mordecai knew it was time to get on with his penetration.
The shoulder bag hit the ground, Mordecai's strong fingers pulling the zipper open to reveal his thermal suit and utility vest. Keeping low in the grass, the man in black swiftly changed, carefully sliding his powerful body into the thermal suit. Just like he and Jeriko had been cautious to avoid setting off more mundane types of security back during their penetration of Preacher's office, the man in black wanted to stay undetected by regular security on his way in here.
Sealing his thermal suit, Mordecai slipped his enhanced vision goggles into place before he took the empty shoulder bag and carefully rolled it into a tight leather cylinder. It then slid silently into the large pocket on the back of his utility vest, which then went on over the thermal suit. His fingers then lightly danced over the control unit built into the forearm, dropping his heat emissions down to ambient levels before he dared to lift himself out of the grass.
So far, so good: nothing was stirring down in the farmyard. At least nothing to indicate he had been spotted. He carefully slid the multi-phasic scanner from one of his utility pouches and activated it.
Almost instantly he found three optical cameras, one in the barn covering the yard, one in the house covering the approach and the third mounted in what appeared to be a weather vane in the middle of the yard, covering the approaches to both the house and barn. Sliding down the visual spectrum, the scanner then detected the IR generators, UV emitters and Ultrasound generators each camera also carried.
That allowed the three units in triangulation to effectively blanket the farm in four types of detection media. Sighing softly in resignation, Mordecai slid the scanner back into its pouch. As much as he had anticipated the mundane detection grid, he was still disappointed that he'd have to deal with it. All he needed now was a telepathic scan to tell him that there was a ward webwork out there so dense that a fly couldn't piss without activating the thing.
At least there was a little good news: not all four media worked at the same time. Instead, they cycled through each type of detection field at a regular interval. That prompted Mordecai to think that If he could time things right, the thermal suit would take care of the IR and UV scans and holding still would defeat the ultrasound motion detection. All he would have to do was be invisible to defeat the optical cameras.
The man in black smiled thinly. At least he had the invisibility option on lock down!
It was part of the equipment he had Seiji pick up, a piece of lone gunman technology that would effectively render him invisible. It was called a mirror field and he had invented it, based on one of his psionic talents that allowed him to bend Light itself.
The premise of the mirror field was simple enough: create a gelled layer of air so dense that it would not only reflect light, but capture it and bend it around an object inside to let it out the other side without distortion. Once the light penetrated the primary layer, it reflected off the secondary layer back towards the primary layer, which, of course, was mirror-reflective on it's inner surface, bouncing 100% of the light back to its source.
The key to the field was that it's permeability to light could be adjusted, allowing the light bouncing around inside out at an angle matching the one it entered at. In effect, it passed each light wave around the object inside, through to its original path. The point to point calculations necessary to adapt the field on the fly to maintain light wave throughput was done by a nest of dedicated micro-A.I.'s, sitting next to the field's generator.
Attaching the mirror field generator to his belt, Mordecai activated it with a thumb on its power switch and silently watched as the field built itself around him. The result was a blurry and dim view of the outside, formed by selectively allowing a small amount of the light to penetrate to the wearer. But it was sufficient to get him to where he was going.
The field in place, Mordecai carefully stepped out from behind his cover and began to methodically make his way towards the house, timing his movement with the cycling detection fields. Metre by metre he crept forward, eyes and ears tensed to hear the screaming alarms upon his discovery, though he knew he was virtually invisible.
Still, he let a sigh of relief trickle through his nostrils when he reached the door undiscovered. Mordecai frowned as he then took a last look around the farmyard to make sure he didn't leave any traces behind before turning to examine the door.
A quick sweep with the multi-phasic scanner was enough to tell him that it was a wood-sheathed metal plate, built to withstand a battering ram. Or, lacking that, a rocket-propelled grenade assault. Behind his thermal suit's facemask, the man in black's lips pursed thoughtfully.
He could breach it with a close range shockwave without fear of detection. The multi-phasic scanner had also revealed a peculiar lack of ward protection, along with standard security and detection fields. It was as if they were depending on the strength of the door itself to prevent entry. But that would make unnecessary noise and the resulting tumult would most assuredly show up on the security system's detection grid. He had to find another way.
Mordecai's eyes narrowed as his thoughtful expression deepened. There was a way that he could slip through the door, but it would require him using psionic energies. It was called 'phasing' and the process used psyken to pull the very atomic structure of his body, clothing and thermal suit far enough apart that he would be able to pass through the door, fitting his atoms into the atomic spaces left in the door's very own matter.
Phasing took a lot of energy, control and strength. And there was always the down time on the other side after reconstituting the body as the user had to deal with phasic shock: the displacement of his or her atomic structure caused by incidental collisions with atoms within the material passed through. It was no fun. Still, it seemed to be the only way in.
Sighing once more, this time with resignation, Mordecai dropped the shields on his core mind and began to interweave his body with powerful psyken tendrils. Time was running out. If he didn't phase through this door, he would lose any advantage he had in sneaking in here. Then, with all the firepower the Brotherhood had gathered here, he might as well jump out and leave Tabitha and the captured Alliance psionics to their own devices. He had to work fast if he didn't want to get detected in an active telepathic sweep with so much psionic activity taking place.
Refocusing his mind's eye, Mordecai peered down into himself, quickly zooming in to the atomic level, watching as his body lost its solid appearance to become a vast universe of tightly packed miniature galaxies, each with their stars spinning rapidly around compact cores of protons and neutrons. The man in black knew that he could go even further, all the way down to neutrinos and the building blocks of atoms, his meta-senses powerful enough to give him that perspective. But this was as far as he needed to go.
Focusing his will on the miniature galaxies that sparkled with their own nuclear light in this universe that was his body, Mordecai began to push at them with narrow beams of psyken, willing each galaxy further and further apart from their fellows. A ripple of pain went through him as the controlled explosions began to deconstitute the big man's body.
Pushing a bit further, Mordecai stopped, the pain too much to stand any further deconstitution. Holding together what was now a loosely bound cloud of atoms, including his own brain, with the power of only his mind, Mordecai then turned and pushed himself into the door's substance.
It was almost like swimming through quicksand: as soon as the dispersed atoms of his body began to collide with the more tightly arrayed atoms of the door, they met resistance in the intra-atomic space. These spaces were still small enough to require the powerful hardwire to literally ram his own substance through, making the process somewhat slow and tedious for something so thick and dense.
With a groan, he was finally through and quickly he pulled his atoms back together to fully reconstitute his body. Immediately his body began to ache with phasic shock. With that came the pain caused by some of his atoms to be knocked from their previous alignments by the intra-atomic collisions he experienced on the way in. Teeth grit against that pain, Mordecai swept a tight wave of psyken through his body to realign the displaced atoms even as he pushed the pain into the back of his mind. That done, he stepped into the cottage proper and began to look around, the mirror field still providing him with invisibility.