Mordecai paused thoughtfully as he closed the door to his small apartment behind him. Already throwing their jackets onto his small sofa, Duffy and Dee both looked back at him over their shoulders when they noticed that he stopped just inside the door.
"Problem, old bean?" Duffy asked upon seeing the thoughtful look on the big man's face. "Surely you're not rehashing that little showdown against the Avalonians. Your diplomacy won the day. What else is there?"
The big man favored the old Brit with a look then smiled thinly.
"It's not quite over, Duffy," he said in a quiet voice.
"What?" Dee frowned as she looked from Mordecai, to Duffy then back at the big man in black. "It's not over? I dunno, man. It looked pretty much over from my angle. The independent nations are clearing their people off the street, the Avalonians aren't going to interfere, and Lash and his vampires are ready to rock and ruin. Sounds over to me."
If anything, Mordecai's thin smile broadened slightly at that. Then the smile was gone.
"Paladin, link me to Lash's comm unit," he tightly directed.
"Link established, Mordecai," the A.I. confirmed from its place in an inner pocket.
"Lash, it's Mordecai. Are you reading me?"
"Five by five, my friend," the Qos Viran commander's distinctive voice replied. "How do we stand?"
"The clock has been started with our warning to the independent nations to clear the streets. You have 5 hours, 52 minutes to the initiation of your suppression sweep. I am sending you the coordinates to all munitions being cached throughout the city by Samantha and Lisa in the next hour. Between them and your present munitions levels, you should have sufficient for your hunt."
"Copy that, Mordecai," Lash replied. "I have received the coordinates. We are on the clock. T-minus 5 hours and 51 minutes by my mark. Mark."
"Acknowledged. Good hunting."
"Blood will run in rivers. Lash out."
Nodding in satisfaction that the plan was in motion, Mordecai looked over at Dee and Duffy just as Raven popped into view with an open site-to-site telehop.
"Nice of you to join us, Raven. Is our back trail clean?"
The Native American hardwire nodded.
"Swept and diffused," she added. "No enemy wirehead will be able to track us back to this location." She paused to slip her own A.I. out of a pocket. "Haida, status on Brotherhood jump ins."
"They are remaining consistent at one per every five minute period, Raven," a quiet male voice replied. "I would recommend a suppression field to prevent additional combatants from entering the field."
Raven looked over at Mordecai, who subtly shook his head.
"Noted, Haida. Stand by," she said before slipping the small A.I. back out of sight.
"Um, that suppression field thing sounds like a good idea to me," Dee said with a frown. "Wouldn't that prevent Brotherhood reinforcements from jumping in once Lash and his vamps start cutting them out?"
"While that'll be true once the Qos Viran begin their purge, we want to draw as many Brotherhood assets as possible into the city prior to take out as many as we can," Jeriko answered in Mordecai's place, the newly minted Storm Wolf having already guessed the man in black's intention. "We want to burn them hard enough that they'll think twice about sending in reinforcements before December."
"Which, if we leverage it properly, will give us the time we need to properly prepare for the Project's trigger event," Mordecai added. "Time we desperately need."
Again the man in black hesitated, staring off into the distance as if he were pondering some great truth. But it was Jeriko that correctly guessed what was going on.
"Something stirring in the probability stream, Marty?" she quietly asked, stepping close to the big man.
Mordecai didn't answer for a long moment as he continued to stare at whatever it was that had caught his attention. Then he was jerking a quick nod.
"An old comrade approaches with a request," he said in a low voice before looking over at a frowning Raven. "A proposal that you initiated, Raven."
"Me? Raven replied, her frown deepening. "I don't recall putting forth any proposals."
"Ah, but you did, my good lady," Duffy said, a thoughtful expression on his weathered face. "You told the nations that if they wanted to join the hunt against the Brotherhood, they would need to become Storm Wolves, like Lisa and Samantha."
Mordecai nodded as he pointed at Duffy.
"The good detective is spot on," he confirmed before pointing back at Raven. "That was your challenge, Raven."
"I wasn't expecting anybody to take me up on it," the Native American hardwire indicated, folding her arms beneath her breasts. "Hell, I don't even know how the Storm Wolves came into being!"
"I made them," Mordecai confessed with a shrug. "By modifying recently deceased psionics with Jeriko's new psionic werewolf template, reanimating them then inserting isolated essences into them."
As the big man fell silent, he found four sets of eyes staring in astonishment at him, including Jeriko.
"You ... you did what?" Dee stammered, eyes wide as she tried to digest what Mordecai had just admitted to doing.
The big man smiled at the tall redhead's reaction.
"I would explain it to you," he began, "But I think I'm about to get the chance to show you!"
As they all wondered what Mordecai was talking about, there was a light tap on the door. Instantly both Jeriko and Raven were pulling in as much bio-energy as they could hold as they turned to stare at the door. At the same time Dee and Duffy were drawing their Shiva's to aim the powerful weapons at the door.
Only when they were ready to unleash hell did Jeriko notice that the most powerful being in the room hadn't as much as brought up his personal shields, little yet pull in energy in preparation for battle. It didn't take long to find out why.
"Come in, Melanie," Mordecai called out. "The door's open."
Jeriko's frown deepened. Melanie?? Was this visit what Mordecai had referred to when he said he was about to show them?
The door to the apartment swung open to reveal the blonde Brit that was part of Avalon's leadership. Noticing the two humans and their weapons standing beside Raven holding a full charge of psionic energy, she quickly threw up her hands.
"I come in peace!" she declared. "I swear!"
"So you do," Mordecai conceded, a look back at his comrades enough to make Dee and Duffy lower their weapons. Raven, however, stayed fully charged, as did Jeriko. Both had seen enough supposed allies turn hostile recently that they weren't about to take a chance, even though Melanie was far below either one of them in power and ability. One didn't need to be a hardwire to burn one out. Just skilled as hell, was all!
Again it was the most powerful of hardwires, and one that had nearly been burnt out at that, that made the next move.
"So you want to be a Storm Wolf, Melanie," he said. Her mouth already open in preparation to ask for that very thing, Melanie closed it with an almost audible click when the man in black anticipated her request. Then she nodded.
"Raven said it was the only way to join the hunt," she went on to explain, earning the Native American lone gunman a look from everybody in the room except Mordecai. "I have come too far, sacrificed too much to get pushed out of the fight now. You know what I went through, Mordecai. You know how much I want to hurt those bastards for what they did." The blonde psionic's chin lifted resolutely.
"If becoming a Storm Wolf is the only way to do it, then I'm in!"
Mordecai slowly nodded. He had anticipated the request. In fact he had seen her make it in a quick probability vision of the near future. How could she not? Raven had thrown down the gauntlet, daring not just the Avalonians to pick it up, but every leader of Calgary's independent nations as well. While probability still was uncertain whether the independent nations would take the challenge, it had only been a matter of time before one of the driven women of Avalon came forward.
Mordecai's eyes abruptly narrowed in thought. In the short time they had existed, Lisa and Samantha had already proven themselves as invaluable assets in the fight against their genocidal foe. Even one more added to their number would further tilt things in their favor. In fact, he could feel the node shifting in response. That, by itself, was enough to convince him to try and figure out how to do the conversion on a living subject.
"Best come in then, Melanie," he said, waving her in. "I'm not going to try a conversion with you standing out in the hallway."
"Oh. Right." Stepping into the small apartment, she gave it a cursory once over. "So this was where you were hiding while offline?"
Mordecai nodded as he pulled Paladin free and began calling up the file he had made to record the conversion process.
"Dee set it up as part of my Normal persona," he revealed as a holo-image of the modified DNA he used appeared above Paladin's silvery case.
Melanie tracked over to the redhead, the only woman in the small group that didn't speak during the confrontation in Avalon's conference room.
"It has a ... remarkably low profile," she said. "Well done."
"If that's a polite way of saying it's a shithole, you're not wrong," the tall detective said with a shrug. "But it did the trick." Her face abruptly tightened. "Speaking of which, how the hell did you find us? Raven said she had cleared our back trail."
Melanie hazarded a quick look at the Native American hardwire, who was nodding in agreement with the Normal detective.
"It was you, actually," the British psionic replied, coming back to Dee. "You and that chap right there," she said, indicating Duffy. "Raven may have swept for psionic signatures but she didn't account for your Normal ones."
"Damn it," Raven growled. "I'm just not used to having Normals in the mix."
"Don't be too hard on yourself, Raven," Dee quickly said with a wry smile. "Up till a month or so ago, we weren't."
Then they were all falling quiet as Mordecai turned to face them, his face a thoughtful mask as he studied the holographic image in front of him.
"Okay, Melanie, I'm ready to try this conversion." He looked over at the Avalonian. "I need you to stand right here." He pointed to a spot in the middle of the apartment's pint-sized living room. As Melanie moved to comply, Mordecai started pulling in energy in preparation for what promised to be a fairly complicated procedure.
Unlike the conversion of necrotic tissue, which was fairly forgiving if he made a mistake, he was dealing with living tissue. So while he didn't need to kick start cellular metabolism to bring it back to life, any changes he made could potentially injure Melanie to the point where he actually killed her. After all, he wasn't just reattaching a limb or healing internal injuries. He was rewriting her entire genetic code, something that was being done for the very first time in Psionic history. The big man was confident in his abilities, but that didn't mean he wouldn't take the utmost care and precaution.
With Melanie now in place, Mordecai gave her a quick reassuring smile when he saw that she was visibly nervous.
"Don't worry, Mel. I'm going to put you in a stasis field so you'll be perfectly safe the whole time."
"A stasis field?" she asked after clearing her throat. "You can do that?"
"I can. You won't feel a thing while I work. And when you wake up, it'll be a brand new you." Then he was extending a powerful psyken field that put her neural activity on pause while it froze her cellular metabolism.
"I hope!" he muttered to himself once he was sure she was in suspension.
"Another one of your accidental discoveries?" Jeriko stepped close to ask, her eyes narrowed as she studied the suspension field.
"No," the big man replied. "I developed it just now."
"Damn," the blonde lone gunman replied, shaking her head with equal parts of astonishment and admiration. Then she was as quiet as everybody else in the room so they could watch the big man work.
With psyken control so fine, he could move the molecules of his own body at will, Mordecai moved into Melanie's suspension-frozen body. His first task: take the DNA segments from the template that created a Storm Wolf and incorporate it into Melanie's genetic make-up, strand by strand.
Once he had rebuilt her DNA, then the man in black had to force Melanie's body to physically change in accordance to the demands put forth by her new genetic make-up. That would be the tricky part: somehow pushing her body, a living organism currently in balance with itself, to radically rebuild itself to new specs. All without breaking something that would irreparably damage her.
Crafting billions of psyken nanobots with a thought, he programmed them to locate every DNA strand that would need to be modified to make the required change. Once each was identified, that strand would then have its old sections removed and replaced by the new ones by the nanobots, much as a retrovirus was used in gene therapy. They would then trigger an immediate mRNA/tRNA sequence to force each cell to cycle through a read and build to reconfigure each cell in every tissue to the new standard.
His psyken bots programmed, Mordecai pushed them into Melanie's body with a surge of telekinesis. Then he sat back, his psionic senses extended into the blonde woman's body to monitor the progress his microscopic workers were making.
Thankfully he didn't have to wait long. With the nanobots saturating Melanie's tissues to the point that she glowed from within, they found her DNA at the speed of thought. The exchange and subsequent cycle push were equally quick, a wave of energy washing over the motionless woman marking the rebuild, the nanobots themselves providing the energy needed for the demanding cellular switch-over.
Seeing the wave of light wash over her, Mordecai leaned close, his Inner Sight confirming that her cells were reconfiguring to their new format. A heartbeat later he watched as she visibly lost body fat and became leaner and harder. A scan of her mouth provided the final indicator: werewolf style fangs had replaced her incisors.
Mordecai let a trickle of satisfaction go through him at seeing those. The transformation had worked. A quick look at Melanie's psionic cortex confirmed that it had been, like Lisa and Samantha both, upgraded to hardwire status. 'Now for the final step before bringing her back online," he thought, making a sweep through his own memories. "A training bolus so she knows what to do with her upgraded abilities!'
Since Melanie wouldn't get the benefit of having a senior hardwire to show her the ropes, training her how to access and use her new abilities to their fullest, like the lone gunmen did with their mentor program, the big man had to improvise. He would transfer to her his own training memories, basically using them to guide her through learning how to be a hardwire. He could only hope it would be enough to keep her from going insane!
The bolus of memories were quickly ready, set up to automatically unfold as soon as Melanie woke up. Then Mordecai was dropping the suspension field.
Immediately Melanie gave a start as she abruptly came back to full awareness.
"Is it ... is it done?" she stammered, clearly a little disoriented.
"It is." Mordecai leaned forward, his expression intent. "How do you feel?"
Melanie lifted her arms as she looked down along her resculpted body, instantly noting her new muscularity.
"Powerful," she replied, turning her head to look at her arms. "Like I can knock down a building."
"That would be the werewolf tweak," Mordecai indicated. "You'll have to learn how to channel that power to compliment your psionic abilities, instead of taking you over."
Melanie nodded as he told her that, obviously already feeling the werewolf part of her clamoring for dominance. Then a tight defensive shield snapped into place around her before she formed several balls of pyroken and began to smoothly weave them through a complicated patterns with a thought. Recognizing the pattern from his own training, Mordecai felt a small smile of satisfaction twist his lips upward.
"I'm also feeling much more psionically powerful," the newly minted hardwire revealed as the balls of fire continued their dance. "You upgraded me to a ...?"
"Hardwire," the man in black supplied. "Not quite lone gunman level, but better than most any other hardwire out there."
Again the British psionic nodded her understanding, transforming the pyroken balls into ones of pure psyken, changing the dancing red light filling the room to furious blue. It was another control exercise that Mordecai's mentor had shown him.
"Now, before you become too used to your current levels, there's one last option I can offer that will bring you to lone gunman levels. But it comes with a warning: if you chose that option, it will change everything you know and sense in the psionic world. Choosing that option, however, will truly make you into a Storm Wolf."
The psyken balls vanished as Melanie looked over at Mordecai, her expression resolved.
"Like I said on your island several months ago, and again just now: if it'll help me help you take down the Brotherhood, then I'm bloody in, mate. Light me up with this option of yours."
The big man's eyebrow lifted at that.
"You don't even want to know what it is?"
Melanie shook her head.
"Don't actually care," she added grimly. "If it helps me kill Brotherhood assets faster, then bloody hit me. Now!"
Mordecai grinned at the hard demand, spoken nearly with a growl. That'd be the werewolf speaking. He glanced back at Jeriko and Raven, who were also grinning.
"You heard the lady, Marty," Jeriko said, folding her arms beneath her breasts. "Flip the switch!"
Mordecai chuckled. From one Storm Wolf to another. Then he was reaching out with his mind.
"Hold on to something, Melanie. This is going to feel a little peculiar."