by Gary Gibson
Stenzer loomed above him, his fist cocked as if prepared to give another punch.
“I can’t tell you anything,” Kendrick repeated weakly, falling into his familiar litany. “I’ve told you everything I can, again and again. If there was anything else, I’d tell you, I really would. But there isn’t. I want to go home.”
Stenzer nodded, his expression hard and inhuman. He walked to the door and opened it. Two guards were waiting outside, ready; they must have been there the whole time. They gripped Kendrick by the arms and hauled him to his feet, then dragged him back out into the corridor, blood dripping from his damaged face.
“What would you like us to do with him, Sir?” one asked.
“Kill him,” Stenzer replied curtly, closing the door forever.
16 October 2096
Leith Docks
“There you are.”
Erik Whitsett still wore the same woollen coat as when he’d first approached Kendrick outside the Armoured Saint. The same scarf was wrapped carefully around his neck, the collar of his jacket pulled up to cover his ears.
Kendrick glanced out along the quay. They were standing near where the ships were docked, the air filled with the cries of gulls and the smell of brine. Warehouses and half-derelict office buildings lined the waterfront. In recent years the area had regained its former notorious reputation, particularly since all the refugees had arrived. Kendrick had lived here himself for a while when he’d first come to Scotland. Those had been difficult times, but he knew the area well enough to know that they’d be left alone now.
“You seem out of breath. Did you find your way okay?”
“I wasn’t exactly sure where you meant,” Whitsett replied. “I’m not so familiar with these parts, remember?” He coughed up a small cloud of steam into the chill air. “Sorry if I’m a little late.”
“No problem. Care to take a walk?”
Whitsett made an exaggerated show of looking around him. “Christ, couldn’t you have picked some bar at least?”
Kendrick grinned. “There’s one a little further along, yeah. But if we’re going to talk about Buddy then I’d prefer somewhere where nobody’s likely to hear or see us.”
“Well, I don’t see any alternative. So, yeah, let’s walk.” They fell into step with each other, the sea at Kendrick’s left shoulder.
“You come down here a lot, don’t you?”
Kendrick smiled. “From time to time, yes. This is where I first arrived on these shores.”
“On one of the ships?”
“Yeah, in the early years of the war. Cargo ships came across, carrying thousands of us once the rioting spread to the East Coast. And then the Legislate navies tried to run a blockade to stop too many of us getting in.”
“Kind of harsh.”
Kendrick shrugged. “What’s it like back over there these days?”
“Same as you probably see daily on the news. Used to be the rest of the world that was fighting among themselves, now it’s our turn.” Whitsett turned to him. “I stayed on, after the Maze. I used to be a counsellor before, so I helped other people cope with what happened to them down there – to try and slow down the suicide rates, sort of. I first got to know Buddy back then, before he decided to head somewhere south of Mexico with that helicopter of his. And what about you?”
“It was either go one way and try and find my way through a war zone, or head the other way and get on the boat. Then, like yours, my augs turned rogue a little while back, so I had to lie low.”
Whitsett nodded sympathetically.
“If you don’t mind my asking,” said Kendrick, “how did you get here without having to go through the usual checks?”
“Private flight, arranged through a company part-owned by a Labrat. It bypasses the usual channels.”
“Anyone I know?”
“Well – remember Roy? Roy Whitman?”
“Yeah, sure I remember him.”
“You worked together, right?”
“Buddy worked for him,” Kendrick corrected Whitsett, “back when he was running all kinds of shit across the US border, both ways. I just sort of . . . tagged along a couple of times, hoping to pick up a good story.”
Whitsett glanced at him quizzically. “You’re still writing?”
Kendrick shook his head. “Hardly at all. I’m lucky just to have the funds to keep going this long without working, but that won’t last for ever.”
“But you can’t get the work, because nobody wants Labrats around them. Times are getting hard for all of us.”
Kendrick shrugged. “I suppose I should take comfort in knowing that I’m far from being the only one with this kind of problem.”
Whitsett smiled. “Consider yourself lucky. Things are a lot worse in some parts of America than they are here.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that. But you didn’t come all this way just to see me.”
“No, there’s other reasons. Mainly, though, Buddy’s surprised he hasn’t heard from you.”
“I remember, you said that. Maybe the question is why did he feel the need to send you when he could have just asked me himself?”
“Like I said, he’s busy. But he needs your help.”
“He could have called me.”
“It took a little time to track you down. You hid yourself pretty well.”
Kendrick allowed himself a small smile. “Looks like I didn’t do a thorough enough job.”
“But Buddy’s speaking to you now – through me. Los Muertos know about the visions.”
“Bully for them.”
“Don’t underestimate Los Muertos. They’re a lot more dangerous now than they were even a few years ago.”
“Come on,” Kendrick protested. “They’re falling apart.”
“Fragmenting, but not getting weaker. They’ve split in two. One faction considers itself effectively a religion, the other is . . . a little more proactive. They both see us as a danger.”
“Look, you know I see things? And I’ll admit it’s quite something, the idea that I’m not alone in this. All that tells me, though, is that our augs are screwing with our heads.” Kendrick chuckled. “I mean, what’s new about that? But what I really don’t understand is why anyone would be interested in the specifics.”
“You can’t overlook the fact that the more fundamentalist factions of Los Muertos believe that they gain something from the visions they can experience themselves, once they get close enough to the Maze. You witnessed it yourself, didn’t you? Buddy told me about your trip into the jungle. What you don’t seem to understand is that we’re all seeing the same things, all of us – everyone who survived Ward Seventeen, specifically.”
Kendrick laughed and shook his head. “That’s impossible.”
“I can tell you what you saw: a tiny boy with wings like a butterfly. I can tell that just by looking at your face.”
Kendrick felt his face grow hot. “So what? Even if that was true – and I don’t necessarily admit it – what difference would that make to me?”
Whitsett shrugged. “We were invited. They must have spoken to you too.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“The Bright.”
Kendrick forced himself to calm his breathing. It had been a long time since he had heard that name. “The Bright aren’t real. They’re just a product of the imagination of someone who became deranged through US-sanctioned medical procedures.”
“Nevertheless they exist. They are real.”
“And Buddy wants to talk to me about this stuff?”
Whitsett took a different tack. “There were four of you, right? You, Peter McCowan, Robert Vincenzo and Buddy Juarez. You were isolated in the Maze and something happened. Something passed between the four of you.”
“All right, I can’t deny we were kept isolated together,” Kendrick conceded.
“And that’s when Robert first started speaking of the Bright?”
Kendrick sighed. “I told you, Robert was crazy.”
“Was he?”
Kendrick looked away and didn’t answer. “A lot of strange things happened back then. Sometimes it’s hard to be sure what was real and what wasn’t.” He looked back at Whitsett. “And Buddy’s decided the Bright are real?”
“They are real,” Whitsett replied with surprising fervour. “The Bright are offering us a way out, a way to escape. But in order to achieve that, we have to get to the Archimedes.”
“The Archimedes? Do you have any idea how nuts this all sounds? How would you even get up there, anyway?”
“Launch company run by a guy called Gerard Sabak, sort of your entrepreneur-industrialist type. He was among the batch that came after us, still stuck in Ward Seventeen when we were dumped in the lower levels. He has a majority partnership in the company, and they specialize in running orbital flights for tourists and industry people, stuff like that. He’s putting everything together, but a lot depends on whether or not we can avoid outside interference.”
“Right.” Kendrick was impressed, despite himself.
“Look, don’t you ever want to get away from the crap we’ve had to put up with? Like not to have even the good guys chasing after you because, just walking around in the streets, they’re scared you’ll turn into a nanotech plague on legs? Of course you would.”
“I’m not denying that,” Kendrick replied, feeling angry now. Perhaps Buddy had lost it, started a cult like Los Muertos out there in the jungle, worshipping the ruins of a military base and the machine intelligences that lurked in every molecule of its lightless corridors. “But the fact is that we have to find ways to cope and stay alive right here in the real world. And even if you could, what would be the point of going up to the Archimedes? Assuming you actually managed to survive the runaway nanotech infesting that thing, you’d be giving the wrong people an even bigger excuse to blow it – and yourself – out of the sky.”
Whitsett looked out over the water for what started to feel like a long time. Then he turned back to Kendrick. “Look, maybe I need to talk to Buddy. If you really had shared the same experience as the rest of us, we wouldn’t even need to have this conversation. You’d know.”
They had stepped nearer to the water’s edge. The hull of a cargo ship loomed nearby, water lapping gently at its rust-corroded hull.
“Look,” Whitsett said suddenly, “here’s an idea. Maybe we—”
By the time Kendrick saw the speedboat it was too late.
He’d been staring out towards the water while the other man spoke. Whitsett had been facing towards him, his back to the water, so that Kendrick was looking over his shoulder at the sea.
The speedboat must have come from around the other side of the cargo ship moored nearby. He had been too busy listening to what Whitsett had to say to have heard the buzz of an approaching outboard engine.
When the bullet hit Whitsett, the force of its impact spun him around so that he stumbled against Kendrick in the last moments of his life. Blood and brains sprayed across the harbour front and Kendrick yelled, stumbling away in shock. Bright flashes sparked from the direction of the speedboat. Something hot whined past his ear.
As Erik Whitsett’s ruined corpse collapsed to the ground, Kendrick could see fine grey filaments mixed in with the soft tissues that had previously formed the interior of the Labrat’s head.
Time slowed down. Kendrick began to run – the motion liquid and dreamlike in his perception. He took a chance, glanced over his shoulder and saw someone in a heavy green slicker standing up in the now stationary speedboat, taking aim. Suddenly he felt sure that it had been him they’d been trying to kill, not Whitsett.
He ran.
16 October 2096
Outside Hardenbrooke’s clinic
“Jesus!” Caroline’s small hands smacked against the dashboard of her car in anger.
When Kendrick said nothing she sighed noisily, staring out at the street around them. People walked by, one or two glancing in their direction, trying to recognize the environment reflected in the car windows. Kendrick knew it was Caroline’s own design: the streets of 1940s Casablanca rendered in black and white. Since many of the vehicles driving along the street, or parked around them, had their own custom reflection programs, theirs didn’t particularly stand out. It meant that they could hide from view until Kendrick needed to enter the clinic.
“I could try and explain, but it wouldn’t make much sense to you.” Even as he said the words, it occurred to Kendrick that he’d have a hard time convincing even himself. Caroline had eventually woken from her catatonic state to find him back in her apartment. No memory of picking up the phone earlier, nor of sleepwalking subsequently: only of waking up to the sound of his voice.
So he’d left then, with little explanation, and in the meantime had met up with a man he hadn’t seen in years – just in time to watch him die.
“Caroline,” he said gently, “if anyone’s likely to know what’s going on here, I think it’s more probably you than me.”
She stared straight ahead at the street outside. “Well, perhaps that’s true,” she said in a small voice.
“Maybe we need to talk. You never told me why we finished. You never told me your augments had—”
She raised a hand as if to silence him, so he changed tack. “Has Buddy been in touch with you?”
Caroline looked as if her face was about to crumble. “Yes, he has,” she replied, visibly pulling herself together. “I went to Holland, and we met there.”
Kendrick nodded. Holland was relatively tolerant about Labrats. “And?”
“I started seeing things just a little while after you did.”
“Christ, Caroline, if you’d only told me—”
“I didn’t want to tell you! I saw things, so many things, and Robert spoke to me—”
“Robert is dead.”
The expression on her face was filled with such cold fury that Kendrick looked away immediately. “You don’t need to remind me,” she replied with icy bitterness. “But he spoke to me. He’s still alive in some way.”
“Caroline, some very fucked-up stuff is happening around me. Someone tried to blow up Malky’s bar, and earlier today I saw someone – someone who claimed to be a friend of Buddy’s – get killed right in front of me.” He saw the shock on her face. “People are trying to tell me things, and I have to take notice of that. I have to start asking serious questions.” He gestured down the street towards Hardenbrooke’s clinic. “You see that place over there? Somebody told me that the guy who’s being paid to save my life is in fact out to get me – why, I don’t know. Now Erik Whitsett turns up and tells me we’re all – all of us – seeing the same damn things in our dreams.”
Kendrick laughed, aware of the edge of panic in his voice. “But then, maybe we’re not seeing the same things, so go figure! I have to get to the bottom of this. I don’t have any idea where to find Buddy, or even if he’s going to give me a reasonable explanation for what’s going on, so in the meantime I’m just going to go in there and find some things out. Unless, Caroline, there’s something you really need to tell me.”
He looked at her expectantly. She was pale, trembling, not meeting his gaze. When the words came, she gave a good impression of having to force them. “When we were in the Maze . . .” He nodded encouragingly. “When they made us . . . I didn’t know that you were down there with him, that you were the one who killed Robert. I didn’t know you were the one that did it.” Anger crept into her words. “I didn’t know you’d killed my brother. And you didn’t even, not ever, not during the whole time we were together, have the fucking grace to tell me, you miserable, pathetic, fucking bastard.”
Kendrick nodded again, this time in understanding, and sat back. It had started raining, fat grey drops sliding in miniature rivers down the glass.
“Caroline, none of us had any choice. He would have killed me—”
“And don’t I just wish he had!” she screamed, her face contorted with rage. She was weeping n
ow. “He was my brother.”
Kendrick fell silent, embarrassed and suddenly inarticulate, wondering just how she had found out. Buddy, perhaps? But he’d promised never to speak about that. Who else might have known?
Or had something that looked like Robert, spoke with Robert’s voice and shared Robert’s memories told her?
But at least he knew now why she’d thrown him out.
Kendrick rehearsed the lines in his head. I had another seizure – two again. I almost died. You have to help me. What would happen after that was anybody’s guess, but he had to get in there and find out if McCowan’s ghost had been as right about Hardenbrooke as it had been about the bomb.
He stepped up to the door of the clinic, which had no handle nor any other obvious means for people to exit or enter. On previous occasions he had been peripherally aware of hidden security equipment scanning him on his approach, and on those occasions the door had simply swung open.
This time, however, he had no appointment.
It was easy to speculate about who Hardenbrooke’s other clients might be. Kendrick was far from being the only Labrat who’d washed up on these shores in dire need of medical assistance that he could never acquire legally.
Kendrick pushed against the door, but it remained locked. He stepped back and looked over to the nearest windows, rising behind tall railings. Below the railings the ground dropped away to a basement level.
He looked around to check if anyone was hanging around nearby. Caroline had long since driven off, abandoning him to his fate. He touched the door’s surface again, feeling a tingle where his hand came into contact with it.
He closed his eyes, sensing the security devices built into the fabric of the door like intricate webs of invisible activity. He moved his hand across the door’s width, letting his augments trace and follow the pulses of electrical energy there . . .
Several seconds later Kendrick heard a loud clunk and the door opened a millimetre or two.
That wasn’t me.
He couldn’t understand or interpret the actions of his augmentations, but he could think about something, and if it had to do with infiltration, assassination or any of a hundred specifically military applications, his body could find a way to perform it. This was not something Kendrick was proud of or wanted. The price of it, after all, had been grievously high, and it rarely produced desirable results.