Against Gravity

"Just professional paranoia. A black-market clinic in Glasgow got raided last week – didn't you hear about it?"

"Maybe." A snatch of news footage flickered across Kendrick's mind's eye. "You're worried about that happening here?"

"Sometimes I reckon it's more a case of 'when' than 'if'. I'm not casting any aspersions on your good character, of course," Hardenbrooke assured him with a flicker of a smile. "It's just-"

"Sure, I understand. But there wasn't anyone following me." Kendrick made sure to catch the man's eye as he said this. "Listen, I'm not just here for the regular treatments. Last night I suffered two seizures in a row, plus…" He shook his head and sighed. "Look, I need you to check out my heart."

Hardenbrooke raised one and a half eyebrows. Something about the man's scars made it hard to determine his age. What little Kendrick knew about him extended only as far as Hardenbrooke's claim to be a survivor of the LA Nuke. Beyond that, the professional nature of their relationship precluded any personal knowledge about each other. Yet they were partners in crime as much as they were doctor and patient, and Kendrick had been paying Hardenbrooke a lot of money for a series of treatments that had so far proved surprisingly effective.

Nonetheless, over recent months some other details of the medic's history had filtered through, giving Kendrick an opportunity to fill in some of the blanks.

"Two seizures? Last night?" Hardenbrooke echoed. "You should have contacted me immediately." His tone was admonishing.

"I know I should. But I'm here now."

The medic went over to a metal desk and pulled a drawer open, rummaging around inside, then stepped back holding an old-fashioned stethoscope in his hands as he fitted the earpieces into his melted-plastic ears. Motioning Kendrick to pull his T-shirt up, Hardenbrooke pressed the icy-cold metal disc against his chest and listened. Kendrick watched a look of consternation spread across that part of Hardenbrooke's face still capable of registering emotion.

Then Hardenbrooke stood up straight. "Let's come to an agreement," he said. "When I say call me if something happens, then call me instantly. Anything that looks like a setback, just call me. Otherwise you're making it a lot harder for me to help you. Is that clear?"

"Absolutely." Kendrick nodded. "I'm sorry," he added. "I was just a little-"

"I understand." Hardenbrooke paused, then, "I'll be frank, Mr Gallmon, technically you should be dead."

A look of alarm crossed Kendrick's face. "Hang on there." Hardenbrooke raised a finger. "What I'm saying is, this is something I've never even heard about before, even among Labrats with totally runaway augmentation growth. This, Mr Gallmon, is unique. I need you to tell me everything you can before we go any further."

Well, maybe not everything, Kendrick thought as he began. "There were… hallucinations, a little like before." He outlined some of the details. Hardenbrooke was already familiar with the visions of butterfly-winged children.

"Anything else?"

Kendrick thought of Peter McCowan. But the ghost – wasn't there a better word? – had warned him against Hardenbrooke. Was that just some figment of Kendrick's own anxieties?

But then, figments of one's imagination didn't necessarily give out warnings about bombs in suitcases either. Seeing men who'd been dead for years – that was something Kendrick was more than willing to keep to himself for the moment.

"That's it: I collapsed twice, I saw things, and my heart stopped working." He laughed nervously. "Nothing unusual, really."

"Look, you have to remember your augmentations are-"

"Inherently unpredictable," Kendrick finished for him. "I know."

Hardenbrooke shrugged, and made an adjustment to the couch so that Kendrick found himself staring upwards into a complicated array of lenses and sensors suspended from the ceiling.

Hardenbrooke picked up one of the spray 'derms and paused. "We're in unknown territory here," he said. "I want you to understand that."

Kendrick nodded. "I do."

Hardenbrooke touched the 'derm to the inside of Kendrick's bare elbow. Kendrick felt a curious coolness spread along his arm, a sensation with a peculiarly synaesthetic quality to it, as if he could taste peppermint through his skin.

This faded quickly. Twisting his head round slightly, Kendrick watched as the medic unrolled a blank eepsheet and hung it from a hook screwed into the wall. Next he picked up a slim plastic wand that looked even more out of date than Kendrick's own. He pointed it first at Kendrick, then at the blank eepsheet.

Kendrick could see the eepsheet clearly from where he lay. Its surface strobed for a moment before resolving into a cloud of brightly coloured pixels spreading rapidly across a field of black. There was a vague sense of form and pattern to the movement of the pixels.

Kendrick realized that Hardenbrooke had just injected him with a form of nanite – vat-grown molecular machines that would provide a wealth of information about what was happening inside his body. This process extended to real-time visuals and, over the next minute or so, the blurry mass of pixels resolved itself into a distinctly human-like shape.

Kendrick twisted his head around so he could watch Hardenbrooke, who was meanwhile keeping an eye on the other eepsheets mounted above his workspace. Kendrick gazed with uneasy fascination at the outline of his own heart, the major blood arteries already clearly delineated by the flood of information flowing from Hardenbrooke's nanites.

Now other 'sheets had started to display full-colour video images of his blood vessels – from the inside. Tumbling camera views spun by arterial walls, and he caught occasional glimpses of smooth, metallic grey where, in any normal unaugmented person, there should have been no such thing.

The first time Kendrick had seen these pictures, he'd expected them to make him uneasy. It could be a hard thing to get a high-definition tour of the sack of meat and blood that made up your body. Instead, he felt strangely reassured by it. He was still clearly human, whatever might be happening inside his body. He suspected that the reason the medic was letting him see these images was to make him feel involved in the consultation process, a psychological ploy intended to make it seem as if they were engaged together in a journey of mutual discovery.

Hardenbrooke didn't actually need to witness any of this process himself since it was the correlated post-examination data that the nanites provided which really mattered. But Kendrick was strangely glad of it all the same. He thought of the nanites as tiny agents of positive change, even though they comprised the same kind of technology as his augmentations. The "good" nanites roamed through his body like microscopic policemen, making sure that everything was in order and that no rowdy augments were stirring up trouble deep within his organs.

On-screen the augmentations showed up as red patches, mostly clustered around his spine and major organs, which manifested as blue. Countless red filaments spread up the tube of his neck, reaching deep into his skull. More filaments surrounded the meat of his brain like a wire cage. There were also segments of red scattered throughout his lungs, his kidneys, through every major organ. Kendrick peered, straining to see if anything had visibly altered. Every now and then one of the video images afforded him fresh glimpses of the artificial organisms that had taken root in his flesh.

But they were also intrinsically part of him, whether he wanted them or not. He thought back to the nightmares that had assailed him, ever since his incarceration in Ward Seventeen, of fine grey filaments extruding from his body like stilettos.

Hardenbrooke too watched the progress on the screen, then turned back to him.