Against Gravity

"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 ru

"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."