Against Gravity

Someone was here – Kendrick had heard them. So why were they hiding?

At some point in the past the basement area had been partitioned to allow the addition of a small office, the interior of which Kendrick could now see through a long rectangular window with half-closed shutters. He stepped towards it, seeing nothing more exciting through the glass than the corner of a desk and a tall steel cabinet.

He entered to find two large wooden crates stuffed with cardboard folders, as if Hardenbrooke had been in the process of packing. Ever since the LA Nuke, people paranoid about losing data through EMP weapons tended to keep hard copies of everything. Considering Hardenbrooke's own history, it wasn't surprising that he shared this tendency.

Okay, nothing like a little breaking and entering. Whoever had coughed could wait. Kendrick sca

If his heart had still been working, it would have skipped a beat then. There's a name that keeps cropping up. He dug around some more, coming up with yet more names. Some he didn't recognize, others he did. All of them Labrats – but maybe that wasn't so surprising.

Kendrick dug further down, finding more names. Again, one or two of them were recognizable. He started on finding Caroline's name listed there. But Caroline had never received any treatments from Hardenbrooke. Or had she? And why hadn't she told him about it in that case?

He studied her file. Augmentations in highly accelerated state, he read. A polite euphemism for turning rogue. More names, soon scattered across the floor. Then – Buddy Juarez, with exactly the same words: Augmentations in highly accelerated state.

He couldn't be sure about any names he didn't recognize or was uncertain of but he was willing to bet every last one of them had passed through Ward Seventeen, down in the Maze. He studied more records: every one of them dead or dying from their rogue augments.

Just outside the office, something moved with a metallic click. Kendrick froze, then carefully stepped back out into the main area.

Tickety-tack, tickety-tack.

He glanced up towards the shadowed ceiling, catching the glint of light on a lens…

And then it was on him.

It landed right on his upturned face, tiny needle-legs catching onto his cheek so that he yelled with pain and surprise. He reached up to rip it off, but even the gentlest tug, he knew, would take skin and flesh away with it. The tips of the device's legs were icy, and a numbness began to spread through his face, his mind. And then Kendrick slid into blackness, lost in a deep, fathomless night.

Consciousness seeped back only slowly.

At first Kendrick saw only dim shapes, their edges blurred. Then his eyes focused more clearly. He did not like to think too deeply of the biosynthetic tendrils that sprang alert along his optic nerves, allowing his vision to snap into such remarkable, almost surreal clarity. In this state, he was entirely capable of discerning the tiniest cracks in the plaster ceiling above his head. It gave him a sense of sharing his skin with some other being whose intent and purpose he could not really know – which was maybe as good a definition of Labrat augmentation as any.

He couldn't yet move, although a distant tingling and dull itch was begi

Kendrick could hear someone talking upstairs. He was picking up sounds better – and from further away -than he ever had before. Rather than being good news, this was instead an indication of how unstable his augmentations had become, altering his flesh and his nervous system in new and alarmingly unpredictable ways.

At first, the words from above were muffled, but his augments filtered and boosted the sound of them until he could listen with relative ease. Even with such enhancements, however, only a small part of what Hardenbrooke was now saying made sense.

"I don't give a shit," he overheard. Was Hardenbrooke speaking over a line? Then a brief exclamation, as of someone else about to raise an objection: so Hardenbrooke was not alone there. "We've got to get rid of him. Smeby must have told him something, otherwise why would he sneak around like this?"

Another voice: "Maybe because you let him in to go wandering around? Jesus, how paranoid can you get?"

Malky?

A pause as Hardenbrooke's voice faded then came back again, as if he was moving about on the upper floor. "… Take care of making sure he's still out, okay? So if I leave you here, sure you can't screw up?"

Soon cautious footsteps echoed down the basement steps, sounding to Kendrick like dustbin lids being smashed against a wall.

Kendrick's body tingled as he imagined the machine-growths entwined with his flesh and blood filtering the drug out of his body according to some complex set of heuristic rules, as if his body was a fortress and the nanites its defenders.

Which possibly explained why the tingling sensation grew exponentially for several seconds before Kendrick found that he could both feel and move his arms and legs again.

One moment he was strapped to the basement couch, the next he was crouching in the shadows just behind it. The leather straps that had bound him now hung loose. He smelled blood, a powerful, rich scent that filled his nostrils. His own blood.

Kendrick glanced down and saw the deep abrasions in his flesh where he had torn away from his restraints. Without volition, without thought. Now he was simply here.

He waited with his knees bent, his hands ready, like a hunter waiting for his prey to show. At least for now he was merely a passenger in his own body. Kendrick watched the door by the stairwell in anticipation. The hate he now felt was cold, pure, artificial. Even though he understood that this feeling came from his augmentations, a means of tweaking and controlling the emotions and desires of a fully augmented warrior, the hatred felt like his own – as if it had always been inside him, waiting to be tapped.

Hardenbrooke pushed open the basement door, the motion seeming slow and languid to Kendrick's accelerated perceptions.

A fraction of an instant later, Kendrick found his viewpoint propelled towards Hardenbrooke so rapidly as to seem instantaneous, the medic's eyes only noticing him when it was already far too late.

Kendrick caught sight of the harsh metal glint of a spray 'derm gripped in Hardenbrooke's fist. The medic's fingers unfolded and the 'derm rocked there, miraculously remaining in the cup of Hardenbrooke's palm as Kendrick's forward momentum slammed the other man's back against the door, the rear of his skull slamming noisily against the wood.

Kendrick watched his own hand slide upwards to grasp the medic around the throat.

"Was it you, Hardenbrooke? Did you kill him?" Kendrick snarled.

"What? Oh Christ, please, let go of me," Hardenbrooke croaked in fright. "There's been a misunderstanding."

"I don't think so. I think you were about to kill me too. I heard you both talking about how you know I met Smeby. So what's going on here?"

Hardenbrooke twitched, struggling to breathe in Kendrick's iron grasp. His mouth opened a little and Kendrick eased off the pressure so that the other man could speak. The spray finally slipped from Hardenbrooke's hand and clattered onto the floor.

Leaning over to one side, Kendrick reached for the spray. Hardenbrooke surprised him by twisting around suddenly and almost scoring a direct hit to Kendrick's testicles with one knee. Kendrick, however, slipped deftly to one side and avoided injury. Unfortunately, this meant letting go of the man, just for an instant. Once he had secured the 'derm he reached out for Hardenbrooke again.