Against Gravity

They got into the car and Smeby sat behind the controls. "Either what you did back there was very brave or very stupid, or maybe both," Smeby said. "I haven't yet quite decided which."

"You're augmented," said Kendrick. It was a statement, not a question.

"But I'm not a Labrat, no."

"Why, Smeby? You must have known the risks."

"I used to be a mercenary. Some advantages are worth the risks."

"So has it been? Worth it, I mean?"

Smeby pursed his lips, and waggled a free hand in the air between them. So-so. Then he returned his attention to steering the car.

A few minutes later Smeby spoke again. "Here's something else. What if I suggested to you that President Wilber was right in what he did?"

"Then I'd suggest back to you that you were crazy, or deluded, or both," Kendrick replied. "Is that really what you think?"

"Let's just say that I think America's downfall was for reasons other than those that you may think brought it down. I'd suggest that weakness brought it down, and I respected Wilber for his strength and commitment. He believed in values like honour and duty, and things like that don't go away."

Kendrick peered ahead, spotting the tower where he'd landed earlier. The VTOL still stood there, waiting high above the trees.

Smeby continued: "The next time we meet, Mr Gallmon, it might not be on such friendly terms. You should remember that." As the car jerked to a halt Kendrick noticed Candice waiting for them at the base of the tower.

"I'd have to say that sounds a lot like a threat," Kendrick replied.

"Money is power, Mr Gallmon. It wouldn't require much effort to get you taken in by the appropriate authorities." Smeby studied him now with cold, hard eyes. "You're already living under a false identity. The fact that your augmentations have turned against you means that you should have registered for voluntary medical quarantine. If someone knows enough about you, that puts you potentially in a very bad place."

Kendrick said nothing, knowing it was true. He suddenly felt cold despite the intense heat. It would be a simple matter for Draeger or Smeby to turn him in.

He began to wonder exactly what he was going home to.

17 July 2088 Experimental Ward Seventeen, The Maze

Someone was screaming, a high banshee ululation that went on for ever.

Kendrick remembered an operating theatre, men and women in antiseptic blue smocks. Then a metal coffin, its smooth walls surrounding him, his heart beating wildly as he was plunged into darkness, his arms and legs shackled together while a thick, viscous liquid filled his nose and lungs. He remembered wires and tubes sprouting from his flesh. He remembered desperately trying to beg for mercy even as they closed the lid on him, leaving him to wonder if they would ever let him out again.

The liquid had an antiseptic taste that turned his lips and tongue numb before he lost consciousness.

Now Kendrick woke and found himself back in the same narrow cot, in the same Ward that had been his home for these past several weeks. He was still in the Maze, somewhere in its deep subterranean levels that riddled the earth with echoing steel and concrete chambers and corridors, filled with the tortured cries and screams of other human beings.

His eyes opened to see bare and unpainted walls, the ceiling crowded with rust-coloured iron conduits. He felt a scratchy numbness in his chest as if his heart had become filled with dried flowers. He tried to part his lips, but they were so dry that they stuck together.

Kendrick lifted up his head and found he had been tied down with restraints. Nonetheless, he caught sight of the fresh, livid scars that criss-crossed his chest, and he moaned with terror.

Down here in the wards all the guards wore contam suits. He could see one standing near the entrance to the Ward with a rifle half lifted to his shoulder, his mouth a round gaping "O" of astonishment, visible through his plastic visor.

At first, Kendrick thought that the guard was staring at him. Though his arms were tied down just below the elbows, he managed to raise his hands high enough so that he could see them by craning his head around the right way. He saw strange patterns in his flesh, unfamiliar ridges like maps of the surfaces of alien moons.

Kendrick turned his head the other way and saw another prisoner strapped to the adjoining cot. The man's mouth gaped, his face red and sweat-slick from the effort of screaming.

A name floated to the top of Kendrick's thoughts: Torrance – that was the other man's name. Like Kendrick, Torrance wore a one-piece disposable uniform. Both their heads were kept shaved. They even shared similar scars where the surgeons had cut into their bodies.

Something was pushing its way out of Torrance's flesh, something shiny, black and metallic-looking, sliding out through his skin like thorny spines, appearing through his neck or sliding out between his ribs. As if caught in a dream, Kendrick perceived, as though from a great distance, that the spines were rough-surfaced, formed of tight fibrous bundles apparently glued or bound together. They glistened wetly, slick with their host's blood.

Torrance began to shake inside his restraints, his body seized by a fit. His screaming choked off suddenly, a wet and bubbling noise emerging from his lungs instead. With surprising vigour, Torrance jerked and rattled in his cot until it began to slip away from the wall. Kendrick continued to watch with horrified fascination as the spines weaved around in the air, the husk of Torrance's body splitting and tearing as if something had become trapped inside it and was trying desperately to escape.

Then a strange, high-pitched laugh sounded. It was the kid, still only in his teens. Robert something? Kendrick turned his attention to him. Robert, in turn, studied Torrance's dying agonies with a horrible fascination. Sudden anger swelled in Kendrick's chest. He knew that the boy was insane, not responsible for his actions, but nonetheless he ached to hurt Robert for seeming to take such delight in Torrance's agony.

Then Kendrick relaxed, because it was, after all, just a dream. He let his head drop back onto the cot's rubber surface and closed his eyes.

As soon as he shut his eyes, bright white light exploded deep within his mind… and for a moment he was Torrance, screaming piteously because his body was being torn apart… and then he was Erik Whitsett, sleeping his endless sleep on the other side of the Ward, near where the guard still stood in uncertain shock while doctors and technicians, dressed in similar bulky contam suits, rushed past him into the Ward.

Whitsett was dreaming of his family, who were waving to him from a great distance… Something else, then: Kendrick had the sensation of being watched, as if some powerful, godlike mind had suddenly entered the expanded realm of his consciousness. Memories and emotions that weren't his own assailed him.

He forced his eyes open again and heard a spasmodic banging sound. He twisted his head to one side to see a huddle of men in contam suits standing near – but not too near – the cot where Torrance now lay dead.

He followed their gaze, to the far end of the Ward.

There was an entrance there that some of the other prisoners had nicknamed the Dissection Door. It was made of steel, designed to slide into a recess in the wall. But now the door was slamming open and shut, over and over again. Opening, shutting, opening, shutting.

I'm doing it, Kendrick thought. No… it wasn't just him. It was Peter McCowan and Buddy, both of whom had already been confined in the Ward when Kendrick had arrived. Robert was part of it too. It was…