Against Gravity

"Labrats?"

Kendrick shrugged. "It's a nickname someone came up with."

"Look, I don't know even which Ward my brother was sent to. I need to know if he's here somewhere. He…" She hesitated. "I just need to find him."

"What was his name?"

"Robert. Robert Vincenzo." The woman paused and then added, "I'm Caroline Vincenzo."

Kendrick stared at her. "Robert Vincenzo?"

Her eyes, two blurred dark circles, widened. "You know him? I can tell from the way you said that. Just tell me!"

"Yes," Kendrick admitted.

"He's dead, isn't he?" she said, her voice toneless.

"I don't know." How to say it? "One day he was there, the next…" He shrugged again. "I don't really know. I'm sorry."

She nodded wordlessly and looked away.

Kendrick opened his mouth to tell her about Robert's apparent escape, and then closed it again. Now wasn't the time or the place. First, they had to find out what was going on here.

They joined a crowd of several dozen that had formed nearby. Some people were laughing, others crying, just happy and relieved to have found familiar faces or voices. However, it became clear to Kendrick as he began to explore the endless corridor in which they found themselves that the ability to navigate in this pitch dark was limited to just a few among them. With deep relief he spotted Buddy standing nearby, with McCowan and a few other people he knew. I should be with them, Kendrick decided.

He turned to Caroline and smiled gently. "We've all of us lost friends and relations. You're not alone."

"But it's more than that. I knew," she insisted. "When I woke up here I thought maybe I was wrong, but somehow I knew – you understand what I mean? It's not like something you can explain. You just know." She shook her head. "So stupid."

Her face was no longer quite so blurred, although everything around Kendrick retained, to his perceptions, a certain ghostly quality. The way she held herself suggested a well-honed body, someone who might have once been a soldier herself, or perhaps a bodyguard.

"Our parents aren't around any more, so I always had to look out for him. He…" Kendrick could picture the course that Caroline's thoughts were taking. She believed Robert was dead, and therefore – in her mind – she had failed him. Kendrick felt a stab of sympathy.

A shout carried above the growing tumult of voices and he looked around. Kendrick could make out men and women weeping: others were kneeling on the hard concrete, hands clasped together, as barely audible prayers spilled from their mouths. Either they were asking for salvation or giving thanks that they were free of the Wards.

Kendrick shrugged apologetically at Caroline and steered a course towards Buddy. In his heart he knew that Sieracki would never simply let them go, even if the guards never returned.

20 October 2096 Edinburgh

Once back in Edinburgh, Kendrick tried to call Caroline, leaving several messages. She didn't reply and he was not even sure what he would say to her anyway. Whatever brief truce they'd enjoyed after he'd escaped from Hardenbrooke's clinic was clearly over.

But right now what concerned him most was the message that arrived in his wand during the flight home. He had gazed at the words for many minutes before looking away from the tiny screen. The message consisted of three words in an unadorned ASCII textfile:

AWE TEPEE PILOT

Then Kendrick made arrangements to pick up a hired car the next morning.

21 October 2096 En route to Loch Awe

Kendrick heard the car parking itself outside his flat in the early morning hours. He stepped outside and gazed up into a red-tinged pre-dawn sky. The jet lag from his long hours of flight had sent his sleep cycle spi

A strong breeze whipped down the winding streets as his vehicle navigated its way through the ancient city. Kendrick kept a window open, for once enjoying the lash of wind and freezing rain. It made for a genuinely pleasant change after the burning heat of Cambodia.

Kendrick had done a lot of soul-searching in the hours since his return, even filling himself with doubt over his prompt refusal of Draeger's offer. But there were hundreds of other Labrats scattered around the globe who could benefit from the treatment, some of them perhaps already at death's door. Draeger using his supposed solution to every Labrat's problems as nothing more than a bargaining tool was the basest kind of bribery. Kendrick breathed deeply, pushing the anger away from him. Instead he watched the morning light spill over distant mountain peaks.

Three words. And they could only have come from the one living person whom Kendrick had ever felt he could really trust.

The car drove on, leaving the city far behind. Grey rain clouds skirted the horizon, spreading out across a sodden landscape of hills and valleys. Kendrick listened to the news as he went. Mostly they talked about the continuing spread of Asian Rot, as close now as the fields of southern Spain, and the source of frantic headlines for the past few weeks. After a while he passed through a damp-looking Falkirk before heading north to Stirling, and then on to Loch Awe.

An hour and a half after Kendrick had left Edinburgh, brilliant sunlight finally split the rain clouds wide, sending God-sized fingers of radiance down onto the waters of the Loch and the surrounding Braes.

The rain still pelted down sporadically as he passed along the shores of the Loch. Now he assumed manual control – and almost missed the old hotel building as it loomed out of bushes of wild heather, with dense thickets of oak trees lining the path to the retreat.

Kendrick let the car park itself in the driveway to the sound of gravel spitting under its wheels. Before him was a two-storey building of granite. Bought by a wealthy Buddhist a little over a century before, since then it had become a dedicated retreat, although Kendrick had never once seen an orange robe during his visits. He walked up to the entrance and passed through the unlocked front door, finding himself in a wide hallway, a bare pine floor under his feet. At first glance it looked as though little had changed during the last several years.

"Hello, can I help you?" A young woman with a crew-cut approached Kendrick from an adjacent room. To one side he could see people sitting in a separate dining area, talking and drinking tea. He didn't recognize the woman, but then, the kind of long-term residents who benefited most from this retreat didn't usually spend much time inside the main building.

Kendrick looked over her shoulder towards the gardens. The parkland that extended toward the hills behind the retreat was visible through tall veranda doors at the far end of the hallway.

"Yeah, I'm looking for Buddy. Buddy Juarez." The young woman looked blank. "Maybe you haven't been here that long?" he suggested. "He comes up here sometimes, when he wants to get away."

Her expression grew slightly wary. "Was he expecting you? Some of the people here don't like to be disturbed."

"It's okay, Sally." Kendrick turned to find himself facing an elderly man dressed in slacks and an open-necked shirt. A name came to him: Hamilton.

"I remember you." Hamilton nodded. "Lukas, isn't it?"

"It is," Kendrick replied, recognizing one of his former aliases. "Buddy's around, is he?"

"Yes." Hamilton studied him. "He turned up just yesterday – rather unexpected, I'm afraid. I do hope everything's all right for him?"