Against Gravity

In the end he called Buddy and told him what he'd found.

"Shit." Then a long-drawn-out silence. "I'm sorry, Kendrick. Do you need me there?"

"No, I don't know if that would make any difference. I'm going to ask some questions, see what I can find out."

"Look, I can get over there in a couple of hours-"

"It's fine."

"You're going to look for her, aren't you?"

"I'll let you know how it goes. So stay in touch."

"Yeah, sure. Be careful. Be very careful."

Kendrick broke the co

Apart from himself, who would have known where Caroline lived? Only Malky, unless she had made new friends over the past year. An image of Malky's dead eyes flashed through his thoughts.

It was hard to accept what Buddy had told him about the Archimedes, but what he'd said about zero-point energy made some sense of both Draeger's and Los Muertos' actions. Zero-point energy was a prize with dangerously high stakes, and the Labrats were apparently caught right in the middle.

And then there was Hardenbrooke, who was clearly playing his own extremely dangerous game, setting each party off against the other – and presumably being paid by both without the other realizing.

Hardenbrooke? Kendrick stared into the distance, knowing that he had only one real option left. If there was even the slightest chance that the medic had been involved with or knew something about Caroline's disappearance, Kendrick had to find him.

22 October 2096 Edinburgh

"Some mess, eh, Kendrick?" McCowan's ghost sat beside him in the rain.

"Tell me I'm not crazy," Kendrick replied. "Tell me if any of this is real."

"Don't talk shite."

Kendrick had only gradually become aware of McCowan sitting beside him on the park bench. In Caroline's flat he'd felt another wave of nausea wash through him so he had made his way outside, desperately wanting to breathe fresh air and find somewhere to wait until the feeling of disorientation passed. He'd stopped at a stretch of green ru

"Then tell me something useful. Like how to find Caroline." As Kendrick spoke, the world around them began to move very slowly, as if caught in some viscous liquid. A dog galloped across a street nearby in languid slow motion.

"I can stretch out our subjective time together this way," McCowan told him. "Gives us longer to talk. But I can't help you with Caroline, Kendrick. I'm sorry."

"Why can't you?"

"Look, out of all the others who survived Ward Seventeen, you're the only one I'm still in contact with. So, I don't know anything about what's happened to Caroline. You'll have to find that out for yourself."

"But why are you only in contact with me?"

"Look, the treatments you received from Hardenbrooke had the unexpected side effect of blocking the signal coming from Robert… coming from the Archimedes."

"What the hell?" Kendrick squinted at him. "Robert on the Archimedes?"

"Shut up and bear with me. Hardenbrooke got your augments under control, and that had the added side effect of blocking Robert – mostly. So you only got snatches, little bits of what Buddy and the rest received. At the same time, Robert was blocking me, preventing me from communicating with you, or indeed with any other of the Ward Seventeen Labrats."

McCowan held up one finger. "Except Hardenbrooke's treatments, by blocking Robert, somehow gave me the opportunity at least to reach you, if nobody else. It means that I can speak to you, but only you, for just seconds at a time."

"But why wouldn't Robert want you contacting me?"

McCowan looked at him sharply. "He's insane – or don't you remember what happened between the two of you? It's hardly surprising that he bears you no goodwill."

"I haven't seen Robert: no dreams, visitations, whatever it is the others got."

McCowan had a sad look on his face. "Ken, Ken," he said with a sigh. "You have seen him, plenty of times. And as for where he is, well, part of him is down here, and part of him is up there on the Archimedes. You'll be seeing more of him, once your augments learn to fully circumvent Hardenbrooke's treatments. Robert is going to have less trouble getting through to you now, which means, in turn, that it'll be harder for me to reach you."

A signal coming from the Archimedes? Knowing that made it easier, more real, more objective. "So why can't you just – I don't know – transmit yourself to the station or something, if that's presumably how Robert got there?"

McCowan made an exasperated sound. "I've tried and failed every time, thanks to that son of a bitch. I can't get there on my own. And as long as Robert's the only human mind directly interfacing with the Bright I can't be that sure the wormhole to the Omega is ever going to open."

A spasm of pain shot through Kendrick's skull and he grabbed his head, gasping at the sudde

Not quite.

"I don't give a shit about Robert. What about Caroline, for Christ's sake? What the hell about her?"

"Find her if you can but, whatever you do, I need you to get to the Maze. If you can do that, I can give you all the answers you've been looking for. But you need to hurry."

"The Maze?" Kendrick screamed through a storm of agony. "Are you fucking insane?"

Another intense flash of pain. Any lingering illusion of reality McCowan had possessed abruptly disappeared as his seated figure twisted into a sudden smear of colour before vanishing entirely.

Kendrick moaned as the full weight of the seizure came upon him. He crumpled to the grass under his feet.

The Maze? Why would McCowan want him there? And where exactly was he-

– Unless, in some way, he was still down there. That revelation hit Kendrick like a ton of bricks.

He looked back up and the city around him was gone.

He pushed himself up onto his knees. That same tiny figure came buzzing towards him on azure wings, its passage through the long-stalked grass sending puffs of pollen floating into the air.

"I know you," Kendrick said, as the creature hovered quite close to him, only a metre or so away. In response, the tiny lips twisted up in a cruel smile. Laughter fell from its mouth, a tinkling half-crazed sound.

"I know you!" it cried. "I know you! I know you!"

McCowan had been right. On some deep level, Kendrick had known from the start but now he couldn't avoid the truth any longer. The creature had Robert's face. And it buzzed around him on silken wings, its laughter chiming in his ears.

Then, as suddenly as he had left it, he was back in a damp park in Edinburgh, his fingers digging spasmodically into the hard turf beneath him.

It didn't take long for Draeger to show his hand.

As Kendrick headed for home, turning down a quiet side street leading towards Leith Walk, he caught sight of an expensive-looking limousine driving towards him at speed. It braked hard and a door swung open in front of him even before it had come to a halt. Kendrick stepped back, alarmed.

He'd barely registered the two men heading his way on the opposite side of the street. They stepped quickly towards him, pulling pistols from their jacket pockets and aiming them at his head. He glanced around and realized, to his chagrin, that there was no one else to be seen. They must have deliberately waited until they were sure there'd be no witnesses.