Against Gravity

Buddy then stepped over and clapped him on the back, but it wasn't hard for Kendrick to sense just how uneasy his friend was.

"What's the tarpaulin for?"

"Smothers the heat signature." Buddy turned to greet Veliz who was standing chatting with the others.

"Hey, Samuel, still got any of that Mexican beer?"

Kendrick's skin itched in the early-evening heat. He felt drowsy from the food and drink that he'd been given. They sat out in the open air by a crackling log fire built in a circle of bricks. Nearby stood half a dozen patched-together vehicles which, contrary to their appearances, apparently did function. Kendrick gazed numbly into the flames, the stars overhead, trying hard not to think of anything in particular.

A woman came over, although he couldn't help but notice that she didn't get too close. Her face cracked open in an uneasy grin – there was something likeable about her.

"Still hungry?" she asked. "Could getcha 'nother bite to eat."

"I'm fine for now." Kendrick shrugged. "It's sort of hard to believe that everyone here is a Labrat. Haven't seen this many of us together in one place since…" He let the sentence trail off.

She nodded. "Same for all of us, yeah."

He studied her more closely, wincing when he saw how close she looked to dying. She was in the advanced and final stages of rogue augmentation growth, her neck dark with the spread of nanite threads inside her, thick cords of the material distorting her cheeks and lips.

Kendrick felt a powerful stab of pity. He looked away.

Shortly after the woman had left him, Kendrick made his way to the building where he would be spending the night. Right now he wanted to be somewhere inside rather than being watched by scared eyes out in the open.

He found his way to a communal bathroom and stared for a long time at his moonlit reflection in the fly-specked mirror hanging from a nail above the washbasin. The room was little more than a cupboard with a chemical toilet, although the sink was at least plumbed in. Instead of a door, a dark wool curtain had been tacked onto the frame.

Kendrick tugged at a light cord and a halogen bulb lit up, sending shimmering sparkles skittering off the filaments that now coated his face. His gaze tracked them down the curve of his neck, seeing how they disappeared beneath his shirt collar.

"What's happening to me?" he whispered to no one. There was no sign of McCowan. Was that a bad sign? There was no way of knowing.

"You okay there?" a voice said quietly. Kendrick looked around to see the woman to whom he'd briefly spoken earlier, peering at him around the edge of the curtain.

"I never caught your name," he replied.

"Audrey," she said. "I wasn't spying, I just heard you talking to yourself." Through the now open door behind her he could see pots hanging on hooks in what was obviously a kitchen.

"Buddy mentioned you before," she continued, "so I got the impression you were on our side. But I can see the way you look at us, like you think all of us here are crazy. You were in Ward Seventeen, right?"

Kendrick nodded, and stepped out of the bathroom to stand closer to her. Audrey's words were friendly enough but, whatever their shared experiences, he reminded himself that he didn't really know these people. So he chose his own words carefully. "I was, yes, but according to Buddy it hasn't been exactly the same for me as for the rest of you."

"But you saw it – the visions? Buddy said you did."

"I saw some of what the rest of you saw, but I was receiving special medical treatments that stopped me getting all of it. To be honest, I don't know if I'm ready to believe that any of what I'm told you've all seen is real."

Audrey looked appalled. "The Omega is real. I've seen it, felt it."

"The Omega Point theory is only a theory. And, like any theory, it depends on certain preconditions – it only works if a certain set of circumstances is presumed to come about. You know what I mean?"

"Believe me, I'm entirely acquainted with the details."

"Are you, though? None of you know for sure that any of what you've witnessed is objectively real. All you've seen are pictures in your head. So, having that degree of faith, it's more like believing in a religion than anything else."

Audrey shook her head, smiling the knowing smile of a true believer. Kendrick felt a burst of irrational anger. She was eyeing Kendrick as if he were some errant child refusing to see the error of his ways.

The problem was that something was happening, something enormous, unprecedented. Somewhere up there a wormhole was forming, an impossible spatial anomaly that was giving every physicist on the planet sleepless night after sleepless night. Maybe it just wasn't something he wanted to face up to, to deal with. Who could blame him?

Kendrick wondered what Audrey's reaction would be if she knew he'd rather see the station destroyed than risk it falling into the hands of Draeger – or anyone else.

"Well, I've got some news for you," Audrey told him. "It may just seem a theory to you, but there are people out there who believe we're monsters – things are only going to get worse for us. One of these days they'll either intern us all or just kill us, and that'll be the end of it. But this way some of us get to take control. This way we choose our own destiny."

TO THE ARCHIMEDES

Kendrick woke deep in the night and found that he had stopped breathing again. He lurched upright, panic blighting his thoughts. This is what it's like to be dead, he thought: no heartbeat, no breath of life. A terrible silence filled the cavity of his chest, like a void.

He had been asleep for several hours on a cot in one corner of the house. Crickets chirruped outside a window nearby. It was hard to believe, listening to the sounds of nature, that he'd see nothing but desolation if he raised his head to look outside.

No heartbeat, no breath of life. Am I even alive?

Slowly, deliberately, he once again sucked air into his lungs. It heaved his chest out and he felt a nitrate-like rush, expanding like a bubble through his brain. He exhaled again.

In, then out – after several seconds Kendrick didn't have to think about it any more. He could feel his hands shaking, his thoughts clear and adrenalin-tinged.

Kendrick looked down again at the fine threads coating his skin. All of them were gold now, and the filaments appeared to be dissolving into his flesh. Slowly, his appearance was returning to normal.

He brushed one cheek with a fingertip and felt that it was smoother than several hours before. A huge wave of relief swept through him.

So far, Audrey and Buddy were the only ones there who had made any effort to speak with him, although his relations with Audrey were still distinctly on the edgy side. He'd even seen some of them huddled together, watching him from a distance and speaking in low whispers once they were sure that they were out of range of his augmented hearing.

Yet Kendrick could have listened to what they were saying if he'd really wanted to, and he was sure that many others in this place shared the same ability. But a house full of Labrats was a house with no privacy whatsoever and, in accord with the special etiquette that had evolved to suit such circumstances, he avoided listening to their conversation, despite overwhelming temptation.