Against Gravity (25 page)

Now, it seemed, the lure of infinite energy was leading everyone towards the
Archimedes
.

Exact date unknown: 2088
The Maze

“I know where we are. I swear, I
know
where this is.”

Vernon Lee’s face was visible only as a pale, pleading shadow in the terrible darkness of the lower levels. He’d been one of only three to survive Ward Nine.

They had gathered together in huddled groups ever since they had found themselves locked away in freezing dark corridors down in the depths of the Earth. Some, like Kendrick, could see those
gathered around them as pale, shadowy outlines. Others whose bio-augmentations had not taken such firm hold on their bodies were still lost in the blackness, clinging quite literally to each other
in the vast echoing spaces.

There was no evidence that food or water would ever be forthcoming and, after almost forty-eight hours, people were beginning to suffer. For himself, Kendrick felt parched, dry and cold. His
stomach longed even for the thin gruel that he had known back in the Ward.

Kendrick pressed his hands against the cold metal of the shield door and felt something humming under the hard surface – the bright subliminal presence of electricity flowing through
circuits. But it seemed faint, as if far away.

“Okay.” Kendrick looked over his shoulder at Lee. “So where are we?”

He could just make out Buddy, standing to one side, listening.

“Used to work for a company did contract military work,” Lee explained. “We built stuff for them, but only bits of it.”

Buddy shifted in the dark. “I don’t get it.”

“What it is, if someone in the military wants something built top secret, they still have to bring in civilians a lot of the time. They screen you for all kinds of shit, you sign release
forms, and they do everything but stick a torch up your ass and take a look.” Lee shrugged. “Sometimes that too. But you never see the whole thing – only part of it. Only a few
people outside the military ever get to see the project as a whole. Usually whoever’s running the operation from the top.”

“Just a minute,” said Kendrick. “Are you saying you helped
build
this place?”

“Yes!” said Lee excitedly. “That’s
exactly
what I’m saying. These doors are designed to withstand nuclear blasts,” he explained, placing a hand against
the same cold metal.

A wall of steel cut across the corridor, completely blocking their access to the upper levels. They were abandoned in what appeared to be literally miles of lightless passageway, but half a
dozen huge steel doors blocked any way out for them. “I helped design these things,” Lee continued. “I even remember how the corridors are laid out.”

Buddy spoke, his voice low and intense. “Can you get us out of here, then?”

Lee shook his head. “No, I can’t. All I’m saying is, I know
where
we are, but that’s it. All this stuff – the doors, I mean – the controls are
centralized. The only way out would be finding some way of interfering with the electronics, but there’s no way to access the mechanisms.”

“So what’s above us?” asked Buddy. “We’re in South America, right? You must know that, at least.”

“Venezuela,” Lee said decisively. Then he grinned ruefully. “Shit, looks like I’m going to jail for breaking my oath of secrecy. Well, fuck.”

Kendrick shook his head. “I had no idea.”

“What does it matter?”

Kendrick turned at the sound of McCowan’s voice. Peter emerged out of the gloom, his words sounding harsh in the freezing air. “We’re screwed, wherever we are. Knowing
exactly
where isn’t going to make any difference. There’ve been rumours for, Christ, years, about US control south of Mexico.”

“It’s true,” said Lee. “There’s no real government up above there. It’s a lawless place now, and the gene-rots hit here even before they hit the
States.”

Kendrick pulled his hands away from the metal, feeling defeated and depressed. “Which leads me to wonder when they actually built this place,” he muttered. “It must have taken
a long time, considering the size of it. And in total secrecy, too.”

“I’ll tell you,” said Lee. “I’m talking twenty years ago. I was just a boy, really.” He shook his head. “Place hasn’t been well
maintained.”

“You could house an army down here,” said McCowan. “The Wards could have been originally intended for treating wounded soldiers.”

“Out here, outside the US, they could get away with anything so long as they were sure nobody was watching,” Buddy spat, his voice bitter and angry.

Telling the time, or even the day, was impossible but Kendrick estimated that they’d been trapped in the darkness for about three days when the voices came.

In the meantime, there had been at least a dozen deaths – some from a lack of medical treatment necessary to keep the weaker Labrats alive, but most of them suicides.

One had hanged herself, knotting one leg of her trousers around her neck after first tying the other end to an overhead pipe. She had stood on the body of her dead lover to reach up to the pipe
before pulling her legs up at the knees and somehow, horribly, holding them there until she passed out. As she slumped unconscious, her improvised noose and the force of gravity completed the
process of strangulation.

Her lover – they never found out either of their names – had died within hours of arriving in the lower levels from the sudden and explosive growth of his augmentations.

There were other incidents, equally as gruesome and equally depressing.

And then there were the other stories.

One told of the figure glowing with light, lightning spitting from its fingertips as it ran laughing through the most distant corridors, somehow passing through the great shield doors that
penned the prisoners in as if it could walk through walls. To Kendrick this meant only that people were losing their sanity as starvation and sensory deprivation pushed them to the brink.

But then the voices came.

Kendrick had seen speakers slung up high along the corridors at irregular intervals. One day they started crackling with the sound of a familiar voice.

Sieracki?

Kendrick listened with a dawning sense of horror. The worst was yet to come.

“Enter the corridor marked Level 9, South-West,” Sieracki ordered them. “The door will open. There is food there, but only for those who survive.” Kendrick listened to
the shouts of dismay around him in the darkness. “You will have to fight for the right to live. We wish now to test the survival skills of subjects from our different experimental
groups.”

“I get it.” Kendrick turned to McCowan, who stood behind his shoulder. There was a sadness in his voice. “They never intended any of us to get out of here alive.”

“It’s fucking insane!” Buddy shouted. “I mean, it doesn’t make any sense.”

“No,” said Kendrick. “It makes perfect sense. They made us what we are, and they aren’t going to set us loose. Instead of just killing us themselves, they throw us in a
hole in the ground and leave us to kill each other. That way they get rid of us, but they also figure out which experimental group has produced the best results. The ones who can survive, that
is.”

“Maybe it makes sense,” McCowan agreed. “But it doesn’t mean that’s how it’s going to work out. People don’t need to fight each other when they know
they’re going to die anyway.”

“I don’t know.” Kendrick shook his head. “If you’ve been hungry and desperate long enough, I’m not sure what any of us would do. Long as people think
there’s even the slimmest chance, the faintest hope, they’ll fight tooth and claw if given the chance.”

“I won’t,” said Buddy decisively. “I can refuse.”

“You can refuse.” Kendrick nodded wearily, thinking:
And that way you’ll die. And the ones who
won’t
refuse will fight, and Sieracki still gets what he
wants.

22 October 2096
Edinburgh

Getting out of the country turned out to be less of a problem than Kendrick had initially suspected. Not long after his conversation with Todd he got another call from
Buddy. Kendrick filled him in.

“I’m on my way to the States myself. Listen, head for California, okay? That’s where we’re meeting,” said Buddy.

“I need to find Caroline first, Buddy.”

“But do you even have any idea where they might have taken her?”

“New York. I know Hardenbrooke is on his way there, and may be he’s got Caroline with him. It’s not like I have any other options.”

“You know this has to be a trap, right?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Kendrick could hear Buddy sigh on the other end of the line. “I guess I’d do the same. Good luck, but maybe you should tie your wand into mine.”

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. Every time I use this thing it gives someone a chance to track me down over the grid.”

“So what? They can probably find you anyway. This way at least your friends will know where you are, right?”

Kendrick thought about it. “Yeah, okay then. Listen, about the . . . this whole thing with the
Archimedes
.”

“Yeah?”

“How long before you go there?”

“Three days, Kendrick.
Three
days. Remember that.”

Kendrick closed the connection and thought for a moment. Then he called up Roy Whitman’s grid address.

“Long time, no hear,” Roy chuckled when he realized who he was talking to. “What’s it been, a couple of years? Anything from Buddy recently? Haven’t heard from him
in a good long while myself.”

“Buddy’s doing fine, Roy. Listen, I need a favour.”

“Uh-huh,” said Roy. “What kind of favour?”

“A special kind of favour.”

“Right, hang on a minute.”

The sound of Roy’s breathing disappeared abruptly for a few seconds. “Okay, we’re on a secure line now,” he said when he returned. “Can you talk freely where you
are?”

Kendrick looked around him. He was standing in a narrow alley near the city centre but a furtive glance around assured him that no one was paying attention to him. “Yeah, I’m
alone.”

“Is there something else I should know?” Roy asked, his voice guarded. “You sound, er, tense.”

“Nothing you’d want to know,” Kendrick replied. “I’m just worried about being tracked via this wand. Is there any way you can make my line permanently secure from
tracking?”

“Not really, no. Only way to be sure is get rid of the thing.”

“I don’t want to do that,” Kendrick replied. “I want Buddy to know where I am.”

“Then so will whoever’s looking for you.”

“I know, Roy. It’s a long story. I need you to help me because—”

“No,” Roy said quickly. “By the sound of things, maybe you shouldn’t even tell me. Keep it all on a need-to-know basis, yeah? Besides, I owe both you guys one.”

Kendrick found it almost frightening how easily Roy created a new fake identity for him. As instructed, Kendrick used public transport to get himself to Edinburgh airport,
heading for a public fax unit on his arrival. He tapped in the q-crypt key that Roy had supplied and a few seconds later the fax spat out a cream-coloured plastic card with his picture on it, along
with fake retina and DNA details coded into a hologram strip, together with yet another assumed identity, also supplied by Roy. A small matt-black data-chip followed the card a few moments
later.

Kendrick studied the plastic card, memorizing the name printed there, and wondered if he could really pull this off. He’d learned how to behave on passing through Customs. The secret was
not to act
too
sure of yourself. People who behaved too smoothly were often those who raised suspicions.

The datachip contained his flight information and payment details. As far as the flight company was concerned, Roy was Kendrick’s legal employer. Probably the datachip would also contain
encrypted financial information to do with Roy’s business. This would give Kendrick’s trip some purpose: many businesses were now too paranoid to trust their most sensitive information
to the public grid, as even private grid networks had their flaws. Nanodust transmitters were only one of many technologies available to the modern corporate spy, and as a result there was still a
call for human couriers to carry information physically from one place to another.

To all appearances, therefore, Kendrick was just another courier.
Okay
.

Kendrick stared past the endless food concessions and identikit bars, which had always infested airport terminals, towards the check-in desks beyond. He took a step forward, then another,
wondering just how self-conscious he looked.

To hell with it
, he decided, picking up his pace.
Do or die
.

In the end, Kendrick’s fears came to nothing. The check-in people asked him what he was carrying and he showed them the datachip, as Roy had instructed. A woman placed
his chip in a reader and that was that – they waved him on.

The jet was barely half-f. Not surprising, given how its destination had lost its tourist appeal in recent decades. The majority of the passengers wore T-shirts or caps that made it clear
they were on their way to do relief work. Apart from them, Kendrick saw a smattering of men and women in businesswear.

The jet boosted to the top of the atmosphere, skipping across the borderline between sky and space like a stone skimming across waves. Kendrick spent most of his time staring out the window at
the deep blue of near-space.

23 October 2096
New York

A few short hours later Kendrick stepped out of the terminal building at La Guardia and into utter chaos.

There were tanks parked all the way around the airport. That was the first thing he noticed. The second thing was the sea of beggars who surrounded him the instant he stepped beyond the terminal
entrance.

Just metres away Kendrick sighted a rank of antique and battered-looking cabs, the entirely manual kind that still needed real human drivers. He headed for the first in line, pushing past all
the people pleading with him. One woman, her face a mask of tears, even thrust her baby at his chest, yelling words he couldn’t comprehend amidst the commotion.