'Have I ever set eyes on you before?'
'No, you've never seen me before in your life. To suggest otherwise would mark me as a scoundrel and a lunatic.'
'Just so we know where we stand, I've introduced new nanites into your body, which will implant their own override algorithms in your augments.'
'So that'll at least delay things for a while?'
'To be honest, it might even cure you.'
'That's impossible. You can't be 'cured' of augmentations. They don't just go away.'
'What can be made can be unmade,' Hardenbrooke replied. 'Remember, experimental tech, but so far, so good. Right?'
Kendrick gazed soberly back at the medic. If Hardenbrooke was in any way lying, it was the cruellest kind of lie: an offering of hope where hope had not previously existed. It occurred to Kendrick that he wasn't really prepared to believe what Hardenbrooke was telling him now, simply because he couldn't cope with any more disappointment.
'You are aware,' Kendrick framed his words carefully, 'that if this really works like you suggest, it would be the biggest news of the century.'
'I never said it was a definite cure. It's a possible cure, using experimental technology that doesn't even officially exist. Apart from getting me deported and jailed, if the authorities found out that your augments had turned rogue and that you had been taking these treatments they'd throw you straight into a secure nanohazard ward, and you'd disappear as far as the rest of the world is concerned.'
Kendrick felt his face flush red. Yet, for the first time in a very great while, he dared to hope. The simple reality of it was that, without Hardenbrooke, and without the possibility that Hardenbrooke was extending to him… without that, he had nothing.
12 October 2096 Edinburgh
Once, when Marlin Smeby had still been young, his maternal grandmother had taken him on a kind of Grand Tour of Europe. At that time, back home in Florida, his parents had been busy yelling and screaming their way towards a grisly divorce. By that stage the family was already rich from his father's lucrative engineering contracts with the governments of various minor Asian nations looking to rebuild after their nuclear squabbles of the 2080s.
The jaunt had given him a taste for travelling, which had led to a spell serving in the old US Army. This in turn had led on to intelligence work, which had led to Marlin's discovery that he had himself inherited every bit of his father's ingrained cruelty and utter disregard for his fellow human beings. To him, Edinburgh had felt like it belonged in some other time, with its ancient brooding castle and those grey stone tenements squatting on steep hillsides.
Still, much had changed since then, and it was no longer the city he remembered from his previous visit. Even as a child he'd been able to see how much bankruptcy had affected Europe. The old EU had almost given up the ghost, but hadn't yet been replaced by the monolithic European Legislate that had risen from its ashes. He remembered people in their thousands sleeping in the parks and streets because there was nowhere else for them to go.
Smeby looked out of the taxi window and realized he could quickly tell which of the city's inhabitants were American. It was something in the way they dressed, the way they carried themselves. He wondered if they still considered themselves to be American. Did they all talk of going back home once things got better, or would they finally give up and decide they were now Europeans?
A smear of graffiti strobed across a wall, its hue flickering from green to red to yellow; Fuck off back to the US, someone had scrawled. Another read Europe for the Europeans.
Smeby sat back and let a smile steal across his features. Europe for the Europeans? Not so long ago it would have been Britain for the British, or maybe France for the French. Their mutual hatred for the flood of American refugees had finally driven the Europeans to embrace each other as brothers.
'Mr Hardenbrooke, I trust you are doing well?'
Hardenbrooke nodded and smiled as best he could, given his difficulties in that area. There was a distinctly pale flush to his skin, Smeby thought: he was clearly nervous about something.
'Business is good,' Hardenbrooke replied, glancing around Smeby's hotel suite. Draeger's money had secured him an entire floor of the Arlington, a large part of it taken up by the conference room in which Smeby had arranged for them to meet.
'How has Mr Gallmon responded to your treatments?'
'I believe this is all detailed in my report.'
'Yes, but I'd like to hear it from you in person.'
'Well, there've been some interesting developments. When he first came to me, his augmentations had clearly gone rogue. There were no visible signs yet, none of the characteristic scarring around the neck and skull, but that was only a matter of time. The treatments have worked in retarding runaway growth.'
'Any ideas concerning these seizures of his?'
'He still reports the same associative hallucinations and I have no idea what's causing those. If you could tell me if anything similar happened with other Labrats, assuming you've actually tested this stuff out on others apart from Gallmon…'
'I can't disclose that,' Smeby replied.
'Okay, fine,' said Hardenbrooke, looking a little nettled – and also nervous. Smeby had given the medic no warning that he'd be in the country. Maybe Draeger had suspicions concerning Hardenbrooke's loyalty. 'But there is one other thing.'
Smeby waited.
'I didn't put this in my report, because it was just a personal feeling, but since you're here… I have the feeling that Gallmon is holding something back, like there's something he's not telling me.'
And there's something you're not telling me, either, Smeby decided. But there's enough time for me to find out.
14 October 2096: 1.45 p.m. Edinburgh
Kendrick hovered outside his flat in Haymarket for over an hour, then took a chance. He headed around to the other side of the block by a circuitous route until he came to a small side window, now conveniently hidden behind a skip, through which he could crawl.
This led him into an underground car park for the office complex that occupied part of the building above. Next he found the service stairs that led up into his own part of the building. He'd once scouted it out as an escape route when he'd suspected that he might one day need one.
However, he hadn't expected to be using it in reverse. Still, there were things upstairs that he needed.
Kendrick hadn't yet risked returning to the Armoured Saint and he'd already outstayed his welcome at Caroline's flat. So home it was, at least for long enough to pick up what he needed and until he could find somewhere else. The flat was tiny, just a rented room and kitchen in a part of the city that had become an American ghetto over several years. But once he got inside and closed the door behind him, all the stresses and fears of the past few days started piling up on him. He collapsed onto his narrow bed, listening to the silence where his heartbeat had once been.
After a little while, he closed his eyes.
