too busy listening to what Whitsett had to say to have heard the buzz of an approaching outboard engine.
When the bullet hit Whitsett, the force of its impact spun him around so that he stumbled against Kendrick in the last moments of his life. Blood and brains sprayed across the harbour front and Kendrick yelled, stumbling away in shock. Bright flashes sparked from the direction of the speedboat. Something hot whined past his ear.
As Erik Whitsett's ruined corpse collapsed to the ground, Kendrick could see fine grey filaments mixed in with the soft tissues that had previously formed the interior of the Labrat's head.
Time slowed down. Kendrick began to run – the motion liquid and dreamlike in his perception. He took a chance, glanced over his shoulder and saw someone in a heavy green slicker standing up in the now stationary speedboat, taking aim. Suddenly he felt sure that it had been him they'd been trying to kill, not Whitsett.
He ran.
16 October 2096 Outside Hardenbrooke's clinic
'Jesus!' Caroline's small hands smacked against the dashboard of her car in anger.
When Kendrick said nothing she sighed noisily, staring out at the street around them. People walked by, one or two glancing in their direction, trying to recognize the environment reflected in the car windows. Kendrick knew it was Caroline's own design: the streets of 1940s Casablanca rendered in black and white. Since many of the vehicles driving along the street, or parked around them, had their own custom reflection programs, theirs didn't particularly stand out. It meant that they could hide from view until Kendrick needed to enter the clinic.
'I could try and explain, but it wouldn't make much sense to you.' Even as he said the words, it occurred to Kendrick that he'd have a hard time convincing even himself. Caroline had eventually woken from her catatonic state to find him back in her apartment. No memory of picking up the phone earlier, nor of sleepwalking subsequently: only of waking up to the sound of his voice.
So he'd left then, with little explanation, and in the meantime had met up with a man he hadn't seen in years – just in time to watch him die.
'Caroline,' he said gently, 'if anyone's likely to know what's going on here, I think it's more probably you than me.'
She stared straight ahead at the street outside. 'Well, perhaps that's true,' she said in a small voice.
'Maybe we need to talk. You never told me why we finished. You never told me your augments had-'
She raised a hand as if to silence him, so he changed tack. 'Has Buddy been in touch with you?'
Caroline looked as if her face was about to crumble. 'Yes, he has,' she replied, visibly pulling herself together. 'I went to Holland, and we met there.'
Kendrick nodded. Holland was relatively tolerant about Labrats. 'And?'
'I started seeing things just a little while after you did.'
'Christ, Caroline, if you'd only told me-'
'I didn't want to tell you! I saw things, so many things, and Robert spoke to me-'
'Robert is dead.'
The expression on her face was filled with such cold fury that Kendrick looked away immediately. 'You don't need to remind me,' she replied with icy bitterness. 'But he spoke to me. He's still alive in some way.'
'Caroline, some very fucked-up stuff is happening around me. Someone tried to blow up Malky's bar, and earlier today I saw someone – someone who claimed to be a friend of Buddy's – get killed right in front of me.' He saw the shock on her face. 'People are trying to tell me things, and I have to take notice of that. I have to start asking serious questions.' He gestured down the street towards Hardenbrooke's clinic. 'You see that place over there? Somebody told me that the guy who's being paid to save my life is in fact out to get me – why, I don't know. Now Erik Whitsett turns up and tells me. we're all – all of us – seeing the same damn things in our dreams.'
Kendrick laughed, aware of the edge of panic in his voice. 'But then, maybe we're not seeing the same things, so go figure! I have to get to the bottom of this. I don't have any idea where to find Buddy, or even if he's going to give me a reasonable explanation for what's going on, so in the meantime I'm just going to go in there and find some things out. Unless, Caroline, there's something you really need to tell me.'
He looked at her expectantly. She was pale, trembling, not meeting his gaze. When the words came, she gave a good impression of having to force them. 'When we were in the Maze…' He nodded encouragingly. 'When they made us… I didn't know that you were down there with him, that you were the one who killed Robert. I didn't know you were the one that did it.' Anger crept into her words. 'I didn't know you'd killed my brother. And you didn't even, not ever, not during the whole time we were together, have the fucking grace to tell me, you miserable, pathetic, fucking bastard.'
Kendrick nodded again, this time in understanding, and sat back. It had started raining, fat grey drops sliding in miniature rivers down the glass.
'Caroline, none of us had any choice. He would have killed me-'
'And don't I just wish he had!' she screamed, her face contorted with rage. She was weeping now. 'He was my brother.'
Kendrick fell silent, embarrassed and suddenly inarticulate, wondering just how she had found out. Buddy, perhaps? But he'd promised never to speak about that. Who else might have known?
Or had something that looked like Robert, spoke with Robert's voice and shared Robert's memories told her?
But at least he knew now why she'd thrown him out.
Kendrick rehearsed the lines in his head. I had another seizure – two again. I almost died. You have to help me. What would happen after that was anybody's guess, but he had to get in there and find out if McCowan's ghost had been as right about Hardenbrooke as it had been about the bomb.
He stepped up to the door of the clinic, which had no handle nor any other obvious means for people to exit or enter. On previous occasions he had been peripherally aware of hidden security equipment scanning him on his approach, and on those occasions the door had simply swung open.
This time, however, he had no appointment.
It was easy to speculate about who Hardenbrooke's other clients might be. Kendrick was far from being the only Labrat who'd washed up on these shores in dire need of medical assistance that he could never acquire legally.
Kendrick pushed against the door, but it remained locked. He stepped back and looked over to the nearest windows, rising behind tall railings. Below the railings the ground dropped away to a basement level.
He looked around to check if anyone was hanging around nearby. Caroline had long since driven off, abandoning him to his fate. He touched the door's surface again, feeling a tingle where his hand came into contact with it.
He closed his eyes, sensing the security devices built into the fabric of the door like intricate webs of invisible activity. He moved his hand across the door's width, letting his augments trace and follow the pulses of electrical energy there
Several seconds later Kendrick heard a loud clunk and the door opened a millimetre or two.
That wasn't me.
He couldn't understand or interpret the actions of his augmentations, but he could think about something, and if it had to do with infiltration, assassination or any of a hundred specifically military applications, his body could find a way to perform it. This was not something Kendrick was proud of or wanted. The price of it, after all, had been grievously high, and it rarely produced desirable results.
He touched the door once more and this time it swung open easily.
Someone was letting him in.
Kendrick gazed across the familiar hallway: stairs ascended and descended in a tight spiral at the far end. He
