'Haven't seen Malky since last night.' Lucia let out a puff of blue smoke, the cigarette dangling from bejewelled fingers. A tattoo on her left arm glittered kaleidoscopically as she climbed down from the neck of her machine- monster sculpture. The tattoo she wore was a holographic design: twisting braids that changed colour depending on which way she moved.
'Last night? Did he seem – I don't know – worried or something?'
Her gaze flicked down to her cigarette and then back up at Kendrick. A small cool smile spread across her features. 'You sound just like something out of a cop show. You look a bit rough too, if you don't mind me saying so. Everything okay?'
Caroline had helped Kendrick clean up and had bandaged the worst of his wounds, now hidden under a sweater. Once back at his own place, he'd crashed solidly for the rest of the day and had stayed in bed for most of the next day as well.
'I'm fine, but I'm concerned about Malky. I think he's in trouble.'
Lucia cocked her head to one side. 'Okay, what's he done this time?'
'Look, I just want to find him. I thought you might have some idea where he is.'
'Right.' She nodded slowly. 'You just want to speak to him. That's why you look like you're ready to headbutt a gorilla.'
'Okay, fine, you're saying he's not in.' Kendrick turned to walk away.
'Ask Todd. He usually knows where Malky is, if anyone does,' Lucia called after him.
'Nope, ain't seen him. Ain't like him, though,' Todd commented. 'Mind if I ask you a question?'
Kendrick looked at him closely. 'Go ahead.'
'Mikhail – he's mixed up in something, isn't he?'
'I think so, yeah. Know anything about it?'
Todd shook his head. 'No, but I can make guesses. Malky's brighter than most people give him credit for, but he has a habit of getting into some things deeper than he intends to, till he can't necessarily get out.'
'You're a close friend of his, so why are you telling me this?'
'Because he's a friend. He's helped me enough in the past. Sometimes you have to return the favour.'
'So you know what's going on then?'
Todd sighed. 'Can't say I do.' Then he smiled. 'I was kind of hoping you were going to tell me.'
Kendrick shook his head. 'Look, there's something you can help me with meanwhile. I need to find somebody.'
Todd regarded him warily. 'Who? And what for? And, by the way, I don't work for free.'
'I know that,' Kendrick replied testily. 'Does the name Hardenbrooke mean anything to you?'
'Not sure.' Todd looked thoughtful. 'Might have heard it. Who is he?'
'A medic, from LA.'
'This wouldn't be some guy with a serious overdose of LA tan, would it? I might have seen him in the bar.'
'It might be.' Kendrick nodded. 'I need you to help me find him.'
A little while later, Kendrick returned again to Hardenbrooke's clinic, finding that its upper windows had now been boarded up. He climbed over the railings that surrounded the building, dropped down and kicked in an uncovered basement window before climbing inside. He carried a golf club that he'd decided would be a handy way to deal with the spider robots he'd encountered last time around.
But this time there were no automatic surveillance systems – or at least none that prevented Kendrick exploring. It came as no surprise to find that the building was completely deserted and empty, top to bottom.
Except for one unpleasant item.
He found Malky in the basement, wedged into a corner of the office where Kendrick had discovered the names and details of so many Labrats. Malky's eyes gazed sightlessly outward, under a neat hole drilled in the centre of his forehead.
The back of his head – what was left of it – rested on a pile of eepsheets sticky with blood. Kendrick noticed a spray of red a little higher up on the wall behind the body, where the bullet had embedded itself after passing through Malky's brain.
Grimacing, Kendrick managed to prise a sole remaining eepsheet from behind the dead man but found that it contained nothing of significance.
Malky had betrayed him, but Kendrick felt grief flooding through him nonetheless. In a way this surprised him, that he should feel such a loss. Perhaps, betrayal or not, he simply couldn't find it in himself to believe that Malky's friendship had been anything but genuine.
Then he continued his search, even though he realized that Hardenbrooke would have left nothing for him to find.
19 October 2096 Arlington Hotel, Edinburgh
Kendrick blinked in the sharp morning light, glancing down at his arms that were now concealed by a charcoal-grey suit jacket. He'd taken the bandages off that morning to find that the flesh underneath was already almost healed. Breaking free of Hardenbrooke's restraints would have broken the bones of any normal man, yet after little more than a day the damage had faded into irregular dark patches on his arms and legs.
But along with such a vastly increased capacity for self-repair came accelerated carcinomas, irreversible nervous-system damage, and the risk of total breakdown of the auto-immune system.
Smeby's aide, Candice, was already waiting for Kendrick outside the hotel as he arrived, standing next to a long and elegant-looking car.
'You should be aware,' she told him, 'that Mr Draeger is currently at his base of operations in the Far East. I hope that doesn't present a major problem for you.'
The Far East? 'No, it doesn't.' Why hadn't he realized this? He'd been assuming that he'd meet Draeger somewhere more neutral – perhaps here in Edinburgh, or in London. So much had been happening around him recently that he wasn't thinking straight. Instead, he was now flying straight into the dragon's lair. He began to have second thoughts.
Candice smiled. 'It's not really going to put you to that much trouble. Mr Draeger provides extremely fast transport for his employees.'
Kendrick studied her. 'That's a long way to go just to have a talk with someone.'
In answer she pulled open the door of the limousine. 'I'm not allowed access to any details of your conversation with Mr Smeby. My instructions are simply to deliver you to him. You're not here under any coercion, so if you've changed your mind it's up to you.'
It's up to me? But until Kendrick could track down Buddy, there was really nowhere else he could go if he was to have any chance of figuring out what in hell was going on around him. And so, despite a definite sense of foreboding, Kendrick bent and climbed into the limousine.
A sheet of smoked glass that doubled as a gridscreen separated Candice, sitting in the front, from him. Kendrick couldn't even see if there was a flesh-and-blood driver, or whether the car drove itself.
Half an hour later they arrived at a private airfield on the outskirts of the city. A snub-nosed passenger VTOL aircraft stood on the wide strip of tarmac, its stubby wings rotated so that the engines pointed at the ground. Candice guided Kendrick on board and took the seat opposite him.
The opulence of the aircraft's decor seemed almost shocking: Kendrick's scuffed leather shoes rested on luxurious thick carpet. An antique-looking table nestled between two comfortable couches that faced each other. He had barely sat down before he heard the whine of engines powering up somewhere beneath his feet.
