his own hand he began to discern other faint shapes, so close to being lost amid the blackness that at first he believed he was imagining them. They gradually resolved themselves into the outlines of men and women stumbling around him.
He looked up and recognized the familiar concrete covered by steel piping that characterized the Maze -barely visible but with a ghostly monotone translucence, like everything else he could just about see.
It took a little while for Kendrick to really grasp that he could actually see in the dark.
He made out other wheeled cots around him. They had been lined up on one side of a long, wide corridor. One or two of the prisoners still lay unconscious, others rose from their cots to stare blindly around them, calling out names that Kendrick didn't recognize.
It was cold, very cold, as Kendrick stood upright, squinting at those whose faces he could see, their faces ghostly in the non-light. He was looking for Buddy, or for any familiar face among the scores moving around aimlessly in the darkness.
'Excuse me?' A woman's voice, faltering and unsure. She put one hand out to him, clearly able to see as well as he could. 'I'm trying to find someone.'
'I don't know where we are,' Kendrick replied. 'I don't know who any of you are.'
'I was in Ward Seventeen. Where are we? Where are the guards?'
Kendrick glanced at her. Her features were a luminous semi-blur. 'I was in Ward Seventeen, but I don't remember you. I don't remember any women there.'
She shook her head. 'Each Ward is split into two sections – didn't you know that? One for the men, one for the women.'
'Oh, right.' The fact of their segregation had always struck him as oddly prudish. 'The guards have gone. I think it's just us Labrats.'
'Labrats?'
Kendrick shrugged. 'It's a nickname someone came up with.'
'Look, I don't know even which Ward my brother was sent to. I need to know if he's here somewhere. He…' She hesitated. 'I just need to find him.'
'What was his name?'
'Robert. Robert Vincenzo.' The woman paused and then added, 'I'm Caroline Vincenzo.'
Kendrick stared at her. 'Robert Vincenzo?'
Her eyes, two blurred dark circles, widened. 'You know him? I can tell from the way you said that. Just tell me!'
'Yes,' Kendrick admitted.
'He's dead, isn't he?' she said, her voice toneless.
'I don't know.' How to say it? 'One day he was there, the next…' He shrugged again. 'I don't really know. I'm sorry.'
She nodded wordlessly and looked away.
Kendrick opened his mouth to tell her about Robert's apparent escape, and then closed it again. Now wasn't the time or the place. First, they had to find out what was going on here.
They joined a crowd of several dozen that had formed nearby. Some people were laughing, others crying, just happy and relieved to have found familiar faces or voices. However, it became clear to Kendrick as he began to explore the endless corridor in which they found themselves that the ability to navigate in this pitch dark was limited to just a few among them. With deep relief he spotted Buddy standing nearby, with McCowan and a few other people he knew. I should be with them, Kendrick decided.
He turned to Caroline and smiled gently. 'We've all of us lost friends and relations. You're not alone.'
'But it's more than that. I knew,' she insisted. 'When I woke up here I thought maybe I was wrong, but somehow I knew – you understand what I mean? It's not like something you can explain. You just know.' She shook her head. 'So stupid.'
Her face was no longer quite so blurred, although everything around Kendrick retained, to his perceptions, a certain ghostly quality. The way she held herself suggested a well-honed body, someone who might have once been a soldier herself, or perhaps a bodyguard.
'Our parents aren't around any more, so I always had to look out for him. He…' Kendrick could picture the course that Caroline's thoughts were taking. She believed Robert was dead, and therefore – in her mind – she had failed him. Kendrick felt a stab of sympathy.
A shout carried above the growing tumult of voices and he looked around. Kendrick could make out men and women weeping: others were kneeling on the hard concrete, hands clasped together, as barely audible prayers spilled from their mouths. Either they were asking for salvation or giving thanks that they were free of the Wards.
Kendrick shrugged apologetically at Caroline and steered a course towards Buddy. In his heart he knew that Sieracki would never simply let them go, even if the guards never returned.
20 October 2096 Edinburgh
Once back in Edinburgh, Kendrick tried to call Caroline, leaving several messages. She didn't reply and he was not even sure what he would say to her anyway. Whatever brief truce they'd enjoyed after he'd escaped from Hardenbrooke's clinic was clearly over.
But right now what concerned him most was the message that arrived in his wand during the flight home. He had gazed at the words for many minutes before looking away from the tiny screen. The message consisted of three words in an unadorned ASCII textfile:
AWE TEPEE PILOT
Then Kendrick made arrangements to pick up a hired car the next morning.
21 October 2096 En route to Loch Awe
Kendrick heard the car parking itself outside his flat in the early morning hours. He stepped outside and gazed up into a red-tinged pre-dawn sky. The jet lag from his long hours of flight had sent his sleep cycle spinning, but he didn't feel he could afford to rest more than was strictly necessary.
A strong breeze whipped down the winding streets as his vehicle navigated its way through the ancient city. Kendrick kept a window open, for once enjoying the lash of wind and freezing rain. It made for a genuinely pleasant change after the burning heat of Cambodia.
Kendrick had done a lot of soul-searching in the hours since his return, even filling himself with doubt over his prompt refusal of Draeger's offer. But there were hundreds of other Labrats scattered around the globe who could benefit from the treatment, some of them perhaps already at death's door. Draeger using his supposed solution to every Labrat's problems as nothing more than a bargaining tool was the basest kind of bribery. Kendrick breathed deeply, pushing the anger away from him. Instead he watched the morning light spill over distant mountain peaks.
Three words. And they could only have come from the one living person whom Kendrick had ever felt he could really trust.
The car drove on, leaving the city far behind. Grey rain clouds skirted the horizon, spreading out across a sodden landscape of hills and valleys. Kendrick listened to the news as he went. Mostly they talked about the continuing spread of Asian Rot, as close now as the fields of southern Spain, and the source of frantic headlines for the past few weeks. After a while he passed through a damp-looking Falkirk before heading north to Stirling,
