icon flash for a moment on the instrument's screen. Then he hit receive, and put the wand to his ear.
'Before you say anything, Kendrick, this line is encrypted. Took me ages to get it sorted out. I heard something about what happened. Unless that was somebody else who fell out of a third- or fourth-floor hotel window and just walked away.'
'So we're safe on this line? I thought maybe-'
'Just don't tell me where you are in case I'm wrong about the encryption and someone can hear us. If anyone oat there has good enough software they can probably break the q-crypt code in a couple of minutes. So I won't be long.' A pause. 'I did as you asked.'
Kendrick forced himself to relax, to grip the wand less desperately. 'You've found Hardenbrooke?'
'Sure. I'm uploading Hardenbrooke's most recent co-ords to you now. By the looks of things, he's on his way to New York. But, a word of warning, I found him the same way he's most likely to find you.'
'That's fine to know, Todd, but I'm in a hurry here.'
'Sure, sorry Ken. Once you've checked out the stuff I'm sending, my best advice is to ditch the wand. If Hardenbrooke had ditched his I'd never have been able to track him so easily.'
'Thanks, Todd. I owe you big time.'
Kendrick closed the connection and switched the screen to review Todd's location data. He realized that he hadn't yet told Todd about Malky – and he couldn't make up his mind whether this was a good or a bad thing.
His wand informed him that Hardenbrooke was somewhere over the Atlantic, heading west – towards America. Numbers scrolled in a corner of the screen, and
Kendrick was pleased to see that Todd's coordinates constantly updated themselves in real-time.
And what if Hardenbrooke does have Caroline? he asked himself. Does she run straight into your arms if you manage to rescue her? Almost certainly not. Draeger had told him earlier that Los Muertos were behind Caroline's abduction – which meant there was a good chance that Hardenbrooke had been involved. So if he could find Hardenbrooke, then he could find Caroline.
A black wave of depression began to settle over Kendrick's thoughts. Admit it, this is all because of Robert. You killed her brother, and now you figure this is your chance to make up for it.
Kendrick thought back to what Buddy had told him, and about what he'd managed to find out while he'd searched the grid for information about zero-point energy. He couldn't even imagine, remembering the few words he'd managed to digest, the sheer destructive horror that such knowledge could be turned to.
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.
