augments? Or wouldn't it seem more likely there might have been others? Peter is still alive, somehow, in the same way that Robert is. He tried to get through to all of you, but Robert managed to prevent that happening with anyone but me. That's because of the treatments Hardenbrooke gave me. But here's the real kicker. If Robert Vincenzo found some way of blocking Peter McCowan's attempts at communication with all of us, what is it that Robert so badly didn't want McCowan to tell you? Something, maybe, that you really ought to know?'
Buddy struggled visibly to absorb this new information. 'Hey, first you tell me we're wrong, even though we've all been seeing the same things, and now you want us all to stop because of something – someone – that only you have seen. Maybe you ought to think about that.'
'Look, Draeger told me there was a way to reverse the growth of our augmentations – and I actually believe him. If he can find a way, so can other people.'
Buddy shook his head. 'I've heard all this before.'
'Look-'
'We don't know how long something like that could take to be properly tested, and that would be an even better excuse to lock us up in the meantime. You've seen Audrey, you saw Caroline. The Archimedes is our only chance.'
'If you believe in the reality of the Omega Singularity,' Kendrick said carefully, 'then you know it holds out for the actual resurrection, at the end of time, of everyone who ever lived. Even if we do all die, we still all get to live again someday.'
Buddy threw his hands up in despair. 'Christ, I know it's only a theory. I also know that what's happening up there proves at least part of it. So, no, maybe the whole human race doesn't wake up at the end of time in a far- future Heaven created by minds so advanced that they'd be indistinguishable from God. Maybe most of us just stay here and rot for all eternity, since there's no reason why any such entity should even bother.
'But now we have a chance, one that nobody else has, to give something back to ourselves when the rest of the world would rather see us conveniently dead. We'd never have to feel pain again – we can be anyone or anything we want to be, for ever. And maybe we'll even be the only human beings lucky enough to experience that.'
'Hallelujah,' Kendrick observed sourly.
Buddy gave him a sharp look, then headed over to his helicopter. Kendrick gazed after him for several minutes, wondering which of them was crazier.
The next time Kendrick woke, dawn was just beginning to break.
He'd dreamt that he'd been deep in conversation with Marlin Smeby, lost in some primeval tunnel full of twisted, hallucinatory carvings. He couldn't remember anything they'd spoken about.
Hearing something clatter outside, he sat up and looked around the darkened room. Empty sleeping bags were scattered across the floor and, since almost all the rest had gone on ahead, he was alone there. He felt racked by a thousand aches and pains.
Buddy planned to fly to the offshore launch site within the next few hours. Meanwhile, Kendrick had needed all the rest he could get.
He got up and stepped outside again, looking over to where the 'copter still sat. Beyond it stood a tall wooden gate leading onto the broken tarmac of a nearby street. Part of the tarpaulin had been flipped back, and a shadowy figure was kneeling next to the machine, surrounded by tools and equipment.
'Hey, how you doing?' Audrey greeted him with a grin as he approached the craft.
'I didn't know that you knew how to handle one of these things.'
'Commercial rather than military, though,' she explained. The black streaks of her augment-growth were vivid under the dim red light of the dawn that was creeping over LA's broken rooftops. 'Buddy's catching some zees, so I'm doing a little maintenance. Couldn't sleep, then?'
'Not any longer.' Kendrick glanced around. 'Is it just us left?'
Audrey shrugged. 'You, me, Bud – rest are all gone.' She squinted at him. 'You feeling okay?'
'Fine – just got up.'
She shrugged again. 'Don't wander off and get lost, now. Remember, not much in the way of law around here, so stick to the compound, okay?'
Kendrick nodded. 'Got it.'
Audrey smiled uncertainly, then turned her attention back to the 'copter's exposed innards. Soon Kendrick heard the sound of a bolt being unscrewed followed by a muttered expletive. He stepped back inside the hut, aware of the woman's eyes constantly glancing after him.
Had someone called his name? He tensed and peered out of a window through which he could see nothing unusual. Maybe it had been Buddy he'd heard.
No: he came across Buddy in another room, curled up in a cot and fast asleep. Of course, he could have muttered something in his sleep…
There it was again: the faintest whisper, barely the suggestion of his name. Kendrick wondered if it was McCowan. Without really thinking about it, he slipped quietly through the ramshackle building until he found another door at the rear, which opened without a sound. The high fence surrounding the compound made it impossible for casual passers-by – had there been any – to spy on them.
He noticed another gate in the fence, presumably leading out onto a different street.
'Kendrick,' whispered a voice somewhere nearby. He stopped, motionless. Nobody was visible.
He stepped out onto the street, moving as quietly as he could. Not McCowan: someone else? In either direction he could see rows of broken buildings, barren and lifeless.
Perhaps this was a bad idea. He should go back inside the fence.
Then Kendrick noticed the car, deep in the shadows of one building that had survived the atomic blast largely intact. His augmented senses picked the vehicle out in vivid detail, and he could see that its windows were silvered. It stood several blocks away from the compound where Audrey was still working on the 'copter.
The car looked shiny and new, incongruous amid so much devastation. Beside it stood Smeby.
Kendrick glanced over his shoulder and caught a strange movement, as if a distorting lens had passed in front of some scrubby bushes growing out of the cracked pavement. He realized with a start that it was someone wearing camouflage like that built into the skin of Buddy's helicopter. The hazy motion halted, resolving itself into a figure holding a rifle pointed at Kendrick's head.
Kendrick glanced towards Smeby again, catching a glint of light on a lens from a glassless window in the building looming up behind the car. Another soldier was undoubtedly positioned there, his gun trained on Kendrick.
The compound was surrounded – and only three of them were left to defend it.
Perhaps they'd traced him by some arcane means that didn't require tracking his wand; perhaps they could still trace him through the lingering Trojan nanites that Hardenbrooke had inserted in his augmentations. In which case, it was conceivable that they knew nothing about Buddy, Audrey, or any of the recently departed Labrats.
Somehow, though, Kendrick suspected otherwise. As he turned to retreat towards the gate, a bullet slammed into the ground and noiselessly kicked up a puff of dust in front of him.
Realizing that he was cornered, he stepped back onto the road and moved slowly towards the vehicle.
When he reached it, Smeby was leaning against the hood with his arms folded. 'I don't know what you want,' Kendrick snarled, 'but I'm not interested.'
'I haven't even said anything yet.' Smeby smiled. 'But Mr Draeger has a fresh proposition for you.'-
'I already told you-'
'Just hear me out, okay?' Smeby snapped. 'We've decided to forget about what happened last time – Mr Draeger feels there's too much at stake.'
Kendrick sensed a movement around the corner of the nearby building. He stepped away from the car, Smeby's gaze following him. At least a dozen more men were standing in a loose group beside a truck parked in the adjacent street. Although dressed in civilian clothes, they certainly looked like soldiers.
A cigarette butt glowed in the dim dawn light like a firefly as one of them drew smoke into his lungs. Their
