Caldwell and Kat headed back towards Waterloo station. Her frail form moved beside him with surprising agility. She had the Sim Unit going but the goggles were perched on her forehead like the sun glasses of a beach bum seeking a moment』s relief from a harsh summer sun. He could hear the soundtrack to whatever movie she was watg buzzing in her ears. His knapsack taining Kenzo Yamamoto』s sole and the sum total of his personal effects was slung around his left shoulder and he carried one of Kat』s duffels in his other hand. The sky above the station itch-black with industrial pollution.
They caught an almost-empty Maglev to the Isle of Dogs. Kat and Caldwell sat in the deserted carriage in total silence. A silenderscored by the low-level hum leaking out of her headphones. He wondered what anyone who saw them sitting there would make of them. This odd couple brought together by fate, circumstand a strange inexplicable mental e. What would they make of their ability to say nothing a everything at the same time?
「I am thinking of looking for my birth parents,」 Kat said suddenly. 「You』ve found out about yours, where you e from. I think now, I want to know.」
Caldwell had known the awful truth about Kat』s past for a few months now but could n himself to tell her. The sequences were too uable. Kat was a e. A anufactured at Uy College London』s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Kat was lab material for medical research students. Acc to puter records at the uy, Kat was ed from a fledgling Hollywood actress who wished to have a sed shot at stardom even after her death. There had been no records of the name of the donor. A bit more drilling down iabase had revealed that one of the lab assistants for the project had been expelled from the uy for removiive material from uy premises. That sensitive material was Kat. She had left the infant beside the HoloDome, ed in insulating material, her little fingers clutg a lukewarm bottle of formula.
Should he tell her now, what he knew? Here, several hundred meters underground being bombarded with holoverts and subliminal advertising for ing services. Should he tell her she was one of them? Destio be discriminated against by the masses? He decided to wait until he returned from Hong Kong. At least, if he was around she』d have somebody to support her as she dealt with the knowledge of who she was. What she was. Did she suspeything? Was she subsciously searg for her identical other in the flickering images of old movies? She deserved to know.
Was there a void deep inside, a flaw that flared bright in her mind leadio suspect that she was different? This was one question Caldwell knew he could not answer although occasionally a look came over her eyes that suggested that she suspected something. That would explain her reluce to trace her parents for so long.
They arrived at the Isle of Dogs station and rode aor to the surface. The station was almost empty. They jumped the barriers at the exit to a cacophony of alarms. These alarms ofte off during off-peak hours but the station wardens more often than not ighem. They despised their faceless corporate owners even more than the passengers who refused to fill their overflowing coffers. They were sometimes happy to let the law breakers protest the only way they knew how, especially at night. And the offenders relished the privilege of letting the system know what they thought of it. The CCTV cameras that dotted every