Ghost of a Smile

FOUR

They went up the next set of stairs like a military unit. Taking their time, checking the corners and the shadows, listening hard for any hint of an attack. Kim went first, flitting silently up the stairs without touching them, out in front because of all of them she was the least in danger. You see? she said brightly. Being dead does have its advantages. JC went next, pushing forward because he always did, eager to get into the next interesting thing. Melody came next, bristling with caution, alert for the smallest noise or hint of danger, so she could do nasty things to it. And Happy brought up the rear because that was what he did best. He somehow managed to hold his peace until they were more than half-way up, but finally an urgent question forced its way out.

“What, exactly, are we proposing to do if attacked?”

“I have my machine pistol,” Melody said immediately.

“Not actually noted for its use against things that are already dead,” said Happy.

“Be of good cheer, my children,” said JC, not looking back. “I have many useful and really quite nasty and only borderline-illegal items tucked away about my person. I won’t tell if you won’t.”

“It’s true,” Kim said solemnly. “He does.”

“I can’t believe we’re still going on,” Happy said miserably. “We’re ghost finders! This is a job for the psychic commandos of the SAS!”

“Well, for mass destruction, general bloodshed, and scorched-earth policies, they do have their uses,” said JC. “But I think even they would admit that subtlety is not their favoured suit. There is a mystery here, questions that need answering, secrets that must be dug up, and that is what we do best. You are, of course, free to walk away at any time, Happy. But you know the rules-you walk out on an active investigation, and your time with the Institute is over.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” growled Happy.

“You make it sound like we volunteered to be ghost finders,” said Melody.

“Didn’t you?” JC said innocently. “I positively jumped at the chance.”

“Yes, but you’re weird,” said Happy. He looked back down the stairs. “I’m pretty sure that leaving is no longer a viable option.. . Whatever’s in here with us, it won’t give up on us that easily. The higher we go, the more doors close behind us. We are climbing up into the belly of the beast…”

“Then try not to think too much about the eventual way out,” JC said briskly.

They’d reached the next set of swing doors, giving out onto the next floor. Huddling together before the doors, they listened carefully, but all they could hear was their own massed breathing. The atmosphere was so still, it almost had a presence of its own. JC put his head right next to the door, straining for even the slightest sound or trace of movement. He bit his lower lip thoughtfully, straightened up, and looked back at Happy.

“Can you sense anything?”

“Not from out here,” said Happy. “I swear something in this building is interfering with my talent. And I mean deliberately, not as a side effect. Something is targeting me. All right, yes, I feel like that most of the time, but this time I have evidence. There’s a psychic weight in the atmosphere, an unnatural oppression… Trying to sense anything here is like listening for bird-song in the middle of a thunderstorm.”

“A simple no would have sufficed,” murmured JC. “You’re sure it couldn’t be some kind of basic phenomenon, a result of the drug trials?”

“No,” said Happy. “Something’s doing this to me.”

“Or someone,” said Melody.

“Oh right,” said Happy. “Thanks a whole bunch. Cheer me up, why don’t you?”

“I have tried being cautious and sensible, and a fat lot of good it has done me,” announced JC. “I am therefore kicking that plan in the head and reverting to standard operating procedure.” He slammed through the doors and strode arrogantly onto the next floor, shouting “Anybody here? Anything weird and unnatural and quite probably illegal, make yourself known! We are here to solve mysteries, whether they like it or not, and dispense beatings to the ungodly!”

“I really hate it when he does that,” said Melody, following JC in.

“If he wants to be a target, let him,” growled Happy, bringing up the rear.

“No-one ever holds the door open for me any more,” said Kim, ghosting through the closing doors.

The whole of the second floor had been made over into one long science laboratory, with shining white walls and surfaces, and tables weighed down with impressive equipment, all of it stretching away into the distance. Fierce fluorescent lighting picked out every detail with almost painful clarity, with not a single shadow to be seen anywhere. The odd partition rose up here and there, presumably to close off the more dangerous procedures; but otherwise, everything was open to view. Work-benches, workstations, computers here there and everywhere, and equipment so complicated the eye seemed to slide right off it, unable to get a hold. Melody pressed forward, grinning widely and making cooing noises, her eyes sparkling as she took in the wonders before her.

“This is fantastic! I mean, look at all this techy goodness! Some of this equipment is so advanced, even I can’t be sure what it is! This is way beyond state of the art, JC. I’ve only ever seen some of this stuff in really specialised trade magazines, usually in the We’re still running tests and crossing our fingers so don’t expect to see this anytime soon department. Available somewhen in the next decade, if you’re lucky, along with the flying cars and personal jet packs. Okay-once we are finished with this case, I get dibs on everything. We are hiring several trucks and taking it all with us. I claim salvage.”

“I don’t think it works like that, Melody,” said JC.

“It does if I say it does,” said Melody. “I have a gun. Finders keepers, losers can sue me. The scientists working here clearly didn’t appreciate what they had, or they wouldn’t have gone off and left it. Which means it’s all mine on moral grounds.” And then she stopped and looked about her thoughtfully. “Odd… Everything here appears to be still turned on, still working… as though people just stopped in the middle of what they were doing and walked away.”

“See!” said Kim. “I told you! Exactly like the Marie Celeste!”

“It’s not normal to be that enthusiastic all the time,” said Happy. “If I didn’t know she was dead, I’d swear she was on more pills than me.”

“But where are the scientists?” said Melody. “Seriously, why would they just walk, leaving everything still running?”

“Probably legged it once they saw the trial was going seriously wrong,” said Happy. “As any sane or sensible person would.”

“Getting bored with that song,” said JC. “Not listening, not listening…”

“They’re not gone,” said Kim. “They’re still here.” She nodded to herself, then realised the others were looking at her. She shrugged. “Just a feeling…”

“Melody,” said JC. “Find another computer and bully some answers out of it. Starting with exactly what is ReSet, and what is it supposed to do? And, in particular, what were the researchers expecting or hoping to achieve with this latest drug trial?”

Melody was already sitting before the nearest computer, which was still humming busily, its screen filled with an image of Stonehenge at dawn. She hammered away at the keyboard, and the computer made a series of important-sounding noises as it replaced the Stonehenge screen saver with a series of scientific files. Happy looked over her shoulder, was quickly baffled, and went back to wandering around the floor-length laboratory.

“I’m picking up something, JC, but it’s hard to pin down anything distinct. There are a lot of emotions still hanging in the air. All of them quite definitely human. Fear, panic, anger, guilt, and a whole lot of get the hell out of here. Pretty much what you’d expect, for when everything’s gone tits up big-time. But it’s all… vague. Group feelings, rather than individual residues. Odd…”

“Found something!” Kim said happily. “JC, come and look! I think it’s a company brochure.”

She was trying to pick it up, but her insubstantial fingers kept passing through it and the desk beneath. She said a few baby swear words and stepped back. JC picked it up. He leafed through the heavy glossy pages, doing his best to ignore Kim hovering behind him.

“This would appear to be an in-house organ,” he said. “Not meant for outside eyes. Basically, preaching to the company faithful. Lots of Good times are on their way, bonuses for all, your names will go down in history so work hard for the company good. All the usual corporate bullshit, to keep the little drones happy and hard at work. The bottom line seems to be that the company was promising a cure for pretty much everything, through the wonders of genetic manipulation. But, of course, not quite yet. All jam tomorrow…”

“What?” said Happy. “Is this like when I was a kid, and my mum would make me take a pill with a spoonful of jam? I miss that.”

“It’s from Through the Looking Glass,” said Kim. “You know-jam tomorrow, jam yesterday, but never jam today. You must know it-it’s a children’s classic by Lewis Carroll.”

“I have a hard time believing Happy was ever a child,” said JC. “I think he was born nervous, sweaty, and trying to cadge free medications off the midwife.”

“I never read any Carroll,” said Happy. “I did try, but it scared the crap out of me. I was a sensitive child.”

JC flipped quickly through to the end of the brochure. “Reading between the lines, what I see here is mostly qualified apologies. The theories are sound, but they don’t have the funding to produce real results. Nothing here about ReSet.”

“Found it!” said Melody. “Drop your linen and start your grinning, Auntie Melody has found the mother lode!” She beat a brief victory tattoo on the desk with both hands. “Not a single decent firewall in this thing. It’s almost like these files wanted to be found. Anyway, gather round while I dispense wisdom and wonders.”

They all did so, and she continued, her attention still riveted on the monitor. “The scientists here at MSI stumbled onto something impressive while looking for something else, which is always the way. But you were right, JC, they had to go outside the company to get the extra funding to make it work. And if I’m reading this right, I mean absolute shed-loads of money. The people on this floor needed some pretty expensive items, a lot of it quite blatantly illegal. And even immoral. We’re talking half a ton of human stem cells, and even more human organs. Along with equipment so cutting-edge they must have boosted it right out of the testing labs. Oh, this can’t be right, I’m looking at invoices for hundreds of human hearts, kidneys, livers, bone marrow… you name it, and it’s here somewhere. Where could they possibly have got it all?”

“I’d guess third-world countries, executed Chinese prisoners, any number of civil-war zones,” said JC. “Trafficking in human organs is the second biggest illegal trade, right after human slavery. Sometimes I think we’re going after the wrong monsters. What were they doing with all those organs? And the stem cells?”

“Strip-mining them for something specific they needed,” said Melody, frowning. “To make ReSet.”

“Who exactly was it that supplied the extra funding?” said JC.

“No names,” Melody said immediately. “Whoever it was went to a lot of trouble to remain strictly anonymous.”

“Could it be Crowley Project?” said Happy. “I mean, this is the kind of nasty shit they’d get off on.”

“None of the usual signifiers,” said Melody. “But everything was kept carefully compartmentalised, so most of the scientists didn’t know what the guy on the next bench was working on. It was all on a strictly need-to-know basis. Perhaps so no-one would know enough to feel properly guilty. This goes far beyond proprietary information, JC. We have to contact the Boss, get them to pry open the company records.” She stopped and looked up from the monitor. “You know, I have to wonder, even if we succeed, if we’ll be allowed to walk away from this case, knowing what we know.”

“Welcome to my paranoid world,” said Happy. “Cold, isn’t it?”

“We don’t know nearly enough yet,” said JC. “And anyway, I’d like to see MSI come up with anything that could stop us.”

“Don’t say things like that!” said Happy. “You’ll be saying What could possibly go wrong next!”

“Face front, brave little soldier,” said JC. “If we can survive what’s going on here, we can survive anything.”

“Did you have to say if?” said Happy.

“What else have you got, Melody?” said JC.

“The extra funding did the trick,” said Melody, scrolling quickly through the files. “They came up with a real miracle drug. They called it ReSet. According to this, it was a completely new wonder drug that could actually repair all damage to the human body by forcing it to reset itself to factory conditions. The miracle cure that all Humanity’s been waiting for-a single drug that would fix whatever was wrong by putting everything back the way it should be. From broken bones to tumours, from viruses to organ failure. No more medicines, no more surgeries, no more transplants. Hell, ReSet could even cure the common cold! But then they tried it on actual test subjects… and it looks like ReSet did far more than was expected.”

“I really don’t like where this is going,” said Happy.

“You’re not alone,” said Melody. “Listen… what’s happened here is the result of the first actual drug trial on human test subjects. Everything else had been strictly computer models and simulations or experiments with the organs and cells they’d acquired. They didn’t do any animal testing-apparently whoever was supplying the funding was in a hurry. The order was to go straight to human testing, and no-one here had the authority to say no. And the researchers were given very strict instructions on how the drug was to be administered. The test subjects, the volunteers, had no idea what they were getting. Poor bastards were told it was an allergy test. They were all given injections of ReSet, right here in the laboratory, and then watched closely for twenty-four hours. Nothing happened.

“I’m looking at the clinical notes. Round-the-clock observation, all life signs carefully monitored, regular blood tests… Nothing. Since there were no obvious reactions, and no biological changes, the test subjects were allowed to return to their living quarters, on the floor below. So the scientists could get into a real screaming match over whose fault it was that nothing had happened. They thought the drug trial was a failure because there should have been immediate signs. After twenty-four hours of sod all, they were tearing each other’s hair out.”

“LD50,” said JC. “They expected half the test subjects to die, or nearly die, then recover, thanks to ReSet.”

“Exactly,” said Melody. “But the test subjects had barely been gone an hour when the first emergency call came through, from Room Seven. Things really went horribly wrong. Jesus, JC, some of this makes seriously scary reading. A lot of it is notes, made on the run by scientists half out of their minds, meant to be fleshed out later. Anyway, the scientists went down to Room Seven, accompanied by building security staff. That’s probably what we heard, in the corridor. And then… a lot of people were killed, in and around Room Seven. There was a struggle. First the researchers attempted to restrain the occupant of Room Seven, who was freaking out big-time, then the security people waded in. They couldn’t control him. Says here they used Tasers, and that was when the killing started. The man in Room Seven just… tore them apart, and kept on killing until the survivors turned and ran. And then… he killed himself. Maybe because he couldn’t stand what he was turning into. What he was becoming.” She paused, clearly shaken by what she was reading.

“By then, the same sort of thing was happening in all the rooms, all hell was breaking loose. The test subjects were all changing. The scientists had given up trying to control the situation, they were trying to get out alive. Two of the test subjects killed one another. Eight of the subjects went mad, apparently from simple proximity to what was happening. They didn’t, or wouldn’t, change. So the others killed them.

“It was a massacre, JC, a slaughterhouse. When they weren’t attacking each other, the test subjects turned on the security men and the scientists. Only a handful got out alive. They just weren’t equipped to deal with what ReSet had made out of the test subjects.”

“Hold it,” said JC. “Not that I’m doubting you, Melody, but… a slaughterhouse? There were no blood stains in the corridor, no signs of violence. Only what we saw in Room Seven.”

“I know!” said Melody. “But according to these reports, there was blood and guts and bodies all over the place!”

“We weren’t allowed to see what Room Seven was really like, until our mysterious hidden enemy was ready for us to see it,” said Happy. “Maybe… we only saw what we were supposed to see, down there.”

“Okay,” said JC. “That is seriously spooky. Could someone be messing with our minds so thoroughly without you being able to detect it?”

“I don’t know,” said Happy. “I wouldn’t have thought so, but I’ve never encountered anything like the conditions in this place. I keep telling you-we are way out of our depths!”

“That’s practically our job description,” said JC. “Don’t panic yet, Happy, or you’ll have nothing left when things get really bad. Anything else of note in the computer files, Melody?”

“The last few are short on detail,” said Melody. “But the people who made them were quite clearly traumatised by what they’d seen. It was chaos down there. A lot of people died, in brutal and unpleasant ways. One researcher managed to make a distress call. We know how that worked out. Eventually, the entire building was sealed off.” She half turned. “That’s where we came in. Literally.”

JC nodded. It was clear to all of them that they had been sent into Chimera House without proper briefing. “Anything else, Melody?” he said.

She turned back to the monitor. “Ah yes, this is interesting… Let me… Yes. It seems one of the surviving test subjects made his way up here and made a short vid recording. Look at this.”

They all leaned in close around Melody as she called it up and put it on the screen. At first, it just showed a series of shifting views of the laboratory. There was no-one in front of the camera, only shouts and disturbances in the background, smashing sounds and strained human voices. Something flashed past, right at the edge of the screen, leaving a thick trail of blood behind it. It was moving too quickly to be identified, and though it was big enough to be human, it didn’t move like anything human. Someone was crying, somewhere off camera, sobbing like all hope was gone. Not far away, someone else was laughing breathlessly. It wasn’t a good sound. The background shouting grew louder, thick with rage and pain and horror. And then someone screamed, a vile, triumphant sound that went on and on, far past the point that a human throat should have been able to sustain it.

“What is that?” said Happy. “What the hell is that?”

Abruptly, the sound shut off. As though all the throats had been cut at once. Suddenly, someone was sitting in front of the camera, staring at the screen. As though he’d always been there, and they’d only just noticed. The image was a man’s head and shoulders, blocking any view of what might have been happening behind him. A man’s face, gaunt with shock and horror… and something else none of them could identify-a strange, almost alien aspect. It took JC a moment to realise that the man wasn’t blinking though tears ran jerkily down his twitching cheeks. When he started speaking, his voice was harsh and strained, actually painful to listen to, as though he’d damaged it from too much screaming.

“The world is over. The world we know is over. Wave it good-bye, we shall not see its like again. I have seen God. Or his angels. And they are not what we thought they were. We… are not what we thought we were. What is Man, but a poor unfinished thing… I have seen the future, and it is beautiful and glorious, but we have no place in it. I can see what’s coming, and I can’t bear it…”

His hands came up to his face and without the slightest hesitation he tore out both his eyes. He threw the eyeballs away, blood streaming thickly down his face. He turned his bloody head this way and that, the dark empty eye-sockets red and jagged where he’d torn the eyelids away, too. And then he laughed, bitterly, painfully, and screamed, “I can still see!”

Something hit the camera and knocked it over on its side. The screaming man disappeared, and all that could be seen was an area of blood-spattered floor. The scream rose and rose, beyond all human limits and meaning, then the screen went blank.

“That’s all there is,” said Melody. “I don’t… that’s all there is.”

“What did he see?” said Happy. “What could make a man do that?”

“He must be dead, now,” said Melody. “He must be dead, mustn’t he?”

“Poor soul,” said Kim. “What do you think he was seeing there, at the end?”

“Don’t let it get to you,” JC said firmly. “Look around you. We just saw this laboratory, this whole floor, being wrecked. People screaming and dying. But look around you… there’s no evidence any of that happened. Do you see any blood, any bodies, or wreckage? Happy, are all our minds being interfered with, to stop us seeing the real lab?”

“No,” Happy said immediately. “I’ve got my mental shields hammered down so tight God Herself couldn’t see inside my mind. And I’m seeing the same lab as the rest of you.”

“So what did happen here?” said Melody. “Did someone… clean it all up? Or was the recording a fake?”

“What we saw on the screen was real,” JC said slowly. “I’ve no doubt about that. But there was no time stamp on the screen. So who’s to say when it happened? I mean, it must have been after the drug trial, but… not enough time has passed to clean up the mess we saw. We’re getting conflicting information here, people. I can’t believe that’s an accident. Someone wants to keep us off-balance.”

“I’ve found something else,” said Melody. Her voice was still shaking from what she’d seen, but her manner was as calm and efficient as ever. It took a lot to throw Melody. “More notes on the drug testing, from one of the doctors involved. He’s putting himself on record as being opposed to the LD50, but only after it had been administered. There’s a lot of mea culpa here, some of it almost hysterical, but… Yes. Here, he’s talking about ReSet, and how it didn’t just re-establish the human body’s factory settings. It went much further than that. You’ve all heard about junk DNA, right? All the DNA in the human genome that’s been there forever, but we haven’t got a clue what it does. What it’s for. ReSet awakened, or activated, all of the human junk DNA and set it to work making it do what it was originally supposed to do. To make us… into what we were supposed to be. There’s another vid file. Do you want to see it?”

“Not really,” said Happy. “But we have to. We need to know what’s going on.”

“Good soldier,” said JC.

“Shut up, or I will slap you,” said Happy.

This time, the doctor’s head and shoulders immediately filled the screen. Middle-aged, balding, in a white lab coat too small for him. There was a spray of fresh blood across the left side of his neck and shoulder, clearly not his. His face was deathly pale from shock, his eyes wide, his mouth trembling. He looked quickly about him, as though not sure he was alone, but there were none of the unnerving background sounds from the first vid file. The doctor squirmed in his chair and took a deep breath, visibly bracing himself. He stared into the camera and started talking, no name, no introduction, no build-up. Just the stumbling words of a man desperate to be heard.

“ReSet never was what they told us it was. Curing problems in the human body was only the first step. The bait in the trap, to get us interested. We weren’t told what it would do next, what it was always meant to do. ReSet had another purpose. He knew. He knew that all along. That’s why he funded us. ReSet was intended to make us all that we could be. All we were meant to be. We were never meant to be human. Not merely human. Somehow, part of our DNA got shut down, suppressed, frozen in place. So instead of becoming what we were meant to be, we got stuck part of the way. What we know as Humanity was only meant to be a stepping-stone on the way to something else. But now ReSet has helped finish the job! Taken the test subjects all the way to the end of the line! They’re not human any more. They’re the New People. That’s what they are. Not superhuman, not more than human… Something else. Gods. And monsters.”

He stopped to laugh briefly, a sad and bitter sound. “ That is what we were meant to be. Gods and monsters? Intelligent design, or evolution’s last laugh? Who knows… All of our knowledge and civilisation was a mistake, because what we were supposed to be would never have needed them.”

He started laughing again, and this time he couldn’t stop. He rocked back and forth in his chair and laughed his sanity away.

Melody shut the screen down. “There is more… but I don’t think we need to see it. I doubt he had anything else to say.”

“So,” said JC. “ReSet rewrote the test subjects, from the bottom up, transforming the ones that didn’t die into New People. Whatever they are. And they’re still here, presumably somewhere above us. Those that survived the process… I think we need to go up and have a nice little chat with them.”

“I just knew he was going to say that,” said Happy. “Didn’t you just know he was going to say that?”

“And what do you mean we, Pale Face?” said Melody. “You heard the mad doctor, gods and monsters, all in the same package. That does not sound like someone you can stroll up to and have a nice little chat with! Give me one good reason why we need to go up and talk with these very scary New People?”

“Because they’re behind everything that’s happening here,” said JC. “That’s why it’s been so easy for us to get answers. They wanted us to know. Be honest, Melody-would you have been able to open up those files so easily under normal conditions?”

“No,” said Melody, reluctantly. “I’m good, but I’m not that good.”

“I don’t think we’re going to be allowed to leave until we’ve seen this through,” said JC. “We’re here for a purpose. I think… these New People want something from us.”

“Why us?” said Happy, plaintively. “Why is it always us?”

“They might want us dead,” said Melody. “Have you considered that?”

“If they’d wanted you dead, you’d be dead by now,” said Kim. Everyone looked at her. She shrugged. “That’s what I’m feeling.”

“Anything else you’d like to share?” snapped Happy.

Melody leaned in close to him. “Don’t upset the dead girl,” she murmured. “You really want a ghost mad at you?”

Kim surprised them all by seriously considering Happy’s question, her eyes far away. “Someone is hiding from us. Close by.”

They all looked quickly around, but the long laboratory stretched away before them, open and still and quiet and completely empty.

“Is that it?” said JC.

“For now, yes,” said Kim. “I’m not like Happy. I don’t see or hear things like he does. I just get feelings.”

“I feel things,” protested Happy.

“Of course you do,” said Melody. “In your own special way.”

“Meanwhile, back at the theorising,” JC said determinedly. “Someone was running those ghost shells, down in the lobby. Could that have been the New People? And if so, were they responsible for their deaths?”

“Seems like they killed all the scientists and doctors, and even some of their own,” said Melody. “What’s a few policemen and security men, after that?”

“Hold everything,” said Happy. “Kim’s right-someone else is here with us.”

They all looked round again. Still nothing. The open planning and the bright fluorescent light left nowhere to hide.

“They’re here,” Happy insisted, his eyes wide and scared. “Lots of them. Getting closer all the while. And they don’t feel at all friendly.”

JC looked at Kim, and she nodded quickly. “They’re coming from a direction I don’t understand. From… outside reality.”

“Human?” said JC.

“I don’t think so,” said Happy.

“Not any more,” said Kim. “They feel… awful. Like something human turned inside out, so all the bad things show. JC, I’m scared.”

“Dead people, come back as something other than people,” said Happy, frowning suddenly. He might have been talking to himself. “Some ghosts are stronger than others. Some are only images, trapped in a repeating moment of Time like insects in amber. Some are recordings, stone tapes playing back. Some are what remains after death. Things that won’t stay dead, or all the way dead, because they’re driven by some overwhelming purpose. And some ghosts are predators… leeching energy from the living to maintain their half-life existence in the waking world.

“It’s getting cold, just like in the lobby. Something is sucking all the life energy out of this place, so the ghosts can bleed in from whatever bolt-hole they’ve found to manifest here, with the living.”

“Who is it, Happy?” JC said quietly. “Who is it that’s coming?”

“The Doctors,” said Happy. “Slaughtered and butchered here by their own creations, driven insane just by being here when it happened.”

“Are you saying that simply being around these New People is enough to drive humans crazy?” said Melody.

“They’re too much for us,” said Happy, dreamily. “We can’t cope. Witnessing the change was enough to blow all the Doctors’ fuses. That’s what we’ve got here-the flotsam and jetsam of a radical experiment, the fall-out and debris from the creation of a new thing. Mad Doctor ghosts, riding the coat-tails of the New People, soaking up the energies released to maintain their insane existence after death.”

“Happy?” said JC. “Happy, can you hear me? You’ve gone too far; you need to come back to us.”

“I see you,” said Happy, staring down the long laboratory at something only he could see. “I see you…”

Melody stepped in front of him, blocking his view. She raised both hands to cup his face tenderly, meeting his gaze with her own.

“Come back to us, Happy. Come back to me. Don’t leave me here alone, in the light.”

His eyes snapped back into focus, and he smiled at her. “I never knew your voice could reach so far. All right, I’m back. I don’t like it, but I’m back. What’s happening, and is it too late to head for the exit?”

“The Doctor… is in,” said a voice, seeming to float down the long, open floor towards them. A foul, desiccated voice, dripping with ill will.

The whole floor was changing. The very structure and constituents of the long laboratory became warped and twisted, wrenched out of shape by unnatural forces. Advance harbingers of the Mad Doctor ghosts, altering the world into something more to their liking, something more able to support their awful existence. Making the world over into a reflection of their own insane needs and wishes. Solid surfaces slumped, flowing and re-forming. Metal ran away in lumpy streams, like melting wax, while scientific equipment heaved and turned, taking on new shapes and meanings. The walls bowed slowly inwards, and the ceiling drooped. The light intensified, becoming painfully bright-perhaps because the Mad Doctors wanted what was happening to be clearly seen, and appreciated. Or perhaps to make the hunting easier.

The computer Melody had been working on swelled up suddenly. The monitor screen burst stickily and vomited its contents onto the floor. The pool spread, as bits of silicon and steel grew legs and scuttled across the floor like maddened insects. All across the laboratory, machines unfolded like blossoming flowers, becoming strange enigmatic things with too many angles. The glass windows all along the far wall disappeared. Where they should have been was nothing -an absence in the world, something the eye couldn’t even acknowledge.

“Scalpel, scalpel, shining bright, in the horror of the night,” said the voice. “What unnatural hand and eye can undo thy yielding flesh?”

“I am getting serious operating-theatre vibes,” said Happy. “And not in a good way.”

“Look,” said Melody, pointing down the long floor. “The Mad Doctors are here.”

They came scuttling and crawling, around and over and in between the warped and twisted structures that now filled the laboratory. They moved in sudden darts, like white-coated spiders, sometimes on two legs and sometimes on more. Mad Doctors in pristine white gowns and blood-spattered surgical masks, ghostly hands clutching scalpels and bone-saws and sharp steel probes. Their eyes were cool and vicious and full of a terrible, hot insanity. They had left their humanity behind them when they died and become something else, with new thoughts in their twisted minds, and dark foul emotions.

There was no way of telling how many Mad Doctor ghosts there were. They were here and there and everywhere, blinking in and out, never still.

“We can see what’s wrong with you,” said the voice. It didn’t seem to come from any one ghost in particular. “We can see what’s bad in you. We’re going to cut it out and play with it, and make it ours. And oh what fun we’ll have-while you last.”

“Happy,” JC said quietly. “Are they really there? I mean- physically there?”

“Oh yes,” said Happy. “Very, very definitely solid and real… These are powerful manifestations, JC. Dead, but not departed. I think

… they exist in the spaces between spaces, in the odd little gaps and lacunae of reality, hiding like trap-door spiders. Think of them as a by-product of the process that made the New People. Or think of them as aetheric parasites. Remaking the laboratory was them putting on something more comfortable. They want to terrify us. I think they feed on fear.”

“They’re still ghosts,” said JC. “And we deal with ghosts.”

“They’re predators,” said Kim, her nose wrinkled with disgust. “And they’re hungry. I can see them more clearly than you can. They’re not human any more. I don’t have words for what they’ve made themselves into, for what they really are. They’re insane, JC, and their madness is contagious. It’s affecting the world.”

“Can we destroy them?” said JC.

“They’re dead,” said Kim. “But not all the way. You might say.. . they’re clinging on to existence by their fingernails. Their madness lets them do impossible things, but that very madness is what makes their grip on reality so precarious. Pry them loose, JC.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” said JC, rubbing his hands together in a brisk and hearty fashion.

“But what are we going to do?” said Happy. “I don’t see our usual bag of tricks working with these ghosts. And those scalpels look really sharp.”

“We’ll do what we always do,” JC said grandly. “Experiment, with extreme prejudice.”

“How do I get out of this chicken-shit outfit?” said Happy.

The Mad Doctor ghosts came charging forward. Some ran, some scuttled, some hopped and leapt like white-coated bugs. Some swarmed over the crazily outcropping structures they’d created. Some walked jerkily, in sudden strobelike motions, as though they couldn’t be bothered to cross all the space they travelled through but rather jumped from bit to bit. They brandished their cutting tools with horrible glee, laughing the vague but confident laugh of the utterly insane. Their eyes were deep and dark, horrifyingly empty of anything a sane man could hope to understand.

Melody stepped forward and opened fire with her machine pistol. She swept it back and forth with cool precision, raking the ranks of the Mad Doctor ghosts with a steady stream of bullets. But she couldn’t seem to hit any of them. Some of the ghosts darted back and forth with inhuman speed, easily avoiding the gunfire. Others simply weren’t there when the bullets arrived. And some simply stood and laughed at her as the bullets went straight through them. Bullets ricocheted from warped structures or sank into moist spongy surfaces. The Mad Doctor ghosts laughed their hateful laughs and kept on coming.

JC glanced at Happy. “Even in the midst of all this, I have to ask-where does she keep that gun when she’s not using it?”

“I’ve never dared ask,” said Happy.

“Which part of they’re already dead did you miss, Melody?” said Kim. “You’re not going to take them out with a bullet. You’d have more luck clubbing them over the head with the barrel.”

“Can’t blame a girl for trying,” Melody said airily, making her machine pistol disappear again. “I am now officially open to fresh ideas. Preferably very soon because those bastards are getting really close.”

A Mad Doctor ghost appeared out of nowhere, leaping in from the extended blind spot where the windows used to be. He threw himself at Kim and passed straight through her. She cried out, in shock and horror. The Mad Doctor ghost howled and shrieked and jumped up to run about on the ceiling, slashing at the air with his scalpel. JC moved in close beside Kim, half reaching out to hold her.

“Are you all right, Kim?”

“It wasn’t only his body that went through me,” said Kim. “It was his mind, too. Or what was left of it. His thoughts don’t make sense any more, JC.”

JC nodded quickly, pulled another of his holy-light grenades out of an inner pocket, primed it, and tossed it into the midst of the Mad Doctor ghosts. But it never got there. While it was still in mid air, the ghost standing on the ceiling caught it easily with one hand, then dropped down to squat on a massive steel shape. The Mad Doctor ghost shook its head violently back and forth as it ate the grenade, biting large chunks off it. The bloody surgical mask split like a crimson smile to allow the ghost to chew on the grenade like a toffee apple. Holy light burst out of the grenade in sudden fierce blasts, and the Mad Doctor ghost sucked it all up.

“Close your mouth, JC,” Kim said quietly. “And tell me you’ve got something else up your sleeve apart from your arm.”

“Of course,” JC said quickly. “It’s just that… I rather had my hopes set on those grenades.”

“I’m picking up something!” said Happy. “There’s someone else on this floor, apart from us and those bloody things! I think someone’s running the Mad Doctor ghosts, the same way they ran the shells in the lobby! Someone or something is connecting them, supporting them!”

“I told you they were barely hanging on,” said Kim.

A Mad Doctor ghost slipped and slid across the floor towards them, grinning with malicious intent, moving faster and faster as though gravity and friction were things he didn’t need to bother with any more. He brandished a gleaming bone-saw with horrid glee. JC went forward to meet it, and the bone-saw lashed out with supernatural speed. JC only had time to get his arm up to protect his throat, and then the jagged razor-sharp edge slashed through his sleeve and arm. Blood spread quickly across the ice-cream white sleeve. He didn’t cry out with pain, only glanced at the stain on his sleeve and roared with rage.

“Look at what you’ve done to my best suit, you bastard!” JC grabbed the nearest half-melted chair and brought it down on the ghost’s head with all his strength. And perhaps because the Mad Doctor ghost had made the things in the laboratory part of its world, the chair smashed the ghost to the ground. JC hit the ghost with the chair again and again, rage fuelling his strength, and the ghost scuttled away across the floor with JC close behind.

Half a dozen Mad Doctor ghosts hit Melody and Happy from every side at once, forcing them apart. Melody spun and danced, punched and kicked, and held the ghosts at bay through sheer ferocity, for a while. Scalpels and bone-saws cut viciously at her from every side, and every cut came that much closer to getting through. Melody’s fists and feet shot out with deadly skill and furious energy, but none of it did her any good. Sometimes her hands connected with something like flesh and bone, but more often they glanced stickily from a grinning face or sailed right through. The ghosts were only as solid as they chose to be. They faded in and out, even passing through each other as they crowded round Melody. She began to get the feeling that the fight was only continuing because they liked to see her dance.

Happy made a run for it, first chance he got, and the giggling ghosts chased him in and out of the distorted surroundings, cutting at him with their sharp blades, to keep him moving. Every now and again, a ghost would appear suddenly to block his path, and Happy would hit it with a concentrated blast of telepathic disbelief. The Mad Doctor ghost would burst apart in an explosion of ectoplasmic strings, then pull itself back together as Happy ran on. After a while, he noticed that while the ghosts scrambled around and over the maze of enigmatic structures that filled the whole floor, they never ran through any of it. They had entered the physical world and made it theirs, so now they had to follow at least some of its rules. Happy sprinted down a narrow channel, thinking fiercely, and when he got to the end, he stopped and spun around and gave the following Mad Doctor ghosts the finger. They howled with rage and came leaping and skittering after him. He threw his whole weight against the nearest towering structure and forced it over, to fall on top of the ghosts. The sheer weight slammed them to the floor and held them there, and Happy did his special victory dance-only to stop abruptly in mid step as the ghosts began to slowly ooze up through the heavy weight.

Happy looked quickly around him, then froze in place as he realised the far end of the laboratory floor had disappeared. In its place, strange lights flared and flickered in an off-kilter honeycomb of caves and depressions, held together with shimmering ectoplasmic strands. Thick fluids dripped, lubricants for the cells of the honeycomb as they turned and revolved around each other. As Happy watched, new cells slowly formed at the edge of the honeycomb, forcing their way further into the world. Happy stared at it, studying it with more than his eyes, and knew it for what it was. The world the Mad Doctor ghosts had made for themselves, located in the spaces between spaces, so they could hide like rats in the walls of reality. The ghosts had brought their world with them, and it was making itself at home.

A Mad Doctor ghost appeared suddenly before Happy, and he reacted instinctively by kicking it good and hard in the balls. The ghost dropped its bone-saw and crashed to its knees. Happy kicked it in the head, and it fell over backwards.

“The longer they stay in our world, the more bound by its rules they become,” said Kim, drifting up by the ceiling. “That’s what they want-to become real again. They don’t know they’re dead.”

Happy nodded quickly, and picked up the ghost’s bone-saw. It was cold and fragile in his hand at first, hard to get a hold on, but the longer he hung on to it, the heavier and more real it felt. The ghost reared up before Happy, screaming and howling as it reached for its weapon. And Happy cut its head off with one hard blow. The head fell to the floor and shattered slowly, like a smashed egg in slow motion. The headless body drifted apart, like smoke on the wind. The bone-saw disappeared from Happy’s hand.

He looked back down the laboratory, in time to see the Mad Doctor ghosts pull Melody down and swarm all over her. Scalpels flashed brightly. Happy yelled her name and sprinted back the way he’d come. Melody fought as hard as she could, but she was only human, and her attackers weren’t, any more. They held her down with their cold hands, while one of them pressed a scalpel against her belly.

“It’s all got to come out,” said a familiar voice. “The insides are the best part. Flesh is wasted on the living.”

Happy hit the ghosts like a cannon ball, scattering them with his sudden appearance and a telepathic blast of sheer rage and fury. The ghosts were blown away by his fierce concentration and ran madly this way and that, flailing their arms, light glinting fiercely from their surgical weapons. Happy hauled Melody to her feet, and they stood back to back as the Mad Doctor ghosts remembered their purpose and circled them slowly.

“You hurt?” Happy asked Melody.

“I’ll live,” said Melody. “Any chance you can do that again?”

“Not for a while,” said Happy. “That kind of thing takes a lot out of you.”

“Any other ideas?”

“Not really.”

“Terrific,” said Melody.

JC had found Kim. “Is there anything you can do to help? Anything you can see here that we can’t?”

Kim nodded slowly, her head bobbing directly below the ceiling. “The ghosts all look the same to me. They’re all Mad Doctor ghosts-no trace of individuality. It’s like they’ve all been overwritten by something stronger. Whatever they were exposed to didn’t only make them crazy, it made them all crazy in exactly the same way. Someone has taken advantage of that to graft on purpose and intent. Driving them on, like it did the shells. These Mad Doctor ghosts are really just more of the building’s attack dogs, another layer of the New People’s defences.”

She broke off abruptly as one of the Mad Doctor ghosts came dancing along the ceiling towards her. It shot past her, scalpel flashing as it lashed out at her, and Kim cried out in shock and horror as the vicious blade cut deep into her ghostly flesh. Blood-tinged ectoplasm ran down her arm and dripped from her fingertips.

“Paper cuts scissors, doctor cuts patient,” said the Mad Doctor ghost, pirouetting unnaturally slowly in place. “You’re all grist to the mill to us, the living and the dead. Suffering is such sweet sorrow, and we eat it up with spoons. We will cut you all up and put you back together, remake you in our own fashion, to serve our special needs and pleasures. And you will last forever, and your torment will never end.”

“JC?” said Kim. “Please do something. I’m really not ready for a fate worse than death.”

“JC!” yelled Happy. “We’re surrounded! And their world is invading ours! Any suggestions would be gratefully received!”

“Kim says they’re all linked!” JC yelled back. “Can you find that link and break it?”

“Now I know what to look for…” said Happy. He concentrated, and his face lightened a little. “Yes! It’s there! Like a signal, connecting and commanding them. So if I interrupt that signal, like this…”

The Mad Doctor ghosts cried out and lurched in every direction at once, like puppets whose strings had been yanked out of them. Lost, without purpose or identity, they flailed madly, striking at each other and the empty air. They were still dangerous, still foul and malignant, but for the first time they seemed vulnerable.

“Time to go old school, I think,” said JC. He took a phial of holy water from inside his jacket, unscrewed the cap, and poured the blessed water carefully over each of his hands in turn. And then he walked quite deliberately into the midst of the Mad Doctor ghosts and laid those hands on them one at a time, speaking the powerful old Words of Exorcism. The ghosts crumbled and dissolved under his blessed touch, as the Words broke their connection with this world. One by one they vanished, driven out of reality, sent on to whatever was waiting for them. None of them ran, or fought, or tried to avoid his touch. They stood trembling where they were, like rabbits staring into approaching headlights. Until he came at last to the final ghost who held up one hand for him to pause for a moment. It dropped its scalpel, which disappeared before it hit the floor, and pulled down its blood-spattered surgical mask, to reveal a surprisingly human face. The eyes were still tormented but no loner insane.

“Go up,” he said. “Go all the way up. The New People are waiting. But beware. We looked into the Medusa’s gaze. Don’t you make the same mistake.”

JC laid his hand on the ghost’s head, and it faded away, as though it had only been hanging on to say those last few words.

JC nodded slowly and went back to join the others. Kim dropped down from the ceiling to drift along at his side. Happy and Melody were leaning on each other, breathing hard. The laboratory had returned to its original shape and purpose, and the bad world at the end of the floor was gone. JC started to say something, then stopped and looked at the tear in the sleeve of his jacket. The crimson stain was still there, from where the ghost’s scalpel had cut him, but when JC pushed the edges apart, the sleeve was cut and bloodied; but the flesh beneath that was untouched.

“My arm doesn’t hurt any more,” he said. “And I don’t mean it’s healed-more like it was never cut at all.”

“Same here,” said Melody. Happy was too busy checking himself in all sorts of important places to speak.

“And I’m fine, too!” said Kim. “Though I still don’t know how he was able to touch me…”

“Belief,” Happy said finally. “It’s all about belief. They were imposing their world-view on us, so if they thought they could cut us, they could.”

“You’re right,” said JC.

“Someone take a photo,” said Happy. “Moments like this don’t happen very often.”

“You were right when you said this isn’t what we signed up for,” said JC. He looked slowly around him. “This is above and beyond the call of our pay grade. We’re investigators, not soldiers. But… someone has to stop these New People, and we’re all there is.”

“You heard the loony ghost,” Happy said reluctantly. “The New People want to see us, and they’re not going to let us out of here till they get what they want.”

“But are they the ones running the shells, and the Mad Doctor ghosts, or is there another unseen party, operating from the shadows?” said Melody.

“Wonderful,” said Happy. “More complications.”

JC looked around at the high tech scattered across the laboratory. A lot of it had been smashed or knocked about, but some still seemed more or less intact. He looked at Melody.

“Any chance you could use something here to get a message out to Patterson, or the Boss? Tell them what’s going on, get them to send in some serious reinforcements?”

“You really think the New People would let us talk to the outside?” said Melody. “I mean, I’ll try if you like, but…”

JC looked at Happy, who shook his head immediately. “I’ve been mentally yelling for help for ages. Screaming at the top of my mental voice. No response.”

JC scowled, folded his arms, and thought hard. “We know a lot more than when we started,” he said finally. “But I don’t think we’ve got anything like the full picture yet. If these New People really are everything they’re supposed to be, why are they waiting around for us? No… something else is going on, and we need to find out what. So let’s go up and take a walk through the other floors and see what there is to see, before we go have our nice little chat with the New People.”

“I just knew he was going to say that, again,” said Happy.

“You must be psychic!” Kim said sweetly.