Ghost of a Smile (18 page)

An oversized liver, dark purple like a veined balloon, shot straight for Melody's face. It came at her from an unexpected angle, and she only got an arm up in time to block it. The heavy organ clamped onto her arm, wrapping around it, and the sheer weight was almost enough to pull her over. The heavy muscles in the liver ground against her arm, trying to crawl up the arm to reach her face, her mouth. Melody dropped her weapon and grabbed at the organ with her hand. Her fingers skidded helplessly from the tough, leathery exterior. Secreted acids stung her palm and fingers.

“Don't let it near your mouth!” yelled Kim. “It wants to crawl inside you!”

“I know!” yelled Melody.

She stopped grabbing at the liver, pulled back her head, and head-butted the ugly thing. The impact sent her staggering backwards, but the liver lost its grip on her arm and fell away. It hit the floor hard but didn't break. Melody picked up the nearest chair and clubbed the organ to death.

Happy tried to stop the advancing organs with a telepathic blast, summoning all his mental strength to force an attack past the deadening oppression that weighed on his mind, but even his concentrated disbelief couldn't affect things that had no minds, no sense of self, only the brute will to survive. A heart the size of a pit bull terrier came flying in out of nowhere and slammed against his chest, driving him back several steps. It clung to him, pulsing in rhythm to his own heart, sweating heavy acids as it tried to burn its way through his chest, to burn out his heart and replace it. Happy didn't know whether he'd survive such a process and didn't want to find out the hard way. The heart snuggled against his chest with horrid familiarity. It wanted in. It wanted to be in him. Happy tried to pry the thing loose, crying out with horror and disgust.

Kim floated this way and that, her face screwed up with indecision, not knowing what to do for the best. JC seemed to be holding his own, and Melody was doing bloody business with her chair. Happy seemed to be the most in trouble, so she dropped her feet to the floor again, strode forward, and grabbed at the heart on Happy's chest with her ghostly hands. Her fingers plunged deep inside, and the huge heart convulsed, turned grey, withered, and fell away. It was dead before it hit the floor. Happy clawed at his acid-holed shirt with both hands, making mindless noises of distress.

“That's it!” said JC. “They can't stand contact with you, Kim! Because you're dead, because the energies that manifest you clash with the energies that motivate them . . . Something like that. I don't know! Maybe you just scare them to death! Everyone crowd around Kim!”

He and Happy and Melody formed a tight circle around Kim. The living organs surrounded them, but stopped dead when they got too close, as though there was some invisible barrier they couldn't cross. They obviously couldn't stand to get too close to the dead girl.

“All right,” said Melody. “Now what? They can't get to us, but we still appear to be trapped.”

“I'm thinking,” said JC.

“Think faster!” said Happy.

“The Bio Reactor!” said JC. “All of these things were born of the Bio Reactor, which I'm guessing is tucked away behind that far partition. Happy, can you see any connection between the living organs and the Reactor?”

“Yes . . . something!” said Happy. “Don't ask me what it is, but it's there!”

“Kim, head straight for it,” said JC. “Walk slowly and carefully, and we'll all stick close to you.”

“Very close,” said Happy.

Kim stepped forward, and the others moved with her. The organs fell back, as though panicked by something they couldn't stand or understand. Kim and JC, Happy and Melody made their way down the long length of the open-plan floor, and the organs moved along with them, still surrounding them but maintaining a more-than-respectful distance. A few let go of the ceiling overhead and dropped on the group, but JC and Melody were always ready to beat them aside. Happy would have, too, but he was so completely unsettled, he was never ready in time. He was breathing painfully hard, and his eyes were wide and wild.

They finally eased past the partition wall, and there was the Bio Reactor, waiting for them. It didn't look like much—a great metal kiln some ten feet tall, its top brushing against the ceiling tiles, maybe eight feet wide around the base. A single hatch faced them, closed, with a wild flaring light rising and falling behind it. The glowing hatch glared at them all like a single unblinking eye.

“I'm still not picking up a single intelligent thought,” said Happy, his voice definitely a little higher than it should have been. “But I am getting a sense of
presence
. . . From the Bio Reactor, not the organs. It knows we're here. It knows we're the enemy. It's planning something . . .”

The metal hatch slammed open, and a huge leathery tentacle shot out. It was made up of organ and muscle tissue, bonded together, to make a single gripping organism. It lunged at the group, and they scattered despite themselves. Kim cried out as she was left alone, and the tentacle shot straight at her. It whipped right through her, and immediately the whole tentacle withered and shrivelled up, all the life going out of it as it fell limply to the floor.

“That's it!” said JC. “Kim, walk right into the Bio Reactor! All the way in and out the other side!”

He stepped forward to encourage her, and the tentacle came to life again. It still had one end inside the Bio Reactor, and new life pulsed down the length of it. It snapped around JC and pulled him down. He cried out as the muscle tissue constricted around him like a snake. Melody and Happy rushed forward, grabbed at the tentacle and tried to pry it off, but it was stronger than all three of them put together. Kim hesitated, and JC yelled at her.

“Never mind me! Walk through the Reactor! It can't hurt you!”

“I can't leave you!” said Kim.

“You have to! Now move! Move!”

Kim ran forward, plunging through the open hatch and inside the Bio Reactor. The moment she entered the huge device, the fierce light snapped off, and the tentacle dropped down, dead. JC wriggled his way out of its grasp with help from Happy and Melody. They put him back on his feet and let him lean inconspicuously on them until his legs were firm again. Kim came out from behind the lifeless machine and floated back to glare at JC.

“I can't believe you made me do that!”

“It was necessary,” said JC, only a little breathless. “And part of the job. We all play to our strengths. I was almost sure it couldn't hurt you.”

“Almost?”
Kim's glare was very cold. “We will have words about this later, JC.”

She turned her back on him, and moved quickly back down the long floor. The others followed after her. Oversized organs lay everywhere, dead and already rotting . . Those stuck to the walls and the ceiling were falling off, in ones and twos, to splatter and fall apart on the cold, hard floor. The smell was appalling.

“You know,” said JC. “I could really go for a good fry-up, right now.”

“Animal,” said Kim, not looking back.

SIX

“I am getting really fed up with climbing stairs,” said Happy, in a more than usually fed-up voice. “It's not like they ever take us anywhere nice. And it still
feels
like we're going down, rather than up. Like we're descending into Hell, step by step by step . . .”

“If you were any gloomier, you'd walk around under your own personal thunderstorm,” said Melody.

“If the New People really are superhumans, or perhaps more properly posthuman,” said JC, “it should feel like we're ascending towards Heaven. Or at the very least towards Olympus, to commune with the gods.”

“And yet it doesn't,” said Happy. “Funny, that . . .”

“Not talking to you, when you're in this kind of mood,” said JC. “Melody, you're the one with all the information at her fingertips. What's supposed to be next?”

“Could be anything,” said Melody. “There was nothing at all about this floor on any of the computers. Could be empty.”

“We're not that lucky,” said Happy.

“Not listening to Mr. Moody,” said JC. “Hardly seems likely, does it? A whole floor left empty, in such a highrent area?”

“Nothing about this building makes sense,” said Melody. “I don't think MSI knew half of what was really going on here. Someone's been playing games, and we're the latest contestants.”

“You mean, whoever it was that supplied the extra funding for ReSet?” said Happy, to show he wasn't being left out of anything.

“Who can say?” said JC. “Upwards and onwards, my children . . .”

“Oh God, he's getting enthusiastic again,” said Happy. “That's always dangerous.”

“Shut up, Happy,” said Melody.

They stopped at the swing doors, listened briefly, then walked right in, on the grounds that being cautious hadn't got them anywhere before. JC stopped the others with an upraised hand the moment they were inside. The whole of the floor was full of thick, curling mists, a pearlescent grey fog that stretched away for as far as the eye could see. Like a great grey ocean, greater than any building could hope to contain. There was a definite sense of being
outside
, and that the fog stretched away forever. Strange lights came and went in the pearl grey reaches of the fog, which moved constantly, slowly, as though troubled by some unfelt gusting breeze. The mists curled and roiled, churning in slow vortices, and the lights came and went, came and went . . .

“Okay,” said JC. “This is new. You don't normally get fog inside a building.”

“Unless something's gone seriously wrong with reality,” said Melody. “Which is always possible, given everything that's happened here recently.”

“I like fog,” said Happy. “Fog is nice. Fog is not dangerous, or threatening, or liable to jump on you without warning. I can live with fog.”

“I'm more worried about what might be hiding in the fog,” said JC.

“You see.” said Happy. “You had to go and spoil it, didn't you?”

“Everyone stay right where you are,” said JC. “Don't get out of sight of each other, or of the doors. Lose track of where you are, and you might never get out of here.”

“Life was so much easier when I was paranoid,” Happy said wistfully. “When I was delusional, and the world really wasn't out to get me.”

“It's not simply fog,” said Kim. They all looked at her, but she had nothing else to say.

“I think the creation of the New People damaged the state of reality itself, inside this building,” said JC. “Or at least, I hope the changes are confined to this building . . . Either way, their arrival has placed an unnatural strain upon the local environment. You've heard of sick building syndrome, where the building itself can affect people's health in unfortunate ways? That's low-level
genius loci
at work. But there is also haunted building syndrome, a building that's gone bad, that either creates ghosts or calls ghosts to it. The whole of Chimera House has been adversely affected, psychically stained, by recent events, an imprinting that will take decades, maybe even centuries, to clean up and make right. Things that would normally be improbable, or wildly unlikely, become more possible in places like this. Even inevitable . . .”

“Like the Bio Reactor's mobile organs?” said Kim.

“Exactly,” said Melody. “You don't normally get to see things like that outside of a Cronenberg film.”

“
They Came from Within
!” said Happy. “Oh, that's a classic! I had to sleep with the lights on for days, and I never felt the same about swimming pools.”

“Strange little man,” said Kim. “I've never cared much for horror movies.”

“Did you join the wrong team!” said Happy.

“Shut up, Happy,” said JC. He stared thoughtfully at the curling fog. “When this is all over, we may have to destroy the entire building. Blow it up, tear it down, crush the rubble, and scatter it at sea.”

“Chimera House has become a strange attractor,” said Melody. “Attracting, pulling ghosts to it.”

“Like moths to a candle,” said Happy.

“Oh dear,” said Kim. “You mean proper ghosts? People ghosts? I've always found them rather unnerving.”

“But you are one!” said Happy.

“But I still think I'm human,” said Kim. “I still feel human. Even though I do sometimes see or hear things that only the dead can know.”

“Like what?” said Happy.

She stared at him very seriously. “You really don't want to know, Happy.”

“I'm a Class Eleven Telepath!” said Happy. “I see things every day that would make grown men rip their own heads off!”

“But I'm dead,” said Kim.

“You're right,” said Happy. “That does trump a hell of a lot of things.”

“I don't know much about ghosts,” said Kim. “Despite being one. It's one of the reasons I joined this team. I don't understand ghosts. They scare me as much as they do you.”

“I am going to change the subject,” said Happy. “Because this one is creeping the hell out of me. Given that the computers didn't have anything to say about this floor, and so therefore it couldn't possibly contain anything important or significant, why don't we skip it and move on up?”

“Doesn't the fog fascinate you?” said JC.

“Let me think about that for a moment no not at all,” said Happy. “I have officially decided I can take it or leave it.”

“We are staying,” JC said firmly. “Because we need all the information we can gather as to what went down here before we have to meet the New People. In a situation like this, information is ammunition. And . . . we really don't want to overlook anything that might come sneaking after us and creep up on us from behind. Do we?”