Ghost of a Smile (21 page)

“I really would like to run some tests on you, JC,” said Melody. “Put you under a microscope and see what's become of you. For your own sake, as well as my curiosity. Glowing that fiercely can't be good for you.”

“Hold everything, go previous,” said Happy. “Are you talking radiation? Kim was glowing all over me, back there! Am I going to be sterile now? Are you going to make me get my ya-yas out in your laboratory, Melody, and poke them with sticks?”

“You know you love it when I wear the nurse costume,” said Melody. “Now behave yourself. The glow isn't any form of radiation I'm familiar with. I have done some research. It's not even light, as such, it's the indication of an Outside force coming into contact with our lesser world.”

“Not really any wiser,” said Happy.

“That's why I won't let you run any more tests,” said JC. “I have enough worries as it is, without you adding to them.” He looked at Happy. “Nothing's changed, Happy. Not really. I'm still me, in every way that matters. I never envied you your telepathy, I always knew what it did to you. Do you think this is any different?”

“God, we're one hell of a team,” said Happy. “The psychically walking wounded.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Melody.

“I am, I am,” said Happy.

“So, are we still a team?” said JC.

“Of course we're a team!” said Melody. “Who else would put up with the likes of us?”

“Yay!” said Kim, uncurling in mid air. “We totally bonded! Yay for us!”

“Oh God, now she's getting enthusiastic, too,” growled Happy. “Bad enough when JC does it. I warn you all now, there is only so much sweetness and light I can put up with before the projectile vomiting starts.”

“Since we are all clearly back to our usual selves, make yourself useful, Happy,” said JC. “Scan the surroundings. See if you can pick up any hint of what we might be heading into.”

“Way ahead of you, as always,” said Happy. “I've been trying to force a scan through the general psychic jamming all the way up here, but it's useless. The entire building's affected, and it's only getting worse the higher we go. The closer we get to the New People. It's like they've psychically pissed in all the wells, poisoning the whole building's ambience. If I didn't know better, I'd say Chimera House is possessed. It's like normal reality has been overwritten by something far more powerful.”

“The New People,” said JC, thinking. “We are going to have to do something about them.”

“When we finally get to meet these all-powerful, godlike people, don't stand anywhere near me,” said Melody. “I plan to be right at the back saying,
He's nothing to do with me
.”

“I don't know,” said Happy, frowning. “It might be them, whatever they are now, or . . . I keep getting this feeling that someone's playing games here. And that maybe the New People are pawns who only think they've become queens and kings.”

“How very eloquent,” said Melody. “I'm impressed. Really. I told you hanging out with me would be good for you.”

“Some of you must be rubbing off on me,” Happy said solemnly.

“If not, it's not for want of trying,” said Melody.

“I swear to God, your entire life is a double entendre,” said JC. “And far too much for my innocent ears. Let us get up and let us go; the job isn't anywhere near finished yet.”

They strode up the remaining stairs two steps at a time, burst through the usual swing doors, then stopped right where they were. All the lights were turned off. It was hard to see anything. The only illumination came from outside, amber shafts of street lighting falling through the glass windows that made up most of the far wall. The situation reminded JC of the abandoned factory, and not in a good way. Most of the light was soaked up by a thick, heavy darkness that gave every indication of being very real and very solid. JC gestured sharply for the others to stay exactly where they were. The whole floor felt
wrong
to him, in so many ways.

“What's that smell?” Happy said quietly. “Can all of you smell that? It's hot and wet and . . . swampy. I'm getting rotting vegetation, murky jungle, and something quiet definitely animal. Like being inside an enclosure at the zoo. Damn, that smells bad . . .”

“The air is hot and damp,” said Melody. “Beyond damp—saturated with moisture. I was in the Amazon rain forest, as a student, and this is a lot like that . . . but inside a building? At least the ghostlight was only supposed to be fog. This feels very much like the real thing.”

“The ghostlight was created,” said JC. “So was this. You were right, Happy, someone's been messing with reality, playing games with the building and everyone in it. Someone or something has overwritten local conditions to make new worlds, inside the building. Test runs, perhaps? Tread carefully, children. We are in unknown territory.”

“Let me try the light switches,” said Melody. “Shed some illumination on what's going down here.”

“Don't,” said a Voice, from deep in the darkness. “We like it this way.”

JC strained his vision against the dark, searching for the source of the Voice. The sound of it had been harsh and brutal and inhumanly deep. Like a beast from the most savage part of the jungle that had taught itself to speak, the better to terrify its prey. Something moved, in the shadows. Huge and broad, radiating animal grace and power, and hard brute force. Old, old instincts yammered at the back of JC's mind, screaming for him to run. He shook himself hard and slapped all the light switches beside the door.

Half a dozen fluorescent lights flickered into life up on the ceiling, enough to reveal a vast tract of tropical jungle spread out before him, where the rest of the floor should have been. It seemed to stretch away forever, as though the end of the floor had become a gateway to another world. Massive trees with huge, dark trunks, and long branches drooping under the weight of heavy foliage. Dark green leaves with heavy veins and serrated edges. Hanging vines and creepers, and great pools of dark, steaming water. Thick, unfamiliar vegetation, filling in the gaps between the trees. Technicolor flowers with huge pulpy petals. The harsh buzzing of insects and the shrill cries of unknown birds.

A crimson light suffused the massive jungle, blazing blood-red from some hidden source, pointing out all the savage details of a setting that had no business inside a London office building. The rich red light made it appear like a living slaughterhouse, where red in tooth and claw was business as usual. The blood-red jungle was a place of death and suffering, and didn't care who knew it.

“They made this for us,” said the Voice, from deep in the bloody shadows. “The New People. Wasn't that nice of them? They called it all into being with the wave of a hand. So to speak. They can do things like that—play with the structure and substance of the world like a child building sand-castles.”

Every word was clear, the meaning obvious, but still the Voice grated on the ear and on the soul, vicious and savage and brutal as any beast. For all its human speech, there was nothing human in it. JC stepped forward, making a point of looking down his nose at the jungle, his whole posture suggesting he was entirely unimpressed.

“Come out where I can see you,” he said. “I don't talk to people who hide in the shadows.”

There was a pause, then a slow roll of laughter, a cruel and utterly malicious sound. “Don't be in such a hurry. We're not to everyone's taste, these days. Once I was a man, like you, but I got better. ReSet saw to that. But . . . not all of us blessed by the drug became New People. We all took the same drug, but ReSet only woke up part of our junk DNA. Perhaps it was damaged in us, or it mutated, down the millennia. Either way, we were cheated of our inheritance. We only got part of the package. Not enough to take us all the way, to what we were meant to be. We didn't get to become more than human, to become New People. No—we became monsters. Not fit to associate with the glorious and wonderful New People, up on the top floor. We are Outcasts.”

“How many of you are there?” said JC. “Maybe there's something we can do to help.”

“Help?” said the Voice. “What makes you think we want help, little man? There are two of us here, now. Male and female, as it should be. There were others, but we killed them. They were superfluous.” The Voice laughed again, a dark and nasty sound that sent shivers up and down JC's spine. “Only room for one alpha male and alpha female. The best of the best. The beast of the beast. So we killed the others and ate their bodies. Delicious . . . There's still some left if you're interested.”

JC gestured surreptitiously for Happy to ease in behind him. Without looking back, JC murmured over his shoulder, “What are you picking up, Happy? Are there really only two of them here?”

“I can't see or hear a damned thing,” Happy said quietly. “The jamming's so oppressive in here, I have to keep all my mental shields nailed down tight to stop my brains leaking out my ears. Sorry, JC, you're on your own. I'm going to go back and hide behind Melody now.”

A single dark figure moved slowly forward to the edge of the jungle, emerging from the blood-red light and the dark shadows. It was nine, ten feet tall, with broad shoulders and a vast barrel chest. It was careful to stay a silhouette against the blood-red light. Its powerful arms hung down past its knees, and the ground trembled with every step it took. It stood still, and another figure suddenly appeared beside it. Just as tall, just as massive, but something about it suggested female, to the first figure's male. They stood easily together, as though they belonged in each other's company and no-one else's, in the bloody jungle the New People had made.

“Take off your sunglasses,” said the Voice. “We want to see your eyes.”

JC did so, with his very best dramatic flourish, as though he'd meant to do it all along. His eyes glowed fiercely bright, but the golden glow didn't travel far and made no impact at all on the blood-red light. JC's eyes didn't affect the jungle or the two figures in the least. JC's breath caught in his chest as he saw them clearly for the first time. The larger figure laughed its slow, awful laugh.

“Yes . . . You have more in common with the New People than we do. You have their eyes . . .”

JC swallowed hard and fought to keep his voice steady. This would be a really bad time to sound nervous or uncertain. “Come with us. We represent an organisation that is used to dealing with strange and unnatural things. We have all kinds of specialists. We can help you.”

“Can you?” said a second Voice, the female Voice. It was just as savage, just as brutal, but there were emotional undertones that somehow made it even worse. “I don't think you understand, you Good Samaritan. Can you undo what has been done to us? Make us human again? I don't think so . . . We've moved on from being human.”

“What makes you think we'd want to go back?” said the first Voice. “To being merely human? That's your limited thinking getting in the way there. If you could only see us, and our world, the way we do . . . without your petty human preconceptions getting in the way . . . This is a glorious world, and we glory in it.”

“I can See you,” said JC. “I can See everything you are. Step forward into the light, and show yourselves if you're not ashamed to be seen.”

He put his sunglasses back on and gestured for the rest of his team to come forward and stand beside him. They did so, some more readily than others. There was a pause, and the two dark shapes moved smoothly forward into the blood-red light at the edge of the jungle. They straightened up, to show themselves off, and JC could feel the rest of his team fighting not to look away. The two figures were physically and spiritually monstrous, a blunt assault on the senses. The triumph of the beast over man. Like demons from the Pit taking on the shape of man to mock and befoul the human figure. They were both a good ten feet tall, and half as broad across the shoulders. Swelling chests, muscular arms and legs, all of it covered with thick dark fur matted with blood and shit and other things. Their hands had claws, their mouths held massive teeth, and sharp, pointed horns thrust up from their broad foreheads.

The male and female had grossly exaggerated sexual characteristics, as inhuman as every other part of them. They moved like animals, held themselves like animals, and they stank of blood and musk, of slaughter and sex. They were everything that humanity was supposed to have left behind and risen above. To look at them was to know there was nothing left in them of human reason, or human concerns. They would do what they would do because they could, and because they wanted to. They had left Humanity behind, or perhaps thrown it off, for the freedom that provided. Their faces still had human lines, but there was nothing of man or woman in them. And if the eyes are the window to the soul, only the Beast looked out.

“Oh God, JC,” said Kim. “Do you see what I'm seeing? They did this to themselves! ReSet changed them, but these shapes came from urges and needs hidden deep within them. Horrid dreams, bestial nightmares, all the things we're not supposed to want or believe in . . .”

“Monsters from the id,” murmured Happy.

“We could have been anything that we wanted to be,” said the male. “But if we couldn't rise to be New People, what was the point? So we let the Beast out. Followed the alternative path our partially awakened DNA showed us, the way we could have been if Humanity hadn't got in the way. We didn't have to give up much to become so much more. Meet the progenitors of a new race. All the power of the Beast, and the intellect of man, with none of the drawbacks. I am Gog. This is Magog. You may kneel and worship us, if you like.”