Ghost of a Smile

TWO

Early evening outside Chimera House, a large and solid stone-and-glass business building tucked away in the heart of London’s business area. A night sky full of stars, a sliver of a new moon, and a cold breeze gusting through empty streets. No traffic, not a soul to be seen anywhere, flat amber light from the street-lamps falling on JC and Happy and Melody as they huddled resentfully together before the brightly lit windows of Chimera House. Two men, one woman, and a ghost unseen, all of them feeling distinctly hard done by.

“It’s not fair,” said Happy, bitterly. “We’re guaranteed proper recovery time between assignments! They can’t throw us right back in the deep end just because we’re handy! All this extra stress is putting years on me. Of course, on me it looks good…”

“Pause for hollow laughter,” said Melody. “What are we doing here, JC? I’m cold, I’m hungry, and I want to go to bed. If I don’t get some proper refreshment and some decent sleep soon, someone’s going to pay for it, and it sure as hell isn’t going to be me.”

“You were all there when I got the phone call,” JC said patiently. “Which means you know as much as I do. The Boss wants us here, so we’re here.”

“Five hours on a train, and what kind of greeting do we get when we arrive at Paddington Station?” said Melody. “Big bunch of flowers, box of chocolates, and a hearty Well done? An air ticket to somewhere decadent? No, we get dropped right in it again. I could spit soot.. .”

“Please don’t,” said Happy. “It’s not a pretty sight.”

“You will observe,” said JC, “that our dear and much respected and even-more-feared divine Bossness is conspicuous by her absence. Which suggests that whatever we’ve been sent to tend to, it can’t be that important. Or she’d be here, bending our ears on the matter. However, given how unusual it is for us to be directed straight to a danger site, without even a quick stop-off for a briefing, it does suggest that whatever happened here… was not only really bad, but decidedly recent.”

“I love to hear him talk,” said Melody. “Don’t you love to hear him talk? He has such a way with words… Look, can’t we at least go inside? It’s bloody cold out here. I am freezing my tits off.”

JC looked at her. “You really want simply to walk in there? Into an unknown situation, with unknown dangers?”

“Yes! I’m cold!”

“What exactly did the Boss say to you?” said Happy, tactfully changing the subject.

“Directions on how to get here and orders to stay put for further instructions,” said JC. “And then she rang off before I could tell her to go to Hell.”

Melody sniffed loudly. “You don’t actually expect her to turn up in person, do you? At this ungodly hour of the morning? Far more likely she’ll roust some poor unfortunate flak-catcher out of bed and send him down here for us to shout at. Hello… spot the expensive car.”

They all turned to look at the huge silver stretch-limousine as it glided down the empty street, then eased to a halt right in front of them, with a purr of its powerful motor. A uniformed chauffeur, complete with peaked cap and supercilious expression, jumped out from behind the wheel and hurried back to open the rear door. Out stepped Robert Patterson. Tall, black, expensively dressed in the best three-piece Saville Row had to offer. A shaved head, a noble brow, and a handsome face, elegant and dignified. Robert Patterson was the public face of the Carnacki Institute, on those rare occasions when it needed to talk with other parts of the Establishment. A product of Eton and Cambridge, ex-Guards and ex-Civil Service, Patterson didn’t normally lower himself to brief field agents. Certainly not out in the field. He had important paper-shuffling to be getting on with.

JC considered Patterson thoughtfully as the man stood silently, ignoring them as he gave complete concentration to checking that his cuffs were immaculate. For Patterson to appear there, in person, meant they had to be facing a very delicate situation. The kind of case in which very rich, very important, and very well-connected people were involved. So highly placed that even the Carnacki Institute had to tread carefully.

Patterson finally deigned to acknowledge the field agents, looking them over sourly. He didn’t seem to be any happier about being there than they did, which cheered them up somewhat.

“Mr. Patterson,” JC said smoothly. “How nice to see you. Especially when you swore you never wanted to see us again after that unfortunate incident at Her Majesty’s garden party last spring. Did you ever get the stains out? No matter, no matter… Looking very elegant, as always, straight from your posh ride. Look at the length of it. That’s not a stretch limo, that’s a car with serious glandular problems. You must forgive our rather more rumpled appearance. We’ve just endured five hours in standard class on British Rail, direct from our last very successful assignment.”

“We had to hire a mini-van!” Happy said loudly. “A bloody mini-van!”

“Hush now, Happy,” murmured JC. “Grown-ups talking.”

“Hell with that,” said Happy. “Open up that limo and let me at the booze. I am in dire need of some medicinal brandy. Or medicinal vodka, I’m not fussy…”

“Damn right,” said Melody. “You got any snacks in there, Patterson? I’m so hungry I could eat your upholstery. Let me at it, or I’ll shoot out your tyres and key your bodywork.”

“Can’t take you two anywhere,” said JC. “Sorry about that, Mr. Patterson. But they aren’t being entirely reasonable, after all we’ve been through. You can of course put it all right by saying the magic words: Extravagant Bonus.”

“It’s either that or we mug you for what you’ve got on you,” said Happy. “Your choice.”

Patterson made a big deal of rising above them. “Pay attention,” he said, in his rich, deep, and very cultured voice. The field agents all made a point of sneering back at him, to show how unimpressed they were. Patterson pressed on. “This is a significant case, with important connections. It has to be handled carefully, with due regard for possible repercussions if it isn’t handled… just so.”

“Can’t be that important,” Happy said craftily. “Or the Boss herself would be here.”

“Catherine Latimer is here,” said Patterson. “But she’s far too busy to spend valuable time talking with you. She is currently interfacing with the police and the Secret Service, making sure the whole area is evacuated, then sealed off until this is all over. Or hadn’t you noticed how deserted the streets are?”

“We didn’t see any Secret Service people on our way in,” said Happy.

Patterson allowed himself a small smile. “Which goes to show how good they are at their job.”

“I’ve never known London this quiet,” said Melody. “Even at this god-forsaken early hour of the morning. Look, I can see empty parking spaces! That’s eerie…”

“What are we dealing with here?” JC said bluntly. “Ghosts, demons, those evil scumbags from the Crowley Project? What?”

“Unknown,” Patterson said carefully. “But almost certainly nothing you’ve encountered before. This whole affair is very much out of the ordinary. Even for the Institute. This entire building, Chimera House, had been officially declared genius loci. A bad place, psychically stained and corrupted. It has to be dealt with, quickly and efficiently. Before the vultures start gathering.”

“The whole building?” said JC. “Who does it belong to? What the hell do they do there?”

“Chimera House is owned by Mutable Solutions Inc.,” said Patterson. “One of the biggest drug companies, worldwide. They have branches everywhere, and annual gross sales bigger than many countries’ entire budgets. In fact, they’re rumoured to run certain small countries, on the quiet. This particular building is one of their private research centres. So private we didn’t even know they owned it until now, and we’re supposed to know things like that, given MSI’s track record for working on the more extreme and dangerous edges of medical science. Chimera House pays volunteers to allow their medical staff to test new drugs on them. All very open and respectable. Good pay, civilised living conditions for the test subjects, never any problems or complaints. Until now.

“It would appear that something has gone very badly wrong inside Chimera House. Some hours ago, emergency services received an increasingly frantic phone call from the science laboratories on the third floor, calling for help. Screaming for help, to be exact. The call was abruptly terminated, right after the caller had used the word monsters. We’re running tests on a recording of the call. There are. .. strange noises in the background. Non-human noises. Further communication with anyone inside Chimera House has proved impossible.

“Two nearby police officers responded to the emergency call. They went inside and haven’t been seen since. They’re not answering their radios. National Security got involved after that. They sent in a fully armed attack squad, looking for signs of industrial espionage. All communications cut off the moment they entered the building, and there’s been no sign of them since, either.

“The whole building has been sealed off, but nothing else has been done… due to a certain amount of disagreement as to who has jurisdiction. The police are hopping mad at the loss of their officers, and the Security people want to storm the building with as many men as it takes. Neither are ready to back down to the other. MI5 and MI6 tried to stick their toes in the door, shouting terrorists very loudly, but since this is an MSI building, with all kinds of government connections and contracts, it got very complicated, very quickly. They’d probably still be shouting at each other if a spokesman for MSI hadn’t phoned the Prime Minister, on his private line, to demand that the Carnacki Institute take control. Which is interesting for any number of reasons, not the least that they’re not supposed to know we even exist. And no, the spokesman wouldn’t say why MSI wanted us. So, until we figure out exactly what’s going on, we have agreed to send a team in. You. Because you’re the nearest A team, with the best reputation. But you are still new enough to be entirely expendable.

“Time is apparently a factor, so we can’t wait for a more experienced team. You get first shot. Go in there, work out what’s going on, and stop it. And if you should happen to find out why the MSI asked for us… there will be honey for tea and generous bonuses all round.”

“Hold everything,” said Happy, raising one hand like a child at school. “We’re supposed to walk into a building that’s already killed a whole bunch of people? With no solid intel, no weapons, and no backup?”

“That’s the job, sometimes,” said JC. “And we don’t know that anyone’s dead yet.”

“I’m not going in there without my equipment!” said Melody. “All my gear’s still packed up on the freight train!”

“I have people bringing it here,” said Patterson. “But you’ll have to make a start without it.”

“What am I supposed to do without equipment?” said Melody, sulking.

“Improvise,” said Patterson. He didn’t smile.

“I think we have to assume that something has gone seriously wrong with the latest drug trial,” JC said quickly. “Remember that case a few years back, when they tried out what they thought was a perfectly safe drug, and half the volunteers exploded? Could be something similar. You can only learn so much from computer modelling. Sooner or later, you have to shove the stuff into somebody’s vein and stand well back. Do you have any information on what MSI was testing?”

“No,” said Patterson. “The MSI spokesman is only telling us what he thinks we need to know. He’s currently hiding behind Proprietary Information. The Boss is putting together enough authority and influence to kick that door down, but it will take time. You should be able to find all the information you need in the building’s various computers. Feel free to look at anything you feel like and make as much mess as you need. You are all officially authorised to act like utter vandals and do any damned thing you feel necessary. That’s it.”

“That’s it?” said Happy. “What if we can’t sort this out? What if we all get killed in there?”

“Don’t,” said Patterson.

He turned sharply and strode back to his silver limo, gleaming at the curb like an expensive ghost in the night. The waiting chauffeur opened the door for him, Patterson disappeared inside, and, within seconds, the car was gliding smoothly away. Kim emerged from the shadows to make a rude gesture after it.

“What an appalling person,” she said.

“Be fair,” said JC. “I can’t think of anyone better suited to take on our enemies. That man could annoy anyone to death.”

They all turned to look at Chimera House. It looked calmly back at them; a tall, imposing structure of steel, glass, and concrete. A building of almost staggering ugliness, with all the aesthetic considerations of a dead rat. It fit right in, in an area where form and function had taken over from pretty much everything else. Lights blazed from every window, but there was no sign that anyone was home.

“Can you see anyone moving in there?” said Happy. “I can’t see anyone moving in there. Where are they?”

“If they were running drug tests, there should be people on duty at all times,” said Melody. “Apart from the test subjects, there should be doctors and nurses, scientists, support staff, building security… They can’t all be dead. Can they?”

“Kim,” said JC. “What do you see?”

“Nothing,” said Kim. “It’s like the whole building is standing in a shadow. A dark veil for someone or something to hide behind. What do you see, JC?”

“Only a building,” said JC. He turned to Happy. “Are you picking anything up, oh master of the mental miracles?”

Happy shrugged unhappily. “Just a feeling… That what we’re looking at is an illusion. A facade. The smile on the face of the tiger.”

They waited, but he had nothing more to say. He was shivering, and not only from the cold. The quiet of the empty street, and the brightly blazing building before them suddenly seemed that much more dangerous, and full of secrets.

“Keep your shields up, Happy,” JC said finally. “Protect yourself in there until we’ve got some idea of what’s going on.”

“Why are you suddenly being nice to me?” said Happy, suspiciously. “That isn’t like you. It’s an improvement, but it’s not like you.”

“Because without Melody’s high-tech toys, you’re the only advantage we’ve got,” JC said calmly. “Our only early-warning system, and probably our only real weapon.”

“Then we are in serious trouble,” said Happy. “Let’s all go home and tell the Boss we couldn’t find the right building.”

“Brace up, man,” said JC. “Be a brave little soldier, and I’ll make you some of my special spag bol afterwards.”

“I miss food,” Kim said wistfully. “I can still enjoy the smell, but anything I put in my mouth drops straight through.”

“Well, there’s a mental image I wasn’t expecting to take home with me,” said Melody.

“Let us not go there,” JC said firmly.

Melody scowled at the brightly lit building before her. “No tech, no proper briefing… I hate going into situations blind.”

“Best way,” JC said cheerfully. “No preconceptions to get in the way. Come, children, let us march into the lobby and claim it as our own.”

He walked forward and darted up the stone steps to the lobby door. It was mostly glass. The others moved quickly after him. JC went right up to it and stuck his nose against the glass. His sunglasses made a loud, clinking sound. He peered carefully round the whole lobby. It was completely open to view, light blazing freely through glass windows. And it was completely empty. No sign of people, no sign of any trouble, or destruction. It looked like a stage set, waiting for the actors to make an entrance and start the scene.

“I don’t see anyone,” said JC, straightening up with definite creaking noises from his spine. “Not even a receptionist. I always thought they were legally obliged to go down with the ship, manning the phones to the end. I see fittings and furnishings, comfortable chairs and potted plants… everything as it should be. But…”

“Where are the bodies?” said Melody, pushing in beside him. “The police and the security men?”

“Why are you so keen that they should be dead?” said JC. “Until proved otherwise, they’re missing in action. This could still turn out to be a rescue mission.”

“They’re dead,” said Happy.

There was something in the way he said it that made everyone else look at him. JC considered him thoughtfully.

“Is that a feeling, or do you know something you really should be sharing with the rest of us?”

“I can feel death in this building,” said Happy. “Like a shroud hanging over everything. And especially in this lobby. Recent death. Sudden death. I don’t think they even knew what hit them until it was too late.”

“Who killed them?” said JC. “Or is it What?”

“I can’t put a name to it,” said Happy. It’s like nothing I’ve seen or felt before. And I’ve been around.”

JC looked at Kim. “Are you picking up any of this?”

“No,” said Kim. “Not a thing. And that’s wrong… If people died here, I should be able to see something… The world is full of ghosts, and fellow travellers, and images that come and go. I see all the things we share the world with. Comes with being a ghost. There are things here on the street with us right now, paying close attention to the building. But when I look into the lobby, there’s nothing there. So I can only assume that someone is hiding what’s happened from me. Which means, I get to go in first.”

She smiled sweetly at JC and stepped through the closed door before he could stop her. She ghosted through the glass as though it weren’t there, and for her, it probably wasn’t. She strode into the lobby and looked quickly about her. JC tensed, his hands pressed flat against the door glass as he watched her every movement intensely. But nothing happened. Kim walked up and down the lobby, her feet bare inches above the deep pile carpet, peering interestedly at everything, until finally she turned to look back at JC and the others and shrug helplessly.

“That’s it,” said JC. “We’re going in.”

But when he tried the door-handle, it wouldn’t move. Someone had locked the door from the inside. JC swore loudly and rattled the door with all his strength, like that was going to make any difference. He scowled, stepped back, and kicked the door moodily.

“Typical of Patterson. He could at least have supplied us with a set of keys.”

Melody shouldered him aside and smashed the glass with one savage karate kick. She sneered at JC.

“Keys are for wimps.”

JC pushed past her, stepped carefully through the door-frame, and hurried into the lobby. “Hello, ghosties! Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

“I hate it when he does that,” growled Melody, following him in. Happy nodded glumly.

The Ghost Finders came together in the middle of the lobby and looked around them. Everything was still and quiet, and not in a good way. There was something wrong with the stillness. It was the stillness of anticipation, of something bad about to happen. As though an unspeakable monster was getting ready to jump out at them from some hidden place. As though trap-doors were about to open under their feet, to send them plummeting down to some unimaginable horror. As though all the rules were about to be changed in some terrible game they didn’t even know they were playing.

“Oh, this is bad,” said Happy. “This feels really bad.”

“My back is crawling,” said Melody. “Like someone painted a target on it.”

Kim looked at JC. “What do you feel, sweetie?”

“Like we’re being watched,” he said. “And I don’t see any security cameras.”

“The whole place feels like fingernails dragged down the blackboard of my soul,” said Happy. “I can feel someone sneaking up behind me, but there’s no-one there…”

“Yes,” said Melody, trying to look in several directions at once. “Like someone’s crept in and is peering over my shoulder.”

“Echoes,” JC said calmly. “Psychic echoes of something that’s already happened. Don’t let them get to you. Kim, are you picking up any traces of a stone tape recording? If all these people were killed here, it might have imprinted on the surroundings…”

“It’s worse in here,” said Kim. “It’s been made worse. Bad things happened here, on purpose. Someone walked in blood and murder, and loved it. JC, this whole building is saturated with unnatural energies. Trying to see what happened here is like staring into a spotlight.”

Melody went straight to the reception desk, sat down before the built-in computer, fired it up, and let out a brief sigh of relief as her fingers tripped busily across the keyboard, teasing and intimidating information out of the computer files.

“For a really major company, with big-time security protocols, their firewalls are strictly amateur night,” she said smugly.

“Open up every file you can access,” said JC. “I have questions.”

“I’m in,” said Melody. “Easy-peasy. What do you want to know?”

Happy looked at her. “Don’t you need passwords, things like that. ..?”

“Passwords are for wimps, too,” said Melody. “You have to know how to talk to these things. Okay… They started the latest drug trial last evening. Code name, Zarathustra. Oh shit. That is not good. Whenever some scientist starts quoting Nietzsche, you know it is never going to be good.”

“‘I teach you the superman,’” JC said solemnly. “He is this thunder, he is this lighting. ‘Man is something that should be overcome.’”

“Damn,” said Happy. “Are you saying they were trying to make superhumans here? I thought there were a whole bunch of really serious laws against messing around with human DNA?”

“Oh there are,” said JC. “Lots and lots. Which is why there are also a whole bunch of companies and governments lining up to pay serious money to the first people to come up with something useful. No questions asked. There’s a quiet undeclared race on to produce something that will improve people. Superman, super-soldier, supergenius-all of them property, not people.”

“There’s nothing here about what this particular drug was supposed to do,” said Melody. “I can’t get into the science laboratories’ files from down here. I need direct access. Which means we need to go further up and poke around… I can tell you that the new drug was administered to the volunteers around seven hours ago. So whatever went wrong, it went wrong really fast. I’ve got a list here, names and information on all the volunteers. Are you really a volunteer if they pay you and don’t properly explain the dangers?”

“Depends how much they pay,” said Happy.

“Forty thousand pounds, for two weeks, plus bed and board,” said Melody.

“Chicken feed,” said JC. “That’s what they usually pay for testing cold cures, hand creams, allergy meds. Presumably the company didn’t want to risk drawing attention to what they were doing. How many test subjects were there, Melody?”

“Twenty. Ten men and ten women, ages twenty to thirty. Of course, some of them would have been given a harmless placebo… Testing took place on the second floor; living quarters for the test subjects are on the first floor. Laboratories on the third… no information on the remaining floors.”

“Something’s coming,” Kim said suddenly, and they all looked around.

The air was suddenly colder, painfully cold in their lungs as they breathed it in. Something was sucking all the heat out of the room. An energy drain, to power some kind of manifestation. There was a growing tension across the lobby, as though something might break, or explode. Suddenly, footsteps started down the stairs at the far end of the lobby. Slow, heavy, and quite deliberate footsteps, descending from above. Each separate sound seemed to hang on the air, unnaturally long, as though reluctant to depart. JC gestured quickly for everyone to spread out at the foot of the stairs, blocking them off. He and Kim got there first, peering eagerly up the stairs, but there was no-one to be seen yet. Melody reluctantly got up from her computer and moved across to join them. Happy stood behind her, not quite hiding. They waited at the foot of the stairs as the footsteps drew steadily nearer, louder, heavier… and then, at the moment when whoever was making them would have had to come round the corner at the top of the stairs, and reveal themselves, the sounds stopped. The last of the echoes died away, and there was only the quiet, and the increasingly oppressive stillness.

JC and the others waited, tense and ready for anything, but the footsteps had stopped. Nothing to hear, nothing to see. JC ran forward and sprinted up the steps to look round the corner, but there was no-one there. No sign there had ever been anyone there. JC came back down the stairs, scowling.

Then the elevator bell rang.

They all looked round sharply, and JC led the way as they raced over to the other side of the lobby, to the single elevator. The down arrow above the door was lit, and the row of numbers showed that the elevator was descending from the third floor. The laboratories… JC gestured urgently, and they all spread out before the elevator doors. Happy moved to not quite hide behind Melody again, and she grabbed his arm and hauled him out beside her. They all watched the numbers descend, tantalisingly slowly. And then the bell rang again, and the elevator doors slid open, to reveal there was no-one inside. The elevator was completely empty. Happy let out a quick sigh of relief, looked away, then cried out as a uniformed police officer appeared out of nowhere, right in the middle of the lobby.

The others spun around, and looked to where Happy was pointing with a trembling hand, but none of them moved. Neither did the police officer. He stood perfectly still, unnaturally still, and stared at them all with unblinking, unwavering eyes. His uniform was perfect, not even the smallest tear or blood stain. Nothing to show how he had died. But none of them doubted for a moment that he was dead. They only had to look at his face.

“Just an ordinary police officer, a bobby on the beat,” said JC. “He should never have been sent into a place like this. He never stood a chance.”

“He’s not breathing,” Melody said quietly. “Not even showing the smallest of involuntary movements. His face is… empty. Nobody home. And look at his eyes… He sees us, but not in a human way. Whatever’s watching us through those eyes isn’t in any way human.”

A second policeman appeared, blinking in out of nowhere, as though forced into existence by an effort of will. Again, quite definitely dead. To look at him was to know it, on an instinctive level. The two dead men stood utterly still, in the centre of the lobby. The temperature was dropping even further. JC and the others were all shivering now, despite themselves, their breath steaming on the air before them. No steam from the dead men’s faces. No frost in the lobby, no ice; only the deep, deep cold.

The security men appeared next, snapping into existence one after the other, all across the lobby. Slamming in without warning, tall uniformed men in heavy flak jackets, all of them carrying guns. But the arms hung limply at their sides, as unmoving as any other part of them, gun barrels pointing at the floor. None of them moved in the least, or made any attempt to communicate. They simply stood and stared. But there was still something terribly menacing about them. As though they were waiting for the right moment to do something horrible.

It was their faces. Human faces weren’t meant to look like theirs. The dead, knowing eyes… the complete lack of any emotion or expression… in faces that weren’t dead enough.

“Look at the plants,” Kim said quietly. “Look at the potted plants.”

They all glanced at the plants, not wanting to take their eyes off the dead men for too long. The half dozen potted plants, which had been standing tall and proud when JC first led the way in were now shrivelling up and withering away. Rot and corruption set in, and curled-up leaves fell listlessly to the floor. Something had sucked the life right out of them to maintain the dead men’s presence. The quality of light in the lobby had changed, too. The fierce fluorescent light now seemed strained, weakened, even infected. One of the policemen took a single step forward, his muscles stiff and awkward. Then one of the security men. And then all the dead men were advancing on JC and his team, from every direction at once, one slow step at a time. Their faces didn’t change, their eyes didn’t move, but there was still an awful, inexorable purpose about them.

“Stand together!” roared JC. “Back to back!”

JC and Kim moved together, as did Happy and Melody. Close enough that no-one could get between them, but not so much that they’d get in each other’s way if push came to violent action. JC was grinning broadly. He was always happiest on a case when things started to happen. It meant the waiting was over, and the mission was finally under way. JC did so love to get his hands dirty, and get stuck into things. Melody had produced her machine pistol again and was waving it steadily back and forth to cover the approaching dead men. Happy was making loud, whimpering noises but stood his ground. If only because all the ways to the exits were blocked. In his own way, he, too, was happiest when things started kicking off, because at least then he knew where the danger was.

The dead men moved with ghastly, deliberate slowness, as though movement was something they only vaguely remembered. The security men still had their arms at their sides, the gun barrels pointing towards the floor, but the sense of menace and danger was even stronger. The tension on the air was so strong, JC could feel it crushing down on him, like an unbearable weight. He glared at the nearest dead man.

“Who are you? What do you want? Do you remember what happened to you here? Do you remember who you are?”

The dead man didn’t react, as though words meant nothing to him. But his unblinking eyes were fixed on JC, and there was something in his face, a strange, alien essence that made all the hairs on the back of JC’s neck stand up.

“Kim,” he said urgently. “Can you read them? Can you tell me anything about them?”

“There’s nothing there to read!” said Kim.

“I’m not picking up anything, either!” said Happy, looking desperately back and forth. “It’s like… there’s nothing there! Except there is!”

“They’re shells,” Kim said suddenly. “Just shells! They’re dead, they’re some kind of ghost… but they’re not surviving personalities, like me. They’re what’s left, after all the life and all the energy have been sucked right out. Something really bad has happened to these people. Because they’re not people any more. Something else is watching us, JC, through their dead eyes.”

JC nodded quickly, thinking hard. “Do they have any actual physical presence? Can they hurt us?”

“I don’t know!” said Kim. “I’ve never seen anything like them before. They’re what’s left when you take the people out of people.”

“Terrific,” said JC. “All right, we do it the hard way, then.”

He strode quickly forward, leaving his team behind, walked right up to the nearest security man, and prodded him in the flak jacket with one stiff finger. And cried out in pain and shock, as his finger sank into the dead man, disappearing from view. He yanked his finger out and staggered back, clutching his injured hand to his chest.

“It’s all right!” he said quickly. “It was just so cold… Like sticking my hand into the vacuum between the stars!”

“A complete absence of physical presence,” said Melody. “Interesting. Not only an image but also a hole in the world…” She put her machine pistol away and flexed her empty hands uneasily.

“Ow!” said JC, flapping his injured hand urgently. “Pins and needles! Sensation coming back! Ow ow ow!”

“If they’re not really there, how do we stop them?” said Happy. “They are getting terribly close now, and not in a good way, and none of them look friendly! If anyone feels like doing something dramatic and violent, I wouldn’t object in the least.”

“Don’t let any of them touch you!” Kim said abruptly.

“What?” said Happy. “Why not?”

“I don’t know,” said Kim. “I’m getting a strong feeling that would be… bad.”

“Terrific,” said JC.

“We should bring a canary in a cage, for situations like this,” said Melody.

“We are the canary in the cage!” said Happy.

One of the dead men surged forward, heading straight for Melody. His movements were jerky and graceless, like a puppet on unseen strings. He reached out with both hands, his unwavering gaze fixed on Melody. Happy lunged forward to stand between them. He thrust out a blocking hand, and scowled fiercely as he concentrated. The dead man exploded silently. The image flared up and was gone, as though it had never been there. All the other dead men stopped moving, frozen in their tracks, in mid movement.

“Very impressive, Happy,” said JC. “Would you mind telling us what it was you did?”

“A concentrated burst of telepathically projected disbelief,” said Happy, breathlessly. “My belief that he didn’t exist overwhelmed Someone else’s belief that he did.”

“Someone else?” said JC. “What someone else?”

“Haven’t a clue,” said Happy.

“My brave bunny,” said Melody, dropping an arm across Happy’s shoulders. “There will be special treats, later.”

“There are still quite a few dead men left,” JC pointed out. “Any chance you could manage that trick again?”

“Not a hope in Hell,” said Happy. “That one effort took pretty much everything I had.”

“You just can’t get good help these days,” said JC. “Not to worry! Now I know those things are vulnerable, I think I might have the very thing…” He fished in a jacket pocket, pulled out a grenade, primed it, and tossed it neatly into the advancing dead men. “Guard your eyes, children! Flashbang!”

The grenade exploded in a blast of incandescent light. Even with their eyes closed and their heads instinctively turned away, JC and Happy and Melody all cried out as the brilliant light seared their eyes. The light snapped off, and when they could all see again, all the dead men were gone, and the lobby was completely empty.

“What the hell was that?” said Melody.

“The very latest in a long line of useful gadgets that I’m not supposed to have,” JC said easily. “An exorcism grenade.”

Melody looked at him dangerously. “An exorcism… Are you taking the piss?”

“The very latest improvement!” said JC. “Gets the job done in half the time! Holy light!”

“I know I’m going to regret asking this,” said Happy. “But how.. .”

“You make water holy by saying the right religious words over it,” said JC. “Why should light be any different?”

“It’s thinking things like that that make my head hurt,” said Happy.

“Wait a moment,” said Kim, who hadn’t been dazzled by the light at all, “How did you know that grenade wouldn’t affect me?”

“Because you’re with us,” said JC. “One of the good guys.”

“Have you ever tested that thing in the field before?” said Melody.

“Guess,” said JC.

“I’m not picking up any remaining traces of the shells,” said Happy. “Any chance that light destroyed them completely?”

“Not really,” said JC. “More likely, the light only chased them away.”

“Oh joy,” said Happy.

“Deep joy,” said Melody.

“Happy happy joy joy!” said Kim, pogoing up and down in mid air.

“Come along, children,” said JC. “We need to get up to the next floor. We need information.”

“And weapons,” said Happy. “Really big weapons.”