Simon Green - Ghost of a Smile

“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?”