Simon Green - Ghost of a Chance

“Oh no,” said Natasha. “There’s still some of him here. I can pick up some of his thoughts, rattling around inside his head. He had a name once, and a family and a job; but he lost them all. He ended up on the streets, begging for small change, but he was never very good at it. He died here, in that corner, locked in overnight and overlooked by everyone. Would you like to know his name?”

“No,” said Erik. “It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t matter. This is a simple haunting, stirred up by our presence, or perhaps the workings of my little computer. He isn’t what we’re here for.”

“Hush,” said Natasha. “I told you I was hungry.”

She advanced slowly on the homeless ghost, which stood there, staring at her dully like an animal that had been beaten into submission. It wasn’t until she was right before him that he seemed to become aware of the danger he was in. He looked at Natasha with growing horror but couldn’t seem to move. Natasha licked her lips.

“You don’t even know you’re dead, do you? How . . . delicious.”

She locked his gaze with hers, reaching out with her mind, forcing him to see her clearly through sheer force of will. The ghost’s face twisted with horror, and he began to howl, a wordless scream of helpless dread. The cry of someone who knows no-one will come to save him. The ghost could see Natasha for what she was; and it terrified him. He drifted slowly backwards, not even moving his feet, and Natasha went after him. She stalked him all around the lobby, for the fun of it.

Until, finally, she lunged forward and locked her mouth on his, blocking off his howl. Living lips clamped down on a dead mouth, and he hung helpless before her as she sucked him dry, eating up every last trace of energy and consciousness that remained to him, and savouring it all. Bit by bit he faded away, becoming increasingly insubstantial as there was less and less of him, until not even a trace of the ghost remained. Natasha straightened up, licked her lips slowly, and laughed almost drunkenly. She looked sideways at Erik, backed up against the far wall, and sniggered at him.

“You don’t know what you’re missing, little man. You must learn to develop a taste for the good things in life. Ooh . . . I’m Daddy’s bad little girl . . . Such a little terror. Are you excited, Erik? Did that turn you on? It did, didn’t it? You’d love me to do that to you, wouldn’t you, Erik? And maybe one day, I will. But I guarantee you won’t like it one little bit.”

“If we’re not alone down here,” said JC, “it’s got to be field agents from the Crowley Project. Has to be. There aren’t many people brave enough or crazy enough to go chasing after ghosts in the dark heart of a Code One Haunting unless they expected to get something out of it. Project agents would brave the fires of Hell itself to snatch away a single burning coal if they thought there was money or power or one-upmanship in it.”

Typically, Melody didn’t want to believe it.

“It could be commuters, travellers, left over from this morning,” she said. “Couldn’t it? Trapped down here and overlooked when the station was sealed off by our security people?”

“No,” said JC as kindly as he could. “I read all the reports; security were very thorough. They checked every corridor, every platform, all the maintenance ducts and crawl spaces . . . They brought out the living and carried out the dead; no-one was left behind.”

“What about the people trapped and carried off in the hell trains?” said Happy. “Some of them might have escaped.”

“Those were downbound trains,” said JC. “All the way down. I don’t think we’ll be seeing any of those people again.”

None of them said anything for a while after that. None of them liked to admit there were some things even trained Institute field agents couldn’t put right. One of Melody’s instrument panels began chiming urgently, and she leaned forward to check its monitor screen.

“Hold everything,” she said. “Long-range sensors are picking up something interesting . . . Someone is using very powerful and very nasty technology not far from here. These readings are . . . Damn. I’m getting definite traces of biotech—cutting-edge science with fully integrated organic components. Cybernetics’ dark and unnatural cousin. Strictly illegal, banned in every civilised country and a few that aren’t.”

“Are you sure?” said JC. “I don’t know anyone who’s actually encountered Frankenstein tech in the field before.”

“I’m telling you!” said Melody. “It’s here . . . and it’s operating. My machines can hear it screaming. If these readings are right, it’s screaming all the time. JC, we have to do something about this!”

“We will,” said JC. “Could this be Crowley Project tech?”

“Has to be,” said Melody. “They’re the only bastards hard-hearted enough to use it.”

“I want a gun,” Happy said immediately. “A really big gun. I want a fully functioning Death Star gun.”

“Not even if Godzilla himself were to show up,” said JC.

“Well, how about a big stick with a nail in it, to wave at them, then?”

“Brace up, man,” said JC. “Odds are they’ll be eaten alive by whatever’s down here long before they can cause us any trouble.”

“Strangely, I don’t find that at all comforting,” said Happy.

“Whatever is going on down here,” said JC thoughtfully, “it must be really important, or the Project wouldn’t risk sending agents into a site already under the control of Institute agents.”

“We have this site under control?” said Melody. “When did that happen, exactly? I must have missed it.”

“Normally, the Institute and the Project go out of their way to avoid direct conflict,” JC said patiently. “Because retaliations have a way of escalating. Neither side wants all-out war. So whatever we have down here, it isn’t simply another haunting gone bad. Not even another Code One Haunting. This has got to be something really special.”

“He’s getting enthusiastic,” Happy said darkly to Melody. “Never a good sign, when he starts getting enthusiastic.”

JC looked at Happy thoughtfully.

“Don’t look at me!” said Happy. “I was engaged for telepathy and light housecleaning. Nothing was ever said about hand-to-hand conflict with trained Project agents.”

“It’s your telepathy I want,” said JC, giving Happy his best persuasive smile. “Nothing too difficult, or too dangerous. Reach out and see if you can get a sense of who they’ve sent down here. You can back off if you even think they know you’re listening in.”

Happy sighed dramatically, but they all knew he was going to do it. He never could resist a challenge, especially if it involved being sneaky and underhanded. His face went blank, and his eyes became lost and far-away as he let his thoughts drift up and out, spreading silently and invisibly through the abandoned station. His mind was a cool, deep pool, calm and collected, entirely untroubled by all the pills he’d taken earlier. His hardened metabolism burned them up almost as fast as he could take them. His thoughts rose through the layers of stone and concrete and metal, slipping through the dark spaces, searching out the flaring lights of human thought. And then he winced abruptly, his hands curling unconsciously into fists at his sides.

“Oh, that feels bad. Really bad. Melody was right. They’ve made a computer out of a cat’s brain. Its thoughts are like razor wire . . . It’s been forced to See things the living should never have to know about. It keeps going insane, but the tech drags it back . . . Poor thing. Poor thing . . . Hold it; I’m getting human presences now. Two of them, a man and a woman. Very strong presences; the woman has a mind like a perfumed steel trap, and the man . . . Damn . . . His emotions run so deep they’re almost primal. Ow! Ow, that hurt!”