Ghost of a Smile g-2

by Simon R. Green

  “Face front, brave little soldier,” said JC. “If we can survive what’s going on here, we can survive anything.”

  “Did you have to say if?” said Happy.

  “What else have you got, Melody?” said JC.

  “The extra funding did the trick,” said Melody, scrolling quickly through the files. “They came up with a real miracle drug. They called it ReSet. According to this, it was a completely new wonder drug that could actually repair all damage to the human body by forcing it to reset itself to factory conditions. The miracle cure that all Humanity’s been waiting for-a single drug that would fix whatever was wrong by putting everything back the way it should be. From broken bones to tumours, from viruses to organ failure. No more medicines, no more surgeries, no more transplants. Hell, ReSet could even cure the common cold! But then they tried it on actual test subjects… and it looks like ReSet did far more than was expected.”

  “I really don’t like where this is going,” said Happy.

  “You’re not alone,” said Melody. “Listen… what’s happened here is the result of the first actual drug trial on human test subjects. Everything else had been strictly computer models and simulations or experiments with the organs and cells they’d acquired. They didn’t do any animal testing-apparently whoever was supplying the funding was in a hurry. The order was to go straight to human testing, and no-one here had the authority to say no. And the researchers were given very strict instructions on how the drug was to be administered. The test subjects, the volunteers, had no idea what they were getting. Poor bastards were told it was an allergy test. They were all given injections of ReSet, right here in the laboratory, and then watched closely for twenty-four hours. Nothing happened.

  “I’m looking at the clinical notes. Round-the-clock observation, all life signs carefully monitored, regular blood tests… Nothing. Since there were no obvious reactions, and no biological changes, the test subjects were allowed to return to their living quarters, on the floor below. So the scientists could get into a real screaming match over whose fault it was that nothing had happened. They thought the drug trial was a failure because there should have been immediate signs. After twenty-four hours of sod all, they were tearing each other’s hair out.”

  “LD50,” said JC. “They expected half the test subjects to die, or nearly die, then recover, thanks to ReSet.”

  “Exactly,” said Melody. “But the test subjects had barely been gone an hour when the first emergency call came through, from Room Seven. Things really went horribly wrong. Jesus, JC, some of this makes seriously scary reading. A lot of it is notes, made on the run by scientists half out of their minds, meant to be fleshed out later. Anyway, the scientists went down to Room Seven, accompanied by building security staff. That’s probably what we heard, in the corridor. And then… a lot of people were killed, in and around Room Seven. There was a struggle. First the researchers attempted to restrain the occupant of Room Seven, who was freaking out big-time, then the security people waded in. They couldn’t control him. Says here they used Tasers, and that was when the killing started. The man in Room Seven just… tore them apart, and kept on killing until the survivors turned and ran. And then… he killed himself. Maybe because he couldn’t stand what he was turning into. What he was becoming.” She paused, clearly shaken by what she was reading.

  “By then, the same sort of thing was happening in all the rooms, all hell was breaking loose. The test subjects were all changing. The scientists had given up trying to control the situation, they were trying to get out alive. Two of the test subjects killed one another. Eight of the subjects went mad, apparently from simple proximity to what was happening. They didn’t, or wouldn’t, change. So the others killed them.

  “It was a massacre, JC, a slaughterhouse. When they weren’t attacking each other, the test subjects turned on the security men and the scientists. Only a handful got out alive. They just weren’t equipped to deal with what ReSet had made out of the test subjects.”

  “Hold it,” said JC. “Not that I’m doubting you, Melody, but… a slaughterhouse? There were no blood stains in the corridor, no signs of violence. Only what we saw in Room Seven.”

  “I know!” said Melody. “But according to these reports, there was blood and guts and bodies all over the place!”

  “We weren’t allowed to see what Room Seven was really like, until our mysterious hidden enemy was ready for us to see it,” said Happy. “Maybe… we only saw what we were supposed to see, down there.”

  “Okay,” said JC. “That is seriously spooky. Could someone be messing with our minds so thoroughly without you being able to detect it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Happy. “I wouldn’t have thought so, but I’ve never encountered anything like the conditions in this place. I keep telling you-we are way out of our depths!”

  “That’s practically our job description,” said JC. “Don’t panic yet, Happy, or you’ll have nothing left when things get really bad. Anything else of note in the computer files, Melody?”

  “The last few are short on detail,” said Melody. “But the people who made them were quite clearly traumatised by what they’d seen. It was chaos down there. A lot of people died, in brutal and unpleasant ways. One researcher managed to make a distress call. We know how that worked out. Eventually, the entire building was sealed off.” She half turned. “That’s where we came in. Literally.”

  JC nodded. It was clear to all of them that they had been sent into Chimera House without proper briefing. “Anything else, Melody?” he said.

  She turned back to the monitor. “Ah yes, this is interesting… Let me… Yes. It seems one of the surviving test subjects made his way up here and made a short vid recording. Look at this.”

  They all leaned in close around Melody as she called it up and put it on the screen. At first, it just showed a series of shifting views of the laboratory. There was no-one in front of the camera, only shouts and disturbances in the background, smashing sounds and strained human voices. Something flashed past, right at the edge of the screen, leaving a thick trail of blood behind it. It was moving too quickly to be identified, and though it was big enough to be human, it didn’t move like anything human. Someone was crying, somewhere off camera, sobbing like all hope was gone. Not far away, someone else was laughing breathlessly. It wasn’t a good sound. The background shouting grew louder, thick with rage and pain and horror. And then someone screamed, a vile, triumphant sound that went on and on, far past the point that a human throat should have been able to sustain it.

  “What is that?” said Happy. “What the hell is that?”

  Abruptly, the sound shut off. As though all the throats had been cut at once. Suddenly, someone was sitting in front of the camera, staring at the screen. As though he’d always been there, and they’d only just noticed. The image was a man’s head and shoulders, blocking any view of what might have been happening behind him. A man’s face, gaunt with shock and horror… and something else none of them could identify-a strange, almost alien aspect. It took JC a moment to realise that the man wasn’t blinking though tears ran jerkily down his twitching cheeks. When he started speaking, his voice was harsh and strained, actually painful to listen to, as though he’d damaged it from too much screaming.

  “The world is over. The world we know is over. Wave it good-bye, we shall not see its like again. I have seen God. Or his angels. And they are not what we thought they were. We… are not what we thought we were. What is Man, but a poor unfinished thing… I have seen the future, and it is beautiful and glorious, but we have no place in it. I can see what’s coming, and I can’t bear it…”

  His hands came up to his face and without the slightest hesitation he tore out both his eyes. He threw the eyeballs away, blood streaming thickly down his face. He turned his bloody head this way and that, the dark empty eye-sockets red and jagged where he’d torn the eyelids away, too. And then he laughed, bitterly, painfully, and screamed, “I can still see!”
/>
  Something hit the camera and knocked it over on its side. The screaming man disappeared, and all that could be seen was an area of blood-spattered floor. The scream rose and rose, beyond all human limits and meaning, then the screen went blank.

  “That’s all there is,” said Melody. “I don’t… that’s all there is.”

  “What did he see?” said Happy. “What could make a man do that?”

  “He must be dead, now,” said Melody. “He must be dead, mustn’t he?”

  “Poor soul,” said Kim. “What do you think he was seeing there, at the end?”

  “Don’t let it get to you,” JC said firmly. “Look around you. We just saw this laboratory, this whole floor, being wrecked. People screaming and dying. But look around you… there’s no evidence any of that happened. Do you see any blood, any bodies, or wreckage? Happy, are all our minds being interfered with, to stop us seeing the real lab?”

  “No,” Happy said immediately. “I’ve got my mental shields hammered down so tight God Herself couldn’t see inside my mind. And I’m seeing the same lab as the rest of you.”

  “So what did happen here?” said Melody. “Did someone… clean it all up? Or was the recording a fake?”

  “What we saw on the screen was real,” JC said slowly. “I’ve no doubt about that. But there was no time stamp on the screen. So who’s to say when it happened? I mean, it must have been after the drug trial, but… not enough time has passed to clean up the mess we saw. We’re getting conflicting information here, people. I can’t believe that’s an accident. Someone wants to keep us off-balance.”

  “I’ve found something else,” said Melody. Her voice was still shaking from what she’d seen, but her manner was as calm and efficient as ever. It took a lot to throw Melody. “More notes on the drug testing, from one of the doctors involved. He’s putting himself on record as being opposed to the LD50, but only after it had been administered. There’s a lot of mea culpa here, some of it almost hysterical, but… Yes. Here, he’s talking about ReSet, and how it didn’t just re-establish the human body’s factory settings. It went much further than that. You’ve all heard about junk DNA, right? All the DNA in the human genome that’s been there forever, but we haven’t got a clue what it does. What it’s for. ReSet awakened, or activated, all of the human junk DNA and set it to work making it do what it was originally supposed to do. To make us… into what we were supposed to be. There’s another vid file. Do you want to see it?”

  “Not really,” said Happy. “But we have to. We need to know what’s going on.”

  “Good soldier,” said JC.

  “Shut up, or I will slap you,” said Happy.

  This time, the doctor’s head and shoulders immediately filled the screen. Middle-aged, balding, in a white lab coat too small for him. There was a spray of fresh blood across the left side of his neck and shoulder, clearly not his. His face was deathly pale from shock, his eyes wide, his mouth trembling. He looked quickly about him, as though not sure he was alone, but there were none of the unnerving background sounds from the first vid file. The doctor squirmed in his chair and took a deep breath, visibly bracing himself. He stared into the camera and started talking, no name, no introduction, no build-up. Just the stumbling words of a man desperate to be heard.

  “ReSet never was what they told us it was. Curing problems in the human body was only the first step. The bait in the trap, to get us interested. We weren’t told what it would do next, what it was always meant to do. ReSet had another purpose. He knew. He knew that all along. That’s why he funded us. ReSet was intended to make us all that we could be. All we were meant to be. We were never meant to be human. Not merely human. Somehow, part of our DNA got shut down, suppressed, frozen in place. So instead of becoming what we were meant to be, we got stuck part of the way. What we know as Humanity was only meant to be a stepping-stone on the way to something else. But now ReSet has helped finish the job! Taken the test subjects all the way to the end of the line! They’re not human any more. They’re the New People. That’s what they are. Not superhuman, not more than human… Something else. Gods. And monsters.”

  He stopped to laugh briefly, a sad and bitter sound. “ That is what we were meant to be. Gods and monsters? Intelligent design, or evolution’s last laugh? Who knows… All of our knowledge and civilisation was a mistake, because what we were supposed to be would never have needed them.”

  He started laughing again, and this time he couldn’t stop. He rocked back and forth in his chair and laughed his sanity away.

  Melody shut the screen down. “There is more… but I don’t think we need to see it. I doubt he had anything else to say.”

  “So,” said JC. “ReSet rewrote the test subjects, from the bottom up, transforming the ones that didn’t die into New People. Whatever they are. And they’re still here, presumably somewhere above us. Those that survived the process… I think we need to go up and have a nice little chat with them.”

  “I just knew he was going to say that,” said Happy. “Didn’t you just know he was going to say that?”

  “And what do you mean we, Pale Face?” said Melody. “You heard the mad doctor, gods and monsters, all in the same package. That does not sound like someone you can stroll up to and have a nice little chat with! Give me one good reason why we need to go up and talk with these very scary New People?”

  “Because they’re behind everything that’s happening here,” said JC. “That’s why it’s been so easy for us to get answers. They wanted us to know. Be honest, Melody-would you have been able to open up those files so easily under normal conditions?”

  “No,” said Melody, reluctantly. “I’m good, but I’m not that good.”

  “I don’t think we’re going to be allowed to leave until we’ve seen this through,” said JC. “We’re here for a purpose. I think… these New People want something from us.”

  “Why us?” said Happy, plaintively. “Why is it always us?”

  “They might want us dead,” said Melody. “Have you considered that?”

  “If they’d wanted you dead, you’d be dead by now,” said Kim. Everyone looked at her. She shrugged. “That’s what I’m feeling.”

  “Anything else you’d like to share?” snapped Happy.

  Melody leaned in close to him. “Don’t upset the dead girl,” she murmured. “You really want a ghost mad at you?”

  Kim surprised them all by seriously considering Happy’s question, her eyes far away. “Someone is hiding from us. Close by.”

  They all looked quickly around, but the long laboratory stretched away before them, open and still and quiet and completely empty.

  “Is that it?” said JC.

  “For now, yes,” said Kim. “I’m not like Happy. I don’t see or hear things like he does. I just get feelings.”

  “I feel things,” protested Happy.

  “Of course you do,” said Melody. “In your own special way.”

  “Meanwhile, back at the theorising,” JC said determinedly. “Someone was running those ghost shells, down in the lobby. Could that have been the New People? And if so, were they responsible for their deaths?”

  “Seems like they killed all the scientists and doctors, and even some of their own,” said Melody. “What’s a few policemen and security men, after that?”

  “Hold everything,” said Happy. “Kim’s right-someone else is here with us.”

  They all looked round again. Still nothing. The open planning and the bright fluorescent light left nowhere to hide.

  “They’re here,” Happy insisted, his eyes wide and scared. “Lots of them. Getting closer all the while. And they don’t feel at all friendly.”

  JC looked at Kim, and she nodded quickly. “They’re coming from a direction I don’t understand. From… outside reality.”

  “Human?” said JC.

  “I don’t think so,” said Happy.

  “Not any more,” said Kim. “They feel… awful. Like something human turned inside out
, so all the bad things show. JC, I’m scared.”

  “Dead people, come back as something other than people,” said Happy, frowning suddenly. He might have been talking to himself. “Some ghosts are stronger than others. Some are only images, trapped in a repeating moment of Time like insects in amber. Some are recordings, stone tapes playing back. Some are what remains after death. Things that won’t stay dead, or all the way dead, because they’re driven by some overwhelming purpose. And some ghosts are predators… leeching energy from the living to maintain their half-life existence in the waking world.

  “It’s getting cold, just like in the lobby. Something is sucking all the life energy out of this place, so the ghosts can bleed in from whatever bolt-hole they’ve found to manifest here, with the living.”

  “Who is it, Happy?” JC said quietly. “Who is it that’s coming?”

  “The Doctors,” said Happy. “Slaughtered and butchered here by their own creations, driven insane just by being here when it happened.”

  “Are you saying that simply being around these New People is enough to drive humans crazy?” said Melody.

  “They’re too much for us,” said Happy, dreamily. “We can’t cope. Witnessing the change was enough to blow all the Doctors’ fuses. That’s what we’ve got here-the flotsam and jetsam of a radical experiment, the fall-out and debris from the creation of a new thing. Mad Doctor ghosts, riding the coat-tails of the New People, soaking up the energies released to maintain their insane existence after death.”

  “Happy?” said JC. “Happy, can you hear me? You’ve gone too far; you need to come back to us.”

  “I see you,” said Happy, staring down the long laboratory at something only he could see. “I see you…”

  Melody stepped in front of him, blocking his view. She raised both hands to cup his face tenderly, meeting his gaze with her own.

  “Come back to us, Happy. Come back to me. Don’t leave me here alone, in the light.”

  His eyes snapped back into focus, and he smiled at her. “I never knew your voice could reach so far. All right, I’m back. I don’t like it, but I’m back. What’s happening, and is it too late to head for the exit?”