Ghostfinders 02 - Ghost of a Smile

wandering around the floor-length laboratory.
    “I’m picking up something, JC, but it’s hard to pin down anything distinct. There are a lot of emotions still hanging in the air. All of them quite definitely human. Fear, panic, anger, guilt, and a whole lot of get the hell out of here . Pretty much what you’d expect, for when everything’s gone tits up big-time. But it’s all . . . vague. Group feelings, rather than individual residues. Odd . . .”
    “Found something!” Kim said happily. “JC, come and look! I think it’s a company brochure.”
    She was trying to pick it up, but her insubstantial fingers kept passing through it and the desk beneath. She said a few baby swear words and stepped back. JC picked it up. He leafed through the heavy glossy pages, doing his best to ignore Kim hovering behind him.
    “This would appear to be an in-house organ,” he said. “Not meant for outside eyes. Basically, preaching to the company faithful. Lots of Good times are on their way, bonuses for all, your names will go down in history so work hard for the company good . All the usual corporate bullshit, to keep the little drones happy and hard at work. The bottom line seems to be that the company was promising a cure for pretty much everything, through the wonders of genetic manipulation. But, of course, not quite yet. All jam tomorrow . . .”
    “What?” said Happy. “Is this like when I was a kid, and my mum would make me take a pill with a spoonful of jam? I miss that.”
    “It’s from Through the Looking Glass ,” said Kim. “You know—jam tomorrow, jam yesterday, but never jam today. You must know it—it’s a children’s classic by Lewis Carroll.”
    “I have a hard time believing Happy was ever a child,” said JC. “I think he was born nervous, sweaty, and trying to cadge free medications off the midwife.”
    “I never read any Carroll,” said Happy. “I did try, but it scared the crap out of me. I was a sensitive child.”
    JC flipped quickly through to the end of the brochure. “Reading between the lines, what I see here is mostly qualified apologies. The theories are sound, but they don’t have the funding to produce real results. Nothing here about ReSet.”
    “Found it!” said Melody. “Drop your linen and start your grinning, Auntie Melody has found the mother lode!” She beat a brief victory tattoo on the desk with both hands. “Not a single decent firewall in this thing. It’s almost like these files wanted to be found. Anyway, gather round while I dispense wisdom and wonders.”
    They all did so, and she continued, her attention still riveted on the monitor. “The scientists here at MSI stumbled onto something impressive while looking for something else, which is always the way. But you were right, JC, they had to go outside the company to get the extra funding to make it work. And if I’m reading this right, I mean absolute shed-loads of money. The people on this floor needed some pretty expensive items, a lot of it quite blatantly illegal. And even immoral. We’re talking half a ton of human stem cells, and even more human organs. Along with equipment so cutting-edge they must have boosted it right out of the testing labs. Oh, this can’t be right, I’m looking at invoices for hundreds of human hearts, kidneys, livers, bone marrow . . . you name it, and it’s here somewhere. Where could they possibly have got it all?”
    “I’d guess third-world countries, executed Chinese prisoners, any number of civil-war zones,” said JC. “Trafficking in human organs is the second biggest illegal trade, right after human slavery. Sometimes I think we’re going after the wrong monsters. What were they doing with all those organs? And the stem cells?”
    “Strip-mining them for something specific they needed,” said Melody, frowning. “To make ReSet.”
    “Who exactly was it that supplied the extra funding?” said JC.
    “No names,” Melody said immediately. “Whoever it was went to a lot of trouble to remain strictly anonymous.”
    “Could it be Crowley Project?” said Happy. “I mean, this is the kind of nasty shit they’d get off on.”
    “None of the usual signifiers,” said Melody. “But everything was kept carefully compartmentalised, so most of the scientists didn’t know what the guy on the next bench was working on. It was all on a strictly need-to-know basis. Perhaps so no-one would know enough to feel properly guilty. This goes far beyond proprietary