Ghostfinders 02 - Ghost of a Smile

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