Ghostfinders 02 - Ghost of a Smile

down. He cried out as the muscle tissue constricted around him like a snake. Melody and Happy rushed forward, grabbed at the tentacle and tried to pry it off, but it was stronger than all three of them put together. Kim hesitated, and JC yelled at her.
    “Never mind me! Walk through the Reactor! It can’t hurt you!”
    “I can’t leave you!” said Kim.
    “You have to! Now move! Move!”
    Kim ran forward, plunging through the open hatch and inside the Bio Reactor. The moment she entered the huge device, the fierce light snapped off, and the tentacle dropped down, dead. JC wriggled his way out of its grasp with help from Happy and Melody. They put him back on his feet and let him lean inconspicuously on them until his legs were firm again. Kim came out from behind the lifeless machine and floated back to glare at JC.
    “I can’t believe you made me do that!”
    “It was necessary,” said JC, only a little breathless. “And part of the job. We all play to our strengths. I was almost sure it couldn’t hurt you.”
    “Almost?” Kim’s glare was very cold. “We will have words about this later, JC.”
    She turned her back on him, and moved quickly back down the long floor. The others followed after her. Oversized organs lay everywhere, dead and already rotting . . Those stuck to the walls and the ceiling were falling off, in ones and twos, to splatter and fall apart on the cold, hard floor. The smell was appalling.
    “You know,” said JC. “I could really go for a good fry-up, right now.”
    “Animal,” said Kim, not looking back.

SIX
    GHOSTLIGHT
    “I am getting really fed up with climbing stairs,” said Happy, in a more than usually fed-up voice. “It’s not like they ever take us anywhere nice. And it still feels like we’re going down, rather than up. Like we’re descending into Hell, step by step by step . . .”
    “If you were any gloomier, you’d walk around under your own personal thunderstorm,” said Melody.
    “If the New People really are superhumans, or perhaps more properly posthuman,” said JC, “it should feel like we’re ascending towards Heaven. Or at the very least towards Olympus, to commune with the gods.”
    “And yet it doesn’t,” said Happy. “Funny, that . . .”
    “Not talking to you, when you’re in this kind of mood,” said JC. “Melody, you’re the one with all the information at her fingertips. What’s supposed to be next?”
    “Could be anything,” said Melody. “There was nothing at all about this floor on any of the computers. Could be empty.”
    “We’re not that lucky,” said Happy.
    “Not listening to Mr. Moody,” said JC. “Hardly seems likely, does it? A whole floor left empty, in such a highrent area?”
    “Nothing about this building makes sense,” said Melody. “I don’t think MSI knew half of what was really going on here. Someone’s been playing games, and we’re the latest contestants.”
    “You mean, whoever it was that supplied the extra funding for ReSet?” said Happy, to show he wasn’t being left out of anything.
    “Who can say?” said JC. “Upwards and onwards, my children . . .”
    “Oh God, he’s getting enthusiastic again,” said Happy. “That’s always dangerous.”
    “Shut up, Happy,” said Melody.
    They stopped at the swing doors, listened briefly, then walked right in, on the grounds that being cautious hadn’t got them anywhere before. JC stopped the others with an upraised hand the moment they were inside. The whole of the floor was full of thick, curling mists, a pearlescent grey fog that stretched away for as far as the eye could see. Like a great grey ocean, greater than any building could hope to contain. There was a definite sense of being outside , and that the fog stretched away forever. Strange lights came and went in the pearl grey reaches of the fog, which moved constantly, slowly, as though troubled by some unfelt gusting breeze. The mists curled and roiled, churning in slow vortices, and the lights came and went, came and went . . .
    “Okay,” said JC. “This is new. You don’t normally get fog inside a building.”
    “Unless something’s gone seriously wrong with reality,” said Melody. “Which is always possible, given everything that’s happened here recently.”
    “I like fog,” said Happy. “Fog is nice. Fog is not dangerous, or threatening, or liable to jump on you without warning. I can live with fog.”
    “I’m more worried about what might be hiding in the