Ghostfinders 02 - Ghost of a Smile

breathing hard, not breathing at all. He nodded slowly to JC, still smiling his wide, wide smile, as though this was the finest thing ever, the most fun he’d ever had.
    “You’d know my name if I said it,” the dead man said in a breathy, scratchy voice. “So I won’t say it.”
    The voice grated on everyone’s nerves. It was only breath, moving over vocal cords. Nothing human in it at all.
    “All right,” said JC. “Let’s try an easier one. What do you want?”
    “I will kill you all,” said the dead man. “And you can’t stop me. You should never have come here. You should never have interfered.”
    “I hate to be picky about this, oh high-and-mighty dead person,” said JC, “but you brought us here. Or at least Patterson did, presumably on your orders.”
    “You were supposed to fail,” said the dead man. “I chose you, above all the other A teams, because you had the least experience. I had to get you in place before someone better turned up. You were supposed to walk in there, like good little sacrificial lambs, and fall to the New People. Or their creatures. The New People were taking too long. They needed a nudge, some exterior pressure, to get them moving. We arranged for their creation, you see, so they would damage reality . . . break it open from within. Smash the walls of the world.”
    “You wanted the New People to destroy the world?” said Latimer. “Why?”
    “The world doesn’t matter,” said Patterson. “It’s merely a cage, from which we will escape. The New People were only ever a means to an end.”
    Latimer’s phone rang. Everything stopped for a moment, reacting to the harsh ringing tone. Latimer took out the phone and put it to her ear, never taking her gaze off the dead man before her. He looked vaguely annoyed at being interrupted but let her answer it. Presumably some reactions are ingrained, even on the dead.
    “Yes, I know,” said Latimer. “Yes, I’m looking right at him. No! Stay where you are! That’s an order! Maintain the perimeter at all costs. Nothing else matters. Hold the line until I tell you otherwise . . . or until it’s clear I’m no longer in charge. Then you take your orders from the Second In Command. God help you. Now don’t bother me again. I’m busy.”
    She put the phone away. Happy looked at her, almost in shock.
    “That’s it? Shouldn’t we contact Institute Headquarters, get some serious reinforcements down here, with really serious weapons?”
    “By the time they could get here, this will all be over,” Latimer said flatly. “One way or the other.”
    “You should get the hell out of here, Boss,” said JC. “You’re too valuable to the Institute to put yourself at risk.”
    “Yes, I am,” said Latimer. “Good of you to remember that, for once. Unfortunately, my emergency teleport button isn’t working. It should have removed me to safety the moment it became clear brute force wouldn’t stop that thing but it would appear something . . . is blocking it. Which isn’t supposed to be possible. I can only assume Patterson betrayed us on a great many levels, sharing his insider knowledge with whoever or whatever is riding him now. I could run, I suppose but I doubt I’d get very far.”
    “Typical,” Happy said bitterly. “The Boss gets an emergency teleport button, but we don’t. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as an emergency teleport button.”
    “I did,” said Melody. “I’ve been trying to hack its files for months, so I could build one of my own.”
    “Oh, that was you, was it?” said Latimer. “We will discuss that later, young lady.”
    “Excuse me,” said JC. “Do you think we could all concentrate on the matter at hand, pretty please? Namely, the dead man with the blood of many on his hands, standing right in front of us? And no, I wouldn’t try outrunning him, Boss. You saw how fast whatever it is moved. I suppose once you’re dead, human limitations don’t apply any more.”
    “No,” said Kim. “They don’t. But there are other limits.”
    JC looked at her. “Anything you can See, anything you can tell us, about the dead man?”
    “He’s got one hell of an aura. Lots of purple. Just by being present, he’s burning up that body. Though probably not soon enough to do us any good. So much power . . . Whatever it is that’s riding Patterson, I don’t think it’s human. Or at least, not human any more.”
    JC nodded quickly, as though that was nothing more than he’d