Ghostfinders 03 -Ghost of a Dream

they wanted her to doubt her instruments. Melody took a deep breath and shut all her instruments down. Everything. The lights went out, the monitor screens went blank, and every single piece of highly sophisticated technology was suddenly still and silent. Melody hated to do it, but if she couldn’t trust what her equipment was telling her, then it was no damned good at all.
    It was all very quiet in the lobby now. The lighting was bright and steady, the shadows blessedly unmoving, and the air was dry and still, as though nothing had happened, and this was just another day. Melody snarled silently at that thought, and rubbed at her aching forehead.
Too much thinking is bad for you,
her mother always said.
It’ll give you lines.
Though her mother never was much of a one for thinking, anyway, or she’d never have married Melody’s father. Bad cess to the man, wherever he might be. Melody made herself concentrate on the matter at hand. Her hands weren’t as steady as they should have been, and her back muscles ached unmercifully from the endless tension. The stress was getting to her; and that wasn’t like her. She never let the world upset her; she made it a matter of principle to always upset the world.
    But now she felt very much on her own, without her instruments to lean on. Alone and vulnerable. Melody sniffed loudly. She knew what to do about that. She crouched and reached into the arms cabinet, feeling for the machine-pistol; but her fingers couldn’t find it. She knelt so she could look right into the cabinet, but there was nothing in it. Nothing at all. She stared into the darkspace. She couldn’t believe it. She swept her hand back and forth inside the cabinet, banging it against the inside walls; but every single one of her weapons was gone. She straightened up and moved quickly up and down her instrument racks, checking all the other, more secret, defensive caches she maintained in her set-up; and they were empty, too. All her weapons were gone, including all the ones nobody else was supposed to know about. Including her team-mates.
    She slowly turned around in a complete circle, taking in the empty, innocent-seeming lobby. Her back muscles crawled, in anticipation of the attack she probably wouldn’t know anything about until it was too late. Her hands clenched into fists. She could feel cold sweat on her face. And then she caught a glimpse of someone, out of the corner of her eye, watching her. She spun round to look straight at him, but there was no-one there. She caught another glimpse of the watching, smiling stranger, out of the corner of her other eye. She spun around again; and again there was nobody there. She was breathing really hard now, ready to jump on anyone and beat the truth out of them, about what was really going on. She caught another glimpse, and another, from this side and from that, but no matter which way she looked, or how fast she turned, she couldn’t catch him. Only the briefest of glimpses; quick impressions of a man watching her, smiling at her, enjoying her agitation. And every time she saw him, he was that little bit closer, closing in on her. She spun round and round, eyes wide open, then stopped herself with an effort. She stood very still, hands clenchedpainfully tight at her sides, fighting to get her frantic breathing and heart rate back under control. She let her head hang down, squeezed her eyes shut, and refused to open them again.
    Come on, girl. You can do better than this. You’ve been trained to withstand Outside influences. Trained to keep other people from messing with your mind. So focus! You can do this!
    Her breathing slowed, and her thoughts settled. Her back muscles unclenched, and so did her fists. Her mind calmed and cleared, as well-rehearsed mental shields slammed down and locked firmly into place. And when she finally lifted her head again, opened her eyes, and looked around her, the lobby was very definitely empty. Melody sniffed loudly and shook herself roughly, like a dog shaking off a bad dream. She took out her mobile phone. She had to reach Happy and JC, let them know what was happening. Let them know there was someone else in the theatre with them. But there was no signal. Even though she was sure there had been, before. She shook the phone hard, and a voice from the phone said her name.
Melody…
That and nothing more. She checked the phone again, but there still wasn’t any signal. Not a single bar. So where was the voice coming