Ghost of a Smile by Simon R. Green
“This is fantastic! I mean, look at all this techy goodness! Some of this equipment is so advanced, even I can’t be sure what it is! This is way beyond state of the art, JC. I’ve only ever seen some of this stuff in really specialised trade magazines, usually in the We’re still running tests and crossing our fingers so don’t expect to see this anytime soon department. Available somewhen in the next decade, if you’re lucky, along with the flying cars and personal jet packs. Okay—once we are finished with this case, I get dibs on everything. We are hiring several trucks and taking it all with us. I claim salvage.”
“I don’t think it works like that, Melody,” said JC.
“It does if I say it does,” said Melody. “I have a gun. Finders keepers, losers can sue me. The scientists working here clearly didn’t appreciate what they had, or they wouldn’t have gone off and left it. Which means it’s all mine on moral grounds.” And then she stopped and looked about her thoughtfully. “Odd . . . Everything here appears to be still turned on, still working . . . as though people just stopped in the middle of what they were doing and walked away.”
“See!” said Kim. “I told you! Exactly like the Marie Celeste!”
“It’s not normal to be that enthusiastic all the time,” said Happy. “If I didn’t know she was dead, I’d swear she was on more pills than me.”
“But where are the scientists?” said Melody. “Seriously, why would they just walk, leaving everything still running?”
“Probably legged it once they saw the trial was going seriously wrong,” said Happy. “As any sane or sensible person would.”
“Getting bored with that song,” said JC. “Not listening, not listening . . .”
“They’re not gone,” said Kim. “They’re still here.” She nodded to herself, then realised the others were looking at her. She shrugged. “Just a feeling . . .”
“Melody,” said JC. “Find another computer and bully some answers out of it. Starting with exactly what is ReSet, and what is it supposed to do? And, in particular, what were the researchers expecting or hoping to achieve with this latest drug trial?”
Melody was already sitting before the nearest computer, which was still humming busily, its screen filled with an image of Stonehenge at dawn. She hammered away at the keyboard, and the computer made a series of important-sounding noises as it replaced the Stonehenge screen saver with a series of scientific files. Happy looked over her shoulder, was quickly baffled, and went back to 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 information, JC. We have to contact the Boss, get them to pry open the company records.” She stopped and looked up from the monitor. “You know, I have to wonder, even if we succeed, if we’ll be allowed to walk away from this case, knowing what we know.”
“Welcome to my paranoid world,” said Happy. “Cold, isn’t it?”
“We don’t know nearly enough yet,” said JC. “And anyway, I’d like to see MSI come up with anything that could stop us.”
“Don’t say things like that!” said Happy. “You’ll be saying What could possibly go wrong next!”
“Face front, brave little soldier,” said JC. “If we can survive what’s going on here, we can survive anything.”
“Did you have to say if?” said Happy.
“What else have you got, Melody?” said JC.
“The extra funding did the trick,” said Melody, scrolling quickly through the files. “They came up with a real miracle drug. They called it ReSet. According to this, it was a completely new wonder drug that could actually repair all damage to the human body by forcing it to reset itself to factory conditions. The miracle cure that all Humanity’s been waiting for—a single drug that would fix whatever was wrong by putting everything back the way it should be. From broken bones to tu
“I really don’t like where this is going,” said Happy.
“You’re not alone,” said Melody. “Listen . . . what’s happened here is the result of the first actual drug trial on human test subjects. Everything else had been strictly computer models and simulations or experiments with the organs and cells they’d acquired. They didn’t do any animal testing—apparently whoever was supplying the funding was in a hurry. The order was to go straight to human testing, and no-one here had the authority to say no. And the researchers were given very strict instructions on how the drug was to be administered. The test subjects, the volunteers, had no idea what they were getting. Poor bastards were told it was an allergy test. They were all given injections of ReSet, right here in the laboratory, and then watched closely for twenty-four hours. Nothing happened.
“I’m looking at the clinical notes. Round-the-clock observation, all life signs carefully monitored, regular blood tests . . . Nothing. Since there were no obvious reactions, and no biological changes, the test subjects were allowed to return to their living quarters, on the floor below. So the scientists could get into a real screaming match over whose fault it was that nothing had happened. They thought the drug trial was a failure because there should have been immediate signs. After twenty-four hours of sod all, they were tearing each other’s hair out.”
“LD50,” said JC. “They expected half the test subjects to die, or nearly die, then recover, thanks to ReSet.”
“Exactly,” said Melody. “But the test subjects had barely been gone an hour when the first emergency call came through, from Room Seven. Things really went horribly wrong. Jesus, JC, some of this makes seriously scary reading. A lot of it is notes, made on the run by scientists half out of their minds, meant to be fleshed out later. Anyway, the scientists went down to Room Seven, accompanied by building security staff. That’s probably what we heard, in the corridor. And then . . . a lot of people were killed, in and around Room Seven. There was a struggle. First the researchers attempted to restrain the occupant of Room Seven, who was freaking out big-time, then the security people waded in. They couldn’t control him. Says here they used Tasers, and that was when the killing started. The man in Room Seven just . . . tore them apart, and kept on killing until the survivors turned and ran. And then . . . he killed himself. Maybe because he couldn’t stand what he was turning into. What he was becoming.” She paused, clearly shaken by what she was reading.
“By then, the same sort of thing was happening in all the rooms, all hell was breaking loose. The test subjects were all changing. The scientists had given up trying to control the situation, they were trying to get out alive. Two of the test subjects killed one another. Eight of the subjects went 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 way and that, the dark empty eye-sockets red and jagged where he’d torn the eyelids away, too. And then he laughed, bitterly, painfully, and screamed, “I can still see!”
Something hit the camera and knocked it over on its side. The screaming man disappeared, and all that could be seen was an area of blood-spattered floor. The scream rose and rose, beyond all human limits and meaning, then the screen went blank.
“That’s all there is,” said Melody. “I don’t . . . that’s all there is.”
“What did he see?” said Happy. “What could make a man do that?”
“He must be dead, now,” said Melody. “He must be dead, mustn’t he?”
“Poor soul,” said Kim. “What do you think he was seeing there, at the end?”
“Don’t let it get to you,” JC said firmly. “Look
“No,” Happy said immediately. “I’ve got my mental shields hammered down so tight God Herself couldn’t see inside my mind. And I’m seeing the same lab as the rest of you.”
“So what did happen here?” said Melody. “Did someone . . . clean it all up? Or was the recording a fake?”
“What we saw on the screen was real,” JC said slowly. “I’ve no doubt about that. But there was no time stamp on the screen. So who’s to say when it happened? I mean, it must have been after the drug trial, but . . . not enough time has passed to clean up the mess we saw. We’re getting conflicting information here, people. I can’t believe that’s an accident. Someone wants to keep us off-balance.”
“I’ve found something else,” said Melody. Her voice was still shaking from what she’d seen, but her manner was as calm and efficient as ever. It took a lot to throw Melody. “More notes on the drug testing, from one of the doctors involved. He’s putting himself on record as being opposed to the LD50, but only after it had been administered. There’s a lot of mea culpa here, some of it almost hysterical, but . . . Yes. Here, he’s talking about ReSet, and how it didn’t just re-establish the human body’s factory settings. It went much further than that. You’ve all heard about junk DNA, right? All the DNA in the human genome that’s been there forever, but we haven’t got a clue what it does. What it’s for. ReSet awakened, or activated, all of the human junk DNA and set it to work making it do what it was originally supposed to do. To make us . . . into what we were supposed to be. There’s another vid file. Do you want to see it?”