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?”
“Not really,” said Happy. “But we have to. We need to know what’s going on.”
“Good soldier,” said JC.
“Shut up, or I will slap you,” said Happy.
This time, the doctor’s head and shoulders immediately filled the screen. Middle-aged, balding, in a white lab coat too small for him. There was a spray of fresh blood across the left side of his neck and shoulder, clearly not his. His face was deathly pale from shock, his eyes wide, his mouth trembling. He looked quickly about him, as though not sure he was alone, but there were none of the unnerving background sounds from the first vid file. The doctor squirmed in his chair and took a deep breath, visibly bracing himself. He stared into the camera and started talking, no name, no introduction, no build-up. Just the stumbling words of a man desperate to be heard.
“ReSet never was what they told us it was. Curing problems in the human body was only the first step. The bait in the trap, to get us interested. We weren’t told what it would do next, what it was always meant to do. ReSet had another purpose. He knew. He knew that all along. That’s why he funded us. ReSet was intended to make us all that we could be. All we were meant to be. We were never meant to be human. Not merely human. Somehow, part of our DNA got shut down, suppressed, frozen in place. So instead of becoming what we were meant to be, we got stuck part of the way. What we know as Humanity was only meant to be a stepping-stone on the way to something else. But now ReSet has helped finish the job! Taken the test subjects all the way to the end of the line! They’re not human any more. They’re the New People. That’s what they are. Not superhuman, not more than human… Something else. Gods. And monsters.”
He stopped to laugh briefly, a sad and bitter sound. “ That is what we were meant to be. Gods and monsters? Intelligent design, or evolution’s last laugh? Who knows… All of our knowledge and civilisation was a mistake, because what we were supposed to be would never have needed them.”
He started laughing again, and this time he couldn’t stop. He rocked back and forth in his chair and laughed his sanity away.
Melody shut the screen down. “There is more… but I don’t think we need to see it. I doubt he had anything else to say.”
“So,” said JC. “ReSet rewrote the test subjects, from the bottom up, transforming the ones that didn’t die into New People. Whatever they are. And they’re still here, presumably somewhere above us. Those that survived the process… I think we need to go up and have a nice little chat with them.”
“I just knew he was going to say that,” said Happy. “Didn’t you just know he was going to say that?”
“And what do you mean we, Pale Face?” said Melody. “You heard the mad doctor, gods and monsters, all in the same package. That does not sound like someone you can stroll up to and have a nice little chat with! Give me one good reason why we need to go up and talk with these very scary New People?”
“Because they’re behind everything that’s happening here,” said JC. “That’s why it’s been so easy for us to get answers. They wanted us to know. Be honest, Melody-would you have been able to open up those files so easily under normal conditions?”
“No,” said Melody, reluctantly. “I’m good, but I’m not that good.”
“I don’t think we’re going to be allowed to leave until we’ve seen this through,” said JC. “We’re here for a purpose. I think… these New People want something from us.”
“Why us?” said Happy, plaintively. “Why is it always us?”
“They might want us dead,” said Melody. “Have you considered that?”
“If they’d wanted you dead, you’d be dead by now,” said Kim. Everyone looked at her. She shrugged. “That’s what I’m feeling.”
“Anything else you’d like to share?” snapped Happy.
Melody leaned in close to him. “Don’t upset the dead girl,” she murmured. “You really want a ghost mad at you?”
Kim surprised them all by seriously considering Happy’s question, her eyes far away. “Someone is hiding from us. Close by.”
They all looked quickly around, but the long laboratory stretched away before them, open and still and quiet and completely empty.
“Is that it?” said JC.
“For now, yes,” said Kim. “I’m not like Happy. I don’t see or hear things like he does. I just get feelings.”
“I feel things,” protested Happy.
“Of course you do,” said Melody. “In your own special way.”
“Meanwhile, back at the theorising,” JC said determinedly. “Someone was running those ghost shells, down in the lobby. Could that have been the New People? And if so, were they responsible for their deaths?”
“Seems like they killed all the scientists and doctors, and even some of their own,” said Melody. “What’s a few policemen and security men, after that?”
“Hold everything,” said Happy. “Kim’s right-someone else is here with us.”
They all looked round again. Still nothing. The open planning and the bright fluorescent light left nowhere to hide.
“They’re here,” Happy insisted, his eyes wide and scared. “Lots of them. Getting closer all the while. And they don’t feel at all friendly.”
JC looked at Kim, and she nodded quickly. “They’re coming from a direction I don’t understand. From… outside reality.”
“Human?” said JC.
“I don’t think so,” said Happy.
“Not any more,” said Kim. “They feel… awful. Like something human turned inside out, so all the bad things show. JC, I’m scared.”
“Dead people, come back as something other than people,” said Happy, frowning suddenly. He might have been talking to himself. “Some ghosts are stronger than others. Some are only images, trapped in a repeating moment of Time like insects in amber. Some are recordings, stone tapes playing back. Some are what remains after death. Things that won’t stay dead, or all the way dead, because they’re driven by some overwhelming purpose. And some ghosts are predators… leeching energy from the living to maintain their half-life existence in the waking world.
“It’s getting cold, just like in the lobby. Something is sucking all the life energy out of this place, so the ghosts can bleed in from whatever bolt-hole they’ve found to manifest here, with the living.”
“Who is it, Happy?” JC said quietly. “Who is it that’s coming?”
“The Doctors,” said Happy. “Slaughtered and butchered here by their own creations, driven insane just by being here when it happened.”
“Are you saying that simply being around these New People is enough to drive humans crazy?” said Melody.
“They’re too much for us,” said Happy, dreamily. “We can’t cope. Witnessing the change was enough to blow all the Doctors’ fuses. That’s what we’ve got here-the flotsam and jetsam of a radical experiment, the fall-out and debris from the creation of a new thing. Mad Doctor ghosts, riding the coat-tails of the New People, soaking up the energies released to maintain their insane existence after death.”
“Happy?” said JC. “Happy, can you hear me? You’ve gone too far; you need to come back to us.”
“I see you,” said Happy, staring down the long laboratory at something only he could see. “I see you…”
Melody stepped in front of him, blocking his view. She raised both hands to cup his face tenderly, meeting his
