While Melody was still trying to get her head around what had happened, all her warning alarms went off at once. The sirens were deafeningly loud in the enclosed space of the lobby, and Melody moved quickly from one readout to the next, all of which seemed convinced that she was surrounded and under attack from any number of heavily armed hostiles. The short-range sensors were picking up guns, energy weapons, Objects of Power, and all kinds of dangerous radiations, while the motion trackers showed dozens of hostile presences, circling round and round her instrument station. As far as her defences were concerned, Melody was under attack from the walking dead, demonic forces, and bloody big aliens in hobnailed boots. The machines were going crazy, warning her about everything under the sun, all of them shouting and screaming for her attention. Melody looked up and glared wildly about her; but the lobby was quite definitely empty and utterly peaceful.
All the alarms shut off at once; and a slow, steady quiet blessedly returned. All the short-range sensor readings were back to normal, indicating everything was as it should be. It was like they’d all suddenly lost their machine minds, for no reason. And then all the long-range sensors kicked in, lights blinking angrily all across the boards. Melody leaned in close to study the readings, and then shook her head numbly. As far as the long-range sensors were concerned, the theatre wasn’t there any more. It was gone, and the rest of the world with it. She couldn’t find a single sensor reporting anything: no physical readings, no energy sources, nothing at all. As though she and her ranks of machines were floating alone, in empty space. Melody looked steadily about her, but the lobby stubbornly insisted it was still there, surrounding her, and everything was fine. She stamped her foot hard on the floor to make sure.
Bright lights were flashing everywhere now, everything kicking off at once; and one by one, the monitor screens turned themselves on, showing Melody images of things that weren’t there. Brief glimpses of other worlds than this. One screen showed the inside of some vast stone temple, from an age before any known history, lit by strange, phosphorescent glows from long creepers of moss, crawling slowly across the floor and walls, and draping themselves around massive stone carvings of long-forgotten gods with horrid insect faces.
The screen next to it showed a dark, drifting, underwater scene, of some sunken city wrapped in seaweed and studded with pulsing mushroom growths. Strange, unpleasant-looking fish darted this way and that, carrying their own eerie light with them, while huge glass submarines glided past, full of hunched humanoid creatures made out of kelp.
Another screen showed the theatre lobby, soaked and splashed with blood and gore. JC and Happy stared out of the screen, standing together, their clothes and flesh ripped and torn. They were both dead, but they shuffled slowly forward on broken feet, staring out of the screen at Melody with dark bloody holes where their eyes had been, their mutilated faces full of a terrible silent accusation.
The monitor screens all shut down at once, showing nothing. Melody was breathing harshly and scowling so fiercely her face hurt. Either something was wrong with her instruments or something was very wrong with the world. And, since a quick glare around showed the lobby was still there, untouched and unchanged, it had to be her machines. She honestly didn’t know what to do. If she started running major diagnostics on everything, she’d still be here running them when JC and Happy came back to tell her the case was over. Checking them all for outside influences would take hours. Though that had to be what this was. Something from Outside was messing with her. First those nightmare posters on the walls, and now this. Someone was messing with her head, trying to make her doubt herself, and now 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 dark space. 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 clenched painfully 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 from? The voice from the phone said her name again. A soft, self-satisfied voice, like a purring cat. Like someone used to having the advantage over other people.