“Kim, head straight for it,” said JC. “Walk slowly and carefully, and we’ll all stick close to you.”
“Very close,” said Happy.
Kim stepped forward, and the others moved with her. The organs fell back, as though panicked by something they couldn’t stand or understand. Kim and JC, Happy and Melody made their way down the long length of the open-plan floor, and the organs moved along with them, still surrounding them but maintaining a more-than-respectful distance. A few let go of the ceiling overhead and dropped on the group, but JC and Melody were always ready to beat them aside. Happy would have, too, but he was so completely unsettled, he was never ready in time. He was breathing painfully hard, and his eyes were wide and wild.
They finally eased past the partition wall, and there was the Bio Reactor, waiting for them. It didn’t look like much-a great metal kiln some ten feet tall, its top brushing against the ceiling tiles, maybe eight feet wide around the base. A single hatch faced them, closed, with a wild flaring light rising and falling behind it. The glowing hatch glared at them all like a single unblinking eye.
“I’m still not picking up a single intelligent thought,” said Happy, his voice definitely a little higher than it should have been. “But I am getting a sense of presence… From the Bio Reactor, not the organs. It knows we’re here. It knows we’re the enemy. It’s planning something…”
The metal hatch slammed open, and a huge leathery tentacle shot out. It was made up of organ and muscle tissue, bonded together, to make a single gripping organism. It lunged at the group, and they scattered despite themselves. Kim cried out as she was left alone, and the tentacle shot straight at her. It whipped right through her, and immediately the whole tentacle withered and shrivelled up, all the life going out of it as it fell limply to the floor.
“That’s it!” said JC. “Kim, walk right into the Bio Reactor! All the way in and out the other side!”
He stepped forward to encourage her, and the tentacle came to life again. It still had one end inside the Bio Reactor, and new life pulsed down the length of it. It snapped around JC and pulled him down. He cried out as the muscle tissue constricted around him like a snake. Melody and Happy rushed forward, grabbed at the tentacle and tried to pry it off, but it was stronger than all three of them put together. Kim hesitated, and JC yelled at her.
“Never mind me! Walk through the Reactor! It can’t hurt you!”
“I can’t leave you!” said Kim.
“You have to! Now move! Move!”
Kim ran forward, plunging through the open hatch and inside the Bio Reactor. The moment she entered the huge device, the fierce light snapped off, and the tentacle dropped down, dead. JC wriggled his way out of its grasp with help from Happy and Melody. They put him back on his feet and let him lean inconspicuously on them until his legs were firm again. Kim came out from behind the lifeless machine and floated back to glare at JC.
“I can’t believe you made me do that!”
“It was necessary,” said JC, only a little breathless. “And part of the job. We all play to our strengths. I was almost sure it couldn’t hurt you.”
“Almost?” Kim’s glare was very cold. “We will have words about this later, JC.”
She turned her back on him, and moved quickly back down the long floor. The others followed after her. Oversized organs lay everywhere, dead and already rotting.. Those stuck to the walls and the ceiling were falling off, in ones and twos, to splatter and fall apart on the cold, hard floor. The smell was appalling.
“You know,” said JC. “I could really go for a good fry-up, right now.”
“Animal,” said Kim, not looking back.
SIX
“I am getting really fed up with climbing stairs,” said Happy, in a more than usually fed-up voice. “It’s not like they ever take us anywhere nice. And it still feels like we’re going down, rather than up. Like we’re descending into Hell, step by step by step…”
“If you were any gloomier, you’d walk around under your own personal thunderstorm,” said Melody.
“If the New People really are superhumans, or perhaps more properly posthuman,” said JC, “it should feel like we’re ascending towards Heaven. Or at the very least towards Olympus, to commune with the gods.”
“And yet it doesn’t,” said Happy. “Funny, that…”
“Not talking to you, when you’re in this kind of mood,” said JC. “Melody, you’re the one with all the information at her fingertips. What’s supposed to be next?”
“Could be anything,” said Melody. “There was nothing at all about this floor on any of the computers. Could be empty.”
“We’re not that lucky,” said Happy.
“Not listening to Mr. Moody,” said JC. “Hardly seems likely, does it? A whole floor left empty, in such a highrent area?”
“Nothing about this building makes sense,” said Melody. “I don’t think MSI knew half of what was really going on here. Someone’s been playing games, and we’re the latest contestants.”
“You mean, whoever it was that supplied the extra funding for ReSet?” said Happy, to show he wasn’t being left out of anything.
“Who can say?” said JC. “Upwards and onwards, my children…”
“Oh God, he’s getting enthusiastic again,” said Happy. “That’s always dangerous.”
“Shut up, Happy,” said Melody.
They stopped at the swing doors, listened briefly, then walked right in, on the grounds that being cautious hadn’t got them anywhere before. JC stopped the others with an upraised hand the moment they were inside. The whole of the floor was full of thick, curling mists, a pearlescent grey fog that stretched away for as far as the eye could see. Like a great grey ocean, greater than any building could hope to contain. There was a definite sense of being outside, and that the fog stretched away forever. Strange lights came and went in the pearl grey reaches of the fog, which moved constantly, slowly, as though troubled by some unfelt gusting breeze. The mists curled and roiled, churning in slow vortices, and the lights came and went, came and went
…
“Okay,” said JC. “This is new. You don’t normally get fog inside a building.”
“Unless something’s gone seriously wrong with reality,” said Melody. “Which is always possible, given everything that’s happened here recently.”
“I like fog,” said Happy. “Fog is nice. Fog is not dangerous, or threatening, or liable to jump on you without warning. I can live with fog.”
“I’m more worried about what might be hiding in the fog,” said JC.
“You see.” said Happy. “You had to go and spoil it, didn’t you?”
“Everyone stay right where you are,” said JC. “Don’t get out of sight of each other, or of the doors. Lose track of where you are, and you might never get out of here.”
“Life was so much easier when I was paranoid,” Happy said wistfully. “When I was delusional, and the world really wasn’t out to get me.”
“It’s not simply fog,” said Kim. They all looked at her, but she had nothing else to say.
“I think the creation of the New People damaged the state of reality itself, inside this building,” said JC. “Or at least, I hope the changes are confined to this building… Either way, their arrival has placed an unnatural strain upon the local environment. You’ve heard of sick building syndrome, where the building itself can affect people’s health in unfortunate ways? That’s low-level genius loci at work. But there is also haunted building syndrome, a building that’s gone bad, that either creates ghosts or calls ghosts to it. The whole of Chimera House has been adversely affected, psychically stained, by recent events, an imprinting that will take decades, maybe even centuries, to clean up and make right. Things that would normally be improbable, or wildly unlikely, become more possible in places like this. Even inevitable…”
“Like the Bio Reactor’s mobile organs?” said Kim.