JC launched himself up the intervening steps and threw himself at Patterson. They slammed together and wrestled fiercely in the confined space. Happy and Melody charged up the stairs, while Kim shouted fierce encouragement to JC. Patterson forced JC off him, with a great effort, and swung wildly at his attacker, who ducked aside at the last moment. Patterson’s strength and momentum carried him right past JC and over the stairwell’s railing, and out into the void. He grabbed the railing with a last desperate effort, and hung on to it with one hand, dangling over the long, long drop. He looked down, then up at JC. Happy and Melody crowded in on either side of JC, and the three of them looked at Patterson. Kim hovered above them all.
None of them moved to help Patterson. Great beads of sweat appeared on his dark face as he hung helplessly, unable to pull himself back up. He glared up at them but said nothing. He wouldn’t beg. JC regarded him dispassionately, and when he finally spoke, his voice was so cold it actually shocked the others.
“For all the people who died here, because of you. For all the lives you ruined, through the ReSet drug. For killing the policemen and the security men. For creating the New People and endangering the whole world… For being a traitor to the Carnacki Institute, and the whole of Humanity… It falls to me to pass judgement on you.”
“JC?” said Kim. “What are you doing, JC? You can’t just kill him. ..”
“Yes, I can,” said JC. “For all he’s done and all he’s made possible-yes, I can kill him.”
“Hold it, hold it, take it easy,” Happy said quickly. “JC, I can see where you’re going with this, but don’t. We can’t kill the man. He knows things, JC. We need to know who he’s working for, if there are other traitors inside the Institute, and everything these people are planning!”
“I’ll never tell,” said Patterson. He swung slowly from his single handhold, making no attempt to pull himself up. “I’d rather die than have them angry at me. There really are fates worth than death.”
“You aren’t actually going to kill him, are you, JC?” said Kim.
“For God’s sake, JC,” said Melody.
“‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,’” said JC. “But he isn’t here right now, and I am.”
He slammed his fist down on Patterson’s hand. The dark fingers sprang open under the impact, and Patterson lost his grip. He fell like a stone, screaming all the way down. JC watched him fall and wouldn’t let himself look away until he lost sight of the man in the gloom of the stairwell. The scream cut off abruptly, and JC finally turned away.
“Damn, JC,” said Happy. “That was… hardcore. I’m not saying you were wrong, necessarily, but…”
“You killed him,” said Kim, looking at JC as though she’d never seen him before.
“It’s part of the job, sometimes,” said Melody. “We’re trained to kill the bad guys, if necessary. If there’s no other way.”
“Yeah,” said Happy. “But there’s a difference between taking out a threat in the heat of the moment and a cold-blooded execution. I mean, I never liked Patterson, but he was one of us. Still a part of the Carnacki Institute.”
“Yes,” said JC. “One of us. That’s why I did it.”
He led the way up the last remaining set of steps, and one by one the others followed him up, all of them watching him thoughtfully, in their own ways.
All too soon they ran out of stairs and stood together looking at the last set of closed swing doors. None of them made any move, for quite a while. JC finally reached out a hand to the doors, then snatched it away again as a great Voice was heard, filling the stairwell, filling their heads. Not a human Voice, not even human words, but still it seemed to JC and the others that Something called to them, summoned them, to come to the final floor and account for themselves.
“What the hell was that?” Melody said hoarsely. “It was inside my head…”
“It went right through all my shields and barriers as though they weren’t even there,” said Happy. “And no, JC, I’m still not picking up anything else. That wasn’t telepathy. It didn’t feel anything like telepathy.”
“The power,” said Kim. “The sheer power…”
“If they’re that powerful, we’d better not keep them waiting,” said JC. “In we go, children. Best foot forward and try not to show me up.”
He pushed the doors open and strode straight in, and the others followed right after him.
JC kept walking, even though he wasn’t sure where he was any more. He could feel the pressure, the sheer presence of the New People, even before he could see them. An overwhelming impact, as though their simple existence had stamped itself onto reality so completely, it was hard to feel anything else. He finally stumbled to a halt, stopped in his tracks by the sheer alien strangeness of the situation. A fierce, unnatural light with no obvious source suffused everything, a light painful even to his altered eyes, and a great Sound filled the air, without beginning or end. JC felt it in his bones and in his soul as much as heard it. He knew that he was in the presence of something unknown, and perhaps even unknowable.
The others had stopped with him. Happy and Melody and Kim huddled close together for the simple comfort of human contact. They all had their eyes screwed up against the light, and the sound and the heavy presence of a place not meant for human kind. Kim seemed as much affected as any of the living.
“We shouldn’t be here,” Happy whispered, like a child in a cathedral. “We don’t belong in a place like this.”
“Chin up, my children,” said JC, as clearly and calmly as he could manage. “Yes, I would have to say that we are in the presence of things unknown… But that’s the job, when you work for the Carnacki Institute.”
“I resign,” said Happy.
“Shut up, Happy,” said JC.
He took off his sunglasses and looked around. In this new place his eyes hardly glowed at all. It was as though the golden light was nothing compared to the harsher light of what had been the top floor of Chimera House. JC nodded slowly, and put his shades back on.
“We have a job to do,” he said flatly, “And we’re going to do it together. Because it’s our duty, and our responsibility, to the Institute and perhaps all Humanity. And because we’re the best damn team in the Institute, and we don’t back down from anything. Right?”
“Right,” said Happy.
“Damned right,” said Melody.
“If I weren’t already dead, I think I’d be very worried,” said Kim. “But yes, of course you’re right. Let’s do it.”
They all moved slowly forward, pushing against the presence of the New People, like swimmers breasting a heavy tide.
The light seemed to fall away some as they moved on, revealing the substance and details of the place in which they found themselves. Huge abstract shapes loomed up everywhere, weird mutated structures that watched and observed. Great pyramids with massive unblinking eyes; jagged energies crackling up and down the air like slow lightning; blurred uncertain shapes that had the feel of living things. Wherever JC looked there were colours he couldn’t name, objects with too many details for the human eye to encompass, and nightmare forms on the edge of his vision that shrieked of bad intent
… And always, everywhere, the feeling of potential doors, or even trap-doors, that led Somewhere Else. Doors to let things In as well as Out…
The New People were waiting for them. Four of them. Standing inhumanly still in the middle of everything, untouched and untroubled by the world around them. The world they’d made, or perhaps a world that appeared to accommodate who and what they were now. Often it seemed that there were more than four of them, dozens or even hundreds, in infinite ranks, superpeople in a superposition, everywhere at once. Their number and location was constantly changing, and yet at the same time there were only four, standing before JC and his group, waiting. JC squeezed his eyes hard shut, and then opened them again, but it didn’t help. He wasn’t sure what he was seeing was actually happening, or whether it was his mind trying to make sense of an impossible situation.