“Teacher’s pet,” said Happy.
“The pressure at this depth would crush or cripple most submersibles,” said Nimmo. “But this . . . is a very special craft.”
“Who did you steal it from?” said JC.
“It’s on loan,” said Chang, just a bit sharply.
“Who from?” said Latimer.
“There are limits to the information we’re prepared to share,” said Chang.
“She doesn’t know,” said Happy.
Chang turned sharply to glare at him. “Stay out of my head!”
“Just guessing,” Happy said airily.
“We’re getting close now,” said Nimmo, staring intently at the viewscreen. “Less than half a mile, to the Flesh Undying.”
“I still can’t see anything,” said JC.
“Is your submersible armed?” said Latimer.
“It’s a Project craft,” said Chang. “Of course it’s armed.”
“Good,” said Latimer. “If you get a shot, take it.”
“Damn right,” said Chang.
Nimmo looked at her sharply. “I understood this was a reconnaissance mission. Information-gathering only.”
“Then you understood wrong,” said Chang. “Everything we do now is all about the complete and utter destruction of the Flesh Undying. If all we get out of this approach is new sensor data, well and good. But let us hope for more. Dear Dr. Nimmo.”
Nimmo and Melody exchanged a glance—of hard-working scientists bedevilled by ignorant superiors and their unreasonable demands and expectations.
And then everyone concentrated on the viewscreen as a single great shape dominated the image. Even without a recognisable setting to gave it scale and context, there was still something about the shape that suggested colossal size and scale. Old atavistic instincts stirred in the back of JC’s mind, telling him to run like hell while he still had the chance. It was like looking at something too big to be understood, too complex for the human mind to comprehend. Even the information feed along the bottom of the screen had slowed, as though the sensors couldn’t cope with what they were getting.
Kim’s voice murmured suddenly in JC’s ear. “I leave you alone for five minutes, and when I catch up with you again, you’re in bed with the enemy. What’s going on?”
Before JC could reply, a whole bunch of alarms sounded shrilly. One of the technicians stood up abruptly and stared wildly about him.
“We have a spiritual incursion! Rogue ghost in the room! A powerful unlife entity has penetrated our defences!”
“Gosh,” said Kim. “Do they mean me?”
She appeared suddenly, standing beside JC in a long white gown, looking more like a pre-Raphaelite painting than ever. She smiled sweetly about her. The technician pointed a trembling finger at her.
“Ghost! Ghost!”
“We know!” said Nimmo. “Now shut those damned sirens off so I can hear myself think!”
The technician turned back to his station and hit a switch. The alarms cut off immediately.
Melody glared at him. “Over-react much? I’m surprised there weren’t flashing lights as well.”
The technician shrugged sulkily. “The special bulbs are still on order . . .”
Nimmo gave the ghost girl his most charming smile. “Welcome to the Crowley Project, Kim Sterling. It’s good to meet you at last. The only actual ghost in the Ghost Finders!”
“You know me?” said Kim. “If I’d known I was expected, I’d have put on something special.”
“I know of you,” said Nimmo. “You’re in our files.”
“The Crowley Project has a file on me?” said Kim. She wasn’t smiling any more, and the room suddenly felt a whole lot colder. The technicians stirred uneasily.
“We have files on everyone,” said Natasha Chang. “How did you get in here, past all our defences?”
“What defences?” Kim said sweetly.
Nimmo glared at the technicians, who all found good reasons to be very busy at their work stations.
“Kim isn’t just any ghost,” said JC. “I would have thought you’d have known that. From her file.”
“He hasn’t read it,” said Happy.
Nimmo glared at him. “Damn telepaths . . .”
“Still guessing!” said Happy.
“I should have known you’d turn up uninvited,” Chang said to Kim. “You get in the way, and I’ll hit the exorcism button. Unnatural thing . . .”
“You can talk,” said Kim. “I can see the remains of all the ghosts you’ve eaten, still rattling around in the back of your head. It’s a wonder to me you can still hear your own voice in there.”
“What are you doing here, Kim Sterling?” said Nimmo. “This is a purely scientific investigation . . .”
Kim looked at the dark shape on the viewscreen. “You’re getting close to the Flesh Undying. Close to seeing what no living eyes have ever seen. Would you care to experience a vision of how it was when the Flesh Undying first appeared in this world?”
“You can do that?” said Nimmo.
“Yes,” said Melody. “She can. We’ve already seen it. Go ahead, Kim.”
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Suddenly they were all seeing the same thing, in the dream theatres of their minds. Miles and miles of open ocean, a choppy surface of blue and green under a brilliant sun in a clear sky. And then a dark, seething mess of roiling energies split the sky, forcing it open—a rent in Time and Space and other things. A break in reality itself. Things came and went on the other side of the opening, huge and terrible things. Bigger than cities and more complex, moving in ways impossible in any sane place. A fierce light shone through the opening, more intense than any light had a right to be. It scorched down through the air, slammed into the ocean, and kept on going, diving down and down into the furthest depths of the ocean. And in that light, something fell. An awful thing, unbelievably large, its shape and nature meaningless to merely human senses. It existed in too many spatial dimensions, its extensions reaching off in directions the human mind couldn’t hope to follow. It fell and fell through increasingly dark waters, killing every living thing it passed. Until it slammed into the sea-bottom and couldn’t go any further. The surface of the ocean slowly grew calm again, while dead fish floated in their thousands. The opening in the sky slammed shut, and the otherworldly light was gone.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
The vision cut off abruptly. Everyone stood still, shocked speechless. Even JC and his team, who’d seen it all before. The viewscreen was still showing things, but nobody cared. Finally, Nimmo cleared his throat and looked thoughtfully at Kim.
“Can I just ask,” he said carefully, “How accurate was that? Did we merely witness a reconstruction of events or what actually occurred at the time?”
“That was a memory I found inside the traitor Patterson’s head, when I possessed him,” said Kim, just as carefully. “He served the Flesh Undying, in life and in death; and he believed it to be entirely accurate.”
While everyone was still getting their heads around that, JC leaned in beside Catherine Latimer for a quiet word in her ear.
“We are way out of our comfort zone, Boss. We’re trained to deal with ghosts, demons, and the occasional Beast from the Outer Reaches. Not . . . aliens, monsters, or whatever the Flesh Undying actually is. This is Drood territory! Why not call them in, let them deal with it? They’ve got the expertise and the weapons.”
“We clean up our own messes,” said Latimer. “And besides, the one thing we can be sure of is that the Flesh Undying has agents everywhere. We have to stick with people we can . . . Well, I hesitate to use the word trust where the Crowley Project is concerned, but at least we know where we stand, with them. All the other secret organisations, with their special agendas, would only complicate things.”
/> “I’m pretty sure I saw a Soulhunter earlier, hanging around the dealers room,” said JC. “You didn’t call him in . . . ?”
“No,” said Latimer. “Did he see you?”
“I don’t think so. Could his people have got word about what’s happening here?”
“Who knows what the Soulhunters know?” Latimer frowned, thinking hard. “If he and his kind are sniffing around . . . the sooner we conclude our business and get the hell out of here, the better.”
JC chose his words carefully. “Happy did say, sometime back, that he’d heard rumours . . . of certain individuals in high places performing secret forbidden experiments. Weakening the walls of reality . . . and that’s how the Flesh Undying was able to enter our world in the first place. Might some of these very important people have been Crowley Project? Or Carnacki Institute? And if the latter, is that why you don’t want any of the other secret organisations involved?”
“Why do you think we’re doing this so quietly?” said Latimer.
“Do you have any idea who these . . . people, might be?” said JC.
“Almost certainly the same people trying to force me out of my position as Head of the Institute,” said Latimer. “But I haven’t been able to uncover any solid evidence on any particular individual. Or I’d have done something about them.”
They both looked around sharply as the people standing in front of the main viewscreen made shocked and alarmed noises. JC and Latimer hurried over to join them. Nimmo was staring fascinated at information streaming across the bottom of the screen. Melody hugged herself tightly, looking as though she wanted to turn away from the images on the screen but didn’t dare. Happy stuck close by her side. Chang was quite obviously angry because she didn’t understand what was going on. Scattered around the room, the white-coated technicians argued fiercely with each other, over new theories as to what it all meant. Some looked ready to come to blows until Nimmo shouted at them to shut the hell up without once taking his eyes off the viewscreen. A slow, sullen silence settled over the room.
“We’re getting close,” said Nimmo. “A hundred feet, maybe less. Creeping in, now.”
“Does the Flesh Undying know the submersible is there?” said Latimer. “Does it know we’re observing it?”
“Who knows what it knows?” said Nimmo. “It shouldn’t, but . . .”
“Look at the new readings!” said Melody. “A shape, a body, but . . . it’s like nothing on Earth! And what’s that, there . . . That’s not radiation, or at least not any form we understand . . .”
“It’s giving off some kind of energies,” said Nimmo. “Maybe a defence system, or a natural response to its surroundings . . . Who knows what’s natural, what’s normal, where something like this is concerned? It doesn’t belong here . . . Wait! We’re losing the signal, it’s breaking up! Information’s dropping out; we need more power!”
“We’re giving it everything we’ve got!” shouted one of the technicians, frantically working his boards. “These sensors weren’t designed to cope with . . . whatever the hell that is!”
Other technicians ran over to work with him, struggling to maintain contact with the submersible as it slowly, cautiously, approached the Flesh Undying. The giant shape all but filled the viewscreen now.
“Slow now, steady . . .” said Nimmo. “We are trying not to be noticed. Just a few ants, crawling around the feet of an elephant. Keep the sensors cracked wide open; but reception only. No scans, no probes, nothing invasive. Nothing that might alert it to our presence. Look at that . . . the sensors are finally giving us exact measurements. No. Wait. That can’t be right . . .”
“It’s enormous,” said Melody. “A living mountain! Miles and miles of it.”
“I still can’t make out any details,” said JC.
“The sensors can’t detect any that make any sense,” Nimmo said numbly. He looked almost shell-shocked. “It could be a matter of scale, or so alien we simply can’t comprehend what it is we’re looking at. This is bigger than any living thing on this planet! Bigger than any living thing that has ever been on this planet.”
“The Mount Everest of monsters,” said Happy.
“Try ten times that big,” said Nimmo.
“Okay,” said Happy. “Head hurting now.”
“Oh . . .” said Melody. “Look at that! If I’m reading the information stream right, what we saw in the vision is confirmed. This thing exists in more than three spatial dimensions at once. It extends . . .”
“How is that even possible?” said Latimer.
“I don’t know!” said Nimmo, almost viciously. “Because it’s not from around here! Perhaps the laws of reality are different where it came from. It must have brought some of its own natural laws with it, as a localised effect. To preserve it. So it can still be . . . what it is.”
“Can we kill it?” said Chang. “If we hit it with everything the submersible has, at close range . . .”
“Are you crazy?” shouted Nimmo. “We couldn’t even touch it!”
“Breathe,” Chang said coldly. “Calm yourself the fuck down, Dr. Nimmo, or I will hurt you.”
“Everyone calm down,” said JC. “Let’s think this through. If the Flesh Undying was forced into our world from a higher dimension . . . Did it bring its body, its flesh, with it? Or did it take what it found here, to make itself a new form, to give it shape and meaning in our world? Help it survive, under our natural laws?”
“Good question!” said Nimmo. He nodded approvingly to JC, in a surprised sort of way, as though he hadn’t expected such clear thinking from a mere Ghost Finder. JC felt like slapping him. Nimmo made an effort to pull himself back together as he studied the images on the viewscreen.
“What difference does any of that make?” said Chang, her voice rising.
“Flesh from a higher dimension might be impervious to anything from our world,” said Melody. “But if it created its body from what it found here . . .”
“We can hurt it,” said Latimer.
“Whatever that is, its current shape and nature answer to the physical laws of our reality,” said Nimmo. “It may possess certain otherworldly attributes, but . . .”
“Hold it,” said Melody. “You’re making a lot of assumptions. If the Flesh Undying is still holding some of its old laws around it, to preserve its true nature . . .”
“I think . . . they just enforce its existence,” said Nimmo. “Physically, it’s just flesh. And anything that’s material must have limitations. And weaknesses.”
“Am I the only one present who knows whistling in the dark when he hears it?” said Happy.
“What have we got,” said JC. “Powerful enough to hurt something that big?”
Latimer looked at Chang, who shrugged.
“Don’t look at me,” she said. “I didn’t anticipate . . . this. How could I? How could anyone?”
“You’ve got contacts inside the Government, Boss,” said JC. “Any chance you could get us a nuke?”
Everything stopped, as everyone looked at Latimer. She took her time, considering the question.
“Possibly,” she said finally. “Through certain backdoor channels . . . But I’m not convinced even that would be enough to do the job. We know the size and scale of the problem now, but we still have no idea of the thing’s structure. What’s going on inside it. An explosion, even a really big one, might simply damage the Flesh Undying. We need to completely destroy it. For that, we’d need a thermonuclear device. A really big one. Or the monster might just put itself back together again.”
“And God alone knows what that kind of blast would do to the ocean bottom,” said Nimmo.
“We might set off a chain reaction,” said Melody. “Blow that thing up, and the energies released might be enough to crack open the whole planet.”
“I don’t believe a nuclear blast would even touch
it,” said Nimmo. “Consider the energies it’s giving off . . . Looks a lot like a force shield to me.”
“Enough to hold off a thermonuclear blast?” said Chang.
“Unknown,” said Nimmo. “There’s too much we don’t know . . .”
He broke off as a fierce light blazed up, filling the viewscreen. Everyone flinched away from the glare, crying out and covering their eyes, until the screen overloaded and went blank.
“Energy discharges are spiking!” yelled one of the technicians. “They’re overloading the systems!”
“What kind of energies?” shouted Nimmo.
“Unknown!” All the colour had dropped out of the technician’s face, and he snatched his hands back from his work station as though they’d been burned. As though he was afraid to touch anything. “The submersible is down! We’ve lost it! We’re not getting any information at all!”
“Is it damaged?” said Melody. “Any chance the systems might reboot?”
“It’s . . . gone!” said the technician. “Just gone!”
The room went very quiet. The technicians stopped working. Nimmo looked at the blank viewscreen, then at the various pieces of equipment surrounding him. He seemed lost, unsure what to do.
“Did we get any real information before the submersible was destroyed?” asked JC. “Anything useful?”
Nimmo and Melody conferred quietly, studying the information streams and checking with the technicians, before reluctantly turning back to the others.
“The drone couldn’t get close enough,” said Nimmo.
“At least we can be sure that was the Flesh Undying,” said Melody. “We can find it again. It’s not like anything that big can uproot itself and move to some new location. For the first time, it’s vulnerable.”
The massive viewscreen exploded. Shattered in a moment by some unknown force, its shrapnel tore through Nimmo, killing him instantly. Blood, flesh, and splintered bone flew across the room. Happy started moving before Melody stopped speaking. Forewarned by some psychic insight, he threw himself at Melody and dragged her to the floor. Shrapnel blasted over their heads as they huddled together. All around the room, computers exploded one after another like a string of firecrackers, destroying the work stations and killing all the technicians. Their mangled bodies were thrown in all directions. Fires broke out, burning fiercely, jumping from surface to surface until the air shimmered from the intense heat. Kim stepped inside JC, and the golden glow leapt out to surround and protect them. Catherine Latimer grabbed Melody Chang and pulled her down to the floor. A tall bank of heavy equipment toppled over and fell on them.