Jekyll & Hyde Inc.

The surgeons looked at one another. One carefully lowered his bone saw, and stepped out from behind the bloody mess he’d been working on.

“But . . . we’re paid up!”

“I am getting really tired of hearing that,” said Daniel. “You can’t bribe your way out of this.”

“Damn right,” said Oscar.

“What have you people been doing here?” said Nigel.

“Just the usual,” said the surgeon. He looked to the other surgeons for support, but they were happy for him to serve as spokesman, so he turned reluctantly back again. “We take the bodies apart, and then ship everything off for transplants. It’s all used up; nothing goes to waste.”

“Where does it all go?” said Daniel.

The surgeon shrugged. “Not our department. Storage, somewhere. There are always orders waiting to be filled.”

“This is sick,” said Oscar.

“That’s not the worst of it,” said Daniel. He gestured angrily at the nearby trestle tables, his hand shaking with the strength of his emotions. “See the heavy restraints, at the wrists and the ankles? All of these people were strapped down, to stop them from struggling.”

Paul looked at him sharply. “You mean . . . they were alive, when these bastards started cutting? Like the one they just butchered?”

Daniel glared at the surgeon. “Why would you do something like that?”

The surgeon shrugged. “Anaesthetics cost money . . . ”

“You little shits,” said Oscar.

“That’s why they put the surgery this far down,” said Daniel. “So no one would hear the screams.”

“They were only homeless people!” the surgeon said quickly. “No one who’ll be missed. At least this way they serve some useful purpose.”

“Someone stop him talking,” said Nigel.

“Love to,” said Oscar.

“We’re shutting this butcher’s shop down,” said Daniel.

“You can’t!” said the surgeon. “This is a Frankenstein Clan operation! We’re protected, by very high-up people!”

“They can go down with you,” said Daniel.

His hand was suddenly entirely steady as he shot the surgeon with his Taser, and the man fell jerking to the floor, trying to force out a scream. Oscar charged forward, not bothering with his own Taser. He raised his baton and clubbed the other two surgeons to the floor, grunting happily with the effort he put into his blows. Blood flew on the air, and the surgeons soon stopped screaming, but Oscar just kept going. And after everything Daniel had seen, he didn’t feel like intervening.

And then the spiky-haired teenage girl burst out of a concealed side door, along with two hulking figures in hospital whites. She stabbed a finger at the policemen, her voice shrill with outrage.

“Kill them! Kill them all!”

The two huge figures lurched forward. Big enough to be serious steroid abusers, their hands opened and closed menacingly as they advanced; but there was something odd in the way they moved, as though their muscles weren’t connected properly, and they couldn’t feel the floor beneath their feet. Most disturbing of all, their faces were completely empty, their eyes fixed and staring. Like dead men walking.

“They’re on something!” said Paul.

Oscar smiled, and hefted his baton. Blood dripped thickly from the extended nightstick.

“Won’t make any difference.”

Paul tasered the nearest big man but he just kept coming, as though he hadn’t felt anything. Oscar charged the other figure and hit him head-on. The man was actually bigger than Oscar, and the two of them grappled clumsily as they wrestled back and forth, crashing into trestle tables and overturning them. Paul dropped his Taser as the first figure advanced on him, and thrust his baton viciously in under the man’s sternum, hard enough to paralyze the heart. The big man didn’t even blink. Huge hands clamped down on Paul’s shoulders, and he cried out in pain. Daniel moved quickly in beside Paul, raining blow after blow on the attacker’s head with his baton, but no blood spurted, and the big man didn’t even seem to notice. Paul was screaming now, as his collarbone shattered under the heavy hands.

The teenage girl advanced on Nigel, grinning nastily. He hesitated, not wanting to hurt a woman—until he saw the look in her eyes, and then he shot her at point-blank range with his Taser. Her grin widened and she surged forward, ignoring the drooping wires and the current they carried. She slapped the Taser right out of his hand. Nigel switched to his baton, and whipped it across her face. She didn’t even flinch. Nigel backed away, and the girl went after him.

Oscar screamed shrilly. Daniel looked round just in time to see the huge figure take a firm hold on Oscar’s head with both hands, and rip it clean off his shoulders. Blood fountained from the ragged neck, splashing against the overhead lights and dripping back again in a crimson rain. Oscar’s body crumpled slowly to the floor.