Nightside 09 - Just Another Judgement Day Read Free Page A

Nightside, after all.
    “Welcome to the Guaranteed New You Parlour, Mr. Taylor, Ms. Shooter,” said the receptionist.
    I considered her thoughtfully. “You know who we are?”
    “Of course. Everyone knows who you are.”
    I nodded. She had a point. “We’re here about Suzie’s face,” I said.
    Suzie and I had already decided this was our best chance for getting a close look at the Parlour’s inner workings. One side of Suzie’s face had been terribly burned during an old case, leaving it a mess of scar tissue. Her left eye was gone, the eyelid sealed shut. It didn’t affect her aim. The damage was my fault. She’d never have been hurt if she hadn’t been helping me out. Suzie forgave me almost immediately. But I don’t forgive me, and I never will.
    She could have had her face healed or repaired in a dozen different ways. She chose not to. She believed a monster should look like a monster. I never pushed her on it. We monsters have to stick together.
    The receptionist’s smile didn’t waver one bit. “Of course, Mr. Taylor, Ms. Shooter. If you’ll just fill out these forms for me . . .”
    “No,” I said. “We want to see what this place has to offer first.”
    The receptionist gathered her papers together again. “One of our interns is on his way here, to give you a guided tour,” she said, still professionally cheerful. If I smiled like that on a regular basis, my cheeks would ache. “Ah, here he is. Dr. Dougan, this is . . .”
    “Oh, I know who you are, Mr. Taylor, Ms. Shooter,” the intern said cheerfully. “Doesn’t everyone?”
    “Our reputation precedes us,” I said dryly, shaking his proffered hand. He had a firm, manly grip. Of course. He offered his hand to Suzie, but she just looked at it, and he quickly pulled it back out of range and stuck it in his coat pocket as though he’d meant to do that all along. He wore the traditional white coat, along with the traditional stethoscope hanging loosely around his neck.
    “Every medico in the Nightside knows about you two,” he said, still cheerful. “Most of us get our training in the emergency wards, patching up people who’ve come into contact with you.”
    I looked at Suzie. “If nothing else, it seems we provide employment.”
    Dr. Dougan babbled on for a while, telling us how marvellous the Parlour was, and how fantastic its new techniques were, while I looked him over. His coat was starched blindingly white and had clearly never seen a bloodstain in its life. And he was far too young and handsome for a real hands-on doctor, which meant he was a shill. He was just for show. He wouldn’t know anything about the real inner workings of the Parlour. But we followed him through the rear doors into the show ward behind the lobby, because you’ve got to start somewhere. Dr. Dougan never stopped talking. He’d been given a script designed to sell the Parlour’s services, he’d learned every word of it, and by God we were going to hear it.
    The show ward turned out to be very impressive, and utterly artificial. Neat patients in neat beds, none of them suffering from anything unsightly or upsetting, attended to by very attractive young nurses in starched white uniforms. There were flowers everywhere, and even the antiseptic in the air had a trace of perfume in it. Lots of light, lots of space, and no-one in any pain at all. A complete dream of a hospital ward. We weren’t actually allowed to talk to any of the patients or nurses, of course. The intern did his best to blind us with statistics about recovery rates, while I looked around for something, anything, out of place. The ward looked absolutely fine, but... something about it disturbed me.
    It took me a while to realise that the whole ward was simply too normal for the Nightside. If this was all the rich and powerful patients wanted, they could get it in Harley Street. The clincher was that not one of the patients or the nurses so much as glanced at me, or Suzie. And that was very