Free Reality Hack by Niall Teasdale Page B

I’m screaming, “Don’t go in there, you stupid fuck!” and they go in and get eaten by zombies.’
    Faline gave a soft whine which sounded like a suggestion that it was good advice, but Nisa edged closer to the door. The smell was stronger there; decay and rot mingled together with something else to form something you could taste as much as smell. Nisa swallowed hard and tried to breathe through her mouth.
    There was not enough light. The office had led out onto the reception area. The windows here were more intact, and the double doors at the front were still there. A few shafts of light made it through, but they served more to make the shadows deeper than to illuminate anything. There seemed to be shapes in the gloom near a flight of stairs which led up from the back of the room. Shapes, but nothing more distinct.
    Focussing her will and concentrating on the form she wanted, Nisa did not waste her time drawing the energy from around her. She reached out her hand, fingers slightly cupped, and willed the light to appear. It took a few seconds to get it right, but suddenly it was there, illuminating the area around Nisa. She swallowed. The floor had red stains on it.
    The shapes looked more like animals now, but none of them were moving. She pushed the light away from her, throwing it out toward the staircase because the last thing she wanted to do right now was go any further into this building. Her fists clenched and she bit back on the urge to scream. Lying beside the staircase were the bodies of several animals, cats and dogs from the sizes and shapes. Every single one of them had been skinned.
    ‘Oh shit,’ Nisa breathed. Somewhere above her, floorboards creaked, and Faline hissed, her eyes on the stairs. ‘Right,’ Nisa said to her, keeping her voice to a whisper. ‘That was probably just the building settling, but…’ She backed to the window, pushing her cat through ahead of her and then, reluctantly, turning her back on the interior to squeeze through.
    By the time she was outside, Faline was watching from the other side of the street, and Nisa joined her, pulling her phone out of her pocket as she went. She had no idea how she was going to explain how her cat had led her to this place, but skinned animals suggested one of two things: either there was a serial killer in the making or there was a Skinwalker in Tower Hamlets.
    July 4 th .
    Kellog had taken Faline’s part in the discovery with his usual stoicism. He had chewed Nisa out for going in alone, but he had to admit she had no way of knowing what was in there until she looked.
    He had not allowed her to go in with him to check the building out, but he had not gone in alone. She had had to wait while he went in with an Armed Response Team who seemed to know more about what they might be facing than Nisa would have expected. Then again, Exceptional Circumstances had been set up by the Home Office, so clearly more people knew about the whole supernatural thing than just a few individuals. Some of Spike’s conspiracy theories appeared to have more validity than Wallace gave them credit for.
    Whatever had been upstairs, if there had been anything, had gone and Kellog had told her to go home. He would pick her up in the morning, he had told her, and they would go over the scene once forensics had taken a good, hard look.
    Nisa was yawning when she emerged from the tower and walked over to Kellog’s unmarked BMW. It was not exactly top-of-the-line, but it was a nice car, though Nisa would have liked black rather than the metallic silver. The seats were comfortable.
    ‘Tough night?’ Kellog asked as she buckled her seatbelt.
    ‘Nightmares. At least I wasn’t being sexually assaulted this time.’
    ‘Skinned alive?’
    ‘Flayed, actually.’
    ‘Did you have breakfast?’
    ‘I thought maybe that might be a bad idea,’ Nisa replied.
    Kellog gave a nod and pulled the car out of the small car park. ‘You may be right.’
    As he drove down Devons