“You’re late,” he said.

We pushed past him. “Yeah, I know,” I said. “So let’s get to it.”

Ponytail led us along a dark white stone corridor for what seemed like the length of the warehouse, then turned and took us about another twenty feet to a double steel door. I looked around. The door, as well as the stone walls, were new. It looked like the junior science corps had done some expensive renovating.

Outside the door was a combo lock. Ponytail slid a card through a slot, then punched some numbers on a tiny keyboard. There was a buzz, a beep, and then finally a click followed by the hiss of the door pushing open. He signaled for us to follow, which we did.

Inside was something out of either a really cheap or really expensive science fiction movie. I couldn’t decide. The room was huge and had a massively high ceiling. Everywhere you looked lights were flashing, machines beeped, liquid ran through tubes, and computers cranked. They even had one of those arc-light deals buzzing above a huge glass tank in the center of the room.

Inside the tank was a slab, and on the slab was a naked man hooked to wires from every part of his body. A machine outside the tank beeped along, telling us he was alive. And as if that wasn’t enough, pointing at the tank was a syringe the size of a Chevy. Its huge needle, a fuckin’ tube really, stuck into the tank.

Even Mo’Lock was impressed. I looked over at him and we both did that wide-eyed thing.

Ponytail was nodding his head beside me waiting for me to ooh and ahh. “Well, what do you think?”

I bobbed my head. “Quite a chemistry set you got here, kid. Where do you want us?”

“Over there,” he said, pointing to a couple of chairs to the left of the tank.

As he said this, Horn-rimmed came in from another door and jumped when he saw us. Skittish fuck.

I ignored him and we went over to the chair and sat. “You boys run along and do your thing. I’ll be over here cheering,” I said, and sat.

Mo’Lock sat down next to me and crossed his big legs. As I took out my flask, he leaned over to me and whispered, “Creepy, isn’t it?”

I took a swig, offered some to the ghoul. He shook his head. “Fucking stupid, if you ask me.”

For the next hour we watched the two geeks scramble around the room pushing this, turning that, and being science types. For all I knew they were doing nothing. It was all a bunch of knobs and tubes to me. I was getting pissed because I’d emptied the flask in the first fifteen minutes.