Tach

He set the updates to download and opened the folder with all of the research files.  He didn't expect to see anything particularly surprising.  He hadn’t checked all that long ago, and his parents were notoriously bad at keeping anything confidential.  Honestly, the main problem for Danny was that he often tuned out his parents when they started ranting and missed important details.  

When he opened the file, however, he was greeted by a brand new folder.  One that had his name on it.  Phantom.

A whole folder just for him?

Well, he couldn’t not look.  

Danny opened it.  Icons for pictures came up.  None of them had proper titles, only an acronym prefix and timestamps, so Danny waited for the pictures to load, checking over his shoulder to make sure his parents hadn’t somehow snuck into the lab without him noticing.  It would be out of character, but they surprised him sometimes.  

He looked back at the computer and blinked.

He… Didn’t know what he was looking at.  He couldn’t be looking at…  The icons were blown up as big as possible, part of his Dad’s ongoing denial of his worsening eyesight, so what each picture was of should have been obvious, but…

It couldn’t be.  

He rolled the chair back to look at the stainless steel dissection table.  It was as scrupulously clean as always, the big lights around it positioned just so, for all that it had never been used.  

Or had it?

Blue and orange jumpsuits around a black and white one.  The center of the picture little more than a mess of glowing green ectoplasm.  He knew what it looked like, but it couldn’t be.  He’d just talked to Dani the other day, and she’d been halfway around the world, touring temples carved out of bedrock.  Not to mention, Danny had been in and out of the lab himself, doing chores and emptying the thermos.  A dissection wasn’t fast.  Even those frogs had taken hours.

His parents couldn’t have caught Dani, much less dissected her, without Danny knowing.

They couldn’t have.  It wasn’t possible.  

But then, what were these pictures?

Was it… just another ghost?  Just.  As if that wasn’t equally horrible.  There was a reason that Danny didn’t leave any of his enemies in the thermos for longer than he had to.  He let everyone go.  Even Spectra.  The chances of his parents finding the thermos were low, but never zero.

Who could it be, with those colors?  Walker, maybe?  But he would be larger, even towards the end of a dissection, and the color ratio was off.  Walker wore more white.  The size also meant it wasn’t Vlad.  There wasn’t any red, anyway.

Danny licked dry lips with an equally dry tongue.  Was it… someone he didn’t know?  Someone he’d never heard of?  Would that be better or worse?

Had they survived?  This was just a few days ago, maybe…  Danny looked at the dissection table again, but it was still sparkling clean.  

Impulsively, he stood and walked over to it.  His parents kept it clean, but how clean?  They didn’t put stuff on it, but did they wash it regularly?  Dust it?  

There wasn’t any dust on it.  

That didn’t mean anything.  

Anxiously, he returned to the computer and the pictures.  Maybe he wasn’t interpreting it correctly.  Maybe it wasn’t a picture of that at all.  The pictures weren’t that big.  That was probably it.  If his parents had caught a ghost, they would have been proud of it, they would have said something about it.  There would be more evidence than pictures.  

He moved the mouse so the cursor hovered over one of the icons.  Maybe it was a dummy, something they made for practice.  That would make sense.  His parents were weird about things like that.  That would explain the pictures.  That was probably it.  He was sure that was it.  

But… he still had to make sure.  

He double-clicked on the icon, opening the picture.  

Just like before, he stared, unable to process what he was looking at.  He couldn’t be looking at what he was looking at.  It just didn’t make sense.  

That was him, strapped to the dissection table.  It wasn’t Dani, which was a very distant relief.  It wasn’t a dummy or a model or another ghost.  It was Danny lying there, cut open, with his parents wrist-deep in his guts.  Lying there, awake.  

He was looking directly at the camera, green eyes wide and pleading.  

Danny covered his mouth and staggered away from the computer, breathing heavily through his nose.  He’d seen a lot of things in his time as a half ghost, as a superhero, but that–

Stop.  

Think.  

He didn’t think it could be fake.  His parents couldn’t make so many of them in the time between now and when Danny had last snooped.  That meant, like it or not, that Danny’s parents had done… that.  

How had they done that?  

Not morally, which was something that would likely boggle Danny until he died all the way, but physically.  Practically.  How had it happened?  Danny didn’t have the best memory, but even he would remember that.  There would have been injuries, if not scars.  He didn’t really scar in ghost form, but something that big would have left a mark, surely.  

They could have made something that healed him and erased his memories, they were great at inventing weird stuff, but why would they do that?  As far as they were concerned, he was just a ghost, a dangerous one, a threat to Amity Park.  They’d keep him, or cut him up into research material, or– or just destroy him.  Rip him apart molecule by molecule.  

Danny’s eyes latched on to the cabinets all around the room.  

He forced back his nausea and straightened from his crouch as his eyes locked on the cabinets all around the room.  

If it had really happened, and the boy on the table wasn’t Danny, then he might still be here, somewhere, locked away in some containment device.  Danny went to the nearest cabinet and started looking.  

But if the picture was real and the boy wasn’t Danny, then who was he?  Where did he come from?

Was it Amorpho?  That would be the easiest solution, but if so, why didn’t he just change into a bug or something and fly away?  And… Amporpho’s eyes were red, too, come to think of it.  It was one of those things he couldn’t seem to hide.  Maybe it was some other shapeshifting ghost?  Not Bertrand.  His alternate forms were all green animals. 

What were the other options?  

Time travel.  In the Ghost Zone, it was easier to do than even his parents expected.  Natural portals could open anywhere and lead to any time.  Managing them was Clockwork’s main job, occasional assassinations notwithstanding.  But, since it was Clockwork’s job, if some future Danny traveled back in time and– and had that happen to him, he would have intervened.  It was too much of a paradox.  

Which left… clones.  Vlad had made a lot of clones, including one who looked just like Danny, even if Dani was the only one who survived.  What if he’d tried again, and then… lost track of the clone?  Sent the clone here, for some reason?  And then didn’t react to the murder in any way.  

Would Vlad have reacted?  He hadn’t reacted much to the clones that weren’t perfect dying.  He hadn’t reacted to Dani almost melting, except for being annoyed.  Heck, he’d sent Valerie to go hunt her down.  

But the picture Danny was looking at was perfect.  It could have been a mirror, if… if the boy in the picture wasn’t cut open.  Surely, Vlad would care, if only because of ‘wasted work.’

This time, Danny got up from the chair and sprinted to one of the lab sinks.  He retched.  Once.  Twice.  

There wasn’t an option where his parents hadn’t done that to a person.  

He rinsed his mouth out and washed the vomit down the sink as best he could.  He hadn’t found any– any samples in the cabinets.  Any body parts.  Oh, God…

What was he going to do?  What could he do?

He breathed in through his nose, then out.  He’d have to call Vlad.  He had to know if there was–  This was something he should tell Vlad, despite Vlad’s… everything.  Would Vlad tell him the truth about the– about if he was still making clones?  If one had– If–

Breathe in, then out. 

He needed to call Vlad.  He should probably call Sam and Tucker, too, and talk to Jazz - maybe she would see something he didn’t, but for now… He didn’t know how to explain this to them.  To any of them.  At least with Vlad, he could act like he was accusing him of something heinous, which, well, he wasn’t sure how else he was supposed to describe the whole cloning episode.  It was heinous.  This was just.  More heinous.  

And it was his parents–

No.  Don't think.  Phone.  Call Vlad.  He couldn't.  Not down here.  He'd have to go upstairs.  Not the living room, either.  His room.  He could bring the handheld to his room and call from there.  Great plan.  He'd have to listen for the click to make sure Jazz didn't pick up.  She could be nosy. 

He'd have to listen for Jazz, because listening for his parents– he–

Upstairs.  Phone.  Room.  

He chanted the order to himself over and over again, to the point he was almost surprised to find himself in his room, the phone in his hands.  He looked around, trying to steady himself, and shrieked, fumbling the phone, when he finally noticed the figure in his bed.  

Already unsettled by the pictures he'd seen and the lack of evidence otherwise, Danny approached cautiously, slowly, phone held in his fist like a weapon.  Inch by inch, he crept forward, then he froze, incredulous.  

The person he saw in his bed was himself.  

Or someone who looked exactly like himself.  

What was Vlad playing at?  This had to be Vlad, after all.  One strange doppelganger could come from virtually anywhere, but two?

The next question was, was this clone here on Vlad’s behalf, or was it a refugee?  What had the last one been, before it was cut apart into nothing?

He reached out and poked his doppelganger with the phone.  The clone just shifted, not waking up, and Danny frowned and poked harder.  This time, the clone made a sleepy, unhappy noise.  

“Hey,” said Danny.  “You need to get up.  And tell me what you’re doing here.”

The clone’s eyelids fluttered, then cracked open, then both he and Danny flinched away from each other.

“Where did you come from,” demanded the clone, ectoplasm gathering around his clenched fist, “and what’s wrong with your eyes?”

“What’s wrong with your eyes?” asked Danny, because they certainly didn’t look how they were supposed to.  

The clone’s eyes were blue, yes, exactly the same shade as Danny’s own, but those were the irises.  It was the pupils that were wrong, flashing green like they were permanently caught in a camera flash.  

There was a moment of tense stillness, and then Danny said, “Did Vlad send you?  Like he did with Dani?”

“Uh, what?” said the clone.  “I should be asking you that.  What’s Vlad thinking, making more clones?”

“I’m not a clone,” said Danny.  “You are.”

“If I’m a clone, then why are your eyes like that?”  He pointed up at Danny’s face with an accusatory finger.  

Danny couldn't help it.  He glanced at the mirror over his desk.  His eyes were the same as the clone’s, glowing internally.  He raised his hand to them, checking.

“Hah!” said the clone.  “See?”  Then he caught sight of his own reflection and did a double take that would have been hilarious under other circumstances.  “What?”