#ectopal

It wouldn’t surprise him terribly if it was a scene from a horror movie. If his entire life was running on film in some alternate universe’s movie theater, clipped and cut, set to atmospheric music, touched up, airbrushed, filtered, tinted.

He raised his finger to his lips and absently bit down on his hangnail, knowing it wouldn’t help any but too absorbed by what he was reading to go dig the nail clippers out of their drawer in the bathroom.

In all honesty, though, Tucker was probably a side character in that hypothetical film, at best. The real horror here was, as always, what had happened to Danny and…

Tucker closed his eyes and rubbed them, not caring about knocking his glasses askew. He corrected them aggressively and went back to reading the screen.

It was full of data. So much data. Data about half ghosts, stolen from Vlad. Danny and Dani were the ones who had snagged it, grabbing one of Vlad’s backup harddrives, but they hadn’t been able to break his encryption. That was, as ever, Tucker’s role in the group.

Not that he minded. He wanted to help any way he could. He enjoyed things like this, for that matter. He enjoyed the hacking part, at least.

Finding out things like this in the middle of the night, not so much. He really wished he wasn’t so awesome sometimes.

This was messed up. Grade A crazy.

The harddrive was full of data. Data that, by all logic, by everything he knew, shouldn’t exist.

Up until a couple months ago, there had only been two half ghosts in the whole wide world. Now, there were three. According to Danny, Vlad, and Dani, there had never been any more than that.

The other clones - and that was something horrible in and of itself - hadn’t been half ghosts. Danny had, a few days after realizing they had truly been destroyed, not just banished, not just weakened to the point of being invisible, come to Tucker and Sam, distraught, and explained to the two of them how he knew they weren’t. Dani had only confirmed it.

But this, the data here, was more than that, more than what could be accounted for by three half ghosts, two of whom had been half ghosts for less than two years. So much more.

Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised Tucker so much. All those weapons and tools Vlad had, designed especially to work on half ghosts, or mimic their abilities, the Plasmius Maximus, the human-ghost shield, the nanites, the forced transformation booth… Vlad wouldn’t have been able to engineer those and be sure they’d work on Danny just from experimenting on himself.

But this… This data represented dozens of individuals, all with different backgrounds. At least, the categories of sex, height, weight, and age all had different values. Danny, Dani, and Vlad himself all had entries, but theirs were clearly labeled with their names, unlike the others.

What happened here? What had Vlad done to get this? Where had he gotten this?

And some of the data… It made him sick that it even existed. Tucker wasn’t the best at medical things, but some of these couldn’t have been acquired ethically. These were… these were stress tests, reaching for limitations, for pain, for injury, for susceptibility to disease, and Tucker had known Vlad was an evil mad scientist type from the beginning, and that had only been confirmed when he infected him and Sam with a potentially fatal disease - and he had to have done things to develop that as well - but this was surprising even in that context.

He pressed a hand to his mouth, feeling suddenly nauseous. The ecto-acne. A biological weapon. Vlad had to have tested it. How had they missed that?

Had Danny realized yet? Realized how far Vlad would go? Tucker knew that Danny thought Vlad was sort of ineffectual in terms of evil, that he thought, deep down, there was something in Vlad worth saving. Like some kind of messed up Darth Vader thing, but without the familial relationship.

And Tucker had thought that maybe Danny had a point. Vlad had plenty of opportunity to kill Mr. Fenton, after all, and yet Mr. Fenton was still alive. But with all this staring him in the face… Right on the heels of Vlad outright torturing Danny, of Vlad all but saying he planned to pull a kill and a replace on Danny, of making and throwing away all those clones…

No, Tucker couldn’t believe that anymore.

Where had Vlad gotten this data? Where had he found dozens of half ghosts, and where had they gone?

From some of this… Tucker ran a finger down the screen, tracing numbers. There were no deaths listed, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything, as much as he wanted it to.

Tucker was… Tucker was afraid. He fought ghosts on a weekly, if not daily, basis, and he was afraid.

His fingers hovered over the phone. It was the middle of the night. If Danny hadn’t been woken up by a ghost, he’d be asleep, and a school night. He needed to sleep.

But Tucker needed to not be alone with this… data. This information, this revelation.

He picked up the phone and called.

.

“Where did he even get this?” asked Danny, his hands shaking as he scrolled down the spreadsheet. Numbers flew past, numbers that either were a terrible lie, or revealed one. “He said it himself, we’re the only half ghosts around. That’s why he wants me to be his evil apprentice or whatever.”

“I don’t know,” said Tucker. “If it says on here, I haven’t found it yet.”

Danny nodded, distracted, and rubbed his finger across his lips, feeling the slight, tugging friction of not-exactly-rubber gloves against not-quite-human skin.

There were three options here, three possibilities that Danny could see.

One, Vlad had made this up. It was a taunt, a prank, a joke, a decoy, a distraction, a plant, a fiction. Something to get Danny all riled up.

Two, Vlad had lied to him from the beginning. Lied, and said that there weren’t any other half ghosts when there were. When they existed, and in such variety. Horrible and heartbreaking, a betrayal even from an enemy, and confusing besides.

Three, Vlad had done something even more unspeakable than usual and created these half ghosts. Created them not from scratch, as he had with Dani and the other clones, but from regular people, people with separate, ordinary lives that he used just for… For whatever this was. For some twisted, sickly shadow of science.

The thought made Danny almost dizzy. Was it really that easy to make a half ghost? Did other half ghosts exist, beyond Danny, Dani, and Vlad? And if either was so, why didn’t Vlad just get someone to agree to it? Agree to be his evil apprentice or something? He was sure there were plenty of people who’d do it, plenty of people who’d trade pain and obedience for power. Why was he so fixated on Danny?

He stopped scrolling, the titles of a few columns catching his eye. He knew those readings.

“What is it?” asked Tucker. “Did you find something?”

“Maybe,” said Danny, feeling hollow. “Do you remember what these mean? These abbreviations?”

“Um. No. Should I?”

“These’re the inputs of the portal. The settings you can change to make it… To make it work. Remember the thing with Desiree?”

“When Sam played protagonist in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life?’ Yeah. I remember that.”

“That’s what we changed on the portal, to make it so I’d definitely become a half ghost.”

“Oh,” said Tucker. “I hadn’t- But then he shouldn’t have readings for you.”

“He does, and they’re the right ones,” said Danny. Having gone through all that twice, he’d never be able to forget. “He…” He trailed off and swallowed. “He does,” he repeated, more quietly. “And look at this.” He pointed at a separate line, broken off from the others by a space. It’s boxes were highlighted with an indication the numbers in them were a result of some computation.

“Huh. That line is the same as yours. What’s this abbreviation mean?”

“I think,” said Danny, “it’s shorthand for optimal.”

.

Sam and Tucker hadn’t wanted them to confront Vlad, didn’t think it was safe, but Danny and Dani needed to know. Dani had always known she was a clone, a science experiment, but Danny hadn’t had even a hint of this. There had been no sign, no indication.

They needed to know how far back this went, and, more importantly, they needed to know if there were other half ghosts, other people who understood.

“Are you ready?” asked Danny. The gates of Vlad’s estate loomed over them, wrought iron casting odd, twisting shadows in the moonlight.

“Yeah,” said Dani, nervously pulling at the fabric of her top. “I’m ready.”

“You don’t have to come,” said Danny. “I’ll tell you everything I find out.”

“No, I want to do this,” said Dani.

Vlad’s mansion felt emptier than usual. Danny couldn’t put his finger on why at first, but then it struck him. “All his Packers stuff is gone.”

“Yeah,” said Dani. “You’re right. There’s something else…”

“What?”

Dani turned to him, her eyes flat green disks in the mostly dark. “I don’t know,” she said, “but can’t you feel it?”

Danny stilled, listening, feeling. There was an electric prickle along the surface of his skin, an unfamiliar sensation that he nonetheless felt like he knew, like he should recognize. He rubbed his left palm with his opposite thumb.

“Maybe,” he said. There was a memory there, an unconscious one. A memory of the body, not the mind. It prickled. Burned. Ran up in lightning lines to his heart. “Yeah, there’s something off, here.”

“It’s Vlad. There’s always something off,” said Dani, bitterly. “Do you think he’s not here? Maybe he went back to Wisconsin.”

“I hadn’t noticed him leaving.”

“It isn’t like you’re watching him all the time, is it?”

It wasn’t, but Danny usually had a… a feeling for who was in Amity Park and who wasn’t. He’d never examined it very closely, but it was there.

“No, he’s here.”

“I don’t know… doesn’t it feel… empty in here?”

It did but… Danny was realizing that it didn’t, not completely. It didn’t feel empty, as in uninhabited. It felt dead.

“Ah, Daniel, Danielle. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Danny and Dani jerked up, spotting Vlad on the stairs above them, leaning over the banister. Rarely had Danny felt so threatened by Vlad, and Vlad wasn’t even doing anything.

Danny floated up to Vlad’s eye level. “We’re not the only half ghosts, are we?”

Vlad raised an eyebrow and straightened, pink-red light flickering behind his pupils. “Whyever would you think that?”

“We saw your data backups,” said Danny. He pressed his lips together, not sure if he should ask this, not sure if he wanted to know the answers. “How do you even know what the readings were on the portal when I… When it turned on?”

Vlad tilted his head to one side. “I see,” he said, crisply. “It’s very simple, really. I arranged for your accident.”

“Why?” demanded Danny.

“Many reasons,” said Vlad, unconcerned with the green fire billowing around Danny’s clenched fists. “Although I had thought to catch one of your parents, rather than you. Although I suppose Maddie would never have fallen for it. She was always much better about lab safety. Ah, well.”

“But why?” asked Dani. “Why do any of this, when there were other half ghosts? You had to get that data from somewhere.”

“Oh, I did,” said Vlad. “I wasn’t the first half ghost, you see. My origin shares many similarities to yours, Daniel. Much like vampires and werewolves, all half ghosts are made by another. My creator was rather smug about the whole thing.”

“Then why don’t you go after them, instead of my dad?”

“What do you think I spent twenty years doing, dear boy? I didn’t lie to you when we met. We were the only two half ghosts in existence. I was only working down the list.” Vlad gave them a razor smile, his teeth sharp white in the dark. “Of course, I needed to test out a few things before rigging the portal. But the lifespans of my test subjects were… seriously compromised. I am glad you seem to have avoided that particular side effect. Thus far.”

“You’re sick,” said Danny.

“Oh, come now, isn’t this a much better state of affairs? Would you prefer to be ordinary, or to not exist at all? Don’t you think it would be lonely, all by yourself, with no one who understood? With no… backups. Don’t you think it’s better with more of us, severed from that old history of abuse and exploitation? After all, you chose to walk into the portal. I only provided the proper circumstances for you to survive such a mistake.”

“No,” snapped Dani, sparks trailing from her fingers. “No. You don’t get to justify any of this. You need to be stopped.”

Vlad was tempted to go up to his study, transform into Plasmius, possess Jack and make him do truly horrible things, or maybe just--

Vlad closed his eyes and swallowed, carefully counting down from ten. When he reached zero, he opened them again. Therapy wasn’t something he was pleased about needing, about taking, but he was trying to… trying to do it seriously. He was trying to do better, to not let all this get the better of him.

His therapist had encouraged him to make amends. To reach out.

Of course, he couldn’t exactly return all the wealth he’d stolen to its so-called ‘rightful owners,’ not without explaining that he’d stolen it in the first place, and he didn’t exactly want to do that. With Jack, well, he wasn’t the one who had to make amends, was he? Why should he reach out when Jack certainly wasn’t?

Maddie, on the other hand…

He leaned over the balustrade, looking down at the ballroom, watching the dancers and… Whatever Jack was doing. It honestly couldn’t be called dancing by any reasonable person.

The whole scene was depressing. And the music was giving him a headache.

Well. No one would notice if he disappeared for a little bit. The night was long, and although he was the host of this reunion, he’d hired more than enough staff to take care of things without any real input from himself.

He climbed the stairs to his study. He’d just lean back in his big chair for a few minutes. Read over his notes from his last therapy session. Perhaps take a nap.

This plan was discarded the minute he opened the door. The emergency entrance to his lab, the secret passage opened by the gold football decoration, was wide open. His mouth went dry. One of the guests must have come up here, probably to steal something or to find some dirt on him, he knew not everyone on his guest list was exactly what he’d call successful, and had accidentally bumped into the trigger. It had to be an accident. For someone to come here already knowing…

Vlad did not especially wish to contemplate that scenario. He’d already done a number of… distasteful things… to protect himself against those who would have used him and his abilities. He did not want to repeat that time in his life.

He could only hope the intruder was still down there, and that they could be silenced easily. But then, if they weren’t down there, they wouldn’t have left the door open, would they? No. Not if they had any kind of wits about them at all.

Perhaps, in the best case scenario, the intruder was merely a drunk and lost party guest and Vlad could convince them the lab was an elaborate homage to some science fiction movie. He was rich! Rich people were allowed to be ridiculous and eccentric.

He walked into the passage, steeling himself for what he might have to do in the name of keeping the GIW (and other branches of the law) far, far away from his person.

He touched a hidden button on the wall as he walked, closing the passage behind him. An intruder would be hard-pressed to find it again to open the passage. They would be trapped here with him.

Vlad descended.

The lights in his lab were dim, and for a moment, he couldn’t sense anything out of place, could not detect the intruder, the outsider, he knew must be there. Nothing seemed missing. The computer monitors slept. The equipment analyzing his most personal projects hummed steadily, undisturbed.

But the light was just slightly dimmer than it should be. Vlad turned to the portal. It had cost him more than he would like to admit to get it up and running, not to mention countless hours spying on Jack and Maddie and longing… But that didn’t matter now.

What mattered was the slender silhouette that stood starkly against the portal’s swirling mists.

Too slight to be an adult. Even Harriet was taller than that. A child, then. He let himself have some relief. Children were easily influenced, easily manipulated, and often not believed when it came to something as fantastical as this.

But the only children at the party were Jack and Maddie’s children. Jasmine and Daniel. Both of whom would know what they were looking at the second they stepped into the lab.

Butter biscuits.

Overshadowing could often erase short-term memory, although the process had never been as smooth or as reliable as Vlad would like. Better to find out what the boy knew, what the boy thought he knew, now, before taking such a measure. It would make it easier to discredit him, should he remember something.

“Hello, Daniel,” he said, softly. As much of a threat as the boy’s knowledge - or lack thereof - could pose to him, he didn’t wish the boy harm. He especially did not want Daniel to startle and fall through the portal. That would be tedious to deal with at best.

The boy whirled, instantly ready for a fight, his eyes flashing green, the color briefly illuminating his features. But then they were shadowed again, only Vlad’s superior vision allowing him to pick up the boy’s startled expression against the vivid backlight of the active portal.

“Uh,” said Daniel, not relaxing from his stance he had taken. A fighting stance, if Vlad wasn’t terribly mistaken. “Mr. Masters. Um.” He slowly pulled himself back, back into the mask of an ordinary, defenseless teen. “I’m sorry for coming down here, but… You have a ghost portal.”

Vlad let the statement stretch into the soft white noise that filled the lab. Perhaps what he had seen had merely been a reflection of the portal’s light, combined with Maddie’s proclivity for martial arts potentially rubbing off on her son… but Vlad didn’t think so. That was the reaction of someone who had seen combat, and those eyes belonged to a ghost.

Now, Daniel Fenton could be overshadowed. There were few ghosts who could hide the color of their eyes when overshadowing another, however, and Vlad hadn’t made any enemies with that particular skill.

Which led to a conclusion so laughable that Vlad had to reject it out of hand. He could not forgive Jack, or even Maddie, for not noticing he was dying in that hospital room all those years ago, for not noticing that he had died, but he could understand it. Surely, even they would notice the death of their own child. Anything else… No. The child was overshadowed.

That was the only logical, rational, sane conclusion to the puzzle he was faced with.

As for why… Well, ghosts were neither logical, rational, nor sane a large portion of the time. If Vlad tried to comprehend everything they did, he would likely go insane himself.

No matter. This would be easily solved. He seriously doubted a ghost weak and cowardly enough to hide in a child would have the strength to prevent Vlad from throwing it out.

“Yes,” said Vlad. “I do. And I wonder, for what reason have you come through it?”

The boy blinked, expression blank for a split second, and then--

Fear. Fear thick enough for Vlad to taste even in human form.

“I don’t- I don’t know what you mean,” said the boy. “I’m not a ghost.”

“Or,” said Vlad, “perhaps it isn’t my portal you came through--”

The boy bolted around one of the lab tables, doubtlessly trying to avoid Vlad and dash up the stairs.

Vlad, for his part, simply stepped through the table, intangibility a cool, familiar wash, cutting Daniel - or, rather, the ghost overshadowing him - off.

The boy gaped.

Vlad smirked. It was, he supposed, gauche of him to relish the surprise and fear he induced in ghosts encountering him, a living human with ghost powers, for the first time. But he took simple pleasures where he could. Indulgence was not a sin.

Speaking of indulgence… He let his rings snap into being and sweep over him. Years ago, he’d traded the lab coat and turtleneck he’d first formed in for a more formal and imposing suit, but otherwise he looked much as he had that day.

Only deader.

If Vlad had thought the ghost was gaping before, he didn’t even know what to call the expression now making its home on the boy’s face. Daniel’s blue eyes were perfectly round, their whites showing on all sides, and all the blood had drained from his face. It was fascinating, really. Most of the time, an overshadowing ghost didn’t have that much influence over the host when it came to subconscious or involuntary emotional responses.

But Vlad wasn’t about to let himself be distracted from the task at hand. He put his hand on one of the boy’s shoulders and pushed.

Nothing happened.

Rather stunned at his failure, Vlad stared for a moment. This was more than enough time for the boy to grab Vlad’s wrist.

“You too?” he asked in a rather pathetic, broken, voice, tears glistening in his eyes. “You too?”

Vlad was about to demand clarification when two bright rings snapped into being around the boy’s waist. By the time they disappeared again, Vlad…

Vlad had questions.

Many questions.

.

“I don’t mean to keep you from your party,” said Daniel, rather shyly, after they’d been talking for half an hour.

“Nonsense, dear boy,” said Vlad. “I can throw all the parties I want, but it isn’t often that a fellow human-ghost hybrid walks into my home.”

“By often,” said Danny, jumping on something like hope, “do you mean--”

“Never,” said Vlad, cutting Danny off. “You’re the only person like me I’ve ever met. I’ve… encountered a few ghosts who can fake life, but… It isn’t the same.”

“Yeah,” said Danny. Spectra and Johnny… it really wasn’t the same. “But… No one?”

“No one,” said Vlad. “I fear that we are the only ones.”

“How did… How did it happen, for you? Dad mentioned something about a proto-portal, but--” He cut himself off. “I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t ask things like that.” Ghosts didn’t usually like to discuss what… what made them ghosts.

“It’s fine,” said Vlad. “I can certainly understand your curiosity. It was the accident with the proto-portal. My transformation was… not quick. I must assume that your current state was also caused by a portal. Perhaps the one your parents finished recently?”

Danny nodded mutely.

“Then we have another thing in common. We are both victims of your father’s foolishness.”

“I mean, I don’t know he was the one who left the portal plugged in…”

“Your mother was always very conscientious about lab safety, so I must assume it was,” countered Vlad, rather haughtily. He sniffed, then relaxed somewhat, reaching towards Danny’s hand. Their gloves contrasted oddly against one another, their glows somehow clashing despite being very nearly the same color. “Daniel. As someone who knows what you’re going through… You are doing very well. This was all very frightening for me to try to figure out on my own, and I was older. I would like to offer to, well, mentor you, I suppose. Help you find some balance with your powers.”

Parts of Vlad’s speech felt oddly rehearsed, as if he was stealing lines from someone else. That did not make it seem less heartfelt.

“We’re going back to Amity Park tomorrow,” said Danny. “I can’t really visit on my own.” Even flying, it was a bit too far.

“Do you have a phone?”

“Not my own. I… don’t know that you’d want to call the landline.”

Vlad grimaced, then floated over to one of the cabinets across the lab. He pulled a plastic package out, wrote something on the back, and tossed it to Danny. “Here,” he said. “It’s a burner. Pre-paid. My number is on the back.”

“You can’t give me a phone! I only just met you!”

“Phones are cheap. Especially burner phones,” said Vlad. “I am one of the richest men in the world.” He paused. “However, if it makes you uncomfortable--”

“No! It’s fine, it’s fine,” said Danny. “I was just… surprised.” Surprised that Vlad already cared so much so fast.

“I can also…” Vlad sighed. “Extend my invitation towards your parents by a few days. Talk up the sightings of the ‘Dairy King Ghost.’”

Danny giggled. “He’s not real, is he?”

“Oh, heavens, he’s quite real. My uncle, as a matter of fact. He merely tends to keep to himself.”

Danny instantly sobered. “I don’t want him to get hurt by my parents.”

“In his own haunt? Unlikely,” said Vlad. “In any case, that would allow us to work on a few things while they’re out of the way. Tips and tricks, as it were. Or simply a sympathetic ear.”

“I… Think I would like that,” said Danny. “If you can do it without the Dairy King getting hurt.”

.

Later, after most of the guests had either left for their hotels or their guest rooms in the mansion, Vlad sent one of his duplicates to slash the tires on the Fenton GAV and pour out all the… ‘gas’ in its tank.

(Vlad shuddered, remembering what was actually in that tank.)

Vlad’s original, however, stayed inside, in front of his computer, researching exactly what offenses could cause a person to lose custody of a child. He hadn’t spent much time spying on the part of the Fenton household that was actually a home. The few times he had felt voyeuristic, especially after an extended conversation with his therapist about it. He’d been more focused on technological achievements that could impact his life and existence.

He hadn’t seen any real evidence of abuse or neglect.

But Jack and Maddie hadn’t noticed Daniel’s death and subsequent transformation into a ghost. If they hadn’t noticed that, or if they simply hadn’t cared, well, there had to be something wrong with them. There had to be evidence.

If there wasn’t…

If there was no evidence, Vlad would simply make some. There was no way on Earth or the Infinite Realms that he would let Daniel, the only other person like him, the only one who could hope to understand, slip through his fingers. Wouldn’t lose him to Jack’s irrational hatred of ghosts and the violence that went along with it. Wouldn’t lose him even to something as mundane as distance.