#evil clockwork

︵‿︵‿︵‿︵👻

Jack slammed the trunk of the GAV open. The vehicle was off but it wasn’t dark inside, a soft pearly light was weakly emitted from the entity lying on the floor. It wasn’t strong enough to illuminate anything, but it sent an involuntary chill down Maddie’s spine even with all her experience.

Jack hovered over her, a big orange shadow, anxious to follow her directions. “When he’s not flying around causing havoc with the other ghosts it’s easy to forget this guy was a kid when he kicked the bucket.”

Maddie appreciated his comment, it made her realize her thoughts had been slipping dangerously in the same direction. If her mind wasn’t sure, and her scalpel wasn’t exact it would only cause undue damage and wasted time. She analyzed the white scrunched up face, leaking ectoplasm out of a bruised nose and cut forehead, and getting it all over the GAV rug. The sluggish green liquid would stain horribly. Its white hair shivered unnaturally in the still air, and she could feel the dip in temperature when she stuck her hand out toward it.

“Phantom might have been a kid once, or its appearance could be an illusion to make Amity Park residents more likely to sympathize with it, or it could be a branch of the ghost zone itself, reaching out to push into our world like a mindless drone scout. Its ecto-signature is so similar to readings taken directly from the portal, how can he exist so effortlessly in the human realm? Whatever it is, we’ll find out more once he’s on the operation table.”

Jack immediately brightened at the thought of testing their many, many theories. This would open the door for them into a realm famously unknowable since the first cells gathered together in the chemical miracle of life. Dr. Frankenstein had nothing on them. Jack scooped Phantom up. The ghost seemed tiny in his arms. The anti-ecto strips in his orange suit would counteract any intangibility that might let a weakened ghost slip away. He bent so Maddie could stick it with her needle. The ghost's head lolled on his neck. She could see the tendons and bones moving beneath his skin, it was amazingly easy to find the carotid artery. She pressed the tip of her needle to his skin to unload her syringe.  

That was strange too. According to their theories, ghosts were ectoplasmic reflections of things that left an intense emotional stain when they passed on from this side. On the inside many ghosts weren't much different from the blob ghosts that floated through ectoplasm dense air like zooplankton. How many ghosts out there had such realistic articulation? Maddie wanted to bounce on her toes with excitement just thinking about it.

They chatted amiably on the walk back through the house down into the basement. The house was dark, she didn't expect Jazz or Danny would be back for a while. Maddie and Jack tossed ideas and strategies back and forth. Delight roasted warmly in her stomach, she always thought best and most clearly with Jack beside her, and his thoughts added such a unique twist to any of her endeavors. Capturing the number one enemy, dissecting him together in their own lab, all the knowledge they would gain, and staying ahead of the government; tonight was shaping up to be quite the pleasant evening.  

~~~~~┏(-Д-┏)～

Phantom woke up sometime as they were going down the stairs. He made a muffled noise and weakly kicked. Jack squeezed him tighter. "None of that, Ghost scum."

Maddie hurried her steps. "Get him on the table, we have a while yet before he's dangerous again, but I don't want him waking up any more than he has."

Jack laid him on the table almost gently. Phantom tried to sit up, but Jack's hands were firm and heavy. Phantom's mouth worked. It looked like he was trying to use a swollen tongue with a deathly dry mouth. His inhuman green eyes were wide as saucers, they followed Maddie around the lab as she got her notes ready and wheeled the table with her instruments closer.

Jack strapped the restraints around his wrists and ankles. Phantom still hadn't made as much protest as she thought he would against the two ghost hunters that had been chasing him since his first appearance. Perhaps he was more out of it than she'd calculated. Jack was making whatever fiddly adjustments he needed on the machines. He pulled out one of these collapsible gadgets from underneath the table below Phantom's head. The middle piece looked like an oxygen mask, but on either side it was attached to a series of clear plastic tanks and tubes. He lowered the mask over Phantom's mouth and nose. Though ghosts had no need to breathe, the facial orifices were still often the most effective way to introduce a foreign substance. For an instant, Maddie imagined she saw the whisper of condensation pearling inside the dome of plastic over the ghost's mouth. She tensed, but Jack flipped the machine's switch and gas swirled through the tubes to cloud the oxygen mask. The left side was green with gaseous ectoplasm harvested directly from the ghost zone and concentrated into its purest form. It would keep pumping strength into the ghost as Maddie dug around in its insides. It should keep it stabilized even while its body was put through stress. The right side was pale and smoky, a sedative more effective than a hard knock to the head or the quick shots Maddie had been giving him. Even as she watched the green glowing disks of his eyes lowered into acidic slits. Phantom looked even more alien with the machine obscuring the bottom half of his face.

She exchanged a glowing look with Jack. This was the moment they'd been waiting for. She picked up the chalk. She pressed one palm against Phantom's chest. Even through the gloves, she could tell the suit he wore was thick and slippery, black as an oil slick. The body below her hand was surprisingly solid. She paused there, as though sensing there was something she'd missed.

Her heart skipped a beat when she felt it rise under her hand. A hitching inhale, a deep exhale. She sought Phantom's eyes. They were still lowered. Two glowing dreamy crescents. His irises wandered aimlessly underneath his lids. She shook her head. A trick, to put her off her guard. She noted it anyway, having Jack file it under physical characteristics. She'd figure it out when the ghost was opened up.

Without further ceremony, she chalked the long, skinny capital 'I'.

~~~~~~~ཀ༼ༀ༽ཫ་

The first layer she peeled back was the suit. It was slippery but thick and flexible with the same sort of texture as their own jumpsuits. She took samples to analyze on their own later. When she had time after wading through the solid feast of information laid out before her. To her surprise, there was skin underneath. It was pale and emaciated, but undeniably skin; with freckles, shadows of ribs, and scar tissue. One interesting, but almost completely faded scar branched from its right arm like spiky starbursts to its left collarbone, up its neck, and down its side where it likely extended to its foot. She pressed her fingers to its stomach. It moved like real skin. squishing gently in the gut and slipping over the ribs. She stepped aside so Jack could take a photo of the scarring.

She pressed the scalpel down. Gentle but persistent pressure, and the ghost's best parody of flesh parted easily to reveal dull green muscle. Jack used a cotton swab to dab away the pooling ectoplasm. Maddie was awed. She'd never suspected such detailed insides. She was doubting even more that such a powerful cognitive structure could belong to a harmless child ghost. What child knew the texture of muscle and exactly how they were supposed to lay under the skin? And brought it with them into death? She pulled back this layer with short precise slices.

Now the rib cage was exposed. The bones were blackened as though charred. She pressed a gloved finger against the curve of bone. She scratched her thumbnail against the surface, it didn’t flake like it had been burned or leave a residue on her fingers. It seemed the color had simply been inverted. She passed an arm over her face, sweating in spite of the cold air. She held out her hand to Jack. Wordlessly he placed the saw into her hand.

Tink. Tink. Plunk. Shards of bone hit the tray. Gummy green ectoplasm splattered messily. Maddie dropped the saw next to the pieces of black rib. They were stained all the way through, that being the only noticeable difference from regular bone. Another thing to study more closely.

She'd only taken out the left bottom few ribs so she could get at the organs she could already see pumping underneath it all. They didn't have time to waste on any more. Maddie could practically feel the GIW crawling in her neck hair. She reached into the small hole she'd made, grateful for small slender hands. She'd found the stomach and was groping for a scalpel when the basement door creaked open.

"Mom? Dad?"

It was Jazz. She couldn't see them yet because of the ecto-tank, and a curtain they'd set up before they started. Maddie quickly yanked her arm out, grabbing a roll of paper towels off the table. Jack was sitting in the computer chair, camera hanging from one hand and notebook almost slipping off his lap. He was clearly unnerved. If the ghost could disturb her husband, it would horrify her daughter. She tossed the soiled paper towels to the floor. She cast an analytical eye over the scene, she could admit the child ghost, even with his inhuman features, spread across the observation table looked pretty grisly. Both of them would benefit from a breather.

She pressed a hand to his shoulder. "It's all right, Jack, I'll talk to her. You go get a snack."

He lumbered out of sight, the fudge she hid above the fridge no doubt on his mind. She untied her apron and tossed it aside.

Jazz stared down at them from the landing. She took in their disheveled, splattered state, but it wasn't unlike them to get a little dirty in the normal course of their work. Jazz didn't comment. Maddie decided that she wouldn't even bring up Phantom's capture. Jazz could be a little squeamish sometimes and she had a clear soft spot for that ghost in particular. The ghost that lay half disassembled on their table at that moment. Maddie suddenly felt terribly weary.

She mustered a tired smile for Jazz. "Hey, sweety. Are you hungry? That chili should still be in the fridge."

A normal teenager might have shrugged but Jazz was above that. "I am fine, I just thought you two were going out?"

"Yeah, we were, but what could be a better date than working in the lab together?"

That made Jazz huff. "Whatever you say. I came down here to ask you if you'd seen Danny?"

Maddie cocked her head. "What? Why?"

Jazz looked away, arms crossed with the elegance of a heron, far beyond her years. "I was just wondering. Sam and Tucker were asking. Let me know if he stops by, alright?"

Maddie's eyes narrowed. It wasn't like Jazz to ask them something she could figure out herself. She must be a lot more worried than she was letting on. "Of course we will, are you sure everything's alright."

"Yes, Mom." Jazz groaned impatiently.

She turned to go but Maddie stopped her. "If you're not sure where he is we can help look." she thought regretfully of Phantom in mid operation, but family was really more important.

A pencil line appeared between Jazz's eyebrows. She looked from her to Jack coming up behind with arms full of fudge and what looked like a few girl scout cookies. "No, it's no big deal. And I wouldn't want to tear you away from whatever new weird invention you guys are bonding over."

"What's this about Danny?" Jack asked.

Maddie answered. "Jazz was asking where he was, she's worried about him."

"I didn't say that." Jazz said. "But yes, he isn't answering his phone and he never showed up at Tucker's house."

"I'm sure it's nothing to worry about, sweety." Maddie soothed. "Danny knows his way around Amity and he's got a clever head on his shoulders believe it or not." Jazz didn't seem to be convinced. There was something else going on, Jazz seemed far too off kilter. Maddie still couldn't believe that Danny was actually in any danger, but it made her uneasy. "Jack? Would you like to go look with Jazz?"

"Huh? Are you sure honey? What about our--- ah, project?"

"I can manage on my own. It'll just come along a lot slower, and I'll miss you. It's okay though, better make sure everything's fine and then you can come back and finish it with me." Maddie was relieved. Jack's stomach was made of strong stuff, not many things bothered him, but she suspected he'd been actually and truly perturbed. It was good he could get a real breath of fresh air.

"Sound's good, Mads!" Jack cried. He grabbed Jazz and whisked her away. "We'll be back in no time."

︵‿︵‿︵‿︵༼ つ ╹ ╹ ༽つ

The basement lab seemed eerily silent without Jack's big boisterous presence. She wouldn't lie, he was the one who made things fun. On her own, it was easy to slip into a monotonous, cynical autopilot. It was a shame because the creature she was studying was a priceless treasure.

Phantom hadn't moved from how she'd left him. She tied the apron back on and got back to work. Dread spread through her mind like ink in water. It had been growing all this time, she realized, like a balloon inflating above her head, and now it had got so big it filled the entire lab, leaving no room for her. Her heart squeezed, and a chill passed through her. She gritted her teeth and viscously threw the feeling away. It was just the ghost taking advantage of her loneliness and worry over Danny, affecting its surroundings with what small ecto-field it had left.

She pulled out an armful of intestines and piled them on a tray. The LED lights flickered. The ghost was toying with her, even drugged senseless. She fought the urge to snip the organs out entirely and see just how Phantom liked that. She took a deep breath through her nose and forced herself to keep working steadily.

Out came the liver, the stomach, the spleen, one kidney, she couldn't seem to find the other one. As she rooted around looking for it, she risked looking at the ghost's face again. His eyes were still barely open, the slivers were almost flashlight bright though, probably from the increased density of ectoplasm.

"Don't look at me like that," she said. "You're the one who came out of the ghost zone where you belong. Maybe you don't even realize how destructive you are to our world. Your obsessions, your careless rages, no thought to the humans you've endangered even the days you only fought the other ghosts." She sighed, wondering if the exhaustion of culminated months were visible in the weight of her eyelids. All the complaints from justified ghost attack victims, all the sleepless nights, all the frantic inventions made from scratch to somehow deal with the ghost infestation. The time stolen from other things that were supposed to be more important than ghost hunting. It had started so innocently. A passion project. Now the ever present glow of the portal was inescapable, a literal haunting. Phantom's eyes were blind and reactionless. Nothing but a hollow husk for her to confess to. "I suppose we're at fault as much as you are. After all, you couldn't be here if we hadn't cracked a hole through the universe with our own obsession. Ah, found it."

The second kidney plopped onto the pile. "Looks like everything's here so far. I was starting to wonder if you were an organ donor."

She moved up to the chest cavity. Things immediately became more interesting. She carved out the diaphragm, pushed aside the yellow-green sacks of the lungs (Which were still, to her bewilderment, gently rising and falling like silly balloons) to find the bruised heart nestled in the left lung. It pumped. Miraculously and impossibly, if slowly. And there, squeezed into the right lung's space like a distorted mirror image of the heart, was Phantom's core.

It glowed a gentle white, like his aura. But her view of it was obstructed by strange growths. Tiny crystalline shards clung to it like a hoard of bees pressed to their hive. When Maddie brushed her hand over the prickly growths they came away easily as though they hadn't been attached at all. Before she could catch them, they'd fallen to scatter in the gooey recesses of Phantom's body. They sparkled under the harsh LED light. Maddie cursed, it was going to be such a hassle to pick them all out. She held one up to the light. It was clear, almost iridescent like spun glass, and about the size of her thumbnail. It was covered with uniform spikes, the shape reminded her of star candy, or maybe the garland of hand blown starry night Christmas ornaments Maddie carefully packed away every year. This was the most inhuman thing she'd found. She suspected it would be the only thing. She'd pay good money to bet that when she opened up his hands, every single minuscule bone and tendon would be accounted for. What a strange exception. These barbed star shapes should have caused a lot of internal damage, at the very least punctured a lung. But those were ghosts. They weren't really real in the same sense she was.

She suddenly was reminded of all the reports of Phantom hanging around the old broken down observatory. Sightings on new moons, and clear skies of Phantom just floating, high above. Whenever there was any notable astronomical phenomenon, it was good chances he'd be around. Always staring up.

Maddie dropped the star in the metal tray where it plinked softly. She was grateful for her rubber gloves when it loosed a small static charge into the metal tray. The lights flickered again.

She gathered two handfuls of stars, careful not to let any more fall. Now she could see the core clearly, she couldn't help admiring it. The core gleamed like abalone shell. It was a smooth oblong shape that really did seem perfectly set to mimic the heart. Strange green veins grasping it tight like roots.

She'd seen cores before in the animals they'd dissected, and she'd read theories about them. But somehow, standing before a fully developed core of a strong ghost seemed different. Something awe inspiring, and something she shouldn't be seeing. Her hand hovered over it, her fingers long shadows over the strange alien organ. To use such an unscientific term, it felt brave, and young, and yes there was something about the celestial in how the light moved inside the core. He really did love space, didn't he? It hummed as she drew closer, and her fingers started to freeze with cold. Terror shot from the nerves of her hand as though it was a message from her own brain. Terror and a complicated layering of other emotions. Disturbed she drew her hand back.

Phantom's center. Pure ectoplasm and theoretically, the ghost's memory, fuel, and drive all rolled into one. Without it, there would be no obsession, no shape to take form around. It's heart and brain together. It was one of the reasons why most ghosts didn't need either of those other things.

So why did Phantom?

Maddie stumbled back from the table. Suddenly feeling shaky for no reason she could figure out. This ghost was really, actually messing with her head. For all his quips and puns while awake, all his differences to other ghosts, she'd never thought it would be this biological similarity that she should have expected to find in the first place, to unbalance her.

She dragged back her goggles, blinking in the suddenly brighter lights of the lab.  She resisted the temptation to rub her tired eyes with her gory hands. She looked again at the piecemealed ghost on her table. The star growths looked even more sparkly on her tray now. Like childish dreams in crystallized form.

She looked down at her arms, the gloves stained green to the elbow. She'd just slogged through an (almost) perfectly accurate sample of a human body and she looked it. Ghosts were not supposed to have that. Period.

She jumped when her phone rang. It sounded almost angry as it repeated the chirping, obnoxious ringtone. Unwillingly she turned away from the ghost to figure out where she’d left it. It just kept making that blaring noise. She found it in the pocket of her evening coat she’d discarded in the excitement on a relatively clean bench. She removed one of her rubber gloves so she didn’t smear green over everything. She felt like she was missing something huge. Something so important, she’d almost grasped it before her thoughts were interrupted. What was worse was she didn’t want to admit it, so she was less than genial when she switched it on and snapped, “Hello,” into the receiver.

“Mads!” came Jack’s voice.

Maddie sagged against the bench. She glanced back, still all too aware of Phantom behind her. “Oh, good. Did you find him?”

The unusual silence on the other end was answer enough, Maddie felt her heart rate pick up. “I’m sure it’ll be fine Jack, Danny will be waltzing back before dinner and tease us for worrying.”

“I’m not so sure dear. The kids… Jazz didn’t seem to want me with them, and Sam and Tucker kept whispering. I feel like something’s really wrong. And they know more than they’re telling me.”

“Well, you know how kids that age are,” Maddie suggested almost hopefully.

Jack grunted, clearly not convinced, and muttered something about possession and dangerous ghosts. “I’m almost home in the GAV. I think the kids might have ditched me. Not sure though. Do you want to start our own investigation?”

Maddie was about to respond when Jack cut back in. “Maddie.” He said, a dangerous edge to his usually jovial voice. “There’s a roadblock in front of our street.”

Maddie stiffened and cursed. “No way, it’s been peaceful as the grave down here. Are you sure it’s them?”

She heard the sound of an engine on the other end. “Wait I’m backing up— oh dear, didn’t see that. Anyway, it all looks very official and normal like regular road work. But I’ve never seen those fellows with a mass of unmarked, white vans. Have you?”

Maddie’s lip quirked. She looked up as though she’d be able to see the GIW agents gathering over her head. Did she hear something upstairs or was it coming from the phone?  “No, I can’t say I have.”

Jack hissed. “Mads, looks like they’re unloading some serious, sweet looking machinery. Be careful. Here they come to talk to me. I hope you got as much as you could out of that spook!”

The phone hung up with a beep. Maddie stared at the black screen.

She sprang up over the bench to sprint up the stairs. She shot the bolt too, and then for good measure, slammed down the old rusty lock Jack had invented for their lab on one of those dull rainy days when he was too full of ideas and energy, and then proceeded to never use the overcomplicated thing until now. She flew back down. She pushed tables into defensible positions, clearing her notes away into horrible sloppy piles. She was being so logical she hardly knew what she was doing.

The lockers built into the wall opened with a press of her fingerprint. The mechanism clicked, and she wrenched the door back. She pulled down gun after gun. They were all ecto based, made for hunting ghosts and nothing else, but they’d still pack a punch against a living breathing human. She stuffed what she could into her jumpsuit, and slid the rest under the tables to bump softly against a leg of the dissection table. Net gun and Foamer, Jack o’ Nine Tails, and Anti-Creep Stick™. She brushed her hands over her bazooka before hefting it over her shoulder and joining the rest of the stuff next to Phantom.

Now, for sure she could hear movement upstairs. That’s when her brain caught up to her. She was being so sensible she’d completely missed the fact that she was going to have to hand Phantom over without a fuss.

She and Jack had already discussed it. It wasn’t fun but the GIW wouldn’t give them much choice, and better to abscond with first pickings than die on an unnecessary hill fighting with the government for scraps. Let the GIW take the ghostly leftovers like the credit stealing vultures they were. At least, that’s what she’d said on the drive over.

She was still puzzling over her actions when she heard the doorknob rattle. She cocked her Fenton Bazooka. There was a grunt on the other side and a bang as the door was busted off its hinges in one clattering hit. Jack’s poor invention didn’t seem to work well after all. Maddie stayed silent. They wouldn’t be able to see her or Phantom with the curtain drawn in between them and the door. But with the portal spinning behind her casting unearthly light over everything, they couldn’t miss that this was the place they were looking for.

The first booted foot thudded down onto the stair.

On the table, Phantom stirred. His eyelids fluttered woozily. She stared down at him, a sick feeling rising in her gut that had been steadily growing ever since he’d been strapped to the table. She ignored it. She vastly preferred that than acknowledge the failing of her logic and reason. The green beating heart and pulsing lungs flashed before her eyes. The glow of the core and the crystalline structures that littered his body like an ingested galaxy. What an interesting ghost. She set her teeth, safely out of the way of her tongue to avoid injury in the wild situation that was cautiously stomping down the stairs toward her. She braced her bazooka against her shoulder.

It seemed she’d made a decision without even realizing it. Whatever happened? She was not going to let the GIW steal her specimen.

“Dr. Madeline Fenton.” rumbled a dry voice beyond the curtain. The first man had hit the bottom step. “You are harboring a level seven ecto entity, code name, Phantom at the top of the wanted list. Illegal under the anti-ecto Act. It has been deemed too dangerous for civilian researchers. It will be confiscated immediately and transferred to a more secure site. Your cooperation is greatly appreciated.”

“I think I have this quite under control, Sirs.” She said, raising her voice. “But you fellows are trespassing. I’ll tell you once to get off Fenton property.

The deep voiced speaker clicked his tongue. “Dr. Fenton. I expected you to be smarter. You know we wouldn’t be here if we didn’t have the jurisdiction. We have complete authority to do whatever we want to you and your family. Now use that logic you’re so fond of. We both know you’re not going to threaten your continued work here over a ghost. No matter how fascinating. Hey, I’m sure the higher ups will even clear you to work on him.”

It took a moment for Maddie to sort through which dumb initial went with the voice. “Agent K. We caught Phantom first, fair and square. Me and my husband are perfectly capable of taking care of it ourselves thank you very much. If you take one step more, you’re facing a lot of messy paperwork.”

She could hear his backup gathering behind him. Any hint of personality in his voice went dry. “I repeat, you are harboring a level seven ecto entity. He will be confiscated with or without your cooperation. Come out with your hands in the air or you will be fired upon.”

“Oh, will I just.” Maddie scooped up the Jack o’ nine tails and swept aside the curtain with the barrel of her gun.

The line of huge men in white suits started for just a millisecond at the huge barrel she was pointing at them. That was enough to bring up the nine tails and release streamers of electricity in every direction.

The men screamed and went down like bowling pins. A gun went off, and glass shattered. A stray tail hit one of the overhead lights and it fell with a shower of sparks. Most of the men were down. The smart ones (or maybe just the lucky ones) had managed to doge the electricity and were pulling themselves back together. Maddie tossed aside the spent Nine Tails and fired the bazooka from her hip. Ecto blasts exploded through the lab. White suits were instantly singed and stained with black and green.

Half of the agents still standing hurtled for her barricade of tables, and the other half took shelter behind their swat shields to train weaponry on her. A circle of green light glinted blindingly off the scope of a government issued rifle.

Maddie dove to the side behind the metal counter. Bullets whined in the air. Flat on her stomach, Maddie pushed away the bazooka and crawled over to the Fenton Foamer. She crawled back to the corner of the counter and peeked out to where the first buzzed heads were poking out of their table foxholes. Someone barked an order and the agents climbed over her barricade. She pulled the trigger. Green foam, freezing cold, with the speed of violent elephant toothpaste poured out of the nozzle. It hit the first man in the chest. He toppled backward, and the foam followed, piling on top of the agents with gummy density.

A few had escaped by being quick on their feet or going around the table. She rolled to one knee and threw the Foamer at the first one. It hit him on the forehead with a klonk and he fell like a stone. For the others she pulled two ecto-rays from her suit. Their compact design meant they couldn’t store a lot of energy, but it worked plenty well in a pinch. She unloaded the entire store into their chests. Their steps slowed under the barrage. Then their jaws went slack and they dropped. The two ecto rays were smoking. At a glance, she could see the gauges on their sides were completely empty. She tossed them away and pulled out her phone from her pocket.

“Any luck, Sweety?” She asked, sneaking a look around her counter. It looked like the GIW had retreated for now beneath the stairs. A few barrels were still stuck out like pins, but they weren’t going to come out for a bit. They had to seriously reassess their situation. She crawled back to her pile of weapons.

Jack made a frustrated noise. “I’m still wrestling with these damn goons, no matter what I say they won’t let me through. The guy’s standing right in front of me. He’s talking about all this paperwork and stuff. Have you met him? He’s got this rat nose, and sort of mushroomy, pouchy eyes. He’s dressed up like a construction worker, as though anyone with eyes couldn’t tell he’s one of the ghost secretaries that are always calling you up. Who are they kiddin? I hate dealing with the GIW— Yes I said GIW, are you serious, of course I know what branch you’re from, stop sweating so much, Man. Alright, I’m not mad, this is just getting very frustrating, and you’re not being very helpful.”

“Sorry it’s not going so well.” Maddie picked up an invention, squinted at it, then tossed it back on the pile. Maybe she was fussing, but she was sure they had the perfect tool to deal with this somewhere. “I actually have some bad news.”

“Not more ghost secretaries in costume, I hope.”

“No, no nothing like that. I’ve just decided not to give Phantom up to the GIW.”

There was a moment of silence while she could feel Jack processing this. “Well,” he said, in his loudest too jovial voice. She winced, she could tell his blood pressure had just skyrocketed. “At least I don’t have to deal with this joker anymore.”

“Exactly. I’m going to need a ride. If we can just get Phantom out of the picture, I’m positive we’ll be able to reason with them. Just get down here. You can run the secretary stooge over with the GAV for all I care— wait no, don’t.” Her brain ran, suddenly seeing a way out of this mess. A vision of that beating heart sharing space with the core shoved itself before her eyes and she pushed it away. “You’re going to use the back door.”

“We don’t have one Sweety.”

“Sure we do, we built it ourselves.” She turned to smile sweetly at the quietly spinning vortex built into their basement wall. Her hand closed around the Anti-creep stick and she hefted it absently, reaching for a sort of harpoon looking thing underneath. “I’d use the specter speeder, but it’s decommissioned for repair right now and I need to deal with these fellows, I can’t turn my back for long. But I think we know someone who’s built their own ghost portal.”

“That’s just a guess though, Mads!”

“He’s shown too much interest in ours. He knows the theory and the engineering you put behind the first prototypes. Put that together with the extra ghost sightings around his house and it’s a very, very good guess. Now it’s going to save us. Oop, I think the GIW are starting to move again. Love ya!”

“Good luck dear, show those white washcloths who’s boss!”

Click. She slipped the phone back into her pocket. She looked up, from her crouch she could just see Phantom’s boots pointed up from where they were tied to the table. His gloved fingers hung over the side next to her head, gleaming white.

“What are you?” Maddie breathed.

She needed so much more time with him. She needed to run blood tests, study the heart, see how all these organ structures held up over time. Would they dissolve immediately into formless ectoplasm when removed from the body and the core? And that core. It was almost like it had been shoved into his chest cavity with no thought, which didn’t make sense next to the intricacies pumping and living in a perfect simulacrum of humanity all around it. It was like there was a veil before her eyes. The truth was staring her right in the face. So why didn’t she want to look at it?

She was interrupted by a cold press against the back of her neck. She carefully turned to look into the emotionless face of Agent K and the others who’d sneaked up on her while she’d been distracted. She was furious enough to spit like a cat, but she forced a serine smile onto her lips and leaned back against the observation table. “Sorry about that, K, this subject is just so interesting. Don’t you think?”

“Put your hands up,” K growled.

Maddie’s hand was still on the Anti Creep Stick. She just needed to direct his attention elsewhere. She pointed up to the operation table behind her. “You’re too late, I’ve already opened up the package.”

K stared at the table. Phantom’s pale, dim glow reflected in his sunglasses. His dark skin was gray in the strange, eerie light. Perhaps he was even shocked by what Maddie had found.

Maddie swung the Anti creep stick in an ark, knocking the muzzle of the gun away from her. K jumped. Back on alert in an instant. The gun went off. It exploded like thunder in her eardrums. The floor tiles cracked only a foot away from her. Maddie sprang away, swinging the bat at any of them who dared come close. There was another bang , and Maddie’s leg shot out from under her.

Maddie fell hard. Her skull bounced on the floor and her vision of the lab tipped, sizzled, and spun with unearthly colors. Oh wait, that’s always what it looked like, ever since they’d shot a hole through the fabric of reality.

Maddie blinked, and K was standing above her. He pointed his huge gun at her chest. Maddie leveraged herself up on her elbows to glower down at the hole in her leg. It was seeping a deep, dull maroon. So different, so lifeless in the light of that other world. She looked back up at K.

He was as blank as ever, he didn’t seem to be exulting in his victory, but maybe this aggressive stance was his version of that. “Stand down, Dr. Fenton. We’re taking you into custody along with the ghost scum.”

Maddie gritted her teeth. She was shaking so much she could almost hear her bones rattling around in her body. She felt her heartbeat. Thud, thud , huge and inescapable, more like the steps of a pursuing movie monster rather than the pump that was keeping her alive. This was the thin veil that separated the dead from the living. It couldn’t even be defined as the ceasing of consciousness anymore now that there were ghosts flying through their midst. All thinking, and speaking, and seeking their goals. All twisted up into narcissistic obsessions. She stared at K. Her breath hiccuping between squeezed lungs and that pursuing thump, thump . Where was the line! Where did whisps become spirits, and spirits became joined to flesh, and bodies rotted from the inside out even as you walked through the supermarket buying sustenance for a family who had all started their own timer to their expiration date. From the very instant of birth. Life eating away at you like an acid. When you were clinically dead, how did a defibrillator reattach the soul to a stopped heart. Her eyes were drawn into pinpoints of rage. Her face was twisted with such anger it didn’t look human anymore, wrinkled with pain and sweat, she looked more like an animal pushed to the brink of sanity. Suddenly a tear squeezed out of her eye.

The tear was followed by more tears and she suddenly couldn’t stop. They dripped down her nose and chin, and she couldn’t get a grip. She covered her face, trying to push the tears back. She moaned. “No. No, he’s not a ghost. He can’t be a ghost.”

K tilted his head, his face scrunched up in disbelief. He hesitated a moment, dithering, then bounced the barrel of the gun off her stomach. His way of dealing with a sobbing woman. “This is beneath you, Dr. Fenton. You won’t get any sympathy from me.”

Maddie choked. She couldn’t stop crying. It felt like she’d taken her scalpel and ripped open her own chest. Faced with the alternative, she wished that’s what had happened. “It can’t be, he can’t be a ghost. Don’t you call him that,” she whispered through hoarse vocal cords.

K clearly thought she was going through a mental break. And maybe she was. The connections her brain had finally drawn were insane after all. Impossible. But the problem was, she couldn’t find a way to dismiss it. The smell of her lab suddenly filled her nostrils. She’d blocked it out she was so used to it, but now the sharp, off-sweet, citrine, and battery acid smell was inescapable.

“I think she’s lost it, Sir.” a younger voice said somewhere behind her, filled with ugly humor.

K’s mouth just twitched. His voice was even when he said, “Dr. Fenton, it’s clear this ghost has exerted some sort of control over you. The GIW will take you in and make sure you’re safe and uncompromised.” K’s eyes darted up and Maddie had no doubt the tranquilizers were on their way.

She sniffed, pressing her mouth together. There were still globs of salt water tracing their ways down her cheeks, but she somehow managed to stop and return K’s civil gaze for civil gaze. She nodded and lifted her hands, creep stick and all. She swallowed past the phlegm in her throat. “I’ll come.”

K nodded, business like. “You’re a very sick woman.”

“I’m a very sick woman,” Maddie answered demurely, lowering her eyelashes. She didn’t need to look to know that to her right, somewhere beyond Phantom’s operation table, was a bright switch surrounded by hazard tape built into the Ecto-containment tanks they’d built. It was another piece of Jack’s engineering. They all knew to stay far away from that big red button because a careless shoulder bump might release all the ghost’s they’d captured into the air. It was handy when she hooked it up to the ghost portal for releasing Amity’s haunters back into their natural habitat, but that was only when it was specifically programmed to do so, with numerous tubes and wires for the ghosts to travel through. Such a careless design flaw.

She sucked in a breath and let out a calm exhale. She twisted and brought her arm down to throw the bat as hard as she could.

Bang . Maddie fell back thrashing and curling into herself with the force of the bullet punched into her side. She never felt it. She felt like she’d turned to stone, all her bones calcifying, and her hag’s fingers carving into crystalizing claws. She stared up at K, her breath pummeling out of her. He let out a single burst of laughter like a cough.

“Where the hell were you aiming, Woman?"

The other agents around her were not so reserved, they burst into fits.

"Huh, didn’t even take advantage of the chance to knock his teeth in!"

"She missed! She really is some sort of crazy.”

K let them get their fun out, an empty grin chiseled onto his face. Finally, he had to holler to reign his men back in line. He was shouting because the rising roar in the air made it impossible to be heard otherwise. The otherworldly light spun giddily on the ceiling. Agent K spun toward the containment tanks, raising his gun. He spoke something into his earpiece but it was drowned out by the hissing warped sounds of ghosts escaping en masse . K’s men were screaming. There was the pounding of more gunfire, but they weren’t prepared to face this scale of ghostly activity. K stepped out of her field of vision, and Maddie soon saw the spectral tails of the ghosts pouring out overhead.

Two of them peeled off from the rest to hover over her. It was a large cat and a wispish girl, her hair spiraling behind her as though underwater. Their blank staring eyes sent chills down Maddie’s numb spine. Static filled her ears and she couldn’t hear a single word as the girl’s mouth moved indecipherably. She trembled, if they attacked her gamble would fail. The girl closed her mouth, apparently she’d said her piece and soared away, hair and dress gliding behind her like midair streams. The cat brushed its long, incandescent whiskers over her before leaping away in another direction. Maybe they knew she was helpless, maybe they recognized she was already close to their side of the veil. Or maybe they knew whatever they might do to her would be a comfort compared to the pain ripping through Maddie’s soul.

Groaning, Maddie turned herself over onto her elbows. She pushed herself along the floor till she could pull herself up with the counter. Her feet slipped under her and she had to rely almost entirely on her arm strength. When she’d finally gotten upright, she stood there, swaying for a moment. A few ghostly lights were still zipping and flashing overhead, but it was like they’d cleared a space around her and the operation table. She lurched forward, dragging herself along the counter. Somewhere behind her the GIW were still shouting, going crazy over the ghost. Any moment they might regain their senses and come for them again. She was going so slow she couldn’t handle it anymore, she launched herself off the counter and grabbed for the edge of the table. She went to her knees, but it was almost easy to pull herself up. She leaned over Phantom. Her breath rushing out of her and the edge of the table wedged into her stomach.

He was just as she’d left him. Disassembled and strewn in pieces. Condolences ectoplasm and drugs still pumping into him through thick tubes as though he was a balloon they needed to keep inflated. That heart was still thumping though. She waited for it with white knuckles on the rim of the table. A slow, sleepy, throb in time with the inflation of the lungs. Maddie reached over the canyon of his chest, blind to it. All she could see was that his eyes had finally closed and the oxygen mask that sold the lie of the fiendishness underneath. She ripped it off, opaque gas flooding out with a hiss. She wrenched the mechanism Jack had designed away, wishing she could just throw it to the floor. One of the foldable joints cracked.

Underneath was the pasty face, gleaming in the way only ghosts did. But it was so young, why hadn’t she allowed herself to accept the possibility that that was all that the face was. No mask at all. Just young. Phantom had never let them get so close. Of course not, they’d said, it was natural ghost spookishness (hah.) Her hands spasmed and with a cry she pressed her hands against Phantom’s face, pushing back the hair so she could stare at the sleeping boy underneath.

She studied each of his features to exacting precision, but it was no use, she could already see the truth.

“My baby,” she whispered. “My baby boy.”

The eyes opened back up into green, glowing crescents, spiraling with the same unearthly energy as the portal. She let go and the white, ghostly hair drifted back down over his face. She was looking at Phantom, but it was a thin mask indeed.

“Danny, I’m so sorry,” she said, sob catching in her throat.

T̴̡͗̑Ȋ̴̛͕̼͔̭̐̀̚M̴͖̜͌̽ͅÉ̴̞̖̔͂͌̌ ̴̰̯̈Ő̸͖̀Ù̶͖̻̀̐T̷̘̠̓͂̉͒́

︵‿︵‿︵‿︵👻

Maddie first became aware of movement passing before her vision. They resolved into shapes and color, but the ability to understand the messages her eyes were sending her brain stalled.

She felt a hand squeezing hers. It was weak but steady and stubborn. It was cold too, almost freezing.

All of a sudden she felt the bullet wounds again, red hot squeezing in her flesh. She would have staggered, only she couldn’t do that yet. What in the world was happening she wondered desperately.

Now she could hear. There was a ticking like someone had shoved an analog clock right up against her ear, and there was someone speaking. It was a dry, ancient voice. “—being unreasonable. Come, Daniel, must you continue this stubbornness.”

Danny’s voice was staticky like the distortion of a radio transmission from a long way away, and hoarse— but how could she have not realized it was his for so long? “Yeah right Clocky, After all, I am so well known for my reasonableness, good conduct, and ease of use.”

Finally, her brain translated the shapes and colors in front of her eyes. There was Phantom, still lying on the operation table, but now he was fully awake, staring furiously at the strange ghost standing on the other side of the bed. He was ancient, wearing purple robes clasped with a tarnished cogwheel. The skin of his face was so delicate with wrinkles it was transparent, seamed by an ugly jagged scar down his cheek. Eery red eyes gazed down on her son, completely unreadable. He held a strange medallion which he’d draped over what was left of Danny’s chest. Maddie quickly looked away.

How could this ghost talk to Danny so leisurely when he’d been injured so horribly? He needed help, not a lecture. Maddie struggled against the strange numbness that suffused her limbs. He needed a shot of ecto-dejecto first to stabilize his core, which was dangerously exposed, everything needed to be put back together including the missing pieces of ribs she’d taken. Panic rose up her throat like bile, at each desperate tally list she felt like she was going more and more insane. How could she ever fix this? She managed to slowly leverage her mouth open. She sucked in a long breath to yell at this strange ghost. The hand holding hers tightened its grip into a frenetic warning. She glanced down and saw her numb hand, frozen on the bed frame where she’d last left it. Danny had edged his hand to the side, to the furthest extent Jack’s bindings would let him, till he could clutch it over her white knuckles.  

All Maddie could do was look at him, mind spinning with questions. But she kept silent and didn’t try to move anymore.

Before her eyes, the old ghost (Clocky?) became young again. The wrinkles slithered off his face, smoothing away till there were only a few crow's feet surrounding the hollows of his unblinking eyes. His back straightened till he was towering over both of them. Not as tall as Jack, but she was struggling not to feel intimidated, especially with Danny laid out helpless between them. She wanted to wrench Danny away, hide him far away from this ghost.

He spoke. “So, it seems she figured things out in the end. A little too late I believe.”

“But… she regretted it didn’t she?” Clocky didn’t answer and Danny grinned wanly, his pale face almost skeletal. “So you lost. Not this or any other situation you can throw me into will make me agree to your dumb plan.

“You’ll forgive me, but I am not convinced,” was the dry answer. “You forget, I have the patience of ages.”

Danny went stiff. “You’re not going to stop, are you? The Observants are going to notice something’s up with you eventually. Sooner or later they’ll reign you in. They won’t let you take control so easily. But you can’t haunt me forever, of course you could, you're the ghost of time. Well, I won’t let you. I beat Pariah Dark, I’ll figure out some way to make you leave me alone.” Clocky was still silent, face completely blank against Danny’s rant. Danny, desperation evident on his face, said, “what about all that talk about using time responsibly? You can’t be planning what I think you are.”

Clocky tilted his head, studying Danny like a strange but particularly fascinating beetle. “I know you never conceived how far the extent of your parent's cruelty could reach. Their desecration of the dead has already surpassed the sins of their ancestors. With this newest act, I see no redemption, only the sorrow of starting to realize how foolish they’ve been. They’ve already been punished for their hubris.” he touched Danny lightly on the cheek. “And now they must finally begin to face it. Oh no, Daniel, the infinite realms could not be more in tune with my actions.”

“Well it doesn’t matter, I’m not going to be your puppet.”

He sighed. When he leaned forward his robe parted to reveal a window set into his chest, clockwork buzzing beneath. “I have tried to be lenient.”

“Manipulative,” Danny bit out with acid.

“But for time to advance as it should, I need you. It saddens me that I must use such painful methods.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“More than you know, Daniel. I hope someday we shall be able to look back on this trial together and see its necessity. But first you must pass through it. I think soon you shall see your human ties are not worth nearly as much as you put by them. It caused the destruction of one timeline, I will not let it subsume this one.”

Danny shook his head, almost spitting with resentment.

“What parent would do this to their child?” Danny had no answer to that. Maddie felt bits of her heart crumble and she wanted to shrivel up and disappear. She wanted to close her ears and stop listening but she was still frozen, and she wasn’t even the one these words were aimed toward. “Because he cared for you, that boy was injured by his own kind. Samantha Manson and your sister never knew anything could be wrong until it was too late. Jasmine stood in this very room where your being was being unwound and documented, and asked where you could be. Such human weakness. You put your friends directly into danger and they completely failed to protect you when it counted. All while the two who made you were destroying you to your very soul.” He shook his head. “Come with me now, Daniel, and we can put these wearisome memories behind us. I can promise you, You will never feel pain again.”

“I— I can’t. I can’t leave them.” To her horror a wobbly tear gathered in her brave, brave boy’s eye. It overspilled the corner of his eye and traced a line into his ear. And then more lines fell like the tracks of a river on a map. His pale green eyes were completely obscured by a film of liquid. “They’re my family, I don’t want to leave them. Please, Mom.” His gaze flicked to hers and then quickly back to CW. “She didn’t know.” He composed himself, sucking wet air in as though each breath was as difficult as running a marathon. His eyes drifted down, their light dim. He looked exhausted. His voice was tiny. “Please don’t do this to me.” Maddie felt his grip on her hand weaken.

Clocky sighed and leaned so far over Danny it was like he was hunched again. He brushed white hair away from Danny’s forehead. Maddie wanted to grind her teeth. That was her job. A tiny voice in the back of her mind reminded her she might have forfeited it forever, but for now she could pretend she was still worthy to touch her son.

Clocky’s voice lowered into a soothing whisper. “You know you have the power to end this with a word. I’ll always be watching.”

She could feel Danny slipping away into unconsciousness in the returning creep of cold numbness. She felt like the world was growing gray and distant.

Clocky’s voice wasn’t just low, it was muffled as though through layers of felt. “Only call my name and I will be here. But I want you to remember what comes next.”

As Danny’s fingers slipped away from her own, and she fell away into the still nothingness he’d pulled her from. As gray wool like thunderclouds crept over her vision and dissolved into shapes and colors that she couldn’t comprehend, she saw the ghost tenderly lay the gear shaped medallion inside Danny’s chest cavity.