Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dust and debris swirled in the air above her. Maddie stumbled to her feet, only to brace herself on the countertop as a wave of dizziness overcame her. Everything hurt: that dull ache in her bones she sometimes got when it was too cold as she slept.

What…happened…?

Little green stars dotted her vision. Maddie blinked, trying to get them to go away. They didn’t.

She was in…a salon, she thought, except it had been the victim of some kind of disaster. Chairs were overturned, bottles spilled everywhere, sunlight filtering in through the shattered front window. Green fires dotted the store. Something was wrong with that, but her head was too foggy to figure out why.

“Mom?”

Maddie stared at the storefront. Her son stood on the other side of the window. “Danny?” she muttered. What was he doing there?

“Mom! You’re okay!” Danny clambered through the opening and began picking his way across the room.

“Danny, there’s glass…you need to….” She couldn’t get the thought out.

Danny ignored her warning and walked heedless of the debris, as if it weren’t even there. “Mom, it’s okay. I’m gonna get you out of here.”

Maddie squinted. In the firelight, he almost seemed to…glow? She blinked away more of the green stars. Danny was covered in a layer of dust that made his dark hair appear lighter and his usual NASA t-shirt appear darker.

“C’mon, Mom. Let’s get you some help.” Danny moved to pull her arm around his shoulder, only for his hand to go right through her side. He froze.

A shock of cold ran through Maddie’s body. That wasn't.... She watched as Danny pulled his hand out and stared at it. His eyes darted between his hand and her face in confusion. They glinted green in the firelight.

“Danny, you’re hurt,” she said, reaching towards him. Her son bled from a large gash across his forehead. The blood, too, seemed to glow.

Danny’s eyes widened in horror. “No no no,” he said, looking around frantically. “This isn’t happening.”

He gasped, then fell to his knees. “This can’t be happening!”

It took Maddie a moment to look at what he found.

Danny knelt next to a body covered in salon detritus and blood. He’d pulled off his shirt to stanch the bleeding. Metal shrapnel had pierced its chest in several places. It wore some kind of jumpsuit, with goggles that had been knocked askance on its head.

It was then that Maddie felt the tugging. From a place deep inside her chest, something lightly pulled her towards the body, while something else pulled her…elsewhere. She couldn’t tell.

A pressure appeared on her neck as Danny checked the body for a pulse. “No no no! Mom!” he said, looking back up at her. He was crying glowing tears. “You can’t be–!”

The little green stars were clustering into tiny blobs that gravitated towards her.

“Danny, what’s…?” She trailed off. The body was…the body was hers.

“Mom, please! I don’t–I don’t know–” Danny looked at her expectantly, as if she had answers. Her head was so foggy. She didn’t even remember how she got here.

“I’m not–I’m not–” His expression changed. “I’m not gonna let this happen to you.”

The glow surrounding Danny brightened, and he reached up and yanked Maddie down, back into her body.

Maddie stared up at her son as he held his shirt to her wounds. “C’mon, Mom. Live. Please just live.”

More green blobs clustered around them. The tugging sensation to…somewhere else grew.

Danny grit his teeth. “I. Won’t. Let. This. Happen!”

There was a flash of light.

The tugging vanished.

Maddie gasped. Bright warmth bloomed in her chest, and with it, pain. Lots and lots of pain.

The last thing she heard before she passed out was Danny, no longer glowing in the spectral firelight, calling for his sister….

Chapter Text

Part 1: Close to Death

Maddie tried to get more comfortable in bed, but she couldn’t move much. The blanket must be wrapped too tightly around her. Also, there was something heavy resting on her foot.

She tried to take a look, but her left eye didn’t want to cooperate and open. Still, even with partial vision, Maddie could make out Danny, sitting in a chair next to her bed and slumped over onto her foot. He was sound asleep.

“Danny, what’re you doing here?” she muttered. “You have your own bed.”

Danny stirred, blinking in confusion, then abruptly stood up. “Mom!”

The sudden movement chased some of Maddie’s sleepiness away. She wasn’t at home – she was in a hospital bed, tucked in tightly and covered in bandages.

What happened?

“Mom? Are you…?” Danny stared at her, like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He reached out a hand, hesitantly, and picked up hers. For once, Danny’s skin felt warm to the touch.

The tension visibly left Danny’s face. “Mom, you’re alive.” He was on the verge of tears. “You’re okay.”

Maddie smiled weakly, though her face didn’t want to move right. “Hi, Danny.” She squeezed his hand – a gesture he returned, though much gentler, careful of the IV in her arm.

To Maddie’s relief, whatever happened to her seemed to have mostly escaped her son. The only injury she could see was a bandage over his right eye. It was too dark in the room to make out any bruises or other wounds.

“Danny,” she rasped, throat dry. Without asking, he jumped up and brought her a cup of water. It hurt to take a sip, every movement aching even through the painkillers she was almost certainly receiving. “What happened?”

Danny sat in the chair and ran his hand through his hair. He didn’t look at her at first.

“There was…an explosion,” he said, quietly. “Jazz and I are okay, but you and Dad got hurt pretty bad.”

As if to answer her unspoken question, the distinctive snore of Jack Fenton reverberated from the bed to her left. Maddie glanced over to see her husband, sleeping. Jack’s right leg was clearly broken, the cast sticking out from under the covers. He wouldn’t be happy about that. But at least he was alive.

She turned back to Danny. “Jazz?” she asked?

“Jazz went home to get some sleep. We’ve been taking turns here.” Danny was staring at her with that intense gaze of his, the one he’d grown into over the last two years. “Do you remember anything?”

Maddie frowned. Vaguely, she remembered waking up once or twice before to a flurry of doctors and nurses checking up on her. Snippets of conversation echoed in her memory.

…needed six transfusions…

…lingering ectoplasmic contamination, but will go away…

…lucky to be alive…

…should be very proud of your son. I don’t know many adults who can keep their cool in a crisis like that, let alone a sixteen-year-old. He saved your life…

And before that…

“We were eating at Nasty Burger, after seeing a movie,” she said, “and then…I don’t know.”

Danny nodded. A range of emotions danced across his face, but they were gone before Maddie could make them out, replaced by the mix of concern and relief that was there before. “I can fill you in later. I, uh, should probably let the nurse know you’re awake.”

He was gone before Maddie could say anything more.

***

Three broken ribs. Several minor fractures. Punctured lung. Over a dozen serious lacerations. Six blood transfusions. Grade two concussion.

She’d died twice while in surgery.

Lucky to be alive, indeed.

From what Maddie could piece together out of the chaos, the Fentons had been walking home from celebrating Jazz’s high school graduation when their ghost meters detected something in a disused newspaper stand. It exploded when Jack opened it, throwing him to the side and Maddie through the – thankfully closed – salon’s window. Danny and Jazz, standing back, escaped with minor injuries.

But not without ectoplasmic contamination that left Danny ill for a day. Maddie didn’t wake up until two days after her son had stopped vomiting.

It was only when two men in white suits and sunglasses arrived that the Fentons finally received some answers.

“We don’t mean to bother you, Mrs. Fenton,” the first GIW agent said. “But the readings from the accident are…unusual, and you are the closest ectobiologist we can contact.”

Maddie sensed the unspoken ‘unfortunately’ at the end of his words. She was alone in the hospital room with the two agents. “It’s Dr. Fenton,” she said. “I’d like to see the data, please.”

The second agent produced a single sheet of paper from his briefcase and handed it to her without speaking. The agency had clearly removed some of the data from a standard ectoplasmic radiation scan, but it was enough for Maddie to see exactly how strange it was. She frowned.

Ectoradiation worked much like normal radiation, falling along a spectrum based on wavelength. Unlike normal radiation, though, ectoradiation only existed on Earth within a certain range of wavelengths, like if visible light was the only kind of radiation that existed. The only time Maddie had seen ectoradiation outside of its set spectrum had been on one of their few trips inside the Ghost Zone. She and Jack theorized that ectoplasm outside that narrow band was too unstable to exist in Earth’s physics.

And yet, here was a reading that showed ectoradiation on Earth far above the normal wavelengths.

“This shouldn’t be possible,” Maddie said. “Are you sure your scanners were calibrated correctly?”

“The data you see was corroborated by four other scanners, Mrs. Fenton.” She suppressed an eye roll. “This particular data was, in fact, produced from one of your own devices your husband lent us. We’d like your conclusion, please.”

“One moment. What was the decay pattern on the ectoradiation? Is the area still contaminated?”

The second agent pulled out another sheet of paper. Maddie’s frown deepened. The ectoradiation had quickly faded, far faster than she would have expected otherwise. Within a few more days, it would be too negligible to measure.

“If you want a more thorough opinion, I’d be happy to cooperate with you professionally on a consultation,” she said. “All I can tell from your data is that this ectoradiation should not be possible.”

“And yet, it is.” The agent snatched the papers back from her. The two men stood up in unison. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Fenton. We’ll contact you if the need arises.”

They left.

Maddie sighed. Did the GIW train their agents to be so brusque? She grabbed her Sudoku book and began scribbling what she remembered from the readouts.

The rest of the Fentons filed back into the room – Jack, on crutches, discharged two days ago; Jazz, nervously running her hands through her hair; and Danny, who still avoided looking in her direction.

Jack started to speak, but she shushed him. Blasted concussion, making it difficult to concentrate. There were far too many holes in the numbers for her liking. And she still couldn’t remember what happened after they left the Nasty Burger, even almost a week later. Her doctor said the memories might never return. It bothered Maddie more than she wanted to acknowledge.

As she closed the book, Jack asked, “So? What did they want to talk to you about?”

Maddie sighed. “I can’t tell you. They made me sign a confidentiality agreement.” While she spoke, though, she gave Jack a look, hoping he’d get her unvoiced message. I’ll tell you later.

The look on Jack’s face told her he did, and from the way Jazz reacted to their exchange, she did too.

Maddie glanced at Danny. Her son stood leaning against the windowsill, arms crossed. He seemed fixated by Vlad’s “get well soon” bouquet – a large and ostentatious collection of flowers that seemed to dwarf everything else around it. Her old college friend had yet to make an appearance. Something about an “internal matter” at his company he had to take care of.

To others, Danny might look like a sulking teenager who didn’t want to be spending time with his family in the hospital. But Maddie knew her son well enough – she hoped – to see the tension in his posture and the worry on his face.

Maddie still didn’t know what he’d seen in the direct aftermath, only that he had been the one to find her, nearly dead. It had to have traumatized him.

If only he’d just talk to me!

But if the last two years had shown her anything, it was that Danny wouldn’t talk to her about such things.

“…a shame, because I’d really like to know what triggered our meters.”

“Mmm?” Maddie tuned back into what her husband was saying. “Have you been able to get any data off of them?”’

Jack shook his head. “Not yet. They’re pretty busted. At least the GIW haven’t taken them yet.” He brightened. “Hey, Danny, do you think Tucker could look at the meters?”

“What?” Danny was startled out of his thoughts. “Uh…sure? I can ask him.”

“Great!” Jack said, too enthusiastically, as if to cover for Danny’s disconnect from the conversation. Jazz visibly winced, and Danny stared at the floor. Clearly, things were awkward at home, even if Jack was trying to hide it.

The family lapsed into an uncomfortable silence, one of many that had plagued them over the last few days. Maddie wanted to break it, but what could she possibly say to that?

Jazz finally spoke, standing up from the guest chair. “It’s getting late. We should probably let Mom rest,” she said. She walked over to Maddie’s bed and gave her a hug. “And I want to make sure everything’s ready at home for when they discharge you tomorrow.”

“Thank you, sweetie,” Maddie said, returning the hug. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” She didn’t really want them to leave, but nor did she want to face this charade. And, truth be told, she did want to rest, and mull over the implications of her meeting with the GIW.

Jazz smiled, but the dark circles under her eyes belied the stress they were all feeling. Maybe having Maddie home would relieve some of it, but deep down she knew that her return wouldn’t be enough.

This explosion had damaged far more than just a storefront.

As Jazz held the door open, Jack hobbled over and gave her a clumsy kiss, then winked at her, promising they’d talk later. Oh, yes, he definitely would like to hear what the GIW didn’t want her to share.

Last, of course, was Danny. She half expected her son to leave with nothing more than a quiet goodbye, but to Maddie’s surprise, he walked over and hugged her. It wasn’t a great hug – between her injuries and Danny’s cold skin, it bordered on discomforting, but Maddie embraced it nonetheless.

“I love you, Danny,” she found herself saying when he let go.

Danny paused, then quietly said, “I love you too, Mom.”

For a moment, Maddie thought he was about to say something else, but instead, he gave her a half smile, then walked towards the door after his sister and father.

Right before he left, Danny glanced back at her, as if he didn’t want to leave her behind.

Chapter Text

Truth be told, Maddie half expected that her house would be a disaster zone in her absence, but when she stepped through the front door, she was surprised to find it nearly spotless. The carpet was freshly vacuumed, the shelves dusted, and all the clutter put away. It smelled nicer, too, though the scent of ectoplasm never fully went away. She looked at Jazz, one eyebrow raised, but her daughter just smiled and gestured towards the kitchen.

Maddie followed her, slowly. It was only a week after the explosion, and her body still had a long way to go before she could hunt ghosts again. She couldn’t even carry her own bag, instead giving it to Jazz.

“Welcome home, Mads!” Jack said as she entered the kitchen. He sat at the table sorting through some papers – probably for the class he’d be teaching next week – broken leg resting on an ottoman borrowed from the living room. The kitchen, too, seemed as clean as the rest of the house.

“Hi, Jack. And hi, Danny,” she added when her son jumped out of his seat to pull out a chair for her.

“Hi, Mom!” Danny seemed in better spirits today than he had been during her week in the hospital. Even bruised and beaten she still was, it must be a relief to see her back to semi-normal. No jumpsuit, though, since it was too tight on her broken ribs.

Maddie eased herself into the chair as Jazz joined them at the table. “So, who do I owe thanks to for the state of the house?”

“That would be Danny,” Jazz said. “He’s been on a cleaning frenzy the last few days.”

Maddie looked at her son, who blushed. “I caught up on some of the chores you’re always asking me to do,” Danny said. He grinned – somewhat sheepishly, but it was the first genuine smile he’d given Maddie since the explosion.

She smiled back, happy to finally see Danny a little less stressed. “It looks great, sweetie. Thank you.”

“Danny here has been a great help around the house while his old man is out of commission,” Jack said. He patted Danny on the back as he spoke, but Danny, with years of practice, managed not to collapse under the force. Maddie held back a laugh. “And, of course, we can’t forget Jazz, our main source of wheels for the time being.”

“Happy to help, Dad,” Jazz said. “But it would be nice if Danny would finally get enough hours on his permit to take his driving test.”

Danny scowled at her. “Hey, it’s not my fault if you drive the only car the DMV approves of. My options are kinda limited here.”

Despite her son’s scowls, Maddie was relaxed by the familiar rehashing of an old argument that had been going on since Danny got his permit. Besides, she couldn’t exactly blame him for his reluctance. She wouldn’t want to learn how to drive from Jack Fenton, either.

“Oh, Mads,” Jack interrupted. “What did the GIW talk with you about?”

Maddie could have sworn the room grew several degrees cooler. As Jazz pulled the Sudoku book out of her bag at Maddie’s request, she glanced at Danny. Though he covered it well, she didn’t miss the way his face dropped at the mention of the GIW.

There was no love lost between any of the Fentons and the GIW, but she knew Danny held a particular hatred for them, though she wasn’t sure why, beyond his general frustrations with ghost hunting. Maybe that was why he seemed so upset when they visited yesterday. But she wasn’t convinced that was all.

Regardless, Maddie was curious what Jack’s take on the readings was. She flipped to the page with her notes. “These are the ectoradiation readings from the explosion. I wrote down as much as I remembered.”

Jack took the book and frowned. “Was the scanner calibrated right?” he asked.

“That’s the same thing I said, but they claimed it was corroborated by several other scanners, including one you leant them.”

“More like the one I gave them when they threatened to arrest me for interfering with a government investigation. But anyway,” Jack said, “these numbers are fascinating. Ectoradiation outside of the normal wavelengths? I’ve never seen anything like th–”

Jack’s phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and glanced at the caller ID. “It’s Detective Carleton,” he said.

A familiar name to Maddie. The Fentons had worked with him plenty of times in ghost investigations over the years, and had been persons of interest in more than a few others. No surprise he would be working with the GIW on this.

“Put it on speaker,” she said.

Jack nodded, then flipped the phone open and set it on the table. “Hi, Detective Carleton. Jack and Maddie Fenton here.”

“Drs. Fenton,” came the no-nonsense voice. It was a bit difficult to make out what he said. Despite the protections they’d installed, the proximity to the portal always made phone calls staticky. “I need to ask your advice in a professional context.”

Maddie exchanged a look with Jack. “Advice in a professional context,” they’d learned, meant that they weren’t under investigation by the Amity Park Police Department. Yet.

“Go on,” she said.

“Since the two of you are both indisposed and the victims of this case, the GIW has decided to bring in a task force of other…ghost hunters” – his voice dripped with distaste – “and I want your professional opinion on their choices.”

Maddie and Jack exchanged another look, this one with shock. The GIW? Bring in external consultants? Now that was new.

She went first. “Well…first I’d suggest you ask–”

“I’m not looking for suggestions, Dr. Fenton. The GIW has already given me their list. I want to know about the credentials of these individuals.”

Ah. Carleton wanted to know whether or not the other ghost hunters were up to the task at hand. A valid concern, given the number of amateur “ghost hunters” who’d shown up in Amity Park and gotten themselves in danger.

“I see,” Maddie said. “Who’s the first?”

“Dr. Agatha Keaton.”

Maddie frowned. The name was familiar to her, but she couldn’t immediately match it with an actual person. Jack, on the other hand, seemed to know exactly who she was.

“Oh, Aggie!” he said. “She’s great. I use her research in my work all the time. Really good with the ectophysics stuff, not too good with the technology part, though, and she doesn’t answer her emails–”

“Great. Next on the list is Dr. Penny Babcock.”

“Penny’s great too, though not quite as good as my Maddie is at ectobiology.” Jack winked at her.

“Okay. The ne–”

Maddie spoke up. “Detective Carleton, you should know that while Penny is brilliant, she also tends to spread herself too thin by working on too many projects at once. We had a hard time keeping her on track when she finished up the winter semester for us at Carrie while we were out of town.” They’d been lucky she was around to cover for them while they addressed a major ghost attack in Wisconsin as a favor to Vlad.

“Noted. Anything else? Good. Moving on. Dr. Erik Sedgewick.”

At the name, Danny muttered something under his breath. Maddie looked over to see him scowling, arms crossed as he slouched over the table. While Jack started to answer the question, Maddie noticed her Sudoku book lying closed in front of Danny. Had he been looking at the ectoradiation data? She wasn’t sure he even knew how to read the scans.

“Dr. Sedgewick is an expert in the field of ectoplasmic decontamination,” Jack was saying, “but there have been some…ethical issues with his research.”

“Explain,” Carleton said.

“Well, he was fired from his university for…exposing people to ectoplasm without their informed consent. Just tiny amounts, not anything too dangerous, but still violating ethical practices. It’s why he’s working at Vladco now. I don’t know what he’s been up to in the last few years.” Jack frowned. “The ectoscience community in general keeps their distance from him.”

“I see.” The phone crackled with a burst of static. “The last name on the list is Dr. Henry Reitman.”

She didn’t recognize him, and, apparently, neither did Jack. He shrugged at her, a confused look on his face.

Though it had recently exploded in popularity, the ectoscience field was very small, especially at the Fentons’ level of expertise. It didn’t bode well that neither of them recognized the name.

“I’m sorry, Detective Carleton,” Maddie said. “But neither of us know who Dr. Reitman is–”

“DID YOU SAY DR. REITMAN?!” Jazz practically exploded out of her seat. “As in ectopsychologist Dr. Reitman? The leading scholar of ghost psychology Dr. Reitman?”

“…Yes, I do believe so,” came the reply.

Jazz practically squealed in delight. “Dr. Reitman is the founder of ectopsychology a field. You won’t be able to find a more accomplished ectopsychologist than him, I promise.”

“That will have to do, I suppose.” Carleton’s sigh was audible through the static. “In any case, the Department thanks the…three of you for your input. I sincerely hope that I don’t have to bother you again.”

There was a pause before he spoke again, this time in a low voice that Maddie had to strain to hear.

“Look, this is off the record,” he began, sighing once more, “but you should know that whatever caused that explosion has the GIW spooked. This task force is proof of that, since the GIW refuses to bring the two of you into this. And anything that worries the GIW has me seriously concerned for the safety of this town.

“I am not asking you to investigate this case. In fact, I want your whole family to stay away from it. But I know that Fenton Works has…connections that the GIW doesn’t have. So if you come by any information you think will be helpful, send it my way.” Carleton sighed once more. “And please, don’t do anything stupid.”

He hung up.

There was a silent pause, then–

“Connections?!” Jack said at the same time Maddie went, “Ghost psychology?!”

Maddie spoke first, turning to Jazz and wincing as the movement jarred her ribs. “Really? Ghost psychology?”

Jazz rolled her eyes. “I know you think ghosts are just mindless ectoplasmic imprints made at the moment of death, not sapient beings, Mom, but if you’d actually just read what Dr. Reitman writes instead of dismissing it….”

Maddie just shook her head. Not this argument again.

“Never mind that,” Jack said. “I want to know what kind of ‘connections’ the detective thinks we have.” He frowned. “Do you think he means…connections to ghosts? That we can get information from them somehow? He should know by now that ghosts don’t cooperate.”

“Have you ever tried talking to a ghost instead of capturing it?”

Maddie jumped. Danny had been so quiet that she almost forgot he was there, as if he had just faded into the background.

“Danny,” she said. “You know that wouldn’t work. Ghosts are too unpredictable. It’s too dangerous.”

“But have you ever actually asked a ghost if they’d talk to you?” That intense stare of his was back, drilling into Maddie’s soul. She suppressed a shiver. Was it really that cold in the room? “Instead of going ‘capture first, talk later’?”

She and Jack exchanged a look. “A few times,” Maddie admitted, “but they didn’t go well.” The laugh of the last ghost echoed in her memory, mocking her for even considering the option.

“Could you try again?”

Her son was so earnest in his question that he was practically begging them. Inwardly, Maddie frowned. Ghost psychology and talking to ghosts. The leading ectoscientific consensus – not counting Jazz’s “ectopsychologist” – agreed that ghosts on Earth were dangerous and unpredictable, too easily consumed by their obsessive nature to listen to rational thought. Where had she and Jack gone wrong if their children believed such quack science and lies?

Maddie knew the answer, of course, just as she had known it every time the conflict about ghost hunting came up. The popularity of Phantom was overwhelming in Amity Park, despite their warnings. Too many young people, including her own children, believed the ghost boy could do no wrong. She half expected that Danny was going to suggest she have some sort of chat with Phantom.

Still, she schooled her face. Maddie did not want to get into this conversation tonight, either. She opened her mouth to speak, but Jack beat her to it.

“Even if that were an option, Danny-boy,” he said, “you’ve seen the news. Ghost sightings are at an all-time low this past week.”

They were? No one had informed her of that. It must have something to do with the ectoradiation from the explosion. She’d really have to look into that more.

Danny slumped back into his chair. “Yeah, I know,” he muttered. “Was just a thought.”

Her son looked so dejected that she wanted to reach across the table and give him a hug, despite her injuries. I wish it were that easy, she thought. Just…talking to ghosts, instead of fighting them. A naïve hope, one that she hoped Danny would soon realize would never come true.

Chapter Text

“Introduction to Ghost Studies”

Personally, Maddie hated the title. The field was ectoscience, not ghost studies. But she and Jack had been overruled by the bureaucrats at Carrie Community College, who thought de-emphasizing the science part might encourage more students to sign up. At least they did let the Fentons teach about ectoscience as adjuncts.

She looked over Jack’s syllabus, now revised to accommodate his broken leg and her absence. The normal class they taught during the semester was condensed into a three-week version for the summer. One week on ectobiology, one on ectophysics, and one on ectoengineering. Maddie thought that was far too short to satisfactorily introduce ectoscience, but, again: bureaucracy.

Jazz and Jack had checked the college’s inventory of ectoscience equipment, personally supplied by the Fentons. Everything was ready for the students to start tomorrow. All 36 of them. Jack could handle them without her. She was more worried about how they would handle him.

Maddie saved the syllabus to Jack’s teaching thumb drive, then shut down the computer and made her way slowly up the stairs in the lab. It had only been two days since she was discharged from the hospital, and she certainly didn’t want to go back from overdoing it.

At the top of the stairs, she hesitated a moment. The portal’s glow cast eerie shadows across their equipment, as if creating its own ghosts.

The Fentons’ greatest creation. A scientific marvel. What secrets lay beyond its gates?

Maddie flicked the lights off, and in the brief moment before her eyes adjusted, she…saw something, in her mind’s eye. A figure limned in spectral firelight, kneeling on the ground, glancing up at her.

It was gone as quickly as it came, but Maddie felt a wave of lightheadedness settle over her. No alarms went off, so it wasn’t a ghost passing by, thankfully.

She breathed in as deep as she could manage with the pain. Probably just climbed up the stairs too fast. Resolving to do a better job with her breathing therapy, Maddie turned off the lights and closed the door, locking the portal and its mysteries away.

***

Danny screamed.

Maddie was halfway down the hallway before she realized what she was doing. She came to a halt, heart pounding, right outside her son’s door and listened.

Nothing.

“Danny,” she called, quietly. “Everything okay?”

From the other side of the door came muffled cursing and thumping.

“Danny, I’m coming in.” She reached for the doorknob.

Danny yelped as she opened the door and flicked the light on. She had just enough time to see him pull his blanket up to his chest. For some reason, he was on the floor next to his bed.

“Sweetie, are you alright?” she asked.

“I’m fine, Mom. I just…fell out of bed.” Danny gave her a look that was halfway between a grin and a grimace.

Maddie frowned. “Are you sure? Did you hurt yourself falling out of bed?” She stepped towards him.

“No! I’m fine, Mom, really. I just…uh…,” he reddened. “I’m not decent right now.”

It was Maddie’s turn to blush as she realized there was another reason a teenage boy might be yelling and covering himself up late at night. “Oh, um, in that case, I’ll leave you be, then. But I’m just down the hall if you need me.”

“Right, thanks, Mom. Got it. Goodnight!”

She didn’t blame Danny for rushing her out, but she stopped right before switching the light off. “I love you, Danny.”

He looked away. “Love you too, Mom.”

She closed the door.

Now that the adrenalin had abated somewhat, Maddie’s chest felt like it was on fire. She grimaced; though her rush to Danny’s aid had been partially unconscious, waking her out of difficult sleep, she had definitely overdone it. Maddie grabbed some painkillers from her bathroom and made her way to the kitchen.

It was barely 12:30am, but Maddie knew she wouldn’t be getting much sleep tonight. Might as well do some studying.

She pulled an article from the stack of printouts on the kitchen table. Every ectoradiation article the only reputable ectoscience journal – aptly named Ectoscience – had published in the last five years, and a good handful of others from more standard physics journals.

While Jack held more interest in ectophysics than Maddie, she still knew about as much as he did. She had to, really, if she wanted to do anything with ghosts and ectobiology. The field had even debated whether or not ectophysics and ectobiology could be considered distinct subjects, since ectoplasm acted much more similar to Earth physics than Earth biology. The consensus was still out on that.

To no surprise, most of the articles were written by the one and only Dr. Agatha Keaton. A few days more healed from her concussion, and Maddie recalled that she had, in fact, met Aggie at a few conferences, though the other woman hadn’t said much.

So far, nothing Maddie had read stood out as the answer to the ectoradiation mystery. The “visible” spectrum of ectoradiation was fairly well-studied, as it was one of the easiest things to study, with the proper technology, at least. If someone had a meter and a sample of ectoplasm, they could measure it. Jack’s students would, in fact, be doing that on their first day of class tomorrow – well, later today.

But anything that fell outside that narrow spectrum was as much a mystery as anything else about ghosts. The few samples the Fentons collected on trips into the Ghost Zone had puffed away as soon as they’d returned to this side of the portal. The only proof they had that it even existed was the records from their scans.

So what circumstances would have to exist for it to linger on Earth for several days?

And what had caused that explosion?

“Mom?”

Maddie startled out of her thoughts and looked up to see Jazz standing in the kitchen doorway, in pajamas and her hair braided for the night. She hadn’t even made it past the first paragraph before losing focus.

“Hi, honey. Can’t sleep?”

Jazz shook her head. “I heard you talking to Danny.” She crossed to the stove and pulled the kettle out. “Is he alright?”

“He said he fell out of bed, but I think he was up to…something else.” She hoped Jazz would get what she meant.

Jazz nodded. She started filling the kettle. “Tea?”

“That would be lovely, thank you.”

Jazz put the kettle on and sat down across from Maddie to wait for it to boil. She didn’t say anything else – just sat there, staring into the dark living room.

Maddie studied her daughter. Unlike Danny, she’d escaped any major injuries to her face, but – like all of them – the dark bags under her eyes belied the exhaustion Jazz was almost certainly feeling. Though she normally projected an air of adulthood, even as a teenager, tonight Jazz looked far younger than Maddie had seen her in years.

Her little girl, off to college in Chicago in just a few months. Though Jazz had received offers to several Ivy League universities in New England, she’d elected to stay closer to home. Closer to family, she’d said, in case they needed her. Maddie hadn’t said otherwise, but she suspected Jazz meant in case Danny needed her.

What would their house look like after Jazz left for college? She and Jack had spent long hours talking about how they would manage Danny’s behavior – the lies, the injuries he couldn’t hide – without their daughter to help mediate. Or how Danny would manage without his sister as a confidante.

“Uh…Mom?”

Once again, Maddie was startled out of her thoughts by Jazz, who this time held a concerned look on her face.

“Are you okay? You’re been staring at me for a bit. Do we need to talk to the neurologist again?”

Maddie shook her head. “I’m okay, Jazz. It’s just been a long night.”

Jazz nodded, but didn’t say anything, once again looking towards the darkened living room. She ran her fingers through the end of her braid.

“Jazz,” Maddie ventured, “are you okay?”

“Can you explain what’s wrong with the ectoplasmic radiation readings? Like, the physics behind them?”

Maddie blinked. That was not what she was expecting. But if her daughter was finally expressing interest in the nuances of ectoscience, she wasn’t going to deny her. “Oh, uh, sure, Jazz.”

She rifled through the stack of papers and found an article with clear readings, then started speaking in her lecturing voice. “In normal physics, there are four fundamental forces that govern interactions between the particles that make up the universe: gravitation, electromagnetic, weak, and strong forces. Each interaction is mediated by a specific kind of particle – theoretically, at least, in the case of gravity. What’s made ectoscience the black sheep of physics is that ectoscientists theorize there’s a fifth force mediated by a particle we call an ecton, which is what produces ectoplasmic radiation and holds ectoplasm together. The main problem with establishing ectoscience as legitimate is that we haven’t been able to directly prove the existence of ectons – we can only measure the effects they have on other elementary particles.”

Maddie pointed to a set of numbers in the article. “These numbers are measurements of perturbations in other elementary particles. The biggest breakthrough in ectoscience was discovering the relationship between these perturbations at the quantum level, which we claim proves the existence of ectons and ectoplasmic radiation.” She pointed to another set of numbers. “These numbers are the result of this breakthrough, giving us a consistent way to measure ectoplasmic radiation. In a way, it’s a lot like looking out the window and seeing the leaves on a tree moving to prove that it’s windy, even if you can’t directly experience the wind.”

Maddie flipped to the back of the article and began sketching a graph of the ectoradiation spectrum. “The biggest question now is why ectoradiation – and its corresponding ectoplasm – outside this spectrum doesn’t exist on Earth, despite the fact that we know it exists in the Ghost Zone. The leading theory right now is that ectoradiation produces a kind of quantum matrix that ectoplasm ‘sticks’ to, for lack of a better term. In the Ghost Zone – whose physics is far more complicated to explain right now – ectons are more abundant than other particles, so the quantum matrix isn’t disrupted.”

“So the ectoplasmic radiation readings from the explosion mean that ectons of a certain energy level were more abundant than usual on Earth?”

“Exactly!” Maddie looked up to beam at her daughter, but the smile slipped from her face. Jazz was slumped down in her seat in unusually bad posture, but she stared at Maddie. Tears rimmed her eyes. “Jazz, honey?”

“Can this kind of abnormal ectoplasmic radiation hurt people?”

Maddie shook her head as the tea kettle started whistling in the background. “It’s not something that’s been studied much at all, but we don’t think so, or at least not in a permanent way. Based on Danny’s reaction, it’s possible, but his readings are back to normal, for him at least. Are you worried about your brother, sweetie?”

Jazz nodded, a tear slipping down her face, but when she spoke, her voice was clear. “What about ghosts? Can it hurt them?”

Maddie stared at her. Could abnormal ectoplasmic radiation hurt ghosts, as much as ghosts could be ‘hurt’? She thought for a moment, going over the physics in her head. “Yes…yes, I think abnormal ectoplasmic radiation would hurt ghosts. It would likely disrupt their quantum matrices enough to destabilize them.” She started scribbling notes below her drawing of the ectoradiation spectrum. “Jazz, thank you for asking me about this. It could very well be the next major breakthrough in ghost hunting technology. I can’t wait to see the effect it would have on Phantom….”

At mention of the ghost, Jazz stood up from her chair with a loud scrape. She pulled out a teabag – decaf – and two mugs from the cabinet. Maddie watched as she fumbled with the teabag. Jazz’s hands shook.

“Jazz, honey,” she said, “are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Mom,” her daughter replied, finally getting the teabag open and dropping it in the kettle, which stopped whistling when she opened it. She turned to face Maddie while the tea seeped, leaning with both hands against the counter. “Or I guess I’m not fine. I shouldn’t be fine, after such a major trauma. Maybe I’m repressing the stress, or maybe I’ve just gotten used to it.”

The anger in her voice said otherwise.

Maddie frowned. “’Gotten used to it’? What do you mea–”

“What do you mean, ‘what do you mean?’” Jazz’s laugh had an edge to it. “Do you realize what you’ve put me and Danny through over the last few years?”

What was with her children bringing up old arguments this weekend? “Jazz, we’ve talked about this. Your father and I have done everything we can to keep you and Danny safe from ghosts.”

“Us safe from ghosts? You think that’s what I’m worried about? Are you not paying attention?” There was a fury in Jazz’s voice that Maddie had rarely seen from her daughter. “Every single day, for the last two years, I’ve had to watch you and Dad go out and hunt ghosts, dangerous ghosts, and every single day, I’ve had to wonder whether or not I’d get a phone call saying my parents were in the hospital, or worse. And every single time I bring it up, you and Dad dismiss me and my worries, because you’re the ghost hunters who have to protect the town, and I’m just the kid who doesn’t know better.”

Maddie narrowed her eyes at Jazz’s words. “Now, listen here, young lady–”

“No, Mom, you listen, for once, because you never actually do.” Jazz was yelling now. “I am sick and tired of my family putting themselves in danger and not caring how it affects everyone else. The only thing you seem to care about is hunting ghosts– fighting ghosts! You don’t even realize that my biggest fear almost came true last week.” She threw her hands up in the air. “And it’s been like that every day since this whole thing began. No wonder Danny has nightmares!”

She paused, breathing heavily, tears running down her face. Then, without another word, Jazz fled the room. Maddie heard the door to her room slam shut.

She sat there, unsure how to react. This wasn’t the first time Jazz had lost her temper with her parents on the subject of ghost hunting, but the vehemence with which she yelled…and some of the things she had said…

Did Jazz really think she and Jack were so obsessed with ghost hunting that they didn’t realize the danger they were in? Of course ghost hunting was dangerous! Maddie knew that, which is why she took so many precautions to make sure that her family was safe from ghosts. It was why she and Jack put themselves in harm’s way to protect Jazz, Danny, and the rest of Amity Park.

But….my biggest fear….in the hospital, or worse!

…lucky to be alive…

Maddie wracked her brain thinking of all the injuries she’d acquired over the years. Between ghost hunting and martial arts, she’d accumulated quite a few.

In all those years, though, she couldn’t think of one where she’d come as close to death as she had this time.

…listen, for once, because you never actually do…

Deep in thought, Maddie sat at the table until long after the kettle had run cold.

Chapter Text

Maddie rolled over in bed and groaned. 7:42am. She’d woken before her alarm went off after only a few hours of sleep. Jack, as usual, snored away beside her.

Might as well get up and face the day. And her daughter. She threw on a pair of loose clothes, brushed her teeth and hair, then took her painkillers and antibiotics.

From the smell of bacon in the hallway, someone was already up and making breakfast. It was honestly a toss-up in Maddie’s mind which of her children were awake downstairs; while Jazz was the early riser of the two, Danny had been rather…zealous in attending to his injured parents.

Maddie’s question was answered when Danny’s door opened as she reached the stairwell. Her son stepped into the hallway and waved at her, yawning as he did so. “Morning, Mom.”

“Morning, Danny,” she replied, trying to hide a smile at the way his uncombed hair stuck straight in the air. Its absence revealed the cut on his forehead from the explosion, already quickly healing. Hopefully it wouldn’t scar too much. She’d hate to have her son deal with scars from ghost hunting for the rest of his life. “I’ll see you downstairs in a bit.”

Danny nodded, then yawned again before wandering, bleary-eyed, into the bathroom.

The smile dropped from her face. Jazz was downstairs, and Maddie didn’t know how she’d react after last night.

In the kitchen, Jazz stood with her back to the doorway, facing the stove. She slid the spatula under a pancake and flipped it onto an already-generous pile. Bacon cooked in another pan, with hash browns in a third.

Taking a deep breath, Maddie said, “Jazz?”

“One moment, Mom,” Jazz said, not turning around. “I don’t want the food to burn.”

Jazz didn’t seem upset, but Maddie knew her daughter could mask her feelings fairly well. “Can I help with anything?”

“Orange juice.”

While Jazz continued making pancakes, Maddie got out four glasses and the carton of juice. She started filling the glasses, working on the other side of the sink from Jazz.

“This is a fairly large breakfast you’re making, Jazz,” Maddie said, desperate to break the silence.

Jazz nodded, but still didn’t look at her. “I wanted Danny to have a solid start to his class.”

Oh, right. In the chaos, she’d almost forgotten that Danny was attending summer school to make up for failing tenth grade History. He’d promised he’d actually try not to miss class or schoolwork, this time. With Jazz driving Jack to Carrie to set up for his class, then working in the library on college prep while he taught, Maddie would be alone until the afternoon.

“Jazz, I’m sorry–”

“No, Mom,” Jazz sighed. “I’m the one who should apologize for last night.” She finally looked at Maddie. The dark shadows were still there, but Jazz looked less…vulnerable than she had the night before. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you. I let the stress of the last week get to me and I lost my temper. I’m sorry.” She looked Maddie in the eye. “But I don’t regret what I said, because it needed to be said. I’m just sorry I said it like that.”

“Thank you, sweetie, but…,” Maddie swallowed, “I should apologize. I’m sorry. You were right. About a lot of things.”

Jazz gave her mother a glance, having turned back to finish up the last of the pancakes. She raised an eyebrow.

“Have your dad and I really been that…unaware of how stressed ghost hunting makes you and Danny?” she asked.

“Honestly?”

“Honestly.”

Jazz sighed, then started moving the food to the kitchen table. “It’s not the ghost hunting that stresses me out, Mom. It’s the fact that you’re constantly putting yourselves in danger and could very easily die because of it. Ghost hunting is just what’s causing that danger.”

Maddie joined her in prepping the table while Jazz continued talking. “But it’s also how you tend to dismiss me whenever I bring it up. As if what would happen to the rest of us if you died isn’t a problem.” Silverware clinked as she set them all down at once, then looked at Maddie again. “Mom, have you even processed how close you came to dying last week?”

Maddie froze, orange juice sloshing over the rims of the cups she held.

She and Jack had talked about it, of course – about the life insurance policies, the wills, what provisions they should make for the care of their children, what would happen to Fenton Works. She’d gone over everything in her head last night. It was all set in place in case one or both of them died.

But here, confronted by Jazz, Maddie realized that, in all those conversations, she never actually thought about either of them dying. Really, truly dying – being gone and leaving her children behind to deal with her absence.

Or maybe she had, but hadn’t internalized it, hadn’t really wanted to acknowledge it was a very real possibility, because it would mean…it would mean….

She didn’t want to think about it.

“Here, Mom, sit down for a moment.” Jazz took the glasses of orange juice and set them aside, then pulled over a chair for Maddie to sit on.

It wasn’t until she was sitting down that Maddie realized how much she was trembling. She pushed down the panic and breathed in and out, following not the physical therapy guidelines for broken ribs, but the martial arts techniques that were second nature to her.

Jazz grimaced. “I’m sorry, Mom. I probably shouldn’t have asked you that right then.” She pulled over another chair to sit next to her mother.

“It’s fine, Jazz,” Maddie said as she focused on relaxing. Her voice came out quieter than she intended. “It’s something I should have been thinking about all this time.” She looked up at her daughter’s concerned face. “I just don’t know how. Is that wrong?”

“It’s actually not that uncommon for people who suffered from trauma to have complicated emotions and delayed reactions,” Jazz said. “You probably should see a therapist to help you sort through how you feel. It might be good if we all did, actually.”

Maddie nodded, but that wasn’t what she meant. “Jazz, about the ghost hunting…I’m sorry that I haven’t taken your worries seriously. I should have done better as a parent.” She took a deep breath, one that made her chest ache, but brought some clarity back. “What can I do to make it up to you?”

Jazz studied her. Though some of the concern was still in Jazz’s expression, it was mostly replaced with a calculating look, like she was breaking down Maddie’s thoughts into different psychological frameworks to determine what the best response should be. Maddie recognized in her daughter some of the same detachment from emotion that Maddie herself had often tried to affect in her science.

Was that where she had gone wrong? Had she ignored her own feelings so much that she ignored those of her children as well?

“You can start by listening to me and Danny,” Jazz said. “You – and also Dad, but we’re talking about you right now – have the tendency to become very self-absorbed in your intellectual superiority that you refuse to admit that you might be wrong about something.”

Jazz spoke so bluntly that Maddie had to bite back an automatic rebuttal, realizing she’d support exactly what Jazz was saying if she did. Instead, she nodded.

Jazz glanced towards the stairwell. Jack and Danny were making their way downstairs, if the voices were any indication. Jazz looked back at Maddie and squeezed her hand.

“We can talk later,” Jazz said. “But the biggest thing is to just…hear what we have to say.” She smiled softly, then scooted her chair back in place as Jack and Danny walked into the kitchen, yammering on about some TV show.

Jazz may affect that emotional detachment, but she was far better than Maddie was about balancing it with her feelings. When had her daughter figured that out?

Maddie shook her head, then joined her family at the table.

***

The phone rang, jolting Maddie awake. Where was she…oh, right. She’d fallen asleep checking the Fenton Works tip line. She picked up the phone. “Fenton Works, this is Dr. Fenton speaking,” she said, before realizing it was her personal phone that had rung.

“Maddie, hi, this is Mr. Lancer at Casper High. I’m calling about Danny. He’s missing from class again.”

Maddie tensed, then swallowed a ball of anger. It was a familiar message. Mr. Lancer – whose first name she could never remember, despite knowing him for several years – had worked with the Fentons since Danny’s problems in high school began. He was well versed in dealing with their son. “What excuse did he give this time?”

“He said he wasn’t feeling well, then practically ran out of the room before I could give him permission to leave. It’s been about ten minutes.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose, sighing. “Thank you, Mr. Lancer. Can you let me know when he returns?”

The sound of students chatting in a hallway echoed through the phone. “I can try, Maddie, but I do have a class to teach. It’s break time right now.”

“That’s alright. Thank you, again. Anything else?”

“You know, there is something else,” he said. The student noise stopped as he closed a door. “I didn’t want to bother you while in the hospital, but last week, several very impolite gentlemen in white suits came to ask me about Danny.”

Maddie sat up, heart pounding. What did the GIW want with her son? “About Danny? What did they want to know?”

“Just about what kind of student he is, as well as about his absences from class.”

“And? What did you tell them?”

“That he’s a good kid,” Lancer said, voice soft, “who has a lot on his plate.”

Danny may complain about Lancer being tough on him, but the teacher did seem to care about her son, more than any of his colleagues. Maddie was pretty sure he was the only reason Danny hadn’t failed more of his classes.

“They also asked me if Danny has any connections to the ghost boy, which to my knowledge he doesn’t,” Lancer continued. “As far as I know, he runs and hides whenever ghosts–”

“Mr. Lancer, I’m going to have to call you back.” Maddie’s phone dinged to signal another phone call was coming in. “Danny’s calling me.” She hung up without another word, switching to Danny’s call. “Danny? Is everything alright?”

“Can you come get me?” Danny’s voice shook as he spoke. “I feel sick.”

“Really, Danny? On the first day of school?”

“I know, but…I just really can’t be in school right now.”

Maddie frowned. Normally when Danny disappeared from class, he didn’t give any explanation until he reappeared. But today, he actually called her. Could he genuinely just not feel well today? No lies this time?

She really shouldn’t be driving so soon after being in the hospital. But Jazz's words about trauma echoed in her head. Danny needed to take this class to not fall behind in school, but could she really force him to stay if he was feeling that bad?

At the same time, Maddie couldn’t get rid of that ever-present shadow of doubt that Danny was holding something back from her.

She sighed. “Alright, sweetie. I’ll be there in a few minutes. Meet me at the front office?”

“Okay. Thanks, Mom.”

***

After signing her in, the front desk directed Maddie to the nurse’s office, where she found Danny hunched over a waste basket. He did look ill. Pale skin, forehead beaded with sweat, shaking. He looked up at her when Maddie entered, but didn’t otherwise react.

The ghost meter she wore on her hip beeped as she approached, signaling that a ghost was nearby. Maddie checked its read-out to see that it was, once again, registering an unusually high amount of ectoradiation from her son. She pressed the button – affectionately called the “Danny Button” – that cancelled out her son’s odd readings in case of an actual ghost attack.

She sat down in the chair next to him and placed a hand on his back. “Hey, sweetie, let’s get you home.” She looked up as the nurse approached.

“His temperature is a little high at 99.7°F, but not high enough to be a concern,” the nurse said. “But I think it’s a good idea to let him go home for now. If he’s sick, I don’t want him getting the other students sick, either.”

Maddie nodded, but hid her alarm. That temperature was high for Danny, who – for reasons his doctor’s couldn’t yet figure out – ran colder than most people. She’d have to keep an eye on him once they got home.

“Thank you for looking after him,” she said, then turned to Danny. “Danny, are you feeling okay enough to stand up?”

He nodded, but said, “I left my bag in the classroom. Can you go get it?”

Maddie glanced up at the nurse, who waved her hand towards the door. “He can stay here while you get his stuff.”

Maddie thanked the nurse and left.

Though Maddie had not attended Casper herself, the hallways were plenty familiar to her. Between ghost attacks and parent-teacher conferences – more than the usual number of them – it took her very little time to make her way to Danny’s classroom on the second floor.

Through the door’s window, she saw Mr. Lancer lecturing to a collection of bored-looking students. After a moment, he noticed Maddie, who pointed at the handle. Lancer paused, spoke to the class, then closed the book he was holding and walked over.

Maddie preemptively stepped to the side to avoid the door when Lancer opened it. As she did, her ghost meter beeped at her.

A ghost attack? Now? It couldn’t be a false reading; Danny wasn’t anywhere nearby. Though she carried a small ectoblaster, as usual, there was no way she could fight a ghost for any amount of time, not in her condition. She didn’t even have her jumpsuit on.

“Dr. Fenton? Can I help you?”

Trying to cover her panic, she said, “Danny is actually sick this time, so I’m taking him home. Can you grab his bag for me?”

Lancer nodded, then disappeared back into the classroom.

Maddie pulled out the ghost meter and inhaled sharply at the numbers it displayed. High levels of ectoradiation, just above the upper extreme of the stable range. Exactly like in the explosion.

She glanced up and down the hallway. No sign of a ghost, though that didn’t necessarily mean no ghost was present.

Calm down, Maddie, she thought. The meter went off when you stepped towards the lockers. She took a step towards them, watching the meter.

Maybe it was just a coincidence that the numbers were going up as she walked down the row. Maybe a natural portal had popped up in one of the lockers and was messing with the readings. Maybe a ghost was playing a prank with her technology. Stranger things had happened before. Maybe… maybe… maybe…

Maddie ignored Lancer as he called out to her, then dropped Danny’s bag outside his door to resume his teaching; he was surely used to the Fentons’ odd behavior by now. The readings on the meter had started going down, so she doubled back to find its peak.

She stopped in front of locker 227, eight away from the classroom door. Like the rest of the lockers, it had no lock; summer was when they were cleaned.

Maddie reached for the locker, then paused. She should call the GIW. Even if it wasn’t related to the explosion, they were the only capable ghost hunters in town at the moment. Involving herself in a ghost fight would likely end up with more people hurt than not.

She opened the locker.

It took Maddie a moment to process what she was looking at.

At first she thought it was a plastic sandwich box leaning next to a thermos – a regular one – left over from the school year, but the matte black coating on both quickly dispelled that notion, despite the similarities in shape. The top of the cylinder was welded shut, and the box had a hinge on the outer face. When she held the meter up to it, it gave off a small amount of heat.

The ectoradiation readings it gave off were quite literally off the charts.

Maddie’s eyes widened in realization, and she took a step back from the locker. Heart pounding, she grabbed Danny’s backpack and pulled the nearest fire alarm.

As Maddie followed the stream of students out of the building, she pulled out her phone and called Detective Carleton’s direct line.

“Detective Carleton, this is Dr. Maddie Fenton. Please send the GIW to Casper High School,” she said. Her throat had gone dry. “I think I found an ectoplasmic bomb.”

Chapter Text

Maddie sat on a bench on the football field, waiting for the Fentons’ lawyer. Besides sharing a basic description of what she found and where she found it, Maddie would wait to talk. She probably shouldn’t have spoken to the GIW back at the hospital without one, but it was too late for that; she wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

Not when there were bombs involved.

Though she hadn’t confirmed that what she found was a bomb, the physics worked out in theory, if she made some assumptions. The cylinder likely held a sample of ectoplasm that was energized by an electric charge, which was captured inside by an ectophobic material. It wasn’t a perfect seal, even welded shut, which is why the meters could detect the ecton activity. The heat coming from the box was likely meant to produce the electric charge; just as Earthly elementary particles reacted to the presence of ectons, ectons reacted to them. A timed explosive charge could set the entire thing off, just like the one outside of Nasty Burger.

While the physics made sense, though, there was one even more important: who had made it?

And why?

Students and teachers waited around the football field, expressions of boredom or worry crossing their faces. School evacuations because of ghosts weren’t too uncommon, but the explosion and subsequent lack of ghosts had left the whole town on edge.

The field was far too close to the school for Maddie’s comfort – in case she was right and the bomb exploded – but she and Danny didn’t have much choice: the GIW had cordoned off the school’s evacuees and were individually scanning them for ectoradiation before sending them to have their statements taken by the police. Until her lawyer came, Maddie and Danny weren’t going anywhere.

Maddie glanced at her son, who was curled up on the bench next to her, using his bag as a pillow. Danny’s color had mostly returned, and he was no longer shaking, but his exposure to that ectoradiation had clearly left him exhausted. Hopefully, a nice meal and some rest would help him feel better.

She rubbed her forehead. She wished she could curl up and sleep; after the night she had and the stress of the morning, a decent headache had built up. It wasn’t even noon yet.

So much to think about. A bomb. Her injuries. Danny’s illness. The family’s trauma.

A bomb.

And not just one bomb. If this was the same thing that caused the explosion at Nasty Burger, this was a second bomb. Who knew how many more of them were out there?

For once, she was almost glad that the GIW were here. She and Jack may be ghost hunters, but bomb technicians they were not.

A clamor at the edge of the football field drew Maddie out of her thoughts; Danny looked up from his rest. A nondescript van had pulled up by the GIW’s mobile command center, and several people were pulling out ectoscience equipment.

“I’ll be right back, sweetie,” Maddie said, standing up. “I’m going to go see what all the fuss is about.” Danny just nodded and closed his eyes.

Maddie already had a pretty good idea what she was going to find before she arrived.

A man in a gray suit – who was almost certainly a GIW member – was removing equipment alongside four individuals in…well, she supposed she could call it civilian clothing. Ectoscientists did have a penchant for unusual dress.

She couldn’t see his face, but the man in the black and red hazmat suit was likely Dr. Sedgewick, the decontamination specialist on the GIW task force. As Maddie watched, he snapped at the GIW member for mishandling a delicate piece of equipment that she couldn’t identify.

Helping the two was a tall, pale man with a receding hairline who wouldn’t look out of place in a tweed jacket in a university history department; he wore a bright yellow suit jacket instead, which upon closer inspection appeared to also be plaid. Maddie didn’t recognize him, so he was probably Dr. Reitman.

Standing off to the side and fiddling with some device was a woman a generation younger than Maddie, with dark skin and her hair in a bun. Dr. Keaton – Aggie, to the limited people she called friends – was dressed in simple clothes, but she wore a large pair of purple headphones.

Maddie frowned. She thought she’d seen–

“Is that Maddie Fenton?!” Dr. Penny Babcock rounded the other side of the van, nearly dropping the box of equipment she was holding to run over to the GIW cordon. She flashed a badge at the police guarding the entrance, then ducked under the rope without waiting for permission.

The crowd clustered around Penny, but she barreled on past as if they weren’t there on her mission to Maddie. As the other woman approached, Maddie held up her hand, and said, “Gentle hug, Penny. I still have three broken ribs.”

Penny – who was almost as tall as Jack – leaned over and gave Maddie a hug that was still too tight, but not the crushing embrace she normally did. “I’m so glad to see you again! It’s been too long!”

“It’s only been a few months since the winter semester ended, Penny.”

“I know, but we really should talk more. I have some exciting new research to share with you!”

Penny pulled out of the hug and only then seemed to notice the cluster of teenage boys gawking at her. Despite the fact that she was obviously here as part of the GIW investigation, Penny had chosen to wear a pastel green sundress and a white chiffon jacket that complemented her tanned skin. It was terribly impractical for ectoscience, but Maddie couldn’t deny the woman’s sense of style.

“Let’s go somewhere more private,” Penny said softly, leading Maddie away by the shoulder. She glared at the few teenagers who tried to follow them.

“Don’t you have to be part of the investigation?” Maddie asked.

Penny shook her head. “Not right now. They’re sending Erik in first once the device is safely removed. I doubt they’ll need me for the decontamination process.” She brightened. “That will give us some time to catch up!

Maddie smiled, but, internally, she groaned. While Penny was a great colleague to talk to, Maddie just didn’t have the energy to match her fellow ectobiologist. Hopefully she could keep this short.

She steered Penny towards a bench adjacent to where Danny still lay – close enough where she could keep an eye on him, but not so close as to disturb him too much.

As they sat down, Maddie spoke. “Penny,” she said, “I’m not sure I should be talking to you about the investigation. I know we’re colleagues, but….”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Penny laughed. “I don’t want to talk about that! Besides, I have my own confidentiality contract to keep. So,” she said, settling down and looking Maddie in the eye, “what’s been going on with the Fentons?”

Maddie glossed over the explosion and her subsequent hospitalization; she didn’t want to rehash it right now, and Penny surely knew most of it anyway, as part of the investigation. She kept the family drama to a minimum, too – that was between her and her children. While Penny may be a good colleague, she was not someone Maddie would necessarily call a friend.

Still, it was a relief to just talk to someone other than her family, especially without the underlying judgment that most other parents gave for her ghost hunting activities. She really should find a therapist like Jazz suggested.

“And what about you, Penny?” she asked. “What have you been up to?”

Penny waved her hand in the air. “Oh, the usual, just teaching ectobiology. You know, my department is trying to expand its ectoscience offerings into a full-blown major. I know your heart is in ghost hunting, but if you ever want to retire, Maddie, my department would love to have you on their faculty. They’ve already recruited Henry for the upcoming school year! It’s how the GIW found him for this task force. The university is trying to hire Aggie, too, but she says that California is too hot for her. I don’t know why she’d want to stay all the way up in New England. It’s so cold there! Oh! I should tell you about the grant we just received from Vladco to study the effect of ectoradiation on the parasympathetic nervous system of mice….”

Maddie tuned Penny out as the woman started rambling about the biology behind her project. Retiring from ghost hunting…like most of her thoughts on the future, it had existed as a distant possibility – something that would happen eventually, but not soon.

Now, though, that time might be closer than she expected. How many more fights could she go through – how many more injuries could she take – before it was too much?

But if she retired, who would protect Amity Park from ghost attacks? She couldn’t leave Jack to fight alone, and neither Jazz nor Danny had expressed much interest in following in their parents’ footsteps. The GIW, for all they were doing in this investigation, were less concerned with protecting Amity Park than they were with hunting and destroying ghosts.

Of course, there was someone else who claimed to protect the people of Amity Park. But would she really want to leave the safety of Amity Park in the hands of a ghost?

“Hello? Earth to Maddie Fenton?” Penny waved a hand in front of her face.

Maddie shook herself back to the present. “I’m sorry, Penny. I didn’t mean to ignore you. It’s just been a long day.”

“I’ll bet. It’s not a problem, but your phone is buzzing.”

“Oh.” She must have been really lost in thought if she didn’t even notice her phone buzzing. It was the Fentons’ lawyer, Vilma Gómez. “I’m sorry, but I need to take this.”

“Don’t worry about it!” Penny said with another hand wave. “We can catch up another time. Toodle-oo!” Without waiting for a reply, she sauntered back to the other members of the task force.

Maddie stood up from the bench and answered the phone. While she directed Ms. Gómez where to meet them, she gently prodded Danny awake and mouthed at him to follow her.

It took far longer than Maddie wanted, but eventually she and Danny gave their statements to the GIW under the counsel of Ms. Gómez, who had come recommended to them from Vlad because of her expertise in ghost law. They both refused the ectoradiation scans from the GIW, and – with a promise to schedule an appointment with Ms. Gómez later in the week – Maddie and Danny were finally allowed to leave.

The clock on the car’s dashboard read 1:14pm. They’d been there for over two hours.

Thankfully, Danny seemed more awake now that they were away from the school. But the sight of Danny slouched in his seat on the ride home, arms crossed and scowling, gave Maddie pause.

“Danny,” she said, “is everything okay?”

Maddie inwardly cringed as soon as the words left her mouth. Of course he wouldn’t be okay. Not only was her son still dealing with the aftermath of the first explosion, now there was a bomb right outside his classroom.

Danny threw his hands in the air. “No! I’m mad!” he began. “On top of everything else going on, now my summer school is probably cancelled. How am I going to graduate on time if ghost stuff keeps getting in the way?”

She blinked in surprise. That was what was upsetting Danny the most right now?

“I’m sure we can work something out with Mr. Lancer,” Maddie said, slowly. “And you know your father and I will do whatever we can to help you.”

Danny snorted.

She glanced sharply at Danny, just catching the foul look on his face before he hid it away.

“Danny…,” she began, a warning note in her voice.

“It’s nothing!”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s nothing, I swear!” He crossed his arms again and resumed scowling. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Maddie gripped the steering wheel, but said nothing. As with every other time she’d tried to pry out of Danny the truth, this conversation would go nowhere.

They rode the rest of the way home in silence.

***

Dust and debris swirled in the air above her. Maddie stumbled to her feet, only to brace herself on the countertop as a wave of dizziness overcame her. Everything hurt: that dull ache in her bones she sometimes got when it was too cold as she slept.

What…happened…?

Little green stars dotted her vision. Maddie blinked, trying to get them to go away. They didn’t.

She was in…a lab, she thought, except it had been the victim of some kind of disaster. Tables were overturned, equipment spilled everywhere, sunlight filtering in through the shattered front window. Green fires dotted the room. Something was wrong with that, but her head was too foggy to figure out why.

“Mom?”

Maddie stared at the broken wall. Her son stood on the other side of the window. “Danny?” she muttered. What was he doing there?

“Mom! You’re okay!” Danny clambered through the opening and began picking his way across the room.

“Danny, there’s glass…you need to….” She couldn’t get the thought out.

Danny ignored her warning and walked through the debris, as if it weren’t even there. “Mom, it’s okay. I’m gonna get you out of here.”

Maddie squinted. In the firelight, he almost seemed to…glow? She blinked away more of the green stars. Danny was covered in a layer of dust that made his white hair appear darker and his usual NASA t-shirt appear lighter.

“C’mon, Dr. Fenton. Let’s get you some help.” Phantom moved to pull her arm around his shoulder, only for her to recoil at his approach. He frowned at her. “That’s not fair. I’m just here to help. You know you can’t protect them on your own.”

The explosion tossed her backwards into something hard with a crack! Maddie rolled and came up on her knees, but a torrent of black hail prevented her from standing up. It crashed down on top of her in little bursts of green stars.

She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe.

Phantom took a sip from his delicate teacup and placed it on the wrought iron garden table in front of them. “Now, Dr. Fenton, what was it you wanted to talk about?”

She and the ghost crouched down alongside Jack and her children. Danny prodded at the cylinder’s lid, then pried it off, hands passing through the welding.

The swirl of green stars coalesced around her into a vortex of green and white that pulled Maddie’s family away from where she stood. Jazz turned to wave at her while Jack patted Danny on the back and the two of them laughed.

Maddie tried to run after them, but a gloved hand caught her shoulder.

She grabbed the hand and twisted, throwing Phantom to the ground in a practiced judo throw. The ghost merely smiled at her and shook her hand.

“It’s a deal, Maddie,” Phantom said. “I’ll take care of them for you.”

“But what do I owe you?” she whispered.

The ghost didn’t hear her. He gave her one last smile and vanished – and with him, so did the vortex of light, leaving Maddie behind.

She opened her eyes.

She was…in bed. The clock said she’d only been asleep for about an hour, but the nap felt much longer.

It was just a dream. A nightmare. Nothing more. Phantom wasn’t really there, and her family wasn’t really leaving her.

The ghost had featured in her dreams before – always causing chaos, destroying her town, threatening her loved ones. Sometimes Maddie beat him, but most of the time, Phantom won. You know you can’t protect them on your own….

Why had the ghost said that? What was her subconscious trying to tell her? That Phantom was someone she could trust? The ghost was dangerous, a threat to her family and city…wasn’t he? The Phantom in this dream hadn’t tried to hurt her family – quite the opposite: he had tried to comfort her.

A nightmare. Nothing more. Right?

Maddie climbed out of bed and dressed, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that this was more than a dream. It was too familiar, too intimate to be something created directly out of her subconscious.

There was really only one option: the dream was inspired by a memory of the explosion, one she couldn’t access while awake. Was that how Danny found her? If she was as close to…as injured as she was now, why was she standing up?

Or was her mind conflating a memory with other events? She didn’t remember ever seeing Danny climb through a broken window after she’d been tossed through it.

And why – oh, why – had Phantom been in her dream?

Maddie froze, hand on the doorknob. Had the ghost been there? At the explosion? No one had reported seeing him, but a ghost like Phantom could easily turn invisible and evade detection, especially in the chaos of an explosion.

Truthfully, Phantom’s presence at the Nasty Burger did make a twisted sort of sense. Phantom had a knack for arriving at ghost-related catastrophes far quicker than anyone else, and if he had been there, the ectoradiation could have destabilized him, which might explain his absence. And it…felt like he was there, as silly as it sounded to her.

Still – something didn’t add up. She hated the gap in her memory from that day. It held answers, Maddie was sure of it. But there was no way to know if the ghost was at the explosion unless she could remember.

Well, there was one way….

Have you ever tried talking to a ghost instead of capturing it?

If only it were that easy.

***

“A bomb? There was a bomb at Casper? A ghost bomb?”

Maddie winced at Jazz’s shriek. Her daughter was now standing in the middle of the living room, fists clenched, looking frantically between her parents and brother.

“Jazz, calm down. I don’t know for sure what I found. It could be…” – she struggled to come up with any idea – “…something else.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that when you called me?”

Maddie gave her a pointed look.

Jazz scowled, then settled her weight on her heel and crossed her arms. “What makes you think it was a bomb?”

As Maddie described her rationale, Jack grimaced. “I have to agree with your mother on this,” he said when she had finished. “It does sound an awful lot like some sort of bomb.” He rubbed his chin. “Don’t know how they’d get the ectons into the chamber after removing the air, though.”

“But Casper? Near the Nasty Burger? Why would someone–” Jazz paled, then looked at Danny.

Maddie followed her gaze to find Danny, wide-eyed and looking like he’d – metaphorically – seen a ghost. She watched as something wordless passed between her children. There was something more in that look than she could figure out.

Maddie’s eyes narrowed. Jazz and Danny knew something that they weren’t letting on. But if they knew information that would help someone – the GIW, the APPD, their parents – figure out what was going on, wouldn’t they share? Especially when…when…lives were on the line?

Could she trust her children? She wanted to, but with Danny’s lies and Jazz covering for him...they weren’t involved in this, were they?

Catching the look on her face, Danny said, “If someone wanted to hurt people, wouldn’t they…uh…choose a place with a lot of people?” It came out hesitantly, as if he were trying to distract from their odd behavior. “Like terrorists?”

His suggestion did make some sense, though the idea of some terrorist group using ectoplasm bombs wasn’t remotely reassuring. But it made more sense than…well, any alternative she could think of. And of course Danny and Jazz weren’t involved. Why would Danny put himself in danger if he were?

She shook her head. She was overthinking things. Jazz was just worried about Danny, as she always was.

“That still doesn’t answer the question of who would do this,” Jack said. “If it is some sort of terrorist group, why would they use ectotechnology to make a bomb? I’m not even sure how they’d make it.” He frowned. “Unless it wasn’t a person who made it.”

The three of them turned to stare at him, mouths open.

“Are you saying that a ghost could be behind this?” Maddie finally asked.

Jack shook his head. “I don’t know, Mads. I’m not even sure that ghosts would be capable of this kind of terrorism. It’s not like they’re that sophisticated.”

That was true, but….

“There is one ghost who might be,” Maddie said. One who had surprised them before with his ability to make complex plans and execute them well. One who had most of the town fooled into thinking he was some sort of hero. One that Maddie was almost certain had been present at the explosion. “Phantom.”

But did she really believe that?

“I don’t think Phantom is behind this, Mom. His ectopsychological profile doesn’t match that of ‘ghost terrorist’.”

Of course Jazz had an ‘ectopsychological profile’ for Phantom. Of course she did.

“I agree with Jazz,” Danny said. “Phantom’s not behind this.” He stood up and stretched. “And I’m not really sure what the point of more speculation is when you don’t even know if what you found actually is a bomb.”

Her son had a point. All they had to go on was the first explosion, the odd ectoradiation readings, and theoretical ectophysics. Without access to the actual device, there was no way to prove any of this.

The thought did very little to calm Maddie’s worry.

***

Halfway through dinner, a series of chirps and beeps echoed from all four of their phones. Danny was the first to dig his out.

“It’s the ghost alert text,” he said. “Mayor Montez is going to make an announcement.” He jumped out of his chair and raced into the living room, where Maddie soon heard the TV turn on.

She looked at Jack in alarm, then followed her son into the living room. Jack and Jazz joined shortly after. Danny stood in front of the TV, bouncing his leg.

The camera faced an empty podium backed by the city’s seal. Odd. It didn’t seem that there were any reporters in the room.

Before long, Mayor Montez walked in, along with two GIW agents and a scowling man Maddie recognized as Dr. Sedgewick.

The mayor looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. Maddie could relate to that. She had to admire his tenacity, though. She didn’t know how or why he’d stayed in the position over the last two years, but he was still mayor despite the challenges. And he had granted the Fentons ghost hunting permits, to use at their discretion, as long as they didn’t cause too much property damage.

“People of Amity Park,” Montez began. “I have called this alert to address an event that occurred today at Casper High School. Joining me are representatives of the GIW, as well as the leader of their task force investigating the explosion a week and a half ago, Dr. Erik Sedgewick.

“The GIW were called to Casper High School by Dr. Madeline Fenton of Amity Park, who reported an unknown object of ectoplasmic origins in the school hallways. Dr. Sedgewick supervised the removal of this object, where it has been taken to a safe location for study. Casper High School will remain closed until further notice.

“For the safety of the city, I have authorized the GIW to establish an additional surveillance network to monitor for unusual ghost activity. While this should not directly interfere with day-to-day living, they ask for your full cooperation when required.

“Lastly, we strongly advise the people of Amity Park to avoid crowded spaces and unnecessary travel as a precaution. I know that we are all well versed in dealing with ghost attacks, but this is not the time for heroics. Please report any ghost activity to the GIW’s tip line and evacuate the area when it is safe to do so.

“While we are facing unusual ghost activity, City Hall and the GIW ask that the people of Amity Park remain calm and do not panic. My office is preparing a full dossier of available resources in this time of uncertainty. Thank you.”

Danny turned the TV off.

“Well,” he said, turning to face his family, “that’s definitely not going to cause people to panic.”

Chapter Text

Of course, people panicked.

Though the people of Amity Park were a resilient bunch after two years of ghost attacks, those who couldn’t manage it long having moved away, every so often there would be something new that wreaked havoc on the tenuous stability the town maintained. A mysterious object found at the high school only to be secreted away by the government would certainly qualify. To be honest, it was a surprise the town hadn’t immediately collapsed into chaos following the initial explosion.

For the Fentons, it meant that the tip line was more active than it had been in months. Despite encouraging people to call the mayor’s office or the GIW, it didn’t stop them from leaving dozens, if not hundreds, of phone calls and emails every hour.

Most of it, Maddie knew from experience, would be utterly useless. Even the people of Amity Park had very little idea what constituted a tangible ghost threat unless one was burning down buildings or attacking them with animated boxes. They were even less knowledgeable about ghost bombs and who might have placed them.

Not that the Fentons knew much more than their tipsters did.

Still, Maddie dutifully spent several hours over the next two mornings evaluating the submissions, categorizing each one based on the likelihood of it being actually ghost related and of it actually being useful. Very few fell into both.

And then there was the last category: Phantom. The ghost had reappeared over the night, with multiple independent sightings corroborating each other. They were all in public places where lots of people tended to congregate. As far as Maddie could tell, there was nothing out of the ordinary about Phantom’s behavior, since he often patrolled Amity Park late at night. It still didn’t mean Phantom wasn’t behind this, of course, but other than suddenly showing up after an unexplained absence, there was nothing overtly suspicious about the ghost – besides, of course, that he was a ghost.

She wasn’t sure if she should be concerned that Phantom was back or reassured that at least something was normal right now.

Have you ever tried talking to a ghost instead of capturing it?

Maddie put down the phone and sighed. Another night of nightmares hadn’t helped her recover at all from the day before, and the monotony of documenting panicked phone calls wasn’t helping her headache.

“Anything useful?” Danny asked from where he spun back and forth on one of the lab’s stools, which he’d dragged in front of the family computer. Casper High had announced that they would be trialing a “distance learning” summer school while the building was closed. More screen time for her son. Oh joy.

Maddie picked up the notepad she’d scribbled notes on. “Well, according to one of our tipsters,” she said, “the person or ghost behind this lives in Arkansas, bought six gallons of bright pink paint from the hardware store in March, and wants to create a wormhole that will punch through the fabric of space so aliens can invade from across the galaxy.”

Danny smirked. “Aliens? When there are actual ghosts in Amity Park?” He often got a kick out of the tip line, which is why he normally managed the ten or so that filtered in whenever there wasn’t a crisis. At least he did something related to ghost hunting.

“Hey, you’re the one who’s obsessed with space, Danny. You never know what they’ll find.” She set the paper down. “Though the tipster might not be that far off about the wormhole.”

Danny cocked an eyebrow at her. “Like how the portal works? Gathering enough ectoplasm in one place to punch through the fabric of reality?”

“Exactly,” Maddie said, even though the actual physics were far more complicated. “But I don’t think that’s what’s going on. Based on what we know about the physics of the explosion, there wasn’t a high enough concentration of ectoplasm to even come close to mimicking what the portal does. And, if we’re correct about how the second bomb works, whoever made it has access to extremely sophisticated ectotechnology and knows how to use it. I think there’s something else going on.”

“That’s not exactly reassuring.”

“No, it isn’t.” The phone rang, again. Maddie groaned and reached for the receiver.

“Maybe you should take a break, Mom,” Danny said. “It’s past lunch time, anyway.”

She glanced at the clock. 1:16pm. Had she really been sorting through tips for almost four hours?

“Feel free to say something next time, Danny,” she said. Her stomach growled. “Or poke me with a stick so I don’t eat you instead.”

He grinned. She didn’t know why, but the danger Danny had been placed in seemed to have knocked the funk out of him. It was nice to see him smile.

Danny turned the computer off, then stood up and almost immediately tripped over himself.

“Danny!” she yelped. On instinct, she lunged to catch him before he fell, but never got there.

A hot pain erupted in her chest. She let out a strangled gasp and curled in on herself, contorting in the air and collapsing on the ground.

For a moment, her vision went dark; when it cleared, Maddie saw Danny kneeling over her, asking if she was okay. The portal cast an eerie green light over her son, almost seeming to make him glow.

Less like a dream, more like a memory….

“Mom? Please say something.”

Maddie blinked away the déjà vu. She took a breath of air to answer Danny, but was hit with another bout of pain. Another few, more shallow breaths and the pain faded enough that she could right herself.

“I’m okay, Danny,” she said, hoarsely.

Danny shook his head. “No, you’re not, Mom, and you know it. Not after what happened at the Nasty Burger. I’m driving you to the hospital. Can you stand?”

There was no point in arguing; they both knew he was right. Maddie accepted his help getting up. She gripped tightly to his arm as he led her up the stairs, still woozy from the shortness of breath. “Danny, you only have a permit. Are you sure you’re okay driving?”

He glanced at her. “I’m better off driving than you are,” Danny said, grabbing the keys. “Even if it’s technically violating the law because Jazz has the good car.”

Thankfully, Danny hadn’t followed in his father’s footsteps when it came to driving. In fact, Danny almost drove better than she did, despite being a new driver. Even if he sometimes drove too close to the curb, Danny’s reaction time was nearly impeccable, and he held himself with far more confidence than she would have expected otherwise.

Had Danny always been this composed when driving? Had she really never noticed…or had he hidden it from her as one of his many lies?

How well did she really know her son?

Danny caught her staring at him. “Mom? You alright?”

“Just grateful that you don’t take after your dad when driving,” she said. It wasn’t technically a lie. “It’s a much smoother ride.”

He smiled, but didn’t relax his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. “Well, I can drive like a maniac if you want, but I’d rather not get a ticket before I even have my license.”

“No, I’d rather you not either,” she agreed. I’d rather you talk to me instead.

By the time they made it to the hospital, the worst of the pain had faded into a dull ache, one that Maddie would have brushed off if not for Danny’s insistence that she get it checked out. It didn’t help that the pain worsened if she moved her left arm.

Still, despite the fact that she had been rushed to this very emergency room on death’s door not two weeks ago, the wait seemed to take forever.

Danny spent the time pacing back and forth in the waiting room. Every time he tried sitting down, he’d be back up in moments, glancing at her every few seconds as if making sure she was still breathing.

Finally, after what was probably only ten minutes or so, a nurse called Maddie’s name. A look of relief crossed Danny’s face when he was offered the chance to go to the non-patient waiting room; as worried as he was, watching his mother be subjected to a variety of medical examinations in the chest area was something neither of them wanted to experience.

After questions, tests, and a lot more waiting, the ER doctor finally arrived. He hung several x-ray images of her ribcage on the lightbox.

“Well, Dr. Fenton, it seems you got very lucky, especially after what happened a few weeks ago.” He pointed to one of the images. “The break on this rib looks to be stable, and the incisions from your surgeries are healing nicely. You likely aggravated the bruising when you fell, which caused your nerves to tense up. People often underestimate how badly pain can affect our undamaged nerves – though from your records I suspect you have plenty of experience with that.” He raised an eyebrow at her.

Maddie nodded. Yes, she did have plenty of experience in that area, unfortunately. “I’m glad to hear that I didn’t reinjure myself.”

“Yes…you really should be more careful, though, Dr. Fenton.” The doctor started packing up the x-rays. “I know you were just doing what most mothers in your place would do, but try to keep those ghost hunting instincts in check, at least until you’ve been given the all-clear by your surgeon and GP.” He eyed her. “And make sure to keep up with your painkillers and breathing therapy.”

She nodded again. She really did need to do a better job with those.

After checking out at the reception, Maddie made her way to the non-patient waiting room – a path that, like the school, she knew by heart.

The room wasn’t that full for a mid-afternoon Wednesday, but she couldn’t see Danny. Maddie frowned. He hadn’t texted her that he had left. Maybe he went to the bathroom?

She was about to pull out her phone and call him when the receptionist – who could recognize all the Fentons on sight – caught her attention and pointed out the window. There, Danny paced back into view while on a phone call. From the way he winced, then rolled his eyes, Maddie had a pretty good idea who was on the other end.

She waved when Danny spotted her. He immediately brightened and spoke to the caller before shutting his phone.

“Let me guess, Jazz?” Maddie asked when she met him outside.

Danny rolled his eyes. “She started lecturing me about proper safety in the lab, even though I just tripped while standing up. You’ll probably get one when she gets home.” The amusement at his sister’s reaction dropped from his face. “Are you alright, Mom? What did the doctor say?”

“Just some bruising from the original injury, and a reminder to be careful about my ‘ghost hunting instincts’,” she said. “Sorry, Danny, next time you fall, you’re on your own.”

Danny smiled, but the mirth didn’t reach his eyes. “Are you okay to drive now? I feel like I’m going to fall asleep on my feet.”

The bags under Danny’s eyes seemed heavier than they were earlier, and…was he shaking? The adrenalin rush must have taken a lot out of him.

“No, I shouldn’t be driving, either, since they gave me extra painkillers. But you know what we should do,” she said, as her stomach reminded her they never got to eat, “is get a very late lunch at the sandwich shop a few blocks away.”

“I can get behind that.”

This time, Danny’s grin was genuine.

***

It was early evening by the time Danny pulled onto their street. The driveway looked empty from this angle; Jazz and Jack weren’t back yet.

They were maybe a block from the house when Danny said, “Mom, there’s some guys watching the house from across the street.”

Sure enough, two men stood on the sidewalk, looking up at the Ops Center. To Maddie’s relief, they weren’t dressed in white. As Danny pulled the car into the driveway – not quite leaving enough space for her to get out without stepping on the lawn – one of the men crossed the street and strode towards them. The second rolled his eyes and followed suit.

“Hello!” the man said, waving as he approached the sidewalk. “Erik was just showing me your operations center! It looks amazing!”

Maddie stifled a groan. Unfortunately, she recognized both of the men.

Still, she gave a stiff smile and held out her hand. “You must be Dr. Reitman,” she said, then nodded to the other man. “Dr. Sedgewick.”

Reitman grabbed her hand with both of his and shook it. He wore another plaid suit jacket, this time a more subtle red than the bright yellow from Monday. His receding hairline was much more obvious from this close. “Oh, right! Yes, I’m Dr. Reitman, though you can call me Henry. It’s great to meet you!” He turned to Danny. “And you must be–”

He cut off when he saw that Danny was currently glaring at Sedgewick, arms crossed. The ectoscientist ignored him, instead choosing stare off into the distance, a look of boredom on his face. He was, as always, incredibly well polished in a tailored black suit in the style of his employer.

“This is my son, Danny,” Maddie said. At the sound of his name – and the warning in her voice – Danny broke from his glare long enough to stick a hand out for Reitman.

“Hi, Dr. Reitman,” Danny said. “I’ve heard a lot about you from my sister.”

“Ah, yes! Jazz! You know, she’s written to me a few times asking. You have a very intelligent daughter, Dr. Fenton. She could have a great career in ectopsychology if she wanted.”

Maddie forced a smile at the compliment. “I’ll be sure to pass that along. Now, if you don’t mind, it’s been a busy day and I have work to do.”

“Oh, yes, yes, sorry to interrupt.” Reitman at least had the decency to look sheepish. “Before we go, I wanted to ask if I could meet you over coffee while I’m in town. I know you’re not a fan of ectopsychology, but I would love to talk with you about Danny Phantom.”

At the ghost’s full name, Maddie tensed. Why did the ghost boy have to share a name with her son? And another ghost hunter who was interested in Phantom? In her quarry? She opened her mouth to speak, but Danny – her Danny – beat her to it.

“Phantom? Why would you want to talk about him?”

“Well, I don’t know if you know this, Danny Fenton, but Danny Phantom has an extremely unusual ectopsychological profile for a ghost, displaying an inordinately high level of both intelligence and compassion, as well as one of the most rapidly evolving sets of ghost powers ever documented. I would love to get my hands on him and–”

“Let me guess,” Danny interrupted. “Dissect him.”

Reitman cocked his head. “Goodness, no! I’d want to have a chat with him. Imagine what we could learn about ghosts! Maybe he’d even know what’s going on with this bomb stuff–”

“Enough, Henry,” Sedgewick snapped. “That’s confidential information.”

So it was a bomb. Even if they’d thought as much, at least now Maddie had confirmation. Not that that really made anything better.

Reitman sighed, but didn’t object. “You’re right. My excitement led to a slip of the tongue. I’ll have to be more careful about speaking in the future. Dr. Fenton, Danny, please don’t repeat anything I said today.”

Maddie nodded, though Danny didn’t break off from glaring at Sedgewick again. “Of course. Now, as I said, I really do have a lot of work to do. Have a good evening, Dr. Reitman. Dr. Sedgewick.”

Without waiting for a response, she turned and walked up the driveway. Danny followed a moment later.

Once inside, Maddie collapsed on the nearest couch, the exhaustion of the day catching up to her. Danny hung up the keys, then sat down opposite her, scowling.

“Danny,” she sighed, “would it kill you to be more polite to my colleagues?”

“Probably,” he muttered, then – catching the look she gave him – sighed as well. “I’m sorry, Mom. I’ll try to be more polite the next time I see him. Which will hopefully be never.” He continued scowling.

To see her normally mild-mannered son so aggravated at Sedgewick’s presence was surprising, to say the least. What was that about?

“Why do you hate him so much?” Maddie found herself asking.

Danny raised an eyebrow. “Besides the fact that he conducted unethical experiments on non-consenting subjects?”

Well, there was that. “I just didn’t know it was something you were so…passionate about.”

Danny shrugged, then leaned back in his chair. He stared at some far corner of the living room. “Sam’s rubbed off on me, I guess. She’s been going on about testing on animals a lot lately.”

It made enough sense, but at the same time, if Danny cared that much, why hadn’t he said anything before? Then again, Maddie thought, Danny was a teenage boy, and everyone in Amity Park knew he had a massive crush on Sam. She’d seen boys act weirder to impress the girls they liked – and vice versa, if her own experience courting Jack was anything to go by.

Maddie nodded, then yawned. “Well, if you or Sam ever want to chat about the ethics of human experimentation, I’m happy to oblige. But for now” – she yawned again – “I’m going to take a nap. I’ll see you for dinner, Danny.”

Danny did little more than nod, still staring at nothing.

***

Another nap. Another nightmare.

Phantom marched her down a school hallway, gloved hand tugging at hers. “Come on, Dr. Fenton, we’re going to be late.”

Maddie stumbled over a broken locker than had been twisted and ripped from the wall. More debris littered the hallway, but the ghost leading her didn’t stop.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

Phantom didn’t answer as he floated across the massive hole in the floor; green sunlight filtered through from the matching hole in the ceiling.

“Trust me, Mom, it’s completely safe,” Danny said. He lifted the ectoblaster and shot at her. “You should listen, for once.”

Maddie ran down the stairs into the lab. The control panel to the portal was in the wrong place. Where was the off button? Why hadn’t she labeled it correctly? It was coming for her.

Jack dropped the ectoradiation meter on the table with a loud thud. “There you are, Mads!” he said as it beeped at her.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

She scrambled towards the device, looking frantically for the Maddie Button. Why couldn’t she find it? Why couldn’t she shut it off?

Beep. Beep. Beep.

“Dr. Fenton, I found it!” Phantom yelled. He knelt over her in the hospital bed, flashing green in the light of the heart rate monitor.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Dust and debris swirled in the air above her. Little green stars dotted her vision.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Danny picked up the scalpel. “Have you ever tried talking to a ghost instead of capturing it?”

He stabbed her in the chest.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Maddie groaned, wishing the ectoradiation meter– no, the heart rate monitor– no, her ringtone would stop.

She sat up in bed, careful of her re-bruised chest, and checked the caller ID. Penny Babcock. She let it go to voicemail, then saw that the phone’s readout said it was 8:27pm. Her family had let her sleep through dinner.

Why did Phantom keep haunting her dreams? What didn’t she remember?

Sitting there in bed, Maddie made a decision. She couldn’t talk to Phantom – but there was one person who might be able to help.

***

Though she didn’t want the promised lecture on lab safety, Maddie knocked on Jazz’s door. “Jazz, honey, can I talk to you for a bit?”

There was a moment of silence before Jazz’s muffled voice filtered through. “Uh, come in.”

Maddie opened the door to find Danny on his back on Jazz’s bed, legs hanging off the edge and hands dragged halfway down his face. Jazz sat cross-legged in her chair.

“Oh, sorry,” Maddie said. “Am I interrupting something?”

Jazz opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, Danny leapt up from the bed and ran out of the room, not looking at his mother as he passed. “Night, Mom!” she heard him call from the hallway before his door slammed shut.

Maddie cocked her head at Jazz, and only then noticed the crumpled tissues on the bed. “Is Danny…okay?”

Jazz sighed. She stood up and brushed the tissues into her waste basket. “Danny would probably want me to say yes,” she said, gesturing for Maddie to sit on the bed. “But no, he isn’t.”

She didn’t take the seat, instead hesitantly asking, “Should I go talk to him?”

“No,” Jazz said. “I think that would just make things worse.”

Worse? Maddie wanted to object – that she knew how to comfort her son – but really, after all the lies and secrets and fears that this past week had brought to the forefront of her mind – did she? It was all too much.

“Is this about the explosion, or– or the ghost hunting?” Tears pricked at her eyes. “Jazz, does…does Danny hate us?”

Jazz sighed again. “Sit down, Mom.”

Maddie sat.

She could see the various thoughts running through Jazz’s head as her daughter studied her face, trying to decide where to start. Finally, Jazz sighed a third time and broke her gaze from Maddie’s face.

“Danny is…complicated,” Jazz said, clearly choosing her words carefully. “And very private about it. There’s a lot that he won’t talk to me about, and I suspect a lot that he doesn’t talk to Sam and Tucker about. But the one thing I do know is that Danny loves you, both you and Dad, very much.”

Maddie nodded, then started to tear up again. “But he lies to me,” she whispered. She made eye contact with Jazz. “Why does he lie so much?”

“Have you ever kept a lie going for so long that you’re afraid to tell the truth? Because you’re afraid of how people will react when you tell them?”

Memories from Maddie’s youth flickered through her head. Lying to her parents about the times she sneaked out to look for ghosts at ‘haunted’ buildings. Hiding her interest in ectoscience to college admissions teams so she stood a chance at scholarships. Keeping her crush on Jack a secret so as to not jeopardize one of her most cherished relationships.

She nodded.

“That’s the position Danny’s in, Mom.” Jazz’s voice was firm as she took Maddie’s hands. “I know it hurts to think that Danny is lying to you, but trust me that he wouldn’t hide something from you without a very good reason.”

She stared at Jazz as some of the puzzle pieces fell into place. “You know what he’s hiding from me.”

It wasn’t a question.

Sighing again, Jazz returned the eye contact with her mother. “I do,” she said, quietly.

She and Jack had long speculated that Danny used Jazz as a confidante, but, until now, they had never confronted their daughter about it. Maddie stared, slack-jawed, at finally having confirmation to her fears – confirmation that there really was something Danny was hiding from them. Confirmation that Jazz, the daughter she’d always trusted to tell the truth, was hiding something, too.

What did even she say to that?

“Jazz, I–” She swallowed. “Is Danny in danger? Is he involved with something bad? Or someone? He gets hurt so much.” Maddie’s voice broke as several tears rolled down her face. “If he’s in danger, why– why didn’t you tell me what’s going on?”

“Because it’s not my secret to tell. It’s Danny’s, and Danny’s alone.” Jazz let go of Maddie’s hands and sat back in her chair, crossing her legs. She looked like nothing so much as a professional counsellor with a client, especially when she handed a tissue box to Maddie. “I’m sorry, Mom. I know that’s not what you wanted to hear. And I’m sorry I’ve been lying to you. I don’t like doing it. But please – if you’ve ever trusted me about anything, trust me that I trust Danny on this.”

Maddie continued staring at her. What could possibly be so important that not only Danny but Jazz would hide something from her? Something that had gotten Danny hurt and driven a wedge between her and her children? Could she still trust Jazz?

…you refuse to admit that you might be wrong...

Jazz’s words from the other morning echoed in her head. If Jazz was keeping something from her, it was because she didn’t think Maddie would agree with it…because she thought Maddie was wrong.

Well, given what she was already here to ask about, she could take the leap of faith and trust her daughter. It might be irresponsible parenting, but at some point, she had to let her children grow up.

She couldn’t protect them forever.

Maddie took a shaky breath, then accepted the proffered tissues. “Okay,” she said, taking another breath and wiping the tears from her face. “Okay, Jazz. I’ll trust you on this. I don’t like it, but…” She swallowed. “I don’t think I have much choice otherwise. Neither of you will tell me, will you?”

Jazz shook her head. “No. Like I said, that’s Danny’s secret to tell. He’s given me very clear conditions for when I could share anything.” She sighed. “And as much as I want him to talk to you….”

“I haven’t earned his trust yet.” As much as it pained her to say it, Maddie had to acknowledge it was true. She’d lost his trust somewhere in the last few years, and she had a pretty good idea why. The question was: how to earn it back?

She pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. “I’m sorry that we– that I put you in this situation by being so…self-absorbed that I’ve pushed you and Danny away. And put you in the middle of this. You shouldn’t have to deal with this.”

Jazz nodded. “I appreciate hearing that. I won’t say it’s been easy, but….” She gave a thin-lipped smile. “Thank you for finally taking the time to actually listen to me about something.”

“I’m trying, at least,” Maddie said. Might as well launch into it. She clenched her fists against her knees, still holding the used tissue. Then, taking a deep breath, she looked Jazz in the eye.

“I want to talk to Phantom about the explosion.”

Chapter Text

Jazz blinked. She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. Then she jumped up and started rooting through a desk drawer.

“Jazz?”

“One sec.”

She pulled out what Maddie recognized as an older model of their ectoradiation meters and turned it on. Maddie watched, eyebrow raised, as Jazz held the meter up towards her. It didn’t make a sound.

“Satisfied?” Maddie asked, dryly. The attempt at levity didn’t break the tension.

“Just making sure you’re not being overshadowed,” she said, sitting back in her chair. “Why do you want to talk to Phantom?”

Maddie straightened. “I just think that…” She cleared her throat. “Phantom may have valuable information for the investigation.”

“And you think you should talk to him?”

“Do you think it’s a bad idea?”

Jazz shook her head. “Not necessarily,” she said, slowly. “I just wasn’t expecting you to ask that. It’s…a bit of an extreme change from just a few days ago.”

Maddie couldn’t disagree with that. “I’ve had a lot to think about over the last few days.”

“Okay…okay. And you want my advice on Phantom?”

“That, and….” Why was talking to Jazz about this so awkward? “I was hoping you could help me figure out a way to get in contact with him.”

Jazz dragged her hand down her face. She sighed, then stared at the wall to Maddie’s left while tapping her chin.

“…Jazz?”

She sighed, again, but didn’t look at Maddie. “Sorry. This is just…a lot to process right now.”

Maddie could practically hear the gears turning in Jazz’s head. What was she thinking about? Her daughter was probably trying to figure out what, exactly, had prompted this change in her mother – and whether or not she should be concerned about it. Did she suspect that Maddie wasn’t being forthright about her reasons for talking to the ghost?

Or was there something else? Jazz may vocally support Phantom to her parents, but how far did that support actually extend? Was Jazz worried that Phantom might take advantage of her because she was injured and couldn’t fight back? Er, fight back well, at least. She wouldn’t give up that fast.

But that didn’t make much sense. Jazz didn’t outright object to the idea; she just said it wasn’t “necessarily” a bad idea that Maddie talk to Phantom. And to be fair, it was quite unexpected. A few days ago, Maddie wouldn’t have believed she’d do this. Any chance she had to get at Phantom would be so she could capture and experiment–

Her eyes widened in realization. “Wait, Jazz, I’m not– I’m not–” she shook her head. “This isn’t a trap! I do actually want to…to talk to…the ghost.”

“I didn’t think it was,” Jazz said, though the brief flash of relief on her face that she didn’t hide away quickly enough suggested otherwise. Maddie tried not to wince; surely her daughter didn’t think that lowly of her. “Okay, I’ll do it. I’ll get you in contact with Phantom.”

“You’re in contact with him?”

Jazz shook her head. “Not directly. But…there are ways to get word to him, if you know the right people.” At Maddie’s incredulous stare, she sighed. “Sometimes he shows up to the Phantom Fan Club at Casper. A few people there know how to contact him.”

“I don’t want this getting around, Jazz,” Maddie said. “I’d rather keep it…private, for now.” Best not to have it known that one of the city’s ghost hunters was planning to meet with her self-declared nemesis. The media circus would never stop.

“I can guarantee confidentiality. Phantom doesn’t trust people with that kind of information easily.”

And how would you know that? Maddie thought, but kept the thought to herself. This wasn’t the time to question her daughter’s relationship to Phantom. “Thank you, Jazz. I know that…I know that I haven’t done anything to show that I’m…worth trusting,” she said, trying again not to wince at her own hesitance, then looked Jazz in the eye. “But thank you, anyway.”

Jazz nodded. “For what it’s worth, Mom, I do believe that you’re sincere, even if it’s against my better judgment and I think you’re lying about why you want to talk to Phantom,” she said, pointedly. Maddie did wince, this time. “But I won’t pretend either that I don’t have my own reasons for wanting you and Phantom to talk.”

“Right.”

The word hung in the air. What did she say to that, when she knew Jazz was holding things back? She tapped her thumb against her knee.

“Well, I should–”

“If you don’t mind–”

Jazz gestured for Maddie to speak.

She cleared her throat. “I, um, should probably leave you be,” she said. “I missed dinner and all that.”

“Yeah, and I have work to do,” Jazz said. “Preparing for college is not easy.”

That was her daughter. Always working on her future. How much of that had Maddie taken away from her children?

She stood up. “Thank you, again, Jazz. For helping me. With Danny and…and Phantom.”

Jazz gave a thin-lipped smile. “Thank you for trusting me, and for giving Phantom a chance. I know that’s not easy for you. And just a word of advice, don’t…be so much of a ghost hunter with either of them.” She stood up and held her arms out. “Hugs?”

Maddie returned the hug, then made her way to the door. She paused, one hand on the knob. “Jazz, can you let me be the one to tell your father and brother about this? I need to figure out how I’m going to explain it.”

Jazz’s face didn’t betray what she was thinking. After a moment, she spoke. “Okay, I won’t. But,” she said, holding up a finger, “I won’t lie to them. I’m already doing enough of that.”

A pang of guilt once more wrought its way through Maddie’s heart. There were only so many times she could apologize, though, so, instead, she just nodded her thanks. “Good night, Jazz,” she said, opening the door. “I love you, so much.”

“Love you too, Mom.”

She closed the door behind her, then went to the kitchen to heat up the leftover pizza her family had ordered while she slept.

Later, as Maddie drifted off to sleep, Jazz’s words rang in her ears. Don’t be so much of a ghost hunter with either of them. What did she mean by that? Maddie had already promised this wasn’t a trap for Phantom….and what about with Danny?

Troubled, she fell asleep to the sound of her husband’s snores beside her.

***

Despite having the first nightmare-free night’s sleep since getting out of the hospital, Maddie was still the first person up in the morning. In the kitchen, she poured herself an orange juice and a bowl of cereal and tried to pretend that she was eating a normal breakfast on a normal morning after a normal night where she hadn’t betrayed the basic tenets of ghost hunting to which she and Jack clung.

Fact: Ghosts were ectoplasmic imprints of a person’s mental state at the moment of death.

Fact: Ghosts were incapable of higher levels of cognition beyond pursuing their singular objects of obsession.

Fact: Ghosts were individualistic to the extreme and had no social structure or shared culture.

Fact: Ghosts were without moral reasoning or concern for living individuals.

Fact: Ghosts were extremely dangerous.

And yet here she was, wanting to meet with one of the most – if not the most – dangerous ghosts in Amity Park to ask if he knew anything about the bombs. Why did she think that would work?

Logically, the only way Phantom would know anything about the bombs was if he had either planted them himself or had observed someone do it, since ghosts didn’t interact with each other unless they were fighting over something. And would he even answer her questions about the first explosion? Maddie frowned, trying to remember if she’d ever caught Phantom – or any ghost – in a lie. Nothing immediately came to mind, but…there were times where Phantom had backtracked and stumbled over things he’d said.

And what about the fan club Jazz had mentioned? While Maddie had been distantly aware of it, this was the first time she could recall hearing that Phantom actually visited it sometimes. That implied the ghost was aware of schedules and the idea of a fan club. It could, of course, be random, since the ghost did frequent the high school….Not to mention, people knew how to contact him – people he trusted.

Or people he had fooled. While the ghost was…unusual, to say the least, his actions could still be explained away by the circumstances of his death, which were unfortunately still unknown. The best the Fentons could tell was that he was a young ghost – perhaps the youngest ghost that frequented Amity Park. Maybe that was why Phantom was able to communicate in ways other ghosts couldn’t: because he hadn’t yet been consumed by his own desires across the course of decades. Maybe that was why he was intelligent and could mimic compassion, as Dr. Reitman had sa–

Was she really thinking about ghost psychology? As if it were something she should take seriously? Maddie scowled.

“Uh…Mom?” Danny stood in the kitchen doorway. “You okay?”

Resolving to stop getting so lost in her thoughts that her own children startled her, Maddie smiled at her son. Her cereal was soggy. “Morning, sweetie.”

“Morning. How’re you doing after yesterday?” Danny said while pouring his own bowl of cereal, one with a considerably higher quantity of sugar than hers.

How was she doing? Now that she thought about it, Maddie felt the constant pain in her chest once more, plus the other aches and bruises from the explosion. “Hoping the painkillers kick in soon,” she said.

Danny nodded, then sat down and started shoveling cereal into his mouth. He wore a different NASA shirt today – this one with a map of constellations on it – and had not yet combed his hair.

“How’s online school been so far?”

Danny, who had just taken a large bite of cereal, rolled his eyes, then held up his finger to signal one sec before swallowing the sugary glob. Maddie frowned. They didn’t normally keep that brand of cereal in the house, did they? Someone – who may or may not have been the teenage boy sitting in front of her – must’ve snuck it in while she was in the hospital.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’d actually rather be in class with Mr. Lancer,” Danny said.

“That bad?”

“It’s so boring!” he said, throwing his hands in the air while still holding the spoon. “All I’ve done so far is sit and watch recorded lectures of some professor drone on and on about America in the 1600s. And then I have to write these long discussion board posts and respond to two other students. It’s not even about the cool stuff, just the cargo lists from the boats they sailed on!”

Danny gestured with a final flourish of annoyance, and something clanged against the cabinets. They both turned to see Danny’s spoon rattle against the floor.

“Oops.” He gave her a sheepish grin.

Maddie had thought that Danny had gotten over the clumsy days of puberty, but apparently not. Maybe the stress had brought it back.

“Before you say it, Mom, here: ‘War and Peace, Danny’,” he said, “’I didn’t know you hated history so much. If only you could take that energy and apply it to doing well in your classes, blah blah blah.’”

Maddie tried but couldn’t quite hide her snicker at her son’s poor imitation of Mr. Lancer. Danny grinned back, and for a moment she could forget the questions that plagued her mind about Phantom.

Unfortunately, the peace was broken by Jazz, who strode into the kitchen with a pair of greetings for her mother and brother.

As her children engaged in breakfast-themed small talk, Maddie tried not to be too obvious as she studied Jazz for any signs of…well, she wasn’t sure. That Phantom had responded to her request for contact, maybe? Or of collusion between her teens about Danny’s secret? Were they talking about things in coded language, right in front of her face? But if there were, she didn’t see them. Was Jazz just that good at pretending?

Stop being so paranoid of your own children, Maddie. You promised you’d try to trust Jazz on this. She dumped her half eaten bowl of soggy cereal in the trash and started brewing a pot of coffee.

As if summoned by the roasted beans, Jack Fenton began his slow walk down the stairs. Her stubborn husband had insisted on sleeping in their bed with her, despite the difficulties a broken leg and crutches posed in climbing the stairs.

“I swear,” he said, finally making his way into the kitchen, “if I wasn’t teaching this class, I would pimp up those stairs with the Fenton StairMaster to make them easier to climb!”

“Honey, that’s a piece of exercise equipment,” Maddie said, at the same time Danny whispered “did he just say ‘pimp up’?” to Jazz.

Jack waved his hand. “Well, we’ll just name it something else, then,” he said, undeterred.

As Danny made breakfast for his father, Maddie’s thoughts turned, once more, to her conversation Jazz last night. There was no doubt in her mind that she would tell Jack and Danny; it was just a matter of when she told them. Before, or after she met with Phantom – presuming the ghost actually agreed to her request.

“Oh, Mads,” Jack said, interrupting her train of thought. “Do we have any extra practice Thermoses laying around? Some of the kiddos were complaining that they had to share.”

She frowned. “I’m not sure. I’d have to look through the boxes from last summer. But I’m sure I can dig something up.”

“Great!” He munched on his toast. "I think half a dozen will be good."

After finishing breakfast, Jack hobbled over to Maddie. “See you later, Mads,” he said before giving her a peck on the cheek; Danny rolled his eyes at their PDA. It was early for Jack and Jazz to leave the house; her husband had his office hours on Thursday mornings.

“Bye, honey. Be safe out there,” she said, even though she and Danny were probably in more danger here in Amity Park than Jack and Jazz would be in Carrie.

“That’s the plan!” Jack said, grinning. “No ghost bomb can scare Jack Fenton!”

It was a show, she knew; the overconfident bravado was just Jack’s way of dealing with the stress, especially in front of their kids. Maddie was pretty sure they saw through it, too, but she couldn’t deny there was some comfort in the normalcy of her husband’s act. Regardless, she grinned back as he hauled himself out of the kitchen.

Before she could settle into thinking about the drudgery of the tip line that awaited her, Maddie heard Jazz open the front door and groan dramatically. “Someone egged the house again,” she called.

Maddie sighed. Of course. Just one more thing to deal with.

***

Maddie pulled a half-assembled mess of metal and wires out of the box and set it on the lab’s table, alongside several other half-assembled messes of metal and wires. She’d thought the box labelled “Intro to GS” would have the spare practice Thermoses in them. Apparently not.

What it did have was a bunch of replacement parts in case a Thermos broke. They’d at least prepared enough for that. It wouldn’t be too difficult to actually assemble more Thermoses, as long as the lab had all of the parts that she needed. The interior panels and ectoplasm batteries were in the box, but they still needed a chassis to attach to.

Maddie rifled through the drawers and cabinets of their ghost hunting prototypes, looking for scrap material. Maybe she could salvage parts from one of the Fenton Bazookas….

Wait. She could just machine more parts.

“Hey, Danny,” she said. No response from where her son sat watching his lectures. “Danny?” she said, louder.

“Mmm?” Danny yanked off his headphones.

“Can you get a box down for me?” Maddie pointed to one sitting on a top shelf. Jazz would probably tie her to the bed if she tried to get it herself.

“Sure.” He dragged over a footstool and retrieved the box – with considerably more ease than Maddie expected, given it was full of papers. He dropped it on the table with a thud. “What’s in this one?”

Maddie twisted the box around so that the label “Schematics'' faced them. “It has most of the plans for our ectotech equipment,” she explained, digging through the files. “Some of it dates back to our college days. You never know what old idea might be important!”

She didn’t mention that many of the plans had never actually made it to production – Jack in particular had a penchant for designing technology that was best described as “illegal” or “extremely dangerous” or “violates the known laws of physics.” Best leave those in their records for the time being.

Danny turned back to his schoolwork as Maddie located the schematic for the practice Thermoses and began collecting the various parts she needed. Unlike the Thermoses she and her husband used, the practice ones were designed to be taken apart by the students so that they could explore the various technologies involved.

Like most of their technology, the Thermoses were powered by an ectoplasm battery, which Maddie thought was their second-best invention – after the portal, of course. The battery ran an engine that produced a negative ectopressure and pulled ectons and ectoplasm into the storage compartment. The physics of ectoplasm allowed it to be compressed many times over, trapping ghosts until they could be studied in the lab or expelled back into the Ghost Zone.

While Jack’s students learned about the mechanics of the Thermoses conceptually, the actual specifications – the chemical composition of the panels, the precise math required for them to work – were one of the few pieces of technology the Fentons hadn’t patented, for it was the same technology that made the portal work. The safeguards of a patent would do nothing to deter someone from creating a portal of their own. Their greatest achievement, and they certainly did not want someone else getting their hands on it – especially the GIW.

As Maddie placed a metal blank in their CNC lathe, the thought of Phantom with one of the devices bothered her more and more. She and Jack had poured over their inventory more than once and found everything accounted for. But based on its appearance and functionality, Phantom’s Thermos appeared to be one of their own.

It implied several disturbing possibilities about the security of the lab – or worse: about ghosts’ technological capabilities.

Had Phantom somehow built his own Thermos? And if he had, what else was he able to make?

Could Phantom really be behind the bombs?

Maddie tried to turn her thoughts elsewhere, to anything less upsetting, but kept coming back to the mystery of Phantom’s Thermos.

***

Eventually, Danny stood up from the computer and announced loudly: “I’m done with my schoolwork. Can I go over to Tucker’s?”

Maddie put the screw driver she was holding down. “I want you to clean the front of the house first before you leave.”

“Really? All by myself? Can I at least wait until Jazz gets back?”

“I don’t want the sun to bake the eggs onto the siding, Danny,” she said. “I’d help you with it, but….” An idea struck her. “Why don’t you invite Sam and Tucker over and the three of you can clean the house? And” – she said, holding up a finger to Danny’s objection – “I’ll take the three of you out for lunch afterwards.”

Danny stared at her, as if gauging how far he should negotiate her bribery, then sighed. “Fine. I’ll see if Tucker’s willing to scrape rotting eggs off the windows in the midafternoon heat.”

“No Sam?” Maddie asked. “Is everything okay between the two of you?”

Danny rolled his eyes. “Sam’s parents decided that this was the perfect time to take a ‘family bonding week’,” he said, with exaggerated air quotes. “She’s in Vancouver right now.”

“I see. In that case, tell Tucker I’ll take you to that meat-themed restaurant Sam was protesting a while back.” She did feel a bit guilty about asking Danny to clean the house alone.

Danny’s eyes lit up. Despite Sam’s influence, she knew her teenage son also appreciated a good piece of beef, even if it wasn’t from the Nasty Burger. “Great! Thanks Mom! I’ll let you know when Tuck gets here!” Without further ado, he ran out of the lab, somehow taking the stairs two at a time while texting on his phone.

Maddie shook her head, smiling, and got back to work.

***

The fax machine whirred to life. Maddie jumped, causing the solder to drip onto the wrong part of the wire; the string of curses she let out made her grateful Danny was outside with Tucker. She’d forgotten the fax machine was still hooked up.

Setting the soldering iron down, Maddie stood, stretched, then retrieved the fax’s printout. Her eyes went wide.

Dr. Fenton,

I’ll meet with you if you follow three basic rules for our mutual safety: no ectoweapons, guests, or telling anyone about this.

If you agree, come to the playground at Amity Park Park at 11:59pm this Friday for an exchange of information about the explosion.

- D. Phantom

Heart pounding, Maddie reread the message several times.

So this was it. The message from Phantom. When Jazz had texted her an hour after she left the house, it had only read “He’ll contact you.”

Of all the methods Maddie had imagined, the fax machine was not one of them.

Wait. The fax machine. Maddie stuffed the paper in her pocket and lunged for the machine’s settings. It should tell her the number that Phantom had sent the message from. To her dismay, though, the machine only listed the sender’s information as “UNKNOWN.”

She leaned back against the counter, doubly grateful Danny wasn’t present to see her mad rush for the fax, or her confusion over the results.

Phantom had sent her a fax. A fax. This meant that Phantom somehow had access to one of the machines – and, more, knew how to send one anonymously. She didn’t even know how to do that.

Clearly, the ghost was going to some length to hide…what, exactly? Maddie glanced at the portal. She was fairly certain that faxes couldn’t come from the Ghost Zone. It would break several laws of physics she was aware of. Was he hiding a connection to someone here on Earth that could help him?

Maddie briefly entertained the idea that Jazz had sent the fax, acting as a proxy for the ghost, but she dismissed it. Mostly. It only made sense if Jazz was much closer to the ghost than she let on.

There was that one ghost who possessed some form of electrokinesis – Technus, she recalled – but would he help Phantom? Could he help Phantom? Ghosts didn’t have a social structure that would enable assistance or favors, unless it was to their mutual benefit.

The implications from the mere existence of this fax were too many. Maddie decided to stop thinking about how Phantom had sent it to her and more on what he had sent.

She pulled the crumpled paper out of her pocket and read it again. Nothing seemed particularly…ghostly about the message. In fact, it read like an email from an ectoscience colleague, not a teenage ghost. The weirdest thing was how not weird it was.

Maddie folded the paper and slipped it in her pocket as she heard the two boys come back inside, arguing about some video game.

11:59pm this Friday. That left her roughly a day and a half to make a decision.

Or so she told herself, knowing it was already made.

***

Tucker bit into his burger, then went “Mmrrm!” He swallowed his bite – without chewing, Maddie noted – and started digging in his bag. He pulled out a Ziploc bag with two disassembled ghost meters and dropped it on the Fenton’s kitchen table. Though Maddie had promised to take them out for lunch, the restaurant was only allowing take-out to avoid gathering crowds. “I have the recovered data for you, Mrs. F. It wasn’t that bad to get the data off the chips. I just had to–”

“That’s great, Tucker! Thank you so much!” Maddie said, cutting him off before he could launch into a lengthy explanation full of words she only mostly recognized. “Do you, uh, have the actual data?”

“Oh, yeah, here.” He pulled out a CD in a thin jewel case. “I can’t guarantee that the data is accurate, since the compromised outer case means that the protections you guys installed may have failed, but it’s all on the disk.”

Maddie shook her head. “That shouldn’t be a problem, Tucker. Jack and I have software designed to help interpret ectoradiation interference.”

Tucker raised an eyebrow at the word “software.” He opened his mouth to speak, but Danny interrupted. “Careful, Tuck,” he said. “Express any interest in their work and the next thing you know you’ll be their own personal software developer.”

Maddie gave Danny the stink-eye, but he ignored her. Tucker just laughed. “Y’know, I wouldn’t mind learning more about ectotech. It sounds interesting. Hey!” he said, when Danny elbowed him. “What was that for?”

The two teenagers glared at each other. Clearly, Tucker’s potential involvement in ghost hunting was a source of contention between them.

The pang of sorrow over her son’s refusal to be more than passively engaged with ghost hunting topics was nothing new to Maddie, but could she really blame Danny for staying out of it? She added that question to the pile of doubt that was ever-growing in her mind.

Danny lost whatever silent battle the boys fought. He sighed, dramatically, then crossed his arms. “What do you even hope to get from the meters, Mom? I thought you said the readings from the school were ‘literally off the charts’.”

“Technically, that is true. The readings were off the charts,” Maddie said, slipping into lecture mode. “However, the user interface on the meters is only designed to show a limited range of ectoradiation that matches the minimum and maximum for ghostly activity. The raw data will let us see the actual readings to a much higher degree of sensitivity. You have to remember, the graphics are only meant to tell us at a quick glance how strong the readings are. We export the data later if we want more precise information.” She stood up. “If you boys want, I can show you what I’m hoping to find.”

Ignoring Danny’s glare, she tossed her lunch garbage in the trash, then – grabbing the meters and data CD – strode into the lab. Moments later, as the computer was booting up, Tucker clambered down the stairs, followed by a reluctant-looking Danny.

Maddie downloaded the data from the CD, then ran it through a piece of software designed to study the full range of the recorded ectoradiation data. Tucker, she sensed, was a little disappointed that the software they used was just a general data visualization program, but he was far more interested than either Danny or Jazz had ever been about this aspect of ectoscience.

“Aha!” she said, once a full graph was generated. It showed the data from both meters, which followed roughly the same pattern. “Just as I thought. What do you see, Tucker?”

He squinted at the screen. “The ectoradiation starts off at an almost negligible amount, then suddenly spikes and grows a lot, before really spiking to almost the top of the graph. I’m guessing that’s when the explosion happened.”

“Very good!” Maddie pointed to the timestamps at the bottom. They were off by an hour, probably because they forgot to program in daylight’s savings time to the devices. “It was less than thirty seconds between when the meters first alerted us to the presence of ectoradiation and when the time of the explosion.”

She deliberately ignored the fact that she, herself, still did not recall the moments before the explosion.

Maddie continued, importing another file to the program. “What bothered me so much about the bomb at Casper was the fact that the meter didn’t detect it until I was less than ten feet away from it. I’m really glad you could recover the data, Tucker, since it gives us two more datasets to compare to.”

The graph for the Casper bomb loaded in a new tab. It had the same initial spike as with the explosion, but it dipped in a local minimum before growing once more, then dropping off. Maddie tapped a few keys and two horizontal lines appeared on the graph.

“These two lines are the range the meters show,” she said, pointing to one towards the bottom and one just below the initial spike’s peak. “And these are the background ectoradiation averages for Amity Park and Casper High, since the school has a higher average than the rest of the city.” The other two were below the pre-spike levels.

Tucker peered at the screen. “So, since the averages were below the readings, that means that the bombs were giving off some ectoradiation, but not enough to alert the meters?”

“Without more testing, we can’t be sure,” Maddie said. “But yes, Tucker, that’s what I suspect.”

Tucker nodded, but then frowned. “I’m…not sure why that’s important, Mrs. F.”

Maddie opened her mouth to speak, but to her surprise – and delight – Danny spoke first.

“The spike happened when Mom and Dad got within a certain distance of the bombs, Tuck. That’s what the dip in the graph from Casper is.” He looked Maddie in the eye with that intense gaze of his. She nodded, smiling, but Danny didn’t smile back. “I remember the meters only yelled at you when you were what, six feet away?”

“So the bombs create this kind of bubble, I guess, of extreme ectoradiation with a certain radius,” Tucker guessed. He exchanged a look with Danny. “And the GIW have access to that tech? That’s…concerning.”

“Don’t worry, Tucker,” Maddie said with a dismissive wave of her hand, though secretly she shared Tucker’s concerns about the GIW. “The ectoradiation only hurts ghosts, so humans should be….”

She trailed off as she caught the terrified look on Danny’s face. There was a human who had been hurt by the abnormal ectoradiation. Why hadn’t she realized the risk to him sooner?

“Oh, sweetheart, it’ll be okay.” She stood and gave her reluctant son a hug. “I’ll talk to your father when he gets home, and we’ll figure out some way to protect you.” She released him. “Though hopefully you won’t need it.”

Danny nodded. “Thanks, Mom.”

For the rest of their time in the lab, Danny seemed fine, but Maddie could see the ghost of his fear still written on his face.

Chapter Text

Maddie pulled into the parking spot and shut off the engine. She glanced at the clock right before the dashboard lights went dark.

11:56pm. Three minutes until the meeting began.

She dug around in her bag for her phone, travel lantern, ghost meter, and goggles – she wanted to know if the ghost was there, even if he wasn’t visible.

As she was about to close the bag, Maddie’s eyes fell on the mini-ectoblaster she always carried. She hesitated. The ghost had said no ectoweapons, but…it left her with no way to defend herself if this really was just a trap in disguise. It was impossible to tell with ghosts.

Maddie grabbed the blaster and tucked it into her waistband, grateful it was cold enough to justify wearing a jacket that would hide it, though she longed for the secure snugness of her jumpsuit.

The playground was a bit of a walk from the parking lot: across the soccer field and close enough to the tree line that Danny had more than once wandered beyond when he was toddler.

It was dark as she made her way across the grass. The park’s lights were off, and the moon was a mere sliver low in the sky. Technically, she shouldn’t be here after hours, but Maddie wasn’t above pushing the limits of her ghost hunting permit for personal use. The rule was more for liability reasons than anything else.

Just as Maddie was judging if she was in range for her goggle’s thermal vision, she froze. There, in the dark of the horizon, a figure haloed in a green-white light blinked into existence.

Phantom.

The ghost floated above the tallest point of the play structure, a dome covering the second level. He lay on his back, hands laced behind his head, with one leg bent at the knee and the other folded across it. He pushed off the dome with one foot, slowly rocking back and forth – like he was having a night stargazing, not defying the laws of Earthly physics.

Maddie’s heart leapt to her throat. How long had the ghost been there? Did he know she was here? He faced away from her, and her meter had yet to make a sound. How good was the ghost’s hearing? She wasn’t sure she and Jack had ever determined that, but it was probably best to assume that it was better than the average human’s, just to be safe– wait. He’d probably heard her slam the car door shut.

Was she really going to do this?

Stop being so foolish, she chided herself. You’re not some amateur looking for her first ghost. You are Dr. Madeline Fenton, leading ectoscientist and one of the world’s most accomplished ghost hunters. You will not be afraid of some teenaged ghost!

Setting her jaw, Maddie strode the rest of the way across the field.

The play structure was shaped like an L, with the domed tower at the end of the long part. The octagonal platform under it had a variety of exits – a slide, a set of uneven stairs, a pole to slide down – and a miniature bridge connected it to the other tower, which descended in wide steps and a toddler slide that formed the short end of the L. Other miscellaneous playground equipment dotted the area. Her approach brought her towards the shorter tower.

The ghost turned to look at her when she first crunched on the mulch floor of the playground, a second before her ghost meter beeped softly. He stared at her for a moment, then vanished.

Maddie fumbled for the camping lantern and flicked it on, then tared the meter’s alarm. She held the light aloft in front of her, hoping that the quiver in her arm wasn’t obvious. You are Dr. Madeline Fenton….

“Sorry, I–”

To her own credit, Maddie barely jumped at the voice echoing from the taller tower and the green-white light that came with it. She looked up to see the ghost, now standing on the platform beneath the dome.

He was as he always was: the black jumpsuit with white accents that matched his hair and glowed bright in the night; piercing green eyes that always seemed to be hiding something, whether a smirk or some ghostly knowledge; purloined Thermos – dented and scuffed – hooked at his waist.

Phantom. Amity Park’s most dangerous ghost, standing less than a dozen feet from her.

The ghost winced. “Sorry,” he repeated, rubbing the back of his neck. “I, uh, didn’t think about the fact that you’d need your own light.”

Maddie stared at the ghost, keeping her expression carefully schooled. Better not to give away any more information than necessary.

“Phantom,” she said.

The ghost gave a little wave. “Uh, yep, that’s me,” he said. “And you’re Dr. Fenton. I’m glad to see you. I wasn’t sure you’d actually come.” He gestured at the stairs. “Why don’t you sit down and we can get started.”

From a tactical standpoint, the ghost had the advantage. Not only did he have the high ground, even standing as he was, but he had chosen the meeting spot and the chance to scope it out ahead of time. Sitting where he indicated could be a trap, but at the same time, standing would make her a larger target.

It would also tire her out sooner, and given she was still recovering from the explosion, Maddie sat, but in a place where she could – hopefully – hide behind something.

Not like that would do much against either a ghost attack or a bomb, but it was better than nothing.

“Okay!” The ghost clapped his hands together. “An exchange of information. I’ll give you a few freebies. First” – he ticked them off on his fingers – “no, I didn’t do it. No, I don’t know who did it. And yes, I want to stop whoever it is from doing it again. Your turn. Ask away.”

He leaned against the half-wall meant to stop children from falling off the platform, idly swinging one leg between the bars – literally between the bars, Maddie noted, as it phased through the metal. An intimidation tactic, she surmised, meant to remind her that he didn’t have to abide by the limits of Earthly physics, unlike her.

The ghost stared at her, intense, waiting for a response. She scowled. “I’m not giving you any information you can use against me,” she said.

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, don’t give the dangerous ghost an edge against you– Look, Dr. Fenton, you’re the one who asked to meet with me, not the other way around. If you’re not going to cooperate, I’ll just leave.” He was staring at her again. “But that’s not going to happen, is it? Because I have information you want.”

Unfortunately, the ghost was right, even if she didn’t like it. She liked even less that he had the awareness to call her out. The ghost was trying to manipulate her, and she couldn’t afford to let him get to her.

“Fine,” she said, curtly. “What do you know about the explosion?”

“I know it was caused by an ectoplasmic bomb and that you found a second one before it exploded at Casper High,” he said. “I know that the bomb produced highly unstable levels of ectoplasmic radiation that are largely harmless to humans but dangerous to ghosts. I know that there’s a lot of highly technical knowledge involved in the explosion that you certainly understand more about than I do, and I suspect that you know that too, so you’re clearly not here about that. My turn.” Maddie wasn’t sure if he’d blinked the entire time he’d been staring at her. “Why are you here?”

Once more, she was taken aback by his blunt acumen for figuring out her motivations. What would he do if she asked the question she really wanted to ask?

“I’m here,” Maddie said, speaking carefully, “because I want to know if you have any ideas about who could have made this bomb.”

“Well, logically, it would have to be someone who actually understands the technology behind it, so that narrows the pool down to a bunch of deranged scientists, several ghost hunting groups, twice as many anti-ghost hunting groups– oh, and the entire GIW.” The ghost paused, and Maddie hid her dismay. That many? She hadn’t even considered the various anti-ghost hunting groups. “Who do you think could have made the bomb?”

“I don’t know,” Maddie snapped. “Do you think I’d be here if I did?”

The ghost shrugged. “No need to be rude, Dr. Fenton, but fair point. To be honest, I don’t really know either. The person or persons who planted the bombs did it without anyone noticing, though now that we’re onto them, it will be harder for them to hide anything.”

He seemed to be waiting for her to respond, so she asked: “Could a ghost have made the bombs?”

Again, the ghost shrugged. “Sure, I guess. It’s probably technically possible. I can think of a few people who probably could, actually. But I don’t know of anyone who would. It doesn’t fit the MO of any of Amity Park’s usual suspects. There’s also the problem of the ectophobic coating, since I’m pretty sure no ghost would touch that with a ten-foot pole. Who–”

“Wait,” Maddie said. “How do you know about the ectophobic coating?” The GIW had been extremely clear that Maddie was not to share that information with anyone outside her immediate family.

The ghost raised an eyebrow at her interruption. “I have my sources, Dr. Fenton, and most of them want to remain anonymous.”

That likely meant he was spying on the GIW, the task force, or the police department, though how he could pull that off undetected was beyond her. She couldn’t rule out, though, that someone involved in the investigation might be sympathetic to the ghost boy and share information with him. It was not a pleasant thought, and nor was the fact that she hadn’t held her tongue. She cursed herself, silently.

“And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t interrupt me, Dr. Fenton,” the ghost continued. “It’s bad for morale. Anyway, as I was about to ask: who do you think the bombs were targeting?”

It was a question Maddie had thought about, but one for which she had no good answer. Yet, the ghost did, it seemed. “You think the bombs were targeting someone?”

He nodded. “I do,” he said, then hesitated. “I think they were targeting me.”

Maddie stared at the ghost, who – for once – didn’t stare back.

While she initially wanted to dismiss the idea as stemming from the ghost’s innate self-centered sense of reality, it…did make sense. She had to admit it. The explosions were not harmless to humans – her family’s injuries were proof of that – but the abnormal ectoradiation they expelled could prove to be very disastrous to ghosts, if her theories were right. Phantom was known to lurk around the Nasty Burger and the high school – anywhere that teenagers tended to congregate, really. And he certainly had enough enemies for it to be a possibility.

Wait.

“You don’t think my husband and I are responsible, do you?” she asked, defensive. “Because we had no role in the explosions, I’ll have you know.”

The ghost let out a nervous laugh. “What? No, I know for a fact that you and the other Dr. Fenton have nothing to do with this. I think you’re reckless and ignorant at times, but you’re not insane.”

She wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or not. She scowled regardless.

“But like I said, I don’t know who’s behind the bombs, or if they even are targeting someone. Anyway” – he stood up straight and cleared his throat – “I think it’s my turn to ask a question. Why did you ask to chat with me instead of your usual ‘capture first, talk later’ strategy?”

The sudden change in topic left Maddie with dozens of unanswered questions, but she had the feeling the ghost wouldn’t be forthcoming with any more information – that is, if he actually knew anything else, which she doubted he did. Following years of training – of whittling down questions into easily manageable segments – Maddie mentally shut off the stream of questions and focused on this new one.

Strangely, the ghost had spoken without accusation in his voice, as if instead genuinely curious about her decision. “Would you have cooperated if we did that?”

The ghost shrugged. “Maybe. I do have a vested interest in stopping the bomber from hurting people again, in case it’s not obvious, and I’d rather work with you than the GIW or their task force. At the very least, thanks for not trying to stick me in a Thermos,” he said. “Those things suck. Your turn.”

Phantom spoke so casually that it was almost like she was talking to one of her kids. He acted so incredibly human, and Maddie had to remind herself not to let her guard down. Again.

And what was that line about having a “vested interest” in people not getting hurt – when it was well-known that he regularly attacked the people of Amity Park? Did he see the bomber as a threat to his personal sandbox of terror? And the attempt at appealing to her compassion by thanking her?

Something in her cracked.

“Why are you pretending to care about us, Phantom?” she snapped. “Are you hoping I’ll help you save your own skin so you can go back to terrifying Amity Park?”

Phantom stiffened, gripping the bars so tightly she swore she heard them creak, and Maddie suddenly was aware of how hostile the playground was – how the too-cool air caused gooseflesh to ripple across her arms, how the ghost’s aura seemed to be winning its battle for dominance against the tiny yellow bubble of her lantern.

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, exhaled. “I know this might come as a surprise to you, Dr. Fenton,” Phantom said, eyes still shut. “But I do actually care about the people of Amity Park.”

“Then why do you keep attacking us?” Maddie yelled, leaping to her feet, the hot knot of anger at the ghost – at the explosions – at her children’s lies – boiling over.

“Because I’m not!” The ghost’s eyes flared open, and the bright green of their glow drowned out what was left of the lantern’s light.

The ghost meter went off.

“You tricked me!” Maddie didn’t remember reaching for the ectoblaster, but found it pointing at the ghost, held in her steady hands.

Phantom put his hands up. “Whoa there, Dr. Fenton–”

But the ghost was interrupted by a loud crack! that drowned out the ghost meter’s alarm. Maddie barely had time to make out the arcs of neon green energy that radiated out from the ghost’s body and across the playground before she dove to the side.

She was out of practice, though, and her roll brushed her against one of the metal support poles for the slide – the conductive pole that carried the ghost’s ectoenergy across the play structure and right into her unshielded left shoulder.

Bright pain flared in her arm, and she found herself sprawled across the mulch on her injured side.

And then Phantom was there.

“Dr. Fenton!” He reached for her. “Are you okay?”

Somehow, she’d kept hold of her blaster, and – at the sight of the ghost looming over her – Maddie scrambled back, out of his reach.

“Stay away from me!” she cried, blaster aimed at the ghost’s chest.

Phantom reached for her again. “I just want to make sure–”

Maddie fired the blaster.

Held in a single, shaking arm, the shot went wild, disappearing into the night’s sky.

The ghost stood there, arm outstretched a few feet from her. He seemed frozen, eyes wide and no longer glowing, while Maddie heaved frantic breaths and struggled to focus on his face.

They locked eyes for one second, two, and an expression unreadable to Maddie’s pain-addled mind flickered across Phantom’s face.

He vanished.

***

Ectoenergy contamination across left clavicle and shoulder. Occurred during interaction with unstable ectoplasmic entity.

Somehow, she made it to the car.

Causes immediate localized frostbite at site of contamination. Prolonged exposure increases spread.

Somehow, she drove home without crashing.

Complications include hypothermia and tissue necrosis.

Somehow, she unlocked the front door.

Prognosis depends on extent of contamination and time between exposure and treatment.

Often fatal if left untreated.

Somehow, she couldn’t unlock the lab door.

The biometric scanner didn’t recognize her. Or she couldn’t get her thumb in the right place. Or it wasn’t turned on. Or something.

Maybe the door was stuck. It did that sometimes. She fumbled for the handle, but her left hand wasn’t cooperating.

Why were they keeping the house so cold? Maddie pulled her jacket tight around her left arm and sank to the floor, shivering. She’d have to check the thermostat when she woke up.

Her heart pounded in her ears – no, the noise came from upstairs. She blinked as the hallway light flicked on.

“Halt, foe! Who goes th– Maddie?”

Her husband stood at the top of the stairs, braced on one crutch and holding an ectoblaster in the other. Jack must be so cold, wearing only those silly boxers with his face printed on them.

He stared at her – huddled as she was against the lab door – then disappeared into the hallway. She winced at his shout: “Jazz! Danny! Wake up! Something’s wrong with your mother!” Could he quiet down, just a bit?

“Mom’s what?!” came Danny’s voice.

Her son appeared at the top of the stairs and froze. He was wearing slightly more sensible clothes with jeans and another NASA shirt, though why he was in his day clothes after bedtime was a mystery.

“Danny, move,” Jazz said, shoving her way past him. It broke Danny out of his pause and the two of them fled down the stairs. Hopefully, her daughter was wearing much more sensible clothing for this crazy weather.

Jazz crouched in front of Maddie and scanned her for injuries; Danny stood behind her. “Danny, help me get Mom to the couch, then get the decontamination kit from the lab.”

“Jazz, I–”

“Later, Danny. Help me move Mom.” Jazz stood up and walked behind Maddie.

“But–”

“Later, Danny.”

“Fine, just– I’ll move her.”

Maddie flinched when Danny picked her up as though she weighed nothing and carried her to the couch. He left, replaced by Jazz, who knelt, checked Maddie’s pulse and forehead, then started to peel off the clothes from her shoulder. Her eyes went wide.

Maddie shivered. This wasn’t normal cold, was it?

“Jazz, what is it?” Jack’s voice came from across the room as he made his way down the stairs.

“Ectoenergy burn, I think. I sent Danny for the kit.”

“What?! How did this happen?”

“I don’t know, Dad. Go start heating water and then help Danny with the kit.” As Jack left for the kitchen, Jazz looked Maddie in the eye and lowered her voice. “Mom, I’m going to take your jacket off, okay? I need to look at the wound.”

Wound. Right. She was hurt. What happened? It was a ghost, wasn’t it? She nodded at Jazz, then closed her eyes. She wanted to sleep.

“Mom, I need you to stay awake. Can you do that for me? Danny, get the blanket on Mom, then hand me the decontamination supplies.”

Someone wrapped Maddie in a coarse, heavy blanket, leaving her head, collarbone, and left shoulder exposed. It rapidly became uncomfortably warm, but the change in temperature brought a little clarity back to Maddie’s mind. She pried open her eyes.

Jazz was pulling on a pair of gloves while Danny dug around the decontamination kit. She noticed Maddie staring at her and smiled, faintly. “We’re going to get you feeling better, Mom. Just hang in there.”

Maddie nodded, still shivering, but less now. Ectoenergy contamination – ecton-based atoms in their ionized form – posed the most risk at the site of contact. As long as it was treated properly, by methods of the Fentons’ own design, she would probably be okay.

Danny handed Jazz a bottle of faintly glowing liquid and stood there with a roll of paper towels. Her daughter took the bottle and popped the lid off.

“Jazz, you should let me do that,” Jack said as he returned from the kitchen. “That’s dangerous stuff you’re handling.”

“I know what I’m doing, Dad, and we need to get it done quickly,” Jazz said, peeling off what was left of Maddie’s shirt. “Turn the lamp on, please.”

Jack frowned, but reached over and flicked the light.

“Mom, this is going to hurt, so brace yourself.” She started applying the viscous liquid to her mother’s injury.

Maddie sucked in a breath at the sudden heat, but barely paid attention to the pain. She was too busy staring at her son.

In the lamplight, with the full extent of the ectoenergy burn revealed, Danny had turned a deathly pale. He stood, still as a statue, gripping the paper towels like his life depended on it, wearing a tortured look of utter horror on his face.

Maddie recognized it.

It was the same expression she now realized had danced across Phantom’s face in the split second before he disappeared.

The look of someone having their world shattered before them.

God, how had she never realized just how young Phantom was?

The ghost was maybe her son’s age, based on how old they guessed he was when he died and how long they estimated he’d been a ghost. Phantom was still just a teenager.

She’d shot at a child. A ghost, yes, but still – a child.

Maddie closed her eyes against the tears welling up. One rolled down her face.

Jazz wiped off the excess fluid from Maddie’s wound, then laid a layer of gauze on it. She sat back and sighed. “That should take care of it. Dad, can you fill the hot water bottle? Danny, help me clean up.”

It wasn’t the first time she’d shot at Phantom, and she’d used much worse weapons, too, but there was something different about this time. Maybe it was because she was so close to him when it happened, or maybe he’d let his cocky façade slip…or maybe it was because he’d tried to help her, and she’d tried to shoot him.

There was a soft thud and the sound of footsteps. Maddie cracked open an eye just in time to see Danny race up the stairs; the paper towels he’d dropped rolled across the floor.

Jack turned to watch Danny. For a second, Maddie thought he might call after their son, but he didn’t, instead leaving for the kitchen. Jazz just sighed and started cleaning up.

Oh, Danny, Maddie thought, and not with a small amount of guilt that she’d thought of the ghost before her own son. The second time in two weeks he’d seen his mother injured. She couldn’t blame him for running out of the room.

Stupid. Stupid to meet with Phantom, stupid to bring the blaster, stupid to hunt ghosts in the first place. She hadn’t even managed to ask him the question she had set out to answer. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

She hiccupped with a sob.

Jazz glanced at her, but didn’t say anything as her mother softly cried.

Chapter Text

When Maddie woke up, she was sweltering under the covers. She groaned, then awkwardly extracted herself from the blanket and sat up, finding herself in a thick winter coat. She vaguely remembered being shepherded upstairs by Jazz and dressed in warm clothes.

Even still, her left shoulder was chilled: that dull ache in her bones she sometimes got when it was too cold as she slept, even though the AC had clearly been turned off.

Maddie froze, her coat pulled halfway off. Why did the cold in her shoulder feel so familiar?

“Afternoon, Mom.”

Maddie shook herself out of the pause and turned to see Jazz sitting in her desk chair, legs propped up on her parents’ bed. She wore a tank top and shorts and her hair pulled back in a braid. A textbook sat open on her lap.

“Jazz.” Her voice came out in a dry croak. She swallowed. “What time is it?”

“About 1:30,” came the reply. Maddie frowned; she’d slept for over twelve hours. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I fell asleep in a sauna,” she said. Maddie pulled her coat the rest of the way off and tried moving her shoulder. Besides the unusual chill, the skin felt tight and tender; ironically, like a sunburn. “Thank you for taking care of me last night. You did a good job.”

Jazz nodded. “You trained me well.”

Surely, her daughter didn’t intend to sound so condemnatory.

The room lapsed into an awkward silence, with Maddie sitting on the bed opposite her daughter. Jazz seemed to be waiting for Maddie to say something.

“Are you going to tell me what happened last night?” Jazz finally asked.

Maddie winced as the memory of Phantom’s horrified face – then Danny’s – flittered through her head. She didn’t speak.

After a moment, Jazz sighed. She closed her textbook and stood. “You should probably check yourself over and eat something, Mom. There’re some sandwiches in the fridge. Dad’s working in the lab and Danny’s gone to Tucker’s. I’ll be downstairs if you want to chat.”

And with that, Maddie was left alone.

***

It took Maddie nearly half an hour to check her wound and get dressed. The skin across her collarbone and shoulder was nearly bleached of color – even vaguely green in the right light. It had been over a decade since she had suffered ectoenergy contamination, but she knew from previous experience that the scar would always be slightly paler than the healthy skin around it.

She checked her temperature and blood pressure, just to make sure they were in the normal range. It was slightly worrying that Jazz had left her alone to do this; her daughter normally liked to make sure everything was done according to her standards.

Did Jazz know what she did? How she’d betrayed Phantom’s trust?

And how was she going to explain this to Jack?

Maddie fingered the cloth of one of her jumpsuits. It would be a while still before she could wear them again, what with her broken ribs and now her injured shoulder. She shrugged on a jacket, even though the AC hadn’t cooled the bedroom down yet, and headed downstairs.

“Maddie! How are you feeling? Jazz told me you were awake.” Jack sat at the kitchen table, having emerged from the lab for his own meal.

She smiled at her husband’s exuberance, though she wished he would quiet down just a bit. “Morning, honey. I’m okay. Jazz knew what she was doing.”

There was a sandwich on the table for her; based on its sloppy construction, it was probably made by Danny before he left for Tucker’s. Hopefully, he was okay after last night. She made a mental note to ask him when he came home later.

Maddie eased into the chair, slowly, and started reconstructing the sandwich into an edible format.

“What happened last night, Mads?” Jack said. He looked like he hadn’t slept much last night – unfortunately an increasingly common occurrence in the Fenton household. “I woke up to the lab alarm and found you there, on the floor. Jazz said it was ectoenergy contamination.”

Maddie nodded, but focused on her sandwich as she spoke. “I went for a drive. To– to clear my head. I stopped at the park and….”

“A ghost attacked you.” It wasn’t a question. “Did you see who it was?”

In the corner of her eye, Maddie could see Jazz staring at her with an unreadable expression on her face.

She finally looked at her husband. “No,” she lied. “They moved too fast for me to get a good look.”

Jazz took a sip of water with the utmost nonchalance.

She knows, Maddie thought. She knows I’m lying.

Thankfully, Jack seemed to buy it. Her husband let out a long breath. “A random ghost attack. Not a good sign,” he said, then groaned. “We should probably let the GIW know. They’ll be mad if we don’t.”

“I…I’m not sure it was an attack, Jack,” Maddie said, after a moment’s hesitation. “We’ve theorized that the explosion can affect the stability of ghostly abilities. It didn’t seem like a usual attack, at least.” Hopefully, Jack wouldn’t point out the obvious flaw of ghosts’ inherent unpredictability.

She could see the skepticism in his face; despite what people may claim, her husband wasn’t stupid. But he didn’t question her – Jack’s trust in her was too strong.

Why – oh why – then, was she lying to him?

And why did she doubt her injuries from Phantom were intentional?

“Either way, it’s clearly dangerous out there. You need to be more careful.” Jack shook his head. “I hate to do this, Mads, but I think I need to ground you.”

“Ground me?”

Jack nodded, completely serious despite the absurdity of his statement. “You need to stay home. No going out unsupervised for at least the next week.” He sighed, and when he spoke again, Maddie could hear the concern in his voice, clear as day. “I’m worried about you, Maddie. You’ve been through a lot of stress lately, and with the concussion, I’m afraid that you’re not thinking clearly.”

As much as Maddie wanted to argue – she was an adult, for Pete’s sake, not a teenager – she had to admit Jack had a point, and she suspected Jazz would support her father in this. She sighed. “You’re probably right, Jack. I shouldn’t have gone out last night,” she said. “Alright, I agree to be ‘grounded.’ I won’t leave the house without you, Jazz, or Danny.”

Based on the look on Jack’s face, he had expected her to argue, but instead said: “Er, good. I’m glad that’s settled.”

The two of them lapsed into idle small talk about Jack’s class and local town news. There was nothing new from the GIW task force about the bomb found at Casper, unfortunately. Not that Maddie really wanted to think about that right now.

Eventually, Jack stood up, bid his wife and daughter a goodbye, and hobbled back to the lab.

Maddie stared at the limp remains of her sandwich. She sighed; eating the whole thing would help her get some energy back, but she just wasn’t hungry.

“You shouldn’t lie to Dad, Mom.” Jazz had remained quiet throughout her parents’ lunch, but now she was watching her mother closely. “I know how quickly secrets get out of hand.”

It took Maddie a second to figure out what lie she was talking about. “You…you know what happened?”

Jazz hesitated – just long enough that Maddie knew she was lying when she said: “No, but it’s not hard to put two and two together.”

How much did Jazz actually know? She clearly knew last night involved Phantom. But more importantly: how much did Maddie want to tell her?

“I’ll tell him, Jazz. I will,” she promised. “I just…need to think things through first.”

When she didn’t continue speaking, Jazz sighed, then pulled out a sheet of college-ruled notebook paper. She slid it across the table. On it, in Jazz’s neat handwriting, was an ordered list of names and phone numbers.

“After last night, I took the liberty of finding possible therapists for you,” Jazz explained. “Surprisingly, no one in driving distance specializes in ghost attacks, but all of the therapists I listed have experience treating PTSD in combat veterans and police officers, which is close enough to your situation.”

“Thank you, Jazz,” Maddie said. “I promise I’ll schedule an appointment with one of them soon.”

Jazz just stared at her. “You can’t keep whatever internal conflict you’re struggling with bottled up forever, Mom. You’ll have to share it with someone eventually.”

Maddie nodded, but when she still didn’t continue speaking, Jazz rolled her eyes. “That was an invitation to talk to me, Mom. Again.”

She stared at the list of names. Combat veterans and police officers. People who were in constant life-or-death situations. People who had – maybe – taken an innocent life.

She’d shot at a child.

“I can’t,” Maddie whispered.

“You mean you won’t,” Jazz said. “Because you don’t want to.” She closed her textbook with a thunk, then stood up. “Whatever. I’m tired of being the only mature adult in this house, anyway.” She walked towards the living room.

“Jazz,” Maddie said, turning around too quickly for her injuries. Her daughter paused, right before leaving Maddie’s eyesight, and looked back. “Are you mad at me?”

“Yes,” Jazz said, without hesitation, face unreadable. “But mostly I’m just disappointed.” She left.

Maddie closed her eyes against the tears welling up in her eyes, but it only made the memory of Phantom’s terrified face stronger in her mind’s eye.

How could she go back to ghost hunting if all she saw was that expression any time she thought about him? Did she even want to go back to ghost hunting? Life was so much simpler before the explosion, before the doubts crept in, before she’d–

It was too much to think about.

So she didn’t.

***

The most mind-numbing task Maddie could think of was to sort through two weeks of accumulated mail.

Maddie sat down on the couch with a trash can in front of her. Most of the mail, she knew, would go directly into the garbage: flyers, newsletters, promotions, hate mail. She only bothered reading the latter if it seemed like there might be helpful information. There rarely was.

Bills, of course, especially hospital bills from after the explosion. She set those aside. Between those, Jazz and Danny’s college funds, and the costs of running Fenton Works, they may need to find an accountant one of these days.

She set ectoscience and ghost hunting related mail in another pile. Those, too, were increasing in volume after the explosion. She’d open those with Jack later. Get-well-soon cards went into a third stack.

And then there were the advertisements from colleges. Quite a few of them, in fact, considering Jazz had already graduated high school – until she realized they weren’t for Jazz, but for Danny.

Maddie flipped through the brochures. A bunch of big universities – UMich, OSU, Purdue, among others – a bunch of private liberal arts schools that she didn’t recognize, and even the Fentons’ alma mater, UW-Madison.

These were good schools. Not the top-tier universities that had courted Jazz, but good ones nonetheless. Better ones than she would have expected to go after Danny, given his grades.

Were his PSAT scores that high? Try as she might, Maddie couldn’t remember what they were. She actually wasn’t sure Danny told her. She thought that maybe he was ashamed of how low they were, but the colleges sending him pamphlets threw that into question.

She frowned. When was the last time Danny even mentioned college? A few years ago, he had his goals set on an astrophysics degree, but that interest seemed to have died along with his grades.

For what seemed like the millionth time in the last two weeks, she wondered what – exactly – had taken her bright, curious boy from her.

Setting the bundle of pamphlets aside, Maddie resolved to ask Danny about college in the next few days. He’d have to think about it soon, anyway, since he was starting his junior year in the fall.

As Maddie grabbed another stack of mail to sort through, her phone rang and she jumped, knocking the college pamphlets off the couch. She grabbed for them with her left hand, not wanting to drop the ones she already held.

A shock of cold spiked from her injured shoulder and radiated down the side of her body, as though someone had dropped a water balloon full of liquid nitrogen on her skin. Maddie sucked in a breath and closed her eyes against the pain, half bent over the couch.

Something flashed in her mind’s eye: a figure, standing in front of her, right hand held out as if they’d jerked it back from a fire.

It was like in her nightmares, except more real. More than just an – she could feel herself standing there amidst the salon’s wreckage, surrounded by ghostly flames, could feel the cold piercing her side where the figure had made contact with her skin, and Maddie knew, instinctively, that this wasn’t just something conjured from her subconscious.

It was a memory, and there was only one possible explanation for what it was of.

And only one explanation for who the figure was.

Except…that still didn’t make sense. Once more, she was standing in this memory, and that shouldn’t be possible. Based on her injuries, she should have been unconscious and unable to stand.

…lucky to be alive…

The phone rang again.

Shoving aside the pain and the questions, Maddie checked the caller ID and answered the call. “Hi, Penny. I’m so sorry I didn’t return your call. I’ve had a lot going on lately.”

“Never mind that,” came the reply. “Have you checked the Ectoscience listserv today?”

There was something in Penny’s voice that gave Maddie pause – or, rather, it was the lack of her usual perk that caused Maddie to worry. “No, I haven’t. Why? Is there news about the explosion?”

A pause. “Not exactly. I think it’s best you see for yourself. Call me later if you need to talk.” Penny hung up.

Maddie frowned as she flipped the phone shut. Whatever was happening on the listserv must have Penny disturbed; it usually took Maddie several minutes to extricate herself from a phone call with her.

Ignoring the cold ache as best she could, Maddie made her way to the lab. “Jack,” she called as she started to descend the stairs. “I just got the strangest call from Penny. Have you checked our email today?”

From the look on Jack’s face as he turned away from the monitor, she knew the answer.

“I was going to tell you soon,” he said, hoarsely. “I just got sucked into the discussion.”

“Jack, you’re worrying me.” Maddie came to stand next to him. “What’s going on?”

Jack adjusted the monitor so they could both see the screen. “It’s a letter,” he said, “condemning us and other ghost hunters.”

“In light of recent events in Amity Park, we the undersigned feel we can no longer stay silent about the violent methods ectoscientists take in approaching their subjects. Though ectoscience holds that ghosts and other ectoentities do not experience a subjective consciousness, we question the evidence behind this understanding and conclude that ectoscience and “ghost hunting” violate ethical and moral standards of scientific investigations. We demand that ectoscience as a discipline examine its treatment of ectoentities and change its approach to align with the ethics of research all other scientific fields are held to. We also demand that organizations that support ectoscientific research, such as universities, corporations, and governments, produce more ethical regulations on the treatment of ectoentities. We wish to prevent further harm from befalling ectoentities at the hands of those studying them.”

Below the short letter was a list of individuals and groups the signatories specifically directed their criticism towards. Maddie saw her name and Jack’s, and recognized several others, including Erik Sedgewick, the GIW, and multiple amateur ghost hunting groups. Notably, Penny, Aggie, and Dr. Reitman were not included.

The letter was signed by almost a thousand scientists from a variety of disciplines, as well as a surprising number of philosophers.

“The letter was sent about twenty minutes ago,” Jack said. “There’ve been over a hundred emails on the listserv since.” He turned to look at her. Even sitting, Jack was almost as tall as she was standing. “Mads, what are we going to do? I mean, they’re wrong – we have the physics to prove that. But we can’t ignore this, either.”

Phantom’s expression flashed in her memory.

Maddie closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then another, and one more after that. She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Can you…I don’t know…send out an email saying we’ll release a statement later?”

Jack nodded. “I can do that, but we’ll have to say something else soon. The listserv wants to know what we’re going to do, since we are two of the leading ectoscientists.”

“I know, I know, Jack. This is just– this is too much for me to deal with right now.” Her shoulder ached. She should probably put the hot water bottle back on.

“Alright, Mads,” Jack said with a sigh. “I understand. I’ll come up with something to say. You go and rest up.”

Although she didn’t really want to leave her husband alone to deal with this – they were a team, after all – Maddie was still grateful that Jack was willing to let her step back for a bit. She hoped he was holding up under all the stress of the explosion and her new injuries and everything else. Just one more thing for her to worry about.

“Thank you, honey,” she said. “I promise we’ll talk later.”

As she left the lab, Maddie very deliberately did not look at the portal.

The pile of college pamphlets still littered the ground, as did the handful of mail she had been holding when the pain caused her to double over.

She just stared at them.

We wish to prevent further harm from befalling ectoentities at the hands of those studying them.

She’d shot at the ghost of a child, at nearly point blank, with the intention of causing harm in order to protect herself.

But had she needed to? What – exactly – had the ghost done to threaten her?

Yes, Phantom had hurt her, but as Maddie replayed the night in her memory, she could find no indication that Phantom had meant to hurt her. She had been the one to lose her temper and freak out, drawing her weapon on him. And when she pulled the blaster out, Phantom had put his hands up in a “don’t shoot!” gesture.

The wave of ectoenergy hadn’t been an attack. It was Phantom losing control of his ghost powers, just like – Maddie now realized – she’d suggested to Jack earlier. It was a well-established fact that ghosts’ emotional states impacted the volatility of their powers. That, plus the threat she posed, plus the havoc wreaked by the explosion…no wonder Phantom’s powers manifested on their own.

Before that, too, with all that she’d thought he was posturing his ghost status – when he was swinging his leg through the bars from above her: it was a defensive position, she realized. The height of the platform, the bars, and the intangibility would have given him time to escape quicker than if they’d been on a level playing field.

The whole time…Phantom had been afraid of her. He didn’t trust that she would come without ectoweaponry, as requested – rightfully so.

She’d shot at a child, a child who was terrified of her, a child who had every right to flee as soon as she’d pulled a blaster on him.

And yet….

And yet, Phantom had come to see if she was alright.

The ache in her body finally became too much, and Maddie sat down on the couch, not caring that the motion spilled another pile of mail onto the floor.

Phantom had nothing to gain by coming to her aid. In fact, he’d put himself at personal risk by checking on her, as evidenced by the missed shot. And – if Maddie was remembering right – Phantom had done the exact same thing at the explosion.

Why hadn’t she just been upfront with Phantom? Why hadn’t she just asked if he’d been there? She’d lost her one chance to close some of the gaps in her memory, all because she’d been too stubborn to admit that Jazz and Danny might be right about–

Wait. Danny.

Danny had been the one who found her. By all accounts, he had almost immediately raced into the salon after the explosion.

By all accounts…except his.

Maddie sat up, ramrod straight, ignoring the pain that came with it. She’d never actually asked her son what he’d seen in the aftermath of the explosion. Why would she? She knew what happened.

But if Phantom was at the explosion, Danny would be the only other person who knew.

Maddie came to a decision.

***

Danny was halfway up the stairs before Maddie woke up enough from where she’d dozed off to realize he was home.

“Danny.” Her voice came out barely louder than a whisper.

Her son froze, mid-step, and turned around, slowly, as though to face some horror creeping up the stairs behind him. “Hi, Mom.” He looked like he was ready to flee. “Um. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“That’s okay,” she said. “Can we talk for a bit?”

Danny paled. “Uh, I have homework I need to do, so….”

“Please, Danny.”

Danny visibly suppressed a cringe, but he slowly walked down the stairs into the living room and sat on the chair furthest from his mother.

In some part of her mind, Maddie was concerned by how panicked Danny seemed, but the rest of her just…was too exhausted to feel much at all.

Danny didn’t quite look in her direction. “So…uh…what do you want to talk about?”

“I wanted to check in on you,” Maddie said. “See how you’re doing after the last two weeks. I’m worried about you. Are you sleeping okay?”

“Me?” Danny was bouncing his leg up and down. “I’m fine.

“Please don’t lie to me, Danny.”

The leg froze. Maddie almost thought her son was about to run out of the room like he had the night before. Maybe it was a bad idea to talk to him in the living room. Too late now.

“Okay,” Danny said, slowly. “Okay. I’ll admit, it’s been…really stressful.” He was fighting hard to keep his tone level, but even so, his voice cracked.

“It’s okay, Danny,” she said. “You don’t have to hide your feelings from me.”

He winced. “I just don’t want to stress you out more, Mom.”

What is he not telling me?

This wasn’t working.

“You mean about what happened when you found me after the explosion.”

Something changed in Danny’s demeanor – something that Maddie couldn’t identify. He started bouncing his leg again. “Oh. That.”

When he didn’t keep talking, some of Maddie’s patience broke. “What happened, Danny?” He kept silent. “I– I keep having these memories that don’t make any sense. It’s cold and I’m standing when I shouldn’t be, and– and there’s someone there but it’s not you, and–”

He looked away.

“–and I think it was Phantom, or– or some other ghost, but that doesn’t make any sense either, and it’s driving me insane because I don’t understand and you’re the only one who was there–”

Danny shook his head, not wanting to answer.

“–and please just talk to me, Danny–”

“The ghost wasn’t Phantom, Mom.” Danny finally turned to look at her, and Maddie saw the tears welling in his eyes. “It was you.”

A chill ran through Maddie’s body, and it wasn’t from her injury. When she spoke, her voice was a whisper. “What?”

“It was you,” Danny repeated. “When I climbed into the salon, you were standing there, and I thought– I thought that you were okay, and I went to help you, but– but then…but then….” The tears were falling down his face now, but he made eye contact with her anyway. “You were a ghost, Mom.”

It was as if Danny’s words had broken a dam in her head, and memories of that time – that time between – flooded her conscious thoughts. Less sounds and images than impressions and senses that threatened to overtake her now.

She felt the cold creep back into her bones, catching her mid-breath, and her vision started to narrow against the too-warm light of the afternoon sun.

Danny kept talking – “and then– and then I saw you there on the ground and you weren’t moving and there was just– so much blood” – but she barely heard him over the ringing in her ears that she swore was the portal calling to her from the lab.

Maddie stood up and bolted for the stairs, ignoring Danny’s call after her.

Up the stairs, through the bedroom door, and into the closet lay her first line of defense against ghosts, and she had become so regrettably lax in protecting herself after the explosion. Silly Maddie. No time like the present to fix that.

She yanked open the closet door to her row of jumpsuits, hanging there like a rack of rifles. They didn’t look like their normal bright teal so much as a dark, muted gray.

The sound of the portal was getting louder. She pulled one jumpsuit off its hanger and started searching for the zipper. Why was it out of place? Had Jack changed the design without her input? It didn’t help that her left arm wasn’t cooperating.

She needed more light, so Maddie sped into the main bedroom where the indirect sunlight filtered in. Where was that blasted zipper?

Another wave of ghostly chill hit her like an ice-cold bullet in the shoulder and she doubled over, collapsing to sit on the bed, clutching the jumpsuit in her fist.

She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe.

Something shifted on the bed next to her, and she lashed out, blindly. Her wild throw hit something steady, but soft.

“Mads,” it said. “Mads, it’s just me. It’s just Jack.”

Jack. Her husband. She turned towards him in the dim light, leaned against his chest, and started sobbing.

He wrapped one arm around her, careful of her wounded shoulder. “That’s right, Mads, I’m here. I’ve got you.”

The two of them sat there on the bed while Maddie cried. Held as she was in Jack’s warm embrace, Maddie’s panic slowly subsided. She wasn’t hearing the portal. No ghosts were after her. Her breathing slowed, the ringing in her ears faded. Eventually, so did her tears.

Hiccupping, Maddie pulled away from Jack’s arms. Her tears left streaks on his jumpsuit.

“You feeling better, Mads?” he asked.

She hesitated, but nodded. “How did you know…?”

“Danny came rushing into the lab, said you were freaking out,” Jack said. He reached past her and grabbed the tissue box from the night stand. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Maddie dabbed at her eyes with the tissue, then blew her nose loudly. She sniffled.

“Danny said…” she began, voice thick with tears still threatening to fall. “Danny said that he saw my…my ghost.” The last word came out a whisper.

“What?!”

Maddie turned to face her husband. “At– at the explosion. When he found me, I was– I was standing there, and I felt cold and I thought– I thought that Phantom was there, but it wasn’t him, it was my ghost, Jack–” She was close to tears again.

“Whoa, whoa, Mads, slow down,” Jack said. “Your ghost? Are you sure that’s what Danny said?”

She nodded. “And I– I remember…looking down and seeing myself, lying there, on the ground….” So much blood….

“But Mads, you’re alive.” Jack had gone pale. “You’re not a ghost. How could Danny seeing your ghost be possible?”

“I don’t know, Jack. I just….” Maddie squeezed her eyes against the tears blurring her husband’s face. The memory of standing there, Danny in front of her, was the strongest in her mind, but there was that other one – the one where she was lying on the ground, Danny kneeling over her, and that strange tugging feeling that suddenly vanished in a flash of light. “I remember it, exactly like Danny said it was.

“But Jack,” Maddie continued, opening her eyes even though it meant the tears started again. “What if…what if I hadn’t lived? What if it was just my…my….” She couldn’t say the word. “What if it happened again? What if one of us did die and became a ghost? How have we never thought about that?” She gasped. “Jack, what if one of our kids became a ghost? We can’t…we can’t…ghost hunting….”

There it was.

The truth she didn’t want to admit.

As she started sobbing once more, Jack took her hand in his and placed her palm against his neck, his hand resting on hers. Maddie looked at him, confused through her tears. His concern was written on his face, but she could tell he was keeping it together for her.

“Can you feel that, Maddie? Can you feel my pulse?” Jack asked, voice softer than usual.

Under the warmth of Jack’s palm, Maddie could feel the strong, steady beat of his heart. She sniffed, then nodded.

“That’s because I’m alive. And so are you, and so are Jazz and Danny. We’re all alive, and that’s what matters right now.”

He was right. All four of them were alive, even if not quite hale at the moment. Her husband and her kids were safe, and so was she. But….

“We can’t ignore this, Jack,” she said, withdrawing her hand. “I don’t know if I can keep…keep hunting ghosts.”

Maddie knew her husband well enough to see the conflict of her questions written on Jack’s face, but he kept them quiet.

“I don’t think we should ignore what you’ve said, either, because it’s…it’s…I don’t even know, Mads” Jack said. He ran his hand down his face. “But do you really think now is the time to have that conversation?”

Maddie shook her head. Again, he was right.

“Do you know what I think we should do now, though?” At her look of confusion, Jack continued: “I think we should ask Jazz to come help you redress your wounds and then start a nice, hot bath for you. And I’ll go check up on Danny, to make sure he’s okay. Does that sound like a good plan?”

“That sounds great, Jack,” she said. “That sounds really great.”

Jack nodded once. “I thought as much.” He started to stand up, but paused. “Are you okay for me to get Jazz, or do you need a moment?”

As much as the tears still threatened to fall, Maddie didn’t want to stay on the precipice of misery that threatened to pull her back under. “No, I think…I think I’m okay now.” It was mostly true, at least. Mostly she just felt drained. “Thank you, honey, for helping me get through this, right now.”

Jack reached out and embraced her with both arms this time – maybe a little too tight, considering her shoulder, but for once Maddie could ignore it. “Of course, Maddie. We Fentons look out for one another.”

Maddie smiled, and pushed back the objections in the back of her mind. She’d tell Jack about Phantom. Eventually.

But for now, she might, finally, relax.

***

Maddie woke up, suddenly, from a dreamless sleep.

Quietly, so as not to wake Jack, she rose from the bed, slipped her feet into her slippers, and – scribbling a quick note on her whereabouts – left the room.

She opted for the entrance in the hallway that led to the Ops Center, not the elevator, and climbed up, feet slippers barely making a sound on the metal floor.

Around various equipment she wove, ignoring the danger the weapons posed. She didn’t turn on the lights.

Up through the second floor, and Maddie made it to the hatch to the roof, where the small deck they used for equipment maintenance sat.

The air was a smidge warmer than the night before, with a gentle breeze that blew her hair aside. Below her, the streets were silent – no cars, no people, no ghosts. She was alone. Maddie leaned against the struts for the center tower and looked up at the sky.

It was barely past 3:00am. Folklorists called it the “witching hour,” when paranormal activity was supposedly stronger than usual, but in all their studies, the Fentons had never confirmed that.

The light pollution from the city made it difficult to see the stars, but as Maddie waited, more and more stars popped into view.

She picked out what little she could recognize in the night’s sky: Cassiopeia, Polaris, the Big Dipper close to the horizon. She used to be able to identify all the constellations in the northern hemisphere, but as Danny had drifted away from her, they’d faded from her memory.

Staring up at the sky, Maddie could imagine why her son might be so interested in astronomy. There was an appeal to the relative eternity of the stars when compared to something so ephemeral as the boundary between life and death.

The problem of consciousness was not something Maddie knew much about. It had only moved into the scientific disciplines right around the time she and Jack had received their doctorates. In an effort to distance itself from the esoteric spiritualism, parapsychology, and psychedelia, and to promote itself as legitimate, ectoscience in the 1980s was strongly materialist, holding that matter was the fundamental substance of the universe. Maddie and Jack, forged as ectoscientists in that milieu, still held to their belief in materialism.

The idea that ghosts did not have a conscious subjectivity was one of the central tenets of ectoscience, proven mathematically in the late 1970s. Consciousness was nothing more than a manifestation of material interactions among electric signals in the brain. Ghosts, lacking a structure so complex as the brain, could not maintain a conscious state, instead following patterns of behavior imprinted from their brain onto ectoplasm at the time of death.

It was why reasoning with ghosts was near impossible, and why they were so dangerous – why Maddie and Jack were so determined to hunt them down and protect the city, and protect their kids.

But like nearly everything over the last two weeks, Maddie was beginning to doubt one of the basic tenets of ectoscience.

Because Maddie had woken up to a single realization.

You were a ghost, Mom, Danny had said. Not that he saw her ghost, but he’d seen her as a ghost.

She remembered being a ghost, now, when she was alive – which meant that she had, somehow, a form of consciousness as a ghost.

And it meant that ectoscience was wrong about ghosts.

Maddie sighed, then took one last look at the stars and climbed back into the Ops Center proper.

She knew she should sleep, but at the same time, she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep, not with the doubts bouncing around her head. She could nap in the afternoon if she really needed it.

Inside, she flicked a row of lights on and booted up the Ops Center’s computer. It took longer to load than the one in the lab.

The questions and doubts made her feel like a grad student again – knowing so much, yet just realizing how little she really knew. But just as she had been then, Maddie was, above all, an ectoscientist. And so she did what all scientists did when faced with something she didn’t know.

She checked the literature.

In the dim light of the lab, Maddie opened the database she and Jack used to find ectoscience articles for their work. She typed a single word into the search bar:

Ectogenesis.

The process by which ghosts are formed.

End of Part 1

Chapter Text

Part 2: Dirty Bombs

Two weeks passed.

Two weeks of no updates on the GIW investigation.

Two weeks of bodies healing and families breaking – of Danny avoiding her and Jazz speaking in clipped, sharp sentences.

Two weeks of frustration at finding little research on ectogenesis, and of articles that contradicted each other.

Two weeks of fear and anxiety from the unknown threats looming over Amity Park.

Two weeks before the next ghost attack.

***

The screams were the first indication something was wrong, coming a few seconds before Maddie’s ghost meter alerted her to elevated levels of ectoradiation in her vicinity.

Maddie’s heart rate spiked as she checked the meter’s readings. They were within the normal range of ghost activity, which, hopefully, meant this was an ordinary attack – if any ghost attack could be considered “ordinary.”

For a moment, Maddie paused, debating whether or not to engage. But another round of screams accompanied by a flash of purple light and an unearthly laugh made the decision for her. She couldn’t fight, but maybe she could help evacuate people until the GIW arrived.

With any luck, this would be over before her frozen groceries melted.

Dumping the coffee that she had just bought in a trash can, Maddie pulled out her phone to text the mayor’s ghost alert line. As one of the few people authorized to declare a ghost attack without secondary verification, her alert was immediately forwarded to the city – a fact confirmed by the chimes of cell phones Maddie heard while jogging towards the screams.

She automatically inventoried her equipment – goggles, ectoblaster, ectophobic knife, ectophobic rope, Thermos – as she ran. It left her woefully underprepared for the average ghost fight, but at least she was wearing a jumpsuit, albeit a jumpsuit modified from one of Jack’s.

The mob of fleeing people had ended by the time Maddie made it to the site of the attack. She crept up along one wall and peeked around the corner, ectoblaster at the ready.

The ghost had chosen the entrance courtyard of the new mall in Amity Park to stage its attack. That was both good and bad: good because there were plenty of places to hide behind, bad because there were plenty of things for a ghost to throw.

Maddie was familiar enough with the courtyard that she could thankfully visualize its layout in her head. It opened to her left, walls on three sides, with the main entrance at the back and department store entrances on the others; long concrete planters about three feet tall along the side walls, with a mix of trees and flowers in them; a row of circular bollards by the road; and a fountain in the center.

Through the trees in the nearest planter, Maddie saw the ghost. Not one she recognized, so unfortunately no idea of its power set. No visible weapons, but flaming hair was never a good sign. The biggest threat was likely its superhuman strength, given its exaggerated musculature – and the fact that it was over twelve feet tall.

It also appeared to be completely nude.

She was already questioning her decision.

Maddie ducked back as the ghost turned in her direction. It didn’t see her, thankfully, and she heard the sound of tree branches breaking. Maddie risked another glance around the corner in time to see the ghost hold the branch up to its hair and then throw it, flaming, across the courtyard like a dart. The branch hit the center of an ‘X’ in the store logo and sent a shower of glass and sparks to the ground.

Screams echoed from the planter in front of the store, and Maddie saw the quick bob of a head peek up and duck back down.

The ghost’s laugh shook the courtyard.

She and Jack may have decided not to hunt ghosts for the time being, but that didn’t mean she would leave people to fend for themselves. Not when she could do something about it.

With the ghost distracted, Maddie ran around the corner and crouched behind the nearest planter. She crept along the ground, trying to get a better angle to shoot from. Darn bushes, getting in the way.

As the ghost grabbed another branch and lit it aflame, Maddie lined up her blaster and let off two bursts of ectoenergy. She had just enough time before she ducked back down to see them hit the ghost in the hand, causing it to fling the branch away and yell in pain.

Maddie crouched with her back to the planter, ready to run at any second, hoping this would give people time to escape.

Her breath caught in her throat as she heard the ghost grab a tree and yank it out of the planter, sending dirt and leaves everywhere. She looked up, saw the tree being slammed down on top of her, and threw herself to the side.

The tree clipped her in the back, and Maddie dove into a roll. Out of practice as she was, though, she didn’t come up standing, and had to scramble out of the way.

As the tree came down a second time – like trying to hit a roach with a duster – the automatic doors for the department store slid open and Maddie took the opportunity to race inside. She yelped as the doors shattered behind her as the ghost smashed them with the tree.

Maddie lay there, breathing heavily, waiting.

Nothing.

After a moment, Maddie staggered to her feet and risked a glimpse out the door. The ghost had lost interest in her and turned back to its original activity. Another flaming branch broke the doors to the mirroring store.

More screams came from that side of the courtyard, and Maddie caught another head bobbing up and back down.

She squinted. Was that a cell phone recording the ghost?

Idiots, she thought.

Good for the idiots, though, was that the ghost seemed intent on tormenting them rather than actually hurting them. But Maddie had seen enough ghost attacks go poorly to know that barely mattered.

As quickly and quietly she could, Maddie picked her way through the shattered doors and downed tree. The nearest door was stuck between the branches, blocking the easiest way out. Maddie braced her shoulder against it and pushed. It budged, but not enough. She glanced at the ghost – it didn’t notice her – then pushed harder, and knocked the door off its track. It crashed down, almost on top of her, and Maddie was grateful for the makeshift jump suit protecting her skin, even if it was uncomfortable.

Maddie shoved the door frame off of her and crawled through the opening it left. Something – some well-honed instinct – made her pause, and she looked up just in time to see a streak of black slam into the ghost, right in the middle of its chest.

It could really only mean one thing.

Phantom had arrived.

Maddie scrambled the rest of the way out. To her dismay, the larger ghost was still on its feet. She’d seen firsthand how far Phantom could launch something when he pulled that trick; it didn’t bode well that he’d barely been able to move his opponent more than a few feet.

She couldn’t see Phantom, either, and she shoved down a pang of unexpected concern for the teen ghost’s wellbeing. Think about that later, she thought. Get those idiots out first.

But before she could move, the ghost grunted and peeled a dazed Phantom off of its chest, dangling him by one foot. It peered closely at Phantom, then said something Maddie didn’t need to translate to understand, and tossed the young ghost over its shoulder. Phantom crashed into the wall somewhere to Maddie’s left.

She didn’t realize what she was doing until she had already closed half of the distance between her and the fallen ghost, who phased himself through the rubble and winced.

Phantom turned in her direction; his eyes opened wide. Maddie came to a halt a few yards from the ghost, and they locked eyes, Phantom’s expression unreadable.

What should she do? What could she say? I’m sorry for trying to shoot you?

Maddie didn’t notice the tree branch coming at her until a second before it hit.

A wave of ice splashed over her – one she recognized, intimately, and she squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting to see the inevitable gore of her mangled body.

I’m sorry, Jack, Maddie thought. I’m sorry, Jazz and Danny. I should have been more careful.

And then just as abruptly as it came, the cold vanished, replaced by the summer heat and a smack of pain on her elbow, and Maddie opened her eyes to find herself being dumped on a rooftop by Phantom.

The ghost paused just long enough to see she was alert, then darted into the air and back into the fight.

Maddie sat up, panting, and rubbed at her elbow. She wasn’t dead; Phantom had saved her, even after what she’d done, and he’d been gentler about it than she would have expected. Yes, the young ghost was far more complicated than she’d ever given him credit for.

Maddie hauled herself to her feet and crept to the edge of the rooftop. Phantom had deposited her right above where he’d crashed, and now he was taking potshots of ectoenergy at the other ghost.

The larger ghost yelled something that Maddie didn’t understand – and from the look on his face, Phantom didn’t either, but that didn’t stop him from yelling, “Ew, dude. Watch the potty mouth!” before hitting it with another ectoblast.

The ghost swiped at Phantom with a burning tree, but he dodged out of the way and blasted it again.

“Whoooo! Go Phantom! Yeah!”

A bunch of hoots and hollers came from the other side of the courtyard, and Maddie risked a look to see the idiots, still filming, now cheering for Phantom. She recognized their Casper High letterman jackets and rolled her eyes.

Unfortunately, there was no readily apparent way off the rooftop, so Maddie pulled out her ectoblaster and fired a single shot at the planter the boys hid behind. The blast glanced off the concrete edge maybe ten feet from the idiots. The cheering abruptly cut off.

It caught their attention, as she’d hoped it would, and when they spotted Maddie on the roof, she pointed emphatically at the courtyard’s exit.

At last, the idiots seemed to realize their idiocy, and the cluster of them ran away, into the parking lot.

Back to the fight: Phantom uncapped his stolen Thermos, but he had to keep dodging; Maddie knew that it didn’t work well if the ghost was intangible.

She bit her lip. What could she do to help? She needed to take its attention off of Phantom.

She scanned the courtyard, looking for something, anything, that might make a difference for the young ghost. The trees mostly blocked her view of the purple ghost – but there was a gap in the trees, and if she could get to the right spot….

Maddie slunk along the roof edge and took aim, but the angle was off, and the shots hit the trees instead. She swore.

Maybe if she leaned out over the edge a bit…and then the ghost roared, and stepped backwards – and nearer to Maddie’s line of sight.

A glance at Phantom told her that he had ramped up his ectoblasts, forcing the larger ghost back. He still couldn’t get close enough to take it down, though.

Maddie’s eyes widened as she realized what Phantom was doing, and she scrambled into position.

She took aim at the fountain, waiting for Phantom to push the other ghost back. Two more steps…one more…

Blam!

Maddie let off a cluster of blasts that hit home, right in the ghost’s mid-side.

It roared a curse, then braced itself on the fountain, which crumbled under its weight. The ghost fell to the side, sending water spraying everywhere and revealing that it was – thank goodness – wearing a sequined thong.

In a rage, the ghost threw its burning tree at Phantom, who easily dodged the projectile, and it crashed into the roof to Maddie’s left, showering sparks in the air.

Phantom was grinning, and when he looked in her direction, Maddie found herself grinning back.

And then something shot Phantom out of the sky.

Several large ectoblasts came from the parking lot and hit the ghost in the fountain; Maddie ducked down as shrapnel flew everywhere.

Great. The GIW were here. She wasn’t sure if she should be relieved or annoyed.

At another roar from the ghost, Maddie peeked over the roof lip. Several GIW agents with bigger ectoweaponry were firing at the ghost, who was trying to stand up from the broken fountain.

But at least one agent wasn’t aiming at the ghost. Maddie followed their shots just in time to see one glance off Phantom, who yelped in pain.

The young ghost was tied to a lamppost overhanging the courtyard. Maddie watched as he struggled against the ectophobic net wrapped around the lower half of his body. His hands lit up and he tried to tear the net apart, but it held true.

Phantom twisted in midair to narrowly avoid another GIW shot; thankfully, the agents were distracted by the other ghost, who was once again throwing burning trees.

Sparks from the rooftop fire sent pinpricks of pain across Maddie’s unprotected face as she inched as close as she could to Phantom. She cursed. There was no way she could reach the ghost and cut him loose. Only one option, then.

She pulled the knife from her belt and called out, “Phantom!”

He looked at her, surprised, and Maddie flung her knife at the ghost.

Maddie’s aim was high, though, and the ghost would have missed it had he not split himself at the torso to extend his reach. Phantom snapped back in place, flicked open the blade, started sawing frantically at the net.

With the ghost boy freeing himself, Maddie turned back to the fight. The purple ghost was waving a second burning tree at the agents, who had retreated back into the parking lot – save for one, who was inching along the planter behind which the idiots had hid until he was almost out of sight behind the ghost.

What is he carrying? Maddie frowned; the agent hefted a gray metal cylinder to his shoulder and took aim.

Right in her direction.

She scrambled back as a loud whine echoed around the courtyard – the weapon was warming up. Are they aiming at me?

Maddie lay flat against the rooftop, pressing her face into the hot, disgusting surface, and braced for whatever force was going to shoot out of the gun.

It didn’t come. The whine was replaced with a whooshing sound, like a massive but quiet vacuum. Maddie recognized it as an ectoentity capture and containment device. A Thermos, in other words.

Maddie army-crawled to the roof’s edge to see the large ghost fighting against the force sucking it in. Despite the clear power of the GIW’s imitation Thermos, the ghost’s sizeable mass let it resist better, almost exactly as classical mechanics described. But even Maddie could tell it was a losing battle as the ghost’s form began to distort towards the agent.

Another flash of black, and Maddie saw what she suspected the GIW could not: Phantom, dashing under the ghost’s flailing arms, and pressing the open mouth of his Thermos right against his opponent’s back.

Maddie looked back and forth, frantically, between the two Thermoses. What should she do? Help Phantom? Help the GIW? Do nothing? The GIW’s Thermos was winning the battle, but, even before the doubts set in, Maddie didn’t want them to win. But could she risk Phantom letting such a dangerous ghost loose in the Ghost Zone, from where it could return?

The decision was made for her. Phantom hands flashed green, and suddenly his Thermos was sucking the other ghost in. Within seconds, it was gone, and he popped the cap back on.

Maddie stared. Had he just…supercharged the Thermos’s battery using his own ectoenergy? How did he figure out how to do that? And why wasn’t he flying away?

Oh.

Oh no.

Phantom was being pulled into the GIW’s Thermos.

The ghost boy squirmed in the air, trying to fly away, but he risked being sucked in further. Phantom let off several bursts of ectoenergy that missed their targets.

He was just about halfway between Maddie and the agent. She could see the panic on his face.

Thanks for not trying to stick me in a Thermos. Those things suck.

There was, really, only one thing she could do.

Maddie held up her ectoblaster, took aim, and fired a single shot that barely missed Phantom, instead shattering the remains of the neon ‘X.’

But she hadn’t been aiming at Phantom.

Glass and sparks rained down on the agent with the mega-Thermos, and he yelled, dropping the weapon to cover himself.

With the suction gone, Phantom fled, disappearing from sight almost as quickly.

For a moment, the only thing Maddie heard was the cracks and pops of the tree burning on the roof next to her. With a groan, Maddie let herself fall onto her back, suddenly exhausted now that the battle was done.

But the sound of fire engines in the distance – and of GIW agents shouting below – meant that she couldn’t rest yet. Maddie hauled herself to her feet and stumbled away to find some way off the roof before someone started asking questions she couldn’t answer.

What was she thinking, shooting at a GIW agent to save Phantom? And right after helping him escape the net? If the GIW realized it was her sniping from the roof, there would be hell to pay.

She’d have to send in a notarized description of the events, regardless; the Fentons weren’t obligated to stay at the scene after an attack, but both the mayor’s permit and their insurance required they provide a statement for liability reasons. This attack would be a nightmare to handle.

And yet, Maddie couldn’t bring herself to regret her decisions.

She finally found the roof access ladder by the dumpsters. Wrinkling her nose at the smell, Maddie started to climb down the ladder. The metal was hot beneath her gloves, and she kept bumping into the safety cage.

Her foot came down on something hard, stopping her path. Maddie kicked at it once, twice, before realizing that – of course – the safety cage was locked from below. She sagged against the bars and groaned.

Great. Now how was she supposed to get down?

“Need a hand?”

Maddie twisted around to find Phantom, floating a few feet away.

“Um.” Maddie blushed. “Yes?”

Phantom reached through the bars of the cage and grabbed her good arm; that wave of cold washed over her again. Maddie tensed as her hands passed through the ladder’s rungs. Without anything to hold onto, she’d fall to the ground.

But along with the cold came a most peculiar sensation – like she was being held in the exact moment a roller coaster drops from the highest peak.

Intangibility and total gravity resistance, she realized.

Maddie let out a squeak as Phantom pulled her through the bars – she didn’t feel them – and guided her down. He let go right before her feet touched the ground, and gravity reasserted itself, but the feeling was so foreign that Maddie stumbled and fell on her behind.

“That was dangerous and stupid of you to get involved. You could have gotten hurt,” Phantom said, floating a few feet off the ground, arms crossed, looking like nothing so much as a scolding parent. He bled ectoplasm slightly from where the GIW hit him in the abdomen. Even though it was daylight, she could see the faint glow he gave off. “But thanks.”

He tossed something at her – which she barely caught – then vanished.

Maddie stared at her knife, slightly stained with ectoplasm, before leaping to her feet. “Phantom, wait!” she cried.

For a second, Maddie thought it was too late, but then Phantom popped back into visibility some twenty feet in the air and halfway out of the loading zone. He floated closer, though out of her reach, and put his hands on his hips.

“I….” Now that she was face to face with Phantom, all the things she’d thought of saying left her head. “I’m sorry,” she finally said, “for shooting at you. I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry.”

Phantom raised a single eyebrow in a gesture that clearly said “no, duh!” He seemed to know she had something else to say.

“Do you need help with that?” Maddie gestured at his injury.

“I can take care of it,” Phantom said. He knew she was stalling.

Pushing back another wave of concern for the young ghost, Maddie said: “Um, I– I know I have no right to ask this, and you have every right to say no, but….” She swallowed. “I wanted to know if you’d be willing to meet with me again.” She suppressed a wince at how awkward she sounded.

“If it’s about the explosion, I already told you: I don’t know anything,” Phantom said.

Maddie shook her head. “No, I just want to talk with you.” When he didn’t respond, she added: “About ghosts.”

“What, so you can pry all the secrets about ghosts out of me? I’m not giving you any information you can use against me, Dr. Fenton,” Phantom said, in a clear mimic of her remark at their first meeting.

This time, Maddie didn’t hide the wince. “It’s not that, I just–” She sighed. “Look, Phantom, I’m coming to realize that I…don’t know as much about ghosts as I thought.” She had to force the words out. It went against her every instinct to admit a weakness to someone part of her still thought of as an enemy. “I was hoping you might be willing to…help me correct that.”

Phantom stared at her, unblinking, with an intensity that rivalled Danny’s. After a few seconds, he pursed his lips, then said: “I’ll think about it.”

The ghost vanished, and this time Maddie didn’t call after him.

***

By the time she stumbled back to the car, her groceries sat in sad little puddles of condensation, but hopefully they’d still be salvageable.

Maddie checked her face in the rearview mirror. There was a smear of black gunk on one cheek and what she was pretty sure was bird poop in her hair, but it didn’t look like the sparks from the fire had caused lasting burns, even though they still stung. She’d probably be bruised and sore tomorrow, and the pain of her broken ribs still lingered in her chest, but the makeshift jump suit had saved her skin, at least.

Sighing, Maddie got in line at the coffee shop’s drive through to get a replacement drink. Decaf, this time; she was still shaking from the adrenaline.

I’ll think about it.

It wasn’t a no, but it didn’t leave her confident that Phantom would say yes, either. Why would he, anyway? The only thing she did during their first meeting was attack him, both verbally and physically. She hadn’t exactly shown that Phantom could trust her.

But there was that moment – that brief moment in the middle of the fight – where the ghost smiled at her and she smiled back. A little connection between them that was as confusing to her as the deepest mysteries of the Ghost Zone.

The memories played out in Maddie’s head. Phantom, looking back after dropping her on the roof. Phantom, grinning at her. Phantom, surprised at the knife. Phantom, floating in midair with his hands on his hips, bleeding ectoplasm from–

Maddie almost slammed on the brakes, but instead managed to pull off into a nearby parking lot. The knife. She scrambled to get it out of its sheath on her belt, nearly dropping it in the process.

In the daylight, Phantom’s ectoplasm was almost invisible, but – like the ghost’s glow – she could somehow make it out.

She had a sample of Phantom’s ectoplasm. The ghost boy was normally so careful about that, and Maddie could really only think of a few times where she’d seen him bleed.

Maddie stared at the knife, possibilities for experiments running through her head. But for the moment, all she could do was uncap her Thermos and pop the knife inside.

***

Fortunately, there were no protestors outside Fenton Works when Maddie made it home, though the day’s crowd had left their mark: trash, of course, and a handful of signs proclaiming “Ghost Rights!” or threatening the Fentons with various levels of vulgarity.

The letter had made the national news a few days after it was sent to the ectoscience listserv, and since then there had been almost daily protests outside the Fentons’ home. It wasn’t as though the Fentons didn’t have experience with anti-ghost hunting protests – the egging from a few weeks ago was evidence of that – but this time around left more than the usual bad taste in Maddie’s mouth.

She pulled into the driveway, popped open the trunk, and grabbed a few bags of groceries. Inside, Maddie dumped the bags on the kitchen table, then sat down with a groan. Her arms did not agree with the weight.

Sighing, she pulled out her phone and sent a text to Danny. After a few seconds, Danny’s door opened and he tromped down the stairs, followed by two other pairs of footsteps. Ah. Danny had company.

“Hi Danny,” Maddie said as her son walked into the kitchen. “Hi Tucker. Hi Sam.”

“Hey Mom.” Danny wore a concerned look on his face. “Are you okay? You’ve got stuff on your face.”

Maddie waved her hand. “It’s just gunk from a roof. There was a ghost attack, but I’m fine. Just tired.” She glanced at Sam and Tucker. “Would the three of you mind taking care of the groceries while I go clean up?”

After the three teens agreed, Maddie trudged upstairs to the bedroom and stepped into the shower. It took a while to get the bird poop out of her hair and even longer to get the roof gunk off her face, but the hot water soothed some of her aches and washed the sweat off, at least. She tossed on a V-neck and jeans that she had unfortunately become too used to wearing and went back downstairs.

Maddie glanced into the kitchen as she descended the stairs and frowned. Danny sat, back to her, at the table with Tucker and Sam, speaking in hushed tones, unlike the loud chitchat she was used to hearing. Sam held her son’s hands in hers, but they withdrew from each other as soon as Maddie walked in.

Pretending she didn’t notice the odd behavior, Maddie said: “Hi, kids. How was Vancouver, Sam?”

“Much too hot,” Sam said, putting one arm over the back of her chair. “But it could have been worse. We could have gone to Florida.” She said the word like she would corporate leadership or meat. “Anyway, Mrs. Fenton, Danny would like to give you an apology.”

Maddie frowned. “Danny?”

He turned around in his chair to face her. “Mom,” Danny said. “I’m sorry that I’ve been giving you the cold shoulder for the last few weeks.” Behind him, Sam and Tucker both winced at his choice of words, but Danny didn’t seem to notice. “I’ve been really stressed out with all the stuff going on and it’s not fair that I’ve been avoiding you because of it. I’m sorry, and I’m going to do better.”

The apology was clearly rehearsed with Jazz, but it still made tears well up in Maddie’s eyes. “Oh, Danny,” she said, swooping down to give him a hug. He didn’t return it, but he didn’t reject it, either. “I’m sorry it’s been so stressful for you,” she said, sitting down in the available chair next to him. “I should have been paying better attention to that.”

“It’s okay, Mom. I could have said something.” Danny almost made eye contact with her, but not quite. “I just…wasn’t ready.”

“I understand, Danny,” she said. “Do we need to get you someone to talk to, a counselor or something?”

Danny shook his head, a look of dread passing over his face. Right. The ghost counselor from his freshman year. “No, I think I’m alright. I’ve got Sam and Tucker, and Jazz.”

Maddie didn’t let it show how much her exclusion from that list hurt.

Tucker spoke up: “Danny also has something he’d like to tell you, Mrs. F.”

Danny scowled at Tucker for a split second; Maddie raised an eyebrow. “He does?”

“Yes, he absolutely does,” Sam added, staring pointedly at Danny and receiving a second scowl in return.

Danny was clearly reluctant to share whatever it was with Maddie. Would he finally share his big secret with her? She tried to keep her face calm, for Danny’s sake.

“Um, yeah,” Danny said. “I, uh…wanted to tell you that I…um….”

Sam and Tucker glanced at each other.

“Yes, Danny?” she said.

“I…um….”

Maddie’s heart pounded in her chest.

“I want to take Dad’s ghost studies class,” Danny blurted out.

She blinked. That was not what she was expecting, and, from the looks on Sam and Tucker’s faces, neither were they.

“You do?” she asked.

Danny nodded vigorously. “Yeah, um. I figured it was time I learned something about ghost hunting, and I think I can get a math credit for it, because Tuck is taking it and he’s getting credit, and–”

He cut off rambling as Sam kicked him in the leg. “I’m still waiting for permission from my parents,” she added.

Well, it wasn’t a bad idea, even if Maddie was pretty sure it wasn’t what Danny meant to tell her. The second session of Jack’s class started on Monday, and it wasn’t nearly as full as the first session. They could probably get a discount on Danny’s tuition, given how much equipment they’d contributed free of charge. There might be some ethical issues with Danny’s instructor being his own father, but honestly, if it would get Danny high school credit, it might be easier for him to keep up during the regular school year….

“Are you sure about that, Danny?” she said. “Your father’s not going to go easy on you just because you’re his son.”

Danny grimaced. “I know, but I think it’ll be okay? It’s not like I’m starting from square one. I have learned some things from listening to you talk about ghosts for sixteen years.”

Maddie wasn’t so convinced. “There’s a lot of math involved. And that’s more homework on top of your history class.”

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Fenton,” Sam said. “We’ll make sure that Danny stays on top of his homework.”

“Yeah, and I can help him with the math,” Tucker said. “We’ve got Danny’s back.”

No matter what might be going on with Danny, at least he had his friends, and Jazz. That was more than Maddie had at his age.

“Alright, you have my permission to take the class. But!” She held up a finger. “You have to ask your dad first, and you can’t fall behind on your history class, either.”

“I won’t, promise.” Despite Maddie’s confidence that Danny was only using Jack’s class to avoid whatever else was on his mind, her son did look genuinely excited. Where that enthusiasm had come from, though, Maddie was none the wiser. “Thanks, Mom!” He popped out of his seat, followed shortly by Tucker and Sam. “We’re going to go back to hanging out upstairs.”

“Ask your father tonight so we can get the logistics figured out,” Maddie called. “Let me know what he says!”

“Will do!” Danny said, following the other two out of the room. But then, hand wrapped around the post at the bottom of the stairwell, he paused, and walked back into the kitchen. Maddie cocked her head.

“You don’t seem very excited that I’m finally taking an interest in ghost hunting, Mom” Danny said. He stood opposite her at the table, arms crossed, leg bouncing nervously.

Maddie sighed. “I am, Danny. It’s just…” she trailed off, rubbing her forehead. Her exhaustion from the day’s activities chose that moment to crash down on her; she felt like curling up in a ball and falling asleep, right there on the kitchen table.

Where did she even begin to explain things to Danny? The doubts, the fears, the questions. She started to speak.

“Why do you trust Phantom so much, Danny?” The words were out of her mouth before she realized what they were.

Danny’s eyes practically bugged out of his face; clearly, he hadn’t been expecting the question. “Um, Phantom?” he asked, followed by a nervous laugh.

“I’m not going to be mad, Danny,” she said. “I just want to understand what you see in him.”

Danny’s gaze flickered around the kitchen, landing anywhere but Maddie’s face. Finally, he sighed, then pulled out one of the chairs and joined her at the table.

“I don’t trust him as much as you think I do,” Danny said, slowly. It was obvious to Maddie that he was still partially expecting her to get mad. “Not as much as Jazz does, at least. You’re not wrong that he can be…is dangerous, Mom. But….” He hesitated. “He tries to help people, as much as he can, even if he messes up sometimes.”

Maddie nodded. It was news to her that Danny didn’t trust Phantom as much as Jazz did – at times, her daughter acted like the ghost boy could do no wrong – but it wasn’t a big surprise, either. Danny had always been more subdued when it came to his support for Phantom.

“Helping people,” Maddie said. “That’s what your father and I set out to do when we first started ghost hunting, helping people deal with dangerous ghosts. But I think we got lost somewhere along the way.”

When had they lost sight of that? Or had it never truly been about helping people? How much of their work had been about trying to prove that they were right about ghosts to all the people who scoffed and wrote off their ideas as some esoteric fantasy? How much of ghost hunting was about the fame and glory of taking vengeance against the entities that had both proven their legitimacy and wreaked havoc on their town?

“It’s not too late to give it another try, Mom.”

Danny had spoken softly, but when she looked at him, there was a glint of hope in his eyes.

Not too long ago, Maddie would have thought her son naïve for such a statement. But she couldn’t claim that anymore – not when it had been his idea in the first place to talk with a ghost, and not after Maddie learned she had become a ghost herself, even if only for a moment. She hadn’t been giving Danny enough credit.

“I know, Danny,” she said, then paused. “Danny, can I confess something to you?” When he nodded, she said: “Phantom’s the one who hurt my shoulder.”

“What?!” Danny’s face bore a look of shock. “How do you know it was Phantom?”

“Because I arranged to meet with him,” Maddie said. Danny stared at her, and she continued, memories of that night rushing through her head. “It was my fault, though. He didn’t mean to hurt me. I think the explosion did something to his powers, or maybe he was just upset, but I wasn’t willing to listen to what he had to say, and then…then….”

She trailed off, then looked at Danny. He’d gone nearly as pale as the ghost in question. “I’m rambling, aren’t I?”

He nodded, but said, “It’s okay, Mom. Um, do you need to talk to a counselor?”

“I’m on a waitlist,” she replied. “The point I’m trying to make is that…you and Jazz are right. At least about Phantom. Which is why–” she turned her tired gaze to Danny’s face “–when I saw him at the attack today, I asked if he’d be willing to meet with me again.”

Danny didn’t make eye contact with her. “What did he say?” he asked, drumming one hand on the table top.

“That he’d think about it.”

Her son nodded, but didn’t say anything else.

She sighed. “I’m sorry, Danny. I shouldn’t be dumping this on you. You should be hanging out with your friends, and I’ve got paperwork to do.”

“It’s okay, Mom.” He smiled, but the thoughts clearly racing through his head meant it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’m…glad to know you’re rethinking things.”

“Thanks, Danny.” Maddie’s smile didn’t quite reach her eyes either, though more from exhaustion than anything else. “Um…would you mind not telling your father about this? I don’t like asking you to keep secrets from him, but I want him to hear it from me, first.”

“I get it, Mom,” Danny said, standing up. “But you should tell him sooner rather than later before things get out of hand.”

She sighed. “Jazz told me the same thing. She’s the one who helped me arrange things with Phantom in the first place.”

“Well, if Jazz gives you advice, that means you really need to listen to it.” Danny was smirking when she looked at him.

“You’re right on that one. Anyway,” Maddie said. “Thank you, again, Danny, for listening.”

“Of course, Mom.” He threw a thumb over his shoulder. “I’m going to go hang out with Sam and Tucker again, if that’s alright.”

Maddie waved him off. “You do that. And tell them they can stay for dinner if they want.” It would be takeout tonight, after the ghost attack, which meant they could easily accommodate Sam and Tucker’s opposing tastes.

“I’ll do that. Bye, Mom!” Danny turned around and – inexplicably – walked with a spring in his step.

Maddie watched him go, then smiled to herself. One of these days, she’d stop underestimating her own children.

At any rate, she had work to do. Maddie hauled herself to her feet, grabbed the Thermos out of her bag, and headed to the lab.

***

She’d been preparing samples of Phantom’s ectoplasm for barely twenty minutes when the fax machine started up. She jumped at the sound, again.

It was the same as before: simple message, unknown sender.

Dr. Fenton,

Another meeting next Sunday, 9 days from now. Same time, same place, SAME RULES!!! (I mean it.)

- D. Phantom

Maddie read the message several times, committing the words to memory, before sending it through the paper shredder, leaving no evidence for Jack to accidentally find.

Chapter Text

After reading every single article on ectogenesis she could get her hands on, Maddie had come to a single conclusion:

Ectoscience had no idea how ghosts form.

Oh, sure, there were theories about it – from the commonly accepted idea of ectoplasmic imprint to obscure fringe theories, such as the one that argued ghosts had no connection to humans and were in fact entities born completely of the Ghost Zone. But not a single one directly addressed the problem of consciousness, and Maddie could poke holes in all but ectoplasmic imprinting.

Of course, it was possible there was something more accurate out there, but if there were, she couldn’t find it. Between the age of some articles, language barriers, and the fact that “ectogenesis” was a term used in regular biology, there was plenty she couldn’t access. Unfortunately, this included the original math behind ectoplasmic imprinting, so she couldn’t evaluate it personally until the article was scanned and mailed to her.

There was, however, plenty written about ectogenesis elsewhere, but Maddie decided she wasn’t so desperate that she would delve into the metaphysically-laden pseudoscience that was parapsychology. Yet.

Which left Maddie more or less at square one when it came to figuring out ectogenesis while accounting for consciousness.

If she could trust her intuition as an ectoscientist – and she wasn’t sure she could, not after everything that’d happened in the last month – the answer likely had something to do with multiple dimensions beyond the four of spacetime: ectons existed largely in the thirteenth dimension, and only under very specific circumstances did they appear in normal spacetime. Theoretically, if consciousness did persist in the transition from human to ghost, it would have to exist outside of spacetime in order to function in both biological matter and ectoplasm.

The mathematics were beyond Maddie’s skills, though; she was trained in molecular biology and practiced in ectoscience, not theoretical particle physics. She’d left a voicemail with Aggie Keaton, though who knew if the woman would ever respond.

The questions over ectogenesis had plagued what felt like Maddie’s every waking moment over the last two and a half weeks – that is, until she looked at Phantom’s ectoplasm under the microscope and found something that should be impossible.

Cells made of ectoplasm.

Human cells, if she were to guess. There was a minute chance that they were hers, or somehow picked up elsewhere, but she doubted that. These weren’t cells infected by ectoplasm; these were cells made of ectoplasm.

The impossibility had to do with the nature of ectoplasm. The suffix -plasm was a misnomer: ectoplasm was not a plasma in the traditional sense, but an unusual form of matter that shared properties with energy. Ectoplasm wasn’t even discrete from Earthly matter – instead, it created ectoisotopes by joining ectons to other particles in atoms. The result was something not necessarily incompatible with human biology, but unstable and highly dangerous.

The bigger problem with Phantom’s ectoplasm being made of cells was that ghosts didn’t have cells. Not that any ectoscientist Maddie was familiar with had discovered, at least.

Contrary to the beliefs of pre-ectoscience paranormalists, ectoplasm varied in chemical composition, and humanoid ectoplasm mimicked collagen, the dominant biopolymer in mammals. It wasn’t exactly the same chemical composition collagen’s macromolecules, but the similarities between humanoid ectoplasm and human collagen were, in fact, why Maddie discredited the theory that ghosts were entities produced solely by the Ghost Zone – it was too much of a coincidence in her eyes.

None of this explained how Phantom’s ectoplasm had cells in it.

What did she do with this discovery? Could she use this for her research into ectogenesis? Were ectoplasmic cells something other ghosts had and they’d just never found them? Or was Phantom some kind of ectogenetic aberration? As best they could tell, Phantom was a fairly new ghost – did ghosts start out with ectoplasmic cells and lose them as they aged?

What even was Phantom? And more importantly: who was Phantom?

Danny chose that moment to stand up from the computer and stretch. “I’m going to take a break and get some snacks. Want anything?”

It took Maddie a second to process what he said. “Um…tea, please. Thanks, Danny,” she said when he nodded. “Oh, and caffeinated!”

Danny’s interruption jolted Maddie’s thoughts back into order. She cracked open her most recent lab notebook on Phantom and started scribbling down thoughts and measurements on a clean page. It wouldn’t do to lose this data, even if it eventually turned out the cells weren’t Phantom’s.

And then a new fax printed out.

Another message from Phantom? The ghost had an uncanny ability to contact her when she was alone in the lab.

Again, it was from an unknown sender, but the message was far shorter than the previous two:

Jack: May 10th, 1981.

Maddie frowned. The date meant nothing to her, but it was from the end of their first year as doctoral students at UW-Madison.

It was also unsigned, which sort of made sense. If this were a message for Jack, Phantom probably wouldn’t want her husband to know it was from him.

“What’s that?”

Maddie whirled around, setting the paper face down on the table as Danny came down the stairs.

“Just a fax for your father,” Maddie said with a wave of her hand.

“Kind of weird that Dad got a fax,” her son said. “You don’t usually get a lot of those.” He proffered a regular thermos.

Maddie accepted the drink. “Thanks, sweetie.” She took a sip, then shook her head. “You’re right, we don’t, but with all the ghost drama in Amity Park lately, we’ve gotten a few.”

“Huh.” Danny sat back on the stool and took a sip from his bottle.

Taking a cue from Danny, Maddie stood and stretched, careful not to aggravate any of her lingering injuries. A weekend of rest had gotten rid of the worst of the pain, but the bruises still remained, as did the ache in her ribs. And, of course, hunching over a microscope didn’t help.

With one more look at the fax, Maddie found enough space on Jack’s work station to set the paper down, along with a sticky note explaining its context. Minus that Phantom sent it, of course.

When she turned around, Danny hadn’t started his schoolwork. He was staring at the portal with his back to her, apparently deep in thought.

“Everything okay, sweetie?” she asked.

For a second, she thought that Danny hadn’t heard her, but then he said, “I just want this to be over.”

“You mean the bombings?”

He nodded.

“Well,” Maddie said. “I’m sure the GIW and the task force are doing everything they can to stop whoever’s doing this.”

Danny finally spun around on his stool to face her. “Do you really believe that?” he asked. “Or are you just trying to reassure me?”

A few years ago, Danny would have taken her statement as truth; she was his mother, after all, and she knew ghost hunting. But now…now there was a desperation in Danny’s voice, as though he needed to know if she was telling the truth – if there really was that assurance.

And Maddie found she couldn’t give it to him.

“I don’t know, Danny,” she said with a sigh. “I want to believe that there’s progress being made, but…I don’t exactly trust that the GIW has Amity Park’s best interests at heart.”

“Because nothing’s changed, and they won’t release information, and they haven’t asked you or Dad for help?” Danny crossed his arms. “Sounds like they either don’t have any clue what’s going on or aren’t doing enough to figure it out.”

“I don’t want that to be true,” Maddie said. “But when you put it that way, it does sound suspicious, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

Though he tried to hide it, the worry bled through on Danny’s face, and Maddie heard an echo of her own voice in her head: We’ll figure out some way to protect you.

With a jolt of guilt, Maddie realized she never followed up on her promise to Danny. So much had happened since then, but still….

She glanced at her work station, where the slide with Phantom’s ectoplasm still sat under the microscope with her research on ectogenesis stacked to the side.

There was a mystery in that sample, and another in her notes – mysteries that could change the face of ectoscience if she solved them. They held the possibility of becoming her most important ectoscientific achievement, perhaps even more important than the portal.

But not more important than her son.

Setting her jaw, Maddie strode back to her desk and took out a new lab notebook. Across the cover she wrote the words Ectoplasmic Bombs, then began writing down everything she knew.

But she still couldn't get the question of Phantom's ectoplasm out of her mind.

***

Later in the afternoon, the mayor’s office called to inform the Fentons of complaints about the trash and rude signs left over from the protests and to politely request that they be removed as soon as possible.

Maddie sighed as she hung up the receiver. With Danny in Carrie for his first day of Jack’s class, she was alone in the house; it fell to her to clean up the mess. She donned heavy-duty gloves – no telling what nasty surprises might be hidden among the trash – grabbed a garbage bag, and went outside.

Empty cans, fast food bags, and all sorts of other delightful grotesqueries littered the sidewalk, while about a dozen signs were stuck in the thin strip of grass next to the road. Maddie gripped the top of one sign that had Jack’s face crossed out with a red slash and started wiggling it out of the ground.

As Maddie started on the next one, a voice said: “Your Operations Center is far more impressive when it’s not covered in snow, Dr. Fenton.”

She yanked the sign out of the ground and stood up to see Erik Sedgewick sauntering towards her.

“You’ve seen it in the snow?” Maddie asked. “I wasn’t aware you’d visited Amity Park before, Dr. Sedgewick.”

“Oh yes.” The other ectoscientist stared up at the Ops Center, hands held casually in the pockets of his slacks. Sedgewick wore a far less formal suit than he had the last time: it was gray, not black, and he left the jacket unbuttoned. “My employer sent me here last December.”

“Must’ve been when I was out of town.”

Sedgewick finally turned to look at her. “I don’t suppose you do tours, Dr. Fenton? I would love to see your work, especially that portal of yours.”

“We’re a private business, not a sightseeing opportunity.” Maddie crossed her arms and tried to give him her best I don’t have time for this look. “Can I help you with something, Dr. Sedgewick?”

He raised an eyebrow, slightly, at her barely concealed hostility, but otherwise didn’t say anything. “Actually, I was hoping to talk with you about the explosions.” He gestured at the trash. “Can I help you clean up while we chat?”

She didn’t really want to deal with him right now, but her promise to Danny overruled that – getting the chance to talk to someone involved in the investigation could be invaluable. “I’ll get you a pair of gloves.”

When Maddie returned, she found Sedgewick staring at the Ops Center again, though he quickly looked away.

“So, Dr. Sedgewick,” she asked, wriggling another sign out of the dirt. “You wanted to talk about the explosions?”

Sedgewick grunted as he yanked at a sign, then scowled when the cardboard ripped in half. “Yes. What do you know about them?”

“Very little. They’re bombs that create abnormal ectoradiation, but that’s it.” Another sign added to the pile. “The GIW and APPD have made it very clear my husband and I are not to be involved. I’m surprised the GIW is even letting you visit me.”

“Hmph. The GIW are far more interested in what the other members of the task force have to offer. My usefulness seems to have run out after the second bomb,” Sedgewick said. He finally pulled the broken sign from the ground. “But my employer is happy to lend me to the investigation as long as the GIW want me around.” He gave her a pointed look.

Ah. Sedgewick was spying on the GIW for Vlad, and the GIW were subsequently limiting his involvement. Maddie clenched and unclenched her jaw. Bureaucratic politics when there were lives involved. Ridiculous.

“How is Vlad, by the way?” Maddie asked, instead of launching into a rant. “I’m surprised he hasn’t been more present in the investigation.”

He didn’t immediately respond, instead tossing another sign on the pile. Then he sighed. “This isn’t public knowledge,” Sedgewick began, quietly. “But Mr. Masters recently learned of a data breach at his company that contained sensitive information.” He sighed again. “It’s actually part of why I came here today, to pass this along to you.”

So Sedgewick was playing messenger as well as spy. “I see.” She uprooted a sign with a word her children weren’t allowed to say. “What does that have to do with the investigation?”

Sedgewick shook his head. “Nothing directly, as far as Mr. Masters and I know. The data breach is over a year old and could be unrelated.” He paused again, and waited until Maddie met his gaze to continue. “But you’re far more connected to Amity Park than any other ectoscientists or ghost hunters. If there was any unusual ghost activity…any unusual ectotechnology…you would be the one to know about it.”

Maddie pulled the last sign out of the ground. She looked at Sedgewick, one hand on her hip. “Unless you count the bombs, no, there’s been nothing unusual in Amity Park recently,” she said. “And I’m not sure why you’re talking to me about this. The GIW surely have better resources than I do for this kind of work.” She frowned, then spoke softly. “The GIW don’t know about the breach, do they?”

“They don’t.”

Great. More politics. Maddie sighed before crouching down to scoop garbage into the bag. “Then why tell me?”

Sedgewick joined her in collecting trash. “Because Mr. Masters thinks it may be connected to the bombs. He trusts you and wants an extra pair of eyes on Amity Park.”

“I’ll do what I can, Dr. Sedgewick, but I’m already pretty busy with other work.”

“Not too busy to help Phantom escape the GIW, though.”

A chill ran through Maddie’s body, not quite blocking the heat of the sun. How did he know about that? She covered her surprise with a glare. “I have my own reasons for not wanting the GIW to get their hands on him,” she said, before turning aside for more trash.

A gloved hand grabbed her arm. Maddie glanced back at Sedgewick and noted for the first time the dark circles under his eyes – shadows that threatened the illusion of smug aloofness he often affected. The man seemed genuinely worried.

They locked gazes for a moment before Sedgewick spoke. Quietly, like he was afraid of being overheard. “To be blunt, Dr. Fenton, I don’t trust the GIW. The investigation isn’t their priority. They’re here for some other reason.”

Phantom’s panicked face flickered through her memories.

Sedgewick continued: “The technology behind the bomb is confusing. Dr. Babcock and I did our best, but neither of us is an expert in ectoengineering and the GIW won’t share what they know. I sometimes think we’re here more for show than anything else.”

Phantom had included the GIW in his list of groups with the know-how to make a bomb. But they wouldn’t actually frame someone with them – would they?

She tried to wrench her arm free, but Sedgewick’s grip was iron. “What do you want me to do, Dr. Sedgewick? I already told you the GIW won’t let me near the investigation.”

“If I can get you a spot on the task force, would you join it?”

There really was no other answer, was there?

“Yes,” she said. “These bombs have already cost my family enough. If I can do anything to help put a stop to the people doing this, then absolutely. Yes.”

Sedgewick nodded, as if he had expected her to agree. Maddie stared at him for a moment, then tried shaking her arm out of his grip again. This time, Sedgewick let her go.

“Alright, then,” he said, with some of the haught returning to his voice. “I’ll help you with the rest of the trash, then be on my merry way. I do hope that you’ll open up your lab to other ectoscientists at some point, Dr. Fenton. It doesn’t do well to keep secrets between such a small field.”

“Not going to happen, Dr. Sedgewick.”

They cleaned up the rest of the trash in silence.

***

Of all the things Sedgewick had told her, the one that stuck with Maddie the most throughout the rest of the day was that Vlad had been hacked.

Her old college friend was rather stringent about security in his research facilities; she remembered multiple x-rays, pat-downs, and metal detectors the few times she’d visited. Vladco had created many an innovative product, but there was likely far more going on behind the scenes than anyone except Vlad and his upper echelon knew about. She wasn’t even sure Sedgewick was part of that group, although it was clear he ranked fairly high in the organization.

And why didn’t Vlad tell the GIW – or at least the APPD – about the hack? If the technology for the bombs really came from Vladco, then Vlad’s research would certainly help!

Some part of Maddie wanted to go to the APPD herself and report what Sedgewick told her, but what evidence did she have other than his word? And there was no chance of getting Vlad to report it himself; once Vlad made his mind up about something, there was little she could do to change it. Well, little that she was willing to do.

Then there was the knowledge that Sedgewick was trying to get her on the task force. If he succeeded…well, anything she learned would absolutely help her protect Danny from any further abnormal ectoradiation should the bombings continue.

But none of this helped Maddie with her problems right now, which is why she found herself – head done with ectoscience for the day – knocking on Danny’s door a few hours after dinner.

“Come in!” came the response.

Maddie opened the door to find Danny doing homework with Tucker and Sam. Her son sat on the floor, leaning against his bed, while Sam lay on her stomach over an open notebook; Tucker was sitting cross-legged in Danny’s desk chair, holding a copy of Jack’s textbook.

“Hi, Mom!” Danny said. He held up his textbook. “We were just working on Dad’s homework.”

“I can see that.” Maddie crossed her arms and leaned against the door frame. “How’s it going?”

Danny glanced at his friends.

“Does Mr. Fenton um…always assign this many problems?” Sam asked, eyebrow raised.

“Believe it or not, Sam,” Maddie said. “This is a reduced load since I’m not teaching this summer.”

The three teens exchanged another glance, and Danny sighed.

“This is what you signed up for, Danny,” she said. “I expect you to do your best.”

“Don’t worry, Mom.” Danny glared at his friends. “Sam and Tuck won’t let me hang out with them unless my homework’s done.”

“We take our promise to help Danny seriously, Mrs. F.,” Tucker added, ignoring the glare. Sam stuck her tongue out at Danny.

He sighed, then closed his textbook. “Anyway. Can I help you with something, Mom?”

Maddie paused. “Well, if I’m interrupting your homework….”

Danny glanced at his friends again. Sam shrugged, then said: “We’ve been working for a while. It’s probably time for a break anyway.”

“In that case,” Maddie said. She gestured at Danny’s bed; at his nod, she sat down on it. “I was hoping to talk to Tucker about something.”

“Tucker?” Danny said at the same time Tucker went: “Me?”

Maddie nodded.

“Ask away, then.”

“Tucker,” she began. “If you were hypothetically going to hack into something, how would you do it?”

Tucker opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. He eyed Maddie, suspicious. “This isn’t going to get me in trouble, is it?”

She shook her head. “No, it won’t. Just consider it an educational moment.”

Tucker still eyed her, but after a moment, he said: “Well, the first step is research on the system you want to break into, especially what kind of network protocols and firewalls it has. And then you have to identify potential vulnerabilities in the system and plan your attack, which can take a long time because there are a lot of different strategies and tools to use.”

He started rattling off a list of computer terms, some of which – like brute-force attack or Trojan horse – Maddie recognized, others – packet analyzer, fork bomb – she didn’t. She almost said something, but Danny beat her to it.

“Tuck,” he said. “None of us understand what any of that means.”

Tucker rolled his eyes. “It’s not my fault you guys refuse to learn. If you’d actually pay attention sometimes…oh, um, not you Mrs. F.,” he added, as if he’d momentarily forgotten she was there.

“It’s fine, Tucker,” she said, then paused. “All of that sounds rather complicated.”

He shrugged. “It can be, plus all the clean-up afterwards to cover your tracks.”

“So you’d have to be exceptionally good with computers to pull off hacking into, say…a multinational corporation with extremely tight security?”

The three teens stared at her. “That’s…oddly specific, Mrs. Fenton,” Sam eventually said. She sat up from lying prone on the floor and crossed her legs.

Drat. That was too specific. She sighed; she probably shouldn’t tell them, but she or Jack would likely slip up around Danny, and he would likely tell Sam and Tucker, so they’d know anyway. “You three have to promise not to tell anyone,” she said, looking each teen in the eye for confirmation. “This isn’t public knowledge yet and I do not want this getting around, but there was a major data breach at Vladco last year.”

“Vlad got hacked?!” Danny spluttered.

Maddie nodded.

Her son exchanged a look with Tucker and Sam, and some silent conversation passed between them. She waited.

“That’s…probably not a good thing,” Danny finally said.

“No, it’s not,” she agreed. She held off on telling them about Sedgewick’s comments on the hack’s possible connection to the bombings; Danny had enough on his plate right now. “Does that change anything, Tucker?”

“Hmm.” Tucker spun back and forth in Danny’s chair, hand to his chin. “To answer your question, Mrs. F., no, you don’t necessarily have to be super good with computers to crack into a computer network as long as you’re prepared and understand the basics. As for it being Vladco….” He exchanged another glance with Danny and Sam. “I know that Vlad is…rather paranoid about information security, so it would probably have to be someone pretty skilled, or someone able to get places they shouldn’t be.”

Maddie’s eyes narrowed as she tried to read whatever conversation they weren’t saying aloud. There was definitely something going on – something they didn’t want her to know about. Of course there was. It was becoming too common of an occurrence lately.

Then Tucker’s words dawned on her. “’Get places they shouldn’t be’?” she asked, shoving aside her misgivings for the moment. “You mean…a ghost?”

The teen shrugged. “It’s possible. Technus could probably do it, but I doubt it. Breaking into a company that makes ectotechnology and is run by Vlad is probably a death wish – or, er, whatever the ghost equivalent is. Anyway, what I meant was someone really good at social engineering.”

“Social engineering?” Maddie vaguely remembered hearing Jazz talk about it at some point.

“It’s a form of psychological manipulation that exploits human cognitive biases in order to gain access to otherwise forbidden areas.”

Maddie, Tucker, and Danny turned to look at Sam, who had preempted Tucker with an explanation. “What?” she said, shrugging and ignoring the glare Tucker gave her. “It’s useful for activist stuff. There’s a lot of different strategies, but basically it’s where you pretend you belong somewhere to convince people to let you in closed off places or give away private information.”

Briefly, Maddie wondered why Sam would need such skills for her activism, but then Tucker spoke. “Yeah,” he said, nodding, no longer glaring at Sam. “A lot of people think that hacking is all about writing computer code and stuff, but actually a good portion of it is just manipulating the right people so they can get physical access to the network, since that’s less complicated than remote work. If I were to guess, it was probably someone who knew someone else at Vladco and engineered their way through security clearances ‘til they found the right access point.”

Fascinating, though it only made the breach at Vladco more terrifying to consider. Hopefully, Vlad had some leads – and hopefully, he’d share them once he did.

“Does that answer your question, Mrs. F?”

Maddie nodded. “It does. Thanks, Tucker, and Sam.” She stood up from the bed, trying not to let what she’d just learned overwhelm her. “Well, I suppose I should leave the three of you to your work. Though I don’t know –” she raised an eyebrow “– should I trust my son with two master manipulators such as you?”

Danny rolled his eyes, but Sam looked Maddie dead in the eye and said, completely straight-faced, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Fenton, we promise only to use our powers for good and not evil.” Tucker nodded in agreement.

“Glad that’s settled.” She made her way to the door. “I’ll see you later, kids. Danny, make sure you’re not up too late doing homework, okay?”

“Will do. Bye, Mom!”

Maddie closed Danny’s door behind her and sighed. There wasn’t really anything she had learned from Tucker or Sam that would help her figure anything out – if anything, it just made for more concerns. But at least her curiosity on hacking was satisfied, for now.

She paused at the top of the stairway, Sedgewick’s comments about seeing the portal echoing through her head. If Vladco – a large and well-funded corporation – could be hacked, what was stopping someone from doing the same to Fenton Works? They’d spent plenty of effort ghost-proofing the place, but what about people-proofing?

“Jack?” Maddie called, descending the stairs. “I just had a conversation with Tucker about information security. Do you think we should–” She stopped at the base of the stairs. Jack was no longer in the kitchen where she’d left him. Probably in the lab, then.

She scanned her thumb on the lab door – it still made her shudder, thinking of the night she couldn’t – and started down the second flight of stairs. “Jack, honey, I’ve been thinking about the computer security of Fenton Works. Do you think we should find a way to upgrade it?”

Still no response. Maddie frowned, then called out again: “Jack? Are you here?”

She rounded the base of the steps and found Jack, hunched over on the stool next his work station, staring at a piece of paper in his hands. “Jack? Is everything alright?”

He jumped, then looked at her. “Maddie,” he said, hoarsely.

The blood had drained from Jack’s face; he looked like she had just told him that one of their kids was hurt.

“Jack, what’s wrong?” she said, rushing to his side and sitting on the stool next to him.

“I got the message you left.” It wasn’t the paper he held; it still sat on his table. “It took me a minute, but– but I know what it means.”

“You do?”

Jack nodded. “And I know who made the bomb.”

“What?!”

Tears welled up in Jack’s eyes as he looked directly at Maddie.

“I did.”

Chapter Text

“What do you mean, you made the bomb?” Maddie demanded.

“I made it,” Jack repeated. “It’s my design. Well, mine and Vlad’s.”

He held out the sheet of paper; Maddie took it and skimmed the page. The paper was a bit faded and crinkled, but the diagram of a cylinder next to a box was clear. It was exactly what she saw at Casper.

“Jack,” she said, just now noticing the schematics box open on his table. “What is this?”

“It’s a prototype from grad school. Vlad and I designed it for a class.” He handed her a stack of papers stapled in one corner, with “May 10th, 1981” written in the header. “It’s not exactly the same, but it’s close enough that I can say it’s heavily based on our design. I’d forgotten about this project until I saw the message you left. Do you know who sent it?”

Maddie didn’t answer. With a sinking feeling, she flipped through the pages, noting the increasing similarities between Jack’s design and what she knew about the bomb. Some of the design’s physics were outdated, but the basic mechanics were sound. Any ectoscientist competent enough in ectoengineering could easily replicate it.

But how did Phantom know about it?

“I don’t,” she lied. “It was sent anonymously.”

Jack frowned, then sniffed back the tears that had not quite fallen. “Mads…I don’t know where someone would get access to this. The only people who’d have a copy are me, Prof. Lloyd, and Vlad….” His eyes flew open, and Maddie knew Jack had come to the same conclusion she had a split second before. “The Vladco hack. It must’ve been in the stolen data.”

“I agree. It’s too big of a coincidence.” Maddie set the report on Jack’s work station and rubbed at her forehead, trying to stave off the dull throb of a headache that was building.

“What I don’t get,” Jack went on, “is why someone would send this to us without anything else. Prof. Lloyd is dead, and surely Vlad would have said something if he knew about it. And it doesn’t seem like blackmail to me.”

“Again, I agree.” If Jack’s professor was dead, then maybe Phantom found out through his ghost. But little else made sense. The ghost boy was either far more trusting or far more desperate than she thought if he would remind Jack of such a dangerous weapon. And if Phantom could send anonymous faxes, why didn’t he send one to the investigation’s tip line instead?

Right. The investigation. “Jack, we need to call Vilma in the morning and tell her about this. We could get in serious trouble if we don’t let the APPD or GIW know. And it could help them figure out who’s doing this.”

But with what Maddie knew about the GIW’s role in the investigation, she wasn’t sure that would matter.

Jack frowned again, but nodded. “You’re right, of course. I’ll call Vilma first thing tomorrow and let her know.” He slammed a fist down on the tabletop, making Maddie jump. “When I get my hands on the person who’s tormenting my town and my family, they’ll wish they never set foot in Amity Park!”

An idea suddenly popped into Maddie’s head. “Jack!” she said, grabbing his arm. “Since we have the original design, I can study its mechanics and find a way to counteract them! We can help stop it from hurting Danny!”

Jack looked at her, then broke into a wide grin, as if the gloom had suddenly been washed away. He gripped her by her shoulders. “Great idea, Maddie! That’s what I love about you: always putting our son’s safety first!” He kissed Maddie’s forehead with his usual gusto.

At any other time, Jack’s enthusiastic adoration would have made her smile in return, but Maddie was distracted by a new thought that had occurred to her: any ectotechnology she developed to protect Danny would likely protect ghosts as well. Had Phantom sent the design hoping that, maybe, she would extend that protection to him, too?

Would she?

***

Even though the lab door muffled most noises from the outside, Maddie still heard the sound of glass breaking somewhere in the house. She and Jack had broken enough glass that she’d recognize it anywhere.

“That’s it!” she said, slamming her screwdriver on the table top. “I’ve had enough of these protestors.” Gathering outside was one thing, but vandalism was something else entirely.

Maddie threw open one of the cabinets and rifled through the assorted technology until she found the Fenton Megaphone. She twisted the volume knob and suppressed a cringe from the loud squawk it gave off. Perfect. It still had a charge.

As Maddie stalked up the stairs, Danny said behind her: “Uh, Mom? What are you doing?”

“I’m going to give those protestors a piece of my mind.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea? I mean, they could get violent, and they’re not ghosts, so….”

Maddie ignored him, even if Danny did raise a good point: the house was ghost-resistant, not people-resistant. She’d have to be careful.

She opened the lab door and was greeted by shouts echoing from outside, the silhouettes of people casting odd shadows across the room. As she expected, one of the living room windows had been broken, sending shards of glass across the couch and floor. Drat. That was going to be hard to clean up.

As Maddie sidled up to the peephole, Danny sighed behind her. “I’ll get the Fenton Glass Vacuum,” he said, then padded off into the kitchen.

It was hard to guess how many people were loitering outside Fenton Works. Maybe twenty? It didn’t really matter. Either her idea would work or it wouldn’t.

Maddie threw open the door and strode onto the stoop. Her appearance was met with jeers and insults from the crowd.

“Attention protestors!” she said into the megaphone. “If you do not disperse immediately, I will be forced to activate the Fenton Booby Traps to protect Fenton Works from harm!” While the house was technically booby trapped, Jack had been strongly urged to disable them after one too many near-misses with random pedestrians. But the protestors didn’t need to know that.

“Do you always threaten your critics with violence, Dr. Fenton?”

Maddie zeroed in on the speaker, a nondescript man that – like the rest of the crowd – she didn’t recognize. The ringleader, she guessed. “Only when you start the violence first,” she said, gesturing at the broken window.

The man sneered. “We started the violence? Tell that to the ghosts you and your husband have illegally experimented on!” His gibe was met with shouts of support from the other protestors. “Tell that to the townspeople hurt by your negligence and cruelty!”

Maddie scowled. “My husband and I take the safety of this town seriously, and we will do whatever it takes to protect it from dangerous ghosts.”

“Oh yeah?” came the challenge. “And who’s responsible for ghosts coming to Amity Park in the first place?”

Maddie started to speak, but before she could get a rebuttal out, the ringleader straightened and said: “Come on, guys. Let’s get out of here.” He spun on his feet and strode off.

“But Dirk–” someone said.

“I said let’s go,” Dirk snapped.

The protestors hesitated, but most of them followed suit, though not without throwing more jeers at Maddie. Only a few lingered – two women wearing animal rights patches, a spindly man in sunglasses, someone in a dark hoodie. Maddie glared at them.

“Go on,” she said. “Get out of here.” The megaphone squawked on the last syllable.

“Not until you pay for what you’ve done!” one of the women shouted, but the look on her face betrayed the confidence she projected.

Despite the protest’s remnants, Maddie didn’t care to stick around; the tension had been diffused for the time being. She gave one last glare at the protestors, then stalked back inside, slamming the door behind her.

She flipped open the alarm box next to the door and keyed in a code. The automatic shutters rolled down the windows, cutting off the sunlight in an effort to protect the remaining glass. Maddie sighed; she probably should have done that in the first place instead of threatening the crowd.

She’d gotten them away from Fenton Works, but it didn’t really feel like a win. The ringleader was, unfortunately, right about what he said.

What was she thinking, storming out there and threatening the protestors? She and Jack didn’t exactly have good PR right now – the last thing they needed was more proof that they were a danger to the town.

Did the townsfolk really blame them that much for ghosts? Sure, the Fentons weren’t the ones attacking the town, but it was their fault ghosts had a way out of the Ghost Zone.

Was keeping the portal open really worth it?

Maddie sighed again, then frowned as her gaze fell on the broken window. Wasn’t Danny getting the glass vacuum?

“Danny?” she called. “Do you need any help?”

For a second, no response, then a muffled thump and the sound of something crashing. “Danny?”

“Everything’s fine!” Danny said as he walked out of the kitchen, holding the vacuum. “I’ll clean that up when I put the vacuum back.”

He carried the vacuum across the living room, but then stopped and frowned. Maddie walked over as her son crouched to pick something up.

“What is that?” she said.

“A rock,” Danny replied. “And it’s got a piece of paper taped to it.” He peeled off the paper and read it. Maddie didn’t like the look on his face as he handed it to her, silent.

WE KNOW YOU DID IT.

She met Danny’s gaze as he stood up. “’We know you did it,’” he said. “Did what?”

Maddie shook her head. “I don’t know, Danny. It’s not like your father and I go sneaking around and committing crimes under the cover of darkness.” In fact, they’d barely done anything in the last month.

Unless it meant….

No, she should wait to talk to Jack about that first, and maybe Jazz — if her daughter would speak to her. Danny had enough on his plate. Maddie shoved the thought aside for now and said: “I’m going to go stick these in a baggie so we can give them to Detective Carleton. Can you start cleaning up the glass?”

Danny nodded, but his furrowed brows told her that he was thinking hard about something. Nevertheless, Maddie left him grabbing gloves out of the custom-made vacuum’s storage compartment and carried the rock and its note into the kitchen.

When she returned to the living room, she found Danny crouched precariously on the back of the couch, picking shards of glass out from behind the cushion.

“Danny!” she said. “Get down from there. What if you lost your balance and fell on the glass?”

Her son glanced down at his feet, as if noticing for the first time the position he had put himself in. “Uh, good point,” he said, then gingerly jumped off the couch. He landed with a wince.

“Danny! Are you alright?”

Danny nodded. “I’m fine,” he said, dumping the shards he’d picked up into the vacuum’s disposal compartment. “Just landed on my foot wrong.”

Maddie frowned, but Danny had already returned to the couch. This time, he shoved it away from the window and walked behind it to pick up the shards. Instead of the chastisement she had prepared, Maddie just shook her head and sighed.

They worked in silence, the only sounds their feet padding on the carpet and the tinkle of glass landing in the trash. Maddie moved slower than Danny; every squat or bend sent more aches through her chest. Neither her doctor nor her husband nor her daughter had been happy to hear of her involvement in the ghost fight on Friday.

Finally, after they finished picking up all they could by hand and dustpan, Maddie stood back as Danny plugged in the vacuum. Her son had the most experience with the vacuum by far: Jack had designed it specifically to clean up broken glass after Danny had gone through a phase where he broke nearly every glass in the house.

While Danny vacuumed the couch and floor, Maddie’s thoughts drifted to the encounter with the protestors, and she realized something else bothered her about it: the ringleader’s sudden change of mind.

Why come just to protest and then leave almost as soon as she confronted him? And the protestors that followed him seemed so reluctant to go! It didn’t make sense.

She was getting really tired of adding new entries to that ever-growing list of things that didn’t make sense right now.

Frustrated, she called out over the sound of the vacuum: “Danny, I’ll be in the lab. Can you finish up here?”

He gave her a thumbs up, and Maddie went back downstairs.

***

“So that’s it, huh? The thing that’s made everything go wrong this summer?”

Danny stood several feet from Maddie’s work table, arms crossed.

“Well, it’s not exactly the same,” Maddie said. “I’ve had to make some changes based on what we had laying around the lab.” She sighed. “But yes, this is more or less the ectoplasm bomb from the Nasty Burger and Casper.”

“The fact that you were able to recreate it in a day and a half is not exactly comforting.” Danny eyed the device like it, too, was about to explode.

“I know,” Maddie said. “But your father’s design was a precursor to a lot of the ectotechnology we use today, so many of the parts are pretty common in ghost hunting.” She tapped the open rim of the Thermos she’d used as the base with her screwdriver; Danny winced at the sound. “Don’t worry, Danny. There’s no power to it right now, so we’re safe.”

“Good to know.” He didn’t relax. “Why did you use a Thermos?”

“Like I said, it’s more or less the same technology. Your father’s design called for a container that could hold energized ectons within it, though in the 80s it was purely theoretical, since we didn’t discover a way to condense ectoisotopes using a negative ectopressure until the mid-90s, and ectophobic material wasn’t invented until a few years afterwards. The problem now is that this–” she gestured at the half-assembled device “–wasn’t actually designed as a bomb. It wasn’t even supposed to explode.”

Danny raised an eyebrow. “You mean Dad designed something that isn’t immensely dangerous?”

“That was probably Vlad’s influence,” Maddie said, then muttered: “though goodness knows that man has created enough other problems. Anyway, it was designed as an ecton emitter in order to amplify the ectoenergy of a small area. Your dad thought that it might strengthen a ghost enough that we could finally establish proof that they exist.”

Suddenly, Danny seemed immensely fascinated in the device sitting on Maddie’s work station. In what felt like the blink of an eye, he was standing at the table’s edge, peering at the modified Thermos. “That’s really interesting, actually.” He looked up at her. “Does it work?”

Maddie blinked in surprise at her son’s unexpected – yet not entirely unwelcome – interest in ectotechnology. “Theoretically, yes, it should. I had to update the mathematics from discoveries we’ve made since the 1980s, but once I finish assembling it and add a power source, yes, it should work. Which is good news for you,” she said, waving her screwdriver in Danny’s direction, “because if I can get this to work, I can hopefully find a way to counteract it.” Then she sighed. “The bad news is that neither your father nor I have figured out a way to make it give off the same radiation from the explosion.”

“So right now you just have a way to make ghosts stronger,” Danny said.

“Yes, we do, which isn’t exactly a good thing,” Maddie mused. “I’d hate to see this fall into the wrong hands. Why are you so interested in this all of a sudden?”

He shrugged, then stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I dunno. I guess the science makes more sense after learning about this stuff in Dad’s class.”

Danny’s words were spoken casually, but something about his body language seemed fake to Maddie – as if Danny was trying to cover up the real reason for his interest with yet another excuse.

Maddie bit back the urge to question her son and instead remembered her promise to Jazz: her promise to trust her daughter about Danny. Was that only a few weeks ago now? It felt like a different lifetime.

“I’m glad you’re learning things in your dad’s class, sweetie. And you are more than welcome to ask me about ectoscience if you have any questions,” Maddie said instead, giving Danny a warm smile. “But don’t you also have another class you need to work on?”

Danny rolled his eyes, but then sighed. “Yes, yes,” he said, walking to the computer. “I’ll go back to listening to lectures about cargo lists on trains in the 1880s. So exciting!”

“I’m really proud of you for taking this class seriously, Danny,” Maddie said. “Even if it is boring.” She almost added the question Why don’t you work this hard during the school year? but bit it back. It wouldn’t help anything — not his confidence in himself, nor his trust in her. Besides, what criticism about his work ethic hadn’t he heard during the last two years?

Danny didn’t turn to look at her when he spoke. “Yeah, well, like I’ve said, I do actually want to graduate high school. Can’t do that if I don’t pass this class.”

There was such a bitter sadness to his voice that Maddie found herself taking a step towards Danny, ready to wrap him in a hug. Then she cursed at herself and withdrew her hand. Why remind him of his past failures by implying he didn’t take his normal schoolwork seriously? It didn’t take a genius to figure out that whatever Danny hid from her was likely the cause of his school stress — not to mention the bomb threats. What comfort could she offer to that?

Clenching her jaw in frustration, Maddie turned back to the one thing that could help Danny. She picked up her screwdriver and started assembling one of the interior panels.

Truthfully, though, there were far more issues with the ecton emitter than Maddie was willing to tell Danny, if only to keep his hopes up. Their inability to figure out a way to recreate the abnormal ectoradiation was, of course, the major problem, but the discovery of Jack’s designs suggested another problem:

Was the bomb in fact a bomb, or was it just a failed attempt at making ghosts stronger?

Both Sedgewick and Reitman called it a bomb, but would they be able to tell the difference from something deliberately designed as one versus a poorly updated ecton emitter? Ectotechnology did have the tendency to break with disastrous results when not constructed well. Maddie would know, considering she was married to Jack Fenton.

But recreating the abnormal ectoradiation still wasn’t nearly as big of an issue as the fact that Maddie had no idea how to test it if she did manage to make it work. There was absolutely no way she would turn it on as long as Danny was around unless she knew it was safe.

It would help if she had any idea why Danny reacted to the bomb’s effects when no one else around them did. Every test they had convinced Danny to let them run — which was not many — turned up within the normal range for a teenage boy, save for that oddly low body temperature of his. And Danny always insisted that he had no idea why he triggered the ghost meter or why he reacted to the explosion—

Maddie stopped with a screw half way in the panel and glanced at her son, who was slouched on the stool and looking very bored. Was that part of Danny’s secret? Did he know why the ghost meter reacted to him? Had something happened that he never told them about?

Or was it Maddie’s fault — and Jack’s — for raising children in the same building that they did their experiments in? Had they done something, however inadvertently, that affected Danny? But why him? Why not Jazz?

“Danny, do you know—” she found herself saying, but stopped. Do you know why you make the ghost meters react around you? Do you know why you were so affected by the ectoradiation? Do you know worried I am about you? Why bother asking, though? Danny wouldn’t give the truth, even if he did know the answer.

“Do I know what, Mom?” Danny asked. She was honestly surprised he had heard her over the lectures. The scar on his forehead from the explosion peaked through his messy hair.

“Do you know, um…what time Sam is coming to pick you up?”

Danny gave her an odd look, but said: “Around 12:30, I think. Why?”

“Oh, no big reason,” Maddie said. “Just wanted to know how much time we have until lunch.”

“Oookay,” Danny said, that look still on his face. “Is that all? ‘Cause I need to get back to work.”

Maddie gave him a big grin that hopefully would cover up her awkwardness. “That’s all. You get back to work, sweetie, and I’ll get back to mine.”

Danny nodded slowly, gave her one last look, then turned back to the computer.

She watched Danny start the video back up and slouch back down. Some part of Maddie was concerned about his posture, but mostly, she just worried about whatever was hurting her son.

***

Later that evening, Maddie stood in the upstairs hallway, one hand raised to knock on Jazz’s door.

Come on, Maddie. You shouldn’t be scared to talk to your own daughter.

She took a deep breath, then knocked. “Jazz,” she called out. “Can I talk to you?”

Silence.

“Jazz, I know you’re in there, and I know you’re still mad at me, but please, I really need your thoughts on something.”

Still no response. Maddie sighed, then lowered her voice so Jack wouldn’t overhear. “I’m sorry about what I did to Phantom, and you have every right to be mad at me about that. But you said I should talk to someone, and, well…I’m here.”

Finally — a loud sigh from Jazz’s room, and then her daughter said: “Come in.”

Jazz was once again sitting in her desk chair, but there was no Danny on her bed. Good. It was just the two of them.

Maddie opened her mouth to speak, but Jazz interrupted her. “Before we talk about anything else,” she said, “You’re going to tell me exactly what happened between you and Phantom that night.”

Maddie nodded, still standing — Jazz hadn’t offered her a place to sit. Then she sighed. “He didn’t mean to hurt me.” She closed her eyes, picturing the way he reached out to help her. “It was an accident — he lost control of his powers, I think, because of the effects of the explosion. And- and because I yelled at him. I accused him of pretending to care about the people of Amity Park because I couldn’t believe that maybe he actually does.” Maddie opened her eyes to stare right into Jazz’s. “And then I tried to shoot him.”

Jazz didn’t respond, instead just holding the eye contact with her mother.

“When he hurt— when I got hurt, he tried to help me,” she said, quietly. “And I shot at him because I was afraid. Because I wouldn’t listen. Because I was too much of a ghost hunter.” Maddie spat out the last words, then blinked her eyes against the tears that welled up in them.

For a long moment, Jazz remained silent, but at last she spoke. “Did you hurt Phantom?”

Maddie sniffed. “No, I didn’t hit him. I missed.”

Jazz nodded, then handed Maddie a box of tissues. “Well, I can’t say I’m happy to hear that you tried to shoot him,” she started, “but…I’m glad that he’s okay.”

Physically, at least, Maddie thought as his look of terror crossed through her memories. “Can I sit down?” she asked, pointing at Jazz’s bed.

“Be my guest. I’m still mad at you, by the way,” Jazz said. She swiveled in her chair to follow Maddie’s movement across the room. “But it’s good that you’re talking to someone about this.” She peered at Maddie. “And that you’re willing to admit your mistake.”

“I am. Or I’m trying to, at least.” Maddie sighed. “I told him as much after the ghost attack on Friday. I don’t know if he believed me, but I told him.”

Jazz didn’t look surprised that she had spoken with the ghost; Danny had probably told her.

“And I apologized to him,” Maddie continued. “And…he agreed to meet with me again, this Sunday.”

This time, her daughter made a face. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Mom.”

“I’m not bringing the ectoblaster,” Maddie added, quickly. “I just want to talk with him. About ghosts.” She sighed. “There’s so much I don’t know, Jazz, and it’s driving me crazy. I can only learn so much from a lab, and I think a lot of what I know is wrong. I don’t know what to believe anymore, Jazz, between Phantom and…and….” She faltered.

“And that you became a ghost.”

“Danny told you?”

Jazz nodded.

Of course he did. “I remember being a ghost, Jazz,” Maddie said. “I remember standing there, looking down at my own body. I remember that cold feeling that always seems to come when there’s a ghost nearby. At first, I thought it was Phantom, because I thought I saw him there, but it was just Danny, and the ghost was me.” She laughed a little, because it was the only option besides panic as the memories once again rose in her mind.

“You remember being a ghost,” Jazz repeated. “Oh boy.” She spun back and forth in her desk chair for a moment, chewing her lip. “That’s…not something I expected.”

“I’m not sure that Danny knew. Neither of us was exactly calm when I realized it. But Jazz — if I remember being a ghost, it means that the ectoplasmic imprint theory is wrong. It doesn’t make sense that memories recorded in ectoplasm would be accessible in the human brain if someone was resuscitated. So there must be something else going on when it comes to consciousness in ghosts.”

Instead of responding, Jazz leapt out of her chair and went to her bookshelf. Maddie watched as she skimmed the labels on a series of three-ring binders, then pulled one out.

“Here,” Jazz said, presenting the binder to Maddie. She took it, then flipped it sideways to read the label.

“Reitman, Henry. Ectopsychology and Danny Phantom,” she read. She cocked her head, confused. “Really? Ectopsychology?”

“I think you may find some answers in Dr. Reitman’s writing, Mom,” Jazz said. “Dr. Reitman’s written about ghosts and memories a few times. And ectopsychology is not junk science.”

Maddie sighed. “I’m starting to believe you, Jazz. Whatever we’re doing with ectophysics and ectobiology isn’t working anymore.” She opened the binder and started flipping through the articles Jazz had printed out and neatly arranged. “And he’s written about Phantom, too?”

“A bit, yeah.” Jazz didn’t quite manage to hide the note of discomfort in her voice, but Maddie didn’t feel like pressing. “Mostly from what he’s observed from videos of Phantom in Amity Park. I’m not sure I agree with all of his conclusions, but it’s something to think about at least.”

Maddie only partially heard what Jazz just said. She’d flipped open to an article titled “Can We Study the Afterlife?: Questionable Research Ethics in Ectopsychology.” She sighed, then flipped the binder closed.

“I have a sample of Phantom’s ectoplasm, Jazz,” she said.

Jazz’s eyes flew wide. “You have what?”

“Phantom’s ectoplasm,” Maddie repeated. “I let him use my knife during the fight on Friday, and he bled on it. I saved it in a Thermos and stuck it in the ectoplasm freezer.”

“What, um, have you done with it?” Jazz had started playing with the ends of her hair. She tried to hide it, but Maddie could tell that this revelation had broken Jazz’s composure. But why?

“Nothing, really,” Maddie said. Should she press Jazz about what she knew about Phantom? “I’ve been too preoccupied with trying to find a way to help Danny that I only looked at it under the microscope.” No — if she knew anything about her daughter, it was that there was nothing Maddie could do to get her to talk if she didn’t want to. She sighed. “Jazz, I found human cells made of ectoplasm in his sample.”

Jazz paused, her fingers tangled in her hair, and stared at Maddie. “That…that should be impossible, right? Ectoplasm makes organic material unstable, which is why we had to take care of your shoulder quickly before necrosis set in.”

Maddie nodded. “Exactly. And no other ghost has any organic structure nearly as complex as Phantom’s ectoplasm does. Which means that he’s not a normal ghost, is he?” She sighed again, and didn’t wait for a response from Jazz. “And when you combine that with my questions about ghosts and consciousness, it means that it would be unethical to experiment on his ectoplasm, right?”

Just a smidgen of the tension in Jazz’s shoulders relaxed, and she nodded. “It does mean that,” she said. “Though — as I’ve been telling you — it’s unethical in general to experiment on ghosts.” She narrowed her eyes at Maddie; whatever made her lose her composure was gone, and Maddie’s stubborn and careful daughter was back.

“Yes,” she sighed. “Yes, you’ve been right all along about that. I’m sorry, Jazz. I should have listened to you a long time ago.”

Jazz nodded, once, then said: “Thank you. But I’m not the one you need to apologize to.”

“You’re right, again, of course. It’s ghosts that have been the victim of….everything. But I’m starting with Phantom.” Maddie paused as she spotted the slightest grin on Jazz’s face. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? Me admitting I’m wrong.”

“Mmhmm.” Jazz couldn’t keep the smugness from bleeding through entirely. “I’ve been waiting years for this moment.” But then the grin slipped from her face. “Mostly I’m just glad that you’re willing to give Phantom a chance, Mom. I think you’ll find he’s not what everyone makes him out to be.”

Maddie nodded. Yes, she could see that already — had seen it, already, at the park. It still didn’t explain everything he’d done to hurt the town and its people over the last two years, but…there had to be another explanation. “You trust him, a lot. But why? I don’t understand how you went from doubting ghosts exist to supporting him so fast.”

“Because he’s saved the people I care about from other ghosts, Mom. Many times. Probably more than you know.” Jazz shrugged. “I just can’t see how someone like that could be bad.”

Jazz was right, of course. Maddie swallowed back the well of frustration she felt building — frustration at herself, mostly, for being so stubborn all these years — frustration that it had taken her literal death for things to change.

“Mom? Anything else you want to talk about?”

Maddie cleared her throat, more to shift herself out of the frustration than anything else. “Yes, but it’s a change of subject.”

“I’m good if you’re good,” Jazz said. “It’s…good to know that you’re thinking things through more, and that you’re not going to bring an ectoweapon when you talk to Phantom.”

Jazz’s expression wasn’t quite a glare, but her disapproval was loud and clear. And she didn’t even know about how Maddie had violated the simple rules Phantom had set. Just one more thing she’d have to admit to. But for the moment, she didn’t.

“It’s about the explosions,” Maddie said, before recounting the morning’s encounter with the protestors and the message on the rock. Jazz’s face grew more grim with every word.

“I don’t know what to think about the message, Jazz,” she concluded. “Except…maybe whoever wrote it thinks that we’re responsible for the bombs.”

Jazz nodded, slowly. “You think someone might be framing you and Dad.” She leaned back in her chair, hand on her chin. “I considered that when this first started, but didn’t think it was likely. But now, with Dad’s design and this message, it’s a possibility. Except, it doesn’t make much sense. If someone was trying to frame you, they’re not doing a very good job, since you’re not even persons of interest in the investigation…officially, at least….” She trailed off, deep in thought. After a moment, she sighed, and said: “You sent the designs and the note to your lawyer, right?”

“Everything went to Vilma, who said she passed it to Detective Carleton,” Maddie confirmed. “I haven’t heard anything else.”

“Here’s my thoughts on this, Mom,” Jazz said. “Right now, let the professionals worry about the bombers. And yes—” she held up a finger to Maddie’s objection “—I know what you think about the GIW. Believe me, I don’t trust them either. But it’s not your job to solve this.”

“You’re right, of course. Again.”

“Of course I am. It’s why you came for my opinion in the first place.” Jazz didn’t bother to hide the smugness this time. “And it’s also my opinion that the best thing you can do right now is find a way to protect Danny in case another bomb goes off. I think it will help all of us relax a little to know he’s safe.”

Or safer, at least. Anything she came up with wouldn’t protect Danny from an explosion, just the ectoradiation. But it was better than nothing, and Jazz certainly knew that.

Maddie sighed. “That’s all I can hope for. Keeping you and Danny and your father safe, as much as I can. Thank you, as always, Jazz, for letting me talk this out with you.”

“Of course, Mom. I’m always here if you need me. And thank you for not being so stubbornly sure that you know everything there is to know about ghosts.” Jazz gave her a look, but didn’t hold it for long. “I wasn’t really that mad at you, Mom. I’m just….” She closed her eyes for a moment. “I’m just worried about you and Danny. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I understand.” And she did. Her actions — her unwillingness to really listen to Jazz about Phantom — had gotten both her and Danny hurt. She didn’t want that to happen, ever again.

And Phantom. Don’t forget that you hurt him, too.

Maddie stood up, a little too fast, and winced at the way her body ached. Jazz noticed, then opened her mouth to speak.

“Save it, Jazz.” Maddie held up a hand. “You already gave me the lecture about fighting ghosts while I’m still injured.”

Jazz scowled. “You could stand to hear it again, Mom.”

“Jazz….”

“Kidding! Mostly.”

Maddie eyed Jazz, but there was a smirk on her daughter’s face that told her Jazz wasn’t going to launch into a lecture once more. “Goodnight, sweetie,” she said, wrapping her arms around Jazz for a hug.

“Goodnight, Mom,” Jazz said as she returned the embrace. “Get some sleep, okay? Don’t spend so much time in the lab like you did last night.”

“I won’t, I promise. I want that sleep, too.” She wasn’t even sure that her body would allow her to spend that much time upright, anyway.

Maddie tossed her tissue in Jazz’s trash can and headed towards the door, tucking the binder under her arm. But the minute she crossed the threshold, a memory popped back into her head.

“Jazz,” Maddie said, turning back around. Her daughter looked up from her chair. “I just remembered something. Phantom thinks the bombs were targeting him.”

Jazz frowned. “Thanks for telling me. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I don’t like the sound of it.”

“Me neither, Jazz,” Maddie said, before pulling the door shut behind her.

Me neither.

Chapter Text

The coffee shop’s door hit a bell hanging from the ceiling as it opened — letting out a loud ding! — and Maddie jumped. She scowled at the bell as she passed under it.

The tables were more full than Maddie expected, given that there was still an unknown bomber and an unknown number of bombs out there. But her ghost meter, recalibrated to detect the unusual ectoradiation at lower levels, didn’t make a peep.

Before Maddie could begin scanning the customers for Aggie Keaton, someone across the coffee shop called out: “Yoohoo! Maddie! Over here!”

The call came from none other than Penny Babcock, dressed in a pale yellow blouse and a large pink hair bow. She seemed to dwarf Aggie, who — as best as Maddie could tell — was wearing the exact same clothes she had at Casper, including the purple headphones. Not that Maddie could judge, considering the row of identical jumpsuits still hanging in her closet.

Maddie wove her way through the coffee shop’s tables to join the two other ectoscientists. “Hi, Aggie,” she said. The younger woman glanced up with a brief smile, but otherwise seemed very occupied with something she held below the tabletop. Maddie would have thought it a phone or a PDA, given how much Aggie looked like Danny or his friends texting at dinner, but it was considerably louder as Aggie tapped away at it. “And Penny! I wasn’t expecting you to be here.”

“Oh, well, Agatha here needed a ride, so I figured I would tag along,” Penny said, buoyantly. “As long as that’s alright with you, that is.”

“It’s fine, Penny.” The other women had claimed the bench seat along the wall, so Maddie was forced to sit with her back facing the open store. She didn’t like that she couldn’t see if a ghost attack were coming — though a wall wouldn’t necessarily stop a ghost, of course. “I’m glad you’re here, actually. I’d like to pick your brain about something.”

“Oooh, exciting! I would love to chat with you more! But!” Penny stood up. “I should let you and Agatha have your meeting first. Can I get the two of you anything?”

“A green tea, please,” Maddie said. Aggie just shook her head.

Maddie sat there for a moment while Aggie continued tapping at her device. Finally, she cleared her throat and said, “So, Aggie, you said you ran into problems with the calculations I asked about?”

Aggie nodded, then said: “One moment, please.”

“Sure.” No small talk from Aggie Keaton, it seemed.

After a longer wait than Maddie expected, Aggie stopped playing with the device in her lap and pulled several sheets of paper out of her bag. She handed them to Maddie. Idly, Maddie wondered why Aggie kept her headphones on.

The photocopied pages were covered in a messy chicken scratch of mathematical notation, and — as far as Maddie could tell — they were all part of the same proof. At the end, Aggie had written something in English, but Maddie could only make out some of the words. After staring at it for what felt like too long, she said, “Aggie, I have no idea what this says.”

“Oh.” Aggie took the papers back and squinted at the page. “Me neither. But I remember the conclusion: I don’t know if physiological consciousness can exist in the thirteenth dimension.”

She hadn’t really been expecting a radical departure from the ectoscientific consensus, but still; Maddie found herself fighting back an unexpectedly strong wave of disappointment.

“But I can’t prove that it doesn’t, either,” Aggie continued. She didn’t look Maddie in the eye as she spoke, instead staring somewhere around Maddie’s chin. “Fleinhardt’s original math only applies to spacetime, not extra dimensions. It’s possible there is some characteristic of the thirteenth that we’re unaware of that makes ectoplasm more complex.” She shrugged. “But that’s only based on what we know of consciousness in different organisms, which is, admittedly, not much.”

Maddie held back a sigh. “Well, I can’t say I expected anything different,” she said. “But thank you nonetheless, Aggie. I hope I didn’t take you away from your work with the GIW.” A thought struck her. “Wait. You said ‘physiological consciousness’. Are you implying that something else exists?”

Again, Aggie shrugged. “Like the soul? It’s possible, yes.”

“But— but that’s getting into metaphysics,” Maddie said. “There’s no proof for any of that.”

“A few years ago people said that there was no proof for ghosts, either, until you and Jack punched a hole through to the Ghost Zone,” Aggie said. “It doesn’t have to be metaphysics for it to be physically possible. We just haven’t figured it out yet.”

Maddie bit back a retort. As much as she was loath to admit anything related to pre-ectoscience paranormalism might be legitimate, Aggie was right. The benefit of doing her doctorate after the materialist turn, she thought. She opened her mouth to speak, but Aggie glanced at something behind Maddie and said: “Penny’s back.”

“Hi, ladies!” Penny said. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything. Maddie, here’s your tea.” She set a mug of steaming tea in front of Maddie, then sat down with her own large iced coffee.

Maddie shook her head. “No, Aggie and I were just finishing up. Can I keep these, Aggie? For reference?” She pointed at the proof, and Aggie nodded before starting to tap away at her device once more.

“Maddie, dear, you can’t imagine how happy I am to get out of that stuffy conference room and see you!” Penny beamed in her direction. “Agatha and Henry are wonderful, but Sedgewick can be quite pretentious at times. Not to mention those GIW agents,” she said, leaning in and whispering conspiratorially. “I can see why you don’t like them, Maddie. They are positively disturbing at times, with all their military talk and government secrecy.” Penny shuddered, then returned to that big smile of hers. “But enough about me. What’s been going on with you and yours, Maddie?”

“Nothing too much,” she lied. “Just normal research and dealing with my teenagers.” She paused, then sighed. “And the protestors outside of Fenton Works.”

Penny nodded, looking concerned. “I heard about that. It’s one of those anti-ghost hunting groups, isn’t it?”

“More than one, I think,” Maddie said. “They broke a window yesterday.”

“Yikes! Was everyone okay?”

She nodded. “We’re all fine, but…it doesn’t exactly let me sleep well at night.” That, and everything else she had on her plate. Maddie hesitated, then said: “Does it bother you, Penny? How ectoscience treats ghosts?” Aggie, she noticed, paused in her fidgeting, though she didn’t look up.

For once, Penny looked uncomfortable. “You’re talking about that letter, aren’t you?” When Maddie nodded, she continued. “Sometimes, Maddie. It’s hard to say, though. We’ve only had proof ghosts exist for two years now, and we still don’t really know what they are, except dangerous.” She sighed. “UCLA errs on the side of caution, but all I do is experiment on ectoplasm. I’m not fighting on the front lines like you and Jack are.” Penny lowered her voice again. “Though there is the GIW and whatever Vladco has going on.”

Maddie nodded, troubled. The Fentons’ methods weren’t that different from the GIW’s when it came to fighting ghosts except when it came to people and property. She and Jack at least tried to minimize the damage to civilians and Amity Park. But who knew what Vladco was up to?

Aggie still hadn’t spoken; Maddie glanced at the younger woman and found her staring somewhere past Maddie’s ear. She sighed.

“Jack and I have talked about changing things,” Maddie said, then shook her head. “I don’t know, Penny. I just feel that with all the publicity the bombs and the letter and the protests are getting, ectoscience is in for a reckoning one of these days. I just hope it can wait until the summer’s over so Danny can finish his classes.” She sighed.

The conversation lapsed into an awkward silence, as Maddie’s thoughts turned back to the ethical dilemmas she had been dealing with. It seemed Penny and Aggie were similarly deep in thought.

After a moment, Penny took a long sip from her iced coffee and spoke, cheerfulness obviously forced back into her voice. “Speaking of classes, how are Jack’s going?”

“Oh, they’re going just fine,” Maddie said. She rushed on, trying to put the awkward moment past them. “The first session went well, with only a few minor injuries and less than a dozen angry parents this time. He started the new one this week. Danny’s in it, actually. I’m glad he’s finally taking an interest in ectoscience, though I think he may have been coerced into it by his friends.” She sighed. “I wish it had been that easy for me to take a class in ectoscience when I was his age.”

Penny had been nodding enthusiastically to Maddie’s comments, but now she frowned. “You’ve been into ectoscience since you were that young?”

“Even younger, in fact. Growing up, I swore my bedroom was haunted,” she said, memories of the creaking old house and its strange happenings playing through her head. “It was a fairly standard haunting, all things considered. Cold spots, disembodied voices, shadows in the corner of your eye. A few times, I thought I saw a figure standing at the foot of my bed, just staring at me.”

Maddie could see it in her mind’s eye: tall, like a professional basketball player, with barely discernible limbs and a pair of eyes — ones Maddie couldn’t quite actually see, but knew were watching her. Absently, she rubbed at her cheek, recalling the time it had reached out to brush her face. It felt so solid compared to how little presence it appeared to have.

“Of course, no one else in my family ever saw it, even though Alicia — my sister — stayed up all night with a baseball bat when it first happened. Several times, in fact,” she said. “It fascinated me as much as it terrified me, and even after we moved, I never forgot that ghost, or whatever it was. Eventually, that led me to Prof. Lloyd at UW-Madison.”

Penny nodded. “Who studied under Fleinhardt and helped found modern ectoscience.” She leaned back in her seat, a wistful expression growing on her face. “What it must have been like to be there at the very beginning. I only became interested in ectoscience after finishing my Master’s. It was my brother, you see, who dragged me into it. Dale, he was working on his senior thesis project making a documentary on some haunted asylum, can’t remember which. He was always way into all things supernatural. And then one day I got a phone call from him. He practically screamed my ear off in excitement about this mysterious green substance he had found.

“It was ectoplasm, obviously, but at the time I had no idea what it was. I decided to quit my lab job and get my doctorate in molecular biology and figure out exactly what I’d seen.” Penny grimaced, as though she’d bitten into something sour. “Of course, this was before ectoscience was popular enough to be accepted in academia, and I didn’t go to UW-Madison, so I couldn’t say anything about it until much later. You and Jack were so lucky you chose the right school.”

“You’re right about that,” Maddie agreed. “How did your brother find that ectoplasm? It’s not easy to find.” Before the portal, at least.

Penny hesitated, and Maddie sensed she hit on a sensitive topic. “He never told me. Dale was always rather…reckless when it came to his ghost hunting, to the point where he was involved in some sketchy business with a group of occultists. They did some things to him that left him scarred in more than one way. It messed with all of us, really.”

“I’m sorry,” Maddie said, for lack of something better to say. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

“No, no, it’s fine. Dale’s fine, too. Mostly.” She sighed. “He did something really stupid a few years ago, and it was a bit of a reality check for him. Now he works in telemarketing. I just wish he had been safer, like you and Jack.”

Maddie nodded, but her memories — both recent and old — contradicted the faith Penny had in their methods. She took a sip of her now-cold tea to distract from her discomfort.

“I saw my mother’s ghost,” Aggie said.

Maddie and Penny turned to look at the younger ectoscientist; she’d been so quiet that Maddie had almost forgotten she was there. But Aggie had stopped fiddling with her device and was now staring off into the distance.

“Your mother’s ghost?” Maddie asked, softly.

Aggie nodded. “Something strange happened in my town when I was eight. I can’t confirm it, but I suspect a natural portal opened in my town and a ghost attacked. Several people died, including my mother.” Her face was surprisingly expressionless as she continued speaking. “I saw her again the night of the funeral. She didn’t seem real, like a shadow of herself. But I remember her smiling at me. And then she vanished.”

“I’m so sorry, Agatha,” Penny said. “That’s terrible.”

She shrugged. “I was young. Maybe I imagined it. It doesn’t exactly fit with what we know about ghosts now.”

Maddie nodded, but her mind flickered to her own time as a ghost. That didn’t exactly fit with what they knew, either. But she said nothing.

“I decided that day that I would figure out what happened,” Aggie continued. “I never saw her again, but it did lead me to theoretical physics.” She shrugged, again. “Maybe she’s out there, somewhere.”

No wonder Aggie thought the soul could exist where consciousness might not.

Another awkward silence fell over the three women as no one seemed to know what to say next. How was she supposed to respond to Aggie’s story, especially knowing that ghosts inevitably turned violent and obsessive with time?

Stop thinking like that, Maddie, she told herself. You can’t figure out Phantom if you keep viewing ghosts that way.

Which reminded her…. She’d have to play this carefully so she didn’t give anything away. As Aggie shrugged and went back to her device, Maddie spoke. “Oh, Penny, I wanted to ask you something,” she said, trying to keep her voice serious but tinged with nonchalance. “And Aggie, if you have any input. I got an email the other day from an ectoscience researcher wanting to know if I’d ever come across organic cells made of ectoplasm.” She was about to continue in her fiction, but she stopped when she caught the look on Penny’s face.

The ectobiologist had gone extremely pale and wide-eyed, as if she’d just been told her dog was hit by a car. “Organic cells made of ectoplasm?” Penny said, hoarsely. “Did they find a sample?”

Maddie nodded. “Yes, there’s a sample, and it seemed like it might be real.” She inwardly cringed and hoped neither woman would poke around for more context. “I know it’s supposed to be impossible, but Penny, you look like you’re about to tell me it’s not.”

Penny squeezed her lips together, then glanced around the room. “That’s because it isn’t,” she said, leaning forward over the table. Maddie leaned in slightly as well, and while Aggie didn’t join them, she turned one ear towards the other women and adjusted her headphone. “The two of you have to swear you won’t tell anyone, but I was one of the people Stanford hired to decontaminate the victims of Sedgewick’s experiments.” Her lip curled in distaste; there was a hint of anger to her voice. “The provost limited what I could see from his notes, but I found them in the medical samples.”

“The cells, you mean?”

Penny nodded. “They wouldn’t tell me exactly what he had been doing, but it was far worse than the university let on. Lots of severe subcutaneous ectoradiation damage. That’s where I found the ectoplasmic cells.”

Maddie stared, agog. Had Sedgewick really produced ectoplasmic cells in his test subjects? “Penny, that’s…that’s incredible. That kind of discovery could revolutionize ectobiology as we know it. How come no one knows about it? And how did he manage to do it?”

“I know! But like I said, Stanford covered it up well. They paid off the victims to avoid a lawsuit.” Penny glanced around the room again. “And the results are sealed, so I don’t know how he did it. But it must’ve been something new if no one’s been able to produce them before.”

Or something that no one’s been willing to try before, Maddie thought. If it was worse than what she already knew about the experiment, then Sedgewick had gone even further with human test subjects than she or Jack had ever considered doing.

Aggie spoke from where she’d been playing with her mystery device, though she didn’t look up. “It was probably a variant on radiotherapy using an ecton accelerator.”

Penny gasped while Maddie’s mind reeled. She hadn’t connected the dots, but in retrospect it made sense. Most of the Fentons’ technology was based in particle acceleration to create a strong enough beam of ectoenergy to damage ghosts, but there was a reason they were careful about ectoradiation contamination. It inevitably led to tissue necrosis and death unless immediately treated, and she couldn’t see a way around that.

What in the world happened to Phantom?

“That’s…a possibility,” Penny said. “I really don’t like it, though, because it means that Sedgewick had far more resources than Stanford let on. They wouldn’t tell me his funding source, either. But Maddie,” she said, making an intense amount of eye contact, “the important thing is: were they human cells?”

Despite the eye contact, Maddie’s voice was steady when she spoke. “No,” she lied. “They said it came from a rat at the scene of a ghost attack.”

Penny visibly relaxed. “That’s a relief,” she said, holding her hand to her heart. “That sounds like it was a natural occurrence, not the result of unethical experimentation. But if that’s true, how often does this happen and we’ve just never seen it?” Then she frowned. “Who did the email come from, again?”

“I can’t tell you. They wanted to remain anonymous.”

“Okay.” She sighed. “I know you’re a smart woman, Maddie, but please: make sure that they’re legitimate. If someone’s experimenting like Sedgewick was….” Penny closed her eyes and shuddered. “I don’t want to see that again.”

“I promise, Penny,” Maddie said. “I’ll do everything in my power to prevent that from happening.”

Penny nodded. “That’s good to hear.” She turned and poked Aggie in the shoulder. “The same goes for you, Agatha.”

From her vantage point, Maddie could see the slight frown on Aggie’s face at the contact, but the younger woman just nodded in return. Penny didn’t seem to notice.

“I suppose the GIW is aware of what Sedgewick did?” Maddie asked. And Vladco? she wondered to herself.

“I’m sure they do, but they’ve made it clear they’re willing to use whatever resources they have to find whoever’s doing this,” Penny said. “They’ve also made it very clear that I am not to tell you or Jack anything about their investigation, sorry.”

“No, no, I understand.” But Maddie’s conversation with Sedgewick on Monday echoed in her memories. “I just wish there was more Jack and I could do to help. Lend our expertise somehow.”

Penny reached across the table and placed a sympathetic hand on Maddie’s. “I know, Maddie. After what you’ve been through, I don’t blame you. But I can put in a good word for you and Jack, and I’m sure Agatha will too.” She smiled at the other woman, who once again just nodded. “Though don’t get your hopes up.”

“I won’t,” Maddie said, then gave Penny a tired smile. “I just hope this whole thing ends soon.”

“Me too.” Penny let out a long sigh before checking her watch. “Agatha and I have about ten minutes before we have to get back to the GIW. Why don’t the three of us talk about something that’s not related to ghosts?”

Not related to ghosts? “Honestly, Penny, there isn’t much in my life that isn’t related to ghosts, besides my family, of course.”

Penny laughed. “You need to get some hobbies, dear! But that’s okay: I have plenty of them. Here, let me tell the two of you about the latest drama in my improv group back home….”

As Penny launched into her story, Maddie found her mind wandering, just like during the last conversation she had with her fellow ectobiologist. She tried to respond appropriately at the correct moments, and if Penny noticed anything, she kept it to herself — nor did she seem bothered that Aggie kept quietly tapping away at her mystery device.

The revelation that Sedgewick had produced ectoplasmic cells in subcutaneous flesh was eye-opening, though horrifying. She was certain that Aggie was right that his experiment involved an ecton accelerator to…do whatever it was he was trying to do. But without knowing the results of his experimentation, it was hard to know what the implications of this knowledge were.

And then there was Phantom. A ghost with cells made of ectoplasm. Was his entire body like that, or just his ectoplasm?

With a jolt, Maddie realized that she was thinking of Phantom like she would a human — someone made of muscles and fat and bones, with a circulatory system that bled — and not like she would a ghost.

Which wasn’t right. It shouldn’t be right. It couldn’t be right. There was no way that Phantom had a human body made of ectoplasm. That kind of thing shouldn’t occur naturally.

Unless….

Oh, she did not like that thought.

The remaining minutes before she could leave seemed to drag on; Maddie tried not to let the idea that emerged from her thoughts distract her even more from small talk with Penny, as much as it twisted her stomach to think about.

Eventually, though, the meeting came to an end, and Maddie rushed out to her car. She put the AC on full blast in an effort to fight off the rising nausea.

Calm down, Maddie, she told herself. You have no idea if that’s how he died.

She took a deep breath, then another, grateful that she’d finally started working on those breathing therapy exercises. The horror she felt slowly faded away, though some of it lingered. No matter how he died, it still didn’t change the fact that Phantom was so young when it happened.

It still didn’t change the fact that he had cells made of ectoplasm.

It still didn’t change the fact that he was psychologically complex for a ghost.

It still didn’t change the fact that he rapidly evolved powers at a rate she’d never seen before.

It still didn’t change the fact that Phantom had died in what looked like a laboratory jumpsuit.

It still didn’t change the fact that Maddie questioned if ectoscience really, truly knew how ectogenesis happened.

As far as Maddie knew, ectoplasmic cells couldn’t exist in a naturally occurring ghost, meaning that she must be mistaken about what she saw on those slides.

Unless Phantom wasn’t a naturally occurring ghost.

Chapter Text

Danny had agreed to spend the day and night at Tucker’s for his own safety, so it was with her husband and daughter that Maddie walked into the lab on Friday morning. It was time to test the ecton emitter.

The first step: Prepare the test site.

Although it had been…—Maddie couldn’t actually remember—…too long since they’d used it, the Fentons had designed the lab with a specific space to test new ectotechnology. While Jack sat at the computer station preparing the ectoradiation meters, Maddie and Jazz started clearing the floor of the lab table and miscellaneous equipment that had accumulated there. Normally, she would prep with Jack, but since he was still on crutches, Jazz had volunteered to help instead.

The space in question was a six-foot cube situated on the left side of the lab, outlined on the floor and wall by slots into which blast shields could be set. One by one, Maddie and Jazz carried the shield panels from where they’d been stacked in the closet and fit them into the floor and wall.

“I know I promised no lectures on your constant disregard for lab safety,” Jazz said, “but I genuinely don’t understand why you don’t keep the blast shields up all the time. I know things explode in here more often than you let on.”

“Well, Jazz, we took it down when we were building the portal and just never got around to putting it back up. But when you have as much experience as your mother and I, you start to get a feel for how big an explosion might be,” Maddie heard Jack say over the brrrrzzzzp of her drill affixing the panels in place. Jazz must have given her father a look, because then he sighed and said: “Alright, fine. We’ve been negligent with lab safety and should have never stopped using it.”

“See? That wasn’t so hard to admit,” Jazz said with that self-satisfied assurance of her own correctness that Maddie was long familiar with. But still — what was going on in her husband’s head that he’d owned up to their error so readily to Jazz? She made a mental note to talk with him later about it.

Without Jack’s strength and height to do the bulk of the lifting, it took much longer than Maddie anticipated to attach the ceiling panels correctly. By the time they were on, it was almost time for Jack and Jazz to leave for Carrie, and Maddie’s muscles were aching with the strain.

As Jazz trudged upstairs to freshen up, Jack said, “I wish I could be here when you test that thing, Mads. I feel bad that you’ve had to do all the work on it while I’ve been off teaching.”

“Jack, honey, don’t feel bad about that. You’re doing something important for the next generation of ectoscientists!” she said. They sat at the kitchen table, and Maddie was grateful for the air conditioning. “And I would be down in the lab trying to figure out how to protect Danny, anyway. At least I have something to go on.”

But Jack shook his head. “That’s not what I meant.” He set down the half-eaten piece of fudge he was holding. “You’ve been working so hard to help our son, and I’ve barely been home this summer. I’m not doing anything for Danny. All I’ve done is design the bomb that….”

Maddie knew her husband enough to hear what he wasn’t saying: that he felt useless. That he blamed himself for his mess. She shook her head, emphatically.

“Now you listen here, Jack Fenton,” she said. “You are not to blame for this situation. You’re not the one who decided to place bombs in Amity Park. You are a hard-working, caring father who is doing his best to uphold his commitments and maintain some sense of normalcy during all of this chaos. Don’t you dare beat yourself up any of this.”

“I know, I know, Maddie,” he said, “and I’m trying not to. But I can’t help wondering, if you’re right about someone trying to frame us…or even if it’s not, but with the protests and everything…how much of this is because we’ve spent years hunting and threatening ghosts?”

The frustration Maddie felt — not at her husband, but at the situation they had been put in — faded away, and she sighed. It was really just an extension of the conversation they’d started and never really finished, though if she was honest, it was because they’d been avoiding it. “I feel the same way, Jack,” she said. “I guess all we can really do right now is…admit we’re wrong.”

“Wrong about what, exactly, Maddie? We’ve seen how destructive ghosts are. They don’t care about hurting people. You know that!”

Maddie shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Jack — unfortunately — had a very good point. She’d witnessed first-hand that ghosts would treat people. Even Phantom, as much as she was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, had done his fair share of property damage.

“Well,” she said, slowly, “there are ghosts that don’t seem that dangerous. Maybe we could try…talking to one?”

Jack’s face darkened. It was one thing to hear the suggestion coming from one of their kids, but hearing it from her wouldn’t be easy for him to brush off. He was probably thinking of the same failed attempts she had when Danny first made his suggestion. “Do you have a specific ghost in mind?” Jack asked.

The moment between his question and her answer wasn’t long enough to be suspicious, but still, a pregnant silence grew between them as Maddie knew exactly who Jack thought she was going to suggest.

Tell him!

“The Wisconsin Dairy King,” she said.

Jack frowned, and the tension shattered. “Who?”

“The ghost that haunts Vlad’s old mansion,” Maddie said. "Danny saw the Dairy King when we were there for the reunion. He said the ghost was friendly.”

“Really?” Jack said. “Danny’s never mentioned that to me.” Then he frowned, again. “Neither has Vlad, actually. But Mads, is that really a good idea? What would we even try to say?”

“I don’t know, Jack,” she snapped, exasperated, before she sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m sorry, honey. I’m just trying to come up with something else. Something that we can do besides hunting ghosts. Because I can’t— I can’t see ghosts as automatically evil anymore, Jack. Not after what happened to me.”

And not after everything that happened with Phantom, either.

Jack opened his mouth to respond, but Jazz’s footsteps started echoing down the stairs. “We’ll have to talk more later, Maddie.” The unspoken “again” filled the air as he reached across the table to squeeze her hand. He smiled, softly. “But we’ll get through this together, like we always do.”

Tell him about Phantom!

Maddie smiled back, but withdrew her hand as Jazz came into the kitchen. “Of course we will, Jack,” she said, despite not feeling it. “We are Fentons, after all.”

“Exactly!” And just like that, Jack’s usual boisterousness was back. He stood up, gave Maddie a kiss on the cheek — Jazz, unlike Danny, didn’t roll her eyes — and left her alone in the kitchen.

Time to get back to work.

***

There was another fax waiting for her in the lab.

The GIW is hiding things from the task force. You may be the only ones who can figure out what’s really going on and put a stop to it.

So Phantom was spying on the GIW, if he knew their inner workings. Maddie wasn’t exactly surprised about that, nor was she that surprised that the GIW were stalling their own investigation. But what did Phantom expect her to do, exactly?

For the moment, though, the thing she could do was test the ecton emitter. She noted the time the fax came in her lab notebook — maybe there was some pattern — on Phantom and then shredded the document.

The blast panels were probably the most expensive piece of equipment in the Fenton Works lab, save for the portal itself, because the polycarbonate was specifically formulated to be ectophobic, limiting the possibility of ecton contamination. Solid metal panels would be a better barrier, but sometimes they needed to see what happened in an experiment. At any rate, Maddie didn’t anticipate the emitter exploding, and the ectoradiation was within the safety margin for human interaction.

Unfortunately, she, Jazz, and Jack hadn’t finished setting up the test chamber, so Maddie was left to set up the emitter and ectoradiation meters herself.

The emitter itself went in the center of the floor, with one meter sitting right next to it. Maddie set four others against the walls and stuck another one on the ceiling, then routed the cables through a hole in one of the panels. Although the emitter and meters could be run wirelessly, wires were far more stable and less likely to suffer from ecton contamination.

Finally, Maddie put ectoradiation meters at various intervals across the lab, just to monitor any possible ecton leakage — and, after a moment’s consideration, she ran one up to Danny’s room, to make sure his room was safe for him when he got back.

With one final check that everything was plugged in, Maddie turned the meters on, and a little line showing the various ectoradiation readings appeared on the screen. There was no way to fully nullify the ectoradiation in the lab because of the portal, but it was good enough for the test.

Maddie picked up the on switch wired to the emitter. She stared at it, feeling unusually trepidatious at testing a new piece of ectotechnology, and double checked that the fire extinguisher was within easy reach. Then, with a deep breath, she turned it on.

Nothing happened.

Maddie glanced at the computer screen and watched the meter set right next to the emitter. She sat there, tense, for what felt like forever, until, eventually, the levels started to slowly increase.

She breathed a sigh of relief. No explosion. It was working, and there was no explosion.

By the calculations she and Jack made, it would take around twenty minutes before the emitter was at full power. With time to wait and watch, Maddie’s thoughts turned to Phantom — and how he might have died.

If Phantom wasn’t a naturally occurring ghost…well, Maddie wasn’t really sure what that meant. What could create an artificial ghost? Was such a thing possible? Ghosts were an either/or situation: either you were a ghost or you weren’t. How could a ghost be artificial?

Regardless of the specifics of Phantom’s ectogenesis, though, if he was somehow artificially created, if he somehow hadn’t died a natural death, then it meant that — Maddie’s stomach still twisted at the though — it meant that someone had experimented on and murdered a teenage boy.

And it meant that Maddie, had she captured Phantom before all of this started, would have experimented on a child who had already gone through that once.

Whoever Phantom was before he died, he had been someone’s child. Maddie tried to imagine what it would be like to watch someone experiment on and then murder one of her kids — and then watch someone hunt down their ghost, call them evil, and threaten to dissect them.

Phantom’s terrified face flashed through her memory again, then Danny’s.

Maddie took a deep breath against the nausea that rose in her gut once again. Wallowing in her own guilt wouldn’t change anything, and in fact might make things worse. And she didn’t know how Phantom died. This was all hypothetical. She forced herself to change subjects. Sort of.

If Phantom had been murdered in order to create an artificial ghost, there were a limited number of people she could think of that could actually do that.

Obviously, the first possibility was Sedgewick. Whatever the specifics of his experiments, Maddie doubted that he could get away with something so extreme as murdering a child. Stanford would certainly have scapegoated Sedgewick instead of covering things up if that were the case. But really, Maddie didn’t know that much about Sedgewick’s career outside the controversy at Stanford and his current position at Vladco.

The second possibility was the GIW. It made more sense than Maddie wanted to admit — why they always seemed more interested in Phantom than any other ghosts. Granted, everyone seemed more interested in Phantom than other ghosts because he was…well, Phantom. But if they were trying to recapture Phantom, why did it take them so long to come to Amity Park, and why the long periods of times between when they were in town?

And then there was the third option: someone else had murdered Phantom. Someone she wasn’t aware of, who knew enough about ectoscience to create an artificial ghost, who was depraved enough to murder a child for the sake of some twisted experiment.

Someone who might be willing to blow up a town in order to get him back.

The lab exploded.

Maddie threw herself to the ground as a small fireball erupted behind her, sending flaming bits of shrapnel pinging around the room. The lights flickered off, leaving only the burning remnants of whatever exploded behind.

Maddie lay on the floor, heart pounding so fast it was hard for her to accurately count to twenty. When nothing more exploded, she hauled herself to her feet and grabbed the fire extinguisher, unexpectedly relieved to find that she could, in fact, touch it. No death today.

To her surprise, it wasn’t the ecton emitter that exploded, but some pieces of equipment on the opposite wall. She sprayed it until the extinguisher put it out, along with the only remaining light in the room.

Maddie stumbled through the lab until she reached the shelf with emergency lanterns and turned it on, then made her way to the circuit breaker. It was rare that one of them damaged the lights without physically breaking one, but from the way everything was off — including, to Maddie’s dismay, the computer — she guessed that a circuit was flipped. Sure enough, when she pushed the breaker back into position, the automated lights flickered back on.

The portal, with its own power source, stayed on, as it always did.

With the lights back on, Maddie grabbed a piece of non-conductive scrap piping and started to poke through the wreckage. She tried not to imagine the self-satisfied look on Jazz’s face when she found out the pile of random miscellany she’d lectured her parents about putting away was the source of the explosion.

Finally, she found what, exactly, exploded: one of Jack’s experimental mousetraps had actually caught a mouse and then inexplicably burst into flames. She held up the charred mouse carcass and found her mouth curling in disgust.

Maddie sighed, then began to clean up the mess.

***

By the time Danny came home on Saturday afternoon, the crowd of protestors was large enough that he had to sneak in through the backyard. They kept the metal shutters on the windows down, and it made the first floor seem like it was sunken into the ground alongside the lab.

But, surprisingly, Danny seemed in good spirits when he opened the door into the kitchen and dumped his bag on the floor. What a relief, Maddie thought. She had been sorting through mail while Jack graded yesterday’s exams.

“Danny!” Jack said, grinning. “How’d it go at Tucker’s?”

“It was pretty fun,” Danny said. He didn’t sit down, but instead remained standing in the kitchen and stretched his arms. “After I got my homework done, we hung out with Sam and then played Doomed.” He grinned, sheepishly. “We, uh, probably stayed up too late doing that.”

Maddie shook her head. “It’s alright, Danny. I’m just glad to see you in a good mood.”

Danny paused, left arm stretched across his collarbone. “Yeah, it was…good to get away from the house for a bit.”

Maddie glanced at Jack, who met her eyes. The protests were due to their actions. It was because of them that Danny — and Jazz, too, she didn’t want to forget — felt attacked in his own home.

“So, uh, how did the emitter test go?” Danny asked before the silence dragged on too long. “I heard there was an accident.”

“My mousetrap finally caught a mouse, Danno!” Jack said with gusto. “And it only barely exploded!”

“That’s, uh, great, Dad.” Danny glanced at Maddie and caught her eye. “And everything else was okay?”

“For the most part, yes,” Maddie said. “It was mostly random bits of junk, and nothing important was damaged.” She sighed, trying hard not to glare at her husband’s nonchalance. “We will have to restart one of the scanners on the roof, though. The explosion tripped the circuit breaker.”

“Uh huh.” Danny still didn’t sit down, instead turning around and opening the cabinets, looking for something. Maddie narrowed her eyes. He probably wanted that super sugary cereal, though based on how fidgety he seemed, he didn’t need any more sugar. Somehow, he’d snuck another box in when she wasn’t looking, but she was pretty sure he’d finished it two days ago. “And the emitter?”

“It worked exactly as planned, thankfully,” Maddie said. She smiled at Danny. “I ran the test a second time after cleaning up the mousetrap. It emitted a nice cloud of ectons energized at specific intervals.” The smiled faded, and she grimaced. “Unfortunately, the seals weren’t as tight as I’d hoped and there was some ecton leakage into the house. It should all be gone now, though.”

“Mmhmm.” Danny had given up looking for his cereal, but he still seemed distracted; Maddie wasn’t sure how much he’d actually paid attention to her news. He bounced up and down on his heels, then said: “Well, I’m going to go, uh, chill in my room now. Bye!” Danny grabbed his bag and left before either of his parents could say anything.

After a moment, Maddie turned to Jack and said, “Does Danny seem…different today?”

“Oh, good, so it wasn’t just me,” he said. “He does seem more distracted than usual.” He shrugged. “I hope coming home doesn’t make him too stressed.”

Maddie nodded, but Danny seemed more than distracted — more like he had an excess of energy he couldn’t get rid of. Not for the first time, she wondered if Danny was on some illicit substance. But no, Jazz knew what Danny was up to, and Maddie couldn’t imagine a world in which Jazz would support her brother using drugs. She sighed.

“Well, I’ll take a distracted but less-stressed Danny than a super-stressed one,” she said. “We’ll just have to keep an eye on him.” As if she didn’t always do that.

“You’re right,” Jack said. He sighed, too. “I’m getting back to grading. It’s going to take a while.”

Adding yet another sigh to the room, Maddie turned back to her pile of mail. She ripped open a nondescript letter envelope to find a disparaging invective against ghost hunting aimed at her, Jack, Fenton Works, the GIW, and, for some reason, Casper High. She tore it in half and moved on to the next piece of probable hate mail.

But it wasn’t long before both her and Jack’s phones beeped with an alert that the mayor had an announcement about the investigation; Danny and Jazz both charged down the stairs a moment later.

Montez looked slightly better, nearly a month after his first press conference with the GIW, but sweat beaded at his forehead. He was flanked once again by two severe men in white suits with Sedgewick standing in the background.

“People of Amity Park,” Montez began once more, “after weeks of intense work, the GIW have called this alert to announce the discovery of several persons of interest in the explosions from early June. I now turn us over to Operative K.”

The darker skinned agent stepped up to the podium. “The Guys in White are seeking the public’s help in identifying six persons of interest identified on security camera footage. We ask that anyone with information reach out to the mayor’s office phone line.”

The screen changed to show the tip line number across the bottom and an inset of Operative K in the corner. Next to him was a blurry screenshot from a security camera.

Operative K began reading a description of the man and where he was last spotted before moving onto the next. The Fentons watched in silence at the stream of persons of interest. Maddie didn’t recognize any of them, and from the lack of reaction among her family, neither did they.

That is, until the last image appeared on the screen.

Maddie didn’t recognize the distant figure in the screenshot; he had his back to the camera as he walked through the school yard. It would have meant nothing to her if not for the fact that, out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Danny and Jazz had both gone very still.

“Juvenile white male, age 14-18, with dark hair. Seen around Casper High School after hours in the week before the unknown ectoplasmic device was discovered.”

Her blood ran cold as she remembered the phone call from Lancer, what felt like so long ago. The GIW had asked him about Danny, and about any connection Danny had to Phantom. In the chaos, she’d forgotten all about it.

Operative K continued speaking: “We are also looking for any reportings on the movements of the ghost menace known as Danny Phantom. He is believed to have information vital to our investigation.”

As the announcements ended, Jack said, “We should give them our logs on Phantom, Mads.”

Give the GIW information that could hurt Phantom? Maddie gave herself a mental shake. How could she frame this in a way that wouldn’t make Jack suspicious of her?

“Do we really want to give the GIW our logs on Phantom?” she asked, slowly, as if thinking hard. She very deliberately did not look at either of her children. When Jack frowned in confusion, she added, “You know the GIW have better visual surveillance powers than we do. If we give them our logs, they might capture him before we do, and they’ll secret him away to some government lab. We could lose our chance at the ghost!”

Jack nodded. “You raise a very good point there, Maddie. I still think we should help out in some way.”

“Well, you shouldn’t share any of your information on Phantom with the GIW unless they subpoena you for it,” Jazz said.

Both Maddie and Jack turned to look at their daughter, who shrugged. “I don’t want you cooperating with the government more than you have to,” she added.

“That does make sense,” Jack said. “Anyway, I didn’t recognize anyone the GIW mentioned. Did any of you?”

Jazz was quicker on the beat to shake her head than Maddie was, or maybe Maddie was wrong and Jazz hadn’t recognized the similarities between the last person of interest and Danny. But her son wore an odd enough expression on his face, one that he covered up as soon as Jack said, “Danny? Could it be a kid at school?”, that Maddie knew that he had seen it too.

Danny shrugged, the epitome of nonchalance. “Nope. But there’s a lot of kids at Casper that I don’t know, so maybe.”

Jack seem satisfied at that, and the family dispersed into the house. But before she took a seat at the kitchen table with Jack, Maddie excused herself to the bathroom.

After doing her business, she stared at herself in the mirror. It was a while since she’d gotten her hair cut, and it nearly brushed her shoulders. The bags under her eyes seemed more apparent than ever, as did the wrinkles on her face. All her decades of ghost hunting were finally making her show her age.

She’d never felt so old before.

Were the GIW really looking into Danny as part of their investigation into the bombings? Of all the things Maddie had imagined Danny might be hiding from them, being involved in the bombings was not one of them.

There was no way her son was involved in the bombings. She refused to believe that he could be.

But then why were the GIW interested in Danny?

And why were they looking at a connection between Danny and Phantom?

***

Several hours later, Maddie was ready to head to bed when she remembered that the roof scanner needed to be reset. She groaned, then headed up to the Ops Center.

Maddie unlocked the hatch and pushed it open, then clambered onto the rooftop and stifled a yelp.

She wasn’t alone.

A figure sat with their back to one of the pylons, staring up at the sky. For a moment, Maddie thought it was Phantom, just based on the silhouette, but then the figure turned towards her and said: “Mom!”

Maddie relaxed and held her hand to her beating heart. “Oh! Danny!” she said. “You scared me!”

“Sorry,” Danny said. “I, um…didn’t mean to scare you.” He sniffed, then wiped his face with his arm. He didn’t get up.

“Danny, you know you’re not supposed to–”

The words died on her lips. In the shadowed rooftop, this late at night, Maddie couldn’t make out Danny’s face, but she didn’t need to see his expression to understand her son’s body language; he was upset about something.

“Danny, sweetie?” She crouched down beside him, and Danny tensed, as though he was trying not to flinch away. He wouldn’t face her. “Is everything okay?”

He sniffed again. After a pause, he said, “Not really.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Danny finally looked at her, and a sliver of light fell across his face; the one eye Maddie could make out seemed startling blue. “Do I have to?”

Something in Danny’s voice broke Maddie right then and she felt tears prick in her eyes. “No, no you don’t. Not right now,” she said, despite wanting nothing more than for her son to talk to her.

Danny nodded, then – to her surprise – reached over and grabbed her in a tight hug. Maddie fell to her knees, then wrapped her arms around him and held her son as he let out a sob.

It didn’t take much imagination for Maddie to guess why Danny was upset: even without whatever secret stressors he held, there was so much going on, so much threatening his family, that it was no wonder he was breaking down in her arms.

But why the roof?

She glanced around the roof, looking for any indications of what Danny was doing here – without permission – before following the memory of his gaze to the sky. Ah.

“Danny,” Maddie said as his sobs subsided, “do you want to go stargazing?”

He pulled back from her and sniffed. “You mean, at the park?” he asked, voice quiet.

She nodded.

Danny eyed her, suspicious. “This isn’t just a ploy to have an awkward mother-son talk, is it?”

Maddie shook her head. “No, just stargazing.” As Danny sniffed again, still not answering, she continued, “Danny, I know you’ve been under a lot of stress lately, and it’s been so long since you and I spent some time together looking at the stars. And I know you can’t see them well from the roof.”

After a moment, Danny nodded. “Okay...okay. That sounds like a great idea, Mom.” He stood up, then proffered her a hand.

“Of course it is. Stargazing with my son is always a good idea,” she said. Maddie took Danny’s hand and was surprised at the strength behind it as he pulled her up. She smiled at him, and Danny gave a weak smile back. “I have to restart the scanner, but it won’t take very long. Why don’t you head down and grab the picnic blanket and lantern, and I’ll meet you downstairs?”

Danny sniffed once more, then nodded and climbed back through the hatch and down the ladder. In minutes, Maddie restarted the scanner and followed her son, locking the hatch behind her.

She headed to the lab and double checked that the scanner was working before hesitating by the rack of ectoweaponry. Several shelves of well-used ectoblaster of various shapes and sizes…. Maddie had already held one in her hand – had actually used one – multiple times since her last night at the park, but as she reached for one, the memory of Phantom’s face once again flashed in her mind, stronger now than it was when she’d grabbed for a weapon before.

With a start, Maddie realized she couldn’t remember the last time she’d left the house without an ectoweapon.

Maddie pulled her hand back. Did she really, truly need one tonight? Ghost attacks were at the lowest they’d been since the portal opened, even if sightings were on the rise once more. What were the chances that she and Danny would be victim to one?

But a slim chance was a still a chance, and Maddie didn’t want to risk Danny getting hurt in a ghost attack; he had no way to defend himself otherwise. She reached for a blaster, promising to use it only in self-defense if they were attacked first.

Phantom’s face again. Could she really trust her instincts if a ghost did show up? Could she accurately judge if a ghost was attacking or not? She withdrew her hand once more.

She could probably distract a ghost long enough to let Danny escape, even without an ectoweapon. Maybe she’d be lucky and able to hold off a ghost until backup arrived.

What backup, though? Jack, on crutches? The GIW? Her hand went for the blaster.

Phantom? The ghost boy often patrolled at night, and he did have an uncanny ability to tell where other ghosts were attacking.

At this last thought of Phantom, Maddie dropped her hand and walked out of the lab, leaving the weapons behind. If she was going to meet with Phantom tomorrow, unarmed, then she better get used to the absent weight on her hip. She flicked the lights off as she left the lab.

Maddie stopped in the kitchen to wait for Danny, who hadn’t brought the supplies yet. Jack was grading the tests from yesterday at the table.

“Jack, I’m taking Danny to go stargazing in the park,” she said.

Her husband looked up from the exams and frowned. “It’s not safe out there,” he said. “I don’t think you should be going out so late at night. What if a ghost attacks? Or you come across another bomb?”

“We’re just going to the park, Jack. I highly doubt there will be a bomb there. But I’m bringing a ghost meter, just in case.” She patted the device hanging from her hip.

Jack still didn’t look happy. “And an ectoblaster?”

“There’s one in the car,” Maddie said, shoving down the guilt at withholding the truth from him. She lowered her voice. “I think Danny really needs this, Jack. I just found him crying on the roof.”

Jack’s brows furrowed. “He knows he’s not supposed to be up there.”

“He was stargazing, Jack,” Maddie said. “Or trying to, at least.”

“He’s that stressed?”

Maddie nodded.

“Alright, Mads.” Jack sighed. “For Danny’s sake. Just promise me you’ll leave at the first sign of trouble.”

“I will, honey. I don’t want to put Danny in danger.”

Jack nodded, then started rifling through the papers on the table. “Speaking of Danny,” he said, voice lowered to match hers. “Take a look at his score on today’s test.”

Maddie took the sheets of paper he handed her. On the top, next to Danny’s name in his messy cursive, was the fraction “93/100” circled in red.

“A 93? That’s a great score!” Maddie couldn’t keep the surprise from his voice. She flipped through the test, noting the few marks Jack had given him.

“It’s not just great,” Jack said. “It’s the highest score by 12 points.”

Maddie looked up to meet her husband’s gaze; he was completely serious. “You’re sure about this?”

Jack nodded. “I checked it three times. And there’s no way he could have cheated. I made the test during lunch and the answer key while the kids were taking it.”

“That’s…that’s incredible.”

“I know. And Danny only lost points because he was rushing too much to double check his numbers.”

“How?” Maddie said, handing the paper back to him. “Danny barely passed his chemistry and trig classes last year.”

Jack shook his head. “I don’t know, Mads. But...I just get the feeling that Danny’s holding back on us.”

Danny’s PSAT scores and the college brochures. Maddie opened her mouth to remind Jack about them, but then, from the stairs: “Mom? Are you ready?”

Maddie looked back at Jack and knew he was just as concerned as she was about their son. But now was not the time to continue that conversation, either.

“We’ll talk later,” Maddie said, and she gave Jack a brief kiss just as Danny walked into the room. For once, Danny didn’t roll his eyes or making gagging noises at his parents’ PDA, which told Maddie volumes about how he must be feeling.

Neither of them said much on the drive to the park; Maddie occasionally glanced over at Danny to find him leaning on his hand, staring out the passenger window at the darkened scenery.

Finally, Maddie pulled into the lot – empty, just as it was the last time she was here – and parked along the soccer field. Before she turned off the car, though, she turned to Danny.

“I hate to tell you this, Danny,” Maddie said, “but I’ve forgotten how to find the constellations we used to look at.” She watched as her son’s face fell, though he tried to hide it. But Maddie caught his eye, and said, “So, will you teach me again?”

The disappointment on Danny’s face was replaced by surprise, and then by a small grin. “Yeah, of course!” he said, then unbuckled and got out of the car.

His enthusiasm was probably a bit forced, Maddie figured, but boy, was it good to see her son smile.

As he grabbed the blanket and lantern from the backseat, though, Danny glanced at the ectoblaster she’d left behind in the center console. He said nothing, and Maddie pretended she didn’t notice.

She also pretended she didn’t notice the conspicuous absence of an ectoblaster’s weight at her hip.

She let Danny take the lead, lantern illuminating their way to a small hill on the other side of the soccer field – and away from the playground. Maddie snuck a glimpse at the structure and felt oddly disappointed to find no glowing figure perched on the equipment.

Danny positioned them just below the crest of the hill, with their backs to the glow from Amity Park. The view still wasn’t superb — the lights from nearby towns softly illuminated the horizon, and the moon was a waning crescent in the southwest — but for their purposes, it was enough.

They spread the blanket out on the grass, facing northeast, and Danny lay down close enough that Maddie could almost feel the inexplicable chill to his skin.

“Okay,” Danny said, “what do you recognize?”

“Polaris.” She pointed. “The Big Dipper.” What was the other one? “Cassiopeia.”

“Alright, let’s start with Cepheus. Do you see the brightest star in Cassiopeia?” Danny pointed at the sky, though Maddie couldn’t really tell where he was looking. He probably couldn’t see where she had been pointing, either.

“Mmhmm.”

“Okay. Find the brightest star in a straight line between that one and Polaris.”

As Danny taught her how to find Cepheus, then Draco and Cygnus, and other constellations in the night’s sky, his voice grew more and more excited. Maddie wished she could see the look on her son’s face, but she kept her eyes on the sky, trying to memorize the patterns made by the pinpricks of light.

It was like Danny had been returned to a former state from a few years ago, back before he had grown distant from her. But Danny hadn’t lost his love of astronomy, and nor — she was sure — had he lost his love for his family. Something else just got in the way.

As much as Maddie wanted to question Danny, though, she kept her promise and didn’t press him, and, at some point, the two of them fell into silence; Maddie lay there and went over the constellations in her head. Some, she had already forgotten, but others were as clear to her tonight as if she’d always known them.

Maddie didn’t know what she needed to do to regain Danny’s trust, but she hoped that tonight was a start down that path.

Eventually, as the stars slowly passed across the sky, Maddie found herself saying, “Danny, I know that I said you don’t have to talk to me about what’s going on, but I want to let you know something.”

Danny didn’t respond, so she rushed on. “I know that there’s something you’re not telling me — something that you’re afraid to talk about.” Her face grew hot and her throat heavy with emotion. “I’m not going to pressure you into telling me anything, but I want you to know that whatever it is, whatever secret you’re hiding, it won’t change the fact that I love you, Danny.” She felt a tear roll down her face.

When Danny still didn’t respond, Maddie frowned, then looked over at her son. He had fallen asleep, here, under the stars he loved so much, alongside the mother she hoped he still cared for.

For a moment, Maddie watched her son — watched the slow rise and fall of his chest as he breathed in and out. Asleep, Danny looked so much younger than sixteen; she hadn’t realized exactly how much the stress had aged him, too.

After a moment, Maddie turned back to the stars. They should be getting back home soon, but for a moment, at least, she could let her son rest.

Chapter Text

At 11:30pm on Sunday night, Maddie slipped out of bed as quietly as she could, so she didn’t risk rousing Jack and facing his questions. Her second meeting with Phantom was in half an hour.

Well, 29 minutes.

She pulled on the clothes she had laid out the night before. As much as she wished she could wear one of her jumpsuits, it was a bad idea: not only did Maddie’s doctor — and daughter — still forbid her from wearing one until her ribs were fully healed, she didn’t want to threaten Phantom by showing up in her normal hunting gear. She instead chose a pair of workout clothes, ones that were form-fitting without being tight and, more importantly, would make it harder to hide ectoweaponry.

Downstairs, Maddie hooked an ectoradiation meter to her belt, grabbed her phone and keys, and locked the door behind her. Thankfully, the protestors had gone home for the night; she wasn’t sure what she’d do if they were still around.

The streets were fairly empty on the way to the park, but Maddie found herself tensing every time she passed another car. What, did she think that some random citizen was going to rat her out to her husband? Maddie shook her head at herself as she drove past a car stopped at a light. No one knew it was her; she was in the nondescript car. Jack wouldn’t find out.

But as Maddie pulled onto the road to the park’s lot, her phone rang, and she knew before she checked that it was Jack.

Maddie took a deep breath, then answered the phone. “Hi, honey!” she said.

“Maddie, where are you?” The concern in Jack’s voice was clear, but there was something else she couldn’t identify, and she didn’t like it. “I woke up and you were gone. Again.”

“I just went for another drive,” Maddie said.

“Really, Mads? You know how dangerous that is.” There was the sound of Jack moving around in the house. “Where are you? I’m coming to get you.”

Her heart rate spiked. “You don’t need to do that. I’m fine.”

“I want to believe you, Maddie, but” — Jack made a frustrated noise — “you’ve been acting so strange lately! I’m worried about you.”

“I told you, I’m fine, Jack.” Maddie kept a tight grip on the steering wheel as she pulled into a parking spot.

“Then why won’t you tell me where you are?”

“Because I…” Tell him! “I’m meeting with someone.”

“Meeting with someone? At midnight?! Who…why…?!”

“They don’t want me to tell anyone who they are.” Maddie cringed at how poor an excuse it sounded, even if it was technically true. “They have information about the explosion.”

“They do? Maddie, why didn’t you tell me?” She cringed again at the betrayal in Jack’s voice. “Do the police know?”

“They didn’t want me to tell anyone what we were doing,” she said.

“So you lied to me.”

It wasn’t a question.

Her heart pounded in her chest. She squeezed her eyes shut, then spoke. “Yes,” she said, quietly.

Silence.

“Jack?”

“I thought we were a team, Mads.”

“We are, Jack. I promise.”

“Then tell me where you are,” Jack repeated. “So we can do this together.”

“I can’t do that,” she said. “I can’t risk scaring him away.”

“Him?!”

Maddie cringed at how bad that sounded.

“I promise it’s not what it seems, Jack,” she said. “He genuinely does have information about the explosion. Nothing else going on.” It was only a partial lie.

“I’m not– that’s not– I’m not worried about that, Maddie! I’m worried that– do you not trust me, Mads?” Jack’s voice broke on her name.

Maddie swallowed back a lump welling in her throat. “I do, Jack. I promise, I trust you. It’s just….” She sighed. “It’s complicated.” The dashboard clock flipped over to 12:01. She didn’t know how long Phantom would wait around. “Look, Jack, I have to go, but I promise that I will explain everything when I get home.”

Once more: silence.

“I’m sorry, Jack.”

“I thought you trusted me,” Jack whispered.

He hung up.

Maddie squeezed her eyes shut and laid her head on the steering wheel. A few tears rolled down her cheek. She wanted nothing more than to call Jack back and apologize, invite him to come, but she didn’t, because the tragic truth, one she was all too aware of, was that she didn’t trust Jack. Not with this. Not with Phantom.

She raised her head from the steering wheel and sniffed. She took a few deep breaths to calm herself, then grabbed her stuff and left the car.

As she walked across the field, lantern lit, Maddie tried to clear her mind from the disagreement with Jack. She doubted that Phantom would try to take advantage of her emotional distress, but it would be better for him to see Dr. Madeline Fenton, not Mrs. Maddie Fenton. If she still deserved to call herself that after tonight.

And yet, she found herself struggling to think of Phantom as a ghost — as an object to study — instead of as a kid out of his league.

To her relief, Phantom was still waiting at the playground. He was once again on the tall tower’s roof, but this time he was lying on the slope, staring up at the sky and dangling his legs off the ledge. It was an impossible angle for a human to lay at without sliding off, but, well, Phantom wasn’t human.

Seeing him there, defying laws of earthly physics, though, Maddie was suddenly reminded of the fact that if she was wrong about Phantom — if he had agreed to meet her as a plot to trick her and take down one of his biggest enemies, or at least one of his biggest nuisances — she was totally in his power. She forced down the sudden spike of anxiety that swelled in her throat. Could she trust Phantom not to hurt her? Could she really, truly trust that she was making the right choice?

There was only one way to find out. Taking a last deep breath, Maddie strode forward and called out: “Phantom?”

Phantom jerked up from where he was lying on the roof so that he was perched on the edge. Just like the last time, he stared at her, then blinked out of sight.

Okay then. Maddie finished the walk to the playground’s edge and stepped onto the mulch, hand taring the meter as soon as its alarm went off.

She looked around for Phantom, but the only source of light came from her small lantern. If he was still present, he was invisible. She thought she felt a brush of cold air near her, but in the summer heat, it disappeared as quickly as it came.

“Phantom?” she said. “Are you still here?”

Nothing happened for a moment, but then the shadows changed. Maddie turned to find Phantom standing on the platform, just as he had the last time. He leaned with both arms on the railing, and Maddie would have called it a casual pose if not for the guarded look on his face.

“Um. Hi,” she said.

“Hi.” Phantom narrowed his eyes. “You didn’t bring any ectoweapons, did you?”

Maddie shook her head. “No, I didn’t. I promise. Just the lantern, my phone, the ghost meter, and this.” She unclipped a device from her belt and held it up for Phantom. “It’s a modified walkie-talkie. It transmits sound to a recorder in my car. I was hoping you would mind if I recorded our conversation tonight.”

Phantom stared at her for another few seconds, as if trying to decide if he could trust her. Then the suspicion on his face vanished and he shrugged. “Sure,” he said. “Just don’t share it with anyone, please.”

“I won’t.” When Phantom didn’t immediately respond, she sat in the same spot as before and tried not to think about green electricity arcing across the metal. The walkie-talkie she set on the step beside her. The device filtered out spectral energy and transmitted the remaining sound to its pair in the car’s stereo, where it was recorded onto a cassette; for some reason, cassettes didn’t behave around ghosts. Someday soon, they really should switch to digital recording.

Phantom kept staring at her; Maddie couldn’t quite meet his gaze, instead looking somewhere near his boots. He seemed to be waiting for her to speak first, but what was she supposed to say to someone who, less than a month ago, she had thought of as the greatest threat to her town?

“So what did you—”

“I wanted to—”

Phantom gestured at her to continue speaking.

Taking a deep breath, Maddie said, “I wanted to apologize to you, Phantom. For attacking you the last time we met. I broke my promise, and I’m— I’m sorry.”

Now that she said the words, they seemed wholly insufficient. How could anything she said be sufficient to make it up to Phantom, after all the times she’d hurt him?

To her surprise, though, Phantom just raised an eyebrow and said, “Do you really mean that?”

Phantom’s terrified face once again flashed in her memory. She closed her eyes briefly against it, then simply said: “Yes.”

“Okay. I believe you.” He straightened up. “But I want you to know that at the first sign of threat from you, I’m gone. I’m taking a big risk by giving you a second chance. Understand?”

She nodded vigorously.

Phantom nodded once in return, then glanced to the side as if uncertain of himself. He still didn’t trust her, clearly.

“In that case….” He cleared his throat. “I owe you an apology, too, Dr. Fenton. You got hurt because I couldn’t control my powers. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

Maddie forced herself to think of the remorse in his voice as genuine. “That’s alright, Phantom. Er, not alright, because…well, you know.” Why couldn’t she talk right to him? “Um, thank you, I guess, and I’m sorry. Again. It was my fault for antagonizing you when you were just trying to be helpful. But, um, I don’t blame you for losing control like that. It was an effect of the explosion, right? That messed up your powers?”

Phantom had looked slightly amused at her stumbling, but at the mention of the explosion, he sobered up. “Yeah,” he said. “I think so. Took me a while to get them back under control.” He glanced away again, as if trying to block out a bad memory. Maybe he was. “Well, let’s get started; I don’t have all night. You wanted to ask me some questions about ghosts, yes?”

Maddie nodded, wondering what other things Phantom had on his agenda for tonight. The fact that he had an agenda was eye opening, if she didn’t assume it was just a figure of speech. Could she assume that? She wasn’t sure.

This was going to get confusing.

“First, some ground rules.” Phantom leaned on the railing with his forearms again. “I agree to answer your questions as honestly as I can,” he said. “But! I also reserve the right to refuse to answer, including but not limited to what I do when I’m not ghost hunting and how I became a ghost. Got it?”

Drat. There went two paths of inquiry she couldn’t pursue, but Maddie nodded anyway. Any information about ghosts she got from Phantom was better than nothing.

“Second,” he continued, staring at her intensely, all awkwardness from a moment before gone, “you agree to hold your prejudice against ghosts in check. I’m giving you a second chance because I think you can earn it, but like I said. The first threat, and I’m gone.”

Maddie bit her lip to hold back a defensive excuse about how it wasn’t prejudice, but she knew it was an accurate term. Still, when most ghosts she knew tried to attack her, including Phantom…. “No prejudice,” she agreed. “I’ll try my best, but–”

Phantom shook his head. “No buts. That’s not good enough, Dr. Fenton. I’m here because I want to believe you can do better than that. Don’t prove me wrong.”

Maddie simultaneously wanted to both defend herself and shy away from the intensity of Phantom’s gaze and, but she forced herself to not to break eye contact with him. As much as part of her was still loath to admit it, Phantom was right: she was prejudiced against ghosts, and she wouldn’t change anything by pretending she wasn’t. If she wanted to learn anything, she would have to get over her preconceptions.

And she was a Fenton, gosh darn it. She could do better than that.

“I won’t,” Maddie said. “You can hold me to that.”

“Good. And third, this” — he gestured between them — “will be a conversation. Not a Q&A or interrogation.” Phantom paused, then cocked his head as if considering something. “I don’t even have that many questions for you, actually.”

“You don’t?”

“Nope.” Phantom shook his head. “I’m not the one only now deciding ghosts have an existence worthy of study outside of being dissected.” He gave her a look.

Maddie winced.

“Sorry,” Phantom said, looking away and rubbing the back of his neck, though he didn’t sound particularly remorseful.

“No, no.” She grimaced. “I probably deserve that, after everything I’ve done. Um. I’m sorry about all of that, too,” she added.

“Probably, yeah. So I guess I’ll start,” Phantom said, then continued without giving Maddie any time to respond. “I’ll ask you again: why are you here? I know you said it’s because you want to ask me things about ghosts, but I don’t think you’re here out of idle curiosity. There’s too much going on for you to take the time off just to chit chat. So: why are you here?”

“I….” Phantom was even more perceptive than she expected, and more aware of what was going on in the world around him than she expected, too. And he asked a good question.

Why was she here, sitting on a playground structure at midnight, talking to the ghost of a teenage boy, and lying to her husband about it? It wasn’t like the last time, where she wanted to know what had happened to her at the explosion. And it wasn’t like she was particularly interested in whatever culture or society ghosts had going on — right now, at least. She was far too ectoscience oriented for that to be her primary concern.

And far too concerned about Danny. She opened her mouth to speak, then thought better of it. Phantom already told her he didn’t know much about the explosion, and she didn’t think he’d know anything about why Danny reacted to abnormal ectoradiation the way he did. What could he do to help solve the explosion’s mechanics that she couldn’t already figure out? She doubted that Phantom knew more about the high-level mathematics of ectoscience than she did.

No, that wasn’t why she was here. There really was only reason she would risk her life — and, apparently, her marriage — to talk with Phantom.

“Because I want to know if there are ghosts that can be trusted,” Maddie said. “And you seemed like the best candidate to prove my hypothesis correct.” She said it as casually as she could, because as much as she wanted Phantom to trust her, there were still things she didn’t want to admit to anyone else. Not yet.

Because I need to know that I wouldn’t have inevitably become evil.

Phantom looked directly at her, a slight smile on his face, and Maddie had the odd feeling she had just passed some kind of test, though what exactly she was being tested on she was unsure.

“Well, that’s good to hear, Dr. Fenton,” Phantom said. “Trust has to go both ways.”

Maddie just nodded, not certain what to say.

Phantom waved his hand at her. “Now that that’s over with, go ahead. Ask away, Dr. Fenton.”

At Phantom’s prompting, all of the questions Maddie had lined up fled from her head. “Um…” she said, grasping for something to say. “What did you do to your Thermos?”

Phantom blinked, then glanced down at the Thermos on his hip. “My Thermos?” he asked.

“The other day, at the mall,” Maddie said. “You did something with it to make it more powerful.”

“Oh, right.” He unhooked the Thermos off his belt and looked at it; from here, Maddie couldn’t make anything unusual out. “Well, it runs on an ectoplasm, right? So I just supercharge it and it makes the…uh, pull stronger.” Phantom hooked it back on, then shrugged. “Can’t do it too much or else the Thermos stops working.”

“Really?” That wasn’t the answer Maddie was expecting — she actually wasn’t sure what she was expecting — but it made sense. “How’d you figure that out?” Her mind started running through various possibilities. She and Jack had tried making the suction stronger, but the Thermoses had the tendency to explode if they made the battery incorrectly.

Phantom shrugged again. “Dunno, really. I just kind of…make it work. Took some trial and error to get it right. And before you ask,” he said, “no, I will not tell you where I got my Thermos. That falls under ‘what I do when I’m not ghost hunting.’”

Disappointing, but still. The fact that Phantom was able to figure out how to make the Thermos work in a way she and Jack hadn’t, and through trial and error, was incredible. And, despite Phantom claiming his non-ghost hunting activities were off limits, he did give away that he spent at least part of his time figuring out how to be more effective in his fights. It showed a dedication to ghost hunting she hadn’t expected.

Just add it to the list of things she didn’t expect from the ghostly teenager.

“That’s amazing, Phantom,” she said. “Really, it is.”

“Uh, thanks.” Phantom looked away and rubbed the back of his neck; Maddie suspected she had embarrassed him, somehow, with the compliment.

They fell into an awkward silence. Despite Phantom’s insistence that this was a conversation, he didn’t seem particularly eager to carry one on. Or not un-eager so much as unsure what to say next.

“So, um,” Maddie started, just to fill the silence, and anxiously tapped her fingers on her knee, “why did you start ghost hunting, Phantom? I mean, you’re a ghost, right? Why would a ghost hunt other ghosts?”

Phantom shrugged. “Because people were getting hurt,” he said simply. “And I could do something about it.”

It was more or less the same answer Maddie had heard from him over the last two years, but she’d never really believed it before. She still wasn’t sure she actually did believe what Phantom said, but…she was just so tired of doubting people’s — mostly her children’s — intentions.

“That’s what my husband and I claim we’re doing,” Maddie said. “That we’re trying to protect people. But we haven’t exactly done a good job of that, have we?”

Again, Phantom shrugged. “I’m not really a good judge of that, Dr. Fenton, since I’m one of the ones you’re trying to protect people from. Even though I’m not– I’m not–”

Phantom made a face as he suddenly seemed stuck on what to say.

He’s not what? Maddie thought. Not a threat to the town? A menace? Evil? Any other insults the Fentons had thrown at him?

“I’m sorry, Phantom,” she said. “We haven’t been very good to you over the last two years.” She paused. “For the record, I don’t think you’re that dangerous to Amity Park anymore.”

For a second, Phantom didn’t respond. Then he just said, “Thanks.”

Another awkward silence. Then, from Phantom: “This conversation thing isn’t really working, is it?”

“Not really. Um, sorry,” Maddie said sheepishly.

Phantom sighed, exasperated, and ran his hand down his face. “Look, Dr. Fenton,” he said, gesturing with the same hand, “can you stop saying you’re sorry? I get it, and I appreciate it, but you’re not doing yourself any favors by constantly apologizing. Just saying words isn’t going to make up for all the things you’re sorry for.”

Maddie just stared at him, surprised. Once again, she hadn’t been expecting that level of emotional maturity from Phantom. She really should try to clear her expectations. And she knew, from all the lectures on parenting Jazz had given her, that he was absolutely correct. Focusing on her own guilt wouldn’t do anything to make it up to Phantom for all the terrible things she’d done — or threatened to do — to him.

“You’re right, Phantom,” she said, meeting Phantom’s intense stare, as much as she wanted to look away. “I should be doing more to make things up to you, after everything I’ve done. I just….” She sighed. “I don’t really know what I can do.”

Phantom snorted. “You can always ask, you know.”

Oh. Right. She could do that. “Um. What can I do? To start to make it up to you?”

“Exactly what you’re doing right now, Dr. Fenton.” She cocked her head in confusion, and Phantom continued: “Not shooting me. Asking genuine questions. Actually listening to what I have to say.”

It struck Maddie right then how much faith Phantom had put in her actions — that she’d come here with good intentions and was trying to assume the same from him. At some point in the not-so-distant past, she would have thought Phantom was manipulating her, or perhaps naive to trust her, but now…now Maddie found Phantom even more shrewd than she had when she still thought him evil.

Maddie opened her mouth to speak, but then Phantom stiffened and exhaled, sharply; she almost thought she saw his breath, despite the summer heat.

“Phantom, what’s wr—?”

“You need to get out of here,” Phantom said, and Maddie could hear the urgency in his voice as he looked around them. “Right now.” He turned to look at her. “Someone’s coming and I don’t know who.”

They’d barely had the chance to talk! “But—”

“Go, Dr. Fenton. Get in your car and go.”

Phantom was barely keeping the panic out of his voice, and it was so unsettling that Maddie stood up, grabbed the lantern, and — giving one last look at Phantom, who was searching off into the distance — ran.

The sprint back to the car left Maddie far more winded than she would have liked, and she had to stop and catch her breath before she could even try to unlock the car. She glanced towards the playground; had the lights changed with another ghost in arrival? She wasn’t sure.

Maddie finally got the car door unlocked and she climbed inside, shutting the door as quietly as she could. She was still breathing heavily, and despite Phantom’s urgency, she took another moment to compose herself before driving away.

Then a motorcycle roared in her ears, and Maddie nearly yelped. She looked around her, and then realized: it was coming from the music player on her car’s dashboard.

Drat. In her panic, she’d left the other walkie-talkie behind. It was picking up sound from the playground.

Should she go back for it? Maddie didn’t want to leave such an important piece of equipment behind, but with Phantom’s insistence that she leave — and her lack of ectoweaponry — she didn’t think that was a good idea. Maybe she could drive out of sight?

Maddie’s hesitance caught her, though, as a voice filtered through the stereo, even with the spectral filtering,

“What’s up, Phantom?” It was a male voice, slightly breathy and vaguely familiar. “Finally done with all the bomb stuff? Running home scared to mommy?”

“Oh, hey, Johnny,” Phantom said. Even through the static, Maddie could hear the annoyance in his voice. “Yeah, I’m sooo scared, which is why I’m the one who’s been hiding out in the Ghost Zone and you’re the one who’s been trying to figure out what’s going on.” Phantom let out a long, tired sigh. “Get lost, Johnny. I’ve got other things to deal with tonight.”

“Hey, no need to be hostile. I’m just here to see if the rumors Kitty heard are true.”

The steering wheel creaked as Maddie gripped it tight. Now she recognized where she knew Johnny from; he was the one who tried to steal Jazz’s body for his girlfriend.

“The rumors aren’t true,” Phantom snapped. “Now like I said: get lost, Johnny.

“But I saw—”

“Is your brain missing? Do you really think I’d do that?” A pause. “Hey! Maybe your brain is back in the Ghost Zone, which is coincidentally where you should go now.”

“What if I don’t want to go back to the Ghost Zone, huh?” Johnny said, and Maddie could hear the scowl in his voice.

“Then I’ll kick your butt and make you.”

“Oh yeah? I’d like to see you try.”

“That can be arranged,” Phantom said; then Johnny barked: “Shadow!”

Maddie winced as the stereo erupted into static, and in the distance, at the playground, she saw a bright flash of green light as the ghosts duked it out.

The altercation was over as soon as it began, and the static dissolved into muffled curses from Johnny, who seemed to be restrained by Phantom. “Alright, alright, I get your point!” he was saying. “Uncle! Uncle!”

“Look, Johnny,” Phantom said. Whatever mirth had been in his voice was gone. “Since we’ve gotten along in the past, I’m going to do you a favor and not shove you into a Thermos, but don’t test me.” There was some scuffling, and Maddie guessed that Phantom had let Johnny up from whatever position he had pinned him in.

“Go back to the Ghost Zone, Johnny,” Phantom said, sighing. The fight — the hostility — seemed to have left him. “I mean it when I say that Amity Park is extremely dangerous right now. Until I figure out what’s going on with this bomb, you’re not safe here. And trust me: you do not want to get hit by it.”

“Okay, fine, I get it. I’ll go,” Johnny replied. “And yeesh. You could’ve held your punches, man.”

Phantom sighed again. “Yeah, probably.” He didn’t say anything more as Johnny roared away on his motorcycle, and the static faded.

Maddie turned the stereo off. She should probably go retrieve the walkie-talkie, but…that conversation. It was more than just that she had learned more about ghosts in that short exchange than she had in all her recent studies — she didn’t know what to make of Phantom.

Maddie had spent the last two years seeking any excuse she could to justify her opinion that Phantom was a danger to the people of Amity Park, even though she had to admit that that many of them were tenuous at best. But just now, there had been an open hostility from Phantom that she’d never seen before. She almost thought that he had been deliberately antagonizing Johnny into a fight, and when they did clash, Phantom had won in a matter of seconds.

A spike of terror shuddered through Maddie: the same one she felt in the worst of her nightmares, the ones where she lost everything and everyone she loved to ghost attacks.

Because, yes — as much as she tried to pretend otherwise, Phantom terrified her.

Something knocked on her window, and this time, she did yelp.

Maddie turned to see Phantom, standing outside the car, motioning for her to roll her window down. Somehow, she missed when the light changed with his arrival.

“You forgot this,” Phantom said once Maddie finished cranking the window open. He offered her the walkie-talkie. “Next time, if you’re going to eavesdrop on me, do a better job of hiding it.”

“Uh, thanks.” Maddie blushed as she took the walkie-talkie back; she hoped Phantom didn’t see it. She almost apologized to him for the indiscretion, but thought better about it. “For what it’s worth, I did genuinely forget it.”

“I figured as much.” Phantom sighed, then rubbed at the back of his neck. He looked tired.

He was closer to her than he had ever been when there wasn’t a fight going on, and Maddie took the chance to study his face. She could see the blemishes to his skin: freckles that dotted his cheeks, the early sprouts of chin hair, even a handful of pimples. They didn’t look like the horrendous case of ecto-acne Vlad had in college — just normal acne, like any teenager. How much that must suck, having acne even into the afterlife.

And, like all ghosts, Phantom always seemed to be in shadow, no matter which way he was facing. It made it hard to make out the details of his face at most times, but with Phantom as the only source of light, the shadows seemed to fade away and he looked almost human. Yet, at the same time, Maddie could make out a faint glow to his skin, and she thought that Phantom had never looked more ghostly.

Or more young.

Phantom caught her looking at him and said, “Dr. Fenton?”

Maddie shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “You just…look tired.” When he just nodded, she asked, “Phantom, are you really telling other ghosts to stay in the Ghost Zone? To avoid any other bombs?”

Phantom nodded again. “What that explosion did to ghosts…it wasn’t fun. And I don’t want any of them to get hurt.”

“But….” Maddie frowned in confusion. “I thought you hunted other ghosts. Why are you trying to protect them?”

Phantom just stared at her as if she said something incredibly stupid. Then he laughed once in disbelief. “You really don’t get it, do you, Dr. Fenton?” he said.

She frowned again. “Get what?”

“That it’s not about ghosts vs. humans," Phantom said. “It’s never been about ghosts vs. humans.”

“Then what is it about?” Maddie asked.

Phantom looked at her with those bright green eyes — eyes which gave off a light separate from his normal glow — and said, “It’s about stopping people from hurting others.”

Something passed between them, in a moment of strange connection, and Maddie spoke, softly. “You’re not evil,” she said, “are you?”

Phantom shook his head, breaking eye contact with her. “No, I’m not.” He didn’t seem offended by her question. “I never have been, and I hope I never will be.”

Maddie didn’t know what to say to that.

Finally, Phantom sighed. “Look, Dr. Fenton. As much as I’d love to chat with you more about ghosts, I don’t think we should meet again. I thought no one would find us here, but they did, and I can’t take that risk again.”

“Shouldn’t that be my risk to take?” Maddie asked.

Phantom shrugged. “Probably, but…it’s just that if my normal enemies find out that we’re working together, they might, and probably will, try to use you to get to me. And I can’t put you in that kind of danger.” He sighed, then stepped away from the car. “Goodbye, Dr. Fenton. Maybe some time later we can talk again. I’ll let you know if I learn something important about the bombs.”

“Wait, Phantom!” Maddie said before he could disappear on her. “Just answer one more question, please. So I can find a way to protect my son.” When he didn’t immediately leave, she said, “How does someone become a ghost?”

Of all the reactions she was expecting from Phantom, it definitely wasn’t the look of panic — like a deer caught in the headlines — that danced across his face, only to be quickly smothered by a look of guarded hesitancy.

“I’m not a scientist, so I don’t really know,” he said, quashing Maddie’s hope that he would reveal the secrets of the universes to her, “but…I think you should look into stellar astrophysics.” Phantom paused, then said, “Goodnight, Dr. Fenton,” and vanished.

Maddie stared at where Phantom had just stood until long after her eyes had adjusted to the dark; she glanced at the horizon above the trees and could barely make out some of the constellations Danny had shown her last night.

Stellar astrophysics? Suddenly, her thought that Phantom had been stargazing at the playground didn’t seem so absurd.

With a sigh, Maddie rolled the window back up, started the car, and began the drive home.

And she thought about what she learned from Phantom.

There was nothing extremely surprising to Maddie. Er, no, that wasn’t right. Everything she learned was surprising, to the point where nothing in particular stood out.

Who was Phantom — this ghost boy with immense power, who could easily destroy everything around him, who amassed enemies both human and ghost, and yet who spent his afterlife fighting to protect people, even the ones who hated him because they refused to give him the benefit of the doubt?

Who was this ghost boy who knew far more than he should, who had a better read on the situation than she did, who was afraid she would be hurt because of him?

Who was this ghost boy who seemed so human?

Maddie didn’t have the answer, and she desperately wished that she could talk things over with Jack. But she was too deep into the secrets now, and she didn’t know how to tell him.

This must be how Danny feels, she thought, as she pulled into the driveway.

For a moment, Maddie swore to herself that she would tell her husband, right here and right now, but when she crossed the threshold of the back door and heard Jack’s snores, the resolve she had mustered faded away.

Her husband had gone back to sleep without her. Maddie was left to climb into bed, in the dark, with a heart breaking at her own betrayal of his trust.

And in the morning, Jack was gone by the time she woke up.

Chapter Text

Ugh. Monday.

Maddie hauled herself out of bed after another night of nightmares and tried to ignore Jack’s absence from the bed beside her. She pulled on a pair of clothes, brushed her teeth, and headed downstairs.

It was dark in the house with the shutters over the windows, and quiet, too; Jack and Jazz had left for Carrie early and Danny was doing his history work over at Sam’s. She didn’t bother turning any lights on besides the one in the kitchen.

Maddie poured herself a cup of coffee — caffeinated — and sat at the kitchen table to think about Danny Phantom.

What did she do about everything she learned last night? And everything she suspected?

She sighed, then made a phone call.

***

Maddie got to the coffee shop early enough this time to grab a seat against the wall, as well as another coffee. She chewed on her lip and wrote down several questions in her Phantom journal. She didn’t trust her sleep-deprived brain to remember them all.

She had been waiting for maybe ten minutes when Henry Reitman walked in. Trailing behind him was Aggie Keaton, wearing her purple headphones and the same shirt as always, except maybe this one was slightly lighter than others Maddie had seen her in. She hadn’t been expecting the younger woman, but she wouldn’t turn down her expertise in physics.

For his part, Reitman was wearing an obnoxious salmon-colored suit jacket with thick pinstripes. As he got closer, and Maddie got a better look, she was pretty sure the pinstripes were made of actual salmon.

“Dr. Reitman,” Maddie said, standing up to shake his hand, “thank you for agreeing to meet with me on such short notice. I’m sure the GIW has you very busy.” She nodded at Aggie. “Hi, Aggie. I wasn’t expecting you to see you today.” The three of them sat. “I thought you said that Penny was coming as well.”

“Ah, well, Penny’s dealing with an issue with her latest project,” Reitman said. “Something about funding being pulled, I think?”

“Oh, that’s terrible!” Maddie shook her head. “I hope she can manage to keep it.” Funding hadn’t been a big issue for Fenton Works for quite some time, since their patents generated a decent income. That, and Vladco had never been shy about grant money with them.

“Yes, me too, me too. Please, call me Henry, by the way! My contract with the GIW stipulates that I get an hour and a half break for lunch each day. I’m still on contract for working with my grad students, you know.” She didn’t, but nodded anyway. “I managed to grab Aggie on my way out.”

“Well, I can’t say I’m disappointed to see you, Aggie,” Maddie said. “I actually have another question for you, at some point.”

At Maddie’s statement, Aggie looked up and gave her a brief close-lipped smile. She didn’t have her mystery device out today, for whatever reason. “I’ll do my best to answer it,” she said.

“Anyway, I will admit, Maddie,” Reitman continued, “I wasn’t expecting you to take me up on my offer to talk about Danny Phantom. I am quite curious to hear what you have to say. I know you don’t take ectopsychology seriously.”

Maddie was taken aback by the bite of accusation in Reitman’s voice and the piercing stare he gave her, which seemed in contrast to his otherwise friendly demeanor. But to be fair to him, she and Jack hadn’t always been…diplomatic in their disdain for ectopsychology. Still, she sat up a little straighter and tried to channel as much professionalism as she could.

“I should apologize for that, Henry,” she said. “My husband and I haven’t always been open to theories on ghosts that contradict our own.”

“No, you haven’t,” Reitman agreed; Maddie tried not to grow defensive. “So tell me, then: why are you only now turning to ectopsychology for help?”

She didn’t want to share the specifics of her own death with someone who was still mostly a stranger, so she just said, “I’ve uncovered some evidence that suggested to me our old theories were incomplete.” She paused. “My daughter introduced me to your work.”

Reitman nodded, and the criticism in his gaze softened, but didn’t disappear entirely. “Ah, Jazz! She and I have met a few times while I’ve been in town.” It was news to Maddie — of course it was — that Jazz had met with Reitman. She filed that away for later. She has a bright future in ectopsych if that’s what she wants to study. But back to you, Maddie.” His stare was nowhere near as intense as her son’s, but still, Maddie had to stop herself from shying away from it. “Why should I talk to you about Phantom?”

“Pardon me, Henry, but why shouldn’t you?” Maddie countered. She was too tired to deal with this interrogation. “We are colleagues. Sharing information is part of being an ectoscience researcher.”

Reitman nodded again and said: “You’re right, of course, Maddie.” He folded his fingers together and set them on the table. “But you’ve read my piece on ethics in ectoscience, yes?” She nodded. “Then you should understand that I have ethical concerns over helping a professional ghost hunter learn more about the ghost she’s been hunting down and threatening to rip apart molecule by molecule for two years. One who is, I will remind you, the ghost of a teenager.”

The accusation in his voice had been replaced by something deeper — more angry than anything. Maddie stared at Reitman, suddenly embarrassed that she hadn’t seen his criticism coming. Of course, to someone who only knew her reputation, her desire to learn more about Phantom would be immensely suspicious.

“So, Maddie,” Reitman continued, “why should I talk to you about Danny Phantom? Because I don’t see a good reason to.”

Why should he, indeed. Maddie tried to think of a good answer for him that didn’t sound like an outright lie. How could she convince him that her intentions were sincere, that she really did just want to learn about Phantom because she was concerned about his well being? She couldn’t exactly tell Reitman that Phantom himself was willing to give her a second chance; no one would hear about that until she told Jack the truth.

The truth. Maddie sighed. “Quite frankly, Henry,” she began, before meeting his eyes, “I doubt anything I say will make you change your mind, because you’re right, I have been determined to hunt Phantom down and tear him apart. I can only give you my word that I want to talk to you about Phantom because I genuinely want to learn from a different perspective, not because I’m going to use what you tell me to hurt him.” She kept his gaze, as much as she wanted to look away. “I’m done with that.”

Reitman held the eye contact as he considered what she had said; Maddie noticed that Aggie was staring at her, too. Finally, he said, “Alright, Maddie. You’re either a much different person than your reputation indicates, or something has changed recently.” He diplomatically didn’t mention that she could just be a very good liar.

Maddie shook her head. “I promise, I am telling the truth. This whole thing with the bombs has…forced me to reconsider some of my preconceived notions about ghosts. And about Phantom.”

“I believe her,” Aggie said.

They both turned to look at her, and she just shrugged. “Maddie asked me about consciousness in the thirteenth dimension. She’s considering other options to ectoplasmic imprinting.”

“Really?” Reitman said, looking back at Maddie. The suspicion in his voice wasn’t completely replaced by curiosity, but he no longer seemed so antagonistic.

She wished that she’d been the one to bring that up, but now that it was out, she said, “Yes, I have. I’ve uncovered evidence that suggests ectoplasmic imprinting is an incomplete theory at best.”

“I’m guessing this evidence is related to Phantom?”

Maddie hesitated, just long enough that she suspected Reitman knew her answer, but she said anyway: “I’m not allowed to disclose that.”

He shrugged. “Fair enough.” He clapped his hands together. “But consciousness in the thirteenth dimension! Forgive me; I’m not a physicist. That would imply that consciousness persists after death, yes?”

Both Maddie and Aggie nodded. “Unfortunately,” Maddie said, “Aggie’s math doesn’t indicate if that’s possible.”

“It’s not impossible, though,” Aggie added.

They were getting off the topic of Phantom, but Reitman seemed willing to talk, and at the very least was not actively hostile to her, so Maddie said, “Right. But this contradicts traditional ectoscience, which is why I’m looking into ectopsychology.”

“Mmm.” Reitman folded his fingers beneath his chin and looked deep in thought. “Well, ectopsychology hasn’t made any strides in countering the materialist approach to ectoscience.” At Maddie’s questioning look, he sighed and said, “There’s no way to reconcile the lack of complex structures in ectoplasm with some of the observations we’ve made on ghosts.”

“Oh,” Maddie said, disappointed. Then: “What kinds of observations?”

“Well, this is where we get into some major ethical issues,” Reitman said. “It’s not like we can murder people, turn them into ghosts, and then test their consistency between states.”

Was that what happened to Phantom? Maddie tabled that train of thought for now.

“And if we presume that consciousness is preserved through death, then it’s unethical to delve into the private details of a ghost’s life in order to determine the similarities to their afterlife. Besides getting their consent, of course. Which no ghost I’ve approached has agreed to speak with me,” Reitman said with a sigh. “So ectopsych was stuck for a while, until Jazz suggested that we look into two high-profile ghosts who have had some material publicly published about them while they were alive.”

“Jazz suggested that?” It was news to Maddie that Jazz had been this involved with Reitman’s work.

Reitman frowned. “She didn’t tell you? She was so instrumental in that research that my team is giving her an authorship citation in an upcoming publication!”

Jazz was going to be a published researcher before she even started college? And she hadn’t told Maddie? How much of Jazz’s own life was she hiding from her parents? “No, she didn’t. But,” she said with a sigh, “I can’t say I blame her. Anyway, which ghosts did she suggest?”

Reitman, thankfully, did not remark on her statement. “Ember McClain and Nicholai Technus. Ember was a minor starlet and gave many interviews to the press before her death, and Technus, well…he wrote a lengthy manifesto about creating a technological meritocracy in which he was the supreme ruler of the world.”

“I’ve read it,” Maddie said, dryly. It was incredibly dense and full of grandiose bragging, which fit with everything she knew about Technus.

“Me too,” Aggie added.

“What we’ve found,” Reitman said, “is that—”

Maddie’s phone started ringing. “Sorry about that,” she said as she checked the caller ID. She didn’t recognize the number. Well, if it was important, they could leave a voicemail. “Continue, please.”

“We’ve found that both Ember and Technus have consistent patterns of behavior that suggest unconscious thought processes, which runs counter to ectoplasmic imprinting. More so, we’ve found that these behaviors are both consistent with pre-mortem ones and susceptible to change due to external stimuli!”

Reitman was considerably enthused with his research reportings, and Maddie found herself nodding along to what he said, though she wasn’t entirely sure how one would determine that. “And how does that disprove ectoplasmic imprinting, exactly?”

For the first time, Reitman looked uncertain. He grimaced. “It doesn’t. Not entirely, at least. But what we know about the nature of ectoplasm doesn’t support the complex structures necessary for unconscious thinking to exist. Which means that there is likely a more complex structure that we can’t access.”

“Huh.” Maddie sat back against the booth, hand to her chin. The idea seemed vaguely familiar; Jazz had likely ranted on about it before, but like most ectopsychology-related topics, Maddie probably tuned it out. She really should have paid more attention to her daughter.

Because it sounded plausible. Maybe she was grasping at straws to explain her own experience, but it sounded plausible.

How would it work, physically, though?

Her spiraling thoughts were interrupted by a tap-tap-tap from Aggie, who had pulled out her device and was, once again, typing away at it below the table.

And that was interrupted by her phone ringing, again.

It was the same number, and Maddie figured if they were calling back so soon, she should probably answer.

“Henry, Aggie,” she said, standing up, “Excuse me. I need to take this.”

Maddie left Reitman saying something asking if he could get Aggie anything and stood in the hallway leading to the bathrooms. She flipped the phone open. “Hello, this is Dr. Madeline Fenton.”

“Dr. Fenton?” The caller’s voice was barely audible over the static that accompanied it, but Maddie knew who it was before he introduced himself. “This is Danny Phantom. I think there’s another bomb in your husband’s classroom.”

Oh no.

Oh no oh no oh no.

Maddie forced herself to not panic and focus on the most pertinent questions, instead of ones like ‘What are you doing at my husband’s classroom?’ or ‘Why are you calling me on the phone?’ “Are you sure?”

“As sure as I can be. There’s something weird in the ceiling.” Maddie plugged her other ear, trying to focus on Phantom’s voice. The teen was clearly trying not to panic. “I’d try to get closer, but….” He trailed off, but Maddie could fill in the blank. “I pulled the fire alarm, but I don’t know what else to do. I can’t exactly call the GIW myself.”

“Okay, okay, um….” Focus, Maddie! “I’ll call the GIW and report it as an anonymous tip. Can you make sure the building is clear of people?”

“Yeah, I can do that.” Phantom sounded relieved, probably because he had something to do.

“Great. I’ll call my husband and head over there as soon as possible,” Maddie said, then paused. “Can you make sure my son is safe? The explosions hurt him like a—”

Like he’s a ghost.

There was something there, just out of Maddie’s grasp, but Phantom said, “Yeah, I’ll keep him safe. Don’t call me back.”

He hung up.

Okay. Okay. Maddie took a deep breath to quell the panic, then dialed 911 and reported an “anonymous tip” claiming a bomb was in her husband’s classroom. The GIW would almost certainly poke holes in that later, but for now she couldn’t worry about it.

Then she called Jack. He didn’t pick up.

He was probably just busy making sure his students were getting out of the building, not actively ignoring her. She hoped.

At the voicemail, she said, “Jack, it’s Maddie. Someone just sent in a tip reporting a bomb in your classroom. I’ve already called the GIW and I’m on my way over to Carrie. Make sure Danny’s away from the building in case the tip is legitimate.” Maddie paused. “I love you. Stay safe.”

She flipped the phone shut. Danny would leave the building from the fire alarm, and Jazz was in a different one entirely. She could call them on the ride over.

For now, though, Maddie returned to the table to find both Reitman and Aggie on their phones, and from the expressions on their faces, the GIW had called them.

“Right, right,” Reitman was saying. “One second.” He looked up as Maddie approached, then covered the receiver with his hand. “I assume you’re heading to Carrie?”

She nodded. “I can give the two of you a ride.”

Reitman reported that back to whomever he was speaking with, while Aggie just said, “Maddie Fenton is driving me there,” and hung up.

Time to go.

***

The local police were already there, but Maddie beat the GIW. She pulled into a parking spot and practically leapt out, leaving Aggie and Reitman to rush after her.

The Carrie Community College campus was shaped like a square, with academic buildings bordering it. It would have had a large green space in the center except that one of Carrie’s main thoroughfares bisected it. The road split two sides of the square into two shorter buildings each, for a total of six.

Jack’s classroom was in the corner of Woodsboro Hall, one of the longer buildings parallel to the road. From the looks of it, the police were in the process of evacuating Woodsboro and the shorter one next to it. She could see the lights flashing in the windows.

It was easy to spot her husband, dressed as he was in his orange jumpsuit. He stood near a collection of students, talking with an officer. There seemed to be far too few students for the 36 in the class. They;d probably skedaddled before the police could round them up.

She didn’t see Danny, or Jazz. Neither of her children had picked up on the ride over. Nor did she see Tucker or Sam.

Maddie flashed her ID and ghost hunting permit at an officer guarding the perimeter, and after a moment they let her and a breathless Reitman in. She didn’t know where Aggie went.

She braced herself for whatever Jack’s reaction would be and walked up to him. His eyes lit up when he saw her, and, after a moment, he excused himself from his conversation.

“Maddie,” Jack said, and the relief was clear in his voice. “I’m glad you’re here. You’re the one that called this in?”

She nodded. “I did. Someone left a tip about it. I can fill you in on the details later.” She looked around again for her son and tried to keep the panic down. “Where’s Danny? Is he alright?”

“He’s fine, Mads. I sent him to get Jazz at the library.”

Maddie breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s good to hear,” she said. “He didn’t pick up his phone when I called. I figured he was evacuating the building, but….” She trailed off, just then remembering that Phantom was supposedly here.

Did she ask Jack if he’d seen the ghost? How would she explain that she knew he was at the campus?

Jack looked at her strangely, but said nothing, and they fell into an awkward silence.

After a moment, Maddie started: “Jack, about last night–”

“Do you really think now is the time to talk about that, Maddie?”

He didn’t snap at her; Jack Fenton rarely spoke that harshly to anyone who wasn’t a ghost. But the reproach was clear, and Maddie found herself blushing in shame.

“No, it’s not,” she agreed. “I just…I’m sorry.”

Jack didn’t respond.

Despite their silence, the green space was full of noise. Students milled around in conversation; cicadas buzzed in the trees behind Woodsboro; traffic drove through the campus; Maddie could even hear the fire alarm shrilling inside.

When would the GIW get here? Maddie had been closer to Carrie than the GIW when she left, and didn’t have to prepare any gear, but surely they’d be here soon. It was so hot outside in the muggy summer heat, and while Maddie was used to wearing a jumpsuit in all weather, something about the makeshift one of Jack’s made the heat harder to tolerate. Her lack of sleep the night before didn’t help.

And she was getting really tired of awkward silences.

“I’m going to get something to drink,” Maddie said. “Can I get you anything?”

Jack started to shake his head — it was beaded with sweat — but then thought better of it. “A water bottle, please.” Then: “Thanks, honey.”

She gave him a brief smile. At least there was that.

It took her probably only a minute or so to cross the street to Scottville Hall, the other long building, but it felt like forever with the heat. The arctic blast of the AC was a welcome break. Scottville’s central atrium went all the way to the back of the building and up all five stories. To Maddie’s left were classrooms; to her right, the school’s library, where Jazz and — supposedly — Danny were, safe and away from the possible bomb.

Maddie looked up through the atrium, and at the stairs going up the back wall of the building, and sighed. The café was on the top floor of the library. In a better situation, she’d climb the stairs no problem, but today, she took the elevator.

The several students who joined didn’t seem concerned. She guessed that news of a bomb hadn’t made it around campus yet.

She watched the floor numbers pass. 1…2…3….

When they passed the fourth floor, Maddie’s ghost meter went off and her heart started pounding.

No.

Then the doors opened on the fifth floor and everyone exited the elevator.

Please, no.

Then the fire alarm went off.

No no no no no!

Then the atrium exploded.

Maddie was thrown to the floor amid screams from the students; she barely avoided hitting her head on the tile. After a moment’s disorientation, she clambered to her feet and let her ghost hunting emergency instincts take over.

But not before she glanced to where she had been laying, just in case.

“Get down the stairs!” she shouted at the students from the elevator. They joined the flow of students staggering out of the café, coughing from the smoke growing in the corridor.

The Fentons were always prepared for a fire, and with her goggles and a kerchief from one of the jumpsuit’s many pockets held to her face, Maddie glanced around. The bulk of the smoke was coming from the floor right below the café. She couldn’t tell if any other floors were burning, but the fifth floor was relatively clear.

Jazz and Danny were in the library. She should go—

Someone screamed from inside the café.

Move!

The café wasn’t yet on fire, but there were still cries for help coming from within. Maddie knew she should get out while she could, but she was a Fenton, and she knew she couldn’t forgive herself if she left now.

She was back by the stairs, and the entrance to the café was towards the front of the building. It opened to her left, with the counter curving further around. Most of the café was a large, open space with tables and chairs.

Maddie caught a student lingering outside the door. “Is there anyone inside?” she said over the fire alarm.

The student looked dazed, but at her words, he said, “My friends are in there!”

“I’ll get them,” she said, pushing the student towards the stairs and rushing inside.

It was a disaster zone. Overturned chairs and tables made a maze of the floor, and Maddie wasn’t sure if anyone was pinned underneath them.

She crept along the outer wall and pushed furniture to the side. Further in, now, she could see that a large light fixture in the very back of the café had collapsed on the floor. It was big enough to cover several tables at once.

Another student was trying to drag the fixture off of a table to no avail. Maddie shoved her way through the room and got on one knee. Using her shoulder, she pushed the light fixture up enough that the student could pull a collapsed table out of the way. Another student crawled out, dragging his leg.

Smoke was now filling the café; Maddie tried to keep the kerchief against her face, but keeping both it and the light fixture up was proving difficult, and Jack’s jumpsuit didn’t have a hood she could stuff it into.

The student was pointing at something next to the table. Maddie followed their finger and saw another student, unconscious and trapped.

“Go!” she shouted. “I’ll get her out!”

With a nod, the student helped their friend hobble out.

Still bracing the light fixture with her shoulder, Maddie reached out for a chair and was just barely able to tug one underneath the metal mounting. She dropped onto her hands and knees and crawled under the table.

Something crashed behind her. Maddie turned to see a bunch of ceiling tiles had fallen to the ground and was shocked to see that the café was already engulfed in flames.

She had thirty seconds to get out of the building. Maybe.

Maddie didn’t bother seeing if the student was conscious yet; she just started trying to drag her out from under the table. As Maddie tugged at the girl’s arm, she groaned. Good. At least she wasn’t moving a body.

Dropping the kerchief — and immediately regretting it — Maddie got both hands under the student’s shoulders and tugged her backwards, out from under the table.

The student was more awake now, but was dazed. Through the smoke, Maddie could see blood on her face. Head wound. Not good.

With a final tug, Maddie got the two of them out from under the table and the light fixture, then guided her towards the wall just as the floor between them and the door collapsed. The heavy counter fell into the inferno, along with tables and chairs, and sent smoke and flames bursting up into the café.

The only floor remaining was the far area she and the student were on and a thin strip about a foot wide around the perimeter. Maddie couldn’t even see the café’s entrance to know if the floor was stable over there.

They were trapped.

She spent a few precious seconds surveying the café and found only one possible way out: the windows. It was a small chance the firefighters would see them, given they were on the fifth floor, but it was the only one they had.

It was that or die.

But Maddie was a Fenton, and the Fentons did not go down without a fight.

The smoke was thick now, and both Maddie and the student were coughing. She grit her teeth, then turned over so she was on her rear and started hauling the student backwards by the shoulders, using her feet to push off the floor.

They were maybe a few feet from the windows when something else collapsed in the café.

A window behind them shattered, sending a brief gust of cold air brushing against Maddie’s back.

Then the floor collapsed under them, and Maddie closed her eyes and she and the student fell into the flames.

Chapter Text

Maddie braced for the impact with the floor below, but it never came. Instead, the awful heat of the flames was replaced by a frozen weightlessness — a familiar one. Maddie had just enough time to question if she’d actually died this time when the cold vanished, and she landed in a tangle of limbs on the grass behind the library.

Hard.

The impact knocked the breath out of her, causing stars to dance in front of her eyes. For a moment, her lungs seemed to forget how to breathe, but then her body reacted to the lack of oxygen and Maddie gasped for air. Her throat, irritated by the smoke, protested. Maddie started coughing furiously to the point where she had to roll over onto her stomach and heave. She retched and retched until she spat out a thick gob of mucus, then collapsed, wheezing.

They were maybe ten feet from the building. Maddie could feel the heat coming from the fire several stories above them.

Maddie gave herself a count of five to recover, briefly, before she pushed herself off the ground. She and the student weren’t out of danger yet, not until they made it away from the building and to whatever emergency services had arrived.

It was then that her brain caught up with the situation, and Maddie had a moment of disorientation that she was on the ground, not falling to her death inside the burning building.

How did I get here?

She crawled — dragged herself — forward, nearer to the library, until her legs were out from under the student, and she flipped herself onto her back. Maddie heaved again, exhausted by the simple movement, then pulled off her soot-stained goggles to find the answer sitting a few feet away from her, shaking and staring at the grass.

In the two years she’d known of his existence, Phantom had never looked so dead.

His eyes were sunken in his face, dark shadows long down his cheeks. His skin was no longer that of a pale human tinged with ectoplasmic green, but a pallid yellow. Phantom’s eyes barely gave off their normal glow, and Maddie found it hard to look at him. She couldn’t make out any visible difference to the spectral glow, but it was wrong, somehow.

And he was injured: ectoplasm oozed from a cut on his forehead, and his wound from the GIW had opened back up.

Phantom had pulled her and the student out of a fire, one full of ectoradiation that he knew would hurt him. He’d saved them — but at what cost to himself?

The student. Maddie tore her gaze from Phantom to the student, who lay on her side, wheezing.

Maddie tried to crawl over to the student’s side, but she broke out into a new coughing fit. She spat out another pile of sputum and fought off a wave of dizziness.

By the time she was done, Phantom had shaken himself out of his stupor and was trying to drape the student’s arm over his shoulder, to no avail. He kept turning intangible and dropping it.

And Maddie thought she saw green electricity flickering around his form.

“Phantom,” she rasped. He didn’t hear her, but then debris from the burning floors crashed to the ground only feet from where the trio lay; Phantom glanced at it, and only then seemed to notice her.

His eyes flew wide. He looked like he was about to panic.

“Go,” Maddie croaked, before he could freak out. A flash of green electricity arced around his left shoulder. “Go.”

Some clarity came back to Phantom’s face. He nodded, then gave a tired salute and leapt into the air. Maddie watched as he turned invisible, then jolted back into visibility. He almost tumbled out of the air, too, but then disappeared from sight for good.

More debris crashed to the ground. Maddie steeled herself and crawled over to the student. It took all her energy not to collapse right there, but she somehow managed to get the student’s arm draped over her shoulder and stood up. By some miracle, the student got one leg under her, and Maddie half walked, half dragged the two of them to the edge of the building.

Just a little bit further….

There were flashing lights reflecting off the smaller building ahead. She just needed to get to where someone could see them.

Each step was its own battle, but one by one Maddie hauled them to the gap between buildings, until she saw a pair of police officers cordoning off the library’s evacuees. People shouted; Maddie collapsed.

Someone — firefighters, she thought — ran over, and Maddie let herself be picked up and carried to where EMS had set up. The technician hooked her up to an oxygen mask and gave her a quick look over.

She didn’t quite pass out, but sat there in a daze for a bit until more shouting, and the oxygen, brought some clarity back.

Maddie glanced up to see Jack lunging towards her, being restrained by two officers and yelling to get to her. Even on crutches, he put up a formidable fight until the tech sighed, then waved him through. The officers let Jack go, and he rushed over.

“Maddie,” he said, grabbing her hand. “Thank goodness you’re okay.”

Wearily, Maddie nodded. Now that the immediate danger had passed, the pain from the moments before hit her hard. Tears welled up at the edge of her eyes, which seemed to be the only part of her not covered in soot, thanks to her goggles. The skin of her face felt like she’d been sunburned, though, thankfully, the jumpsuit had provided some protection from the thermal energy; it seemed she avoided major burns. But everything ached. She probably tore something lifting that light fixture.

Maddie watched the EMTs strap the student she’d rescued into an ambulance and rush her away. She’d pay the price for her heroics today. She hoped it was worth it.

Jack followed her line of sight. “She’s the third the ambulances have taken away. They got everyone out of Woodsboro before it went up, but….” He shook his head. “No one expected the library to be hit.”

Now that Jack mentioned it, Maddie could see the second column of flames on the other side of campus. Woodsboro mirrored Scottsville’s destruction, though the emergency services were clustered on this side, where people had been inside.

Where Jazz and Danny had been.

Jack must’ve seen the look of panic on her face and guessed what it meant, because he said, “The kids weren’t in the building when the explosion happened, thankfully. But Danny….he’s not doing so well. He’s waiting in the AC in Jazz’s car.” He reddened. “I need to let them know you’re okay!”

“Okay” was pushing it, but at least she was conscious. And alive.

While Jack stepped away to call Jazz, Maddie took the moment to breathe. It was hard; her throat was irritated and she had to stop herself from coughing several times. But still, she closed her eyes and breathed. In and out. In and out.

A bomb in the science building, where her husband and son were, and one in the library, where her was.

One by the Nasty Burger. One by her son’s classroom at Casper.

It couldn’t be a coincidence.

Someone was trying to kill the Fentons. All of them.

And yet some doubt lingered in Maddie’s mind. Phantom had been here, at Carrie, for some reason. He’d been close enough to the Nasty Burger bomb to be hurt by it, and she knew he spent a lot of time at the high school. Was it a coincidence that Phantom was in the same places her family just happened to be?

Maddie didn’t know the answer, but she did know something: she needed to be on the GIW task force so she could learn as much as she could. Her family was involved too far, now, for her to remain ignorant down in her lab.

Jack was still on the phone — he seemed to be arguing with Jazz about something — when the technician came over and gave Maddie another look for injuries.

“You need to go to the emergency room,” the tech said. She glanced over her shoulder at the triage workers dressing wounds and giving oxygen. “Go to Amity Park General. We’re directing the walking wounded there instead of to Carrie. They’re going to be swamped with the more serious injuries.”

Maddie nodded, and the technician removed the oxygen mask. She helped Maddie to her feet, then led her over to Jack. The technician released her, and she clutched Jack’s arm for strength.

Jack glanced at her, then said to the phone, “Fine, Jazz. You can take Danny home. But we need some way to get your mother to the emergency room.” He paused a moment. Then: “Send her to the police perimeter. Your mom needs help walking.” Another pause. “Okay. Keep me updated on Danny’s status. I’ll let you know how your mom does. Love you, Jazz. Bye.”

He flipped the phone closed and sighed. At Maddie’s querying look, he said, “Jazz doesn’t want to take Danny to his pediatrician. Something about how they wouldn’t know how to treat him for ectocontamination, but she does.” Jack sighed, again. “She’s right, as usual, but I still want him checked out. Anyway, she and Tucker are taking Danny home. Sam’s volunteered to drive us to the ER.”

Maddie nodded, coughed some more, and then the two of them began hobbling across the lawn to the yellow police line set up between the two shorter buildings by the parking lot. It was slow going, between Jack’s crutches and Maddie’s exhaustion, but they slowly made their way past the emergency services.

The world was chaos around them: dual columns of smoke and flames billowing in the air; shouts and yells as emergency services dealt with panicked and injured people; the bright lights flashing from too many vehicles to count.

But Jack was there. Even if he was angry with her, he was still there for her, and she loved him for that.

As the Fentons approached the police line, Sam spotted them and ducked under the tape. Ignoring the officers shouting at her to stop, she ran over and held out her arm to Maddie.

“C’mon, Mrs. Fenton,” she said. “Let’s get you out of here.”

Maddie nodded, still too tired to speak, and grabbed onto Sam’s arm, then let go of her husband’s. She wobbled a bit at the transition, but it was easier to walk with Sam than Jack with his crutches. Sam’s arm was steady, strong from the workouts the girl always tried — and usually failed — to convince Danny to join her in.

Their progress was only marginally faster with Sam’s help, but at least it was easier. Still, it seemed an endless walk to where Maddie parked her car halfway down the lot.

Sam helped her into the backseat before adjusting the passenger seat for Jack. She could tell that Jack wanted to join her in the back, but even without the cast on his leg he wouldn’t be able to fit. He glanced back at her, concerned, as Sam started the car. Maddie gave a weak smile back.

It was only as they were about to leave the parking lot that the GIW arrived.

At least a dozen white vans zoomed down the road in front of them; the first one barely slowed in time for the officers manning the police tape to get out of the way before barreling through it. The rest stopped in the road or crowded into the parking lots, paying absolutely no attention to the painted lines. Emergency services probably wouldn’t like having the roads blocked like that, Maddie thought, but changing that was probably a losing battle against the GIW.

More agents and support staff than Maddie ever seen at once streamed out of the vans. There had to be at least fifty of them. Some just had on their usual white, while others had decontamination suits on, but most of them were decked out in some kind of ghost hunting gear.

They’re here for Phantom, Maddie realized. She glanced around, but there was no sign of him.

She hoped the teen had gotten away. Did he have anywhere safe to go? The Ghost Zone, maybe? But the way Phantom wasn’t in control of his powers, and the way he had flickered with green electricity, made Maddie worry that Phantom wasn’t stable enough to get all the way back to the portal.

And he was hurt. Did he have anyone to help him bandage his wounds? Or did he have to dress them himself? She’d never seen him permanently allied with any ghosts here on Earth, and Maddie doubted any of his human supporters knew enough to take care of an injured ghost.

Come to think of it, neither did she, even though she’d offered to help him at the mall. She had always focused on how to take ghosts apart, not put them back together.

Maddie was left with an unanswered question: if Phantom came to her for help, could she actually help him?

She sighed, then leaned back and closed her eyes.

“Hey, Maddie, can you stay awake for me, please?”

Jack’s voice seemed distant, but Maddie forced herself to open her eyes and say, “I’ll try, Jack.” She probably wasn’t in immediate danger if she fell unconscious, but Jack’s worry was contagious. She promised herself to try and stay awake, just in case.

It wasn’t a problem, though. Not long after Sam pulled onto the highway back to Amity Park did Jack’s phone start ringing, and he answered the call from who Maddie assumed was some high-level administrator at Carrie with many questions for Jack. Her husband’s booming voice echoed around the tiny car, too loud for Maddie to fall nod off too.

Her thoughts, of course, went back to Phantom and the many questions she had about him.

Why was he at Jack’s classroom? Did he suspect something would happen there? Or was it a coincidence? Maddie doubted it was; she knew of less than twenty credible sightings of Phantom in Carrie, since ghost attacks were mostly limited to Amity Park. So he was there for some other reason.

Then there was the fact that he’d called her. That was even more mystifying than why he was at Carrie. Ghosts couldn’t use normal phones, since their spectral energy caused too much distortion. Even with the Fentons’ technology, ghosts’ voices were only somewhat intelligible. Yet Phantom had the technology to call her. Where did he get it?

And why did he call her? Did Phantom really trust her that much that he’d report a bomb to her instead of….well, Maddie wasn’t sure of the alternatives.

Then Maddie realized something. She felt the blood drain from her face, and for a moment she felt like she was going to pass out.

When Phantom called to report the bomb to her, she’d believed him, without hesitation. There were very few people in this world that Maddie would trust like that.

So what was it about Phantom that made her trust him back?

***

It was going to be a long wait at the emergency room. Several of the library’s patrons had arrived before them, some with worse injuries than Maddie. And there were also regular people in the ER, too. Still, Maddie couldn’t really lament the fact that she might have to wait a while to be seen. It meant she wasn’t on death’s door. Again.

Jack waved to a few of the soot-covered students, and Maddie realized they were probably kids from his class. They must’ve gone to the café to wait out the heat and been caught in the fire. Her husband seemed unconcerned with the fact that his students had been injured, but Maddie knew him well enough to catch the way his jaw clenched, and he blinked back tears. He was putting on a show for them, to make them less worried.

In the waiting room, Maddie sat between Jack and Sam, resting her head on Jack’s shoulder. Her companions both had their phones out; they’d chosen a back corner of the waiting room so that Jack could continue his phone calls. Sam, she guessed, was texting with Jazz or Tucker about Danny’s status. As much as Maddie wanted to pester her for details, she let Sam be. If anything serious happened to Danny, she trusted Sam to tell her.

But there was a reason Sam kept her aviator sunglasses on inside; Maddie didn’t miss the tear that rolled down her cheek.

She was suddenly struck with a wave of gratitude for her son’s friends, and a tear of her own escaped her eye. Sam and Tucker looked out for Danny. Whatever the three of them got up to — whatever secret Danny was keeping from his parents — at least he wasn’t alone. Maddie resolved to tell them that, at some point.

Please let Danny be okay, she thought, sniffling. Please.

Maddie closed her eyes and tried to relax, though between Jack’s voice and the general hubbub of a busy ER, she doubted she would rest much.

She was proven wrong, though, when she jerked out of doze sometime later as Jack said, loudly: “Ah, fudge nuggets!”

“Mmm?” Maddie sat up from his shoulder, wincing at the crick in her neck.

Jack shifted in his seat so that he was looking at her. “There are multiple reports that Phantom was at the explosion,” he said. Jack’s face twisted into almost a sneer, and Maddie was taken aback by the unusual anger in his voice. “I knew that sorry sack of spectral scum was involved in this! When I get my hands on him….”

But he’s not involved, Maddie thought.

Then she noticed Jack was looking at her oddly, and Maddie realized with horror that she’d accidentally spoken aloud.

“What do you mean, ‘he’s not involved’?” Jack asked, slowly.

Maddie blinked, suddenly even more exhausted. She scrambled for something else to say, but the words just wouldn’t come. “He’s not,” she repeated.

“How do you know that he’s not involved?” Jack said. “Why else would he be at Carrie?”

“I don’t know, Jack,” she said. “But….” Why did this conversation have to happen at this moment?

“But what, Maddie?”

She could lie. She could lie to her husband yet again and make up some excuse for why she thought Phantom wasn’t involved in the bombs. Something based in logic and reasoning and not because she trusted the ghost she used to hate the most. A lie that wouldn’t further betray Jack’s trust in her.

But… she’d have to tell him at some point. Might as well do it now.

“He’s not responsible for the bombs,” she whispered. “He was the one who called the tip in.”

“What?!”

Jack’s outburst caused several heads to turn their way, but Maddie barely paid them any attention. The confusion in Jack’s voice was palpable.

“Phantom reported the bombs? He called you?” Jack said, quieter this time. “And you believed him?”

Maddie nodded.

“Why?”

“Because I trust him, Jack,” she said. She didn’t want to say anything more — she knew it would hurt Jack, a lot — but it was time to come clean. Maddie closed her eyes. She was so tired. “He’s the one I’ve been meeting with about the explosions.”

Jack didn’t say anything.

Maddie cracked her eyes open to see him staring at her, agog.

“Phantom.” Jack’s voice was devoid of intonation. “You’ve been meeting with Phantom.”

She nodded.

Jack turned away and pinched at his forehead. “You…you…meeting with him…why?”

“Because I thought he might have answers about the explosion,” she said. Despite her fatigue, Maddie’s heart was now pounding in her chest. “He said he doesn’t know anything.”

“But you can’t trust him!” Jack threw his hands up in the air. “He’s a ghost.”

“He’s a child,” Maddie countered. She shifted in her seat so that she was looking up at him. “He’s just a kid, Jack. A kid who’s in over his head trying to stop people from getting hurt.”

Jack’s eyes bugged out. “But he hurt you, Maddie. Didn’t he? He’s why you came home with the ectoenergy contamination that night, isn’t he?”

Maddie shook her head. “It was an accident, Jack. He didn’t mean to.”

“Didn’t mean to….” Jack made a sound of exasperation. “But how do you know that? How do you know it wasn’t some elaborate trick?”

She had no answer Jack would accept, so she said, simply: “Instinct.”

Jack opened and closed his mouth several times, for once out of words to say. Finally, he sputtered out, “You’re a scientist, Maddie. We can’t…you can’t just trust your instincts. Not when it comes to ghosts.”

Maddie crossed her arms and forced herself to meet Jack’s eyes. “Yes, I can,” she said. “And believe me when I say that Phantom is not involved in the bombings.”

The two Fentons stared at each other, Maddie on the defensive and Jack in frustration. They held each other’s gaze for a moment, and then Maddie felt her resolve crumble under her own guilt, and she looked away at the exact same time Jack seemed to deflate.

Her husband sagged in his chair, head in his hands. He sighed, then sighed again and said, “You lied to me, Maddie. About Phantom, of all things.”

“I’m sorry, Jack,” Maddie said, softly. The short burst of adrenalin from the fight was gone. “I should have told you. I just….” She trailed off, lacking the strength to speak the truth.

But Jack didn’t lack the strength; he lifted his head from his hands and looked at her, still hunched over, and said, “You just didn’t trust me.”

All Maddie could do now was nod and try not to cry.

Jack sighed a third time. “What else have you been lying about?”

“Nothing, Jack. That’s it,” she said. “Just my meetings with Phantom. And some of my research.” Except…. “And where the faxes came from.” After a beat, she added, “they’re from Phantom, too.”

“Really? Is that all?” There was an accusation in Jack’s voice, and Maddie tried not to get mad at it. “Can I really trust that you’re telling the truth about that, too?”

Maddie opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, Sam tapped her on the shoulder and she jumped. She’d forgotten the girl was still there.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Sam said, “but they just called your name.” She thumbed over her shoulder at a nurse, standing by the staff door with a clipboard.

Maddie squeezed her eyes shut for a second to fight back tears. “Okay, Sam.” She turned back to Jack. “Jack, I—”

“Sam, can you go with Maddie?” he said, ignoring her. “I think I need some time to think.”

“Uh, sure,” Sam said. She stood up, then helped Maddie to her feet.

It seemed like everyone in the room was either staring at her or pretending not to as Sam helped her to the nurse. In the heat of the argument, she’d forgotten that they were in a public place. Maddie’s cheeks flushed with embarrassment, and shame.

The nurse took Maddie to get some chest x-rays, then her blood drawn, before leading her back to the ER. He left her in one of the rooms made out of curtains, half laying, half sitting on the gurney.

Sam joined her in the little cloth room and leaned against the bed. The girl flipped open her phone, read something, then started typing a response. Someone — almost certainly either Tucker or Jazz — texted back. The exchange went on for what felt like forever, but then Sam sighed and flipped it shut.

“Danny’s okay,” she said. Maddie still couldn’t see her eyes behind the aviators. “Well, not ‘okay’ okay, but he’s not…in risk…of....”

Sam didn’t seem to know how to continue, so Maddie just said, “Thanks for the update, Sam.” She paused. “Do you think he’s going to be alright?”

“Jazz and Tucker know what they’re doing. The three of us helped Danny the first time this happened. He’s in the best hands possible.”

The best hands. His sister’s and his friends’. Not his parents’. Maddie wasn’t sure if Sam realized the criticism inherent in her comment, but she really did not feel up to another confrontation right now.

Danny will be okay, she thought. He got through the last time fine.

But did he? Danny hadn’t said much about it, and in the chaos of the last month and a half, Maddie hadn’t pushed him on it. She didn’t know if there were any long-term side effects of…whatever it was that happened to him.

Because she didn’t know what had happened to her son.

There was so much she didn’t know about Danny. She didn’t know why her son reacted to ectoradiation. She didn’t know why he registered on ghost meters. She didn’t know how much he knew about what was going on.

And she didn’t know if he was going to be okay.

Maddie choked back a sudden sob, then broke into a coughing fit as it irritated her throat. Sam ducked out of the curtains, then reappeared a moment later with a plastic cup of water.

As Maddie drank it as carefully as she could, the nurse popped his head in to check on her.

“I’m okay,” she said. “Just an irritated throat.”

The nurse nodded, then gave them some vague estimate of when the doctor might arrive.

After he left, Maddie sniffed away more tears. Sam just let her cry.

The truth of the matter was that Maddie didn’t know what was wrong with Danny because she’d never really dedicated herself to finding it out. Sure, a lot of that was because Danny was reluctant to cooperate with attempts to uncover the issue — which she and Jack had written off as Tucker’s phobia of hospitals rubbing off on him mixed in with the awkwardness of puberty — but she hadn’t pushed him, either.

After the first times a piece of ectotechnology locked into Danny, he never seemed that bothered by…whatever it was. It rarely came up anymore, anyways, and every test they or his pediatrician did manage to do came back normal for a boy of his age. Except for his slightly low temperature, there was nothing out of the ordinary about Danny.

And there had always been something else, some ghost to hunt or experiment to run or paper to write. It was important to make sure that Fenton Works was up to par with the latest research and innovations. The Fentons couldn’t fall behind in case of a ghost attack.

Maddie knew she was making excuses for herself about why she’d never dedicated the time or energy to helping Danny with his…ailment wasn’t quite the right word, but she didn’t have anything else to call it.

And now, because neither she nor Jack had gotten to the bottom of it, her son was probably lying in bed, suffering.

Just one more thing she’d screwed up.

“I’m sorry you had to see that, Sam,” Maddie said. Sam looked up from her phone; at her raised eyebrow, Maddie added, “The fight. Between me and Jack.” She sighed. “We should have waited to talk about it.”

“Yeah, you kind of messed up there,” Sam said. “No offense.”

“None taken.” She sighed, again, and then a new thought struck her. “You don’t seem surprised that I was meeting with Phantom.”

Sam hesitated for a moment, then said, “Will it get Danny in trouble if I tell you he told me?”

Maddie shook her head. “No. I guessed as much.”

They fell into another silence, though not much of an awkward one. Or maybe it was, but Maddie was too tired to care.

She didn’t remember the last time she’d had a one-on-one conversation with Sam. She, Danny, and Tucker seemed attached at the hip sometimes, always hanging out, doing homework or whatever it was Danny was up to. And if Danny or Tucker wasn’t there, well, more often than not Jack was with her. Or Jazz. What did Maddie say to Sam?

Then Sam surprised her when she spoke and asked, “Did you really mean those things you said about Phantom?”

“That he’s just a kid, trying to help people?”

Sam nodded.

“I did, and I do,” Maddie said. She took another sip of water. “I don’t think he’s evil. We’ve been looking at him wrong the entire time.”

Again, Sam nodded. “Yup, he’s not evil. He never was.” She crossed her arms and stared at the curtain; the fluorescent lights glinted off her aviators. “About time you figured that out. Two years is an awful long time to be hunting some kid. Threatening to rip him apart. Molecule by molecule.” Her voice was shaking as she spoke.

Of course Sam was critical of ghost hunting. She should have expected that, given all her activism. But Maddie, like everything else, it seemed, had ignored that.

“You sound like Jazz,” she said. “You support Phantom, don’t you?”

“Yep.” Sam finally raised her glasses to look Maddie in the eye. She could tell why Sam wanted to keep them on. Her eyes were red with either tears or anger, maybe both, and her makeup was a mess. “It’s wrong, what you’ve been doing to him. You’ve hurt him a lot, and part of me doesn’t want to forgive you for it.” She slid the glasses back down and crossed Her arms again. “But that’s his call to make, not mine.”

Maddie frowned. “You sound like you know him.”

Sam shrugged. “Every kid as Casper knows Phantom. He’s saved us all from ghost attacks multiple times. The kids there care about him. Myself included.”

Maddie didn’t know what to say to that. Some part of her thought it inappropriate that Sam would be so critical of her friend’s mother, but the louder part of her didn’t care. Sam was right.

Just more proof that she should have listened sooner. Maybe then there wouldn’t be someone targeting the Fentons. Or Phantom. She didn’t know which.

She didn’t know why, either. Who would go to so much trouble as to bomb places the Fentons went? Or to frame them? Phantom, it made more sense. Even beyond the Fentons and the GIW, he’d amassed a lot of enemies. If someone wanted to take him down, these bombs were a good way to do it.

Sam took her phone out again, probably to get an update on Danny, but for once, Maddie’s thoughts were on Phantom instead of her son.

No, that wasn’t right. There was another time she could think of where her thoughts prioritized Phantom over Danny: right after their first meeting, when she couldn’t stop thinking about his terrified face.

She pictured it now, in her mind’s eye, and then the way he looked today at the library. She closed her eyes and leaned back against the bed.

“I’m worried about him, Sam,” Maddie said, quietly.

“Danny will be okay,” Sam said. “Like I said, the three of us know to take care of him.”

Maddie opened her eyes and shook her head. “Not Danny. Phantom.” She paused. “I mean, I am worried about Danny, but, as you said, he has people to help him. I just…I don’t know if Phantom does. And knowing how the bombs hurt him the first time….” She trailed off.

Sam chewed on her lip for a moment, staring at the curtains again. She seemed like she had something to say. Maddie just waited.

Finally: “He has allies,” Sam said, slowly. Maddie could see her scowling behind her sunglasses. She clearly didn’t want to tell Maddie...but she did anyway. “In the Ghost Zone.”

Maddie let out a sigh of relief she didn’t realize she was holding. “So he’s got help.”

Sam nodded. “Don’t tell him I told you that, if you see him again. It’s not exactly public knowledge.”

“Then why did you tell me?”

Sam kept scowling. “Because I don’t want you stewing in your own guilt forever. Or doing something stupid like trying to find him while you’re injured. I don’t think Danny would forgive me if I encouraged you to do something that winds up with you hurt.”

No, that would be bad. But still. It was a concession of sorts from Sam.

“You’re a good friend to him, Sam,” Maddie said. “You and Tucker. Thanks for being there for Danny when he needs it.” And in whatever secret the three of you are keeping….

“Yeah, well, he’s my best friend.” Sam’s face softened, though she still didn’t look at Maddie when she spoke. “I’d do anything for him, just like he’d do anything for me. Or Tuck.”

Danny would be there for his friends. In all the ways he’d changed over the last two years, that, at least, had stayed the same.

“At least Jack and I got that right, raising him,” she said.

“Yeah, you did.” Sam actually smiled, just a bit, like she was thinking of a fond memory of Danny. Then, the smile went away, and she said, “Don’t think you can make me forgive you by peppering me with compliments, Mrs. Fenton. The only reason I haven’t joined the protests outside your house yet is because Danny asked me not to. And I still might get out there. Just to keep my protest skills sharp.”

Sam sounded serious, but something in her voice, and her posture, had changed, and Maddie knew she was joking. Mostly.

“Well, we wouldn’t want that, would we now?” she said. “You’d probably have the whole town outside my house in an hour.”

“Oh, please. I could do it in twenty minutes. Don’t tell me Danny’s been understating my skills.”

Maddie tried not to smile and shook her head. “You’ll have to take that up with him.” Then she remembered what had happened today. “If he gets better.”

“He will,” Sam said, though it sounded more like she was trying to convince herself. “He’s resilient that way.”

Maddie frowned; what did Sam mean by that? But before she could ask, Sam sighed and said, “I’m sorry for getting angry with you, Mrs. Fenton. You’ve been through a lot today, and I should’ve held my tongue.”

The apology from Sam, who was equally as stubborn as any Fenton, was a surprise. “Thanks, Sam. And I’m sorry, too. For...all of it.”

Sam nodded. “Thanks. But I’m not the one you need to apologize to.”

No, she wasn’t, and Maddie knew exactly who Sam was talking about. She hesitated a moment, wondering if she should tell Sam about Phantom’s stance on her apologies, but then the curtains were pulled back.

It was the doctor this time — the same one she had seen after she fell in the lab. His report was as she expected. Smoke inhalation, a few minor burns. It didn’t seem she actually pulled anything, thankfully.

Maddie left the ER with a prescription for an inhaler and an order to get some rest and not involve herself in anything ridiculously dangerous. Again.

She and Sam made their slow, staggering way back to the waiting room. Right before they turned the last corner, though, Sam stopped, and said, “Can I ask something of you, Mrs. Fenton?”

Maddie frowned. “Sure, Sam.”

“When Danny’s better, tell him what you said about Phantom tonight. That you trust him.”

Tell Danny what she said about Phantom? That didn’t make much sense.

“Um, yes, I can do that. Why?”

This close to Sam, and in the dim lighting of the hallway, Maddie could see her eyes through the shine of her aviators. Sam searched her face, and she must’ve seen something she approved of, because she said, “I think he needs to hear it.”

Without waiting for a response, Sam strode off down the hallway, leaving Maddie shuffling back alone. She’d think about Sam’s request later.

She hobbled back into the waiting room to find that Jack had fallen asleep in his chair. After a moment’s hesitation, Maddie nudged him awake.

Jack jumped at her touch, looking around suspiciously. Then, he realized she was there, and said, “Maddie. What did the doctor say?” His voice was empty, drained of energy.

“Rest, and an inhaler,” Maddie said. “He wants me to see my GP.”

Jack nodded, then looked away from her. “That’s good.” He stood up. “We should get going. Jazz wants us to bring her dinner.”

The fact that Jack didn’t press for more details was worrying, but not surprising, given their fight from earlier. And right now, Maddie found it a struggle to care.

Chapter Text

Maddie watched Danny breathe.

Each breath he took was shallow and slow; the time between each one seemed so long that it needled Maddie with anxiety, making her fearful that she had just watched her son breathe his last. But just as she would want to reach out, to place her hand on Danny to make sure he was still alive, he’d suck in another breath, and the cycle would start anew.

Danny lay on top of his bedsheets, wearing nothing but a thin t-shirt and a pair of boxers. He had his back to her; Maddie couldn’t see his face, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to. In the brief glimpse she’d had when entering the room, he looked like a corpse.

A feverish one. Jazz was monitoring it closely, making sure the temperature wasn’t too high by Danny’s standards, but Maddie could tell it worried her daughter. There was a box of instant ice packs next to his bed.

Jazz hadn’t let her parents into Danny’s room that first night. “Mom, you need your own rest,” she’d said. “And Dad, you’re too loud. Tucker and I just got Danny to sleep and I won’t let you wake him up now.”

Jack had tried to argue with her, but Jazz wouldn’t have it. Maddie had just slowly made her way up the stairs, washed herself off, and collapsed into bed.

It was nearly two days later, now. She’d slept through most of the day before.

Tucker sat opposite Maddie, facing Danny. Staring at him, as if Danny would vanish if he looked away.

He, Jazz, and Sam had a schedule worked out for taking care of Danny. With Jack’s class canceled, his friends could be here around the clock. Maddie wasn’t sure either of them had actually gone home for more than a few hours, though with the protestors outside, it was difficult to leave. At least Jazz had taken some time to sleep.

They were worried about him, more than Maddie thought they wanted to let on.

She was worried, too. Even when Danny had the flu as a kid, he hadn’t looked so sick. There was something that seemed extremely off about him, but Maddie couldn’t pinpoint what it was.

Tucker sniffed back a tear.

Abruptly, Maddie stood up, fighting off both a wave of dizziness and her own tears. She couldn’t stand to see Danny like this.

As quietly as she could, she wandered over to Danny’s bookshelf, which was mostly populated with spaceship models, action figures, and miscellaneous junk. Everything was covered in a layer of dust — a light one, Maddie realized. Danny must dust them pretty regularly.

She lingered on a model of the Hubble Telescope, which to Maddie looked like a glorified tin can. But Danny loved it. It had launched the same month he was born.

He still cares about them, she thought.

Below the shelves crowded with Danny’s figurines were his books. A mix of fiction and non-fiction, they were covered in a thicker layer of dust. Not much of a surprise there. Danny had never been much of a reader, at least not compared to his sister.

Her eyes fell on one of the titles: Introduction to Stellar Astrophysics, Vol. 3, by Erika Böhm-Vitense.

I’m not a scientist, so I don’t really know, Phantom had said, but…I think you should look into stellar astrophysics.

Maddie pulled it off the shelf and flipped through the first few pages. Stellar structure and evolution, she read. The math didn’t look impossible for a teenager to do, though it might take some dedication on their part.

She stood, slowly and achingly. “Tucker?” she said.

“Yeah, Mrs. Fenton?” Tucker broke his stare at Danny to look at her; she was greeted by more dark under-eye circles.

She held up the book. “Do you think Danny would mind if I borrowed this?”

Tucker glanced at the cover, then shrugged. “I don’t see why not.”

“Great.” She looked around at the dim lighting in Danny’s room. “I’m going to go downstairs,” Maddie said, hoping Tucker wouldn’t judge her for leaving Danny behind. It was just…hard to look at her son like that. “Let me know if anything changes, alright?”

Tucker simply nodded, then resumed his vigil at Danny’s bedside.

***

The news out of Carrie called it a miracle that no one had died in the explosions.

The news out of Amity Park knew that it wasn’t.

By the reporters’ estimates, eight people had their lives saved by Phantom on Monday, though Maddie wasn’t sure if that counted her or the student she, and Phantom, had rescued. But she did know that the boy had gone back into the flames multiple times — right into the epicenter of highly abnormal ectoradiation.

Was he getting help for his injuries? If Sam was right, Phantom was likely in the Ghost Zone, where he had allies. But there was just no way to confirm that; the girl had been mum on the topic of Phantom since the hospital.

“Four people remain hospitalized following the explosions.” Shelly Makamoto’s voice filtered in from the living room, where Jack sat watching the TV. Maddie remained in the kitchen; they hadn’t exactly been avoiding each other, but neither were they spending much time together. “Thankfully, no one is in critical condition and everyone is expected to recover.

“Meanwhile,” Makamoto continued, “rumors abound about the cause of these latest explosions. The GIW have remained silent about their involvement in the investigation, but their heavy presence at Carrie Community College on Monday afternoon has led some to speculate that these are part of the same bombing campaign that damaged a storefront and landed both of the Fentons in the hospital.”

At the mention of her surname, Maddie looked up from Danny’s astrophysics book and glanced at the kitchen doorway. “Fenton Works released an official statement confirming that one of the explosions did take place in Dr. Jack Fenton’s classroom at Carrie, though they declined to comment on the possible origin of the explosions. The Fentons have not been involved in the GIW investigation, instead focusing on recovering from their injuries. They also confirmed that Dr. Madeline Fenton was injured in the explosions on Monday but is similarly expected to make a full recovery.”

The GIW hadn’t said anything about the explosions yet, but there was no doubt to Maddie that whoever made the first two bombs was responsible for the ones at Carrie. Her ghost meter had gone off. That was enough for her to believe it wasn’t a coincidence anymore.

Makamoto went on to talk about the protests outside of Fenton Works, but Maddie tuned it out. She didn’t need to hear the reporters to know what was going on there.

She could hear the protestors outside, their condemnations filtering through the shutters that otherwise kept the Fentons in the dark.

The crowd was now so large that the protestors had split into two camps: one that opposed cruelty towards ghosts, and one that thought ghosts were a plague upon the city. They’d clashed more than once over the last two days, to the point where the police had been called, but the differences didn’t really matter. Both blamed the Fentons for endangering the city.

They’re probably right, Maddie thought, miserably. Maybe she should go stand on the front porch and leave herself at the mercy of the crowd.

After a count of ten, Maddie dragged herself out of the guilt and turned back to Danny’s book. Wallowing wouldn’t fix anything, but if Phantom was correct, understanding stellar astrophysics might.

“…in the h and χ Persei clusters we find a few stars which are still brighter than the giants as compared to…”

But she still hadn’t gotten through the first chapter when the TV caught her attention again.

“…are no confirmed sightings of Danny Phantom since Monday afternoon,” Makamoto was saying. “The ghost boy’s absence has been cause for concern among—”

The report cut off as Jack changed the channel.

Maddie’s heart caught in her throat. It was one thing to guess that Phantom was gone and another thing to hear it confirmed.

But what else did Makamoto have to say? Should she go into the living room and ask Jack to change the channel back? Something told her that wouldn’t go over well.

She turned back to the book.

“…as compared to the main sequence stars. These very bright stars are called the…”

A new burst of shouting came from outside the front door. Were the protestors getting riled up at the Fentons again, or were they just fighting amongst themselves?

“…are called the supergiants. The giants and supergiants do not form a very tight sequence as do…”

Jack changed the channel again, this time to some cartoon. The characters’ high pitched voices grated against Maddie’s ears.

“…sequence as do the main sequence….”

The second hand on the kitchen clock made its way around. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

“…main sequence stars….”

The cartoon character laughed.

That’s it. Maddie slammed the book shut and stood up.

She grabbed the book and her half-empty glass of water, then walked into the living room and tried not to scream in frustration when she saw that Jack wasn’t even watching the cartoon; instead, he was focused on a needlepoint piece.

Jack pushed the needle through the cloth, then turned it around and pushed it back through. He tugged at the thread with such force that Maddie was surprised it didn’t break.

He had the needlepoint frame propped up on a pillow on his leg, which was in turn propped up on the coffee table. Maddie frowned. When did he get the cast replaced by the boot? Was his doctor’s appointment yesterday? He hadn’t said anything about it.

Maddie fought back tears. Then: Enough, Maddie! Stop wallowing! She walked the rest of the way into the living room.

“I’m going to work in the lab,” she announced.

“Okay.” Jack didn’t look up from his craft, instead continuing to angrily stab at the cloth.

Maddie lingered for a moment more, wondering if she should say something.

Now’s not the time, she thought. He’s too upset.

Then: Are you just making excuses for why you haven’t talked to him yet, Maddie?

In the end, her nerves got the better of her, and Maddie descended into the lab.

***

Fifteen minutes and three pages later, Maddie gave up trying to read Danny’s book.

It wasn’t that the material was too difficult; Maddie knew far more complicated physics than this, and long ago she’d taken an astronomy class. But she’d read a line, then again, and again, and realize she’d forgotten how it started.

She was worried about Danny. She was worried about Phantom. She was worried about Jack, and Jazz, and Sam and Tucker, and Fenton Works and Amity Park and the future of ghost hunting and everything else on the face of the earth.

Too many questions from the past weeks and not enough answers. Why did Danny react so strongly to ectoradiation? How did Phantom become a ghost? How were ghosts made? Who had set off the bombs, and why?

Maddie dragged her hands down her face. She really wanted Jack’s help. But that wasn’t going to happen right now. She was on her own.

Focus, Maddie, she thought. Pick one question and break it into smaller ones.

She closed Introduction to Stellar Astrophysics, grabbed a few of her notebooks, and walked over to the nearest rolling dry erase board.

She stared at the two-month-old scribbles in black and green marker. Calculations for an experiment testing the limits of ectoplasm under different pressures and temperatures — an experiment that was the basis of a hypothetical ectoweapon she and Jack had designed. Maddie shuddered, then flipped the board over. The other side was mostly clear, save for a ghost saying “BOO!” doodled in the bottom right corner. It was upside down, and Maddie recognized it as Jack’s handwriting. She smiled, just a bit, and left the doodle alone.

Maddie uncapped a marker and wrote at the top of the board, “Why does Danny react to ectoradiation?” She paused for a moment before erasing it; Danny didn’t just react to ectoradiation, but gave off some as well. Just more to the mystery.

Rethinking her strategy, she drew a line down the center of the board; the left column she labeled “Ectoradiation” and the right column “Danny.”

Then Maddie started writing everything she knew about the basics of ectoradiation.

All of it went on the board: the equation used to prove ectoradiation’s existence; lists of its basic properties; a schematic of a carbon ectoisotope; theories and conjectures not yet proven but hypothesized to be true. As much as she could fit went onto the left side of the board, and she bled over in some places into right column.

Once Maddie felt she had the basics written out before her, she moved onto Danny’s column, writing down the same kind of brain dump on what she knew about her son.

It had started some time around the time he began high school. She and Jack had first noticed the strange readings from their son when pieces of equipment started locking onto him, claiming they found an ectoradiation signature coming from Danny. For a while, they’d thought it was a mistake, somehow, but things kept happening, no matter how much they changed. Eventually, the Fentons just incorporated Danny’s specific ectoradiation signature into their equipment, programming it to ignore him.

Maddie drew out the timeline from her records, noting how their tests trickled off around four months after they began. She wrote down every symptom Danny had every reported, and then some. Fever. Headache. Light sensitivity. Low body temperature. Low blood pressure. Low heart rate. Clumsiness. Insomnia. Anxiety. Depression. Frequent bruis—

She paused. How many of these symptoms were from Danny’s ectoradiation issue and how many were from his secret activities? Then, she frowned. Was Danny’s ectoradiation issue related to his secret activities?

What on Earth was Danny up to?

And how much of these were just due to high school and puberty?

Maddie took a second to gather her thoughts, write down a few more possible symptoms, then started looking through her records for the data she and Jack had collected on Danny. In the beginning, their tests had been more regular, but after the fourth month drop-off point, they were sporadic, and Maddie really had to comb through her notes to find them.

She drew a grid on the board and started populating it with the data on Danny’s heart rate, blood pressure, and temperature; the ectoradiation he gave off in ectojoules; and the ectoradiant flux, measured in ectowatts.

Maddie stared at the chart, but the numbers were too abstracted for her to make sense of them. Dropping the marker, Maddie spun on her heel and strode to the supply closet.

Aha! She pulled out the pad of easel paper that she and Jack sometimes used to sketch blueprints before committing them to the expensive paper.

Maddie ripped off two sheets of the easel paper and taped them to the wall between her work station and the blast chamber. On the first one, she drew three graphs, one for each of Danny’s normal vital signs, and on the other, two, for his ectoradiation and ectoradiant flux. She grabbed a permanent marker and started to graph each reading she or Jack had taken.

There was no trend Maddie could see as she plotted the data. In the first few months, Danny’s vitals jumped up and down — enough to be concerned, but not enough to show anything really serious. The ectoradiation and ectoradiant flux showed roughly the same pattern.

The problem, however, was that there were large stretches of time where they hadn’t run any tests on Danny; while the early months were plotted well, the last year and a half were full of gaps.

Maddie stopped plotting and stood, tapping her chin with the marker. His vitals were a bit more consistent, but there weren’t even any ectoradiation or ectoradiant flux readings more recent than about eight months ago. What, exactly, could she conclude from such inconsistent data? Was there any other place she could get data from?

His pediatrician, she thought, and a phone call and a fax later she had Danny’s medical records in her hands. It still wasn’t great, and she didn’t know how his doctor’s instruments compared to theirs, but it was something, at least. Maddie plotted those in red.

But what about the ectoradiation and ectoradiant flux measurements? She and Jack hadn’t recorded anything from Danny…. except, Maddie realized, they had.

Maddie booted up the computer and navigated to their archive of raw data from the ghost meters. Every event — every interaction with the meter — was recorded, along with the measurements at that time. Over a year and a half’s worth of Danny Button readings, starting around the time she and Jack had stopped taking measurements of Danny themselves. Hundreds of data points. There was no way she could graph these herself.

Again, it wasn’t perfect data; she couldn’t easily control for distance from Danny, for example, and the presence of other sources of ectoradiation could confound it. But Maddie tried her best to normalize the data and get rid of the outliers, then typed in a command to visualize it on a graph.

As she sat there, waiting, Maddie felt quite silly as she realized she could have saved time and let the computer graph Danny’s vitals. But there was something comforting about the tactile nature of a marker on paper, and she let the feeling go.

Maddie’s heart pounded in her chest as the graphs loaded.

Like Danny’s vitals, his ectoradiation measurements started off inconsistent, jumping around a lot and providing no clear trend. But then, some point around the January of Danny’s ninth-grade year, the readings started to level out, following the same trend.

But they didn’t stay static, like she’d expected…like she’d hoped. Maddie typed in another few commands and the graph reloaded, this time with a trend line starting from that January.

She checked the goodness-of-fit measurement for the trend line to confirm what she saw visually: the measurements increased, statistically significantly, over time.

Maddie stared at the graph. If it was true…if it was accurate…then Danny had been giving off more ectojoules with each passing day.

Then she groaned and dropped her head in her hands, elbows braced on the table.

How had she missed this? How had she missed that her son was inexplicably giving off more ectoradiation as time passed?

Maddie knew the answer, of course. She and Jack had simply been too caught up in themselves and their work to notice. What else had they ignored?

And what did it mean for Danny?

She should tell Jack. She should march up the stairs right now and tell him what she’d found. No more hiding research, especially not when it came to Danny.

Before she could stop herself, Maddie rose and strode to the stairs. Jack might be upset with her, but she needed him to see this.

“Jack,” she said, upon entering the living room, “I need to show you something in the lab.”

But Jack wasn’t in the living room, and neither was his needlepoint. Maddie frowned. Maybe he was in the kitchen. “Jack?” she called out as she made her way across the room.

“He went out,” came the reply.

Jazz was sitting at the kitchen table, looking barely awake. Her hair was uncombed and pulled back in a ponytail, and she’d clearly slept in her shirt.

“Dad went out,” Jazz repeated when Maddie entered the kitchen. “He said something about getting dinner.”

Oh. Was it that late already? Maddie checked her watch, noticed that she wasn’t wearing it, then glanced at the kitchen clock. It was just past 3:30 in the afternoon. “It’s early for dinner,” she said.

Jazz shrugged.

“Did he get through the protestors okay?” They were still loud outside, though not as much as before. The summer afternoon generally quieted them down. Somewhat.

Again, Jazz shrugged.

She’d just have to talk to Jack later. Maddie sighed, then joined her daughter at the table. They sat in silence for a moment before Maddie said, “Is Danny doing okay?”

“About the same,” Jazz said. She didn’t look directly at Maddie. “Tucker and Sam are with him right now. I just woke up.”

Maddie had guessed as much. “That’s good, I suppose. That he’s not worse.”

Jazz just nodded.

Did she ask Jazz about her findings on Danny? Her daughter was no ectoscientist, but she knew more about Danny than Maddie did, as loathe as Maddie was to admit that. If anyone would know why Danny acted the way he did with ectoradiation, it would be Jazz.

Or Sam and Tucker, but Maddie doubted she would get a peep out of either of them.

But would Jazz even tell her anything? Or would she stay quiet in order to protect her brother’s privacy? Maybe, Maddie thought, if she framed it the right way, she could convince Jazz to help her figure out…something.

But before she could speak, Jazz asked, “Are we safe here, Mom? In Fenton Works?”

Maddie frowned. “You mean from the protestors? The walls are reinforced, and—”

“No, from the bombs.”

Oh.

Somehow, in all of this mess, Maddie had never considered the option that they might be attacked here, in their own home.

She forced down a rising panic — freaking out wouldn’t help Jazz — and said, “They’d have to be targeting us, specifically, to do that, and don’t know that they are yet.” Maddie tried, and failed, to keep her voice level.

But Jazz shook her head and finally looked at Maddie. “Mom, the bomb in Scottsville was on the fourth floor, near enough to the elevators to trigger your meter.” Tears started to well up in Jazz’s eyes, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “That’s where I’ve been sitting every day this summer. They’re targeting us. The Fentons.”

Not Phantom. Not ghosts. The Fentons.

Maddie stared at Jazz as a thousand more thoughts flew through her head, and Jazz stared back. Her gaze was steady, but Maddie could see the fear in her daughter’s eyes.

“That’s it,” Maddie said, and the anger in her voice surprised her.

“What’s it?”

But Maddie was already pulling her phone out of her pocket and dialing Detective Carleton at the APPD.

He picked up on the second ring. “Keep it short, Dr. Fenton,” he snapped.

“I’m speaking in a professional context. Get me and my husband on the task force.”

“I told you, I can’t just—”

Maddie slammed her fist on the table top; Jazz jumped. “My husband and I are the leading experts in ectoscience and ghost hunting specifically in Amity Park. We’re being kept in the dark and people are getting hurt.”

“I know that, Dr. Fenton. If the APPD had their way, you’d’ve been on it from the start.”

Maddie clenched her jaw. “Why don’t they want us on it?”

Carleton sighed, exasperatedly. “I don’t know,” he said, voice lowered somewhat. “They won’t tell us.”

“Fine.” Maddie chewed on her lip, then chose her next words carefully. “Have any news stations reported on that?”

Carleton was silent for a moment. “I’m not following the news much. Maybe PR knows.” Maddie heard him shift in his seat, then sigh. “I can’t guarantee anything, Dr. Fenton, but I’ll see what I can do.” He hung up.

Maddie was pretty sure he got the message. She flipped her phone shut to find Jazz, staring at her in amazement.

“Mom,” she said, “did you…did you just try to blackmail the federal government?”

“Technically, no,” she said, then grimaced. “I hope.”

“That’s still probably come back to bite you,” Jazz said, “knowing how the GIW is.”

Maddie tossed her hands in the air. “Honestly, Jazz, I don’t really care anymore! Our family’s in danger and there’s nothing I can do about it. The people with the real power to investigate are keeping me in the dark and I’m tired of it. The GIW needs to get their act together before someone dies from their inaction.”

Jazz just continued staring at Maddie, clearly surprised by her outburst. Then she blinked, and said: “Have you considered why the GIW doesn’t want you on its task force?”

“What?” She shook herself out of her anger. “No, I haven’t. Why? Do you know?”

Jazz shook her head. “I don’t know. But, I would guess….” Jazz paused, and Maddie got the sense that she wasn’t sure she really wanted to say it. “They’re trying to prolong the investigation by not letting you or Dad on the task force. It’s the only reason I can think of that makes any sense.”

Well, that was a horrifying thought. “But why would they want to keep it going so long, especially when people are getting hurt?” Maddie frowned, then realized why Jazz was so hesitant to speak. “They’re hunting Phantom.”

“Mmhm,” Jazz confirmed. “They get increased surveillance capabilities and a reason to be poking around Amity Park with ectotechnology.”

The interview with Mr. Lancer. The fight at the mall. The massive turnout at Carrie.

“I don’t have any proof of that,” Jazz continued, “but given their history with him, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Maddie nodded, slowly. Then, she blurted out: “Is Phantom safe, Jazz? Do you know?” A beat. “You don’t have to tell me anything else, but please. I just want to know if he’s okay,” she said.

“Any answer I give you is going to tell you something,” Jazz countered. But she sighed, and said, “Yes. He’s safe.”

“Oh, thank goodness.” It was a relief to hear, even if it did imply that Jazz was closer to Phantom than she had initially let on. That wasn’t exactly a surprise, though; Maddie had suspected as much.

But “safe” didn’t mean he wasn’t still affected by the bomb. If Danny was this hurt, then an actual ghost would be much more worse off.

Danny. Hurt.

Maddie’s eyes flew open as she remembered why she came upstairs in the first place. “Jazz,” she said, standing. “I want you to look at something in the lab.” She walked off, leaving Jazz behind in the kitchen.

To her credit, Jazz followed her mother, silently, down into the lab.

Maddie sat on the stool in front of the computer and jiggled the mouse to wake the screen up. Her graph of Danny’s ectoradiation measurements appeared on the screen.

“What do you see here, Jazz?” she said, pointing to the graph.

Jazz leaned towards the screen. “I see an increase in ectojoules measured over the last nineteen months, suggesting that the source you were studying has become increasingly stronger,” she said, then frowned. “Why are you showing me this? What were you measuring?”

“Danny,” Maddie said, simply.

She watched as Jazz went from confusion, to more confusion, to realization, to discomfort, and, finally, to a blank face.

“Oh,” she said.

“Jazz, I know you promised Danny you wouldn’t say anything to me,” Maddie said, “but I am looking at data showing that Danny not only has an ectoradiation signature, but that it’s been growing in strength over the last year and a half.” She spoke through gritted teeth, fighting back tears. “I don’t understand what’s going on, and I can’t help him unless I do.”

Jazz stared at the screen, its light casting her face in a pale light. Or maybe it was the stress of the confrontation. Another thing Maddie didn’t know.

“Help me, Jazz,” she begged.

After an eternity, Jazz sighed. She closed her eyes, then ran her hands down her face. When she opened her eyes, she didn’t look at Maddie.

“Danny drank ectoplasm,” she said.

“Danny drank what?!” Maddie yelled.

Jazz cringed at the volume. “He drank a glass of ectoplasm,” she repeated. “I don’t know exactly when he did, but it was before his freshman year.”

This was…this was not anything Maddie had expected to hear. She and Jack had impressed upon the kids not to ingest anything in the lab, and they had listened. She thought.

She had half a mind to race upstairs, shake Danny awake, and demand the story from him. But that wouldn’t help either of them, not with him ill…drinking ectoplasm, dear goodness…and besides, Jazz was actually talking to her right now. Waiting another day, when it had already been two whole years wouldn’t do more harm. She hoped.

“What…why?” was all Maddie could choke out.

“For once, I’m not going to pretend to know what goes on in my brother’s head,” Jazz said. “All I know is that he drank ectoplasm, threw most of it up, and then” — she looked exhaustedly bewildered — “drank a gallon of orange juice.”

Maddie rubbed at her eyes. Drinking ectoplasm. Then orange juice. None of that made any sense, but apparently Danny thought it did. “And you didn’t think to tell me or your father about this?”

Jazz shrugged. “Honestly, I thought you already knew.”

“Well, I didn’t!” Maddie said. “But…” she sighed. Either Jazz was telling the truth, or she was a much better liar than

“I appreciate your honesty with me, Jazz.” Finally, she thought.

Drinking ectoplasm. Even Jack hadn’t been so foolhardy to try that. It was lethal when ingested.

“Danny should be dead,” Maddie said, suddenly, looking at Jazz. “The ectoplasm should have killed him.” But he didn’t. “I guess…he must’ve metabolized it, somehow?” Was it just in his blood stream? His spinal column? Or his entire body?

“I don’t know. You’re the ectobiologist, Mom,” Jazz said, “But Danny seems pretty alive to me.”

He did, and Maddie had the vital signs to prove it.

“Is there anything else I should know?” she asked.

Jazz shook her head, then paused, and said: “He said it tasted like ranch dressing.”

Ranch dressing…. Maddie groaned. If she thought she didn’t know things before, this revelation was a whole new can of worms to deal with.

“Okay.” What did she do now? “Okay. How do I treat a teenage boy who’s suffering from…I don’t even know.” Maddie’s thoughts started going in a dozen different directions at once.

Then Jazz said: “How would you treat a ghost?”

“Excuse me?”

“How would you treat a ghost with…ectoradiation sickness?” Jazz repeated. “If he’s responding like a ghost, why not treat him like one?

It wasn’t a bad thought. Much more to go on than where her brain headed right now. But how would she…. “Electric shock,” Maddie said. “If you run the right amount of electricity through a ghost, it can temporarily change their ectoradiation signature. We’ve used it to disrupt ghosts’ forms before.” She felt herself sneering in disgust at herself. “But, theoretically, it could reset a ghost’s natural ectoradiation.” At Jazz’s horrified expression, she added quickly, “I don’t think that’s a good idea to do with Danny.”

Wide-eyed, Jazz shook her head.

What else? Make him…drink…another cup of ectoplasm? No, without knowing the original ectoplasm he drank — he drank ectoplasm — she wouldn’t want to risk poisoning Danny and killing her own son.

“What helped him recover from the other explosions?” she asked.

“Time,” was all Jazz said.

That…made sense, or as much sense as anything did right now. She squeezed her eyes shut. Think, Maddie! Think! How could she speed up the process?

Briefly, she thought of using a Thermos on Danny, but no, that probably wouldn’t work. Since Danny wasn’t an ectoentity, it would only suck out the loose ectons in the air around him, not help reduce the ectoradiation in his system.

Loose ectons….

Maddie looked towards the ecton emitter, still sitting in the blast chamber from where she’d left it on Saturday. Was that really only four days ago?

She ran over the physics in her head. Yes…flooding a room with ectons energized to certain levels could lower a ghost’s ectoenergy, given enough time.

“The ecton emitter might work,” she said, only partially to Jazz, “but we can’t risk it.”

“Why not?”

“The problem with using the ecton emitter is that the loose electrons would connect to any inside Danny’s body,” Maddie explained. “With enough of them, ectoplasm would form, and that would almost certainly hurt Danny.”

“Mmm.” Jazz crossed her arms and looked towards the emitter. “So there’s not really anything you can do to help Danny, is there?”

Tears brimmed at Maddie’s eyes, and she slumped, suddenly exhausted. “No, there isn’t.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I wish your father was here to offer his thoughts. Don’t lecture me, please, Jazz,” she said as her daughter opened her mouth.

Jazz made a face. “I wasn’t going to. All I was going to say is to give him time.” She raised an eyebrow. “You’re the one who messed up. Be patient.”

“I know, I know,” Maddie said. “Believe me, I know.”

But knowing that didn’t make her feel better. She sat there and failed trying not to cry.

Suddenly, Jazz was there. “Mom,” she said, softly, “I think you should take a break. Go rest some.”

Maddie wiped a tear from her face. “I think that’s a good idea.”

It wasn’t until she was already in bed, half way asleep, that Maddie realized she never answered Jazz’s question.

Were they safe in Fenton Works?

She didn’t know.

***

Dinner was a quiet and awkward affair.

Jazz was upstairs in Danny’s room, trying to get him to drink some Pedialyte; he was definitely at risk of dehydration. Sam and Tucker joined the Fentons for their takeout, and neither spoke much. Maddie wasn’t sure how much the two of them had slept since Monday afternoon, but it was almost certainly not enough.

And then there was Jack. The two of them had barely spoken a dozen words to each other since he came back with dinner.

Maddie pushed her food around on the plate — too miserable to have an appetite. Her husband wasn’t talking to her because she lied to him; her son was ill because she hadn’t impressed upon him lab safety well enough; someone was targeting her family with literal bombs, probably also because of her.

And some part of her felt guilty for moping. She sighed.

Then Detective Carleton called her, and she took a welcome break from the silent kitchen to speak to him in the hallway.

“You’re in,” he said. “Don’t ask me how, but you’re in. The GIW want you at their meeting tomorrow evening.”

“That’s…thank you, Detective Carleton.” It was like the color had returned to the world, lifting Maddie out of the dark she was stuck in. “What time should Jack and I be there?”

“Not Jack. Just you.”

“What?” Maddie frowned. “I’m not doing this without my husband.”

Carleton sighed; Maddie could hear his impatience through the phone. “It’s either you or not at all. The GIW were clear about that.”

Maddie grit her teeth, then exhaled forcefully. What choice did she have, if she wanted more information? “Fine,” she said, sharply. “Just me. When and where is this meeting?”

“I’ll fax them to you,” Carleton said. “Along with your contract. You’re officially working as a consultant for the APPD on this, not directly for the GIW. Don’t mess this up.” He ended the call.

Maddie stood there, in the hallway, for a moment. She had a way in, but without Jack.

Steeling herself, Maddie walked back into the kitchen. “That was Detective Carleton,” she announced. “I’m on the task force.” Then, she looked at Jack and said, “Just me. I’m sorry, Jack.”

Her husband might not be on good terms with her right now, but Maddie still could read his expression as well as she always had, and she knew from the specific way his lips creased that he was upset — the specific kind of upset that came when someone insulted his intelligence and left him out of the equation.

“Did Carleton tell you why?” he asked, quietly.

She shook her head. “No, only that it’s the GIW’s decision.”

Jack took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Okay. Then I guess you’ll have to go alone.”

Maddie’s heart broke a little bit more. “Yeah, I guess I will.”

Chapter Text

There were a grand total of two outfits Jazz would let Maddie wear to the GIW meeting. The first was a dark red blouse with a pair of black slacks; the second, a gray pantsuit. For once, she agreed with Jazz that she shouldn’t wear her jumpsuit. She needed to be professional, and…it just didn’t seem right.

Maddie had lain the two outfits side-by-side on the bed and was presently staring at them, trying to decide which one to wear. The pantsuit was the more professional of the two, but it was harder to move in than the blouse and slacks. How seriously did she want the GIW to take her? She reached for the pantsuit, but stopped, hand hovering over the bed. Did it matter? They already knew her.

Then Maddie remembered that the GIW’s assistants wore gray, and she reached instead for the blouse and slacks.

But before she could start to undress, from the hallway came the sound of the bathroom door opening, a thunk, and a loud “ow!”

That was Danny’s voice.

Maddie rushed out into the hallway to find Danny laying on the floor, halfway out of the bathroom.

“Danny!” she cried, kneeling down next to him. “Are you okay?”

Danny groaned, but started to push himself up into a sitting position; with Maddie’s help, he leaned his back against the door frame and sat there, breathing hard. He wore the same t-shirt and boxers from the day before, but had added Sam’s aviators to his dress. Light sensitivity, probably.

“I’m fine,” he said, resting his head on the frame. “Just tripped.”

“Do you need ice, or a bandage, or…?” Down the hallway, Sam and Tucker had stepped out of Danny’s room; Maddie waved them off, but the two of them kept hovering in the hallway.

He shook his head. “Just a minute to catch my breath is all.”

Maddie rested back on her heels, waiting for her heartbeat to settle down. This was the first time she’d seen her son awake since Monday morning, and it was a relief to see him, if not recovered, then at least not catatonic.

Then she frowned. Something was off about Danny’s posture, and it took her a moment to realize it was because her son was in pain.

And trying to hide it.

He was hunched over, slightly, and was holding his right arm against his lower stomach, but just gently enough that it wasn’t immediately obviously. Maddie peered at him, then gasped.

“Danny!” she said, leaning forward and pointing. “You’re bleeding!”

Danny followed her finger to where the bright red stains showed clearly on his white shirt. A quick glance, and he leaned his head back against the door frame. “It’s just a scratch. Nothing to be worried about.”

Maddie shook her head. “It’s not ‘just a scratch.’ That’s too much blood. I’m getting the first aid kit.” She stood up; Danny groaned out an exasperated “Mom!”

“Sam, Tucker, get Danny to his room,” she commanded. “I’ll be there in a jiffy.”

The two teens hesitated, but at a barked “Now!” from Maddie, they obeyed, much to Danny’s protests.

Within moments, Maddie retrieved the first aid kit from the hallway closet, washed her hands, and opened the door to Danny’s room. Her son sat, slouched, on his messy bed, having a hushed argument with Tucker and Sam. They all glanced at Maddie when she entered his room; then Danny glared at his friends. They glared back.

“Pull up your shirt, Danny,” Maddie said, setting the first aid kit on the bed next to him and donning a pair of gloves. Danny sighed, but lifted his shirt barely past the injury; Maddie noticed how he tried not to cringe at the movement.

She knelt down to take a closer look. There was a large gauze pad neatly taped to his abdomen. He’d bled through it.

“You don’t need to take it off, Mom, see?” Danny said. “All patched up.”

Maddie shook her head. “Danny, you’re bleeding through the gauze. I’m replacing the bandage.”

Despite his scowl, Danny didn’t protest more as she gently pulled off the tape and bloodied gauze. But Maddie didn’t miss how he tensed and sucked in a sharp breath when she peeled it away.

Then Maddie sucked in her own breath as she saw what lay beneath the gauze.

It was a burn wound, roughly the size of the palm of her hand. Probably second-degree, based on how red and bloody it was. And despite all of Maddie’s experience with burn injuries, she couldn’t tell how old it was. There was something weird about her son’s injury, too, that she wasn’t able to place.

“Danny,” she said, quietly, looking up at him. “When did this happen?”

Danny was staring somewhere behind Tucker. “Last week,” he said.

“And you didn’t tell me?”

He looked at her and shrugged. “You had enough on your plate. I didn’t want to worry you more.”

“Well, I’m plenty worried now, Danny.” Maddie started the process of cleaning his wound. There wasn’t much she needed to do; it had been well taken care of, and there was no sign of infection. With a sinking feeling, Maddie realized this wasn’t the first time Danny had taken care of an injury like this. The care was too well-practiced for this to be a one-time thing. “Tell me what happened.”

For a moment, Danny said nothing, and Maddie suspected a silent conversation was taking place between him, Sam, and Tucker. She started to cover the raw skin with burn ointment; Danny hissed through his teeth.

Then he said: “Kitchen mishap.”

Maddie looked up at him, and Danny looked down at her, and Maddie knew that Danny knew she knew he was lying to her.

She looked away from him as her face started burning; she clenched her jaw and felt tears prick at her eyes.

More lies. Even now, sick in bed because of an ectoradiation bomb that he shouldn’t even react to, Danny was lying to her. Unbelievable.

“Mom, I—”

“If it’s another lie, Danny, I don’t want to hear it.”

He didn’t respond, and Maddie had to physically stop herself from yelling.

She took a deep breath to steady herself before tearing open the pack of fresh gauze and placing it, as gently as she could, on Danny’s burn. He flinched, but just barely.

Maddie finished taping the gauze on, then stood, peeling off the gloves and tossing them into the trash. Danny at least had the decency to look ashamed, but that still didn’t change the fact that he continued to lie to her. She studied his face.

Danny gingerly pulled his shirt down over the fresh bandage. “Thanks, Mom,” he said, quietly.

“You’re welcome.” Then, she saw something, and frowned. “What’s that on your forehead?”

“It’s nothing.”

“I don’t have time for this, Danny!” Maddie said, throwing her hands in the air. “Let me see your forehead.”

She reached forward to brush his hair away from above his right eye; Danny didn’t bother fighting her on it.

She gasped. It was the cut Danny suffered at the first explosion — where once it had healed to a thin line of scar tissue, now it was red and scabbed over, as though it had just happened recently.

“That’s it,” Maddie said. “You’re going to the hospital.”

“What? No!” Danny grabbed her arm. “What about the GIW meeting?”

“I’ll have to cancel.” Jazz was sleeping, and Jack had gone out. Sam and Tucker were minors. It was her or no one. “Danny, you reopened a healed injury. That’s a serious issue!” It was a connective tissue problem, she thought; the only one Maddie could remember at the moment was scurvy, but there were others.

“Mom, you have to go to the GIW meeting. It’s really important!”

“Not more important than you!”

Danny let go of her arm and shook his head. “Yes, it is. People are getting hurt. People that aren’t involved in this. You know the GIW aren’t doing their jobs right.”

Maddie thought back to the fax, warning her that the GIW was hiding things from the task force. She let her hands drop to her side. When did her son become so selfless? “I can’t just leave you here, Danny. You’re hurt, more than I think you realize.”

He shook his head again. “I know it looks bad,” he said, “but I’ll be fine. It’s already healed a bit from Monday.”

Maddie barely resisted throwing her hands in the air again. “You don’t know that.”

“I know how to take care of myself, Mom.” He pointed at Tucker and Sam. “They do, too.”

More than you do, was the unspoken implication, but Maddie ignored it. “Danny,” she said, quieter, “I don’t understand how you can just throw your own well-being to the side like that.”

Danny finally raised Sam’s aviators. His tired eyes were bloodshot, but it only made their blue color pop out more. He glanced back at his friends, then looked at Maddie and said, “Okay. I’ll explain it to you. I’ll explain everything. But only after you get back from meeting with the GIW.”

It was the biggest concession Maddie had in the fight over Danny’s secrets, and for a second, she was too stunned to react. But then she shook her head. “No. If you can tell me later, then you can tell me now.”

Danny shook his head in return. “I can’t tell you now. If I do, you won’t go to the meeting.”

“Can’t tell me, or won’t tell me?”

“Won’t.”

She stared at Danny, and Danny stared back.

Sometimes, it was hard to remember that Danny was a Fenton. He didn’t get good grades, he lacked self-confidence, and he wasn’t a know-it-all like — Maddie had to admit it — his parents or sister. He was often quieter than the rest of them, too, to the point where it was sometimes easy to forget he was even there. He tried to fly under the radar in a way that Maddie, Jack, and Jazz never had.

But right now, Maddie was reminded that, first and foremost, Fentons were stubborn, and as soon as she made eye contact with Danny’s unusually intense stare, she knew her son had never been more of a Fenton than in that moment.

And Maddie knew that she had lost.

“Do you promise to tell me the truth, Danny?” she asked, softly.

He nodded. “I promise. I’ll tell you everything, as soon as you get back.”

Maddie closed her eyes. She took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. She opened her eyes to find Danny still staring at her, but the fight had left his eyes. “Okay. I don’t like it, but you won’t be persuaded, will you?”

Danny shook his head.

“Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

Maddie wasn’t sure if she imagined Danny’s hesitation before he spoke. “As sure as I can be, Mom. Like I said, I know how to take care of myself.”

Maddie nodded, then spun around and pointed at Sam and Tucker. “You two,” she said. “If Danny gets worse, promise me you’ll take him to the hospital.”

Tucker blanched, but nodded. Sam said, “We’ll make sure Danny gets help.”

“Okay,” Maddie said. She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Okay. It probably makes me a bad parent for not rushing Danny to the hospital, but I’m trusting the three of you. Don’t make me regret that.”

The teens nodded. Danny looked like he was about to fall asleep; the confrontation had worn him out.

“I’m going to get dressed and head out to the meeting,” Maddie continued. “I don’t want to be late. Can one of you take care of the first aid kit?”

Once again, Tucker looked queasy, and Sam said, “I’ll get it.” She started immediately, and the movement broke the remaining tension. Tucker stepped back to lean against Danny’s desk, and Danny sagged with fatigue.

But as Maddie was about to close the door behind her, Danny called out: “Mom?”

Maddie turned around to look back at her son.

“I love you,” he said.

Maddie smiled — a small one, but a smile nonetheless. “I love you too, Danny. I’ll see you when I get home.”

Danny nodded, but Maddie didn’t miss that he didn’t smile back.

***

After getting through the chaos of the protestors, Maddie texted Jack about Danny’s injury. She left out that he had promised to tell her the truth. And then she spent the entire ride thinking about Danny, just as she often did when alone.

Her thoughts were a variation of the same theme — what secret was her son hiding? — but this time, she had to ask herself: why now? Why did Danny decide, today of all days, that it was time to tell her the truth?

Was it that he had gotten hurt for the third time this summer, but knew he couldn’t get the right help unless he fessed up? It was possible that Jazz had intervened there, or maybe Sam and Tucker, who did seem to be encouraging Danny to tell her.

Or was it something else, something that had happened in whatever secret life he was leading? Without having a clue what that actually was, Maddie was bereft of ideas.

Maybe, it wasn’t what had happened to Danny so much as what happened to others. She had almost died for the second time this summer, after all. And what was it Danny said? People are getting hurt. People that aren’t involved in this. He was worried about the innocent people who were caught up in…well, Maddie wasn’t actually sure what he meant by “this.” The bombings? Whatever else he was up to?

Regardless, that didn’t quite make sense. If people getting hurt was the trigger, why would Danny wait so long to tell her, especially if he thought she could do something about it?

What if it was because Jazz had told her about the ectoplasm he drank? Maybe he was worried that if his parents pressed too much — because Maddie was absolutely going to do that once he was better — they’d…find out his secret?

Maddie frowned. That Danny drank ectoplasm couldn’t be part of whatever he was hiding — Jazz had been adamant that she wouldn’t tell Maddie Danny’s secret; she’d let Danny do that. But Maddie couldn’t let go of the idea that there was some connection between the ectoplasm beverage and Danny’s secret.

Because the more she thought about it, the more things didn’t add up: namely, if Danny really had ingested ectoplasm, he should be dead. It should have caused his throat and esophagus to shrivel and break apart — like someone dipped in liquid nitrogen before being exposed to a nuclear core just gone critical. No lab mouse she or Jack had experimented on had survived ingesting ectoplasm. Maddie shuddered, recalling their deaths; she hated to imagine her son going through the same thing.

There were only two conclusions Maddie could draw from the contradiction: either Jazz was lying to her about Danny drinking ectoplasm, or there was something else going on with Danny, far beyond her understanding. And Maddie was pretty sure Jazz had told the truth.

She sighed. At least there was one less thing to worry about: she knew that Phantom was alive — er, whatever the ghost version of “alive” was. He’d sent her another fax this morning, this time warning her to be careful what she said at the GIW meeting. Maddie barely even bothered to wonder how he knew it was happening.

By the time Maddie arrived at the GIW’s temporary headquarters, she was late, and she felt like she had gone nowhere with her thoughts. As she was directed towards a specific place to park, Maddie pushed back her worries about Danny: it was time to be Dr. Fenton right now, not Mrs. Fenton.

The GIW were renting out parts of Amity Park’s Torrance Hotel for their time in the town; from the armada of identical white vans Maddie drove through, she wouldn’t be surprised if they had the entire hotel to themselves.

The Torrance was supposedly haunted, as every building in Amity Park seemed to be, but Maddie and Jack had never found any evidence of a specific haunting. It was just an older hotel, three stories tall and a little worn down. The GIW had probably chosen it because of the conference center on the second floor, but Maddie wouldn’t put it past them that they had been sucked in by the rumors of a haunting.

She parked and got out, walking to the back entrance as directed. Maddie tried, as surreptitiously as she could, to see what kind of surveillance the GIW had set up. Multiple additional security cameras. Ghost meters. Ectoplasm guns on the roof. She was pretty sure she saw movement behind several curtains.

And, of course, there were the agents in white and assistants in gray, swarming around like ants on a piece of candy.

One of the assistants stopped her at the door. “ID,” he demanded, bored contempt radiating with his voice.

Maddie showed him her ID, always at the ready for exactly these situations, and then tried to walk into the building, only to find the assistant’s hand pushing against her sternum.

“No ectotechnology.” That was in her contract, and she hadn’t brought any. “No communication devices.” That wasn’t.

“What? No, I need my cell phone,” Maddie said. “My son is sick and I need to know if his condition changes.”

The assistant shook his head. “No communication devices,” he repeated.

Maddie glared at him, but she wasn’t sure he was even looking at her from behind those sunglasses of his. Finally, she acquiesced, as much as she loathed to let the GIW win even a small battle. But she didn’t want to risk getting kicked off the task force now that she was actually on it.

“Fine,” she snapped. “But I’m putting it in my car.”

The assistant shrugged.

When Maddie returned, she was subjected to a thorough but, thankfully, perfunctory pat-down before being shuffled through more x-ray scanners than at most of the classified federal research facilities she’d been to. Two different people searched her bag, and then she was escorted up a flight of stairs and down the hallway to the main conference room.

She was almost half an hour late, thanks to the security force.

The GIW escort left almost as soon as they had arrived and Maddie stood right inside the door, trying not to clutch too hard at her bag’s straps while everyone stared at her. Even though the blouse and slacks made the most sense to wear, without her jumpsuit, she felt exposed. Naked. Vulnerable.

Then a familiar voice said: “Maddie, hi!” and the tension cracked, just enough that Maddie felt like she could breathe again.

She turned to see Penny striding towards her from where she sat between Aggie and Sedgewick along one side of the table. Grateful for the intercession, Maddie smiled at the other ectoscientist.

“It’s good to see you, Maddie,” Penny said, taking Maddie’s hand that wasn’t clutching at the bag in both of hers. Even though she seemed more subdued than usual, there was still a pep to Penny’s speech that Maddie couldn’t fathom how she managed to maintain. “Everyone,” she continued, voice raised, “I hardly think she needs the introduction, but this is Dr. Maddie Fenton of Amity Park’s Fenton Works. We are so glad that she’s finally able to be here to help us.”

Penny set about introducing everyone to Maddie, even the people she already knew. Maddie mostly tuned it out, instead taking a moment to look around the room.

It was a pretty standard conference room, all things considered. Bland off-white paint, a storage closet near the entrance, a cluster of empty folding tables along the wall, paneled ceiling tiles. A dozen or so chairs sat around a large wooden table, which was covered in lots and lots of paper. There was no chair at the head of the table; instead, the space in front was cleared for a rolling dry erase board like the ones the Fentons used. A projector sat, currently off, on the middle of the table. It was a new digital projector, much better the cumbersome overhead ones Casper High used.

The thought of Casper dampened Maddie’s already sour mood. Danny probably won’t be able to finish his classes this summer, she thought. He’s going to be so upset when he realizes that.

Most of the chairs were filled with people she recognized. There were the four ectoscientists; Detective Carleton and another member of the APPD; and a gray-haired civil engineer whose surname she thought was Duvall. The Fentons had worked with her a few times on ghost-proofing projects. She’d also testified against them once in a property damage suit. And then there were three others Maddie didn’t recall seeing before. Probably liaisons with different departments in the mayor’s office, she guessed.

Notably, the two GIW agents in charge of the investigation were absent, though she guessed by the empty chairs by the head of the table that she would be seeing them tonight. There were white-suited agents standing in the corners of the room, though, and Maddie remembered Phantom’s warning.

“It’s a tight fit, but we’ve managed to make a spot for you, Maddie,” Penny said.

After a half-second’s delay to process what she said, Maddie followed where Penny was pointing. At the butt of the table was a narrow chair, one that looked significantly less comfortable than what everyone else sat in, squeezed between Reitman and Detective Carleton.

Well, at least she’d have a good view of the screen.

Maddie’s decorum finally caught up with her, and she looked around the room, smiling in what she hoped was a non-threatening manner. “Thank you, everyone. I’m looking forward to working with you so we can hopefully put an end to the threats in Amity Park.”

As people nodded in agreement, Maddie took her seat and set about unpacking her lab notebook and pencil; she’d chosen a blank one for tonight.

With Maddie seated, the room’s occupants returned to the small, murmured conversations her arrival had interrupted. She was a little surprised that Penny wasn’t pestering her for details about the explosions at Carrie, but it was a welcome break, and, besides, she was prepared to sit there, avoided like she normally was at meetings like this.

But then Reitman turned to her and said, “Maddie, I was glad to hear that your family made it out of the explosions in one piece. I hope you’re all doing okay.”

“Thank you, Henry. We’re managing alright.” He didn’t need to know about Danny, or her row with Jack. “Fenton Works is used to dealing with ghost-related crises.”

“Mmm, I suppose you would be,” Reitman said. He lowered his voice, just slightly. “Maddie, I was wondering if you could tell me, to answer some rumors we’ve heard: was Phantom there, at Carrie?”

He sounded innocent enough asking it, like it was just out of curiosity, but there was a certain tone to his voice that Maddie barely caught: Reitman was concerned about the boy, too.

Maddie noticed, then, that the room had quieted, just a little; people were trying to listen in without making it obvious they were eavesdropping. How much did she want to reveal to these people — and how much did she want to risk the GIW finding out? “I’d rather wait until the agents are here to discuss Monday,” she said, speaking a little bit louder, hoping people might get the message to bugger off.

Reitman, at least, seemed to, even though Maddie wasn’t sure if guessed her real reason to say nothing. He nodded, and said, “I understand. Don’t want to repeat yourself too much.” He settled back in his chair.

The rest of the room fell back into its previous conversational patterns shortly thereafter, and Maddie was grateful that no one was pushing her to talk, for the moment, at least. There would be plenty of that once the meeting got started.

After a small eternity, the doors behind Maddie burst open, and she twisted in her chair to see a wall of white suit jackets staring her in the face. The GIW had arrived, more than an hour late. A charitable take on their tardiness might guess it was because the GIW were busy dealing with the danger threatening Amity Park, instead of making some sort of power play by making everyone else wait.

But Maddie was long past being charitable towards the GIW. She tried to hide her scowl as the two men in charge took their spots at the table’s head, surrounded by other agents.

While they were getting set up, Carleton pushed a note in front of her. “Don’t make a scene. Remember, you’re representing the APPD, not Fenton Works,” it said.

Maddie glanced at him and nodded, once. She didn’t plan on it.

At long last, the agent Maddie knew as Operative K cleared his throat. “We’re getting started,” he said, somehow sounding both extremely serious and extremely bored at the same time. “Maddie Fenton is here at the request of the APPD. We hope she’ll be a great help and so on and so forth. We’ll start with an overview of the case so far. This will be a review for everyone, but the APPD requested we get Mrs. Fenton up to speed.”

Maddie held back an exasperated sigh.

***

“I presume you’re familiar with the basic structure of the bombs,” Agent E, the GIW explosives expert, said, “given that they’re based on your husband’s design.”

Maddie nodded.

“Great. Then I won’t bore you with those details.” He flipped the slideshow to an intricate schematic of the bombs with font so small Maddie couldn’t read it. “Best we can tell, all four bombs follow the same form, composed of the main cylinder and the control box on the outside.” As he spoke, Agent E circled the parts with a laser pointer. “Thanks to the one from Casper, we know that the box contains a half-hour timer that can be remotely activated from within a distance of approximately 60 meters, or 200 feet. This means that whoever placed the bombs must have been in proximity of their locations no later than thirty minutes beforehand.”

That could limit their suspect pool, depending on who showed up on surveillance cameras. She tried to imagine how far away 60 meters was — roughly half a football field’s length away. But Agent E kept talking, so Maddie just scribbled some notes.

The next slide was a list of compounds, broken down into rough percentages.

“The cylinder contained the explosive material itself, which can be divided into two distinct substances. The first is a standard low explosive mixture commonly found in pipe bombs and IEDs.” Agent E rattled off the compounds before he said, nonchalantly, “The second substance is the same composition, but ectoplasmic.”

It took Maddie a second to understand what that meant; her breath caught in her throat as he continued: “The remote timer triggers an ectoenergetic reaction between the two substances. Because the cylinder is mostly ectophobic, it retains the reaction for roughly half an hour until the ectopressure exceeds the breaking point of the cylinder’s walls, exploding the bomb.”

Had she not been in semi-polite company, Maddie would have smacked herself. Of course. Ectoplasm under high pressures was more energetic — that, at least was consistent with Earthly physics. It certainly explained the abnormal ectoenergy readings from the explosions.

It was so obvious. How had she missed it?

And what else had she missed?

Mistaking her dumbfounded expression as a lack of comprehension, Agent E said, “It’s basically a highly customized pressure cooker bomb, Dr. Fenton.”

Maddie recovered from her surprise and nodded. “I understand,” she said. “But have a question.”

“We’re saving questions until the end, Mrs. Fenton,” Operative K said.

She fought against clenching her jaw. Right. “Go on, then,” Maddie said, writing down her questions.

The next forty-five minutes were spent going over the three explosions in detail. Agent E droned on about blast radius and shrapnel penetration and structural damage and so forth. Most of it, Maddie thought, was fairly useless other than to gauge the extent of the terror the bomber intended to cause, but then Agent E said, “We found that the range of highly energized ectons was far greater than the vicinity of the physical damage.”

“By how much?” Maddie asked.

Operative K glared at her, but Agent E said, “In the first five minutes of the explosions at Carrie, we estimated the range at 45-50 meters, or 150-165 feet.”

“That’s sizable.” Far larger than she expected.

Agent E nodded. “Yes. And that doesn’t include the drift range, which was far larger in the hours following the explosions, though less ectoenergetic. We found changes in ectoradiation up to two miles away.”

Maddie pursed her lips, but didn’t say anything. If Phantom — or any other ghost, she supposed — had been within that range during the initial explosion near the Nasty Burger, it could have seriously disrupted their form. No wonder Phantom had warned them to stay away.

As though he was reading her mind, Agent E said, “Notably, there were fewer reports of ghost attacks immediately after the first bomb, which suggests that either fewer ghosts were in the vicinity or that the ectoradiation does not have a significant impact on ghosts’ hostility or volatility. However, this latter theory contradicts laboratory testing, so we suspect the former. We’ve also seen fewer—”

“This is getting into extraneous information,” Operative K interrupted, though Maddie thought the opposite. “Mrs. Fenton, you have five minutes to ask your questions before we break.”

Five minutes may have been zero minutes, for all that would help. But Maddie looked to her top question, and said: “According to my husband, the initial explosion happened as soon as we opened the newspaper box, which suggests the explosion may have been deliberately triggered when we investigated. Is there any evidence to support this?”

“No,” Agent E said. “The explosion conforms to the same design as the other two. It was a coincidence.”

But, for better or worse, Maddie had a lot of experience with people lying to her, and something — perhaps a minute pause, or his tone of voice — made her pretty sure that Agent E was hiding something from her.

Of course he was.

“Okay,” she said, making a note in the margins. “Next question: My understanding of the ectoplasmic compound found in the bombs is that it should be volatile and requires someone with a high level of ectoscientific practice to create. Is this correct?”

Agent E nodded once. “Yes. In order to create this material, specialized equipment is needed. There are only a handful of labs around the country that are capable of replicating it in a stable enough form to transport. However, we have not ruled out that an experienced enough individual could create this in a private lab setting.”

Maddie narrowed her eyes, just slightly. Unlike her surety with Agent E’s lie moments ago, she wasn’t sure if that was a condemnation of Fenton Works or not. “So you can use this information to narrow down possible suspects, based on known experts in ectoscience?”

Again, Agent E nodded once. “Yes. But my colleague will explain our person of interest list in the next presentation.”

Maddie made another note in her book, then asked a few clarifying questions about other details Agent E had mentioned. She had barely made a dent in her list, though, before Operative K said, “Thank you, Agent E, for that information. Hopefully this will be helpful to Mrs. Fenton. We break for fifteen minutes.”

As if on cue, Operative K and his partner stood up and exited the room. They were followed by all the other agents, save for the four guarding the corners of the room.

Maddie dropped her face into her hands and let out a long exhale. She rubbed at her eyes, before sighing and sitting up straight again.

She was surprised, for a moment, to find the other members of the task force in the room with her — during Agent E’s presentation, everyone else had just faded into the background, for all the input they gave. Were allowed to give. She wasn’t sure if there was a difference at this point.

What did she make of the things she’d learned just now? Maddie wished Jack was here to help her sort through the information about the bomb, since her head did not want to put the pieces together right now.

“There’s coffee, Maddie,” someone behind her said. “You look like you could use some.”

Maddie jumped, then twisted in her seat to find Penny, looking only slightly less tired than Maddie felt. A glance behind her revealed a gray-suited GIW member unloading large thermoses that had been taken from the hotel’s supplies, if the logos on them were anything to go by. Another member was pushing in a cart full of boxed meals. She’d forgotten there would be catering.

“You’re right about that,” she said, finally standing. “You look like you could use some, too.”

Penny sighed. “A task force meeting will do that to you.”

As the two women made their way to the food table, Maddie asked, voice quiet, “Are all the meetings like this?”

Penny considered for a second, then shook her head. “No, there’s normally less lecturing. But if you’re talking about the oppressive monochromatic atmosphere, then yes, they are.” Maybe the bright blue Penny wore today was in rebellion against that. “But we haven’t had many meetings as a big group, anyway. This is only the third or fourth time we’re all together.”

Maddie absently nodded, then frowned when she realized what Penny said. “That doesn’t seem…productive.”

“It’s not, but it’s what the GIW wants,” Penny said.

And the GIW gets what it wants, was the unspoken conclusion to that statement.

The two of them grabbed their meal boxes and cups of coffee, and Penny lead Maddie back to their seats. To her surprise, Reitman and Aggie had pulled her chair, plus Penny’s, into a semi-circle alongside the table. It was like she was back in high school, doing a group project, except that she’d actually been included this time.

As Maddie chewed her room-temperature sandwich, she glanced around the room. Carleton and his partner sat together, as did the liaisons for the mayor’s office. Only the engineer and Sedgewick ate alone. The four room guards didn’t eat.

The room was quiet except for the crinkle of sandwich wrappers and creaking chairs; no one wanted to break the silence, it seemed. But, eventually, people started to get up and throw their trash out. Maddie joined them, then checked her watch. She had a few minutes left to use the restroom, and then dash outside to the car to see if there was any update on Danny.

Did anything she learned just now change what she thought about Danny’s reactions to the bombs? Was it maybe not the energized ectons that affected Danny so much so as the composition of the bombs?

Maddie thought about it as she used the toilet. She wasn’t sure; she kept coming back to the same problem as always: why was Danny affected by the bombs and no one else?

Except Phantom, she reminded herself, thinking of how the boy’s injury had reopened, just like Danny’s had. It must have a similar effect on ghosts’ collagen-like ectoplasm…or whatever Phantom had.

A moment. Then, Maddie froze, hand just about to turn on the faucet.

And me.

The explosion had killed her, but what had caused her to form as a ghost? Maddie didn’t remember dying — the time immediately before the explosion was still lost to her, and probably would forever be — but it couldn’t have been more than a minute between when she had and when she’d come to as a ghost.

All of the literature on ectogenesis suggested that the process didn’t happen immediately — generally, at least a few months passed before ghostly phenomena occurred relating to a specific person’s death. They didn’t know what happened in the Ghost Zone, of course, but did that really matter? Maddie had died on Earth.

And she’d died in a highly energized, ecton-rich environment: one of the ways in which ectogenesis was theorized to take place.

They’re dirty bombs, Maddie realized. Someone is trying to turn my family into ghosts. She found herself growing dizzy.

Someone knocked on the door. “Dr. Fenton?” She thought it was Duvall. “Is everything okay?”

Maddie shook herself. Right. Right. This was a single-user bathroom and there was a line. “One moment,” she called back, then quickly washed her hands.

Don’t get ahead of yourself, Maddie, she thought to herself. You don’t have evidence that these are dirty bombs.

She didn’t know for sure that her family was being targeted. She didn’t know for sure that the ectoplasm would encourage ectogenesis. She didn’t know for sure of anything right now, except that the people she cared about were getting hurt.

But even if she couldn’t prove it, Maddie felt in her gut that it was, if not perfectly correct, at least closer to the truth than anything else she’d considered.

What did she do with this theory? Tell the GIW, probably. Maddie found herself sneering at the thought. No, they were going to go over people of interest in the bombings. That would include motives. She could wait until then.

***

She didn’t get any updates on Danny; the GIW wouldn’t let her leave. Some excuse about how it would take too long for her to go through their security system again, this close to the break ending. Next time, she should leave at the beginning of the break, not the end.

So Maddie sat in her chair, arms crossed and trying to focus more on being irritated at the GIW than worried about her son. At least this time, the Operative K, his partner, and the other agents didn’t make them wait too long before they reappeared.

One of the agents stood at the head of the table, and Maddie knew she would not be able to pick him out of the crowd of GIW agents if she saw him again.

“I’m Agent S,” he said. “I’ll be going over our list tonight. We have updates on several people and a few we’ve ruled out.”

There was a subtle movement in the room as his words caught the assembled’s attention; people sat up straighter, and suddenly, the room didn’t seem so depressing.

“I’ll remind you before we get started that these are still only people of interest, not suspects.” Agent S spoke with a voice as monotone as his suit was monochrome. “Legally, at least.”

Maddie half expected that this presentation would drag on like the first one had, but then Agent S opened the first slide and her heart rate spiked.

“Danny Phantom, age unknown. Last sighted at Carrie Community College on Monday. Current location unknown.”

The slide was covered in blurry stills from security cameras and cell phones of Phantom, each labeled with the location and date they were taken.

Maddie wasn’t sure if she should be relieved or worried that the GIW didn’t know where Phantom was. But she was definitely worried that they thought he was involved in all of this.

“We have evidence placing Phantom at Casper High School in the days leading up to Dr. Fenton’s discovery of the second bomb,” the agent said. “We also have evidence placing Phantom at Carrie Community College in the hours before the second and third explosions, as well as immediately afterwards.” As he spoke, he flipped through several more slides, all showing Phantom near the three bombs. “We do not have any photographic evidence of Phantom at the site of the first explosion. However, the area around the Nasty Burger is a known location that Phantom frequents. It is possible that he placed the bomb during one of his visits, though it is also possible that he used his ghost powers to place it unseen.

“Dr. Fenton,” he said, suddenly, turning to Maddie. “Does Fenton Works have any surveillance capabilities that could have detected Phantom’s presence at any of these locations?”

“Um, no,” Maddie said. She wasn’t expecting a question directed at her so soon. “Not that we haven’t already shared with the APPD.”

“Very well,” Agent S said, and Maddie couldn’t tell what he thought about her reply. She caught Operative K, however, hiding a glare. How unprofessional.

“Although we have many data on Phantom’s ghost powers, combat abilities, alliances, and enemies,” Agent S continued, “we do not know what Phantom does when he is not active in Amity Park, making it difficult to know if he has the capability to engineer a bomb of this design. From its composition, however, we know it cannot originate in the Ghost Zone. Therefore, if Phantom is responsible for placing the bombs, we know he must have a location on Earth where he is either producing or sourcing them. Here are the people of interest who may be working with Phantom.”

He moved on to another slide, this one showing the blurry security camera footage from the GIW’s announcement over the weekend alongside several other still frames, along with a driver’s license ID photo showing a frowning man with short cropped hair. “Richard Herman, age 26. Currently under surveillance in Madison, Wisconsin.”

Another slide, with more photos. “Herman has worked as a delivery driver for Vladco for the last three years. He was a person of interest in the disappearance of ectoplasmic samples we sent to be processed by Vladco sixteen months ago, which vanished en route while he was driving. However, all evidence was deemed circumstantial, and Herman remains employed by Vladco.”

It was news to Maddie that the GIW would use Vladco for ectoscientific work, and even more surprising that samples would disappear; Vlad was anal about security. But…his servers had been hacked. His security wasn’t as good as it seemed. She glanced at Sedgewick, who seemed utterly bored with everything.

“What were the samples of?” she asked.

Agent S opened his mouth to speak, but Operative K cut him off. “That’s classified, Mrs. Fenton,” he barked. “And no questions.”

Maddie resisted glaring at him, as much as she really, really wanted to. By the self-satisfied smirk on his face, she knew he knew he had gotten to her.

The initial stress of seeing Phantom’s face on the presentation faded, somewhat, while Agent S droned on about more people of interest:

“Andrew Gilbert, age 33.” An unsmiling man with a scar on his cheek, this time in a mugshot. “Former warehouse worker for the US Postal Service. Currently under surveillance in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.”

“Gerald Bentley, age 28.” A smile this time, with perfectly straight teeth. “Inventory auditor for Vladco’s household cleaning department. Currently under surveillance in Madison, Wisconsin.” This man made the other members of the task force scribble down notes; he was a new addition to the list, clearly.

“Kurt Whitney, age 45.” A balding man with bushy eyebrows, neither smiling nor unsmiling. “Employed with a tree-cutting service, though formerly applied to the FBI. Under surveillance in Rockford, Illinois.”

And so on.

At some point, Maddie lost count of how many men appeared on Agent S’s slideshow. Eight, maybe, or nine? Did it matter? None of them really seemed like viable suspects. Most of them were working class men like Richard Herman, and none of them seemed the type to have connections with someone who could not only build a bomb, but have the will to set it off.

But Maddie didn’t fail to notice that the teenage boy who caused both of her children to tense up — the one who fit Danny’s description — was no longer on the list.

If this was all the GIW had to go on, no wonder they hadn’t made any progress.

She reminded herself, though, that these were just the people the GIW thought might be working with Phantom, as implausible as that seemed to her. Phantom wasn’t involved in the bombs any more than her own son was. The people of interest who were capable of making a bomb would come in due time.

Except they didn’t. Agent S went over the details of several more people before ending the slideshow entirely.

“That concludes our people of interest,” he said. “We now open the room to discussion.”

Maddie spoke quickly, before anyone else could take the conversation in a different direction. “I thought you would discuss people of interest who had the equipment and expertise to actually build a bomb. Surely that’s more helpful than whatever these people are suspicious of,” she said, waving her hand at the now-blank screen.

Agent S shook his head. “We investigated the experts on the shortlist and have determined that there is not sufficient evidence to label anyone as a person of interest.”

“I’d still like to see the list,” Maddie said. “Maybe there’s someone you missed that we know of.”

“The list is classified,” Agent S said.

“Why?”

The question came from Sedgewick; Maddie leaned forward in her seat to get a better look at him over the table’s curve.

“There are individuals who work for various arms of the government,” Agent S said, after a pause. “Their identities are being kept private for their protection.”

“So?” Sedgewick said. “Dr. Fenton raises a good point. You can still tell us the civilians on it.”

“We can’t—”

“I’m interested in hearing this list, Agent S.” This one came from Detective Carleton.

Penny and Reitman spoke at the same time: “Me too.”

Agent S shook his head. “That’s not going to—”

“For goodness’ sake, man!” Sedgewick nearly shouted. “How are we supposed to help you if you just keep us in the dark all the time? Tell us the list!”

“You, Dr. Sedgewick,” Operative K said, standing up and pointing at him; the chaos quieted. “Your colleagues at Vladco. Dr. Babcock. Dr. Keaton. Their colleagues.” With each name, he pointed. “Dr. Fenton and her husband. Dr. Malcolm. Dr. Serizawa. Dr. Gottlieb. Dr. Bashir. The teams in Jakarta, Beijing, Moscow, and Lagos. Satisfied?”

Unfazed, Sedgewick simply nodded and said, “Yep. Thanks.”

Operative K nodded back. And with that, the powder keg of tension that had suddenly exploded ended, and Maddie found herself struggling to keep up with the change in tone. No one else seemed to know what to say, either, and so everyone just sat there, silent.

Finally, Operative K spoke. “If no one has any questions, we’ll take our break early. You have half an hour.” Without waiting for a response, he strode out of the room, followed, again, by the other agents.

Maddie felt herself deflate, but, as much as she wanted to collapse onto the table, she knew she needed to get out to her car if she wanted to check for an update on Danny. So she forced herself to stand up and stagger over to the coffee table, where the same gray-suited GIW member was exchanging the empty thermoses for full ones. It took all of her willpower not to grab the thermos and chug it.

“So that was something,” Reitman said, joining her, along with Penny and Aggie.

Maddie nodded, and Penny said, eyes wide, “I’ve never seen K get so angry before! Something must have upset him.”

Maddie had two guesses, and their names were “Fenton” and “Phantom.” She rubbed at her eyes. Maybe she should just get in the car and go.

But Danny wouldn’t like that. She had to stay, if only so that her son would be honest with her for once.

As her colleagues chattered on — well, as Penny and Reitman did, Aggie silent as usual — the moments before ran through Maddie’s head.

You, Dr. Sedgewick. Your colleagues at Vladco, Operative K had yelled. Dr. Babcock. Dr. Keaton. Their colleagues. Dr. Fenton and her husband.

She didn’t want to admit it, but it was impossible to ignore: many of the people best equipped to make the bombs were her fellow ectoscientists. Heck, knowing what she did now about the composition of the bombs, Maddie was sure she could recreate one with a few days’ work. She already had a working ecton emitter.

Could she trust any of them?

The GIW member finished with the thermoses and pushed the cart out of the way. Maddie grabbed a cup and filled it with coffee, relieved to see steam coming from the liquid. She wasn’t quite so desperate as to burn her tongue on it, but the sharp tingle of heat on her hands brought some clarity back. Maddie set her coffee down by her seat at the table and was about to leave when Henry Reitman walked up to her.

“Hi, Maddie,” he said. “I was wondering if we could chat about something real quick?”

“Um,” she said. “I was about to go to my car.”

“No worries!” Something was off about Reitman’s tone; it was too cheery, she thought. “Mind if I join you?”

Maddie shook her head. “No, that’s fine.” They left the room, along with Penny and Aggie, who split off towards the bathrooms.

It took them a few minutes to make it out to the parking lot, and Maddie was surprised to find it dark outside. Even though she’d known how late it was — some time past 10:00 pm — she hadn’t processed how long the meeting had been going on. She glanced up. Distantly, a few stars peeked through the lights illuminating the lot.

“You wanted to talk about something?” Maddie asked, once they were out of direct earshot of the GIW.

“Do you know what happened to Phantom after Monday?” Reitman replied, in a hushed tone, all sense of levity gone. “Is he okay?”

Maddie thought for a moment on how to answer. She settled on the truth. “No, I don’t know,” she said. “It worries me, but I suspect he’s in the Ghost Zone by now. There’s not much I can do.”

Reitman nodded, but didn’t reply as they made it to Maddie’s car. He stood there, arms crossed, while Maddie unlocked it and pulled out her phone.

One text from Jazz around 8:30, saying she was awake, Danny was asleep, and she was taking Sam and Tucker home.

Nothing from Jack.

Maddie sighed and replaced the phone, locking it in her car.

“Henry,” she found herself saying, “I have a question for you.”

Reitman looked at her, sharply, and studied her face. The streetlight falling on his jacket made the pale yellow seem almost white. He could have been a member of the GIW, except that there was a level of sincerity coming from him that the agents lacked.

He’s the only one that K didn’t list as a person of interest, she realized. He’s a psychologist, not a physicist.

Did that mean she could trust him? Not necessarily — but he was the only other person who seemed to care about Phantom.

“Do you know anything about how Phantom died?” she asked.

Reitman shook his head. “No, I don’t,” he said. “And I’m not sure I would tell you if I did. Besides the fact that he was clearly a minor when he died, I’m still hesitant to believe that you don’t actually want to hunt him down.” He sighed. “But Aggie believes you, and that holds weight.”

“That’s fair,” Maddie said. “I just….” She rubbed at her forehead. “You know that something’s strange about Phantom, and I think whatever it is has to do with how he died.”

“That’s possible,” he said, thoughtfully. “But like I said on Monday, ectopsych hasn’t disproven the materialist stance on ectoscience. I’m not sure I have anything to add.”

“I know,” Maddie said. “I just figured I’d ask.”

Reitman nodded, and together they started back to the hotel.

***

There were maybe ten minutes left in the break by the time they got back to the conference room. Maddie wavered at the door, unsure of what to do, until a wave of lightheadedness came over her, and she stumbled back to her chair.

So much had happened tonight that she wasn’t sure what to make of it all. She’d learned things, but at the same time, Maddie felt like she would come away from tonight knowing less than she had when she started. Hopefully the notes she took would make sense when she looked at them tomorrow.

The smell of coffee broke through Maddie’s dizziness, reminding her that she’d left the cup behind. She took a sip of it — still too hot, but not enough to scald her. She shook off the disorientation, then stood up and walked to the catering table.

She ignored the meal boxes and grabbed a bag of pretzels. Leaning against the table, she tore the bag open and popped a pretzel in her mouth, then another. The taste was a welcome distraction.

Maddie surveyed the room. Everyone was back from the break except for Aggie, Penny, and Duvall; the lack of Penny’s bright blue shirt dulled the atmosphere. Carleton and his partner were talking, quietly, as were the liaisons for the mayor’s office. Sedgewick was the only one who didn’t seem exhausted by the evening, instead wearing a look of extreme boredom on his face. But Maddie could see the bags under his eyes as he tapped his fingers on the table.

Maddie crunched on another pretzel.

The door burst open, and everyone turned to see Duvall storm in, muttering something foul under her breath. The woman marched over to her chair and sat down, arms crossed and glaring at anyone who looked her way.

She was followed a short moment later by Penny, though it didn’t seem like she was involved in whatever conflict had Duvall angry; Maddie guessed the GIW were responsible for that.

Penny made a beeline to Henry, and even though she spoke softly, Maddie could hear her say: “Henry, I think I left my room key in your car. I need it to get my medication.”

Reitman glanced at the clock in the room — about seven minutes left of the break — and frowned, but nodded and stood anyway. “Of course, Penny,” he said.

As they passed Maddie on the way out, she said, “Where’s Aggie?”

“Oh, she went to bed!” Penny said. “It’s in her contract that she can leave at 10:30 each night. Something about maintaining her sleep schedule. I’m a little miffed that I didn’t ask for the same thing.” She winked at Maddie. “See you in a moment!”

They left. Maddie continued to eat her pretzels, and watched the clocked tick down. Six minutes of the break left.

Was it worth it to stay for the rest of the evening? What was she learning, anyway? That the GIW knew nothing? That they were hiding some of what they did know? Could she manage through another hour or two facing the open contempt for her?

Five minutes. Penny and Reitman needed to get back soon if they were going to make it on time.

If she left now, Danny might not tell her the truth about his secret. Was her son that petty, though? Surely Danny would understand why she didn’t want to stay. But did it even matter? Jazz’s text said Danny was asleep, and, honestly, Maddie wanted nothing more than to join him.

Four minutes.

Maddie finished her pretzels and tossed the bag out, but stayed, leaning against the tables. She couldn’t bring herself to sit down, not yet. That would mean she’d made the decision to stay, at least until the next break.

Three minutes.

The GIW might not invite her back if she left now, and the APPD would not be happy with her. The future of their cooperation with Fenton Works might be at risk.

Two minutes.

It was now or never. Maddie sighed, then pushed herself off the table as the clock ticked to one minute left.

Halfway across the room, a phone rang.

Maddie jumped, then looked toward the sound. Sedgewick was standing and pulling a cell phone out of his pocket. He strode across the room and barked “What is it?” into it, barely avoiding Maddie in the process.

They let him have a phone but not her? How dare the G—

Sedgewick nearly ran into the door as it was thrown open. Reitman rushed inside, almost crashed into Maddie, and skidded to a stop.

“Maddie, I need to tell you something,” he said in a furtive whisper and glancing after Sedgewick. “Before I forge—”

An alarm rang out. The guards moved, and—

Someone behind her cursed. She spun on her heels, and—

She was in the dark, and—

An icy weightlessness was leaving her, and—

The room beyond the darkness erupted.

Maddie tumbled into a pile of stacked chairs while orange and green light flashed through the gap in the door jamb. She lost track of what was happening as her body tensed with pain, and it took her a moment to regain her bearings.

Another explosion. She needed to get out.

Sucking in a breath, Maddie staggered to her feet, yanked the door open, and froze.

The room beyond was another disaster zone: chairs and papers flung everywhere, broken ceiling panels scattered across the table top — lights off, people groaning in pain.

But that wasn’t why Maddie froze.

Phantom stood — no, floated — by the catering tables, almost where she had been a moment ago, his back to her. His arms were outstretched to the side, and his hands were splayed. He was surrounded by a glowing green sphere of ectoenergy, a shield Maddie had seen him use to protect himself many times, but now it crackled with vibrant green electricity.

It hurt Maddie’s eyes to watch, but she stared, immobile, as Phantom slowly drew his arms inward, clenching his hands into fists as he went. Green lightning flashed like a summer thunderstorm, growing in strength as the shield shrank, until Phantom was all but invisible inside.

Finally, with a flash of white, it vanished.

The room plunged into darkness, and Maddie couldn’t make anything out — until there was a new spark of green light: electricity arcing around Phantom, illuminating his hunched shoulders and clenched fists.

Maddie tried to move, to get to Phantom before the GIW did, to do anything but stand there, watching, but her body wouldn’t respond, locked as she was inside her own mind at the shock of it all.

And then her eyes fell on the second ghost in the room, and Maddie finally screamed.

At the sound, Phantom turned, with incredible slowness, and stared at the shadowy figure a few feet before him. It was barely recognizable as a person, warped and malformed, like it was made from the wisp of smoke from a blown-out candle. It seemed drawn to him, as if pulled in.

Phantom looked at Henry Reitman’s ghost, standing above his mangled body. The boy’s face was utterly blank, his eyes completely overwhelmed with light — a doll, forever frozen with an expression Maddie knew would be in her nightmares.

Whoever Phantom may be, he wasn’t, not right now.

The ghost raised a hand, glowing not with its normal ectoplasm, but with a ball of horrible electricity. As if in slow motion, the charge in his hand grew; Maddie knew, somehow, what he was about to do, and she forced herself to keep watching, to witness the last moments of Reitman’s afterlife.

Right before he let the blast go, Phantom only then seemed to register Maddie’s presence. Nothing visibly changed, but at the same time, Maddie knew that some part of Phantom had reawoken. His face twisted as he realized what was happening, and, at the last moment, he raised his hand above his head and blasted the ceiling.

On instinct, Maddie yelped and ducked to avoid the shrapnel, crouching on the floor with her hands protecting her face. After a second, she risked a look at Phantom.

The ghost stood there, a mask of wretched sorrow on his face. He seemed frozen, eyes still glowing, electricity still arcing, and Maddie found herself reaching out towards him, not knowing what she could do other than knowing that he needed help.

Somehow, through the blinding light, they locked eyes for one second, two, and Phantom reached back.

Then the room exploded into sound as the GIW burst in, shouting, yelling, and firing ectoweapons in every direction. Maddie ducked again as they charged at Phantom, and she had just enough of a view to see his face twist once more, this time in unfettered rage. But instead of shooting back, he turned and fled through the window, not bothering to go intangible as it shattered on his impact.

The last thing Maddie heard before someone pulled her out of the room was the distinctive whoosh of an activated Thermos.

***

Pavement. Black, cracked, covered in debris.

Red lights, blue, white, flashing incessantly in the darkness.

Voices, everywhere at once, saying nothing at all.

A mylar blanket, crinkling.

Boots loud on the ground.

Sirens fading in the distance.

Phantom’s blank stare.

Reitman’s twisting ghost.

Penny sobbing to her right, Aggie silent to her left.

Pavement, black and cracked.

***

“…doesn’t seem to be in any immediate danger,” someone was saying. “Get her to rest tonight, though keep an eye on her. The ER will be full tonight, but she should go to the hospital tomorrow to be checked out.”

“She’s not injured?”

Maddie knew that voice.

“She’s fairly bruised, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s fractured something, but it doesn’t look like she was in the room when it went off. Which is good, obviously, but there’s always the chance of something worse.”

“What about shock?” said the voice.

“Physical, no, but I would be on the lookout for signs of psychological shock.”

“I know what to look for. This isn’t the first time my mom’s been through something like this.”

Someone crouched down in front of Maddie. “Hey, Mom,” the voice said, “It’s Jazz.”

Jazz. Her daughter.

Maddie blinked. She was sitting on a curb at the far end of the parking lot, away from the hotel. She didn’t know how long she’d been there, but she was alone. At some point, Penny and Aggie had left, as had about half of the emergency vehicles.

She looked at Jazz and opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out. Instead, hot tears began rolling down Maddie’s face. She sat there, frozen.

“It’s alright, Mom. I’m here,” Jazz said. She shuffled around and put one arm under Maddie’s, helping her stand. “Let’s get you home.”

End of Part 2

Chapter Text

Part 3: When Children Go to War

“Mads.”

She didn’t want to get up.

“I wish I could let you sleep, but it’s….”

She didn’t want to get up, because that meant confronting what happened last night. As long as she was still in bed, still half asleep, she could pretend it was all just a terrible nightmare.

“It’s Danny, Mads. He’s gone.”

She rolled over in bed to face Jack.

“He’s what?” she whispered, heart racing, mind running through every possible meaning of the word “gone.”

Jack looked like he was trying not to cry. “He ran away last night. We’ve been looking for him all morning, but….” He trailed off.

Maddie hauled herself into a sitting position and glanced at the clock. It was a little before 11am.

Danny was gone. Run away. She’d never thought….on top of everything else….at least he wasn’t….

“You’re– you’re sure?”

Jack nodded. “Jazz and I checked the entire house several times. He’s not here.”

“What about the lab? The Ops Center? The RV?” She grabbed Jack’s arm.

“Checked them all. And Sam and Tucker’s too. Jazz is out with them right now, checking a few places.”

No…. “He hasn’t contacted them?”

Jack shook his head.

“Oh, god.” She let go of his arm and leaned back, eyes closed against a wave of nausea.

“Jazz wants us to meet her at the police department soon.” Jack’s voice seemed distant. “We…we have to fill out a missing person report.”

A missing person report. One more layer to the nightmare she was living.

Jack laid a hand on her knee. “Maddie?”

Maddie took a deep breath, then another, and opened her eyes to find Jack watching her with concern.

“Okay,” she whispered. “What do we need to do?”

“Get dressed, eat something,” Jack said. “Jazz already collected the paperwork.” At Maddie’s lack of understanding, he added, “A photo, copy of his passport, his permit…he left his wallet behind.”

Maddie nodded, then started to get out of bed.

The pain hit — soreness, tenderness, a whole body ache, worse where she was bruised on her left side. Maddie sucked in a breath and squeezed her eyes shut.

“Maddie!” Jack said, alarmed. “Are you okay?”

She forced a nod. “I’ll be fine.” Another deep breath. “Can you grab some clothes for me? Just regular clothes?”

Jack nodded, then limped off to her closet, leaving Maddie alone.

Danny was gone. A thousand other things to worry about, but Danny was gone. It was all she could think about as Jack brought her some clothes and she dressed, slowly, to avoid making the pain worse — all she could think about, except for the look on Phantom’s face right before he redirected the blast aimed at Reitman’s ghost.

There was only so much more of this she could take. But Maddie forced herself to go downstairs and eat something, if only so she’d have some energy to help find her son.

As she chewed a tasteless protein bar, Jack called a taxi to come pick them up, and it was only then that Maddie noticed how quiet it was.

“Jack,” she said, once he hung up, “Are the protestors still out there? I can’t hear them.”

“The Mansons hired a private security force to guard the house after…what happened last night,” he said. “There were a few protestors across the street, last time I checked, but for now they’re mostly gone.

Maddie nodded absently and tried to swallow another bite. She was too tired to feel relieved.

They stayed quiet on the taxi ride, instead staring out opposite windows. Ostensibly, Maddie was looking for any sign of Danny, but the only thing that stood out to her was the emptiness of the streets. The taxi passed a few other vehicles, but for the most part, Amity Park was a ghost town.

Traditional stories of hauntings sometimes described ghosts like how Maddie felt: cold, alone, adrift in a washed out landscape of nothingness and sorrow. But Maddie knew from intimate experience that ghosts — real ghosts — were, in some ways, just as alive as any human, perhaps more so at times. She just kept staring out the window.

Jazz wouldn’t tell Jack if she knew where Danny was, if it was related to whatever secrets he kept. Maybe she was with Sam and Tucker, trying to come up with a story that would cover his absence. Maybe she would tell her mother, if not where Danny was, then at least that she knew he was okay.

It was the only hope Maddie clung to as she and Jack walked into the police station.

But as Jazz looked up from a chair in the foyer, and Maddie saw her daughter’s face, the last of the false hope she had convinced herself of was quashed. Those were real tears on Jazz’s face.

Jazz stood up as they limped across the crowded room. “Mom…Dad…,” she said, sniffing back tears. Jazz reached out like she was going to give Maddie a hug, then hesitated, likely remembering her mother’s bruises. She settled for grabbing her hands, gently, instead. “Detective Lawson said she’d come take the report soon as we’re all here, but, um…they’re really busy, after last night.”

Indeed, the foyer was full of people, rushing this way and that, or standing and waiting, and despite the bright fluorescent lighting, there was an air of darkness to the mood.

But Maddie barely paid attention to the chaos, instead searching her daughter’s face. Did Jazz know anything about Danny’s disappearance? Anything at all that might help them find him?

She couldn’t tell, either because Jazz was too good at hiding it or because she was too exhausted, but then Jazz caught Maddie looking and held eye contact for just long enough. She shook her head, ever so slightly.

Jazz didn’t know where Danny was.

Maddie exhaled, and more tears welled at her eyes. Feeling her legs wobble, she sat down on the chair Jazz had just vacated.

What had she done, or didn’t do, that would make Danny run away? It hurt to think about. She may as well have died last night, for all the pain she was feeling now.

But then Jazz said, “Hey, Mom,” and Maddie was reminded that she wasn’t the only one dealing with Danny’s disappearance.

“Statistics say that most runaways come back within 48 hours,” Jazz said. “So, um…Danny will hopefully be back soon.”

Maddie nodded, then took a deep breath. Jazz was right, even if her daughter didn’t look convinced of her own words. Nor did Jack, for that matter. But it was another small bit of hope to latch onto, that her son would come home. Probably.

She opened her mouth to speak, but then Detective Lawson walked up to the three of them and introduced herself. Within moments, the Fentons had been ushered to her desk in the chaotic open space of detectives’ room, and Maddie found herself sitting next to Jack, with Jazz on her other side.

Jack’s hand found hers, and she tried not to grip it too tightly.

“So we’ve got a runaway?” Lawson asked. She sounded like she’d rather be anywhere else than talking to them, and Maddie would have prickled in ire if not for her exhaustion.

“Yes,” Jazz said. “My brother, Daniel J. Fenton. He mostly goes by Danny. He was missing from his room this morning. I went to check on him around 9:00 am and found he’d stuffed pillows under his blanket to make it look like he was sleeping.”

Lawson wrote it down. “Last time anyone saw him?”

Again, Jazz answered. “A little before 7:30 last night. His friends were the last ones to see him. They said he was asleep when they left. He’s been sick the last few days….”

In some part of Maddie’s brain, she worried about what Detective Lawson would think about the fact that Danny’s sister was answering the questions instead of his parents, but the other part of her was just relieved that she didn’t have to compose herself enough to speak coherently.

Jazz answered every question Lawson had about Danny’s information: his birthday, his address, his description, and Maddie found it a struggle to stay focused, until Lawson said, “Scars, tattoos, or other marks?” and Jazz hesitated.

“He has a mole on his back, right below his left shoulder blade,” Jazz began, glancing briefly at her parents before closing her eyes in an effort to remember. “A two-inch-long scar on his right forearm, from mishandling a knife. A red burn scar the size of a quarter on his left arm. Another burn on his stomach, just above his belly button.” With each one, Jazz pointed to the location on her own body where the scars were. “At least eight scars on his hands from broken glass. Three on his left shoulder, here, here, and here, about four inches long each.”

Detective Lawson flipped to a new page in her notebook as Jazz listed off several more scars that Maddie didn’t even know about. She and Jack exchanged a horrified glance. Why did Jazz know about them in such detail? Had she…prepared for Danny to go missing?

“One just below his hairline, right here, maybe an inch long. And one on his left hip, five inches long,” Jazz finished.

But that wasn’t everything. “He has a cut on his forehead, above his right eyebrow,” Maddie said, reaching a hand to the same place on hers. “And a fresh burn wound, lower right abdomen.”

“A what?” Jack exclaimed, turning to her.

Maddie glanced at Jack, then back to Lawson. “He said it was a kitchen mishap from last week. I didn’t know about it until yesterday.”

Lawson nodded, but didn’t look up from her notebook. “Anything else?”

“No, that’s it—” Jazz started to say, but then Jack interrupted.

“There’s one in the cartilage of his left ear, about half an inch long,” he said. “Danny got a fish hook stuck in it when he was little.”

Maddie remembered that one — Danny and Jack had gone on a father-son fishing trip when Danny was eight or nine, and he’d come back with a bandage on his ear. Her son had been so worried that his ear would fall off. She almost smiled at the memory.

“Okay. Uh…any suspicious behavior? Truancy, rule breaking, and so forth?”

This time, Jazz stayed silent; Maddie exchanged a look with Jack.

“He’s had a lot of problems at school,” she said, slowly. “Skipping classes, not turning in schoolwork…he used to get bullied a lot, but that stopped after his freshman year.” Danny hadn’t offered an explanation for that, either. Nor did it explain why he was still getting injured so often.

“Danny would sometimes come home with unexplained injuries,” Jack said, picking up where Maddie left off. “Bruises, mostly, and small cuts. He never…he never told us where they came from.”

“Drug use?”

Maddie shook her head. “No, never drug use, as far as we can tell. Every test he took came back clean. And no alcohol either.”

“What about his friends, uh….” Lawson flipped back through her notes. “Samantha Manson and Tucker Foley? Any trouble with them?”

“Danny’s really close with them,” Jack said. “If they knew anything about where he was, they’d tell us. I’m absolutely sure of that.”

Jazz didn’t say anything, and something about her silence made Maddie stay quiet, too.

And then Detective Lawson asked about the elephant in the room: “How has Danny been dealing with the explosions this summer? I know he was involved in them.”

For a moment, Maddie’s heart spiked. Involved in them?! But then she realized Lawson meant “near them,” and she took a deep breath to steady herself.

Jack was saying: “He’s definitely been stressed about them. Danny came to me the other day, before the ones at Carrie, told me how freaked out he is, how he just wants this to be over. He was…trying to hold back tears.”

“He’s been worried about his schoolwork, too,” Maddie added. “He’s taking a class this summer to make up for failing it last year. Danny was really upset when it was moved online. He seems like he’s taking school more seriously than before.” She’d never told Jack about Danny’s PSAT scores, she realized.

Lawson nodded, then paused, before finally looking up at the Fentons. “Dr. and Dr. Fenton, Jazz,” she began, “This is a difficult question to ask, but I need you to take it seriously. Has Danny ever shown any signs of being suicidal?”

Maddie exchanged a horrified glance with Jack. In all their conversations about Danny, the thought that he might be suicidal never came up. More tears welled in Maddie’s eyes, this time in guilt over what they may have missed all this time. The thought of Danny, dead….

“My brother is not suicidal,” Jazz said; the three adults turned to look at her. She shook her head. “I’ve talked to Danny about this. He assures me he’s not, and he doesn’t have most signs of being suicidal. His mental health problems — depression, anxiety, the usual — are because he’s a teenager living in Amity Park. Suicide isn’t something we need to worry about.”

It was a relief to hear, of course, but at the same time, it only made Maddie’s guilt worse: Jazz knew more about Danny’s struggles than she did.

Deep breath, Maddie, she thought. Stop wallowing in guilt.

Easier said than done, though.

Lawson took longer to write in her notebook after Jazz’s comment. Then, she sighed and said, “Okay, last few questions. Is there anywhere you think Danny might go? Anyone he might turn to?”

“Sam and Tucker,” Maddie said, at the exact same time Jack said, “Tucker and Sam.”

“He’s not with them,” Jazz said. “I already checked.” At Lawson’s raised eyebrow, she added, “I trust them to tell me the truth.”

But are you telling us the truth? Maddie shoved the thought away.

“There’s Maddie’s and my college friend, Vlad Masters,” Jack said. “But…I don’t think Danny likes him enough to run away there. Not anymore, at least. There’s also my family near Green Bay, and my extended family in New Hampshire, after we were kicked out of Boston. Danny hasn’t seen them in years, though.”

“My sister’s in Spittoon, Arkansas,” Maddie said. “Danny saw her a few years ago. He might go to her.” She doubted Danny would go to Alicia, either, especially given how remote she was. It was worth a call, at least, and it would be nice to hear her sister’s voice.

“What about here, in Amity Park? Does Danny have any other friends?”

Maddie shook her head, but then Jazz said, “Danny’s ex-girlfriend, Valerie Gray. They’re still on good terms, and she’s coming over later to help us look for him.”

“That’s it? No one else in Amity Park?”

Maddie exchanged another look with Jack. It was a strikingly short list of friends Danny had. She knew her son wasn’t exactly a social butterfly, but only three? She thought he’d mentioned more than that.

“Mr. Lancer?” Jack said with a shrug. “That’s his vice principal. He’s worked a lot with Danny over the past few years. I can’t see Lancer helping Danny run away, but maybe Danny talked to him recently?”

Lawson nodded, then had the Fentons write down the contact information for everyone they mentioned. Finally, she sighed and flipped her notebook closed. “I’ll be straight with you here, Dr. and Dr. Fenton, Jazz. This seems like a textbook runaway case. Rule breaking, troubles in school and social life, complicated home life, and all the stress is made worse by the bombings this summer. Chances are, Danny’ll show up within a day or two. In the meantime, call the people you mentioned and ask if they’ve heard from him. You can put up fliers if you want, but we can’t advise a large search party due to the bombings. The APPD will send out an APB and call the local hospitals.” She stood up. “We’ll let you know if we find anything.”

“That’s it? That’s all you’re going to do to find my son?” Jack said, also standing. Maddie could hear the frustration building in his voice and tried to find the same within herself; she couldn’t, not with her fatigue.

“We’ll do as much as we can, Dr. Fenton,” Lawson said, unfazed by Jack’s height. She began walking them out to the foyer, and Maddie had to scramble to keep up. “But our resources are spread thin right now dealing with the bombings. I’m sorry, but we don’t have the manpower to spare looking for a runaway. But the APPD is investigating places in the city where bombs could be hidden, so we’ll be on the lookout for Danny. As I said, we’ll let you know if we find anything. Good day.”

She left them there in the foyer, Jack spluttering after her dismissal.

“Unbelievable,” he finally got out, before sighing and running a hand over his face. “We should get going,” he said, turning to Maddie and Jazz. “We need to get you checked out at the hospital, Mads, before joining the kids for the search party.”

As they were leaving, though, the receptionist called out, “Dr. Fenton?”

Both Maddie and Jack turned to look at her. She pointed at Jack and said, “Jack Fenton, sorry. Detective Carleton has some equipment to return to you. I need you to fill out some paperwork for it.”

Jack glanced at Maddie, who shrugged, listlessly. She wasn’t in any rush to visit the ER yet again. “Alright,” Jack said, walking to the desk. “Hand it over.”

The receptionist handed him a clipboard and pen and Jack began reading it through.

“I’m going to take Mom to the car,” Jazz said. “We’ll see you in a few.”

Jack raised a hand in acknowledgment, but didn’t look up from the paperwork.

Jazz had parked the car further back in the parking lot than Maddie would have liked, but at least it was in the shade. The sunlight glinted off windshields and Maddie could see the heat waves distorting her surroundings.

Was Danny out there in this heat, suffering? He was so vulnerable to heat exhaustion, given his low body temperature. Maddie didn’t want to think about what could happen if he didn’t get cooled off.

I know how to take care of myself, he’d said. She hoped he was right.

Jazz ushered Maddie into the car, where she sat in the passenger seat; Jack normally sat up front for the leg room, but she could move when he arrived.

As soon as the doors were shut, Maddie turned to Jazz, about to pelt her with questions, but Jazz beat her to it.

“I don’t know where Danny is,” Jazz said. She didn’t look at Maddie, instead staring at the rear-view mirror. “Neither do Sam and Tucker. He didn’t tell us he was going to sneak out.”

Tears pricked at Maddie’s eyes, and she struggled to get words out. “Is it…do you think it’s related to whatever he’s hiding from me– from us?”

Jazz didn’t answer right away. She stared at the mirror, her lips pressed together so hard that they were a thin white line. “Most likely, yes,” she eventually said. “I can’t think of another reason why Danny would run away.”

“Then what is it, Jazz? What is he hiding?” Maddie asked.

Jazz shook her head. “I won’t say.”

“He was going to tell me, Jazz,” Maddie said, softly. “After the GIW meeting. He promised he would tell me.”

“Then that’s his promise to keep, Mom.”

“What if he’s in danger, Jazz?” Maddie pleaded. “What if he’s hurt? What if he’s…he’s…?”

“It’s not my place to tell you! I promised Danny—”

“I don’t care what you promised him!” Maddie yelled, banging her fist on the dashboard. “I don’t want to lose my son!”

“And I don’t want to lose my brother, Mom!” Jazz shouted back. She turned to face Maddie. “Do you think I want Danny missing, out there by himself in the condition he’s in while someone is trying to kill us?” At the word “kill,” Maddie let out a sob, but Jazz continued, though not as loudly. “I would tell you, Mom, but I promised Danny I wouldn’t, and I am not going to break that promise yet when he could come home at any moment. I’m not going to tear this family apart more than it already is by breaking Danny’s trust, because goodness knows he doesn’t need to lose anyone else.” Then Jazz sighed and deflated against her seat, arms crossed. “He gave me one week.”

The words broke through Maddie’s tears, and she stopped crying long enough to spurt out: “What?”

Jazz sighed again. “One week,” she repeated. “If Danny hasn’t found a way to contact me, Sam, or Tucker, then the three of us are to sit down with you and Dad and tell you about Danny.”

Maddie just stared at her, trying to form words out of her sniffles. After a moment, Jazz sighed a third time and popped open the storage compartment between the seats. She pulled out a tissue box and handed it to Maddie.

At the motion, Maddie blinked. “Why…why not sooner?” she asked. “Why wait?”

“It gives Danny time to get out of whatever situation—”

“Situation?”

“—he’s gotten himself into, for one. And it gives us time to find out what’s happened to Danny.” Jazz spoke in such a way that made it clear that “us” did not include her parents.

Maddie blew her nose. “You’ve had this planned out,” she realized. “How long?”

“Since the first time it happened,” Jazz said, sighing. “I covered for him, but…Danny said that if something bad happened to him, he didn’t want you and Dad to be left wondering.”

The first time…. “How many times, Jazz?” How many times had Danny vanished and she’d never noticed?

“Four times,” Jazz said. “He was back within a day and a half each time, which is why I’m not totally freaking out yet.”

“But it’s different this time, isn’t it? With the bombs, and him being hurt, and…?”

“It is,” Jazz admitted, after a pause. “Things are different.” She leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes. “I’m scared for Danny’s safety.”

Maybe Jazz would listen to reason, so Maddie said, “But if Danny’s in danger, then couldn’t your dad and I help? If we knew what was going on?”

“Mom,” Jazz said, and her voice broke on the name. “If Danny’s in a place where Sam, Tucker, and I can’t find out where he is, then there’s nothing you or Dad could do to help him.”

All Maddie could do was stare at her daughter in horror, until the first tear leaked down Jazz’s cheek and opened the floodgates. Jazz started sobbing, and Maddie swallowed back the fear enough to hand her the tissue box.

Nothing they could do to help him.

Nothing.

What on Earth was happening to their son?

“There must be something your father and I can do, Jazz,” she said, softly, as Jazz’s sobs abated. “So that we’re not just sitting around while you three find him.”

It was a concession of sorts — Maddie wouldn’t continue trying to convince Jazz to tell her about Danny — and from the way Jazz shifted when she heard it, Maddie knew that Jazz understood the message.

Her daughter sniffed a few times and dabbed at her eyes before sitting up straight in her seat. She took a deep breath, then said, “There is one thing you can do. Find Phantom.”

The blood drained from Maddie’s face, but Jazz didn’t seem to notice. “Phantom?” she asked. “Why Phantom?”

“Phantom knows more about what goes on in Amity Park than anyone else,” Jazz said. “If anyone besides us can find Danny, it’s him.”

“Don’t you have a way to get in contact with him?” Maddie asked, but she felt she already knew the answer.

Jazz shook her head. “That bridge got burned after the explosion at Carrie. I don’t know how to find him now.”

Maddie swallowed the lump in her throat. Jazz, of all people, should hear the truth.

“Phantom was there last night, Jazz,” Maddie whispered. Jazz looked at her, and Maddie added another horrified expression to her memories. “He pulled me out of the room, and then…then….” Then what? What exactly did Phantom do? “He absorbed the ectoplasm from the explosion.”

“What?” Jazz gasped, but Maddie was already too lost in the recollection to process that she spoke.

Phantom, standing there in a shroud of green electricity. Reitman’s ghost, a wisp of smoke over a body. The expression on Phantom’s face before he realized what he was doing. The shouts from the hallway. The glass shattering. The Thermos activating.

“Mom.” Jazz gripped her arm, jolting Maddie out of the memory. She felt tears rolling down her face that she didn’t remember crying. “Did Phantom get away?”

She hesitated, but nodded. “He crashed through a window,” she said. “I don’t know where he went after that.”

Jazz nodded, more to herself than to her mother. “Okay,” she said. “Okay, that’s…good, I think. He’s probably in the Ghost Zone right now. Best place for him to be.” She looked like she was trying to convince herself of that.

It was Maddie’s turn to slump against the seat and close her eyes. She was exhausted, so exhausted after the crying…and the yelling…and wanted nothing more than to sleep. Let the hours pass between now and when her son returned so she wouldn’t have to deal with the stress. But rest was not for Maddie, because then Jazz said, “Dad’s coming.”

Maddie groaned, then staggered out of the passenger seat and into the back just in time for Jack to get in and escape the heat.

“What’d they return?” Jazz asked while her father buckled in.

Jack held up a brown paper bag, stapled shut at the top. “It’s the ectoradiation reader the GIW coerced from me,” he said. “They probably wiped all the data from it, but at least we finally have it back.” He gave it to Maddie, and she dropped it on the seat next to her. “We should probably grab a quick lunch on the way to the hospital. And then join the search for Danny.” Jack sighed, then sniffled once.

No one spoke much as Jazz drove them through the heart of downtown; Maddie just stared out the window again. It was slightly more populated here, but not as much as it should be early on a Friday afternoon. People walked close to the buildings, avoiding trash cans and newspaper stands that could hold a bomb. No one congregated at bus stops, and more than a few storefronts were closed.

Maddie almost laughed. These people weren’t in serious danger. Whoever was doing this wasn’t doing it for general terrorism — they were after the Fentons. Only people near them were at risk.

And ghosts.

Maddie closed her eyes and the same memories of last night flashed through her head. Phantom and the green electricity. Reitman’s ghost. Phantom’s expression. The shouts from the hallway. The glass shattering. The Thermos activating. Over and over again.

An icy weightlessness was leaving her, and—

If Phantom hadn’t pulled her into the closet, she would most likely be dead, just like poor Henry Reitman. But why? Why had Phantom chosen to save her? Was it a coincidence, because she was closest to him? Was it because she had been trying to establish a rapport with him?

Phantom and the green electricity. Reitman’s ghost. Phantom’s expression. The shouts from the hallway. The glass shattering. The Thermos activating.

Why was Phantom there, in the first place? It couldn’t have been easy to sneak into the GIW’s temporary headquarters, but she was pretty sure he had done it before. Was he spying on the meeting? On the GIW? On her? Or did he suspect that something was going to go wrong?

Phantom and the green electricity. Reitman’s ghost. Phantom’s expression. The shouts from the hallway. The glass shattering. The Thermos activating.

She hoped Phantom was okay, wherever he ended up. She worried about Reitman, though. What had happened to his ghost?

Phantom and the green electricity. Reitman’s ghost. Phantom’s expression. The shouts from the hallway. The glass shattering. The Thermos activating.

But as the memories played over in Maddie’s mind, something seemed off. She frowned and tried to think it through.

Phantom and the green electricity. Reitman’s ghost. Phantom’s expression.

It was clear in her mind’s eye — Maddie doubted she’d ever forget what she saw. But what about what she’d heard?

The shouts from the hallway. The glass shattering. The Thermos activating.

That was more chaotic; everything happened in such rapid succession, she wasn’t sure she remembered the order correctly.

The shouts from the hallway. The glass shattering. The Thermos activating.

The Thermos activating.

Oh no.

“Pull over, Jazz,” she said. “I’m going to be sick.”

Jazz immediately pulled into one of the many empty parallel parking spaces, and the car had barely stopped before Maddie was out of the car and racing towards the nearest trash can. She made it just in time to heave what little was in her stomach into the bin.

Maddie stood bent over the can, gripping its decorative edge for stability and waiting for the nausea to pass. The heat didn’t help, and she retched, again.

Behind her, she heard Jack tell Jazz to buy a bottle of water from the corner store, and it was only a moment before he had limped over to her.

“Maddie, are you okay?” he said, clearly alarmed. “Do we need to skip lunch and get you to the ER right now?”

Maddie shook her head, then spat in the bin. Jack handed her a kerchief, and she wiped the vomit and sweat from her face. Still gripping the can, she looked up at Jack. He stood on the other side of the can from her, blocking most of the sunlight.

“The GIW has Phantom,” she whispered. “I think.”

To his credit, Jack didn’t get upset or deny her concerns, instead asking, “What happened, Mads?”

“I heard a Thermos last night, right as they pulled me out of the room,” she said, closing her eyes. “I thought they used it on Reitman, but it was outside, right after Phantom left.”

“You’re really worried about him,” Jack said, softly. “About what the GIW will do to him.”

Maddie nodded. “He’s just a kid, Jack. But the GIW don’t care about that. We didn’t.”

When Jack didn’t immediately reply, she opened her eyes. Jack had run a hand through his hair and paused, looking off into the distance. With the sun behind him, it was hard to make out the expression on his face.

“I’m sorry I lied to you, Jack,” Maddie said. “I never meant to hurt you.”

“I know, Mads. Can’t say I really blame you for not telling me, but….” Jack sighed. “Thanks. For the apology.” Then: “Come on, let’s go sit in the car.”

Jack took her hand and gently helped Maddie back to the car, which Jazz had thankfully left running, along with its air conditioning. The cool air was a gift to Maddie’s skin, flushed as it was.

Jack joined her in the back seat, and for a moment, they sat in silence, Maddie resting her head on Jack’s shoulder, eyes closed.

“What changed, Maddie?” Jack eventually asked. “Why did you start trusting Phantom?”

She couldn’t make out what Jack was thinking behind his tone of voice, but she settled on the truth, regardless. “I tried to shoot him,” Maddie replied. “The look on his face…it reminded me of Danny. And I just…started to think about him differently. When I stopped thinking of him as evil, everything changed.”

She felt, rather than saw, Jack nod. “Why did you go to him in the first place?”

“I thought he was there, Jack, at the first explosion. When I died. I wanted to know if it was true.” Maddie sighed. “But it was just me.”

“Mmm.”

Another silence descended upon them, but it wasn’t an awkward one — more a thoughtful silence, as Maddie waited for Jack’s next remark.

“Okay,” he finally said.

Maddie raised her head and looked at Jack, frowning. “Okay what?”

Jack shrugged. “If you say that Phantom is trustworthy, then I’ll believe you.”

“Really?” She hadn’t expected it to be so…easy. Even after more than twenty years of marriage, she still underestimated husband sometimes, apparently. “You mean it?”

“I do, Mads,” he replied. “I just had to think it over.” Then, Jack sighed. “And, Maddie, I spent over a month being Jazz’s captive audience on the drives to Carrie. You try doing that without coming out of it with your world turned upside down.”

Maddie smiled and shook her head. “Sounds like our Jazz.” But the brief moment of mirth didn’t last, and the smile faded from her lips. “Jack, I can’t let this go. If the GIW has Phantom, then we have to do something to help him.”

“I hear you,” Jack said, and she guessed where he was going right before he spoke. “But we have to focus on finding Danny. He’s our son. He has to take priority over Phantom.”

“I know, Jack. Believe me, I know.” She took a deep breath, then continued: “Jazz told me that if we find Phantom, he’ll help find Danny.”

Jack frowned. “When did she say that?”

“While you were getting the ectoradiation reader from Carleton.” Maddie sighed. “I’m sorry again for keeping things from you.”

“I know, Maddie. I’m not upset with you anymore. I just….” He trailed off.

There was still something broken between them, a trust that had to be rebuilt. But where was she to start? Should she apologize again?

Just saying words isn’t going to make up for all the things you’re sorry for….

No. Phantom was right. Mending the tear between her and Jack required action, not just words.

Maddie shifted in her seat so that she could look her husband in the eyes. “Jack,” she said, “I know I’ve been keeping things from you, and I know that it’s caused a rift in our relationship.” She could tell Jack wasn’t sure where she was going, so she got to the point. “But we’ve always been a team, and it was a mistake to keep you out. So when we get home, after the hospital and after looking for Danny, I promise you that I will tell you everything I know.”

“Everything?” Jack raised an eyebrow. “How much is there to tell?”

“A lot.” Maddie knew her husband well enough that she could recognize the curiosity, rather than disappointment, in his voice. “About the bombs, about Phantom….” She paused. “About Danny.”

“About Danny?!”

She nodded. “I don’t know a lot. But we’ve been ignoring his interactions with ectoradiation for too long, Jack, and I think…I think it’s related to why he’s gone missing.”

“And you’re worried that if we tell the police, the GIW will find out,” Jack said. “And we don’t want that.”

She hadn’t exactly thought that through, but: “No, I don’t. I…worry about what they’d do with him.” Or to him, but she didn’t say that.

Jack nodded, albeit grimly. “Alright, Maddie. It’s a deal. Tonight.” He held out his hand.

Maddie slipped her hand in his. “Tonight.”

She’d tell him everything. But, with all luck, she wouldn’t have to tell him about Danny.

With all luck, Danny would be home before she had the chance.

Chapter Text

Tired, depressed, and broken, the three remaining Fentons made it home shortly before sunset after fruitless hours of searching for Danny. They were met at the back door by a glum-looking Tucker and Sam, along with Maddie’s car. She vaguely remembered arranging for them to pick it up from the Torrance Hotel; most of the search was a blur.

Inside, the five of them sat around the kitchen table, and Sam wordlessly handed Maddie her cell phone, locked in the car all day. There were dozens of missed calls and enough voicemail to fill her inbox.

“Danny didn’t call,” Tucker said while Maddie scrolled through the numbers. “I looked at the list. Didn’t check your voicemail though.”

Maddie nodded, but barely processed what he said past “Danny didn’t call.” Her son had taken his phone with him, they thought, so it was unlikely he would call from a different number. But darn her if she wouldn’t check all of them.

There were several calls from both Jack and Jazz the night before, almost certainly trying to get in touch with her after hearing about the explosion. None from Carleton, though not exactly a surprise; she didn’t know how injured he was, but she doubted he got away unscathed.

She skipped over the calls from Penny and other acquaintances, likely asking after her wellbeing. Her lawyer’s firm, too — there’d be time to deal with those after she checked the unknown numbers.

“Hi, Maddie, this is Brad, Harriet Chin’s assistant. Ms. Chin sends her best wishes regarding Danny’s disappearance. She was hoping you might want to interview with her about Danny and your involvement in the explosions. Give us a call back at your earliest convenience!”

She clicked on to the next one.

“How dare you? You’re the reason we’re in danger! First with that ghost portal nonsense and now with these bombs! No wonder your son ran away!”

Click.

“This town was fine before you and your idiot husband showed up! Now it’s infested with those things and it’s all your fault! Take your ghost hunting garbage and get out of this town before you do anything worse!”

Click.

“I heard your son is gone. That’s what you get for messing with that occult crap! You don’t deserve to keep that boy in that hellhole you call a house!”

Click.

“That poor psychologist! His blood is on your hands!”

Click.

“I bet you killed your son in some sick, twisted experiment, you freaks!”

Jack pulled the phone away from Maddie’s ear and gently closed it, then set it on the table. She looked at him, mouth agape in an unvoiced protest. Why did he take her phone from her?

“Mads, I think that’s enough for tonight,” he said.

“But what about…what if Danny…?”

Jack shook his head. “I don’t think you’re in any condition to keep listening to whatever those messages are. Here.” He held a tissue out to her.

Maddie took it and only then felt the tears and snot dripping down her face. How long had she been crying?

“I’ll listen to them, Mom,” Jazz said, grabbing the phone. “If you don’t mind.”

Jazz’s face bore an expression of open concern, one that was matched by Tucker; Sam was staring off into space. She must have been crying something awful if they were that worried about her.

Maddie blew her nose on the tissue. “No, that’s fine, Jazz. It’s just…they said some awful stuff. About me and your dad.”

Jazz nodded in sympathy. “Then Dad’s right that you shouldn’t listen to it.”

“Thanks, Jazz.” Maddie blew her nose again, then stood up from the table. She wobbled and gripped the chair for balance. “Come on, Jack, I’ll show you my work in the lab.” When he didn’t move, she said, “Jack, why aren’t you getting up?”

“No, Maddie,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re going to bed.”

“But– but Danny–”

Jack shook his head again, more forcefully this time. “Maddie, you can hardly stand. You’ve had almost no chance to rest after yesterday. And I’m exhausted too! What progress do you think we could make right now?”

She looked to Jazz, hoping for support, but Jazz just said, “You know he’s right, Mom. You working yourself to the point of collapse isn’t going to help Danny. Or Phantom. You need to rest.”

As much as Maddie wanted to protest — as much as she wanted to go down to the lab and not stop working until she found a solution that would fix the harm she’d caused — what little of her rational mind that was still awake knew that her husband and daughter were right. She needed sleep.

“If it helps, Mrs. F., Sam and I are staying the night,” Tucker added. “We can make sure one of us is awake in case we hear from Danny.” Sam nodded in agreement, even though Maddie wasn’t sure she actually registered what Tucker volunteered her for.

“That’s…that’s fine,” Maddie said. “Um, as long as your parents are fine with it.”

Tucker frowned. “We cleared it with them earlier. You were there.”

Oh. Maddie swayed a bit, and the next thing she knew, Jazz was leading her down the hallway to her bedroom, Jack following closely behind. They helped her get undressed and into pajamas, and Jazz made sure that she took the painkillers the ER doctor prescribed.

Then Maddie was climbing into bed, under the covers, and Jazz was saying to her, “Goodnight, Mom. We’ll let you know if we hear anything.”

And then Maddie was asleep and she remembered no more.

***

The nightmares were back: Danny, fingers making gouges in the floor as a Thermos the size of a jet engine sucked him in. Phantom, standing right in its path, fuzzing at the edges, eyes hidden in shadows. Both of them lost as the portal pulled them in with the power of a black hole, leaving nothing but the impression of glowing green eyes.

Though she could barely remember it, Maddie’s heart pounded, deep in her chest, and it took a second before she felt she could breathe.

Based on the twilit gloom filtering through the blinds, she’d slept about eight hours. It wasn’t anywhere close to enough, not with the days she’d had lately, but Maddie knew her head wouldn’t let her fall back asleep. That, plus the pain from her various injuries demanded medication, so Maddie stumbled out of bed and went downstairs, still in her pajamas. She left a note for Jack so he wouldn’t panic when he found the bed empty. They’d both had enough of her sneaking around.

The living room was still plunged into darkness from the covered windows, but the light was on in the kitchen. She found Sam with her head down on the table. All five of their phones, plus Tucker’s PDA, were plugged into a power strip in front of her.

Maddie walked softly through the kitchen, trying not to disturb her, but then Sam jolted awake and glanced around. She relaxed when she saw Maddie, then rapidly checked the assembled devices.

Maddie didn’t need to ask to know what she found.

Nothing. Danny was still missing.

She grabbed a yogurt from the fridge and joined Sam at the table. The girl’s face was clear of makeup for the first time in…Maddie wasn’t sure, but it revealed a fatigue she wasn’t used to seeing from Sam.

“Any updates on Danny?” Maddie asked anyway.

“No,” Sam said, shaking her head. “Tucker, Jazz, and I checked everywhere and with everyone we could think of. No one knows anything.”

Maddie frowned at Sam’s tone of voice. “You don’t know why Danny ran away, do you?”

Sam crossed her arms and glared at her, then looked away. “It’s not that,” she said, slowly. “We’re pretty sure we know why Danny left.” Maddie waited, tense, but Sam didn’t elaborate. “He just…didn’t tell us what he was doing. And no,” she added, resuming the glare, “I’m not telling you what he did.”

Maddie swallowed back a ball of frustration, but she nodded. Still, Sam had told her something: Danny had been up to something on Thursday night before he disappeared. Not that it helped her feel any better, given what else happened that night.

A pang of hunger reminded Maddie that she hadn’t eaten much the day before. She tore the lid off her yogurt, picked up the spoon, and tried not to gag at the smell. Ignoring the nausea, Maddie forced herself to swallow a spoonful. She barely registered what flavor it was.

After the first bite, she asked, “And what about Phantom? Any information on him?”

Sam tensed. “I don’t know. No one’s seen him since Monday. Except for you and….”

“And the GIW,” Maddie finished, quietly.

“Yeah.” Sam’s response was sharp, and she was clearly trying not to show how upset she was. “Tucker’s trying some…things to see if he can figure out what happened to Phantom after the explosion. He can explain it when he’s awake.” She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them to look Maddie in the face. “Jazz told us what you told her about Phantom. What’re you going to do if the GIW does have Phantom?”

Maddie scraped at the bottom of her yogurt container. “I go to the news with what I saw. Phantom’s a popular figure in Amity Park. The public pressure might…do something.”

Sam frowned, and Maddie could hear every objection the girl was probably considering. Would anyone even believe Maddie if she tried advocating for Phantom? Her anti-ghost reputation would come back to bite her. Again. And what would they do if it didn’t work?

Across the table, Sam had started to stare into space in her exhaustion.

“When’s someone coming to relieve you, Sam?” she asked.

Sam shook her head. “Tuck and I switched off about an hour ago.”

“Ah.” That would put Sam at around six hours of sleep — probably less, since she probably stayed up after Maddie went to bed. “Did you get enough sleep?”

Sam glared at her. “I know how to take care of myself,” she snapped. Then, she sighed and dropped the glare. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Fenton. I shouldn’t’ve been sharp with you.”

“It’s okay,” Maddie said. “We’re all under a lot of stress right now.”

Sam nodded, then just sat there, staring at the silent phones.

“Danny said the same thing,” Maddie found herself saying, softly; Sam looked up at her, and Maddie turned to meet her gaze. “On Thursday. ‘I know how to take care of myself.’”

Sam shrugged, limply. “When you go to school at Casper, you learn how to. There won’t always be someone there to protect you.”

“Oh.” Although Sam’s voice was as dead as the ghosts she didn’t mention, Maddie couldn’t help but hear an accusation. “Right.”

This town was fine before you and your idiot husband showed up!

Maddie choked down the rest of her yogurt and tried to keep the voices out of her head.

You’re the reason we’re in danger!

But it was hard, so hard, when her own voice just added to theirs.

A rock, thrown through a broken window. A letter, saying “WE KNOW YOU DID IT”

His blood is on your hands!

Maddie set her spoon down with a clink. “Sam,” she said. “You’re an activist. You’re used to looking for solutions to problems.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“How do Jack and I fix this?” Sam looked at her, uncomprehending. “How do we fix our relationship with Amity Park? Do you think they’ll forgive us?”

Again, Sam shrugged. “I’m not sure if you can, Mrs. Fenton.” Then, before Maddie could ask what she meant, she sighed. “You and Mr. Fenton have messed up a lot of this town. Some of it’s just because of the portal, but a lot of it is the way you’ve gone about trying to hunt ghosts. It’s just made things worse. I don’t know if you can fix that.”

“So are you saying we should just…give up?”

“I’m not saying ‘give up,’ Mrs. Fenton,” Sam said with a shake of her head. “It’s just, you shouldn’t be looking for forgiveness from people. That shouldn’t be your goal. You should be doing things because they’re the right thing to do, not because it’ll ‘fix’ your relationship with the town.”

Sam was right, just as Jazz had been right and Phantom had been right. She and Jack needed to stop putting themselves in the center of everything and instead focus on trying to repair the damage.

“Where should we start?” she asked.

“I don’t know, Mrs. Fenton,” Sam said. “And no offense, but I’m not really in the mood to help you figure that out right now.”

Sam sounded exasperated, but by the way her voice cracked, she was trying not to cry more than anything else. Maddie could understand that.

“I’m sorry Sam. I should have waited for a better time.”

Sam didn’t say anything, instead folding her arms and looking away from Maddie — but not quickly enough that Maddie missed the tear rolling down her cheek.

She sighed. Probably best to leave Sam alone for the time being. Maddie stood, then said, “I’m going to the lab, Sam. I’ll be there if you need me.”

Sam kept staring into space, but then shook herself. “Here,” she said, handing Maddie her phone and a folded piece of notebook paper. “Jazz wrote up what the messages said.”

“Thanks, Sam,” Maddie said as she took the items. “And um, thanks for all you’re doing to help Danny. And the guards and everything.”

The girl just nodded, then laid her head down on the table, staring at the phones, waiting for them to ring.

***

Maddie’s notes from the other day were still up on the dry erase board and the wall when she entered the lab. She stared at them, hoping the answers to Danny’s secret would jump out at her, would map the pathway to bringing him home, safe and unharmed. But nothing did. They were just numbers, showing that something was going horribly wrong with her son.

Resisting the urge to rip the easel paper off the wall in a fit of frustration, Maddie unfolded the notebook paper Sam had given her. On it, Jazz had written the name and number of each caller, along with a summary of what they said. Trust her daughter to be thorough. Besides the vitriol, well-wishes, and a call from Vlad that Jazz — in unusually sloppy handwriting — noted Maddie should not listen to, the only call of value was the one from her lawyer, letting the Fentons know that the GIW had finagled a court-ordered deposition for them on Thursday.

Maddie sighed, then deleted most of the messages. It would just make room for more of the vitriol, but she wanted to leave it open in case Danny called. At least Jack had had the wherewithal to send the tip line directly to the APPD at some point in the last few days.

Turning back to her notes, Maddie contemplated where to start. Her notes on ectoradiation and Danny were more or less complete. Everything she knew about Phantom and ectogenesis were scribbled in her lab books — and besides, Jack already knew everything she did about Phantom. Almost everything, she thought, lips pursed.

That really only left one thing that she needed to focus on right now. Jaw clenched, Maddie sat down and tried to recall everything she could from the meeting with the GIW.

***

Jack was never quiet coming down the lab stairs, and today his clangor woke Maddie up. She looked around, disoriented, until she recognized the table covered in papers that she had been resting her head on. She’d fallen asleep at her work station.

“Morning, Mads,” Jack said. “Coffee?”

Maddie nodded, and he handed her one of the travel mugs he was holding. She gulped it down, not worried about the temperature — Jack always made it perfectly. “What time is it?” she asked, after draining half the mug.

“A little past 9:30,” Jack said, then frowned. “How long have you been up?”

“Umm….” Maddie closed her eyes, trying to do the math in her head. “Four hours? I’m not sure when I fell asleep, though.”

Jack nodded, then glanced at the notes on Danny. From his grim expression, it was clear that he understood enough of her scribbles to get that something serious was going on with their son.

But he didn’t mention them, instead saying: “The kids started another search. It’s just us right now. There’s…no news on Danny.” Jack’s voice had been steady, but it cloyed up on their son’s name.

She’d expected as much, but still, hearing there was nothing from Danny threatened Maddie’s stability, and she sat down, abruptly, choking back tears. “I see,” she said, softly. She swallowed back her tears. “Do we have any leads?” she asked.

“No one I called has any clue.” Jack set his mug down on Maddie’s table. She wasn’t sure he’d actually taken a sip from it yet. “But I think the sooner you catch me up to speed, the better.” He sat on one of the lab stools.

“Agreed.” Taking a deep breath, Maddie flexed her hands at her side, then exhaled. “Jack, before we get started, I need to clear the air with you.” She looked her husband in the eye, and said, “I didn’t tell you the truth about Phantom because I was afraid of how you’d react. I was afraid that you wouldn’t believe me or- or would try to hurt him, or I don’t even know what. But…I didn’t trust you when I should have, and you deserve more than that from me. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

Though her heart was pounding, waiting for Jack’s response, Maddie felt some of the tension leave her body as she admitted her transgression — not hunched over a trashcan, but here, in the space they shared.

Jack nodded, and said with utter seriousness, “Thank you, Maddie. It…hurts to hear that, but thank you. I know you won’t let that happen again.” Then, he sighed. “I have something to tell you, too. I went looking for Phantom on Wednesday and Thursday. That’s why I wasn’t home.”

“You were looking for him? What— why? Did you find him?”

“I wanted to know if he’d talk to me,” Jack said, “to see if his story matched yours. But no, I didn’t find him.”

“Oh.” If Jack hadn’t found Phantom, chances were no one else had seen him. So where had he gone between the explosions? “That’s…thank you for telling me, Jack.” Maddie tried to ignore the guilt at learning that Jack, despite being hurt by her, had still tried to listen. “And, um, about Danny…I didn’t mean to keep things from you. It just…everything’s happened so fast, and I only learned about some of it a few days ago.” She was rambling, so she took a deep breath and finished: “But I’ll tell you now, if…we’re good?”

Jack nodded. “We’re good, Maddie.” Then, with a grim but determined look on his face, he said, “Tell me about our son.”

“The first thing you need to know,” Maddie began, “is that Danny is hiding something from us, something big. I don’t know what it is, but Jazz does. She said that Danny hasn’t told her everything, but she knows a lot of it.”

“If she knows, then why hasn’t she said anything about it?”

Maddie stood up and started pacing — in part because she didn’t want to see the look on Jack’s face when she told him, but also because she needed to think. “She promised Danny that she’d wait a week to tell us, and she doesn’t want to break her promise to Danny. I tried to convince her otherwise, but, well, you know Jazz.”

Jack nodded in agreement.

“The delay is so she, Sam, and Tucker can try to find Danny. And it’s- Danny’s disappeared four times before this, Jack,” Maddie said. She licked her lips. “But, Jack, Jazz said that if they can’t find Danny, then…there’s nothing you or I can do to help him.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Maddie shook her head. “I don’t know, Jack, but it worries me.” She bumped into her work table, not realizing how close she was to it while pacing. “What Danny could have possibly gotten himself involved in.”

“You said yesterday that it’s related to his interactions with ectoplasm, right?”

“I think so. It’s…it’s bad, Jack. Here, let me show you.” Maddie ran over to the computer and waited for it to wake up; thankfully, she’d left it on the other day. She pulled up the graph of Danny’s ectoradiation signature. “Look.”

Jack peered at the screen as Maddie told him about the Danny Button data. “And then this—” She dashed to the easel papers on the wall, tore them off the wall, and held them out to Jack. “Danny’s heart rate, blood pressure, and temperature have slowly dropped over time, while his ectoradiation signature has gotten stronger.”

She gave Jack a moment to read the charts, then said: “Jack, Jazz told me that Danny drank ectoplasm.”

“Danny drank what?!” Jack shouted. He looked up from the papers, bewildered.

“Ectoplasm. A whole glass of it, followed by a gallon of orange juice.” She shook her head. “It happened some time before his freshman year. Jazz didn’t know anything else.”

“But- but…Danny should be dead! Ectoplasm isn’t ingestible!”

“That’s what I told Jazz.”

Jack paused, thinking hard. “Do you believe her, Mads?”

“I think so,” Maddie said, though hesitantly. “But I don’t think that’s the full story. There’s something else going on with Danny…and it’s hurting him, Jack.”

Jack’s face grew darker and more concerned as Maddie explained her confrontation with Danny on Thursday — was that really only two days ago? — and the injury he wouldn’t explain. She finished, then stood there, out of breath, and her stomach growled.

Staring off towards the portal, Jack didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, he stood. “Mads…I think I need a moment,” he said, running his hand through his hair. “To process all this.”

“Okay, um….” Her stomach growled again, and she sighed. “I’m going to get something to eat, refill my coffee. Can I get you anything?”

“No, I’m fine,” Jack said, still staring into the depths of the lab, voice distant.

What light filtered through the upstairs windows reminded Maddie that it had been…too many hours since she’d eaten, so she heated up leftovers from the dinner she vaguely remembered eating yesterday. Who cared that it was just past ten in the morning at this point?

But Maddie wanted something else to eat. She started rifling through cabinets, hoping something would spike her appetite. There were the normal breakfast foods and snacks, ingredients for bigger meals…. Maddie shuffled things around in the pantry, reaching all the way to the top shelf, just in case there was a stale box of crackers or something, then stopped.

Hidden behind a box of instant mashed potatoes was the sugary cereal Danny had snuck in when she was in the hospital, way back at the start of all of this. Maddie stood on her toes and barely managed to grab it. The cereal shook in the mostly-empty box.

Maddie stared at the front with its colorful mascot, then popped it open, unrolled the bag, and stuffed a handful of the cereal into her mouth. It was stale, but still edible.

Where are you, Danny? she thought. Why did you run away?

The cereal didn’t respond, nor did the sugar spark any inspiration. Maddie stood there, munching on the cereal directly from the box, until the microwave signaled her leftovers were heated. She sighed and didn’t bother putting the box away.

Maddie shoveled her food into her mouth, eager to get back down to the lab and talk with Jack. She needed to tell him what she knew about Phantom and the bombs, because maybe one of them would be able to think of something that would help them find the other missing Danny.

But before she could finish her plate, a rhythmic banging sound echoed throughout the house. Maddie stood up and listened intently.

It’s coming from the lab, she realized.

Maddie rushed to the lab, thankfully getting the fingerprint scan on the first try, and marched down the stairs. The banging grew louder.

“Jack?” she called out. “Everything alright?”

There was no response, except for the occasional distressed sound from her husband accompanying the bangs. Maddie’s heart pounded. What was going on? She expected more noise if he were fighting a ghost….

She turned the corner into the lab to find that Jack had taken the Fenton Anti-Creep Stick they kept by the portal and was whaling on the metal doorway.

“Jack, stop!” Maddie yelled as she ran over and grabbed his arm. He didn’t notice her at first, and his next swing nearly ripped her off her feet. “What are you doing?”

When his swing didn’t connect as expected, Jack turned to Maddie, breathing hard. The portal’s eerie light glinted off his tears and sweat like they were made of glass.

They locked eyes as Jack’s mouth fumbled silently. “I…the portal, Mads…,” he tried to say. “Danny wouldn’t…if we hadn’t….” Another tear rolled down his cheek.

“I know, Jack,” she said. If they hadn’t spent so much time focused on the portal. If they hadn’t ignored their children. If they’d never opened it in the first place. She glanced at the frame, where Jack had left a few dents. “But breaking the portal won’t fix that.”

Jack went limp. Maddie let go of his arm and he stumbled over to the wall to lean against it. Then, with a dejected sigh, he sank to the ground, the Anti-Creep Stick clacking loudly as he dropped it. Maddie followed; she sat down next to her husband and laced her hand in his.

“Mads,” Jack said after a while, voice still heavy, “do you think…if something happened to him, he’d come back?”

Maddie squeezed her lips together. “Jazz thinks so,” she said. “Danny’s gone missing before, and…he came home okay.” Okay to the point where his parents had never even known he was gone, but Maddie didn’t think that would help Jack.

But her husband shook his head. “No, I mean if he…if he- would he come back here? To the lab?”

Oh. Oh. That’s what he meant.

Maddie thought for a moment about her answer, trying to figure out what was the truth and what was the answer Jack wanted. Finally, she said, “Do you know the last thing Danny said to me before I left for the meeting? After he promised he’d tell me what’s going on?” Jack shook his head. “He told me he loved me, Jack. Danny called me back to his room as I was leaving specifically to tell me that.” She felt Jack tense, slightly. “So I think that, yes, if Danny died and became a ghost, he would come back. Or at least he’d try.”

Maybe it was wishful thinking, but Maddie hoped Danny understood that she really, truly had changed her mind about ghosts — and that it would be safe for him to come home if anything did happen to him.

But she hoped to goodness that nothing had.

Jack only nodded. For some time, they sat there, bathed in the portal’s omnipresent glow, the lone sound Jack’s sniffles echoing around the lab.

Then, Jack whispered: “Maddie, do you see that?”

“See what?”

“Across the lab, where the burn mark is. Movement.”

Maddie remained still and watched, and it wasn’t long before she saw what Jack had: a small shadow stuttering across the floor. It was denser than a normal shadow, as if it were more than two dimensional.

“I see it,” she whispered. “Is it—?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Something’s off about it.”

She saw that, too. “Wait here,” she told him. “I’m getting a Thermos.”

Jack nodded. As silently as she could, Maddie got to her feet; aching though she was, she was the quieter of the two. She crossed over Jack’s legs and tiptoed towards the portal, where they stored a Thermos, ready for use. Maddie pulled the device from its wall casing, then turned it on. The Thermos’s small hum didn’t seem to disturb the shadow, so Maddie uncapped it and crept forward.

As Maddie got closer to the shadow, she became more confident in what it was, but she wouldn’t know for sure until they could examine it. Ten feet away, Maddie activated the Thermos, its bright white light nearly drowning out the shadow as it was sucked in. Maddie’s skin prickled; it was far too reminiscent of her nightmare. She capped the Thermos to trap the shadow inside.

“Got it,” she said, turning to Jack.

“What is it?” he asked as he climbed to his feet.

“Let’s find out.”

With some effort, they made room for the smaller ectophobic experiment chamber they’d built for blob ghosts. It was the size of a small fish tank, with a port on one side where they could affix a Thermos and safely release their smaller specimens. Maddie attached opaque white panels to the outside and tried to ignore the old ectoplasm stains Jack wiped off.

When the tank was ready, and the Fentons poised with their lab notebooks, Maddie screwed the Thermos into the port, checked the seal, and hit the release button.

After the bright light faded, Jack started writing his observations down. Maddie just stared at the creature in the tank, feeling the blood drain from her face.

The shadow was thicker, more defined in the tank — the result of ectoplasm being ejected into a condensed space. With its black shape against the white panels, she could make out the edges of its ears, snout, and tail; the whiskers weren’t quite visible, but in the right light they might be. It had frozen inside the tank, but when Maddie looked closely, she could see it breathing. It hadn’t realized it was dead yet.

“It’s the mouse that my mousetrap caught, isn’t it?” Jack asked. “The one that got fried. But….” He frowned. “It’s not like any ghost I’ve seen before.”

“I have,” Maddie said, quietly. She tore her eyes away from the shadow mouse and grabbed the notebook she had been writing in before she fell asleep. She flipped through to the last few pages and read: “’The ghost was humanoid without obviously exaggerated proportions. Most of the ghost was transparent and made of black and gray, with more opaque spots giving definition to its figure. I could just barely make out clothes and facial features, though I am uncertain if these are a legitimate recognition or imagined based on mental suggestion.’”

She looked up at Jack. “That’s part of the description of Reitman’s ghost I wrote this morning. It’s extremely similar to what’s in the tank.”

Jack took the notebook she offered and skimmed the rest of her description. His eyes flicked back and forth across the page; Maddie recognized the look of concern in the furrow of his eyebrows as read her conclusion.

“You think this is what happened to you, at the first explosion,” Jack said. “That whatever you…became is the same thing Reitman became. And this mouse ghost is the same thing.” He frowned. “Only, you lived. They didn’t.”

Maddie nodded. “I did, and I don’t know why,” she said, and it bothered more than she wanted to admit at the moment. “But Jack, I don’t think that this—” she gestured at the tank “—is a ghost, at least not like the ones we’re used to. That means that Reitman and I weren’t either.”

“Hmm.” Jack bent down to look at the shadow mouse, which had begun sniffing around the tank. “It almost reminds me of apparitions from pre-ectoscience ghost hunting. Stories of the dead as moving shadows.” He ran a hand down his face and sighed. “The one thing that you, Reitman, and this mouse had in common as…proto-ghosts is an excess of energized ectons in the air. Maybe that’s what caused it.”

“Proto-ghosts? Like the precursor to a full ghost?”

Jack nodded.

“Maybe,” Maddie agreed, slowly. It was possible, she supposed. “There’s something else, Jack.” She told him about the conclusion she’d reached during the GIW meeting: that the bomber was trying to turn her family into ghosts. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

Jack had leaned back against a table and started stroking his chin as he thought. “Maddie, if that’s true, we need to call the kids back. They could be in danger.”

He was right, and Maddie cursed herself for not thinking of that sooner. “I’ll call Jazz and tell her.”

“You do that. I’m going to look something up,” Jack said.

They broke, briefly, and Maddie left the lab to call Jazz and update her. Her daughter said she’d talk to Sam and Tucker about it; they still had places they wanted to search for Danny.

We should be out there, looking for him, Maddie thought, thinking about the messages from the night before, while she started brewing another cup of coffee. What kinds of parents stayed in a homemade lab while their son was missing? They should be making fliers and pleas on the news for Danny to come home, or for others to come forward with any information they might have.

But Jazz said that what would help Danny best was for her parents to find Phantom. Not like they’d ever been able to do that before.

When she returned to the lab, two full mugs of coffee in hand, Jack was hanging up from his own phone call. “I just got off the phone with the library at Madison,” he said, accepting the mug from Maddie. “Thanks, Mads. The Lloyd Archive is open on Monday. I think you should go there.”

“Okay,” Maddie said. “Why?”

“Well, for one, they said I’m not allowed in the building after the last time, so it’d have to be you. And Jazz, since you’re not allowed to drive.” He took a sip of his coffee. “But two, there was a study Lloyd worked on before either of us were at Madison. It was about overshadowing. She never published it, but the Archive has records from her research.” He glanced at the tank. “These proto-ghosts remind me of something she wrote in the draft.”

“Okay,” Maddie said again. “But what does overshadowing have to do with this?” Jack opened his mouth to answer, but then Maddie said: “You think that has something to do with what’s wrong with Danny.”

Jack nodded. “I know we ruled out overshadowing as an explanation for Danny’s…Danny-ness, but this is something else entirely. If he’s possessed by a proto-ghost, then it could explain the readings he gives off, why he’s reacted to the explosions like he has.” He frowned. “He may not even realize what’s happened to him.”

He does, though. Maddie thought back to the last time she saw her son — his promise to her, and the promise Jazz made to Danny. One week…. She shook her head, remembering her promise to Jack. “I think he does know what’s going on, Jack. At least some of it. Just…the things he and Jazz have said to me,” she said in response to Jack’s questioning look. “I’ll talk to Jazz when she gets back about making a trip to Madison.” The people leaving rude voice messages wouldn’t like it, but screw it, if the Fentons could figure this proto-ghost/overshadowing thing out, they could maybe figure out how to deal with the bombs — and help Danny, if he ever made it home.

Maddie sighed. “We need to make a plan of action, Jack, because there’s something else we need to focus on: finding Phantom.”

Maddie didn’t miss the way Jack’s jaw clenched, just a bit, but he nodded. Goodness, how she was grateful for him. “I can take a look at the surveillance system, Maddie, but you know how inconsistent it is when it comes to Phantom.”

She did, of course; the problem had plagued them for years. But before they could move into that….

“There’s one more thing I need to tell you, Jack,” Maddie began. “About Phantom.” She flipped to a page in her Phantom notebook and handed it to Jack. “We’ve known for a while that Phantom isn’t a normal ghost, but this is far beyond anything I’d ever imagined.”

Jack’s face went from confused, to concerned, to dismay in a matter of seconds as he read her notes on Phantom. He was quiet for a long time after he finished reading.

“Ectoplasmic cells,” he finally said.

Maddie nodded. “Yep.”

“Artificially created ghosts.”

“Yep.”

Her husband leaned back against the table, his face a portrait of disbelief as he thought about it. Then, Jack shook his head.

“Maddie,” he began, softly. “Since you’re the one who’s more familiar with all of this…do you get the feeling that this is all related somehow? Danny, the bombs, Phantom…. Something’s connecting all of them.”

“I do, Jack,” she said. Truthfully, she had for a while, but to hear it voiced — yes, she thought so. “I feel like there’s one big piece to this that we’re missing, and that once we figure it out, everything will make sense.”

Jack nodded, as if he’d been expecting as much. “Alright,” he said, then stood and stretched. “Let’s take a break, and then when we get back —” he looked Maddie in the eye “— we’re gonna figure out how to bring our son home.”

Chapter Text

“I went to take a look at that scanner,” Tucker said, “and found this in the bag.” He fished around in the bag and pulled out a USB drive.

It was several hours after Maddie called Jazz to warn her about possible bombs, and the three teens had only just returned; while Jazz and Sam were sweaty messes from walking around town looking for Danny, Tucker had spent the time checking the ectoradiation meter the APPD returned the previous day. In an unusual amount of paranoia, Jack had asked him to make sure the GIW hadn’t installed any software in secret.

Jack took the drive and looked it over before passing it onto Maddie. She turned it over in her hand. It was a nondescript gray with no logos on it, save for a stamp declaring it to hold two gigabytes of data. She handed it back to Tucker across the kitchen table.

He plugged it into his laptop and continued speaking. “After scanning it for malware, I checked the files.” Despite his fatigue, there was a glint of eagerness in the teen’s eyes. “The APPD gave you a bunch of data about the explosions.”

“They did?!” Maddie and Jack exclaimed, simultaneously.

Tucker nodded. “All sorts of stuff. I’m not sure what a lot of it is, but I recognized some ectoradiation stuff and observations from the first responders at the Nasty Burger, Casper High, and Carrie. There’s also a note for you.”

Maddie crowded around his laptop next to Jack as the text file opened on the screen.

Drs. Fenton,

In light of recent developments, my superiors have agreed to officially bring you onto the explosions investigation in a professional context. This drive contains as much information as we can legally give you. As usual, you are NOT allowed to discuss this with anyone outside the APPD or visit the investigation sites. Keep your investigation inside Fenton Works.

All future communication should go to Det. Lawson.

- Det. Carleton

“Finally!” Jack said. He slapped the table, causing Maddie and Tucker to jump. “Took them long enough!”

“It will be helpful,” Maddie agreed. “Especially for the first explosion.” Maybe it would help her remember something from that day. “We should start looking…” she started to add, but Jack was already hunched over and scrolling through the files on Tucker’s laptop. “Jack, dear, maybe give Tucker his laptop back?”

“Uh huh,” Jack said. He opened a file and started reading.

“It’s okay, Mrs. F.” Tucker said. “I was actually hoping you could show me how to take this model apart?” He held up the paper bag holding the ghost meter. It was their most sophisticated one; the GIW had demanded nothing less. “I want to make sure they didn’t bug it or anything.”

Maddie nodded and stood up. “Sure. Let’s go to the lab.”

Tucker followed her down the stairs, but stopped at the bottom. “Um, no offense, Mrs. F,” he said, “but I thought you were done experimenting on ghosts for now.”

“We’re not experimenting on anything,” Maddie said as she pulled out her toolkit. “It’s something we captured in the lab earlier today. We’ve just been observing it for now.”

“It doesn’t look like a ghost.” Tucker approached the tank and peered at the shadow mouse. “Well, it doesn’t look like a normal ghost.”

Maddie dropped her toolkit on her workstation and gestured Tucker over. “That’s because it’s not,” she said. “We’re calling it a proto-ghost for now, but we’re not sure exactly how it relates to regular ghosts yet. We are pretty sure it’s the mouse that died in Jack’s mousetrap last week, though.”

“Huh,” Tucker said. “Interesting.”

He didn’t seem to catch any significance in the phrase “proto-ghost,” which Maddie was grateful for. She and Jack had spent these last hours observing and discussing the shadow mouse and they hadn’t come to many conclusions.

“Yeah, it is interesting,” Maddie said. She started disassembling the ghost meter as Tucker watched. “And one thing in particular that you should know.” She paused half-way through a screw to look at Tucker. He nervously met her eye. “The proto-ghost in the tank gave off similar ectoradiation readings to Danny.”

Tucker frowned. “If you’re trying to convince me to tell you about Danny, it’s not going to work, Mrs. Fenton.”

“I’m not trying to, I promise,” Maddie said, despite wanting nothing more than to grab her daughter and her son’s friends by the shoulders and demand they tell her everything. “But if this somehow helps the three of you find Danny….”

“That’s good to know,” he said, still frowning. “I don’t get the implications of it, though.”

“We don’t, either. But it means that there’s probably a connection between this mouse and whatever’s up with Danny.”

Tucker looked thoughtful for a minute, so Maddie went back to disassembling the meter. After a moment, Tucker spoke in an unusually hesitant voice. “Mrs. Fenton, what are you going to do when he gets back? I mean, he’s probably hurt after the explosion.”

She looked at him, sharply, and dropped the plastic casing she was holding. “Danny’s hurt? Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Oh, um,” Tucker stammered, face flushing. “I meant Phantom.”

Maddie breathed a sigh of relief that it was just Phantom, then immediately felt guilty that she had dismissed what happened to him so quickly. Whatever his condition after the explosion, it was at least partially on her; he’d jumped in front of the blast to save her.

But Tucker asked a good question, and she wasn’t surprised that he was concerned about Phantom. “I don’t know, Tucker,” she said. “I haven’t thought about that.” Her hands shook as she bent down to pick up the casing from the floor. “I guess it depends on his status if he comes back to Amity Park.”

“When he returns.”

Maddie looked at Tucker. His jaw was clenched in a determination he clearly did not feel. But maybe she should take a page from his book. “When he returns,” she agreed. “When he and Danny both return.”

***

After they found no bugs and Tucker left, Maddie watched the shadow mouse skitter around in the tank. It hopped along the back wall, passing right through the little cardboard house Jack made as if it weren’t even there.

The mouse didn’t always react to stimuli, they’d found. Sometimes it acknowledged Maddie or Jack’s hand if they stuck it in the tank, and sometimes it didn’t. Likewise, sometimes it would ignore the cardboard house and other times it would only walk through the opening cut in the side.

It did, however, react to ectoplasm. As Maddie watched, it nibbled at the cube of denatured ectoplasm Jack had dropped in for it earlier. Neither of them was really sure what a proto-ghost mouse would eat, or even if it needed to, but they figured they’d try.

What will happen to it? What will happen to Reitman’s proto-ghost? Maddie thought — and, of course: What would have happened to me if Danny hadn’t….

She frowned. Why did she think that Danny had something to do with how she…survived the explosion? All she remembered was Danny, seeing her, mistaking her for her living self, then her son falling to his knees, and that bright light. Where did it come from? Had it come from Danny? What was it?

And he recognized me, Maddie realized. He saw my proto-ghost and didn’t realize what I was.

Maddie forced herself to recall what Reitman looked like after he died. There was no way she could have mistaken him for a living, breathing human.

But Danny had made that mistake.

What is wrong with my son?

And where is he?

Maddie let herself be distracted for a count of ten, then turned away from the mouse and away from her worries about Danny, grabbed one of her notebooks, and started looking through it.

Tucker’s question about Phantom lingered in her brain. What was she going to do when Phantom returned, if he was hurt? She’d told Jazz the previous week that an electric shock might restabilize a ghost, but that was only conjecture.

The pages of this notebook were filled with sketches and calculations for different pieces of ectotechnology: the Bazooka, the Specter-Deflector, the Soul Eater, the Ecto-Lance, the DEEP Gun. The last one was mounted onto the GAV, ready for deployment. In testing, it had shredded the blob ghost test subjects into thin rivulets that never reconstituted.

She and Jack had planned to use it on Phantom at the first chance they had.

Maddie slammed the notebook in disgust. Everything she and Jack had done — every experiment performed, every piece of technology made — was with the intention of destroying ghosts. Ripping them apart, depowering them, strapping them down, dissecting them. She knew so little about how to heal ghosts from injury.

Maddie sighed. Maybe it was time the Fentons swallowed their pride and asked someone for help.

Well, three someones.

Decision made, Maddie grabbed her empty mug of coffee and trudged up the stairs, ready to find Jack. But as she reached the top, the door slid open and Maddie nearly ran into her husband. She stumbled a bit, and Jack reached out a hand to steady her.

“Jack! Hi!” she said, surprised. “I was just coming to find you. I have an idea I want to share with you.”

“Maddie, I was just coming to get you, too,” Jack said. “I need to show you something.”

Maddie shook the surprise off at the urgency in Jack’s voice. “My thing can wait. What is it?”

Jack led her all the way up the stairs and into the Ops Center, where he showed her a text editor with lines of code on it. She skimmed the code, but it was messy and uncommented.

“Jack, what am I looking at?” she asked.

“So you didn’t write it?”

Maddie shook her head.

“I didn’t think so, but I was hoping….” Jack grimaced. “I’m not entirely sure, yet, but I think it’s a script designed to hide Phantom’s ecto-signature from our scanners.”

“What?!”

“I was looking at the data from the APPD,” Jack continued, “and they had some readings that we didn’t, so I came up here to see what the issue was. Poked around and found this.” He jabbed a finger at the screen.

“How did it get there?” This could be bad. Very bad. “Who put it on the computer?” She started pacing.

Jack shook his head. “I don’t know, Mads. As soon as I realized what this was, I disconnected the computer from the network and went to get you. I’ll have to look into this more.”

Maddie didn’t immediately reply. This had to be why they struggled to follow Phantom on the tracker — why he seemed to disappear at random from the ghost radar. With a sinking feeling, Maddie realized that the script must have let some data through, since they were able to track Phantom through various parts of the city.

But who would do this? Phantom was the first choice, obviously, but if Technus hadn’t been able to get onto their ectophobic system after the updates, then Phantom certainly wouldn’t. This computer wasn’t connected to the Internet, only their internal network, and they’d never seen it on the firewall…which implied that it had been installed by someone with access to the Fenton Intranet. Maddie grimaced. At least—

“The good news is that it can’t send data to anyone,” Jack said, as if he’d followed her train of thought. “But I don’t like the idea of someone getting it past the firewall without us knowing.”

“It had to be someone who had access to the house, or was somehow able to get on it from outside.” A thought struck her. “Jack, do you think this is related to the hack at Vlad’s?”

The face Jack made told her he hadn’t considered that yet. “I don’t know, Mads,” he said. “But I gotta admit, it’s very strange that both we and Vlad had computer intrusions.” He pursed his lips. “But…it doesn’t make sense that someone would steal data from Vlad but not from us. At least, I hope they haven’t stolen any data.” Jack turned back to the monitor and started clicking around. “I’m gonna figure this out, Maddie. Surely they left some tracks.”

He was about to get sucked into the computer forensics, Maddie realized. “Jack, before you do that, I want to run an idea by you.”

Thankfully, Jack tore himself away from the monitor to look at her. “I’m listening.”

“Tucker asked me what we’re going to do when Phantom returns, if he’s still injured from the explosion,” Maddie said. “And I realized…we don’t know anything about healing ghosts. Only how to destroy them.”

Jack’s face had grown wary as she was speaking, but he nodded in agreement.

“And we should probably have a plan for when Phantom gets back, if he is hurt. Not only could he endanger the town, but….” Maddie sighed in frustration. “Jack, Phantom put himself in danger to protect me at the Torrance. Not to mention all the other stuff we’ve put him through. I feel we owe him our help.”

Jack stared at Maddie, his eyes darting back and forth as he searched her face and thought about what she said. Finally, he sighed. “I get what you mean. But where would we even start? It’s not like we can run experiments right now.” He grimaced. “Or should.”

“I have a few ideas.” Maddie told him her thoughts on electric shocks, and Jack nodded slowly in agreement. “But Jack, I don’t think we can do this alone. We need help from people with other expertise.” Enough stalling. She looked him in the eye and said: “I want to invite Aggie, Penny, and Sedgewick to the lab and ask them for help.”

“Oh.” Jack blinked. “But I thought you said the GIW considered them suspects.”

“The GIW thinks we’re suspects,” Maddie said, exasperated. “Or ‘persons of interest.’ Frankly, Jack, I don’t really care what the GIW thinks right now. And I see no reason why we should suspect any of them. They’re our colleagues, and they’re in town, and I think we should take advantage of that.” She collapsed onto the nearest stool. “And….I think they deserve to hear what happened to Reitman in person.”

Jack nodded. “Okay, Mads. I agree that the benefits outweigh the risks. Still —” he held up one finger “— I want them searched when before they enter the lab for any hazardous materials, and we should limit what we show them. No blueprints for any ectotech.”

“No blueprints for ectotech,” Maddie concurred. “I want us to focus on how to help Phantom when he returns.” She glanced outside. It was bright and sunny right now, but she wished the rain predicted for tomorrow would come early, to better match her mood. “I’ll call them and see if we can arrange a time for all of us to meet. And then we should come up with a game plan.” She sighed. “Time to stop keeping so many secrets.”

***

The next day, when Maddie opened the front door to let the three ectoscientists into her home, the assembled crowd started shouting obscenities at her. The two days of precious silence after the latest bomb hadn’t lasted nearly long enough. Only the real anti-Fenton zealots were here, though – the bombings must’ve scared the more reasonable people away. Not that it made Maddie feel any better, since part of her wondered if the bomber might be part of that crowd.

Amidst the sea of signs featuring Jack’s distinctive logo crossed out in red, Maddie spotted that one protester who had acted strangely on the day she’d confronted them. Dirk, she thought his name was. Unlike the rest of the crowd, he just stood there and glared at Fenton Works. Her eyes connected with his, briefly, and he opened his mouth to shout something. Maddie quickly slammed the door shut, locked it, and suppressed a shiver.

“Welcome to Fenton Wo—” she started to say, but Penny swept her up in a hug and squeezed. Maddie let out a little squeak.

“Oh, Maddie,” Penny said, after letting her go. “I’m so sorry to hear about you son.”

“I, um.” Maddie sniffed at the sudden wave of concern that came over her. “Thank you, Penny. We’re hoping Danny will come home soon.” She gave them a thin-lipped smile and gestured to the couches. “Have a seat, everyone, and we can talk before showing you the lab.”

Maddie joined Jack on one of the couches and took a moment to examine her colleagues. Aggie dressed the same as she always did, though the purple headphones were absent for once. The younger woman had taken the chair across from the Fentons, forcing Sedgewick to join Penny on the other couch. Sedgewick, similarly, wore a suit, as usual, but despite the casual atmosphere, he wore a crisp black suit that wouldn’t be out of place in a boardroom meeting at Vladco. Why he had chosen this outfit was beyond Maddie’s grasp.

Penny, though…. The other ectobiologist had stepped away from her usual pastels and was dressed in a black blouse and dark red chiffon. She wore no makeup and her hair fell limp on her shoulders. Based on the bags under her eyes, Maddie guessed that Penny hadn’t slept much in the last few days.

Reitman was her colleague, Maddie remembered. His death must have hit her hard.

The five ectoscientists sat in an awkward silence before Maddie cleared her throat and spoke.

“Thank you for coming,” she said. “I know I was vague on the phone, but Jack and I have some things to share that we don’t want the GIW to know about, yet.”

“You shouldn’t keep things from them, Dr. Fenton,” Sedgewick said. “They won’t be happy when they find out. You can bet they’ll interview each of us to find out what we talked about with you.”

Maddie narrowed her eyes, slightly. That was rich, coming from the man who had asked her to keep the news about the Vladco hack a secret. Sedgewick caught her look and at least had the decency to look away.

“Fenton Works is a private company and you are all here outside of your contract,” Jack said. “You are under no obligation to tell the GIW anything, and we would greatly appreciate it if you did not.”

“Of course we won’t share anything,” Penny said, sharply. “Right, Erik?”

It was clear that Sedgewick was trying not to roll his eyes, but he said, “Of course not.” He took a sip from the glass of water Jack had put out for him. “I was merely warning Dr. Fenton about the GIW’s reaction.”

Maddie clenched and unclenched her jaw. So this was how today was going to go. Hopefully they’d make some progress, as long as attitudes didn’t get in the way. “Thank you, Dr. Sedgewick,” she said. “And Penny, and Aggie. Now, I know you’re probably eager to see the lab and find out why we asked you here, but…there’s something you need to know first.” She looked Penny and Sedgewick in the eye, and checked that Aggie was at least looking in her direction, before continuing. “About Henry’s death.”

She shared with them what happened that night, from when Reitman ran into the room to when Phantom flew out of it — except for that moment when she and Phantom reached towards each other. It was too private, too intimate to share with relative strangers.

By the time Maddie finished, Sedgewick was staring at her, wide-eyed; Aggie’s face was blank; and Penny was crying.

“Did- did you ever find out what H-Henry wanted to tell you?” she asked, after accepting a tissue from the box Jack offered.

Maddie shook her head. “No, I didn’t. Whatever he was going to say died with him.” Then: “Did he say anything to you about it?”

Penny blew her nose loudly. “He just handed me the keys and ran off after saying he needed to talk to you,” she said. “I don’t know…anything about….”

“You don’t know what happened to Henry after the ghost boy shot him?” Sedgewick asked as Penny blew her nose again.

“The ‘ghost boy’ didn’t hit him,” Maddie corrected. “He redirected the blast. But no, I don’t know what happened afterwards.”

“Hmm.” Sedgewick leaned back against the couch, apparently deep in thought. “I have to wonder if the GIW didn’t find Henry’s ghost after they cleared the room. They’ve all but abandoned the Torrance to the APPD now.”

Maddie exchanged a glance with Jack. They’d abandoned the site?

“That was a quick investigation,” Jack said. “I’d expect them to take longer.”

“I can’t speak for them, obviously, but I suspect they’re trying to find Danny Phantom after his appearance at the hotel,” Sedgewick said. Maddie sat up as he continued. “In fact, I suspect that’s why they came to Amity Park in the first place. Another excuse to try and capture the ghost boy.”

“I’m sorry,” Maddie began, heart pounding, “but are you saying the GIW didn’t capture Phantom?”

Sedgewick shrugged. “I can’t tell you with any certainty, but based on the foul mood Operative K has been in, I’m guessing they don’t.”

Maddie breathed a small sigh of relief. It wasn’t confirmation that the GIW didn’t have Phantom, but it was something, at least. If she could trust Sedgewick, that is.

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Glad the GIW doesn’t have the ghost boy? So you can capture him yourself?”

“I, uh, no,” Maddie said, flushing. She hadn’t expected such a direct confrontation. She glanced at Jack, and noticed that all three ectoscientists were staring at her, intently.

“We’re done with that part of ghost hunting,” Jack said. “We’ve been reconsidering how we approach ghosts and ectoscience. That’s actually why we all asked you here. To get your help.”

“Phantom’s stability was likely damaged after the explosions at the Torrance,” Maddie explained. “He’s been affected by the ectoradiation released by the bombs. So far, I know for a fact it’s caused uncontrolled bursts of ectoelectricity—” she resisted the urge to rub at the sudden cold feeling in her shoulder “—but I’m presuming there’s more going on. If the GIW doesn’t have Phantom, then he’s probably going to need help when he returns to Amity Park.”

“Why would he need your help?” Aggie spoke for the first time since arriving. “He’s a ghost.”

Aggie didn’t explain further, but — if Maddie guessed her implications correctly — she raised a good point, one neither of the Fentons had considered. Why would Phantom need their help? If he was in the Ghost Zone, then…well, she didn’t really know what went on in the Zone, but surely Phantom had some way to get help. But if he was still in their world, then….

“We don’t know how stable Phantom is, or will be,” Maddie said. “We’d like to be prepared when he returns to Amity Park.”

“If he returns,” Sedgewick said.

Maddie glared at him. He shrugged and said, “You don’t know if Phantom will come back here. Who knows if he’s still stable enough to be considered ‘Phantom’ anymore.” He leaned forward on the couch. “If you’re concerned about the ghost boy’s wellbeing, then you should consider all the options.”

Maddie opened her mouth to speak, but Jack laid a hand on her thigh. “Why don’t we take this conversation to the lab? There’s something we need to show you.”

“Yes, let’s,” Penny said, standing up. “I will admit I’ve been eager to finally see the inside of the famous Fenton Works lab.”

As Jack led the ectoscientists through the security and safety measures they’d come up with, Maddie cleaned up the glasses of water and Penny’s used tissues and thought about what Sedgewick had said — because, unfortunately, he was right to ask those questions. What if Phantom never returned to Amity Park? Or what if he came back but wasn’t Phantom anymore? What would that mean for the search for Danny, since it seemed right now that Phantom might be the only remaining lead to where their son disappeared to?

The boy’s face was utterly blank, his eyes completely overwhelmed with light — a doll, forever frozen with an expression Maddie knew would be in her nightmares.

Whoever Phantom may be, he wasn’t, not right now.

Gooseflesh ran up Maddie’s arms; she shuddered at the memory. Why had absorbing that ectoplasm caused Phantom to…she didn’t know, lose his sense of self? It didn’t bode well.

But Maddie forced herself to think of the moment just after that, when Phantom seemed to recognize her and redirected the blast. Who knew what had happened to Phantom in the meanwhile, but at least there had been some part of him left. A little bit of hope for her to hold onto.

Maddie caught up to the others in the lab, where Jack was showing them the portal. He glanced at her with concern and a question in his eyes; her husband knew she was trying not to be too upset about Sedgewick’s statements. She took a deep breath and nodded back.

The others didn’t seem to notice her arrival, caught up as they were in finally getting to see the portal. It was closed right now, but, as always, it seemed to glow, even if Maddie could never actually see the light.

“It is quite the marvel,” Sedgewick was saying. “Perhaps the greatest feat of ectoengineering to date.” He stepped forward.

“Please stay behind the line, Dr. Sedgewick,” Jack said, pointing at the tape they’d hastily laid down the night before. “It’s unlikely anything would happen, but better be safe than sorry.”

“Safe?” Penny asked, wary, while Sedgewick reluctantly moved back. “I can hardly imagine that something that dense with ectoplasm is ‘safe.’”

“We have a perfect safety record over the last two years,” Maddie said, moving to stand next to Jack and hoping none of the others noticed the dent from Jack’s swing at the frame yesterday. “No one has been injured from it, and we only open it for specific experiments.”

She also hoped that none of them caught her in that lie: it was opened far more often than that.

Sometimes, they weren’t even the ones who opened it.

Maddie and Jack spent the next twenty minutes fielding questions from the others about the portal. She was eager to get started talking about proto-ghosts, but if Maddie knew anything about ectoscientists, it’s that they had to sate their curiosity first before any work could get done.

As Jack finished answering yet another query from Sedgewick, Aggie said: “What happens when a ghost goes through the portal? Can you measure the ectoenergetic fluctuations?”

Maddie glanced at Jack. “Um, no,” she said. “We can’t. We monitor the portal’s output, but it’s ectoenergy levels are too high for our instruments to note fluctuations like that. It’s…a problem. It’s why we don’t know if Phantom used our portal to return to the Ghost Zone after Thursday night.” Who knew what resources he had?

Aggie nodded, then started typing something into her device. Maddie craned her neck slightly to see what it was, but Aggie was too far away for her to make it out. The boxy device was vaguely familiar, though, she thought.

Jack cleared his throat. “We actually have something else to show you, if you’ll follow me.”

Aggie turned and followed Jack to where they’d covered the tank with a blanket, but both Sedgewick and Penny loitered, staring at the portal.

What are they thinking about? Maddie wondered. She stepped up between the two others; Sedgewick started, rolled his eyes, then turned away from the portal and left her alone with Penny.

For a moment, she stood next to her colleague, eyes tracing the line between the two doors. Their greatest creation, and the cause of all of these problems. What would Amity Park be like now if they’d never opened the portal? Would she and Jack still be regarded as quack scientists: annoyances to be laughed at and dismissed, but overall ignored? Or would they have found some other way to mess things up?

Would the town be safe from ectoplasmic bombings if they had never built the portal?

“I’m sorry about Henry,” Maddie said, quietly. “We lost a great ectoscientist that day. He didn’t deserve to die.”

Penny kept her eyes on the portal. Her face was unreadable. “I just want this to be over,” she said, quietly.

“Me too.” More than anything else, Maddie wanted the bombings to be over. That, and for her son to be home.

After a moment, Penny sighed. “Thank you, Maddie,” she said, turning towards her. “Henry was a wonderful colleague. I’ll miss him a lot.” She sniffed, took a deep breath, then added: “Let’s join the others, shall we?”

Jack and the others were waiting for them, though Jack and Aggie were involved in some highly technical conversation that didn’t seem to have anything to do with ectoscience. As Maddie and Penny joined, Jack told Aggie they could talk later, then said: “Maddie and I can explain more in a moment, but we figured we’d just show you.” He pulled the blanket off, and the three ectoscientists leaned in.

For a moment, Maddie couldn’t find the shadow mouse in the tank. It didn’t have anywhere to hide, since they’d removed the house and ectoplasm bowl. But then it moved, and all three ectoscientists jumped; Penny and Sedgewick both gasped, and Aggie took a step back. Briefly, Maddie wondered how often they’d actually worked with real ghosts. That was a luxury the Fentons had that very few other ectoscientists did.

“What are we looking at, Dr. Fenton?” Sedgewick asked.

“It’s the ghost of a mouse that died in the lab. We’ve been calling it a proto-ghost,” Maddie said. “We think it’s the same sort of ectoplasmic entity that Henry became.” She and Jack explained their thoughts on the shadow mouse. They left out Maddie’s experience as a ghost — that was more private than she wanted to share.

As they answered questions, though, Maddie became aware that Penny kept glancing at her. She caught the other woman’s eyes and raised an brow. Penny just shook her head and mouthed “later.”

What was that about?

“This is an incredible discovery, Dr. and Dr. Fenton,” Sedgewick was saying, “but I don’t understand how this relates to Phantom.”

Maddie exchanged a look with Jack. “We’re not sure, either,” she said. “However, there are some…ah…idiosyncrasies with Phantom that we think might have similarities to the proto-ghosts.” She started to tell them about some of her observations on Phantom’s oddities, but then Aggie spoke.

“Is this where you found those cells from?” she asked. “The ones made of ectoplasm?”

Penny cringed; Sedgewick looked rapidly between the four of them and said, “Cells made of ectoplasm? When did this happen?”

Maddie winced at the volume, and at Aggie’s question. She had not planned on someone mentioning those in front of Sedgewick. “Um, yes. Cells made of ectoplasm. We were asked to investigate some a few weeks ago. I asked Penny and Aggie for their advice about two weeks ago. But no,” she said, turning to Aggie, “those were from someone else.”

“Someone else?” Penny asked. She crossed her arms. “Like a person? I thought you said they were from a rat.”

“Excuse me, but please explain how you came across cells made of ectoplasm?” Sedgewick demanded.

“Wait, you lied about where you found them?” Aggie asked.

“Maddie, if you found human cells made of ectoplasm, that could be a very serious ethical problem,” Penny added, side-eyeing Sedgewick. “Where did these come from?”

“Me,” Maddie blurted out. “Um. I had a mishap with a ghost a few weeks ago. I took samples of my skin before going through the decontamination process.” She looked at Penny and Aggie. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want the GIW finding out about that incident.”

It was a decent enough lie, she thought. But the others were frowning in thought.

“So it’s not an aftereffect of being caught in the explosions?” Sedgewick asked.

Maddie shook her head. “No, this was unrelated to that.”

“And there were no serious side effects?” He looked like he was about to reach over and grab her by the shoulders. “Please be honest, Dr. Fenton. This could have serious effects.”

“No, the decontamination process worked.”

“You seem awfully concerned about the effect of ectoplasmic contamination, Erik,” Penny said. She crossed her arms and glared at him.

He glanced at her, and Maddie saw the realization flick across his face before he smoothed it away. “Yes, I do, Penny,” Sedgewick said, quieter this time. “And I promise that my only concern is for Dr. Fenton’s wellbeing.”

“Mmhmm, I’m sure you are.”

Jack’s eyes darted back and forth as he tried to follow the conversation. “Why don’t I show you—” he started to say, reaching over to grab a stack of their notes in an effort to break the tension, but, instead, all five of their phones started beeping at once.

Penny just glared at Sedgewick, and he leveled a steely gaze back at her; Aggie was staring at something in the lab. Jack beat her to pulling his phone out to check the message, but Maddie was already confident she knew what it was.

“The GIW are doing a press conference in ten minutes,” Jack said. Penny and Sedgewick held their stare for a moment longer, then looked at Jack as he continued. “The alert says they’re announcing an arrest.”

“An arrest?” Penny asked.

Jack shrugged. “They didn’t give any more details.”

“Perhaps we should all go upstairs and wait for the announcement to start,” Maddie suggested, hoping that the change of scenery might break up the tension. She wanted to stay in the lab and try to figure out the mystery of the proto-ghost, Phantom, and Danny, but if the GIW were releasing information, they should be there to listen to it.

Back in the living room, the Fentons directed people to the bathroom and refilled glasses of water. In the kitchen, Maddie and Jack had a moment alone together.

“Well, that went terribly,” she said to him.

“Unfortunately,” Jack agreed. “Nice save, though.”

“Thanks.” She didn’t regret the lie, necessarily, if it meant protecting Phantom, but it felt bad to hide something when the whole point of this meeting was to stop keeping secrets between the ectoscientists. Maddie folded her arms and leaned back against the counter. “I don’t know how well any of them bought it, but….” She trailed off with a sigh. “I have a bad feeling about this press conference, Jack. I don’t like it.”

Jack nodded. “Did you see how surprised the three of them were? I don’t think the GIW told them about this, and I don’t like it.”

“Me neither.”

They stopped their conversation as Penny returned from the bathroom. She gave them a brief smile that went nowhere near her eyes. Maddie smiled back, and — with reluctance — followed her into the living room to await the news.

The TV was already turned to the mayor’s empty podium as the five of them took seats in the living room. This time, though, Sedgewick took the chair Aggie had occupied earlier so that he wouldn’t have to share with Penny. They seemed to be ignoring each other for the moment, thankfully.

After an eternity, Mayor Montez walked on the screen. At the same time, though, Maddie’s phone dinged in her pocket. Just hers. While the mayor gave an introduction praising the GIW, the APPD, and the task force for their work on the bomb investigation, Maddie pulled her phone out and read the message.

It was a text from Jazz, in her daughter’s perfect grammar:

There’s a rumor APE News is doing an exposé on Fenton Works after the Mayor’s announcement. You should probably watch it.

Maddie exhaled through her nose. The televised “news” division of the Amity Park Enquirer — with their stylized logo of an angry purple-back gorilla — was doing an exposé on Fenton Works. The local tabloid never had anything good to say about the Fentons, and this surely this would be no exception. She nudged Jack to show him the text; he grimaced.

The mayor finished his overly-laudatory introduction and let Operative K take the podium. He began without preamble.

“We have arrested an individual believed to be involved in the bombings in Amity Park.” Though his face was stoic, there was…something in his voice. Some tone that Maddie couldn’t quite identify. “Curt Willoughby, 33, of Topeka, Kansas, was arrested this morning following an intense investigation by the GIW. And the APPD,” he added, seemingly as an afterthought. “We are asking anyone who recognizes this man to come forward and share your information.”

As Operative K droned on with more information, his image shrank and a mugshot appeared on the screen. Penny gasped, and Sedgewick gave a sharp inhale; Maddie and Jack turned to look.

“I recognize him,” Sedgewick said, face grave. “He’s one of the GIW members.”

“He’s what?” both the Fentons exclaimed at once.

“You’re saying this was an inside job?” Jack asked, while Maddie tried to recall if she’d seen this man before.

Yes…yes, she had. “He was the one who refilled the coffee thermoses,” she realized. She turned to Jack in horror, trying to come up with something to say and failing.

“Hush, everyone,” Penny said, waving her hand at the TV.

Operative K was finishing his description of Willoughby’s suspected involvement, and now that Maddie knew who the suspect was, she realized: that was probably why Operative K’s voice sounded off. It was an inside job.

Oh, this was very bad.

It got worse: an image of Phantom appeared on the screen, and Maddie felt her blood run cold.

“We are also announcing that the ghost boy, Danny Phantom, is an official suspect in the murder of Dr. Henry Reitman,” Operative K said.

“No,” Maddie whispered. “No, that’s not what happened.” She turned to Jack. “He absolutely did not murder Reitman.” But she knew that that wouldn’t matter to many of the people who disapproved of Phantom — it certainly wouldn’t matter to the GIW.

But at least this seemed to confirm Sedgewick’s earlier speculation that the GIW didn’t have Phantom, though she wouldn’t put it past them to publicly lie about something like that. It just reinforced the fact that Fenton Works needed to find Phantom as soon as they could.

The rest of the press conference was short and repetitive, once again asking the people to Amity Park to share any information they might have with the GIW or the APPD. Within minutes, the wall of white suits left the podium and the channel switched back to the regular news.

For a moment, no one said anything. Then, Sedgewick stood up, pulled his phone out of his pocket, and said, with barely concealed anger, “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to make a phone call.” He stormed off to the kitchen, where he started speaking with someone in hushed tones.

Maddie didn’t bother trying to listen in. “There’s another broadcast,” she explained to Aggie and Penny. Maddie fumbled with the remote and switched the channel to APE News’s broadcast.

“—an exclusive look at what the Fentons are up to in that basement of theirs,” the figure on screen was saying. Maddie’s lip curled in disgust at the voice of Jonah Kolchak, APE’s leading personality. To think they’d once worked with him back when APE was the only outlet that would listen to their talk about ghosts. How that relationship had soured after he tried to hit on Jazz.

“Through our reporters’ tireless investigation,” Kolchak continued, “we have uncovered documents of the Fentons’ experiments that they never wanted you to see. It’s horrifying, folks. Trust me, you don’t want to miss this.”

Documents they didn’t want people to see? Maddie exchanged a worried look with Jack; he shrugged, but she could see the tension in his face.

Sedgewick returned a moment later while APE’s lengthy introduction was playing. He didn’t say anything, just sat in the chair with his arms crossed and wearing a scowl.

“Maddie, Jack, what does he mean, ‘horrifying’?” Penny said.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Maddie said, trying — and probably failing — to sound casual. “APE News is known to exaggerate.”

Penny nodded, but didn’t look fully convinced.

Kolchak returned: “Now, folks, I’m sure you’re all familiar with the Fentons, but let me remind you.” Unflattering pictures of the two of them appeared to his right. “Jack and Maddie Fenton are Amity Park’s ‘professional ghost hunters,’ but we all know them as the town’s feckless menaces. They’ve repeatedly trespassed, caused massive property damage, and generally put the innocent people of this town in serious danger, including the recent spate of bombings that the Fentons have done absolutely nothing to stop! It’s gotten to the point where even their own son doesn’t want to live with them! Young Danny, if you’re watching this, let me tell you: you made the right choice in leaving.”

Maddie felt Jack tense up alongside her, and she had to fight the urge to throw the remote at the television.

“But let’s get serious here.” Kolchak stared at the camera, affecting an air of seriousness. “APE News has discovered that the crimes of the Fentons go way deeper than anything we’ve suspected before. Take a look at this drawing from Maddie Fenton’s notebook.”

It was a sketch of Phantom, strapped down to a lab table, with detailed step-by-step instructions on how to go about dissecting him: from the first incision all the way to sewing him back up — presuming, of course, that there was any definition left to the ghost afterwards.

Maddie recognized it; she’d drawn it, maybe a year and a half ago. How did they get a hold of that?

“What we see here is Maddie’s notes on dissecting Danny Phantom,” Kolchak went on. “That’s right, folks: Maddie Fenton has dissected our town’s hero!”

Penny gasped. “Maddie, is that true?”

“No, it’s not,” Maddie said. “I never dissected him.” But she could see exactly how this image from her notebook — her private lab notebook — made her look. “We barely ever captured him. He always got away.”

“Or how about this blueprint from Jack?” They showed a drawing — not a formal blueprint — of one of Jack’s more violent inventions, one that was designed to literally shred ghosts like they were made of paper. He’d never actually made it. “Or this description of another dissection by Maddie?” That one was an actual dissection, this time of a blob ghost. “Or these measurements of electroshock experiments? Or the evidence of a legitimate torture chamber in their sub-basement?”

“Jack, how did they get these?” she said, turning to Jack. He just shook his head, watching in rapt horror as their work was misrepresented for the world to see.

Maddie twisted in her seat to face the three ectoscientists and found Penny staring at her in disgust. “This isn’t what it looks like, I promise!” she said, holding up her palms in an effort to placate the accusations in her colleague’s eyes. “I can explain!”

“Explain what?” Penny pointed at the screen. “Because that looks very much like the results of an unethical dissection to me.”

Maddie turned back to the television and saw, with horror, photos from the dissection of the blob ghost mentioned above. Ectoplasm was splattered all over the table from where the blob ghost had literally exploded before she’d made much way into the dissection. They’d taken many pictures; APE News had chosen one where the splatter looked suspiciously like the outline of a person. Maddie remembered the feel of the ghost’s outer form to her ectophobic scalpel, how it resisted splitting under the sharp blade, how she’d pushed in harder until it has split open like a water balloon.

She remembered how she’d rejoiced in the inhuman sound it made as it exploded because she hadn’t know that blob ghosts could make a noise like that.

“I- I….” She stumbled over what to say, because, as Maddie realized with a cold feeling down her spine, there was no explaining most of this. Sure, APE News was exaggerating and misinterpreting some things, probably deliberately, but the slideshow of their transgressions was, more often than not, accurate to what they had done to ghosts, down in the lab. “I don’t know where they got these,” she finished, lamely.

“I had no idea,” Penny said, hugging herself and staring at the screen. “I knew that you and Jack did some questionable things, but I didn’t know that you were, this…this depraved, Maddie.” She looked at Maddie and there was rage in her eyes. “This is wildly unethical on a number of levels. I was willing to give that letter the benefit of the doubt, because I thought, ‘the Fentons are a little crazy with the anti-ghost talk, yes, but surely, surely it’s just posturing for the sake of their business.’” Penny stood up. “Surely, two people who are parents wouldn’t do something like what he did.” She pointed at Sedgewick.

“You don’t know what you’re tal—” Sedgewick shouted, also standing up.

“That comparison is unfair, Penny,” Maddie said, joining them in standing. “We never conducted experiments on actual people! We only experimented on —” She cut herself off.

“Go ahead, Maddie,” Penny snarled. “Finish that sentence.”

Jack stood up next to her and grabbed her hand, and Maddie said, “Ghosts. We only experimented on ghosts. But that was—”

“That’s the problem, Maddie. That’s the problem with you and Jack and Erik and all the others like you.” Penny started grabbing her things. “You don’t see ghosts as people. You never did, and now we’re in this whole mess and Henry is dead.” She rushed past the Fentons to the front door.

“Penny, wait!” Maddie cried, reaching after her. “Let me explain!”

Penny pulled the door open, and rain rushed in; the street behind her was empty. As Penny gave her one last look, Maddie could see the tears brimming in her eyes. “It’s your fault he died, you know,” she said. “If he hadn’t gone to talk to you, he’d still be alive.”

She slammed the door shut behind her.

Jonah Kolchak droned on in the background, each word condemning the Fentons more and more until Jack turned him off.

“Congratulations, Dr. Fenton,” Sedgewick snapped, breaking the silence. “You’ve alienated one of the members of this task force and shown that you’re both amoral lunatics.”

Maddie rolled her eyes. “Oh, please, Sedgewick, do lecture us on the morality of ectoscientific experimentation.”

“We know what you did,” Jack added. “What happened at Stanford. You don’t have any room to talk.”

“Do you, now?” Sedgewick took a step towards them. “Then you’ll know that I had full approval from my institution to perform those experiments. Everything I did was to help develop the decontamination process that saved your life, Maddie. What have the two of you done?”

“We’ve done plenty of things to help this town!” Jack shouted.

“Oh yeah? Name one thing, Jack. One thing besides causing massive destruction to this town.”

Maddie tried to think of something, just one thing, but all that ran through her head was Danny, laying in bed, sick from ectoradiation contamination. Jack only spluttered empty words.

Sedgewick sneered at them. “You know, I never wanted to work with the two of you. I only did because my employer asked me to, and because it might, just might, stop this madness.” He snorted in derision. “Why anyone in this town thinks you can protect them when you can’t even keep your son safe from ghosts is beyond me.”

Jack lunged across the room at Sedgewick, but Maddie was closer; although she may have been injured and exhausted and out of practice, muscle memory from a black belt and decades of training was hard to forget, and she brought her open palm against Sedgewick’s cheek in a slap! that echoed around the room.

Sedgewick stumbled back and caught his balance on the chair he was sitting on. He glanced up at Maddie, who stood over him with her fists clenched, breathing heavily and trembling. She struggled to come up with something to say through her rage.

Sedgewick touched his cheek, gently, and visibly tried not to flinch. Then, he clenched his jaw and stood up to face Maddie with a glare. He was several inches taller than Maddie, and his squared shoulders made him look even taller; but Maddie was married to Jack Fenton and hunted ghosts for a living; it took more than an angry human man to intimidate her.

“That’s assault, Dr. Fenton,” he said, voice low and threatening.

“It’s battery, actually,” Maddie replied. “Get out of our house.”

Sedgewick didn’t move; he glared at Maddie, and she held the glare. Then, Maddie felt Jack move to step behind her, and Sedgewick glanced back at him.

“You heard my wife,” Jack said. “Get out of our house.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Yes,” Maddie said.

Sedgewick glanced between them; some part of Maddie she was reluctant to admit existed relished in the fear she saw when he looked at her. Finally, he straightened his suit jacket with a huff and stormed off. Maddie didn’t watch him go.

After Sedgewick slammed their front door behind him, Jack sighed. “Come on, Mads,” he said. “Let’s sit down.”

She didn’t move, and instead stood there, trembling, with her eyes squeezed shut. When Jack placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, she jumped and felt she was going to explode like the ghost she’d dissected.

Maddie opened her eyes, though, when the couch across the room creaked. She turned to find Aggie, forgotten in the chaos, standing up and gathering her things. “I think I should go,” she said, walking across the room and not looking at the Fentons. At the front door, Aggie stopped and dug through her bag; she alone had brought an umbrella for the rain.

The motion shook Maddie out of her stupor, and she snapped, “What, no condemnation from you, too, Aggie?”

Behind her, Jack sighed, and Maddie knew she would regret saying it later; for now, she was too angry to care.

The young ectoscientist cocked her head in contemplation of Maddie’s question. Then, Aggie glanced at the Fentons, and, still not making eye contact, said: “You should’ve hit him harder.”

And then Maddie and Jack were left alone.

***

Sometime later — Maddie didn’t really pay attention — after the tension abated, Maddie sat at the kitchen table with Jack, drained from the confrontations. She sipped at a mug of tasteless tea.

Neither of them spoke. What was there to say? What comfort could words bring when their lives were falling apart around them?

She did hear some words, though: running through her head on repeat.

It’s your fault he died, you know. If he hadn’t gone to talk to you, he’d still be alive.

The logical part of Maddie’s brain told her that it wasn’t true. Reitman’s death was no one’s fault but the person who planted the bomb, and just because he had chosen to come back to talk to her didn’t make Maddie responsible for his death.

Not that it helped, of course.

Maddie rubbed at her eyes, then stood up and started pacing the kitchen. Jack glanced at her, but didn’t say anything.

What was so important that Reitman had ditched Penny in the parking lot to come talk to her? She forced herself to run through the memory again.

Sedgewick nearly ran into the door as it was thrown open. Reitman rushed inside, almost crashed into Maddie, and skidded to a stop.

“Maddie, I need to tell you something,” he said in a furtive whisper and glancing after Sedgewick. “Before I forge—”

She frowned. Why had he glanced after Sedgewick like that? Did Reitman have something to say to her about the other ectoscientist?

On a lap past the kitchen table, Maddie picked up her mug, took a sip, and carried it with her as she paced. Why did this seem to matter so much right now?

There was something at the edge of her thoughts, an idea that hadn’t spawned yet. Think, Maddie. Think! Where was her brain going with this?

If only there was a way to….

Maddie’s eyes flew wide. “Jack,” she said, spinning to face him. “I have an idea. It’s wild and I don’t know if it will help anything, but I want to share it with you.”

Her husband looked up from where he had been staring into his own mug of tea. “I’m listening.”

As she laid out her idea to Jack, Maddie’s head spun. Maybe it was the come-down from the adrenalin, but she felt a little bit insane. Would this be worth the effort? The risk? She was thankful, though, that her husband was at least as crazy as she was, because Jack started nodding along with her explanation.

“I think this could work, Maddie,” he said. “If you’re right, though, I don’t want the GIW knowing and interfering. And if we tell the APPD, then the GIW will inevitably find out.”

Maddie grimaced. “You’re right. I think we can do this without breaking any laws, but just the two of us?” She chewed on her lip for a moment before noticing that Jack had opened his phone and was typing in a number. “What are you doing?”

“Calling the kids.”

***

Twenty minutes later, Sam, Tucker, and Jazz had joined the elder Fentons around the kitchen table. Maddie didn’t know exactly what they’d been up to; they said they were searching for Danny, but based on how dry their clothes were, she doubted they’d been out in Amity Park. She resolved to join them one of these days.

“Alright, Mom, Dad,” Jazz said. She was leaning back in the seat, arms crossed and eyes wary. “Why’d you ask us here? You know we’re not saying anything about Danny.”

Maddie shook her head. “It’s not that.” She exchanged a look with Jack. “We…need your help with something. Specifically Tucker and Sam’s help.”

“You do?” Tucker said. Sam just raised an eyebrow.

“Yes,” Jack said. “We’re in need of your…skills.”

Jazz rolled her eyes. “Can you please stop being vague and get on with it?”

She was right. Maddie cleared her throat. “Sorry,” she said. “But I have a question before I tell you.” She looked at Tucker and Sam each in turn and made sure to look both in the eyes. “What we’re about to ask you to do is probably going to be dangerous and might possibly get you in trouble with either the APPD or the GIW. Would you be willing to risk that?”

The two teens looked at each other; some silent conversation passed between them. Jazz, for her part, didn’t voice the objections Maddie thought she might, but her daughter didn’t look happy.

“Will it help Danny somehow?” Sam asked. “Or Phantom?”

“We hope so,” Jack said, “but we aren’t sure.”

Another silent conversation. Then: “If it helps Danny, we’re in,” Tucker said, and Sam added: “Anything to get Danny back.”

At least there was this little bright spot in this terrible day: that her son had such loyal friends. And they both looked at her with a little spark of hope in their eyes. Maybe some of that would rub off on her.

“Okay,” Maddie said. She took a deep breath. “Here’s what I need your help with. After Jazz and I get back from Madison, I’m going to the Torrance Hotel.” Maddie paused and looked Sam and Tucker in the eyes once more. “And I’m going to summon Dr. Reitman’s ghost.”

Chapter Text

Phantom raced through the air and came to hover in front of the massive ghost. It was one of the largest Amity Park had seen: taller than the school by several stories; broad shouldered and bulging in awkward places.

A pair of glowing eyes stared out at Phantom as it threw a punch at him. He dodged it, then dodged the back swing and another punch. The ghost he fought was larger and more powerful, but Phantom had the advantage of agility and speed. He flew around behind the ghost and kicked it in the back of the head.

The bigger they are, the harder they fall, and Phantom’s kick was strong enough to knock the ghost onto the ground. But it was back up in a moment with a sucker punch that flung the boy high into the sky. Phantom, though, took advantage of the height, turned around, and used his momentum to slam into the ghost from above. The ghost splattered into a thousand pieces from the impact.

But still, Phantom didn’t get a break. Parts of the ghost reformed into five smaller versions, equally as threatening as their larger counterpart. The boy launched back into the air; a second later, the five combatants followed.

The video ended.

Maddie remembered that day vividly. Jack was convinced that Jazz was a ghost, somehow, and Maddie had been drawn into his determination. They’d chased after their daughter with a variety of equipment meant to suck the ghost out of her, only to finally call it quits the next morning. They’d almost thrown in the towel on ghost hunting, too. A month with the portal open and no sign of ghosts. It was time to admit they were wrong.

And then, Danny Phantom had crashed through the ground between Maddie and her daughter, shouting something lost to the wind. A real, actual ghost. Not some shadow in the corner. Not some figment of the imagination. A full ghost. The first one she ever saw.

Ironically, she and Jack missed the fight between Phantom and the Lunch Lady, but they were astonished to find security camera footage from the school all over the news that night. It took a few days, but Maddie managed to track down a copy of the full video, but once she got her hands on it, she and Jack didn’t stopped watching it. They poured over the footage for hours, analyzing every little detail they could observe.

Maddie had watched the video hundreds of times, maybe even thousands. Every detail was committed to memory: she knew exactly when Phantom would dodge the attacks — exactly how long between when he disappeared off-screen after being sucker-punched and when he crashed into the Lunch Lady. There was nothing Maddie didn’t know about this video.

She clicked on the next file on her laptop. It was a compilation of broadcast and cell phone footage from the first concert Ember McClain tried to throw. Maddie knew this one, too. Ember’s concert — which she and Jack were loath to admit they were not suspicious of — was the first widespread acknowledgment of Danny Phantom’s existence, since he was literally center-stage during the fight.

Still, it wasn’t until the mass-overshadowing event that the public had decided ghosts were real. There was plenty of footage from that day, too. It was the first record they had of Phantom using his ghost rays to attack the people of Amity Park — at least, they thought he was attacking.

Now, re-watching the footage of the fight at the Town Hall with new eyes, Maddie saw for the first time how Phantom pulled punches and tried to avoid blasting people with his ghost rays. Not to mention how she’d come face to face with him, and all he’d done was leave even when the bazooka died.

At the time, she’d thought that he was trying to preserve people’s bodies so they could be of better use to the horde of ghosts overshadowing people. But…maybe he was genuinely trying to minimize how much he hurt people.

As Maddie re-watched the videos of Phantom over the last two years — most of them fights, but many of them not — she found the pattern repeating: whereas she previously dismissed Phantom’s actions with a litany of excuses, she now saw the effort he gave to cause the least amount of damage possible, especially to the people of Amity Park. More than a few times, the videos showed Phantom choose, again and again, to redirect his attacks — and his enemies’ attacks — into buildings and vehicles, rather than into people. No wonder property damage was so high after ghost attacks.

The pattern was especially visible as Phantom became more powerful. The damage to the town’s infrastructure went up dramatically whenever Phantom developed some new power, but even when he was unable to fully control them, he had tried, at least, to reduce the risk.

Maddie closed a video of Phantom using that destructive scream of his then glanced out the car’s window as Jazz drove them to Madison. How had she never noticed this?

She knew the answer, of course: she’d deliberately excused away any signs of Phantom’s benevolence in favor of demonizing him. Re-watching the videos only confirmed that Phantom was just the ghost of some kid trying to protect people.

Enough guilt, Maddie thought. You’ve already gone through that. What can you learn about Phantom now?

Maddie opened the Lunch Lady fight and watched the clip a few more times before pausing, thinking, and opening the fight from Ember’s concert. She watched Phantom body slam Ember off the stage, only to get walloped off by her energy wave a moment later. And then Phantom returned — popping into visibility — and grabbed Ember’s microphone stand. The two ghosts began fighting, stand against guitar, until Phantom was trapped.

Maddie rewound the video before Phantom threw the mic to Tucker Foley, of all people, and watched the fight again, frowning. She was certain she’d noticed this before — it had been a while since she’d watched these clips — but Phantom wasn’t inexperienced with fighting with a staff. He wasn’t exactly good with it, but he’d clearly had some training in it. Clicking back to the Lunch Lady fight, Maddie tried to imagine how she’d deliver a powerful kick to a larger enemy while floating in midair, and yes — she saw a similar, if improvised, form to Phantom’s movements.

Phantom had combat training. A mix of self-defense and various martial arts moves, if she were to take a guess. Maddie knew that Phantom had developed more combat abilities as he became experienced fighting other ghosts, but she’d been so focused on his ectoabilities that she had never thought much about how he would have known how to fight.

The big question, though: where had Phantom learned such a hodgepodge of fighting moves when he didn’t use an ectoplasmic powers until several weeks after his first appearance?

She could guess at this answer, too: they were a holdover from before he died.

“Who were you, Phantom?” she whispered.

“Sorry, Mom, didn’t catch that,” Jazz said.

“Who was this kid, Jazz?” Maddie said, throwing her hands in the air. “He’s a ghost who fights other ghosts.” She ticked things off on her hands as she spoke. “He knew how to fight before he developed complex powers. He has cells made of ectoplasm. He died wearing a laboratory jumpsuit. I can’t make any sense of his death.”

Jazz glanced at her, then kept her attention on the road. “You think there’s something weird about how he died?”

“Yes! Nothing about Phantom’s death makes any sense.” Maddie crossed her arms with a huff. “Or anything we know about his existence as a ghost.” Then, before she could stop herself: “Do you know, Jazz? How Phantom died?”

Jazz shook her head. “No, I don’t.”

But Maddie wasn’t done. “What about who he was, before he died?”

“I don’t know that, either, Mom.” Jazz glanced at her again. “And what makes you think I would tell you even if I did?”

The fervor that had grabbed Maddie faded, and she sighed. At least Jazz was being sincere. “Right, sorry.” She sighed again. “It’s just…Jazz, if Phantom was murdered—”

“You think he was murdered?” Jazz frowned, but didn’t look at her mother.

“It’s the only thing that makes sense, Jazz,” Maddie said. She explained her suspicions that Phantom had been made into a ghost by persons unknown; Jazz’s frown grew deeper. “I know that there are ethical issues involved in trying to identify who ghosts were before they died, especially young ghosts like Phantom, but if Phantom was murdered, then surely we should do everything we can to bring his killer to justice.”

“First of all, Mom,” Jazz said with a sigh, “you don’t know that Phantom was murdered. That’s just speculation in your part. And second —” here she gave Maddie a side-eye “— since when have you been concerned about the ethics of ghosts’ living identities?”

Inside, Maddie grimaced. Might as well bring it up. “I know about the article you wrote with Dr. Reitman, Jazz. The one about Ember and Technus.”

“Oh,” Jazz said, voice flat.

Maddie shifted in her seat so that she could look at Jazz better. Her daughter’s face was closed off, and she very pointedly did not move her gaze from the road.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this, Jazz?” Maddie asked. “A publication before college? That’s incredible!”

“Would you have thought that a month ago?”

Maddie opened her mouth to speak, then closed it. “Fair point,” she said, softly. After a moment, she added, “I’m very proud of you, Jazz, for sticking with your beliefs even when your father and I were telling you otherwise.”

Her daughter raised an eyebrow. “Bet you have a lot of experience with everyone telling you you’re wrong about ghosts, yeah?”

Maddie closed her eyes and exhaled. Of course. What a hypocrite she was. “I never made that connection, Jazz,” she said. “Your father and I have been doing the same thing to you that everyone else did to us. I’m so sorry, sweetie.”

“Thanks, Mom.” Jazz eyed her again, and Maddie saw relief in her face. “So you’re not mad? Because I was honestly expecting a lecture about all the ways I was wrong.”

“No, no lecture,” Maddie confirmed. “And — you’re right, Jazz, with the ethics of identification.” She sighed. “As you have been, all along.”

She didn’t miss the self-satisfied smirk that Jazz tried to hide. “Thanks, Mom,” her daughter said, again. “I’m glad you’re finally coming around.” Then, the mirth faded, and Jazz added, “I can’t help you with Phantom, Mom. I know far less about him than you think I do. And I have no idea where to even begin trying to identify who he was before he became a ghost, even though I guarantee people have tried. Including the GIW.” She made a face. “But, honestly, Mom, I don’t think trying to figure out who Phantom was should be your priority right now. It’s not going to help find where he is now.”

Right. It wouldn’t, and she couldn’t really spend time worrying about Phantom’s past when he and Danny were both still missing. She probably shouldn’t be making this trip, anyway, and Maddie almost told Jazz to turn around so she could help Jack with the tracking system. But they were only a little under an hour away from the library at Madison, and she did have an obligation to use this research to help the APPD.

Maddie glanced at the video of the Lunch Lady fight, still paused on her screen, then closed the file and shut her laptop off. There was something else more important than watching videos right now.

“So, Jazz,” Maddie said. “Can you tell me about your research with Dr. Reitman?”

***

The Gillian Lloyd Archive for Ectoscientific Research was founded in 1988 after the death of its namesake, the founder of modern ectoscience as an academic field. It was, unfortunately, less impressive than the title made it sound. Mostly, it was a repository for old notes and random documents that Maddie thought were more valuable for its historical import than actual ectoscientific research; the math she could find in her own research. But Maddie had visited it a few times — once at its inauguration, and the rest for some obscure research topic — and today, she was looking to the past for help.

“Just to review,” Jazz said as they got out of the car. “Dad thinks there’s an unpublished study from the early 1970s about overshadowing that will help us understand how proto-ghosts form, and we have to look through several years of disorganized archival material in order to find it, even though it might not actually exist.”

The way Jazz described it made the task sound a lot harder than she’d imagined. “Yes, that’s right,” Maddie said. “But remember, back in the 70s it was called ‘possession,’ not ‘overshadowing,’ so be on the lookout for that term, too.”

In the library, Maddie retrieved the cardboard box from the circulation desk, then followed Jazz to a table in the corner where they could talk quietly if needed. She set the box on the table and took off the lid. “Let’s see what we have here,” she said. Jazz peered into the box while Maddie started removing the material and setting them on the table. “Lab notebooks, article drafts, grant requests, loose-leaf paper…and Lloyd’s personal journals.” She looked at Jazz. “Where do you want to start?”

“I’ll start with the journals,” Jazz said, rifling through one. “This doesn’t look too heavy on the math.”

“Good idea, sweetie. And you know you can always ask me questions if you have them.” Maddie sat down and scooted her chair close to the table. “I’m going to look at the lab notebooks. The study your dad mentioned is probably in the notebooks or journals.”

Jazz nodded, and the two of them started reading.

The oldest of the yellowed notebooks in the box was from the middle of 1971, the year after Lloyd became a professor at Madison. Maddie gently flipped the notebook open to the first page to find lines upon lines of a cramped script detailing an experimental design for testing a carbon ectoisotope’s conductive capacity.

She remembered replicating a similar experiment under Lloyd’s tutelage during her first year of graduate school. It was a challenging experiment, mostly because creating ectoisotopes even into the mid-1980s was a difficult process. But modern ectotechnology had made that trivial.

Looking through more of Lloyd’s experiments, Maddie found herself dragged back into the memories of her time at Madison.

It was a wondrous moment, the first day of orientation, when she finally had the chance to meet Jack and Vlad in person. The three grad students knew each other as pen-pals through a paranormal studies zine they all subscribed to. They’d exchanged hundreds of letters between the three of them, and they’d coordinated getting into the same graduate program so they could work together. Prof. Lloyd agreed to take all three of them on as her students, despite the extra workload, simply because they were some of the only people interested in ectoscience as a science, along with her and her adviser, David Fleinhardt.

Rarely since then had Maddie felt the same exhilaration when it came to the discussions she had with Jack and Vlad. She remembered one late night conversation in their apartment where they intensely debated the existence of the Lake Winnebago Water Monster. Jack swore it existed, claiming he saw it on a fishing trip once; Vlad said it didn’t; and Maddie was on the fence. She’d left the two of them still arguing around three in the morning, unsure of what she thought about the monster’s existence, but just happy to be with other people willing to believe in the unknown.

Of course, it all came crashing down on the day of Vlad’s accident: one of them dropped out; the other two fighting to stay in their program; and one very upset faculty adviser. It was amazing Maddie and Jack were allowed to graduate at all. But the tribunal ruled that, while all three of them were lax in following safety standards, the fault landed on Vlad for getting too close to the portal in the first place.

“Mom,” Jazz said, pulling Maddie out of her reveries. “Sorry to bother you, but could you tell me — what was Dr. Lloyd like?”

Maddie bit her lip, thinking. “Strict,” she said after a moment. “She had high expectations of us and didn’t tolerate any nonsense. She didn’t like your father very much. But…she was an absolute genius, and incredibly dedicated to her work. It was especially challenging, you know, being a woman in physics in the 1970s. I don’t think I’ve met anyone more passionate about ectoscience than she was.”

Jazz nodded, as if that was what she expected. Then she asked, slowly: “Did she ever seem…paranoid to you?”

“Paranoid? No, I don’t think so. At least, not more than the usual amount as someone studying ghosts.” Maddie frowned. “Why do you ask?”

“Her journal is full of comments about how she felt she was being watched,” Jazz said. “At first, I thought it was the normal ghost hunter obsession with labeling every little thing a ghost, but — here.”

She handed Maddie a journal, flipped open to an entry from May 9th, 1972:

I’m convinced someone was following me tonight. I saw them as I left Steenbock around 9:15 in the evening. Just a glimpse, since they darted out of sight as soon as I turned to look. But I saw them twice more before I changed my route and took the bus home instead. I am terrified that 1966 has come back to haunt me, literally.

Maddie handed the journal back to Jazz. “What happened in 1966?”

“I don’t know,” Jazz said. “That’s the first time she’s mentioned the date. Her journals don’t go back that far.” She played with a strand of her hair. “It sounds like she was being stalked. Or haunted.”

“I think so, too. It sounds like it could be either.” Maddie stood up. “Hold on, I’ll be back in a few.”

At one of the computers, Maddie logged in with her guest account and pulled up Lloyd’s biography on the library’s website. It only mentioned 1966 once, stating that she left her post-doc at Princeton and moved back home to Duluth, Minnesota.

Maddie switched to a new tab and started typing various terms into the search engine, trying to find anything about Lloyd in 1966. She would have been in her early thirties, if Maddie remembered correctly. Maybe something happened with one of her children…but wait, did Lloyd ever mention having kids? Maddie wasn’t sure she ever married, either.

There was plenty about Princeton in the 1960s online, but not much she could find about Duluth. Maddie pulled up another website, then checked the time. Drat. 5:22 PM. The public library in Duluth was closed until the morning. Maddie tapped her fingers on the table for a moment, then scribbled the library’s number on a piece of paper and logged out of the computer.

“I couldn’t find anything online, but I’ll have to make a phone call in the morning,” Maddie said, sitting down. “Um…Jazz?”

Her daughter hadn’t acknowledged Maddie’s return, instead flipping through the pages of Lloyd’s journal and jotting dates down. Maddie poked her in the shoulder. “Jazz? What are you doing?”

“Oh!” Jazz jumped. “Sorry, I was writing down every mention I could find of Lloyd feeling like she was being watched, to see if there’s a pattern. What were you saying?”

Maddie filled her in on what she had — or hadn’t — found, then told Jazz about her plan to call the Duluth Public Library. “I’m going to look through the other documents to see if there’s a mention of 1966,” she finished.

“Sounds like a plan, Mom,” Jazz said. “Just don’t get too caught up in this 1966 thing. We don’t know if it’s related to the experiment Dad was talking about.”

“Right, right,” Maddie said, as Jazz went back to Lloyd’s journal.

But she couldn’t help the feeling that it was.

***

Later, in their hotel room, Maddie sat on the end of the bed while Jazz took a shower. She left a message with the Duluth Public Library, then called Jack.

“Maddie, hello!” her husband said. “How is the search going?”

“I’m not sure at the moment.” She didn’t bother asking about Danny; if something were to change on that front, she knew Jack would call her immediately. “We might have a lead, but neither of us has found anything definitive. You’re sure you don’t remember any specifics?”

She could hear Jack shake his head over the phone. “No, Lloyd never said when it happened. I only figured out the date range after several years working with her.”

“I just don’t understand why she never mentioned any of this to me,” Maddie said. “I remember distinctly asking her how overshadow— er, possession worked and all she ever said was that she didn’t know and didn’t care to.”

“Well….” Jack cleared his throat. “She didn’t bring it up in normal conversations, only when she was lecturing me about the follies of believing in the soul. Which I don’t…didn’t, but she seemed to think I did.”

Ah. That would explain it: like many who met him, Lloyd had never really respected Jack. Maddie could recall more than one time waiting for him outside of Lloyd’s closed office door, eavesdropping on the haranguing. But still, for her to only mention it when she was irate suggested there was more to the story than met the eye.

Maddie updated Jack on the rest of their day at the library and her hopes for tomorrow’s research. “I hope this isn’t a waste of time,” she concluded, then sighed. “It just seems like we keep hitting dead ends with everything.”

“I know, Mads. And I’m sorry if— hold on a second.”

Maddie waited to the sounds of Jack moving around on the other side of the phone.

“I’m back,” he said a moment later. “We just got a fax with no name on it. All it says is ‘Ecton decay’ followed by….” He trailed off.

“Followed by what, Jack?” Maddie’s heart rate spiked. An anonymous fax. Was it from Phantom? Did it mean that the boy was alright?

“Followed by a method for deriving the half-life of an ecton based a ghost’s normal ectoradiation signature and added ectoenergy.” There was a quiet awe to her husband’s voice that Maddie had rarely heard before. “Maddie, we’ve been trying to track Phantom using his normal ectosignature, but we completely forgot to take into account how the material he absorbed would change that.”

Maddie inhaled sharply. “And you think you can use this to track Phantom’s movements after the explosion?”

“Yes,” said Jack. “I’ll have to modify the algorithm for detecting ectoradiation on the city’s ghost surveillance array, and make changes to….Maddie, I’ve got to go work on this. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Love you! Bye!”

He hung up before Maddie could get another word in.

Maddie just sighed and closed her phone with a small smile on her face. She was glad to hear her husband’s enthusiasm for this project, even if it came at the expense of his manners. And if it helped them find Phantom, well, that would solve one major mystery.

But the smile faded from Maddie’s face as she considered the fax. She grabbed her notebook on Phantom and opened it to where she’d recorded his other faxes. As she read over the past messages, doubt started to creep into her thoughts. The math seemed particularly advanced, if it had impressed Jack that much. Did Phantom really know that much about ectoscience to have come up with this all on his own?

Had Phantom really sent her all of these messages? The first two — the ones where they’d arranged the meetings at the park — were definitely from him, complete with his name at the bottom. But the others? The one addressed to Jack about the ecton emitter, the one warning them about the GIW, this one. They didn’t read like the two from Phantom.

But if they weren’t from Phantom, who were they from?

And why had it taken her until now to question their origin?

With a groan, Maddie flopped back on the bed and ran her hands down her face. When did her life become so embroiled in secrets and lies? First Danny’s, then her own, and now this mysterious tipster’s.

She lay on the bed for a moment longer until the thoughts of ectoradiation and Danny combined in her mind, and Maddie remembered Danny’s astrophysics book that she’d never finished reading, or even really started, for that matter.

If Phantom hadn’t sent the faxes — if Phantom didn’t know as much about ectoscience as she thought he did — then maybe his suggestion to look at stellar astrophysics for inspiration about ectogenesis was a red herring. But then again…maybe not.

The sound of the shower cut off. Jazz was finished; it was Maddie’s turn next, and then an early bed for an early morning. She wouldn’t have too much time to read, but, at the very least, she could try to make some progress.

***

“Mom, what’s a ‘walk-in’?” Jazz asked.

“What’s a what?” Maddie looked up from the lab notebook she was reading. “Let me see the context.”

Jazz handed Maddie the second volume of Lloyd’s journals, opened to a passage from March 22nd, 1973.

It was mid-morning on Tuesday, and neither of them had found anything about overshadowing — or much else — that could help them. Nor had Maddie heard back from the Duluth Public Library yet.

But what they did have was written testimony to the fact that Gillian Lloyd had almost certainly been haunted.

The ectoscientist herself was convinced of it, and Maddie was inclined to agree. There were ample reportings in her journals about a shadowed figure she saw constantly around the UW campus, especially in her building. It was accompanied by other typical paranormal phenomena: erratic lights, objects disappearing, disembodied voices, orbs. Lloyd started to refuse to be on her floor alone after dark; there was a detailed schedule of people who agreed to stay with her on certain nights.

Of course — as Jazz constantly reminded her mother — this all came from Lloyd’s own reporting. Who knew how accurate Lloyd’s recollection was? Without being able to test any of the phenomena herself, Maddie had no way to confirm that this wasn’t just all in Lloyd’s head — an effect of stress, suggestion, or, perhaps, carbon monoxide poisoning.

But Lloyd was an ectoscientist working with the founder of their field, David Fleinhardt, so it had to account for something.

They still didn’t know what happened in 1966, though.

The passage Jazz was asking about might offer some answers, Maddie thought as she read it.

David told me he spoke on the telephone with a self-reported walk-in today who wants to consult with me. They want to know if I can confirm their status, though I do not know why they asked for me specifically. I am skeptical about this person’s claims, but David’s experience in this matter is something I have to consider. If this is an actual case of a walk-in, though, it may change the way we think about death and the afterlife. Either way, I told David I would have Judith arrange a telephone call with this person.

Maddie felt a chill run down her spine. She handed the journal back to Jazz.

“A walk-in is a paranormalist term for when someone dies and another soul takes over their body,” Maddie said. “They ‘walk’ into the body, so to speak, and pilot it around.” She shook her head. “I haven’t thought about concept that in years, probably. It’s not something we take seriously in ectoscience. A ghost can only temporarily control a live body. The lack of complexity in ectoplasm means they can’t mimic the human brain adequately enough.”

Jazz was silent; Maddie could practically see the gears turning in her head as her daughter thought. Then, she looked Maddie in the eye and said: “That’s what you believed before you died. What about now?”

“I….” She swallowed. “I don’t know, Jazz. My experience seems to fly in the face of everything we know about ectoplasm and ghosts, but…I can’t discount that it happened.” Maddie rapped her knuckles across the table. “There’s something we’re missing, Jazz. Something about ectoplasm and consciousness. I don’t know if it means that something metaphysical like the soul does exist or if we’re wrong, somehow, about ectoplasm.”

Then Jazz said: “Do they have the original study in the Archive? The one that you said proved ectoplasm can’t support consciousness?”

Maddie looked at Jazz in astonishment. Why didn’t she think of that? “They probably do. Great idea, Jazz. Let me go check.”

She started to stand up, but before she could, Jazz said, “Mom…you’re not a walk-in, are you?”

Maddie almost laughed, but the look on Jazz’s face stopped her. “No, sweetie, I’m not,” she said, reaching across the table to take her daughter’s hand. “Walk-ins — whether real or not — are characterized by amnesia and extreme personality changes. And I’m still me, right?”

Jazz visibly relaxed. “Yes, you’re still my mother, for better or worse. And I’m glad I don’t have to worry about any walk-ins in my family.”

No, she didn’t, and Maddie was grateful for that. She hadn’t considered what might have happened if — provided walk-ins were real — something else had taken her place. What would Jack do if that were the case?

That was a question for another time, though, and Maddie didn’t have much to spare right now. She left Jazz to continue reading Lloyd’s journal and made her way to the computer station. She wiggled the mouse to wake it up, then pulled the keyboard out to log in.

Her phone rang.

Heart pounding, Maddie dashed out into the hallway, then pulled her phone out and flipped it open. “Hello, this is Maddie Fenton.”

“Hi, Mrs. Fenton, this is Carl with the Duluth Public Library. I got your message from last night about Gillian Lloyd in 1966. I was able to find two obituaries mentioning her.”

“Oh, that’s fantastic!” Maddie said, only to realize she sounded far too excited for the words “two obituaries.” She toned it down. “Thank you very much. Can you tell me who they’re for?”

“The first one, from April 12th, is for her mother, Deirdre Lloyd,” Carl said. “It says she died from complications from pneumonia. The second one — September 2nd — is for her brother, Waylon Lloyd. It doesn’t list his cause of death.”

“Thank you so much, Carl,” Maddie said. “Is there any way I could get copies of the obituaries?”

“Sure, I can email you….”

Maddie exchanged emails with Carl, thanked him again, then hung up. Well, two deaths in the family could certainly be reason to move back home. But was that all? Why would Lloyd write that 1966 was “haunting” her?

Maddie returned to the computer and logged in, then printed the obituaries Carl sent her and started trawling the Lloyd Archive’s finding aid until she located the study she was looking for. A few minutes later, obituaries and study in hand, she turned back to the corner table she shared with her daughter and found Jazz wiping tears from her eyes.

“Jazz, sweetie, what’s wrong?” Maddie said, rushing to her daughter’s side. “Is everything alright?”

The look Jazz gave her said no, everything is not alright, but Jazz merely handed her Lloyd’s journal, open to March 29th, 1973. A week after Lloyd mentioned the walk-in.

I spoke with Craig on the telephone today. I began with the usual questions, but he interrupted me and said, “Gilly, it’s Waylon. I woke up in this body several months ago and I don’t know what happened.” I almost ended the call but instead began asking him questions that only my brother would know. He answered most correctly but some he did not. Then I asked him if he remembered what happened on September 2nd. He said, “You and I were moving Mother’s things out of her house when the sky went dark, even though it was midday. My hair stood on end and there was a flash like lightning but without clouds. We ran back into the house and found a glowing figure standing in the hallway. Behind it was a green whirlpool of light but it was in midair. It yelled your name and lunged at you, but I pushed you out of the way. It laughed and threw something at me. I hit my head on the wall and everything went dark. I remembered nothing until I woke up in December and found that seven years had passed.”

I did not want to relive the ghost attack that killed my brother, but I could not deny that Craig knew details of my brother’s death that no one else could know. I agreed to meet with Craig in person in two weeks. He did not remark that it is the anniversary of my mother’s death.

I feel the grief at their deaths threatening to overcome me again. I will cancel my lecture tomorrow and visit Janine at the arboretum. It has been too long since I have seen her.

Maddie finished reading the passage, then looked at her daughter. Jazz had finished drying her eyes, and although there was some redness left, she had recovered from her tears.

“Watching my brother die is one of my worst nightmares,” Jazz said softly, and the way her voice quavered made Maddie revise her judgment that Jazz was recovered from crying; she just held it back well. “I don’t want to imagine life without Danny if he doesn’t come back.”

Maddie opened her mouth to speak, to offer some words of empty comfort to her daughter, but Jazz sniffed and said, “Um. Did you find the study?” and Maddie knew from experience that Jazz wanted to move on from her vulnerability.

“I did, and I got the call back from the library in Duluth,” she said. “But…you already know everything I know.” Maddie slid the obituaries over to Jazz, who glanced at them briefly and nodded. "What happened at the meeting between Lloyd and Craig?”

Jazz shook her head. “I haven’t read that far yet,” she said.

“Okay,” said Maddie. “Are you okay to keep reading the journal?” She would have gladly taken over the duty from her daughter, but she was also the only one of the two of them who could read advanced mathematics and biophysics.

“Yeah, I think so, but um, I’m going to take a break first.” Jazz stood up from the table and left.

Maddie sat there for a moment. How worried should she be about Jazz? This was the first time that she’d seen her daughter crack since their conversation at the police station. Was Jazz really holding up that well, or was she hiding it from Maddie? She sighed. If she dwelled on this too much, she wouldn’t get anything done, so Maddie pushed her overwhelming concern for Jazz to the same place she kept her worries about Danny in check — for now, at least — and turned to Lloyd’s study.

It had been over two decades since she’d read the exact text of the study, but the results were intimately familiar to Maddie as an expert in both ectobiology and molecular biology: there were no cellular structures in ectoplasm that resembled neurons or their component parts. Although Maddie had replicated the results many times, Lloyd’s experiment was the first systematic study of the inner structure and conductivity of ectoplasm to determine it lacked the complexity to support consciousness. There simply wasn’t enough electrical potential to match that of brain activity.

Maddie took her time reading through the study, double checking the methodology and triple checking the mathematics, and was so intense in her review that she barely noticed when Jazz returned. Then she read through it a second time, and a third time, and frowned.

Something was nagging in the back of her mind, and she couldn’t tell what it was. There was the obvious flaw in Lloyd’s study that Maddie had been suspecting for weeks now — that it was materialist and left no room for any concept of the soul or similar analogs — but that wasn’t it. She chewed on her lip for a moment, then flipped back to the first page and read the study again — this time, focusing not on the validity of the study itself, but on everything else.

The study was published in the precursor to Ectoscience in the winter edition of 1977; Maddie didn’t know if it was peer-reviewed or not. Lloyd was the sole author, though she thanked Fleinhardt for his assistance in gathering data. Maddie wasn’t surprised to see that Lloyd wasn’t sponsored for this article, since very few people at the time were willing to fund ectoscience research. There were eleven sources — three of which Maddie recognized — and six footnotes.

Nothing there seemed to be off. What else was there?

It was probably her ninth or tenth read-through that Maddie finally caught what was bothering her; her heart plunged a dozen stories in her chest.

The data was collected on April 15th, 1973. Three days after Lloyd met with Craig, the supposed walk-in.

Maddie pulled one of Lloyd’s notebooks out of the archival box and opened it to the 30th. She’d read this one already, but nothing about it stood out initially; she didn’t realize it was from the study.

There, towards the top: “Data collected from a ghost captured on April 12th, 1973.”

Oh, no.

“Jazz,” she croaked, throat dry. “Have you read Lloyd’s meeting on with the man claiming to be her brother yet?”

But she needn’t have asked; the pallor of her daughter’s face was louder than when Jazz said, “I’m reading it right now.”

Maddie inhaled; Jazz continued: “It’s…bad, Mom. Really bad.”

***

May 6th, 1973

It has been almost a month since I met with “Craig.” The fright that has gripped me prevented me from documenting what happened, but with Janine’s help and a few shots of whiskey, I am finally writing this entry.

I met with “Craig” in my office in Steenbock at 4:00 PM on April 12th. David agreed to join me, though “Craig” was not happy with this. I began by asking “Craig” what happened and he repeated the story that he woke up in this body in late December in a hospital here in Madison. He said he remembered his name as Waylon Lloyd and that he had a sister in Duluth, Minnesota. The name on his identification was Craig Alles and he was told by the nurses that he was a transient who overdosed on an unknown drug earlier in the day. He coded twice before regaining consciousness. After leaving the emergency room, he spent the next several months attempting to get in contact with me. Judith has been refusing his telephone messages. I have thanked her profusely for this.

As before, I asked him questions that only my brother should know and he again answered most correctly but not all. I changed to asking him what he remembered between the day my brother died and when he woke up in December. He reported that he remembered a world of bright green like the whirlpool on the day of my brother’s death. He called it a “zone of ghosts” full of strange geometry and floating doors. He said that it is where some people end up after they die and speculated that his proximity to the whirlpool led him there. I questioned him heavily about this while David took notes.

I was uncertain about his claim to be my brother and asked him why he had sought me. He said, “You’re my sister, Gilly, and I don’t know what else to do.” I said to him that I did not know whether or not to believe him because he had answered several questions wrong. He grew irate and said that he shouldn’t be expected to remember everything considering what he had been through. David suggested that we take a break and I agreed but “Craig” refused to leave my office.

At this point the hair on my arms stood on end and the temperature dropped. I shouted at David to leave but the door closed of its own volition and David could not pull it open. “Craig’s” eyes then began to glow bright green and the light became distorted. The papers and objects in my office started moving in a typical poltergeist manner. “Craig” then shouted something I could not hear over the chaos and another whirlpool opened in my office exactly like the one on the day my brother died. I do not fully trust my memory of this moment but I thought I saw the same spirit from that day in place of “Craig’s” body. It was tall and devilish with many horns and a spindly body. It lunged for me but I ducked under my desk while it hit at the wood with its hands. While under my desk, I saw the electric stun weapon prototype that David’s student had left in my room last week and it reminded me of how the spirit was frightened by my mother’s cattle prod in 1966. Thankfully it was still plugged in. I grabbed it and turned it on and waited until the spirit had broken my desk to stab it with the weapon. The spirit collapsed and the phenomena immediately stopped though it left ectoplasm covering everything in my office.

David and I discussed what to do with the body when we realized that “Craig” was still breathing. We took him to David’s office where he used his modified Geiger counter and found that “Craig” was giving off similar radiation to other ectoentities we have encountered. It was different from the radiation in my office however. We came to the conclusion that the spirit was still possessing “Craig” and I suggested that we take samples of his hair, skin, and blood for further research. After some discussion David agreed and I collected the samples along with samples from the ectoplasm in my office.

While I was storing the samples downstairs, “Craig” apparently woke up and the phenomena started up again. David threatened the spirit with the weapon and it abandoned the body and fled into another whirlpool. David’s device was recording during this but then showed normal radiation after the spirit left. “Craig” was unconscious and we could not rouse him, so David contacted campus security and told them we were meeting with him when he became violent and passed out. I do not know what has become of the body or if it is still alive since the police will not give us details.

David and I later performed multiple experiments on the samples I collected before they could go bad. We have discussed these at great length but so far have reached no formal conclusions.

However I have concluded that the spirit in Craig Alles’s body was not my brother Waylon’s but in fact some kind of malevolent spirit that wanted its revenge after I dispatched it with my mother’s cattle prod. I do not know why it came after me in the first place, but I am frightened by the fact that it knew so much about me and Waylon. At least I know how it knew the details of his death, since it was the one that murdered him.

The speak of a “zone of ghosts” does not align with other reports of near death experiences and resuscitations, so I do not know what to make of this. I am quite interested in the two whirlpools I have seen now and the fact that it appears to be a doorway of some sort. Maybe it is Hell and ectoentities are demons. I do not know but I can only conclude that the spirit is not human soul and likely never was.

Both my memories and the alcohol are making it difficult to continue, but I am glad that I have managed to get this much down. I am taking comfort in the fact that my brother’s spirit is passed and not stuck in another man’s body.

***

Maddie set the journal down and buried her face in her hands.

She could count on her fingers the number of confirmed murders at the hands of ghosts in the last seventy years; she’d personally confirmed four of them. It wasn’t that ghost attacks didn’t result in deaths — they did, but they were rare, and the majority were indirectly caused by injuries from infrastructural damage or heart attacks. Very few ghosts seemed to want to actually kill people.

In her years at Madison, Lloyd never mentioned any ghost attack, and Maddie doubted that the woman had been attacked while she and Jack were students. It was quite possible that this ghost never resurfaced. At least, not around Lloyd.

Maddie stowed away those thoughts, and the ones about the fact that the ghost appeared to be able to open its own portals, and took a deep breath before looking at Jazz.

“So,” she said.

“So.”

Maddie took another shaky breath. “I wasn’t expecting that outcome.”

“Me neither.”

Her daughter was waiting for her to make the first analysis of the entry, apparently. “It seems like…” Maddie began, then swallowed, “…like Lloyd’s disbelief in human souls was strengthened after this encounter with a malevolent ghost. We know now, of course, that ghosts of people can end up violent and dangerous like that one, so it’s possible that what Lloyd encountered was the ghost of someone who died.” She rubbed at her eyes. “I’m guessing this is what she was referencing in those lectures at your father. But I don’t know what it tells us about overshadowing.”

“Well, it tells us Lloyd was human,” Jazz said. “And that she was capable of making conclusions based on preconceived notions and biased thinking” — Maddie guessed she wasn’t just talking about Lloyd — “Did you realize that she never concluded that consciousness wasn’t possible in ectoentities? Only that the biological structures in animal brain matter aren’t noticeable in ectoplasm?”

Maddie raised an eyebrow at Jazz, not sure where her daughter was going. Jazz continued: “Mom, did you come to your own conclusions about ectoplasm and consciousness, or did you follow what Lloyd taught you?”

“What are you saying, Jazz?”

Jazz shrugged. “I’m saying that you fell victim to authority bias. From what I’ve gathered, Lloyd drew false conclusions from the evidence and Fleinhardt found about consciousness in ghosts because her personal experience clouded her view. And because she was your adviser — and Dad’s — you believed her ideas and carried them over into your own research.” She rolled her eyes. “And then because you and Dad are egotistical zealots, you refused to see any other perspectives until you literally died.”

It was nothing Jazz hadn’t criticized her for before, but something about the added context of Lloyd’s own faults — the founder of ectoscience’s faults — that made Maddie sneer in disgust at herself.

“We really have been that ignorant, haven’t we?” she said. “Willfully ignorant, too.”

“Yep.”

Maddie gave herself another minute or so of self-hatred — which Jazz allowed her to indulge in without comment — then took a deep breath and exhaled. Again: she was the one who had hurt others through her refusal to see other perspectives, and she didn’t have the luxury of feeling bad for herself. Not when Danny and Phantom were still missing and someone was trying to murder her family.

“Okay,” Maddie said. “The point has been taken. Your father and I will have to reconsider some of the foundational tenets of ectoscience once we’re done fearing for our lives. But, for now…I think we have what we came here for.” She glanced at the clock. “It’s nearly 1:00 PM anyway. We need to get back to Amity Park soon. Let’s make copies of all of this so I can explain things to your dad when we get back.”

“Sounds like a plan, Mom,” Jazz said, standing up. “But first….” She wrapped her arms around Maddie and squeezed her tight. “I’m so proud of you for reconsidering all of this. I know it’s not easy to admit when you’re wrong about something. I love you, Mom.”

Maddie blinked the sudden tears from her eyes and squeezed her daughter back. “I love you too, Jazz,” she said. “And thank you. For what it’s worth, I’m glad I’m coming around, too.”

***

They didn’t speak much on the ride home; Maddie suspected Jazz was as emotionally exhausted as she was. But still, her head was wide awake, so Maddie opened Stellar Structure and Evolution and continued where she left off last night.

It was, admittedly, a fascinating subject, one that Maddie should have explored more with Danny when he was younger. Since stars emitted the majority of luminous material in the galaxy, they were vital to understanding how other galaxies were formed and how massive structures in space formed and interacted. But, at the same time — and to Maddie’s interest — stellar astronomy required knowledge of subatomic particles and how they interacted. Maybe, when Danny came home, they could visit the planetarium together.

But it wasn’t until Maddie was almost done with the book that she understood why Phantom had recommended she look into stellar astrophysics. She turned the page to Chapter 20: Star Formation and there, at the end of the second paragraph, written in Danny’s neat script, was the word “ghosts?” in blue pen.

Maddie’s breath caught in her throat.

The word was written next to the line, “It thus appears that new stars may be born in regions of high density interstellar material.” Maddie skimmed the first paragraph, seeing only an explanation for how astrophysicists reached their conclusion about star formation. She flipped to the next page.

Danny had written two comments here, one that read “ghosts form in ectoplasm-rich environments” and another: “what causes ectoplasmic instability?”

The book explained that stars formed out of clouds of dense interstellar material — a mix of gas and dust called the interstellar medium. When the gravitational force of the interstellar medium contracted enough to overcome the gas pressure pushing the cloud apart, it could collapse into a star.

Heart pounding and head buzzing with the implications, Maddie skimmed the rest of the book for other annotations by Danny. It seemed that was it, though, until she flipped to the inside of the back cover and found that — in seven short bullet points — her son had answered the questions she’d been asking before she even had them.

Immediately, Maddie called her husband.

“Jack,” she said without preamble, “listen to this.”

Ghosts form in ecton-rich environments) (the Zone’s equivalent of interstellar medium

Something disturbs the ecto-equilibrium and it contracts into a ghost

Either a Earth-based ghost or a Zone-based ghost

Like different kinds of stars?

Probably the soul or consciousness or mind or whatever

(It definitely exists even if Mom and Dad don’t believe it)

Probably how lairs work too

She finished to empty silence, but couldn’t keep her excitement in. “Jack, Danny wrote that.”

“Danny wrote what? Mads, what is this?”

“It’s in the back of his stellar astrophysics book,” she said. “Jack, Danny just theorized that ghosts form in the same process that stars do.”

“You’re kidding me.”

Maddie shook her head, even though Jack couldn’t see it. “No, I’m not. Jack, I’ve read almost all of Danny’s textbook and — Jack, I think he’s right. Our son’s a genius.”

“Of course he is, Mads. Danny’s a Fenton!” Through the excitement in Jack’s voice, though, Maddie could still hear a bit of confusion. “What’s a lair?”

“A lair?” In her rush to call Jack, she’d ignored the last line. “I don’t know. Do you think it’s a ghost thing?”

Jazz spoke: “Put me on speaker.”

Maddie sent Jazz a questioning look, but Jazz just nodded at the phone and went back to driving.

“Jazz has something to say, Jack. I’m putting her on speaker.”

“Jazz! Hello!”

“Hi, Dad,” Jazz said. “A lair is a ghost’s home in the Ghost Zone. It’s a pocket dimension that manifests itself according to a ghost’s memories. They have some control over it, but it’s mostly autonomous.”

Silence.

“Jazz,” Maddie said, slowly. “How do you know this?”

Jazz’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. “Phantom told me.”

“What?!” shouted both of the Fentons.

“Like that should come as a surprise to you at this point,” Jazz said, then sighed. “Yes, I’ve talked to Phantom about the Ghost Zone and how it works.”

“And were you ever going to tell us this?” Jack asked.

“It wasn’t relevant until now, Dad.”

“How much do you know about Phantom and the Ghost Zone, Jazz?” Maddie said.

Jazz pursed her lips. “More than you expect, but less than you think. Look, Mom, Dad, I’m treading a very fine line between respecting Phantom’s right to confidentiality and giving you information that I think will help you!”

Of course Jazz would think a ghost had a right to confidentiality. She was probably right. Maddie didn’t like it, and she knew Jack didn’t either, but if Jazz wasn’t going to spill the beans about Danny’s, then she certainly wasn’t going to tell them anything about Phantom.

“Alright, fine,” Maddie said. “Anything else you can tell us about ectogenesis?”

Jazz shook her head. “What Danny had written in his book was news to me. I don’t know anything more about how ghosts form than you do. I’m not a physicist.”

“We’ll have to look into this more once I’m home, Jack,” Maddie said, turning her attention to back to her husband. “I really think there could be something to this.”

“Agreed, Maddie. But changing the subject back to the Ghost Zone….I was just going to call you, actually. Phantom’s there.”

Now it was Jazz’s turn to add her “What?!” to her mother’s shout. “How do you know this?” Maddie added.

“Exactly like I said last night, Mads. I made some changes to the surveillance algorithm according to that fax, and bam! There it was, a path leading directly from the Torrance to Fenton Works that tracked exactly with the suggestion from the fax. I don’t think it could be anything other than Phantom, and he’s definitely not in the house, so he has to have used the portal.”

Jack went on to explain, in detail, the process behind figuring everything out, so Maddie turned the speaker off. It was the ghost meters all over again: the data was recorded, but since it was outside of the range meant to alert them, they had to specifically look for it — though, this time, Jack had to run it through a different algorithm before the data points were significant enough to observe.

Jazz, she noticed as her husband rambled on, was sniffing back tears with a relief that Maddie shared.

They knew where Phantom was. Sort of. It wasn’t the ideal resolution to that particular mystery, but it was better than nothing. And if they could somehow get in contact with him, then they might be able to find and bring home Danny.

“Jack, we—” Maddie started, but Jack interrupted her.

“Is the speaker off now?”

“Yes, Jack,” she said. There was something to Jack’s tone that made her nervous.

“Good. I don’t want Jazz hearing this because she’ll probably try to divert the topic.”

Maddie glanced at her daughter, but Jazz didn’t seem to be eavesdropping on the conversation. “We’re okay on that front. What’s up?” she asked, casually.

“I found out who added that script to hide Phantom’s ectosignature. It was Tucker.”

The blood drained from Maddie’s face. “Explain, please.”

“I managed to figure out when it was added to the computer and correlated that with access logs to the Ops Center.” Jack sighed. “He was with Danny, Mads. Sam too.”

“But Jack, that means….” She trailed off, not wanting to alert Jazz.

“That Danny and his friends have been trying to keep us from finding Phantom? Yeah, I think so.” He went on, following the same train of thought Maddie had: “Maddie, with what we know about Phantom’s access to Fenton Works — how we’ve never caught him at the portal even though he has to be emptying his Thermos somehow — what are the chances that Danny, Tucker, and Sam, and probably Jazz, too, have actively been working with Phantom under our noses this entire time?”

Maddie gave one more glance at Jazz, and caught her quickly looking away. How much of that had her daughter heard? “I think they’re very high, Jack.”

Chapter Text

Just after 2:30 AM on Wednesday morning, Maddie pulled the GAV into the Torrance’s front parking lot, said goodbye to her husband, and hopped out of the vehicle. Sam and Tucker followed suit, coming to join Maddie by the closed driver’s door.

“This is probably your last chance to back out,” Maddie said. “It’s okay if you do. I can do this alone if needed.”

Both teens shook their heads. “If this helps us find Danny…or Phantom, or put a stop to this bomber,” Sam said, “we’re in.”

“Yeah,” Tucker agreed. “And this is like, a three out of ten on the danger scale from what we’re used to.”

“I think a two.”

“Two and a half.”

Was the danger they referred to just general Amity Park ghost attacks, or something more specific? Maddie had to wonder. But she didn’t bring it up — there would be a time and a place for that, she and Jack had decided, and it was after they dealt with Reitman’s proto-ghost.

Besides, it was probably part of this secret of Danny’s they would reveal tomorrow. She could wait. Barely.

“Well, I am glad to have backup,” Maddie said, flashing them a brief smile. She gave them a quick once-over, pulled down her goggles, and together, the three of them made their way to the back entrance.

They all wore jumpsuits modified from Jack’s, and Tucker and Sam wore spare pairs of Maddie’s goggles. It was important they looked the part, too.

Maddie felt the sweat bead on her face as they rounded the corner. If the APPD followed the same pattern they had the past two nights, they should only be dealing with one officer, probably a rookie, guarding the site of the explosion. Their whole plan hinged on the fact that the APPD was too short-staffed to send more than one person and the GIW too indifferent to care.

Well, that, and the fact that very few people in Amity Park had much of a clue what the Fentons actually did.

It seemed Sam’s reconnaissance paid off, though, because only one officer alerted to their presence. “Halt!” he said. “Identify yourselves!”

Here goes nothing, Maddie thought. “Hello, officer!” she said with as much nonchalance as she could muster. “It’s Dr. Madeline Fenton? Of Fenton Works? I’m here about the ghost that needs to be exorcized.”

At the word “ghost,” the young officer tensed, but Maddie pretended to ignore it. Excellent.

“I’m going to need to see some ID,” he said.

“Sure thing, Officer” — she glanced at his badge — “Franklin!” Maddie proffered her ghost hunting permit from the mayor, and the officer took it, inspecting the card with his flashlight.

“Okay,” he said, handing it back. “But who are these two?”

“Oh, these are my assistants, Tucker Foley and Samantha Manson!” The teens agreed to use their real names to make things less suspicious; if they were caught in a lie, it could make things worse.

Both Sam and Tucker waved, and Tucker added, “Hi, Officer Franklin!”

But Franklin wasn’t buying it, yet. “Aren’t you two a little young to be ghost hunters?”

“If anything, we’re too old,” Sam said with a shrug. “Ghosts are more likely to come out around young kids, since they’re less afraid.”

“Mmm.” The officer didn’t say anything, but under the light of the sodium lamp, Maddie thought she saw a flicker of worry cross his face. Oh, goodie. She jumped on the opportunity.

“Do you have kids, Officer Franklin?” she asked, letting concern slip into her voice.

“Uh, yeah,” he said. “Two of them.” His eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask?”

Maddie lifted her goggles; eye contact would probably make her seem more sympathetic. “Did you do the proper preparations before coming here?”

“Preparations?”

“Oh, dear,” Maddie gasped, placing a hand on her chest; the teens followed her lead and startled. “They didn’t prepare you for this post? Quick, Sam, give him some salt and rosemary!”

In one swift move, Sam pulled her backpack off, swung it around, and came to kneel on the ground. She unzipped one of the outer pockets and pulled out a tiny envelope they’d filled with table salt and rosemary from the Mansons’ greenhouse. Sam popped back up and practically shoved the packet into Franklin’s hands. “Sprinkle some around you once we leave. Surrounding yourself with salt and rosemary is a good way to stop a ghost from following you home,” she said, absolutely seriously.

Franklin glanced down at the envelope, then back at Maddie, conflict writ large across his face. “Follow me?” he asked. “But I thought you said you were here to get rid of a ghost?”

“Of course we are,” she said, quickly. “But that doesn’t mean that spirits watching from the other side of the veil won’t decide to come after you later. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we need to get set up before the witching hour starts.” Maddie tried to brush past him, but Franklin stopped her with a hand to the chest.

“Wait a minute, Dr. Fenton,” he said. “I wasn’t informed that anyone was exorcizing a ghost tonight.”

Maddie made a sound of disgust. “They didn’t tell you we were coming?”

“Typical Guys in White,” Tucker added. “Of course they ‘forgot’ to tell the APPD about us.” He put air quotes around the word “forgot.”

Inwardly, Maddie cringed; bad-mouthing the GIW would get them in serious trouble if tonight’s escapades were to get out. She wanted to avoid that at all costs.

But the comment seemed to work, because Franklin scowled, and Maddie thanked Tucker’s genius for playing on the strife between the two organizations. “Oh, them. They sent you? Don’t they have their own team to deal with this?”

“Of course they do. But between you and me,” Maddie said, then leaned in and spoke, sotto voce, as if she were trying to keep her statement from the teens, “they haven’t been doing a very good job with this whole fiasco. My team has spent all of our time cleaning up the mess they’ve left behind.” She decided to take a risk and sniffled, once, though she didn’t have to fake the emotion in her voice when she added: “I haven’t even been able to search for my son with all this extra work!”

“Oh, right. Your son is missing,” Franklin said, though he seemed uncertain of how to proceed with an emotional mother.

Sam stepped in and laid a hand on Maddie’s arm. “Careful, Dr. Fenton,” she said, “keep the emotions down. Don’t draw the ghosts,” and Officer Franklin looked more startled.

A good reminder, even if they weren’t making up things on the spot. But the lie had worked to spook Franklin. The girl was good at this social engineering thing.

“Right, thank you, Samantha,” Maddie said with another sniffle. She made a big show of inhaling and exhaling, then stood up straighter. “I’m sorry, Officer Franklin. It’s just been…quite a lot, recently.” Not a lie. “I hope you never have to go through the experience of losing a child.” She cleared her throat. “Now, we really do need to get going. The witching hour starts in twenty minutes and we need to get ready.”

“Hang on, Dr. Fenton,” Franklin said, even though he looked like he wanted to be anywhere but in this conversation. “I need to call my supervisor and confirm with him that you’re supposed to be here.”

Darn it! Maddie almost screamed in frustration. Instead, she smiled thinly and gestured for him to go ahead and call.

This was the trickiest part of the con, and also the most explicitly illegal. If Jack and Tucker hadn’t gotten the signal jammer to work perfectly, or if Franklin was too suspicious….

But when Franklin finished his message and waited for a response, there was nothing but static. He looked at Maddie and opened his mouth—

“Oh no,” Tucker said. He started fiddling around on his PDA, where Maddie knew he had a graph with its memory usage already pulled up. “Dr. Fenton, the ghost is getting close!” He glanced at Franklin’s befuddled panic, and added, quickly: “Radio interference is a strong indicator that a ghost is nearby.”

“Quick, Officer Franklin,” Maddie said, grabbing his arm and pointing at the end of the sidewalk. “Go sit on the asphalt and face the moon — there, just beyond the trees — make sure no straight lines are pointing at you from the hotel — sprinkle the salt and rosemary around you — and try your best not to think about ghosts. You do not want one following you home! Go! Go! Kids, come on!”

She pushed Franklin in the direction she pointed, then hustled off before Franklin could ask any more questions. Sam and Tucker followed her to the door she’d entered the last time — its window broken — and Maddie yanked it open. Just before she ducked inside, she looked back at Officer Franklin, who was frantically spreading the salt and rosemary mix in a circle around him. She watched long enough to see him turn his back on them, sit down, and stare at the moon, just like she’d said. With any luck, he’d stay that way the entire time.

Maddie let the door close behind her and turned to find Tucker and Sam grinning wildly. “It actually worked!” Sam said, and she and Tucker gave each other a quiet high five.

Maddie started to smile back, but then the scent of burnt ectoplasm registered, and she was ripped back to Thursday night.

Phantom stood — no, floated — by the catering tables, almost where she had been a moment ago, his back to her. His arms were outstretched to the side, and his hands were splayed. He was surrounded by a glowing green sphere of ectoenergy, a shield Maddie had seen him use to protect himself many times, but now it crackled.

“Hey, Mrs. F., you okay?”

It hurt Maddie’s eyes to watch, but she stared, immobile, as Phantom slowly drew his arms inward, clenching his hands into fists as he went. Green lightning flashed like a summer thunderstorm, growing in strength as the shield shrank, until Phantom was all but invisible inside.

“Whoa, Mrs. Fenton, let’s sit down, alright?”

Finally, with a flash of white, it vanished.

The room plunged into darkness, and Maddie couldn’t make anything out — until there was a new spark of green light: electricity arcing around Phantom, illuminating his hunched shoulders and clenched fists.

Maddie blinked and found herself leaning against the wall and grabbing onto the railing for the exit’s ramp. She was breathing heavily and it felt like ice had dropped into her limbs.

Sam had one arm around her; Tucker was offering her a water bottle. She sank the rest of the way to the floor with Sam’s help, then took the bottle from Tucker and chugged half of it.

“I’m okay,” she said, woozily waving them off. “Just…need a moment.”

The teens exchanged worried glances. “Are you sure, Mrs. F.?” Tucker asked. “Do we need to get Mr. Fenton?”

“We know the signs of a trauma response, Mrs. Fenton,” Sam added. “This isn’t worth the risk if it’s going to trigger you.”

Maddie shook her head. “No, I’m okay,” she said. She forced herself to run through the memory of that night — from the initial bomb all the way to when someone pulled her out of the room — and took a shaky breath. “I’m okay,” she repeated. “I just…didn’t adequately prepare myself.” With effort, she hauled herself to her feet, then waved the teens off again. “This isn’t the first time I’ve dealt with something like this. I can do it.”

It was only a partial lie, but — by the look they gave each other — Sam and Tucker believed it less than she did. But they didn’t question her further, and Maddie led them deeper into the darkened hotel.

“Jack, do you copy?” she said, activating her Fenton Phones now that the signal jammer was off.

“Roger that, Maddie,” he responded. “You okay?”

Her husband could tell something was off, and she loved him for that, but now was not the time. “Affirmative, Jack,” she said. “Just needed a moment.”

“Okay,” Jack said, skeptically. “Just let me know if you need help and I’ll come running!”

Maddie smiled, just a bit. She fully believed he’d give it his best shot, but the fact that Jack couldn’t run with his injured leg was the leading reason why he was sitting in the GAV and not here with her. If this went sour and they needed to run, fast — whether from a ghost or the GIW — Jack’s injury would slow him down. But they needed someone to monitor various feeds in the GAV, and Jazz home in case Danny called, so it worked out, even if her husband was disappointed to miss out on the action.

The three of them trudged up the stairwell with nary a word, but without the AC on to provide white noise — the power was turned off in the building — their footsteps echoed around them, creating the illusion that Maddie, Tucker, and Sam were not alone.

Maybe they weren’t. Maddie didn’t know the rules for proto-ghosts. Reitman could be in the stairwell with them, right now, though Maddie couldn’t see anything unusual in her infrared goggles.

Maddie pushed open the fire door at the second-floor landing and shined her light into the hallway. She steeled herself, then swung the lamp to the left, where the conference room was.

The hallway almost looked normal at first glance, but then Maddie began to pick up on the little details. The doors were left wide open, but the light picked out little pockmarks where shrapnel had splashed against them; one door seemed to have broken off a hinge. Dust covering the carpet was filled by footprints — boots, mostly, by the size of them. A strand of caution tape had fallen from where it blocked off the entrance and was draped across the floor like a deflated snake.

The air was entirely still. No wind made it inside.

“Alright, the coast is clear,” Maddie said, leading Sam and Tucker into the hallway. The silence made her hush her voice, as if by talking too loud she’d disturb an eternal peace laid over the hotel.

Too bad that she was here to do just that.

“Tucker, if you can get things set up out here,” she said, gesturing at the open space before the doors, “Sam, let’s check out what we’ve got to work with.”

Tucker began pulling out the equipment according to the plan they made — a thermal camera, a motion sensor, voice recorder, and a ghost meter — while Maddie took a deep breath, and looked into the room where she watched a man die.

It was much as she expected. Detritus was scattered everywhere — paper, trash, things she couldn’t identify. Both windows were covered in tarps that hung like sheets on old furniture and made the room feel closed off. Some of the ceiling tiles that had fallen were gone, but others stayed in midair, held up by wires. The chairs were haphazardly shoved out of the way, likely to get the injured out as quickly as possible. The folding tables where the food was were utterly annihilated; it was Maddie’s understanding that the bomb had been placed there.

The one thing she didn’t expect was the bloodstain.

Footsteps had tracked it in and out of the room, obscuring its pooling, but the reddish-brown color of days-old blood was unmistakable. As if on autopilot, Maddie stepped into the spot where she had stood the night of the explosion and shuddered when she could place the bloodstain right where Reitman’s ghost was in her memory.

“Mrs. Fenton?” Sam asked. “Are you okay?”

Maddie shook her head to get rid of the memory, then nodded. “I’m okay, Sam,” she said, softly. “Let’s get things set up.”

She and Sam cleared a space on the floor — close to where Maddie was standing — and started setting up their equipment. They were careful not to disturb too much, as it would be best to leave as little evidence of their presence as possible.

Maddie put a ghost meter in three corners of the room, one by the folding table wreckage and one on each adjoining corner, since there was too much debris in the way for the fourth. She cabled these to Tucker, who plugged them into the central power unit. The teen was talking over the Phone quietly to Jack, making sure he was receiving the signal.

Sam was busy setting up the spirit box, the main device they’d be using to try and contact Reitman; none of that Ouija board nonsense for them. The box was a more traditional piece of ghost hunting technology than what Fenton Works normally applied — in fact, nearly everything tonight was — but if Maddie’s hunch was correct, it would work better on a proto-ghost than the Ghost Gabber she and Jack had designed.

The spirit box worked by cycling through radio frequencies at a rate of several thousand a second. Ghosts could theoretically manipulate them in order to “speak” through the box, though ghost hunters had to be careful not to mistake random sounds for EVP, or electronic voice phenomena. Maddie had considered it fairly obsolete for ghost hunting, since her targets were capable of speech to a similar degree that humans were, but she had used it to some success before ectotechnology had existed. And if she was right that proto-ghosts were the equivalent of stereotypical ghosts, then it should work on Reitman. In theory. If he still existed.

Maddie pushed the doubts from her mind and pulled the last piece of equipment out of her bag: the ecton emitter. The Fentons, Sam, and Tucker had spent quite a while debating whether or not to use it, but ultimately they decided to bring it. It hadn’t hurt the shadow mouse; in fact, it seemed to make it stronger. If they could help strengthen Reitman, it would make things go a lot smoother.

Again: in theory.

As Maddie ran through her mental list of the equipment they’d brought, her hand twitched to her hip on instinct, and Maddie felt her heart skip a beat when she found her ectoblaster missing. Right. They hadn’t brought any ectoweaponry. Nothing that could harm Reitman, and there were no other ghosts to worry about.

“Okay, everyone” she said, trying to move past the moment. “Let’s get this show on the road. Jack, Tucker, get a baseline reading on all the devices. Sam, let’s get some chairs set up.”

They dragged four mostly stable chairs into a circle around their equipment, with Maddie sitting opposite a chair intended for Reitman’s ghost. She switched her goggles to their thermal setting and turned her head slowly around the room.

“Can I ask what you’re doing?” Sam said.

Maddie turned towards her. On the thermal setting, Sam’s face was a bright red, with blue spots on her hair and around her nose, where she was breathing. Maddie couldn’t make out the teen’s eyes, since they were hidden behind the dark blue of her cold goggles. Her clothes were a mix of blues and greens — warm from her body heat, but blocking enough of the radiation that it didn’t make its way to Maddie’s lenses.

In her hands, she held a dark blue tube. Sam was in charge of one of the two Thermoses, just in case they needed it. Maddie had the other.

“I’m doing two things,” she said. “First, I’m establishing what the room looks like on thermals, and, second, I’m looking for any strange temperature readings.”

“Find any?”

“Not yet.”

Maddie forced herself to look at the bloodstain on the floor, but it didn’t show up on the thermal imaging. She switched her goggles back to infrared.

After a minute, Tucker said, “Okay, done with the baseline.” He joined Maddie and Sam at the circle of chairs.

“Good luck, everyone,” Jack said. Then, on a private line to Maddie: “You’ve got this, Mads. You’re the best ghost hunter I know.”

“Thanks, Jack,” she replied, softly. “Lights off, kids. It’s go time.”

They each turned their lights off, plunging the room into a darkness that didn’t matter to Maddie’s goggles. And they sat and listened.

Very little sound made it to Maddie’s ears save for the almost inaudible hum from their equipment and the breathing from her companions. Before breaking the silence, Maddie took a moment to gather her wits and take stock of her other sensory input — a ghost hunter’s first line of defense. The smell of burnt ectoplasm was stronger here, as well as a dusty odor, and something metallic she couldn’t identify. And without wind or AC, the air in the hotel was stagnant and humid, causing sweat to bead up under her jumpsuit.

It was uncomfortable, to say the least. But there were no unexpected odors, no strange cold spot to cause gooseflesh. No sign of a ghost yet.

“Hi Henry,” Maddie said after a moment. She kept her voice casual, like she was leaving a voicemail on his phone. “It’s Maddie Fenton. How’s it going?”

Tucker shifted in his seat, but that was it.

She continued: “You had something you wanted to say to me, but we got cut off. Can we talk about that now?”

“I’ve got nothing on my end, Mads,” Jack said. “No motion, no EVPs, no changes on the thermal.”

“I don’t feel anything, either,” she replied. “Kids? Anything?”

On the IR, Sam and Tucker shook their heads.

“Okay. Let’s wait a few minutes before starting the emitter.”

Maddie didn’t want to wait, since she didn’t have any idea how long their con of Officer Franklin would last, but ghost hunting — whether traditional or ectoscientifically — required patience; ghosts didn’t always follow Earthly patterns of time, especially weaker ones. Sometimes, you just needed to wait.

She glanced at the teens. They seemed to be handling the tense night well so far; Sam sat with her arms crossed and Tucker with his on his lap. If she didn’t know better, she’d say they almost seemed bored, despite the constant threat of either a ghost attacking or the police catching them. But then again…maybe she didn’t know better.

Tucker and Sam were working with Danny and Jazz to hide Phantom from them. Neither she nor Jack had any idea to what extent the four of them were involved with Phantom, but it didn’t take a genius to connect Danny’s injuries and lies to Phantom’s ghost hunting.

She and Jack spent nearly two hours discussing their son’s involvement with Phantom after she’d returned home. It was so obvious now that they knew what Danny was up to. And — if Maddie really admitted it to herself — she could understand why Danny never told them, even if it did hurt to learn that her son had been engaging in the very same thing that he condemned his parents for.

It made sense, too, why Danny would have the same thoughts about ghosts and stellar astrophysics that Phantom did. Maddie did question, just a bit, how much of his notes in the book were Danny’s ideas versus ones he took from Phantom, but Maddie highly doubted the ghost knew as much about both stars and ectoscience as her son did. She knew her son was smart — when he chose to apply himself.

Then there was the fact that Danny believed in some sort of metaphysical construct that persisted through death, and that it had something to do with lairs, which she only sort of understood.

Thinking about it, Maddie couldn’t help but feel there was something she was missing in Danny’s notes.

But this wasn’t the time for endless pondering, so she cleared her throat and said, “Anything, anyone? Nope? Okay, I’m starting the emitter.”

She reached down, flipped the switch, and a low hum added itself to the near-silence. Maddie changed her goggles to their thermal setting and watched as the air around the emitter went from an innocuous green to a deep, dark blue. For reasons still unknown to the Fentons, energized ectons were cold, whereas Earthly matter was warmer when energetic. It didn’t take long for Maddie to feel the chill in the air, along with the unexplained eeriness that always seemed to accompany ecton-filled spaces.

“Just noting that I’m feeling the effects of the emitter already,” Maddie said. “Mostly the mild unease, but I did get gooseflesh once.”

“I feel like someone’s watching me,” Tucker said. He glanced around the room — probably too quickly for him to notice any figures on the thermals, if Maddie were to guess, but she didn’t see anything on a slower sweep.

“Same here,” Sam added. “I don’t like it. This isn’t what usual ghosts are like.”

“Well, unfortunately,” Maddie said, “we don’t have a ghost yet. Or a proto-ghost.”

Jack added: “I don’t have anything, either.”

Drat; Maddie exhaled in frustration. “Okay, okay. Let’s wait another few minutes, then try the spirit box.” It was a pretty loud device, and she didn’t want to run it for too long.

Maybe it was the effect of the energized ectons, or the building worry that this would all be for naught, but these few minutes seemed considerably longer than the previous set. She wasn’t the only one feeling it, either: the teens kept shifting in their seats, making the chairs creak.

Even with the cooler temperatures, the air didn’t move. At least she wasn’t sweating so much.

It was getting hard to concentrate through the chill, though. She had only napped before they left for the Torrance, and she’d been plagued once more by nightmares. Images of her family, horned, with extended limbs, resurfaced in her head. Danny; Jazz; Jack; her sister, Alicia — all of them dead, and coming to bring her with them.

“Did Jazz tell you what we found at the Lloyd Archive?” Maddie found herself asking.

The teens glanced at each other. “Um, we’re talking now?” Tucker asked.

Maddie shrugged. “Why not? Let’s have a conversation,” she said. “Maybe Henry will have something to add. Just make sure not to mention you-know-what.”

Don’t mention that Reitman was dead.

A tenet of traditional ghost hunting: most ghosts didn’t know they were dead. The knowledge could make them unpredictable. Treat them like they were still alive, and they might join the conversation.

Treat them like they’re still human, Maddie thought. How quickly that idea was forgotten once she turned to ectoscience.

“Alright, I’ll bite,” said Sam. “Jazz only told us that you found some pretty nasty things in Lloyd’s journals. We haven’t exactly had the time to sit down and chat.”

Maddie wasn’t sure if Sam was lying or not, but it was an invitation to talk. Where to begin…?

“The study on overshadowing Jack remembered wasn’t so much of a study as it was a…an opportunity Lloyd took advantage of,” Maddie said. She told them how Lloyd had been attacked by a ghost, how she’d stunned it and collected samples. “It wasn’t an ethical test,” she added. “But that’s only part of it. Lloyd denounced the existence of consciousness in ghosts because of how violent the attack was. And…how traumatic it was.”

Maddie looked at Tucker and Sam each in turn, then said: “The ghost was pretending to be her brother, back from the dead seven years after he was killed. By that same ghost, if Lloyd is to be believed.”

“Hold up,” Tucker said. “A ghost murdered her brother?” He glanced again at Sam, who had tensed up.

Maddie nodded. “We think so. I don’t see why Lloyd would make something like that up.”

“Is Jazz okay?” Tucker asked, softly.

She was surprised to hear Tucker’s concern for her daughter, but — after a moment’s hesitation — Maddie nodded. “She’s okay. It wasn’t easy for either of us to read, though.”

Tucker nodded, then looked at Sam. The other teen just sat there, shoulders hunched. “You okay, Sam?”

“I’m fine,” Sam snapped. “Just…dealing with memories.”

Memories? Of what? Maddie knew that Sam, like everyone in Amity Park, had some close calls with ghosts before, but there wasn’t anything she could remember where Sam was in a particular amount of danger.

Of course, Maddie reminded herself, that meant very little when, clearly, Sam was far more involved with ghosts than she ever knew.

“Well, the most important thing we found is—'' she started to say, then cut herself off. “We learned that…I learned that Lloyd was far more biased against ghosts than I thought. It compromised her scientific objectivity, and her biased interpretations were passed onto me and Jack. I know that…doesn’t excuse anything that we’ve done — that I’ve done — but it shows that there’s a lot within ectoscience as a field that needs to be reconsidered. That will be our first goal once all of this is over.”

Maddie wasn’t sure why she was telling the teens all of this, but it seemed to have done something: Sam was sitting up straighter in her chair, and Tucker had angled his body to face Maddie. They were listening.

“We also learned,” Maddie continued, “that Lloyd’s biases caused her to reject consciousness, or souls, in ghosts as a possibility, and that’s had a ripple effect across an entire generation of ectoscientists.” She sighed. “Jack and I have our work cut out for us if we’re to prove that ghosts do have a soul. Or something similar, at least.”

Sam and Tucker exchanged another glance — they seemed fluent in them — but didn’t say anything. Maddie hardly noticed, lost in thought. There was so much she had dismissed over the years that she would probably have to do a complete review of the literature again for all the things she’d missed, just like she did with the videos of Phantom’s fights. And a lot of apologies to give, Maddie thought, remembering all the people whose studies and ideas she argued against.

But Maddie was willing to give out as many apologies as needed, if only to find a way to undo the harm she’d done.

“Mads,” Jack said on the private line, softly. “There’s something behind Sam on the thermals.”

Maddie’s breath caught in her throat. Casually, as if nothing had changed, she turned her head to look over Sam’s shoulder.

There it was: the faint impression of a torso, arms, and head in a blue just barely cooler than its surrounds. If there were legs, they were hidden behind Sam, but, from experience, Maddie doubted it. She had limited depth perception on her goggles, compared to the video feed Jack was watching, but if she were to guess, it was right on top of the bloodstain.

Exactly where she’d last seen Reitman’s ghost.

“Henry! Is that you?” she asked, loudly; Tucker and Sam both jumped at the volume. “Come, come, sit down and join us!” She gestured to the empty seat, but the thermal apparition didn’t seem to notice. It just stood — er, floated there.

To Maddie’s surprise, and relief, the teens had followed her approach, turning towards the empty chair and waving.

“Hi, Dr. Reitman,” Sam said, far more chipper than Maddie anticipated, “I’m Sam Manson, and this is my friend, Tucker Foley. We’ve heard about you from Jazz.”

“Yeah,” Tucker added, “she’s talked a lot about your work on ectoscience ethics and Danny Phantom.”

At the ghost boy’s name, the thermal apparition quivered, then vanished.

Maddie cursed under her breath. “He’s gone,” she said to the others. “Phantom’s name seemed to cause a reaction, but I don’t see him anymore.”

“I didn’t catch any EVPs,” Jack added. “It was just the three of you.”

“What exactly did you see, Mrs. F.?” Tucker asked.

Right. Jack told only her. “Jack saw a figure on the thermals standing behind Sam. I saw it too, but it didn’t last long. Either of you catch anything?”

Both of them shook their heads.

“Nope, I was on infrared,” Tucker said.

“Same here.”

“Okay, okay, uh….” It wasn’t too unusual to have apparitions that only lasted a few sections, but still, it was frustrating. Maddie lifted her goggles for a moment to rub at her tired eyes. “Okay, let’s get the spirit box on and—”

She yelped. Although it was dark in the room, there were enough LEDs on their equipment to give vague definition to the shapes in the room, and there was one right in front of her, less than two feet away.

It was larger than the apparition on the thermals, though with less definition. Only a vague taper indicated a head; the rest of the body was just an impression in the darkness.

Maddie swallowed her surprise and smiled. “Hi, Henry,” she said. “We’ve got a chair for you.”

Once again, she gestured at the chair, and felt, rather than saw, the apparition take a step back. “Sam, get the box on.”

Sam knelt from her chair to flip on the box, but froze when Jack, on the main line, said: “Wait! I think I heard something.”

“What was it?”

“It was your name, Maddie.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” she said. “Kids, either of you?”

Both of them shook their heads.

Well, now they were getting somewhere, provided that Jack wasn’t experiencing pareidolia and imaging sounds that weren’t there — a risk taken in traditional ghost hunting. “Okay. I’ve got a figural apparition a few feet in front of me, near the chair. It’s roughly Henry’s height. I can make out a head and not much else. Jack? See anything?”

“I’ve got nothing on the thermals.”

Tucker must’ve removed his goggles, because he let out a muffled noise. “I see him.”

“Me too,” said Sam. She tried to hide it, but Maddie could hear the nerves in her voice. Whatever experience they have with ghost hunting, it didn’t seem to be this kind. Seeing an apparition for the first time was definitely unnerving.

“Get the box on, Sam. Let’s see if that helps.”

Maddie tried not to cringe at the sound that came out of the box when Sam hit the on button. It was a loud, grating noise that sounded like a squirrel chattering sped up a thousand times. Every millisecond, the box played a new radio frequency, capturing an audio sample too fast for the human ear to make it out. And yet, by some means the Fentons had never explored, traditional ghosts — proto-ghosts, if they were right — were able to manipulate the sound coming out of the box to compose words or sentences.

“I was hoping to talk with you about the meeting with the GIW, Henry,” Maddie said, speaking louder to be heard over the box. “We got cut off before you could tell me what’s up.”

If the apparition was manipulating the box, she couldn’t tell. It just kept going, without interruption.

Maddie waited for a count of ten — ghosts could sometimes take a moment to respond — then said, “I’m guessing it was important, Henry. Penny said you ran inside from the parking lot to come talk to me.”

“BOMBS”

“Did that just say…‘bombs’?” Tucker asked.

“That’s what I heard,” Maddie said, heart pounding. An interaction!

Sam said, “Me too,” and Jack agreed: “Came through loud and clear.

“So it was about the bombs,” Maddie said. “Henry, do you know something about them?”

The box was silent for a moment before spitting out: “PERIMENTS”

She frowned. “Experiments? Whose experiments? Mine? The GIW’s?” Maddie hesitated. “Sedgewick’s?”

At the name “Sedgewick,” the apparition wobbled, and the ghost meter in the corner behind Maddie and Tucker beeped.

The memory of Reitman glancing after Sedgewick as the latter ran out the door, right before the bomb went off, flashed through Maddie’s head. She exhaled, trying to keep her tension hidden.

“What do Sedgewick’s experiments have to do with the bombs?”

“DA”

Maddie frowned, again. She couldn’t tell if it was a dah sound or a dey sound; spirit boxes sometimes didn’t produce clear pronunciations. “I’m sorry, Henry, I didn’t catch that. Can you repeat that?” Or was it supposed to be yah, like someone saying “yes” in a Germanic language?

Did she have the right ghost?

“DA”

That one sounded more like a dah to Maddie, but she instead asked, “Sam, Tucker, can you make out what’s being said?”

Sam shook her head — barely noticeable in the dark, since Maddie still had her goggles up — but Tucker said, “I think it was a dah sound.”

“That’s what I got too,” Maddie said.

“Me too,” added Jack.

Okay, consensus said it was a dah sound. But what could that mean? What words of significance began with a dah sound….oh.

Maddie’s blood ran cold.

She closed her eyes, briefly, to keep her composure. “Danny? Is that what you said?”

Please don’t be about my Danny. Not my Danny.

“He seems…agitated,” Sam said, hesitantly. “Is it about…um…Danny Fenton or Danny Phantom?”

“PHANTOM”

All three of them jerked in their seats; Tucker’s chair scraped loudly on the floor. From the Phones, Jack let out a long whistle. “That was one of the most clear words I’ve heard come out of there,” he said.

Bombs. Experiments. Danny Phantom. Maddie did not like any of these responses.

“Does Phantom know anything?” she asked. When there was no reply, Maddie added: “Or is this about what happened at the GIW’s meeting?”

It was a risky move to bring up what occurred that night, but she couldn’t think of any other reason why Reitman would bring up Phantom. Unless….

A horrible idea started forming in Maddie’s head, but she shoved it aside. Now is not the time to deal with this!

Again, nothing came out of the box for a moment, but when it finally spoke, it was nowhere near what Maddie thought it might say.

“HIS SISTER”

A beat. Then: “Phantom has a sister?!” and “Phantom’s what?!”

Maddie spoke in shock at the same time Jack did. Was she hearing that right? Phantom had a sister? That was more information about Phantom’s life before he died than she had ever learned before.

As Maddie tried to think of what to say, she noticed that both Sam and Tucker had gone very still. That, more than anything else, told Maddie that her assumption about Phantom having a sister was correct.

Wait. How did Reitman, of all people, know about this?

Maddie opened her mouth, but the spirit box spoke before she did:

“HAPPENED AT THE MEE”

Maddie felt a chill down her spine, and it had nothing to do with the ever-decreasing temperature in the hotel. “Are you asking me what happened that night, Henry?” she asked, slowly.

“TELL ME”

She wanted to explain, but how could she without mentioning Reitman’s death?

“Um, Mrs. Fenton?” Sam said. “I think I can see him better.”

Maddie took a moment to look at the apparition again — she’d been distracted by its last few comments — and was startled to see that, yes, there was more definition to his face. It was difficult to tell in the dark, but she thought she could almost make out the facial features of Henry Reitman.

“I’ve got an image on the thermals, Mads,” Jack added. “Barely, but it’s there.”

The emitter was working. His proto-ghost was getting stronger.

“GREEN STARS”

The phrase jolted Maddie back into her memories.

Dust and debris swirled in the air above her.

Distantly, Maddie heard Jack ask what the phrase meant.

Little green stars dotted her vision.

She remembered her own confusion from that brief moment as a proto-ghost — when she didn’t understand what had happened to her, what was happening. She still didn’t, not really.

What would it mean for Reitman, who had been a proto-ghost for almost a week now, alone in a dead and abandoned hotel? How much did he understand what was happening to him right now?

Treat ghosts like they were human. Wouldn’t that mean telling Reitman the truth?

“Henry, I’m sorry,” Maddie blurted out. “There was another bomb at the meeting. It hurt a lot of people, and…it killed you. You’re a ghost, Henry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Nothing, save for the unintelligible noise of the spirit box.

“Maddie,” Jack started to say over the private line, “I don’t think that was—”

“I know, Jack,” she interrupted. “I just…I think he deserves to know.”

The four of them sat in anxious silence, waiting for Reitman’s reaction. His apparition didn’t move. It remained in place, until, without warning, it vanished.

“I can’t see him anymore,” Maddie said, softly. “Anybody got eyes on him?” She put her goggles back on and glanced around the room in thermal mode, then infrared, but saw nothing out of the ordinary.

Jack, Tucker, and Sam all confirmed the same.

Though this was painfully short for a ghost hunt, when Maddie checked her watch, it was nearly 4:00 AM, and surely Officer Franklin’s patience was wearing thin. “Well, that’s probably it,” she said with a sigh. “Let’s wait another five minutes, then get things packed up.”

When the five minutes were over, Maddie stood, stretched her aching body, and bent down to turn the spirit box off—

“NOTHER”’

Maddie froze. “Another?” she asked; the apparition was back. “Another what?”

“I’ve got movement in the hallway, Mads,” Jack said.

“ANOTHER GHOST”

The room darkened to blue on Maddie’s thermals. She ripped them off to find the room full of brilliant white light, bleaching color from everything, then spun towards the door to find—

“Anyone care to tell me what happened here?”

The ghost in the doorway was a lady in white — all white, from her skin to her dress, as though she were carved from clouded ice. Save for her eyes, which glowed with a terrible lavender as they landed on Maddie.

“Are you the one responsible for breaking my hotel?” the ghost demanded, hands on her hips, before her face twisted in anger. “I worked hard on these decorations!”

And then the furniture started glowing.

Uh oh.

Maddie, Tucker, and Sam scattered as the chairs they were sitting on lifted off the ground and tried to unseat them. She crawled towards the wall as the room’s debris started to spin violently in the air, then pressed herself to the floor as a piece of wood took a swing at her. She looked around for any place to hide, but there was nothing. All she could do was lay on the floor, hands over her head, as broken wood and shattered glass battered her body.

What a fool she was. There had been no signs of any ghost at the Torrance over the years, but that didn’t mean one wouldn’t show up. They’d learned from the Lunch Lady that major changes could draw ghosts into their world. A bomb closing the hotel would definitely count.

And here she was, attacked by another violent ghost and no ectoweapons to protect herself — or, Maddie realized with horror, the two kids she’d brought with her.

The ghost was taking her time, wandering into the room and shouting insults at Maddie’s sense of decoration. She didn’t seem interested in Sam or Tucker, thankfully, but Maddie couldn’t see them. Had the ghost done something with them? Had they escaped?

Something tugged at Maddie’s arm; she flinched. She twisted her head away from the action and towards the wall and found Sam, thank goodness, similarly flattened to the floor. The teen jerked her thumb to the closet she had crawled from — the same one Phantom had tossed Maddie into — then started to inch backwards into it.

Taking Sam’s cue, Maddie started pulling herself along the floor as fast as she could until Sam reached out and pulled her the rest of the way in.

The closet’s door offered some protection from the maelstrom in the conference room, and Maddie took the brief respite to get into a crouch. “Where’s Tucker?” she yelled over the chaos.

“He made it to the hallway!” Sam yelled back. “He should start distracting Matilda soon!”

Sure enough, Maddie heard the distinctive sound of an ectoblaster, and the ghost screamed, though whether in pain or in anger she couldn’t tell. “You brought ectoblasters? Where did you get them?”

But Sam was moving to crouch by the door. She peered out, then said, “Wait here!” and was gone.

Maddie lunged to the door and watched Sam army crawl along the floor. In one hand, the teen held an ectoblaster, and in the other, the Thermos.

The teens were going to fight the ghost, Maddie realized, while she sat back and did nothing. She wasn’t much use without ectoweapons, not with all the debris the ghost — Matilda, apparently — was throwing around.

Tucker had drawn Matilda towards the door, giving Sam enough of a break in the chaos to make her way into the Thermos’s range. The lid was already off and her thumb was on the button, but she didn’t trigger the device.

What are you doing? Maddie wanted to scream. Take the shot! But then she saw what Sam had undoubtedly seen.

Pressed against the wall opposite her was Henry Reitman. The light from Matilda’s glow gave him enough definition that Maddie could make out the frightened look on his face, even through the debris.

If Sam took the shot, Reitman would be sucked into the Thermos along with Matilda. She should know that it was okay to use the Thermos on a proto-ghost, if the shadow mouse was any indication….but what would happen if a regular ghost was added to the mix? Maddie swore. She didn’t know the answer, and clearly Sam didn’t, either.

And Tucker didn’t have a Thermos. He couldn’t help Sam with that problem.

But Maddie had one. She took a breath to steel herself, then ducked out of the closet and began crawling across the floor towards Reitman.

She kept her body as low to the floor as possible; the debris in the air still struck her anyway. It was slow going as Maddie tried to dodge as much as possible, but something — she didn’t see what — slammed into her from the side and sent her rolling onto her back, followed by another piece that crashed into her left shoulder.

Pain shot through her body, and when Maddie tried to get her body to move, it was slow to respond. Lying on her back, though, gave Maddie a perfect vantage point to watch Matilda throw something through the door into the hallway; Tucker shrieked, and Matilda turned around.

“Where did you go, Miss I-don’t-respect-other-people’s-hotels?” the ghost said. “You need a lesson in interior design!”

Then the ghost spotted Sam, and Maddie’s heart lurched in her chest. Get moving, Maddie! She tried to roll onto her stomach, but hissed in pain from her shoulder.

“You there, girl!” Matilda shouted. She launched a piece of wood at Sam, who tried to dodge out of the way but was too slow. The board hit her across the back, flattening Sam to the ground. By some miracle, she kept a hold on the Thermos, but the blaster skittered out of her hand. “Where is she?”

It was just a few inches away, but the board pinning Sam meant that she could only reach so far. Matilda saw her straining for it, slammed a shard of glass down on Sam’s hand, and Sam screamed. Matilda raised the shard again.

No!

Maddie couldn’t let this happen, not to the kids she’d brought with her. So she grit her teeth and forced herself to roll onto her stomach. The pain in her shoulder flared; she ignored it, instead climbing to her knees, uncapping the Thermos, and holding it behind her back.

“Hey, Matilda!” Maddie shouted. “Looking for me?”

The ghost paused, shard of glass hovering inches above Sam’s hand. She looked at Maddie, uncomprehending, then her face twisted in a malicious smile.

“There you are!” Matilda said. “It’s time for you to fix what you’ve done!”

You’ve got that right, Maddie thought as the ghost focused the maelstrom of debris on her. She hoped that Sam would understand what she was planning; the debris obscured the teen.

Matilda stalked closer, yelling more insults, and, somehow, the debris grew sharper to Maddie’s eyes.

This was going to hurt. Maddie braced herself for the attack, knowing there was no Phantom here to save her this time.

And then Sam used the Thermos.

Matilda shrieked at the sound and looked around wildly, but it wasn’t directed at her: Sam had aimed the Thermos at Reitman, sucking in his proto-ghost and racing out to the hallway.

With Sam gone, Matilda turned back to Maddie, only to find Maddie’s Thermos facing her. Maddie pressed the button, and — with a final scream — Matilda was sucked in.

The debris hung in the air a second longer, still held aloft, before the eerie white light faded and everything came crashing down.

Maddie threw herself to the floor as a hundred pieces of broken furniture landed on top of her. Nothing large hit her, though, and after a moment, Maddie realized that most of the debris had broken into much smaller pieces.

A light switched on in the hallway, and Tucker peeked into the room. “Mrs. F.? Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yes, Tucker,” Maddie said. With a groan, she pushed herself into a sitting position. “Are you? Is Sam?”

“Yeah, I’m okay.” Sam appeared in the doorway, and the two teens began to pick their way across the floor. “I got Reitman.”

Maddie breathed a sigh of relief as Tucker reached down to help her up. This could have gone much, much worse. “And I got Matilda,” she said.

The three of them stared at each other, illuminated by the single flashlight Tucker held. So many questions raced through Maddie’s head — why they knew this ghost, where they got ectoblasters from — but upon seeing the teens’ faces, she found she didn’t have the words to ask.

Both teens were covered in dozens of tiny cuts and bled from most of them. Sam was cradling her hand. Tucker’s right eye was swollen; his glasses were missing. They looked exhausted.

Maddie’s mouth fumbled as she tried to come up with something to say. The only thing that came out was “I’m sorry.”

Sam and Tucker exchanged another glance, looked back at Maddie, and then both shrugged.

“Could’ve been worse,” Sam said.

“We got the ghost, at least,” Tucker added. “Both of them.”

Absently, Maddie nodded. “That we did.”

Then, the sound of harried footsteps echoed in the hallway. Maddie tensed, ready to be attacked by another ghost or arrested by Officer Franklin.

“Maddie?!” Jack said, rounding the door frame with an ectoblaster in both hands. “Where’s the ghost?”

Maddie blinked, then sagged in relief. “Um, gone,” she said. “It’s in a Thermos.”

“Oh, thank fudge.” Jack let go of the blasters; they dropped to his side, apparently on wires. He limped across the room to the three of them. “I was scared when the communication cut off.” Jack gave her a once-over. “I’m glad you’re all okay.”

“We are, thanks to the two of you,” Maddie said, gesturing at Tucker and Sam. She glanced at the ectoblaster Tucker had slid into his pocket. Both teens tensed. “We can talk about the blasters later. Um…we should gather as much of our equipment as possible and get out of here.”

Nodding, Sam and Tucker turned to start searching the room for what bits of their equipment hadn’t been destroyed. Maddie stared after them, then fumbled for the flashlight attached to her belt to begin her search. But Jack grabbed her arm — her injured arm; she flinched; he let go — and she turned to face him.

“Are you sure you’re okay, Mads?” he asked, quietly, concern writ large across his face.

“I will be,” she said. “After I get some sleep.” Then, to Jack’s unasked question: “Sam has Reitman.”

He nodded. “That’s good. Don’t know what we’re going to do with him, but….”

Maddie didn’t know, either. It was one thing to release the shadow mouse into the tank; it was something else entirely to release Reitman’s proto-ghost into…well, she wasn’t sure. But for now, they needed to get out of here as soon as possible — either before Officer Franklin found them or she fell asleep on her feet.

It took them about ten minutes, but the four of them were able to find most of what they had set up in the room; the equipment in the hallway was left untouched. Some cables were missing or ripped in half, and everything was fairly battered, but the Fentons hadn’t spent the extra money to invest in heavy duty protection for no reason; everything survived more or less intact.

For some reason, the ecton emitter had remained where Maddie had left it, unmoved. A mystery to solve later, though.

After the equipment was packed away, Jack slung Sam and Tucker’s bags over his shoulder, and the four of them left the broken conference room behind. Though the room was still chilled, it was hot, humid, and stagnant in the hallway, and even more so in the stairwell. Before long, sweat was running down Maddie’s face, and she had to keep wiping it out of her eyes.

Before they left, though, Maddie stopped and said, “Jack, did you see if that officer is still there?”

He shook his head. “I came in the front door.”

For a moment, Maddie contemplated leaving out that way, abandoning Franklin to the early morning. But, she thought, if they left without telling him, he might find reason to investigate the conference room, and she’d prefer if they could get away without suspicion. The fact that he hadn’t investigated, despite what was surely an extremely loud ghost attack, was worrying.

Maddie made sure that as much dust as possible was brushed off her jumpsuit, then strode out the door with as much confidence as she could muster.

“Hello, Officer Franklin!” she called to the man, who was still sitting on the asphalt where she’d last seen him. But he didn’t respond. “Officer Franklin?”

She looked back at the others, who looked as worried as she felt. Preparing herself for the worst, Maddie approached Franklin, and, as she got closer, she realized that he was slumped over. Her heart lurched in her chest. “Officer Franklin, are you alright?”

Maddie was only a few feet from him before she realized, with relief, that he was still breathing. But why wasn’t he responding to her?

Then she heard the snores. Somehow, Officer Franklin had slept through the entire thing.

Chapter Text

The Fentons arrived early to the police station, ready to face their doom.

At least, that was how it felt to Maddie as she and Jack trudged their way across the parking lot.

It was already sweltering, and the heat waves from the asphalt didn’t help her fatigue. She was still exhausted from the encounter at the Torrance — they all were. They hadn’t even unpacked the equipment from the GAV, save for the two Thermoses. Matilda had been released back into the Ghost Zone, but neither Maddie nor Jack had any idea what they were going to do with Reitman yet.

Through the station’s windows, Maddie spied her daughter sitting quietly across from the Fentons’ lawyer, Vilma Gómez, and two other lawyers from the same firm. Vilma didn’t smile as they approached, but Maddie couldn’t find any of the frustration the lawyer expressed at her and Jack during their lengthy meeting yesterday. Either Vilma was over her pique, or she maintained her professionalism much better than Maddie did; Maddie suspected the latter.

“Maddie, Jack,” she said, nodding to each of them in turn. “Thank you for arriving early, and —” she gave them both a once-over glance “— for dressing appropriately.”

Jack had resisted Vilma’s attempts during their meeting yesterday to convince him to wear a suit to his deposition, but he eventually caved; Jack was smart enough to realize that this deposition was far more serious than other ones he’d attended in the past, thankfully. Still, it was extremely strange to Maddie to see Jack wearing something other than his jumpsuit or pajamas, though that didn’t stop her from observing how smoothly the suit fit his body. Jack cleaned up well.

Jazz offered Maddie a thin smile as she sat down next to her daughter, with Jack joining them on Maddie’s other side. Their daughter had arrived separately, saying she had an errand to run before the deposition. Whatever it was, though, she hadn’t specified.

That wasn’t the only thing Jazz hadn’t explained. It was the day she had promised to tell Maddie and Jack the truth about Danny, but Jazz had refused to say anything when asked about it this morning.

“Trust me, it’ll be better if you don’t know anything until after the deposition,” Jazz had said, folding her arms. “The chances you’ll say something that will get Danny in trouble are too high.”

It was strangely similar to why Danny hadn’t explained his situation to Maddie right before the meeting with the GIW. She wasn’t sure what to make of that.

Either way, Jazz had won the argument, no matter how much Maddie and Jack had tried to reason with or cajole or beg her to tell them. It wasn’t like her parents could force her to say anything if she didn’t want to. And hopefully, Jazz wouldn’t disappear without explaining the truth. Like her brother had.

Maddie swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. Now was not the time to cry.

She distracted herself by studying the other people in the waiting area with her. Besides the receptionist and the occasional officer, the room was empty aside from their party. There was Vilma, with her black pantsuit and dirty blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail. The woman sitting next to her was the lawyer accompanying Jack, one Ms. Elwood, a staid woman in gray whose whole being seemed the opposite of Jack’s in every way, except for their shared height. On the other side of Vilma was Mr. Wright, who wore a suit that probably cost as much as the rest of their clothes combined. He’d be going with Jazz, who, as a legal adult, didn’t need her parents to join her.

That didn’t mean that Jazz was ready for this — none of them were, though at least Maddie and Jack had experience being interviewed by both the police and the GIW from previous incidents. As Maddie watched, Jazz slowly clenched and unclenched her fists until her knuckles were white, and, if Maddie wasn’t mistaken, she was shaking slightly.

Maddie reached over the arm rest to squeeze Jazz’s hand, just to remind her daughter that she wasn’t wholly alone; Jazz shot her another small smile in gratitude. But when Maddie tried to pull away, Jazz grabbed her hand in return and didn’t let go. Her grasp was tight to the point of being painful, but the pain was worth it if it helped Jazz feel better.

A moment later, Maddie felt Jack reach over and take her hand in his, though his grip was much gentler, stemming from many years of holding a hand smaller than his.

But the connection didn’t last, for it wasn’t more than a minute before a gray-suited GIW agent came to whisk Jack, and then Jazz, away to the bowels of the station. In what felt like an instant, only Maddie and Vilma were left.

Vilma came to sit next to Maddie as they waited. “Do you remember the rules we talked about, Maddie?” Vilma asked, softly.

Maddie nodded. “Don’t ask questions, except for clarification. Don’t try to get information out of them. Don’t give any more detail than necessary.”

“And the one thing to remember?”

“That the GIW can lie.”

“Good. Hopefully this will all go smoothly and we’ll be out of here by lunch.”

Somehow, Maddie doubted that would happen.

The minutes ticked by, and Maddie was seconds away from caving in to the urge to pace when a different GIW agent came to retrieve them, more than half an hour after her husband and daughter had been taken away.

The room the agent led Maddie and Vilma to was as gray as the suit he wore and barely large enough to accommodate a table and five chairs. Maddie and Vilma took the pair on one side of the table. Two of the other chairs were empty, while the third was occupied with a court stenographer and her little keyboard and screen.

In the corner, a video camera sat on a tripod, aimed directly at Maddie. She glanced nervously at it, unable to tell if it was already recording her every move. She pulled at the collar of her shirt, wishing the room weren’t so stuffy and hot.

Thankfully, the GIW didn’t make her wait long before Operative K strode into the room, along with another agent in gray, and sat.

The other agent set his briefcase on the table and pulled out a thick file and notepad before saying something full of legal jargon that Maddie didn’t understand. Then, he cleared his throat and said, “I’m Agent L, lawyer for the Guys in White, here with my client Operative K, to hear the deposition of Dr. Madeline Fenton, accompanied by her lawyer, Vilma Gómez, regarding the incident at the Torrance Hotel one week ago.”

“Incident” was one way to describe a night where a man was killed, but Maddie didn’t say anything. At least they were using her proper title this time.

“Dr. Fenton is documented as having been in the room when the incident occurred and is considered a witness to events. Is this accurate, Dr. Fenton?”

Maddie swallowed against her suddenly dry throat, then nodded. “Yes,” she said, glad that her voice came out much stronger than she anticipated.

“Alright,” Agent L said. “Tell us what happened that night, starting from when you got out of your car.”

Maddie nodded again before beginning to describe, in as few of words as possible, what she remembered. The stenography typed away at her keyboard as Maddie spoke, and Operative K sat there, impassively, eyes hidden behind his sunglasses. She couldn’t tell if he was watching her, or Vilma, or the wall behind them. He didn’t seem bothered by the heat in the room, though, and Maddie felt a pang of envy that she pushed down as she tried to keep control of her voice.

When she arrived at the part of the night when Reitman had accompanied her to the car, however, Maddie paused, and Operative K turned his head towards her and raised an eyebrow.

“Is there a problem, Dr. Fenton?” Agent L asked.

I don’t want to tell you anything about Phantom, Maddie thought. I want to drop you both out of a plane over Arkansas and let my sister’s friends hunt you for sport. But she just said, “No, there’s not. It’s just…a lot to think about.”

Operative K folded his arms, and this time, Maddie was sure that he was staring right at her.

“During the second break of the night,” Maddie began, “I went to my car to see if my family had contacted me. Dr. Reitman asked if he could join me. He wanted to know if I knew what happened to Phantom after the explosions at Carrie Community College a few days before.”

“Do you?”

Maddie shook her head. “No,” she said. “I saw him fly away from Scottville Hall, but that was it.”

Agent L wrote something on his notepad before asking, “Did you talk about anything else?”

“I…asked him if he knew how Phantom died,” she said, hesitantly. “Which he didn’t, and I don’t, either.” It was technically true: she didn’t know anything. She just had her speculation.

“What happened when you were back inside the building?” Agent L asked.

“We went back to the meeting room. I stood by the snack table and ate a bag of pretzels.” Maddie said, before explaining who was in the room, where they were sitting, and what they were doing. At Agent L’s prompting, she described the movement of people in and out of the room — Duvall, followed by Penny and Reitman, and Aggie’s absence. “Dr. Sedgewick’s phone rang, and he answered it before running out of the room.”

“Did he say who was calling?”

“No.”

Agent L made another note on his pad before gesturing for Maddie to continue.

“Right as he was leaving, Dr. Reitman came back into the room and said he had to tell me something. But he…he didn’t get the chance to,” Maddie said, closing her eyes and reliving the memory. “Some alarm went off and the guards in the room started to move, and then someone shoved me into the closet. I think it was Phantom.”

Neither of the men were expecting that, clearly; Agent L started in his seat, and even Operative K looked surprised.

“Danny Phantom put you in the closet?” Agent L asked. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” Maddie admitted. “I think I was the closest to where he was standing. I heard someone swear behind me, but didn’t see anyone before I was in the closet and the explosion happened.”

Maddie hadn’t wanted to tell the GIW that Phantom had saved her, out of all the people there. She didn’t know what it would mean for Phantom if the GIW learned that he had, somehow, gotten past their defenses. But, at the same time, the boy was gone and she really, really did not want to get caught in a lie by the GIW.

“I see,” said Agent L. He scribbled something on his notepad again, taking nearly a minute to get it all down. “What happened next?”

Maddie took a deep breath, then explained in short, clipped sentences how she’d stumbled out of the room to find Phantom enhaloed in ectoenergy; how she’d noticed Reitman’s ghost and Phantom had almost, but not quite, attacked him; and how Phantom had reached for her before fleeing. Then, memory of her shock fell in, and Maddie faltered.

Agent L either didn’t notice or didn’t care, because he pressed on, asking Maddie to clarify details about where the ghosts were when she left the closet; what, exactly, Phantom was doing; what Reitman looked like as a ghost; and others.

She had just finished explaining what the room smelled like when Agent L said: “Do you think Danny Phantom is responsible for Dr. Reitman’s death?”

Maddie blinked. “What? No, I don’t,” she said, shaking her head. “The person killed Dr. Reitman was whoever placed the bomb.” Stop asking about Phantom. Please ask about Willoughby. If they would switch topics to the man they’d arrested, who she was pretty sure she saw that night….

Agent L didn’t take the bait. “Why didn’t the ghost boy grab Dr. Reitman when he grabbed you?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Why did he save you instead of Dr. Reitman?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did Phantom intend for him to die?”

“I don’t know,” Maddie snapped. Beside her, Vilma placed a hand on Maddie’s knee in a gesture of warning. It didn’t go unnoticed by either of the GIW agents; Operative K smirked, just slightly, but enough that Maddie knew he meant for her to see it.

Calm yourself, Maddie, she thought. Don’t let them rile you up.

“Do you think that Danny Phantom is involved in the bombings?” the lawyer asked.

Maddie shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so?”

“No I don’t think so,” Maddie repeated.

Operative K didn’t like that she didn’t elaborate; she could see the way he clenched his jaw. Don’t give any more detail than necessary, she reminded herself.

“Do you think Danny Phantom killed Dr. Reitman?”

Again, Maddie shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“But you weren’t in the room when he died,” Agent L said. “How can you be certain?”

Maddie hesitated; there was a trap in that question, she was sure of it. “Phantom has never demonstrated a desire to kill anyone,” she said, slowly. “I see no reason why he would want to kill Henry.”

Agent L didn’t respond right away, instead opening his folder and flipping through the pages. He pulled out a stack of papers stapled together, cleared his throat, and began reading: “‘While the majority of ghosts stick to specific behavioral patterns, Phantom has often deviated from this standard, showing a remarkable unpredictability and an ability to adapt to different situations with ease. In addition to his strong and highly diverse power set, this makes Phantom one of, if not the, most dangerous ghosts to be seen in Amity Park. We at Fenton Works urge the people of Amity Park to vote in favor of the anti-ghost ordinance during this upcoming election.” He lowered the paper, then raised an eyebrow at Maddie. “Statement of Maddie Fenton to the Amity Park Chronicle, dated three months ago.”

Maddie said nothing.

“Did you make this statement, Dr. Fenton?”

“It’s…possible.”

“Possible?”

“Without checking my records, I can’t say for sure,” Maddie replied. “Only that it’s possible that I said that.”

“But you admit that Danny Phantom poses a threat to this town?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, slowly.

“And you admit that Danny Phantom has deliberately targeted specific individuals in his ghostly pursuits?”

“Yes.”

“And since you weren’t present when Dr. Reitman died, do you admit that Danny Phantom could have killed Dr. Reitman after removing you from the room?”

“It’s possible,” Maddie said through gritted teeth. “Though, again, I don’t believe Phantom is responsible for placing the bombs, and especially not the one at the Torrance.”

Agent L quirked an eyebrow. “How do you know there was a bomb at the Torrance, Dr. Fenton? The cause of that explosion it yet to be determined. Do you know something you’re not telling us?”

Drat. She didn’t believe for a second that the GIW didn’t already know exactly what caused the explosion, but it was true that the information hadn’t been released to the public — or the task force, if that still existed — yet. “An assumption on my part,” Maddie said. “Still, regardless of what caused it, I don’t believe Phantom is responsible for that explosion or any of the others.”

The agent made a noncommittal noise and started to write something on his notepad. As the seconds ticked by, Maddie struggled to stay calm under the silence, the heat, and the oppressive gaze of Operative K, who she was certain was staring at her from behind his sunglasses. It was an intimidation technique, the logical side of her rationalized, meant to make her cave under the pressure — meant to make her doubt her own recollection and say something they could use against her. But Maddie refused to give the GIW the satisfaction of watching her squirm and forced herself to sit still.

That didn’t stop the little voice in the back of her head from saying that Agent L was right, that in the split second she wasn’t in the room, Phantom could have killed Reitman. All she had to go on that he hadn’t was Phantom’s insistence that he wasn’t involved. She could only trust her instincts that he was telling the truth.

After what felt like an eternity, Agent L finished writing, cleared his throat once more, and said, “Let’s move on. Dr. Fenton, what is your relationship to Danny Phantom?”

Oh no.

“My relationship to Danny Phantom?” she parroted.

“Yes.”

“We barely have one,” Maddie said, trying to act as casual and haughty as possible. Let them see her as the arrogant ghost hunter they thought she was. “He’s a ghost and, as already established, that means he’s dangerous to this town. My husband and I have been trying to capture him ever since he showed up.” It wasn’t technically a lie, and it rolled off her tongue easily enough from the practice of repetition. But still, Maddie hoped neither man would notice her lack of conviction. “Our opinions on Phantom are widely known.”

“Yes,” Agent L said, staring at her, “but we’re asking about your relationship to him, not yours and your husband’s. Have you ever, say, met with the ghost boy recently? On your own?”

They know, Maddie thought. Or suspect. If the question earlier had been a trap, then this was feeling the door about to give way beneath her feet. She couldn’t lie; they might catch her on it. As much as she didn’t want to, and despite her pounding heart, Maddie kept her voice level and said, “Yes, I have.”

Her answer seemed to surprise both men, for the second time that night; if she hadn’t been so nervous, Maddie would have found some satisfaction in that.

But Agent L betrayed no emotion in his voice when he asked, “How many times?”

“Twice since the bomb at Casper High.”

“Nothing before that?”

“No.”

Agent L frowned, just slightly, as he made a quick mark in his notes. He bombarded Maddie with questions about the dates, times, and locations; what they talked about; why she hadn’t told anyone what she was doing; how her family reacted to the injury she sustained at Phantom’s hands. She kept the answers as short as possible, and downplayed her inquiries about ectogenesis. Thankfully, the agent didn’t ask if Maddie recorded either meeting. She certainly wasn’t going to offer that information up.

And then Agent L asked the question she’d been dreading: “How did you arrange the meetings with Danny Phantom?”

Maddie said nothing.

“Dr. Fenton?”

Beside her, Vilma gave her a pointed look. They’d talked about this possibility yesterday, but that didn’t make Maddie any happier about it.

“Answer the question, Dr. Fenton.”

Forgive me, Jazz.

“My daughter,” Maddie said. “She got a message to him about the first one.”

Operative K smiled, as though that was the answer he had been hoping for.

***

Maddie splashed water on her face to wash the sweat off, then looked in the bathroom mirror. The woman who stared back had deep bags under her eyes and limp red hair streaked with gray. The streaks Maddie expected, but since when were there so many?

The GIW had broken for lunch not too long after she’d admitted Jazz had helped her get in contact with Phantom. They’d gone off to wherever they were deciding how to ruin the Fentons’ futures, and Maddie and Vilma had been taken to a conference room that was, thankfully, better ventilated than the cramped space Maddie had been trapped in.

Jack, Jazz, and the two other lawyers were already there, eating lunch, and Maddie had taken barely a glance at her daughter’s face before she’d rushed to the bathroom. The panic she’d felt never became a full-blown attack, but it was close.

How could she stand to go through several more hours of this? She already wanted to curl up in a ball and sleep for a year.

But that would only delay the suffering, and Maddie knew the stress she felt would only keep building until the bomber was caught and Danny was home.

Danny. It felt like their only hope for bringing him home was to find Phantom. Jazz hadn’t outright stated as much, but when Maddie had and Jack discussed it last night, it seemed increasingly obvious that their daughter believed Phantom was the key to finding their son.

And since the evidence was pointing towards Phantom being in the Ghost Zone, with no sign of him returning to Earth any time soon, it looked like a trip to the Ghost Zone was in the Fentons’ future.

Maddie took a deep breath and wiped the water off her face. She straightened her shirt, fixed her hair, and unlocked the bathroom door. A bored-looking police officer led her back to the conference room, where Maddie unwrapped her room temperature sandwich and tried to force something into her stomach.

No one spoke. Maddie felt paranoid just thinking about it, but the GIW was probably listening to them — if not them, then the APPD. Not that the Fentons were in any condition to make small talk; Jack had only offered Maddie a small smile, while Jazz was too busy systematically cutting the cheese from her mostly-untouched sandwich into increasingly small squares.

What did her daughter know? Why had she run a secret errand this morning? Maddie suspected she had gone to talk to Tucker and Sam, though about what she wasn’t sure. If all things went according to plan, Danny’s friends were currently at Fenton Works, digging the Specter Speeder out of the storage shed in the backyard.

If Phantom wasn’t coming back to them, then the Fentons were going to go to him.

Assuming they made it through the day.

***

Agent L cleared his throat. Maddie wanted to strangle the sound out of him.

“We have some questions about your son, Dr. Fenton,” he said.

Of course they did — it was the other topic she’d been dreading.

“Your son’s been missing since…last Thursday?” Agent L asked, after flipping through his notes. He raised an eyebrow. “The night of the incident at the Torrance?”

“That’s correct,” Maddie said.

“When did you last see him?”

“Around 5:30pm that night, before I left for the Torrance.” Maddie frowned. Her head was thick and she didn’t want to spend more time here than necessary. “I told all of this to Detective Lawson on Friday.”

“We’d like to hear it again, Dr. Fenton. You said that Daniel was sick before you left. Do you know with what?”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t.”

“What were his symptoms?”

Why do they want to know? Maddie suppressed another frown, but answered anyway. “Fever, nausea, vomiting, chills, fatigue.”

“How long did he show these symptoms?”

“Since the explosions at Carrie,” Maddie said.

Agent L flipped to another document in his file. “Has Daniel ever had these symptoms before?”

“Twice,” Maddie said. “After the first explosion and after a bomb was found at Casper High.”

“A strange coincidence, wouldn’t you say, Dr. Fenton? That your son would be sick after several different ectoenergetic explosions?”

The change in his tone threw Maddie off kilter, and she stumbled out: “I…don’t know. Maybe?”

Despite her lack of an answer, Agent L moved on, switching topics to ask about Danny’s home, school, and social lives, as well as his relationship to his parents. He jumped around as he did, and it took all of Maddie’s concentration to not over share private information about her family.

“How is Daniel’s relationship to Jasmine?” he finally asked. “Are they close? Do they get along?”

Another question about Jazz; another question Maddie really did not want to answer. She was tired and hot and dehydrated and wanted to go home. But it was one she was prepared to answer, at least, so she said the response she’d thought up ahead of time: “They’re as close as any pair of siblings, I suppose. They bicker sometimes, but for the most part they get along.”

Agent L frowned; that clearly wasn’t he wanted to hear. “Has Daniel ever confided in his sister about what goes on in his life?”

“Maybe,” Maddie said. “But I don’t know how much he’s told her about what’s going on.”

“So Daniel is involved in something?”

Beside her, Vilma made a nearly imperceptible noise of displeasure; Maddie felt the blood drain from her face. “I didn’t say that.”

“You implied it.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Then what did you mean by ‘what’s going on’?”

“I meant,” Maddie began. “I mean….” She shook her head. “What was the question?”

“Is your son keeping things from you, Dr. Fenton?”

“How…how would I know if he was?” She was stalling, trying to come up with a way to avoid making her son look suspicious, if it wasn’t already too late for that. Nothing was coming to mind, precisely because she already knew that Danny was hiding something.

Agent L replied: “As you’ve already told us, Daniel has a limited social life, struggles in school, and often breaks household rules. No extracurriculars to speak of, and plenty of time to himself. Are you saying that you’ve never once wondered why he sometimes comes home with injuries he refuses to explain?”

Eyes narrowing at the line of questioning, Maddie said, “No, I have wondered what he doesn’t talk about. But he’s a teenager, and I try to give my kids their privacy. I don’t want to force them to tell me everything.”

“So you admit to willfully neglecting your son’s health?”

“I—” she started, but Vilma said, “My client will not be answering that question.”

Maddie glanced at her lawyer, who shook her head once; Maddie swallowed her response. She supposed answering that question could implicate her for child neglect, based on the wording. She looked back at the GIW’s lawyer, whose face betrayed no emotion. He probably hadn’t been expecting much of an answer, but he scribbled something on his notepad anyway.

“Let’s talk about safety in the Fenton Works’ laboratory,” he said. “What is Daniel’s access to it?”

“He’s allowed in when his father or I are working, or to do his homework or chores,” Maddie said. “He doesn’t spend much time in it otherwise.”

“But he has access to it at any time? Unsupervised?”

“Yes,” Maddie said, slowly.

More notes went onto the page. “Has he ever brought anyone outside of your family into the lab?”

“Only Sam and Tucker.”

“Has he ever removed any equipment or ectoplasm samples from the lab?”

The question set off alarm bells in Maddie’s head, but she wasn’t sure of the reason. Why did the GIW want to know about Danny’s access to the lab? “He’s never messed with the samples, and has only taken equipment with permission,” she said. “Or in emergency situations. And he’s always returned it later.”

“Has any equipment ever gone missing from your lab?” Agent L asked.

Maddie hesitated. “No.”

“No?” He raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t it well known that Danny Phantom carries one of your Thermoses?”

Oh, she thought, as the pieces clicked together. The GIW must be wondering if Danny was working with Phantom — if he was the one who had supplied a Thermos to Phantom. They must have been suspecting it for a while, at least since they spoke with Lancer about Danny, way at the beginning of the summer.

Choosing her words carefully, Maddie said: “We’ve never determined if the Thermos Phantom uses came from Fenton Works. All the Thermoses we’ve produced are present when we do our inventories, and we do them every six months. He’d somehow have to be stealing it and replacing it constantly, and our lab is well-sealed from Phantom.”

“But the technology behind the Thermoses is proprietary,” Agent L said. “You’ve never patented it. How else would Phantom have acquired a working Thermos if not from Fenton Works?”

Don’t you have something similar? Maddie thought, remembering the device that a GIW agent had procured during the ghost fight at the mall. But bringing that up likely wouldn’t help her in any way, so she just said, “It’s possible that another ectoscience researcher created one. Or maybe it’s technology from the Ghost Zone.” She shook her head. “I don’t know where he got the Thermos, if it even is one.”

Agent L simply flipped the page on his notepad and began writing at the top of the new one. Then, he said, “Let’s talk more about the Fenton Works lab.” He smiled, and Maddie almost would have preferred the penetrating stare of the ever-silent Operative K. “Especially the portal.”

Inwardly, Maddie sighed.

***

Long past when she should have eaten dinner, Maddie sat in the conference room, hand in hand with Jack. Neither of them spoke; even without the threat of surveillance, she doubted that either of them would have the energy to form a coherent thought after more than eight hours of laying bare their entire lives.

It felt like there was no aspect of Maddie’s life that Agent L had not asked about. After questioning her about the lab, he’d returned to her family, poking holes in Maddie’s relationship with her husband, daughter, and son until she had to force herself to remember that they loved her, and she loved them. Then the agent had asked about Maddie’s experience with ghosts, ghost hunting, and ectoscience; her time as a grad student, and her time as a teacher; her recollection of the other bombings — she finally managed to bring up Willoughby — and what she thought of the mechanics behind the explosions.

He’d implied, multiple times, how poor of a parent Maddie was, too, questioning why she had left the search for Danny to Jazz, and why she’d left town while her son was missing. Not that she needed the reminder. Her own thoughts were enough for that.

By the end, Maddie was ready to stab Agent L with his own pen, if only to shift the focus onto a crime she’d actually committed. At least they didn’t seem to know about the ghost hunt at the Torrance yesterday morning.

But the day wasn’t even close to over: Jazz was still in her deposition, and there was no telling when it would end. Her poor daughter. But — after waiting for forty-five minutes — a gray-suited GIW member had come to speak with Vilma and Ms. Elwood in the hallway. Maddie was too exhausted to even try to eavesdrop on their hushed voices.

Finally, the two lawyers returned, Ms. Elwood closing the door quietly behind her; still, both Maddie and Jack jumped at the sound.

“The GIW wants to speak to the three of you together,” Vilma said, taking a seat across the table. “The two of you plus Jazz.”

Maddie exchanged a look with Jack. “Is that even allowed?” Jack asked.

“They have permission from a judge, so yes, it is,” Vilma replied. Despite having joined Maddie in that hot, stuffy room, she looked little the worse for wear, with only lines in the corners of her eyes revealing any sign of fatigue. “To be honest, Maddie, Jack,” she continued, folding her hands on the table, “I don’t like this. It’s going to put pressure on the three of you in different ways, which makes it harder to avoid falling into any tricks they might pull. Keep your answers short and to the point. I suggest taking another bathroom break. I don’t know how long the next session will be, but the agent said he’d come back to get us soon.”

As much as Maddie didn’t want to part from her husband — and as dehydrated as she was — she reluctantly allowed herself to be led back to the bathroom and used it. She didn’t look at herself in the mirror; she didn’t want to face the person she would see staring back at her.

She could only guess why they were taking so long with Jazz. And guess she did: if her deposition was any indication, the GIW suspected Jazz of…something, and it didn’t take a genius like her daughter to conclude that the GIW were trying to wrangle the truth out of her.

For the first time since this all began, Maddie wished she’d gotten them all into therapy before today, since the Fentons would surely need it. Her children especially.

Assuming Danny ever comes home, a voice in the back of her mind whispered. She was too tired to silence it.

Maddie had just sat down in the conference room when the anonymous agent returned to lead her, Jack, and Vilma to the next phase of their torture. Ms. Elwood was on standby, as would be Mr. Wright, since they were only allowing one lawyer in with the Fentons.

Jazz looked small, sitting on one side of the silver metal table — small, and angry. Despite her sheet-white face and slight quiver, there was a fire in her daughter’s eyes that Maddie both admired and found herself envious of. She smiled, relieved in the knowledge that Jazz hadn’t been beaten down quite as much as her parents had.

Once more, none of them spoke as Maddie and Jack took their seats on opposites side of Jazz. Jazz barely reacted, but Maddie knew her daughter well enough to see just a tiny bit of the tension lift from her shoulders.

Although there were already six people in the room — the Fentons, Vilma, another GIW member Maddie remembered as Operative O, and a different stenographer — it was far less stuffy than the room Maddie had previously been shoved into. It seemed that despite the GIW’s projected stoicism, even they were sick of the heat: someone had set a rotating fan up in the corner, aimed at Operative O and the two other empty seats across from the Fentons and their lawyer.

Thankfully, they didn’t have to wait long for the GIW to show up. Operative K and Agent L were back, and they joined Operative O in a wall of white and gray.

“There are inconsistencies in your depositions,” Operative K began, without preamble, “regarding the relationship of Ms. Fenton to her brother.”

Maddie glanced at Jazz, who remained almost as impassive as the GIW men; Maddie would say she was bored, if not for the white fists clenched against her knees, out of sight from the GIW. It took Maddie a second to realize that she had balled her fists in the same way earlier, during her own deposition.

“Mrs. Fenton—” this time, she wasn’t sure if Operative K was using the wrong title as an insult or as a clarification “—you stated that Daniel and Jazz aren’t that close, though you also admitted that you do not know much about your children’s lives.” He turned to look at Jack. “Mr. Fenton, you stated that your children are extremely close and tell each other almost everything.” Looking at Jazz, he raised an eyebrow. “Well, Ms. Fenton? Which is it? How close are you to your brother?”

“No offense to my dad,” Jazz began, in a tone of voice that implied you know how clueless he is about these things, “because I know he wants me and Danny to be closer than we actually are, but the truth is that Danny and I don’t talk about that much. He does his thing and I do mine.” She wrinkled her nose, and Maddie could practically hear the eye roll in her voice. “I love my little brother, but he’s such a dweeb. I don’t really want to know what he’s up to.” Jazz folded her arms and glanced at Jack. “Sorry, Dad. I know that’s not what you wanted to hear, but Mom’s right.”

Jazz sounded so much like a normal teenager, and so not like herself, that Maddie almost didn’t recognize her daughter, but she tried to react like this was exactly what she expected Jazz to say and slouched, just a bit, in her chair. But Jack blurted out, “Jazz, I thou—”

“Quiet, Jack,” Vilma interrupted.

“No, please, Mr. Fenton,” Operative K said. “What were you going to say?”

Maddie looked at her husband out of the corner of her eye. Jack looked confused, and maybe a little bit hurt by what Jazz said. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

Please follow Jazz’s lead, Jack, she thought. Get him to think Jazz doesn’t know anything about Danny.

“I thought….” Jack began, then let his shoulders sag. “I thought Jazz and Danny were closer than they are. Guess I overestimated things, Agent K.”

Operative K said nothing, but his jaw clenched at Jack’s slip-up; beside him, Operative O rolled his eyes. It was clear that they both thought Jack was an idiot for getting the title wrong.

Maddie started to bristle at the implied insult to her husband’s intelligence, but then she thought: Jack knew Operative K’s correct title. Even under the pressure of questioning, he shouldn’t have gotten it wrong. Which meant…he’d used the wrong name on purpose to play into his reputation as an oblivious fool.

Manipulating the GIW was probably not a great idea, but Maddie could see what Jazz was trying to do. If the GIW dismissed her as a normal teenage girl — albeit a brilliant one — who kept a distance from her younger brother, Jazz might be able to prevent them from figuring out how much she really knew about Danny’s secrets.

“It’s Operative K,” Operative K said. “Not Agent.”

“Yes, sir,” Jack said, utterly serious. Maddie almost thought he was going to salute Operative K. “It won’t happen again. Sir.”

He was maybe laying it on a little thick, but Operative K seemed if not wholly mollified, then at least convinced of Jack’s sincerity. “Ms. Fenton,” he said, once again turning to Jazz, “what is your opinion of Danny Phantom?”

Jazz crossed her arms. “I already explained this to Operative O.”

“Explain it to me.”

Jazz sighed, but said, “I believe that Phantom does more good than bad in this town. He is the only ghost who tries to protect the people of Amity Park instead of trying to attack them. He may be a nuisance sometimes but that doesn’t mean he’s bad.”

“What do your parents think about this opinion?”

“It’s been—” Maddie started, but Operative K glared at her and said, “I asked your daughter, Mrs. Fenton.”

Maddie exhaled sharply, but didn’t say anything.

“It’s caused…a lot of arguments between me and my parents,” Jazz said. “They think that Phantom is dangerous. I think they should stop treating him like an enemy.”

“How do you want them to treat Danny Phantom?”

“Like an ally,” Jazz replied. “He can help them protect the town from the ghosts that are actually dangerous.”

Operative O had been writing something on a notepad, and he slid it over to Operative K. They didn’t bother to hide what was written on it, but that didn’t matter. The message was in some code or language Maddie didn’t recognize. Operative K glanced at it, then continued without reacting. “Is Danny Phantom dangerous, Ms. Fenton?”

Jazz paused, then said, “He can be. But he tries not to be.”

“Elaborate.”

“On which part?”

Operative K’s eye twitched. “What do you mean by ‘he can be’?”

“If you look at Phantom’s fighting history,” Jazz said, “he isn’t always careful with his attacks. Sometimes they miss the ghost he’s fighting and damage things.”

“How do you know that damage he causes isn’t intentional?”

“I can’t say that none of the damage is intentional.”

“But you believe that most of it is unintentional.”

Another pause. “Yes,” Jazz said. Maddie didn’t know if any of the GIW members could hear the slight tone of worry in her daughter’s voice. But she didn’t like where this line of questioning was going, either. It felt like another trap.

“Why?”

“Because he’s said so.”

“And you believe him?”

Jazz shrugged. “I do.”

“Tell us about your relationship to Danny Phantom.”

With a slight frown, Jazz said: “There’s not much of one. He’s saved me from other ghosts a few times, and I’ve helped him during some ghost fights.”

“Helped him in what way?”

“Mostly as backup during some of his bigger fights. I’ve also helped get people out of the way of his battles.”

“Have you ever loaned him ghost hunting equipment from your parents’ lab?”

“No.”

“Then how did he come into possession of a Fenton Thermos?”

Again with the Thermos. Why did the GIW care so much about that so much? Maddie was pretty sure that Jazz wasn’t the one who had given Phantom the Thermos — her daughter had adamantly denied the existence of ghosts until at least a month after Phantom’s first appearance in Amity Park — and sure enough, Jazz shook her head and said, “I don’t know.”

It was at that point that Operative O clasped his hands on the table in front of him, leaned forward, and said, “Ms. Fenton, you say that you don’t have much of a relationship with Danny Phantom. But your mother told us that you were the one who arranged her first meeting with the ghost boy after the incident at Casper High School. How did you get in contact with him?”

“The Danny Phantom Fan Club at Casper High helped me.”

“Who did you speak with at the Club?” Operative O asked.

“I don’t know,” Jazz said, shrugging. “I just emailed them and asked for them to pass a message to Phantom for me.”

“That’s not what your email history says.”

Jazz blinked. “My email history,” she repeated, voice high.

Out of the corner of her eye, Maddie saw Jack stiffen, ever so slightly, reflecting the same tension she heard in Jazz’s voice — the same tension she felt, too. The GIW had been reading their emails. Against her now-racing heartbeat, Maddie tried to remember if she’d sent anything over email that might incriminate her. She couldn’t think of anything, but that didn’t mean that her daughter’s account was as clean.

The GIW can lie, Maddie reminded herself, but then Agent L pulled out a stack of papers and slid them across the table to Jazz. She looked at them and paled, and it didn’t take much to guess that Jazz saw no falsehood in whatever she’d been shown.

Agent L was already in the process of pulling out another sheet of paper as Vilma said, “I’d like to see the warrant.” He passed it on, and the Fentons’ lawyer glanced it over, then squeezed her lips into a thin line. “It’s valid.”

“Your email history doesn’t show that you ever contacted the Danny Phantom Fan Club,” Operative O said. “But your mother insisted that you were the one who arranged the meeting.” He looked at Maddie, who didn’t breathe as she stared back, before back at Jazz. “One of you is lying. Which one is it?”

Jazz was lying — Maddie knew that, because she knew her own side of the story. What did she do? Anything she said to her daughter’s defense would be a lie, but she couldn’t just leave Jazz to handle this alone.

Suddenly, Jazz’s fear that her parents would accidentally tell the GIW something about Danny if they knew the truth made horrible sense. Despite the heat, a chill ran down Maddie’s spine. It was so much more pressure on Jazz than she had imagined: her daughter, alone with the burden of knowledge, against the strength of the Guys in White. It was a cautionary move — and a massive sacrifice that kept the weight off her parents’ shoulders.

All so Jazz could protect her missing brother.

Maddie opened her mouth, a lie at Jazz’s defense half-formed in her head, but then Jazz blurted out: “Okay, fine. I didn’t tell my mom about this because I didn’t trust her not to use the knowledge to hurt Phantom, but it’s pretty easy to find him in Amity Park if you know where to look. There are places he tends to hang out if he’s not fighting ghosts or patrolling the city. It’s…kind of an open secret at Casper.” She glanced at Maddie. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

Maddie felt her face twist in horror, but not at the fact that Jazz had lied, again; she’d already accepted that Jazz was keeping secrets from her. No, it was the mix of anger and defeat in her voice that grabbed at Maddie’s heart. She sounded so frustrated that Maddie was certain the feeling was sincere, not an affect to distract the GIW. Her daughter clearly didn’t want to let the organization know about the places Phantom frequented.

But, regardless, Operative K said: “Give us these locations.”

“If you’re looking for Phantom, you’re not going to find him,” Jazz said, miserably. “I’ve been checking them ever since he disappeared. He’s not there.” When Operative K said nothing, she sighed and said, “Phantom mostly hangs out around Casper High after it empties for the night. But he also spends a lot of time near other places where teenagers hang out. I guess because he’s a ghost around their age. There’s the Nasty Burger, the playground at the park, the picnic tables across the street from the mall.”

As Jazz named several more locations, Agent L diligently wrote them on his yellow notepad. Maddie stole a glance at Jack and found him looking in her direction, an expression of confusion and broken trust on his face. He knew, from what she’d told him, that Jazz had kept secrets from them, but it was something else entirely to be directly confronted with that fact.

“And the abandoned dock at the port,” Jazz finished, “since the Box Ghost is often seen there. I found him at the park that night because I knew he wouldn’t be at Casper or the Nasty Burger. I told him my mom wanted to meet with him, and he said he’d get in contact with her. That’s it, I swear.”

Maddie barely heard the end of Jazz’s statement; her heart was pounding so intensely in her chest that it seemed to drown everything out, for the energy in the room had changed. There was no difference Maddie could identify, but the GIW were almost electrified in excitement. They hid it well under the mask of professionalism, but she could sense it, clear as day.

“We will take a five-minute recess,” Operative K said, standing up. “Wait here.” With no other warning, the three men filed out of the room, leaving the Fentons, Vilma, and the stenographer behind.

Maddie felt sick. Something Jazz said was exactly what they wanted to hear, and that could not mean good news for any of them.

And Jazz knew it, too. She was hugging her body tightly, looking pale and far, far younger than eighteen; Maddie had to remind herself that, for all Jazz acted mature and adult, she still only had half the life experience Maddie did. Even growing up in Amity Park with ghost attacks wouldn’t change that.

Have we ruined your life, too, Jazz? Maddie thought. Along with Danny’s?

She almost reached out to comfort Jazz, but the camera staring at the Fentons from the corner of the room stopped her. Could the GIW use a simple gesture of compassion to implicate her in some crime? Maddie didn’t know. Or would they be suspicious if she didn’t do something? She didn’t know that, either.

They can find a way to use anything you do, some part of Maddie reminded her. Hug Jazz anyway.

But still she sat, frozen by indecision; Jack, likewise, didn’t moved a muscle.

What was he thinking? She didn’t know. She didn’t know anything, anymore. Not about ghosts, not about bombs, not about her son…nothing. What good was she as a scientist, as a parent, if she couldn’t even figure out what her own husband, the one person she knew better than anyone, maybe even herself, might be thinking about?

The GIW returned, along with three officers from the APPD. That was certainly not a good sign, but at least it interrupted Maddie’s downward spiral, and she decided that she did know one thing: the Fentons would be paying for today — for a lifetime of ignorance and bias — for a long time.

“Thank you for your patience,” Agent L said. “We have just a few more questions today.”

It was the first moderately courteous thing any of them had said to her, and Maddie had to stop herself from laughing bitterly. How dare he be polite after the GIW had put her family through all this? Mentally, she added herself to group of Alicia’s friends hunting Agent L for sport.

The lawyer pulled a folder out of his briefcase and set it on the table. “Mrs. Fenton,” he said, staring directly at Maddie, “I’m going to show you some photographs. I want you to tell me if you recognize anyone.”

Heart pounding, Maddie nodded.

The first photo was a still taken from a security camera, grainy and in monochrome. Several people stood at a sidewalk crossing, waiting for the light to change. Maddie scanned the faces, not feeling any recognition until her eyes fell on a man in a pageboy hat standing towards the back. He held himself with the assuredness of someone with martial training — probably military, if Maddie were to guess.

“I think I recognize someone,” she said.

Agent L waited for her to say more, then, when he realized she wasn’t going to give a name, he asked, “Who do you recognize and who do you think they are?”

“This man,” Maddie said, pointing at the man in the pageboy. “I think it’s Curt Willoughby.”

The two operatives gave no response to her identification of one of their members, and all Agent L did was take the photo and make yet another mark on his notepad. He didn’t ask the other Fentons for their opinion.

They repeated the process with more than a dozen photographs, all taken from security cameras of various quality. Maddie recognized Willoughby in some of them, but most of the photos just had random people in them, taken on city streets and in alleys and at places Maddie couldn’t determine. She recognized no one else besides Willoughby and was beginning to wonder what the point of this was when Agent L handed her a photo of Danny.

Her son had his back to her, but had glanced over his shoulder at something; the camera clearly picked up Danny’s face. He was at Casper High, and Maddie swore it was almost identical to the image the GIW had shown, on the day she’d taken Danny to the park, of the unknown teenager walking across the school yard.

What did she do? Did she lie to protect her son? But protect them from what? She didn’t even know why the GIW wanted to know about Danny.

They knew, she thought, trying to tamp down on a wave of hysteria. They knew all along that it was him.

Why did the GIW care so much about her son? Why? Why?!

Agent L cleared his throat. “Mrs. Fenton? Do you recognize this person?”

Maddie looked up from the photo, held in her shaking hands. “Yes,” she said, softly.

“Who is it?”

“My son,” Maddie whispered, “Danny Fenton.”

There was a loud scraping noise as Jack recoiled in his chair, and Jazz inhaled sharply. They both looked at Maddie, and at the picture of Danny, but Agent L snatched it out of her hand and replaced it with another.

Again, it was Danny. He was harder to make out this time, standing on the other side of a parking lot, but the camera was exceptionally high quality — with a start, Maddie realized Danny was standing a few parking spaces away from her car, and the other vehicles to the edge of the image were the anonymous white vans of the GIW.

Automatically, Maddie answered Agent L’s questions, barely aware of what she was saying, for she was too busy wondering why her son had been at the Torrance the night the bomb went off.

There were three more photos, taken with what Maddie was increasingly sure were the GIW’s own high-quality surveillance cameras: one of Danny at the salon near the Nasty Burger after the first explosion; and two more at Carrie Community College near Woodsboro and Scottville — before the explosions, but after dark. Why would Danny go to Carrie at night? Jack’s classes were in the afternoon. More importantly: when where these photos taken? When had Danny left Fenton Works and gone all that way, even before the bombs went off?

As Maddie handed the last photo back to Agent L, he cleared his throat and said, “We have just a few more photos left, Mrs. Fenton. Tell me if you recognize these numbers.”

This time, he spread out five photographs in front of Maddie. They were smaller than the others, and in color, with markings on the photos indicating they were evidence collected by the APPD for an investigation.

Maddie spent a long time staring at the first picture. It was a scrap of twisted metal no more than a few inches in either direction, made from what was probably steel. Etched into its surface was the code FW05-00587.

The next picture was of another piece of jagged metal. Part of its code was missing, cut in half by whatever force had ripped a piece of steel into parts, but Maddie could clearly make out FW05-0.

Two more pieces of metal. Two more codes. FW05-00591. FW05-00586.

By the time Maddie laid her eyes on the fifth and final photograph, she was not surprised at what she saw: an unbroken piece of metal that made up the bottom of a cylinder. It was painted matte black, but the etchings in the steel still shone through. FW05-00589, she read.

“I recognize these numbers,” Maddie said. There was no use hiding it — there was no way the GIW didn’t already know the truth.

“What are they?”

“Fenton Works serial numbers,” she whispered, and closed her eyes.

She and Jack had wondered how the bomber had gotten their hands on Fenton Works technology in order to replicate it so well. Had they found it in the hack at Vladco? From the archives at UW-Madison? From the Fenton Works files? No option they came up with had made perfect sense, but there had been too much else to think about to waste time on something that wasn’t their job to figure out in the first place.

She never imagined that the bomber had just used actual Fenton Thermoses.

Oh, Danny, what have you done?

“I don’t know what devices they’re from, specifically,” Maddie continued, answering Agent L’s question that she barely heard. “I’d have to check our inventory.”

“But they’re definitely Fenton Works’ serial numbers?”

“Yes.”

“Very well.” Agent L cleared his throat, and Maddie opened her eyes to look at him, despite her now-spinning head. “Ms. Fenton, you are free to go. Please take your things and leave the interrogation room.”

Jazz hesitated, but at a nod from Vilma, she gave a last, worried look at her parents, then allowed herself to be escorted out by one of the APPD officers.

Maddie almost sighed in relief. At least Jazz wouldn’t have to see what was coming.

Agent L began: “Mr. and Mrs. Fenton, we have enough evidence to make an arrest tonight. We know that Daniel Fenton has been conspiring with Danny Phantom to plant ectoplasmic bombs around Amity Park and Carrie. We already have a warrant out for your son’s arrest, and with the full force of the GIW searching, we will find him.”

He handed Vilma several sheets of paper before she had the chance to open her mouth.

“But we know that Daniel could not have made these bombs alone. We know that someone at Fenton Works has been helping him. As we speak, the APPD and the GIW are executing a search warrant of Fenton Works. We will discover what you’ve been working on and we will stop it.”

Maddie’s hand twitched. She almost reached across where Jazz had sat to clutch at Jack’s hand, but the gulf between them was too wide.

“We know which one of you is behind this. That’s not in question. But what is in question is this: will you confess to your crimes, or will we have to force it out of you?”

“Don’t speak,” Vilma said.

They could be lying, the Fentons’ lawyer seemed to add, silently. Not about the warrants, since they were clearly legitimate, but about knowing which one of them the evidence pointed towards.

Please be lying, Maddie thought.

“This is your last chance,” Agent L said. He looked between them, as if daring one of them to speak.

Maddie didn’t say anything. Neither did Jack.

She closed her eyes as Operative K stood up so she wouldn’t have to see the smug look on his face. But she certainly heard it in his voice as he said, “Jack Fenton, you are under arrest for domestic terrorism and felony murder for the death of Dr. Henry Reitman.”

The police officers’ boots stomped on the floor, their handcuffs clinking as they approached. Jack’s chair scraped on the floor, and Maddie’s breath caught in her throat as she worried, for just a second, what Jack was going to do. Especially if— if he was guilty like they claimed.

She opened her eyes to find Jack staring at her, and, as they locked gazes, Maddie hated herself for ever doubting her husband’s innocence: he simply stared at her, tears brimming in his eyes.

At least you and Jazz are okay, that look said.

Jack didn’t fight as the APPD handcuffed him and read his Miranda rights. He invoked them and was led out of the room, and only then did Jack break his gaze with Maddie.

“Mrs. Fenton,” Agent L said. “You are free to go.”

***

Maddie was too dehydrated to cry on the drive to the motel.

The broken asphalt crackled under her tires as she parked in the back, out of sight from the road, and waited for Jazz finish getting a room. Her daughter was the least recognizable of the two of them. Maybe this far out of town, they’d be able to hide long enough to sleep for a few hours.

It was Vilma’s idea. “I want the two of you to get out of Amity Park as soon as you leave the station,” she’d said. “Drive for as long as you can, but don’t go to Carrie or Elmerton. Find a motel that’s not on a main road. Pay in cash if you can. Don’t answer the phone for anyone except me, my firm, or each other. The media will be on you as soon as word of Jack’s arrest gets out, and I want to delay them finding you for as long as possible.” Then, she’d let out a long sigh and looked as weary as Maddie felt. Her voice softened. “My firm will take care of Jack. We’ll keep you updated. Call me once you’ve stopped for the night.”

They’d taken separate cars. Jazz had suggested they leave a false trail somewhere, but Maddie didn’t want to abandon one of their cars. Who knew what would happen if one of the anti-Fenton crowd found it? They drove for some time after leaving the city — Maddie ignored the clock and how late it was — until Jazz pulled off at a Motel 6, somewhere in the No Man’s Land between Amity Park, Carrie, and Silver Springs. The sign for the 6 had come loose at some point and hung upside down, making it a Motel 9.

Maddie backed into a parking spot, hoping it would hide her license plate, then shut the lights off and waited. The parking lot was a little more than half empty, though some of the other cars looked like they hadn’t been moved in a while. One room had a window boarded up by plywood; another two had lights on. She wondered if this was an extended stay motel. Maybe people made their home here.

Home. Vilma didn’t know when they’d be allowed back in Fenton Works. She’d only said that the warrant excluded the RV and required that the GIW send decontamination specialists to decommission the portal. Convenient that the GIW already had those on hand.

Jazz found Maddie in the parking lot after leaving her car at the opposite end. “The manager on duty won’t say anything to the press,” she said, “but I don’t know what will happen when the morning staff takes over.”

Maddie just nodded, not even bothering to ask Jazz how she had acquired the manager’s silence, nor why she’d already had enough cash on her to pay for the room.

They were assigned Room 13, of course, because the Fentons’ luck wasn’t bad enough already.

Once inside, Jazz locked the door and slid the chain in place. Maddie sat on the edge of the queen bed and watched Jazz rifle through her bag. She pulled out a set of pajamas and toiletry bag and handed them to Maddie. “I’ve been waiting for something like this to happen for a long time,” was all she said by way of explanation.

But that wasn’t what Maddie cared about right now.

“Jazz,” she said. “Tell me Danny’s secret.”

Jazz paused, then straightened, took a deep breath, looked her mother in the eye, and said: “No.”

“You promised, Jazz!” Maddie said, standing to face her daughter. “You promised me you would tell me the truth today. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Today. I waited an entire week and then waited all day to know what’s going on with my son, and I want to know the truth. Now.”

“I’m breaking my promise,” Jazz said. She was somehow still calm, despite Maddie’s yells. “Things have changed, and I don’t have time to explain Danny’s situation to you anymore.”

Maddie had opened her mouth to yell again, but then Jazz’s words caught up to her. “You’re leaving?” she said, voice breaking, as the anger evaporated.

Jazz nodded. “I am. I need to talk to Tucker and Sam about something urgent. Something that might put an end to all of this. Before anything worse happens.”

“Vilma said—”

“I know what she said, Mom, and I wouldn’t leave if it wasn’t of dire importance. You, on the other hand, are staying here. You need sleep.”

“But—” and Maddie’s knees took that moment to give out on her. She collapsed to sit on the bed, Jazz giving her a pointed look. “Okay, fine, I’ll stay,” she said. “Just…tell me this, Jazz. Please.” Maddie met eyes with her daughter. “Is it true what the GIW says about Danny? That he’s involved in the bombings.”

Jazz hesitated, just barely, before answering. “Yes,” she said, softly. “But not in the way you think he is.”

“What’s that suppos—”

“Do you trust me, Mom?” Jazz interrupted. At Maddie’s blank look, she continued: “Back when you first approached me about meeting with Phantom, I asked you to trust me, and you said you would. Do you still trust me, Mom?”

Part of Maddie longed to say that no, she didn’t trust Jazz, because Jazz was keeping so many secrets that Maddie doubted she knew her daughter at all anymore, because these secrets had taken her son and her husband and her house and her security from her, and maybe if she kept arguing with Jazz, her daughter would eventually crumble and tell Maddie the truth about Danny.

But the other part of Maddie, the part of her that loved Jazz, and Danny, and Jack, and just wanted them home — the part of her that had decided to let go of what she thought she believed, all for the sake of a ghost — just said, “Yes. I do.”

Jazz’s mouth was set in a thin line, as though she had expected Maddie to argue, but she nodded. “Thank you,” she said, then grabbed her mother in a hug. “I love you, Mom. I’m sorry I have to do this. I really am. I hope you can forgive me once you know the truth.”

“Stay safe, Jazz.” It was all Maddie could get out through the tears that finally pricked her eyes.

“I will.” Jazz grabbed her bag and slung it over her shoulder. Without another word, she unlocked the door and left, shutting it slowly behind her.

But before she did, Jazz absently flicked the lights off, leaving Maddie alone in the dark.

Chapter Text

With Jazz gone, the last pillar of Maddie’s composure crumbled, and she curled up on the bed and started to cry; not with loud, dramatic sobs, but with silent, dripping tears as the despair set in.

Jack was arrested for a crime she was sure he didn’t commit. Jazz was off to who-knows-where, still keeping secrets from her. The GIW was ransacking her house and destroying her livelihood.

And Danny was still missing.

If not for that, she thought she might’ve been able to handle the stress. It wasn’t like Jack hadn’t been arrested before, though never for something so serious as terrorism or murder, and Maddie knew Fenton Works could always be rebuilt. Jazz would come around and explain things to her, she was sure of that. The bomber would be caught. Things would settle down. Eventually.

But there was no guarantee that Danny would ever come home. For the first time since he disappeared, Maddie let herself think about what life would be like without her son. No more watching him grow up. Never getting to see him graduate, or find a job, or get married, or have kids, if he wanted them. Never knowing if Danny would have seen his dream of being an astronaut come true.

Never knowing what happened to him. Never knowing why he had visited the sites of the bombs. Never knowing why he kept so many secrets; why he decided to leave.

Never knowing what kind of person Danny really was when he didn’t feel the need to hide from her.

Never knowing would be the hardest part, Maddie decided. For someone who had dedicated her life to understanding the unknown, living life in ignorance about her son, no matter how hard she tried to learn otherwise, was one of the worst fates she could imagine.

Where are you, Danny? she thought. Why did you leave me?

She’d almost rather he return as a ghost, because at least then she’d know.

At least she had a decent idea of what happened to the other missing child in her life. Phantom was in the Ghost Zone. He was almost certainly safer there than he was on this side of the portal, even if it was unlikely he’d be able to return. From what Vilma said, the GIW were planning to disassemble the Fenton portal instead of traveling through it, though Maddie suspected they were just going to use it to build their own version, somewhere deep in their permanent headquarters where no ghost would ever see the light of day.

Maddie shivered. Hopefully, somehow, Phantom would know not to use that one.

Suddenly, the weight of what Jazz said about Danny before she left finally sank in, and Maddie frowned. Yes, her daughter had said when Maddie asked if Danny was involved in the bombings, but not in the way you think he is.

What’s that supposed to mean? Maddie thought. Then: How do I think Danny is involved?

The GIW had a warrant out for Danny’s arrest, believing that he was working with Phantom to plant the bombs. They arrested Jack for helping Danny and Phantom, though Maddie wasn’t sure which one of them the GIW thought was in charge. For the moment, it didn’t matter; Maddie knew that Jack wasn’t behind the bombings.

No, she didn’t know that Jack wasn’t responsible for them. But she did trust that Jack was innocent. Jack would never do anything to intentionally hurt his family.

And after reconsidering what she knew about Phantom — after he repeatedly put himself in danger to save her — Maddie had to trust that the boy wasn’t involved, either.

She let out a short, disgusted laugh at herself. What world did she now live in where she was willing to trust a ghost before trusting her own son?

Maddie finally sat up, wincing at the stress headache building behind her temples. She winced again when she turned the lights on, but they seemed to keep the despair at bay, at least a little. Her tears had since dried up, but she grabbed a length of toilet paper — the motel didn’t provide tissues — and blew her nose.

Then she paused, the tissue half-wadded in her hand. The answer was obvious: Danny was helping Phantom investigate the bombings. Jazz didn’t know her parents were aware that Danny and his friends had been working with Phantom for some time, so of course she assumed Maddie might believe what the GIW said about Danny.

Reaching that conclusion didn’t help much to assuage Maddie’s worries about her son, though. If he had been investigating the bombings when he disappeared, it only seemed more likely that something bad had happened to him, rather than he voluntarily vanished….

Unless Phantom had taken Danny into the Ghost Zone when he escaped the Torrance. It wasn’t an impossibility, but the idea of Danny being dragged through the portal into the Ghost Zone sent Maddie’s heart rate pounding. While the Fentons were confident the Ghost Zone itself was mostly habitable by humans — with exceptions, of course — the portal itself was extremely dangerous, a highly concentrated whirlpool of energized ectoplasm. What effect it would have, precisely, on a non-ectoentity was unknown. They’d built the Specter Speeder with the exact purpose of protecting themselves during the transition so that they’d never have to find out.

Wait. Had Phantom taken Danny through the portal before? Was that why Danny had an ectoradiation signature? It made more sense than Danny drinking ectoplasm.

Did Jazz suspect that Danny was in the Ghost Zone? Did Jazz know that Danny had been there before?

Be careful, Maddie, she cautioned herself. This was all speculation. She didn’t know that Danny had ever been to the Ghost Zone, and she didn’t know that he was there now. Even if it did fit better than any other theory.

But if Danny was in the Ghost Zone with Phantom, it made losing access to the portal all the more disastrous. The Fenton Works portal was the only one of its kind in existence, and relying on a natural portal could take forever.

Maddie began to pace.

Was that the whole point of this bombing campaign? To maneuver the Fentons into a place where the portal could be torn down? Destroyed, so that no more ghosts could come through? It made some sense, but it didn’t explain why the Fentons had been attacked all over town.

No, it did. Killing all four of the Fentons would give Fenton Works to Alicia, who would almost certainly have the portal shut down. Maddie cursed herself. Even though they’d had the legal inheritance figured out, once again, her refusal to consider the possibility of dying before old age had come back to bite them.

But what about the bomb at the Torrance? It seemed impossible that someone could sneak a bomb right under the GIW’s noses….except they’d had help in the form of an insider, Maddie remembered. She knew almost nothing about Willoughby except that he had worked for the GIW. Maybe he was in some role that made setting a bomb off in their headquarters easy.

Briefly, Maddie entertained the idea that the GIW were behind the bombings, but she dismissed it. Attacking two cities and their own headquarters was far too much trouble, and she was fairly confident that the GIW could get to the portal through other, more sane methods. Unless they needed to prove the Fentons weren’t capable of responsibly handling their equipment….

Stop that, Maddie, she scolded. Her thoughts were straying into the paranoid, and that certainly wouldn’t help anything.

Who else might want the Fentons gone and the portal shut down? Fenton Works’ only direct competition was Vladco, and despite her qualms about him, Maddie couldn’t see Vlad putting her and her kids in danger for the sake of eliminating a business rival, especially one so insignificant compared to his corporate empire. And there was the Vladco hack to think about. Vlad might be a megalomaniac, but causing a security risk at his own company for the sake of making himself look like a victim? That wasn’t Vlad’s style.

Maddie paused her pacing and stared at the wall. Who else was there? Who hated the Fentons that much?

The image of broken glass sparkling across the couch flashed through Maddie’s head. The protestors. She knew nothing about any of them, and highly doubted that most of them knew much about ectoscience at all, but maybe some of them did. For all she knew, they could be signatories of the letter condemning the Fentons, from what felt like years ago at this point. If only she knew how to tell them how right they were.

Maddie sniffed, then realized she was still holding the dirty tissue from earlier. She glanced around, and upon finding no trash can, went to flush it down the toilet.

Her phone rang.

She left the toilet unflushed and clambered for her phone. There were only a few people whose numbers would ring; everyone else would be silent, muted in preparation for the inevitable barrage of calls Vilma had warned about.

But it wasn’t Vilma calling. It wasn’t Jazz, either, or Danny, as she’d hoped. It was Tucker Foley.

“Tucker, hi,” Maddie said, trying to keep the disappointment out of her voice.

“Mrs. F.,” Tucker said by way of greeting. It seemed like he, in turn, was trying to keep the stress out of his voice. “There’s something I want you to look at, but Jazz said I shouldn’t email you. Can you write the link down if I spell it out?”

Maddie blinked. “Uh, sure, Tucker,” she said. “Give me a moment.”

As she scrambled for a pen and paper from her bag — she doubted the motel had any — Maddie wondered: what could Tucker possibly be sending her? “I’m ready.”

Tucker read off a URL full of random letters and numbers for a website that Maddie would never click on for fear of a virus. But if Tucker was sending it to her, it was probably worth it, especially with the tension she heard from him. “Tucker, what are you sending me?” she asked when he was done.

“I don’t know, exactly” Tucker said. “I was hoping that you can answer that for me. Just…um, don’t ask me where it’s from. Or share it with anyone. Or tell anyone that you have it.”

That meant he had acquired it through less than legal methods, Maddie guessed; she found she didn’t care. “Okay, I won’t,” she promised.

Someone — probably Sam — spoke in the background of Tucker’s phone, and he called back, “Yeah, gimme a sec! I just gave it to her. Sorry, Mrs. F.,” he continued. “I gotta go.”

He hung up before Maddie could get another word in.

With a sigh, Maddie snapped her phone shut, then glanced at the outer screen. 17 missed calls. She flipped her phone back open with another sigh and scrolled through the list. There were several numbers from contacts in her phone, but most she didn’t recognize. She snapped the phone shut again, and this time noticed that her battery was at 8%. Drat. She didn’t have a charger with her.

Thankfully, the motel offered wireless Internet for an upcharge; she hoped no one was trying to track her with her credit card. Within minutes, Maddie had started her VPN, opened her browser, and typed in the address. It led to a file sharing website that Maddie absolutely would not have trusted if not for the fact that Tucker was the most paranoid person she knew when it came to Internet security, and even then, she hesitated before downloading it.

It was an audio file about eleven minutes long, simply titled: “Subject_D.”

Maddie clicked play.

***

There was the sound of a door opening, a pen scratching at paper, and then Erik Sedgewick said, “You wanted to see me, Mr. Masters?”

“Have a seat, Dr. Sedgewick.” Vlad sounded as he usually did — suave, confident, arrogant — but there was something more to his voice: a tinge of anger that sent a shiver down Maddie’s spine. “Tell me what went wrong with Subject D.”

“The ectopathogen didn’t behave as expected,” Sedgewick said. His voice was louder than Vlad’s, and muffled; she guessed that Sedgewick held the recorder in his pocket. “We monitored the injection site for signs of infection, but nothing of concern appeared. Subject D reported no symptoms until about five minutes before the incident. As soon as he reported numbness in his arm, my team investigated and discovered rapidly developing necrosis at the injection site. We activated a decontamination protocol and managed to slow down the spread of necrosis, but it’s uncertain how long we can stall it before the damage reaches vital organs.”

Vlad’s pen kept scratching away. “What caused the necrosis? Was it the ectopathogen?”

“We’re uncertain about that, sir,” Sedgewick said. “The ectopathogen undoubtedly played a role in starting the necrotic spread, but we’ve yet to determine if the ectopathogen itself was spreading or if it triggered a necrotic chain reaction.”

“I see. How is Subject D after the decontamination protocol?”

“He’s in intensive care and under constant monitoring. He…hasn’t regained consciousness yet.”

“Prognosis?”

There was a rustling noise as Sedgewick shifted uncomfortably. “We’re still registering brainwave activity, which suggests that his consciousness is intact. But we’re uncertain if it’s remained unaffected by the ectopathogen. We won’t know unless he wakes up.”

“Or the alternative happens.”

“Yes,” Sedgewick said. “Or the alternative happens.”

Vlad kept writing; Maddie could imagine him, sitting there at his desk, making notes or signing checks or whatever it was he did, not looking up while Sedgewick stood ramrod straight in front of him. She had half a mind that Vlad was writing nonsense just to keep Sedgewick in a state of stress.

Finally, Vlad put the pen down with a quiet thud. “Tell me, Dr. Sedgewick,” he said, voice icy, “which decontamination protocol did your team use?”

A beat. Then: “The Fentons’, sir.”

“Not mine?”

“No, sir.”

“Why not?” Vlad hissed.

Another pause. “The Fentons’ protocol was quicker to activate, sir.”

“I see,” Vlad said, so quietly that the recorder almost didn’t pick it up. “Do you question my methods, Dr. Sedgewick? Do you doubt all the work I’ve done?”

“No, sir,” replied Sedgewick vehemently. “It was a mistake made in haste. I’ll see to it that my team understands to employ the Vladco protocol in the future.”

Some silent communication must have happened, because there was a moment of silence before Vlad said: “It will do you good to remember, Dr. Sedgewick, who hired you after the disaster at Stanford. Remember who you owe your continued career in ectoscience to.”

Sedgewick swallowed. “Yes, sir.”

“Good.” Vlad picked up the pen and started scratching away at the paper once more. “Keep me abreast of any developments with Subject D. Do your best to keep him alive, but it’s not the end of the world if he dies. Just make sure that the alternative happens if he does.”

“I will, sir.”

“You’re dismissed.”

Sedgewick’s footsteps played from the speakers, but then Vlad spoke once more.

“Oh, and Dr. Sedgewick? Don’t record our conversations again.”

“Yes, sir.”

A door opened and closed; a few moments of random noises; and then Sedgewick sighed and the recording ended with a click. But before Maddie had the chance to ponder what “the alternative” meant, Sedgewick started speaking again.

“Personal recording of Dr. Erik Sedgewick, Lead Researcher in the Ectoplasmic Decontamination Division of Vladco, Incorporated, reporting on the incident with Subject D that occurred earlier today, April 12th, in Laboratory 7.”

Sedgwick sounded tired, and the thud of a glass suggested he was drinking.

“The previous conversation was between myself and Vlad Masters, CEO of Vladco and my direct boss. I saved this recording despite his order to delete it in case I need it as evidence in more lawsuits.” He sighed. “Subject D is— was— is part of the ecto-acne decontamination clinical experiments at Vladco. Identifying information has been deliberately withheld from me, but Subject D is a young white male who was deliberately infected with an ecto-acne pathogen so EDD could test possible treatments for the disease.

“Four days ago, a sample of a weakened ectopathogen was subcutaneously injected into Subject D’s left arm. Our directive was to monitor the ectopathogen’s progress and watch for the formation of pustules on the surface of Subject D’s skin. Once they developed, we were to take samples of the reaction before activating the Vladco decontamination procedure to treat it.”

He took a drink and sighed, again. “I don’t know what went wrong. Trials on animals never caused necrosis, not like it did on Subject D. I used the Fenton Works protocol because the supplies were closer, even if it goes against Vladco policy.” Another drink. “I still carry the Fentons’ decon kit after the incident at Stanford. I don’t want to be caught without something on hand ever again. We do not want that ecto-pathogen spreading.”

From the way Sedgewick was talking, Maddie guessed this wasn’t his first drink of the night. What happened with Subject D must’ve rattled him.

It rattled her. She remembered how terribly ecto-acne affected Vlad after his accident, even if he kept his distance. At the time, she and Jack thought it was a physiological reaction to ectoplasm contamination. Finding out ecto-acne was due to an ectopathogen was disturbing.

The fact that Sedgewick had access to it disturbed her more.

Sedgewick didn’t speak for a minute. “I don’t know if he’ll survive,” he finally said. “He’ll almost certainly lose function in the arm if he does. We managed to save the bone, but it’s like his skin and muscle were burned away. It’ll take years of physical therapy to get it even half-way working again.

“It would help if we knew where the ectopathogen came from. It’s made of ectoplasm, but it’s not ectoplasmic in origin, I’m sure of it. Its structure resembles an earthy virus too much for that.” He was silent for another moment. “I guess I’ll never be able to escape what happened at Stanford.”

He must’ve stood up and started pacing, because when Sedgewick spoke again, his volume fluctuated as he walked past the recorder; he sounded angry. “I’m beholden to Masters for what he did to save my career, but I don’t trust him. Some of the projects my colleagues are working on scare me, and I’ll probably be sent to one of them if the experiment on Subject D fails.” He fell silent again, with only his footsteps once more thumping through the speakers. “Sometimes I think I’m a coward for remaining at Vladco instead of owning up to what happened at Stanford. But I worked hard to get where I am, and I am not going to give it up yet. I want access to that portal. The Fentons—”

At the word “portal,” Maddie sat up straight. What did Sedgewick want with the portal?

She never got her answer. From the recording came the sound of a phone ringing, followed by Sedgewick’s voice, far away from the recorder, snapping, “What is it?” He swore. “He coded?” More swearing. “Fine, fine, just keep him stable until I get there.”

There was a cascade of unidentifiable sounds, followed by a single click as Sedgewick turned the recorder off.

***

The first thing Maddie did was call Tucker.

It rang once, twice, six times before his voicemail picked up; Maddie squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to cry when Danny’s voice said: “This is Tucker Foley’s phone! He’s probably off eating meat or making out with his PDA! Leave a message after the beep!”

She hadn’t realized how much she missed the sound of Danny’s voice. He sounded so happy. Only the beep of Tucker’s voicemail reminded Maddie of why she called.

“Tucker, it’s Mrs. Fenton,” she said, voice thick with emotion. “Call me back when you get this.”

Her head spun with everything she learned in the recording, and she started pacing again. Ectopathogens. Decontamination protocols. Rapid necrosis. Subject D. What did it mean? Why had Tucker sent this to her? Why did Sedgewick care so much about the portal?

Did Subject D survive?

She’d never heard about any deaths at Vladco, but, she thought darkly, it wouldn’t surprise her if Vlad had arranged a cover-up, especially with how tight a yoke he seemed to have on Sedgewick. What had Sedgewick said, exactly? “He coded?” Maddie could only assume he was referring to Subject D, which meant that the young man’s heart had stopped. But “keep him stable” implied that Sedgewick’s team had managed to revive him.

Her brain went back to the portal. Sedgewick hadn’t seemed very extreme when he’d actually seen it, but she remembered that he’d tried twice before to get access to it: once when he’d told her about the hack, and, apparently, once the winter before, when Vlad had sent him to Amity Park.

And an ectopathogen. Despite being a leading ectobiologist, Maddie had never encountered the concept, though Sedgewick had provided enough context that she could make some guesses. None of them were good.

What was most strange was his claim that, despite being made of ectoplasm, it wasn’t ectoplasmic in origin — that it resembled an earthly virus. What in the world did that mean? Had an earthly virus somehow been transformed into an ectoentity?

She needed to talk to someone about this. Maddie dialed Tucker’s number again, but ended the call after only a few rings. Then she called Sam, and then Jazz; neither girl picked up. She was about to call Alicia when—

Subject D.

‘D’ as in ‘Danny.’

Danny Phantom.

What if “the alternative” was to ensure that Subject D became a ghost?

It made brutal, horrifying sense. An ectopathogen that caused tissue necrosis. A ghost with cells made of ectoplasm. An impossibility made real.

Maddie started to shake as she tried to process the revelation that Erik Sedgewick was responsible for Danny Phantom becoming a ghost. The low ceilings and dim lighting of the motel room started to close in on Maddie, and, as calmly as she could, she grabbed the room key, unlocked the door, and nearly ran into the parking lot.

The light breeze brushed against Maddie’s face as she looked up at the sky. Danny had found solace in the stars; maybe she could find the same. But the sodium lights of the parking lot polluted her vision to the point that she could only make out a few bits of light shining past.

Maddie squeezed her eyes shut as she tried to think: where could she go to see the stars? Of course — the park, where she’d spent one last evening of peace with her son, before the world started to collapse around her.

Some part of Maddie’s head knew that leaving the motel was a bad idea; she’d told Jazz not to leave, after all. But the rest of Maddie just wanted to escape. All the chaos, all the stress, all the horrifying realities of what ectoscience was capable of.

So Maddie scribbled a note for Jazz, locked the motel room, got in her car, and drove away.

Chapter Text

Once more, Maddie pulled into a parking space and shut off the engine. It was, coincidentally, just before midnight.

But there would be no ghost to meet at the playground, no son to go stargazing with. Maddie was completely and utterly alone.

She didn’t bother looking up as she got out of the car, grabbing her keys and her dying phone. Just like at the motel, the lights here were too bright and drowned out the stars; she knew from experience. Walking into the field would give her eyes time to adjust.

As she walked, Maddie tried to remember which constellations would be in the sky. It wasn’t even two weeks since she’d been out here with Danny. The sky wouldn’t be too different, right?

Maybe Danny was out there somewhere, looking up at the same sky and missing his family as much as they missed him.

Maddie reached the little hill where she had stargazed with Danny, and, hoping her eyes had adjusted by now, looked up at the sky.

A layer of clouds had rolled in, blocking her view.

Maddie screamed.

She screamed in anger, in frustration, in loss and in sadness. She screamed at the hole in her heart where her family should go, and she screamed at the clouds that had taken this last connection to her son.

The sound tore itself from her throat like a wild animal trying to escape from its captors. She screamed again and again and again, until her throat was raw and painful, and then she screamed some more until there was no breath left in her chest to give it strength.

Maddie fell to her knees and buried her face in her hands, breathing hard. She didn’t cry; there were no more tears left to shed.

What did she do now?

Fenton Works wasn’t an option. She didn’t want to go back to the motel, where she’d have to hide from the world. She didn’t have any friends she could go to for help, and she doubted Sam or Tucker would do anything more than awkwardly dance around her questions.

So Maddie just knelt there, staring at the clouds, hoping they would break long enough for her to catch a glimpse of even one star.

A quiet light blinked on in the distance.

Maddie tensed: the light came from the playground. It was ectoplasmic in origin; she could tell that much.

It’s a bad idea, she told herself. She had nothing on her but a set of keys and an almost-dead cellphone. The smart thing would be to head back to her car and leave before the ghost knew she was there, in case they were hostile.

But it was the first ghost she had seen in weeks, besides Phantom and the ones at the Torrance. Maybe they had news on her missing ghost.

It was a bad idea. But it was the only bit of hope she had.

Maddie started walking towards the light.

She tried to walk normally, despite wanting to break into a sprint. She wanted the ghost to hear her approach so she didn’t spook them, but neither did she want to be so loud that she came off as a threat.

The light came from the other side of the playground, near the swings, with the play structure blocking her view. She stepped onto the mulch and stopped, feeling a strong sense of déjà vu and a chill in her left shoulder.

“Hello?” Maddie called. “Is anyone there?”

No response.

“I’m unarmed,” Maddie said. From this distance, there seemed something…wrong with the ghostly light, like her eyes couldn’t interpret it right. She started circling around to the swings, slowly, and held up her arms to show her empty hands. “I was hoping to ask you some questions. There haven’t been any ghosts in Amity Park for a while.”

The light flickered, and Maddie swore, internally. “Please don’t go,” she begged, not bothering to keep the desperation out of her voice. She could see a figure on the swings through the rungs on the play structure, but they were too thick for her to make much out.

Her heart pounded in her chest as she began to round the corner. It would be a risk to say his name, since she didn’t know if the ghost was a friend or foe, but…maybe it would get a reaction. “I just want to ask you about Danny—”

And there he was, sitting on a swing, pushing off gently with his foot, his back to her.

“Phantom!” she cried, running the rest of the way.

He turned around, eyes open wide. “Dr. Fenton!”

“You’re okay!” they said, simultaneously.

Maddie stared at Phantom; Phantom stared at her; and Maddie had to wonder if he was as aware as she was of how strange their relationship had become that they both were glad to see the other was okay. They weren’t quite allies, but they were no longer enemies, and Maddie found she wasn’t ashamed to admit she was worried about the boy.

From the look of open relief on his face, it seemed Phantom felt the same.

“Um…” Maddie began, and that broke the moment between them. She gestured at the swing next to Phantom. “Do you mind if I sit?”

“Oh, uh…no?” Phantom said. He shifted awkwardly as she sat, the chains clinking in the night.

Maddie took a moment to study him. As best as she could tell, Phantom was whole and unharmed, with no sign of the injuries she’d seen during the explosions at Carrie — nor could she see any signs of the injuries Sedgewick described on Subject D. Still the same white hair and green eyes, the same jumpsuit with the battered Thermos belted at his waist.

But something was off. She found it hard to look at him directly, like he glowed too brightly, even though Phantom almost seemed dimmer than she was used to. And he looked exhausted. She didn’t think ghosts were capable of being tired, but there were faint shadows under Phantom’s eyes and his skin was a shade too pallid. Phantom sagged in his seat, like he lacked the energy to sit up straight.

Phantom was staring at Maddie, too, but he looked like he was struggling to focus on her face. He didn’t seem inclined to start a conversation, so Maddie took the first bite.

“Phantom,” she said, not bothering to hide the concern in her voice, “where have you been?”

“The Ghost Zone,” Phantom replied. He finally looked away from her and started pushing back and forth with his foot. “It seemed the safest place to go.” He paused. “I didn’t really think about it. I just went.”

At least that theory was confirmed. “Did you…stop along the way?” Maddie asked, hesitantly, afraid of what his answer would be.

“No,” Phantom said, shaking his head, and Maddie’s heart sank. “I made a beeline for the portal. I wasn’t really in control of myself. I didn’t want to hurt anyone.” He looked back at her, and there was a terror in his eyes that made Maddie tense. “Did everyone at the Torrance…?”

“I’m sorry, Phantom,” Maddie said softly, shoving down her own pain for the sake of the ghost boy. “Dr. Reitman was killed in the explosion.”

Phantom looked away again. Maddie stayed quiet, giving him time to process the news. Finally, he said, “I tried to grab you both, but I missed. You two were the closest to the bomb. It all happened so fast and all I could do was try to stop the ectoplasm from spreading.”

He sounded so miserable that Maddie almost reached out to grasp his hand, like she would with one of her own kids, but she held back. She didn’t know what Phantom would think.

Phantom continued: “I don’t remember much after that. But I saw you, and I saw Dr. Reitman, and I remember…I remember wanting to get rid of him, because I thought it would make the pain stop. But it didn’t. So I ran away before I could hurt anyone else.”

He’s still disoriented, Maddie thought, because there was no reason why Phantom should be opening up to her like this — showing such vulnerability. He wasn’t thinking straight.

That, or Phantom trusted her far more than she thought.

“We have Henry’s ghost, Phantom,” she said. He looked at her, sharply. “I went back a few days later—”

“Wait, a few days?” Phantom said. “How long have I been gone?”

“A week,” Maddie replied. “Today’s Thursday. Well, Friday, since it’s past midnight.”

Phantom looked at her with trepidation. “So— Jazz told you, then? That I—” He cut himself off.

“That you’ve been getting help from my kids to investigate the bombs?” When Phantom hesitantly nodded, she sighed and said, “Jazz hasn’t told me anything yet. Things have been…hectic.” Maddie paused, wondering how much she should tell Phantom about Jack’s arrest and Danny’s disappearance. She didn’t want to stress him out even more. “But my husband and I guessed as much. We found the script Tucker used to hide you from our equipment.”

“Oh, um…sorry?”

Maddie shook her head. “You don’t need to be sorry, Phantom. You did what you had to protect yourself.” She huffed in contempt of herself. “We haven’t exactly made Amity Park a safe place for you.”

“No, you haven’t,” Phantom agreed. “But, um, you were saying about Dr. Reitman?”

“Right. Well….” Briefly, Maddie explained what happened at the Torrance, only two nights ago. Then she grimaced. “The GIW probably have his Thermos by now.”

Phantom looked horrified. “They what?!”

“I guess I should explain that too,” Maddie said. As she told him about the events of the past week, starting with Danny’s disappearance, Phantom grew more and more agitated. Maddie could see it in his expression and posture, and when she got the point where Jack was arrested, a crackle of green electricity ran up the chain from where Phantom clutched it.

Maddie jumped out of her swing at the same time Phantom phased backwards out of his. They stood on opposite sides of the swings and stared at each other through the rocking chains, Maddie breathing hard and Phantom utterly still.

“Dr. Fenton! Are you okay?” he finally asked, eyes wild. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“I’m okay, Phantom,” Maddie said, trying to keep her voice calm, since Phantom seemed on the edge of panic. “Really. I’m alright. You didn’t hurt me.” Phantom nodded. He rubbed at the hand that sparked the electricity like it hurt, but didn’t say anything. “Are you okay?”

Phantom hesitated, then said, in a small voice, “Not really.”

“Do you have somewhere you can go for help?” she asked. “Friends, or family, or…?”

He stared at her for a long while before he looked away and said, “My parents don’t know it’s me.”

“Oh.” Maddie’s face flushed. How agonizing that must be for the teen, to have died — especially when she considered how he died — and come back as a ghost, but not have the love of his parents to help him. She briefly wondered if she would recognize Danny, if he became a ghost, but, her heart aching, pushed the thought away.

Right now, Phantom deserved her compassion. It was the least she owed him.

“Do you want to talk about it with me?” Maddie asked.

He nodded.

“Alright.” Carefully, Maddie pushed past her swing until she was on the same side as Phantom. He continued staring at her with wide, fearful eyes that reminded her of the night of their first meeting. She glanced around. What could she do to assuage some of that worry? “Here,” she said, dragging the rubber landing mat out from under the swing and sitting on it. “It’s an insulating material. I’ll be safe here. You can sit on the swing.”

Phantom didn’t look like he quite believed that she’d be safe, but he shook his head. “No. If you’re sitting on the ground, then I’m joining you.” He picked up the other mat like it weighed nothing and set it down about six feet from Maddie. Phantom sat, crossed his legs, tucked his hands in his lap, then stared at the mulch between them. He didn’t speak, for a moment, and Maddie just waited for him to start.

“When I absorbed the energy from the bomb,” Phantom began, quietly, “it was like I forgot who I was. Like my thoughts were too spread out to connect. Everything just…hurt. I know you were there, Dr. Fenton, but I didn’t recognize you until the very end. It was enough to make me realize that I had to get away from you before I lost control of my ghost powers, so I ran. I followed the tug of the portal until I was in the Ghost Zone.”

The tug of the portal…. With Phantom’s words, Maddie was thrust back into the memory of her brief time as a ghost, when it felt like something was trying to pull her away. That’s what that was! She longed to ask Phantom about it, but just let him continue.

“Once I was in the Ghost Zone, it was too much ectoplasm to hold onto, so I just…let go. I really don’t remember anything after that until I woke up in the Ghost Zone —” Phantom scrunched his face in thought “— maybe a few hours ago? But then I left through the portal, and the GIW were in the house, so I ran and came here. And that’s where I’ve been.” He pulled his hands up and looked at them. The white shone brightly, as if it had never encountered the concept of dirt. “I don’t have control of most of my ghost powers right now. Just the basic ones. Flight, invisibility, intangibility, and I guess overshadowing, but I haven’t tried that one. And they’re all weaker, too.” Phantom tucked his hands back in his lap, then glanced at Maddie before looking away again. “I’m scared, Dr. Fenton. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

The two of them sat there in the little bubble of Phantom’s glow while Maddie tried to think of something to say. Phantom sounded so different from his normal cocky bravado that part of Maddie had a hard time reconciling the ghost teen sitting in front of her with the one she’d fought so many times.

So she settled on a simple, “I’m sorry, Phantom.”

He shrugged. “Thanks.”

But then Maddie realized: Phantom’s glow no longer hurt to look at. He seemed less slumped, too, though clearly still exhausted. That meant that either her eyes had adjusted, or…

Or talking about himself helps correct his ectoradiation signature.

The same thing happened with Reitman, she recalled. His proto-ghost hadn’t appeared until Maddie started to reflect on the biases she held in ectoscience — what Reitman had fought against. There was a whole train of thought to explore, but Maddie forced herself to keep her attention on Phantom. Keep him talking, she thought. It might help.

“Can I ask you a question?” she said.

“Go for it.”

“You said that you ‘followed the tug of the portal’,” Maddie said. “What does that mean?”

“Oh,” Phantom replied, brows furrowing. “That.” He shrugged. “No matter where I am in Amity Park, I can feel the portal. It’s like it’s pulling me towards it. Every ghost I’ve talked to can feel it.” He finally looked at Maddie. “The portal is a massively dense collection of ectoplasm that punches through dimensions, right?”

Maddie thought she saw a spark of excitement in his eyes, much like the one Danny got when talking about astronomy. “Right,” she said, slowly. What was Phantom getting at? “Wait. Wait, wait wait. Are you saying that the portal is the ectoplasmic equivalent of a black hole?”

“Yep!” Phantom nodded, and looked very pleased with her guess.

Maddie just stared at him. Who was this ghost, sitting across from her? This child who died in some messed up experiment — who had maybe been deliberately turned into a ghost, and yet spent his time fighting to protect the people of Amity Park? This teenage who seemed to know far more than he should, who reached a conclusion neither she nor Jack had ever considered?

Who shared an interest in space and a first name with her son?

Something wasn’t adding up.

“You’ve talked with Danny about the portal, haven’t you?” Maddie asked, slowly.

“Um.” Phantom tensed. “Will you be mad at him if I say ‘yes’?”

She shook her head. “No. Not anymore.”

“Okay, um. That’s good to know,” Phantom said. “Um, Dr. Fenton, I wanted to ask—”

Maddie’s phone rang.

“I’m sorry, Phantom,” she said, pulling it out. “I need to take this. My daughter’s calling.”

“Jazz?!”

She turned aside, facing away from Phantom. “Jazz, what is it?”

“The bombs were made from practice Thermoses.”

That one, simple sentence set Maddie’s blood to ice. “What?” she whispered.

“FW05-00586 through FW05-00591 are practice Thermoses from your class at Carrie, Mom,” Jazz said. She sounded like she was barely keeping herself together. “That’s what I went to check. They’re missing, Mom. Six of them.”

Six practice Thermoses. The same number Jack had asked her to make.

“They weren’t on the inventory sheet for this summer. But Mom — they were on it in December.”

One bomb near the Nasty Burger. One bomb at Casper. Two in Carrie. And one at the Torrance.

“Do you get what that means, Mom?”

Phantom was staring at her, a mix of worry and confusion written on his face.

“Someone changed the inventory, Mom. Someone stole six practice Thermoses and changed the inventory so we wouldn’t know.”

Six stolen Thermoses.

“Dr. Fenton?” Phantom said.

Five bombs.

“Dr. Fenton, can you tell Jazz that I—”

Beep.

Maddie pulled her phone away and stared at it. The low battery light no longer flashed, and she couldn’t get the screen to light up. Her phone had died.

“Dr. Fenton?” Phantom said. “What’s wrong?”

Someone highly skilled in ectoscience. Someone with a deep understanding of the effects of volatile ectoradiation. Someone with an excuse to leave the room at the Torrance. Someone who had been here in December. Someone who would do anything to protect his career.

Someone who, more than anything, wanted access to the Fenton Works portal.

There was one bomb left, and Maddie knew where to find it.

***

"So let me get this straight,” Phantom said. He walked — not floated — alongside Maddie as she marched back to her car. “The GIW arrested your husband, kicked you out of your home, and has an warrant out for your son’s arrest, and you’re going back to them?”

“Yep,” Maddie said.

“Even though your lawyer told you to get out of Amity Park?”

“Yep.”

“And there’s an unaccounted-for bomb out there?”

“Yep.”

“Can I come?”

Maddie stopped in her tracks. “Excuse me?” she said, confused.

“With you,” Phantom said. “I mean. In the car.”

“Um.” Maddie didn’t know if ghosts could blush, but if they could, Phantom definitely was. “Can’t you fly?”

Phantom didn’t look Maddie in the eye. “Yes, but…uhh,” he said, as awkward as any teenager Maddie had ever met, “I want to save my strength. Y’know.” He shrugged. “In case there’s a fight.”

The idea of a ghost — let alone Danny Phantom — riding in her car was so comically absurd that Maddie almost laughed out loud, but she managed to hold herself back. Several objections ran through her head, but in the end she said, “Sure,” and continued the march to her car; Phantom had to jog to catch up with her.

There was little time to waste. Sedgewick could set the bomb off at any minute — if he hadn’t already.

Maddie cursed under her breath. Sedgewick. She was bringing Phantom towards the man responsible for his death.

“Phantom, you need to know something,” she said as she unlocked the car. “The bomber is Erik Sedgewick.”

Phantom froze, hand on the door handle. “Oh,” he said, quietly.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to come,” Maddie said, matching her volume to his. “I know what he did to you.”

He looked at her, sharply. “You do?”

Phantom locked his eyes onto hers, and Maddie had to force herself not to look away from his intense, unblinking gaze. “Yes,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Phantom.”

The teen stared at her for another second, then said, “Okay. I’m still coming with you.”

Maddie nodded once and finally tore her eyes away from Phantom’s. The two of them climbed into the car, Phantom buckling himself into the passenger seat as though he’d been riding in it forever. Maddie barely registered how odd it was for a ghost to buckle himself in; just another strange element to the mystery that was Phantom.

“Brace yourself,” Maddie said to Phantom before flicking a switch. The green and yellow lights of the Ghost Emergency Alert started flashing from the top of the windshield; Maddie threw the car into gear and peeled out of the lot at twice the speed limit.

It was a twenty-five-minute drive from the park to Fenton Works; Maddie knew she could make it in under fifteen.

“I thought the other Dr. Fenton was the crazy driver!” Phantom said, loudly, as Maddie swerved too hard around a slow car in her lane and ended up on the sidewalk.

She glanced over to see that Phantom was clutching his seatbelt for dear life. “Well, I haven’t watched my husband drive for two decades without picking up a few tricks,” Maddie said through clenched teeth; her own knuckles were white from gripping the steering wheel too hard.

The streets were mostly empty at this hour, and Maddie drove through them like a madwoman, ignoring stop signs and running red lights. She took corners far too sharply and lost traction on her wheels at least twice, and she knew the post office would be mad at her that a Fenton took out yet another mailbox; she kept going.

Some part of her whispered concern that the ghost in the car was more worried than she was, but Maddie didn’t care. She had already lost everything; but she still had everything left to lose. She might already be too late to save Fenton Works, but she was darn well going to try.

Then she turned onto the last road before her home and found the barricade.

The GIW had blocked off the road three blocks from Fenton Works and had agents standing behind the wooden barriers. The APPD had joined them, their blue and red lights drowning out the green and yellow from Maddie’s car. She turned down a side road a few blocks from the barrier and drove parallel to it, much slower now. After six blocks, the barriers ended, and Maddie didn’t need to keep going to guess that the GIW had blocked off every possible approach to Fenton Works. She made a U-turn and started driving back to the main road.

The sound of a seatbelt being undone startled Maddie, and she glanced to the side to see that her passenger was gone. “Uh, Phantom?” she asked.

“I’m still here,” came his disembodied voice. It seemed to come from nowhere in particular, and in the confines of the car, the strange echo to it was stronger. “I don’t want them to see me.”

“Right, okay,” Maddie said, hoping that he couldn’t tell how unnerved she was at not being able to see him. “Just let me know in the future if you’re going to do that.”

“Oh, uh, sure,” Phantom said, sounding embarrassed.

Maddie didn’t respond, because by that time she had made it to the main road. “I’m going to see if I can talk to the GIW,” Maddie said. “If you need to slip away, now’s the best chance.”

“No, I’m staying with you.”

The guards at the barriers must’ve known it was her, because there was an APPD car waiting for Maddie on this side of the wall. She pulled up alongside it and rolled her window down as the officer approached. In the distance, she could clearly see that the GIW had activated the anti-ghost shielding around Fenton Works, glowing green against the orange haze of the city at night.

“Officer,” Maddie said, then cursed inwardly when she recognized him as Officer Franklin, the one they’d tricked at the Torrance. “I need to speak to Operative K.”

Franklin shook his head. “I’m sorry, Dr. Fenton, but you need to leave.”

“You don’t understand. I need to talk to Operative K. I have information that will help the bomb investigation.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Franklin said. He glanced behind her, into the car, and Maddie had to force herself not to react. Had he somehow sensed that Phantom was there? “You’re not allowed anywhere near it after your husband’s arrest.”

“I know that.” Maddie barely held back from yelling at him in frustration. “This is about something else. Let me talk to him.”

Again, Franklin shook his head. “No, Dr. Fenton. I appreciate what you did for me, but I can’t let you through.” He paused. “I have orders to arrest you if you don’t leave the area. Now.”

“Fine,” she snapped. Without waiting for Franklin to respond, Maddie put her car in reverse and backed away before racing off, tires screeching. She drove only a few blocks before turning onto another side road and stopping her car against a row of townhouses, out of sight from the GIW and their stupid barricades.

Maddie peeled her fingers from the steering wheel and exhaled a wordless snarl of frustration. “Phantom, are you still here?” she asked through gritted teeth.

“Yeah, I am,” he said, still invisible. “So what now?”

“I ram my car through the barrier and march into Fenton Works myself.”

“Uh….”

“I’m kidding, Phantom,” Maddie said, even though she absolutely was not. “I find a pay-phone and call the APPD, I guess.” Which was probably what she should have done in the first place, but in the stress of the moment it hadn’t even occurred to her — in her defense, it had been more than eighteen hours since she’d slept and today had been one of the most stressful days of her life, on top of one of the most stressful weeks of her life.

Focus, Maddie. Now that the adrenalin rush was wearing off, it was getting harder to stay on track. Where’s the nearest pay-phone?

As Maddie ran through her mental map of every pay-phone she knew of, she silently cursed Amity Park for removing them as mobile phones became more popular. The nearest pay-phone was by Casper High, and it was on the opposite side of Fenton Works. She’d have to take such a roundabout path to get there—

Splat!

The sound of something wet and heavy hitting the windshield startled Maddie out of her thoughts. She looked up and found an egg shattered across her view. As she watched the egg innards ooze down the glass, another egg hit the window, then a third one.

Oh no, Maddie thought. She wasn’t surprised when the vandal came close enough that she could recognize him.

It was Dirk, the protester, and he wasn’t alone.

A mob of people followed him, carrying baseball bats and camping lanterns in place of pitchforks and torches. They marched down the street, yelling obscenities at Maddie. She recognized people from the protesters who had gathered at her house before, but this crowd also included some of her neighbors — people who, she guessed, had been evacuated from their homes by the GIW; people she knew had never liked the Fentons and their proximity to the normal people of Amity Park.

Maddie put her car in reverse and started backing up, but twenty feet from the end of the block, a car drove up and blocked the exit, trapping her in.

She turned back around and found the encroaching mob was almost at her car. What should she do? She was trapped if she stayed in the car, but she would almost certainly be caught if she tried to make a run for it.

Maddie twisted back and forth in her seat, looking for an answer. Lights were turning on in the nearby townhouses as the yelling crowd woke people up. Maybe she could beg at a neighbor’s door to be let in? She unbuckled her seatbelt and was reaching for the door when something hit her windshield, hard, and she shrieked. Another blow sent a spiderweb of cracks across the glass.

“Dr. Fenton,” Phantom said, still invisible. “When I tell you to, back out of here as fast as you can.”

“But there’s a car back there!” she protested. Something cracked the passenger window; Maddie cringed away.

“Just trust me!”

Maddie’s next protest died in her throat. She trusted Phantom. Against her better judgment, maybe, but she did. Maddie nodded, hoping Phantom saw her — yet another hit to the windshield — and got ready to back up.

The front of her car was almost entirely surrounded by people, who were hitting the hood and mirrors with baseball bats. She twisted around in her seat and saw that the road behind her was still blocked; she didn’t know what Phantom had in mind, but when he gasped out a strained “Go!” Maddie slammed her foot on the gas.

The car shot out from between the protestors, but Maddie was too focused on the car blocking the exit her to notice if any of them were knocked down. Her eyes went wide as the car rapidly grew closer; they were about to crash into it when an icy chill came over Maddie, and her car went sailing straight through the other.

He’s turned us intangible! Maddie thought wildly as her car shot backwards, the lack of friction and air resistance preserving what speed she had built up in those few seconds.

As quickly as the chill had come on, it vanished, and Phantom reappeared in the seat next to her, groaning. Maddie barely paid him any attention; she hadn’t parked straight, and the angle had them heading towards a tree wrapped in a metal cage, several blocks down the road from where the protesters trapped them. The sudden reintroduction of the laws of physics to her car sent the tires screeching, and Maddie slammed on the brakes while wrenching the steering wheel to the side.

The car missed the tree.

It did not, however, miss the concrete stoop right behind it.

Maddie’s skull slammed into the headrest, and she was grateful that she had been facing forward when they crashed. Still, despite the relatively low speed, the impact left her dizzy; she should get checked for a concussion after this. But after a moment of catching her breath, Maddie gave herself a once-over and was fairly sure nothing was broken or seriously injured.

Phantom was another story. He sat in the seat next to her, tense, invisibility gone, his eyes screwed shut as if he were in pain.

“Phantom?” Maddie said.

No response.

Through the cracks in her windshield, Maddie could see the protesters making their way towards her car again. Phantom’s trick had bought them a few moments, but not much.

“Phantom,” she repeated, “if you can hear me, you need to wake up.”

Tentatively, Maddie pressed the gas pedal. Her car lurched a bit, and there was a terrible screech of metal, but it was too stuck on the stoop to move. Rats! She’d have to escape on foot.

Maddie unbuckled, then looked at Phantom. He hadn’t moved since her last glance, still tensed up. His breathing seemed labored, and the scientific part of Maddie’s mind filed that detail away to investigate later. He’s overwhelmed from the intangibility, she thought. He wasn’t exaggerating when he said his powers were out of control; she’d seen him turn entire buildings intangible before without breaking a sweat — if ghosts could sweat; she didn’t know — and yet this move had left him stunned.

Maddie reached, hesitated, then placed a hand on Phantom’s shoulder; it was, she realized, the first time she’d willingly touched him out of concern instead of necessity. His jumpsuit felt like ice to her skin. “Phantom?”

As soon as her hand made contact, Phantom’s eyes flew open and he shook himself. Then, he looked at Maddie, and it took a second for him to focus on her.

“Uh…” Phantom said, like he was trying to remember what he was going to say. “Did it work?”

Maddie nodded, relieved. “It did,” she said, “but I crashed the car, and they’re still coming.” She pointed at the approaching protesters.

“Okay,” he said, twisting around in his seat. Now that the moment of disorientation had passed, Phantom was more alert, and Maddie saw the calculating look in his eyes. “I know where we are. There’s a place nearby we can regroup.” He pointed at a nearby alley that Maddie knew from her ghost hunting experience led down a row of garages between houses. “Meet me there,” he said, and vanished.

Some part of Maddie’s mind yelled at her for leaving the scene of an accident, but, from the shouts of the mob that was almost here, she’d have bigger problems if she didn’t leave. So Maddie grabbed her keys and her still-dead phone, opened the car door, and made a run for the alley.

It wasn’t a very impressive run; she stumbled over the curb almost immediately, her head spinning once more, but Maddie managed to make it to the alley without tripping over her own feet. She leaned against the wall, breathing hard, when something grabbed her hand. It felt like she’d shoved her hand into a bucket of ice water, and another wave of coldness followed.

Her vision immediately went haywire.

Everything was upside down; colors were inverted; and it felt like a layer of television static was dancing across her pupils. But Maddie didn’t have time to process what was happening before Phantom was pulling her into a run.

“Phantom!” she hissed. “I can’t see!”

“You’ll get used to it,” he said. Belatedly, Maddie realized she could see Phantom, despite the fact that she was fairly certain they were invisible right now. He looked like an afterimage burned into her retinas; her own arm appeared the same way. “Just follow my lead.”

Maddie allowed herself to be dragged along at a run through the alley, not really watching where she was going and hoping that Phantom would keep her away from the numerous potholes lining the street. Behind her, the protesters were shouting, but she couldn’t tell how far away they were; the invisibility was messing with her hearing, too.

She didn’t know how long they ran, but it couldn’t have been very long before Maddie felt another wave of ice pass over her, and the world seemed to spin as Phantom led her through the wall of someone’s garage. It was empty, save for a car covered in a tarp and some shelves lined against the wall.

Phantom let Maddie go and the cold vanished, leaving her shoulder aching. Before her vision had the chance to reorient itself, she stumbled into the wall. She caught herself, then leaned against it and sank to the floor.

Phantom stood a few feet from her. He was bent over, hands on his knees, like a runner breathing hard, except he wasn’t breathing. Before Maddie could say anything, he held up one finger, then, a moment later, opened his eyes and turned to her.

“Are you alright, Dr. Fenton?” he asked. Despite the dark of the garage, Phantom glowed, just enough, that she could make out the concern on his face.

Maddie nodded. “Thanks for getting me out of that mess,” she said. There were no sounds from outside, no shouts or footsteps or anything. Hopefully, that meant they had escaped. “Where are we?”

“Mr. Kaufman’s garage,” Phantom said. “He’s in California visiting his kids until August.” He shrugged. “I figured no one would bother us here since he’s not home.”

“Huh,” Maddie said. She didn’t know Mr. Kaufman that well, but Danny, Tucker, and Sam had helped him clear his basement out in the spring so he could make renovations. How Phantom knew he was out of town was a mystery, but she didn’t feel like asking. Instead, she groaned and buried her face in her hands.

This was a disaster. How was she going to be able to stop Sedgewick now? Part of her wanted to give up, let the GIW deal with whatever he was going to do, but all Maddie could think was that Fenton Works was her home, the portal her creation, and that made it her responsibility to make sure that no one got hurt if something happened to the portal. She didn’t know why Sedgewick — or Vlad, she couldn’t forget his role in this — wanted the portal or what it had to do with the sixth bomb, but he had already killed two people, and it was only by luck that her death didn’t stick.

“Can you shut the portal down?”

Maddie lifted her head and raised an eyebrow at Phantom. “Come again?”

“If you could get to the lab,” Phantom asked, tense, “can you shut the portal down? So Sedgewick can’t do anything to it?”

She could, theoretically. They’d never had a reason to shut the portal down before, so the method was never tested, but experiments on the small scale proved successful. It worked by shunting the ectoenergy into a series of large batteries installed in the walls of the portal; any excess ectoplasm would be vacuumed into storage containers under the floor. Disposing of the waste would be a major hassle — but then again, so would a bomb being set off in the lab. The only major problem was that it would take hours, if not days, for the process to finish. Time would not be on their side.

But…there was the emergency shut-down to consider.

Maddie barely understood how it worked; it was Jack’s idea, not hers, and the physics was almost beyond her grasp. It would jettison all the ectoenergy into the Ghost Zone in a single move, leaving nothing but inert ectoplasm behind. It might work.

It might also explode.

Still, Maddie nodded. Yes, she could shut the portal down if necessary.

Phantom took a deep breath, then said, “I can get you into Fenton Works.”

“What? No you can’t,” Maddie said, shaking her head. “The GIW activated the ghost shield.”

“About that….” Phantom rubbed at the back of his neck and didn’t look at Maddie. “There are…weak spots in your shielding. They’re really obvious to a ghost.” Was he blushing, again? “Sorry.”

Maddie blinked. Well, that certainly explained how Phantom and all the other ghosts got in and out of the lab. “The GIW have the streets blocked off,” she said, starting to get an inkling of Phantom’s plan and not liking it in the slightest. “They’re definitely monitoring for ghostly activity. How will we get past them?”

Phantom pointed at the ground. “They can’t track us down there.”

“Oh.”

Maddie wanted to bang her head against the wall. Of course ghosts would travel through the earth to avoid detection; they could turn intangible. She and Jack had spent so much time protecting the walls and the air around Fenton Works, but the ground was left almost entirely undefended.

The Fentons weren’t ghosts. Why would they think like one?

Phantom nodded. “There’s a weak spot in the dungeon we can use,” he said. “There’s one right above the portal, too, but it’s probably best if we know what Sedgewick is up to before we do anything.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Maddie said, even though moving through the dirt with an unstable ghost sounded like a terrible plan. Maddie eyed Phantom. Were her eyes playing tricks, or did he seem less focused than before? “Phantom…are you sure you’re okay to do this?” she asked. “You looked…stressed after turning the car intangible.”

“I’ll be fine,” Phantom said, shaking his head. “It’s easier to use my ghost powers on people than non-organic things. I won’t let anything happen to you. Promise.”

He gave her a lopsided smile that seemed so uncannily reminiscent of Danny’s that, for a second, Maddie thought she was looking at her son instead of Phantom. She blinked, and the recognition went away. But it lingered, and Maddie told herself that she would find out the connection between her son and Phantom once this was all over.

For now, though, Maddie just nodded and said, “Okay.” She held out a hand to Phantom. “Let’s do this.”

Phantom hesitated, just a split second, before taking her proffered hand. A wave of ice flooded Maddie’s system, and along with it came the eerie vertigo of being eternally suspended in the first drop of a roller coaster as Phantom passed both his intangibility and gravity resistance over to her.

Then Phantom pulled her down into the darkness.

Chapter Text

Nothing.

She saw nothing. She heard nothing. She felt nothing — nothing except the firm grip of Phantom’s hand and the glacial frigidity that came with him.

And, maybe, a gentle pull towards somewhere in front of her, but Maddie wasn’t sure if she was imagining it or not.

She tried not to think about what would happen if Phantom lost control of his intangibility, if even for a second. He would be fine — probably, she wasn’t wholly certain — but Maddie wasn’t a ghost, and becoming solid while in the ground would be an instant death sentence. She would disappear, her body buried so deep as to be unrecoverable; if she didn’t become a ghost, the only person who would know her fate would be Phantom, and she didn’t know if he would ever tell her family the truth: that he let her die.

Stop thinking about that, Maddie scolded. She forced herself to think about something, anything else.

What were they going to do when she and Phantom got to the lab? Now that she was unable to speak to Phantom, Maddie realized how poor of an idea this was. What if the GIW were in the dungeon? How would she explain her suspicions to them? What if they attacked Phantom?

She shivered. The cold was getting harder to deal with the longer Phantom’s intangibility was passed onto her. Maddie didn’t know what the long-term effects of being under a ghost’s powers would do to a living person. Try as they might, but the Fentons had never successfully been able to replicate how ghosts disobeyed the laws of earthly physics. They’d studied victims of overshadowing, of course, but there never seemed to be any lingering side effects.

Henry was right. Her kids were right. She and Jack could have learned so much more if they’d been willing to talk to Phantom in the first place.

This isn’t helping, Maddie thought, but then there was a jolt, like she’d been shot, and Phantom was pulling her into the dungeon and letting go of her hand. She stumbled as gravity took hold of her, but managed not to fall this time. After a moment, she glanced around and saw that the room was empty.

Completely empty, actually. Every bit of equipment they’d stored down here, from the nastier weapons to the incomplete projects, was gone, removed by the GIW. As much as it broke her heart and stoked her anger, part of Maddie was grateful the pseudo-medieval torture devices were gone so that Phantom didn’t have to see them.

Granted, he knew the Fentons called the sub-basement the “dungeon,” so Phantom probably already knew what was normally here.

Maddie found herself rubbing at her left shoulder; it was still freezing, even after the rest of the chill had fallen away when Phantom released her. That was concerning, since the decontamination protocol should have nullified any remaining ectoplasm, but Maddie pushed the thought aside as she realized Phantom hadn’t said anything.

“Phantom?” she whispered, turning to find Phantom once again hunched over, eyes screwed shut and hands gripping his knees. He was so tense that he shook, but otherwise, he didn’t move. “Phantom!”

Maddie moved until she was in front of him and bent her knees so she’d be at eye level when he opened his; she was close enough to see the faint scar above his eye. Phantom didn’t acknowledge that she was there, not even when Maddie placed a hand on his shoulder, grateful he wasn’t still intangible, and shook him gently.

What did she do now? “Phantom,” she said, quietly, then thought for a second. “We made it to the dungeon. It’s empty. The GIW cleared it out with their search warrant. You’re not intangible anymore, and you’re not flying, either. Your feet are firmly on the ground.”

Was she imagining things, or did Phantom’s face twitch? Maddie continued: “You got me here safely. I’m still a little chilly, but I’m okay. There’s no one coming for us. We’re safe for the moment.”

Phantom opened his eyes so suddenly that Maddie let go of his shoulder and stumbled back. He was staring at her, but his eyes were glowing so brightly that Maddie couldn’t make out any details. Despite the ectolight playing tricks with her vision, Maddie kept eye contact with him and, after a moment, Phantom’s eyes faded back to their normal glow. He looked around wildly, like he wasn’t sure how he got here, and then settled back on Maddie.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

Phantom nodded, then looked away as if ashamed. “Yeah,” he said. “The ghost shield took more out of me than I thought it would.” He cleared his throat. “We’re alone?”

“Yes,” Maddie said, taking the change of subject, “but I realized that the GIW could be all over the lab. We could be walking right into their hands. I didn’t think about that.”

“Me neither.” Phantom looked deep in thought for a moment, then said: “Let me take a look.”

He vanished before Maddie had the chance to say anything, and with him went the light that had illuminated them in the darkness. And then Maddie was back in the earth, in that eternal nothingness, lost forever to everyone but a ghost….

Maddie stomped her foot lightly on the floor. The sound echoed in the room, reminding Maddie that she was standing in the dungeon, not stuck the ground, and she was still alive and knew where the exit was if Phantom never came back.

But then the room lit up and Phantom was standing in front of her. He looked even more exhausted than before, but his eyes were clear and focused. Maddie held back a sigh of relief as he said: “The GIW aren’t here. It’s just two people arguing over something in front of the portal.”

“Sedgewick and an assistant,” Maddie said. Anger rose in her chest, hot and boiling and chasing off the lingering chill in her shoulder. Finally! She knew who was behind the bombs; she knew where he was; and she knew she could finally, finally do something about the danger than had been haunting her family for a month and a half. “I’m putting an end to this,” she hissed, and she stomped towards the stairs.

“Wait!” Phantom called, lunging after her. He caught her shoulder and Maddie spun around to face him. Phantom cringed, just slightly, at the rage that must’ve shown on her face. “A sneak attack. Let me take you through the door.”

Maddie barely held herself back from snapping at him. “Are you sure you can do that?”

Phantom hesitated, then nodded. “I can get you through the door and to the portal,” he said. “And then we take him down.”

There was an anger in Phantom’s voice she hadn’t heard before, and Maddie reminded herself that Phantom had suffered under Sedgewick’s hand. Of course he’d want to stop Sedgewick as much as, if not more than, she did.

“Okay,” Maddie found herself agreeing, then spun back around, climbed the narrow staircase, and stopped just before the door. Once again, she held out her hand to Phantom when he arrived seconds after her.

Maddie ignored the little voice telling her how bad an idea this was, and braced herself as another wave of ice crashed down on top of her. Phantom’s powers wreaked havoc on her body again, but Maddie was prepared for it; she didn’t flinch as her vision inverted and the vertigo settled in her chest.

Then Phantom pulled her through the door and into the lab.

He dropped the intangibility as soon as they were through, but the other effects on Maddie’s senses remained. She squinted at the lab, her head momentarily unable to process what she was seeing, but then, as though a switch had been flipped, what she saw made sense again, even though the strange filters on her brain.

You’ll get used to it, Phantom had said. The longer she stayed under his powers, the more she adjusted to them; Maddie wasn’t sure that was a good thing.

They stood at the back of the lab. The GIW had done a thorough job: the lab was startlingly empty, like the day the Fentons had first declared it finished. Every experiment had been packed up, shelves cleared of equipment and miscellaneous junk, the posters Maddie had scribbled her theories on ripped down and taken away. Even the tank the ghost mouse lived in had been removed — Maddie hoped it would be okay.

Almost twenty years of the Fentons’ lives and livelihood, gone as though they never existed. The only things the GIW left were the tables and stools, pushed to the sides of the lab as an afterthought, as well as the experiment chamber, which still stood where it had been assembled.

And, of course, the portal.

It was open, and Maddie couldn’t help but think its colors were more vivid when seen through invisible eyes. Two figures in hooded hazmat suits stood in front of it. Maddie couldn’t make out their voices while under Phantom’s invisibility, but he assessment of them was correct: they were arguing, one person standing with their arms crossed and the other gesticulating wildly.

Maddie couldn’t tell how far along Sedgewick and his assistant were in decommissioning the portal, but it didn’t look like they’d gotten too far: their bags were sitting on a table pulled from the cluster along the wall, largely unpacked.

She breathed a sigh of relief. Good. Maybe she and Phantom could stop this, after all.

Phantom had started to walk forward, despite floating a few inches off the ground. It seemed to strain him to pull Maddie, though, so she mimicked him, imagining an invisible floor for her feet to walk on. For the moment, she ignored how much they were breaking Newton’s Laws of Motion and instead focused on putting on foot in front of the other.

In the light of the portal, Phantom glowed brighter, and he was standing up straighter. Maddie could see more of him, too, than when he’d made her invisible before. Being near the portal is making him stronger, she thought, though she didn’t like what that implied about loose ectons in the lab.

They were about half-way across the lab when Phantom shivered violently and his powers suddenly vanished. He and Maddie dropped the few inches to the floor, their feet clanging loudly on the metal. Maddie lost her balance and fell to her knees. Her head spun as her brain adjusted her sight back to normal.

Phantom remained standing.

“Step away from the portal, Dr. Sedgewick,” the ghost commanded, holding up his fists threateningly. “And no one will get hurt.”

“A ghost!” someone shouted, and that’s when the shooting started.

Maddie threw herself towards the clump of lab stools; Phantom leapt into the air as someone fired an ectoblaster at him. He bounced around the room at a speed and agility that would shock most people, staying just ahead of each blast, trying to get closer to Sedgewick.

But to Maddie, who knew how Phantom fought more than almost anyone else, saw the way he slammed too hard into that wall, stumbled too much with that landing, and knew it was only a matter of time before one of the blasts took out Phantom. She looked around wildly for some kind of weapon, but in the empty lab, there was nothing for her to grab except the stool and—

Phantom yelped, then crashed to the floor only feet from Maddie, to the shouts of Sedgewick and his assistant. Phantom groaned loudly enough for her to hear, his body scrunched up in obvious pain. The blast had taken him right in the abdomen.

Before Maddie had time to react, someone raced over, jammed something into Phantom’s chest, and tasered him.

Phantom screamed in pain, his back arching against the electricity that ran through his body. He kept screaming even as a crackle of green ectoenergy zipped around his body; his glow grew harsh to Maddie’s eyes.

“Stop!” Maddie yelled. She jumped up from behind the stools, safety be screwed. “Stop! You’re hurting him!”

Phantom’s assailant startled. The movement was enough to pull the taser off of Phantom; he collapsed and didn’t move. “Maddie Fenton?” they shrieked, voice twisted in disbelief. The portal glinted off their faceplate, blocking Maddie from identifying them. “And Danny Phantom?”

Maddie’s blood ran cold. She couldn’t see them, but she knew that voice.

“Penny,” Maddie hissed, “we have to get out of here.” She grabbed the other woman’s arm. Of course Penny was here. She was the other decontamination specialist. “Sedgewick’s the bomber.”

But Penny pulled her arm from Maddie’s grip. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m trying to stop—”

“Dr. Fenton?!”

Maddie cursed. She turned to face Sedgewick, who had come racing after Penny. “I’m here to stop you, Sedgewick,” she spat, and moved to stand next to Penny. “I know you’re behind the bombs.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Sedgewick yelled. Through the faceplate of his suit, Maddie could see him look back and forth between her and Penny, his face twisted with unidentifiable emotions.

“I know everything,” Maddie said through clenched teeth. “You made the bombs. You framed my husband. You tried to kill my family.” With each accusation, she jabbed a finger at Sedgewick. “You wanted access to our portal, so you stole those Thermoses and tried to destroy us.”

“Dr. Fenton—Maddie, listen—”

“And I know what you did to Danny Phantom,” she said, feeling her face twist in a sneer as she pointed at the ghost. Penny tensed beside her. “Even Jack and I never went that far.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Sedgewick roared; Maddie managed not to shy back in fear of the rage in his voice.

“I know about the ectopathogen!” Maddie shouted back. “I know about Subject D!”

“You—what?!” Confusion replaced some of the rage on Sedgewick’s face. “What does he have to do with anything?” He swore, then fumbled for the radio on his hip. “Enough. I’m contacting the GIW—”

Penny shot him.

The ectoblast took Sedgewick right in the chest and knocked him off his feet. He landed on his back, hard, and didn’t get up.

Maddie backed away from the other woman, but her foot caught Phantom’s still form and she went down, falling on her rear. She looked up to find an ectoblaster aimed at her face. Maddie put her hands in the air and stared at Penny in confusion.

“Penny, what the fu—”

Someone who knew multiple areas of advanced ectoscience. Someone with access to highly specialized equipment. Someone who wasn’t in the room when the bomb at the Torrance went off.

Someone who was in Carrie when the Thermoses were stolen, covering the Fentons’ class while they were gone.

“It’s you,” Maddie said, quietly. “You’re the bomber.”

“Took you long enough,” Penny sneered. There was no sign of the normal warmth in her voice, only a hard anger that had long solidified into ice. “Some genius you are. Get up.”

Maddie glared at Penny.

“I said, get up!” Penny yelled, and her fingers tightened on the trigger.

This time, Maddie climbed to her feet, slowly, not wanting to draw Penny’s ire any further by inaction or sudden movement. The woman Maddie might have called a friend was gone, and in her place was a furious ectoscientist who didn’t seem entirely stable.

A cascade of thoughts rushed through Maddie’s head. How had she been so ignorant? Once again, Maddie’s biases had gotten in the way of her seeing the truth; she’d become so fixated on Sedgewick that she’d failed to consider any other options.

Penny was behind the bombings. She had the sixth Thermos. Was it here in the lab, or out there in Amity Park, ready to murder innocent passersby — or maybe the GIW? Maddie still didn’t know where they were or why they weren’t showing up to the commotion. And she had no idea what Penny’s motives were, either, or what she planned to do.

“Why are you doing this, Penny?” Maddie asked. “I don’t understand.”

Penny didn’t answer. Keeping the ectoblaster trained on Maddie, she pulled something out of her pocket and tossed them to her. By reflex, Maddie caught them. It was a set of ecto-cuffs, designed to inhibit a ghost’s powers.

“Put those on,” Penny said, nodding at Phantom.

Maddie glanced at the stairwell, wondering if she could make it out. Penny saw her glance, and said, “The GIW aren’t coming to save you, Maddie. I’ve convinced them to stay away until I give the all-clear. They’re cowards, the whole lot of them. Not willing to risk themselves in case something goes wrong down here.” She glared at Maddie. “Put the cuffs on.”

Now, Maddie obeyed. She kept her eyes on Penny as she slowly knelt, only looking away to find Phantom’s hands and bind them. She hated to do it: the cuffs were meant to hurt. She hoped Phantom would understand.

If he ever woke up. The teen didn’t react as she pulled his arms together and cuffed his hands. Phantom wasn’t breathing — of course he wasn’t, he was a ghost — and his arms had no tension to them. It reminded Maddie of the few times she’d been unfortunate enough to handle a corpse — which, in a way, she was, although Phantom was much colder than the average dead body.

She didn’t know if Phantom’s temperature was normal for a ghost. She didn’t know if his limpness was normal, either. She didn’t know any first aid for a ghost. She didn’t know anything.

She didn’t know how she was getting out of this alive.

Maddie left as much slack in the cuffs as she thought she could get away with, then looked up at Penny. The other ectoscientist was as unmoving as a statue, the gun still pointed at Maddie. “Pick him up,” Penny said.

Slowly, Maddie gathered Phantom in her arms. He was lighter than he looked, but heavier than she expected a lanky teenage ghost to be. Again, he didn’t respond to Maddie when she moved him.

The two ectoscientists watched each other as Maddie stood, awkwardly. For a moment, she considered throwing Phantom at Penny and making a run for it. She considered throwing herself at Penny and hoping she could wrestle the ectoblaster away from her without getting hit. Maddie considered doing a lot of things, but in the end, she didn’t like her chances and just continued glaring at Penny.

“Take him to the portal,” Penny commanded.

“What, so you can toss him in?” The words were out of Maddie’s mouth before she could stop herself; antagonizing the person with the weapon was probably a bad idea.

But Penny let out a bark of a laugh and said: “And let him get help from the Ghost Zone? Do you think I’m stupid?” She gestured for Maddie to move.

“No,” Maddie said as she started towards the portal. Just unhinged, she added, silently. “You’re a lot of things, Penny, but ‘stupid’ isn’t one of them.” Carrying Phantom and walking through the lab, even empty, was harder than she thought, so she didn’t say anything else. Penny’s blaster was still trained on her, and Maddie doubted that she could get Phantom close enough to the portal without getting shot. But maybe…she could get herself close enough.

It was a foolish idea, Maddie knew. Going through the portal unprotected could very well kill her, and there was no guarantee she could get back. And for all she knew, Penny — or Sedgewick, in his attempts to shut it down — had already messed with the portal.

But it was an option.

About three meters from the portal, Penny had Maddie set Phantom on the ground, along the right wall, then commanded that she cuff Sedgewick, too. He, at least, was somewhat conscious, if still fairly out of it to the point where he didn’t fight Maddie’s attempt to cuff him.

She glanced at the wound on his chest. It didn’t look like it had broken through the thick material of his hazmat suit, but Maddie had been hit with ectoblasts — both from ghosts and her husband’s wild shots — enough to know that they could pack a punch, even if they didn’t break skin. Sedgewick’s landing was hard, too, and the way his eyes were unfocused made Maddie worry about a concussion.

“For what it’s worth,” Maddie whispered, taking the risk of speaking, “I’m sorry for blaming you for this.”

Sedgewick didn’t respond; she didn’t know if he heard her or not.

Under Penny’s direction, Maddie helped Sedgewick to his feet and partially walked, partially dragged him closer to the portal, though away from Phantom. She wants to keep an eye on them, Maddie realized. She lowered her charge with less care than she did with Phantom, and leaned him against the wall.

“So what now?” Maddie asked once she had deposited Sedgewick on the floor. “Are you going to tie me up, too?”

Penny shook her head. “No. You’re going to make the bomb that’s going to take down you, Sedgewick, and the entire GIW.” She sneered at Maddie. “You always had better fine motor skills, anyway.”

Her rationale didn’t make much sense to Maddie, but, then again, she was pretty sure Penny had long stopped thinking rationally.

A stack of papers was shoved into Maddie’s hands. Feeling the weight of Penny’s glare on her, Maddie rifled through them, trying to make sense of what she was looking at. She recognized the mechanics of a Thermos and the portal, and a picture of what Penny wanted to do slowly, horrifically assembled itself in her head.

“You’re going to suck the entire portal into a Thermos,” Maddie said. “That’s— a Thermos isn’t strong enough to do that!”

“Not unless you supercharge it,” Penny said, smugly, because she knew something Maddie didn’t. “Your friend Phantom —” she kicked him, hard; he didn’t move “— proved it was possible. The GIW don’t want your stupid batteries when they can have the portal hand-delivered to them.”

And now Maddie could see how it worked. Penny was going to have her rewire the emergency shut-down to the Thermos so that when it was activated, the energy meant to shunt the portal’s ectoplasm to the Ghost Zone would power the Thermos instead. It would happen almost instantaneously, but the Thermos would be so dense with ectoplasm that it would be immensely fragile. As soon as someone opened it, or it was punctured somehow, the highly charged ectoplasm would escape, causing an explosion several magnitudes larger than the ones they’d already seen.

At least, that’s what the math at the back said.

“Aggie’s part of this, too?” Maddie asked. There were few other options for who could have scribbled those numbers.

“No,” Penny said, shaking her head. “But you know Agatha. She loves a challenge.”

Maddie was relieved to hear that she didn’t have to face another betrayal. Then, she crossed her arms and said: “This is ridiculous. Why should I help you, Penny? After all you’ve done to hurt my family? I know you’re going to kill me eventually. You might as well get it over with now.”

And Penny said: “Because I know where your son is.”

Maddie’s knees went weak, and she fought to stay standing. “You know where Danny is?” she whispered.

Penny nodded. “I do. And I’ll make sure the APPD find him, alive, once the dust has settled.”

She was bluffing. She had to be bluffing. There was no way Maddie could trust that Penny was telling the truth about Danny. It was too easy, too convenient, and some nagging thought at the back of her mind told her that she was missing something important, and that meant Penny was lying.

But could Maddie risk that Penny wasn’t lying? Was she willing to risk Danny’s life on that?

Was she willing to put Danny’s life ahead of Sedgewick and the GIW? What about anyone who happened to be in the crossfire when the bomb exploded? Was Danny’s life worth more than all of theirs combined?

Maddie was no ethicist; she knew that from the way she had treated ghosts all this time. But she knew what the right answer should be, as much as she wanted it to be anything but. Maddie had to risk that Penny was lying, and do what she could to stop her so that more people didn’t die.

But how much did it matter whether or not Maddie died? In the end, her decision was made for her: if she was killed now, Penny would just finish the bomb anyway. Maddie was the only thing standing in the way.

Maddie had to live as long as she could, stall as much as possible, because the longer she held out, the higher the chances some other option would make itself available to her.

Because, right now, the only option Maddie saw was to make sure the bomb went off prematurely.

It would kill her, Penny, and Sedgewick; who knew what it would do to Phantom. But setting the bomb off in the lab would contain more of the explosion, sending it upwards instead of outwards. Fenton Works would be destroyed, along with anyone inside it, but it would do far less damage.

She hoped.

“Fine,” Maddie spat. “I’ll assemble your bomb.”

Penny gestured at one of the equipment bags. “Get to it, then.”

***

As Maddie unpacked the bag, she decided to start questioning Penny. Maybe that would give her an opportunity.

“Why are you doing this, Penny?” she asked, pulling a Thermos out of the bag. She checked the serial number. Sure enough, it was FW05-00590, the last of the stolen Thermoses. “You never seemed the jealous type.”

“Jealous? Of who? You?” The sneer in Penny’s voice was audible. She had positioned herself so that she could watch Maddie work while also keeping an eye on Sedgewick and the still-unconscious Phantom — but far enough away that Maddie couldn’t reach her. “Like I’d go to all the trouble because of jealousy.”

Maddie withdrew a soldering iron. “Then explain it to me.”

“Why should I?”

Maddie didn’t have a good answer for that, so she said: “What changed, Penny? I thought we were friends.”

“It’s called lying, Maddie,” Penny snapped. “Maybe we were friends, once upon a time, but that was before you—” She cut herself off.

Before I what? Maddie thought, but said nothing. She finished unloading the bag and began setting up equipment. Penny didn’t give her any safety gear, so she’d have to be extra careful.

She eyed the soldering iron. Maybe she could throw it at Penny, distract her with it…but then what? Penny still had the ectoblaster, and probably several other things in her pockets, like the taser she’d used on Phantom. Was Maddie willing to bet that Penny’s reaction time was slower than her ability to throw things?

“No funny business, Maddie,” Penny warned.

Drat. She’d seen Maddie looking at the iron. Maddie just shook her head as she plugged it into an outlet on the floor.

For a while, Maddie worked in silence, stripping wires to later connect them to the Thermos to other components of the bomb. She didn’t have to take the paneling off the wall next to the portal — Penny or Sedgewick had already done that. She kept glancing at Penny, to see if she had an opening to rush her, but the other ectoscientist was watching her like a hawk. There was no opening.

Her other option, at the moment, was to find a spot to sabotage the bomb. But it was getting harder to think through the logic of engineering and figure out where to break things without Penny noticing. Maddie didn’t know exactly what time it was, but she knew she’d been awake for more than eighteen hours at this point, and the day had felt exceedingly long six hours ago. She hadn’t even eaten dinner.

Maybe Maddie didn’t have to find a spot to sabotage the bomb. Maybe in her exhaustion she’d just make a mistake.

Wait a second….

As casually as she could, Maddie said: “So, Penny, when did you steal the schematics for the portal?”

“Ask your friend Vlad about that,” Penny sneered. “He had them on his servers.”

Several pieces of the puzzle fell into place. “You were behind the hack at Vladco, I take it?”

“So you know about that. Good for you.” Maddie could hear the smirk in Penny’s voice, even though she couldn’t see it with the portal glinting off the faceplate of her suit. “It was child’s play to distract that young man long enough to get on Vlad’s network. His password is your name and birthday, by the way.” As a last comment, she muttered, “Creep.”

Maddie tried to follow the implications of knowing Vlad had, at some point, accessed Fenton Works’ private servers. Or maybe Jack had given him open access at some point; she didn’t know. But it was probably safe to assume that anything the Fentons stored on there made it to Vlad’s servers, which meant that Penny likely had access to them.

She forced herself not to react when she reached the conclusion that Penny was the one who leaked those documents to APE News. Could she use that information, somehow? Maddie thought it over as she wrestled the bottom panel off the Thermos to get at the wires.

Penny’s design called for wiring the Thermos into the same system that held the ecto-filtrator, which was nowhere near critical because Danny had — Maddie couldn’t believe she was thinking this — unfortunately been doing his chores before he disappeared. The Thermos was to be placed in the socket that expelled ghosts into the Zone and attached to a custom device that would help supercharge it. When the emergency shut-off was triggered, the rewiring would reverse the flow of ectoplasm back into the Thermos, creating the bomb.

It meant that Maddie would spend most of her time on the opposite side of the portal from the shut-off, and so she couldn’t physically activate the switch. She couldn’t think of a way to trigger it by connecting any of the wires, either: the ghost expeller was on a different electrical system and could be disconnected without affecting the rest of the portal. Maddie would know — she designed it that way.

The bigger problem was that she didn’t know how Penny had constructed the attachment for the Thermos. It looked like it had already been wired to the portal, though Maddie had no idea what it could do to the portal. Her best guess was that it was similar to the sandwich box-like attachments welded to the bomb at Casper, but she barely knew anything about them. What little she learned was at the Torrance, a week and a lifetime ago, and her memory was slow to recall.

No, her best bet was still to sabotage the Thermos or the socket somehow. It wouldn’t be easy: she and Jack had over-engineered the Thermoses to the point of multiple redundancies, since a ghost escaping from one would prove disastrous for their reputation. Maddie cursed her past self for being too good at her job.

She risked another glance at Penny’s captives. Phantom still hadn’t moved, but she flinched when she saw that Sedgewick was staring straight at her. From the grimace on his face, Maddie guessed he was in a considerable amount of pain.

Penny noticed her movement and sneered when she saw Sedgewick. “You’re awake,” she said. “Oh, joy.”

“I never thought you capable of something like this, Penelope,” Sedgewick wheezed. “Smart enough and skilled enough, sure. But terrorism? Murder? Doesn’t seem like you.”

“Shut up, Erik,” Penny snapped. “You don’t know me half as well as you think you do.”

Despite talking with Sedgewick, Penny was still watching Maddie closely. She decided to start soldering the Thermos into the socket, hoping that inspiration would strike or an opportunity would open.

“Then tell me why you’re doing this,” Sedgewick continued. “I heard you tell Maddie it’s not because of jealousy. So what is it then? Power? Infamy? Is someone paying you to do this?”

Penny remained stiff where she stood; she seemed to be having some kind of internal debate with herself.

Then: “You really don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?”

“Who Subject D is.”

Penny knew about Subject D, and Maddie was finally able to guess where Tucker found that file. “He’s Danny Phantom,” Maddie said, taking the full brunt of Penny’s glare. She ignored it and continued wiring the Thermos to the attachment on the wall.

Inexplicably, Sedgewick chuckled. It was a dry, painful sound, but a laugh nonetheless. “Danny Phantom is not Subject D, Maddie,” he said. “But that’s a good a guess as any. No, I never learned who Subject D was. I don’t even know if he lived.”

“Well, he did,” Penny snapped. “Despite everything the two of you did to him.”

Maddie’s thoughts raced around her brain. Who was Subject D, if not Danny Phantom? Why did Penny blame her for what Sedgewick did to Subject D?

If the D didn’t stand for Danny….

He did something really stupid a few years ago, and it was a bit of a reality check for him. Now he works in telemarketing.

This wasn’t about jealousy or power: it was about revenge.

“Subject D was your brother,” Maddie guessed. “Dale Babcock.”

“Don’t you dare say his name!” Penny snarled.

She raised the ectoblaster at Maddie, who reacted on instinct and threw herself to the side, sending herself sprawling right in front of the open portal. The shot missed, hitting the wall in a wave of sparks, and Maddie realized that Penny had, at some point, exchanged the blaster for an actual gun.

Stupid Maddie, she thought, but she didn’t have any more time to berate herself for being unobservant.

Penny loomed over her, pointing the gun straight at Maddie’s head. At this range, Maddie wouldn’t have time to dodge, and, despite Penny’s shaking hand, the other woman wouldn’t miss.

“Go ahead, Penny,” Maddie said, meeting her eyes. “Pull the trigger. Kill me. Finish what you started.”

Penny’s face was in shadow, but Maddie could see the sneer on her face, twisted in anger and — she realized — grief. As much as she wanted to look away, Maddie kept her eyes locked onto Penny’s until, eventually, the other woman lowered the gun.

Maddie saw the pistol-whip coming a moment before it connected. She angled her body and moved with the blow, minimizing the damage. But still, the gun barrel connected hard, and she felt something crack under the force. Pain lanced across Maddie’s face and she screamed, collapsing on the floor.

She waited for another blow to come, but Sedgewick shouted something she didn’t catch, and Penny turned away.

Get up, Maddie! Now’s your chance to pull the shut-off!

But no matter how much Maddie tried to move, her body wouldn’t cooperate, the pain from her face finally taking her to her limit. She lay there, breathing hard, barely able to lift her head enough to feebly spit out a gob of blood from where she’d bitten her tongue.

She found herself staring at the electric green of the portal, inches from her face; the proximity sent gooseflesh racing across her body. She imagined it was whispering to her, trying to convince her to crawl into its depths — to let it do with her what it would. Or maybe it was just the ringing in her ears from the gunshot. She didn’t know.

It would be easy to give up, Maddie thought. The portal had started this all, and now it could end it. Her career was over, her livelihood in shambles, her family broken. They’d never even know she did it. She’d disappear, just like her son. He was probably dead, anyway. Maybe she’d find him on the other side.

Maddie found she didn’t mind anymore if the bomb killed Penny, Sedgewick, and the GIW. They’d caused enough harm to people, just like she had. She didn’t care if they were caught in the explosion.

But she did care if Phantom was.

“The Fentons had nothing to do with him!” Sedgewick was yelling.

“They had everything to do with Dale!” Penny screamed back. “It’s their fault ectoscience is like this! They’re the ones who said ghosts can’t feel pain! They’re the ones who led unethical experimentation on ghosts! They’re the ones who made it easy for people like you to start experimenting on living people!” Her voice got dangerously low. “Did you know that it took my brother weeks to be able to speak again after he woke up? It took him months to be able to move his arm at all. Dale has permanent nerve damage because of them. He had to give up his career, his life because of the Fentons. And because of you.”

Calling on every bit of strength she had, Maddie lifted her head off the ground just enough to turn it away from the portal and look at the others. Penny was standing several feet away from Sedgewick, punctuating each accusation with a wave of the gun. She didn’t notice Maddie gathering her arms under her shoulders and pushing herself up, slowly and painfully.

But Sedgewick did. His eyes locked with Maddie’s, then darted above her, then back. “I’m the one who hurt your brother, Penelope,” he said. “But I tried to save him! You heard the recording. You know I followed a decontamination protocol.”

Once more, Sedgewick looked above Maddie before making eye contact again. This time, she figured out what he was doing.

He was drawing Penny’s ire.

Causing a distraction.

“You used the Fentons’ protocol!” Penny yelled as Maddie focused on getting her legs underneath her. “You should have known that it doesn’t work after what you did at Stanford.”

“No one could have predicted what happened at Stanford,” Sedgewick said. “You know that ectoscience goes catastrophically wrong sometimes.”

“Liar!” Penny shrieked.

As Maddie got on her knees, she glanced at where Phantom lay — and blanched at what she saw. She looked away, quickly, then put one foot in front of her and staggered to her feet.

“The Fentons’ protocol doesn’t work!” Penny shouted. She sounded like she was sobbing. “It doesn’t work and you should have known that and you should have used Vlad’s and you should have saved my brother!”

Ever so softly, so quietly that Maddie could barely hear him, Sedgewick said, “You killed Henry, Penelope.”

Penny screamed. Maddie lunged at the shut-off. The gun went off once, twice, three times.

She pulled the lever.

Nothing happened.

Maddie tried to yank the shut-off lever down, again, but it didn’t budge. She had enough time to glance at the lever and see that someone had jammed it with a metal rod before Penny turned around and screamed something Maddie couldn’t hear over the ringing in her ears.

Maddie turned and ran.

A bullet hit the wall beside her, sending bits of hot metal flying in her face. Maddie flinched, then lost her balance and fell. She tried to throw herself into a roll but missed, instead slamming her left shoulder into the ground. She felt something go pop! and the pain made her vision go dark.

Fighting through it, she scrambled into a sitting position as Penny fired again, hitting the floor where Maddie had been a second earlier. Maddie shoved herself back, but it was hard with only one arm. Another bullet whizzed past her face and shattered one of the blast panels on the experiment chamber.

Maddie bumped into a table leg, the impact jarring her broken cheekbone and causing stars to spin in her eyes. She sat there, dazed, as Penny stalked over and aimed the gun right at Maddie’s chest.

She was done for. There was no getting away from Penny. This was the end.

Maddie gave one last look at the portal. Her eyes went wide. Penny saw her react and whirled around.

Danny Phantom, who had vanished from where he lay when Maddie looked moments ago, stood at the emergency shut-off. He locked eyes with her as he crackled with green electricity, then phased the rod jamming the lever out, and yanked it down.

In the blink of an eye, the ectoenergy in the portal disappeared, leaving nothing but a pile of dull green ectoplasm behind. Maddie sagged in relief. Incomplete her soldering job was, the shut-off or the Thermos worked to contain everything.

Then the portal exploded.

It’s body acted like a funnel, directing the full mass of the portal — all of that bright, violent ectoplasm crackling with electricity — into the lab, where it expanded in a cylinder of chaos. There was no way for Maddie, or Penny, or even Phantom to escape.

Time seemed to slow down as two things happened at once.

First, Phantom leapt into the explosion as it blossomed into the lab, his arms spread wide, a dark shape against the light.

And then the ghost of Erik Sedgewick tackled Penny to the floor. Her head hit the ground first, and, almost instantly, Maddie saw a shimmering figure emerge from her body, only to be sucked into the explosion along with Sedgewick, as Phantom, once again, pulled everything into himself.

The energy and ectoplasm from the explosion vanished, leaving a teenage boy in their place, who knelt on the ground with his arms wrapped around his torso and glowed with crackling electricity so bright, so wrong, that Maddie could hardly stand to look at him.

Briefly, Maddie wondered if, like a star becoming a black hole, Phantom would become a portal after absorbing so much ectoplasm.

Then Phantom looked at her, and mouthed a single word:

Run.

Maddie flung herself through the broken panel of the blast chamber and remembered, then, the other fate that befell stars that could become black holes.

Like a star going supernova, Phantom exploded into a column of electric green flames.

Chapter Text

Tepid, disgusting water splashed against Maddie’s skin and broke her out of the stupor she’d fallen into. The sprinkler system, judging by the roar it made. Even lying in the experiment chamber, she couldn’t escape the water splattering its way through the broken panel.

But Maddie didn’t move. She lay on top of the broken shards, breathing heavily, and listened for signs of life, or death.

There were none: just the thunderous sound of water beating down on the lab and the ringing in her ears.

And then a phone started to ring.

That was enough to stir Maddie to action. Slowly, she pushed herself up with her one good arm, dragged one leg under the rest of her body, and stood, bracing herself against the wall of the chamber to catch her breath. Besides the broken cheekbone and what was probably a dislocated shoulder, nothing else seemed seriously injured, though Maddie was pretty certain she had urinated herself at some point. It didn’t matter, though, because the sprinklers were going to keep running until either she or the fire department turned it off.

Maddie listened for anything that might mean someone else was in the lab with her — whether alive or dead — but there were none. Taking a deep breath, she stepped out into the artificial rain and was immediately soaked.

Without the portal, it was utterly dark in the lab; one of the explosions must’ve taken out the lights. At least the lab hadn’t collapsed in on itself like she’d worried, but it would definitely be to Maddie’s benefit to get out as quickly as she could in case the structural integrity was compromised.

But she had to get to that phone first. There were only six mobile phones in the world that could reliably get service in the lab, and the only one with any reason to be down here was dead. So Maddie started stumbling towards the sound, using her memory of the lab as a guide. Before Maddie had taken two steps, though, the phone stopped ringing. She scowled, then sagged in relief when it started ringing again.

By the time Maddie was about half way there, she could see a little bit of light coming from the phone’s screen, which let her know the rest of the way was probably clear. It was laying right where Phantom had been tied up. She stomped through the layer of water building on the floor — the lab’s drainage system needed updating — and picked up the phone.

Maddie didn’t bother to look for any identifying information; she was almost certain she knew who the phone belonged to, and who might be calling. She flipped it open, but didn’t manage to get a word out before the caller interrupted.

“Danny!” Sam shouted. “Where are you? What’s going on? Are you okay?”

“Sam,” Maddie tried to say, but nothing came out as Sam continued her barrage of questions — “Why did you leave? Is it a ghost thing? Danny? Are you there? Why aren’t you saying anything?” — so she cleared her throat and tried again. “Sam. It’s Mrs. Fenton.”

“Mrs. Fenton!” Now it was Tucker shouting. “Is Danny there? Is he okay?”

She shook her head automatically, wincing at the pain in her face. “Danny’s not here. I don’t know where he is.”

“Then how do you have his phone?”

“Phantom had it.” Maddie put Danny’s phone on speaker and used what little light came from the screen to illuminate her path as she stumbled to the equipment cabinets.

“Phantom’s back?” Sam was back. “Is he okay?”

“No, he’s not,” Maddie said, opening the first cabinet. Thank goodness; the GIW hadn’t taken the non-ectoplasmic flashlights. She grabbed the biggest one she saw and turned it on before moving to the water shut-off. “Sam, Tucker, I don’t have time to explain right now, but Phantom’s in trouble and I need your help. Do you have any ectoweapons?”

There was no answer from either teen. Maddie held back a sigh and said, “I know you’ve been working with Phantom to hunt ghosts. I need whatever the two of you have in order to rescue Phantom.”

“Yes, we have ectoweapons,” Sam said after a beat. “What do you want us to do?”

“Bring everything you have to Fenton Works as soon as you can.” With a spin of the wheel, Maddie turned the sprinkler water off and sighed in relief. “I’ll make sure the APPD knows to let you through.”

“But what about—” Sam started to say, before Tucker interrupted her with, “We’ll be there, Mrs. F.”

“Good.”

Maddie hung up before they could say anything else, mostly because it hurt to speak. She tucked Danny’s phone into her pocket, then shined the flashlight around the lab.

The ceiling looked intact, though there was a dark patch where Phantom’s column of flames had, apparently, passed most of the way through without doing damage. It was hard to tell if the portal was okay, since Maddie still wasn’t sure where the failure point was, but at least it didn’t seem to be at risk of exploding again. Parts of the stolen practice Thermos were melted or burnt; the portal exploding had likely overwhelmed the circuitry.

Besides the layer of water and general chaos from the fight, everything seemed to be more or less okay; once more, Maddie was, ironically, grateful that the GIW had removed everything, because none of their equipment was caught in the explosion or subsequent downpour.

But there were the bodies to think about.

Erik Sedgewick was very obviously dead, even discounting that Maddie had seen his ghost. The sprinklers had washed most of the blood off the walls, but it swirled around his corpse in the water that wasn’t draining. It was unlikely that Sedgewick could lose that much blood and live — that, and half his face was missing from where Penny had shot him.

It was harder to tell with her. If Maddie didn’t know better, she might think that Penny was asleep. But when Maddie diligently pulled Penny’s glove off and felt at her wrist, there was no pulse to be found. But that didn’t mean Penny’s ghost wasn’t out there, doing who-knew-what to Amity Park.

After Maddie stood up from Penny’s body, she shined the flashlight into the experiment chamber and found it empty. She was still alive. Somehow.

Not “somehow,” she thought. Because Phantom saved you, again.

She gave another sweep around the lab with the lantern, and this time the light fell on several things where Phantom had lain, things she must’ve missed in the dark. Maddie shuffled over and crouched down to inspect them.

The ecto-cuffs lay on the ground, disabled but unopened. How Phantom had managed that, Maddie didn’t know, but she ignored them, as well as the Fenton Works walkie-talkie laying nearby, to focus on the Thermos — Phantom’s Thermos.

Maddie picked the Thermos up and flipped it over to check the serial number. FW04-00053. One of Danny’s Thermoses. Somehow, that fact didn’t surprise her.

Before Maddie could mull why Phantom had a Thermos assigned to Danny further, a dull bang echoed down the stairwell, followed by another, and another.

She looked up, sharply. Someone was trying to get into the lab, probably intending to investigate the explosion, or the gunshots, or whatever, but the door was inactive with the power out. Maddie cursed. She grabbed the Thermos, then shoved the walkie-talkie into her pocket and hiked over to the stairs. Being found in the lab with a pair of bodies — especially when she had no reasonable way to even get into the lab — would not paint a good picture.

At the top of the stairs — where the bangs from the other side were loud enough to make Maddie flinch — she rapped her fist on the door and said, “Hello? It’s Maddie Fenton.”

There were muffled noises from the other side, and then someone replied, “Dr. Fenton? This is the APPD. We can’t get the door open from this side.”

Maddie bit back a sigh of relief; the APPD were far better to deal with than the GIW. “I can get the door open from this side.” She paused, then added, “I’ll open the door and then kneel on the stairs with one hand in the air. My left shoulder is dislocated and I can’t put it up.”

More muffled noises before whoever was speaking said, “Roger. Open the door.”

“Opening.” Maddie set Phantom’s Thermos and the flashlight on the floor, shining the latter up so it reflected light around the door. Without electricity, the door was locked in place and would be extremely difficult to open without explosives. But Maddie and Jack had prepared for this, modifying the door to run on a protected battery after the last time Technus had locked them out. It was part of the security system and therefore hidden in case someone — or something — was otherwise trapped in the lab.

The door’s control panel was a simple button next to a keypad. Maddie typed a number — 19860907, their wedding anniversary — and watched as a little panel popped open with a click! revealing a switch. Maddie flicked it, waited until the door lit up, then knelt on the stairs and put her right hand in the air.

“You can open the door now!” she called.

After a moment, the door slid open to reveal four APPD officers from the SWAT team, each with their gun aimed at her. Maddie’s heart pounded in her ears as she waited for something to happen.

The officer in charge — a burly captain whose name she forgot — said: “Stand up and exit the hallway, slowly. Keep your arm in the air.”

Maddie followed his instructions, then stood there, the guns still trained on her, as the captain ordered the SWAT team downstairs before telling an officer to search her. The officer gave her a rapid but thorough pat-down, removed the walkie-talkie and Danny’s phone from her pockets and gave them to the captain, then said, “She’s clear.”

The captain nodded, then waved for the SWAT team to lower their guns — but, Maddie noticed, they didn’t put them away.

“I want to speak to my lawyer,” Maddie said before the captain — Jacobs, she could see on his uniform — could say anything.

He rolled his eyes, but spoke into his shoulder microphone. Within seconds, another officer brought Mr. Wright into Fenton Works. Trailing behind him was Detective. Carleton with one arm in a swing.

“He’s here,” Captain Jacobs said. “What will we find down there?”

“Two bodies,” Maddie said, though from his lack of reaction she suspected the SWAT team had already found them. “Dr. Babcock was behind the bombs. She shot Dr. Sedgewick before being killed when the portal exploded. Danny Phantom brought me to the lab,” she added. “He contained the explosion before fleeing.”

“We know,” Detective Carleton said. “We heard the last few minutes, at least. Officer Franklin found your car.”

Maddie stared at him for a second before she connected the dots. “The walkie-talkie,” she said. Phantom must’ve grabbed it before they ran, remembering the system she’d used during their second meeting. She relaxed, just a bit. Hopefully whatever it recorded would be enough to prove her innocence. Then Maddie tensed. “Where’s the GIW?” she asked, warily.

“They ran after the ball of fire that came out of your backyard,” Jacobs said. “Told us to deal with whatever happened in the basement.”

A rush of thoughts flooded through Maddie’s head, and she gasped out, “You have to let me go after them. They don’t know what they’re dealing with!”

Yet Jacobs shook his head. “I can’t do that, Dr. Fenton,” he said. “Until we know exactly what happened, you’re staying here.”

“But you heard what happened!” Maddie protested.

He fixed her with an iron gaze. “You’re the only survivor of something that left two people dead, Dr. Fenton,” he said. “You weren’t even supposed to be in your lab, and the only person who could possibly vouch for you hasn’t been seen by anyone else in over a week. I hope you can see why that’s an issue.”

Maddie bit her lip, thinking through her options, then desperately glanced at Mr. Wright. He had a resigned look on his face that told her he already knew her next move, but gave a slight nod of his head.

“Has a ghost emergency been declared yet?” she asked.

Carleton nodded. “It’s a level 4,” he said. “The GIW announced it as soon as they went after the ghost fire.”

“Then you can’t keep me here,” Maddie said, turning back to Jacobs. “As an authorized ghost hunter, I have freedom of movement during a level 3 or above ghost emergency.”

“Excuse me?” Jacobs demanded.

“She’s correct,” Wright said. “Amity Park ghost statute 11, section 3a, states that ‘any authorized ghost hunter caught during the commission of a crime while engaging in ghost hunting activities during a level 3 or higher ghost emergency cannot be detained by law enforcement officers until the emergency has been concluded’.”

Jacobs just stared at him. It was an egregious loophole in a clause that was intended to refer to crimes like trespassing or property damage, not murder. How it had made it into actual law was a mystery, though privately Maddie suspected Vlad’s involvement to protect any ghost hunters he hired.

Its origins didn’t matter though: the Fentons knew they could use it, too, though exactly once before the loophole was caught and contested. Maddie felt that if there was any time to use it, it was now.

But Jacobs was unconvinced. He frowned, skeptical, and said, “I can still arrest you, Dr. Fenton. Let the DA figure out if you should be charged.”

Maddie decided to take a huge gamble: while most of the APPD liked Phantom — or at least preferred him to other ghost hunters — there were many who didn’t, and she had no idea about Jacobs. “If you don’t let me go,” Maddie said, voice lowered, “then the GIW will capture Danny Phantom and Amity Park will never see him again.”

That was the wrong thing to say. Jacobs scowled and snapped, “And letting you get Phantom is the right thing to do? So you can take him to your lab and do every awful thing you’ve threatened to do to him?”

“What lab?” Maddie retorted. She gestured to the open door, ignoring the pain in her other shoulder. “My portal is destroyed and the GIW has the rest of my equipment. I can’t do anything to him, even if I wanted to.” Jacobs kept scowling, so she calmed her voice and tried a different tactic. “Look, Captain Jacobs. Phantom saved my life several times tonight at great personal expense, despite everything I’ve said or done to him. I owe it to Phantom to at least try and help him.”

She held her stare at him until, after a moment, Jacobs sighed. “Fine, Dr. Fenton. You’re in charge of the ghost hunting. We’ll deal with the legal stuff later. Provided,” he added, sternly, “that you don’t do anything else that suggests you’re doing anything other than trying to deal with the ghosts.”

Before Maddie could say anything, he called Officer Franklin over and jerked a thumb towards her. “Franklin, you’re on babysitting duty. Make sure Dr. Fenton doesn’t do anything extremely illegal. Help her out if you feel like it.” He handed the Thermos, the walkie-talkie, and Danny’s phone back to her. “Dr. Fenton, go do whatever it is you’re going to do. Just stay out of the way as we deal with the mess in the basement.”

He turned and left, leaving Maddie standing there with Wright, Carleton, and Franklin. She opened her mouth to speak, but a voice behind spoke from the kitchen.

“Is it safe to come out yet?” said Aggie Keaton.

***

Two minutes. That was all Maddie allowed herself. She set an alarm on Danny’s phone, placed it on the bathroom counter, and began to freak out.

Penny was the bomber. Penny tried to kill her family. Penny, a colleague Maddie might have called a friend, was behind everything, all because the Fenton decontamination protocol failed to protect her brother and she blamed Maddie and Jack and Sedgewick and now she was dead.

Penny was dead.

And so was Sedgewick and now their ghosts were out there with the GIW chasing them — if they were even still ghosts because who knew what happened when they were sucked into the portal’s explosion while Phantom tried to stop it.

Phantom. Oh dear gosh, Phantom. She said she was going to rescue Phantom but could she. Could she? The smaller amount of material from the Torrance bomb had been enough to make Phantom lose control of himself. She had no idea what absorbing the entirety of the portal would do to him.

What if she went after Phantom and couldn’t find him? What if he didn’t know who she was and tried to attack her? What if there was nothing left to him that was recognizable as Phantom?

What if there was nothing left to him at all?

What if she couldn’t help him?

What if—

The alarm on Danny’s phone went off, breaking Maddie out of her spiraling thoughts. She found herself gripping the edge of her counter with the white-knuckled fingers of her good hand, staring at the faucet, with tears dripping into the sink. Maddie stood there for another twenty seconds as she wrangled her pounding heart and hyperventilation back under control, then sagged in exhaustion.

Maddie wanted nothing more than to sink to the floor and give up, let someone else take care of everything, but Phantom had saved her life. He was her responsibility, and she was going to save him.

You’re a scientist, Maddie Fenton, she thought. Compartmentalize your feelings and deal with them later.

Time to get to work.

She stripped off her damp clothing and left it in a pile on the floor. After toweling herself off, Maddie returned to her bedroom, ignored the mess that the GIW had made of the room she and Jack shared, and then took a deep breath before throwing open her closet door.

A row of identical jumpsuits greeted her, still on their hangers.

Maddie sighed in relief. She’d worried the GIW had taken her jumpsuits, but it seemed they’d ignored them, or maybe only taken one. She didn’t know, and, right now, she didn’t care. All that mattered was that she had at least one.

She pulled one off its hanger and relaxed slightly at the familiar, comforting touch of the fabric. It was long past the time when she wanted to wear it, but until now she’d been following her doctor’s orders not to wear it while her ribs healed. Now, though, Maddie would need its protection.

She stepped into the suit, legs first, followed by her arms — careful of her shoulder — then pulled the zipper up from her lower torso to her neck. Maddie ran her hands along the fabric to make sure the zipper was covered before standing up straight and putting her hands on her hips.

It didn’t fit.

The jumpsuit was tight where it should be loose and loose where it should be tight, and the entire thing itched at her skin. Maddie pinched and pulled at the fabric until it fit slightly better, but as she stared at herself in the mirror, she realized that she and her body had changed too much in the past weeks to find any sort of comfort in her jumpsuit any longer.

Enough moping, Maddie thought, and she spun away from the mirror. The jumpsuit fit well enough to offer protection; she could deal with the discomfort. She grabbed Danny’s phone and Phantom’s Thermos, leaving the walkie-talkie behind, and stormed out into the hallway. Officer Franklin looked up at her approach and nodded a greeting before following Maddie down the stairs.

She hurried into the kitchen where Aggie was sitting with Detective Carleton and Mr. Wright. Why Aggie was here past her contractual bedtime was beyond Maddie, but she didn’t really care. She stalked past the table, tore off the biohazard tape sealing the fridge, and grabbed a bottle of Fenton Works energy drink. She didn’t bother with a cup and instead chugged the entire thing in one go. When she finished, Maddie set it on the counter, wiped her mouth with her good arm, and turned to Carleton.

“I need an update on the GIW and the ghosts,” Maddie said. “Location or activity or anything that will help me know what I’m getting into.”

“Reports are coming in that something’s happening at the park,” Carleton replied. “The GIW isn’t communicating much with us, but they’re supposedly en route.”

The park. Suddenly, a bit of hope leaked into Maddie’s thoughts. There was no way it was a coincidence: neither Penny nor Sedgewick had any reason to head there.

But Phantom did.

And with that bit of hope came an idea.

The explosion in the lab happened about ten minutes ago, which meant the GIW had a ten-minute lead on her. Maddie knew from very recent experience that they still had five minutes to go driving at max speed before they arrived . There was no time for her to waste.

Maddie grabbed a pen and notepad from a kitchen drawer and scribbled some notes and equations before shoving it in Aggie’s direction. “Calculate these, please,” she said.

Aggie glanced over the sheet, then nodded, pulled the mystery device out of her bag, and began typing away.

“Aggie, bring those calculations to my backyard when you’re done,” Maddie said, then turned and strode to the back door.

Most of her equipment was gone, but the GIW’s warrant hadn’t covered the GAV. It was still parked in the backyard — largely empty, unfortunately, since they’d cleared the bulk of the weapons out for the night at the Torrance, but the built-in weapons were still there. Maddie grabbed for the keys hanging next to the back door as she turned the handle, but her hand was met with empty air.

She stared at the row of empty pegs for a second before realizing: the GIW must’ve taken the keys, even though they left the GAV alone. Maddie swore, then stormed into the backyard, Officer Franklin following on her heels. She barely took notice of the patch of dead grass that crunched with frost under her feet.

Fuming, Maddie stared at the GAV, looking for a way in. The windows were the obvious answer, but they were a centimeter-thick layer of ectophobic plastic sandwiched between layers of ballistic glass. The body of the GAV was a no-go as well, made of high-quality composite armor designed to stop kinetic projectiles. The locks on the front doors were both electric and mechanical to stop ghostly interference, while the lock on the back door was purely mechanical. With the current tools Maddie had on hand — which were a cellphone and Thermos — there was no way she could get in.

Maddie stomped her foot on the ground, not caring how juvenile she might appear to Franklin, and tried to think of a solution.

Then Danny’s phone rang. She flipped it open without checking the caller-ID and spat out: “What?”

“We’re here,” Tucker said. “Where do you want us?”

“The backyard,” she replied, and barely a few seconds later did she hear a knock on the fence. Maddie flipped the latch, pulled it open, and swore, loudly.

Tucker and Sam were dressed for war.

Both of them were wearing bulletproof vests and thick outer clothing: black denim for Sam, dark leather jacket and cargo pants for Tucker. They both wore boots, and Sam had steel toes on hers. Each carried a variety of gadgets and equipment, some of which was clearly taken from Fenton Works, including a Thermos. Sam had a motorcycle helmet under one arm, while a football helmet hung from Tucker’s bag.

And it wasn’t new gear, either. Everywhere Maddie looked, there was some scratch or scuff mark or repair patch, or stains that were either ectoplasm or blood, and several she didn’t want to speculate on. These clothes — these pieces of armor — were well-used.

The teens weren’t in much better shape: what limited skin was visible had scabbed-over scratches from the attack at the Torrance. The swelling around Tucker’s eye had gone down enough he could see from it, but it was still clearly a black eye. Sam’s hand was well-bandaged.

In that moment, Maddie hated herself more than she ever had. First Danny and Jazz, then Phantom, and now Sam and Tucker. How many kids’ lives — or afterlives — had she ruined in her crusade against ghosts?

When Maddie didn’t say anything else, the teens exchanged a glance before Sam said: “Uh, Mrs. Fenton? Can we come in?”

Maddie shook herself out of the funk, then nodded and headed back to the GAV.

“What happened to Phantom?” Sam demanded, hurrying after Maddie while Tucker closed the gate. “Where is he?”

“I’ll explain in a minute,” Maddie said. She turned towards the teens as Tucker caught up and surveyed them with her right hand on her hip and her left arm dangling. “Do either of you have a way into the GAV? The GIW took the keys.”

“Destructive or non-destructive?” Tucker asked.

Maddie briefly wondered what kind of “destructive” way Tucker was thinking of, but pushed the thought aside and said, “Preferably non-destructive, but minor damage is okay.”

“Got it,” Tucker said. He knelt to the ground and started pawing through his bag. “Sam, do you wanna take this?”

Sam shook her head. “You do it. My hand’s injured, remember?”

“Oh, yeah.” Tucker grabbed several things and jogged off behind the GAV.

Before Maddie or Sam could say anything, Aggie called out Maddie’s name from the backdoor; both spun to look at her. “I have those calculations you wanted,” Aggie said, utterly unperturbed by the arrival of two teenagers in combat gear.

Maddie retrieved the notepad from Aggie and glanced over the results, committing them to memory. She could work with this. Then, she tried to rip the page off, but without the full use of both hands, it was difficult.

“Want me to relocate your shoulder, Mrs. F.?” Sam asked.

Maddie blinked in surprise. “You know how to do that?”

Sam shrugged. “Tucker’s dislocates easily in ghost fights, so I learned how.”

It shouldn’t have been a shock that Sam would so easily mention she and Tucker fought ghosts, but it still came as a surprise to Maddie that she wouldn’t even try to hide it. How long had they been doing this with her son? How had she never noticed?

What else had they been forced to learn to keep this all a secret?

When Maddie assented, Sam had her lay down on top of the large bin where the Fentons stored their gardening supplies and stick her left arm out at a right angle. Maddie knew the drill; she’d dislocated her shoulder several times in her martial arts training. “Don’t do the trick where you say you’ll do it on three and then do it on one,” she said as Sam took Maddie’s arm. “Just get it over with.”

“Okay,” Sam said, and pulled.

Even prepared, Maddie yelped at the pain as her humerus moved back into place, but within seconds, the intense throbbing had faded to a dull ache, and she breathed in relief from the pain. She sat up and gently rolled her shoulder. She definitely needed to see a doctor afterwards, but for now, she could move her arm.

“Thank you, Sam,” Maddie started to say, but a loud bang! from the back of the GAV caught their attention.

“It’s open!” Tucker called.

Maddie jogged to the GAV with Sam right behind her to find Tucker holding a miniature blowtorch while the back door swung open. Despite the circumstances, he had a wide grin on his face.

“Ta-da!” Tucker said. “One GAV, ready for service! Careful, Mrs. F.,” he added when Maddie reached for the handle. “It’s currently about -150° C.”

Maddie jerked her hand back and only then noticed the layer of frost on the door — and…ectoplasm? “You froze the lock using ectoplasm?” she asked, pulling the door open from the bottom and hauling herself inside.

“Yeah!” Tucker said. He activated the blow torch for a moment; the flames that spurted out were the familiar green of ectoplasm. “It energizes the ectoplasm to drop temperatures really fast.” He paused for a brief second while putting things away in his bag. “Danny and I worked together on it.”

“That’s incredible, Tucker. Really,” Maddie said. She turned around in the doorway, crouched, and gestured at Tucker and Sam. “Alright, give me the ectoweapons.”

The teens glanced at each other, then shook their heads.

“We’re coming with you,” Sam said.

Maddie frowned. “No, you’re not,” she said. “It’s too dangerous. You could get hurt.”

“More hurt than we already are?” said Sam, holding up her bandaged hand. “No way. We’re not sitting this out. Not when Phantom’s in danger.”

“And you need our help, Mrs. Fenton,” Tucker added. “We know how to deal with dangerous ghosts, and you’re in no shape to fight them alone.”

Maddie let out an exasperated sigh. She didn’t have time for this, even though Tucker was absolutely correct. “I don’t want to have to explain to your parents why I let two more kids die while fighting ghosts!” she said loudly, just shy of a shout.

“We know what we’re doing, Mrs. Fenton,” Sam shot back. “We are your assistants, remember?”

My assistants? Maddie opened her mouth to ask Sam what she meant, but stopped when she saw Officer Franklin watching her; she held back another sigh. Of course she ended up being babysat by the one cop who thought Sam and Tucker were her “assistants.” It would look strange to him that she was denying them the opportunity to aid her.

But still, she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if they got hurt. It was time to shut this argument down. She glared at them; Sam and Tucker glared back; and then Maddie recognized the look on their faces. It was the same one Danny got whenever he decided that, no matter what Maddie told him not to do, he was going to do it anyway. They were, for better or worse, very much his friends.

If they were going to follow her anyway, she might as well bring the teens along to keep an eye on them. Maddie gave them one last glare before she snapped, “Fine, you can come. But —” she held up one finger “— you agree to follow whatever I say, including if I tell you to leave.” She stared Tucker, then Sam in the eye before adding, “Otherwise I’ll tie you up and leave you in the GAV. Got it?”

Sam and Tucker both nodded, and Maddie let them, and Franklin, climb into the GAV.

Maddie grabbed the spare key from the glove department and turned it in the ignition, listening to the roar of the engine as the GAV came to life. Next to her, Franklin buckled into the passenger seat, and then asked, quietly, “Are your assistants normally this disobedient?”

“No,” Maddie said, glaring at the teens in the rear-view mirror. “They’re usually much better behaved.”

As if on cue, Sam and Tucker stuck their tongues out at her.

Yep, definitely her son’s friends.

***

Maddie tore through the streets of Amity Park with even more urgency than before. The GAV didn’t handle corners as well as her car, but it had the advantage of going off-road. Maddie ignored curbs and crossed through parking lots or people’s yards as though they were clear stretches of asphalt, all the while blaring the siren and lights.

“Alright, kids,” she said to Tucker and Sam, “what did you bring?”

“Not much,” Tucker admitted. He started digging through his bag. “Two ectoblasters, a pair of ecto-handcuffs, uh, a spool of Fenton fishing line, a Specter-Deflector, and the blow torch.” He looked at Sam. “What did you bring?”

“Another ectoblaster, a Jack o’ Nine Tails, like eight sleeping bag capsules, a wrist laser, two personal ghost shields, a pair of wrist rays, and Fenton Finder,” Sam listed. “Oh, and this.”

She pulled the ecton emitter out of her bag.

Maddie gasped. “Where did you get that?”

“Jazz brought it to us this morning,” Sam said, “along with Reitman’s Thermos and an empty fish tank.”

“She said she was worried the GIW would pull something,” Tucker added with a shrug. “Guess she was right.”

Where would she be without Jazz? “Okay,” Maddie said, thinking out loud, as she drove through a small playground. “There’s not a lot of ghost hunting equipment in the GAV, since the kids cleared out anything unstable or perishable when Jack and I got hurt. So that leaves the things you two brought, some various stuff for close-up combat, and the DEEP gun.”

The Directed Ecto-Electric Pulse gun was one of the Fentons’ most recent inventions, designed to send out a strong pulse energy in the ecto-electric field that would, in theory, absolutely obliterate any ghost in a 45° spread.

“Uh, Mrs. Fenton?” Tucker said.

It would also short-out any ectoplasm equipment in the vicinity, so Maddie essentially had one shot from it. She flipped the switch to start its power-up sequence.

Nothing happened.

She glanced at the control screen, narrowly avoided hitting a solid oak tree, and cursed. Why wasn’t it turning on?

Then Maddie looked in the rear view mirror at the guilty expression on Tucker’s face and paled.

“Tucker,” she said, voice low and tense, “what did you do?”

“I may have sabotaged the DEEP gun,” he said.

“You what?”

“I didn’t want you to use it on Phantom!” Tucker protested. “But I can fix it!” He paused. “Probably.”

Maddie gripped the steering wheel tighter than she thought possible, but managed not to lose control of the GAV or start yelling at Tucker. “Start fixing it.” As Tucker got to work, she turned her gaze to Sam in the mirror. “Sam, I want you to tell me everything you know about lairs in the Ghost Zone.”

Sam crossed her arms. “Tell me what happened to Phantom first.”

Maddie rolled her eyes, but didn’t bother fighting with Sam; if they knew Phantom as well as she thought, they deserved to know his fate. She gave an abbreviated version from when she found Phantom at the park to when he exploded into flames.

Sam’s face grew more horrified with each word, and Tucker’s expression matched. “Do you think he’ll be okay?” she said, and Maddie could hear the tears in her voice.

“I don’t know, Sam,” Maddie replied. “But I’m going to do my best to help him. Now tell me about lairs.”

Sam took a deep breath and started talking. To her credit, she seemed to speak honestly about what she knew, but Maddie could tell she was keeping something back; she just had to trust that Sam wasn’t hiding anything important.

Unfortunately, Sam didn’t know much more than what Maddie did; just the same things Jazz already told her — to the point where Maddie was fairly sure they had all agreed on a definition — and a less-concise description of Phantom’s black hole theory. But then Sam said: “Entering a lair without permission is dangerous because it will react to the ghost’s emotional state and come to their defense. They’re extremely unpredictable.”

“Does Phantom have a lair?”

“No, he never spent enough time in the Ghost Zone for one to form.”

Maddie set that detail aside to deal with later and ran over the implications of Sam’s information. It could mean she was correct in her theory, but she wasn’t sure.

“Why were you asking about—”

“Dr. Fenton.” Franklin interrupted Sam, his voice on the edge of panic. “Why is the sky purple?”

She’d been so focused on Sam — and not crashing the GAV — that she hadn’t noticed the sky changing colors. She peered up at the clouds and sucked in a breath. The clouds were a brilliant violet, accentuated with ectoplasmic green. As Maddie watched, bright green flashes lit up the sky, coming from the direction of the park.

Something ghostly was happening — something big.

Half an hour had passed since the explosion in the lab, and they were maybe two minutes from the park, already going at the highest speed Maddie would allow. She hoped they weren’t too late.

“Tucker, how goes the DEEP gun?”

“Umm…probably another ten minutes?” he said. “I can’t fix part of it until the GAV’s stopped.”

“Keep working on it.” She glanced at Franklin; he was pale, and looked vaguely nauseous. Not everyone had the constitution to fight ghosts, and although it kept Fenton Works in business, she wished Franklin was one of them who could. “Officer, how much are you willing to help?”

He shook his head. “Not very. I don’t want to risk my kids getting hurt.” Another look told her he was staring at the sky. “Don’t you need to do the preparations?”

Risk his kids? Preparation? Oh, right, the social engineering lies. “That’s fine, Officer,” Maddie said, trying to keep her voice calm. “You can stay in the GAV.” She eyed the clouds. “Hopefully, this will be over quickly.”

And then they arrived at the entrance to the park.

The first thing Maddie noticed was that the lights on the GIW’s van were dark. There was no one present to stop her from tearing through the “Do Not Cross” tape, which she did without stopping.

The streetlights were out, too, so Maddie slowed down as she wound through the trees surrounding the park. Without the lamps, and this far from the city, the flashes of ectoplasmic light were brighter and more obvious, illuminating the inside of the GAV every few seconds.

No one spoke as Maddie rounded the penultimate corner, then the last, and stopped at the entrance to the parking lot. She sucked in a shocked breath and heard the others do the same.

A fight was raging in the park, and the GIW were clearly losing.

The parking lot and surrounding fields were littered with more of the GIW’s white vans, all of them damaged, most of them destroyed beyond repair. They had been crumpled in ways no car should, as though some giant hand had smashed them. As Maddie watched in horror, one came sailing through the air and dug a deep trench in the grass before coming to a stop.

The actual battle was centered further out in the field, and Maddie wasn’t exactly clear on what was happening. But the two 20-foot ghosts were easy enough to see, as was the bright green glow clustered on something in the distance behind them.

A knock on her window made Maddie jump, and she nearly sped off in the GAV before looking to find Operative K standing there with a scowl on his face. His normally immaculate white clothing was torn and stained with colors she couldn’t identify in the ecto-light, and he was bleeding from at least one wound on his face. He gestured for her to roll down the window.

“What are you doing here, Dr. Fenton?” he yelled once she did, his voice nearly drowned out by the sounds of the battle; if she didn’t know better, Maddie would be worried there was a tornado nearby. “I should arrest you for murder!”

“You need backup!” she shouted back, wind whipping at her hair. “I’m it!”

“We have reinforcements coming in 75 minutes. If you don’t leave now, I’ll have you arrested for interfering with a federal investigation.”

Maddie ignored the second threat and shook her head. “They’re not here yet. I am. Let me help you before more of your men get hurt.”

Operative K clenched his jaw, but didn’t refute her. He glanced behind him and Maddie followed his gaze to where a row of surviving vans was functioning as an ad hoc command center. GIW agents and members crouched down to avoid the wind, some less incapacitated than others. She looked away when she saw the row of bodies.

Operative K kept his gaze on them a moment longer than Maddie did, and a flash of ectolight gave her a glimpse of his eyes for the first time. He turned back to her. “Fine. But the ghosts are mine. Let me in so I can debrief you.”

Sam opened the back door to let Operative K clamber in, who seemed indifferent to the presence of two minors at a major ghost fight. He glanced around the inside of the GAV; Maddie was positive he was cataloging everything he saw in order to add to his intelligence on the Fentons, but she ignored him. “What’s the situation, Operative?” she asked.

“Two ghosts with a resemblance to Sedgewick and Babcock in hazmat suits, roughly twenty feet tall. We can’t tell who is who,” Operative K said. “And what we think is a portal to the Ghost Zone.”

A portal! Her theory might be right after all. Maddie kept her face neutral as he went on. “The ghosts are mostly fighting each other, but one attacks us any time we get close. They’re defending the portal from the other ghost.” A flash of green lit up Operative K’s face. “We think they’re drawing power from the portal. Our goal is to close it, but we don’t know why it’s still open. No ghosts are coming or going and that spot isn’t an anomalous zone where a natural portal could form.” He fixed Maddie with a stare. “Do you know what’s going on with that portal?”

“I don’t,” Maddie lied. “But it’s energy from the portal in my lab. It’s possible it didn’t dissipate when Penny blew up the lab and instead clustered on the ghosts. But I have an idea on how to close it.”

Operative K didn’t react to her statement about Penny, all but confirming her suspicions that the GIW had been made aware of what the APPD heard on her radio. “What is it?”

“The Fenton DEEP gun.” She started to explain the details, but Operative K cut her off.

“If you think it will work, then I authorize you to try,” he said. “One of my officers will give you the data we’ve taken on the ghosts. In the meantime, I’m making a retreat with my team until reinforcements get here.”

“What?!”

“I have casualties to deal with, Dr. Fenton. You’re on your own. Make sure I get the ghosts when you’re done.”

Despite Maddie’s — and Sam and Tucker’s — protests, Operative K left without saying another word.

As soon as the door slammed shut, the teens started loudly complaining about the GIW, while Maddie quietly seethed. One day, she thought, one day I will see your organization annihilated and your career shattered beneath my feet.

“Okay,” Maddie said under her breath, trying to rein her anger under control. “Okay. What can I do about this?”

It didn’t change much from the plan building in her mind, but it did mean that if she messed this up, there was no one to come save her.

“Okay,” she said again, louder this time. “Tucker, Sam, Officer Franklin: now’s your opportunity to get out and leave with the GIW. Because I’m about to do something stupid and dangerous, and I need help from people who are committed to this.”

“I’m staying,” said Tucker and Sam simultaneously, while Franklin said, “I’ll stay in the GAV.”

“Good,” Maddie said, and ran through the plan once more in her head.

“So what exactly are you planning to do?” Sam asked.

“I’m going in that portal,” Maddie said, grimly. “Because that’s where Phantom is.”

***

The good news: According to the GIW’s data, Sedgewick and Penny were limited to a 50 meter exclusion zone around the portal. For the most part, the GAV was safe in the parking lot.

The bad news: The radius was expanding, and its expansion was accelerating. The data was too imprecise for Maddie to make any sure guesses, but the parking lot wouldn’t be safe for much longer.

Maddie told Officer Franklin to stay in the front seat and watch for any major changes in the fight ahead, then hopped in the back with Sam and Tucker.

“Sam, in the compartment next to the bathroom there’s a spare car battery,” she commanded, grabbing the ecton emitter and a screwdriver. “Dig it out for me. Tucker, how goes the DEEP gun?”

“It’s going,” Tucker grunted from where he was hunched over his computer typing frantically. “I should have it back up in a few minutes, and then it has to charge.”

“Alright. Keep working on it.”

Since Maddie had built the emitter, she knew exactly how to sabotage it. Within seconds, she had opened up the base of the emitter and revealed the ectoplasm battery. She removed it, exposing the battery terminal.

“Here’s the car battery,” Sam said, dropping it with a thunk next to Maddie.

“Great,” she said. “There’s a drawer labeled ‘EBW’ with a bunch of little cylinders in them. Get me one.”

After Sam handed her the cylinder, Maddie carefully removed the device from its protective sleeve, then started wrapping the Fenton fishing line around it, then duct taped it to the terminal. When Tucker announced he was done de-sabotaging the DEEP gun, Maddie had him start disassembling the battery terminal, and Sam put the fuel capsule in an ectoblaster.

“Dr. Fenton,” Franklin said, voice tense, “the green flashes haven’t stopped.”

Maddie cursed. She’d hoped the ectoblasts were from the GIW’s weaponry, but they were long gone by now: one, or both, of the ghosts had developed an ectoplasmic ability.

How powerful were they? Even Phantom hadn’t acquired anything beyond the basic abilities until at least a month after his first appearance in Amity Park.

She didn’t dare assume for a second that Sedgewick would be on her side in this fight. Who knew how his mind had been distorted from undergoing rapid ectogenesis from an enormously powerful source of ectoenergy? Sedgewick might be aware of the situation enough to help them, or he might not.

Penny almost certainly would be a hindrance.

Maddie dumped the fuel Tucker and Sam extracted into the ecton emitter, then replaced the cap and turned it on, careful to avoid the exposed battery terminal with the EBW taped to it. She hopped back into the driver’s seat and sped onto the grass, taking a wide circle towards the playground.

“Is everyone good on the plan?” she asked, watching as the GAV approached the ghosts of her colleagues.

“Yes, ma’am,” Officer Franklin said.

“I still think you should let me or Tucker handle Phantom,” Sam replied.

“And I’m still mad you’re sacrificing my blow torch,” added Tucker.

Maddie rolled her eyes. “Tucker, I’ll help you and Danny make a new one. Sam, we went over this. I’m the only one with a jumpsuit, and I am not sending you unprotected through a portal.”

Sam grumbled something under her breath, but didn’t otherwise protest. Maddie was right, and the teen knew it.

They reached the spot Maddie was aiming for, and she slammed the brakes on the GAV where she wanted it — making an isosceles triangle between the portal and the playground, with the GAV at its point — and pressed the “GROUND” button. The GAV made a horrible grinding noise as four hydraulic pistons slammed metal rods several feet in the ground. Thick sheets of metal slid out at an angle to cover the wheels, leaving very little room for anything to get under them.

“The GAV is rated for an EF4 tornado,” Maddie said as she turned the GAV off and started gathering her equipment. “And it should stay up against most attacks. The safest place in this entire area is inside the GAV.”

The GAV fell silent as Maddie hooked Phantom’s Thermos onto her belt along with one of the personal ghost shields. She grabbed a face shield and ecto-filter from their spots in the GAV and pressed them on her face, making sure they stayed sealed against the edges of her jumpsuit. The face shield bit into her broken cheekbone, but Maddie had so much adrenalin and Fenton energy drink in her system that she hardly felt it.

Sam, meanwhile, buttoned her jacket and pulled on a pair of gloves, before strapping herself into the motorcycle helmet she brought.

“Ready, Sam?”

Sam met her eyes through the open window of her helmet, and Maddie wasn’t surprised to see a gaze as steeled as the toes of Sam’s boots. “Ready,” Sam said, then flicked the visor down.

“Tucker?”

He, too, had zipped his jacket and donned gloves and his helmet. He carried the car battery and a pair of jumper cables. “Ready, Mrs. F.,” he said, with equal intensity.

“Remember,” Maddie told them. “23 minutes. Then use the gun on the portal.”

Sam and Tucker both nodded, once.

Then the three of them exited the GAV and entered the maelstrom.

A gust of wind strong enough to nearly knock Maddie off her feet buffeted the group, and Maddie scrambled to clutch at the GAV’s external ladder. She nodded at the teens, then gave them a salute and ran away from the safety of the GAV.

She kept herself low to the ground to make herself a smaller target, avoiding as much as she could the natural dips in the earth and the unnatural craters from ghost attacks. There were more than a few bits of debris from the GIW’s failed assault.

While Maddie ran, Sam’s heavy breathing sounded in her Fenton Phones — which, somehow, the teens already had — as the girl sprinted from the GAV to the playground. It was her job to set up the ecton emitter and Tucker’s blow torch on the playground, then run the Fenton fishing wire back to Tucker.

“She’s made it to the playground,” Tucker said. “And I’ve got the jumper cables attached to the GAV and the car battery. Waiting for Sam.”

“Roger,” Maddie breathed. “Make sure you’re both inside the GAV before starting it.”

“I know.”

Maddie ran as fast as she could until she made it to one of the GIW’s abandoned vans — or half of one, at least — that was just outside the exclusion zone. She crouched down beside it. “I’m in place,” she said, breathing hard, and took her first real look at the fight.

Penny and Sedgewick were engaged in a hand-to-hand battle, but fought with the gracelessness of a high school fistfight. Unlike the GIW, Maddie could tell which colleague was which; the shorter one was Penny, and she fought Sedgewick with an unrivaled ferocity. But it made her clumsy, and Sedgewick was able to take advantage of her errors.

As Maddie watched, Penny swung a fist at Sedgewick’s chest, but he dodged and caught it on his arm instead. The collision between them caused a flash of ecto-electric lightning; Maddie sighed in relief that it was some other phenomenon, not ectoblasts — until Penny let a bolt fly at Sedgewick, and this attack hit him squarely in the chest.

Sedgewick went flying, but he managed to turn around, mid-air, and fly back at Penny with shocking speed. He’s using the gravity of the portal to his advantage, Maddie thought as he crashed into Penny and sent them both sprawling on the ground.

Penny was faster to her feet than Sedgewick, and she ran towards the portal before Sedgewick grabbed her feet, and she fell. They started grappling awkwardly on the ground.

“Sam’s on her way back,” Tucker said.

Penny wanted the portal, though Maddie was uncertain if she wanted to destroy the portal or gather power from it. Maybe both. But Sedgewick was stopping her; for now, it seemed, he and Maddie were on the same side. As long as he stopped Penny from messing with the portal.

As the two grappled, Maddie noticed an…aura, of sorts, surrounding the two ghosts. It swirled around them like a terrifying halo before being siphoned off in the portal’s bright green corona. No, that was wrong: the ghosts were siphoning energy from the portal — like a white dwarf star absorbing its companion.

Maddie tensed. The portal was being held together under its ecto-gravity, but it was losing strength. How much longer did she have until it dissipated completely and freed her colleagues from its pull? What would Penny, a powerful, vengeful ghost, do?

What would happen to Phantom? She started to run through Aggie’s calcula—

Sam screamed in her ear, and Tucker yelled out, “She tripped!”

“Sam what?!” Maddie cried. She looked towards the GAV, then the playground, but couldn’t see Sam. “Is she okay?”

“I’m fine!” Sam — who did not sound fine — said through clenched teeth. “But I can’t walk. Tuck, I’m throwing the line at you.”

“But Sam—!”

“Just get the line, okay?”

Maddie glanced between the GAV and the portal. She had only one chance to make it to the portal — but she couldn’t in good conscience leave Sam out in the open. She gave one last look at the portal. I’m sorry, Phantom, she thought, then said, “Mission’s over. Tucker, pull back. Sam, I’m coming to get—”

“I’ve got the line!” Tucker yelled.

And then Penny noticed the GAV.

She scrambled to her feet and pushed Sedgewick away, then rushed towards the GAV. But maybe twenty yards from it, she stumbled — the pull of the portal was that strong. Penny lunged at it anyway, falling to her knees in the process. She started clawing at the dirt towards the vehicle.

“Tucker! Get Sam out of there!” Maddie screamed. She ran towards the GAV, but tripped on something and nearly face-planted into the earth.

“No!” Sam yelled. “Keep going! We have to save Danny!”

Maddie didn’t have the chance to register Sam’s use of Phantom’s given name, because then Penny saw her and let out an ectoblast as large as Maddie was tall.

Maddie rolled herself out of the way, though the shot missed her by several meters. She scrambled back to the GIW van, aware that it would do next-to-nothing to protect her from the next. She risked a glance just in time to see that Sedgewick had tackled Penny, and they were once again wrestling on the ground.

But Penny clearly had the upper hand. Maybe it was her rage, maybe she just kept getting closer to the portal, but she was fueled by something Sedgewick lacked, and she was able to squirm out of his grasp and send out another ectoblast — but not aimed at Maddie.

“SAM!” Maddie yelled at the same time Tucker did.

There was silence for one second, two, then—

“I’m okay!” Sam said. “Don’t worry about me! Just set the thing off, Tucker!”

An ectoblast hit only a few feet away from Maddie, and she realized that hiding behind the van made her a larger target. She ran out from behind it, towards the portal, but narrowly avoided another and took a dive to the ground.

Tucker and Sam were arguing — or maybe just screaming, she couldn’t tell over the heartbeat in her ears — but Maddie was trapped, unable to help Sam or get to the portal, as Penny seemed to be revitalized by her new targets and fought off Sedgewick with renewed strength.

Suddenly, Tucker yelled, “Officer Franklin?” and Sam yelled, “Set it off, Tucker!”

All Maddie could over the Fenton Phones was Tucker’s cursing, and then the playground erupted into a brilliant green aurora.

Thick, glowing ropes of ionized ectoplasm were flung into the sky, energized by the ecton emitter and further excited by Tucker’s blow torch. The emitter was likely enough by itself, but Maddie had used the fishing line, an exploding-bridgewire detonator, and a jumpstarted car battery to supercharge the emitter like Phantom had done to his Thermos. The excess energy caused green electricity to dance around the bars of the play structure, not unlike when Phantom had first lost control, and sparks joined the usually atmospheric phenomenon brought down to Earth.

And like moths to a flame, the two ghostly ectoscientists were drawn to the light show. Penny stopped her attacks to stare at the spectacle.

Maddie took off running towards the portal.

She doubted that Penny would stop her attacks for long; the aurorae were a distraction, not anything that would seriously affect ghosts this powerful.

But she didn’t need it to. All she needed was time.

As Maddie passed into the exclusion zone, the air grew colder, despite her exertion, and gooseflesh spread across her skin. Her stomach twisted with vertigo and she had to put all of her concentration into not tripping.

She didn’t know what happened to Sam. She didn’t know if Penny had spotted her. All Maddie knew, as she ran towards the blindingly bright light, was that the portal was directly on top of the small hill where she and Danny had stargazed, and then she activated the ghost shield and leapt into another world.

Chapter Text

The transition between realms launched an all-out assault on Maddie’s senses; if the journey through the ground was awful, this was several magnitudes worse.

She was freezing cold; she was burning hot; she was under extreme gravity; she was weightless. She was in pain, but pain held no meaning in this anti-place where no human should ever go. If she had been capable of rational thought, she might have recalled

without atmospheric pressure, exposure to the vacuum of space causes the water in our bodies to boil, creating gas bubbles in blood and tissue

and

frostbite occurs when blood vessels constrict due to extreme cold to the point where ice crystals can form in soft tissue, which results in damage at the cellular level

and

strong gravitational fields, such as those found near black holes, will stretch objects in one direction and compress them in others, leading to a phenomenon known as ‘spaghettification’

and

death is the cessation of the biological functions necessary for life

And then she was through.

Maddie collapsed on her forearms and knees, gasping down breath after breath while sweat dripped down her chin to pool at the bottom of her face shield. She shivered violently while her body tried to sort out what her senses were supposed to interpret.

It took every bit of Maddie’s dwindling stamina not to vomit, but she managed to calm her breathing without losing her stomach. She still shivered, and with the ambient temperature, she doubted she would be able stop. Hypothermia was a real concern, though, hopefully, the air-activated Fenton Hand Warmers installed in key places around her suit would help fight that off for the next 35 minutes until her filter ran out and the kids used the DEEP gun on the portal.

Her watch beeped. 34 minutes.

Still shaking, Maddie — remembering when Phantom turned her intangible — kept her eyes squeezed shut and tried to make sense of the world around her. She was kneeling on a flat surface and didn’t feel any vertigo, which meant there was some sort of gravity here. She made a fist and gently rapped her knuckles on the ground. They just…stopped. There was no sensation of touching anything, but her hand didn’t move, even when she pressed her palm on the ground and pushed.

She couldn’t hear anything, either, except for a loud static from her Fenton Phones as they were overwhelmed with spectral wavelengths. Maddie fumbled around and managed to get them turned off; they were functionally useless here, since she couldn’t communicate with Sam or Tucker. She’d just have to hope that they were still alive.

But she was alive. She was pretty sure of that. Probably.

Another beep: 33 minutes.

Time was running out, so Maddie finally opened her eyes.

All she could see was the green of the ghost shield. Taking a risk, she deactivated it, and, almost immediately, an ectoblast hit her in the side.

Maddie cried out as the attack sent her rolling across the not-floor. She barely had enough time to understand what happened before another one hit her, then another.

“Phantom!” she gasped out. “It’s me! It’s Dr. Fenton! I’m unarmed!”

Just as soon as they started, the attacks ended.

Tentatively, still breathing hard, Maddie cracked an eye, then the other, and got her first in-person look at the Ghost Zone.

She was in a deep, empty space, with the portal to her back and her shadow stretched out on the not-floor in front of her. Despite the deep shadows on the not-floor, every part of her body was visible and brightly lit, as though the three-dimensional space had never heard of shade. Maddie could not tell what color the space was; it was every color, it was no color, it was some impossible wavelength that activated her cones and rods but that her brain could not comprehend. The portal spun in a silent vortex of a green so bright it was almost white, and it cast shadows that split off at odd angles, as though the light was being filtered through invisible prisms. The entire space was filled with errant stars of bright green light, wafting in an imperceptible breeze, and Maddie shivered in a way that had nothing to do with the temperature.

Naturally, there was no sign of Phantom. Maddie sighed. Of course it couldn’t be that easy. She didn’t even know if she was in Phantom’s lair or some other part of the Ghost Zone.

But she suspected that she was near Phantom, at least. The existence of the portal suggested that Phantom was somewhere inside the maelstrom of ectoplasm – or maybe he was the portal; Maddie still wasn’t sure. But if she was right, then Phantom’s body had acted as a locus for ectoplasm to cluster around and grow dense enough to create another portal, despite the amount of ectoenergy lost when he went supernova. And if Danny’s notes on ghost lairs were accurate, then Phantom’s consciousness would direct the ectoplasm in and around him.

She should be able to rescue Phantom if she could find where his consciousness manifested in this improvised lair.

In theory.

Ignoring as much of her pain as possible, Maddie climbed to her feet and checked the ghost meter. As she suspected, it was totally useless, the readings maxed out off the screen. But maybe she could get some interesting data out of it once this whole thing was over. For now, though, she had a mission to complete.

“Phantom?” Maddie called out again. The space was completely anechoic, swallowing her voice completely and giving no indication how big of an area she was in. “It’s Dr. Fenton. Are you there? I’m here if you need help.”

There was, unsurprisingly, no response, so Maddie took a deep breath and started walking.

She wasn’t sure she was actually moving anywhere, since her feet didn’t register hitting the not-floor and the portal seemed to stay constant behind her, but she focused on putting one foot in front of the other and trying to move.

Maddie slammed face-first into an invisible wall. The impact shoved her face shield against her cheeks, and she hissed in pain at the pressure on her fractured bone. After it faded to a tolerable amount, Maddie pressed a hand against the not-wall. It had the same impossible resistance that the floor did, and she suddenly wondered if it was less of a surface than some kind of force made solid. She pulled a flashlight out of her fanny pack and shined it on the not-wall, but try as she might, she couldn’t make out any details, and the light went straight through. The wall didn’t match with any of the invisible prisms, either.

Okay, she thought, putting the flashlight away. I guess I’ll go right.

Maddie turned, and, after walking a few feet, encountered another wall.

I don’t have time for this! she thought, so she said, out loud: “Phantom, I don’t know if you can hear me, but I’m trying to help you. Are you able to help me?”

Once again, there was no response, so Maddie crossed her arms, scowled, and looked around for any sign that things had changed. Everything was exactly the same, from the not-color of the Zone, to the strange shadows from the portal, to the floating stars of green light that reminded Maddie too much of her own death.

And then she noticed that some of the stars weren’t moving. They were far above her and stationary, and, as she watched, more of them appeared in the sky.

“That’s Pegasus!” Maddie said, recognizing the constellation. “Which means…that’s Andromeda, and that’s Pisces!” Her eyes darted around as a map of the stars — real, Earthly stars — unfolded in the sky above her, and she recognized more and more of the constellations that Danny had taught her about, from what felt like a lifetime ago.

She read out the constellations as she followed the across the sky: “Cygnus, Lacerta, Cassiopeia…that’s Cepheus, Draco…and then Ursa Major into the Big Dipper, follow the edge of the ladle to Polaris and that’s North!”

Polaris was a navigational star, helping humans find their way home for millennia. What was the chance the appearance of this star map was just a coincidence — or a trick? Maddie was willing to bet her life that it wasn’t. Phantom was leading her to him.

Polaris was oriented at 10 o’clock to the portal, so Maddie took off in that direction with her arms outstretched, but she didn’t run into any not-walls. She was going the right direction. She hoped.

As Maddie walked, she started talking — in part to distract herself from the cold, and in part because of her hypothesis that reminding ghosts of themselves helped strengthen them. Asking Phantom for helped had gotten her the star map, at the very least.

“I remember when you first came to Amity Park, Phantom,” Maddie said. “Or at least the first time my husband and I saw you in town. It was a month after the portal opened, and we were so excited that we could finally prove the existence of ghosts to the rest of the world.” She paused and double checked to make sure she was on course with Polaris. “Of course, we weren’t exactly welcoming hosts to you. Or any other ghosts. I’m so sorry for that, Phantom. We were…wrong about you. And about ghosts. All gho—”

Her foot hit solid ground.

Maddie stopped and looked down. The not-floor had vanished and had been replaced by what looked and felt like asphalt. She bent down and pressed her palm against it. Yep, definitely asphalt.

She turned around and saw that the asphalt stretched out behind her, as though it had always been there. Creepy, Maddie thought, but it led straight to Polaris. She kept walking.

“I used to think you were a danger to Amity Park, but I don’t think that anymore. Well, you’ve caused — and still cause — a lot of property damage, but I re-watched a lot of your old fights, Phantom, and I saw that you always try to redirect damage to things instead of people. You’ve been trying to protect us the whole time.”

As Maddie spoke, buildings started to solidify around her, and before long, she was walking down a facsimile of a street in Amity Park. The facades were a patchwork from all around Amity Park, so Maddie couldn’t place herself within the city, but she recognized most of them, at least. Including….

“’Game Shack’,” Maddie read. She walked over to try the door. “My son once camped out in front of this store for two nights, waiting for the special edition release of Doomed.” The door opened, but the only thing behind it was more empty, not-colored space. She closed it, unnerved, and went back to walking.

“You’re pretty good at fighting, Phantom,” she said. “Both with your powers and in hand-to-hand combat. I don’t know if you know this, but I’m a black belt. I know how to tell when someone’s received training.” Maddie went on, describing to the empty space of Phantom’s lair — she was all but sure that’s where she was — the observations she made while re-watching the videos of his fights: how he combined his hand-to-hand skills with his ghost abilities to defeat enemies; how he grew in skill as he grew in power; how he pulled punches and restrained himself to avoid hurting people.

Something moved in the corner of her vision. Maddie whipped her head around; something loud crackled in her ear; and she jumped — there was nothing there, but there was a layer of ice on her left shoulder. Maddie hastily brushed it off, but realized, with a redundant chill, that the ice had formed exactly on top of the scar on her shoulder from Phantom’s accidental attack.

It almost seemed to be glowing.

Was Phantom or his lair trying to communicate with her…or had the decontamination process failed for her, just like it had for Dale Babcock?

She couldn’t worry about that now. Maddie brushed the last of the ice off, turned back to the road, and found the apocalypse had passed while she wasn’t looking.

The buildings around her had been obliterated, with no remaining wall higher than Maddie was tall. Broken bricks and glass littered the street, which was cracked and torn in many places. The damage seemed to have all come from the direction she was walking. Maddie shivered again, and this time didn’t stop. Hypothermia was a real danger now.

She kept walking, and it wasn’t long before Maddie realized that she recognized this kind of damage: it was the result of that destructive scream of Phantom’s, the one that he only used against his most powerful enemies.

She’d never seen it this bad, though. This wasn’t just Phantom using his wail to defeat an enemy; this was annihilation.

And Maddie was walking towards its epicenter.

She walked in silence, too awed and horrified by the destruction to resume her address to an absent Phantom. If this really was Phantom’s lair, was the damage the product of his imagination, his subconscious imagining a worst-case-scenario of his powers going awry — or was this a memory of something that actually happened?

Maddie walked another half-block, as best she could estimate in the destruction, and came across the first body.

It lay face-down on a pile of rubble and looked fairly fresh, though when Maddie touched its shoulder, it was colder than ice. Even before she rolled it over, she knew from the clothing and hair who it was. There was no mistaking that red hair and blue jumpsuit.

Maddie rolled a simulacrum of her own body over and immediately recoiled. The body was whole and injured, save for the head: her face had melted off in a mess of ectoplasm that stuck to the bricks below, revealing the skull below. One eyeball had been pulled out of its socket to hang in the goo dripping off not-Maddie’s face.

Maddie took a shaky breath before standing up. As horrifying as this was, she couldn’t afford to spend time investigating her own pseudo-corpse.

As she walked, more bodies appeared in along the street, most showing up more than once. Some lay in the street, while others were draped across piles of rubble or on the remnants of walls. All of them were face-down, though Maddie didn’t stop to check any more faces; she could recognize most of them from the back.

Jazz. Jack. Tucker and Sam. Danny’s ex, Valerie. Other kids from her children’s school, plus their teachers. People she knew from around Amity Park. Mayor Montez and officers from the APPD. Lance Thunder, the reporter. GIW members, Aggie, and the others from the task force. Even Vlad’s corpse appeared a few times in the rubble.

There were ghosts, too. Technus, Ember, the Box Ghost, the Lunch Lady. The big mechanical ghost with the flaming mullet. The couple with the motorbike. The Wisconsin Ghost and the Dairy King. The red-suited ghost that sometimes worked with Phantom to hunt other ghosts. And many she didn’t recognize, like a teenager in black and white; a figure in a top hat and black coat; an empty purple cloak on top of a staff.

So many dead and twice-dead, all at Phantom’s hand. This wasn’t a memory; it was a nightmare.

She was walking through a very literal ghost town.

Suddenly, talking to the subconscious of a scared teenage boy about his extremely dangerous powers seemed like a very bad idea.

It was getting more difficult for Maddie to think as she shook so hard her teeth chattered. What could she talk about that wasn’t likely to re-traumatize Phantom? There was astrophysics, but she was too cold to remember many details, let alone hold a conversation about it, and the same applied to what Danny had told her about the constellations. What else did she know about Phantom?

Maddie stumbled past another pair of corpses — Tucker and Sam, who always appeared side-by-side for some reason — and Sam yelling, “We have to save Danny!” echoed through her mind.

Phantom knew Sam and Tucker well enough that she’d used his first name. They’d been fighting with him for a while. Maddie could run with that.

“I know you’ve b-been working with Tucker and Sam, Phantom,” she said through her shivers. “And my d-daughter, too. My husband and I wondered how you got to our equipment and the portal. Do they empty your Thermos for you, or do they let you in to do it?” Maddie stuck her hands in her armpits to try to warm them up, then remembered how Phantom had gotten her into the lab. She shook her head. “Nevermind. I forgot you know how to sneak in. I don’t mind that. Maybe once this is over you and c-can work something out so you don’t have to hide anymore.”

Her watch beeped a little ditty. Ten minutes left until her filter ran out. She wasn’t sure what would happen after it did, but she wasn’t sure how much that mattered with the hypothermia symptoms.

Maddie kept her eyes on her feet as she shuffled along; she was worried she’d trip over something. “Tucker and Sam are v-very loyal to you,” she said. “They helped me get to the portal that led me here.” She had enough of her wits about her to realize that mentioning to Phantom that his friends might be dead was a bad idea. “I couldn’t have done this without them. I should tell th-them that.”

She glanced up, briefly, but barely processed that the path corpses had thinned — it was just the three Fentons and Sam and Tucker — and the piles of rubble were shrinking; the walls were being rebuilt.

“They’re good friends to my son,” she went on, mostly following her train of thought. “D-do you know my son, Phantom? I guess you probably do if you’ve worked with his friends and Jazz. His name is Danny, too. D-Danny Fenton and Danny Phantom.” Maddie giggled, slightly hysterically, and it turned into a deeper shiver. “I never noticed how similar your names are. Two Dannys, working together.”

Something warm ran down Maddie’s cheek, and it took her far too long to realize she was crying. “I miss him so m-much,” she whispered. “I don’t care what his big secret is anymore. I j-just want my son back.”

Maddie’s sobs echoed through the ghost town, bouncing off walls that had rebuilt themselves when she wasn’t looking. She staggered through a residential part of town, trying to recall why it looked so familiar, until she recognized a major landmark, just around a corner — the first one she’d come across— and gasped.

It was Fenton Works.

And Maddie wasn’t the one sobbing.

The realization made Maddie’s heart jump, dulling the edge of her shivering just slightly, and she gathered enough strength to hurry the last few blocks to the turn in the road, then slowed as she saw that the ghost town’s Fenton Works was abandoned.

The windows were boarded up with rotting plywood and weeds grew through cracks in the sidewalk. The bricks were covered in lichen, dust, and other things Maddie couldn’t identify. The house itself looked structurally sound, but a rusted, decrepit Ops Center creaked in an absent wind, threatening to collapse and take the whole building with it.

Phantom knelt in front of the stoop, weeping.

“Phantom!” Maddie cried, rushing towards him.

The boy whipped his head around to stare at her, confusion and surprise and hope written across his face, and said, hoarsely, “Mom?”

The single word stopped Maddie in her tracks; she felt her heart breaking. Another wave of tears pricked at her eyes and she fumbled wordlessly for a response.

“I’m sorry, Phantom,” she eventually said. “It’s just me. Just Dr. Fenton.”

Phantom stared at her for what felt like an eternity, expression unreadable, until his face finally fell, and he said, “Oh.”

“I know I’m not the person you want to see right now,” Maddie said, “but I’m here to help you—”

“You can’t be here!” Phantom said, leaping to his feet. A crackle of green electricity ran around his body, then skittered a few feet across the pavement. He started backing away from her slowly. “It’s not— it’s not safe for you. You have to go!”

The momentary distraction of finding him and Fenton Works was gone, and the cold was starting to seep deeper into Maddie’s bones, but she shook her head. “I’m not leaving without you, Phantom.”

Before he could respond, another burst of electricity flickered around Phantom, lasting longer and expanding outward more than the first one. The energy passed into the sidewalk once more, almost reaching Maddie’s feet. She stumbled back to avoid it, and thankfully managed not to fall.

Maddie met Phantom’s eyes, unable to keep her face from twisting in horror. Phantom just stared back with a sorrowful look in his eyes, as though he had expected that to happen.

“See what I mean?” he whispered. “It’s not safe for you here. I could hurt you.”

The whole world is made of ectoplasm, Maddie thought, dimly; everything was going to conduct ectoelectricity. The only thing protecting her was distance and her jumpsuit. She could activate the ghost shield, but she didn’t want to spook Phantom. He already looked like he was ready to flee, and using the shield would just prove to him that she thought he was dangerous.

Something creaked in the not-Ops Center above, and Phantom glanced at it in terror. He looked back at Maddie, then turned as if to run.

She needed to calm him down. “You won’t hurt me, Phantom,” she said. “You’re not dangerous like that.”

“But I did hurt you!” Phantom said, wringing his hands in anguish. “At the park. And— and I could do it again!” His voice dropped to a whisper as more electricity danced around him; it was almost constant now. “I can’t control my ghost powers.”

Maddie was suddenly extremely aware of the cold in her shoulder, once again covered in a thin layer of ice, and she realized that his horror wasn’t coming from a hypothetical: Phantom had hurt her, and he had been carrying that baggage with him ever since.

“If I get hurt trying to help you,” Maddie said, softly, “then that’s okay. That’s the risk I took when I decided to help you.”

Phantom froze, staring at her, and his eyes widened, ever so slightly.

The not-Ops Center made another noise, and dust rained down onto the sidewalk between them.

“Phantom, l-listen,” Maddie struggled to say through her shivering; her watch beeped for seven minutes left. “When you absorbed the energy from the explosion, it created another portal — one centered around you and the lair we’re in.” Phantom’s eyes grew wider, though he didn’t seem wholly surprised. “But Dr. Sedgewick and Dr. Babcock became ghosts, and they’ve been p-pulling energy from your portal. There’s not much longer until they escape, and no one knows what will happen after that.”

Phantom shook his head, looking panicked. “I didn’t mean for any of that time happen!”

“I know, Phantom,” Maddie said, quickly. He now stood in the center of constant bursts of electricity that branched out from him like filaments in a plasma globe. They almost reached where Maddie was standing, and she forced herself not to take a step back. “But we can’t capture them until this portal is destroyed. I c-convinced the GIW to let me break it up first, but I don’t have much time left. If I d-don’t g-get you out first, you’ll be destroyed along with the p-portal.” She shook her head, almost uncontrollably. “I won’t let that happen.”

“If the portal’s centered on me, then I can’t leave,” Phantom replied, miserably.

“Not if I p-put you in a Thermos,” Maddie said.

Phantom’s eyes grew wide again as she detached his Thermos from her hip and held it out for him to see. “Will that even work? This whole place is made of ectoplasm.”

“Yes,” Maddie said, not wanting to admit how uncertain she actually was; the margin of error on Aggie’s calculations was far too large for her comfort. “But just on you, not normal ghosts.”

Phantom reeled as though he’d been slapped. “Have you…figured the rest out?”

“No,” Maddie said, honestly; she hadn’t meant to bring up that she knew about Phantom’s strange existence, but it was so hard to concentrate in the cold. Her watch beeped with a five-minute warning. “Phantom, when I use the Thermos on you, it will collapse the p-portal and let us capture the other ghosts. We’ll put an end to the b-bombings and their destruction.”

But Maddie could tell he wasn’t convinced. Phantom wobbled on his feet like he was about to pass out, and she realized she wasn’t the only one struggling to stay focused. “Won’t the portal collapsing trap you in the Ghost Zone?”

“I’ll have a few minutes before it c-closes all the way,” she lied; again, the margin of error was too high to know for sure. “I know you don’t like being put in a Thermos. But I promise to keep you safe.”

Phantom stared at her for a long while, expression once again unreadable. He was completely still within the sphere of plasma filaments that licked at Maddie’s boots, while Maddie violently shivered. But she held he gaze as her watch beeped again and the not-Ops Center creaked above them.

Finally, Phantom whispered: “Okay, Dr. Fenton. I trust you.” He took a deep breath, then stood up a little taller. “What do you need to do?”

“I just n-need to get closer,” she said, “so I can focus the Thermos on you.”

He nodded. “Okay,” he said, then paused. “I’m scared. I don’t know how to control my ghost powers right now.”

“I know.” How could she help Phantom manage his powers? She hadn’t grabbed the Specter Deflector or any other technology that could limit a ghost’s ectoplasmic abilities. She wasn’t even sure they would work under these circumstances. And despite all of her knowledge about ghosts, Maddie didn’t know how a scared ghost could even lose control of his powers in the first place, let alone how to help him regain control.

But she did know how to help a scared teenager.

“Close your eyes,” Maddie said. “I’m going to walk you through an exercise I used to use with my son.”

Phantom closed his eyes and — for some reason — quirked a small smile.

“Think of a moment when you felt safe, physically and emotionally,” Maddie said. She began to inch forward. “Do you have one?”

He nodded.

“We’ll do emotions first. Think about why you f-felt s-safe in that moment. Was it b-because of where you were? What you were doing? Who you were with? Take a deep breath and remember what it felt like to be safe and at ease.” She didn’t know if the breathing portion of the exercise would help, but Phantom took a breath anyway. “Think about how c-calm you were, how at peace you felt.”

As Maddie guided Phantom through the exercise, she entered the sphere of plasma filaments. They resisted her presence, repelled by the ectophobic material of her jumpsuit. She might’ve imagined it, but they almost seemed to be growing less dramatic — a hopeful sign that Phantom was calming down. She was protected for now, but as soon as her filter ran out, they’d find a way through her defenses, and she didn’t know what would happen then.

Maddie kept talking to Phantom in a low, calm voice, as much as she could despite the shivering. She led Phantom through the physical memory part of the exercise, asking him to recall each of his five main senses. She forced herself to walk slowly despite the ticking clock, afraid of spooking Phantom and undoing the progress.

Whatever memory Phantom chose, though, it seemed to be helping. The filaments shrunk almost as quickly as Maddie moved towards Phantom, dying out like the last vestiges of a distant thunderstorm until they were all but gone. She had the briefest moment to realize that the ghost town’s Fenton Works was as pristine as the day she and Jack had opened it for business, the windows whole and dust-free, the sidewalk freshly power-washed to get rid of the weeds.

Her watch rang with the two-minute alarm.

Maddie paused half a dozen feet from Phantom and stopped talking. He kept on with the deep breathing, and here, in the Ghost Zone, he didn’t have the glow that always accompanied him on Earth.

He seemed so incredibly human that when Maddie next spoke, she felt compelled to use his first name instead of his last.

“I’m going to use the Thermos now, Danny,” she said.

“Okay,” Danny said, eyes still shut. “Do it.”

Maddie took the lid off Phantom’s own Thermos, aimed it at him, and activated it.

The device came to life with its familiar effects, the pale blue light shooting out to envelope Phantom, the whoosh overwhelmingly loud in the ghost town. Phantom didn’t respond as his form became distorted towards its mouth, and Maddie watched as he was sucked inside.

Then he was gone.

Immediately, the ghost town began to shake.

Maddie capped the Thermos and looked around frantically, trying to find the way out. The road she had taken was warping and bending, but she could make out the portal in the distance, glowing brightly against the not-color of the Zone.

Maddie took off in a half-run, half-stumble, shivering so hard she couldn’t keep her eyes focused. With Phantom in the Thermos, the temperature dropped precipitously and Maddie struggled to put one foot in front of the other without falling. She kept the beacon of the portal ahead of her as the only salvation in this world with which she was incompatible.

The ghost town began to break apart around her. Bricks crumbled into clusters of swirling green stars in Maddie’s vision, while the bodies melted into ectoplasm-covered skeletons before they, too, were rendered into green ooze.

Behind her, the not-Ops Center collapsed in a tremendous crash that sent a cataclysmic shake through the lair. The road liquefied under Maddie’s feet, and she fell, her knees and shoes sinking into the ectoplasm. She managed to shove herself back up, legs numb from the cold, and forced herself to keep slogging through the ghostly mire.

But it was cold, so cold that Maddie couldn’t feel her muscles burning with fatigue. She wasn’t even aware of when her filter finally ran out, since the chill was so deep that her body was physiologically incapable of registering changes in temperature.

Ectoplasm clumped together like wax in a lava lamp as the artificial gravity, no longer under Phantom’s influence, vanished completely. Vague shapes loomed in the not-color, casting impossible shadows as the lair succumbed to the Ghost Zone.

Maddie found herself floating in the fetal position only a few meters from the portal, clutching Phantom’s Thermos and shivering violently. She almost thought she could feel herself falling towards the portal; she tried to reach for it, to grab at any possibility, no matter how slim, that she might be able to make it home.

But her body didn’t respond — she couldn’t feel most of it anymore — save for her right arm, so Maddie slapped clumsily at the emergency button on the portable ghost shield.

Through frost-heavy lashes, Maddie saw the ghost shield flare up in a sphere around her and she breathed a sigh of relief. The shield could not help her now, but it came with a homing signal that could last decades.

Someday, someone from Fenton Works might be able to find her and open the Thermos, so that Phantom would not be trapped for eternity.

The last conscious thought Maddie had, before she closed her eyes and faded away, was the realization that in Phantom’s ghost town, she hadn’t seen a single corpse of her son.

Chapter Text

“I can’t believe you wanted to see a documentary about crossword puzzles,” Danny was saying.

“First of all, my high school graduation, my choice of the movie,” Jazz replied. “Second, crossword puzzles are a great way to hone your vocabulary skills and keep your brain sharp, Danny. There are studies that indicate that crossword puzzles are a helpful pedagogical tool for learning new concepts. Maybe they can help with your history class.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me, Jazz.”

Maddie drifted on the sidewalk in front of them. She tried to turn around to look at her son, but the air was thick with ice and she couldn’t get her body to obey. All she could do instead was waft along besides her husband. She was too cold to shiver.

Jack said something to her that she didn’t make out. Maddie turned her head, impossibly slow, and felt her mouth form the words, “What was that, honey?”

Although Jack moved like he was underwater, his words were clear to Maddie’s ears: “My ghost meter just beeped!”

“Mine too!” her mouth said, even though it hadn’t made a sound.

With glacial slowness, they both reached for the devices at their hips — with her other hand, Maddie pulled her goggles over her eyes. The world took on a greenish tint.

“Stay back, kids!” she found herself saying. “We’re detecting ghostly activity!”

Like two lethargic hounds, she and Jack followed the indicators on their meters to a cluster of abandoned newspaper boxes. Two of them were empty, but the third was a negative space in Maddie’s vision; she couldn’t make out what, if anything, was inside. She pulled the ectoblaster from her hip and watched herself move into position opposite Jack, holding the blaster at the ready.

“On a count of five,” Jack said. “Five! Four!”

As he counted down, a whisper graced Maddie’s ear: “Anything, Danny?”

She could almost feel Danny shake his head. “Probably just some leftover junk,” he muttered back.

Maddie spun against the invisible tide keeping her in place to ask what he meant, and she was gifted with a brief glimpse of black hair before Jack shouted, “One!” and the world fell apart.

***

An oppressively heavy force weighed on Maddie, like a lead blanket had been lain on top of her — or perhaps she was the lead blanket, dense and unresponsive. There was no feedback from her body other than the crushing pressure that was holding her down and making it hard to breathe. Her aspiration felt full of broken glass, piercing her lungs with each shallow breath, and it was a hard fight against the gravity and the pain to take the next.

But she was breathing, and, with that realization, a modicum of awareness flooded back into Maddie.

Her limbs were still difficult to move, but three of them at least acknowledged the attempts at motion. They were stopped by the…the sheet — yes, she was under a bedsheet. That knowledge was coupled with a cacophony that hit her ears: beeps, whines, and voices. But they were muffled, and Maddie didn’t know what they were saying.

She drifted in and out of consciousness, existing somewhere half asleep, or maybe half dead, with only the shadow of voices and the ever-present weight to keep her company.

And then back into nothingness.

***

At some point, her eyes flickered almost of their own volition, but they, too, were laden down with invisible pressure. Maddie forced her eyes open against the weight and found herself in a dim, quiet room. Orange sodium lamps from outside backlit the closed blinds. It was night, or early morning — although Maddie could make out a clock, her eyes were too blurry to tell what time it was.

Her alarm was going off beside her, but the sound was weird: a slow beep…beep…beep instead of the rapid trilling she was used to. Maddie rolled over in bed to shut it off — or tried to, at least. Only part of her body wanted to respond, and the part that did couldn’t move much. She shifted under an increasingly unfamiliar bedsheet and, slowly, her brain caught up with the situation.

She was in a hospital room. Again.

Before Maddie had the chance to come to any further conclusions about that fact, she was swarmed with an entire company of nurses and doctors, fussing about her with questions and tests — her name, her birthday, where she lived, what her job was; could she wiggle her toes and fingers, follow this pencil with her eyes.

She kept asking, with increasing desperation: “Where are my kids? Are my kids okay?” but no one gave her a clear answer.

Suddenly Jack was there, tears in his eyes and the sunlight — sunlight? — peeking through the blinds to line his face. “Sam and Tucker are okay, Maddie,” he said, clutching her hand like he never wanted to let go. “A little banged up, but otherwise okay. Jazz is fine, too. But Danny….” Here he looked away to blink more tears from his eyes. “Danny is still missing.”

And then he was gone, the touch of his lips echoing on Maddie’s forehead, and she cried herself to sleep, not understanding what Jack meant — only knowing that there was no way her children should have survived that explosion.

***

In every dream, Maddie relived the explosion. The location moved around Amity Park — sometimes at Casper High, sometimes at Fenton Works, sometimes at the park — and the people present changed from her family to Sam and Tucker to her ectoscience colleagues to Vlad and beyond, but no matter how hard she tried, she could never stop it, and no matter how much she fought to turn around, she could never catch more than a glimpse of her son’s face.

***

When Maddie next fully woke, she tried to sit up before she knew what she was doing, and it was with a painful clarity that she realized she could not move her left arm.

No, that wasn’t quite right. If she focused, she could make her fingers twinge, maybe shift her elbow, but beyond that — nothing. At least she could sort of feel the bedsheet on her skin, though everything felt like she had dipped her arm in ice.

Maddie squirmed in bed, managing to move her head to where she could see that her left shoulder was bandaged. She stared at it, uncomprehending, while the beep…beep…beep of the heart monitor sped up slightly. The change in rate must have sent a silent alert, because a moment later, a man in nurse’s scrubs poked his head in the room. He looked at her like he’d seen a ghost, metaphorically.

“Nurse,” Maddie said, her voice barely above a whisper from disuse, “something’s wrong with my arm.”

It took forever and a minute, but the nurse came back with her surgeon from the last time she was in the hospital; with that recognition, Maddie remembered that the explosion had happened months ago, and she was here for a different reason. The details were still foggy, but she remembered Phantom, and the Ghost Zone, and being so, so cold….

“We managed to save most of your arm, Dr. Fenton,” her doctor said after asking her the same questions she’d been asked several times before, “but you still lost a fair amount of muscle mass and skin from the frostbite. You’ll need physical therapy if you want to gain back some mobility.” He went on, talking about things like hypothermia and possible neurological defects and avoided a cardiopulmonary bypass, and that phrase again: lucky to be alive.

“You have your young assistants to thank for your life, Dr. Fenton,” he added. “They kept your heart beating long enough to get you to the ER here, though —” he gestured at her chest “— they’re responsible for several more broken ribs.”

Maddie nodded along without fully taking in his words. Her memories were slow to come, but from what she did remember, she really shouldn’t have survived the Ghost Zone like she had. How did she get out and to the hospital?

And what happened to Phantom?

Maddie’s heart rate spiked again at the memory of Phantom in his Thermos. “Where’s—?” she started to say, but cut herself off. For some reason, she didn’t want to ask after the boy until she spoke to Tucker or Sam.

“Your husband and daughter are down in the waiting room,” her doctor said, mistaking the subject of her question. “But your lawyer will be by later today to discuss things with you first.”

“My lawyer?” Maddie said, but her doctor had already moved on to her options for physical therapy. She let the subject drop, then stifled a mirthless laugh when she realized: she suffered the same injury as Dale Babcock.

***

Vilma’s entrance several hours later roused Maddie from an uneasy sleep wherein she dreamed her family melted around her and she was powerless to stop it; she was grateful for the disturbance.

“I’m glad to see you’re more or less in one piece, Maddie” Vilma said by way of greeting. She dragged the sole chair in Maddie’s private room to the side of the bed and sat down. “We have a lot to discuss, so I’ll cut to the chase: the federal government will be coming by tomorrow to interview you for your role in the deaths of Dr. Babcock and Dr. Sedgewick. They’re not happy after the stunt you pulled with Statute 11, but you’re not considered an official suspect in their deaths, yet. Just a person of interest. You have, however, been arrested for the destruction of public property.” At Maddie’s confused frown, she added: “The playground melted.”

Oops.

Vilma pulled out a legal pad from her briefcase, perched it on one crossed leg, and said, “So, Maddie: what happened after we parted ways at the police station.”

Maddie told her everything. Almost.

She started with her conversation with Jazz at the motel and how her daughter refused to answer any questions about Danny. She described the audio file Tucker sent her, explaining, no, she didn’t know how he found it. Maddie walked Vilma through finding Phantom at the park all the way to his sacrifice at Fenton Works and her return to the park, and how she absolutely did not intend to permanently destroy the playground in her distraction — and then, her journey through Phantom’s ghost town.

“I found him at the end of the road,” Maddie said softly, eyes closed against the memory. “He was kneeling in front of Fenton Works and was crying. He mistook me for his mother.” She frowned, and opened her eyes. “I didn’t realize how weird that was. But, um, he was worried about hurting me. Again. I had to convince him to let me get close enough to use the Thermos.”

Maddie hesitated a moment before continuing: “I used a grounding technique that works on my son to calm him down. It worked and…and I put him in the Thermos.”

She paused, lost in the memory of the slight quirk of a smile Phantom gave her. Why was it so familiar to her?

“Then?”

“Then I ran,” Maddie said; Vilma didn’t need to know that she’d called him Danny. “Without Phantom to stabilize the lair, it started to collapse. But I didn’t make it to the exit. I remember activating the ghost shield and its emergency beacon…and then waking up here.” She shifted in bed and cringed as the wound in her shoulder smarted.

“You’re sure you don’t remember anything after using the ghost shield?” Vilma asked.

Maddie shook her head.

“And you had Phantom’s Thermos with you?”