It had been little over two months since what was generally known as "the incident". Then again, several things were known as "the incident" in the Fenton family, so when one was feeling particularly descriptive the incident in question may also be called "that one time an elemental wrecked the lab."
The incident had set back Maddie and Jack's research by several months, and would continue to do so for many more. Merely fixing the damage to the architecture had been a blow to their research funds, not to mention the cost of fixing or replacing the equipment. Many irreplaceable samples had been lost, and all their digitized records lost.
On the bright side, their entire weapons vault and the shelf of written records had been unharmed, and they were presented with the enticing opportunity of creating new safety protocols. Someone had also presented them with an anonymous external hard drive containing a copy of all the files on the former lab computer, taken three weeks before its destruction. The whole thing had been highly suspicious, but the drive contained no malware and was free of even lingering ectoplasmic influence so Maddie saw no harm in using it to their advantage. The thought that someone was watching them and copying their files didn't exactly help her sleep at night, though.
During those little over two months Maddie hadn't paid any mind to Phantom, either. Sure, she saw the ghost around town every now and then and might have even waved once, but she hadn't had neither the time nor the energy to research the strange spectre any further.
Until now.
The lab still wasn't quite as it used to be, but it was functional and she really needed some variation from the constant restoration work. So, she hooked up the little test portal, checked its functions, found them satisfactory, and began to hunt for cockroaches.
Maddie had to wait a few days before she could conduct her experiments, not only because the cockroaches she needed for test subjects were being irritatingly slippery and hard to catch, but also because her son was in the house. Perhaps she even wasn't giving the bug-hunting her best until Danny announced that he would stay the night at Valerie's.
In the end, the cockroach hunting turned out to be quite fun, and especially after Jack joined in it became a nice couples' activity. Not that Jack was any help, really, but his positive attitude and good sportsmanship were highly contagious.
But right now, Maddie was warming up the little portal, seven cockroaches loaded into three wire mesh boxes and her moderately scorched handwritten notes from her last experiment over two months ago waiting on the table next to her. The flat insects seemed agitated, but Maddie couldn't be bothered to feel too sorry for them. Yes, they were most likely going to die very soon, but they were also going to be a part of an important scientific breakthrough. If Maddie could decide, that was the way she'd want to go when the time came.
She'd do the first two cockroaches with half the power, and the second two with full power. After that she'd observe the specimens to her heart's content and decide what to do with the last three. Maddie placed the first two cockroaches in their little box on the bottom of the little portal and pulled an extra pair of safety goggles over the ones she was already wearing. Even at half power, the little portal was going to expel a lot of energy, and the less little bright spots she had dancing in her vision the sooner she could inspect the results.
The portal turned on with the push of a button, and the otherwise silent laboratory was immediately filled with the electric and spectral whine of it. The noise died down to the usual hum of a stable portal in a few seconds, and Maddie thought she could hear two faint splats from the middle of it. She powered the portal down, and the reason became clear- both of the cockroaches had, using a layman's term, gone splat. Disappointing results, but results nonetheless. Maddie wrote down the details, scanned the bug remains for emissions, and scribbled down a description of the results with an added reminder to rewrite it with more appropriate word choices when she had the time, in case she wanted to publish them.
After decontaminating the portal frame, it was time for the full power experiment. The two cockroaches were skittering wildly in their mesh box, antennas swishing about as if trying to find a way out of the small container. Maddie turned the power dial up and pressed the button.
The portal was louder and brighter this time, which was to be expected, but the splat sound Maddie was expecting didn't come. Instead there was a faint sort of hissing sound, almost exactly like one might imagine a cockroach being electrocuted to sound like. Soon after that came a sizzle, but the hiss continued on until Maddie turned off the portal again.
The other cockroach was completely gone; Maddie guessed that had been the sizzle and it had burned away completely. The other cockroach was an entirely different story.
It was whole, even if it was slightly smoking. It had changed color, from the usual dark brown to cyan, and it was glowing ever so slightly. It stood very still on the bottom of the box, but its antennas were twitching with minuscule movement. Maddie hurriedly scrambled for her spectre-o-meter.
"Oh my," Maddie breathed as she scanned the cockroach. It was reading a definite ecto-positive, as much was clear from a visual once-over, but the amount of ectoplasmic energy packed into the one-and-a-half inches of roach was unbelievable. As Maddie watched, the flickering barely-there glow of the cockroach steadied into something brighter, a solid aura that was unheard of on a spectral entity this recent.
Maddie reached for her modified ghost detector, and turned it on. It showed one faint red spot, right in front of her, so close that the detector beeped a little ghost proximity warning.
The experiment had been a success.
The ghost cockroach was moving now, shakily moving its little legs and starting to feel its surroundings with its glowing white antennas. A small spark of white light flickered next to its head, and then once again, and Maddie leaned in to see whether it was some kind of an after-reaction. The spark appeared again, but instead of flickering out in the blink of an eye it hung there, and fell on the cockroach. Out of the spark expanded a little ring of light the size of a keyring. It too lingered for a while, before parting in the middle and moving up and down the insect. The ghostly cyan appearance the cockroach had attained in the experiment flickered out with the small white rings, leaving the cockroach dark brown and looking exactly like it had before the experiment.
"What?" Maddie exclaimed in surprise, even if there was nobody there to hear her. She checked the ghost detector again, almost frantically. The red dot was gone.
Maddie checked the cockroach over with the spectre-o-meter as well. It still checked ecto-positive, but only barely; yesterday morning's fried eggs had had a higher reading, and they hadn't even come alive and attacked anyone like they sometimes did. Maddie looked the insect over to the best of her ability, cursing its small size and fetching a magnifying class halfway through the inspection.
For all intents and purposes, the cockroach seemed to be alive and well.
If she hadn't seen it cyan and glowing three minutes ago, she would've never known it had been in the portal.
"Oh, hell," Maddie cursed.