Toby ran over to the edge of the portal, getting as close to it as he dared. Everything was quiet, and Jim wasn't saying anything, and there was some kind of steam floating around inside the portal, so he couldn't see inside. Or was it smoke? A mist or fog? Not important, Toby reminded himself.

"Jim?" croaked Toby. "You in there, buddy?" A cough rang out through the silence, and Toby sighed. Jim was alive. "Dude, you really scared me! Are you okay?"

"I.." Jim tried to get up, but his legs wouldn't move. Propping himself up on his elbows, he tried to see through the fog that surrounded him. The air tasted strange - a kind of metallic that was unfamiliar to him. "I don't know…" He blinked hard, but he couldn't focus on anything. It was like his eyes were trying to see past the floor… and he couldn't tell if there was something there. It almost seemed like there was. He could feel the floor beneath his hands, but the surface looked less than solid, shifting constantly, almost giving away to something else. A swath of colors he couldn't describe washed over everything, and he felt his whole body buzz like his skin was made of bees. Echoes of something unknown called far away in the back of his head. He tried to push it all away and focused on the immediately important problems he had to deal with. "Toby… what happened?"

"I don't know, man! You tell me! You're the one who was in there!" Toby paced back and forth at the gaping entrance of the portal. "How, uh, how do you feel?" He tugged nervously on an untucked part of his shirt. He hated the idea of being an accomplice to his friend getting hurt, but tried not to focus on the guilt.

"I don't know… I can't feel.. Anything… but like. I can also feel my whole body tingling? Where are you? I think my muscles need help remembering how to move." He grunted as he tried to sit up, but his arms strained against him. It was like all the energy was sucked out of him. If he was electrocuted - which he hated to consider, but it was very possible - his nerves could have been damaged or something. His mom was a doctor, but he didn't know much about medical procedures himself. He knew that he'd be unable to take care of his own wounds, if there were any. Jim still couldn't quite feel his arms and legs, so it was hard to tell.

"Uhh… hmmm… errr…" Toby hemmed and hawed about entering the portal. "You're sure it's safe in there?"

"Of course not, Toby, that's why I'm asking you to help me out of here!" The fog-smoke was clearing, but Jim's vision wasn't. Everything still ebbed and flowed about haphazardly. "I've heard that people in accidents like this can get disoriented easily, and I am already extremely disoriented." He tried to pound the ground with his right fist to emphasise his own frustration, but his hand didn't make contact with anything. Suddenly his whole arm was swinging down below him, which didn't make sense at all. The floor was right there, and his hand was acting like it wasn't even there. It was as if he were lying down on the edge of a cliff and his arm was just dangling off the side. Worriedly, he pulled his arm back up and decided not to say anything. Clearly, this accident was making him crazy.

"Okay. I'm coming in for you, Jimbo. Hold tight." Toby stepped carefully into the chamber, which was dark and foreboding now that it had no power running to it. The air inside was mostly clear, but the lack of light made it hard to see where Jim was on the floor. As he tiptoed along, he wondered what this accident would do to Jim in the long run. What exactly happened inside? He'd have to ask Jim that when they were both more collected. Suddenly his toe tapped something solid, but soft. "Jim!"

"Watch it, Tobes!" snapped Jim. He took a deep breath. "I'm worried you'll step on me. I need help up, too. Everything's… weird." Toby nodded and reached out his hand for Jim to grab. Nervously, Jim held up his right hand, watching it carefully as it rose up to meet Toby's.

"Dude, were you also zapped by a slow motion ray in there?" Toby moved forward and grabbed onto Jim's hand, giving it a bit of a squeeze. "Listen, everything's going to be okay. I know you don't want to get in trouble, but… if things are really that bad, your mom is a doctor. We can ask her for help."

Jim grimaced as he pulled on Toby's arm, bringing himself upward. "I know, but I don't like that idea. Let's take stock of everything first. Okay, I'm standing, mostly. Do I uh, do I look okay?" He glanced down at himself, still using Toby as support. Everything was still fuzzy and nothing was sitting still.

Toby looked him up and down, craning his head back a bit. Resting his gaze on Jim's head, he said, "You know, I wasn't going to say anything, but -"

"What? Is it bad? Is my face melting off or something?" Jim started sweating nervously. What could he do about something like that?

"Nothing like that, but... your hair. It's like, gone all white. I have no idea what's up with that, but it's probably not a good sign." Toby paused for a minute, looking at Jim's feet. "And this is a weird follow-up question, but what color was that jumpsuit again?"

"It was teal," Jim said. "I mean, it is teal. I mean.. Wait, why are you asking that?" He looked down at himself again, and this time really paid attention to what he was seeing. Toby was right - the jumpsuit wasn't teal anymore. It was a pinkish color, almost peach. "What the heck?"

"Okay, that's weird, but don't worry, we'll figure it out later. We still have to walk out of this stupid portal, remember?" Jim nodded, and they both turned towards the entrance. They took a few steps, slowly and carefully, waiting between for Jim to catch his breath. Toby listened for the sound of Mrs. Lake's rumbly van returning home, but so far it seemed like she was still out.

Jim took a deep breath, and as he let it out, suddenly Toby's support was gone, and he was falling over. He braced himself with his forearms and when he landed on the ground with a whump, he looked back at Toby. "What the heck? Why did you let go of me?"

Toby stared at Jim with a terrified expression, and color was draining out of his face. "I… I didn't let go…" Toby just kept looking at the arm he'd been holding onto. Or, that is… where Jim's right arm should have been.

Jim looked down at his right arm. He lifted it up, but for some reason, he couldn't see anything there. Well, his bicep was still there, attached to his shoulder, but the rest of his arm past his elbow faded into nothing. It disappeared into the air in a gradient, almost, like someone had started to erase his forearm from a comic book but didn't finish. "WHERE. IS. MY ARM?" Jim hollered. "I don't - what th- what is going on? Toby?" He worriedly whipped his head back to look his friend in the face.

Toby's expression was somber, and he looked back at Jim with a seriousness that he hadn't seen before. "I," Toby paused. "I don't know what's going on, I know less than you probably do, Jim. But let's get you up to your room, at least. Then we can evaluate everything without worrying about your mom barging in on us. I can uh, say that you're in your room 'cause you have a stomach ache from... food poisoning, or something. Then we can dye your hair back." Toby bent down and helped Jim up again, this time holding him by the waist. His missing arm would not be so easy to hide. "Good news is that since I just pulled the power plug for the thing, I don't think the portal's broken. So if we can figure out whatever's up with you, we should get out of this unscathed, for the most part."

"Unscathed," mumbled Jim, staring at his missing right hand. "It doesn't hurt, which is weird. And it feels like I can move my fingers. But where are they?" He looked back at Toby. This was too much. Everything was still swimming around him, and he couldn't tell where one color stopped and another started. Every shape he could see in front of him looked like it was filled with static, and it buzzed to the beat of his own skin. "We should probably get going. We don't want to get caught, and I'm not sure how much energy I have. We shouldn't waste it." Toby nodded, and they headed for the stairs.

Twenty minutes later, they were in Jim's room, both of them out of breath from the trek up the stairs. It was never so hard to go up two flights of stairs like that for Jim, and it worried him. He felt like he couldn't catch his breath, and the tingling in his nerves was getting worse. He leaned against his desk. "Toby," he said between heaves of air, "thanks for the help… Sorry… that you were…. Dragged into this. I didn't mean to..." Toby waved him off.

"What are best friends for?" Toby said with a shrug. "Now, how are you feeling?"

"Worse," Jim panted. "I don't -" Suddenly a pain filled Jim's head and the floor tilted underneath him. He watched the ground come up to meet his face, but he couldn't react fast enough to brace himself. He landed with a smack, and everything went black.

"JIM!" yelled Toby, stepping forward to wake him up, but a blindingly bright flash filled the room. He covered his eyes, and when he opened them again, he examined Jim on the floor. Everything seemed different after the flash - Toby propped Jim's face up in his lap, and saw that Jim's hair had changed back to black. His right hand was where it should be, and the jumpsuit was teal once again. It was like none of the weird stuff even happened. What could this mean?

Before he had time to dwell on that question, Toby heard Mrs. Lake in the driveway. Frantically, Toby dragged Jim across the floor and wrestled his unconscious body into bed. He tucked Jim in, and took some school papers out of Jim's backpack and spread them out on both the bed in front of Jim and on the floor. We were doing homework together, thought Toby. And then he started feeling sick.

The lock in the front door downstairs turned with a jostle of keys. "Jim?" called Mrs. Lake. Toby came out of the room and hopped down the stairs.

"Hi, Mrs. Lake!" he said with forced positivity. "Welcome back!"

"Hi, Toby," said Mrs. Lake, in that motherly way. She pulled her pink-tinted goggles off of her eyes and rested them on her forehead. She set her bags down and took off her long, white coat. "Where's Jim? Up in his room?"

"Uh, yeah," said Toby, heart pounding. He fiddled with his shirt as he thought of what to say. "We were working together on homework, and - and suddenly Jim said he didn't feel so good."

"Oh no! Is he alright?" Mrs. Lake rushed to the stairs, caught up in worry for her son. Toby followed her up the stairs.

"Yeah, uh, he's in bed right now. I think he got most of it out of his system." He paused for a second. "He's sleeping it off now. Must have been a case of food poisoning or something..." Toby could feel the sweat coming through his shirt.

"Oh, poor Jim," said Mrs. Lake, opening the door to Jim's room. Across the room, there he was: asleep in bed, homework strewn about, everything peaceful. "He was going to make such a fancy dinner tonight… Now he'll probably need some chicken soup. Not that I'm very good at cooking!" Mrs. Lake chuckled and headed back for the stairs.

"Well," piped up Toby, "maybe I could stay the night and help? Or, at least, stay for dinner. I know he's going to be fine, but…" he looked back at Jim's door, which they'd left slightly ajar.

"You want to keep an eye on him, be my guest," said Mrs. Lake. "And when it comes to food, I could use all the help I can get! Maybe this time we'll make something edible." She headed off to the kitchen, presumably to check for ingredients.

Toby worried about what would happen when Jim woke up. Possibly nothing. But it could also possibly be not nothing, and Toby couldn't even begin to guess what not nothing would entail. "I'm going back upstairs to check on him, " Toby called, and he climbed the stairs once again.

When he got into Jim's room, he went to Jim's desk and opened his laptop. He pulled up the web browser and typed into the search bar a question that had been burning in his mind this whole time.

"What is the ghost zone?"