Chapter 2: The Light at the End of the Tunnel

"A blunder – apparently the merest chance – reveals an unsuspecting world, and the individual is drawn into a relationship with forces that are not rightly understood… the blunder may amount to the opening of a destiny."

– James Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

'Dude, this is incredible!'

Tucker looked down at the basement, adjusting his red beret. The three of them stood at the top of the stairs. Danny looked behind him at the open basement door with concern.

'Just a few minutes, okay? Every time I go down there, I have to get scrubbed for 'potential chemical exposure', " Danny shuddered at the memory. "I don't want you guys going through the same thing. Besides, as I've already said…"

He flicked a light on, illuminating the basement laboratory. '…it doesn't work anyway.'

The metallic arc stood at the end of the basement, wires snaking out into a variety of control panels. Tucker skipped down the stairs, eyes gleaming in excitement.

'It's like a real-life stargate though! And look at all this cool stuff!' He bounded over to a table. A gaggle of gadgets blipped. 'Do any of them work?'

Danny shook his head. 'As far as I know, not really. Besides," he chuckled nervously, "it's not like ghosts exist anyway.'

The raven-haired girl next to him stepped towards the machine, placing a hand on the rim of the portal.

'What if they do though? Wouldn't that be so cool?' She took the Polaroid camera off her neck. She turned to Danny. 'Hey, we should have a picture of us in front of the portal."

Danny raised his hands. 'No thanks.'

'Come on. Just the three of us – one picture, okay?' Sam lifted up the camera in eager anticipation.

"Well, okay then. One picture though!" Danny stood in front of the portal. Tucker stood behind him, his smile still wide upon seeing himself in the lab. Sam positioned herself beside them, her arm struggling under the weight of the camera.

"You have to admit, this is pretty awesome dude." Tucker said.

Danny laughed, "I guess so."

The camera clicked.

"Hey – what's in there?" Sam asked, as she slid the camera back to her chest. Her eyes fell across an open closet.

Danny glanced at the closet. "Oh, that? Just a bunch of HAZMAT suits. Parents got me one for my birthday."

A mischievous grin played upon her face. "How about one more with you and that lame suit in front of the portal?" She whirred the camera slider.

He rolled his eyes. "Okay– but one more and then we're out of here."

He went over to the closet, grabbing his unused HAZMAT suit from the hanger. It glimmered silver within the florescent lights. A sticker of his father's face beamed on the front. Danny walked over to the portal, holding the suit in front of him in an awkward manner.

"Smile!" Sam clicked the camera.

The flash that ensued blinded Danny for a moment. He blinked, trying to get the stars out of his eyes. "Okay, you got your picture – can we go now? My parents might be here any minute."

"Come on Danny, a ghost portal? Aren't you curious?" Sam adjusted the camera. "You gotta check it out!"

He looked at the machine, a hand rubbing his chin. To see a new realm…what would that be like?

What if it was a misty forest, a place born of shadows like the stories his father used to read to him?

What if was a world bathed in brightness, a white light like the one so many described on their deathbeds?

What if it was an eldritch-like domain, a place of abnormal geometries and grotesque monstrosities?

He could be the next Neil Armstrong or Yuri Gagarin – the first pioneer to a world unseen. He grinned.

'You know what? You're right. Who knows what super-awesome things could exist on the other side of that portal? Let's do this.' Danny said.

He placed a leg through the HAZMAT suit, the material tight against his skin. He looked towards the portal, zipping the suit to his neckline. The boots and gloves stood out black from the rest of the material.

"Hold on." Sam stepped up towards him, snatching the sticker off his chest. She pointed to Jack's visage. "You can't go walking around with that on your chest."

Danny turned to the maw of the machine. The portal loomed over him, the darkness a silent threat. His face fell. What if they were real? Those things, those ghosts? All those stories of possessions and hauntings, spirits who came into the real world in fury and jealousy of the living... the familiar fear pricked against his veins.

In that brief moment, he believed them real – no longer childish nightmares, but dark stuff born from human myth. His conviction wavered. At the corner of his eye, he could see Tucker and Sam urging him on. Tucker winked and gave a thumbs up. Sam readied the camera in preparation.

Danny stepped into the portal.

His eyes ran around the concave walls, an ants' hill of intricate wires trailing towards the generator at the back. He walked further into the machine, boots clicking upon the cement. He whistled. 'You guys sure know how to make something,' he muttered to himself.

As Danny continued down lost in thought, his foot caught into a snare of wires. He tripped. With a lurch, he tried to steady himself against the wall. His palm fell onto a button.

It clicked.

'What?' Danny looked, wide-eyed, releasing his hand from the on switch. A light appeared at the end of the tunnel.

The wires glowered red, electricity raising sparks around him. Adrenaline rushed through him, animal instinct kicking his body into overdrive. He began to run towards the entry of the portal, reaching for escape from some unknown terror.

He couldn't hear Sam and Tucker screaming at him to get out, couldn't hear the cackle, couldn't hear anything over his heartbeat thudding as thorns of electricity ripped their snares into him. His foot hooked onto more cables. He twisted as he fell, only to be caught by the green light that smashed into his entire body.

Electricity arose from naked wires, breaking into his system. His heart stopped for only a few minutes - but that was all it took.

Within the hottest of ectoplasmic hot zones, Danny Fenton died.

The ectoplasmic units that rammed into the emerging portal were scarcely sentient, their sensessolely consisting of light and extreme temperatures. Suctioned from the realms of the ghost dimension into the spaces between the Infinite Realms and the real world, they went straight for the nearest source of warmth.

They phased through Danny's suit, and infected his internal structure. With a gasp, he woke up, his heart hiccupping to life again, but it was far too late.

Inside the nuclei of almost every cell, the ghostly agents merged with every bit of Danny's DNA, inserting 'ladders', rearranging the structure. Their eyes closed upon the fusion. His re-coded DNA pumped out new proteins at an alarming rate.

As Danny felt pure ectoplasm seep into his flesh, become flesh, he began to scream.

The light blasted inside the machine, catching Danny like a shadow swallowed by the sun. Sam and Tucker watched as his silhouette writhed in the portal, arms and legs board-rigid against his sides. Sam's breath caught against her throat.

'Sam, we need to get out of the way!' Tucker grabbed her and ran towards the side of the portal. Moments later, light exploded into the lab. Sam placed her hands into her ears - anything, anything to shut out Danny's screams.

Tucker looked around, seeking a way to stop the portal. His eyes went down, towards the plugs lying on the ground. He lunged at the floor. Putting a hand on each end, he pulled. His back arched, wires taunt within his grip.

'They're stuck!' He dropped them onto the ground with a clunk. 'They must be magnetized or something,' his voice arose in panic, 'I don't know what to do!'

Sam ran towards him, grabbed an end. They pulled, a sick tag of war, but the cords stuck together. Tucker dropped a cord, shoulders trembling.

His heart raced, voice repeating fearful beats. 'No, no, no, no, no…'

Tucker looked up, noticing Sam stare straight ahead at the portal. His eyes followed hers. An eddying veil formed around the entrance, shrouding the view of their friend's flailing figure. The last view they saw of him were his legs winding into one…

The light bulbs erupted. A shower of glass crashed upon the tiles, narrowly avoiding the two huddled figures against the control console.

The laboratory shattered into black. Sam plunged her head onto Tucker's shoulder. Tucker gripped onto her for dear life, his face a mask of anguish. He has to be okay. He has to be.

Within the depths of the portal, time slipped into illusion – seconds into hours, minutes into years. Time was not a reality within the depths of the machine. There was only the light all around Danny, searing his vision, filling it will green, burning it with green.

He tried to cover his eyes with rigid hands. The suit charred black – the light reached a crescendo his flesh gave away his skeleton was showing through -

With a gasp darkness dropped like deadweight upon him; he plummeted into a roiling vortex, his limbs stretched out from him, shifting between feeling weightless and substantial, freezing and boiling, from seconds into eternity -

Then everything stood still.

The veil settled upon the entrance of the portal, a red light blinking upon the top of the machine. The lab went silent upon the aftermath of the storm.

The emergency lights went on with a thunk, bathing the room in red. Smoke poured of the portal, a delicate mist polluting the entrance. Whether it was from the machination of the portal or hints of another world, Tucker and Sam did not know.

Head pounding, Sam stepped towards the gate again, hoping against hope.

'Danny? Danny? Can you hear me?'

As from a great distance, they heard a groan on the other side of the veil. Tucker sighed a breath of relief. Danny was okay – or as close to okay as someone could get considering the circumstances. He was okay. They could all laugh about it later, everything turned out fine -

A white glove broke through the surface tension of the veil, spilling ectoplasm onto the floor. A stranger stumbled out, clutching onto the rim of the portal.

He stared blind at the ceiling. Yellow-green eyes shone beneath them, illuminating the darkness of the lab. Shock-white hair straggled down his head. Tucker stepped back in abject horror, fear punching him in the gut.

He could see right through its head.

The ghost slowly blinked and glanced back down at the two trembling figures. It staggered towards them, silver boots dragging against the ground. A palm reached for them. Sam and Tucker lurched back, away from this thing staring right at them.

'Tucker… Sam?" it said softly. The voice sounded like it came from across the room, a whisper across the halls – and yet it sounded vaguely familiar, almost like… like…

Realization ripped into Sam, razor-sharp. A hand flew to her mouth. "Danny…?"

Tucker closed his eyes and groaned.

Danny's knees buckled, making him collapse onto the ground. His arms snaked around his stomach. He shivered, his breath coming out in streams. Sam inched towards him as a mist poured off his suit, uncertainty etched over her face. 'Are - are you okay? How do you feel?'

Sam immediately admonished herself for asking such a stupid question – but what else could be said? Hey Danny, you alive?

He didn't respond. His breath faded.

'Here, let me help you up.' She placed a hand beneath each shoulder, and holstered him up. A gasp escaped her lips. Even with all the sports training her parents made her take, he felt as light as a wicker ball. His head lulled, eyes flickering open.

A familiar human hue met hers.

'Sam- I -' with a sigh Danny fell backwards.

Sam stepped back in fear, open hands trembling.

Tucker took a step forward. 'Did you accidently drop him-?' He caught a few flecks of white smoke dissolve from between her fingers.

Danny fell unconscious to the ground, a glove draped over his chest in search of a heartbeat.

Tucker felt sick. "What are we going to do?" His voice rose in panic.

Sam crouched down, attempting to gage Danny's state. She reached for the zipper on his suit, only to find that there wasn't one. She frowned. It was as if the zipper was never there.

Undeterred, she pressed her fingers beneath his collar. "I can feel a pulse – it's very faint though."

"Think we should call 9-1-1?" Tucker pulled out a sleek cellphone out of his pockets.

"I don't think this is something they'll know what to do with and I don't have his parent's number. Call Jazz! I'm sure she'll know what to do. Hurry!"

Tucker dialed the number, though it took a few tries due to how much his fingers trembled. The phone began to emit a ring-tone. "Come on… come on…" He muttered under his breath.

As they waited for Jazz to pick the phone up, Sam kept watch over the boy lying on the tiles.

Au aura arose around his still frame, motes dancing in the air around him. His hair ruffled, a supernatural wind emanating from the portal. She looked up.

The gate seemed to loom over them, ever larger. A green film swirled at the entrance.

As Tucker talked on the phone, she stared at the portal, convincing herself that the curtain was hypnotic in its twists and turns. It was, but that wasn't the reason she looked away.

She couldn't bring herself to look at Danny.

Though she was loath to admit it, there was something about both the familiarity and unfamiliarity of her friend that sent a primordial shiver up her spine.

She was scared of him -

- and scared of what that could mean.