6~
Daisy maneuvered their used car around another fissure in the middle of the street, as she navigated through a deeper section of the ruined downtown.
Despite the beauty of Crystal Cove's sunset, the gradually growing shadows that stretched from the ruins made the town feel more unwelcome, and seemed to herald a not-to-farfetched notion that the Phanplasm would do even better hunting at night.
"Is it me?" Daisy muttered. "Or are the streets even worse on this side of town?"
"Stay the course," Ghostly Marcie said to her, with confidence, from the back seat. "You can make it."
"I just hope the information that scientist gave you was solid," Marcie fretted.
"Of course, it wasn't solid. She's a ghost," the spirit quipped. "But, she's okay. She said that she used to work for Quest Research Labs in town, and when the staff was still breathing, they were working on something along the lines of Tesla, a portable energy transmitter. Another device they were working on did the opposite effect; it could absorb energy from the ambient electromagnetic spectrum. They called it EAT-Energy Absorption Technology. Makes sense."
"So, where would this stuff be?" Daisy asked.
"She said that prototypes would, probably, be stored in a vault in the engineering lab," the ghost said. "And the schematics would be stored in the lab's mainframe."
"We've got options. Good," Marcie nodded at their good fortune. "The sooner we get them and put the Phanplasm down, the better. We don't need to spend any more time, here, than we have to."
Ghostly Marcie gave a smirk. "Oh, come on, Marcie. You're not giving this place a chance. Just wait until the sun goes down. Then, this town'll be like a whole other place."
"I'm just afraid of ending up in a hole." Daisy complained, as she slowed down to avoid a deep pothole. "It's bad enough trying to watch out for these streets during the day. At night, I don't know if I'll be able to see them in time."
"Don't worry. You're almost there," the ghost said to her. "There it is."
Daisy and Marcie immediately recognized the building as they approached it. In their world, it had been repurposed into the Crystal Cove branch of Sundial, after Benton Quest's fall from scientific grace.
After parking the car in the street in front of the building, Daisy and the others got out and examined the lab's façade's damaged features more closely, to get a sense of what to expect when they searched among its floors.
The building was mainly intact, its sheer size spared it from being further injured during the town's local tremors and invasion. Halfway up the length of the lab's central administrative tower, they could see windows gutted to the sky, with the windows of the floors, immediately, above, slightly melted. The forward edges of the sides of the tower's wall, at that point, were scorched, the testament of a fire that had raged and long since went out.
A flight of stairs led from the street up to the main entrance, however, it was the incongruous sight of tire tracks running up its length, which caught the group's combined attention.
When they reached the top of the stairs, they saw that the glass of the main doors were shattered and their frames, streaked with blue paint within the rough, metal scars, were violently bowed inward, the flanking metal detectors, demolished.
"Well, that explains the tire tracks," Marcie mused. "Whoever drove up here, either lost control and smashed the doors in by accident-"
"Or someone wanted to get in, bad," Daisy finished.
Stepping through the twisted main entrance, and being careful to avoid the jagged teeth of remaining glass still attached to the steel frames, the group crept into the vast lobby, that was growing darker from the dying light of the day.
Daisy cast her eyes on the dim corners of the foyer. The walls around them were stained black with soot from old fire damage. Above them, the ceiling was breached, exposing the warped and torn network of pipes that served the building's sprinkler system.
The water that had long put out the flames, was still leaking from the torn conduits, creating a Sistine Chapel-like spread of mold across the ceiling, and feeding a pool of water that extended a quarter of the length of the room. Broken glass from the front doors sparkled in the pool's depths, but there was no evidence that there was a car, here.
"There's no car, here." Daisy said. "I guess the doors stopped it."
Ghostly Marcie cocked her head for a moment. "Do you hear something?"
"Yeah," said Marcie, turning on her penlight, and sweeping its beam across the width of the lobby.
Off to one shadowy side of the lobby, stood a small, portable generator, quietly, putting. Ghostly Marcie flew over to examine it further, and saw two cantaloupe-sized, spherical machines resting on the floor beside it, being fed power from cords that connected the generator to them.
Each sphere was actually composed of two silvery, metal hemispheres joined in the center by an equatorial space where a rotor's propeller was extended. It was clearly designed for powered flight and was marked with a tiny stenciling that read, Saturn I Security Drone.
"Hey, guys, look at this," she called out to them.
When they gathered around her to look at the strange machines, she said to them, "They look like high-tech security robots. Somebody's taking care of them, but who?"
"Probably the same person who's been stealing generators," Marcie said, pointing her lit penlight at the top of the generator. "Look."
Ghostly Marcie peered down, saw the logo stenciled on the putting machine, and read, "Clean Sweep Debris Removal."
"Those must be the generators that the Chief said were stolen by the Phanplasm," Daisy said. "What would a ghost monster need with generators?"
"Charging security drones, apparently," said Marcie. "Looks like our Phanplasm may be less than meets the eye, and he's probably here in the building, so let's keep an eye out for him while we get what we came for."
"We better find a map," Daisy suggested. "This place is big."
They moved further through the lobby, passing ragged-clothed, animal-gnawed skeletons on the floor, until Marcie saw what looked to be a large, soot-covered, picture frame hanging on a section of the blackened wall, ahead.
Wiping the glass of the frame clean with her hand, she revealed a floor directory and map, while the others joined her.
While they studied the list of floors and numerous facilities, the map below the directory, showed the lobby, a bank of elevators, up ahead, that served the administration tower, and an arched corridor on either side of the lobby's security sectioned rear, that led to elevators that served the two laboratory wings that flanked the tower on the ground level.
"Chemical, Bio-Chemical, Computer Sciences...ah! Engineering," Marcie said, pointing to the outermost of the two tandem laboratory sectors in a given wing. "That must be where the devices are."
Crossing the lobby and entering the side corridor that led into the first floor of the engineering labs, the group tried to call down the elevators that served the sector, and found them unresponsive.
"I guess back-up power isn't working," Marcie muttered. "That explains the portable generator, back there."
"Let's take the stairs," the ghost offered, standing by a door near the elevators, which opened to an emergency staircase that ascended the floors of the sector.
As Ghostly Marcie floated ahead with an inner light to lead the way, they reached the next floor's landing, opened its door, and walked into its dark level.
From down the halls and inside the laboratories that flanked them, the corners of the girls' glancing eyes could catch silent, tell-tale glimpses of ghostly staff members floating in and out of the edges of their vision, sometimes, pantomiming or even performing the tasks they did in life, or just, forlornly, standing in the dark corners of rooms or the hallway.
Ghostly Marcie went up to one of the forlorn, and asked him, "Excuse me. But could you tell us where you would keep engineering prototypes, or their schematics?"
The ghost regarded her, quietly, and then pointed a finger towards the ceiling.
"Thanks," she said, and then waked back to her companions.
"Upstairs," Ghostly Marcie relayed, and then they turned and headed back the way they came, down the hall towards the staircase.
"Are we okay?" Marcie asked her ghostly double, nervously, as they walked by a floating researcher. "We're not…intruding, are we?"
"No, not really," the spirit explained. "Sometimes, this is just how ghosts cope with their condition. Some just sit and stare, and others just want to get back to doing what they did in life, probably to forget what happened to them."
"Is that what you did?" Daisy asked her. "Is that how you coped?"
Ghostly Marcie gave a wan smile. "I don't know. I just woke up one day in the cave where I died, and just wandered around. Maybe I just needed to know if the last thing I did in my life was done. Nova said that the old gang was safe, so maybe that was it. Nothing left to do, now, except help you stop the Phanplasm, so the rest of the town and I can move on."
"If it's upstairs," Marcie suggested, "Let's go to the top and work our way down, so we don't miss anything."
"Works for me," Daisy agreed.
Slowly huffing and puffing all the way to the uppermost floor, they, eventually, entered the reception area of an, eerily, quiet office level, dimly, lit by the ambient light of the retreating sun through its windows.
Taking a rest, here, their eyes adjusted enough in the gloom to notice the smashed remnants of a pair of glass security doors that provided entrance into the floor's outer office and work area.
The ghost floated into the office, and waited for the others by the empty receptionist's desk. The two living girls stepped through the shattered doorway to join her, soon after.
The boxy sight of another portable generator, sitting the space of the desk, nearby, caught their attention.
"Another one," Daisy remarked. "No drones, though."
"Good," Marcie nodded. "Let's split up and find that vault."
Immediately, Daisy bore for the rooms to the right, with Ghostly Marcie following her to provide lighting, and Marcie, with her penlight, took the unassuming rooms to the left.
All the while, silent guardians were waiting for them.
Daisy and Ghostly Marcie crept into the midst of the standardized layout of rooms, and discovered, while searching, that they housed and supported the floor's computer department.
Each one they entered was given a cursory glance. The tiny offices looked spartan and efficient, and none looked as if they would store anything valuable, although some were still manned by a corpse or two, which made Daisy jump, badly, when found.
The supervisor's office, the largest room in this operations pool, was the last to be opened and searched, before rendezvousing with Marcie.
The duo walked in, and the door, easily, closed behind them with a soft click. Off to one side of the wide room, Daisy thought she saw a large structure extended from it, possibly another door, but when the glowing ghost moved near it, it turned out to be a bookcase.
"Rats," Daisy swore.
In the room, behind them, a floating, red eyeball moved, slowly, to observe them, its propeller wash, softly, rustling some papers on a nearby table.
Marcie opened the door, and gave a peek into what looked to be another conference room, seeing the same kind of wide table and chair arrangement that those rooms were typically furnished with.
Instead of studying the room from the threshold, however, casual curiosity goaded her to step further in. The door, then, quietly, closed behind her, and cut off from the others.
This time, it was Daisy who pricked her ears to a sound. "Do you hear that?"
Ghostly Marcie turned her head to follow the sound, when she noticed it, and came face to face with an operational security drone, hovering with its central rotor, its one crimson eye not looking at her, but at Daisy, beside her.
"Uh, I think I know what it is," the ghost said, nervously.
"What?"
From the drone's southern hemisphere, a tiny, red light winked on, next to a small, pronged protuberance, shaped like an electrical plug. The plug-like object shot from the hemisphere, where it missed Daisy, and embedded its wired taser dart into a portion of wall that she was standing next to.
The sound of the impact, made Daisy spin around to see the dart's wires hang impotent and discharged from the drone.
"Okay, that's unexpected."
The drone pulled the dart free from the wall, leaving two small burn marks were they penetrated.
Daisy grabbed a folder from off the office's desk and brandished it. The drone's response was to try and fire his dart through the folder and strike her, anyway, but the paperwork inside proved to be just thick enough to stop the taser, although its voltage, promptly, smoldered the paper and, quickly, set it ablaze.
Marcie walked around the periphery of the wide table, sweeping the light beam of her penlight along the dark walls, revealing portraits, inspirational posters...and a red-eyed drone hovering in front of the door she came through.
"Uh-oh," she muttered, before she noticed a tiny red bulb on its lower hemisphere blink on.
Not knowing the drone's intentions, Marcie backed away, but then, stumbled against a chair and almost fell over, just as a pronged taser dart shot from its cubby-hole and stabbed into the high back rest of that chair.
As she recovered from her misstep, she could see two thin wires, attached to the dart, pull taught as the drone tried to reel the dart back, and met resistance from the padding of the chair.
Realizing that it was her cue to leave, Marcie went around the still struggling machine and reached the door. Then, her peripheral vision caught the second one.
Another drone hiding in the shadows of the room's ceiling, fired its taser down upon her. It missed, deflecting off the door knob she was holding, and sending a numbing shock into her hand that made her jump back in defensive pain.
The second drone descended.
The drone circled around Daisy, looking for a clear shot to stun her with its taser, while she drove it away with the flaming folder, which, she noticed with distress, was being consumed with every wave, making the growing fire creep closer to her hands.
Desperate to help and caught up in the moment, Ghostly Marcie saw a stapler on the desk, scooped it up, and threw it against the rounded hull of the drone, which ricocheted off it hard enough for the drone's computer brain to decide that the thrower of that was a greater threat, and disregarded Daisy, momentarily.
That gave Daisy time to look for, and find a metal wastepaper basket to discard the folder.
"Rats," she swore, again, once she realized, upon, hastily, dumping the fiery, improvised weapon into the basket, that she didn't remove the other paper that was already in it. The trash fed the fire, nicely.
The drone turned in place and scanned the section of the room that it thought the attack came from, but saw nothing.
The spirit, expecting quick retaliation, saw how flustered and cautious the machine was behaving, and then called out to Daisy, "I don't think Humpty-Dumpty can't see me! I'll distract it!"
Daisy was about to run to the door, when she looked down at the flaming wastepaper basket, and hesitated.
"Not yet," she said. "I've got to put this fire out!"
"What?" Ghostly Marcie asked, incredulously, holding the drone's attention by waving a paperweight, which it could see.
"I know the whole town is trashed, but I don't want it to burn down because of me," Daisy explained. "It could spread to other towns, and I do not need that kind of guilt in my life!"
"Fire is rapid oxidation," the ghost told her, while distracting the drone by tapping its single eye with a ruler. "You need to deoxygenate the combustion process."
"What?"
"Smother the fire!"
"Oh."
Daisy gave a thought to that, looked at the basket, again, and then, came up with something.
The drone, by that time, had reached a decision gate in its programming as to what to do. Although it felt and saw objects, it could not subdue them, as the supposed attacker wasn't seen, and the objects that were seen, were not human. It decided to refocus its duties to bringing down the only human it knew of.
It rotated to face Daisy, again, but instead of drawing a bead on her, it had to, suddenly, contend with a burning wastepaper basket being tilted up-side down and placed over it.
Ghostly Marcie, quickly, seeing the efficacy of Daisy's plan, grabbed a handful of books from a nearby shelf, and put them down on the basket. Daisy then leaned on the stack of books to make sure the drone was well and truly trapped.
They could hear the labored whine of the rotor, as the drone tried to escape from its hellish prison. Hot ash was drawn into its upper intake vent, choking the rotor's engine, while trash and the cramped space of the basket held down the propeller.
Soon, with an overworked engine and melting components, the inert drone's own smoke added to the dark cloud that was seeping out from under the overturned receptacle.
"Well, nothing here," Daisy concluded, as they left the cloudy room.
Marcie's attempted escape, quickly, devolved into a chase around the conference table, with the second drone firing and reeling back the missed dart, while she, desperately, ducked and serpentined past the chairs.
Meanwhile, the first drone still fought with the chair it was stuck on.
Every time Marcie ran to the door, the drone would drive her away with a shot to the door.
She knew that she could not maintain this pace forever, and decided that, now, was the time to counter-attack, so she stopped her run, which made the drone stop in its pursuit, to watch her, cautiously.
She thrust her hand into her jacket pocket, eager to pluck an Insta-Ice capsule from it and end the conflict.
Her pockets were, distressingly, empty.
Understanding that she needed a new strategy, Marcie implemented one. She ran past the drone, prompting it to chase her around the table in the opposite direction.
Her troubles were soon doubled, however, when the first drone, finally, managed to yank its dart out of the cushioned seat, and then sidled over to the door to bar Marcie from using it, when she ran by it, again.
Seeing this, she stopped running, again, to think. From the combatants' positions, Marcie stood to the side of the table, which sat between her and the drone guarding the door, while the drone that was pursuing her, hovered by the far end of the table.
Its programming was satisfied that this energy-draining chase was over, and the target was, now, trapped between it and its fellow unit. It locked-on to her, and for good measure, glided closer to her, for a surer hit.
It then applied sufficient charge to its taser system, as it, curiously, watched her, carefully, reach over to the table and pick up a lone clipboard. A futile choice of weapon, it computed, as one strike would be all that was needed.
Marcie stood where she was, as the drone approached her, and then looked over at the drone by the door. She then waited.
The drone hovered into position, and Marcie focused all of her hearing onto it. If she was in the right spot and angle, she would get one try at this.
The loud pop of the taser dart drove her reactions. The dart zoomed at her in a straight flight path, and she had moments to correct the stance and the angle of the board.
Her mind took a snapshot the distance of the dart, as it closed in. Now, was the time to do it, before it had gotten too close to evade, if she missed.
She brought up the clipboard up, with both hands, like a fan, and when the dart was as close as she felt comfortable, she swung the board up into the dart, like it was a shuttlecock, batting it away from her, and into the direction of the door drone.
The dart was heavy enough to still have momentum after the hit, and it was, here, that Marcie hoped that her aim was true.
The dart sailed into an arc over to the unsuspecting drone, and made contact with its conductive, metal shell, diverting the taser's full charge into its sensitive systems in one surge.
The door drone sparked, its eye winked out, its propeller halted its spin, and then, the machine dropped to the floor.
Quickly, Marcie reached across the table and grabbed the dart's wires, being careful not to hold the dart, itself, just as the drone was reeling it back.
She rolled over to the other side of the table, and although she was winning the tug-o-war with her lighter opponent, the drone was still gathering in more of the wire, getting itself drawn closer and closer to her.
In seconds, it would be close enough, that if she did not incapacitate it, and was forced to let go of the dart, it would be in position for a clean shot at point-blank range, and it would not miss, this time.
The wires before the dart, were taut in her hand, as she, desperately, looked for something to do with it. Looking down, she, finally, found that something.
With a final yank against the drone to slacken the wires, Marcie looped and tied them around the arm of a chair nearest her, then held her breath and let go.
The wires tightened, again, but they didn't slip from the textured upholstery of the arm, as the drone continued to reel in, until it was drawn into the side of the chair and was stuck.
Marcie wasted no more time and left the room, while the drone changed the pitch of its propeller, and, pathetically, revved, to no avail.
All three girls met by the receptionist's desk, looking a little shaken, but none the worse for wear.
"We've got those drones up here, too!" Daisy warned Marcie, upon seeing her. "G. M. and I had to deal with one."
Marcie nodded in the direction of where she was. "I know. I just ran into two of them. If the Phanplasm is using the generators to charge the drones, then he's using them to guard this place."
"He must be using this place as a hideout," Daisy reasoned.
"It makes sense," Ghostly Marcie added. "It's in the middle of town, his so-called 'hunting ground,' so maybe he's using it, like a duck blind, or hunting shack."
"Well, whatever the reason, we have to find the devices, or the plans to them, pronto." Marcie said, pointing the penlight's beam further into the office. "The only places we haven't checked yet are those two rooms, up ahead, in the rear of the office."
"I'll check the biggest room, first," Ghostly Marcie volunteered, pointing to the room with the opened door. "If there are any drones in there, then, at least, we'll know about it."
To save time, she flew on and soared past what looked to be a reinforced door, hanging weakly by a single hinge. It was, heavily, cratered with deep dents and its built-in security card reader was pulverized.
Daisy and Marcie went towards the other room which neighbored the chamber Ghostly Marcie entered.
Hanging on the wall outside the office's door, was a portrait or someone, disturbingly, familiar to Marcie, and told her the magnitude of importance that the office held.
It was a faded painting of Doctor Benton Quest, with a plaque below, which read, 'Founder.'
She wondered if this Quest was a different, and even, better man that the one from her universe, and if he and his extended family survived the fall of Crystal Cove.
Such answers would keep, she decided, in light of this fortuitous discovery, however.
"This is Quest's office," Marcie hissed. "If he has a computer in there, not only would it be tied to the building's mainframe, but it might, also, contain his own personal database. The plans to the energy technology we need could be in either one of those."
"Arr! Along with any other high-tech booty that his people had been working on," Daisy added, with piratical flourish. "Just ripe for the taking, eh, Cap'n Fleach?"
"Yeah!" Marcie, mindlessly, agreed, before catching herself. "Wait! What?"
"You're drooling, there, Geekbeard," her friend said, knowingly. "I know, because that's the look I get when I see some cool stuff in a yard sale, or an auction."
"It's not like that, Daisy," Marcie, nervously, justified. "Since we're from another world, and the owners of this technology aren't around, it can be argued that this is simply a form of archeology. At the very least, it's as a finder's fee for our work, once the Phanplasm is dealt with."
Not convinced by Marcie's excuse, Daisy shrugged and said, "Uh-huh. If you say so."
"Okay," Marcie said, with breathless anticipation, while reaching for the door knob. "Let's see what's in there."
Before her hand touched the knob, Ghostly Marcie called out to them.
Out of curiosity and worry for the ghost, Marcie and Daisy, dismissed the possible treasures in the office, and walked over to the wrecked door and the dark chamber that lay beyond.
When they reached the threshold, Daisy noticed a small sledgehammer lying against the doorway.
"Now, that's a big key," she muttered. Then, they both heard their friend call out from inside the room.
"Hey, guys," Ghostly Marcie called out. "I think we might be too late. It looks like the aftermath of a shoe sale, in here."
The girls stepped into the room, now, lit by the ghost's light, and saw a distressing sight.
All over the floor were littered labeled, discarded, broken, and half-completed engineering projects and prototypes, the doors to their storage compartments in the walls of the vault, left open.
"I think it's safe to say that the Phanplasm went shopping," Marcie said, turning and leaving the vault. "That just leaves Dr. Quest's office. We found it, so we're going there, next."
"Arr!" Daisy growled, following her out with a smirk.
Marcie rolled her eyes. "Ugh! Come on."
Confused, Ghostly Marcie shook her head at the exchange and muttered, "Sometimes, I just don't get the living." Then, she left the vault, as well.
Marcie went for the door knob. It didn't turn.
"Rats," she hissed, looking over to her non-corporeal counterpart. "It's locked. G. M., would you do the honors?"
"Right," said the ghost. She passed through the stout door, opened it from the other side, and illuminated the room.
Once they all entered, they sauntered up to the desk that dominated the center of the office, peeked around, and saw the tower of the computer terminal sitting inside it.
"Jackpot," Marcie whispered.
Daisy looked at her in confusion. "Jackpot, how? Even I know enough about computers to know that you need power to turn them on, and there's no power in the whole building. How do we get out with this thing? Drag it?"
Marcie gave a frown of thought, before Ghostly Marcie chimed in. "You can, in a way. I knew my way around a computer of two in my day. Let's look around for something I can use like a screwdriver."
Following her lead, Marcie and Daisy searched around the office, peering through bookcases, tables, sofas, and other furnishings.
Over at a low hanging shelf, Ghostly Marcie noticed something incongruous to the business decor of the room, a loose collection of small vials, some filled with a dark liquid, others, empty with just the liquid's residue coating the tubes' insides.
She turned her head to the sound of Marcie calling her back to the desk, holding something long.
"Did you find something?" Ghostly Marcie asked, when she arrived.
Marcie held out a brass-looking letter opener. "I hope this'll do."
"It will. Thanks," said the ghost, taking up the opener, and then crouching into the tower's space in the desk, to pull the computer out.
She went to work manipulating the end of the opener into the heads of the screws that held the computer's housing together, twisting them loose, until the side panel fell away, exposing the tower's innards.
"It would've been easier to just pass my hands into this thing and pulled the drives out," said the ghost. "But, they wouldn't come out with my hands, if I did that, so we do this the manual way."
She reached deep inside, parting away the nest of wires, and located the metal slabs that were the hard drives. Gripping them at their power line and interface connectors, she worked them apart from the drives and brought them out.
"Thanks, G. M.," Marcie praised.
"Nothing to it," the ghost waved. "Now, we better get moving. It's getting dark, and I don't want to be around when you-know-who comes home."
It was nearly pitch-black when they reentered the rear of the lobby, with Ghostly Marcie glowing on her friends' behalf, lighting the way, as they passed by the security office beside the administrative tower's elevators.
"Not a bad day's work, if I do say so, myself," Marcie said, holding the two hard drives in her hands. The secrets needed to, somehow, defeat the Phanplasm were there. Visions of inventions, particularly chemical, that her world, probably, never knew, were, also there, swimming in their precious platters, waiting to inspire her work for years to come.
She almost felt like skipping, when she heard a sudden gasp from their ghost companion.
She turned her head to what was the matter, and saw it, soon enough.
The door to the security office banged open, as if kicked, and the image of the Phanplasm, looking more frightening in the gloom of the lobby, than he ever did in the daylight, stared down at them, malevolently.
"Girls!" he hissed.
Screaming, the girls turned hard and sprinted for the shattered exit, far ahead, with Ghostly Marcie dousing her inner light, as she flew, to avoid giving the spectral predator an easier target.
As Marcie and Daisy got closer to the wrecked main entrance, splashing through the standing pool of water, they looked behind them to see if they were pursued.
The Phanplasm was gliding, silently, after them, stalking them, at an almost leisurely pace.
Daisy remembered the dangerous condition of the front doors, and warned Marcie, "Watch out for the glass in the doors!"
Following Daisy's lead, Marcie slowed a few yards from the main entrance, ready to power-walk, carefully, through the windowless doors, when she happened to glance, absently, to the far side.
The generator was still sitting there in the dark, but the two drones that were grounded by its side, were not.
"Now!" the Phanplasm cried out, from behind.
The two silvery drones floated out from the nearby shadows, their red optics locking-on to their targets, quickly, and flanked the two girls.
Taser darts fired out of their sockets, but instead of stabbing into their skin, the darts landed in the brackish water Marcie and Daisy were standing in.
Surges of current was pumped into the conductive pool, with their shivering, muscle-locked bodies completing the perilous circuit, their pained yells bouncing off the walls of the ruined lobby.
The hard drives fell from Marcie's trembling hands, as the girls collapsed just feet from freedom, into the water, stunned, paralyzed, and in the approaching Phanplasm's dubious mercy, the fingers of his outstretched hand, flexing, eagerly.
"On my order," he intoned to the waiting drones, as they reeled in their darts. "Fire tasers, continuously, until their hearts stop. Their meddling souls will please The Inheritor, greatly."
Suddenly, unseen by him, or the drones, an old coffee pot filled with rancid java floated from the, nearby, receptionist's kiosk. It, then, hovered over the machines and tipped forward, pouring its rotten contents into the vents in the backs of their upper hemispheres, shorting them out, severely.
The Phanplasm, looking for the attacker, managed to cry out, "What-" before the same pot, suddenly, flew end over end, in his direction, painfully, shattering the glass bottom against his mournful face.
Through his furious howls, he was just able to see through the pain, and located a floating, now visible, Ghostly Marcie, fly past him and back toward the rear of the lobby. He, immediately, gave deadly chase.
Ghostly Marcie, proving to be the faster of the two, desperately, used the vast width of the lobby to evade the Phanplasm, whenever he got too close to her, zipping into shadowed corners and zooming up towards the dark ceiling, all the while, having the larger ghost on her tail.
Coming up with a quick idea, the smaller ghost power-dove to the floor, pulled up and accelerated towards the elevators. It was her hope that if the lobby's open space was giving the Phanplasm too much of an advantage, then the cramp interior of the elevator shafts might slow him down, somewhat.
In either case, she reasoned, that as long as he was focused on her, she bought the other girls time to recover, hopefully.
She headed for the closed, inoperative elevator car doors, and then, rocketed through them, expecting the creature to flow through them, as well.
The Phanplasm soared to the closed doors.
Then, he stopped.
His fingers curled, and with an irate, predatory growl, and he gave the doors a hammer blow with his fist.
Looking around, quickly, he saw the door to the emergency stairwell of the admin tower. Snatching it open, he blasted up the staircase, enraged, willing to search every floor of the tower in the hopes of exacting a torturous feeding on the hated girl.
After that, the lobby was quiet, again.
Then, a head of frizzy hair, gradually, materialized through the elevator doors.
Ghostly Marcie, carefully, looked around. The Phanplasm was gone, and, up ahead, the girls still lay in the water, helpless, but safe. At the moment, she was safe, yet, she was left to ponder the obvious question of why he didn't just pass through the car's doors to chase after her...
The constant bouncing, starting and stopping, finally, roused Daisy and Marcie from their sleep, in the backseat of the car, as it trundled through the blasted neighborhood.
When they saw that the car was riding, dangerously, along with no driver, they both screamed.
Their screams prompted a startled Ghostly Marcie to scream, as she ceased her invisibility, sitting in the driver's seat, and trying to navigate the damaged streets in the night.
"What are you screaming for?" the ghost asked, recovering from the scare.
"Why are you invisible? I thought we were put in a car and set to crash," Marcie said, catching her breath.
"Me, too," added Daisy. "How did we get away? Did you help us?"
"Yeah," said the ghost. "Sorry about cloaking just now. Force of habit. I lured that bed sheet away, and then afterwards, I grabbed you two, and got out of there."
Marcie's memories were fast-paced and vague during their run-in with the Phanplasm. Then, she noticed that her hands were empty, and she feared the worse.
"Did you get the hard drives, G. M.?" she asked.
The ghost shrugged. "I've got them. They're in the back, with you, but you might not want to use them, considering what happened."
"What?" Marcie fretted. "What happened?"
"They took a beating, that's what happened," Ghostly Marcie explained. "Electrical damage from the tasers and water immersion totally ruined the platters inside."
"Oh, no!"
"Yeah. When things like that happen, time is of the essence. They might've been salvageable back at Mr. E's lair, but we've been out here too long. I'm sorry."
Marcie gritted her teeth at the affair. She knew who was to blame. "Ugh! That Phanplasm! I'd make him a ghost, myself, if he wasn't one, already!"
Daisy rolled her eyes in fatigue and frustration at the loss of the devices' plans. "So, we got barbecued for nothing, then? Great. What else can happen?"
The car shuttered to a halt in the middle of town. Ghostly Marcie glanced at the gauges on the dashboard.
"We could be out of gas," she answered.
Considering how far a walk Destroido would be to them, the girls in the back, understandably, groaned.