Critical Point

Danny was trapped and dying. Maddie had only one chance: It didn't feel real, and that's what mattered.

This didn't feel real. An advanced double doctorate in physics and biochemistry had been a cakewalk for Maddie Fenton. The fact that ghosts were extradimensional beings formed from an amalgamation of ectoplasmic matter and electricity driven by post-human consciousness had come as a matter of course. That her son was a hybrid of one of these creatures had been a little harder to accept, but in a week it had become normalcy. That said half-ghost son would call her up on a Tuesday asking to leave school so he could help the US government contain a nuclear meltdown had struck her as amusing, not implausible.

But this… this didn't feel real.

Security checks and steel-plated hallways passed by Maddie in a blur. The aide beside her, a trim young man in a dark grey suit, kept talking. He wasn't making sense. This didn't feel real.

"Can't you do anything?" she asked again, stupidly, as if she hadn't heard the answer on the phone. During the helicopter ride. On the drive into the bunker. As the elevator sank her thirty floors into the earth. That depth would protect her from the thing about to kill her son. What they said would kill her son. It didn't feel real.

"We've estimated Phantom's position at around fifty meters from the core," the aide repeated with well-trained patience. "It's radiating so much heat at this stage that it's impossible for any human to withstand. Even if we did send in personnel, they would succumb to radiation poisoning before they reached his location."

"But there might be another way," Maddie said, turning to look at him fully. "That's why you brought me in, right? For my expertise. So I could help you find a solution. If I just knew more about the situation, then—"

The aide paled, taking a step back. His professional facade faltered. "I'm sorry— I — I thought the general was clear on the phone. You can't..." He squared his shoulders. "Ma'am, there's no way to stop the meltdown. There's no one we can send in. There's nothing you can do."

Maddie shook her head, resisting the urge to take this boy by the shoulders and shake him. "You brought me here, didn't you? I can do something, can't I? Why else would you fly me in?"

The young man hesitated. "We've still got radio contact with your son. The general thought you'd want to speak with him. Before… before the facility hits critical."

This didn't feel real.

"Ma'am, I'm sorry," the aide touched her shoulder. "If there was anything anyone could do, believe me, we'd be all over it by now."

He turned and walked on. Maddie followed.

A door opened. "In here, please."

Maddie drifted into the room. It was bland and unextraordinary: whitewashed walls, dense grey industrial carpet. A conference table took up the center of the room, lined with chairs and peopled with grim-looking men and women in uniform. A bank of computers stood against one wall, showing varying numbers and graphs. Even in her numb haze she recognized some of the figures and the scientific side of her mind filled in the blanks. Critical. Irreversible. Imminent.

"Dr. Fenton, sir." the aide said.

"Ma'am?" The man at the head of the table stood up. Heavy-set, greying hair, with the clean-cut bearing of a longtime soldier. Deep lines carved up his tanned face, dividing tired eyes from a creased brow and a downturned mouth. "Thank you for coming."

"General Brand." She drew herself up and looked him square in the eye. "You brought me all the way here to tell me that you can't save my son?"

"We brought you in because he asked for you." The general sounded defeated, tired. Like he'd just lost a war. "You'll have my deepest regrets and a full briefing on our efforts in good time, but for Phantom, time's running out. Please. Attend to him first."

The general gestured to an open chair. A microphone sat in front of it. It didn't feel real.

Maddie sank into the seat and wrapped her hands around the mic. Someone pressed a button. A speaker came to life, hissing with the sound of distant machinery, punctuated by someone breathing.

She glanced around at the sober faces, then leaned in and spoke. "Danny? Can you hear me?"

"Hey Mom," her son's familiar voice crackled over the speakers.

The world snapped into focus: Real. All too real.

"How are you?" he added, absurdly.

"I—I'm fine, I—" she covered the mic and took a deep breath, steadying her voice. "Sweetie, are you sure you can't move?"

He laughed. "Pretty sure. There's about three tons of lead sheeting squashed on top of me." Lead was one of the few natural metals that resisted phasing. A scuffling sound,then a groan. "Or more like into me."

Maddie shuddered at that mental image. They had told her trapped, not injured. She shot a glare at the aide, who wouldn't meet her eyes. "Are you hurt?"

A long pause. "I can move my arm, and my head some."

That non-answer frightened her more than any details could. "Danny you can't stay there. You know what's going to happen, right?"

"Well yeah, that's why I came here in the first place. They couldn't stop this thing, just contain it. A few more minutes and…" Danny imitated an explosion. He paused. "Not like you'd really need a nuclear meltdown to finish me at this point," he added, almost too quietly to catch.

The room stood silent. Eighteen people. Generals, experts, high-ranking strategists, and none of them could help her son. The silence stretched on.

"I guess this is it, then. Wow. I thought actually dying would be cooler than this. And faster." His voice broke and he coughed to cover it up. That turned into a real cough, deep and wet that cut off with a pained whine.

Something in Maddie snapped at that sound. This could not happen. It couldn't be real. She couldn't bear it. Her baby lying under some miserable pile of scrap metal, counting down the minutes, knowing he was dying, and—

Knowing.

Maddie froze. Suddenly she remembered a day long, long ago. A fishing trip gone awry, before she'd learned his secret, when she'd been more than happy to use her knowledge against the ghost boy. Ghosts were what they believed. Danny had that weakness, or that strength. If it didn't feel real… to him, at least…

She leaned forward and grabbed the mic. "Danny, listen to me."

"Mom?"

"There's something you have to know."

"If it's the secret ingredient to your cookies, I know what it is, and it's really gross."

"Danny, please. No jokes. Just listen."

"Okay." He sounded puzzled and a little worried. He was listening.

"You know your physiology is different from ours. I never told you how different. You aren't human. Not even a little bit. Right down to the cellular level."

"What are you saying?"

"You aren't alive in the sense that we are. You can't die here because you don't have that kind of existence anymore. You haven't for a long time." Maddie paused; that wasn't enough. She had to make it real to him. She had to be cruel. "The truth is… you died that day, Danny," she said softly. "You're an exceptional ghost, unique, amazing at masking your true form, but…"

The room fell silent. Eighteen people stared at her with horror in their eyes. He's dying, their gazes said. Let him have this. She ignored them.

Danny filled in the blank. A shuddering gasp came through the speakers. "You said no jokes, Mom. And this one's not funny."

"Believe me sweetie, I know. But I couldn't keep this from you anymore. You're a full ghost. Always have been."

"But— but I grew, I aged—"

"Just as Technus has advanced forms. Ghosts evolve, we have record of that."

"Vlad said—"

Maddie shrugged, though he couldn't see it. "Vlad did nothing but manipulate you to get what he wanted. What's one more lie?"

"If I'm full ghost, and you knew it, why didn't you hunt me?"

"Danny," and this she said with a wry smile that didn't quite make it to her voice, "you could be a card-carrying spawn of Satan and your father and I wouldn't love you any less."

"I guess that's true." A long pause. "So I'm dead." He sounded so dispirited.

Maddie shut her eyes. "Yes."

"Dead hurts."

"I know it does, sweetie, and I'm sorry."

She could hear him shifting. Something metal creaked ominously and he hissed in pain. "If this isn't killing me, then it's doing a pretty good imitation."

"It might hurt you, but it won't kill you. The lead, the radiation, the explosion… they can't destroy you, Danny. Nothing can."

Maddie cast her eyes around the room, daring anyone to challenge her. There were several experts here who could shoot her down right now, but they all seemed spellbound by her confession, too timid or too horrified to object.

"Your ecto-electric matrix exists on a plane of physical reality untouchable by the physical world. That's what gives you shape and consciousness. Your body doesn't matter. The ectoplasm doesn't matter. Even if every atom in your body gets blasted apart, you'll still exist."

"Molecule by molecule, huh," Danny muttered. "That's a pretty apt description of what's about to happen."

"It won't kill you," Maddie said again, forcefully. She gripped the mic so hard her knuckles popped. "It can't. Your consciousness will survive. You can reform yourself from raw ectoplasmic matter."

"Oh, that's great. I guess I'll just trot on over to the Ghost Zone once I get done not-dying in this radioactive explosion stuck under ghost-proof metal."

Maddie bit her lip, thinking quickly. The theories were there, and sound, but how could she impress them on Danny's mind in a few sentences? "Our dimensions exist simultaneously, Danny. Overlapping each other, not side by side. As a ghost you're not much more than an extension of the Ghost Zone into our own dimension. In a way you never leave it. Without a physical body to link you to this plane, you'll pass right between dimensions."

He tried to laugh. "You're getting way too metaphysical for a C student."

"It doesn't matter." He didn't have to understand; he just had to believe. "The important thing is that you can come back. You will come back. I know you will, Danny. You're the most powerful ghost I know."

It sounded awful, putting it that way. Ghost I know. As he if wasn't her own flesh and blood. How must that sound to a teenager barely old enough to leave the house, who was now dying, alone and in pain, with only a voice on the radio keeping him company? A voice that had just told him he had never been alive in the first place. His mother's voice.

"I get it, Mom. It's fine. I'm dead. I get it." A pause. "The radio's getting warm. It's gonna fry soon."

"You are a brave young man," the general said, sending a stern glance at Maddie. "You will be remembered for your service."

"Sure. Thanks, sir."

"Sweetie?"

"Still here. I'd say still alive, but," a rustle that might have been a shrug, "you know."

"I love you." Maddie hoped the words wouldn't sound hollow, after all that she'd just said. "I love you more than anything, Danny."

A deep sigh came through the radio. "Mom—"

The connection crackled and died.

Maddie clutched the mic, staring at it, as if she could will the connection back into existence. The room seemed darker somehow, going grey under the appalling white noise that hissed out of the speakers, unanswering.

"Was all that true?" someone asked in an awed whisper. One of the aides. He looked almost as young as Danny. Maddie stared at him. He had blue eyes. For some reason that cut deep.

"No," she said at last. "I lied." She dropped her head in her hands; she had either just saved her child's life or added useless anguish to his last few minutes. And she wouldn't know which for a long, long time, if at all.

"Why? If none of that was true, he's going to die anyway. Why would you do that to him?"

"Because it might save him," she said, not raising her head. "I just hope I lied well enough."

The bunker shuddered at a faraway explosion. The screens went white.

Months passed. Cleanup crews came and went. Memorials were held. Rebuilding began. A year later the first blades of grass pushed their way out of the blackened earth.

Two days after that, Danny Fenton stumbled out of the portal and collapsed in his parents' arms.

fin

A/N:

Sarapsys requested a followup to Overthinking It, which is posted separately here on FFn. That fic is a funny little oneshot I whipped up for Phanniemay a couple of years ago. This... is less funny, but it plays with the same idea. I hope you enjoy it!

Thanks for your reviews, everyone!

-Hj