A/N: Yes, the plot doth thicken. And from here on out it is going to get VERY dark indeed and after that VERY angsty. The author must make note at this point that after this, some of the chapters are going to start containing gratutious violence. Okay, maybe not gratutious, but it isn't going to be pretty... Just thought I should warn all you lovely people.
Ormandria
Egon, Ray and Peter busted through the front doors of the old theater, looking for the ghost that had hidden within only moments before. Winston was the only one left outside, having decided that it would be best if someone stayed in place, just in case the ghost came back out again.
"Were did it go?" Peter demanded angrily, proton pack at the ready.
Egon lifted up the PKE Meter to get a reading, but one of the antenna were bent and a spark flew from it as the needle dropped to nothing. The blonde hit the device against the palm of his hand. "Damn it! I can't tell. The PKE Meter's broken. That last blast must have knocked a sensor loose. It's going to take me a few minutes to fix it."
"We don't have a few minutes," Ray reminded him. "That thing has Janine."
"I know that!" Egon snapped impatiently. He felt immediately sorry as he watched Ray flinch back. They had all watched Janine leave the building to go home for the night when the ghost had come by and grabbed her. If it hadn't been for the fact that Egon and Ray had already managed to make the adjustments to the proton packs that they had needed to make, then there would have been no way they would have been able to follow the ghost this far to begin with.
Of course Egon could not help but fell that they were being led here on purpose. Every single time they lost track of the ghost, it would reappear briefly, giving them just enough of a view to get back on its trail.
They had spent the better part of three days trying in vain to capture this ghost. The few times they had come close, they discovered that the proton packs were not powerful enough to hold the specter. Ray and Egon had finally figured out earlier in the day, how to adjust the packs so that they did more than just tick the ghost off. True, without the adjustment they could still hurt the ghost, but it was almost impossible to keep it still long enough to trap it.
The fact was, plain and simple, that everyone was on edge and anxious. This ghost was only a class-10 but seemed to have the resistance of something much bigger and the attitude of something much worse. Peter, sensing the tired tension in the air, took the rare step into the role of leader before Ray and Egon ended up at each others throats.
"Okay, Ray, you check the basement and start there. I'll go upstairs and check the upper levels. Egon, get that thing fixed and check this floor. If any of us run into it or Janine, well… yell really, really loud." Ray and Egon nodded in assent.
Egon got to work on the PKE Meter while Peter and Ray took off in opposite directions. He started by bending the antenna back in place and opening the casing to see where the spark had come from. He almost wished he hadn't when he saw that a loose sensor was the least of the damage. Still, he knew it wouldn't be hard to jury-rig it so that it would work until they got the ghost and got back to the firehouse. He could give it a proper fixing then.
His fingers moved swiftly over wires and nodes and dials and tiny red and green lights. Once he was done, he gently pushed the casing back in place and turned it on to test his work. He went into a slow rotation of the room, hoping to pick up some reading from the ghost they had been chasing.
On his third turn, the PKE Meter burst to life as the needle pushed its way up to the nine mark, where it trembled in hesitation. Egon gave a quick swat to the side, to be sure that it wasn't stuck, and it rose up to ten where it stayed.
Satisfied that he had done his job properly, he focused on the direction it was facing. It indicated that the ghost was indeed still in the building and on the very level he was on. He slowly walked forward, and through a wide pair of doors that marked the entrance to one of the three individual theaters that made up the cinaplex.
The room was huge. It had row upon row of seats that face a large stage. The stage itself gave just enough room for a very small group of people to stand upon it before the movie screen. A smaller orchestra-type pit was sunk into the floor in front of it, no doubt used to allow workers to get underneath the stage should something down there be in need of repair. Above, in two separate sections was balcony seating. Each balcony held approximately six to seven rows of fourteen seats, with an aisle down the center and on the outer sides of each one. It wasn't difficult for Egon to put two and two together and determine that this was the main theater in the building.
Egon lifted the PKE Meter once more and found, much to his consternation that it was flickering toward the nine once more. A sharp hit brought it back up to the ten as he pointed it toward the front of the theater where the stage, screen and orchestra pit lay.
Egon stepped forward carefully, never taking his eyes off of the darkened area in front of him, save for the occasional glance at the PKE Meter. The readings became stronger the closer he got, but every once in a while they would dip down to the nine before shifting back up to the ten. It was rather frustrating, but all in all, it could have been much worse in Egon's opinion. It could have stopped working all together and given him no sign of where the ghost might be, giving the ghost an unfortunate advantage over the team.
Lights flashed brilliantly as the antenna erected fully into an upright position. The ghost was close. Egon quickly pocketed the device in exchange for gripping the gun on his proton pack. This ghost had already proven itself more than a match and he wanted to make sure he was not caught off guard. Especially not with Janine's well being hanging in the balance.
Slowly edging forward a touch more Egon glance before him and noticed something strange in the pit. It took him a minute for his eyes to adjust to the shadows with its depths. His heart rushed up to his throat as he realized what it was he was looking at.
There, in the darkened pit, lay Janine, in mid air, her back to the floor. She appeared unconscious. Her arms were pulled tightly over her head by what looked like piano wire tied to some sort of pulley system at the left of the pit. Her legs, equally stretched an identical pulley, piano wire and all, to the right. As Egon watched, both pulleys slowly rotated a fraction of a centimeter at a time. It wasn't much, but the ghostbuster could tell from the tension in Janine's body that she would not be able to hold up much more under the stress. In fact, he would not be surprised if she the reason for her unconsciousness was due to her passing out from the pain. Nothing kept her from falling to the floor save the wire that now threatened to tear her in two.
"Delicious looking, isn't she?" asked the ghost as it floated through the screen and smiled down upon the scene. He came to a rest between Egon and the pit. His eyes glowed a deep burning red and ectoplasmic saliva dripped from his gaping jaws that were home to dozens of sharp, needle-point teeth. He did not have anything that could be construed as hands. His appendages ended instead in great, greasy palms that had five claws sticking out from the base.
The smell of rot and decay hung in the air around him as pieces of ghostly debris shifted silently about his form. The only thing even remotely human about the ghost was the look of bloodlust in his eyes.
"Let her go," Egon warned, pointing the proton gun toward the ghost.
"Now why would I do that? She will make me such a luscious treat. And when I am done devouring her flesh, I shall bind her spirit to me and take her as my bride."
Egon heard the slight click of the gears on the pulleys, registering the tightening of Janine's body in the restraints. Three days. Three days they had hunted this ghost down and now he had Janine and was going to murder her. They were the Ghostbusters. It was their job to capture ghosts. It was their job to protect people. Janine was a person the same as any other, but at the same time she was more. She was a member of what had become their very lose, quasi-dysfunctional family and he would be damned if he would let some ego-maniacal ghost turn her into the next Bridezella of Hell. Besides all that, Janine really was the only one that even knew the filing and billing system at the firehouse and they'd be truly lost without her. Egon would be lost without her….
"Do you honestly think I'll allow you to get away with this?"
"You have no choice. Your toys have already proven useless against me. I am more powerful than you can possibly imagine. We will bring pain and suffering to the world around us and no one will be able to stop us. Not even you."
Rage built up in Egon's mind, clouding his senses as his fingers moved numbly and nimbly over the controls of the proton pack. It was as though all his memories were stored in those fingers of his as the danced lightly, adjusting this and that. He and Ray had made the newest adjustments to the pack so that they could finally capture this ghost, so it wasn't difficult for Egon to adjust them even more. Adjustments that would not only hold the ghost, but would hurt him as well. The ghost wanted pain, so Egon was about to douse him in it. The ghost noticed none of this.
"I'll destroy you here before I let you have her!" Egon turned the pack on, aiming it straight for the ghost's torso. The ghost screamed in agony. His body twisted in pure agony, yet to Egon it still wasn't enough. He turned up the power, sending another all-new torturous wave of pain into the ghost. How long he stood there doing this, he didn't remember, except that at some point he had turned the power up so high that his proton pack shock out of control, threatening to explode and the ghosts howls had become so loud that they could be heard several blocks away.
Suddenly a second and third beam were added to the one that was already holding the ghost.
"We've got him Egon!" Peter yelled from behind the blonde. "Turn off your pack before it's too late! Ray, the trap!"
Egon fell backwards as he shut his pack off. It trembled and buzzed, making him wonder if he was already too late, but then it finally settled down into a calm quiet. He was surprised to find that it was hot to the touch and that had he not been wearing heavy duty gloves, he might have fried his hands.
Ray threw out the trap and opened it as Peter, still behind Egon and Winston, who was now standing on the opposite side of the small stage as Ray, kept the ghost held by the proton beams from their packs. The ghost, who had finally stopped howling, still appeared to be in a great deal of pain as ectoplasm smoked off him and dissipated into thin air. The trap opened, with its bright, white light pouring forth, and closed again, blinking in time to signify the capture of the ghost.
Winston grabbed the loaded trap and hoped down into the pit where he called to Peter for help with Janine. Peter ran forward, his pocket knife in hand and began to cut the secretary down. Egon could hear her groaning as she regained consciousness, Winston and Peter telling her that she was safe now.
"You okay?" Ray asked, helping Egon up.
"Yeah," replied Egon, shaking his head to clear it.
"Boy, you're lucky," the red-haired ghostbuster muttered as he glanced at Egon's proton pack. "I guess the same blast that broke the PKE Meter must have affected your pack."
Egon eyed Ray and for a brief moment wondered if he should tell him the truth, but then decided against it. 'No use in going into details that the others didn't need to know,' he thought. As Ray said, they simply had to take it back and he could fix it before the next use. It shouldn't be too problematic. Besides, it wasn't as if anything seriously bad would happen if he didn't tell the others what really happened. They already had their ghost and Janine was safe now and that's all that mattered.
Egon recounted the tale with the same blurred velocity usually reserved for race car drivers and stand-up comics. He kept his head low, avoiding their gaze and wishing to God that he had told them everything sooner. He knew that this was going to have a profound affect on how they viewed him. His best hope would be that they didn't judge him too harshly.
When he was finished explaining what had happened there was a stunned silence in the room. The others looked at Egon like he had just stepped out of a portal from another dimension and informed them that man was really descended from aliens that looked like carpet bags and that soon they would be taking a trip into outer space to re-join the mothership.
It took several minutes for each person in the room to digest this new information. Each person opened and closed their mouths several times, trying to figure out which of the multiple questions and comments they wanted to say should come first. Peter was the first one to find his voice.
"Let me get this straight," he said, his hand clasped against his forehead to stem the growing migraine that was on the verge of overwhelming him. Peter had never liked having to think on complicated matters, and what Egon had just divulged was nothing short of the biggest tangled mess of complicated that Peter had ever dealt with. "You, Egon, our Egon, the same man who, when no one is looking, helps little kittens down from trees, who likes playing with ameba's thinks that Santa Claus still exists …."
"He does," Egon interrupted. "I've seen him."
Peter ignored the interruption and continued on. "And who normally is about as emotional as a garbage truck, tortured a ghost?"
"Yes," Egon confirmed, in a steady voice.
"And did it make you feel any better?" Peter asked in mock concern.
"At the time, yes."
"You know Egon, if your having anger management issues, you might want to find a better way to resolve them."
"Yeah," agreed Ray. "You can always try putting peanut butter and jelly in Peter's bed. I find that always helps me with my anger issues."
"So he tortured a ghost," Winston said. "Big deal. We've all wanted to do that at one time or another. What's that got to do with what's going on with Victoria?"
"Don't you see?" Egon explained. "That ghost wasn't the only one there. The PKE Meter kept trying to register another ghost. A class-9. And I, in a brief episode of infinite stupidity, chose to believe that it was merely a glitch caused by the earlier break."
"And Groden was a class-9," commented Ray.
"You don't think that the class-10 was Groden's brother, do you?" Winston asked.
"That's precisely what I think," nodded the blonde. "If Groden was his brother and he saw what I did, then I can't exactly blame him for wanting me dead."
"But that doesn't mean he needs to go killing the rest of us in the process," Peter pouted.
"He apparently disagrees. It seems that he is taking revenge to the eye for an eye level. I tortured his brother, and then all of us took that brother away from him. To him there's probably no greater crime then that."
"But we had to catch him," Ray remarked. "He had Janine."
"Maybe, but Peter is right. I should have kept my temper under control. He said that 'we will bring pain and suffering' and I assumed he meant Janine, after he made her his bride. But what if he had meant Groden?"
"Like I'd ever marry that slimeball." Janine shuddered at the thought.
"Well at least we have a better idea of what's going on now. Maybe now we can get through to Victoria," Ray suggested.
"Yeah," agreed Winston. Peter however did not look convinced, nor did Egon.
"Not possible," Egon said sadly. "If anything, this will make it even harder to get through to her."
"What do you mean?" asked Ray.
"She's an empath, remember? Not only can she sense what other people feel, but she tends to commiserate. Their emotions become hers. If they feel sad, she feels sad. If they feel happy, she feels happy. If they feel angry, she feels angry. I don't know just how bad it is for her, but I know it was hell on my aunt," Egon explained. "This is even worse though. It isn't like Groden is something or someone that she can just walk away from. They're integrating into a whole being, yet with two minds. Everything he feels, she's bound to feel as well and with them getting closer and closer to completing that integration, she's no doubt already convinced that his hatred is hers as well. When they finish, even their minds will be one."
"So how are supposed to separate them if we can't get her in here?" Winston inquired.
Egon eyed the ecto-plasm wave de-amplifier that he had been working on when Victoria had first come to visit. A smile crept slowly across his fast as the gears in his brain began clicking together once more.
"Ray," he began. "Do you still remember how to adjust the particle beams so that they can be used without hurting a human, yet still be able to hold that person and or a ghost?"
"I think so," answered Ray.
"Good. Get started on making the necessary adjustments to the packs. I also want that extra pack in full working order. Janine, take Slimer and Jasper back down to the basement. They should be safe if they stay down there. At the very least, if Groden does show back up they'll get enough warning to get out of the building."
"Alright," the secretary nodded.
"I'm going to work on reversing and making some adjustments of my own to Victoria's little science project."
"Is there anything we can do?" asked Winston.
"Not at the moment. Unless one of you wants to cook breakfast for the rest of us. I have a feeling it's going to be a long day, and a possibly even longer night. Victoria said she couldn't pass herself through objects at will yet. That it would be another two to three days before she could. I'm assuming that means it will take another two to three days for them to finish merging. Which gives us two to three days to separate them, and the sooner we do just that. The better."