Twenty-eight
Observants' High Council Chamber
The Ghost Zone
A groan startled Danny, and he looked around him, suddenly remembering Vlad and his family and friends. He was alone in the huge chamber, however, except for one figure lying sprawled on the ground about a hundred feet away. "Valerie!"
He tried to get up and rush to her side, but his nerves still felt jangled and his head was swimming, so he could only crawl slowly across the floor. Valerie groaned again, raising herself up on two arms.
"Valerie! Are you all right?" He finally reached her side as she sat up.
"Danny? Where—AAAAAHH!" She screamed as she saw the hanging eyeballs above. "Where are we?"
"I'm not sure. It seems kinda familiar, but I can't remember exactly why. We're definitely somewhere in the Ghost Zone, though."
"You think?" She looked around again, this time keeping her gaze across the room and not above. "What happened? Where's everyone else? And… Vlad? That was Vlad Masters, right?"
"Yeah. Or what's left of him after the asteroid got him." Danny grimaced. "I don't know where anyone else is. I just woke up myself."
"Woke up? But it doesn't feel like we've been asleep or unconscious. It feels like no time has passed. One second we were in the park, and the next I was on the ground here."
"Yeah, I know." He remembered the staff Vlad had pulled out just before everything changed. "Plasmius has Clockwork's staff. I'm guessing he stopped time and then somehow moved us here before restarting it again."
Valerie rose to her feet with more agility than he could have managed at the moment. "Wherever here is." She looked around again. "Man, there was some kinda fight here."
"Apparently." He dragged two fingers across the floor, smudging his white gloves with a soot-like substance. "This looks the same stuff that we found all over the place at Clockwork's tower, which must be from the powers Vlad got when the asteroid… did whatever it is the asteroid did to him."
"But it's not shocking you."
"No. Which means the fight happened at least a day ago. The residue wears off after, like, a day. When Sam and I went back to Clockwork's the next day, nothing shocked me."
"So Vlad did this."
"I'm guessing. I just wish I knew whose place this was and how big a deal it was that they were defeated." Trying once more to get to his feet, he stumbled, and Val reached out to steady him.
"Looks like he got you with that anti-ghost beam of his, too."
"Sure feels like it." Danny shook his hands, trying to get rid of the weird tingly feeling.
"You okay?"
"Been better. But we've got bigger problems. Like what happened to Sam and Tuck and Jazz and all our parents."
"How we gonna find 'em if we don't even know where we are?"
"I'm not sure. I… oh, duh." He tapped his left ear. "The Fenton Phones!" Flipping the microphone down in place, he toggled on the talkback. "Sam, Tucker, Jazz. Anyone there? Come in, guys. Where are you?"
There was no answer. Danny frowned.
"Maybe they don't work in the Ghost Zone?" Valerie suggested.
"No, they work fine in the Ghost Zone. Although I don't think we've ever used them to try and communicate between the Ghost Zone and the Human World. Hopefully that means they're still back in Amity Park."
"With Vlad?"
Danny shuddered. "Okay, maybe not. We need to get out of here and figure out where in the Ghost Zone we are, and see if we can find a portal."
"You up to it?"
"Yeah, I'm feeling a little less shaky now." Stepping away from her, he morphed into human form.
"Why'd you do that?"
"The Ghost Zone is opposite of the Human World, remember? In human form, I can phase through stuff." To prove his point, he walked towards the rows of seats surrounding them. Phasing through them, he headed toward the wall—and came to an abrupt stop when he bumped into the very solid and tangible wall, which flared electric blue. "Ow!"
"So much for that plan."
"I don't get it. Humans should have no trouble… oh, crud." He shook his head, remembering. "A couple of years ago, Vlad figured out how to tweak the Ghost Shield so that it works on humans, too. He used it to keep me and Jazz trapped together once."
Behind her faceplate, Valerie frowned. "But if he set up something like that here, then he must've planned for this."
"Maybe. Who knows how much extra time that 'time out' gave him, though." Danny pressed his hands against the wall, getting the same blue aura wherever he touched it, and started walking along it, testing to see if there was anywhere he could get through. When he got about a quarter of the way around the chamber, he reached a massive set of double doors, but was not surprised to find them locked. He changed back to ghost form, then took a few experimental blasts with his ghost ray and then his ice powers, and Valerie tried a few weapons of her own, but nothing had any effect, so he headed back towards Valerie in the center of the room. "We could try the hole in the ceiling, but I'm guessing that'll be shielded, too."
She nodded, making her jet sled appear out of nowhere, and the two of them flew up to inspect the hole in the dome, but when Danny got close, it was like hitting an electric fence. He backed off quickly, rubbing his arms again. "Okay, I really could live the whole rest of my whole life without getting jolted by that stupid ectoranium again."
"I thought you said it wore off."
"It did." Danny frowned up at the hole. "Look. It looks extra green out there. I think he's got the whole place shielded in one of those ectoranium fields."
"Fabulous." They circled the dome, spitting off a few random shots for good measure before landing back on the ground in the center of the chamber.
Something gnawed at Danny as he watched Valerie make her sled disappear again. "That's weird, now that I think about it. You have your suit and your sled and your weapons, and I have my Fenton Phone and the Ecto-flage belt I was wearing back at the park—"
"Oh! Your belt!"
"What?"
"That belt! You said your dad made it to mask your ghost signature, right? Maybe if it's turned on, that anti-ghost energy won't shock you!"
"I dunno. My dad said it only masks my passive ghost energy, not my powers or my actual physical makeup. He said ghost shields and the Specter Deflector would still work against me, so I don't see why this would be any different."
"Doesn't hurt to try."
Danny crossed his arms and leveled a glare at her. "Except for the part where trying means I have to fly into that field and get shocked again." Although, she did have a point. Not a lot was known about ectoranium, and they definitely didn't know anything at all about what a ray form of it might or might not do, so he figured he should at least try. Toggling on the switch on the center of his belt, he flew up towards the jagged hole in the domed ceiling.
And fell back when it shocked him again. "There. You happy?"
She didn't answer, and he landed beside her once more. "Anyway, what I was about to say was, I wonder why Vlad would leave us our weapons and stuff, and your suit and sled."
"I doubt he knows how to take the suit away, actually. Whatever Technus did when he created it sort of hard-wired it to me. You can't just take it off like the old one."
Danny took a deep, uneasy breath. "I'm telling you, Val, the more I learn about that suit, the more nervous it makes me. Technus isn't exactly trustworthy. Hell, I thought maybe he was the one who posted that video of me and Sam. He tried to convince me—" He stopped short, then looked up at all the hanging eyeballs. "Oh, man, I think I just figured out where we are. And if I'm right, this is bad."
"What?"
He pointed at the ceiling. "This is an observatory. And that hole, the one that's supposed to be there? It's like it was made for a telescope. And all the eyes everywhere? You sensing a theme?"
Valerie rubbed her arms. "Yeah. Creepy peeping tom."
"Exactly. This place belongs to the Observants. That's why it looks familiar. I came here once, when Vlad let loose that stupid weather ghost. I brought him back here after we captured him. Not to this room, but it was another, smaller, observatory kind of place. The Observants' whole reason for existence is to watch stuff. Frostbite said they have a High Council that holds trials for ghosts who are messing around with the Human World. Doesn't this place look like some sort of council meeting room or something?"
"Yeah, it does."
"If Vlad took out both Clockwork and the Observants, then he's pretty much gotten everyone who keeps an eye on anything in the Ghost Zone. Unless you count Walker, which I don't, because he only cares about his own rules, not any sort of real justice."
Valerie's eyes widened. "Vlad's set himself up to take over the whole Ghost Zone, like the Ghost King."
"Worse. With these new powers of his, he's way more dangerous than Pariah Dark was." Another thought hit Danny, and he slapped his forehead. "He was the last one with the Crown of Fire, too."
"I don't think that matters. You said yourself, he's already more dangerous than the Ghost King was. I don't think he needs the Crown or that freaky ring to do any damage."
"Probably not." Danny looked up at the ceiling again. "Dammit! I should've listened to Technus. If I'd have checked out the Observants when he suggested it, maybe I could've done something." He turned to Valerie. "We need to get out of here, find the others, and stop him."
"As creepy as that other ghost was, maybe you should've taken him up on his offer to team up."
Danny grimaced. "I don't know. He's not a lot better. He was a sort of Ghost King in his time, too."
She cocked her head at him. "So what's the story about him, anyway? You said something about a future you? You wanna explain that one?"
He sighed. "It's a really long story, and one I'm not exactly proud of."
"Just give me the Qwik Notes version."
"He's me from ten years into the future, but it's an alternate future that's no longer possible. Clockwork sorta… arranged things so I would see exactly what I would become if I made the wrong choices, and I ended up changing the past—well, his past, anyway—so that I would never turn into that. He shouldn't exist at all, except he used one of Clockwork's medallions to come to the present to try and keep things the same, but I beat him. Since he wasn't in the time stream when everything changed, he still exists even though I won't ever become him."
She wrinkled her nose. "You need a roadmap to follow that story."
"I know. Welcome to the joy that is working with Clockwork."
"So what's with all that calling me 'his girl' and the comments about how I look in the new suit and stuff? That was pretty creepy."
Danny felt his cheeks turn red, and he wasn't sure if it was more from embarrassment or anger. "Ugh. Yeah." He let out a huff of air. "Here's the thing, Val. His past and mine diverge at the point of the C.A.T. test we took freshman year. Remember that? With Lancer going all apocalyptic about our futures if we flunked that test?"
"Uh-huh. And?"
"And, I guess that was after the whole Ghost King thing when you and I started getting kinda interested in each other, but before we went out those couple of times, and way before I was willing to even consider I might think of Sam as more than a friend. And…" He swallowed, then had to force himself to tell her the rest. "In that future, the one that will never happen, everyone else in my life is dead. My whole family, Sam, Tucker, everyone. That's one of the big things Clockwork helped me change. But to the evil me, in his timeline, you were pretty much the only one left to stand against him when he destroyed Amity Park, and, well…" He paused again, looking down at the ground. "You know how we always were when we used to fight against each other, right? It was kinda…"
"Fun?"
It wasn't the word he was thinking of, but it was much less awkward, so he nodded. "Yeah. So he had that whole arch-enemy-you-flirt-with thing going with the future you, and can we stop talking about this now? It's making me really uncomfortable."
"Yeah, okay." He could see out of the corner of his eye that she was hugging herself, looking pretty disturbed. "So then, what's the deal with Vlad and your mom?"
Danny groaned. "Oh, yeah, that's much less cringe-worthy." But at least it was no reflection on him—past, present, or future—and she did have the right to know how Vlad's mind worked, considering how much he liked to mess with her.
"Okay. My parents and Vlad were friends back in college, and he had a thing for my mom. The three of them were working together on the prototype of the Ghost Portal and, before Vlad got a chance to tell my mom how he felt, my dad sorta accidentally blew up the portal in Vlad's face. He got ghost powers, and he blamed the accident and my dad for the fact that he 'lost' my mom, even though she was never interested in the first place. But he's been obsessed with her ever since. And then he found out I had ghost powers from an accident really similar to his, so he's been obsessed with me, too. He's got this idea that I'm gonna suddenly decide I hate my dad and wanna be his son instead." Danny rolled his eyes. "So that's pretty much Vlad in a nutshell. Emphasis on the nut. Control the world, control my mom, control me, and destroy my dad. Not necessarily in that order."
"How does your sister fit into the picture?"
He shrugged. "I don't think she really does for the most part. If he can use her to mess with me or mess with my dad, he will. He'd probably include her in his completely twisted concept of his perfect little family if he thought she'd have him, but he's not really focused on her one way or another." Tilting his head back, he looked up at the ceiling. "But we really need to stop talking and figure out how to get out of here and—" His eye caught one of the damaged eyeballs hanging from the ceiling, and he noticed something inside. "Hey, what's that?"
"What's what?"
He cocked his head to the side and squinted up at it. "The eyeball thingy. I think they're for more than just really gross decoration. It looks like some sort of recording studio in there." He flew up and peered through the broken glass into the eyeball's interior. "Yeah, there's all sorts of tech stuff in here. Tucker would have a field day."
Valerie, on her sled once more, joined Danny at his side. "Tucker's not the only one who knows his technology, you know. Let me take a look."
"Careful. Lots of broken glass, and the cable it's hanging from is half-shredded."
Hovering on her sled, she poked her head in, careful to avoid the shards of broken glass. "You might be right. This could easily be surveillance or video equipment." She inched her sled back and looked around, then zoomed off to another hanging eyeball, one that wasn't broken. "The front is some kind of screen or monitor, like a rear-screen projector."
Danny flew to her side. "Think you can figure out how to work it? If the Observants watched everything, maybe there's a way we can see what's going on outside."
Valerie put her hand behind her neck. "I dunno. I'm better with human tech than ghost tech."
Danny gave her a dubious look. "You have an entire suit made of ghost tech."
"Well, yeah but, I told you, it's sort of hard-wired to me. I just want it to do something, and it does."
Danny turned back to the hanging eyeball. "So if I wanted to see what happened in the park before we ended up here—"
There was a brief hum, like a computer monitor coming out of sleep mode, and then an image of Amity Park appeared on the screen. It showed him and Sam just as she turned away from him, and then a blur of white and gray flew in and rammed into Danny, smashing him into a tree.
