Thirty-six

Observants' Observatory #5
The Ghost Zone

Sam stared at the eyeball screen, blinking rapidly, as Jazz cried softly beside her. She heard a sniffle, then felt Jazz's hand on her arm. "Oh, Sam. I can't believe he's…"

"It's not real." She said the words automatically, without even thinking but, as they came out of her mouth, she suddenly felt them with conviction. "It's not real."

"Sam…"

"No. I-it can't be real. It can't." She clenched her fists, her fingernails digging into her palms. "Danny can't be…"

"I know it's hard. I know you… I mean… oh, Sam!" She threw herself around Sam in a hug, but Sam pushed her away.

"No. Don't. You can't grieve. He's still alive."

Jazz sighed, her eyes full of pity Sam didn't want. "Denial isn't going to help."

"It's not denial!" The words came out more forceful than she'd intended. "He can't be dead! He promised!"

"He promised?"

"The ring. He took the ring and promised to give it back, just like in Antarctica. The Fenton Jet crashed, and we all thought he was dead, but he promised, and he wasn't dead. Not then, and not now, because he hasn't given the ring back to me yet, and he promised he would."

Even as she said the words, she knew how ridiculous they were. She didn't need Jazz's gaping stare to tell her it was absolutely insane. The ring wasn't a magic talisman that could ward off the Spirit of Death. It was an ordinary and rather garish undergraduate class ring. University of Wisconsin-Madison, class of 1984. She wasn't superstitious; she didn't believe in good luck charms or old wives' tales. She was a goth. She believed in the dark and the morbid, and that life necessarily involved pain and death. She'd even once told Tucker that one of the things that kept her from telling Danny how she felt about him was a fear that once she had him, she would only lose him. And now… hadn't she just said, earlier this same evening, that she was in love with him? Not that it had been direct, or that she couldn't pass it off as getting too involved in the role she'd been playing at the time, if she wanted to pass it off. But the words had been said. They were out there in the universe, so of course this would be the exact moment that he would be taken from her forever.

Except that he promised to bring the ring back. Just like Antarctica, and in Antarctica, he didn't die. The Fenton Jet crashed, but he hadn't been in it. And he wasn't dead now. She knew it with a certainly she couldn't explain and didn't make any sense, not even to her. But Danny was alive. He had to be.

"Sam…"

" I know you think I'm crazy, Jazz, but think about it. We're still alive."

Jazz just blinked at her, confused.

"Danny is, like, the focus of Vlad's whole existence. If he killed him, even by accident, why would he keep us alive? I'm less than nothing to him. The guy won't even bother to call me by name. If he's okay with killing Danny and Valerie, who were his favorite pet projects, why would he keep us alive? Our only value to him at all is as leverage. Something to hang over Danny's head to get him to do what he wants. Without Danny, we have no value at all."

"Sam…" Jazz sighed. "You're forgetting his other favorite pet project: my mother. He can hang us over her head, too."

"You, maybe. But me?"

Jazz gaped at her. "You don't think my mother would care if something happened to you?"

"Of course she would, but Vlad doesn't think like that! Come on, Jazz! You're the psychology major! You know how Vlad's mind works. He doesn't understand humanity or compassion. He only understands possession. In his world, you belong to your mother, so it makes sense that he would see you as leverage to use against her. But me? My only value is in relation to Danny. I'm Danny's friend. Danny's girlfriend. His possession. Without him, Vlad has no use for me at all."

Jazz shook her head slowly. "I… I see what you're saying. And you do have a point. But Sam… We saw what happened for ourselves."

"We saw a video. Video can be faked."

"How? And why?"

"To mess with us! You said yourself he was trying to psych you out with all that stuff about needing your little brother to protect you. What could be more demoralizing than losing him completely?"

"And you said our only value was in relationship to Danny. Why bother messing with us? Wouldn't he rather mess with Danny?"

"But you're a Fenton. You're Jack's daughter, which makes you suspect, but you're also Maddie's daughter, which makes you valuable. And, geez, Jazz, you really do look like your mom. The older you get, the more like her you become. Vlad even said so. So he's got all this conflicting stuff with you… does he want to own you or get rid of you? Are you more Maddie or Jack? He doesn't know, so the only thing he can do is mess with you."

The more Sam spoke, the more convinced she became that she was right. Even Jazz seemed to be considering it. She regarded Sam a moment, then closed her eyes and let out a long, slow breath. "I don't know, Sam. It seems so far-fetched. But… God, I hope you're right. I really hope you're right."

"I am right."

She had to be. He'd promised.

Observants' Observatory #2
The Ghost Zone

Tucker felt like time had stopped again, and with it, his brain. He couldn't seem to get it working, to get it to really take in what he'd just seen.

Valerie, dead.

Danny, vaporized.

It was too much to comprehend.

Behind him, Mr. Gray was taking the observatory apart, piece by piece. He'd started with the eyeball monitor, smashing his fist into it and shattering the screen. Oddly, the shards of—glass? some glass-like ghost substance?—didn't cut him. He was somehow able to make contact with the screen, but the broken pieces were intangible to him. Yet another oddity of the Ghost Zone.

After the monitor was demolished, he started in on the telescope. He would yank a piece off of it, then throw it across the room, all the while making more and more violent threats against Vlad, using language that Tucker had never heard an adult use in front of him. But as pieces of telescope and ghost circuitry rained down around him, Tucker sat absolutely still, trying to get his brain functioning again.

Something was wrong.

Well, obviously, if Danny was… if his best friend in the whole world was gone, then everything was wrong. But not that kind of wrong. Something just didn't fit. Something at the back of his brain was poking at him, but it couldn't be heard over the screaming in his head from the image of Valerie landing face-first in the grass and Danny being blasted to dust.

Valerie, landing face-first. In the grass.

Why was that weird? She was in the park. Parks have grass. Nothing weird there.

She was in the park…

Hold up. Tucker's eyes widened, and he went to pull out his PDA, forgetting for a moment that it was already in his hand. While Mr. Gray hurled another piece of equipment against the wall with a curse that would've made Tucker blush had he been paying closer attention, he thumbed through his programs, calling up the one he used to track things. It came up but wasn't active, and Tucker swore under his breath. This was a different PDA. Vlad had toasted the first one. When did he last sync them up? He couldn't remember. Please let it be here, please let it be here…

With a ping, the program went active. There were two Fenton Phones a few levels below—Jazz and Sam. Further down was that funky signal Mrs. Fenton's jumpsuit gave off—wait. Further down? Hadn't she been the highest one up? He looked at the signal again, and saw that it was rapidly descending. Mrs. Fenton's on the move. Let's hope she got out and it's not Vlad taking her somewhere. He shuddered, pushing that thought away as he looked for the other signals. There was Mr. Fenton's, somewhere buried below the mountain. And at its base? Where was Danny's ecto signature?

Tucker swallowed. It wasn't there. There was only a lone Fenton Phone and a whole lot of random ectoplasmic energy, but no ecto-signature. No Danny.

But… it had been there. Here in the complex, not in Amity Park. If Danny had been here, then the video they'd seen couldn't possibly be right. That video showed Vlad starting time again without ever sending Danny and Val into the Ghost Zone. They couldn't possibly have gotten killed in Amity Park if they were in the Ghost Zone.

But that didn't make any sense. This place belonged to the Observants. Their equipment was designed specifically to observe, not create. How could it observe something that wasn't real? And if it wasn't real, if Danny and Val really had been here in the Ghost Zone, where were they now?

He wasn't getting a signal at all. Not Danny's ecto-signature, and not the bug that had been planted on Val. Although… the signal had been glitchy before. The suit! Tucker looked up. "Mr. G.!"

The man in question hurled something—an eyepiece, maybe?—and Tucker ducked, forgetting for a moment that it would have just passed through him anyway. "Mr. G., wait! Stop! I think they might be alive!"

Mr. Gray stopped and stared at Tucker. "What?"

"I don't think that video was real. Remember when I was tracking everyone before? They were all here in the Ghost Zone, Danny and Val included. But that video showed them getting… it showed them still in the park."

Mr. Gray's eyes widened, and he came over to where Tucker was sitting and hunched down to look over his shoulder. "She's alive? You're saying my baby's alive? You can see her on that thing?"

"Actually, I can't find a signal for her at the moment." Tucker winced, hoping that wouldn't send her father into another rage frenzy. "But this is a different PDA, and I didn't calibrate it like the other one. Her suit could be masking it. Plus, there's a hell of a lot of random ectoplasmic energy where they last were, and that could be masking it, too."

"Ectoplasmic energy? Like from that suit or jet sled of hers?"

"Could be. Listen, Mr. G. Have you ever gotten a good look at the suit? Do you know the specs on it?"

"I… no. Not the new one. The old one I'd taken apart and put back together a hundred times before it was destroyed, but not the new one."

Tucker frowned. "But didn't Technus make the new one out of the pieces from the old one?"

A determined look crossed Mr. Gray's features. "Give me that thing."

Tucker handed over the PDA and watched as the older man went to work. After a moment, Mr. Gray sat back, his shoulders sagging in relief. "It's her. She's here. That's definitely her suit." And then he frowned. "But it looks like she's in one hell of a fight, judging by all that ectoplasmic energy." Abruptly, he got up off the floor. "We need to get out of here and find her! Let's get this thing cranking and short-circuit the shield."

Tucker nodded. "I just wish I knew for sure that Danny was okay, too."

"You're not getting a signal from him?"

"Nope. No ecto-signature. Just—" Tucker stopped. "There's a Fenton Phone there! That has to be Danny! He was the only other one wearing one!" But still, the lack of an ecto-signature was troubling. It had been there before, why not now? It couldn't be the new PDA… he knew for sure all his PDAs were properly programmed with the specs for Danny's ecto-signature. Hell, he could do it from memory.

"We don't have time to figure it out now, Tucker. We can use this eyeball monitor thing to generate the feedback we need so we can get out of here and up to that power source and take the whole complex's shields down."