Chapter 19

After Danny saw Sam home, he hesitantly returned to Vlad's mansion. He probably stared at the door for at least five minutes before he built up the courage to finally to enter.

Once he was in the foyer, he debated with himself for a few minutes on whether or not he should immediately return to his room or see if he could find a snack. As much as he didn't want to run into Vlad, it was late, and he could really use a sandwich or something. Food won out, so he made his way to the kitchen.

"Daniel!" Chills ran up his spine as he turned to see Vlad appearing from a different room. His expression seemed genuinely concerned, but there was something about his eyes where narrowed and calculating. He walked slowly towards him, but instead of being reassuring, it felt almost predatory. "You had me worried when you just ran out this morning. I tried calling you, but when you didn't answer, I assumed you must have been angry with me."

Vlad had called him? He didn't remember getting anything other than a few texts from Sam, Tucker, and his mother. "I… err… sorry about that. I just got reminded of what happened… and freaked." His call history didn't show evidence of anything. "I didn't get any calls today."

"Oh?" Vlad glanced at his own phone. "Perhaps I didn't dial it correctly. My apologies for not following up."

Danny had to suppress a snort. Who actually dials anymore? Actually, that raised a different question. Was Vlad possibly lying? The man had a modern phone, so it seemed unlikely the man would have misdialed since, knowing his parents, they had given Vlad his number years ago. But why would he lie about something so simple?

As he mulled over the idea, his mother appeared. "Hi, Sweetie! Did your date with Sam go well?"

"Mommmm…" he complained as she tried to give him a hug. "But for you information, I think it went great."

She giggled, "To be young again. I see the two of you seem to be getting along."

"But of course, my dear," Vlad explained with a slight flourish of the hand. "Daniel explained his reaction this morning hadn't been intentional. Something reminded him of his terrible experience, and in my haste to check on him, I seem to have misdialed his number. Although, I do have to wonder what exactly caused such a reaction?" His light tone started to sound forced as his attention turned back towards Danny.

"Vlad!" his mother scolded. "You know how traumatic that must have been for Danny!"

"But Maddie, if I don't know, how can I avoid accidentally causing the same reaction in the future?"

"It's okay, Mom," he interrupted, somewhat creeped out by Vlad's words. His movements seemed more over the top than usual. "It just… something about the room reminded me of what happened. I think it was something about the colors. It's nothing really."

She didn't immediately respond, opting to examine his face. Uncomfortable with her gaze, he glanced away. "Well, okay, if you're sure. Anyways, Danny I had something I needed to discuss with you. Can you come down to the lab?"

"Sure? Can I grab a snack first?"

….

About twenty minutes later, Danny managed to find his way to the lab. It was something else. Compared to the lab his parents built in the basement, this one was at least three times as large and different areas seemed to be set up for different tasks. Unlike his parents' lab, there weren't wires anywhere, and it seemed the walls were reinforced in a different manner. At the far end the room, there were closed doors which suspiciously looked like his parents' portal, but the most glaring difference was the large bluish bubble in the middle of the room where the 'Box Ghost' was currently being held. The Box Ghost seemed to be shouting something, but the bubble muffled his voice.

Trying to ignore the ghost, who was pounding on the bubble, he made his way over to his parents were tinkering with something on one of the work benches. "So, you needed to talk to me?"

"Dann-o!" his dad shouted. With obvious glee, he gave Danny one of his infamous bear hugs. "Your mom said your date went well! That's my boy!"

"Jack, there will be time for that later," his mother interrupted, allowing him to slip out of his dad's grip. "There's something else that's we need to discuss. Danny, can you pull up a seat?"

It took a little bit of rooting around, but they eventually found a chair for him to use. He sat across from them and realized both his parents seemed unusually serious. "So, what's up? Am I in trouble?"

"No, you're not in trouble… it's just…" His mother sighed. "I honestly don't know how to approach this. Remember how we talked about how the incident might have changed you somehow?"

A gnawing fear appeared in the pit of his stomach. "Y-yeah…"

"Well, we hadn't thought too much about it…"

"But here's the thing Danny, that ghost from earlier," his dad gestured to the trapped and still yelling Box Ghost, "called you a fellow ghost when we were transferring it to the holding container. Said it didn't understand why you helped us."

He glanced towards the Box Ghost, who seemed to be angrily gesturing to him, before turning back to his parents. "Heheh, that's pretty weird." This was the second ghost who seemed to recognize him as being inhuman upon sight. "But why would you be worried about that?"

"Sweetie," his mother leaned forward while wearing a sad smile, "remember that talk we had after that thing broke into the house? About how you might have been changed somehow after you and your classmates were taken?"

"Yeah…"

"Well, your father and I are a bit concerned about it. If it's okay with you, we'd like to do some tests…"

"Tests?" he squeaked, trying not to wince at the sudden higher pitch of his voice. "What kind of tests? Cuz I really don't want those to include things that might result in me getting hurt."

"Oh, nothing of the sort. Just normal tests, like what you'd see in the doctor's office, but we are going to get a blood sample." When he openly cringed, his mother admonished him. "Danny, I know this isn't the most ideal thing, but we need to know if your body has been contaminated by something. Blood, saliva, and hair samples are the best for that."

"Yeah, but if you happen to find something, who's to say you aren't going to end up doing something drastic to 'fix' it?" he demanded as he stood up, knocking his chair over. "How many times have you talked about wanting to experiment on and possibly dissect paranormal creatures? If you're telling me you think something otherworldly happened, I need to know… you absolutely need to promise me you aren't going to do anything like that if you find something." His eyes burned from the threat of tears.

From the time he first faced his parents after returning from the world of the dead, a nagging fear their scientific side might outweigh their parental side would surface from time to time. His mother did a decent job of reassuring him the night that Collector attacked, but that was before his parents decided to confront him about him in a laboratory.

"Oh! Oh… Sweetie, come here," his mother pulled him into a hug, and his father joined in. She gently ran her hand through is hair like she used to do when he was small. "We would never hurt you. We just want to know what, if anything is wrong… and if it is, what precautions we might need to take to make sure you stay safe."

"Yeah, Danny! You shouldn't worry about a thing! We'll keep you safe from ghosts, spooks, specters, and any other type of phantom." He smiled brightly as he stood up and grabbed a bunch of things Danny couldn't identify. "But, if your trips into that other realm did somethin' to you, I don't want anything I made to accidentally hurt you."

He pulled away from her and looked between her and his dad. Their expressions seemed genuine; no hostility, just concern. Should he tell them? Or should he keep quiet? "I…" his mouth felt dry as he tried to continue. "Well… fine… go ahead, but I want to know that you'll stop if…"

"We don't want to do anything that makes you uncomfortable, so just give us the word if you need us to stop," his mother told him, and he agreed.

Over the course of the next hour, his mother ran normal tests to check his vitals while his father bounced back and forth between different inventions and writing down the information his mother relayed to him. According to his mother, his reflexes appeared normal, but, like what was seen in the hospital, his temperature, respiration, and blood pressure were all lower than expected.

"Hmm… everything still lines up with that the doctors saw when you were hospitalized," she confirmed with a sigh. "I'll admit I hoped you vitals might return to normal overtime, but it looks like that won't be happening. Now, if it's alright with you, I'd like to get some sort of sample. Blood would be best…" When he grimaced, she put down the note pad she was using and gave him a reassuring smile. "Sweetie, remember, I told you that you don't have to do anything you aren't comfortable with. If you want us to stop, we can stop."

"I… I…" he stammered as he glanced around the room. He took a deep breath and summoned his courage. Just like any normal teen, there were things he wanted to keep from his parents, but this seemed so much bigger than keeping silent about being bullied or hiding those forsaken magazines Tucker attempted to pawn off on him. As much as he thought of Tucker as a brother, he had weird tastes.

"I'm okay with hair and spit samples, just no blood. Not yet anyways. I want to think about that one." It was true. Actually, he wanted to test that himself first anyways because a nagging concern that he might no longer bleed red kept creeping into his mind. If that was the case, he wanted to be sure of that first.

He also wanted to take the time to debate with how much to tell his parents. If they found something, he'd have to come clean about some aspects of what happened to him, but how much they needed to know would be the question. Heck, he barely understood the changes to his body.

His mother gave him a pat on the shoulder as she stood to take the samples. "Thanks, Sweetie. It shouldn't take more than a few days to get the results," she explained as she placed the samples on the work desk after labeling them.

"Sure thing." He glanced back towards the bubble. "So, what are you going to do with him?"

"Him? Oh, you mean the ghost?" His dad excitedly appeared at his side and pushed him forward towards it. "Right now, we're just studying it. Getting energy levels and getting an idea of stability. Since we don't have the equipment, we can't do much else other than that. Right now, he's a great test case for the Fenton Ecto-Bubble."

"What are you going to do after that?"

"We hadn't gotten that far," his dad admitted as he scratched his head.

"Couldn't you just release him back to his home dimension or something? I mean, if all he can do is throw boxes…"

His mother hummed thoughtfully from behind him. "You're not wrong. Compared to the other entities that might be stalking the area, it isn't that big of a threat. The creature that attacked you may also be of a completely different constitution than this ghost. I guess it wouldn't to release it after we get our data, as long as we don't find evidence it's a bigger threat than we initially thought."

Danny nodded. After meeting Ember, Frostbite, and Clockwork, his preconceived notions regarding ghosts changed. Even though the Box Ghost seemed like he was probably the most annoying creature in existence, with the exception of the raccoon that kept trying to destroy the backyard, he hadn't done anything to warrant being harmed. However, he was hesitant to let his parents know that.

"Ah, there you are!"

Danny jumped at Vlad's words. He turned to see the man move towards them. A muffled squeal brought his attention back to the Box Ghost, who had moved as far away as possible from Vlad. It almost appeared as if he was frightened.

"You've been down here for some time, and I wanted to double check everything was fine."

"Vladdie!"

"Oh, we must have lost track of time!" his mother sheepishly mentioned. "We were just checking Danny's vitals. We wanted to see if anything had changed since he had been released from the hospital. Oh, but it's a school night, isn't it?"

"Awww, come on, Maddie! I think Danny's earned a day off from school. I mean, he's been attacked by two different spooks and had to leave that hotel because of that weird fire over the course of one weekend." His dad clapped him on the shoulder which nearly knocked him down.

His mother scowled at both of them as she pursed her lips. "Fine. Just one day though. I'll call the school in the morning to let them know you'll be missing due to our circumstances. Make sure you text Sam and Tucker so one of them can pick up your school work."

"YES!" He gave his mother a quick hug. "Best mom ever!" Deciding he no longer needed to be in the room, he ran out of the lab and back towards the room. He didn't miss the strange look Vlad sent him as he passed him.

A few moments later, Danny collapsed on his bed and reflected about the day. After every strange thing that happened, he finally managed to go on a successful date, and he managed to get a day off of school. Having an extra day to sleep sounded amazing.

After a quick texting session with Sam and Tucker, he decided a shower sounded wonderful. After taking a bit longer than usual, he made his way back to his bedroom to retire early. However, as soon as he crossed the threshold, a shiver ran down his spine and his breath misted in front of him. Something seemed off, as if everything suddenly stilled. A strange weight appeared on his chest, and he looked down to find a medallion around his neck.

"Daniel." He turned around to find Clockwork floating in the hallway. "My apologies for taking so long to contact you. We have much to talk about."

Sorry the chapter is a little shorter than normal, but with what's coming next, this was the natural break. See everyone next month