"Are you strong enough to break us out of here?" Vlad asked, his voice low enough to not be picked up by the various cameras watching them.
Dan nodded as he sat up and leaned against the wall. "I think so. We can't do much with our powers here, but we can still morph. Once the cameras are looped, I can morph and punch our way out of here," Dan explained, matching Vlad's volume.
"The door is too thick. You'd break your hand before you got us out of here," Vlad cautioned.
"Who said anything about the door?" Dan said, knocking lightly on the wall he was leaning against.
"Okay, but how will that get us out of here?" Vlad questioned.
Dan sat up further, hardly able to contain his excited anticipation. "The more powerful the ghost, the harder it is to contain there power under any circumstance. Even for an agency as well equipped as these guys," Dan explained. "If I break through this wall, those ghosts behind it are ripe for the picking. It'll be like shooting fish in a barrel, only it'll help us. My powers will spike and be too much for their systems to contain. I'll be able to-"
"I'm not going to let you drain those ghosts out of existence," Vlad refused.
Dan groaned and rolled his eyes. "Do you have a better idea?"
Vlad sighed and leaned back against the wall, considering. After a moment, he sat back up again and asked, "Do you have to destroy the ghosts to get their power?"
Dan shook his head. "No, not really, but it'll be better for us because-"
"Us, or you?" Vlad interrogated, making Dan freeze.
"What do you mean?"
"I'm just saying that you nearly killed me because you couldn't control yourself," Vlad explained. "Do you want those ghosts because they'll help us escape or because you want their power?"
Dan scoffed. "Does it really matter? Either way, I can use their powers to help us escape. We will get out of here."
Vlad stared at Dan intensely, studying him. After a while of tense silence, Vlad sighed. "Fine. You can drain one ghost, but you will not destroy them."
"Fine," Dan agreed, privately wondering what Vlad could even do to stop him. "Can you tell them that it's okay to loop the feed?"
Vlad removed the small camera from his pocket and held it up to his face. "We're ready when you are." The green light on the small machine started to blink, and Vlad mouthed out the letters. "M-o-v-e-b-e-s-t-l-o-o-p." Vlad lowered the camera. "They want us to move around so that they have a better segment to loop."
Dan nodded. "You move around more than I do in here, so you do it. It'll decrease suspicion."
"Okay," Vlad agreed.
They spent a minute with Dan lying on the floor in various positions as he usually does and Vlad pacing around the cell as he usually does. Vlad then sat down and picked up the little camera again. "Ready?" he asked.
After a moment or two, the camera blinked out two letters: "G-o."
Vlad looked up at Dan. "We're ready."
Dan shot to his feet, instantly morphing. He turned around as Vlad got to his feet. Vlad morphed, and Dan started to punch the wall with all of his ghostly strength. Vlad's ghost form was weaker than Dan's and was even weaker as a result from the multiple experiments from the agents, but he still joined in.
Dan's hand began to ache more and more, but the wall was cracking. The ghosts beyond it were afraid and backing up to the other side of the cell. The power from the ghost he just drained was already waning. He struck the wall harder and harder, and eventually, it burst. Pieces of the thick, tinted wall dropped to the ground, opening up a large hole to the other cell. Dan slipped through the hole, and Vlad followed. He barely got through the hole when Dan already had a ghost in his hands. His teeth were latched onto its throat. Vlad rushed up to him, waiting. He concentrated on his forming powers. He doesn't use the power much due to its destructive capabilities, and he wasn't sure how much of it he could use with the power-cancelling collar on, but he had to get Dan to let go.
It wasn't long after the ghost stopped pushing against Dan's chest that it started to fade. Vlad readied his electric-based ability and formed a small shock in his fingertips. He jabbed his fingertips into Dan's throat, making him jump and let go. Vlad caught the ghost as Dan dropped it. He held it upright and turned to Dan. "That's enough!" he shouted. "Now get us out of here."
Dan wanted to know how Vlad shocked him like that, but it didn't exactly matter at the moment. Dan summoned a bright pink blast into his hand, and just as he suspected, the anti-ghost defenses the facility was equipped with did nothing to stop him. He focused the blast on the door of the cell and let it rip. The door was blasted to bits. The alarm instantly went off. Dan grabbed Vlad and took off through the air.
Vlad struggled to hold onto the tiny camera. He hardly noticed when it started to blink again. "F-r-e-q-u-1-1-8."
He looked up at Dan as he raced through the halls. "Grab a walkie talkie off of one of the agents!" he called. "They want to talk to us!"
Dan didn't acknowledge that he heard him, but as a group of four agents burst through the nearby doors and into the halls, he dropped to the ground. He let Vlad go, and instantly blasted the agents. It was a clean and efficient one blast each. Dan approached one of the fallen agents and swiped the walkie from his belt. He tossed it to Vlad and instructed, "Talk fast. It's only a matter of time before more agents come, and the excess power does wear off you know."
Vlad nodded in acknowledgement as he gently placed the still-flickering, unconscious ghost on the floor and flipped the walkie's frequency to 118. "You there?"
"We're here!" Maddie's voice greeted.
"And we can see you on the camera footage," a new voice said. Vlad recognized it, but he couldn't quite place it.
"That's Tucker," Dan muttered, approaching Vlad as he pulled at his collar with a glowing hand. "Tucker what're you doing there?"
"Breaking you out, of course," Tucker's voice laughed. "Now, I've got the camera feed looped still, so they can't exactly tell where you are as long as you don't go blasting anymore doors. So follow my instructions, and we'll get you to their main control room. We bring that down, both you two and all of these ghosts can escape without issue."
"Where do we go?" Vlad asked.
"First, head straight down the hall you're in now," Tucker instructed.
Dan tore off his collar in one swift motion and quickly grabbed Vlad again, taking off down the hall. Dan followed the instructions that Vlad relayed to him to the letter until Vlad ordered him to stop. "You're right below it," Tucker's faint voice said. "Can you still phase through stuff?"
"I think so," Dan responded, turning himself and Vlad intangible.
He drifted upwards, easily slipping through the ceiling. Once through, Dan dropped Vlad onto the floor and readied two ectoblasts. The security inside were too busy panicking to even notice their entrance. Dan easily blasted the first two out of five agents in the room, finally catching their attention. He blasted the second pair as they reached for their weapons. The final agent shot him with her ecto-gun, but Dan absorbed the energy with his hand and then sent it back towards her.
All five agents were down quickly, and Vlad rushed to the one closest to him. He took the agent's pulse and was relieved to find that he was still alive. He lifted up the walkie and opened the channel again. "We're in the security room. How do we take it down?"
"There should be a large, red button under a thick glass cover," Tucker informed.
"Found it," Dan announced as he stood up, an ecto-gun in his hand.
"What're you doing with that?" Vlad wondered, standing up slowly.
Dan glanced down at the gun and then back at Vlad. "Oh, don't worry," he dismissed. "It's not for you." He then pointed the gun at his own chest and pulled the trigger with his thumb.
"Dan!" Vlad shouted, rushing towards him.
Dan sighed contentedly and then dropped the gun, leaving Vlad standing there with an open mouthed, shocked expression. "It's artificial energy, but it still gets the job done," Dan explained.
"What happened?" Tucker's voice wondered from the walkie.
"Nothing," Vlad sighed. "We found the button. Now what?"
"All five agents have keys on them. You need to turn them all at the same time to open it," Tucker explained. "I would say you can just blast it, but unfortunately it's ecto-proof."
Dan and Vlad searched the agents finding their keys. They inserted each key into a keyhole around the button, and then Dan lifted a hand. The five keys were encased in a green aura of energy, and they all turned simultaneously. The thick covering popped open.
Vlad held the Walkie up again. "It's open."
"Great! Push that, and all ghost defenses go down," Tucker said.
Dan shrugged and slammed his hand down on the button. A second, more high-pitched alarm blared, and Tucker shouted through the walkie, "It worked! All the ghosts are starting to break open their cells. We're just outside in the Fenton RV."
Vlad's collar stopped glowing, and he felt his suppressed powers rise up within him. He pulled off the collar, and he and Dan took off through the ceiling. They phased through floor after floor until they ended up outside. They easily spotted the Fenton Family Assault Vehicle a few blocks away and raced towards it. They landed outside and morphed into their human forms. The back door opened, and Jazz poked her head out. "Get in!"
Vlad and Dan jumped inside, and Jazz closed the door behind them. Tucker was sitting in the back seat, a walkie in the cup-holder next to him and a laptop on his lap. Sam was sitting next to him watching what he was doing over his shoulder. They both jumped when the door closed. They turned to see them, and Tucker smiled warmly. "Welcome to the outside, dude," he greeted.
Sam got up on her knees, turning to fully face Dan. Having not seen them in over a year, Dan didn't know what to do and stood there frozen. Sam balled her hand into a fist and reeled it back, instantly punching Dan in the nose.
Dan stumbled backwards with the sudden force and groaned. He dropped down onto the floor and held his nose. "Ow!" he complained, his voice muffled by his hand. "What was that for?"
"Abandoning us after you nearly died!" Sam yelled.
"Where are Jack and Maddie?" Vlad interrupted.
Tucker glanced back at his screen. "They're coming back now."
A minute later, the driver and front passenger doors both opened, and Jack and Maddie slipped inside. "Mission successful!" Jack proudly announced.
"And what mission was that?" Dan wondered, getting back up to his knees.
Jack put the vehicle into drive and blasted out of their parked position as Maddie explained, "We destroyed any and all samples they had. They have no scientific proof that you even existed."
"And now," Tucker announced, raising his hand and slamming his finger down on the enter button, "They have no proof at all. I just erased every single file pertaining to you both and sent an overload signal to their entire computer system." Tucker turned back to Dan and Vlad. "I would have done that to their security system, too, but that system was air gapped. Couldn't hack it."
An unfamiliar engine sound reached Dan's hearing, and he turned around to look through the back window. "Uh-huh, and that's all well, and good, but what was your plan for being followed?"