I have a LOT to say about this chapter, but it can mostly be summed up as such: holy shit.

I don't know if this is what anyone expected. It's only a quarter of what I expected, honestly. I also wrote about 4k of it in one sitting, and I still don't know how it happened.

All that being said, this is Part 1 of...2(?). I don't have Part 2 written. I debated waiting to post this until I had at least some of it written. I figure a good person would wait to post Part 1 of The Climax until she was SURE she could deliver Part 2 in a timely manner.

I am not a good person.

But we all know this.

For what it's worth, please enjoy. :)


Chapter 31: The Activation (Part I)

It felt weird having so many people in the lab.

For the longest time, the lab was a source of shame for him and Jazz. Back before Phantom and the Portal and everything else, it was a physical reminder that everything they said about Maddie and Jack Fenton was true: 'That family is full of utter whack-jobs,' they'd mutter amongst themselves. 'They are insane.' 'Deluded.' 'Fanatic.'

Whatever word of the day they decided to ascribe to the Fenton family, the lab was where Danny's resentment congregated, where he placed the blame for every nasty nickname and confused, pitying look he collected from his peers, from strangers in the streets, and from teachers and neighbors alike.

Then the Accident happened. Things changed. People accepted ghosts were real, and not only was the Ghost Zone suddenly real, too, but Danny also had to accept that he had somehow become...something of it.

After all that, his perception of the lab changed. It wasn't just two mad scientists' pet project anymore. It was the foundation upon which their weird family was built. It was where he trained, where his parents invented and researched, where he and Jazz buried most of their secrets before they all came to light. It was where he could find assurance that, with his parents' help, the public would be safe from that which spawned from the Zone, even if he, personally, wasn't likely to ever feel truly safe after what had happened to him down there.

The lab, in essence, became a safe haven just as much as it became the origin of most of Danny's nightmares.

Understandably, the lab stirred a mixed pot of feelings. It wasn't something Danny ever expected to share, let alone celebrate, in such an intimate setting.

Danny's skin prickled with unease as he stepped out onto the first level of catwalks, but he dismissed the sensation and steadfastly ignored the camera lenses glinting from every direction and angle. He focused instead on the part of him sparkling with filial pride when he saw people stall to gawk at the machinery, at the nearly finished Specter Speeder Dad had oh-so-obviously left out for the event. Dad's workbenches were clear of clutter, too, instead displaying some of FentonWorks' most iconic inventions, including the Fenton Thermos, several half-dismantled ecto-weapons, and, as an inside joke that Danny immediately appreciated, the Ghost Gabber.

Dad was waiting for him to notice, too. He smirked the moment Danny caught him watching. Danny rolled his eyes at his father, making a valiant effort to hide his true reaction.

(He'd never admit it to Dad, but he was pretty funny).

Mom distracted Dad with a quick tap on his shoulder and gestured him away. Together, they pulled Vlad aside and skirted around several others, altogether missing Danny break into a broad smile.

None of the fascinated guests and eager scholars looked half as radiant as his parents. No amount of lost sleep, anxiety, or throbbing headaches could prevent Danny from allowing himself to feel another burst of momentous wonder and satisfaction at the sight of them in their element and in their space, finally reaping the benefits of hard-earned acclaim. Despite realizing, logically, that things had changed, it hit him every so often just how much had changed—and how much of it had changed for the better. Each realization left him as euphoric and breathless as the first time he experienced a controlled freefall through the sky.

He'd take these joyous, spastic butterflies over the dilapidated, anxious ones every time, too. No question about it.

It really was too bad that freefalls only lasted for so long before the reality of the ground caught up to you.

Without warning, Tuck began to split away from him and his sister, following after the line of other guests heading to the observation deck. Danny only just managed to grasp his shoulder and stop him before he was caught up in the crowd. "Hang on, where are you going?"

"Uh, to sit?"

Danny shook his head once and then cocked his head toward a thick door to their right. Jazz pushed it open to reveal another solid set of stairs leading down to the main level of the lab. Mom, Dad, and Vlad thanked Jazz absently, and, without pausing their conversation, followed the stairs down. Tucker, for his part, gave no indication he understood what Danny was offering, but when he did, Danny thought it was worth everything to see the ecstatic smile stretch across his friend's face.

"You're serious?" he asked.

"No, I'm just teasing you." Danny rolled his eyes again and pushed him forward. "Yes , I'm serious."

Tucker gleefully bounded past Jazz and flew down the stairs. By the time Danny and Jazz made it down themselves, he was bouncing on his toes, neck craning as he looked up the high, vaulted walls, then past the observation deck, and, finally, at everything around him.

Their ghost shields shimmered throughout the entire lab, casting subtle pale green light across the walls and the Portal. Stage lighting provided by Lance Thunder's team was aimed with intense focus at the podium before the Portal, as well as the device itself. Cameras and video screens flanked two short lines of chairs that were set against the wall, a safe distance away. These were reserved for his family, the mayor and several of his posse, some security members, Lance Thunder, and Vlad, who managed to wriggle his way into giving the keynote speaker introduction. To invite Tucker down here was likely going to get under the skin of several other guests, but in Danny's oh-so-honest opinion, they could suck it up and deal.

Tucker, more than anyone, deserved to be there.

"This place looks even more massive from down here," Tucker commented in an awed voice. He pushed his glasses up his nose as he tilted his head back to a more natural angle. His gaze lingered with particular interest on Dad's workbenches, eyes widening even larger upon seeing the Speeder. He'd seen it not too long ago, but it clearly delighted him to see it so close. "I can't believe Sam is missing this."

Danny's hand twitched toward his phone, but he aborted the compulsory check. He hadn't received any new messages since he left the kitchen. Battling a surge of disappointment, he switched his phone onto silent.

Tucker offered a consolatory smile and patted him on the shoulder. "Tough break, man. We'll see her tomorrow at school and tell her all about it, though, yeah?"

"I guess." With a sigh, Danny rubbed the back of his neck, seeking out the Mansons on instinct. Up on the deck, they'd chosen a spot near the Medium Ms. Bourgeois, Dr. Vu, and the superintendent of Casper High, who Danny hadn't had the displeasure of seeing arrive at all.

He almost wished he hadn't looked. He'd completely forgotten about Dr. Lucas, and now was not the time to dig up old suspicions. He couldn't see anyone's expressions from this angle, but he didn't have to. He knew eyes were on him. He could feel them. The hairs on the back of his neck rose ominously, but when he redirected his attention to the main level, he immediately felt like an absolute fool.

The cheerful cameraman Danny had helped earlier that morning—Raj—gave him an even more excitable smile and enthusiastic wave. He'd obviously been waiting to catch Danny's attention.

Kicking himself for his paranoia, Danny allowed his heart rate to settle before he returned the wave. Raj's grin broadened, and he nudged his coworker Dave, who turned to offer Danny a far more reserved greeting before returning to work.

"Making friends everywhere, I see," Jazz teased, bumping her shoulder against Danny's.

Danny would like to say that the lance of irrational irritation he felt at the comment was well-deserved, but he knew, rationally, that it wasn't. He bit back an unfair retort and, temples pounding with a fresh pulse of pressure, tried to withhold a grimace at the ache.

God, he needed to get a grip. He knew he wasn't always at his best when he was tired or feeling off, but he knew better than to lash out at Jazz for that.

Jazz noticed immediately. The good humor died from her expression. "Headache?" she asked, brow furrowed. "It's...been awhile since you've—"

"Just tired," Danny said, and if his tone was a little sharp, he couldn't be bothered. "I'm fine."

Jazz wasn't placated, and her voice sounded a little off, oddly hesitant, when she offered, "Do you need me to find some ibuprofen? Just to get you through until—"

"Too late," Danny interrupted under his breath as their head of security stepped up onto the podium and called for everyone's attention.

"If everyone would kindly take their seats," the man requested, "we have a few instructions to give in the event of an emergency before we can begin the presentation this morning."

What can you do? Danny shrugged uselessly at Jazz. When her frown deepened, he mouthed "I'm fine" to emphasize the point and turned back to Tucker, effectively ending the conversation.

He still felt his sister's eyes on him all the same.

With Tucker in tow, they filed to their seats. The mayor had already claimed a seat, though he was still chatting amicably with Lance Thunder and several others as they waited. Danny acknowledged them with a polite smile and took a chair between Vlad and Tucker, in the front row of chairs.

"We might be lucky, Daniel," Vlad murmured from beside him. His posture was casual, arms folded across his chest and one leg kicked out and crossed over the other as he lounged in his chair. Danny knew better than to think Vlad was anything but relaxed. His gaze traced the Portal and the control panel with steady acuity. "Perhaps we...did overreact."

"Maybe," Danny said. Despite himself, he began the same intense study of the Portal as the man beside him. "Maybe not."

It's going to be okay, Danny tried to tell himself. He visualized the inside of the Portal, along with the diagrams and the blueprints his parents took great pains to share with him.

The amount of additional safety measures they included is insane, Danny reminded himself as he rubbed his hands up and down his knees. And there's no switch on the inside this time. Mom and Dad made sure of it.

Vlad side-eyed him, and when Danny met his gaze, he had the sense that, for the first time since he's known Vlad Plasmius, any animosity they held for the other was utterly obsolete. That's not to say that the misunderstandings and bad blood and extensive antagonistic history they shared was completely forgotten. Or forgiven. It'd always be there. But there was common ground strewn between them now, tentatively cultivated during the Shift and expanding ever so slowly in the face of what awaited them next.

Trust was not something Vlad would ever have, but in that moment, Danny didn't have to worry about getting stabbed in the back.

They were on the same page, and maybe it should send worms of disgust crawling straight down to Danny's gut, but if anything, Danny felt such a powerful swell of relief that, for one delicious second, he felt more like himself than he had since early this morning, before the headache and well before his conversation with Vu.

Between the two of them, they could tackle anything. And they would.

We're going be okay, Danny thought again, settling a little more comfortably in his chair. His mom smiled at him from where she stood waiting at the end of the line of chairs, and at her insistent nudge, Dad leaned around Vlad to whisper at him, "All good?"

He wasn't asking about the guests or the Portal or even the GIW. A brief blanket of warmth settled in Danny's chest, and he said, "Yeah."

He wasn't lying to his father when he said it. But when their security guy began to drone through their safety protocols, pointing out the emergency exits with extensive care…

It suddenly didn't matter.

Danny's nerves spun into a chaotic, powerless nose dive right then and there. His heart rate skyrocketed again, muscles locking in preparation for a fight as adrenaline laced through every vein. A cold sweat chilled him from head to toe.

Lance Thunder took the stage to offer a few more final instructions about how to behave as a courteous studio audience, and before Danny knew it, all was quiet. The cameras were rolling, and the head of each blinding light turned to focus on the mayor, who smiled and spread his arms in welcome toward all those watching both in the lab and at home.

It was finally starting.

Danny's leg bounced a little through the mayor's initial speech, his eyes drawn to the video screens they had placed near the cameras. Some of them displayed the podium from different angles, a few displayed the audience up on the second floor, and one closest to Danny actually showed some of the rolling footage from outside FentonWorks, where a fraction of Thunder's team remained to capture a broader picture of the polarizing opinions associated with the Portal's activation.

From what he could see, everyone was giving the mayor's speech rapt attention. Danny, for his part, didn't hear a word of it. Tucker didn't seem to mind sitting next to him when he was like this, but Vlad gave him such a dirty look that he did, in fact, stop jostling around.

...up until the moment Vlad rose smoothly from his seat at his cue and took his place behind the podium for his own speech.

When Dad had told him that he and Mom agreed to let Vlad speak, Danny had thought they were nuts, even if the intention was to give Vlad an excuse to remain near the Portal during the event. Surely Vlad's keynote introduction would be leaden with hidden barbs directed at Dad? Or with thinly veiled resentment toward the prototype Portal that had nearly ruined his life?

As it turned out, Danny didn't have to worry.

Vlad, in a rare show of vulnerability and authenticity, made a speech that...well, Danny wondered if maybe he was catching a glimpse of the man Vlad had been before his Accident—the one his parents loved like a brother. Danny had the sense the speech was personal. Genuine. Commending. Funny, too, if the reactions from the audience were anything to go by.

Danny didn't hear much of this one either. The roar in his ears was much, much too loud.

By the time Vlad invited his parents up to the podium and shook their hands, handing the spotlight over to them, Danny was shivering. Not perceptibly to the naked eye. He was long past that point. The quakes travelled beneath the skin, where anticipation culminated into a force so great it held him captive in his chair and churned his gut so violently he worried he was going to puke all over the lab floor.

Danny and Jazz had heard Dad's part of the presentation often enough that Danny could probably deliver it himself. Hell, Dad had gotten as much feedback as he could from his family, Lance Thunder, other publicists, and Vlad before he was satisfied. He'd practiced, too, but not nearly as much as Mom did for her segment.

It paid off. Dad's natural exuberance wasn't so much a distraction as it was an enhancement. Over-rehearsal would have ruined the effect entirely. His excitement and passion permeated the room, and at Danny's side, Tucker leaned forward, eager and utterly captivated by his dad's charismatic aura. He wasn't the only one.

Danny couldn't appreciate it. Not really. Not as much as he wished he could.

He waited, teeth gritted and nerves sparking, for his dad to reach the end. To say the phrase " And without further ado..."

It came. It went. And…

Dad pulled the switch.

An awed, hushed silence descended upon the lab, the entire collective holding its breath as the Portal began to hum, deep and rich. A single, beautiful green spark ignited within its furthest recesses before being sucked into a vacuum of pure darkness. A second. Two. And then a spiraling burst of ecto-energy plumed from the Portal's heart, expanding in a mesmerizing mass of slow, swirling greens that soon overtook the entire mouth of the Portal. Licks of flame-like energy teased at the ghost shield his parents had implemented within the entrance of the Portal, fluctuating playfully and never quite breaching the thin, thin barrier upon which the Real World and the Ghost Zone tentatively touched.

Danny took a deep breath, overwhelmed, and he knew—he could feel it in his very core—even before his father said it.

"We're live," Dad announced proudly, looking up from a tablet of graphs and power readouts. "And we're stable."

Applause and exclamations exploded from above, carrying through every corner of the lab and echoing back toward the audience in a huge wave of celebratory noise.

Danny sat motionless amongst the onslaught, unable to move. To think.

The Portal was working. It was...it was working just fine.

Something isn't right, a voice not unlike his own whispers into his mind. It's not right.

But, no, surely...?

Paranoia crept along its deceptive path, carving its way through him like a butcher's knife.

His parents stood before the audience, smiling so brightly their inner light far exceeded that of the stage lights aimed upon them. They shared a delighted hug, not caring who saw and swaying back and forth in each other's arms. Those on the lower level rose to their feet, hands clapping ferociously.

Danny followed as if on autopilot, staring intensely at the Portal. His chest rose and fell, but it was a mimicry of a true breath.

He couldn't breathe.

Danny would have expected to feel boneless with relief. He would have expected to feel...like Jazz was feeling right now. How Tucker was feeling. How his parents and everyone in the room was feeling. He would have thought he'd be smiling right now.

Everyone was safe. Nothing happened. But even still, it...it was...

Not. Right.

His heartbeat clattered like a traveling circus caravan in his ears, and it was wrong. Discordant and off-kilter. Fragmented radio static filled the spaces in between, shrieking in a pitch far too high for human ears.

I need to turn it off, Danny thought as he blinked at the Portal. It didn't look any different than it had mere moments ago. It's not right. Nothing is right, and it needs...it needs—

To be turned off. That's the only answer. That had to be it.

Because...Because something was going to happen, and he needed…

He needed.

Danny didn't notice Vlad stiffen beside him and look down at his watch, a curious and calculating expression on his face.

Dread built in Danny's chest, the dam there leaking with huge cracks and buckling under the pressure. His ears rang as the noise in his head cascaded into a crescendo.

(He needed to protect everyone. Before it was too late. It would be too late if he didn't...just...)

Go. Now.

A small part of Danny marveled at how pathetically easy it was, to invisibly peel a part of himself away from his own body and take his second 'first step' forward. Duplicating had always been such a pain to learn before—he'd always had a mental block that left him stuck with a half-formed limb or a third eye—but this...this was natural, as straightforward as learning to push and pull a grocery cart.

His duplicate, still in human form, put on a smiling face and clapped and clapped and clapped. The other Danny leaned toward Tucker, toward Jazz, and said something. Danny watched invisibly as they laughed, noting with detached interest how odd it was to experience this moment in time from two different, and yet intimately similar, points of view.

And then he transformed.

No one—but one —noticed.

Phantom didn't even think to check who was watching.

And why should he? He was a ghost, after all.

Still invisible, Phantom took a step away from his duplicate. And then another. Logic might have told him to stop. To stop and think. To look again.

Right then, he couldn't understand logic, much in the same way he hadn't heard much of the speeches.

All he wanted—all he needed —was to get to that Portal.

Because if he didn't, who would ? They didn't see it. None of the others could. Only he could.

And he had to turn it off.

The compulsion echoed through his human duplicate, whose mental presence flowed and ebbed into Phantom's mind like waves on a beach, some—most —crashing with enough force to submerge Phantom entirely.

No, his human counterpart urged forcefully. Turning it off isn't enough. Not for this.

Disoriented by the sensation and thrown by the tearing rip of pain in his head, Phantom stumbled and winced. Sheer force of will kept him upright, and he took another step toward the Portal.

Not for this, Phantom agreed weakly. Something is wrong. Something is...

Go, go, go, his duplicate begged again. Whatever we need to do...

...we have to do it now, Phantom concluded, feeding and regurgitating anxiety in a hell loop between the two copies of himself.

The room was beginning to settle. The congratulations were coming to an end.

His breath fogged before him.

Shit, fuck, he had to do something ...

...right...

NOW.

A wave of magenta ecto-energy intercepted his leap forward, and Phantom spun, snarling wordlessly, just as his assailant tackled him around the waist and full-bodily shoved them both, intangible and grappling, into the Earth.

Away from the Portal.

"No!" Phantom shouted, squirming and lashing out at the ghost keeping him in a vice-like hold. His human duplicate's panic felt like a rusty knife shuffling around in his insides. It distracted Phantom enough that his vision crossed, blurring through the lab and back again. His hands with cold, and he took a blind, wild swing upward, blasting a powerful stream of ecto-ice without restraint up toward the form looming above him.

The attack seared past Plasmius's face, and the older halfa cursed, his hands glowing and crackling with electricity-infused ectoplasm. The power burned through Phantom's uniform, and even his cold core couldn't counteract the horrible sting of Plasmius's infused touch.

It gave him only some satisfaction to realize his cold aura was causing Plasmius just as much discomfort.

But not much.

A very small part of him thought that was a bit odd. Normally he reveled in Plasmius's discomfort.

The larger part of him? Keenly aware that there was a predator holding him down, and every animal instinct in him thrashed with the need to get away.

To get back to the Portal.

"Let go of me!" Phantom shouted frantically, loading another ectoblast within his palms.

"Just...hold the fuck on, Daniel," Plasmius grunted, taking the blast in his stomach. It hardly had its intended effect. His claws unsheathed, digging into the flesh of Phantom's shoulders. "What has gotten into you?"

"What is wrong with you ?" Phantom retorted, voice rising. Vlad flinched as it reached spectral frequencies, not quite at the level of one of his Ghostly Wails but close enough that Phantom experienced such a dizzying surge of fatigue that he nearly lost control over his form.

It didn't help matters that his human counterpart was trying to split off into a third duplicate at the exact same time.

His duplicate's actions divided Phantom's attention again, giving Plasmius an edge over him, but the amount of frantic energy generated from Danny's failure to generate another copy powered Phantom through the worst of the after-effects.

Situated more firmly in his own head, Phantom twisted in Vlad's grip, slipping just enough to shove an elbow into his face, but Vlad caught his arm again and pinned it to his side.

"Don't you see what's happening in there?" Phantom shouted desperately.

"What are you talking about, Daniel?"

Phantom shouted and discharged another ectoblast that blew up in Vlad's face. Vlad cursed but didn't falter. Unable to get any sort of advantage over the other, locked together and unwilling to give, they twirled up through the Earth and manifested outside FentonWorks, where, with a ferocious shove, Plasmius's brute strength overtook Phantom's adrenaline-fueled panic. He forced Phantom down before they could breach the tree-line. Phantom's head cracked against the ground of their enclosed backyard with particular emphasis.

The pain stunned Phantom just enough to realize that Plasmius was yelling at him. His pale blue face hovered right above Phantom's, eyes glowing vivid, angry red.

" What do you think you're doing ?!" he demanded.

"Something's wrong with the Portal!" Phantom's voice broke, frustrated and desperate tears streaming down his face. Shit, shit, SHIT. His human duplicate fed into the formless beast of emotion crouching like a trapped Feuder in Phantom's chest.

We need to… the duplicate muttered to himself. Half an ear tuned in to Mom's lecture, but most of Danny's attention was focused inward, on Phantom's battle, on the Portal. On the need.

We need… we...

"You need to let me up!" Phantom exclaimed, snapping back to himself. "There's no time for this! We need to—"

The anger in Plasmius's eyes dissolved to instant confusion. "Daniel," Plasmius said slowly, carefully. Now that he wasn't using all of his strength to struggle against Plasmius, Phantom suspected he might have lulled Plasmius into a false sense of security. There might be an opening so long as he took Plasmius by surprise. Cautiously, he tested the weight Plasmius was using to hold him down and found that he could escape. With care.

Probably.

No. Not probably. He would. A fresh rush of overwhelming, shared fear from his duplicate overtook him, screaming at him to get up and move.

Everyone's safety was at risk. And here he was. Pinned.

By Plasmius .

Jeez, was he losing his touch, or was his duplication faulty somehow? This was embarrassing. And it was not the time to be weak.

He braced himself.

His head throbbed.

"— nothing wrong with the Portal, Daniel!" Plasmius was saying, curiously unargumentative. His attempts at soothing would have been humorous if Phantom wasn't so frantic with the sense of doom hanging over both of their heads.

Because how could he not see it? Why did no one see it?

"We were wrong," Plasmius said. "It's working. No one is in danger. The Portal—" Sudden revelation and horror spilled across Plasmius's face like runny watercolor.

"The Portal was never the target."

Phantom surged upward, hands blazing.


Flying with Skulker and The Box Ghost was not like flying with Danny.

That's not to say that it wasn't equally exhilarating and terrifying. Because it was. Danny might have been faster—more graceful, too—but that wasn't exactly it either.

When Danny flew, he behaved like any other whip of wind travelling amongst the clouds, an element as naturally occurring as that of the water that filled the Great Lakes and the earth upon which they walked. When he flew with her and Tuck, he made them feel as though they were a part of the sky, too.

He shared the experience with them. Made them companions to, rather than passengers of, his flight.

Skulker, on the other hand, made her feel like a piece of bulky, somewhat disgusting, cargo. One held up by fraying, rotting ropes that were seconds away from snapping.

He obviously thought it was well beneath him to fly a human anywhere, which fell in line with how he'd treated her earlier, back in her parents' garage. Sam would have had something to say about it in any other circumstance, but her dignity really was the last thing on her mind. Besides, she asked for this, and it wouldn't do to bite the hand that fed her, no matter how contemptuous the hand.

In any case, Skulker's speed and serious dedication to the mission made up for his sour behavior. Even The Box Ghost sensed Sam's and Skulker's urgency and understood the importance of making it to FentonWorks posthaste. He didn't once check on the box Sam gave him. Instead, the portly ghost kept up with Skulker's aggressive pace without complaint, eyes focused ahead.

When they reached the edge of the ghost shield the Fentons had erected around their block, Sam knew immediately. Skulker banked so harshly she got whiplash, arms aching as he jerked her to an abrupt stop.

"We can go no further," Skulker announced unnecessarily, scowling down at the humans below.

Hanging awkwardly in his grip, Sam looked down, too. They were hovering several stories over a scattering of protestors. A few of them sat on the curb near the edge of the shield, and Sam did a double take when she recognized Val and Damon Gray, the latter gesticulating with broad, excited motions and tracing a line along the sky that followed the near-invisible edge of the shield on the opposite side of the street. Sam sketched the same line through the air. The shield's surface was barely more than a vague shimmer in the late autumn sunshine. It took a keen eye to see.

Closer to FentonWorks, a larger throng of people idled, too far from the edge of the shield for Sam to pick out any individuals. The noise wasn't as bad as she feared, though that was likely because a lot of them were huddled around phones and other devices, watching...

Sam's stomach dropped down into the masses. The Fentons must have started speaking. That meant they were already airing live.

They...they were too late.

Skulker sniffed at the air with disdain, an action that caught Sam off guard, as remarkably human as it was. "The Portal is still inactive, human."

"He's right," The Box Ghost chimed in. "I can't sense its presence."

Sam exhaled a sharp, stressed breath. "Okay," she murmured. "Okay. What do we do now?"

She could get through the shield without any problems, but getting into FentonWorks would require intangibility. Something she didn't have. Danny's prototype, cold against her wrist, only offered invisibility.

Skulker rumbled a dark, snide chortle, eyeing The Box Ghost as he pulled out his gifted Vladco box and fiddled at it like Tucker would one of his fidget toys. The bold V across its surface caught Sam's eye. "You initiated this hunt, human," he said. "I am here to assist, but I would have expected you to—"

"Plasmius!" Sam exclaimed. She cast her gaze out back over at FentonWorks, mind scrambling and tongue unable to keep up as Skulker stared at her, uncomprehending. She clutched at a fold in his armor and asked hurriedly, "You used to work for him, didn't you?"

Skulker's expression remained impassive. "Yes."

"Call him."

Barking a laugh, Skulker shook his head. "Child, if you think—"

"He's here," Sam interrupted. Skulker gave her an incredulous look, and she pushed through his eerie silence, remembering how, mere days ago, the Fentons had fixed their security systems to accept Vlad's ectosignature specifically for today's event. "And he's one of the only two ghosts who can get through this shield right now! Do it!"

Skulker flung open a panel on one of his gauntlets, hesitating only a moment to say, "If he is irritated, I will not protect you, girl."

He pressed a button on his wrist.

Afterwards, there was nothing to do but wait and see if Plasmius received the ping.

Sam spent the next two interminable minutes running through options. Maybe she could break a window and crawl inside the building. Maybe the Fentons left the backdoor open, or perhaps she could pound on the front door—or, hell, the garage door, which had access to the lab—with enough vigor to notify someone inside.

She knew it was unlikely anyone would hear her. The Fentons built FentonWorks like a fortress.

She was just about to decide on a slightly more realistic course of action when she felt it: another sheet of cold, menacing and dark, slammed into her.

"I would hope," Plasmius said drolly, materializing out of thin air, "you have a remarkable reason for summoning me here, Skulker."

Skulker didn't say anything. Instead, he shoved Sam at him.

Seeing the Vlad Plasmius become baffled was an unreal experience. His ominous presence and the overall malicious aura he exuded shattered as he fumbled to keep her aloft. He'd been a terrifying figure when she first saw him, but even with her recent exposure to two new ghosts, she couldn't help the bite of fear that tore through her when Plasmius put his hands on her. This close, she could see the fangs slipping from beneath his upper lip as it curled. His grip on her made her feel fragile, spineless and malleable, and she did not like it.

"Ms. Manson?" he asked, blinking his pupil-less, bloody eyes. Turning back to Skulker, he asked, "What is the meaning of this? I don't—"

Before she could recover her spine and explain, he suddenly froze, eyes fixating on a point beyond her. "Shit ," he hissed. "What is he...?"

"Is it Danny?" Sam demanded immediately, finding her voice.

Vlad didn't respond, a horrid snarl pulling his lips even further across his sickly blue face, and Sam watched as her fears became manifest in the battle that suddenly overtook Plasmius's features.

Surprise. Fear. Determination. Pain. His breath caught with a strangled rasp in his throat, and he winced, closing his eyes. "He's gone mad," he hissed. "What do you know of this, Ms. Manson?"

"I...what's happening?" Sam demanded. "Is it the Portal? Is it...?"

"The Portal is fine," Vlad snapped, his voice cracking like a whip. When she winced, he softened, but only just. "We are lucky he has zero experience with duplication. Maintaining three duplicates against his two is not easy as it is!"

"Fuck!" Sam cursed, furious, frightened tears burning at her eyes. In an ill-advised move, she released Vlad's cape and swung out of his hold to point toward FentonWorks. "Take me to my parents! Now! "

"Your parents? Why in the world—?" He cut off, a heavy, wheezing breath of air escaping his lungs. "That little shit," he cursed. To Sam he hissed, "I cannot do this for long, so you had better explain now. What is happening?"

"They got to my parents!" Sam cried. "Through your company." The Box Ghost helpfully raised and jostled the Vladco box for Vlad to see. "They gave them some weird little devices, and if they weren't planted to disrupt the actual activation..."

Plasmius's mouth went slack, his expression a growing storm cloud of tangled emotion. "The Portal was never the target," he realized quietly, eyes going distant again.

"It's him! " Sam screamed. Her tears caught in her fly-aways, sticking them to her forehead as a brisk wind whipped around them. She brushed them away with a ferocious wipe of her hand. "They're doing something to Danny to get what they want!"

"He's paranoid beyond imagining," Plasmius revealed with another wince. His eyes snapped back to her, but she could see his concentration wavering even more than before. She'd known Vlad was powerful, and that Danny was even more so, but she couldn't fathom what it meant to control two selves, let alone three.

"He's convinced he needs to get to the Portal and shut it down himself," Vlad said. If Sam wasn't imagining things, she could have sworn he was...afraid. "He's...highly unmanageable."

"They're sabotaging his mind," Sam concluded aloud, sickened to the core. That...that was exactly what Pariah Dark had done to thousands of ghosts during the Shift. Danny had avoided corruption then. Possibly because of his human half? She couldn't say, but the question remained: how had the GIW managed to do it now?

And why...why was Vlad spared?

"We have to get down there!" Sam insisted.

"And do what?" Vlad hissed. "Think, Ms. Manson! Making a big hullaballoo in front of everyone—in front of the cameras—will play right into their hands! I was lucky to get him out of the lab as quickly and silently as I did. Our duplicates are maintaining face in there, but if Daniel is seen fighting me as Phantom, how do you think it will be received? And if he does whatever he intends to do with the Portal? What then?"

Sam's mind raced as she wiped her face again. Calling this attack double-pronged would be understating things. Ignoring the implications of what the device was actually doing to Danny, it was far more complicated than that. Ruining the Portal as Phantom, invisibly or otherwise, would negatively impact his and his parents' reputation. If he was seen sabotaging the Portal, the GIW might swing the media and public to believe that Phantom was dangerous, irrational, not even to be trusted amongst his own family. If he wasn't seen, then they'd twist the narrative so that everyone would believe that, through pure negligence, the Fentons put a whole audience—and city—at risk with a suddenly malfunctioning Portal.

And even if Danny never touched the Portal, there was no telling what else they could make him do. Sam couldn't know how much of a hold they had on Danny right now, and if that wasn't the most terrifying thing she ever heard...

She shook her head, banishing images she remembered seeing on TV from the Shift. She couldn't think about that. She needed to act now, not worry about the ifs and whens of later.

Vlad had already brought up yet another concerning facet of this entire debacle she needed to consider: if Phantom was seen fighting Plasmius, people would speculate that the Fentons couldn't do half as good of a job keeping dangerous enemies from infiltrating their shields as they proclaimed. Again, their reputation and professional integrity would suffer.

That, Sam assumed, had to have been a very accidental and unfortunate coincidence. The GIW couldn't know a second halfa existed, let alone guess that he'd be present at the Portal's activation, too. Besides that, Vlad wasn't affected the same way that Danny was, so whatever her parents' devices did, they targeted Danny specifically.

That meant...for all that Vlad's ghostly identity was a huge complication, it was going to be their saving grace.

A small balloon of hope inflated within her chest, pushing aside some of her panic. She took a deep, steadying breath and latched onto that feeling.

No matter what happened, they couldn't let anyone realize what was going on. The minute someone saw something—suspected something—doubt would be cast. Things would get ugly, and there would be room for the GIW's agenda to get even more solid footing in the public's mind.

Sam didn't want to think about what would happen after that. Because then they'd also know that their ploy worked. That they could, in whatever capacity, control one of the most powerful ghosts in the world.

God. Danny...

"Then we do it carefully," she said decisively, sounding far more confident than she felt. "Can you hold him back? Keep him from being seen?"

"So long as I can lose this additional duplicate as soon as possible, I think so," Plasmius grunted.

"And his...duplicate?" Of all the times to master a new power. "The human one?"

"Mine shall keep an eye on him. He seems...on edge, but he's not in any danger of making a scene or creating a third. I imagine he's devoting a lot of energy to the version I'm fighting. I can handle them both."

"Then get me down there and get me inside." She lifted her wrist to display the invisibility band Danny had given her. "I'll take care of my parents and destroy those things."

"You are so certain destroying these...devices will work," Skulker stated suddenly, inserting himself back into their conversation. "Why?"

Sam eyed him and scowled. "Because it has to."

"You know," The Box Ghost commented as Vlad impatiently gave a sharp order to Skulker to stay alert just in case Sam was wrong and this all went to shit, "that's what he said, too. About the Tower. No one believed him then either."

"What?" Sam asked, momentarily thrown.

She didn't get to hear a response. They were already descending.


"Did you think about what would happen if I was somehow…compromised? There'd…I mean, it wouldn't be the first time. Pariah Dark nearly—he—he nearly…"

The faculty members looked at a loss as to what to say, but Jazz interceded before Mom could so much as blink. "Danny," his sister consoled, "the chances of that happening again are slim to none…"

-Shift, Chapter 4: The Stipulations

Fellow pantsers out there: never underestimate the potential power of a random throwaway line. ;)