A Holiday Truce gift fic for ectopal on tumblr!
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Tucker picked at a hangnail, frowning at the screen in front of him. The fan on his computer whirred, and the mouse wheel clicked softly as he turned it, but this late at night there were no other sounds coming from inside the house. Every so often, he'd hear a car or rustle from outside through his partially open window, but that was it. Otherwise, it was silent and still. Like a scene from a horror movie, Tucker supposed.
It wouldn't surprise him terribly if it was a scene from a horror movie. If his entire life was running on film in some alternate universe's movie theater, clipped and cut, set to atmospheric music, touched up, airbrushed, filtered, tinted.
He raised his finger to his lips and absently bit down on his hangnail, knowing it wouldn't help any but too absorbed by what he was reading to go dig the nail clippers out of their drawer in the bathroom.
In all honesty, though, Tucker was probably a side character in that hypothetical film, at best. The real horror here was, as always, what had happened to Danny and…
Tucker closed his eyes and rubbed them, not caring about knocking his glasses askew. He corrected them aggressively and went back to reading the screen.
It was full of data. So much data. Data about half ghosts, stolen from Vlad. Danny and Dani were the ones who had snagged it, grabbing one of Vlad's backup harddrives, but they hadn't been able to break his encryption. That was, as ever, Tucker's role in the group.
Not that he minded. He wanted to help any way he could. He enjoyed things like this, for that matter. He enjoyed the hacking part, at least.
Finding out things like this in the middle of the night, not so much. He really wished he wasn't so awesome sometimes.
This was messed up. Grade A crazy.
The harddrive was full of data. Data that, by all logic, by everything he knew, shouldn't exist.
Up until a couple months ago, there had only been two half ghosts in the whole wide world. Now, there were three. According to Danny, Vlad, and Dani, there had never been any more than that.
The other clones - and that was something horrible in and of itself - hadn't been half ghosts. Danny had, a few days after realizing they had truly been destroyed, not just banished, not just weakened to the point of being invisible, come to Tucker and Sam, distraught, and explained to the two of them how he knew they weren't. Dani had only confirmed it.
But this, the data here, was more than that, more than what could be accounted for by three half ghosts, two of whom had been half ghosts for less than two years. So much more.
Maybe it shouldn't have surprised Tucker so much. All those weapons and tools Vlad had, designed especially to work on half ghosts, or mimic their abilities, the Plasmius Maximus, the human-ghost shield, the nanites, the forced transformation booth… Vlad wouldn't have been able to engineer those and be sure they'd work on Danny just from experimenting on himself.
But this… This data represented dozens of individuals, all with different backgrounds. At least, the categories of sex, height, weight, and age all had different values. Danny, Dani, and Vlad himself all had entries, but theirs were clearly labeled with their names, unlike the others.
What happened here? What had Vlad done to get this? Where had he gotten this?
And some of the data… It made him sick that it even existed. Tucker wasn't the best at medical things, but some of these couldn't have been acquired ethically. These were… these were stress tests, reaching for limitations, for pain, for injury, for susceptibility to disease, and Tucker had known Vlad was an evil mad scientist type from the beginning, and that had only been confirmed when he infected him and Sam with a potentially fatal disease - and he had to have done things to develop that as well - but this was surprising even in that context.
He pressed a hand to his mouth, feeling suddenly nauseous. The ecto-acne. A biological weapon. Vlad had to have tested it. How had they missed that?
Had Danny realized yet? Realized how far Vlad would go? Tucker knew that Danny thought Vlad was sort of ineffectual in terms of evil, that he thought, deep down, there was something in Vlad worth saving. Like some kind of messed up Darth Vader thing, but without the familial relationship.
And Tucker had thought that maybe Danny had a point. Vlad had plenty of opportunity to kill Mr. Fenton, after all, and yet Mr. Fenton was still alive. But with all this staring him in the face… Right on the heels of Vlad outright torturing Danny, of Vlad all but saying he planned to pull a kill and a replace on Danny, of making and throwing away all those clones…
No, Tucker couldn't believe that anymore.
Where had Vlad gotten this data? Where had he found dozens of half ghosts, and where had they gone?
From some of this… Tucker ran a finger down the screen, tracing numbers. There were no deaths listed, but that didn't necessarily mean anything, as much as he wanted it to.
Tucker was… Tucker was afraid. He fought ghosts on a weekly, if not daily, basis, and he was afraid.
His fingers hovered over the phone. It was the middle of the night. If Danny hadn't been woken up by a ghost, he'd be asleep, and a school night. He needed to sleep.
But Tucker needed to not be alone with this… data. This information, this revelation.
He picked up the phone and called.
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"Where did he even get this?" asked Danny, his hands shaking as he scrolled down the spreadsheet. Numbers flew past, numbers that either were a terrible lie, or revealed one. "He said it himself, we're the only half ghosts around. That's why he wants me to be his evil apprentice or whatever."
"I don't know," said Tucker. "If it says on here, I haven't found it yet."
Danny nodded, distracted, and rubbed his finger across his lips, feeling the slight, tugging friction of not-exactly-rubber gloves against not-quite-human skin.
There were three options here, three possibilities that Danny could see.
One, Vlad had made this up. It was a taunt, a prank, a joke, a decoy, a distraction, a plant, a fiction. Something to get Danny all riled up.
Two, Vlad had lied to him from the beginning. Lied, and said that there weren't any other half ghosts when there were. When they existed, and in such variety. Horrible and heartbreaking, a betrayal even from an enemy, and confusing besides.
Three, Vlad had done something even more unspeakable than usual and created these half ghosts. Created them not from scratch, as he had with Dani and the other clones, but from regular people, people with separate, ordinary lives that he used just for… For whatever this was. For some twisted, sickly shadow of science.
The thought made Danny almost dizzy. Was it really that easy to make a half ghost? Did other half ghosts exist, beyond Danny, Dani, and Vlad? And if either was so, why didn't Vlad just get someone to agree to it? Agree to be his evil apprentice or something? He was sure there were plenty of people who'd do it, plenty of people who'd trade pain and obedience for power. Why was he so fixated on Danny?
He stopped scrolling, the titles of a few columns catching his eye. He knew those readings.
"What is it?" asked Tucker. "Did you find something?"
"Maybe," said Danny, feeling hollow. "Do you remember what these mean? These abbreviations?"
"Um. No. Should I?"
"These're the inputs of the portal. The settings you can change to make it… To make it work. Remember the thing with Desiree?"
"When Sam played protagonist in 'It's a Wonderful Life?' Yeah. I remember that."
"That's what we changed on the portal, to make it so I'd definitely become a half ghost."
"Oh," said Tucker. "I hadn't- But then he shouldn't have readings for you."
"He does, and they're the right ones," said Danny. Having gone through all that twice, he'd never be able to forget. "He…" He trailed off and swallowed. "He does," he repeated, more quietly. "And look at this." He pointed at a separate line, broken off from the others by a space. It's boxes were highlighted with an indication the numbers in them were a result of some computation.
"Huh. That line is the same as yours. What's this abbreviation mean?"
"I think," said Danny, "it's shorthand for optimal."
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Sam and Tucker hadn't wanted them to confront Vlad, didn't think it was safe, but Danny and Dani needed to know. Dani had always known she was a clone, a science experiment, but Danny hadn't had even a hint of this. There had been no sign, no indication.
They needed to know how far back this went, and, more importantly, they needed to know if there were other half ghosts, other people who understood.
"Are you ready?" asked Danny. The gates of Vlad's estate loomed over them, wrought iron casting odd, twisting shadows in the moonlight.
"Yeah," said Dani, nervously pulling at the fabric of her top. "I'm ready."
"You don't have to come," said Danny. "I'll tell you everything I find out."
"No, I want to do this," said Dani.
Vlad's mansion felt emptier than usual. Danny couldn't put his finger on why at first, but then it struck him. "All his Packers stuff is gone."
"Yeah," said Dani. "You're right. There's something else…"
"What?"
Dani turned to him, her eyes flat green disks in the mostly dark. "I don't know," she said, "but can't you feel it?"
Danny stilled, listening, feeling. There was an electric prickle along the surface of his skin, an unfamiliar sensation that he nonetheless felt like he knew, like he should recognize. He rubbed his left palm with his opposite thumb.
"Maybe," he said. There was a memory there, an unconscious one. A memory of the body, not the mind. It prickled. Burned. Ran up in lightning lines to his heart. "Yeah, there's something off, here."
"It's Vlad. There's always something off," said Dani, bitterly. "Do you think he's not here? Maybe he went back to Wisconsin."
"I hadn't noticed him leaving."
"It isn't like you're watching him all the time, is it?"
It wasn't, but Danny usually had a… a feeling for who was in Amity Park and who wasn't. He'd never examined it very closely, but it was there.
"No, he's here."
"I don't know… doesn't it feel… empty in here?"
It did but… Danny was realizing that it didn't, not completely. It didn't feel empty, as in uninhabited. It felt dead.
"Ah, Daniel, Danielle. To what do I owe the pleasure?"
Danny and Dani jerked up, spotting Vlad on the stairs above them, leaning over the banister. Rarely had Danny felt so threatened by Vlad, and Vlad wasn't even doing anything.
Danny floated up to Vlad's eye level. "We're not the only half ghosts, are we?"
Vlad raised an eyebrow and straightened, pink-red light flickering behind his pupils. "Whyever would you think that?"
"We saw your data backups," said Danny. He pressed his lips together, not sure if he should ask this, not sure if he wanted to know the answers. "How do you even know what the readings were on the portal when I… When it turned on?"
Vlad tilted his head to one side. "I see," he said, crisply. "It's very simple, really. I arranged for your accident."
"Why?" demanded Danny.
"Many reasons," said Vlad, unconcerned with the green fire billowing around Danny's clenched fists. "Although I had thought to catch one of your parents, rather than you. Although I suppose Maddie would never have fallen for it. She was always much better about lab safety. Ah, well."
"But why?" asked Dani. "Why do any of this, when there were other half ghosts? You had to get that data from somewhere."
"Oh, I did," said Vlad. "I wasn't the first half ghost, you see. My origin shares many similarities to yours, Daniel. Much like vampires and werewolves, all half ghosts are made by another. My creator was rather smug about the whole thing."
"Then why don't you go after them, instead of my dad?"
"What do you think I spent twenty years doing, dear boy? I didn't lie to you when we met. We were the only two half ghosts in existence. I was only working down the list." Vlad gave them a razor smile, his teeth sharp white in the dark. "Of course, I needed to test out a few things before rigging the portal. But the lifespans of my test subjects were… seriously compromised. I am glad you seem to have avoided that particular side effect. Thus far."
"You're sick," said Danny.
"Oh, come now, isn't this a much better state of affairs? Would you prefer to be ordinary, or to not exist at all? Don't you think it would be lonely, all by yourself, with no one who understood? With no… backups. Don't you think it's better with more of us, severed from that old history of abuse and exploitation? After all, you chose to walk into the portal. I only provided the proper circumstances for you to survive such a mistake."
"No," snapped Dani, sparks trailing from her fingers. "No. You don't get to justify any of this. You need to be stopped."
"Oh, dear Danielle, you are certainly welcome to try."