Danny was barely conscious as he floated lazily towards the hexagonal opening of his parents' ghost portal. He'd been out longer than he had anticipated, as a fight with Skulker had commenced the second he got within a mile radius of Skulker's lair. The problem was that Skulker was fresh with anger from their last tumble and had just finished a few (non-tested) weapons that … hurt. A lot.

Danny's head bobbed and his flight pattern wavered a bit; he fell, maintained balance, fell a little more, fought to rise up again. When Danny turned his head, his entire mind seemingly burst. He fought through blurry, green clouded vision to stare at the few wandering ghosts that followed him, some concernedly, some blood-thirstily.

Danny threw up. He never stopped moving, of course; he had to make it back to the portal in time. A worried thought flickered through his mind like a quiet warning that he quickly dismissed with false hope.

What if his parents were in the lab?

Danny glanced down at himself and wiped at the green bile that dripped from his mouth. It stained his white gloves in a morbid streak. He could feel the pain in his left leg dully but just enough to recognized that his shin had been fractured. His eyes burned; a steady stream of ectoplasm streamed from his hairline and into his eyes and down the bridge of his nose. His teeth were stained green from the stuff in his throat and from the steady rivulet of green from his right nostril that stopped at the crevice of his top and bottom lip pushed against each other in a desperate attempt to distract himself from the ache of his entire body.

The portal approached faster than he thought it would. Suddenly he was barrelling through it into the slightly warmer atmosphere of the basement.

Those ghosts are still on my tail. His feet touched the ground and pulled back up at at horrible sting of broken bone rubbing against broken bone. He cried out and pressed his lips together again; screaming would bring attention in the case that anybody in his house was awake. Danny floated dizzily towards the controls and leaned heavily on the big red CLOSE button that jutted up over the other switches and levers. The mechanical hum of motors working to close the yellow striped towards filled the quiet basement. The only other noise was the steady drip drip of ectoplasm onto the floor.

Danny collapsed. The blood on the back of his jumpsuit streaked against the side of the control panel. Okay, now he needed medical supplies. There were some in the basement, wasn't there? Maybe if he could just work up the energy to look for them …

A mechanical whir made Danny snap his eyes open. If he wasn't mistaken, that was the sound of …

The barrel of an ectogun met his gaze. Danny wheezed in a breath.

"Jack."

The gun lowered, albeit slowly, revealing the horribly calculating and stern faces of Danny's parents. Like he was a pile of gunk on the floor. He looked around at the ectoplasm surrounding his form. Well, yeah, he supposed that he was gunk on the floor.

"It's the ghost boy," hissed Jack, eyes flicking to the face of his wife and back to the roughened figure on his laboratory floor. "We should end it."

Maddie bit her lip. "You see that? He's breathing. Ghosts … they don't breathe."

"Habit," Jack growled, lifting his gun again.

"We're gonna discard him just like that? Whatever happened to studying his unique structure?"

"Right here, guys," Danny muttered distractedly, head tilting towards his shoulder. He reached to his throbbing side and pulled away with a hiss; a giant gash from his ribs to his ribs had met his fingers. "Why aren't I healing?"

"I was wondering the same thing," Maddie whispered. She squatted and came eye level to the ghost in front of her. "What happened?'

Danny grimaced at the way the question was worded without actual concern. "Skulker."

"The mechanical one? What'd he do?"

Danny frowned. He fought to talk over his tongue, which felt swollen. "Don' remember."

Maddie's frown deepened. "Corrupted ectosignature?" She wondered aloud. Then: "What's your name?"

"Need. First-Aid."

"What is your name?"

"Danny."

Maddie visibly shivered at the name of her youngest child. Danny noticed this, vaguely, and corrected himself. "Phantom! I'm Phantom." Suddenly, he doubled over and threw up directly beside his outstretched legs.

"What's happening to you?"

"Dyin'."

Both Jack and Maddie's eyebrows furrowed. "You are dead."

Phantom seemed to think this was funny, because he started chuckling weakly. "Almost," he mused, like he'd forgotten that there were people around him. "Almost dead." Seconds later, his eyes widened a fraction. "'M gonna die."

Neither Jack nor Maddie knew what to say to this, so they stared silently as Phantom bled out on their floor.

The dark room lit in a blinding white light. Maddie's eyes didn't have time to adjust before Phantom shouted "No!" and the light disappeared. He started wheezing in hasty breaths of anxiety. "'M gonna change!" Tears formed in the corners of his eyes. "I can't! "I can't! Stay awake!"

The light appeared again, but Phantom wasn't frantically yelling anymore. When Maddie's eyes adjusted, she saw that the light came from two rings that travelled up and down the ghost's body. Right before the top ring reached Phantom's face, his eyes closed and his entire body slumped into complete unconsciousness.

Maddie was momentarily blind even after the light subsided. Jack, beside her, reacted first.

"No."

Maddie rubbed the white spots from her eyes and looked again.

Before her, her youngest, her baby, lay in a heap where Phantom should have been. The ectoplasm around his form had turned horrifically blood red. It … it was blood. It was Danny Fenton's blood.

She stood suddenly. It couldn't be real. It had to be an illusion. Her hand reached up subconsciously to cover her mouth.

Next to her, Jack started running. "Where's the First-Aid!" He shouted crazily, frantically ripping open cabinets and overturning supplies that covered the tables.

Maddie silently shook.