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Orb/Reanimation
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"What's his name again?" asked Danny, picking at the hem of his shirt. Today had been… stressful, for a number of reasons. Partially the long drive and the disastrous breakfast stop, but also the fact that they were driving to meet a guy who was possibly:
a) Vlad Masters version 2.
b) A horrible hole in reality that would try to kill him.
c) Possessed, like the Keens.
d) Using ghost stuff without knowing it was ghost stuff.
e) Messing around with ghost stuff while knowing it was ghost stuff, but without any of the skill to keep it from messing him up in turn.
f) Crazy in some wonderful, unforeseen way.
Or, finally,
g) Mom and Dad's one and only normal friend.
Danny really wasn't holding for the last one, if he was being honest. After all, unlike Marianne, this guy had been part of the Paranormal Research Club.
Okay, maybe there were other, positive, options. It was completely possible for someone to be weird or crazy and not be evil or even particularly threatening. Most ghosts were like that, in fact.
Still.
"Frank Stone," said Dad, cheerfully.
"If he turns out to be a Dr. Frankenstein type, I quit," groaned Jazz. "Just so you know."
"You won't quit," said Danny, with complete confidence.
"He is a doctor," said Mom. "He was studying biology when we met him, for his undergraduate degree."
"I quit; I'm telling you."
"If you were really quitting," reasoned Danny, "you'd just open the door and jump out." He was pleased that Jazz was taking her turn as the resident overdramatic teenager. She carried that burden only rarely, but it did seem like long trips in the GAV really brought it out.
Maybe they made her remember the whole Youngblood thing. Who knew? Not Danny.
"I'm not going to jump out of a moving vehicle. That's more of a 'you' thing."
"I can't really dispute that," said Danny, remembering all the times he had, in fact, jumped out of a moving vehicle. "In my defense, I can fly."
"Why you can fly completely negates that as a defense."
Danny held up a finger. "Okay, so, first off, reality is not a moving vehicle."
"Anything can be a moving vehicle, depending on your reference frame."
"I agree on the moving part, but I dispute the vehicle part. Vehicle comes from the Latin vehiculum, which is 'a means of conveyance.' Reality is not a means of conveyance. Ergo, it cannot be a vehicle."
"Not so fast, brother dear. Words change meaning over time."
"Yeah, but that's still what vehicle means," said Danny. "Unless you're doing the medicine definition, anyway. I think."
"Reality is a metaphorical vehicle."
"Well, if it's metaphorical, it doesn't matter whether or not it's moving. Does it?"
"I'm… not sure."
"I think this is the place!" exclaimed Dad, pulling into a parking lot. "Golding City University Medical Research Lab."
"He doesn't live here," said Danny, slowly, "does he?" They weren't ambushing this guy at work, were they? Even if he did turn out to be just as bad as all of Mom and Dad's other friends, that was kind of mean.
(Except, the Keens had been acceptable, once they were no longer possessed, and even the ghost possessing them hadn't been too terrible.)
"He's in the building behind the lab," said Mom. "They let the teachers live on-campus, here. He's expecting us, anyway."
Right. Because they had called ahead, giving warning to their potential enemy. Curse you, common courtesy and sundry social conventions.
Jazz was glaring at the small name sign on the building, which was just barely visible through the rain. "Golding City University," she said, eyes narrowed.
"Uh, is something wrong?"
"Frankenstein," she said.
"Um," said Danny. He looked more closely at the name. "Golding City. Ingolstadt." Oh, no. Now he was glaring at the name, too. Because Jazz was right, and it would be his luck. Their parents' luck. Whatever.
"Do you feel anything?" asked Dad.
"No," said Danny.
"Well," said Mom. "We'll have to run a bit, try to stay out of the rain. It's too bad there isn't a closer parking lot…"
"I could also just make us all intangible," said Danny.
"What?"
"I could make us all intangible. I do it all the time to miss the rain when no one is looking too closely."
"Huh," said Mom.
"It isn't as if my powers disappear when I'm not fighting ghosts," said Danny. "I get to use them for other things."
"I know, I know, it just seems… petty."
"Petty is one of the best words to describe ghosts with," said Danny.
.
Frank Stone did not look like a Frankenstein. Not the monster, and not the 'doctor.'
(Because Victor Frankenstein had not, in fact, become a doctor, had he?)
He was actually pretty average looking. The same age as Mom and Dad, of course. Brown hair. Glasses. Skinny, but not that skinny. Could Dr. Stone rob a grave? Probably. But carrying the loot away without some mechanical advantage was probably out. Unless it was old loot. Dried out. Maybe just bones.
Corpses were heavy.
(No, Danny was not going to elaborate.)
Dr. Stone appeared to be somewhat confused about why Danny and Jazz were there. Evidently, Mom and Dad had managed to give the man the impression that they wanted to fund his research with the fortune they had inherited from Vlad.
Which, incidentally, had been inherited by Danny, who couldn't really do much with it until he was twenty-five. Not that he was particularly keen on funding… Whatever it was that Dr. Stone was researching.
Maybe that would be different if he could tell what Dr. Stone was talking about. Danny wasn't stupid, far from it, and had a good background in any number of esoteric subjects, but, well. It was hard to rival an adult lifetime of learning and research. Especially when he didn't have any context.
Mom and Dad's briefing on Dr. Stone had generally focused on what he had been interested in as a member of the Paranormal Research Club, not his true field of study.
"Oh," said Mom, suddenly, "this is about your organ transplant project, isn't it? You really need to provide more context. When you just jump right in like that, even we'll get lost!"
Okay. Danny felt better.
"Well, yes," said Dr. Stone. "I have been working on this off and on since college, you know how it is. I know you kept up with that portal business!" He flashed a nervous smile and set his coffee mug down on his coffee table. It made a soft chinking sound against the glass. "But the university gave me a grant, Vladco's been donating some supplies—From their chemical division, mostly—and I've been having a lot of success! I can't wait to show you. We've actually got a few specimens in near-stasis right now, all from mice. We're going to be implanting one tomorrow. See how it functions."
"Have you implanted any before?" asked Mom, leaning forward.
"A few, but, well. I can't say they were resounding successes. The most recent subject only lasted a few days… Although, that is better than the first! We've been adjusting some of our ratios."
"Say, Frank," said Dad. "What chemicals are you using for this, anyway? I know you're using them in conjunction with low temperatures, but keeping crystals from forming in the flesh—"
"Yes, yes, that's always been the problem with cryogenics," agreed Dr. Stone. Then they dove back into jargon and technical language.
Danny glanced sideways at Jazz, uneasy. Chemicals. From Vladco. Yeah. Not suspicious at all.
He leaned over. "Ten dollars says that he's using ectoplasm to reanimate dead bodies."
"I'm not taking that bet. Do you feel anything weird from him?" Jazz whispered back.
"Weird, yes, but…" Danny bit his lip. "I'm not sensing any… doors. Or ghosts."
"Okay," said Jazz. "So, when we do find his mad science lab full of dead body parts, what do we do?"
"Well… Nothing? As long as they're legal dead body parts, I guess. You know, from organ donors, or people who donated their bodies to science. I mean…" He shrugged. "You've read Frankenstein, too. And met Ellie."
"Hm. True," said Jazz. "I have to check my biases. I'm still quitting, though. As soon as we find his Frankenstein stuff. Just so you know."
"No, you aren't."
Jazz just sighed.
.
Danny walks silently through the halls of the research facility. True, Dr. Stone was planning on giving his family a tour of his workspace first thing tomorrow and had implied that other researchers would be doing the same, but Danny believed in being prepared.
Well. Sometimes. He was allowed to be inconsistent and contradictory. Like any teen, he was still learning how to exist.
Maybe he should stop comparing himself to 'any teen,' though. It was beginning to feel dishonest, even in his own head. Even though, technically, it was true.
Anyway.
This place was kind of creepy. At least, he presumed a normal person would find it creepy. Too bad he didn't know any normal people. Sam would think it was cool. Tucker would be freaking out because it was a medical research lab. Ancients, Danny was as bad as his parents.
It did have a number of features that one would typically only find on the set of a horror movie, however, so he felt fairly confident in his assessment of its creepiness. Also, he had encountered at least five different crimes against nature and sanity (it took one to know one), and he hadn't even gotten to Dr. Stone's lab yet.
He was impressed. He hadn't expected such a high concentration outside of Amity Park or Vlad's hideouts.
At the thought of Vlad, Danny drooped. Yeah. He still wasn't over the stupid fruitloop. Still hated the fact that he had died.
Back to the crimes against nature. Ectoplasm was definitely a component, if a small one. Hard to get things to glow that precise, reality bending shade of green otherwise. Also, well. Danny can sense ectoplasm.
And… Now he was in a room of jars full of diluted ectoplasm and… He sniffed. Formaldehyde? He frowned and decided the number, size, and arrangement of jars was suspicious. He walked around the table. Yep. That was in the outline of a human body. Yep.
Honestly, this wasn't any more alarming than the living mice impaled with various glowing needles, or the disturbingly brown heart beating in a fish tank a few rooms back. It was, also, significantly less alarming than the prosthetic face (mainly because, dang, that thing looked realistic), the (fresh) skeleton someone had been injecting ectoplasm into (yikes), and the weird flesh… blob… thing that someone had just left out in their workspace.
Still. This was another point for the 'someone is building a Frankenstein's monster in this building' theory, and Danny had kind of been hoping that he was wrong.
He walked out of the room, on alert for random murderous corpse monsters (or sad corpse monsters that needed a shoulder to cry on, a restraining order against their creators, and a loving home). Or mad scientists. Because, at this point, he was fairly certain that everyone who worked here was crazy, and not necessarily in the fun way Mom and Dad were.
He was glad they had decided to sleep in the GAV and ignore Dr. Stone's invitation to stay in his apartment.
Dr. Stone's office was just next door. His lab, just beyond that. Danny approached cautiously, his ghost half on high alert, and his deeper self stirring uneasily.
He laid a hand flat against the door, and that stirring became wakefulness.
Crimes against nature. Hubris. Pride.
Superbia. It had to be.
A hole. A wound.
Well. This was fast. Even with the Keens' list of Paranormal Research Club members they had encountered while possessed, Danny hadn't expected to find another thing like Gula so quickly.
He hadn't wanted to. Despite his outward pessimism, he had hoped that there weren't any more.
After several frozen moments where Danny braced himself for an attack, he realized one wasn't forthcoming. The tear beyond the door had not noticed him, was not trying to consume him.
So, he had a choice. He could either try to deal with this alone, right now, or he could sneak away and tell his family what he had found. Both choices had pros and cons.
Before even a second had passed, Danny was easing away from the door. He hadn't quite promised to share if he felt anything strange, if he had detected anything bad, but… It was a near thing, and he didn't want to be dishonest with his family after they had been so accepting of all his… Stuff.
Yeah. Call it stuff. Nice and generic. Covers everything.
Plus, his encounter with Gula had confirmed that he needed backup.
He refrained from calling on his powers on the way out. He didn't want to draw attention. The limits of the doors to the place which should not be mentioned were largely unknown to him.
Luckily, the doors weren't alarmed, and he got back to the GAV without a problem. He poked Jazz awake first.
"Hey," he said, "we've got a problem."
.
"This portal is just… Sitting there," said Mom.
"Yep."
"In Frank's office."
"Well, I think it might actually be in the lab, but yes. It's kind of freaking me out."
"Is Frank sleeping in his lab?" asked Dad, stroking the stubble on his chin.
"No, I checked that before I went in," said Danny. "He's in his apartment."
"You just… broke into his apartment?" asked Mom.
Danny shrugged. "I didn't break anything," he said. "But, I mean, what else was I supposed to do?"
For a moment, it looked like Mom was about to argue or scold him, but she shook her head. "Alright, then someone else is in his office."
"Maybe. I'm not sure if these portals need a person attached or not. Using person in the very loosest of senses, because…" He made a gesture he hoped would be interpreted as a soul being forcibly removed from a body without killing the body.
"You don't think it's in the, um," Jazz also made a vague gesture.
"You mean the hypothetical Frankenstein's monster he's made? Yeah. I think that's likely. Also, judging from the sheer amount of, um, weird stuff in the other labs, I'd say it's influencing everyone and everything around it, too."
"Is that a thing it can do?" asked Mom.
"I mean, I can do that," said Danny. He paused. "'I' in this case being the portal. Yeah. That's why Amity Park is so… Amity Park."
Mom breathed out, slowly. "Sweetie, trust me on this, Amity Park was strange long before we made the portal.
"Well, yes?" said Danny, not seeing what that had to do with it. "So?"
"So, that strangeness couldn't be caused by the portal."
"Mom. I'm—It's a hole in reality. Do you think it's going to obey the laws of cause and effect? You went to Amity Park because it was already a 'thin spot,' right? I was already there."
Mom looked vaguely ill.
"Okay," said Jazz. "Let's table that discussion for right now. What are we going to do about this? Break in? Wait for our 'tour' tomorrow?"
"I don't like the idea of waiting for Dr. Stone to give us a tour," said Danny. "I don't want to give them time to prepare for us."
"He doesn't know what we're here for, though," said Dad. "Does he?"
"I don't know," said Danny. "I can't read minds."
"Yet," added Jazz.
"Do you think he even knows about the…" It was Mom's turn to enter the gesturing game.
"Let's just call it a hell portal for the sake of communication," said Danny, despite the fact that the term did not do the actuality justice. "Or Superbia for this particular one. I think this must be Superbia, anyway." He didn't want to imagine the possibility of even more of these things out there.
"I'm not sure how he couldn't notice that something strange was going on," said Dad. "Even if he was using ectoplasm and other supernatural elements in his research, we gave him a good grounding in what to expect from ectoplasm in college."
"Yeah," said Jazz. "But not everyone is like you and Mom. Your college days were over two decades ago."
Something moving in the dark and rain beyond the GAV windows, catching Danny's eye. He pushed past his family to get a better look, blinking to adjust his eyes.
"Heck," he said. "We have a mob."
"What?" exclaimed Dad, rushing to the console to turn on the GAV's exterior floodlights.
They illuminated Dr. Stone and a crowd of college and graduate students quite nicely. Their eyes reflected a dim red. The GAV was, as far as Danny could see, surrounded.
Very briefly, the thought of gunning the GAV and crashing through the crowd crossed his mind. It was just as quickly dismissed.
He didn't know what the line between influenced and mind controlled was, or how easily Superbia could cross it. It was even possible that the 'hell portal' could vault over both of those and land directly in possession.
"Ghost shield?" suggested Danny.
"Will it do anything?" asked Mom.
"Won't hurt," said Danny with a shrug.
Mom flipped the switch.
"What are we going to do?" asked Jazz, softly. "Wait them out?"
"Realistically," said Danny, "we don't have enough food and water to do that. With this many people, they could take turns watching us."
"Call the police?" suggested Maddie. The other three turned to look at her. "They are still human, aren't they?"
"Yeah," said Danny, frowning. "But I don't know how much, um, agency they have right now. If we were in Amity, I'd say sure, our police understand, mostly, but… Also, bringing extra hostages into this might not be a good idea."
"If it's the campus police that would get called, they might be affected, too," said Jazz.
"They have campus police? How do you know?"
"This college sent me a brochure once."
"Right. Um. I could always just fly us out of here," said Danny.
"Assuming they don't have ranged attacks," said Mom, dubiously.
"Hm. Yeah. I think I could lift the GAV, and then we could just leave the shield on."
"Assuming the shield does anything."
Danny shrugged. "I can always just try to fight them outright. I'd prefer not to do that, though."
Mom inhaled as if she were about to say something but was cut off by a loud noise from outside.
"Jack~ Maddie~ I know you're in there." That was Dr. Stone's voice, warped by a megaphone speaker. "Why don't you come out and see what I've done? I dare say I've exceeded even our wildest dreams from college." A long pause. "I even made a portal… Weren't you trying to get one of those? Isn't that what got good old Vlad hospitalized?" There was laughter. Too much laughter.
The mob was laughing, too.
Superbia. Pride.
Danny knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to walk out and deal with the threat that was grating on his every sense. But… He knew that prideful actions were contraindicated under the present circumstances.
Influence. Right. How much could Danny be influenced?
How much could his family be influenced?
He looked up at his parents, seeking guidance. They seemed uncertain, too.
"I didn't destroy any lives- I made new life. New life! Powered by an interdimensional portal, oh, yes… Can you imagine the application? Can you imagine a new world?"
"Okay, he didn't seem like this in the apartment," muttered Jazz. "We have human nonlethal weapons, right?"
"Still have to worry about running people over," said Danny. He looked back at the lab building. "We could try to cut this off at the source. They aren't protecting the building. They're using it as part of their perimeter."
Eyes turned to the dimly lit building.
"We can cover you," offered Dad.
"I don't like this any better than you flying off with us," said Mom. "But… It offers a more permanent solution."
Danny should have gone after it when he was in the building the first time. Well. Time only rewound for one ghost, and that ghost wasn't him.
Unless he counted… Never mind. The point was, despite all his other wonderful and troubling features, Danny couldn't go back and change a decision he'd already made. Agonizing over it was a waste of time and brain power.
Dad got behind the wheel. Jazz crawled up into the well-disguised turret. Maddie manned the other weapons.
Danny stood at the door, ready to run, ready to transform as soon as he was through the shield.
Family bonding activities. So much fun.
.
The mob attacked before he got the door open. He still made it to the building.
.
Danny didn't bother with doors or windows or halls. He remembered what floor Dr. Stone's office was on, and, now that he was sensitized to it, he could feel Superbia. He went through the walls, straight as an arrow.
(He wondered, briefly, if he was being as bigoted as he'd often felt his parents to be. If he was ascribing more evil to the portals to the Red Country than was warranted. If he was simply holding up a dark mirror and seeing what he feared from himself.)
(But no. He did not command like that. He did not force his people to assemble armies in the night or attack people. He kept them safe. He had rules.)
The lab was awash in sick red not-light that burned in Danny's mind. It was barely physically perceptible, more present in senses that couldn't translate to human terms than anything to do with Danny's eyes, ghostly or not.
In the center of the lab, on an operation table, was a stitched-together corpse. Perhaps, under other circumstances, it would have been a very pretty corpse. A young woman with long dark hair and broad shoulders.
Its chest had been torn open. Half-in half-out of the cavity was a red orb, the source of the not-light, like some sick imitation of a ghost core.
(It reminded Danny of Freakshow's staff, and he realized that he never did find out where that horrid thing had come from.)
They had been trying to make something like Danny.
He felt like he had eaten those blood blossom pancakes.
Danny gritted his teeth and let his light, white-green and clear, fill his hands. Ectoplasm fought against the miasma in the air, an oddly purifying presence. It wasn't enough to chase away the wrongness. This wasn't his space.
The fight against Gula was different. Both he and it had been within nominally living bodies. They had been next to the heart of Danny's territory, his home ground. Danny had been tricked and trapped, taken off guard, unable to use the tricks he had grown used to while fighting ghosts and Vlad.
(He could feel Superbia in his mind, pride urging him forward towards error. Pride in his abilities, in his mind, in his family.)
Danny drifted sideways, watching. Listening. Other things in the building were stirring. Sparks of wrongness growing and twisting, warping into fountains and springs. This whole building was full of it. Rotten to the bones. It pressed against his teeth.
Careful.
He had to be careful.
The orb shone.
(Too much like Freakshow's staff.)
(Influence, Danny remembered. Just how close was it to mind control?)
Doing this as a human was impossible. Trying to fight that as a ghost was unwise.
The always-open always-closed door that both contained and laid within Danny's soul shifted. So did the corpse on the table, its constituent parts sliding over each other gruesomely. Death had lost its hold, lost its meaning. The ghost that was Danny twisted, and he was too human, too alive.
Special little thing. You think you can defeat us.
He could. He could open himself and wash all this away in an instant. He could burn with electric fire and the cold of deep space. He could reach out. The orb would be as dust under his hand.
He didn't move.
In thinking you become…
Un-light burned up from the grooves in the tile floor. It didn't reach the soles of his boots, didn't reach his soul. He gritted his teeth.
US.
YOUR VICTORY IS OURS.
"Wow, you picked the wrong person to use that strategy on," said Danny, out loud. Internally, he pulled on the delicate and frayed strands of reality that persisted even here. "I have so much imposter syndrome and anxiety that it isn't even funny. I know I can't beat you. Not here."
But then, he didn't have to.
He found the right string and pulled. He found the key and opened the door. Death was in the room again. Danny could move again. Not so much the pile of flesh in front of him. It was hard, it hurt, to keep hold of something like this, but half of Danny was this, was dead, even if he had far too many halves to ever be whole.
Ice coated the floor, the tiles cracking under the sudden temperature change. He dropped to the floor and was human.
An impossible thing.
And behind the human—
Well. Danny didn't have to defeat Superbia. It wasn't like Gula, didn't have that strength, that experience. He just had to make it so the things that would, could.
(Danny had rules. Some of them were to protect himself.)
He walked over to the orb. Ultimately, it was just a representation, not Superbia itself. Still. He put his foot down on it and slowly transferred his weight to it until it cracked. Until it splintered. Until it shattered. Until he ground its dust under his heel.
Then, the building collapsed. Danny didn't move, didn't have to move. He was a ghost again, floating in the air, exactly where he had been, all the floors having passed harmlessly through him.
Outside, the faculty and student body of the college were sprawled in piles on the ground. The GAV was, somehow, halfway up a tree. A shockingly sturdy tree. Several statues were in pieces.
The sun was coming up.
Danny put a hand to his chest and assessed himself. Yes. Still here. Still himself. The Ghost Zone still sang in his bones, in his core. He was still anchored in Amity Park. Everything in order.
This place, though… This place would be tainted for years, a thin spot forever. He could feel it, now. Why couldn't he feel it before, when they drove in?
He shuddered. Then he flew down to the GAV and knocked on the window. Mom rolled it down.
"Want me to fly us away to somewhere secluded before the cops get called and we get asked a bunch of awkward questions?" he asked.
Mom closed her eyes. "Please do," she said.