Chapter Ten: Descent Into Mystery

"Jeez Ellie," Jake complained as his sister looked once again at the microscope slide, "you've been staring in that thing for hours! It's already half-past midnight!"

Ellie ignored her brother, adjusting the piece of glass on the stage once more. As she looked from a new angle, the result was the same: blots of red and yellow, flecked with green.

"It just doesn't make any sense," she yawned. "I can't pinpoint exactly how this ectoplasm got into our bloodstream. I haven't been able to find any blood samples from before the accident, so there's no way of telling what the difference is. At least, not with these." She gestured to a row of blood slides from medical donors. "We need our blood for that."

She tossed the slide carelessly aside with the others. "I don't believe it. I just don't believe it. It's been over a month since we got these powers, and we still have absolutely no idea where they came from or who or what is responsible."

"Sis, don't beat yourself up about that," Jake said. "Besides, it might be better if we don't know. What if we did, and it turned out to be something bad?"

"What? Like we're some kind of spy planted by ghosts to destroy all of humanity?"

"That's a little negative, but yes. Like that."

Ellie raised an eye. "You don't really think it'll be something like that, do you?"

"I hope not, but it might not matter anyway. Did you see that article Shaw posted the day after the attack?"

"About how we're just a group of punk kids who only care about wailing on each other? About how we're a menace to both our societies? About how we should be shoved back into the foul abyss from whence we came? No; what did he write?"

"Oh ha ha," Jake said sardonically. "The point is that a lot of people don't seem to appreciate what we did. They think we're as dangerous as Box Lunch."

"You know better than to flatter that teen. She's crazy."

"Shaw appears to say the same about us. Considering the damage to the weather dome we caused, I can't entirely blame him."

A buzzer on Jake's watch sounded off through Ellie's room. The green LED read 12:37 P.M.

"We'll have to get back to this later," he said. "We'd better get to bed."

"Got it," Ellie replied. "'Night."

As she put the microscope away, Ellie saw Jake leave from out of her eye's penumbra. The room became a bit more desolate upon his absence. Ellie knew that one she went to sleep, the dreams would start again. Her mind palace had changed in the last month. The eerie miasma that was cast upon the halls of her id was spreading. Her palace was split between two warring halves of her mind.

But the split wasn't even.

It favored the id.

Vladimir Masters has been known as many things. Venture capitalist, international tycoon, world-renowned dilettante, military provider, and even asylum patient have been among the many hats he has worn.

Inside, Vlad is none of these things.

Inside, Vlad is what is collectively known in the Ghost Zone as a halfa. An abomination of nature, a half-living fusion of human physicality and spectral power. His mind is in two: the superego that is Masters conspiring with the id that is Plasmius.

It was this way for nearly thirty years.

Now, it begins anew.

Right now, the aforementioned halfa was in his office, picking out a suitable ensemble for the meeting he had been waiting for over a period of fifteen years. Those years were absolute torture on the man. Not only did he not have the power to gain what he wanted, he wasn't even entirely sure what he wanted. With that part of his mind effectively nullified, his mind shattered.

Now, it had been rebuilt. Now, Vlad Masters was exactly sure of what he wanted. Now, he could finally gain what he wanted.

All he needed was the will to take it; no matter what or who stood in his way.

As Vlad switched into his trademark designer's suit, red mist permeated his sinuses, spilling out his nostrils. The scent of artificial lubricant followed along with it.

"Hello, Nicolai," he said silkily.

Sure enough, when he turned to face the entrance to his office, the self-proclaimed 'Master of All Things Electronic and Beeping' was standing in the doorway. His cyberpunk uniform, undercut ponytail, and dark-tinted sunglasses were unmistakable anywhere. As he walked in, a heavy clank clank clank accompanied the clack of the black boots he wore.

"Hello, Vlad," Technus replied nasally. "I trust that you're ready for your little...trip."

Vlad groaned. It was only Technus' mechakinetic expertise, tactical knowledge, and love of infamy that had kept him on board the Dalv Corp train for so long. He'd nearly bankrupted the company with this stupid project of his, as well as with the construction of his legions of personal bodyguards. However, Vlad wasn't going to let a few random personality quirks ground his efforts he'd worked on for so long.

"Yes, I'm ready Nic," Vlad replied. "Your robot had better be ready as well. It's already cost us too much."

"Don't worry, it's ready. Disable cloaking device."

A metallic creature that bore a strong resemblance to a huntsman arachnid appeared in the middle of the room. Its body was a small, elliptical disc of metal, surrounded by six tentaclelike arms, three green claws serving as each 'arm's' fingers. On the front of the ellipse, there was a thin, cablelike stalk, a cylinder on the end that sported a green lens.

"Greetings, Mr. Masters," came a cool, mechanical voice. "I am the Heuristically Engineered Experimental Android for Protection, Observation, and Diagnosis. Code designation: HEXAPOD. I have already been briefed on my mission criteria by Father."

Vlad blinked in surprise. "Father?"

"Erm...That's what it regards me as," Technus explained, "since I created it, and all."

"Very well," Vlad snorted. "As long as it does its job correctly, I'll be satisfied."

"I shall complete my task as ordered, sir," the robot said. It then disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. Vlad wasn't surprised; he'd seen this thing do dozens of tricks.

As he got his black coat from its hanger, along with a matching hat, Vlad turned back to his Chairman of the Board.

"One last thing," he said. "Do you have the masking gas?"

"Of course." Technus handed him a bottle of yellow-greenish fluid that resembled cologne. "It's the one that smells like..." he read the label, "...night blooming jasmine."

"Very good." Vlad took the bottle, splashing its contents on places that seemed appropriate. He then screwed the stopper back on, handing the bottle back to Technus.

"See to things over the truce, will you? This particular businessman has a very special meeting."

As he went down the hall, he started to hum a rather unusual tune, followed by the familiar clank clank clank as he went.

There are many misconceptions about darkness that common people make. Usually, they make these errors in judgement not because of unintentional mistakes, but due to the fact that human beings will do anything to avoid searching for the things that they fear. And one thing they fear is the dark.

One common misunderstanding is the assumption that the darkness is something to be feared. This is not true in many ways. The darkness is merely an absence, an embodiment of the unknown. Humans fear the dark because they do not know what it envelops. However, the darkness must be used by people. It conceals our true identities, hearts, and souls toward those we do not trust. It also protects us from what we fear by concealing it in shadow.

Another misconception is that the darkness is temporary. Through the ages, night and day have alternated in their never ending dance, burning the thought into our minds that the day pushes away the darkness, and that night itself is only an illusion. Untrue. It is day that is the illusion, the trick of the light. While the sun brings day to the world, darkness requires no such source. It has always been, and it always will be.

But the most important characteristic of the darkness–as well as the most mistaken–is that it gives us the gift of light. Day is defined and glorified by the night it postpones, just as stars are defined and glorified by the shadow that surrounds them. Without the darkness, the light will never be appreciated, never be loved. It will always be hated for the revelation of the horrible truths it shows us. Yet, with the dark, light is embraced with open arms. For darkness embraces the light, and brings it forth from its heart.

The fear of the dark stems from the fact that while the light may emerge victorious, the dark will always win.

Ellen Cynthia Fenton realizes this. As she lies awake in her scarlet-sheeted bed, she realizes that the being she fears resides in these darkened corners of her mind. But in order to find out about the mystery that surrounds the ghost powers that have surfaced out of nowhere in her brother and her, she must journey deep into her mental mansion for a certain sample of blood that she saw as a child.

It's the only way to know what happened.

Ellie must know, even if it means facing the darkness itself...

The palace was divided. Divided between light and darkness, favoring the shadows. This reminded Ellie of the planet Mercury, where its slow rotation caused one side to constantly face towards the sun and the other side to face away.

But here, the darkness was deep. It fully enveloped the id of the palace in shadows, and was advancing in on the ego. Already, Ellie had felt a little voice in her head when awake, telling her to take Chrissy's brownie at lunch, even though she was her best friend. It scared her that she would even think that.

Now, the force that told her to steal from her friend had taken hold of the only place that could explain this mystery. Somewhere in the Hall of Science, where she kept all her knowledge of microbiology, that thing was lurking about doing who knows what.

Swallowing her pulse, Ellie journeyed past the statue of Adonis, and into the darkness.

It seemed less dark as she went inside. This shadowmass had the apparent consistency of a fog bank, where visibility was bad, but still possible. In the gloom, Ellie could make out the series of lockers leading to the part of her mind that stored her science mnemonics. She followed the sequence–214, 215, 216, 217–until she came across a door emblazoned with the symbol of a hydrogen atom. It was simple, yet memorable. Perfect for the palace.

Ellie touched the door, which opened on command. Inside was an infinitely long hall lined with desks, filing cabinets, and mountains upon mountains of boxes. It looked like the managing area of a warehouse. She walked down the darkened halls, remembering the old mnemonic links she used with her slides. Finally, after the vampire bat saliva sample, she came across an old slide she'd used two years ago. It had been in her science class, and she had been assigned to take a sample of her blood and look at it under the scope, taking notes on its movement. Sure enough, the notes were there, fastened to the slide with a paperclip.

She thumbed through the notes, using another trained link to remember them with exact clarity. The sample had been unusual when compared to the others; it showed excessive amounts of mutated red blood cells unlike any seen before in humans. Back then, her teachers had put it off to sample contamination. Now, she wasn't so sure. The blood cells from the sample were a bit discolored, as though in early stages of necrosis. But they functioned perfectly, just like normal cells.

"What's the problem, then?" she asked herself aloud. "This semi-necrosis has something to do with it. I just know it. Maybe if I examined it closer..."

She took a microscope from a nearby desk, plugging in the light that illuminated the stage. Slipping the glass slide under the viewport, she examined the cells once again. The stated dead quality of the red cells was there, along with the misshapenness. But there was something else.

Flecks of green among the plasma. Barely visible, but present.

However, instead of helping to solve the mystery, the slide merely compounded the difficulty. Those traces of ectoplasm were never supposed to be there. The slide was supposed to be a control group used to create a possible hypothesis.

Now, Ellie was confused, scared, and feeling the beginnings of a migraine. She wanted to get out of this place and relax against the statue in the main hall...

An icy, stinging feeling spread up her throat and through her lips, culminating in a wisp of blue vapor.

Terrified at what this new activation of her ghost-sense could bring–she'd reasoned that it went off when ghosts were close by a few days ago after the attack–Ellie dashed out of the Hall of Science, running aimlessly through the gloom. She was not paying attention or giving a care to where she went, so long as it took her away from that awful form–

WHAM!

Ellie felt solid wood bite into the bridge of her nose. As she reeled back, clutching the afflicted area, she saw a door in the gloom, hewn from oak that looked like it was still growing. In the center was a section of a poem she was familiar with:

Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose garden.

The Eliot poem mystified her, as it often did when Jake had read it to her. She reached out to touch the door, and it opened on command. Within was sunshine.

Warm, inviting sunshine.

As Ellie journeyed inwards towards the glare, she could make out a garden, teeming with life. Butterflies, birds, rabbits, and squirrels were among the many creatures that lived in this haven. For a second, Ellie thought she'd somehow found a way through the looking glass into Wonderland.

She moved cautiously into this storybook room as cute little animals stared at her expectantly. Something here was not right; she never liked these things, even when she was a toddler. There was something amiss...

"Like it?" asked a scarily familiar voice. "I made it myself."

From out of the lowermost branch of a nearby tree, a teenage girl hung by the crook of her knees, swinging back and forth playfully. She wore a black and white hazmat suit and bore ice-white hair and green eyes. There was an eerie quality to her, like that of an unopened door in an abandoned house.

"Who are you?" Ellie asked carefully.

"Don't play 'little miss innocent' with me," the girl said sternly. She dropped out of the tree, striding across the bed of roses. "You know who I am. You've always known."

Ellie backed away from the girl, her pulse bouncing in her throat like a pinball.

"That blood sample isn't an aberrant sample," she continued. "You already know that, but you won't admit it to yourself. You don't want to think of what you might be. Of what we might be. You're weak. You would never have won that ghost battle without me. You survived because of me."

The rose garden vanished in shadow, its light pooling towards her ghostly id. Light was being drained from the very fabric of her mind palace itself. Ellie was choking on ozone and the smell of decay...

Ellie shot up in bed, drenched in cold perspiration. The room was cast in an eerie miasma from the light on her digital clock, the reading from which read 3:01 A.M. In the corner of the room, she could make out Snickerdoodle, curled up on his sleeping cushion. Shadows stretched and swirled and filled the world.

"What's the matter with me?" she asked aloud. "Jake gets ghost powers, he's just fine. I get ghost powers, I start going crazy?"

She got out of bed, trudging to the bathroom. In the harsh glare of the light fixtures, her features looked weary and thin in the mirror. Bags of puce circled her eyes, which were bloodshot and tired. Her hair was a train wreck, and her pajamas were wrinkled beyond repair. She looked like someone who'd just gone through a haunted train ride five hundred times in a row.

After she got a drink of water, Ellie got back into bed. As she lay down, she remembered what her id had said to her:

You survived because of me.

It left her haunted. She felt drained of strength; unable to even summon the effort to get up and read as she usually did when she had nightmares. She looked around her room: it was a mess. It was though primal darkness was claiming the room.

Just as it claimed the garden.