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Chapter 145: Scientific Madmen

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"Now," said Vlad, "keep in mind that the next floor is one that is divided into many rooms, and that some of them can be tempting."

"Tempting, how?" asked Danny, already not liking the sound of it.

Vlad rolled his eyes. "Well, it's somewhat ridiculous."

"It is not," said Prunella. "It's perfectly reasonable, and it shares the burden of research with those who have an inclination towards psychology!"

"It turns everyone into mad scientists. It's irresponsible."

"In all honestly, it isn't as if you need much help to turn into a mad scientist," shot back Prunella.

"He doesn't need any help at all," said Danny. "You sure it changed you? Ellie, did it change him?"

"I don't know, he never took me to that floor."

"I am not a mad scientist!"

"The term 'mad' isn't terribly accurate," said Prunella. "It's more along the lines of 'passionate.' Or perhaps 'motivated' is the correct term."

Danny sighed. On one hand, it was good to have a guide who knew the Tower well. On the other, Prunella was obviously mainly motivated by the prospect of collecting research data. Mainly. She also seemed like a decent person who didn't want them to to get hurt. But. Yeah. Being looked at as mainly research subjects wasn't pleasant, nor did it engender trust.

"Do you get changed on the next floor?" asked Lester.

"Of course not! I'm always passionate!"

… This did not surprise Danny.

"What do you mean by tempting?"

"The rooms are labs. Fully stocked labs," said Vlad, wrinkling his nose. "Under the conditions of that floor, you will want to stay. Experiment. But you cannot. We must be extremely careful to avoid researchers and delays."

"Why?" asked Hannah.

"Do you know the meaning of the word 'vivisection?'"

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Danny curled his lips back to show teeth. "Why would anyone want to stay here?" he asked, disgusted. "What's the point? It's completely enclosed! You can't see the stars. Although you wouldn't be able to in the Ghost Zone anyway. I can't imagine the setups for ectobiology, general ectology, metaphysics, and particle physics are any better. There just wasn't any thought put into this. I thought you said staying here would be tempting, Vladimir."

Vlad made a sound like a dying cat, which was exactly what Danny was going for. Hey, if Vlad called Danny 'Daniel' all the time, then Danny was very well going to call him by his full name. Especially since it annoyed him so much that Danny could make fun of him for being a grown man bothered by his own full first name. Not that the name, in itself, was a bad thing, nor was Vlad's dislike of it, but it was okay to mock since it was Vlad. Danny would mock Vlad for thinking the sky was blue, if he thought he could get away with it.

But even Vlad's discomfort wasn't enough to distract Danny for long.

"You said the labs were fully stocked," complained Danny. He opened a door to look in on an equally disappointing lab room.

"These first ones are always a little depleted," said Prunella. "So many people go through them, after all..."

"Uh huh," said Danny. He looked back over his shoulder. "Su-" He paused. Counted. Counted again. "Where did Mikey and Ricky go? And- Kwan, is that a lab coat? Where did you-? Oh, right. Never mind. But, really. Mikey? Ricky? Anyone?"

There was a mutter of negatives, accompanied by a quiet "Butter biscuits," from Vlad, and a "The Missing!" from Mr Lancer.

"So no one," Danny gestured at the many doors out of the first lab, "saw where they went? None of you? And... Star is also missing. Okay."

"You didn't see where they went either, Danny," said Paulina. "Gosh, don't blame us for everything."

Danny blushed. There was his inability to talk to people properly popping up again. He wished he wasn't such a freak, sometimes. "I'm not. I'm just annoyed." He crossed his arms. "We're going to have to find them. Um. We know they couldn't have come through this door, since we were all looking at it, and that one is too close to Mr Lancer, so... That leaves those three." He pointed. "But we don't even know that they went together... I mean, they probably did. Mikey and Ricky are friends, right? But Star is... not. Right?"

"Uh, duh?" said Paulina. "Do you live under a rock, or something? It isn't rocket science. It isn't even dermatology."

"What does dermatology have to do with anything?" asked Danny.

"Me," said Paulina.

Danny blinked slowly at her. Was that supposed to make sense? He didn't really know. Why and how could he understand some people so well, and others not at all?

"H-Hey," said Kwan, getting Prunella's attention. "Is there a medical research wing on this floor?"

"Yes," she said, "it's right over there, a few rooms down."

Kwan nodded.

Danny frowned. "Wait, Kwan, why-?"

"Sorry! I have to cure my dad's cancer!" He ran through the door.

There was a beat as the door swung behind him, and Danny, unwilling to leave the rest of the class, stared, frozen. Kwan's dad didn't even have cancer, as far as Danny knew, and Danny made it his job to know a lot about his people, even if he didn't understand it. Which was maybe a little creepy. But, hey. He was a ghost. That was his thing. One of his things.

The class scattered.

"No! No, don't!" shouted Danny. It didn't help any. He groaned, bent at the waist, and pounded his head into the metallic surface of a lab table. "Why?" he moaned. "Haven't we done this enough to know that it's a bad idea?"

The only people left were Danny, Vlad, Ellie, Prunella (who was smiling in the most infuriating way), Mia, Mr Lancer (who was gaping), and Ashley.

Danny moaned again. Even Valerie had jumped ship. Danny suspected that Mia was only still here because she couldn't see. From the way she was squinting, she was even more near-sighted than usual.

He picked himself up. "Okay," he said. "Everyone is supposed to be really smart on this floor, right? So, any insights about how to solve this problem?"

"Um," said Mia, raising her hand.

"Yes, Mia?"

"I don't think this floor makes us smarter, it just makes us dedicated scientists."

"Sure, but dedicated scientists who are in high school. Or... Huh. Well, only you and I are in high school. The rest of you... It still takes some intelligence to be a scientist, right? I think we have to be smarter. I hope we're smarter." He paused. "So, no ideas?"

"Now someone wants my ideas," muttered Mr Lancer. "They could have had them before but, no, the grants fell through... had to be a teacher... had to teach in ghost town... can't believe this..." Mr Lancer cleared his throat. "Other than going through room by room until we find them all? No."

"We could leave them," said Vlad. "We should leave them. Honestly, Daniel, they're more trouble than they're worth. We can send a specialist through to get them. Someone without a scientific bone in their body."

Danny knew a lot of people without any bones in their bodies, and he didn't think that would work. Many of them were very scientifically oriented.

"Yeah, no," said Danny. "They'll die."

"We could split up?" asked Ellie, dubiously.

"I don't think that's a good idea," said Danny.

"I don't know," said Ellie. "I'd like to see the other labs, though."

"Really? You too? Prunella, do you know the layout of this floor? Please?" He approached her, hands clasped. "I don't want my friends to die in lab accidents. I've done that. It's not great."

"You've done that?" said Mia.

Danny winced. "Later."

Prunella sighed. "Not completely. But a friend of mine is here regularly. I know where she likes to stay."

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Issitoq held the crystal disdainfully, between the very tips of two of his clawed fingers.

"Penelope Spectra," he said. "This is your last chance. You will find the abominations, and you will destroy them. Or I will arrange for your core to be dropped in the deepest, darkest hole I can find, and watch as you shrivel away. The only reason I haven't done it already, is because you did get the worst of the three of them out of Elysium."

The core vibrated slightly under his fingers.

"That goes for the rest of you as well," he said, regarding the assembled ghosts with a look akin to what one might bestow on another person's vomit. "You have one chance. One."

One ghost cackled. "For a chance at seeing what makes a halfa tick? I'll take the risk!"

The other ghosts twitched, muttered, or sniffled. Few of them nodded, or otherwise signified acknowledgment. Issitoq had to admit that he was scraping the bottom of the barrel with this. He was recruiting madmen from the Grinder. But he wanted to get rid of the abomination before it was back under Pandora's protection, and pulling more competent minions from farther afield in either time or space would draw suspicion and use more of the hourglass's power than he was willing to expend. He had back-up plans, but many of the more desperate ones required the hourglass.

With a flick of his fingers, Issitoq opened a portal that led from the small, dark cave to the appropriate Tower door.

"Go on, then."

He tossed the crystal to the ground. Its shadow twisted and boiled, lifting up off the floor in the form of pitch-black flames. It wasn't long before the shadow became a silhoutte of a woman. One Penelope Spectra.

Spectra glowered at Issitoq, but said nothing before she, too, left for the Tower.

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Prunella's friend was not in residence, as it turned out. Also, their room, an odd combination between office space and lab, was a mess, a disaster area, worse than the Fenton's basement lab. It looked like someone had ransacked it.

Danny held the collar of his shirt over his mouth. There was a nasty chemical smell in the air, and he didn't want to breathe in any more of it than he had to.

"Is it always like this?" asked Danny, not daring to take more than a few steps in. There were things spilled on the floor.

"No," said Prunella. "This isn't right at all."

Danny shook his head. At least coming here hadn't been a total waste. They had located Rebecca and Elliot on the way, dragging them away from a group of ghosts researching biology just before Rebecca got stabbed with a nasty looking needle.

Most of the labs they had passed through were either set up for chemistry, biology, or ectobiology. Danny was somewhat intrigued by the ectobiology labs, but he had one in his basement, they were of limited interest to him.

None of the ghosts they had encountered had been very helpful. They were too absorbed in their studies, and were unwilling to be pulled away from them. Taking Elliot and Rebecca away had roused contention and ended in a tussle, but that tussle had ended quickly, with the ghosts bitterly returning to their work. Few of them would even talk to Danny and the others, none had noticed anyone else come in.

"Any idea what could have happened?"

Prunella shook her head. "No. She's always here. I don't understand what could have happened."

"She was attacked?" suggested Ellie. "I mean, that's what this looks like. Did she have any enemies?"

"That's a ridiculous question. Everyone has enemies. That's what happens when you're essentially immortal and hold grudges."

"Okay, what I meant was, does she have any enemies that could be here? And who, uh, would dump ten pounds of purple goo all over her floor?"

"I don't know!"

"Let's just go," said Danny. "The more time we spend here, the more likely it is that someone has their arm cut off for science."

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Pandora's lips thinned as she looked out over the battlefield from a relatively 'lofty' vantage. She didn't like what she was seeing. There were more mercenaries than she had initially estimated. They had been hiding behind the flying islands, or standing by invisibly. Oh, to be certain sure, her people were more than holding their own. Each Elysian soldier was worth more than a dozen of these mercenaries. However, with groups Alpha and Beta in the Tower, all available soldiers were involved in the defense of the ship.

This meant there was no one to investigate or intervene when an incredibly suspicious and inconveniently timed portal appeared in front of one of the Tower's exterior doors, and disgorged a number of ghosts. The ghosts then proceeded directly into the Tower. This would have been bad enough, as most of them appeared to be the kind of deranged scientists that gave the Grinder its bad reputation, but then Pandora spotted one Penelope Spectra.

That was not good.

That was one of the floors Danny might be on. This felt like Issitoq's work, though she was unsure how he could have organized it all so quickly when he had been all but blindsided by the decision of the Council of Ancients. Not to mention the portal. Issitoq should not be able to do that. The creation of portals was a rare power, and not one that Issitoq possessed. Clockwork certainly wasn't going to make portals for Issitoq. Danny's safety, his child's safety, was one of the few loopholes in his contract he could actually use.

She could order the ship farther in, reduce the compliment protecting it, send those removed from the ship into the Tower after Spectra's cohort. That would be dangerous, but doable. The ship probably wouldn't be destroyed, and even if it was, the ship wasn't exactly necessary.

For ghosts.

No, for ghosts it would just make the journey back to Elysium take longer, be more difficult, if that. They had fast fliers among their numbers. But she hadn't brought the ship along just to make the trip easier, although that had been a consideration, she had brought it along so that there would be somewhere to put Danny's human classmates, so they wouldn't be forced to carry the humans in their arms all the way back to Elysium.

Then there were the humans already on board. She couldn't risk their lives like that.

On the other hand... Well. The situation was already chaotic. If things got worse, it could only be by increments.

(This was patently untrue, and Pandora knew it, but positive thinking was her bailiwick, and no small amount of her power.)

They would want to do it, to help. They had been pushing for it for a greater or lesser extent for the entire trip. Oh, she hoped she wasn't going to regret this.

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"Oh, cool," said Tucker. He bounced merrily over to the wall. "Check out these circuits!"

"Focus," said Sam, pulling him back.

The handful of Elysian ghosts that had accompanied them spread out, checking the room.

"Odd," said a ghost who had only introduced himself as the captain. "There should be people here." He brushed his hand over a soldering iron. "This is still warm."

"Lunch break?" suggested Tucker.

"Unlikely," said Jazz.

"You don't think Spectra did something to them, do you?" asked Sam. "Something to make them leave?" She hesitated. "Hostages?"

"It was more than just Spectra that came in," said the captain. "Be wary."

"Sure," said Tucker, "but could I just maybe get a look at those circuit boards?"

"Tucker."

"Oh, fine."