"We're exploring the next horizon of science, kids! We could solve the energy crisis - bring power to every home on earth!"
Danny shivered, looking at the green liquid squirming around within the tiny lidded jars. Each lacked a proper core, instead flicked through with smaller bubbles that surfaced and shrunk. Still unstable, the captured ghosts were only semi-sentient.
Still, he could hear their garbled words.
Not quite in the proper ghost tongue, but enough raw emotion to flicker a bit of meaning across.
'scaredsmallhungerfearshhhhhhhhhhescapescaredsmall'
Danny averted his eyes as the needle slid down.
The small team of scientists on the other side of Maddie's webcam were looking on in interest, a faint skritch of pens barely audible as they took notes.
"With the right pattern of electricity, we can actually synchronize with the pulses within the ectoplasm, and start to control the energy flow."
It thrashed at first, the half-whispered emotions turning into an endless shriek of different types of pain. The remnants of previous experiments, buried deep between the molecules of their tools, their walls, the very air they breathed, it all harmonized for a moment.
Danny felt the hair on his arms and neck stand on end, proverbial ears laying flat as he tried to slink away. It pierced his ears, his brain, singing and writhing in his blood as everything seemed to focus on that tiny half-formed ghost.
For just a moment, Danny could see the shreds of soul around him, the faint energy that ectoplasm allowed to sing in harmony. It spun and swirled, skittering strangely as his mom twisted a knob.
Suddenly, the arboreal-like overlay in his mind's eye staggered to a halt, frozen in unnaturally straight lines.
"There we go."
The ghost had stopped moving, a little glob of green gelatin no longer glowing on its own, purely illuminated by the solidified core within.
"It wont be stable for long, but we're taking the first steps in figuring out how to store this energy and transport it elsewhere."
Danny abandoned his attempt to stay and listen, phasing out through the kitchen door the moment his mom had her back turned.
He couldn't watch it again, the way she sank a tool into the frozen orb, channeling energy out and venting heat in, creating a cycle where the tiny being's essence was used as some sort of battery.
Danny flicked invisible, his world blanking out of color and light. His own irises unable to pick up reflections around him, he relied solely on that arboreal hum that silhouetted the world around him.
Parts of it were still eerily still, and echoes of the lab's actions still quivered up into his awareness.
Danny collapsed onto his bed, shivering back into the 'real' world and tucking himself securely against the side of his bed. One hand dragged his blanket off, pulling it over his shoulders, while the other clutched at his own chest, sympathetic twinges pinging off his core.
They were playing with an atom bomb, his parents.
Synchronized or not, he could feel the power thrumming through that tiny orb in his chest. Even exhausted and bleeding off power, he'd seen the disaster that spread from a core being punctured.
No.
An atom bomb wasn't even close.