Chapter 24: Out of the Pot, Into the Fire
Danny flew through the spacious world of the ghost-zone, anxious to get home as soon as possible. While his path to the Fenton Ghost Portal was fairly straight, the young boy's mind was spinning in circles at what Clockwork had just said to him. Was he supposed to be glad that he now had a way to find Danielle, or worried that something terrible would happen if he didn't get to her in time? Both thoughts were making him fly faster all the same.
The conversation he just had with the Master of Time kept playing in his head and the memories it brought back were beginning to scare him: especially the last part.
A few years ago, before Danielle's creation, Danny had come across Clockwork when he was about to make a horrible mistake: A simple little choice that would have led him on a path that turned him into the most evil ghost in both worlds. It was only when he had actually met and fought this older and evil version of himself that he was able to turn things around. Danny was able to defeat him after learning his ghostly wail, which he had ironically picked up from that ghost, but the whole experience was one he hoped he would never have to repeat. That Fenton Thermos back in Clockwork's tower contained that very ghost Danny would have turned into had he decided to make the wrong decision.
But what could possibly get Danielle to return to the life she had after she was made? She had already chosen to part ways with Vlad a long time ago. And the last time Danny saw her, she looked far from wanting to turn against the one who helped her to see the light. It was much more like she had lost all her will to live: That there was no further purpose for her existence than to die as a lab experiment. Danny felt himself get crushed inside at the very thought and caught himself before he was starting to tear up.
This probably wasn't the best time to worry about that. Since that visit with Clockwork, Danny now had a plan to find the young clone. And he planned on putting it into action the minute he got back to his own world.
Danny finally got through the Ghost Portal and back in the Fenton Work's lab. By now, it was getting pretty dark, but his parents were still working in the Op Center. He barely spared a minute to tell them to be prepared to receive word to call the police before turning intangible and flying through the ceiling to the next floor. He headed straight for the transport chamber where he would be teleported directly to Sam's house.
Sam was the one who answered the door when he knocked on it rapidly. "How did it go with Clockwork?" She asked in a hurry before Danny could express his surprised that she was still wide awake.
"Well, the time-window thing didn't even work, but I think I've found another way we can find her." He said.
Before five minutes had passed, Danny was flying across town, carrying Sam to City Hall where they would pick up Tucker. They glided straight through the ghost-shield that recognized the ghost hero's ecto-signature and he phased inside the white and currently quieted building.
He and Sam found Tucker sleeping in a grand suite on a king-sized, four poster bed, snoring loudly. "Hey, Tucker." Danny whispered as soon as he and Sam had phased through the door. When Tucker didn't respond, he and Sam further approached the bed.
"Tucker." Sam now said in a singsong voice.
"Tuck." Danny repeated, a little louder and tried to shake him awake. Tucker just snorted and turned in his sleep.
"Mayor Foley." He and Sam said in unison and, starting to get impatient. Tucker just snored on, muttering something inaudible.
Danny groaned in frustration, looking at Sam who just smiling mischievously. Danny nodded at her, returning the smile and getting the hint. He held his hand out, generating a blue glow from it. A clump of snow materialized in the air and started hovering right above Tucker's head. Then it suddenly plopped on his face.
The teenage mayor instantly bolted upright in his bed from the sudden blast of cold. "Dah! What the…" He exclaimed in surprise, wiping his now wet face with his blanket and looking around angrily through unfocused vision.
"About time." Sam said, putting her hands on her hips as if in disapproval but she just couldn't help but grin in amusement. Tucker retrieved his glasses from a nightstand next to the huge bed. As soon as he put them on, he saw her and Danny standing there with grins on their faces.
Tucker looked at the clock that was on his nightstand. "Guys, it's nearly midnight." He said, infuriated. He gave a particularly irritated look to Danny. "And that wasn't funny." He grabbed his pillow, shaking the snow off of it and slammed the still dry side over his head, wrapping the corners around his ears as any sleepyhead would when they were frustrated about being woken up so suddenly and wanted to go back to sleep.
Danny simply folded his arms shaking his head at the way Tucker was being so ignorant. But he had a way of getting his attention. "I think I know where Danielle is." He simply stated.
He was right. As soon as he said this, Tucker removed his pillow and pushed himself up with his hands, looking at Danny with a wide-eyed expression. "Where?" he asked, looking anxious to know.
"The Woods of Lake Eerie." Danny responded.
There was a rather awkward pause after Danny had said this. Tucker looked at Sam who simply shrugged and shook her head in confusion. The mayor turned back to his half-ghost friend. "But, Danny you've already checked the woods. And the investigators have combed the place themselves." He said, getting out of the bed and heading over to a computer to double-check the results of that search.
"Yeah, but those same investigators still haven't figured out how that ghost-shield reversal thing happened when Lydia attacked this place and kidnapped you." Danny specified.
"Hmm. That's a good point." Sam admitted for Tucker, after a second of thought. "But what makes you think the Guys in White have been in the woods this whole time?"
Tucker turned from his computer remaining seated at his desk chair as Danny explained what Clockwork had said to him about the apparent connection he had with Danielle. That the feelings and flashes the young hero had been having in her absence weren't just his paranoid imagination. They were real. They were short visions of what was really happening to her every time she was in pain. And they got stronger while he was in the woods, not because that was the last place he saw her, but because that was where she still was.
Tucker and Sam were looking at him in disbelief by the time he finished. "So you think you can use this connection to find her?" Tucker asked, after taking in what Danny had just explained.
Danny shook his head. "I don't think it's strong enough for me to actually pinpoint her location. Even if I could, it would probably take forever and we don't have that kind of time on our hands." Sam and Tucker looked at each other for a second before he went on. "However, there's someone currently living in those woods who can help us track her exact location." He turned to Tucker. "Can you pull up a 3D map of the woods?"
The let out a short laugh. "You're talking to a techno-geek who's helped you track ghosts for years. I could do it even if I was still sleeping." The teenage mayor turned back to his computer and easily activated a holographic projection of the woods on the desk.
On Danny's instruction, he zoomed in on the image and it started viewing the woods in a bit more detail. Danny bent down on one knee so he could examine it at eye level, looking for a certain place he thought he would recognize. Sam looked over Danny's shoulder in wonder of what he was looking for.
"There." Danny suddenly said, pointing at the hologram at an image that looked like a rocky mountain with a cave opening half way up. A large waterfall was pouring beside it. "Wulf's Cave." Danny said. "Danielle described it to me once. That's gotta be it."
"Your gonna ask Wulf for help? Does he even know?" Tucker said, looking up from the hologram with a bit of a confused look. Sam was doing the same thing, wondering where this was going.
Danny explained himself when he saw the question in their faces. "Danielle said that he's how she found us after Freakshow took us all captive. Dad said that we have almost identical ecto-signatures since she's a clone of me. She thinks that we also smell the same to Wulf because all he had to do was sniff her to pick up my scent at the old Fenton Works and follow it to the train."
As Danny was explaining this, his two friends were starting to get ecstatic looks of realization on their faces. "Oh, so you think it can work the other way around?" Sam asked, beaming at the brilliance of the half-ghost teen.
Danny smiled in confirmation and Tucker bolted up from his chair. "Well, what are we waiting for?" He said, hurrying inside his closet (which was as big as a root-cellar) coming back out in less than a minute, fully changed from his pajamas to his usual outfit of a yellow shirt, baggy pants, boots and putting on his favorite red beret. "Let's find your cousin." He said with a smile, picking up his trusty PDA and handy backpack. Sam went over and stood next to Tucker, looking just as prepared to help as he was.
Danny smiled at his two friends in appreciation. It was just like old times. He and his closest friends sneaking out at night, helping each other to find ghosts and keep their hometown safe.
Less than an hour later, with the help of Tucker's PDA, they found the cave that they thought might be Wulf's new home. "Wulf?" Danny called into the cave as soon as he landed inside. He didn't see or hear anything that even resembled the giant beast he had as a friend, as he ignited his hand with a green charge of his ecto energy.
Danny led the way into the nearby tunnel that he hoped would lead to where he would find his sought-out friend. He, Sam and Tucker called out Wulf's name as they stepped inside a dome-shaped cavern. He wasn't there. But from the green glow coming from Danny's hand, he could make out a sight that took his breath away. Sam's and Tucker's too, as soon as they had a glance inside.
"Holy cow." Danny finally managed to say aloud as he observed the etchings on the walls of events he recognized. "We're definitely in the right cave. This must be the archive Dani told me about." He raised his glowing hand to further observe the carvings and ran the fingers of his other hand along the curved wall. "She said it was huge, but…" His sentence trailed off when he found himself speechless.
"She tells you everything, doesn't she?" Sam inquired, as Tucker started taking a closer look at the walls himself. "You guys must be really close." Danny turned towards her when he detected sadness in her voice. She sighed looking down at her feet. "Had I known what kind of bond you two shared, I don't think I'd have even dared to say those things about her."
Danny walked over to his friend and put a sympathetic hand on her shoulder, smiling in reassurance. "You don't have to keep beating yourself up about that." He said.
Sam smiled a little and put her own hand on top of his in acceptance of his understanding. But she still looked quite sorrowful. "Do you think she'll forgive me?" She asked.
"We'll have to worry about that when we actually find her." The teen ghost said, starting to sound more serious. "And we can't do that unless we find Wulf…Who doesn't seem to be here at the moment." He added this last part as he took one last look around before heading back through the tunnel. He was starting to sense Danielle in pain again and his anxiety to get to her was growing stronger.
Danny was starting to contemplate where Wulf could possibly be at this time of the night as he reached the end of the tunnel. But luckily, he didn't have to think any further as soon as his friends had followed him out because the hairy ghost had just climbed into the cave. As soon as the great dog saw the three teenagers, his tail started to wag and he rushed at Danny, pouncing him to the stone floor of the cave, wildly licking his face, like he did back at the cabin after he had rescued him from Freakshow. They hadn't seen each other since then and it was obvious how much the beast had missed his half ghost friend.
Though the sight was amusing, this was a matter of urgency. Once they got the dog's full attention, the three teenagers all relayed their story about Danielle's abduction and how they needed his help. Wulf growled in vengeance once he learned how the same forces he had saved the girl from before had hunted her down once again. Within the next moment, all four of them were heading to the place where Danny witnessed his cousin giving herself up to the ghost-hunters.
Once they arrived at the right place, Danny let Wulf sniff his hand and the scruffy black beast began exploring around the area with his nose moving across the ground.
Sam watched, getting a little nervous as the seconds rolled by. She may have jumped when the idea was first presented, but now she was starting to have doubts on its tru success. "Danny are you sure this can work in the reverse order? What if that was just a lucky break because you were the only ghost who hangs around the old Fenton Works?"
"The "Boo"-merang even got our ecto-signatures confused, Sam. I'm positive it'll work." Danny reassured. But then, he said in a quieter tone to himself, "It's how fast he'll be able to do it that I'm worried about." As Wulf continued to sniff around, Danny's thoughts wandered back to the final warning Clockwork had given him.
Wulf's nose eventually led him to scaling a tall, nearby tree. He was nearly to the top when he leapt to another one, digging his claws in the thick trunk to keep himself aloft from the ground, and continuing to sniff for the scent he was trying to match. The three teenagers watched nervously as he did this a few more times. Before long, the great dog's ears suddenly perked up and his tail was wagging madly. He leapt back down to the ground and started pointing off in a certain direction, speaking in Esperanto.
Tucker beamed and relayed the message. "He's found the trail."
Danny sighed in relief at the news, but he knew that they still had a ways to go before their objective was achieved.
Wulf invited Tucker and Sam to ride on his back and Danny flew behind the beast as he led the way through the woods at a very fast pace. Once in a while the dog would climb another tree to get another whiff of the airborne trail the Guys in White had unknowingly left behind when they had taken Danielle into their custody.
Danny followed closely. His feeling growing with the knowledge that he was getting closer to his lost cousin. Though he still couldn't contemplate how Danielle could possibly become evil from being in the captivity of ghost hunters, he hoped it wouldn't be too late by the time they got to her. He was beginning to feel as if Danielle's presence inside him was growing weak.
Soon, all four had arrived at a clearing and Wulf stopped at the edge of the trees, sniffing around more cautiously now. There was nothing visible there, but Wulf seemed to be wanting to hold back, staying in the cover of the trees. Tucker took out his PDA, retrieved a few additional gadgets from his backpack and wired them to his hand held before analyzing the screen. "There's definitely something there." He said. "It's faint, even with these attachments, but I'm picking up technological interference…and some spectral activity."
"Danielle." Danny whispered. Then he asked Tucker, "Can you override the cloaking, somehow? To make the structure visible?"
Tucker bit his lower lip, "Maybe." He responded and began pressing buttons. "That could be tricky without a direct link to the controls." He continued to work, concentrating on the screen of his PDA. Sometimes he would hold it out at arm's length as if trying to get something to activate. It took several attempts that failed with Tucker shaking his head in disappointment when finally in pressing the 'enter' button for perhaps the fourteenth time, a tall, white, metallic, dome-shaped building that filled almost the entire clearing, flickered into visibility.
"Yes." All three teenage friends said in unison at the triumph.
"I'll see if I can find and deactivate any security alarms before we go in." Tucker said, looking more confident now and getting to work on his PDA yet again. In the meantime, Danny called up his parents, who were still up despite the late hour. He informed them of the location of the Guys in White and they hung up with their reassurance that they would be there soon with the police. They would be able to find the location with the tracer that only made Danny detectible to the Fenton scanners.
Wulf was reluctant to stay outside, but he did so with instructions to wait until the other Fentons arrived. He was too big to be able to move freely around the building without giving away their position in some way anyway, even while invisible and he couldn't really help much if he stayed intangible the whole time as well.
Danny, Sam and Tucker moved in, carefully avoiding any traps that would set off an alarm with Tucker's help and bypassing a ghost-shield with Danny simply temporarily changing into his human form to go straight through. Apparently, with something like that protecting the building, Wulf wouldn't be able to go in until the police got here anyway.
They made it inside, turning invisible and cautiously exploring the first room of the dome-shaped base. This particular room had the walls lined with all kinds of controls. Danny noticed some kind of radar screen in particular that had his picture on it. He smiled in seeing that it wasn't detecting that he was right in the center of the room. There were several people monitoring it and the other controls that were all wearing armor with helmets that made Danny think of some kind of spacesuit.
So, the Guys in White still had their own employees. They just liked going out to hunt certain ghosts themselves. Well, at least unlike Vlad, who paid to have a lot of other people doing his dirty work for him, Operatives K and O were a little more hands-on with their work. But that little fact didn't make Danny hate them any less for kidnapping his cousin, doing who knows what with her.
Danny carried his two friends, quietly phasing through the door to a circular room that had doors leading to other places in the building. One of which, Operatives K and O just came out of, completely unaware that that they were passing their number one ghost-target and his two "meddling" friends.
"I swear she's getting more stubborn with each method we use." Operative K was saying to his partner, putting a cap on a test-vial he was carrying that had a bright green liquid in it. "If this keeps up, we may not have a hybrid to experiment on anymore."
"Yes, but with the right methods, I'm sure she'll come to see who the real boss is in this building." Operative O reassured as they walked into the control room together.
Danny didn't like the sound of what they had just said. Still invisible, he turned intangible and carried his friends through the door he had just seen the Guys in White come out of.
As soon as they were inside, he noticed that no one was in there, and he landed himself and his friends on the tiled floor, turning visible again. He looked frantically around the room for a second. So did Tucker and Sam, who were looking about as concerned at what they had just overheard the Guys in White say as he was.
This room looked like any other ghost research lab Danny had ever been in with the standard research equipment and containment-chambers to hold the experimental subjects in. It's just that the basic style of this equipment was white with blue screens and lights. These were practically the Guys in White's theme colors. Up towards the wall to their left was a metal, vertical panel that was suspended about six inches from the floor. Strapped to it by her wrists and ankles, looking so weak, she was barely conscious, and to Danny's horror in seeing her like so, was Danielle.
"Oh my gosh." Danny said as he rushed over to her. Memories of that time in Vlad's lab were repeating all over again. This was exactly the way that cruel man had her restrained as he was melting her down. That wasn't happening to her now, but as Danny got to her, he noticed that she was still in the worst state he had ever seen her: almost lifeless and bruised all over her face, which reflecting such hopelessness and despair, it was like the very feelings were being emitted straight to Danny's heart.
Tucker sped to the controls with his handheld devices to see if he could hack into them and unlock Danielle from the panel. Sam looked over Tucker's shoulder watching as Danny tried to wake his cousin up. She was elevated from the floor enough that Danny had to hover up to her before he could reach the height she was at and shake her shoulders a bit. "Dani. Dani, wake up." He said with concern. She kept her eyes shut and she suddenly tensed up as if preparing to resist something. The boy removed his hands a bit confused at her reaction. He pull her chin up so he could get a better look at the condition of her face when she suddenly jerked it away from him, breathing heavily. Danny felt himself grow heavy inside when this happened and he sank to the floor. What had these men been putting her through?
"Danielle, I'm not gonna hurt you. It's me." He said, trying to reassure her as he cupped her cheek in one of his white-gloved hands, more gently this time. "It's Danny."
His soft touch, in comparison to the hard and forceful way the Guys in White must have treated her, seemed to help with the assurance. Danny felt her relax a bit and she let him turn her face back in his direction, though her eyes were still closed. He put his other hand under her chin and carefully lifted her face up so she could get a better look that it wasn't her enemy trying to wake her for further experimentation.
She moaned weakly and her eyelids started to flutter a bit. She looked almost scared to do it at first. Probably thinking it might be a trick, but she eventually opened her eyes. At first, they seemed unfocused but when they noticed Danny, her awareness returned.
"Danny?" She said, looking at her cousin as if confused to see him standing right in front of her. The quiet tone in her voice emphasized her weariness. "You're here?"
Danny exhaled, taken aback by the question. "Well, of course I'm here. Where else would I be besides looking for you after they took you away?" He said to her, sinking down to the floor.
Danielle seemed to regain more of her strength in seeing him again, but she started looking around a bit fearfully. "Danny, you can't be here. If someone catches you…"
"I just got here Danielle, and I'm not going to leave you with these poachers. End of story." Danny interrupted defiantly and he bent down to try and pry the medal restraints off her ankles himself. Tucker was apparently having trouble in getting them off the technological way.
"How did you get here anyway?" Danielle asked, after Danny's own attempt to free her failed.
"The same way you found me back with Freakshow." He simply answered, turning to Tucker and Sam to check their progress in deactivating the cuffs that bound his poor cousin to the panel on the wall.
"Freakshow." Danielle said with a hint of frightful realization creeping into the way she said the name. Danny looked back at her in catching the tone of her voice. "Danny, that jail break." She said. "And that ghost-shield reversal thing at City Hall. It was an inside job, like the investigators thought. And the…AAH!" Her sentence was suddenly cut off with a short scream of pain. An electrifying surge that came from the medal cuffs that bound her had just went through her whole figure.
"Tucker, be careful." Danny said in concern, turning to his friend. He didn't even notice that he had almost felt the pain from the surge himself.
"It wasn't me, dude, I promise." Tucker said, raising his free hand defensively. "I haven't even reached the mainframe yet."
In response to this, a cold voice came from the direction of the door behind them. "And you never will."
Danny and his friends spun around with chills running down all of their spines in seeing Operative K and Operative O standing in the now open doorway to the lab. Operative K was holding a remote-like device that must have been the cause of the painful jolt Danielle had just received.
"We're not sure how you got passed the outer defenses or even how you kids found our base, but we made sure those control panels were completely techno-geek proof. You're not hacking into that, Mayor Foley, for the life of you." At least twenty men in the weird suits started filing into the room from behind them, charging weapons and surrounding the intrusive teenagers as Operative K added, folding his arms, "Or in this case, any of your hybrid ghost friends."
The two Phantoms and their two teenage associates already knew they were in trouble as soon as he saw the Guys in White, but Tucker couldn't help but nervously say the one word that confirmed it.
"Busted." He said with a gulp.
Uh Oh. Okay, so they found Danielle, but as Tucker just said, they're busted. I was going to make it longer, but I thought this was a good place to end it.