It was only when we neared the blimp building (which I now realized had the word "Fenton" on it) that Phantom took pity on me and landed a block away. He grabbed the three of us who had yet to master flight and phased us through the ground and back to the laboratory. Then, I got a firsthand look at how he managed to hook the thermos up to the ghost…vortex thing and I swore I heard Puck's scream in the distance.
Relief hit me in a wave and I closed my eyes with the biggest sigh I could manage. It was so nice to finally have that nuisance of a ghost out of the mortal realm that just the realization made my arms and legs tingle. Well, maybe that was just exhaustion.
There was a flash of red behind my eyelids and I opened them, curious about what it had been. Three pairs of eyes were staring at me—again. Phantom, Tucker, and Sam wore identical expressions of shock and disbelief as they looked at me.
"What?" I asked, glancing over my shoulder. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary until I realized that my shirt was back to its normal color. In fact, when I held my hands out in front of me, my skin looked completely normal and very not dead. "Holy—"
"Max…? You're-?" Sam was the first to speak out of the three of them, glancing rapidly between Phantom and me.
"Not dead!" I completed, throwing my hands up ecstatically. "No, wait—hold on. I was dead, I think. Maybe. And now… I am…not. Is that even possible?" I spun in a circle, looking at my clothes and making sure that I really was alive. I even pinched myself just in case. "Mmm. Quite a debacle."
Maybe I was just over exerted emotionally, but the fact that I was alive wasn't really hitting home. I was taking it remarkably smoothly if I do say so myself. "Another halfa?" Sam asked, though her question was directed more towards the other two than towards me.
"How is that even possible?" Phantom asked, again not really directing his question towards me but rather the room at large. I didn't mind too much as I was a little bit enthralled by pinching myself and watching the blood rush into my skin, thus proving without a doubt that I was alive. I completely missed the rest of their conversation and didn't even look up until someone tapped me on the shoulder, startling me.
"Max, we need to know how you got these powers. Have you ever seen another ghost portal other than this one?" Phantom asked, gesturing towards the green vortex.
"Powers? What're you talkin' about? This is clearly just…the weirdest hallucination ever," I said, glancing at the portal and then back to them. "I've only seen this one. Is this a common occurrence? Do people…regularly come back from being ghosts?"
It was a bit of a relief to see them shake their heads, but that quickly changed to panic and then mind numbing exhaustion that hit me like a truck. "Hey, you know…maybe I should just take a nap and let you guys figure it out," I said, already sliding down the wall to sit on the floor. They approached me with concern, but I waved them off. "Shh, nap time. I am not mentally capable of handling anything else right now," I whispered, closing my eyes.
If they objected, I didn't hear it. I was out like a light.