"Formerly Deaton? Is that you?" Stiles tried to make his voice gentle.

The silence stretched and then the faraway screaming came again.

There was something sad about the sound, as though it were that much worse to die a second time.

"I will not harm you. I promise. I can bring you peace, if you would like, or simply be here with you. I promise, no touch unless you request it. Don't be afraid. There's nothing I could do. I don't even know where she keeps your body. Please, I need your help."

The ghost materialized into existence to Stiles's left. Or, more properly, he materialized as much as he was able into existence, which wasn't all that much anymore. Bits of him were now drifting off in spiraling fuzzy tendrils. His shape was no longer human, but more cloudlike.

"Effervescent!" screamed the ghost once he had found his voice. "Why are you here? Where is Lydia? What has she done? What have you done? Where is the machine? What. What? Who is that screaming? Is that me? How can that be me and this be me, talking to you? You. Effervescent? What are you doing here? Where is Lydia?"

It was like some broken record destined to repeat the same few lines over and over again. The ghost was caught up in a loop. Periodically, he interrupted himself to cry out, a long low moan of agony to accompany the wail of second-death. Whether it was the paint of the spirit or pain in truth was difficult to tell, but it sounded to Stiles not unlike Scott shifting into a werewolf.

Stiles straightened up. Before him lay his duty, staring him in the face. That didn't occur very often. Under ordinary circumstances, he would have asked Lydia for permission, but the inventor was gone. She had abandoned her mentor, her uncle, whatever he was, in this state. The ghost was suffering.

"Formerly Deaton," he said politely, "I am in the unique position to offer you . . . I mean, I could . . . Oh, screw it, would you like an exorcism?"

"Death? Death! Are you asking me if I want death, effervescent? To not exist at all." The ghost twirled again, spiraling all the way up to the ceiling. Floating far above, the ghost became contemplative. "I have served my time. I have taught. Not many get to say that. I have helped defend people and taught them to defend themselves. And I have done it after I died as well." He paused and drifted back down. "Not that I like children all that much. What can a ghost do? When my Lydia, my lovely intelligent girl, became enamored of that awful woman. All I taught her was gone. Then the boy. Just like his mother. Devious. Who thought I should end up teaching him as well? And now. Look what it has all come to. Death. My death, and an effervescent to help me along. Unnatural. All of it. Preternatural boy, what good are you to me?"

"I can give you peace." Stiles's eyebrow was quirked. Ghosts near poltergeist really did ramble.

"I don't want peace. I want hope. Can you give me that?"

Sympathy, so far as Stiles was concerned, only went so far, at least right at this moment. "Okay, then, if you don't want my help, I need to get going. Try not to wail too loudly or they'll call BUR. They have enough to do on a full moon."

The ghost floated back down. For a moment, he collected himself. "No, wait. I will . . . What will I? Oh, yes, I will show you. Follow me."

He made his way to the corner of a massive room, next to a large barrel that rested on its side. As he neared the barrel, the ghost became more and more substantial, until he was almost his old self—the ghost Stiles had first met nearly a year ago.

The keening wail was much louder here, although it still seemed to be coming from some distance away, with an echo as though emanating from the bottom of a mine.

"I'm sorry. I can't stop that," said the ghost at Stiles's wince.

"No, you wouldn't be able to do that. Your time has come."

The ghost nodded. "Lydia gave me a long afterlife. Few ghosts are so fortunate. They usually only have months. I have had years."

"Years?"

"Years."

"She's a genius." Stiles was impressed.

"Yet she loves too frequently and too easily. I couldn't teach her that lesson. So much like her father, I think. And that son of hers."

Stiles thought of his own son. "Everyone should love their child."

"Even if he is a wild creature born to another woman?"

Stiles thought of Derek, then. "Especially then."

The ghost let out a dry laugh. "I can see why you and Lydia are friends."

It was thinking about Lydia and Allison and Liam that Stiles put everything together. Not fast enough, of course, because the wails were getting louder. Even a ghost such as Formerly Deaton, with such strength of character and mental fitness, could not resist his own demise when it was fated.

Stiles asked, "Is there something wrong with Lydia?"

"Yes." It was said in a hiss. The ghost was shaking, shivering in the air before him.

"That machine, the one she was building, it wasn't for the government, was it?"

"No." The ghost began spinning as he vibrated. The tendrils were back, drifting away, floating into the air.

"It's the kind of thing that could break into a building, isn't it? Even a well-protected one? Even with the best federal agents protecting it?"

"Yes. So unlike her, to build something brutish." The screaming was getting louder. "Right question, effervescent. You aren't asking me the right question. And we are almost out of time." His hand detached and wafted towards Stiles. "Effervescent? What are you? Why are you here? Where is Lydia?"

"It was you who activated the ghost network, wasn't it? Did you send me the message? The one about the assassination?"

"Yessss," hissed the ghost.

"But why would Lydia want to kill the—"

Stiles was cut off mid-question as Formerly Deaton burst apart. The ghost exploded noiselessly. Parts of him drifted off in all directions at once, a spread of white mist wafting all around and through the machinery of the lab.

Stiles couldn't help himself; he let out a scream of shock. There was no going back now. Formerly Alan Deaton had gone full poltergeist. It was time for Stiles to perform an exorcism.

Stiles approached the barrel and inspected it closely. He was familiar with his friend's style and design aesthetic, so he looked for a hidden knob or handle. On the end of the barrel facing the wall, he found a small button. He pushed against it. With a faint clicking noise, the wood slid away, revealing a coffin-sized fish tank filled with the preserved body of Alan Deaton.

Stiles was caught by the genius of the invention. It was one of the great trials of ghostly employment that specters would stay sane only so long as their bodies were preserved, but they couldn't form a tether if the body was immersed fully in formaldehyde. Lydia had invented a way around that by having air bubbling through the formaldehyde to allow a tether, while still keeping the flesh submerged. No wonder the ghost had such a long after life.

But even this could not save a ghost in the end. Eventually the body decayed enough so that it could no longer hold the tether; the ghost would lose cohesion and succumb to second-death.

Stiles thought he might mention this tank to BUR. They would probably order a few for their more valuable ghosts. He wondered if the gas had something do with Deaton's explosive end.

Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be any way into the tank. Lydia clearly hadn't been planning on getting back in once she created it. So, Stiles did the only thing he could think of. He swung his bat at the glass.

After the second hit, the tank cracked and then broke, spilling liquid all over the floor and with it, a strong, suffocating scent. Stiles's eyes began burning and watering. Quickly, he reached out and touched the dead body's hand once, flesh to flesh, and just like that, it was over.

The wailing stopped. The body part wisps vanished.

He looked around at the mess, but he didn't have time to cleanup. He hoped they were still arguing about shoes upstairs, because he had no time for stealth. He must stop his friend from action. And, more importantly, he desperately needed to find out why. Why Lydia, a brilliant scientist, well-respected, and successful, would try to do something like attack the President of the United States?

Stiles remembered what Lydia had said about relocation, however he didn't actually know where the warehouse was located. Luckily, he knew some who probably had that information.

"Erica?" he almost shouted into his phone, trying to be heard over the noise of people outside.

"Stiles? What's wrong?"

"Nothing, nothing. I was just wondering if you knew where the warehouse Lydia was renting out was located."

"Well, I'm not really supposed to, but I saw some papers with it on there while I was helping out."

"Really? Where is it?"

"I don't know the exact address. I think it's off 10th Avenue somewhere, though. Near the water."

Stiles tried not to roll his eyes. That could be anywhere. But it was more information than he'd had before.

He jumped into his car and took off. He thought he might just drive until he found an area with a sufficient number of warehouses. When Stiles finally got out of the car, he had to hope he was in the right area. He was in front of a large number of warehouses, each one resembling a barn, only bigger, with several stories on each. Stiles could hear people nearby – he thought he might be close to the Meatpacking District – but there was nobody in his immediate vicinity.

Stiles was not going to let a dark alleyway prevent him from helping a friend, though, especially when she obviously needed someone to help her see sense. So he took off, his gun in one hand and bat in the other. He listened at the door of each warehouse and peeked into small windows.

Finally, inside the last building, Stiles saw light inside. Inside, Lydia, or the person he assumed must be Lydia, wore a helmet of some sort and coveralls. She was holding a flaming torch, welding slabs of metal together. Her giant metal construct had taken its final form.

It was giant, at least two stories high. It looked mostly like a large tank, but had metal arms that, no doubt, would move independently of each other.

He banged on the window to attract Lydia's attention, but she did not hear him.

Stiles walked around the building, looking for an entrance. It had massive loading doors street side, but they were bolted shut. There must be a one-person door somewhere.

Finally, he found it. It, too, was locked. He whacked at it with his bat in frustration, but brute force was also ineffectual. Not for the first time, Stiles wished he knew how to pick a lock. Both his father and his husband had frowned when he'd expressed this desire in the past.

He went back around to the front and considered breaking one of the lower windows, but a massive noise interrupted him.

The building began shaking slightly, the roof creaking terribly, and the two loading bay doors clattering against their hinges.

Stiles moved as fast as he could away from the doors, and just in time too, because they burst open, crashing against the sides of the building.

The tank came through. The doors were not quite tall enough to permit an easy exist, but this didn't trouble the machine. It simply took the roof off with it.

The machine and its driver did not notice Stiles far below in the shadows, but it spotted his car. It raised one arm and took careful aim. A burst of fire came pouring out the tip. His car was no more.

Stiles raised hit bat and tried activating the magnetic disruptor. It had no effect. Stiles was not surprised; after all, the redhead was not stupid enough as to build a weapon that could be so easily defeated by another of her own design. Especially if she knew Stiles was looking into things.

Stiles switched to his gun, but the bullet bounced harmlessly off. It didn't even leave a dent.

The machine proceeded down the street slowly, but at a steady pace. It did not seem to stop even when it hit the sides of buildings.

Stiles was at a loss. He didn't know what to do and he couldn't even leave, his car having been burnt by the machine. So he turned the opposite direction of the machine, toward the river.

As he staggered along, Stiles's mind whirled with confusion. Why would Lydia build such a machine? She was, by and large, a woman of subtlety. And why wasn't she headed towards the UN building? Or to the hotel nearby where the President was probably at by this time at night? If Lydia had designs on the President, she was going in the wrong direction. Stiles frowned. I am clearly missing something. Either something Lydia said, or did not say, or something Deaton said or did not say. Or . . .

Stiles stopped in her tracks and hit his forehead with the butt of his hand.

"Of course. I'm a fucking idiot. I have the wrong target."

Then he started walking again, his mind now calculating. The original ghostly messenger had never specified the President and neither had Deaton. They had all just assumed. What other pseudo-royalty did they have? Lydia and her tank weren't after the leader of the United States – a kind of king; no, she was after a hive queen. That made much more sense. Lydia had never liked the vampires, not since they corrupted Allison. Giver their rocky history, Stiles would bet Lydia was after Morrell. This made sense too, considering the direction the tank was headed. Somehow, Lydia had figured out where the Manhattan Hive was located.

Another mystery. The location of a hive was a guarded secret. Stiles knew of it, of course, but that was only because . . .

"Oh, crap. I'm such a dumbass!" The burglary at Newark! Lydia must have been the thief, stealing the old papers because among them was Stiles's original invitation from the Manhattan Queen to visit the hive. It had been delivered to him by Braeden Tandy the afternoon after Stiles had killed his first vampire. It contained the address of the hive house and Stiles had never thought to destroy it. When did I even tell Lydia that story?

Stiles cast desperately about the empty street. He had to reach the Manhattan Hive and fast. It seemed even the noises he had heard earlier had left quickly when a large tank started rolling through the area. He had no idea what he was going to do.