Waiting for a trap to be sprung doesn't mean not fighting back.
"Danny, you have to go," Sam said. The ectopus had come to give them warning barely a minute ago, and she knew it was lucky that Danny had been talking strategy with her when it had arrived. If he hadn't been, if he'd been somewhere on his own, he might've tried to fight.
He might still try if she couldn't talk him out of it.
As it was, they were on the top floor of their makeshift hideout, something that she suspected had been a renovated farmhouse before it had been abandoned. The foundation was thick stone, but the room they were in was hardly a stuffy attic. They stood out of easy sight of the room's large windows rather than staying at the tables where they might be easier targets, but they'd chosen this room—once a studio, maybe?—to do their planning for more than just the vantage point. With windows on three walls, there was more than enough light that the lack of electricity hadn't been an issue; she could count the number of times on one hand that they'd had to use candles or Danny had had to light a ghost ray for them.
"No arguing," she added when he opened his mouth. "We can't afford to lose you."
"We can't afford to lose you, either!"
"Yes, you can. If you have to." Sam clenched her hands into fists, trying to stop from shaking. As much as she didn't want Danny to leave, he had to. For all their sakes. If they lost him…. "You're more important than I am. Besides, don't you think I can hold this place?"
"It's not that I doubt you. It's that, well, you know we can't afford to underestimate them. Tucker's intel—"
"Tucker's intel is enough for us to be prepared and not make that obvious," she countered. It was easier to fall back on what they knew than to think too much about their current situation; if she let a tremor creep into her voice and he heard it…. "I'm not going to be alone in thinking this. You know that. We can't lose you. Especially not now."
"But—"
"Please don't argue. There isn't time."
"But…."
He was still hesitating, torn. Sam threw her arms around him and squeezed tightly before pushing him away. "Go."
"If…if this goes wrong…."
"I won't let it go wrong."
"But if it does—"
"I'm not going down without a fight."
"That doesn't mean you'll win," he whispered. "I…. Sam, I don't think I can do this without you. If they get you, I can't fight you. I just…. I can't."
"You'll be able to do whatever you need to do to survive. If they do get me, I won't be thinking straight. We don't know if we can fight it. You know I'll try, but you can't trust that I'll succeed. Treat me like everyone else who's been washed."
"I—"
"Promise me. And then leave. There's no point in having sentinels if you don't take advantage of the warning."
He looked to his feet. "I'll try," he croaked, and she knew that was the best she was going to get.
"Survive and fight. Even…even if this ends in a loss, you can't give up. Okay?" He nodded, and she tried to swallow the lump in her throat. It stuck, and she had to force her next words out around it. "Thank you. Now go. Please."
"I'll come back for you."
"Don't come back until the fight is over. And…and don't hide anywhere I've been, just in case." Not having any one person know everything had been Jazz's plan, right in the beginning, but Sam knew it was a common tactic. No one could know too much. No one who was fully human, anyway. It was the only way to keep people safe. Ghosts couldn't be washed, and they were all safer for that.
How long would it be until they didn't have that safety net? The Guys in White knew about Freakshow. They must know he'd found a way to do control ghosts, so they had to be searching for a way to replicate that. Of course, for all she knew, they'd already found it and were still experimenting with it, trying to find the best way to use it. Or they'd found it and were waiting for the right time to use it.
Danny bit his lip, but he must have swallowed back whatever argument was on the tip of his tongue because he leaned forward and kissed her instead. She blinked, too startled to say anything, and he flew back, a sly grin across his face. It had been so long since she'd seen that expression, she—
"I'll come back for you," he repeated. "Even if it takes me some time, I'll come back. I promise."
He vanished, and she stood frozen until one of the vultures shrieked an alarm. She turned back to the south window. The assault was beginning. Ghost tech against ghosts. Technus was going to knock out what he could, but as far as Sam was concerned, they couldn't afford to lose him, either. His interference gave Tucker an extra level of security.
But that's what this was, too.
An almost guaranteed loss for them, taken to give Tucker that security. To ensure his safety. She didn't intend to fall. None of them did. Still, she planned to give them one hell of a fight. They needed to see that, needed to see her. She'd try to run before the end, but if she timed the retreat wrong or they pulled out a weapon she wasn't expecting….
No time to think on that.
No time to dwell on what might happen to her, to the resistance, if things went wrong.
Sam took a steadying breath and squared her shoulders. She couldn't afford to let fear or doubt consume her. She had to do this.
She stepped to the open window and settled onto the sill. The glass had long since broken, one of the ghosts phasing the shards away for her when she'd settled on this plan. She hadn't told Danny this part. She still wasn't sure he'd approve. They were all on the same side now, fighting for the same thing. They had to trust each other. They had to take risks.
"Okay," she called. "I'm ready."
Vines erupted beneath her. The Virginia creeper came alive, its leaves doubling in size as new tendrils unfurled and wrapped around her limbs in support. She closed her eyes as Undergrowth's power washed over her, washed through her, but their partnership was symbiotic now, not parasitic. He lent her strength, power, an awareness of the field through his stretching biomass; she lent him inventiveness, adaptability, inherent knowledge of how the enemy moved—and, to a lesser extent, precision his plants would otherwise lack when it came to attacking something not touching the ground.
Troops advanced from all sides, trying to hem them in. Air support came from above, some trying to pick them off one by one while others seemed to be— Sam scowled. "It's a formation. Stop them." If the GiW ringed them all in a ghost shield, they wouldn't be able to escape. Once Vortex's storm was fully developed, she wouldn't have to worry about that particular trick, but until then—
More than one ectopus flew past to carry out her command, flanked by vultures and a swarm of blob ghosts that were excellent at concealment and distraction. She didn't have Dora, Aragon, or any of their kin. She didn't have an army of skeletons to command. Yet, everyone here trusted her, and that had to be enough. She would make sure it was enough.
She felt the vibrations of anti-ecto charges in her roots before she heard them, a low booming too consistent to be mistaken for Vortex's thunder. Hauling that machinery would slow down the GiW—they might as well be lugging along canons that were pointed towards the earth—but she wasn't terribly surprised they'd brought it. They were protecting their backs, scattering whatever outlying forces they thought she might have, and trying to drive them all into this net. She couldn't let them do that. Once they were in range, no one would be able to hide in the earth for a surprise attack; it would force her to withdraw until the machinery could be taken out. With any luck, Technus would have enough of a distraction to make quick work of them.
The Guys in White were additionally protected behind portable ghost shields, meaning any ghostly counterattacks had to be indirect, using the environment. Vortex's storm was spectacular—the torrential rain had to be slowing down the GiW—but her side had still taken casualties before it had been raging in full force, and she had to hope that it would keep the rest to a minimum. (Captured or destroyed, they were still casualties in her book; until they could figure out how to rescue the captives, they were as good as lost.)
Vortex, Klemper, Technus, Undergrowth— They were the most powerful ghosts fighting with her today, strategic or showy enough to make it appear as if they'd been caught unawares. She had to play to their strengths.
And she had to keep as many of the others safe as she could.
A contingent of animal ghosts were fighting on the ground, too, darting through the ranks of the GiW to try to break them up. They were under the heaviest fire, and she couldn't protect them all. The ghost shields stopped her fly traps, anti-ecto charges kept her roots from spreading unseen, meaning she was left with whatever she could do aboveground that was mostly unseen. She focused on weaving a tangled forest of vines in the grass to trip as many of the advancing enemy as she could. Klemper was only to freeze designated areas, but if he got overexcited or distracted, she—Undergrowth—would have to pull back, and Sam—
Sam screamed.
Her remaining tendrils shied away from the heat, but part of her mass had been lost forever.
The battle had started to blur, and she hadn't realized they were fighting with fire until she was burned.
Vortex's rain helped to slow it, as did Klemper's barricades, but something in that fire— Something was different. Something was wrong. It hungered, happy to devour even that which should quench it. It would slow, consume, grow, and rage.
Ghost flame.
The knowledge was Undergrowth's, but the memories felt like hers.
It feeds upon ectoplasm to sustain itself.
It had consumed the first world she—Undergrowth—had ever known.
There hadn't even been ash left behind.
If the Guys in White had harnessed its power, their experiments were becoming more advanced, and they were digging deeper into the lore of a world they outwardly despised. They sought power, domination, and had no qualms about using anything they could to their advantage regardless of its origins. If they went unchecked, controlling ghosts would be next. Hoping otherwise would be futile. They had already found some way to control people, but the methods and protocols behind the washings were so secretive Tucker hadn't been able to find anything to pass back to their side. If the ghosts weren't free, either….
She had to stop them.
Sam wiped at her tearing eyes and squinted into the smoke as the fire fueled itself with the landscape of her world as readily as it did anything made solely of ectoplasm. How did the Guys in White figure out how to contain that? It was a problem for another time. Right now, she had to try to compensate for what they'd lost, and she had to make a decision. "Pull it all back."
Scorched earth. They couldn't give the flames anything on which to feed. Undergrowth had enough power here to convince the plants of her world to obey without much coaxing, so a thin band of black stretched through the green, growing wider as the plants below glowed and uprooted themselves, pulling well back of flamethrower range before settling down again. Rainwater turned the exposed clay to nigh-on-impassible soup, and Sam grinned as the first line of attackers hesitated for the first time. Good.
Any ghost who had seen the flame or its effects had already withdrawn, and those who hadn't seemed to be taking their cue from the others. Her roots still stretched below the exposed earth, but the lingering effects of the anti-ecto charges kept her from going any farther, meaning the earth beneath their enemies would be impassible to intangible ghosts now. Through the growing haze, she could see some of the GiW changing out their equipment already—perhaps reloading, perhaps trading flamethrowers or blasters for jetpacks—but she wasn't going to give them a chance to use anything.
"Have Klemper flash freeze them once he's over the flames, and make sure the others cover him. A bubble of safety within a block of ice will only get the Guys in White so far, and I doubt they'll want to burn up their only oxygen trying to get free. They'll have to change tack. We can't take them into the ground till Technus is through, but we—"
There was something more than burning foliage and ectoplasm in the smell of smoke now, something sweet and cloying that somehow cut through the heaviness of the rain. Why couldn't Vortex blow it away? How come the rain seemed to be making it worse?
"We have to—" Sam blinked and drew a breath through Undergrowth instead, unable to get enough oxygen into her lungs the usual way. It simultaneously cleared the fuzziness from her head but caused it to ache. Each heartbeat increased the pain, rising from dull to pounding to splitting until she was forced to close her eyes. "We need—"
She couldn't focus. She was spread too thin, becoming lost as she splintered along each meandering path of Undergrowth's spreading roots and searching vines. Sam allowed herself a few precious seconds to listen, grounding herself in the crackling flame and zinging exchanges of ectoblasts, in the roar of the raging wind and the pelting rain, before pulling back and trading the feeling of oozing mud and slippery grass for the cold sting of rain on her skin. She couldn't withdraw completely without leaving herself blind and breathless, but it wasn't enough.
The headiness didn't disappear.
It took her precious time to work through why. Whatever chemical the Guys in White were spewing out under the screen of the flames, it was soaking into the soil. They'd planned for this. For her. Anticipated something she hadn't yet shown off.
She took a real breath this time, coughing as the taste in the back of her throat became acrid. She tried without success to spit it out. Her stomach swooped at the motion, and she felt like she should be falling. Would be falling, were Undergrowth not holding her steady. Was he still holding her steady? She couldn't tell if she was swaying with more than just the wind.
It didn't matter. She was in command. She still had to make the call. "We've gotta neutralize—"
Her prickling limbs—flesh and plant alike—fell numb and dropped away from her awareness with alarming consistency. There was no sense of the extent of herself, only that she was shrinking beyond what she should be.
"Gotta stop—"
She was becoming untethered.
Sam opened her eyes to a swirl a blackness as another wave of wooziness hit her. She choked on her next breath as she turned her head to try to get her bearings, but she only gleaned a vague impression of rain-soaked flesh that seemed alien to her before her wide eyes saw nothing but black.
Sound blurred into a rising roar. Her awareness of the situation narrowed exponentially until all she knew was herself, the tilting world around her, and a distant cry that pierced through the ringing in her ears.
"NOOOOOOOOOOO!"
