Chapter 2: The Gauntlet Part 1

My name is Dan Shannon. I can tell you without hyperbole that I have seen some strange things in my life, but ever since I became a Ghostbuster this one took the cheese.

It was the 24th of June, 1995. It was 9:03 at night.

I was walking through an old warehouse wearing my newly-acquired blue and gray uniform. I was loaded up with what the Ghostbusters called standard equipment which consisted of a Proton Pack on my back and a PKE meter at my side. I walked about the warehouse looking for the specter that was causing the disturbance. After my aggressive test with the equipment, it was decided I would simply be dropped into a field job when the conditions were right. Egon Spengler was on the southwest side of the warehouse; Peter Venkman on the southeast; Ray Stantz on the northeast; finishing off the original crew was Winston Zeddemore on the northwest.

I, in particular, was in the middle section of the warehouse. I wasn't given a very thorough description of the ghost that was messing with the place, but nevertheless I searched around looking through crates, under every shelf, and through every office window I came across. I even peeked toward the ceiling everyone once in a blue moon to find jack. It was a really boring 20 minutes so far.

I started hearing footsteps. I knew the place had been cleared out, even security. Everyone had radios and as far as I knew, we were the only 5 guys in the building. We were supposed to contact everyone if we were gonna leave our assigned areas, so I took the footfalls as a sign of something heading my way. I pulled the thrower off my pack and started it up. I walked down the main corridor where the forklifts normally ran and crouched down behind a box. I was nervous; hell, I might have been playing the whole thing up because of it and that did become more clear when the steps got as close as 3 yards away. I jumped from behind the box and held the particle thrower ahead of me…

"Whoa, wait a minute, Dan! It's me!" A black man in a seafoam-green suit with red trim threw his hands up and covered his face. It was fellow Ghostbuster Winston Zeddemore.

I clenched hard before I dropped my thrower, finally exhaling as I put my head into my hand, "Jesus, Winston, you scared the shit outta me!" he lowered his arms as he yelled out, "That's nice, coming from someone that nearly blew my face off!" I remembered removing my hand from my face, "Hey, I wasn't expecting you to go wandering around my section of the warehouse." "I know," he said. By this point he was calming down, "I just tried to call everyone but the radios aren't working right."

I racked my thrower back on my pack as Winston told me that. I wasn't sure what he meant by that, "What ya mean, 'Not working right'?"

"Radio communications are spotty. It's in and out."

"Is it the building?" I asked. All he could give me was a shrug. We agreed we needed to meet up with the others because of the situation so we began toward one of the other ends of the warehouse, paying attention to our surroundings.

I'm not sure if I mentioned this, but this was my first assignment as a Ghostbuster, or - shall I say - my first "Busting" experience. At the time my skills were not fully developed which would explain my lack of reflexes. It was also for the fact I didn't know what ghosts were going to do what, so the whole thing made me feel jumpy. Then again, I was given a dangerous, still technically experimental nuclear-fueled backpack accelerator, so it couldn't get any scarier than that.

Anyway, back to my point. We started looking around the south end of the building for Peter. We walked down one of the service aisles while I scoured the left and Winston took the right. I looked around a corner and I spotted a man in a pair of brown and green coveralls walking away from me. I called to the man in a whispered voice to get his attention, "Peter!" he turned to look at me, Winston also with his attention to me as the man responded, "Yeah?" Winston waved him over, "Over here, man!" Peter Venkman quickly crept back down the aisle toward us and we all huddled for a briefing, Winston asking, "Find anything?"

"No," Venkman answered, "you guys?"

I shook my head. Winston agreed, "Nothing yet." In the thick of the frustration of it all, I had to ask for what I figured was pertinent information, "Do we even know what it is we're looking for yet?" "I haven't heard anything," Peter answered, "Radio's been quiet so far tonight." "About that, Pete," Winston said, "I've been trying to call you for a bit here. I think we're getting interference." "You know something," Peter stated, "I was wondering why I wasn't getting anything on the Mets game tonight." I had to chime in at this moment, "Last I heard they were getting their asses kicked by the Braves. I saw it on a TV in the break room when we got in." I then realized what I was saying, "Wait a second, you brought a Walkman on the job, didn't you?"

Peter got kinda defensive, "Hey, it was an emergency!"

"He's right," Winston told me, "he's gonna owe me ten bucks if the Braves win."

This is who hired me. My God…

That was when our radios crackled. A deep monotone voice came over them along with a lot of static. It was Egon, "Venkman, Zeddemore, Shannon, come in." Peter took his radio off his belt and responded, "Venkman. Zeddemore and Shannon are with me. Did you finally find that crate of Aquanet for that jelly-roll of a hairstyle of yours?" I remember having a say in that smartass comment, "That's cute coming from someone that uses a whole can of the stuff to look like Jerry Only from the Misfits."

Winston started laughing his ass off.

Before Peter could fire back at me, Egon came back over the radio, "We made contact with the entity. We need your assistance on the north side ASAP." This was it, I figured. After Peter acknowledged the call we all started heading our way on that side of the building. I had a pit in my stomach. I was nervous before, but now I was in the thick of it. I started running behind Peter and Winston down the dark aisles of the warehouse but they were losing me. I'll tell ya one thing: running around with a 100 pound nuclear weapon on your back gives you a sense of power, but it can tire out your ass pretty damn fast.

The two of them ran up a ramp and readied themselves to round the corner leaving me panting. My legs were burning. Endurance training was something that needed to be added to the training docket. Seriously, 3 weeks and I barely used a pack before this? "Guys…" I stopped and grabbed the railing of the ramp, "Wait up… for me!" Through all of this I thought this was gonna be an in-and-out procedure; the others made it sound that way.

Boy, was I wrong.

After I finally caught my breath and started to run after the others again, I saw them finally round the corner, throwers drawn. They disappeared around the corner leaving me to catch up in my oxygen-deprived state. Just as I was about to round the corner myself I saw a large and bright flash of light coming from the same corner. I threw up my arms to block the light before I went blind. I heard screaming.

Winston and Peter came flying out from around the corner with two other men - a husky man with a tan and brown uniform and a blonde haired man with a light blue and pink uniform; Ray Stantz and Egon Spengler respectively. As Ray ran past me he grabbed me by my Proton Pack's strap and yanked me to follow them. I almost tripped over myself and fell on my face attempting to keep up with them.

After a few minutes we got to our area we called our "Safe Zone" where we could catch up with our nerves. I asked, "What the hell was that all about?" Egon stood up from his doubled over position and pushed up his red-rimmed glasses as he spoke in his monotone voice, "Class 7 astral projection. Something I've never seen before." Ray looked at him with a confused look on his face, "Astral projection? You mean it's not really there, nor is it a ghost?" After a moment Ray started getting excited. Yep, right on time, "That's great! That means a higher classification can project itself from outside its form and have a Gozer-level reading!"

"Precisely," Egon said, "The mental projection of the form is always weaker than the main form. Trouble is, we didn't see the point of origin of the projection. It's hiding someplace, but I doubt it's not nearby." I didn't understand a damn word he was saying but it was becoming clear it wasn't good. I also sure as hell didn't get a glimpse at whatever the hell this thing was so I had nothing to take guesses at. I was curious, "What exactly does this thing look like? What's it doing? Maybe I can work out what it's doing if you could just describe it."

"Daniel," Egon spoke candidly at me. What he said was the most belittling thing I ever heard, "you can't work out what you're not familiar with. Being a trainee you would be too intimidated to think that clearly on the fly to be able to come to a logical conclusion."

I was kinda left dumbfounded. Dr. Egon Spengler just treated me like a little kid. I felt like I was a news reporter trying to talk to a politician during a press briefing. Some of the questions I've asked over the last month I've haven't had answered; especially by Egon. Come to think of it, almost everyone's ignored my questions, usually telling me to get back to cleaning or repairing something. Worst of all, when they do "Answer" my questions they emphasize how much I wouldn't understand. Bachelors in Nuclear Engineering. What a waste of fucking money.

"So," Peter asked, "what are we gonna do?"

Egon put his hand to his chin and rubbed it in thought, "It may not have assessed us as a threat yet. If we work quickly we might be able to rush it and get it contained before it knows what hit it." Venkman - the consistent asshole he was - decided to remind everyone of something, "Egon, may I remind you that plan might jeopardize a certain someone in the crew?"

Ray agreed, "He's right," he turned to me and told me bluntly, "Dan, you're going to have to stay behind."

If I wasn't insulted before, I sure as hell was now.

Peter interjected, "Well, I was actually talking about me, but…"

"Wait a goddamn minute," I cut off Venkman as I vented, "why do I need to stay out of the call for? I thought I was being trained to catch ghosts, not just be an over-glorified golf caddy!" "We can't have you injured on your training mission" Egon explained to me, "We did this to someone once before and it was a near-travisty. For now, both you and Winston will have to set this out." Peter, Ray, and Egon began walking away from us. I was feeling my blood pressure building, "Oh, come on! That's bullshit! How am I supposed to prove myself if you don't let me do the job?" Ray turned to look at me as he was still walking with the others, "It's too risky, Dan. Maybe a different call. It's too dangerous for you to rush into at your current experience level." With that, Ray turned back on his heel and caught up with the others.

Man, was I pissed. I couldn't stand the fact I was being treated like a 4 year old. Winston and I walked outside and waited in the parking lot. Winston sat in Ecto-1 with the radio on listening to the Mets/Braves game. I sat on the hood of the Cadillac with my head in my hands. I was feeling rather… perturbed.

After a few minutes Winston stepped out of the car and walked beside me. He climbed onto the hood to sit with me. He tried to get me to loosen up, "I know how ya feel, man. I was a rookie like you once. I remember the first field call I did with Ray. We went to Fort Detmerring and after we split up, he was in one of the exhibit rooms for some time." I looked over to Winston and got a good look at the expression on his face. It looked a bit humored but also… bothered. I asked, "What did he do in that room?"

"Honestly," he shook his head, "considering he was wearing one of the costumes in the Fort, his fly was undone, and he had a big stupid grin on his face…"

"You didn't wanna know?" I asked. Winston gave me a glare that was one of concern, eyebrow raised, "And for both our sanitys' sake, you shouldn't want to know, either." I remembered sighing, "Point taken." After a minute I grunted in annoyance, "You know, it feels like the others don't like me. Egon's done nothing but talk down to me. The others…" I held the bridge of my nose as I felt the tension start to build around my eyes. I was getting a bad headache, "They're acting like I can't do this job."

Maybe I was just getting jaded because of the circumstances in my life up to this point, but Winston was making an attempt to keep me grounded and level-headed about the situation, "Hey, they did hire you, didn't they? If they didn't think you could do the work they wouldn't have even considered you. They probably just don't think you're ready."

"Yeah, well," I started, "who's fault is that? After they had me chistling all the caked on slime from the inside of the traps and doing wire-by-wire Molex pin crimping and replacement - seeing they burned my time doing that crap - they punished me by promising me some field practice and pulling rugs from under me…"

"I feel ya, man," my fellow hired Ghostbuster said, "but if Egon says things are too hairy, I'd believe him. We risked the life of another of our rookies years ago. We were lucky he was there with us during the Architect Incident, but he could have been easily killed. That was why Egon put in more learning ahead of field work. It was just as bad with me."

I tried to heed Winston's words and look on the bright side of the whole thing, "Well, I'm glad I don't have to wear a tag that actually says, 'Rookie' on it. My dignity couldn't get any lower." "I donno," Winston snickered, "we could arrange one for ya." Now, I'm not entirely sure what my face looked like at that moment, but I'm sure it was bothersome enough because Winston gave a nervous chuckle and then went quiet. I really need to get a polaroid camera and get a snapshot of my face when I'm royally annoyed.

A half an hour went by and we still haven't heard from the others. I remember checking my watch for the 8th time with Winston making the comment, "Will you stop doing that? You make a man nervous doing that." He then decided to check his own watch. It was clear something wasn't right if even Winston was getting bothered by how long it was taking. These were the original Ghostbusters after all; the guys who started this company and pioneered paranormal exterminations. They should be experts in this field, right?

Right?

I went to check my watch again when I realized I was just performing insanity and waved it off in frustration, "What's taking them so long? Does it really take this long to get a ghost?" "Not really," he told me, "at most 15 minutes, but Egon did say something about it being a projection and being stronger at its source."

"About that," my curiosity was biting at me, "what's an astral projection? I heard of it before, but I don't get it." "You heard of an out of body experience?" I was just about to ask a few more questions when the radios crackled as the distorted voice of Egon came over them, "Shannon! Zeddemore! We ne…ck up! I've been blin…ded! We hav…ergency! Venkman is uncon…ous!"

I felt my heart jump into my throat. I looked back to the warehouse and saw in the few windows on the outside of the building. I saw that same intense light I saw when the others ran out and grabbed me. Winston was now on his radio and was screaming back at Egon, "You're cutting out, Spengler! Say again!" The next thing we both heard was the most horrifying thing I thought I was ever gonna hear.

Egon let out a blood curdling scream. In the middle of the transmission, the radio went full static.

Winston keyed the radio. I never heard anyone - not even a Marine - have a voice as panicked as his. He kept calling and calling Egon, Ray, and Peter. I turned back just as the radio fell out of Winston's hand and hit the ground, breaking open. I was starting to shake in panic as I asked Winston, "What the hell just happened?" Now, not to be an unsavory person here, but frankly, I've never seen a black man turn white before.

Then again, I've heard the others say he's seen stuff like that before, so it shouldn't really surprise me.

Where was I going with this? Are you still reading this?

We went inside the warehouse with throwers drawn. I felt like I was going to puke. The best I could figure from what Egon was screaming, they were in need of serious backup, that it was an emergency, he had been blinded, and that Venkman was knocked out; unconscious. Me and Winston walked into the main storage area from the offices. He looked nervous. I couldn't blame him. I took the spare PKE meter out of Ecto-1 and started scanning the area. Since my previous experience with the meter I learned how to properly operate it. It was showing a blip, but it wasn't moving. I took the moment to ask Winston, "What do we do here?"

"We're gonna have to split up and box it in," he told me as he wiped the sweat from his forehead, "Since it's a projection we can't trap it, but maybe we can for it to go back to where it came from."

"You mean, force it back into its body?"

"Something like that, yeah."

"Um," I had a thought… yeah, I know: dangerous pastime, "isn't that a bad idea? I mean, if it goes back to it's body, wouldn't it just disappear? I thought there was a difference between ghosts and people." "We'll be able to track it back to the body," he said as he started to adjust his throwers settings, "Alright, full stream, drift at 10 degrees." We adjusted our settings and split up. It was supposed to be a synchronized attack but somewhere in the middle one of us goofed.

Okay, okay, it was me…

Winston came from the north wall as I approached from the east. I didn;t know it but my boot lace was untied. When I was walking past a stack of boxes my lace got wrapped around the pallet under the boxes and got stuck, falling over and hitting the floor like a sack of bricks. Before I knew it I was trying to unhook myself when I suddenly saw a flash of light from around the corner I was about to walk around. I got my lace loose and tied my boot back up. There was a rumble and a scream…

"Oh, shit," I realized what I just did, "Winston!"

I hauled ass like a donkey merchant and ran to the corner. The light died down and the screaming stopped. I rounded the corner and found out how late I was. I saw smoke lining the floor. I was getting a bad vibe, I started calling out quietly, "Winston?" I felt something under one of my boots when I stepped down. It felt soft like fabric. I bent down and waved the smoke away and when it cleared I was beside myself. It was an embroidered patch on a scrap of seafoam green fabric. It was red and white; a cartoonish figure of a ghost in a circle-slash design. I knew it. I had one on my own arm.

It was the logo patch from Winston's uniform.

Now, I knew this job was going to be strange. I knew it was going to be quite possibly terrifying. I even knew there were gonna be moments it was going to suck, but never did I think I was going to be the last one standing. As the smoke cleared from the floor I saw several more patches on the floor, spread out in various places, half charred and attached to several scraps of fabric. They were from Peter, Ray, and Egon's uniforms. Whatever this thing was, it really hated iconography.

I gathered them up and looked at them. I was starting to have a terrible sensation crawl up my spine. When I gathered up Egon's patch that was when I noticed his still-running PKE meter on the floor around the corner from a crate. I picked it up and I saw the blip on the meter. It was starting to come toward me. I only had one option here…

"Screw forcing it to do anything," I yelled, dropping Egon's meter, "I'm gettin' the hell outta here!"

Hey, when four fellow Ghostbusters suddenly disappear, it was more important to stay alive.

I put the patches in my pocket and started heading out of the building as fast as I could go. The meter on my side started beeping wildly as I passed through the bulk of the warehouse. I took out my meter and saw that whatever was chasing was gaining on me. It looked like whatever it was was intent on me only leaving if I was in a body bag first.

Getting outside and closing the door behind me, the door immediately started to bang and was being bent outward. I tried to hold the door shut in sheer panic, thinking I could hold the line and hopefully it would just go away. When the metal of the emergency door I was holding was beginning to breach from the outside, I grabbed my thrower and started adjusting the thrower's setting to act like an arc welder. My grandfather was a pipefitter by trade and I knew a little about the profession. Knowing the Ghostbusters had used the equipment in this fashion before I knew I could oscillate the beam to do the same effect. I shot a proton beam at the door jamb and started welding the door shut containing the beast - at the very least - from outright swinging the door open on me. The whatever-it-was was contained for the moment. I got to Ecto-1 and tried to start the car when I just realized something…

Winston had the keys.

The metal door that led inside the warehouse started to glow orange. Then white. The door exploded, sending melted pieces of the door all over the place. A bright blue glow came from the door and I saw a ghostly figure of a young woman wearing a flower-child facade. She was young with her brown braided hair flowing from under a headband, a fringe vest draped over her tie-dyed t-shirt. When she opened her eyes they were glowing blood red. Her eyes settled on me sitting in Ecto-1. She walked on air as she approached the car. I didn't even attempt to get out of the driver side door; I slid over to the passenger side and hopped out to start running. I tried to look behind me to see where she was when I tripped over another parking block in the warehouse's parking lot.

I rolled over and saw the woman hovering over me. At this point, I was frozen in fear. I thought looking through the old case logs of the guys put in front of me made me confident in the job I was about to perform. Uh, yeeeaaah, turns out I was far from ready. She hovered over me and licked her lips before she spoke,"Yes, you will do just fine. Another one to add to my collection; just like those other four." I asked out of nerves, "This means I'm screwed, doesn't it?"

Without her saying a word more a bright light flashed before my eyes. Through the blinding light I was a symbol appearing on the girl's buttoner. It looked like some bastardized form of the Rod of Asclepius. A beam of energy started to emanate from the symbol and suddenly a large reptilian-like creature appeared before me. It was ugly with large teeth. It literally looked like a Rancor from Return of the Jedi. The creature bent over me and picked me up. It looked at me like it was peering into my soul. I would have gone for my thrower but my arms were pinned to my sides. My body was starting to tingle as the thing was holding me. My right arm started to burn right where my patch was sitting on my sleeve of my newly acquired uniform.

I tried to do something to see if I could somehow get free of this thing. I felt around under the grip of the beast. My fingers were getting numb, but I had just enough feeling left to feel around my weapon belt. My hand bumped into something hard and cold. It was the foot trigger to my Ghost Trap. It was risky, but I was running out of ideas. I called out, "Hey, big guy?" The creature once again looked me in the eye, "How would you like being blinded?" I triggered the trap…

The trap on my Proton Pack opened, sending out a pulse of light of its own. The creature let out a bellow and dropped me, the entrapment vortex of the trap directly under its hand. Before I knew it I was on the ground and I saw the creature disappear back into the woman's chest… I thought, anyway. I was fuzzy at what happened at this point. The girl suddenly convulsed and went limp. The blue glow around her disappeared. I didn't know what to do. My instinct was to run and regroup, but I had no one to regroup with.

To this day I still don't know why I didn't just turn and run, but instead I approached the girl on the ground and drew my thrower. I guess I was curious. I still needed to know what happened to the guys and this girl was the only lead I had. Still, I had to cover her in case she wasn't done killing me. And reached out and grabbed her shoulder to shake. She was solid and warm. This was the strangest ghost I ever heard of. When she started to moan I quickly stood and jumped back. My knuckles were turning white as I gripped the thrower watching as the girl sat up.

She looked around confused. When she finally took notice of me she jumped in startled surprise, her voice accompanying that sentiment, "Who are you? How did I get outside?!" She looked around and became even more puzzled as she asked, "Where is outside?"

I shook my head in disbelief. Was this girl fucking with me or something? "You just tried to kill me and you can't remember who I am?!" I took the safety off my thrower and aimed it at her, the whir of the pack spinning up scaring her more, "You better tell me what you did with the others, or I swear…"

"Wait!" She cried. That was when I noticed her eyes weren't glowing red anymore. She looked at me panicked, throwing her hands up to stop me and show her being unarmed, "Stop! I didn't do anything, I swear!" She was scared. She just did what she did not more than a moment ago, but she really acted like she didn't do anything. Her body language was… off. I grabbed my PKE meter and took another scan to find nothing there. The signal was completely gone.

I put my meter away and I calmly approached the girl, "Who are you?" She looked intimidated. If you were suddenly snapped out of the trance you were in to find a man wearing a jumpsuit pointing a nuclear accelerator at you, you'd be nervous, too, "M-my name's Nicole Alcaline. I-I was asleep in a train station. What happened? How'd I get here?" It was clear she had no memory of what just happened. It was becoming increasingly clear she was neither a ghost or an astral projection. I introduced myself, "I'm Dan Shannon. I'm a Ghostbuster. We were called here because there were reports of a large creature roaming the building. Apparently you were possessed by it. Four of my… uh… colleagues are missing after encountering it, and whatever it did to them almost did the same to me."

As I talked I saw the anxiety slowly pull at her face. Her eyes became wider as she heard me talk. Her voice broke as she spoke, "No! Not another group of innocent people! Please tell me this is a joke!" I saw the tears form in her eyes as she asked. I had no choice. I had to illustrate the point. I pulled out the guys' patches from my pocket and compared the now half-burnt one on my sleeve as I told her, "I hate to tell ya, but I wish it was."

I helped Nicole up and escorted her to the distribution offices. After getting her calmed down I started asking her questions and having a conversation, "You said you were asleep at a train station. You were clearly in a warehouse; this warehouse. Why are you attacking people anywhere?"

She looked at me with her blue eyes. She quickly looked away and grabbed the can of Coke I had retrieved for her to drink. She was having a hard time, I can tell. She looked at the can with some confusion, "When did they start putting Coke into cans?" I ignored her question and her looking at the can with curiosity as I asked her again. She hesitated to answer me, but she finally came around, "I… I'm a runaway. When I was a kid my parents were killed in a car chase. When me and my sister ended up in the foster home, they were extremely abusive. My sister eventually started squealing on me to our foster parents leaving me open to abuse."

I heard her talk and as soon as she mentioned that, my heart went out to her. I didn't actually have the best of childhoods myself, but then she continued, "When I ran away that was when I met a group of girls that took me in and showed me the power of witchcraft. At first I was afraid of it, but then I started asking questions. I was physically abused and they saw how much pain I was in. They called on the power of this one creature that sounded like it would protect me, but one night I woke up and I found myself amongst my dead foster parents with my sister barely still alive. She told me a large creature had broken in and started killing my foster parents. She apologized to me right before she died."

"Then," I was kinda shocked. I was stumbling over my own words, "this… Thing you harbor…"

"Spearkipy," she got out. She took a drink of her Coke as the tears started to form in her eyes again. She used her arm to wipe the Coke from her lips, then used the same arm to wipe the tears from her eyes, "Spearkipy is a demon that lives in my my body and walks as I sleep. Every time he attacks someone, it's after someone has attacked me in some way. He's been in my body for…" she stopped a moment and tried to think. It was like she was trying to remember something like if she said it incorrectly she'd look like an idiot. She looked at me worried of the answer she got when she asked me, "What's today's date?"

"June 24th," I answered.

She became flustered and added to her question, "The year," she asked, "What year is it?"

Yeah, that was a strange question, and dare I say, I started to have an inkling of what was coming next, "1995. You're on the wharfs of New York Harbor." She suddenly became panicked again as she looked at me with terror, "Another 3 years went by? And I'm in New York? I was just in Philadelphia last!" She was starting to hyperventilate when I tried to talk her down, "Woah, whoa, calm down. Fill me in." She took a moment and started to calm down. She started again, picking up where she left off. Good, I didn't wanna have to remember how she got to this point again, "Me and Spearkipy had been bonded together since 1963. At first, after an attack, I'd only be out for a few hours. Then it became days. At one point, I think a whole decade went by. He's been in control of me for so long, when I do come around I try to find a new place to be and try to stay out of people's way, but it's becoming harder."

I did some quick math in my head. It had been 32 years - roughly - since this girl became possessed with this… whatever the hell it was. I had a stupid question, "Why do you look like you're 17 years old?" She locked up and again averted her eyes. She bit her lower lip as the tears kept streaming down her face. She cleared them and found the strength to tell me, "Spearkipy needs energy from people of this world to survive. He entraps people who attack him directly to use as energy cells; like batteries. That energy gets transferred to me to keep me young. Problem is, I become so tired handling him I guess I slip into comas. I'm almost never awake when he attacks people. If anyone attacks me directly, he comes out and kills outright. He needs more and more people to sustain himself in this world and…" she looked back at me and saw my face. It was like she never got any older because he looked at me like a scared child, "You don't believe me, do you?"

I'll admit, this whole story was insane, but if it weren't for the big hulking thing trying to grab me I'd be skeptical. She didn't know that, clearly, but she was suspecting because, well, would you believe it without experience? I had to reassure her, "I'm a Ghostbuster; I'm ready to believe you." Yeah, I still groan at me using the company slogan for that. I was a new employee, it was all I knew to say!

"What's a Ghostbuster?"

Okay, at this point I was starting to suspect not only was she telling the truth, but this whole decade asleep thing was possible, too. To imagine, this is the kind of crazy shit the guys had to put up with for 11 years, "Long story. Have you tried telling him to stop? Maybe he could go somewhere else?" "I wish it was that easy," she told me, "After we were combined, there was no way for us to separate. I can't communicate with him, either. I mean, he can hear me, we can talk to each other, but he's completely adamant on using me for his own use. I can't do anything about him." The poor girl sounded so defeated. I remembered being in this position once before in my life and it's the most infuriating and exhausting feeling in the world. If only you could grab the problem and physically squeeze it to make it stop, but you can't.

Nicole looked back up to me, rubbing her upper arms, "You're the first person I ever told this to. Being one of these 'Ghostbusters,' does that mean you can help me?" She looked so scared. I hated this. I got up and I started to pace the office as I tried to think of what Egon would do in this kind of situation. There was only one: Go back to the firehouse and research.