"Oh, ancestors," breathed George. "They tried to kill Cousin Alicia, too."
"We don't know that, yet," snapped Iris. She had stormed right back into the room after getting the text, albeit with all the fingers of her left hand bandaged. No one asked her what she'd punched.
"But that is the most likely thing, isn't it?" asked George. "It'd be one hell of a coincidence, otherwise, for her to fall into a coma at the same time as half the family was murdered."
"Except it wasn't at the same time," said Jazz. "Mid-January. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't call the seventh mid-January. Why didn't they send an actual date?"
The phones buzzed again.
Lwys: Confirm exact date and cause of coma, and send visual confirmation.
They all looked up at Lewis.
"What?" he said. "No one else was doing anything, and there's a reason it's being forwarded to us."
"Yes," said Iris, "but–"
The phones buzzed again.
Hospital reports that many of their recent records were corrupted by a computer glitch, making the exact date and circumstances of Princess Alicia's admittance uncertain. We are currently investigating.
As they looked, a picture was uploaded to the conversation.
"That does look like Aunt Alicia," said Danny. She looked… bad. Alicia wasn't bouncy like his dad, but whenever they'd gone to visit her, she'd been… vital. Strong. There had been a feeling of solidity to her, like she'd drawn up all the best qualities of her adopted home. Now, she was washed out and pale under hospital lighting, hooked up to dozens of machines that Danny didn't even know the names of.
"Yeah," said Iris. She brought the phone up to her face and squinted at it. "Hey, George, does this look right to you?"
"Hmm," said George. "Maybe it's an American thing? Oh, no, that is a bit weird. But maybe she was dehydrated or they have her on antibiotics or something?"
"What is it?" asked Jazz, looking at her own phone.
"IVs," said Iris. "Look at the IV tree. Generally speaking, if you have an ongoing coma with no known cause, and there's nothing else wrong with the patient, you don't use that many medications. There's, like, half a dozen bags on there, and they're all weird colors, on top of that."
The colors didn't seem all that weird to Danny, but maybe his perspective was skewed by Frostbite being his main doctor since he'd become a half ghost (or syvyr; if Gwensyvyr thought it was okay for him to call himself that, then it was), and his parents often taking care of his medical stuff before that, except when they came back to Avlynys. Bright apple green, sapphire blue, and neon red were all normal medicine colors, weren't they?
Lwys: What medications is Princess Alicia on, and why?
Everyone looked at Lewis again.
"It's great to have questions, but if you want to know the answers, you have to actually ask," he said, peeved.
Unclear. Hospital staff unwilling to share medical details, as we are not listed as 'next of kin.'
"We'll need Mom, then," said Jazz. "Danny, did you hear anything about when she and Dad will be back?"
"No, but I'm sure Matthew will tell them about this, when everything is sorted out."
"Why isn't Dad answering this, anyway?" asked Iris, deep lines etching themselves into her brow. "You don't think…"
This time, everyone looked at Danny for answers.
Danny looked at Gwensyvyr, who had, of course, been following the whole conversation while draped languidly over the back of the couch. Gwensyvyr tilted her head thoughtfully, looked at the other ghosts in the room, then shook her head.
"I think he's probably alright. None of the ghosts here are saying otherwise, anyway."
"Don't take this the wrong way," said George, "but I liked it way better when all of the ghost and spirit stuff was pseudoscience and outdated occultism."
"All occultism is outdated," said Iris.
"Eh," said Danny.
"No," said Iris, "I don't want to hear it. I refuse to hear it."
"I'm just saying, never say the W-word. You never know if there's a genie around to hear it."
Leo choked back a laugh. "Are you serious?"
"Oh, yeah, she sucks by the way. I also got mind controlled by a clown one time."
"Next thing, you'll be saying that the stupid secret society stuff that some people get into is for real," said Iris.
"I'm not saying it is, but I'm not saying it isn't, either."
Iris let out a long, barely controlled breath. "I can't believe you're joking around at a time like this."
It was because if he didn't, he'd start screaming and crying. Aunt Alicia had been attacked, and he'd had no idea. He hadn't even been on the same continent. Or maybe he had! He didn't know, because he didn't know when it had happened!
"Bit of graveyard humor never hurt anyone," said Danny, brightly, instead.
"It is a little funny," said George, hesitantly. "I mean, you remember when we walked in on those guys trying to summon a dark demon or something at our internship, right? In that one meeting room? Imagine if they'd actually gotten something."
Iris glared up at George from her curl on the couch, but then her face softened and she put her phone aside to start rubbing her eyes. "Yeah, that's Revyvtech for you. Cutting edge medicine, weird ancient superstitions."
"I think you said Revyvtech when you mean Avlynys."
Iris froze, then snatched up her phone again.
"What is it?" asked Danny, slipping around to sit on her other side.
"I don't know yet," said Iris. "George. George. What logo would you say this was? On, like, everything."
"Um. It's sort of blurry…"
"Guess," demanded Iris.
"Well…"
"The rest of you, what logo is this? On all the stuff?"
Danny frowned at his phone. In the pictures, the logos on the equipment were small and blurry, but… They did look familiar.
"Is that the Revyvtech logo?" asked Jazz.
"It could be something else," said George. "The picture is–"
Lwys: Please send pictures of the medical equipment in Alicia's room.
"It's not like they aren't there, ready to do whatever we tell them," said Lewis, more aggravated than before.
"I was right," said Iris, as the pictures started coming in. "I was right. All this stuff is Revyvtech."
"Which means… what?" asked Danny. "I mean, like you said, Revyvtech is big, and cutting edge, and from Avlynys, so why wouldn't they…" He trailed off. "Did the hospital even know who she was? They didn't contact anyone."
"Yeah, and even if Revyvtech is big, other than here, and a few places in Britain and on the Continent they have special deals with, no one just has that much stuff from them concentrated into one room. They're expensive. Trust me, George and I have toured enough hospitals to know."
"We have," said George. "Half the time, the tour guides wanted us to recommend their hospitals for discounts or something… We don't do that here…"
"So," said Jazz, "this is weird. The whole situation is weird, but all the Revyvtech is especially weird?"
"Yeah," said Iris.
"Okay," said Jazz. "The other man who was with Skyppa, he was associated with Revyvtech somehow?"
"Assemblymember Richard Bytras," said Leo, speaking up for the first time that night. "He used to be the CEO of Revyvtech, and he's still a major shareholder. Right now, he's the 'in-between' for the stability and progress factions - the factions are unofficial, by the way, doesn't mean they don't exist - in the Assembly. Last time I checked, he had about fifteen-hundred sponsorships, but that number was dropping, because of his association with Skyppa. The anti-corporate traditionalists have been picking up some of those sponsorships, but most of them are going to Speaker Melissa Myrynoe and Assemblymember Aneirin Kymb, who are more centrist." He wrapped his blanket more tightly around his shoulders. "Sorry, analyzing intra-Assembly politics was going to be my semester project for the honors college."
"Right," said Danny. "He's rich, then?"
"Oh, yeah. One of the richest people in the country."
Danny was about to say 'except for Vlad,' but Vlad wasn't in the country.
Heh.
Sucked to be him.
"Rich people are always up to something."
"We're rich," pointed out Leo.
"Yeah, and are we, or are we not, up to something?"
"Alright, so we need to figure out the relationship between Revyvtech and this hospital, and Revyvtech and Skyppa…"
"And Skyppa Wybyldyn Gruyp," said Danny. "Gwe– Uh." No, he didn't want to deal with that revelation right now. "The ghosts think that whatever happened to Prince Leon and Lady Maria is related to what's happening now, and Skyppa Wykbyldyn Gruyp was involved."
Lewis sighed heavily and started typing on his phone. "Even if I'm the only one who can text, apparently, I don't know anything about corporations or businesses or whatever."
"I do," said Eugene. "My dad's in finance, and I have some contacts, even if, ah…" Eugene very delicately didn't mention that he was an unemployed dilettante trust fund baby who spent most of his time writing poetry under a pen name.
(Everyone knew about the pen name.)
"The serial number on this IV bag doesn't match the product name," grumbled Iris. "Or product appearance. What the heck is this?"
"It could be an international thing," said George. "Like, regional names."
"Shut up, I know what Rezymatykka is supposed to look like, and this isn't it. And you know it, too!"
"It could be a tracer dye or something–"
"It isn't!"
"What's Rez, uh," said Danny. "What's that?"
"Rezymatykka is one of Revyvtech's 'wonder drugs,'" said George as Iris typed furiously on her phone. "It has a lot of minor health benefits, like improving wound healing, boosting the immune system, reducing headaches, stuff like that. But it also walks back some types of brain damage and lets new connections be formed across damaged areas. They figured that out when they were testing it out as an anti-aging medicine. It'd be normal to prescribe it to a coma patient."
"It's not even approved by the US drug board!" hissed Iris. "It can't be imported! Whatever that is, it's something else."
"I think I'm going to have to talk to some of these people somewhere else," said Eugene, looking up from his phone. "Excuse me." He walked out of the room, a small handful of ghosts anxiously following him.
"Maybe, said Leo, if Eugene is doing that," said Leo, "then maybe I'll… put together a list of people politically associated with Bytras and Skyppa?"
Leo was a full four years older than Danny, but in the moment he just looked… young. Out of his depth. The thought crossed Danny's mind that Leo had probably never been in life or death situations before this. He certainly hadn't had someone like Skulker chasing after him.
Although politics by themselves could be deadly. Case in point, Danny's still-blurry vision.
"That sounds great," said Danny, giving him a thumbs up.
"And I guess I'll be the go-between," said Lewis.
"Do you… Have something else you want to do?" asked Jazz.
"No," said Lewis. He sighed. "I work for an art museum, I don't know anything."
"Right," said Jazz, "so, I'll–"
Danny saw the moment that Jazz realized she didn't really have anything to do, and he cleared his throat. "Iris?"
"What? I'm kind of busy."
"Do you think Aunt Alicia is in any danger? Because if she is, the security team needs to get her out of there."
"I don't know," said Iris. "All I know is that half of this stuff is unidentifiable, and half of it would make more sense if she was having a continuous allergic reaction. Like this, this is a tank of oxygen, this is an intravenous antihistamine, this I think is super diluted epinephrine, but I could be reading some of those numbers wrong. I don't know what taking her off any of it would do. Maybe it's what's keeping her in a coma. Maybe it's keeping her from dying. All I do know is that it's weird, and it's not the way it should be set up, and because of that, we can't trust anyone there to actually get rid of the weird stuff." She swiped her hand roughly under her nose. "And I can't even figure out what the weird stuff is numbered as, because I can't get into that part of Revyvtech's systems. So unless you can do something about that–"
"I might be able to," said Danny. "Just. Give me a minute. A few minutes."
Danny grabbed Jazz's wrist and pulled her back to the bedroom they shared and Danny… stopped. Very slowly, he sat down.
"Danny?" said Jazz.
"Sorry," said Danny. "I'm sorry. Is it bad that I'm tempted to fly out of here and find Mom and Dad? But I don't want to leave everyone else and - Aunt Alicia is in a coma, and sometimes those are permanent - and all I can think about is that I was right about that Richard guy being a knockoff Vlad, and that the stupid meeting room cult is probably going to come back to haunt us, and that other than Mom and Dad's shields, the only thing I can think of that really keeps ghosts away like that is blood blossoms and those are extinct, and–"
"That's a lot for 'all you can think about,'" interrupted Jazz. She sat on the floor next to him. "Why don't you just… breathe for right now? Okay?"
Something cool whispered over his shoulders, and Danny turned to see that Gwensyvyr - famous ancestor Gwensyvyr, founder of the nation, that Gwensyvyr - had put her arm around his shoulders and looked worried. For him.
"I'm okay," said Danny. He rubbed his face. He could already feel the salt crystals where the edges of his tears were drying. "Really. Sorry."
"It's alright. I'm pretty sure everyone's had at least one breakdown by now."
Gwensyvyr shrugged, then nodded judiciously in response to that.
"What, you, too?"
Gwensyvyr's next gesture conveyed the sentiment of 'Who, me?' perfectly.
Jazz glanced at Gwensyvyr - or, rather, at the empty space she guessed held Gwensyvyr. "What is your plan, here, anyway? Tucker?"
"I don't want to involve him and Sam in something that's already killed seven people. Nine, if you count Mom's parents." He smiled thinly up at Jazz, then at Gwensyvyr and the other ghosts that had floated into the room after them. "No. I'm going to see if we can pull a Technus."