.
.
Maddie watched the damage report on the news with her teeth clenched, fingers tight around the handle of her coffee mug. She hadn't slept much last night, too worried even after the dust had settled. On one side of the screen, opposite the anchor, a clip played on repeat.
It was shaky and grainy, obviously taken on someone's phone or PDA, and it was only a few seconds long. A hulking ghost standing in the middle of the playground, small children still trying to run, the fence behind it splintered and bent, holding up a fist that grew ever-brighter. Suddenly, a ray of green light shot out from the fist, towards the children and the camera - then the Phantom was there, a green shield expanding from his body like a drop of dye in water.
Then the clip ended, only to start again.
"This can't keep going. This can't happen again," said Maddie.
A few week animal ghosts, and ghosts like the Phantom who seemed to avoid humans, were one thing. Not quite acceptable, but, still, manageable, and in Maddie's view worth it for the benefits the study of the Ghost Zone could supply. This was entirely different.
This was dangerous, and not just for them.
"I know," said Jack, quietly. "I thought the doors would keep them in, but..." He sighed. "You're right. We need to shut off the portal until we have a better way to keep ghosts like this from crossing over."
Neither of them moved to do it just yet. They'd been hoping to keep it on until they could figure out what caused the initial failure and the later success, so that they wouldn't have to worry about whether or not they could start the portal up again.
Of course, in their original plans, they only meant to keep the portal on for a day or two, on the outside, for the first start-up, but... things happened. Danny's electrical injury (caused by the portal), the ghosts, issues with other patents, the incident at Vlad's, the list went on.
It was a disappointment, but one they could deal with.
"Might as well do it now," said Maddie.
"Might as well." He heaved himself up from the dinning room table. "Kid'll be pleased, at least."
Maddie hummed. "I don't know that Danny will care." He seemed remarkably lukewarm about ghosts, considering. "Jazz, on the other hand..."
"Jazz sure has opinions, doesn't she?" Jack chuckled, but his heart clearly wasn't in it.
They walked down to the lab and started to prep. In theory, turning off the portal would be easy. Once they set the ectofiltrator on shut-down mode and made sure the capacitors and power wells were primed to receive the portal's discharge energy, all they needed to do was hit the off button.
"Jack," said Maddie. "Where's the button?"
"Right next to the on button," said Jack, distracted by an instrumentation check.
"Where's the on button, then?"
"Uh," said Jack.
Maddie flushed, half in frustration, half in embarrassment. She and Jack had built this thing from scratch. They should know where the buttons were.
"I mean," said Jack, "when I turned it on, I was holding..." He trailed off as he traced down a thick cable bundle to a plug. "I was holding this," he said. "I just... plugged it in."
Maddie pressed her lips together. The initialization circuit must have already been in the 'on' position. It was bad lab procedure, to just plug this kind of equipment in like that, but Jack loved his mad scientist moments, and Maddie, more often than not, humored him, because she loved those moments, too.
"Blueprints," she said, walking over to the appropriate drawer and yanking it open with much more force than was necessary.
The shutdown was painful enough as it was, why did it have to be so difficult on top of that?
She found the symbol for the on-off switch.
"No," she said, "that can't be right."
"What is it, Mads?"
"Jack, tell me we didn't put the switch on the inside of the portal."
The way color drained from Jack's face told her he couldn't.
"How did it even turn on?"