Danny Phantom: Contact

[Graywand2]

"And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust."
-T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land


"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio.
Then are dreamt of in your philosophy."
-William Shakespeare, Hamlet.

Historian's Note: This story is set two months after Phantom Planet.

Chapter One
Under the Night​

The sun was dipping below the horizon to the west, bathing in a brilliant red-orange the sky in which the Specter Speeder Mark 2 flew humming softly as it trundled along at subsonic speeds during its standard patrol pattern in the rural area to the east of Amity Park. The Speeder's pilot, Samantha Manson, clad in a blood red duty jumpsuit, deftly entered commands into the pilot's console of the greatly redesigned Speeder, correcting for minor discrepancies and variations in the ship's course.

It's a beautiful sunset, the attractive sixteen year old thought to herself as she entered commands into her console. I wish Danny was here with me. But he wasn't, unfortunately. Their unique weapons and abilities dictated that Danny and Valerie flew most patrols together, which meant that she flew most of her combat patrols with either Jazz or Tucker nowadays. Not that minded, she considered both of them her friends, but ghost hunting was time-consuming, bitter work, and between that and school, they didn't see each other as often as they'd like. She supposed she should be thankful. If the people who were in Antarctica hadn't agreed to keep his secret, seven billion people would've known and their private life would've faded like fog.

Which is why I try to make the most of the time I do get to spend with him, she thought mischievously to herself. A blinking light caught her eye and when she saw what it was, she groaned, annoyance flooding her. Her forward navigational sensors were out of alignment again, for the umpteenth time this flight. As she grumbled to herself and recalibrated the sensors again, she caught a glimpse of the chronometer. It read, in iridescent green on a blue background, 1725 hours.

5:25 huh?, she thought to herself, a bubble of relief that the patrol would be coming to an end soon rising in her. Our respective patrols should be ending in an hour. Maybe when we get back I can actually spend some alone time with Danny before I have to go home and get some homework done.


"That forward nav sensor bothering you again?" Jazz said from her position at the console behind and to her right. The new redesign of the Specter Speeder due to analysis of technology captured from Vlad's estate had split piloting and sensor functions. At the front of the Speeder was the pilot's console while off and behind to her right was a console devoted exclusively to manning the Speeder's primary sensor array, including, when they were in the Ghost Zone, the Real World Items Scanner. In addition, the redesign had substantially reduced the size of the engines, giving them most of the space in the Speeder. Hence the newly opened spaces had one bench that doubled effectively as a storage compartment along each bulkhead, each one capable of sitting two people.


Sam's only response was an exasperated groan as she angrily finished recalibrating her sensors.


"I'll take that as a yes," Jazz said succinctly.


"The nav sensors didn't pop out of alignment this often during the test flights," Sam said angrily. "They popped out once during each flight." Sam shook her head. "We'll run a diagnostic when we get back to FentonWorks tonight."


"You know," Jazz said, a guarded tone on her voice. "Have you considered the possibility that this is a design flaw? This is only our third combat patrol on the new design. Maybe we missed something."


Sam shook her head, bristling at Jazz's comment. She'd found herself possessive of this new design of Specter Speeder. It handled like a dream compared to the Mark One, in addition to a full ECM suite, decoys, and vastly improved sensors. It had saved their lives once already. The other day Skulker had decided to take potshots at the Speeder, with guided missiles and energy weapons, loudly proclaiming that he'd mount their heads on his wall. The ECM suite had managed to jam the targeting locks on three of Skulkers missiles, the decoys had drawn off the others, and the Speeder's improved handling allowed them to avoid getting hit by the worst of the energy bursts.

If it hadn't been for this thing, she thought to herself, subconsciously patting the console as if she were comforting a cat, IDOT crews would still be picking parts of this ship, and us, out of the road. Ever since then, she'd had quite the soft spot for this design. She was willing to concede to the probability that some parts needed swapping out, but a design flaw? It would take a lot more to convince her of that then a wonky nav sensor.


"I don't think-," Sam began, but suddenly a red light started blinking on her console. Instinctively thinking that it was the nav sensor again she swore and turned to deal with it, but stopped, concern flooding through her when she saw that it wasn't a nav sensor.


"I'm reading an energy fluctuation in the right engine," she said immediately. An engine fluctuation could be a symptom of any number of things, one of them being internal damage that could blow the small craft apart.


"I think we should set down," Jazz said, concern on her voice. Sam heard Jazz activate her active sensors. After a few moments, she said, "There's a field about half a kilometer from where we are on our current position. I'll send you the coordinates."


"Agreed," Sam said, setting a course for the coordinates that appeared on her screen. Sighing, she opened a channel to FentonWorks. After a second, a chime was heard throughout the cabin, indicating an open channel.


"Hello?" the voice of Danny and Jazz's mother, Madeline said, reverberating throughout the cabin.


"Mrs. Fenton, it's Sam," Sam said quickly. "Listen we're going to be a little late returning from our patrol, we're having some technical issues so we're going to set down in a field not far from here and see if we can't figure out what's gone wrong before we continue our flight."


"If you can't figure it out," Maddie said. "I could send Jack around with the tow truck."


Sam felt a shudder run down her spine as she thought of Danny and Jazz's father and the tow truck. Jack Fenton was fast, but he wasn't exactly safe, and the last thing she thought any of them, Jack Fenton included, was to flip out into a ditch somewhere by the side of the road.


"It's okay," Sam said quickly. "We'll figure it out. Bye." And she closed the channel. Sighing in relief, the two women gently guided the ship towards the field they'd detected. It

was 5:30.




Samantha Ariel Manson gently stepped down onto the grassy field, a red toolkit in her hand. The isolated field Jazz had detected had apparently been abandoned for quite some time, as the area was blanketed with wild growing grass. Looking off towards the sunset, she abruptly got the sense that something was wrong. Looking around, she realized with a start, what it was.


There was no road. She'd parked too far from the road. It would be difficult for the tow truck to get to them if they needed it.


"Jazz," she said. "I think I parked too far from the road."
Jazz walked up to her side and looked out. The other woman sighed in frustration. "Let's get the engine fixed before we have to call out the tow and Dad has to drive cross-country."


"Agreed," Sam responded, and followed Jazz over to the engine mounting. They set their toolkits on the ground and they each pulled out a socket wrench and attached it to a bolt on either side of the right engine pod….


Darkness enveloped Samantha Manson as she floated in a sea of nothingness, her mind blank, and all sensation of the world around her gone. Finally, after what felt like an eternity drifting in a mind numbing fog, she felt sensation in the rest of her body begin to return. She tried to open her eyes, and realized that she was lying face down. More than that, she was lying face down on something itchy, something that tickled on the bare skin of her head and neck.

Grass, she thought to herself, confusion stabbing at her. Why am I lying face down on grass? Less than a minute ago I was helping to open up the right engine housing? Feeling like she could roll over, she pushed herself onto her back and opened up her eyes, staring up at the sky they'd so recently left.

What the hell! She thought to herself, surprise flooding her. Thirty seconds ago, the sun was just starting to set! What happened! Instead of the brilliant red-orange gold of the sky at sunset, the sky was dark, and laced with thousands of glowing stars. Hanging in the sky like a great swollen orb was a first quarter moon, it's right half shining with the reflected light of the sun with its left half enshrouded in darkness. Pushing herself off the ground she scrambled to her feet, fear running down her back in rivulets.

What happened, she thought to herself. Then suddenly, memory returned and she started around in shock. Jazz! Looking around frantically she saw a figure lying five feet away on her right, face down in the dirt.
Oh, no, she thought to herself, urging her feet, which felt like they were weighed down with lead, forward. Breaking into a dead run she reached her friend's side. Jazz was pushing herself off the ground as well. Rising unsteadily to her feet, she flicked a piece of red hair out of her face and turned to look at Sam.


"What happened?" she asked wearily. Then she looked up. Her green eyes widened and she blurted out, "and what happened to the sky?"


"I don't know," Sam said, shaking her head, a roil of emotions hitting her at once. Confusion, shock, fear, surprise.


"Well," Jazz said. "Where's the Speeder?"
Sam looked around, an uncharacteristically frantic and, thirty feet to the left of the two woman. She saw it, the Specter Speeder, lying in the field just as they'd left her. They shared a concerned glance and they both drew their side arms, and approached the Speeder cautiously, eyes flicking back and forth, looking for any dangers. As they got closer, they saw that the pod was dark inside. When they got to the entry hatch, Sam sighed, and reached her hand inside, feeling for the light switch. In an instant the pod was illuminated and Sam lurched herself into the ship, weapon outstretched, looking for anything that may have knocked them unconscious and left them in a field. There was nothing.

Everything was exactly as she and Jazz had left it.


"It's been powered down," Sam said, fear still gripping her as Jazz re-entered the speeder. "Exactly like I left the ship."


"Sam," Jazz said, her arms folded in worry. "What time is it? How long were we out?"


Sam looked at the black watch wrapped around her left wrist, and sighed. The display was blinking 12:00, over and over again.


Annoyed, Sam responded, "I don't know. This thing's reset itself, back to it's factory settings."


Jazz sighed, sitting down at the sensor station. "Well," she said glumly. "Let's get back in the air and get home whatever time it is."


"You'll get no argument from me," Sam responded, sliding into the pilot's seat. "I'm going to power up the engines. Let's get the pre-flight checklist out of the way then get out of here."
Sam sighed as she deftly piloted the Specter Speeder in the direction of Amity Park. Memory of the events that just happened still flowing through her like water. What happened back there? The obvious answer to that was that they'd been drugged and left there. But nothing had been taken. Nothing at all. Even the tools had been left behind. She shook her head. Something weird had definitely happened. But what it was, she couldn't even begin to say. As a woman, part of her mind began to suspect that the two of them may have been sexually assaulted, but if they had somehow been overpowered, drugged, and violated, whoever did it had done a good job of covering their tracks. Her jumpsuit was still on her, exactly as she'd put it on God only knew how many hours earlier, there were no rips anywhere near the sensitive parts of her body, and none on Jazz.
It wasn't rape, she thought to herself. Probably. I suppose I should be thankful for that at least.


Jazz's adrenaline laced warning shout ripped through her reverie, forcing her to focus on the present.
"Incoming contact!" Her friend shouted, the sounds of her tapping commands into her console rapping like tap dancers behind her. "Unknown classification!"


"Get me a targeting lock," Sam said immediately, adrenaline banishing the fear and doubt of the last few seconds as her hands played across her board, bringing her weapons online. If it was a ghost, the full compliment of Anti-Ecto weapons on the Speeder would hopefully be enough to deal with the threat. In the unlikely event that it was a human hostile contact, she'd switch over to the conventional weapons on board. The thought perturbed her. She'd never dogfighted against a human accept for mock engagements with Valerie. Fighting ghosts was one thing, having to kill a flesh and blood human being, even one that meant to kill them, was quite another matter entirely.


"Wait!" Jazz shouted an instant later, her board ringing out with a sensor alarm that told her that the computer had managed to ID the target. "I'm getting an IFF signal." She heard her sigh in relief. "It's the second Specter Speeder. It must've been sent to look for us." She heard a ringing sensation from her own console and looked down to see the blinking words, Incoming Transmission on her own status board.


"They're signaling us," she said quickly, feeling a sense of relief that they were no longer alone out there. She accepted the incoming channel.


"Sam," Danny's blessedly familiar voice said. "Where've you been?"


Sam and Jazz turned to look at each other, confusion fresh in their eyes as both struggled to figure out something to actually say. "I'll let you know when I figure that out. What are you doing in the Specter Speeder?"


"It's me and Valerie actually," Danny said over the comm.-channel. "When you failed to report in we were sent back out to look for you, and we took the Speeder so we could use it's sensor array. What happened? You've been radio silent for a long time."


"Uh, Danny," Sam said, no small amount of fear on her voice. "How long were we out?"


"You don't know?" Danny said, worry on his voice. "Sam, you're last comm.-check was at 5:30. You failed to check in at seven or nine and we've been flying for an hour. It's 10:00."


Sam, shock and disbelief coursing through her, found herself at a loss for words, as her mind struggled to comprehend what Danny had just told her. Finally, her shock addled mind found its ability to string words together in a coherent sentence again.


"Danny," she said slowly, part of her refusing to accept the evidence of both her senses and Danny's testimony. "Are you saying that we've been out of contact for four and a half hours?!"


"Yes," Danny said, the worry only increasing on his voice. "Sam, what happened?"


She shook her head. "I don't know. I'll tell you more when we get back. For now, I just want to focus on flying."




Sam felt worry gnaw at her stomach as she sat in the sofa of Danny's living room, trying to take solace from the fact that she could feel the strong, comforting grip of Danny's hand. Sighing, she looked over at her boyfriend. He stared off into nothingness, so angry that his eyes had taken on that green glow that made normal anger seem almost feral in it's intensity.

He's furious all right, Sam realized, staring at him. He's furious at whomever or whatever did whatever they did to me and his sister out there, and he's furious at himself, for not being there to protect us. As she looked at him, she couldn't help but give a wan smile.

There is one piece of information that we know, and that we're both relieved isn't the case, she thought to herself, feeling a slight bit of comfort come back to her. Neither one of us was raped tonight, Maddie found no evidence of anything on either of us.


She looked over at Jazz, who was sitting in an easy chair across from the sofa. She had changed into a green long-sleeved shirt and blue jeans and was trying to concentrate on some historical book for her class at UI Chicago. She couldn't concentrate, that much was clear, as she kept looking around the room, the same confusion that had gripped her in the Specter Speeder still evident in her eyes.


The sound of footsteps from the direction of the kitchen caught her attention and she stared expectantly as Madeline Fenton walked into the room, a clipboard in her hands and a perplexed and worried look in her violet eyes. Her eyes darted from Jazz, who was staring at her mother with an expectant look that mirrored the one on her's, to Sam, then back to Jazz before releasing a frustrated sigh.


"Well," Sam said, concern on her voice. "What is it?"


"I can find no evidence of any type of sedative in either of your systems," she said, confusion on her voice. "And I can't find any fingerprints on your jumpsuits that I can't account for."


"You can't find anything," Danny and Jazz said in unison, disbelief on their voices. "Are you sure?"


"Quite sure," Maddie said, staring down at her clipboard. "Also no evidence of head injuries, aneurysms, tumors or anything else that might account for being unconscious for four and a half hours, or memory loss."


"That's impossible," Sam said quickly, staring disbelievingly at Maddie Fenton. "We were unconscious for four and a half hours. One second we were trying to open up the right engine on the Specter Speeder at sunset and the next moment it was ten in the evening and we were trying to pick ourselves up off the ground."


"That's another thing," Maddie said, shaking her head. "Valerie and Jack have been going over the Specter Speeder from cockpit to engine to undercarriage and so far have found absolutely nothing to account for either the malfunctioning navigational sensors or engine problems you reported before you touched down."


Sam just stared at Maddie in shock until she heard Jazz say. "How is that possible? Weren't the malfunction alerts logged?"


Maddie nodded. "Yes, they were logged. The onboard computers believe that there were energy fluctuations in the right engine and that the forward navigational sensors kept coming out of alignment, but there's nothing to account for them."


Sam, at a loss for words, just leaned back in the sofa, shaking her head in disbelief.

Something did happen out there, she thought to herself. I just don't know what."

 

[Graywand2]

Chapter Two​

What Dreams May Come​

​

Two days later

Danny sat on the other side of the food garbage strewn table in the middle of Meagher-Corcoran Park and watched as Sam tucked away her salad with uncharacteristic slowness, as he absentmindedly played with one of those packaged plastic knives that the Nasty Burger always put in “to go” food as he did so. They had ordered their food from the Nasty Burger and, because they didn’t feel like staying and eating there, decided to eat in the park. They had moved deep into the park, away from the road that winded its way through it, and away from the areas where most people hung out, hoping to spend some quality time alone with his girlfriend. Sam though, seemed to still be haunted by whatever happened to her two days ago. Her violet eyes still held that lonely, hunted look he’d seen in her eyes two days ago. She stabbed at leaves of lettuce and small red baby tomatoes slowly, and with none of her normal speed. Every so often, every minute or two, she’d look over her shoulders for a second before returning to her food.

“Sam,” Danny said, worry on his voice, “are you okay?”

“Hmm?” Sam grunted, looking at him curiously, her violet eyes slightly bloodshot.

“Are you okay?” Danny asked again, shocked at how tired she was. Why didn’t he notice that before? “You look beat.”

“Yeah,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, Danny, I haven’t gotten much sleep in the last couple days. I can’t get what happened out of my head. I mean, with no evidence of anything wrong, I should move on, but I can’t. Something weird happened on Friday, and though I like weird I kind of like to have a name to assign to the weirdness. When something weird happens, especially when it happens to me, I kind of like to have a name to assign it to.”

“You and me both, Sam,” Danny said. The truth was, it had unsettled him deeply as well. Something had rendered his girlfriend and his sister, the two most important women in his life, unconscious for reasons right now known only to the perpetrator and God and whomever or whatever was responsible could come back for them. He hated the thought of just sitting around and waiting for whoever attacked them to come back, if they came back, was thinking that he would round up Valerie when he and Sam finally separated for the day and pay a visit to several of the usual suspects in the Ghost Zone. The only reason he hadn’t done so yet was because he had been waiting for his parents to glean some sort of clue so he wouldn’t focus his energies on the wrong target, but there was no clue, so he was back to option one.

Looking at the precarious state of his girlfriend, Danny said , sympathy and sadness flowing in him by turns, “Listen, sweetheart,” and leaned over to put his hands lovingly on her shoulders, eager to comfort her the only way he could. “We’ll-,” his words were cut off as when he saw a brief dark blur and he felt a sensation like a painful vise locking around his wrist, a vise that had fingernails that were digging themselves into his skin. His eyes flew down to see Sam’s hand locked around her wrist as he reflexively dropped a plastic knife he didn’t even know he’d been holding.

Sam, a manic, almost feral look in her eyes, gave him a glare that looked like it should be able to burn through solid diamond. “Do you have to point that thing so close to my face!” She roared angrily, fixing him with that venomous, almost homicidal glare. Danny just froze there, like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car, genuine fear of Sam cutting him to the core for the first time in his life. Two years of ghost fighting had, aside from leaving her in good physical shape, had made her a really good fighter, and he knew that if she truly felt like she had to she could easily end his life in whatever form he happened to be in. For a long moment, time seemed to stand still as they sat there, his wrist locked in Sam’s grip as he fought the urge to cower before this woman who’d taken over his girlfriend’s body. Almost as soon as that rage came over her though, he felt the pain in his weaken as her grip on his wrist lessened and then disappeared entirely as the fire in Sam’s eyes was extinguished.

For a moment the two of them stared at each other, shock in each other’s eyes, the field around him as silent as a graveyard. Finally, Sam, her bottom lip trembling slightly whispered furtively, “I’m sorry, Danny,” she said hollowly, and he realized that she was back to her old self. “I don’t know what came over me.”

That makes two of us, he thought to himself, fear rushing through him. It’s probably just the lack of sleep, it tends to leave her irritable. Though she’s never gotten that irritable. Aloud, he said, ignoring the irrelevant sight of the red welts on his wrist . “It’s okay.” Smiling wanly, he said, “How about I just take you home so you can take a nap? You might feel better.”

Sam gave a weary nod, her eyes mingled with shame and self-loathing. “That might not be such a bad idea, Danny.”

Two hours later, Danny Phantom found himself walking up the darkened, infinitely winding staircase that led to the top of Clockwork’s tower, pursuing the last lead they had left in the Ghost Zone. Valerie, in her Red Huntress suit, was walking at his side. He noticed through the flickering torchlight that she was decidedly on edge, the young African-American woman’s eyes still darting about in a search for targets that had, perhaps worryingly, become as natural as breathing to his friend.

“Don’t worry, Val,” he said in what was meant to be a comforting tone, intended to smooth Valerie’s tense and ruffled feathers. “I know Clockwork. We’re completely safe here.”

“Didn’t you say that you’re evil older self from an alternate timeline is being held here in a Fenton Thermos?” Valerie asked pointedly, giving him a half-friendly, half-annoyed glare.

Danny felt the back of his neck burn with embarrassment as that little fact came roaring back to the fore. Impulsively rubbing at the sight, he said, a bashful tone on his voice, “Yes.”

“Then I don’t feel entirely safe,” Valerie said, the annoyance in her gaze transmuting to the easy camaraderie that the two of them had. It had come surprisingly fast after they’d finally made peace after Operation Spirit. On top of the fact they had been attracted to each other once, Danny had always respected Valerie’s abilities, and a year and a half of unwanted conflict between the two of them had given her a respect for his own abilities, albeit a grudging and deeply buried one. When they’d started running patrols together, becoming close friends had just come naturally.

“Say Danny,” Valerie said after a moment, a worried tone on her rough voice. “Is Sam jealous? Of us, flying patrols together?”

“Huh,” Danny said, then what she just said finally clicked in his brain and he said, with perhaps more force than the clearly genuinely concerned Valerie deserved. “Of course not. We’re secure in our feelings for each other. She knows it makes sense for us to fly CAP together, considering we can actually fly CAP together naturally, instead of me holding on to them and propelling them along by sheer momentum. Why do you ask?”

“I think Sam is jealous,” Valerie said, giving him a knowing look. “If nothing else but of the sure and certain fact that I monopolize so much of your time nowadays.”

“Sam and I spend plenty of time together,” Danny said defensively as he rounded the stairs.

“Really?” Valerie said, pointedly. Grabbing her shoulder, she stopped them on the stairs, and turned him to face her, staring him directly in the eyes. “How much time did you spend with her in the last week, barring you having lunch together in the park which you cut short when it became readily apparent she was an exhausted wreck of her former self who needed a good ten hours sleep?”

Danny opened his mouth to defend himself when his back brain actually started to run through all the times he and Sam had spent together. Apart from a (really good) make out session in a secluded corner of the Casper High grounds on Monday, he had spent most of his time fighting ghosts whenever they popped up, and flying patrols looking for trouble when they weren’t popping up.

“Maybe you have a point,” Danny said, nodding, thinking that perhaps that might account for at least a small portion of Sam’s anxiety. “So, what do I do?”

Valerie looked at him askance as if he’d just asked her in all seriousness if she was black. “Isn’t it obvious? Fly the next few patrols with Sam in one of the Specter Speeders.” When he opened his mouth, she said. “If anything pops up, just give Sam a weapon’s lock and go ghost and fight yourself.”

Danny stood there, lost in thought. Part of him wanted to refuse, to continue to watch her back because he felt he owed her for not simply telling her the truth about who he was and who Vlad really was a long time ago and saving them both from a world of trouble. But more than the fact that they owed each other she was also one of his best friends, and right now one of his best friends was telling him he needed to make more time for his girlfriend.

She’s right, he thought to himself, shame burning him as though someone had taken a brand to his skin. Particularly in light of whatever happened to her, I should’ve reached that conclusion myself by now.

“Some boyfriend I’m turning out to be,” Danny said glumly.

“You’ve never been a boyfriend before,” Valerie pointed out. “Not for real at least. You’re going to stumble, make mistakes.” She gave him a friendly smile. “But if there’s one thing I know about you Daniel Fenton is that you learn from your mistakes. As a matter of fact, if it wasn’t for the fact that you’re smart enough to learn from your mistakes, we’d all be dead and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“True,” Danny said, feeling a bit better as they continued to walk up the stairs. “True, true.”


“What do you mean you can’t tell me what happened two nights ago?!” An enraged Danny shouted, fixing Clockwork with a shocked glare. “You’re the Master of friggin Time for God’s sake! You see, hear, and know everything!”

“Do we have to do this every time?” The pale-faced ghost in violet robes said, faint annoyance on his voice. This was a practiced argument between the two men. “I’m not your personal go-to Ghost for every answer to every problem you’re faced with.”

“You’ve helped me before,” Danny said pointedly, folding his arms. “You showed me how to cure the ecto-acne that was killing Sam and Tucker. Sam is in trouble again, and you’re the only person who can help me.”

“You were meant to find the answer to this problem yourself,” Clockwork said, switching to his child form, that of a swaddling infant with the same glowing red eyes before shifting abruptly back to his adult form. “You know that as well as I do.”

“I can’t very well solve a problem without a clue,” Danny said shaking his head. “The other ghosts whom I normally have to deal with profess innocence, which I’m reluctantly forced to accept because this is so unlike them, and my parents can’t find anything physically wrong with either Sam, Jazz, or the Specter Speeder. You are the only person that I know who, beyond a shadow of a doubt, knows what happened in that field Friday night. Who, human or Ghost did whatever they did to Sam and Jazz?”

Clockwork sighed, leaning on his staff and looking at the large, glowing crystal ball in the middle of it’s pit, looking at some historical event in the past, present or future that in all probability had nothing to do with the situation at hand. “There’s your problem right there,” he said after a moment. “Why do you assume it has to be either one of those?”

Danny, flabbergasted, gave Clockwork a confused look. He looked over at Valerie, who had a look backed with utter confusion at him before they both turned back to stare at Clockwork.

“Well,” Danny said, the confusion he felt evident on his voice. “Who else can it be?”

“There are more things in Heaven, Earth, and the Ghost Zone, Danny, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Clockwork said cryptically, giving Danny a look that was half amusement and half annoyance. “That is a truth most people, human or ghost, know on some level but can’t quite grasp in reality. The two of you judge yourselves against the adversaries you’ve encountered before. Skulker, Ember, Walker, yourselves. Out there are threats that make them and the human villains you’ve yet to encounter look like child’s play. That’s all I will say on the matter, so could you please leave and let me get back to my work.



Two hours earlier

Samantha Manson ripped aside the lavender curtain on the left side of her four-poster bed with such force that she almost tore it off and flopped unceremoniously face first onto her bed, burying her head in her pillow. Her eyes felt like they were pocked with sand and her legs felt like they were made of lead, and she eagerly wanted to close her eyes and sleep. However, banishing any attempts to lapse into unconsciousness, was what she did to Danny not twenty minutes ago, replaying in a continuous loop

What is wrong with me? She thought to herself, angry and ashamed, as she resisted the urge to cry into her pillow. Falling to pieces over a plastic knife. Where the hell did that come from?! She gave a frustrated sigh. Maybe Danny’s right. All I need is a nap in order to feel better, and prevent myself from lashing out at people who are just trying to help. She turned herself over, slipped under her covers, slid her curtain back into position and closed her eyes, letting her exhaustion come over her in waves. Finally, all conscious thought began to lapse and she felt herself slip under the waves, falling into sleep.

It was a jumble of images and sensations. She felt herself being dragged down a metal corridor between two people, though she couldn’t tell who was dragging her. She felt herself being slammed onto a table. She remembered struggling against something that came down across her chest, squeezing the air torturously from her lung, leaving her fighting for every breath as her lungs burned.. A blindingly powerful light exploded into her vision and she saw something…a scalpel attached to some sort of metallic armature move down towards her. Her mind exploded, all the reason that her species prided itself on was abandoned in favor of the visceral terror brought on by uncounted millennia of instinct. Even as she pushed frantically against the restraining arm holding her down, pushing at the nigh immovable restraint with every ounce of adrenaline fueled strength, furiously kicking at the bottom of the table with no effect, she felt the knife bite into her skin, burning her as it cut…

The world broke around her and Sam found herself bolting forward in bed, feeling her chest for a cut that wasn’t there even as she cast about frantically for something, anything to defend herself with.

Defend myself from what? She thought to herself, she tried to remember what her dream had been about but doing so was like grasping for straws that were being blown about on the wind. She remembered being dragged by something, or perhaps two somethings, but by what or where she had no clue. She looked over at the small digital clock next to her bed. It was six in the evening. Danny had taken her at home around noon, which means she’d been sleeping for a good six hours.

What is wrong with me? She thought to herself as she flopped back onto her bed. First I go off on Danny and now I’m having nightmares. The rational part of her mind wanted to say that it was only one nightmare. Nightmares were perfectly normal, and logically there didn’t have to be a connection.

You don’t honestly believe that, do you? A tiny little voice in her back brain said. Something happened out there. Maybe your subconscious is trying to tell you what it is, but you’re just not listening.

 

[RobertScorpio]

I like how your characters can have these great little conversations with everything going on around them..makes them seem real.

Also, clockwork sounds like Q. In fact, when he told them about the past enemies they've faced, I could so much see Q telling picard the same thing...

cant wait for chapter three!

Rob

 

[Graywand2]

Chapter Three​

Distant Whispers​

Samantha Manson lay in her bed, attempting to focus on the science fiction book in her hand by the orange light of the nightstand lamp. As much as she loved Lois McMaster Bujold’s work, Memory in particular, what happened earlier that day with Danny kept popping in and out of her head. Even now, ten hours later, she was still partially in shock. Danny, the man who loved her, who’d never harmed a hair on her head when he was under the control of his own mind, had simply tried to comfort her like he was supposed to and he’d repaid his love by nearly tearing his arm out of his socket.

Over what, she thought, feeling a fresh urge to berate herself, to call herself every low name under the sun. A stupid plastic knife that he was holding onto absentmindedly? She looked over at the cell phone on her desk. She hadn’t called Danny since he dropped him off earlier in the day. And Danny hadn’t called her.

Why won’t he call? Sam thought to herself, a worm of worry digging into her stomach, and staying there. He could just be busy, and then the thought hit her. Or he could be hurt. Or he could be dead. She looked over at her cell phone again. She could easily pick up that phone right now and put her mind at ease by simply calling him. But something was holding her back. What was it?

Unbidden the memory returned, fresh and sharp. The approach of that plastic knife, a perfectly ordinary plastic knife that had still been in its original packaging, had triggered something in her so deep-seated that it had set off her flight or fight response, driving the fact that this was Danny out of her mind, and all she could think of was defending herself from the knife, and it’s wielder. For the life of her though, she couldn’t figure out what it was.

And that is what had truly terrified her more than anything else, during those few moments of pure rage and anger coursing through her like nothing human, she had been prepared to kill him. For the second time in as many years she had been on the cusp of murdering the man she loved. The first time she could rationalize to herself, maybe, by the fact that she was at least partially under the control of a ghost. This though, she couldn’t excuse or explain.

It’s not like I’ve ever made peace with the first time I wanted to murder him, Sam thought to herself, remembering what happened during Undergrowth’s control of Amity Park, shame filling her at her actions. She may have been brainwashed and manipulated, but the whole point of brainwashing and manipulating someone was to leave their individuality intact, but serving the will of the brainwasher. Try as she might, she couldn’t make peace with the fact that she had wanted to fight Danny. That she had enjoyed it. Over the years, she’d come to realize that the reason he chose her as his second-in-command, apart from her love of plants, which was hardly unusual, was her own hypocritical actions. On one hand, she had paid lip service to the concepts of freedom and self-determination, and on the other she tried to force her own dietary system on the rest of the school, and had once even tried to get Danny to destroy things that others liked, and she didn’t. Undergrowth had seen the part of her that wanted to be in charge of others, and instead of offering her a constructive outlet for that aspect of her personality, he’d driven her insane. He’d lowered her inhibitions and offered her real power in exchange for renouncing her humanity, and her family and friends.

And the crazed animal with no inhibitions left, and no loyalty beyond her own desire for power and control that she had become had eagerly accepted, not even once bothering to stand up for herself. When she had cornered Danny, she’d offered him a chance to rule with her not because she had wanted an equal, but because she wanted a mate to satisfy her own desires, a tool to be used as she saw fit. And when Danny rejected her…

Even now, after all this time, unable to stomach what she’d almost done, and what she’d felt like doing today, she put her past out of her mind and was about to attempt to focus her attentions on her novel again, when she felt a cold chill cut through her like a knife, as though she had been picked up and ws unceremoniously being held in a bathtub of ice water. Her hands starting to shiver, she reached under her lavender pillow and pulled the ectogun out from under it. She aimed it around the room in a practiced, fluid motion, aiming it at her work desk, her computer, her TV, the door to her bedroom.

“If that’s you, Danny,” she said, affecting an air of menace that she didn’t really feel at the moment. “Reveal yourself before I’m forced to assume it’s not you start firing at random points around the room to see what I hit.”

Danny abruptly materialized in front of her, changing smoothly from ghost form to human form. He had changed his clothes since lunch that day. He was wearing a black shirt and silver slacks and he was standing there with his arms folded in front of his chest.

Sam lowered her weapon, breathing a sigh of relief. “I hate it when that happens.”

“Necessary evil, Sam,” Danny said, sighing. “Necessary evil.”

Cold snaps whenever ghosts, and Danny in ghost form, entered a room were part and parcel to the life she had chosen when she was fourteen. She was about to say something to that effect when she noticed the fresh bandage around his wrist. Shame burning through her like a brand, she walked over and gently held his hand. Her shame doubled in intensity when she felt his hand twitch ever so slightly.

You should never have to fear me, honey, she thought to herself sadly.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, a leaden tone on her voice.

“It’s okay,” Danny said, a comforting tone on his voice. “It’s in the past, as far as I’m concerned. Let it go.”

Sam opened her mouth to say something, to demand that Danny do something other than just admonish her to let it go this time, but the fact of the matter was Danny was here with her. Another fact of the matter was that she loved him too much to waste the time they had to spend together hanging onto the past, no matter how shameful that past was.

“Why are you here, Danny?” Sam remarked, smiling despite herself.

Danny, sounding like his feelings were hurt, responded, “Do I really need a reason to visit the woman I love?” There was a playful glint in those piercing blue eyes, however, that belied the tone on his voice. Sam folded her arms and stared at him in mock annoyance until he said,, a playful tone on his voice, “Not that I don’t have a reason this time, but still.”

Samantha smirked despite herself. “What is it?”

Danny sighed and sat down in the easy chair across from her in the room. “I just paid a visit to our friend Clockwork. I hoped he would be able to shed some light on what happened to you Friday night.”

Sam nodded, walking back over to her bed, she could already see the gist of the probable conversation playing in her mind. “Let me take a wild stab and say that he gave the usual ‘you need to work this out on your own’ speech. Which, in any other circumstances, I’d agree with wholeheartedly, unusually annoyed with whom she sometimes referred to as the Time Lord’s grandstanding, but your perspective on such issues tends to change when something like this happens to you.
“
Yes, actually,” Danny said, nodding, his eyes briefly reflecting the annoyance she felt. “Though he did say one interesting thing, and it actually sounded oddly familiar. I think I’ve heard something like it before.”

A burst of curiosity replacing the toxic mix of shame and self-loathing that she’d been grappling with before Danny showed up , she sat down on her bed and said, “What do you mean?”

“Something to the effect of ‘there are more things in heaven, earth, and the Ghost Zone, then are dreamt of in your philosophy’.” Danny responded, a thoughtful tone on his voice. “I thought I’ve heard something like it before,” he shook his head in frustration. “I don’t know where I’ve heard it, and neither does Valerie.”

“You and Valerie need to pay attention in Lit class more,” Sam said, the sheer shock that Danny didn’t know the source of that statement causing her to want to smack him. Sam shook her head. “I’m sorry, Danny, but you still need to work on applying yourself in school.”

“My grades have steadily improved in the past year or so,” Danny said defensively. That was true, his grades had started to climb back out of the pit they’d fallen into, his assignments garnering Cs to Bs in some areas again. Aside from the fact that Danny was starting to pass out of that wall teenage boys hit when they inevitably started to get more focused on getting laid, with varying results, then getting their work done correctly and in a timely manner, Sam had been helping him manage the time he didn’t spend ghost-hunting better. The trade off for the better grades, however, was the fact that they had less time to spend together romantically, barring rendezvous like this in the middle of the night.

Which is why part of me would really rather be kissing him right at the moment, she thought to herself, clamping down on her own desires for after they’d worked through what he was revealing. Or more. But this is too important.

“The two of you still need to pay attention in Lit class,” Sam remarked, putting those thoughts aside,“and read more literature that wasn’t written in the last two to three decades.”

“Says the woman who’s reading Memory, which is from ’96 and by the way, is my copy which I loaned you because I’ve already read it a dozen times,” Danny pointed out.

“I thought your personal belief was ‘never loan a book because you probably won’t get it back’,” Sam said defensively, clutching possessively at her book, which incidentally bore a DF written in cursive in black Sharpie on the tops of the pages. Shaking her head, she said, “Never mind. Clockwork was manipulating a line from Hamlet to his own purposes.” Getting off her bed, she walked over to her bookshelf, and grabbed a well-worn copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio off the shelf. She walked it over to her desk, set it down and started flipping through it, looking for Hamlet, then the appropriate section. Finding it, she said, “It was after the ghost of Hamlet’s father. Hamlet senior had just gotten done telling his son that he was murdered and he needed to avenge his death. He swore his friends, the gate guards Francisco and Bernardo, and his college buddy Horatio, to secrecy regarding what he just revealed to him. Horatio remarked that this was all very strange and Hamlet responded by saying, “And therefore as a stranger give it welcome, there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, then are dreamt of in your philosophy. The line is basically an admonishment to listen and remember that there are more things then are presently known to science in this world, and things that science can’t even explain.” She gave him a knowing look. “Ghosts for example.”

Danny smirked. “Though the way he put it, makes it sound like he was talking about more than just Ghosts.”

“I know,” Sam said, thinking about it. The more she thought about it though, the more the conclusion she didn’t want to reach came into her mind. After all, it was easier to believe they were up against an opponent who they at least had a frame of reference for beginning to deal with, then the alternative. “Danny, do you ever get the feeling that there’s more than just humans in this universe?”

“Are you feeling okay?” Danny said from behind her, his tone one of mixed annoyance and genuine concern, considering the fact that pretty much everyone on Earth knew they were not alone now.

“I’m not talking about the Ghost Zone,” Sam said, cold fear washing over as she looked at him. He was still sitting in her armchair, giving her a look of understandable concern. “I’m referring to this reality. Do you think we are alone in this universe?”

Immediately, the temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees of its own volition, as both found themselves considering a conclusion they’ve been avoiding since whatever had happened Friday night. Danny instinctively got out of her seat and started to pace back and forth, fear, anger, and hurt in his every line.

Finally after a moment, he stopped his eyes widened with shock as he stared at her,. “If you’re going where I think you’re going,” Danny began, as a hard edge appeared on his voice.

“I am,” Sam said immediately, unable to resist the only other conclusion. The enormity of what they were suggesting settling over her like a black cloud of frustration. Everything made sense now. Everything. The missing time event, the complete lack of any evidence that they’d been attacked in any matter whatsoever. Clockwork’s ambiguous use of Hamlet, had done it’s work.

It all adds up, she thought to herself. I just don’t like what it adds up to.

She and Jazz had been violated that Friday evening. Something had happened that was so traumatic that her conscious mind had suppressed all memory of it, but yet and still her subconscious had been so frightened it had reacted to anything that had had the slightest connection to whatever happened, even a totally innocuous gesture by the man she was in love with. And the perpetrators of the attack could not be human or ghost.

The image of that innocent plastic knife flashed through her head, along with her reaction to it.

Dear God, she thought for the umpteenth time that night, shaking her head, as disgust filled her. What did they do to me out there, and what did they do to Jazz?

 

[Graywand2]

Chapter Four​

Approaching Emmaus​

Danny watched as Sam sat at the kitchen table in FentonWorks, his kitchen illuminated in the orange-red light of the setting sun. He watched as she gently sipped her third cup ofs steaming hot tea from a yellow teacup, the pungent smell of the Earl Gray tea tickling his nostrils even from where he stood near the kitchen sink. As he watched he felt a sense of relief flood him that Sam had agreed to spend time with him before his parents and his sister came over. On the surface, it was nothing unusual, she preferred to spend as much of her time with him as possible anyway. In recent days, it had taken on an entirely new urgency. Since they’d come to the stomach-churning realization of what had happened that Friday night, neither one of them had wanted to be too far from the site of the other. That, and they needed to tell Jazz, his parents, and their friends what they figured out, so they can actually look for abnormalities from that point.

Thinking about last night caused a steaming torrent of rage to flood through him once again. More than anything else, it was his duty to keep people safe, especially the ones he loved. To know that the two most important woman in his life in all probability had been experimented on for God only knew what purpose made him want to kill something, preferably whoever or whatever was responsible

I should’ve been with at least one of them, he thought to himself, despair at his own actions seeping into the torrent of rage he grappled with. Valerie may be my friend, but Sam is…the woman I love. If I’d just have been the one on that patrol, one of them would’ve been with Valerie, far away from where they were forced to land, and I could’ve defended either one of the ones I was with.

Beating himself up over his perceived mistake, however, paled in comparison as to how he felt about what must’ve been done to her and his sister. He’d gotten no sleep the previous night, thinking a out the possibilities. Images of their DNA being…harvested, for use in hybrid breeding experiments, being subjected to invasive surgeries for bizarre reasons, being impregnated with alien hybrids, they’d all jockeyed for position in his brain that night, with the result that he’d gotten only a few hours sleep.

“God, I’m sorry,” Danny said abruptly, unable to take what he was feeling any longer. He’d managed to get through the school day without bringing it up, unwilling to discuss what had happened in public He’d wanted to say those words since last night. However, before he’d even had a chance to say them, Valerie had called saying she needed help battling a giant ghost snake that had taken over the food court at the mall, so he’d had to leave immediately. Sam had wanted to come and help back her up, but her parents were home and it was a Sunday evening. Personally, the last thing Sam had needed was for her parents to grill her as to why she was out late on a school night. So, he and Tucker went to her aid instead, quickly mopping up the nasty ghost creature and sending him back to the Ghost Zone. After that, he’d been so tired he’d simply set a course straight home and went to bed with his nightmares.

“Sorry for what?” Sam asked quizzically, tilting her head in confusion as she regarded him curiously.

Danny swallowed the act feeling like he was swallowing a lump of coal whole. “For not being with you Friday night.”

Sam released a frustrated and sympathetic sigh. “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not!” Danny half- shouted, feeling a fresh surge of anger rush through his body like an electric current. Sam was always the one who prodded him, pushed him, told him when he was making a stupid, idiotic mistake, and now here she was telling him that a mistake that got her and his sister experimented on was okay!

“Yes, it is,” Sam said forcefully, shaking her head from side to side, her black hair shifting in the light of the setting sun flowing through the kitchen window. “There was no way you could’ve known what was going to happen.”

“Knowing what would’ve happened is irrelevant,” Danny said incredulously, glaring at her in shock. “I failed you as your boyfriend by not being there in the first place.”

Sam’s knuckles immediately whitened around her teacup and her normally violet eyes became almost black with anger as she glared at him from the table, every line reflecting hardened malice. “What do you mean by that? You have to be there all the time because I’m a woman? Therefore I’m weak and soft without my big and strong boyfriend that can shoot energy blasts out of his hands to ward off danger.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” Danny said angrily, shooting her incensed daggers as he felt hurt that she could even contemplate such a thing. Regret over his perceived failure as a boyfriend softening the furious glare, he sighed and said, “I should’ve realized that you resented not being able to patrol with me like we used to. If we’d just patrolled together that night, I can’t help but think that my powers and your skills might have been enough to prevent you from being…abducted.” God, he had trouble even saying the word. He didn’t understand why. If ghosts could exist, why not aliens? Considering how much he loved science fiction, he’d always believed in extraterrestrial life.

Maybe it’s because I didn’t expect them to act the way they did, he thought to himself, trying to wrap his mind around why the concept which he was forced to accept was so difficult for him to voice. Maybe because I genuinely believed that in order to travel between the stars that any alien race had to get past war and violence. As soon those thoughts came to him, all three Halo games that both he and Sam owned popped into his mind, complete with a line from the original Star Trek series. “We’re human beings with a million savage years on our hands.”

So if it’s not a belief that any spacefaring aliens would necessarily be peaceful, Danny thought. Then what is it? Maybe because it’s the fact that you scoffed at the entire notion of alien abduction, particularly after your mother told you that any race advanced enough for interstellar travel would only need to take a few drops of blood from one human in order to understand the basic genetic and physiological underpinnings of our entire race.

That changed, however, when it was the only option that made sense to understand something that happened to a loved one. Regardless of why it was happening. It had happened.

“It happened, Danny,” Sam said softly, walking over to where he was standing and snaking her arms around his neck with a sympathetic look on her face. The warmth of her hands on his flesh brought her back to reality, and he instinctively brought his hands around her back, holding her to him. He breathed in a contented sigh, taking in the scent of her strawberry shampoo. Resting her head on his chest, she said, “There’s no point in griping about it. The only thing we can do is try to do is move forward, just find out what we can, and hope we learn more in the days to come.”

The presence of Sam’s warm body pressed against his, her scent filling his nostrils sent a wave of enjoyable heat filling him. Putting his hand on her chin, he pushed her head up and stared into her lovely eyes. Sam, all trace of sadness or anger gone, reached up and ran her hand through his messy black hair, before moving her hands back to his neck and pushing his head down and pressing her lips to his. The warm kiss sent a pleasurable jolt running through her and he kissed her back furiously, even as he slipped his hand under the hem of her shirt, running his hand along the smooth skin of her waist.

“Mmm hmm,” the sound of a woman clearing her throat echoed through the kitchen. Sam broke the kiss and looked towards the sound. Danny, too into it, made a move to nibble on her earlobe in an attempt to draw her back to him when his eyes glided over, and he abruptly stopped, feeling a tingle of embarrassment replace the tingle of lust on his neck.

“Pardon me,” she said, a mixture of annoyance and apprehension on her voice. “But I believe you had something important you wanted to say to me?” There was something about the way his normally confident elder sister was carrying herself, a nervousness that conveyed all he needed to know.

“Jazz what’s wrong? You’re here early.”






“You walked out in the middle of your English class? And in the middle of a test no less?” Sam said, shocked, staring at the other woman as though she’d suddenly grown a hideously deformed second head that sprouted lines in Klingon. The thought, the very concept of Jazz just walking out a class, even a college class she wasn’t required to attend, was ludicrous in the extreme, particularly when there was no ghosts to fight, and they had said repeatedly that there was no urgent need to drop whatever she was doing.

She looked over at Danny. Her boyfriend just stared at his sister, his blue eyes widened with shock. Finally, after a few moments her boyfriend said, disbelief thick on his cadences, finally just said, “In the name of God, why?”

Jazz sighed, shaking her head, her face crinkling in embarrassment. “Because,” and she stopped and visibly swallowed, clearly hesitant. After a second she sighed and blurted out roughly, “Ah, to hell with it.” Sighing again, she said, “I feel trapped by my desk.”

“You’re what?” Sam said quizzically, cocking her head and giving Danny’s sister a quizzical look. “Why?”

“It’s damned strange, isn’t it?” Jazz said, looking at her teacup with haunted eyes, a trace of the clinical Jazz showing through in her voice. “Those foldout half-desks cause a bizarre feeling to run through me, as though I’m being held down to a table with something pressing down on my chest forcing the air out of my lungs.” The moment those last words came tumbling out of Jazz’s mouth, she felt her chest burn as though it had been set on fire. She rubbed at the base of her neck impulsively, feeling like her lungs were being brutally constricted by a vise. Jazz, oblivious clearly to what Sam was feeling just now continued on. “I’ve never had such a…emotional response to an inanimate object like that before, particularly one as innocuous as a foldout half-desk in a lecture hall. Halfway through my third class today, it grew too much and I just packed my bags and left, test be damned. When I got the email on my cell saying that the two of you had something to tell me, I seized on that as something to do, so I came.” She looked at the two of them expectantly, a hint of tension remaining on her voice. “Well, what is it?”

Sam sighed, and, ignoring the feeling in her chest, she said, the anger and embarrassment of the previous day resurging once again, carrying with it the shame of having tried to hurt Danny once before. “I, too had an out of proportion emotional response to an object.”

The haunted look in Jazz’s eyes disappeared as though it were fog exposed to the sun, replaced by a look of morbid curiosity and concern. Sliding her tea aside she reached over and said, “What happened?”

For the umpteenth time in the last hour, Sam gave a frustrated sigh. “Me and Danny were having lunch in Amity Park-,”

“Huh,” Jazz said, a look of confusion crackling to life on her face. “You mean Meagher-Corcoran Park? Tucker successfully sponsored an initiative to rename it after a couple of Irish-American Civil War generals before he resigned as mayor when he realized Chicagoland politics were a living hell.”

“Right,” Sam said, nodding. She often forgot the new name for the park. Tucker having renamed it or not, it had been, somewhat ridiculously, called Amity Park for as long as she’d been alive on this planet. “Anyway,” Sam said. “Danny was absentmindedly holding a plastic knife, still in its original packaging and I, well.” Words unaccountably failing her, Sam gently grabbed Danny’s wrist and put it on the table, showing her the freshly white bandage. Shooting Danny another apologetic look he turned to look at Jazz.

The look of surprise on Jazz’s face swiftly transmuted to anger, and, shooting Sam a vicious glare, she bit out, in a low, enraged tone “You attacked my brother?”

Dropping Danny’s wrist like it had burned her, she put her head in her hands and said, “I don’t know what came over me, Jazz. He was reaching out to me and when I saw the knife he was absentmindedly holding onto I just flipped out, I grabbed his arm and yelled at him. She sighed, and said the words she knew, she knew Jazz wasn’t going to like. “I don’t know what came over me, but I we do have an idea of what might have caused it, and what happened to us over the weekend.”

Jazz, the angry look gone from her eyes, said. “Start explaining.”

Sam opened her mouth to speak when he felt the warmth of Danny on her arm. She looked over at him, and saw that his blue eyes, those piercing blue eyes that she loved, were filled with concern. Understanding the meaning of the look in his eyes, she nodded and closed her mouth, loving him more in that one moment then she already did if that were possible.

I’ll handle it, his eyes had told her. And Danny did. As he launched into the explanation about what Clockwork had said. A few minutes into listening to Danny explain to an increasingly incredulous looking Jazz about what happened, she felt a twinge in her loins that had nothing to do with the fact that she was close to Danny. It was an urge that was growing rapidly larger with each passing second. All thoughts of Danny pushed to the back, she concentrated all her willpower on ignoring the urge. Even as she fought the urge to get up and go to the bathroom, eager to see what Jazz thought of their theory, her body responded of its own volition, her right foot tapping up and down on the tile under the kitchen table.

I can’t hold this much longer, Sam thought to herself desperately. Deciding quickly she scooted away from the table with a loud grunting sound that caused Danny to cease trying to poorly explain how the Hamlet reference cued them on to the truth and stare curiously at her. It’s times like this that I curse the fact that my favorite drink is a natural diuretic.

“Excuse me,” she said quickly. “I have to go to the bathroom.” Without another word, she quickly ran up and out of the kitchen, running up the stairs, finding the bathroom, and locking herself in.

After sitting down on the toilet and relieving herself, she walked over to the white porcelain sink and turned it on, letting the hot water flow as she soaped her hands before letting them run over the warm water.

“Violence is part of our soul, Sam, you can’t keep denying our nature,” a familiar feminine voice said in a menacing manner as she stared at the stream of warm water coming from the sink. Sam stood there, rooted to the spot, feeling cold rush over her, chilling her to the bone even through the warm water of the sink. Looking up, fear coursing through her in rivulets, she saw, leaning against the wall next to the toilet with her arms folded, behind the reflection of herself in the mirror, herself. She was wearing a dark green dress that went down to the tops of her legs. Her eyes glowed with a light of their own, similar to Danny’s but deeper, richer, and even the vague outline of the structure of her eyes gone. She had that same maniacal smile on her face. It was the maniacal smile of the power hungry psychopath that took part in the attempted murder of billions of people, the genocide of her entire species, in the name of power. The woman who’d been, ever so briefly, Lord of the Earth.

Sam turned slowly around, fear gripping her, her heart pounding in her chest, thumping in her ear, and stared towards the spot. There was nothing there, not one damn thing. Turning back slowly, the sound of her heart beating still thumping in his ears, she saw there was no one else in the mirror except the reflection the laws of physics said should be in the mirror.

It’s just my imagination, she thought to herself frantically as she turned the lights out and left the bathroom as quickly as possible.

 

[Graywand2]

Doctor Madeline Fenton had once believed that she was prepared for whatever life threw at her. Valedictorian at Spotane High School in Arkansas; Baccalaureates in Science degrees in both biology and mechanical engineering from Texas A&M; both a masters and a doctorate in biology from University of Wisconsin at Madison. That united with a loving husband that gave her two wonderful children, had once led her to believe that she had beaten the odds, was winning at the game of life.

Yeah right, she thought to herself as she and Jack watched Sam lie down on the CAT scanner in the corner of the basement lab next to the Ghost Portal, wearing a light blue medical smock. Turns out I was ignoring the bloody obvious, and failing in my duty to my children. She’d failed to even register Vlad Masters’ obsession with her when she was a grad student in Wisconsin, so wrapped up in the early ghost portal research and the fact that she was head over heels in love with Jack Fenton. She’d failed to notice that her own son was half-ghost, and as such had spent the better part of two years trying to capture him and experiment on him. What was worse, was that Vlad was also half-ghost, and had an obsession with seducing her and claiming her son as his own. She’d failed to protect him from Vlad even after he’d lured her and Danny to Colorado and attempted to proposition her. That alone should have been enough to ensure that she tried to keep that sick bastard as far away from her family as possible.

Big mistake. She’d failed at that to. So much so that she’d utterly failed to even notice, beyond the fact that both Vlad and her son had acquired ghost powers in similar accidents, that Vlad had been waging an aggressive war against her own son for two years, with only Sam, Tucker, and Jazz standing behind him and fighting it out. She only learned who and what he was in Antarctica, after he’d risked his life to save the entire planet from an asteroid the size of Denmark. She felt like she owed them all, both for saving her life and the lives of mankind, but to atone for her decades long failure to listen.

I do owe them all, she thought to herself as she pressed the button on her computer, which sent Sam into the CAT scanner with a loud humming sound, which is why I’m going to take a serious look for proof of their alien theory for them. Honestly, she didn’t expect to find anything, but it was the least she could do, the least she owed them. After all, any alien race capable of interstellar travel would already have the tech necessary to get the entire basic underpinnings of a species from a drop of blood or two. The CAT scan bed entered the scanner, and the door closed with a metal clang. With one press of a button on her keyboard, she started the scan sequence.

She ensured that the scan process was being carried out normally with a few taps on her keyboard and was considering going upstairs to get coffee during the few minutes it would take for the scan to be completed, when there was a ringing sound on her console.

That took less time than expected, she thought to herself. Bringing up the scan result, she exhaled, shock flooding her as she stared at something that wasn’t supposed to be there.

“What the hell is that?”

 

[RobertScorpio]

referring to


Chapter Three
Distant Whispers

This read really well. You have a very good talent of letting two people in a conversation have good things to say. And there is always that second layer when these two are together that you keep just under the radar. Not sure where this is going, and that is good, and its hard to imagine where Danny and Sam will be at the end...which is neatest part of this tale..

Rob

 

[RobertScorpio]

Chapter Four
Approaching Emmaus

Another great read. Sam, Jazz, Danny...it will be fun to see how this all 'shakes' out. Even though I am nothng like Sam, her description of a desk was somewhat..well...understandable!!! I sit at one of those from time to time and I feel the exact same way...

Rob