Chapter 37: Happy Death Day!
Tucker descended first, followed by Sam, then Octavia. Danny came last, closing the door behind them.
The basement stairs were narrow. "Watch your step." Danny hit the light switch at the bottom, and the fluorescents buzzed to life one bar at a time.
"Okay," Danny said. "Welcome to the lab."
Tucker let out a low whistle. "Whoa. Okay, that's… wow. Can't believe you never let me down here before."
Sam didn't answer. She was already walking, camera up, lens sweeping across the room.
The room was larger than it seemed from the outside, and every inch of it was occupied. Many half-built gadgets crowded the workbenches stamped with FENTONWORKS. Extension cords ran across the floor in coils. A whiteboard near the door was packed with equations written in thick black marker.
"You undersold it," Sam said. "This is insane."
Tucker stepped off the last stair. "Your parents built all of this?"
"From scratch," Danny said. "They've been at it since before I was born."
Tucker stopped in front of the control interface on the side wall. "This is all custom built. Your dad wrote his own firmware for this?"
"Yup."
"There's more hardware in here than in the school computer lab."
Sam paused at something that looked like a leaf blower with a digital screen bolted onto the side. "Is this a weapon?"
"Probably."
Octavia shrugged. "It is his parent's stuff. I mean, I've seen some of this stuff before, but it gets a bit samey after they show me and Danny an improved version of the same gadget for the third time.
And at the far end of the room, built directly into the wall, was the portal. The Fenton Portal had a circular metal entrance to a hollow tunnel of lined plating. Thick conduit fed it from a power cabinet taller than Danny.
Sam raised her camera and snapped a photo. The flash lit up the tunnel for a brief moment. "This is the portal?"
"Yeah." Danny stopped a few feet away, hands in his pockets.
She held her camera up and took a wide shot, then moved closer to examine the frame. Her fingers hovered just short of the metal. "And it's supposed to open a gateway? To an actual other dimension?"
"That's the idea. Open a gateway to the Ghost Zone where ghosts are supposed to exist. My parents think it's another dimension overlapping ours."
"How does it work?"
Danny stepped beside her, hands in his pockets. "It destabilizes the boundary between dimensions and targets a specific one."
Tucker leaned closer, scanning the readouts. "Do you know how much energy this would take? To punch through dimensional barriers?" He shook his head. "If this worked, it'd be next-level."
Tucker was crouched near the cable runs, looking up at the frame. "How many times have they tried?"
"A lot."
"It looks like a mad scientist's lab," Tucker said, poking a device shaped vaguely like a gun.
"Don't touch that," Danny said quickly.
"I was gentle."
"Yeah, well… my parents were really excited about this," Danny said more quietly. "It was supposed to be their big breakthrough."
"That's a lot riding on one machine." Tucker stepped closer, peering into the portal's dark interior. "Solid build, at least. I don't know what a ghost portal's supposed to look like, but this thing's massive."
"They tried turning it on last week, but nothing happened."
Octavia crossed her arms. "Because ghosts don't exist."
Tucker straightened up. "Yeah. I mean, I'm not saying your parents aren't smart, Danny, but the whole ghost dimension thing is kind of..."
"I know, Tuck."
"That's what I keep telling him," Octavia added.
Sam lowered her camera. "Why do you think it didn't work?"
Danny shrugged. "Could be a lot of things. Energy source. Material. The math might be off somewhere. I don't know. They've been over it a hundred times. Something's missing, I guess."
"Like what?"
"If I knew, it'd be running."
She studied him for a second. "Or maybe it's because ghosts aren't real?"
"My parents think they're real," he said.
"I know. I'm asking what you think."
Danny looked at the dark tunnel, then at the floor. He shoved his hands into his pockets. "I don't know."
Danny could have said yes. He could have agreed with her. But something stopped him. Maybe it was loyalty to his parents. Maybe it was the faint hope that all their work meant something.
She nodded, her gaze drifting back to the portal. "Still. It's kind of cool, though. Most people don't actually chase their dreams like this."
Danny glanced at her, surprised.
"I mean, it didn't work," Sam went on, "but at least they tried. That's more than most people can say."
"Yeah," he said quietly. "I guess."
He was in the middle on this. His parents were not stupid. His mother had three degrees. His father had patents. A good chunk of their non-ghost focused inventions worked.
His parents had sacrificed time, money, and a normal family life for it. Part of him wanted them to be right. Another part of him was not sure what to believe. It kept his parents in the basement on school nights, and absent during Halloween, and perpetually distracted at dinner.
And then there was Stolas, who had looked genuinely skeptical when Danny first mentioned the Ghost Zone. This was coming from a demon from hell who could see heaven in the sky.
Sam moved closer to the tunnel entrance, leaning in slightly. "It goes pretty far back."
"Yeah. My parents built it into the wall. It's supposed to stabilize the gateway or something."
Tucker stepped around her and stood a few feet from the chamber opening. "Huh. It's bigger than I thought."
Sam's eyes traced some of the labels. "The heck is a particle injector array?"
Danny glanced over at the label she was pointing to and shrugged one shoulder.
"Okay, so… you know how atoms are made of tiny particles? Electrons, protons, all that stuff?" He tapped the side of the machine.
"It shoots charged particles into one point really fast. The portal needs insane amounts of energy to punch a hole between dimensions. The particles slam into the containment field at close to light speed." Danny pointed toward the circular frame of the portal. "When they collide, they dump a ton of energy to destabilize space to open the gateway. The ‘array' part just means there's more than one so it doesn't blow up."
He paused, then added:
"…At least that's what Mom was explaining before Dad tried to test it with a toaster."
Sam blinked. Once. Twice. "…Okay, hold on," she said slowly, still staring at Danny "Since when do you know stuff like that?"
Tucker pushed his glasses up, squinting at Danny. "Yeah, dude. Last week, you needed help resetting the router."
Danny immediately flushed. "Hey! That's completely different!"
Across the lab, Octavia leaned casually against one of the worktables, arms crossed, clearly enjoying herself. A knowing smirk tugged at her mouth. "Did you two never really question why he was acing his science classes for a while?"
Sam and Tucker turned toward her.
"…I assumed it was because of the grading curve," Tucker said.
"I thought it was extra credit," Sam added. "Or pity."
Danny groaned. "Wow. Thanks. Love the confidence."
Octavia gestured to the entire room. "He's been surrounded by experimental physics stuff since childhood."
Danny rubbed the back of his neck. "You kinda absorb stuff when your parents talk about their design at breakfast."
Tucker looked back at the portal, then at Danny again. "So you're telling me you understood any of what your parents have been building this whole time?"
Danny hesitated. "…In theory? I like the hands-on mechanical stuff." Most of the time helping his parents took place in the garage.
"Right…"
Danny worked up a lopsided smile. "In any case, this stuff should be safe. My parents tried to get it running earlier this week." He swept an arm at the entrance and sighed. "As of now, it's just a big expensive basement decoration."
Sam crouched by a bank of unlabeled dials. "But it could."
Tucker hovered near the side console. "Worse case scenario, you could sell tickets to see the lab on Halloween."
Danny huffed. "Step right up, gaze into the void that broke my parents' hearts. Two bucks extra for popcorn."
Octavia's mouth tugged. "You said they don't give up."
Danny forced a small smile. "Yeah. And knowing my parents, they'll be back at it soon enough. They don't really give up."
"That's good, right?" Tucker said.
"I guess." Danny rubbed the back of his neck. "I just hate seeing them like that. Jazz has been trying to keep them from spiraling, but it's... yeah."
Danny folded the suit over his arm and turned toward the stairs. "Alright, you've seen it. Let's go."
Tucker didn't move. "What? No way. We just got down here."
"There's nothing else to see."
"But look at all this stuff." Tucker gestured around the lab. "Your parents have, like, a dozen inventions just sitting here. Do any of them work?"
"Some of them."
"Which ones?"
Danny hesitated. "I don't know. I don't come down here that often."
Sam pulled out her camera and raised it to her eye, snapping a few shots of the portal from different angles. The shutter clicked in rapid succession. She lowered the camera and looked at Danny. "You should get in it."
Danny blinked. "What?"
"For a photo. It'd be a great shot."
Tucker laughed. "Good one."
"I'm serious."
The humor drained from Tucker's face. "Wait, really?"
"Yeah." Sam gestured toward the portal with her camera. "Think about it. You, standing inside this massive machine your parents built. It's got atmosphere. It's cool."
Danny sighed. "Really?"
"Come on. It's completely safe."
"I mean…"
"Again, you just told us it doesn't work."
"I mean, she's not wrong." Octavia didn't think much of anything, very skeptical of ghosts. She didn't think the portal was dangerous either. It wouldn't work. It couldn't work. But something about the way Sam kept pushing made her uneasy.
Sam raised her camera again. "So? Photo?"
Danny sighed. He looked at the portal, then at Sam, then at the portal again.
Sam lowered her camera and looked around the room. Her gaze landed on a folded bundle of fabric sitting on a nearby chair. She picked it up, unrolled it, and grinned. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me." She tossed it to Danny. It seemed his size.
He caught it reflexively, the fabric unfolding in his hands. A jumpsuit. White with black trim, a zipper running down the front. And grinning up at him in full color, was his dad's face.
Danny stared at it, groaned, and held the suit at arm's length.
Tucker glanced over and snorted. "Is that…"
"Yep."
Sam raised her camera. "Hold it up."
"Don't you dare."
"Smile!" The shutter clicked and she pulled out the new photo.
Octavia glanced at the suit. "Oh, I remember this. That's the one your parents gave you, right? For your birthday?"
"Yeah," Danny muttered. "Birthday present. Every thirteen-year-old dreams of a personal hazmat suit. They wanted the whole family to match."
"Oh man. That's rough." Tucker chuckled. "Love your parents, but gifting your kid a jumpsuit is a choice."
Sam bit back a smile. "Your parents are something else."
"That is not even the worst part." Danny walked over to the wall and pointed at a framed family photo. In it, Jack and Maddie stood proudly in their orange and teal suits. Jazz and Danny flanked them, both in matching black-and-white versions. Jazz looked resigned. Danny looked mortified. And both of their suits had Jack's grinning face printed across the chest. "They wanted these for the family photo."
Sam grinned. "You should put it on. Maybe a photo of you in it near the portal will cheer them up."
Octavia stepped closer to the suit and examined it. "Wait… Is it…" She scraped a nail along the big grinning Jack on the chest. The corner lifted. "It's a sticker."
Danny blinked. "What?"
Octavia reached out and peeled at the corner of Jack's face. The sticker came off easily. Everyone got a better look of the overall suit. "There. Much better."
Danny stared at her, then at the sticker, then at the photo on the wall. "Jazz and I could've just… taken it off?" He dragged a hand down his face, laughing helplessly.
"Apparently."
Sam waited in the doorway, glancing up at the chamber walls. "Come on, Danny."
Octavia shrugged. "It's for your family, right?"
"Okay…" Danny shook out the suit, resignation settling in. "Whatever. Let's do it."
He dropped to the floor and pulled it on over his clothes, forcing the boots over his sneakers and yanking the zipper closed. He tugged the sleeves into place, then turned to face Sam.
"Happy?"
She raised the camera. "Very. If you guys ever get this working, you gotta let us know ASAP."
Danny raised a brow. "Really? I didn't think you guys would get so interested in hypothetical ghosts."
Octavia shrugged. "I wouldn't get your hopes up." I would hope that Danny's parents don't accidentally open a portal to hell, no matter how ridiculous that sounds.
"Come on, Danny. A Ghost Zone? Your parents would have proved that an afterlife exists."
Both Danny and Octavia shared a look. "Yeah, it would be groundbreaking."
"Aren't you curious?" She gestured toward the dark tunnel. "We gotta check it out when it's ready."
He let out a slow breath. If those two already exist, why can't there be others? "You know what? You're right." He looked back up into the chamber. "When my parents get this thing up and running, who knows what kind of awesome, super-cool things exist on the other side of that portal?"
Octavia pushed off the worktable and moved closer as Danny stepped toward the chamber.
He moved slowly toward the back. About halfway in, he looked over his shoulder. Tucker stood at the doorway with his hands in his pockets, watching. Sam had the camera raised. Octavia seemed to be wary. "Is this good or-"
"Keep going. I want to get a wide shot with everything and you in the center."
"Alright…" Danny turned back and kept walking.
He was past the halfway mark when Sam called out, "That's far enough. Get into a pose."
As Danny turned, his hand slid along the inner wall for balance. His foot caught a wire, and he lurched forward, palm slamming flat against the panel. Something beneath it depressed with a soft click.
"Danny." Octavia moved first.
"I'm fine." He pushed himself up onto his hands, his knee stinging where it had struck the floor. "I just slipped."
And then a single beep.
"Uh," he said.
A low hum spread through the walls. Danny froze, his gaze snapping to his hand as the vibration rose, climbing fast.
There was a switch inside the portal.
Right in front of him, embedded in the inner wall where no one would ever see it unless they were inside the machine, was a button. Labeled ON. It wasn't on any of the printed schematics.
'Inside the portal? Did Dad put an ON button inside the portal?' And he just pressed it. "Oh no…"
"Danny, what was that?" He could hear the concern in Octavia's voice.
Panels flared to life in sequence. The hum swelled into a roar. The floor trembled beneath his feet as the ring-lights began to pulse faster.
Sam's eyes widening. "What did you do?"
"Danny!" Tucker, from outside.
"Get out!" Sam.
Octavia's gaze snapped to the tunnel as the paneling began to glow. "Get out of there!" She started moving to try and save him.
Danny spun and bolted for the exit.
He made one step before pressure slammed into his back and locked him in place. Pale light burst from the walls. The ring-lights flared, one after another, strobing down the length of the tunnel. Energy snapped across the chamber. It crawled over the metal, over the floor, over him.
He forced himself forward. It felt like running through cement.
Octavia lunged into the tunnel. He reached for her.
Their hands almost met.
"DANNY!"
The portal ignited.
White-green light erupted from the circular frame. A shockwave blasted down the chamber and threw Octavia backward. She hit the floor hard, sliding across concrete as her glamour tore away in a scatter of light, feathers flashing into view.
Sam screamed.
Tucker staggered back in fear.
Inside the chamber, the force reversed. Danny was pulled further in.
Green filled his vision.