Something Far More Interesting

"I'm not a ghost." Danny struggles against the restraints, the cold, harsh metal of the lab table making his far too human body shiver.

The woman in the white lab suit circles back around him to the head of the table, her eyes hidden behind goggles as she appraises him. He can see his own desperate face reflected in their glassy lenses, red as the blood that pounds in his ears.

She runs her gloved hand through his hair, and he cringes at the contact. "I never said you were."

Her voice is the same as the one that had greeted him after school yesterday with freshly-baked cookies. The hand that sits on his head feels the same as the one that had ruffled his hair before he'd left to go visit Tucker.

But this isn't mom. It can't be.

Her voice is too cold. Her face too clinical and aloof. It holds neither the love his mom carries for her human son, nor the fury she burns with for her ghostly quarry.

Danny flinches at a pinprick of pain in his scalp, then watches as the woman who isn't his mom studies the hair she just plucked from his head. She hums and mutters to herself—the same sort of scientific gobbledygook his mom mumbles when she gets really into an experiment (and that makes Danny her experiment, and—no, he's not going down that line of thought, he needs to find a way out, and panicking won't help).

"You have a heartbeat."

He starts as she turns to face him, her expression unreadable.

"It's statistically significantly slower than the average for a human, but this is still a human capability."

A quiet rumble of small wheels on concrete floor breaks the quiet of the room. Danny strains to look and catches a glimpse of the metal cart the woman pushes towards him. Plastic rustles and metal and glass clink against each other in rhythm with the roll of the wheels.

He needs to get out.

"You clearly need to breathe, and indeed do so on instinct. And your currently elevated breathing rate is indicative of an awareness of and reaction to the situation you are in."

Danny feels himself flush, and he tries to control his breathing. "Then maybe you should let me go!"

She ignores him and wheels the cart next to his head. He gasps and his blood runs cold as he sees the metal instruments carefully organized on its surface—instruments meant to poke, and prod, and cut, and slice, and forcibly take from him everything he is.

"Your blood runs red as that of any human, and your physiological reaction highly resembles that of increased distress, as would be typical of any human in your situation."

"Why are you doing this, then?!" The words burst out of his mouth, voice cracking in his desperation.

She seems to glance at him—it's hard to tell behind the goggles. From a lower level of the cart, she pulls out a small beaker full of clear liquid. "This is a water-based solution of 2-hydroectolase, 5% by mass. Highly nonreactive to most matter in the known universe. Certainly nonreactive to carbon-based molecules, and indeed all known molecules native to the human body. I could drink this, if I wanted to, and be perfectly fine."

She places the beaker on top of the cart, much too close to Danny's head, and he eyes it warily. He doesn't like where this is going.

From below, she pulls out two petri dishes and places them next to the beaker: one with a strand of brown hair, and one with the hair she'd taken from Danny. He watches as she fills a pipette with the solution, expertly avoiding air bubbles with the technique his mom had shown him time and time again since he was little.

"With my own hair, the solution does nothing." The woman pipettes the solution into the first petri dish; it looks like a hair in a bit of water. "I am human. My molecules are by and large carbon-based."

Danny doesn't like where this is going at all.

"You, however, seem to be partially composed of ectoplasm. And ectoplasm is not of the known universe."

Danny feels his eyes widen as he looks up at her—but she doesn't seem to care about his shock, about the way his breath hitches in his chest, about how casually she admitted to knowing his biggest secret, like she's just sharing some scientific fact. She just draws more of that damn solution into the pipette, as meticulous as she is cold and matter of fact.

"Ectoplasm is reactive in the presence of even small amounts of 2-hydroectolase. The electrochemical bonds that hold it together under most circumstances break quite readily. And that process is volatile."

Then she pipettes the solution into the petri dish with Danny's hair.

The reaction is instantaneous: where once there was hair, there is now green fire that stinks of burnt limes and copper, the solution itself hissing and spitting right in front of his face. Danny flinches away, feeling the restraint on his neck push harshly into his throat. Some of the droplets hit him anyways—on his cheek, on his neck, on his forehead—and he can't help but scream as it burns coldly into his flesh, squirm as pinpricks of fire eat into him. He feels his scream build to a wail in the back of his throat, the screams of the damned burgeoning forth to be set free—

He chokes as something wet and cold is wrapped over his entire face. The relief is immediate, even if just as cold. The burning drops to a tolerable level, and he lets himself go limp, lets his awareness swim as he gives in to apnea enforced by the wet and cold covering his mouth and nose.

Then the cold, wet relief is removed, and his face burns hot as it stretches through his gasping, coughing breaths. His eyes water from the bright white of his surroundings, and the spots on his face sting wetly and deeply, but the hurt is bearable, and it isn't getting worse.

"Fascinating."

Danny squints up at the woman in white who isn't his mom; she stares back, gloved hand to her chin, head cocked quizzically like when his mom stares at his dad's work at the kitchen table.

"The entity's blood sample did not consist of enough ectoplasm to warrant such a strong reaction to the 2-hydroectolase. Perhaps the ectoplasm concentrates itself onto the surface of the entity? Or perhaps interactions between the ectoplasm and the hydrocarbons created structure that the catalyst could exploit. Multiple samples must be taken throughout the procedure..."

"I have a name, you know," Danny rasps. He doesn't want to hear what "the procedure" is. And he doesn't like being talked about like he isn't there.

The woman stops her muttering and looks directly at him, rather than at his injuries. "Names are for humans. Pets. Places. Things of import in the known universe."

She leans in close, as if stating the obvious to a five-year-old. "This reaction is not a human capability. Indeed, it is not a capability of anything in the known universe."

Danny shivers, ignoring his pain and staring up at her as she stands up straight, looming over him.

"So I do agree with you. You're not a ghost."

For the first time, she grins, and Danny can't help but tense at the cold cruelty in her expression—nothing like his mother's warmth in her smiles.

"No, you are something far more interesting, aren't you?"

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