Danny Runner and the Phantom Crown

1. In the laboratory

Danny Runner wanted to make his parents happy. On the contrary, it seemed that those two had agreed to make the task difficult for him.

Danny was fourteen, but he had decided early on that he could make the effort to take on some responsibilities for the collective good of the family... a family made up of him, an older sister, a father, a mother, and, a very sad note for the youngest Runner, no pets. There were a few houseplants, perched near the windows or relegated to ornaments in a few selected spots of the house, but Danny didn't understand, unfortunately, how he could play with them, so he continued to dream of a puppy of his own.

Those allowed in the Runner house were all plants that didn't require too much care and thrived with the sun's rays that reached them and, without realizing it, Danny had taken them as a bit of an example. He rarely got sick, and when he was healthy enough to go, he practically never skipped school. He did his homework without bothering anyone by asking for help, even though his grades were never high enough to deserve any praise, unlike the spotless report cards his sister Delphine brought home.

If he was in trouble, he tried to solve it by himself, without worrying his parents. He never came home late and respected the curfew his parents had imposed on him.

And yet, you could see that something in his method wasn't working.

His mother's hugs were warm, but always short. His father liked to talk to him, but he wasn't as good at listening. Maybe it was his fault, maybe Danny wasn't an easy boy to love, even if he didn't know exactly why.

He didn't have many people with whom he had managed to create a sincere relationship: there was his older sister, and two friends he was grateful for every day.

So when his father put a hand on his shoulder (a big, big hand: Iago Runner's size looked even more impressive when he was next to his frail son) and offered to hang out, he was happy. He could feel the smile on his face before Danny even asked. His father had been smiling before, in that half-enthusiastic, half-silly way that some retrievers have.

«Dan-dan!» He said «Come down to the lab with your old man. Your mother's taking a nice bath to clean off the ecto-contamination, and I like having someone to listen to me talk».

Danny laughed.

«Sure, Dad»

«And bring some elbow grease, son, let's tidy up the lab!».

Danny laughed again and shook his head. He knew his father, he knew that when he was in the mood to chat, phrases like "we tidy up" magically transformed into "you tidy up", because he would get lost in the thread of his own conversation and get nothing done. But he knew it was like that, he loved his dad for who he was. He didn't mind cleaning.

Danny walked down the stairs behind his father, his gaze down at his growing teenage feet. Even if he looked up, he would have seen nothing but his father's broad back, so broad that it filled the narrow space of the dimly lit tunnel. The stairs led deep into the homemade cellar beneath the Runners' house, which had once been a normal cellar but had been transformed beyond recognition: metal tables, similar to those used to prepare corpses, were set against walls reinforced with bolted steel plates; a long, low, sea-green enameled cabinet took up most of the length of the wall to the right of the stairs, topped by a jumble of test tubes, flasks, ledgers, small whirring machines, and a pair of Bunsen burners.

In the center of the room, rising from a greenish, scratched floor, was a circular, magnetic platform, its base covered in little levers and buttons.

Grease stains, small accumulations of soot from explosions, streaks of milky material stained both the floor and the metal panels in several places.