GhostBusters: Rift In Dimensions

Chapter Two

Y/N's P.O.V

I sat at the kitchen table in Ghostbusters headquarters and came to one very mature, very reasonable conclusion:

I had officially lost my mind.

There was no way in hell it was 1991.

Across from me, Egon and Ray were bent over the strange book I'd found, murmuring to each other in low voices while they examined its pages like it might bite. Off to my left, Peter and Winston sat at the same table playing cards like discovering a time-displaced teenage girl was just a mildly inconvenient part of their Tuesday.

I folded my arms on the table and dropped my forehead onto them with a sigh.

A hand patted my back twice.

I lifted my head just enough to see Winston glancing at me while still holding his cards.

He gave me a look that somehow said, Hang in there, kid, without him actually saying a word.

I let my head fall back down.

This was insane.

After a minute, I pushed myself upright and wandered toward the window. Outside, the city moved along like nothing was wrong. Cars rolled past. People walked by in coats and jackets. Nobody looked panicked. Nobody looked like they lived in a world waiting for daily updates about case numbers and lockdowns and masks.

It was wrong.

Too normal.

I turned away from the glass and studied the firehouse properly for the first time.

The kitchen sat in one corner of the upper level, small but lived-in. Off to the right, a doorway led toward what I assumed were their sleeping quarters. From where I stood, I could see a few of the beds lined up in the next room. Nearby sat a pool table and a cluster of arcade machines, because apparently ghost hunting and recreational pinball belonged in the same building. A brass fire pole ran through the floor beside them, and scattered around the room were desks buried under tools, books, notes, and enough weird equipment to qualify the place as either a laboratory or a health code violation.

I spotted the staircase leading down and glanced back at the others.

Nobody was paying attention to me.

Bad idea?

Probably.

Was I still going to do it?

Absolutely.

I headed down the stairs as quietly as I could.

At the bottom was the garage. The first thing I noticed was the vehicle parked there, an old ambulance converted into something else entirely. I stared at it for a moment, slowly circling it. Whatever they'd done to it, it was impressive. Restored, modified, polished. It looked old-fashioned and futuristic at the same time, like somebody had rebuilt history and then strapped an engine to a ghost story.

Beautiful, honestly.

The firehouse itself was the same way. Old bones, new purpose.

Off to one side sat a receptionist's desk, where a woman with bright red hair was reading a newspaper with the kind of focus that suggested she either hadn't noticed me or had decided I wasn't worth interrupting her article for.

I kept going.

Another staircase led down, and curiosity tugged harder than common sense.

Again.

The basement was darker, colder, and hummer than the rest of the building. At the center of it all stood a massive red machine pulsing with light. It was round, industrial, and looked like the sort of thing a supervillain would dramatically reveal before explaining his master plan.