As much as she wanted to, Maddie Fenton could not refute the media's claims. Well, not all of them. For instance, she and her husband had both been aware that their late son was Phantom. They had enabled his ghost hunting and encouraged him to spend his teenage years on the edge of peril. And yes, they did fake his medical records—but only so he could receive professional medical treatment!

Though, contrary to popular speculation they never experimented on him. Not once. Even though she'd wanted to.

(Oh, how she had dreamt of running tests…)

She couldn't blame the public for coming to that conclusion. All the other nasty rumors about their family were true; what was one more? Either way, they were already up to their knees in CPS violations. Besides, they'd committed numerous taboos—the matter of experimentation was almost insignificant.

"Are you considering it, Mads?" Jack asked.

They were sitting opposite the kitchen table. Three sheets of lined notebook paper were spread out between them. She tried to keep her eyes focused on Jack, but her peripheral vision kept drawing back to those damned papers. It'd taken Jack many minutes to calm her hysteria after she'd initially read them and she wasn't keen on reliving that.

"Possibly."

He inhaled sharply. "If we did this, would it make us bad parents? Bad people?"

This time, she couldn't help but glance at the paper on the table. Danny's Last Will and Testament was a little frayed at the edges and tearstained, but its message was intact. Carefully, Maddie drew her finger over the paper. "He gave his consent."

Jack shook his head. "Consent doesn't excuse that this is wrong."

"I know." She bit her lip. "But I'm okay with being a bad person."

"Please, don't say that…."

Something about Jack's soft-spoken plea set Maddie off. She knew that he was grieving as much as she was, but she couldn't contain her frustration. She clenched the edge of the table and tried not to dig her fingers into the wood.

"Isn't it true? Look at what we've done already! Because of our negligence, Danny died in our basement when he was fourteen. When he finally told us last year, he thought we were going to kill him! And instead of trying to fix him, we let him resume ghost hunting! We let himself get him killed by that—that shadow ghost!"

"Mads—"

"My baby died because I didn't want to tell him he couldn't hunt ghosts. He died on a dirty street, twisted under some electrical cables, in the middle of the night. And he died alone. Aren't I already a bad person?"

Jack's eyes welled with tears.

"Stop it—" he choked. "Danny di—n't—"

"Danny understood how valuable his body was. He wanted us to do this. Even though it's—it's wrong, I'm committed to scientific discovery. Think of what we could learn!"

"Maddie, it's our son's corpse! I don't… I can't…"

"It'd be a clean dissection. We'd collect our data and then patch him up before the funeral. It's already closed casket so nobody will think anything of it."

"I'll think of it!" Jack pounded his fist against the table. "How can you suggest that we're supposed to just cut him up like a piece of meat? Like a cadaver!"

"It is a cadaver. Danny's dead, it isn't him anymore. And this is our last opportunity to ever evaluate a half-ghost, to see what makes them tick. Hell, Danny suggested it! He knew how much his body would benefit science!"

"No, he didn't. You know as well as I do that he didn't give a damn about science. He knew how much you wanted to experiment on him."

Maddie's cheeks burned. "Excuse me?"

"He wasn't naïve! You were so obvious! Dropping all those 'subtle' hints that you wanted him to spend more time in the lab… that you thought his core would be 'neat' to run scans on!"

She couldn't decide if she was furious or flabbergasted. She couldn't believe that Jack had the nerve to accuse her of that!

She grit her teeth. "Don't you dare make this about me, Jack Fenton. I know for a fact that you wanted to vivisect him too."

"No, no I didn't!" he denied.

Bullshit.

"You can't fool me, Jack. You had your own way of expressing it and I've seen it in your eyes. That… curiosity."

"I—I don't—"

"You might not admit it, but we both know I'm right. A genetically modified human hybrid is any scientist's dream! Tearing one apart—although, inhumane—is a privilege!"

"I never wanted to hurt my son," Jack protested. "Never."

"I never did either—but that didn't stop me from fantasizing. And now, we can play out our fantasies without harming him. Don't you see? Danny saw it, that's why he consented!"

"This is so fucked up, Mads. We're fucked up."

"Oh, definitely." Maddie brushed her hand through her hair. "So will you do it?"

Jack hesitated. "Will you?"

"Only if you agree."

He took a shaky breath. "Alright. Let's… let's dissect our son."

Maddie smiled. "For research."

"For research."