A/N: This is beta'd by Cordria.
"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise to the occasion. We cannot escape history. We will be remembered in spite of ourselves. The fiery trial though which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the last generation. We shall nobly save or meanly lose our last, best hope of Earth."
-Abraham Lincoln, as quoted by Bruce Boxleitner, Babylon 5
Chapter One
"Do you have to go?" Danny asked somewhat pleadingly as Sam gently folded her dark violet underwear and put it into her suitcase. They'd moved in together barely three weeks ago, nine months, after their emancipation in the wake of what was universally being hailed as "the Miracle in Antarctica." Two years of "hero work", to borrow a term from a Pixar film, had taught them both painful lessons in the fact that a) they weren't immortal just because they were young and b) no one's plans survived first contact with life. But damn it did she have to leave barely three weeks after we finally got settled in together.
Sam paused before she picked up the last pair of underwear and looked up at him, favoring him with a sympathetic look. "I know what you wanted to do, Danny, but I've been trying to impress upon my mother that I'm not some dangerously irresponsible loose cannon just because I'm almost seventeen and I've been fighting ghosts since I was fourteen. And this is the best chance I have."
"In Hong Kong?" Danny said incredulously. "I've heard you," he searched for the least offensive word he could come up with for what he was about to say next, "criticize the People's Republic of China's policies in Hong Kong and Macau since we were twelve. Hell I've heard you say that both territories should have gone to Taiwan." Which would have caused the Third World War.
As soon as the words were out of his mouth he knew he'd made a mistake. "But they got rid of the democratically elected councils the British and the Portuguese instituted before they left, cracked down on free speech-,"
He held up her hand to forestall her rant. "So why are you going?"
Sam sighed and stood there, looking down at the suitcase as she thought about it. "I don't know. It is still Hong Kong. I've always wanted to see it. And I get to try to impress upon my parents that I am in fact capable of interacting on an adult level. A genuine adult level, not what most people our age think is an adult level."
Danny smirked. "And you get to stand in a protest line waving the flag of British Hong Kong as a snub to the People's Republic."
Sam smirked back. "And I get to stand in a protest line waving the flag of British Hong Kong as a snub to the so-called People's Republic." She put the last pair of underwear in the suitcase and closed it and locked it. She walked around to him, wrapped his arms around her neck, and leaned up for a hard kiss. After a long moment they broke the kiss and she favored him with a lovestruck smile. "Try to hold the world together while I'm gone."
Danny smiled back and leaned in to press a kiss on her forehead. "I always do."
She pulled her suitcase off the desk and walked towards the door. When she was stepping out he said, "Try not to reset the nuclear clock while you're gone." He heard a sharp laugh as Sam closed the door behind her, the sound of her footsteps echoing down the hall. He walked to the window and watched as she slid into the back of her parents' black Rolls-Royce before it drove away.
Danny sighed, folding his arms across his chest and shook his head. For what it was worth, he really hoped that this attempt at reconciliation took, even if he didn't expect much from it. Which was the sad part; her mother couldn't accept that she and her husband had raised a decent, honorable young woman. No she, and to a lesser extent, her husband had this checklist in their head, and if every aspect of their daughter's personality didn't fit the checklist, they considered their job failed.
In other words they were still trying to raise an idealized version of themselves.
He looked around him, at the still somewhat incongruous, at least in his own mind, fact that he and Sam were in what had once been his parents' masterbedroom. That was but one symptom of the changes that had ripped through everyone's life in the few months since Antarctica. When they had phased the planet to allow a giant ectoranium asteroid the size of Great Britain to pass through the planet and out the other side without both being destroyed (it had since crashed into the surface of Mercury). The world was in the process of changing.
It had taken some doing but he and his sister Jasmine had finally managed to convince their parents that the technology had applications beyond ghost hunting. And when the patents for Vlad's technology had been transferred to them, the fact that they could not only revolutionize aviation, power generation, medicine, and so many other fields and allow humanity access to their own solar system had been too tempting to ignore.
And it worked. Inside three months they were already making money hand over fist, and with so much of it actually tied up in assets, and the fact that he'd already learned not to let money go to his head, there was no real temptation to snub his friends and replace them with robots like last time. But still leave quite a sum for them to live off. They were on the company payroll as the nascent ghost-hunting/private military arm, as a way to allow them to be paid for what they'd been doing for the past few years anyway, which coupled with the legal emancipation of him and his friends, had been one of the high points of the last year.
But the greatest joy of it was when his parents, as part of their long-term plan to move to a space station/shipyard they were busily designing, signed the house over to him, and allowed Sam to move in with him with their tacit approval.
His eyes widened at the sudden thought of what he could do to pass the time. I wonder what Val and Tuck are doing to pass the time. Tucker's brief term as Mayor had foundered when the inevitable lawsuit found that the resolution of the town council appointing him mayor for the remainder of Vladimir Master's term had violated state law. He'd been removed from power with astonishing speed, and returned to his unofficial job as their computer analyst. Valerie had naturally joined up with them as well, increasing their combat power substantially…and becoming a new member of their inner circle of friends. Which is why he was texting them both to see if they could come over.
Fort Pillow State Park. Forty Miles north of Memphis, Tennessee
The setting sun cast an orange glow over the murky waters of Fort Pillow Lake as Danielle Fenton came in for a soft landing. Shifting back into her human form, the young woman sighed as she looked around her, wondering where her contact was.
"Cervantes?" She called out in a whisper as she stalked into the underbrush along the shoreline. She moved deeper into the trees. "Cervantes?"
She felt a strong arm grab her and yank her towards a blurred form. She didn't have time to say anything before she felt someone's mouth pressed hard against her and enveloped in someone else's arms. It was Cervantes she realized, glancing to their right with his eyes. She followed his gaze and saw two people standing there. She saw them they were...rough-looking, to say the least. Not with the kind of air of affected suave that Guys in White units used as a matter of course. No, they worked for the group she was investigating. They were thugs, and didn't care who knew it. Understanding his intent, she began kissing him back. It was dark., and their features were just common enough that there was at least a chance they'd assume they weren't the people they were looking for.
After a few moments of this, they left, stalking back into the underbrush themselves.
Cervantes broke the kiss after their footfalls faded, shooting her an apologetic look, though she couldn't help but detect just a smidge of masculine smugness on the older guy's face.
Can't blame him for that, that was a good kiss, she began to babble in her head. Shaking her head, she sighed and said, "We can talk about what happened later, Cervantes. Do you have the information?"
Cervantes nodded vigorously and reached into his backpack and handed her a manila folder. "Here it is. Names. Addresses. Stuff that can make a real dent in that trafficking ring you've been trying to shut down." The tawny-skinned, dark-haired young man's face hardened. "You do something with this, you hear me? Make that dent. My sister died helping me get you this information."
She sighed, a dull ache filling her. Cervantes Quinn was one of her most dedicated contacts. One of the few who knew the truth of both sides of her personality, when both saving his life and maintaining her cover in front of him had been problematic. She'd already asked so much of him over the past couple years. It had cost him so much.
"Thank you, Cervantes." She said softly, taking the folder gently as if it were made of silk and shoving it into her duffel bag. "Whether by my hand or the law's, they will fall. It will not be in vain."
Cervantes smiled a wan smile. "I know it will. Sorry for surprising you like that." He turned to walk away.
She grabbed his hand. Without another word, she leaned up and pressed his mouth to hers. She pulled away. "You could kiss me again before you go. I'm not trying to start anything more than that."
Cervantes smiled back at her. "I've always wanted to make out with a ghost girl."
She punched him in the shoulder playfully before bringing his mouth back down to hers.
After forty minutes of necking, Danielle tramped out of the underbrush, a goofy smile on her face. This day went nicer than expected. Fort Pillow's nicer than I thought it would be.
Then the residual lust, and her breath, was forced out of her lungs as though she'd been punched in the gut. "Oh, my God," she said to no one in particular. "The massacre. How could I forget?"
One hundred and fifty years earlier, this place had been the site of a battle between Union and Confederate forces. The place had changed hands several times over the course of the war, Tennessee, for the most part, having fallen rather early in the conflict. The battle, the massacre corrected herself, however was a losing one for the Union. The Confederate army that had taken the fort, under the command of legendary cavalry officer Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest, had violated the most basic aspects of battlefield conduct that day. They used the ceasefire to maneuver into positions they hadn't been able to take during the actual fighting, and once they'd forced the Union garrison's surrender, had rampaged through the garrison, consisting in large part of the Sixth U.S. Regiment Colored Heavy Artillery and the Memphis Battery Light Artillery (African Descent); from four in the afternoon to dusk, they indiscriminately massacred everyone they came across, being particularly savage to the soldiers and the white officers of the colored units, with one lieutenant being nailed to the floor of the barracks before setting the building on fire. And that wasn't even the worst of it.
She shuddered. I should have remembered where we were, damn it. Talk about disrespecting the dead.
She heard a rustling behind her, and what felt like cold fingers inched their way down her shoulder blades. Instinct took over and she let out an icy blue breath. Swearing to herself, she shifted into her ghost form and wheeled about, her fist glowing with a green ball of plasma as she prepared to face whatever was coming out at her.
The leaves rustled again, and she heard whimpering coming from the brush. Having been lured into ambushes by ghosts pretending to be hurt or sad before, she advanced on the underbrush stealthily, moving the bushes aside, to see... A ghost child. It was small, floating in mid-air. It was huddled in fear as he, and it was a he, about roughly seven or eight in human terms, and he was clearly terrified.
Sympathy and suspicion mixed in her chest as she approached the boy cautiously. "Hey," she said in a low, soothing tone as she approached the boy, letting the plasma dissipate from her hand. "Hey how are you?"
The boy looked up at him, eyes wide with obvious fear. He began to shy away from her, and she held her hand out.
"My…my daddy is gone," he whimpered softly. "Can you help me find him?"
Having a sinking feeling about when this boy's father died, and assuming he wasn't conceived with another ghost after his arrival in the ghost zone, when the boy died, she nodded.
"What's your name?"
The boy, hesitantly nodded. "Richard."
Danni nodded quickly. "Richard. Do you know where your father died?"
He nodded vigorously himself. "Here," he said, causing a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. "The Rebs killed him. They didn't like us, working for the Union."
She sighed. "And where is your father now?"
"Some place up North in Illinois. Amity Park. He said that some of their great-great-great grandchildren were up there, and he wants to pay them a visit."
Why do I not like the sound of that?
"All right. Do you know where your mother is?"
He nodded. "Back in the Ghost Zone."
"Okay," she reached into her duffel bag, and extracted a Fenton thermos, glinting silver in the moon's light. "Do you know what this is?"
He shook his head. "No."
"This is where we put ghosts for transport home," she partially lied, as soothingly as she could. Part of her rebelled against putting a child ghost in the thermos, but she didn't have must choice. Amity Park's Guys in White presence was large, and the last thing she needed was a battle with the GIW. That by itself would be more traumatic for the little boy than a Fenton Thermos that rendered low to medium power ghosts unconscious immediately anyway. "I'm going to put you in here, and you'll fall asleep. And when you wake up you'll be back in the Ghost Zone. Then I'll find your father, if I haven't found him already. Either way, as soon as you're back there go back to your mother."
"You'll find him? You promise?"
"I promise." That wasn't a white lie. She'd bring him back. She just hoped that the sinking feeling that told her he was looking for payback was an overreaction.
The boy seemed to think about it for a moment. Then nodded. "Okay."
She pointed the thermos at him, then in two practiced motions she unscrewed the lid and let the crackling rush of energy suck him in. She closed the lid, screwed it on tight before putting it back in her bag.
She took off, soaring into the air. First stop, she'd drop her packet off at the FBI office in Memphis. The Feds would take it from there, and the child trafficking ring that she'd been hunting ofor months would run on rails to its appointed end. Then it was northwest, to Amity Park, and she hoped it wouldn't be too late: for she had a bad feeling that the innocent were going to be made to answer for the crimes of their forbears.