One Thousand Years

by Nylah

One shot. Too many years have passed by, and when he's finally set free, does he want to?

Do you have to die in order to be dead? Or, in contrast, can you live on after you die? The existence of ghosts seems to suggest the latter, if you stretch the definition of 'alive' a little. And some people most certainly don't look very alive, even though they're breathing. Of course, you can't really tell from the outside. You'd have to look inside their soul...

What about being a half human, half ghost hybrid? How does that work, how do the two halves coexist? Does one state of being influence the other? If he stayed human all of the time, would he age normally, have kids, grow old? What if he was a ghost all the time? Ghosts don't age... they go on forever.

---

ONE THOUSAND YEARS

---

Tamar Slater viewed the information on the hologram in front of her, absentmindedly rubbing her arms. Yawning, she leaned back in her chair and it wobbled a little as it adjusted to the gravitational shift, settling into a new equilibrium less than a second later. The chair was comfortable, very comfortable, but in all honesty she wished she was somewhere else instead. Bed, for instance. Bed would be nice. With that soft thermo blanket hugging her form, keeping her warm. Better even, Brian keeping her warm. Wishful thinking.

She sighed and kept staring at the image right in front of her. She knew it, she had seen it many times, she knew the information that appeared, highlighted, at every point she cared to fix her eyes on for more than a second. Still, she kept her eyes fixed on the image of the white, blocky structure, ominous, eternal, floating. She no longer shuddered from the sight of it, but she never got past the uneasy feeling the twentieth century ghostly prison gave her.

She knew Brian was right. She shouldn't feel sorry for ghosts, especially not the ghosts who were locked up in that old fashioned prison. Ghosts were just ectoplasmic entities, remains of post human consciousness, too stubborn to just die, but forever lingering. The prison had held, as had been its purpose, ghostly criminals. They simply belonged there. It was the order of things. Ghost prison existed, therefore ghost prisoners existed. It was nothing to be worried about, or even pay too much attention to.

Humans used the ghost zone to travel to other places, simply passing through, not only on earth but to other star systems as well. It was a convenient shortcut, once they had figured out how to navigate in the vast, infinite realms of the zone. Ghosts were merely a sight on their passing through, something to look at, mostly harmless, sometimes a nuisance, never dangerous. Until a week ago.

She didn't know why the ghostly warden of the prison had decided to attack an innocent people transporter that had passed it by, but he had. The white ghost had suddenly appeared in front of the cruiser, accompanied by hundreds of underlings that looked like prison guards, complete with night sticks. Even then, the pilot hadn't been worried, but had joked to his co-pilot, commenting on the old-fashioned garb of the white warden. A second later, the ship had been obliterated. That last part hadn't actually been on the footage coming from the black box that had been retrieved. She only knew that because that black box – which color was in fact a bright orange, the name dating back over five hundred years – had been one of the few parts of the ship that had actually been retrieved.

Three hundred and fifty three people. Dead.

Her mind shied away from that number. Sure, accidents happened, people got hurt every now and then, died even, but that had always been a few. In fact, the last casualty had been over five years ago. It had been big news back then, an investigation had been demanded and executed – by Brian – and everything had been resolved. Security had been increased. Everything ought to have been safe.

Three hundred and fifty three people.

Men. Women. Children. She swallowed. Then blinked. She needed to focus. What was done, was done. Now, she had to do her job. Which meant staring at the hologram of the recently conquered prison. She was in charge. She had a job to do, and she would do it, however uneasy the ghost zone and its occupants always made her. Demolishing a ghost prison should make her happy, not anxious.

"Ma'am? Tamar?"

For the first time in an hour, she looked away from the hologram, turning her head to the door behind her and in doing so, catching both a glimpse of her reflection in the small window - brown, short hair, tired brown eyes, too many lines on her face - and the swirling green outside the ship. The sight of what passed as 'sky' in the ghost zone, the ever moving, turning, twisting ectoplasm always made her feel both on edge and strangely comforted.

"Yes, what is it, Tom?"

Her second in command entered, smiling apologetically, knowing exactly why she sounded a bit grumpy. On her own ship, she had huge windows in her command center, allowing her a wide view on what was in front of her. Here, she only had the small window. She didn't need to look outside to navigate a ship, not in the ghost zone, but she liked to anyway. She should have been perfectly alright with her screens and holograms, spilling data about her environment whenever she needed it. However, this wasn't her ship.

"We've almost finished," he said, "All the guards are gone, either destroyed or chased away. I don't think they'll bother us anymore. And most of the prisoners have been set free."

Tamar waited. There was more. Tom hesitated.

"There's one prisoner... he's still in there. Refuses to leave."

Annoyance washed over her, and she was about to make an irritated remark when she held back, almost biting her tongue. She was tired. Tom was tired. It wouldn't do to start an argument here just because they hadn't slept in over twenty four hours. Tom had a problem, he came to her for a reason.

"You can't just make him?" she asked.

Tom shook his head. "He won't let us near him. Blasted Gio and Ella when they tried to get his cuffs off."

"Are they alright?" Visions of severe burn wounds entered her head, and she had already half risen from her chair when Tom nodded.

"They're fine. Just a sting. A warning. We tried to reason with him, but he's just yelling at us to leave him alone. I thought..." He hesitated for a moment. "I thought maybe you could talk to him."

She sighed in exasperation. Talk yourself out of a potentially bad ghost confrontation once and everybody immediately assumes you're an expert on ghost negotiations. Still, she couldn't very well demolish the building with somebody still in there, even if he was only a ghost. And also she couldn't risk anybody else getting hurt. If somebody had to go in there to confront a potentially dangerous ghost, it was her. She got up.

"Alright," she said, "Let's have a look at him. Does he have a name?"

Tom nodded and opened the door for her, inviting her to lead the way.

"Phantom," he said, "Danny Phantom."

---

It took her a few moments to get used to the chill in the deserted structure. Tom had parked the shuttle in the central hallway, a huge space with hallways leading away from it and an enormous door leading to the ghost zone. It had been open before, to allow the ghost prisoners to get out, but it was closed now. Humans didn't need the door anyway. They could just phase through any given wall, and they frequently did. Tamar jumped when Gio Castello suddenly appeared next to her, stepping through a wall with a gleeful expression on his face. Even thought they traveled through the zone frequently, they rarely left their ships to enjoy the perks that ghosts had when traversing the human pane. In the ghost zone, they were the ghosts. He was making the most of it.

"Gio," she said, "Don't do that, you're giving me a heart attack."

"Sorry," he said, not sounding sorry at all. He turned and gestured vaguely at the wall he had just stepped through. "Follow me, captain."

She bit back a retort and quickly followed him when he stepped through the wall again. It was a strange feeling. The wall seemed solid, cold to the touch. When she phased through it, it was like taking a cold shower, only not only on the outside of her body, but also on the inside. She literally felt the wall shift through her body, her cells, molecules momentarily merging with the ectoplasm and then letting go again. She held her body together. Here, in the ghost zone, it was only her consciousness, her mind that kept her alive. If she died here, she'd disintegrate. Like the three hundred and fifty three people in the transporter had. And then she'd turn into a ghost.

She shuddered. It was one of the most terrifying aspects of the ghost zone, something she and the other the cruiser captains, and some of the crew, knew about, but it wasn't general knowledge. Dying in the ghost zone always turned you into a ghost. She knew about it. She didn't want to experience it. And now there were three hundred and fifty three new ghosts in the ghost zone, wandering about, lost and frightened. Dying was bad. Dying and turning into a ghost...

They traversed the endless corridors of the prison, one leading into the next, with doors on either side. All of them were standing open and she caught glimpses of cold dark cells with cots and a tiny barred window looking out onto the green of the ghost zone. She averted her eyes. There was nothing to see in those cells anyway.

Just when she began to wonder just how many prisoners that ghostly warden had held in his prison, Gio stopped at one of the open doors that looked different from all the others. Instead of the bright green, it was very dark, almost black. Ella stood next to the door, a little bit away from it, eying it warily. Tamar noticed she kept out of sight from whoever was inside the cell. She raised her eyebrows.

"Ella? Are you alright?"

Ella Frank started and looked up at her commanding officer. She blushed.

"Yes, captain," she said, "He didn't hurt us much, and he hasn't tried again. We're alright as long as we stay out of sight."

"What happened?"

Gio spoke up. "We were releasing the prisoners, opening their cells, and they all rushed out. Most of them didn't even acknowledge us." He waved the ecto gun. "Some, we had to encourage to leave us alone. And then we got to this door and it was different."

"Different how?"

Gio opened his mouth, but Ella seemed to think it was her turn to tell the story. "At first we thought there was nobody in there. But then we saw him sitting there, chained to the wall. He wasn't looking at us or anything, just staring into space. We tried to talk to him and Gio even shook him, but he just didn't move. It was like we weren't there at all. So I thought we'd just cut his chains with the ecto-slicer and shove him out."

"And then he woke up and started screaming and he hit the both of us with an ecto blast," Gio piped in, looking little annoyed at Ella's intrusion. "So we got out and tried to reason with him. He threatened to shoot us if we went in there again."

"And then they called me," Tom said.

Tamar nodded thoughtfully and looked at the door. She caught a glimpse of the darkness of the cell and a soft white glow coming from somewhere out of sight. Unlike the other cells, this one didn't have a cot in it that she could see. It was just bare, the floor cold and concrete-like, the walls a dirty dark green. Unpleasant. Hesitantly, she moved closer to the door and tried to look inside, ignoring the worried gestures of Gio and Ella.

She had been right. Unlike the other cells, this one was completely bare. In the far corner, she could just make out part of the origin of the white glow. A leg, clad in what seemed to be black pants, on his foot a boot that at one point could have been white, but was now severely stained, having the same dirty dark green color of the walls.

"I know you're there."

She froze. Had he seen her? Would he take a shot at her? He hadn't hurt Gio or Ella, but that didn't mean that he wouldn't use more force the next time someone tried to approach him. Quickly swallowing a few times, she straightened and placed her hand on the door handle.

"Can I come in?" she asked.

Silence in the room. Then a chuckle. "Sure. Step into my humble little place. I won't blast you, promise."

Tamar glanced back at her companions. Ella was shaking her head, silently mouthing the word 'no' a few times. Gio looked nervous and took a step back, as if to say, 'don't look at me, I'm just the hired help'. Tom just frowned. She sighed. She was the captain. She was in charge. The image of fearless confidence had to be maintained, always. Even if the ghost in the cell scared the hell out of her.

One hand still on the door handle, she took a step forward, entering the cell. Immediately, she was struck by the dreariness of the place, the cold dampness, the oppressive feeling of hopelessness. High up in the wall, greenish light came from the outside, making everything in the cell look more pronounced somehow, the black a deeper black, the green almost fluorescent. Red, she realized, would show as black here too.

The ghost in the corner looked at her with bright green eyes. She stared back at him.

"You're just a kid," she whispered.

He was. He seemed to be around fifteen, clad in what she knew was some sort of black hazmat suit with a white belt and white gloves. At least, she suspected they had at one point been white, like his boots. She knew these kind of suits had been used in the old days to protect people from radiation, before they figured out how to simply shield themselves from it with a simple, generated ghost shield. All the ships had one. In fact, she was carrying one on her belt, effectuating a body tight radiation shield to protect her from the ectoplasmic radiation that was all around her in the zone.

But what struck her the most wasn't his young age or his glowing green eyes, looking old in that young face. It wasn't the matted white hair that hung in his face, half hiding the bruises on it. It wasn't even the eerie smile on his lips as he looked at her, making her skin crawl and making her almost bolt out of the door.

It was the fact that he was chained to the wall, with both his hands and his feet, allowing him only a few feet of movement. He was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, one leg stretched in front of him, the other bend, his arm resting on his knee. His other hand was simply placed on the floor. In front of him, just out of reach, was a bowl containing some sort of greenish porridge. It was only half filled, the rest of it spilled in a trail on the floor as it had obviously been shoved in his direction. Whoever had done that hadn't shoved hard enough though. The ghost could only look at it. She resisted the urge to gag when she examined the contents of the bowl more closely. It was a watery porridge, with little black chunks floating in it. There was no spoon.

The ghost followed her gaze and the smile disappeared from his face. He stared at the bowl hungrily. He didn't say anything, though. Surely he couldn't actually want to eat that? She gestured at the bowl.

"Do you... need this?" she asked.

It wasn't what she had wanted to say. She had wanted to ask him what in God's name that was, what they were feeding him, and why it was out of his reach, or even why he simply didn't ask her to give it to him. He just sat there, staring at it, his mouth twitching. He looked up at her and she almost stepped back from the sudden hope in his eyes. Slowly, uncertainly, as if he expected her to beat him, he nodded.

She crouched down next to the bowl and shoved it in his direction, careful not to spill any more of its contents and averting her eyes to avoid throwing up. When it came within his reach, she withdrew and shuffled back a little. He eyed her warily, looked at the bowl again and then scooped it up and brought it to his mouth. She felt the bile rise up in her throat again as she watched him gulp it down like he had been starving, all the while keeping his green eyes directed at her face as if expecting her to take it away from him. He had been starving, she realized with a start.

"Do they always do that to you?" she asked him, a hint of compassion in her voice.

The moment he heard her voice he stopped eating, a resigned look on his face. Then he seemed to realize she wasn't telling him to put it down and he relaxed a little.

"No," he said, "Sometimes... most of the time... they put it within my reach. They're really good for me. Sometimes I piss them off and then they... forget that I can't reach it there."

She looked at him, horrified. He looked back at her, smiled that eerie smile of his and then, seemingly deciding that it was safe to eat once more, quickly shoved the rest of the contents of the bowl into his mouth, using his fingers to get the black, slimy chunks out of the bowl. She shuddered and tried to push away the idea of eating slugs. Instead, she glanced around the cell once more. Still crouched, she brushed her hand over the floor, wrinkled her nose at the black and green grime she swept up and then slowly sat down on the floor, crossing her legs. She'd have her pants cleaned the moment they got out of this place and were back on her comfortable ship.

"My name is Tamar," she said, "I hear your name is Danny."

Danny put the bowl down, looked at it wistfully for a moment as if hoping that by looking at it, it would somehow miraculously fill up again, and then nodded.

"Danny, I'm temporarily captain of the ghost zone cruiser 'Dauntless'. We are here to... liberate... all the prisoners in this prison." She wondered if he could sense her lie. Well, technically, it wasn't a lie. Freeing the prisoners was simply a byproduct of conquering the prison. "And that means you can go free too. So, if you would just let us get these cuffs off of you, you can be on your way. How does that sound?"

His expression didn't change. He kept looking at her, smiling. His hands started to glow a soft green.

"No," he said.

"Why not? Don't you want to be free?"

He got nervous from that question. His hands lost the green hue and he stopped looking at her. Instead, his eyes started to dart through he room, never settling on anything for more than a second. Finally, he looked down, stared at the hands on his lap and mumbled something.

"What was that?" It came out harsher than she intended, and Danny flinched. "I'm sorry," she said hastily, "I didn't mean it like that. What did you say? I couldn't hear you."

He looked up through his bangs. "I haven't finished my sentence yet."

She leaned back at that, stunned. "You... what?" she stuttered.

"I haven't finished my sentence yet," the boy repeated, "I have to stay right here until I do. Walker said so."

"...Walker? You mean the warden?"

His eyes flickered to the door. For a moment, a fearful expression appeared on his face. She turned to look behind her, but saw nobody. Tom, Ella and Gio were keeping out of sight. When she turned back, he was looking at her again.

"Walker is gone," she said, "He can't hurt you anymore."

"Gone?" he asked. Something else flickered in his eyes, something she couldn't quite place. "As in, dead? Destroyed?"

She nodded. "We conquered the prison. Surely you must have heard the fighting?"

He looked away. "I thought I heard something," he mumbled.

"That was us, chasing all the guards out once we broke their resistance."

She didn't mention that half of the guards had been the ghosts of the passengers of the people transporter the prison warden – Walker – had destroyed. The other half had been prisoners in the prison. She didn't know how Walker had managed that, only that she never, ever, would tell their families what she had seen, what had been left of their loved ones.

"You mean once you destroyed Walker." The boy was back to staring at his hands again. "I thought it was weird that I couldn't feel him anymore."

"Feel him?"

He moved a little, then drew up his knees and wrapped his arms around them. "Like..." he said, "I dunno. He's there. Even if you can't see him, he's there. You know he's watching you. Always. Can't get away from him. Ever."

He glanced a the door again and hugged his legs tighter. "Can you... can you please close the door," he asked.

Again, she was shocked. "I... no. I don't want to be locked in here with you. You should let us uncuff you, you'll be able to get out."

He shook his head violently. "It's creepy," he said, "The way it's open like that... all sorts of... things could get through, I might even... maybe I''ll just walk out and then... please close it, please, it should be closed, otherwise..."

He stopped, almost choking on that last part of the sentence. She leaned closer, placed her hands on the floor – only wincing a little when she touched the slippery surface – and scooted a little closer to the boy, who seemed to be getting more and more distressed.

"What, Danny, what were you going to say?"

His eyes glazed over. Instead of answering her, he buried his head between his knees and started rocking back and forth, causing the chains that tied him to the wall to tingle slightly.

"Danny... answer me, Danny!"

He ignored her. She moved even closer, crawling now. Behind her, she heard a faint rustle, movement by the door. She glanced back over her shoulder and looked straight into the worried faces of Tom and Ella. She frowned at them and waved them away, then ignored them and sat down again, close enough to the teenage ghost to touch him.

"Danny," she said.

Hesitantly, she placed a hand on his shoulder, but quickly pulled back when he flinched. A soft sound came from him, and she strained her ears, trying to catch what he was doing. He was humming. She didn't know the tune, but it sounded so childlike and desperate that she got up, rushed to the door and pushed it until it was almost completely closed, ignoring Tom, who was frantically gesturing at her not to do that. She turned around.

"Danny, look," she said, "Look, it's closed. I closed the door. Nothing can come in here anymore, see?"

The humming stopped. Slowly, he lifted his head and looked suspiciously at the door. Quickly, she stepped in front of it, so he wouldn't see that it was in fact not completely closed. The thought of locking herself in there with him, even though he seemed more like a frightened child than a dangerous ghost, sent shivers down her spine. She had never been this close to a ghost before. He radiated coldness. She could feel the chill coming off him as she moved closer to him again, stopping about two feet away from him when he seemed to indicate with a slight shift in his eyes that that was close enough.

She sat down again, mentally making a note to just completely throw out her pants, instead of attempting to clean them. She was sure the dirt and grime would never come off anyway. Danny kept his eyes on her, every now and then glancing back at the door as if to make sure it remained closed.

"Danny," she said, "Why are you so afraid of the door being open?"

He still hadn't uncurled. His arms still hugged his legs, but now he was resting his chin on his knees.

"I'll escape," he said simply.

Tamar crossed her legs and rested her elbows on her knees, leaning a little. "Is that a bad thing?" she asked.

He remained silent, studying her. "Isn't it?" he asked. Then, when she didn't answer, "This is a prison... Walker's prison. You're not supposed to escape Walker's prison."

"Why not?" she asked, "Isn't that what prisoners do? Try to escape?"

He seemed to ponder that for a moment. "No," he said finally, "It's against the rules."

Tamar's head spun. Instead of answering immediately that that was ridiculous and resisting the urge to just shake him go get him to understand – something that would most likely send him back to that state of rocking back and forth, humming to himself, or, worse, have him blast her –, she thought for a moment. She had to know more about him.

"Did you ever try to escape?

He didn't answer her for a while, and she was just about to ask again, thinking he hadn't heard her, when the eerie smile crept back onto his face.

"Yeah," he said. He frowned, his eyes going distant. "A while back."

"What happened?"

He shrugged.

"Did he leave the door open, Danny?"

The ghost looked at the door, but then quickly averted his eyes again.

"Did he leave it open, did you try to escape, and then he caught you? What happened then, Danny?"

The distant look remained in his eyes, the smile never left his face. His hands started to glow. Tamar resisted the urge to scoot away from him. He looked at her, tilting his head a little.

"Bad things," he finally said.

She wasn't getting anywhere with him. Annoyance rose again. This ghost didn't need her, a cruiser captain with a questionable experience with ghost interaction, he needed a ghost psychiatrist. An entity that had insight in ghost psychology. She hadn't a clue about what went on in his head, or even if he had a brain at all. Maybe this was all that he was, the ghost of a frightened child, locked away in this hell-hole of a prison for... for what?

"Danny, why are you in here?"

He looked at her, and she noticed fear had replaced the distant look in his eyes. He looked at her as if he expected her to hit him at any moment.

"Danny, I'm not going to hurt you," she said.

He relaxed, but only a little. "You're annoyed with me," he said.

She closed her eyes and counted to ten. "Danny," she said, digging into her meager knowledge of ghosts, most of it coming from freaky ghost stories her brother used to tell, "Can you sense my emotions?"

He blinked. "Yes?" he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Oh, great," she muttered.

They sat in silence. Time passed by, and Tamar resisted the urge to look at her watch. And all the while they were sitting there, he was watching her, studying her, as if he was committing her to memory. She must be the first person other than the prison guards and Walker that he had seen in a long time, she realized.

"Danny, how long have you been in here?" she asked.

He tore his eyes away from her and with some difficulty, let go of his legs with one arm. His hand brushed over the dirt on the floor.

"I used to count," he said, "I used to count the days and the months and the years. But you can't see that anymore, it's covered with..." He pressed his finger on the floor, drew a line and then held his finger up to her, showing her the black dirt on it.

"You scratched it in the floor?"

He nodded. "And the wall. As far as I could reach it. Couldn't really tell time here of course, so I was just guessing. I ran out of space. And it got really dirty. I stopped doing it."

She viewed the space he was sitting in. He could reach quite a bit of wall and about one third of the floor. She tried to picture him scratching in another day, adding to the huge amount already there. She imagined him making very thin lines, as close together as he could get them, using only a small piece of rock to do it as they obviously didn't let him have any sharp objects or even a spoon. Then, she imagined running out of space.

"So, how long?" she pressed.

He shrugged. "Dunno. What year is it?"

"Twenty four ninety eight."

He sat very still. His eyes grew distant again.

"Oh," he said.

"How long, Danny."

"I never was any good in math," he said.

"It's a simple calculation."

Long silences seemed to be his thing. But Tamar could wait, too. She could even out-wait Brian Callager, which was quite a feat.

"Four hundred and ninety two years," he finally said.

Tamar's mind reeled. There was no way... but there was a way. The hazmat suit was a dead giveaway, they hadn't been used in over four hundred years. It should have clued her in. The boy probably died in the ghost zone, wearing his suit. Walker captured him and put him in his prison.

"You haven't told me why you are in here," she said, trying to get her mind back on track.

He laughed a little. "Shocked you, didn't I," he smirked. Then his smile fell."I don't remember," he said curtly.

Again, there was silence. Four hundred and ninety two years. Almost five hundred years, chained to a wall in a small cell.

"Were you in here all that time? Like this?"

He nodded. "Most of the time. Sometimes..."

He stopped. His mouth twitched. Then he smiled again. "Most of the time."

She looked at the door, and then back at the chains. He followed her gaze.

"I...," he said, then stopped. He moved his hands, tugging the chains, making them rattle. He seemed to know what she wanted to ask. How had he gotten out of the door if he was chained to the wall?

She waited. The feeling of urgency had left her, the wanting to get this over with, talk the ghost out of his cell so she could demolish the prison quickly and efficiently and finally get some sleep. She looked at the cuffs. They were glowing faintly, a greenish glow, depicting them to be of ghostly origin. She extended her hand, slowly as not to alarm him, and touched the chain leading from his right ankle to the wall. For a moment, it seemed solid, but then her hand moved right through it. Danny watched her. She studied his face, and noticed the tiny twitches and the clenched jaw. He was allowing her to touch his chains, she realized. She had accomplished something.

"You can get out of these, can't you," she said.

He shivered.

"Why don't you? This must be uncomfortable."

She already knew the answer.

"I'm not supposed to," he said.

Again, he drew up his legs close to his chest and started hugging them tightly. She couldn't help herself. She knew he could feel what she was feeling, but there was no way to stop the anger that rose up in her. What had that mad prison warden, Walker, done to this boy? What did the young ghost do to deserve this cruel punishment, this hell? He was just a kid. Nobody deserved five hundred years chained to a wall...

Danny started whimpering and buried his face between his knees again.

"I'm sorry," she said hastily, "I'm sorry, I'm not angry with you, Danny, I'm angry with this Walker guy, the one who put you in here."

With some effort, she managed to suppress her anger, though it kept smoldering deep inside of her. Instead, she let compassion flood her, sympathy for the boy. Slowly, she edged closer to him, until she was only a foot away from him.

"Danny," she whispered, "Come on, look at me, I'm not angry with you."

She raised her hand as if making to touch his shoulder again, but thought better of it, remembering how he had reacted to touch before. She didn't know how to comfort him. She could only watch as he slowly unclenched his fists, relaxed his shoulders, stopped the shaking.

Somebody knocked at the door. Danny stiffened.

"Don't worry," Tamar said, eying the door angrily, "Those are my friends. They are worried about me... us. They want to know how we're doing." He looked up. "How are you doing, Danny?"

"Fine," he said automatically. He stared at the door. "The man standing close to the door is worried about you. He's debating himself if he should just burst in here and drag you out. The woman is thinking about... warmth. Bath. Shower. She is impatient, wants to get out of here. The other man..."

His eyes widened, and then the impossible happened. He blushed. Tamar stared at him in amazement. He was talking about Gio.

"What?" she asked.

Cheeks burning, the boy looked away from her. She hadn't imagined it, he really was blushing. She smiled at him encouragingly, glad that they had found something to talk about other than prisons and chains and cruel wardens.

"Um," Danny said, still refusing to meet her eyes, "He's thinking about... her. The woman. He wants to... he's imagining... you know."

Surprised laughter welled up in her, but she managed to tone it down to an amused chuckle. Danny looked up at her, and then grinned. Not his eerie smile from before, but a genuine grin, looking right at home on that fifteen year old face. Of course, the boy wasn't really fifteen, she had to remind herself, he was... he was five hundred and seven years old, give or take. Before she could stop herself, she asked the one question she was sure was very impolite to ask a ghost.

"How old were you when you died?"

The grin swept right off his face and Tamar could have slapped herself.

"I'm sorry," she said, "I didn't mean it, I didn't want to..."

"No," he said, interrupting her, "It's a perfectly natural question to ask a ghost, I suppose." He rubbed his face and the bruise next to his right eye. He frowned. "It was such a long time ago. I don't..." He caught her disbelieving look. "Alright, so I do remember. I just don't want to talk about it, OK?"

He stared at the door again. Tamar wondered if she should bring up the subject of him leaving the cell again. She really felt she had made progress here. He seemed to trust her. She remembered the look on his face when she had touched the chain that chained him to the wall. He hadn't wanted her to touch it, but she had anyway, and he had let her. Maybe...

"Danny, how did you get out of those cuffs?" she asked.

He shrugged. "It doesn't matter," he said.

"But you can get out of them."

He nodded, but didn't look at her, instead staring at something on the floor.

"What about..." She hesitated, then pressed on, "What about you getting out of these chains, but we'll keep the door closed, alright? You won't escape then, right? You can't get out of the door is closed."

He shook his head vigorously. "No, I can't, I'm not supposed to..."

"Walker's dead. Destroyed."

He was silent for a while, staring straight ahead.

"It's a special cell," he said finally, "I can't phase out of it, even when I'm... He had it made especially for me after..."

"What?"

"Nothing."

Tamar suppressed her impatience, knowing the ghost would be able to feel it. Five hundred years, she reminded herself, Walker had broken the boy's spirit a long time ago, had had him obey all his commands for such a long time that the boy probably hardly knew what it was like to be free anymore.

"Don't you want to be free?" she asked softly.

She didn't expect his answer.

"No."

He looked up at her. "You are surprised," he said.

She was.

"I haven't finished my sentence."

She swallowed. "How long?"

Danny trailed his finger on the floor, drawing another line in the grime next to the one he had made before. "Another five hundred and eight years," he whispered.

"He sentenced you to a thousand years in prison? For what?"

"I broke the rules."

"What rules?"

Her voice had risen and he flinched again. She had to remind herself to keep it down, to keep her voice soft and friendly as not to scare him.

"He has a book," he explained, "With rules. You can't break the rules."

"Who made up those rules?" she asked, trying to find an opening, a flaw in his reasoning, a reasoning Walker had imprinted on him.

Again, he shrugged. "Walker himself, I suppose," he said.

Tamar wanted to scream and shout. "So you're telling me," she said, trying to keep her voice level, nonthreatening, "That this insane ghost makes up rules and then throws other ghosts in prison for not following them?"

Danny thought about that for a moment. "Pretty much," he admitted. It didn't seem to disturb him.

Tamar closed her eyes. Stay calm, she told herself, there must be a way out of this insanity. There had to be a way to convince the ghost to get out of the chains, out of the cell and out of the prison. Then she wondered if he would be alright if he did. Would he be able to handle his freedom after all those years? Was that her concern?

He was only a ghost.

He was also a kid.

She couldn't burden herself with a kid, much less a ghost kid. It wasn't like he could die out there on his own. He was already dead.

He'd be miserable.

She shook herself out of it, trying to convince herself this was neither the time nor the place to contemplate these things. She had a job to do. She was going to do it. She couldn't blow up the prison with him in it, it was against regulations to willfully harm a ghost if it could be avoided. Besides that, she couldn't really do that to him. He didn't deserve this. Any of this.

"Why don't you just leave me here?" he asked.

Of course, he had to ask. She wondered if he could also read her mind. She looked down at the floor, and the bowl that had contained his food.

Food.

She picked the bowl up and studied it. "Since when do ghosts need food?" she asked.

He blinked at her, then looked away.

"Ghosts don't need food," she pressed on, "Not really."

She didn't really know what she was talking about, of course, because for all she knew ghosts did need food, but judging from his reaction she had struck a nerve. Ghosts didn't need food. But he did. What did that make him?

"I can't just leave you here," she said, "You'll go hungry."

He started fidgeting. Clearly, he hadn't considered that.

"Everybody's gone?" he asked finally, "There's nobody here to..."

Tamar shook her head. "And before you ask, no, we're not going to bring you food either. You'll have to come out. Come on, Danny, there's no need to stay in here any longer. Your sentence is forfeit. It ended when Walker was destroyed. He can't hold you in here any longer."

The boy tried to process that thought. His eyes grew distant again, the eerie smile crept back on his face. She got up and looked down on him as he sat there, suddenly struck by how small he looked. For some reason, she wanted to ruffle his hair, but she restrained herself. If her nephew's reaction to that sort of thing was anything to go by, he wouldn't appreciate it, even if he didn't mind being touched by anyone. She looked at the bruise on his face. It looked recent, but then again she couldn't really tell. He was a ghost. For all she knew, it could have been there since he died.

"I'm going to step outside for a moment," she said, "I'll be right back."

She moved away. He didn't give any indication that he had heard her, but she was sure that he had. She opened the door a little wider until the gap was just wide enough to let her through, then closed it behind her. Tom immediately grabbed her arms.

"What are you doing in there," he stage-whispered, "You've been in there for an hour already! Does he want to leave or what?"

She pushed him away from her, grabbed his arm and gestured to Gio and Ella to follow her. Her eyes stayed on Gio a little bit longer, and she noticed now how he looked at Ella, his eyes slightly glazed. She smirked at him knowingly and he looked at her in confusion. When they were about ten yards away from the cell, she stopped.

"He's a kid," she said bluntly, "He's been in here for almost five hundred years, chained to the wall. Walker has him convinced somehow that he deserves this. He's afraid to let go. He's miserable, starving and dirty and I think they beat him."

The three of them gaped at her.

"He's a ghost," Gio said, "Let's just blast him out of there."

"We can't do that and you know it," Tom said sternly, "He's innocent. He had nothing to do with the attack on the people transporter 'Voyager'."

"He's in prison, isn't he," Gio said stubbornly, no doubt irritated by the fact that he was pulled out of his fantasies about Ella, "He must be in here for a reason. I'm sure he's not all innocent."

"He's a kid," Tamar said, "You must have seen that when you tried to get him out of those chains."

Gio shrugged. "Kids do bad things too. Maybe he killed someone."

"In the ghost zone?" Tamar raised her hands and shook her head. "Look. I've been talking to him. I'm trying to convince him to get out of those chains. I promised him we'd keep the door to his cell closed so he won't be able to escape. Maybe I succeeded. I'll just go back in there, but I need you to stay back a little. He can feel your emotions." She looked at Gio. "He was very specific."

To her satisfaction his face turned a bright red. He mumbled something and looked down at the floor. Both Ella and Tom looked at him in surprise. She turned to her second in command.

"Tom, why don't you go back to the 'Dauntless' and inform commander Callager about what is taking us so long. Leave the dealings with the authorities and the BGC to him, he can smooth talk them into waiting, I hope. I think I can manage to talk this kid out of his cell before they start shouting that we should just blow up the prison with him in it and be done with it, so they can reopen their precious trade route."

Tom left. Tamar walked back to the dark door, the only closed door in the corridor, followed by Ella and Gio, who retook their positions next to the door of the cell. She placed her hand on the door handle, but hesitated.

"Why is this door different?" she asked.

Ella nodded. "Yes," she said, "I noticed that too. Look."

She stepped across the hallway, placed her hand against the door leading to the cell opposite that of Danny and pushed. After a moment, her hand went right through.

"Now watch this," she said.

She placed her hand against the dark door leading to Danny's cell and pushed. Nothing happened. She pushed harder and her face contorted from the effort, but she really couldn't get through.

"This cell," she said, "It isn't for holding ghosts. It's for holding humans."

Tamar studied the cell door, and then the wall next to it. The consequences of what she just heard... she didn't want to think about them, but she couldn't stop herself. The prison warden had a cell for holding humans. He had that for a reason. He intended to hold humans at his prison.

"Are there any other cells like this?" she asked.

Gio shook his head. "Nope," he said, "This is the only one."

Tamar removed the glove from her right hand and placed it against the door. She felt a soft tingle, and a definite coldness, the coldness associated with ectoplasm. But the structure of it... it seemed like wood, genuine wood, but infused with ectplasm.

"Strange," she muttered, "It's... wood. But it's also ectoplasm. This cell will also hold ghosts."

Gio shrugged. "It holds a ghost right now," he said.

Intrigued by the puzzle, Tamar stood there for a moment, staring at the door. Then she shrugged. The prison was going to be demolished soon. She might never find out. But she did need to get the ghost out before they set off the charges her crew had almost finished placing around the structure.

She opened the door and stepped back into the cell, to find Danny curled up on the floor, eyes closed, seemingly asleep. Did ghosts sleep? She shook herself, amazed by her lack of knowledge. How was it that she and all the other people that traversed the ghost zone on a regular basis, knew so little about the creatures that lived there?

Quietly, she closed the door behind her. Not quiet enough, though. At the soft sound, the boy's eyes flew open, and in an instant he scurried back against the wall in that now familiar position with his legs drawn up and his arms around his knees. He stared at her, and then seemed to space out.

"Danny?" she said softly.

He ignored her, but kept staring past her. His eyes were empty, a vague smile on his lips. He wasn't there, she realized. She had shocked him out of his sleep, and before he could see who she was, he had retreated into his mind, shutting the world out. He had been like that when Gio and Ella found him, too. Inwardly, she groaned. It seemed that all the progress she had made before had been undone by a simple, careless sound. Then, for the first time, she wondered if she would be doing him a favor by setting him free. He obviously found comfort in sitting there, chained to the wall. And he was only a ghost, a remnant of some kid who died almost five hundred years ago. Maybe it would be better for him if he just found his peace...

She edged back to the door. It would be easy. She couldn't talk him out of the cell. Forcing him would put her and her crew in danger. Brian would agree with her. It would end his misery.

She stopped. He hadn't moved. Could she destroy him?

"Danny?" she whispered again.

Her hand was on the door handle. He whimpered.

In an instant, she was next to him, putting her arms around his shoulders, hugging him. He resisted for a moment, tried to push her away, but then leaned into her. He didn't make another sound, but was just shivering.

"I'm sorry," she said, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."

She sat down next to him, without letting him go. For some reason, this boy brought out motherly feelings in her, feelings she didn't know she had. Sure, she was fond of her nephew, her sister's son, but he didn't make her want to hug him. Maybe it was the way this boy was hurting, or the way he seemed to just take life... after-life... as it was, without question. Or maybe it was those intense green eyes, looking way too old in that young face, or the way his hair kept falling in front of them and he had to push it away.

"Why do you want to kill me?" he asked.

She let go of him. "I don't want to kill you," she said.

"You were thinking about it," he said. He didn't look at her.

"Can you read minds too?"

He shook his head and kept staring at the floor. "Killing people... it comes with certain emotions."

"Oh." She let her eyes wander around the cell again. Not much to look at. She tried not to think about having to look at the inside of this cell for five hundred years. "How do you know that?"

"I just do."

He moved his hands again, letting the chain rattle a little. He smiled, then did it again. And again, a bit more forceful. This time, the chain stopped the movement and jerked his arm back. He did it again. A line appeared on the glove. The cuff was cutting into the fabric. Another jerk. The cuff bit deeper.

"Stop," Tamar said.

She grabbed his arm. He tore it loose, and jerked his arm again, hard. The chain rattled. The edge of the cuff bit into his wrist. It started to bleed green ectoplasm. He stopped and stared at it. The smile never left his face, he gave no indication of hurt.

"You hurt yourself," she whispered, taken aback.

He looked up at her. His eyes were glazed again. Then he lifted up his arm. Did ghosts feel pain?

"No!" she shouted, grabbing his arm again, and this time, holding on to it when he tried to jerk it free again. He struggled for a while, but then went limp. He shagged, leaning back with his back against the wall. She kept holding on to his arm, ignoring the chill that permeated through her gloves. She looked down and examined the wound. It seemed shallow. Green ectoplasm was slowly leaking out, but she saw it was already clogging. It wouldn't bleed for much longer, in fact, now that she looked at it closely, the wound seemed already to be closing up.

"Why?" she asked.

Danny had closed his eyes. "Why not," he said.

"You can't hurt yourself."

"It's something to do. Besides..."

He opened his eyes, and she didn't like the expression in them. He had seemed young and innocent before, but now his face twisted into something cruel. For a moment she wondered if Gio's accusation was true. Maybe this boy really had killed someone.

"Besides," he continued, "It's a change from being beaten up by somebody else. At least I get to pick which injury I get."

She gasped at that. "That's...," she said, "That's sick."

Somebody knocked at the door. Gio's voice. "Captain, are you alright?"

"Yeah!", she shouted.

Danny winced, and the cruel expression slowly faded from his face.

"They're afraid of me," he said.

"Yes, well, you did hurt them," Tamar answered.

He was silent again. Tamar studied him, trying to figure out what he was thinking now. She couldn't make out anything from his face.

"Danny, why are you really in here?"

His face darkened, but he remained silent. Tamar leaned back against the wall, no longer caring about what the filth did to her clothes. She even rested her head against it.

"I'll be honest with you," she said. He snorted. She rolled her eyes. "The prison will be demolished. Walker attacked a people transporter last week. We conquered the prison today, chased away or destroyed all the guards including Walker, and set free all the prisoners. And now we're going to destroy the prison too, so there will be nothing left."

She glanced sideways, but he gave no indication that he understood what she was saying.

"That's why you have to get out. If you don't, you'll be destroyed along with the building. You don't want that, do you?"

His eyes narrowed. Tamar waited, almost holding her breath. He was thinking, she could see that. She had no idea in which direction his thoughts went, though. He stared at the wall for a while, up at the small window and then down at his ectoplasm-covered wrist. The wound has almost healed. He rattled the chain, but shook his head when Tamar made to grab his arm again.

"I never considered it," he said.

She didn't ask what he was talking about. She knew. She remained silent.

"All this time, I could have... but I didn't. I could've just... you know. It'd have been painful, but it'd have been over."

Again, he rattled the chain, and then, to her dismay, suddenly jerked his arm, hard. The cuff's sharp edge bit into his wrist again, reopening the gash. His face remained impassive.

"Please don't do that," she said.

He glanced at her. "Does it make you uncomfortable?" he asked.

She looked away, unable to watch him study the gash with interest.

"It's not like I haven't done this a thousand times before," he said, "It's no big deal. I'm a ghost. I heal fast. Look."

She didn't want to, but looked anyway. As before, the gash was already starting to heal.

"Doesn't it hurt," she asked.

He smiled that eerie smile of his again, and it struck her that he was insane.

"Like crazy," he said.

"Why would you want to hurt yourself?" she asked, and then, as another thought struck her, "But you can't kill yourself that way, can you... you're already dead."

He blinked at her, opened his mouth, but then closed it again. Another knock at the door, and Tom's voice.

"Ta... captain?"

She got up, intending to step out of the cell again for a moment, but before she could take a step two cold hands grabbed her ankle. She looked down at Danny and found herself staring into two frightened eyes.

"Please don't leave me again," he said.

She winced at the force of his grip, faintly noticing the trickle of ectoplasm from his wrist that now stained the bottom of her pants. He saw her wince and eased his grip. She tore herself lose and took a step away from him before turning around.

"I need to speak with my first officer for a moment, OK?"

He looked at her blankly for a moment, then scooted back until he hit the wall. "I don't wanna die," he said.

She stared at him. He'd said it. He didn't want to be destroyed. Now, she had to help him, had to get him out of there. And everybody would be breathing down her neck to hurry it up. Then she felt guilty. She had been hoping he would say he wanted to end it all. That would have made her life so much easier.

Abruptly, she stepped to the door and yanked it open. Then she looked back at the once again innocent looking boy on the other side of the cell.

"Danny?" she said, "Can Tom come in here?"

He stared at her for a moment, then slowly nodded. She suppressed a smile. Progress after all. She looked at Tom and gestured he should step inside the cell. He did, and softly closed the door behind him, making sure it didn't lock.

"Danny, meet Tom Burton, second in command on the cruiser 'Dauntless'. Tom, this is Danny Phantom."

They studied each other. Danny took in the man's dark hair and blue eyes, his slightly crumpled green uniform. Tom just stared a the ghost. Tamar saw him being taken aback by his seemingly young age. His eyes settled on the ectoplasm still leaking out of his wrist.

"Did you do that to yourself?" he demanded.

Tamar flinched at his tone, and so did Danny.

"What if I did," the boy said, and there was a definite defiant tone in his voice.

"That's just stupid," Tom said.

"Yeah, well," Danny answered, and he looked away, "Stupid is my middle name."

Tom was silent for a moment, and then walked further into the cell. He shot Tamar a look, raised his eyebrows at the stains on her clothes, and sat down on the floor about three feet away from the ghost, in about the same spot Tamar had been sitting in the first time she had come into the cell.

"What was your name, Danny?" Tom asked.

The ghost looked at him uncomprehendingly, and then his eyes grew distant, as if he was thinking.

"Fenton," he said.

"Fenton," Tom repeated, "As in, Daniel Fenton? Where were you born, Daniel?"

Danny looked annoyed. "Don't call me Daniel. I hate that."

Outside the door, Tamar heard the telltale clicks of somebody typing on a hand held communications unit. Someone, most likely Ella, was already trying to find information on the boy.

"Where were you born, Danny," Tom repeated the question.

Danny leaned back and looked at the ceiling. "You're tracing me," he said.

"Is that a bad thing? Are you worried we'll find out who you are? Why were you in here, Daniel?"

He was going too fast, Tamar realized, coming on too strong. Danny moved away a little, a cautious look on his face. His eyes were unreadable. He didn't answer. Tamar stepped closer and sat down next to Tom, placing a hand on his shoulder to silence him.

"Danny," she said, shooting a warning look at Tom to stay quiet, "You do understand why you need to get out, do you? Why we want to untie you, get you out of this prison. It's gonna blow, whether you're in here or not, eventually. You can't stop it. If you don't come out, they'll just go ahead and do it."

She didn't like the look in his eyes. It was calculating. He stared at her thoughtfully, and she could see his mind swirl. She couldn't tell what he was thinking, had no way to follow the logic in that disturbed mind. He shifted his gaze to Tom, and then looked at the door.

"You set the charges," he said.

"Yes," Tamar answered.

"So you're gonna blow me up."

She shook her head. "I won't blow you up. But in the end, it won't be me who's going to make the decision. If I don't do it, somebody else will."

"That's bull," he said, "You set the charges. You want to blow this place up. Walking away from it and letting somebody else do it doesn't mean you'll be able to wash your hands of it."

"It's not my call. I can stall. I can't prevent."

"Why don't you all just leave me alone!"

The frustrated teenager was back again. He pulled at his chain, and for a moment she thought he was going to hurt himself again. Tom seemed to think so too, because his hand jerked, as if he intended to grab the boy's arm. Danny flinched and pressed himself harder against the wall.

"I can't leave you alone," Tamar said, trying to keep her voice reasonable, while all she wanted to do was scream at him, "You have to come out. I can help you if you let us take you out of this prison. I can't help you if you stay in here."

"Yes, you can."

Danny pressed his hands against the floor and furrowed his brows in concentration. For a moment, nothing happened, and both she and Tom looked at him curiously. Then, suddenly, the temperature in the cell began to drop rapidly. Danny started to glow, not green, but blue. Ice began to form at his hands, quickly spreading past her and Tom, covering the floor, then the walls and the ceiling and, most importantly, the door. With a squeak, Tamar tried to get up, only to find herself frozen to the floor. Tom was struggling next to her. Danny looked at them with a dark expression on his face.

"They'll blow up a ghost," he said darkly, "But they won't blow up humans. I'll just have to keep you here."

Tamar stopped struggling and stared at him. Didn't that boy think at all? Surely he couldn't expect to get away with this? Then she started to shiver. Her thermo-enhanced suit wasn't made for this kind of cold. Already, her feet were going numb.

"D-Danny, you're k-k-killing us," Tom said, "We w-won't make g-g-good h-hostages if we're d-d-dead."

His voice sounded strong, commanding through the clattering, but Tamar could hear the fear behind it. And so could Danny, judging from the look on his face. Or maybe he could just sense what they were feeling. And she was afraid. She couldn't move.

"D-D-D..." she started.

The temperature dropped even further. Vaguely, she heard pounding at the door, voices shouting, and then a cracking sound as if somebody had fired a ecto gun at the door. The cold slammed into her, chilled her, froze her blood. She could feel it. Her breathing became labored. Next to her, she heard Tom's rasping breath. Danny looked at them, his eyes glowing blue.

She had to stop him. She had to do something, say something, but her jaw seemed frozen. It refused to move. She got angry. This boy, this insane ghost was going to kill her because he wanted to stay chained to the wall in his cell. The stupid kid didn't see they were doing him a favor. She had tried reasoning with him, had tried to understand him, felt sorry for him even, but no longer.

"S-S-Sh...," she pressed out through her teeth, "S-should've... l-l-letyoudie."

The only thing she still managed was to glare at him. He stared back at her. His face twitched. The blue drained from his eyes, leaving only fearful green ones. He shifted uneasily, then again drew his legs up and buried his head between his knees, wrapping his arms around his legs. It only served to fuel her anger. The temperature rose. A little.

"Y-you i-insufferable m-m-moron," she said, no longer holding back, "W-we c-c-came out here t-t-to h-help you." Temperature now definitely was up. "We don't want to d-destroy you. This is h-how you repay us?"

She moved her leg. And then the other. Next to her, Tom slowly clambered to his feet and started to stamp on the floor, hugging himself. His face was white, his lips blue. She stood up too, thinking she must look about the same. Behind her, the door burst open and Gio and Ella burst into the room, ecto guns drawn, pointing them at the shivering wreck on the floor.

"Wait," Tamar said, although she was still angry enough to just give the order to shoot.

Ella looked at Danny, and for a moment Tamar thought she was going to ignore the order, but then she lowered the gun.

"He was trying to kill you," she said angrily.

"We called for backup," Gio added, "The others had already left. They were all waiting for us. They're coming back." He glanced at Tamar. "Commander Callager is with them."

Great, Tamar thought, Brian was going to butt his nose in. It wasn't that she didn't love him, but sometimes he was insufferably superior. The fact that he was her commanding officer at the moment didn't help that one bit. She sighed. She couldn't wait to get back to her old ship, her old assignment, the quiet patrols in the outer rims of the ghost zone, hardly ever bothered by anybody or anything except ghosts. Too bad her ship had been damaged. She raised her hands in a futile attempt to appease everyone, including herself.

"Just," she said, "Just... let's all calm down. Nobody is going to shoot anybody today." She turned to Danny, who seemed to think that if he couldn't see them, they weren't there. "Danny."

No reaction. If possible, he clenched himself into an even tighter ball. Tamar rubbed her eyes with both her hands and tried to suppress her anger. She wasn't getting anywhere, and she had already lost too much time. And she wanted to sleep.

"Danny, please look at me."

Slowly, his head came up an inch. Tamar crouched down in front of him and tried to see his eyes through his bangs. She squashed her impatience. Moments before he had tried to take them hostage, almost killing them in the process, now, he was acting like a four year old. His erratic behavior was grating her nerves. However much she tried to remind herself he had been through a lot, there was no way she could accept this behavior.

He seemed to sense her swirling emotions, and drew the right conclusion from them. He head shot up and he looked her in the eyes, a little fearful.

"I'm sorry?" he said.

The anger was there again, and again, she suppressed it. Somewhere in the back of her mind she started to keep tally of how many times she did that. It couldn't be good for her heart. Maybe she would yell at Brian for a bit later, just to get it all out of her system.

"Look," she said, "I know you've been through a lot, and I know you're scared, but you have to stop doing this. This prison is going to blow. You have to get out. Now either we shoot you and then cut the chains...," she glanced back at Ella who held up the ecto-slicer and waved her ecto gun threateningly, "Or you do it yourself. You said you could."

Danny's eyes started to dart through the room, trying to find something nonthreatening to look at, but as the cell was now filled with four humans and hadn't been overly spacious to begin with, he was having a hard time. Finally, he settled back on Tamar, seemingly deciding that she was safest to look at. She wondered about that. It wasn't like she had been the epitaph of diplomacy here.

"I... shouldn't," he said.

"Oh, quit that," Tamar said irritably, "He's dead, Walker is gone, he can't hurt you anymore."

"But..."

"I'm telling you you should. Why don't you listen to me for a change. Walker's gone. I'm right in front of you."

He frowned. She could see his mind turn. He was struggling with the concept. She waited. Somewhere, in the distance, she could hear the sound of hurried footsteps, rushing toward them. She turned and raised her eyebrows at Tom, who mouthed, "I'll go talk to them."

He slid out of the room and she turned back to her ghost problem. That was all he was, she reminded herself again, a problem. Problems were there to be solved. Some just took more time and effort than others. The boy stared at the door through which Tom had disappeared.

"I didn't finish my sentence..." he muttered, his voice trailing away.

"You'll never finish your sentence," she said, "I told you. This prison is going to be destroyed."

He shifted and rested his chin on his knees. Behind her, Tom and Ella kept quiet. They too seemed to sense the ghost would only really talk to Tamar. What, she thought, is it in me that attracts ghosts, why do they want to talk to only me, and nobody else?

"Alright."

His voice was soft, and she had to strain her ears to hear it. She blinked in surprise. Somehow, even though she had been getting through to the boy, she hadn't thought she'd actually succeed in convincing him. She had been going over plans to subdue him in her head, but most of them had one major flaw in them: she didn't know what other powers he had, and how strong he was. From what she had seen, his power was considerable. How had Walker ever managed to subdue him?

Danny sat up and stretched his left arm, rattling the chains. She winced when she saw the edge of the cuff scrape against the almost healed wound.

He stared at it for a while, and then said, "Cover your eyes. I haven't done this in a while. It'll be bright."

She didn't know what she expected, but this wasn't it. Maybe some sort of explosion, or maybe a special kind of ghost ray that could cut through the ectoplasmic steel. Instead, two rings appeared around his clenched fist, growing brighter, and then separating, one ring traveling the short distance over his fist, the other passing over his wrist and the cuff. Tamar shielded her eyes with her hands, but couldn't resist squinting into the bright light.

His hand turned... human. The dirty white glove disappeared and it was replaced with slightly tanned, human skin. Then light dimmed somewhat as the ring that had passed over his fist disappeared, having finished the transformation. The other remained steady, stopping somewhere between his wrist and his elbow. Danny bared his teeth and furrowed his brow, a look of intense concentration on his face.

Then, his hand simply passed through the cuff. It fell to the floor with a loud clank. Immediately, the one remaining white ring traveled back over his arm. The other ring reappeared, and as soon as they collided, they disappeared. One hand was free. Danny looked up, his face unreadable.

"One down," he said.

He stretched out his right arm, but Tamar didn't look at it as he repeated the process. She was staring at his left hand. The white glove was... white. Clean. Completely unblemished. It was so white it almost hurt her eyes. His fingers twitched as the same bright rings transformed his other hand into something... human? What kind of ghost power was that?

When the light once again dimmed, Danny leaned back against the wall. He looked tired. Dark circles had formed under his eyes. His shoulders shagged, and he looked up at her, the expression in his eyes a mixture of triumph and unease. He didn't like being loose from the chains. He looked down at his hands and moved them experimentally away from him, but jerked to a stop when he reached the now imaginary limitation of the chains.

"That was amazing," Ella said.

She had stepped closer and, when she saw the sudden fear in the ghost's eyes, had crouched down next to Tamar, trying to seem nonthreatening. She was doing a poor job at it though, as she was still clutching the ecto gun in her right hand, although she wasn't pointing it at him.

"Come on, Danny, give me your hand," Tamar said.

She held out her hand, inviting him to reach beyond the limited reach of the chain. He shivered, hesitated, and then slowly extended his hand until he touched hers. For a moment, his fingers brushed hers, and she could feel the chill coming from him. Then he retreated and wrapped his arms protectively around his chest. Outside the cell, Tamar could hear voices, talking softly, but sounding increasingly agitated. Tom, obviously, trying to placate Brian and trying to prevent him from bursting in here.

"Come on, Danny, how about your legs," she said, trying to get him to hurry up.

"I'm tired," he said.

"You can rest afterwards."

He sighed and then looked down at his feet. He stretched out one leg, pulled up the other and again concentrated. The ring appeared around his calf, split up and traveled partly upward over his leg and downward over his foot. Again, Tamar studied the process. Blue pants appeared, made of an old fashioned organic cloth, red and white shoes that appeared to be made from some sort of oil-based synthetic material.

Something you would expect on someone living five hundred years ago.

She wasn't surprised when, after phasing out of the cuff around his ankle, his boot reappeared a pristine white. She wondered what would happen if he let those rings travel all over his body. But maybe that would be too draining. By the looks of him, the transformation took a lot out of the boy, which, given the power he had demonstrated when turning his cell into a giant ice cube, must mean a lot of power was involved.

"What was that?" Gio asked, whose curiosity got the better of him, "What are you doing? How does that work? How is it possible for a ghost to phase out of ecto-cuffs?"

Tamar wanted to slap him. She wanted Danny to continue what he was doing, and with his questions, Gio made the boy reconsider. She could see it on his face, the sudden doubt, the uneasiness with his relative freedom of movement. He moved his leg, stretched it until well beyond what he had previously been able too and then retreated again.

"Come on," she thought, "Come on, do the other one."

She wanted to say that out loud, but restrained herself. It wouldn't do any good. He would move in his own time. It would be best for all of them if he freed himself. She contented herself with glaring at Gio. Outside the door, she now could clearly make out Brian's voice, interrogating Tom, and then Tom's own patient voice, calmly explaining that no, she wasn't in any danger, yes, she would have the young ghost out in no time at all so their planned demolition of the prison could commence without more than a few hours delay.

Danny looked at her, at the door, then back at her again and rolled his eyes. The expression was of such an exceptional humanity that she was stunned.

"He's impatient and scared," he informed her.

She could have told him that herself, so she contented herself with nodding impatiently at him. He moved in agitation, obviously sensing that her impatience involved his lack of enthusiasm with freeing himself. He stretched out his last leg.

Later, Tamar would remember this moment. Everything seemed as it had been before, Danny concentrating, the bright white ring appearing about midway between his knee and his ankle, slowly traveling over his leg and again showing the old fashioned clothing. The lower ring had just reached his foot, and Tamar was just thinking about the convenience of cleaning your clothes that way when the door behind her burst open.

In shock, she turned around. Brian strode in and stopped dead in his tracks when he saw her sitting in front of the ghost who was performing some sort of transformation. Judging by the way his red hair was messed up, he was feeling very agitated indeed. Then, a split second later, she turned back to the ghost when she heard him cry out.

He had lost control. The ring brightened, and instead of stopping roughly at his knee to allow him to phase his leg out of the cuff and then reverse the transformation, it traveled all the way up over his leg, then over his body, split again when it reached about his mid section and then the two rings completed the transformation.

Black hair. Blue eyes. A white t-shirt with a red oval on it. The blue pants she had partly seen before, red and white shoes. Human, slightly tanned skin. Still dark circles under his eyes. He took a deep breath.

"Crap," he said.

---

"The Bureau for Ghost Control will want to know."

Tamar didn't turn around, but continued gazing out of the window, looking at the swirling green of the ghost zone. In the distance, pieces of debris were floating, pieces of that horrendous prison. She had pressed the button herself, with great satisfaction. A place that held a teenage boy prison for almost five hundred years for breaking a rule he didn't even know existed, held him chained to the wall until he almost lost his mind – not completely, she had told herself, part of him was still sane – didn't deserve to exist. Some people had argued that they should have just left it there, as a monument, as a reminder of the barbarism ghosts were capable off, but for once she totally agreed with the authorities. Blow it to bits and move on.

"Why, Brian?" she asked.

He was silent for a moment, then moved closer to her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders from behind, softly resting his chin on her head. She leaned into him. It was nice and comforting that he was here, but his presence did pose a problem. He had witnessed Danny transform into a very human boy. A teenage boy, scared out of his mind, whimpering and crying when they carried him out of the cell, struggling when worked into the shuttle and finally crawling into a corner of the small cabin they'd given him on the 'Dauntless'.

"He's unique. A hybrid. Nobody knew he existed. They will want to examine him."

"You mean experiment on him."

Again, he was silent. She could almost hear his mind try to work around the moral issues it posed. It would be his – their – duty to turn the boy over to the BGC. Part of her agreed with that. She'd be rid of the problem he posed, the emotional burden he laid on her, the aggravation he caused. They'd take good care of him. He desperately needed help, psychological help, and she couldn't give it to him.

And yet...

The BGC wasn't known for their kind-heartedness. In fact, they were known as a brutal organization, prepared to do whatever it took to get what they wanted, which was rid the human pane of ghosts, contain them where they belonged, the ghost zone. And even there, they were known to explore, experiment, even though it was against the ghost zone protocol. Which, admittedly, was more of a guideline than an actual law.

They would experiment. She turned around.

"Brian, you haven't seen him. He's just a kid, in a bad shape. Walker brainwashed him into believing he deserved to be where he was. If we hadn't come along, he would have been there for another five hundred years. Chained to the wall, Brian. Can you imagine that, being chained to a wall for a thousand years?"

"No..."

"The BGC will use him, drain him with their stupid experiments. He'll be worse off than when he was in that prison. It's unfair, Brian. He deserves to live, deserves a life."

"How do you know that?" Brian grabbed her shoulders and turned her around so she could look into his green eyes. "You have absolutely no idea who he is. He refuses to give us information by which we can trace him. He must have a reason for that. Why did he die in the ghost zone, when travel through the ghost zone wasn't common? Four hundred and ninety two years ago... I think there wasn't even a portal then."

She was about to answer him, an angry retort, something that would probably start them off on one of their legendary fights that sometimes had them not speaking to each other for months – something that actually was quite feasible when she was in the outer rims of the zone, exploring, finding new portals, far away from interfering authorities or possessive lovers – but was a little harder now that he was her commanding officer. So the fact that Tom chose that exact moment to enter with an excited "Found him" was something to be grateful for. Almost.

She could have used a good shout.

Instead, they both turned to Tom, who looked a little embarrassed.

"Um," he said.

Tamar waved him in. Brian looked first annoyed, then relieved and finally settled on interested. "Go ahead," he said, "What did you find?"

Tom glanced at Tamar as if wanting to ask her permission to speak, which was inappropriate because Brian was clearly higher ranking than she was, but she was grateful for it. After all, this was her ship. Tom was loyal to her. She liked to have that reaffirmed.

"In the year two thousand twenty, the first artificial portal was created," Tom said.

Tamar nodded impatiently. Everybody knew that. The Masters Portal. First used to travel the ghost zone. There was a monument for it in Amity Park, and in fact, the portal still existed. It was too small for the ships they were now using, but by paying a huge amount of money, people could get tours in the ghost zone through it.

"Vladimir Masters, as you know, researched it for thirty-five years until the breakthrough."

"Tom, I don't need a history lesson," Brian said, "What's your point?"

"OK, alright, but this is about his wife," Tom said.

"Madeline Masters," Tamar provided. She had no idea where Tom was going.

"It's not generally known. In fact, it was only by coincidence that I stumbled across it when I started searching for 'Fenton'. She had been married before. To a Jack Fenton. And they had a son, Daniel, who died in a ghost attack in Amity Park when he was sixteen, and get this..." Tom's eyes lit up excitedly, "His body was never found!"

Silence fell over the room. Tamar and Brian both stared at Tom in a stunned disbelieve. Danny Fenton, Danny Phantom... it made sense. He'd renamed himself after he died... only he didn't die. Did the boy know that? Yes, she thought, he did. He had turned his hands human to phase them out of the cuffs. His human body probably had been preserved by him being in his ghost form all the time.

"How come nobody knows this?" Brian asked.

Tom shrugged. "Dunno. Everybody's always focused on Vlad Masters, the hero, the visionary. I guess they didn't think Madeline was that important."

It could be, Tamar thought, but somehow she doubted that. When being in the spotlight like Masters had been, still was, people always wanted to know everything there was to know about him, his wife, his relatives, his friends, hell, his cat. This looked more like a deliberate omission.

She wondered what Danny had to tell about it, and then suddenly she forgot about that as it hit her: they had somebody here in their ship that had probably known the legendary Vlad Masters! The stories he could tell!

"Let's go talk to him," she said, and without waiting for the two men stepped out of her office/control room and quickly walked the short distance to the cabin they had put Danny in.

She stopped a the door, glanced at Brian and Tom, who had followed her, and then knocked at the door. There was no answer, so she knocked again, said, "Danny, we're coming in," and opened the door.

He was still sitting on the floor in the corner of the small room, in the same position she had left him in a few hours previously. He was hugging his knees close to him, and his head rested against the wall. For a moment, she thought he was sleeping, but then she saw him looking at her through half lidded eyes.

She hesitated, trying to gauge his mood, wondering how to start. A thousand questions tumbled through her head, and she couldn't decide which one would serve as an innocent conversation starter. She opened her mouth to say something, but he beat her to it.

"What got you so excited?" he asked.

Tamar closed her mouth and blinked. He sounded so... normal. His voice was the voice of a teenage boy. She hadn't noticed before. When he was a ghost, his voice sounded hollow, echoing, ghostly. She hadn't thought twice about it then, but she realized now that everything he had said while being a ghost had somehow sounded more ominous and threatening than it would have been had he been human at the time.

"You're Danny Fenton, son of Jack and Madeline Fenton," she blurted out, "You died in a ghost fight in two thousand six, aged sixteen."

He frowned and his eyes grew distant. "I died, huh," he said.

"Yes," Tom piped in from behind her, trying to look over her shoulder, "But your body was never found."

Danny kept staring into the distance. "They thought I was dead," he muttered, "So that's why..."

"What?" Brian asked.

Danny shrugged and closed his eyes. "Nothing. It doesn't matter. They're all dead now anyway."

He should have sounded forlorn and lonely. Instead, he sounded... dead, his voice flat, his face impassive. Tamar couldn't tell what went on behind the mask his face presented. She stepped further into the cabin, pulled the chair out from under the tiny desk in the corner and sat down on it backwards, leaning her elbows on the back of the chair. Behind her, Brian squeezed into the room, leaving Tom standing in the door frame as there was no more room.

"What happened," she asked.

Danny opened one eye and looked at her. Then his gaze shifted to Brian and Tom. He shivered, and Tamar could see him tense when he saw their anticipation. If he didn't like them asking him questions now, he certainly wasn't going to like the BGC. And they would do a lot more than ask him questions.

"It was a long time ago," he said, "I don't remember."

"It's not like you've had something else to think about all that time," Brian said, "Five hundred years in a cell, chained to the wall. I imagine you had a lot of time to reminisce about he past. Not much else to do."

Danny's look darkened. "What would you know?" he snapped.

To Tamar's dismay, his eyes momentarily flashed green. She wondered if he could use his ghost powers when he was human, or if he needed to transform for it.

"Nothing," Brian said. He could do impassive too. "You tell us."

Danny rested his chin on his knees and kept glaring at Brian. "I don't have to tell you anything."

Tamar shot Brian a look. He was too impatient. He was that way with her nephew too, always trying to bully the boy into doing as he was told. It didn't work that way. But, as she knew all too well, it was the only way Brian knew. It was a good thing neither of them wanted to have children – not that it would have been possible, given their way of life –, because she was sure he wouldn't have been able to handle it. Give him the command over a group of capable, eager men and women and he did great. Put him in charge of a group of children... she shuddered.

"Danny, it would help us, help you, if you told us a little bit about yourself, on how you ended up being the way you are, how you got yourself in that prison. We can help you." She tried to sound convincing, wondering if the boy knew what he was in for if the BGC got a hold of him.

He laughed bitterly. "Sure. And then tests, right? Lots of painful tests. Study me like I'm some sort of guinea pig. Maybe even tear me apart molecule by molecule."

He knew. Tamar sighed, and again looked at Brian, pleadingly this time, trying to convince him that turning him over to the BGC was a bad idea. Brian looked uncomfortable. Danny studied their interaction with interest.

"So you are contemplating turning me over to the GIW, aren't you," he said, "I knew it. You humans are all the same. Don't understand something, tear it apart. Who cares if that something is a living, breathing person who would rather just hang out with his friends and goof off instead of hunting ghosts and getting shot at as a thank you."

Despite his angry tone of voice, Tamar could see he was afraid. He pressed himself into the corner of the room, as if the walls would provide him with some sort of protection. His breathing came fast, in short gasps, and for a moment she thought he was working himself into a panic again. She shook her head.

"I'm not going to turn you over," she said, trying to sound reassuring and glaring at Brian, who for once just shut his mouth, "We have the Bureau for Ghost Control, they investigate ghosts that trespass into the human pane, and also do research in the ghost zone. They'd be very interested in knowing you exist."

This did nothing to calm him down, she realized. "Listen, Danny," she said, "We are not going to turn you over to them, alright? Relax. We won't let them have you. But you have to tell us a little bit more about yourself."

Danny stared at her for a while. Slowly, he calmed down, his breathing slowing down so that he now only sounded mildly agitated.

"There's not much to tell," he said, "One day I stepped into my parents' portal and it turned on with me in it. I was fourteen. It turned me into a half ghost. I fought ghosts for a while, returned them to the ghost zone. One day, at the school... there was an explosion. My dad..." His breathing sped up again. "Oh no... dad..."

A sob rose in his throat. He buried his face between his knees and clenched his fists. His shoulders shook a little, but he curled himself in such a tight ball Tamar couldn't tell if he was crying. She got up, turned to Brian and Tom to shoo them out of the room and closed the door behind them, shutting out their half-hearted whispered protests. Then, she sat down on the floor next to Danny, the way she had before in the prison, close, but not touching.

She glanced at the clock on the wall and resisted a groan. She should be sleeping. They all should be sleeping. Everything always turned out better in the morning after a good night's sleep. But she doubted Danny would sleep, even if she did manage to talk him out of the corner and into the bed.

"Danny..." she started.

He interrupted her. "You're tired," he said, "Why don't you get some sleep." His voice sounded muffled, coming from beneath his arms.

She really wished he wasn't able to interpret her feelings that clearly. It made her feel very uncomfortable.

"Why don't you?" she asked him.

"I'm fine right here, thanks," he said.

She touched his arm and he jerked away from her.

"Danny," she said tiredly, "Please, at least try and lay on the bed. For me. You'd be so much more comfortable..."

He shook his head. "I'm fine," he insisted.

Tamar leaned her head against the wall. She wanted to get through to him, to at least get him one step further away from that prison cell. Him sitting on the floor of the cabin, pressed into a corner didn't really qualify as progress. She was certain that if presented with cuffs, he would have put them on.

"You can't sit here forever," she said.

He was silent. Slowly, he looked up and let his eyes wander through the cabin, taking in the small desk, the closet, the shelf containing a few books and finally the bed. He stared at it for a while, as if it was some alien entity.

"I just want to be left alone," he said.

He had said that in the prison as well. Tamar sighed and rubbed her eyes. You could take the boy out of the prison, but how to take the prison out of the boy? Walker had messed with his mind, obviously. The boy made his own prison now. She wondered if he would ever be free. A soft knock on the door shook her out of her contemplations.

"Uh oh," Danny said.

The door opened and to her surprise Brian looked in. His face was impassive again, which told her he was trying to hide bad news.

"The BGC are on their way. Seems they've caught a rumor that we have a survivor of the 'Voyager' on board. They want to talk to him."

Tamar let out an exasperated sigh. "Oh yes," she said, "Because we didn't already have enough to deal with here. Which moron called them?"

Brian shrugged, half stepping into the room and shooting Danny a look, which held the middle between annoyance and sympathy. "Doesn't matter now. A lot of crew members saw us come back with him. It takes only one. Half your crew is new, Tamar, they don't really know you, their loyalties lay elsewhere. Question is, what are we going to tell them?"

Tamar blinked. "You're siding with me now?" she asked.

Brian closed the door behind him and, to her surprise, sat down on the floor, leaning his back against the door. He was tired too, she saw. The lines in his face were more pronounced, the shadows under his eyes deeper.

"I guess I am," he said. He glanced at Danny again. "I wouldn't hand over any ghost to the BGC if I could help it. Of course, most of the time I don't have much of a choice, but in his case, I think we can hide what he is. I talked to Gio and Ella. They really don't want to have anything to do with this but they're loyal to you. If you talk to them, they'll stay quiet about this."

"But what do we tell them? The BCG, I mean. Where did he come from?"

Brian leaned forward. "Nothing. We tell them nothing. Whoever saw us arrive with him was mistaken. He's a crew member. He's injured."

"He's sixteen."

"So he's young." Brian frowned at Danny, as if that would convince the boy to crawl out of his corner. "He can pass as eighteen, probably. The crew is new, not everybody knows everybody here, and Ella and Gio will vouch for him. I'll get him a uniform. You get him out of that corner."

He groaned and got up on his feet again. His communicator beeped.

"Yes, go ahead, Gio."

"They're here."

Brian closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them again.

"Stall them."

Two steps brought him right in front of Danny.

"Kid," he said.

Danny frowned angrily at him. "You do realize I'm oder than you," he said.

"Then behave as such. Get up, get yourself into the uniform I'm gonna get you, try to act naturally. You were with us in the prison. This is your first assignment, you only really know Gio and Ella. You were injured by a ghost in the prison, that's why we brought you back here and put you in this cabin, to rest. You're fine now. Got that?"

Danny glared back and pressed his lips together. Brian didn't wait for acknowledgment, but just turned around and left the cabin, leaving it to Tamar to get the ghost boy to listen to reason. She sighed, shook her head and smiled at him.

"You heard the man," she said, "Come on, Danny. You can sit on the bed, that's all you need to do. What you're doing now is... suspicious. They'll want to have a closer look at you, ask you questions. If we manage to satisfy them, they'll leave."

"Does he always do that?" Danny asked.

"What?" For a moment, Tamar was confused. Danny hadn't listened to her at all.

"Boss you around?"

She laughed. "He certainly tries. Sometimes I even listen. Of course, since he is my commanding officer at the moment, I'm having a slightly harder time ignoring him. But he has a point now. Please get up, Danny, go and sit on the bed."

Behind her, the door opened, a hand appeared and threw in several pieces of clothing. Then he withdrew. Tamar recognized the green pants and jacket of a cadet, together with a white t-shirt and the mandatory black shoes. Brian had obviously forgotten about socks, which meant Danny would have to wear the shoes without them, because Tamar didn't have the time to find him some. The BCG men probably wouldn't notice.

"Danny," she said, trying without much success to suppress her impatience and anxiety.

He responded by hugging his knees tighter.

"Danny, come on." She moved closer and crouched in front of him. Tentatively, she placed her hand on his arm. He shivered.

"Come on. You really don't want to let them take you."

He shook his head. It occurred to her that the temperature in the room had dropped. Did he do that, or was it just her imagination?

"Are they..." He hesitated, looked at her and then at the floor. "Are they like the GIW?"

Tamar raised her eyebrows. "I don't know any GIW," she said. She thought for a moment. "GIW... would that mean Guys In White? The keepers of the ghost zone? The ones helped Vlad Masters tame the ghosts and..."

She stopped, because suddenly Danny's face changed. The fear and anxiety disappeared, to be replaced with rage. And, as in answer to her question about him being able to use his powers while human, his eyes flashed a bright green.

"Vlad," he spat, "Vlad tamed the ghosts? That psychopathic fruitloop is remembered because he tamed the ghosts?"

Tamar looked at him in dismay "Look," she said, sounding a little indignant, "I suggest you don't call the legendary Vlad masters a fruitloop, especially not in front of the BCG. I know it happened after you died, but he's the one who first opened a portal to the ghost zone, he's the one who managed to acquire the infinimap, which allows us to travel the ghost zone and go to other star systems, other planets with relative ease. Now get out of your damn corner and put on those clothes, Brian, Gio and Ella can only stall the BCG for so long."

He glared at her some more, then looked down. He seemed to struggle with himself for a moment, before slowly nodding. "Alright," he muttered, "Don't wanna get caught by the GIW... BCG... whatever."

His eyes glazed, and for a moment Tamar thought he had spaced out again, but then he continued.

"Lots of experiments... painful experiments... they said so."

Slowly, he unclenched his fists, unwrapped his arms from his legs and put his hands on the floor. Tamar shivered in the chill of the room and made a mental note to turn up the heating when Danny was dressing. She didn't dare do it now, because it required her to speak and she didn't want to distract Danny at the moment, as he was obviously trying to concentrate on getting up. Or not.

He wasn't moving.

"Danny," she said, trying to sound as gentle as possible, remembering the last time she had tried that particular tone on a child. The little girl had run away screaming to her mother. Danny wasn't a child though. And still he didn't move.

His face twitched. "I..." he said. Sweat broke out. He stared at the door. Then he looked down. "I can't move," he whispered.

Tamar's communicator beeped once. No message, just one beep. A warning. They were coming. No time to lose. Without further delay, she simply reached forward, grabbed his arms and pulled him up. He gasped in surprise and tried to get away from her, momentarily disappearing from sight.

In her surprise, she nearly let go of him. He could go invisible at will, even when he was human. What else could he do? How human was he?

Sensing her indecision and taking advantage of her loosening grip, he yanked himself free and moved away from her, shaking his head and mumbling incoherently. Another beep of her communicator, which managed to somehow sound more urgent than the last time she heard it. Amazing what emotion could be conveyed in a simple beep.

No time left. She took one big step and slapped him.

He stopped muttering and looked up, a surprised and hurt look on his face, and something else. Acceptance. Submission. With a sick feeling in her stomach, she realized she could make him do anything... as long as she hit him, abused him. He'd listen, he'd do as she told him, because that was the way he was taught. Five hundred years, she realized, and if she thought she could undo that by simply talking to him, she was crazy.

No time for contemplations. "Get dressed," she said harshly.

Still he resisted, and if she had thought about it, she would have found that encouraging. "But..." he said.

She slapped him again. "Get dressed."

He didn't even bring his hand to his face. His shoulders shagged, his eyes averted, he tentatively walked through he small room, picked up the clothes and threw the on the bed. Then, obviously not feeling self conscious at all, he pulled his dirty white shirt over his head, exposing his scarred chest. Tamar winced, and then discreetly turned around.

As she heard him undress and then dress behind her, she softly spoke the command to turn up heating in the cabin, and only seconds later she felt the warm air brush against her face, coming from an air vent above the door. It got a little warmer.

"Um," Danny said, "I'm done."

She turned around to inspect him. The green pants were a little too long, but if he sat down on the bed, they probably wouldn't notice. The jacket was hanging open, showing his white t-shirt. The black shoes were on his feet, but she could tell they were uncomfortable. He was fidgeting under her scrutiny, his eyes darting through the room, looking everywhere, anywhere but at her. She squashed her guilt. Now was not the time. She'd apologize after the BGC had gone.

"Sit," she ordered.

He sat. Not a moment too soon. A knock on the door behind her, and then, before she could answer, two huge men stepped into the room, dressed in pristine white suits and wearing sunglasses. If they weren't looking so intimidating, she would have found it funny. Danny's face turned ashen.

The two men came to a stop in the middle of the cabin, at exactly the same moment, as if they had been marching together and someone had shouted "Halt!". They were both broad shouldered, bald headed and at least six foot four. They wore dark sunglasses. Tamar suppressed the giggle which would have put her in serious trouble. Danny, seemingly sensing her mirth, hid a smile of his own and relaxed a little. Some color returned to his face.

"Agents Brown and Green," the BGC agent on the left said, "I'm Brown. "Your name?"

Although it was hard to tell his age, he seemed to be the oldest of the two, judging from his graying mustache and the beginning of wrinkles on his forehead. Although the latter also might mean he just frowned a lot.

"Danny Fenton," Danny said.

Agent Green, standing next to him, pulled out a large hand held device and started typing.

"You're not on the crew list," he said after a moment.

Tamar intervened. "No. The list is a mess. This ship not only has my crew but also additions from some of the other ships that are in repair and quite a number cadets from the academy. We've been trying to get it right for weeks, but things just keep going wrong."

Green glared at her. "Regulations require you to have your crew members properly registered," he said.

Tamar crossed her arms, happy that their attention was so easily diverted from the ghost boy and even more happy to be able start a discussion on the futility of ghost zone fleet regulations, in particular those which required her to spend endless hours of going over endless memos and forms to be filled out. Agent Brown, however, waved impatiently at his colleague and turned back to Danny.

"Where are you from?" he asked.

Danny's eyes shot to Tamar for a moment before looking down at the floor. He must have felt her sudden jolt of anxiety, because he mumbled something almost inaudible.

"Amity Park?" Brown asked.

Danny nodded, but didn't look up. Tamar opened her mouth to take control over the situation again, but Green again spoke up. Tamar now noticed that the older man looked at him irritably. She filed that little bit of information away for future reference and closed her mouth again, satisfied that the younger agent would quiet nicely create a diversion all by himself.

"What were you doing in that prison?" he asked.

Danny shrank back at his harsh tone of voice and looked at Tamar pleadingly. She shrugged and smiled at him, letting him feel her smugness at the fact that the younger man seemed to be wanting to take charge. Danny's eyebrows shot up in surprise. He turned back to the BGC agent.

"Exploring," he said.

Good, Tamar thought, keep it simple. Don't elaborate.

Green huffed when it became apparent that Danny wasn't going to say anything more.

"And?" he said impatiently, "Come on, boy, I've got other things to do."

"Why don't you go do them then?" Danny said.

Tamar glared at him. This was not the right time to suddenly find his confidence again. Somewhere in the back of her mind, alarm bells were going off at his sudden change in demeanor. The last time he had done that was when he had frozen her and Tom to the floor in the prison. If he tried to do something ghostly now, he'd be doomed.

The young agent stepped closer to Danny and stared down at him, his huge form intimidating the small boy, who seemed even smaller in comparison. Danny glared back at him. His hands were starting go glow a little. Tamar stepped forward.

"I'm sorry," she said, trying to sound as charming and convincing as she could, "It's been a long day for all of us and young Danny here had quite a scare."

"How so?" the agent Brown asked.

Tamar smiled. "We were setting the ghosts free, and while they left the building one of them took a shot at Danny." She glanced at the device with the dials and meters the older agent was holding. Several of the meters showed an alarming proximity to the red zone. "His personal shield failed. That's why his ecto levels are so high. It'll be alright. They'll go down in a few days." Please buy this, she thought.

For the first time, the older man actually looked at his device. Then agent Green simply yanked it from his hands.

"What's this?" he yelled, holding the device close to Danny, who suddenly lost his previous display of confidence and scrambled backwards on the bed until his back hit the wall, "This is way to high! You're a ghost!"

Tamar's mouth went dry. She hadn't thought his ghost part would show though his human counterpart. Not to the degree that the ghost sensors of the BGC would sense it. And then she realized something else. If Danny went down, if they determined he was a ghost, she would go down too. And Brian. For harboring a ghost. She could slap herself. What kind of power did the ghost boy hold over her to make her forget that tiny but important aspect of their deception?

"No!" she said angrily.

She stepped forward and placed herself between the younger man and Danny.

"Don't be st..." Stupid wasn't a word she should use here. "... Hasty. I told you. He was hit. By a very powerful ghost. And he was covered... in... goo. Ghost goo. Ectoplasm. We had to dig him out. That's what your device is picking up. He'll be fine. It'll take time. Look at him."

Green looked at her angrily, and then at the boy, who was still pressed against the wall as if he wanted to phase through it. Which, Tamar thought, he probably could. So the fact that he was still there actually signified a tremendous amount of control from his part.

"He's breathing," she continued, "He has a pulse. Ghosts don't do that. Go feel."

She crossed her fingers. If he wanted to do that, Danny had to let him. Agent Green looked at him, at her and then at the agent next to him, who crossed his arms and seemed to convey that since Green was so anxious to take control, he should be the one to do it. The young agent shrugged. He moved closer to Danny, who suppressed a whimper. Instead, he held out his arm.

Green removed his glove. Danny was very obviously breathing. In fact, Tamar was starting to get worried he might be hyperventilating.

"Come on kid," Green was saying, a smirk on his face, "Just hold out your arm. It'll only take a sec."

Danny withdrew his arms and pressed them against his chest. He glared at Green, and for a moment his eyes flashed a bright green. Tamar closed her eyes for a moment.

"I'm not a kid," Danny growled.

The agents stared at him. Tamar jumped in front of them and started pushing them in the direction of the door, quite a feat for a woman her size.

"Quit harassing my crew member," she said angrily, "You got here on some hysterical report from a clueless newbie who doesn't know what he's talking about and start accusing Danny of being a ghost? Which is quite obviously completely untrue? Just leave him in peace, let him recover, quit scaring him!"

By the time she was finished, she had already pushed Agent Brown out of the door. Agent Green stopped in the doorway. He looked down at her, and from up close she could see through the sunglasses. She couldn't determine his eye color, but she could see the expression in them. Cold. Calculating. Zealous.

"We'll be back," he said.

With that, he turned around, and the two agents strode down the hallway, in perfect unison. This time, Tamar didn't think it was funny. She leaned against the doorway, watching them go. Then she jumped when somebody touched her shoulder. She swirled around, only to look into Brian's serious green eyes.

"Stop sneaking up on me," she snapped.

He smirked, used to her moods. He glanced over her shoulder into the cabin, and his expression sobered. A bright white light lit his face, making him look pale for a moment, and then it was gone. Tamar turned around.

"Looks like we're back to where we started," Brian commented.

Danny Phantom was sitting in his corner again. Ice was forming at his feet, his hands and behind his back. His eyes were glazed once more, as if he was retreating into himself. The ice started to take form, links, a chain. Cuffs, fitting tightly around the boy's wrists and ankles. The chains attached themselves to the frozen wall.

It took Tamar a while to realize her teeth were clattering. A blue, ice cold haze hung over the room. The only sound came from her and Brian's breath, fogging in the arctic atmosphere.

"Well," Brian said dryly, wrapping his arms around himself, "Looks like you're stuck with him."

Tamar glared at him, at the motionless ghost boy and then back at him again. She stepped back, closing the door and shutting in the cold. Then she stalked away through the corridor in the same direction the BGC agents had taken, leaving it up to Brian to decide whether to follow her to her cabin or not.

Either way, she was going to get some sleep.

---

"You owe me one thousand years, punk." - Walker in 'Ghostly Love' by inukagome15

I don't have a particular view on the future, I'm not much into the science part of science fiction. I only have a vague idea about it, mostly coming from Star Trek, if you must know. If you ask me, I think we'll either have destroyed the world in he coming century, or we'll all live in caves again. Or both. But let's stay optimistic here.

Can you believe this started as a short drabble for my one shot collection? It just went on and on and on and it ended in this ridiculously long story which doesn't even have a proper ending. And no, I haven't the faintest idea where I should go with this, I have no plans on continuing it.

Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom.