Chapter 4:

The teen stretched his back and yawn. Still too tired to notice his surroundings, he plopped himself back to bed before realizing… his room wasn't white… Almost falling off his bed, he jolted up in the hospital bed trying to figure where the hell he was. Unfortunately he swerved to fast to his right and clumsily began slipping off the white sheets.

"Gah!?" he clenched his eyes shut, knowing the familiar hit to the pavement was something he should've been used by now…be it by being attacked, defended, or being ridiculously proud on how little balance his body seemed to have.

"Is it just me, or have I've catching you one too many times now?"

"Huh?" the pair of blue eyes blinked opened to discover he'd been saved from a very painful bruise.

"Warrick Brown, I met you in alley remember? This scenario is actually very similar to how we met…" the CSI pulled the surprisingly light teenager back on to bed. "You said your name was Danny right?"

Danny blushed realizing how stupid he must have looked, gratefully taking the outstretched hand. He nodded dumbly, not remembering much from what supposed to have happened before he got in that particular situation. He froze.

It all came back to him in a moment, the fight he had with a ghost… a very dark and evil ghost… He was so beaten up after the fight he fainted…and a guy…Brown, caught him…asked his name… he turned to glance at the wall clock across the room.

"It's one in the morning?"

"Yeah…"

"AW, CRAP! MOM AND DAD ARE GONNA KILL ME FOR THIS!" the now unstable boy started to panic, muttering things about a ghost convention ending at eleven…

"Uh, Danny, relax, I'm from the Las Vegas Police, we'll contact your parents as soon as a broadcast is out, but right now," Warrick grabbed a chair and pulled it up to Danny's bedside, " you need to tell me what happen to you."

The boy stuttered.

Mr. Brown wasn't as observant of people as his Mentor Grissom was… but he was pretty damn sure it didn't take much to tell what the kid was feeling. It was written all over his face. Nervousness, fear…and guilt?

"I… kind of sneaked off from my parents from a ghost convention… I was bored so decided to take a stroll outside, a big guy suddenly attacked me in an alley…" Danny wasn't exactly lying. He did sneak off…and he was bored…he just failed to mention the 'big guy' being a very evil specter and he also cut out the part of him transforming into the ghost boy and battling the said specter. "I don't remember much, sorry…"

Warrick eyed the boy skeptically. He didn't mention anything about a fire or explosive which didn't explain the burn marks present in the scene.

"That's alright Danny, but I'll still need you, we found a body a block away from where I found you, it's possible that the 'big guy' was the one responsible for the murder."

Danny almost looked guilty as he turned away, unconsciously clenching on the white sheets.

"Danny, I need to know if you can remember the man's face…"

The teen slowly shook his head. He knew the description would be useless if the cops were looking for a man…if the real culprit was a ghost. He hadn't realized his knuckles had turned dead white and that he even breaking out in a cold sweat.

"Relax Danny," the man tried to sooth the teen as he placed a hand on the boy's shoulder. "It's okay…"

"I-I don't remember much of his face…it was dark, I could only tell that he was huge and strong…" Danny, so far, has never met a ghost that killed as naïve as it sounds... he's had mind-control, take-over-the-world, scaring, terrorizing…but never blood-thirsty murder. It was terrifying to the fourteen year old teenager and somehow it was making him feel like the guilty one. "S-sorry… I'm not much help…"

"Hey, don't worry about it kid, my team are one of best out there, we'll catch the guy." He looked into those big blue eyes, so easy to read but so mysterious at the same time. "Anyway, we have a couple of questions concerning your current state of health, when I was checking your body for any more damage, I found a lot, and I mean a lot of scars… these scars looked old and were very faint, if I weren't train to be a CSI I probably wouldn't have noticed either... I want to know where you got those scars Danny…"

"I'm pretty clumsy…I kind of trip every two minutes and back at school I get bullied a lot by jocks, no surprise there…" Danny was lying through his teeth and he knew the man in front of him could tell he was.

"Are you sure about that Danny?" Warrick could see the teen couldn't even look into his eyes when he answered yes.

"I'll be your temporary guardian for tonight till your parents get back, just to let you know…" the African American had wanted to ask about the recent burn that turned into 'old and healed scar' in a matter of minutes which the teen had on his shoulder, but he had stopped himself. No use trying to drill questions on a recently attacked victim, but somehow the said teenager wasn't even in shock or traumatized. As a matter a fact, it looked as if he was never attacked at least never affected by it anyhow. Either the assault never happen which he doubted, or the boy was so used to getting attacked by strangers that he wasn't affected by the whole incident at all.

A blonde Caucasian nurse entered the room, bringing along a tray of food and checking on Danny. As he waited for the nurse to finish the check-up, Warrick had an inkling that this boy was related to their most recent case.