Danny slowly growing aware of his surroundings, blinking to the noise of a TV and the smell of hotel waffles. Pushing himself into a sitting position Danny looked around the room.
"How much did this cost?" Danny asked starling the poor balding English teacher at the end of the twin bed next to the one Danny was occupying.
"You're like a ghost you know." Lancer said clutching his heart as it hammered; he hadn't even heard the boy move. Danny stared at him not knowing if he was joking or if he knew, Danny kept his expression blank as he stared but once he confirmed Lancer didn't know anything he blinked.
"Sorry." Was all he could come up with as he threw off the covers.
"Around 80 bucks." Lancer responded answering Danny's earlier question. Danny opened him mouth, "I think I have more things to worry about rather than how high my credit card bills will be." Lancer said with a sigh seeing the objection in Danny's eyes, "And I wasn't about to spend another night amongst the bed bugs." Lancer said looking at Danny pointedly who had closed him mouth and then nodded.
"I understand." Danny said standing up and walking to the bathroom. Lancer sighed changing the channel on the TV thinking about the boy who had just gone to the bathroom.
"Keep it together." Lancer breathed to himself surprised he had held up as long as he had. Talking to himself was a bad habit he'd picked up, even in his early years of bachelorhood. The few days he'd spent with Danny hadn't changed that. Clicking the channel again Lancer sighed.
Let's run. His mind screamed at him.
He's just a kid. Lancer mentally argued.
A kid who killed 12 people and injured 20 more! His mind countered.
He was escaping. Lancer said trying to soothe the nagging voice in his mind.
Escaping from where? Don't you think they locked him up for a reason?
Lancer shook his head dispelling that though. It wasn't a pleasant one, but he had known Danny Fenton… hadn't he? He was lazy and sloppy and stayed up all night playing video games, using half his classes to catch up on that sleep. He was smart but didn't care. He had wanted to be an astronaut but that was probably a long way off. He ditched and ditched and ditched and ditched to the point where if Danny hadn't ditched one period a day, it probably was the end of the world. He knew the boy, the boy he hadn't really given a second thought to after a while. The boy whom he had punished in an attempt to try and make him see sense, the same boy that he realized that was bullied and pushed around while Lancer himself did nothing about it. He was Danny Fenton, he laughed with his friends he thought the world was a joke half the time… Lancer knew Danny.
A cold feeling was starting to make its way through Lancer's blood as he realized everything he thought he knew about the boy had been shattered by the Danny in the bathroom. That Danny… that Danny could kill people, he was cold, distant, serious, he was hard and sharp. Danny was a different Danny than the one Lancer had known, he was a new Danny, and this Danny was scary. Lancer shivered and tried to focus on the news clip that was playing hoping to dispel thoughts on this new Danny.
"Teen murder still at large." A picture of Lancer came up on the screen behind the news woman, "56 year old Edward Lancer, last seen at Casper High School and place of work on Friday, is still missing and believed to be held captive by a deranged teenage murder that was being held at a high security prison just outside of Amity Park. Officials are saying that a reward with be offered for the whereabouts of either Edward Lancer or his teenaged captor. Check points are being set up across the country in an attempt to catch this dangerous criminal. Officials describe the murderer to be around 15 or so years of age with black hair and blue eyes. The young age of this…"
"Hey." Came a soft voice. Lancer fell off the bed he'd been sitting on the edge of with the sudden appearance of Daniel Fenton.
"M-Mr. Fenton! Dante's inferno don't scare me like that!" Lancer choked out trying to regain what little dignity he had left.
"Sorry." Danny said blinking impassively and speaking in a monotone, "I just wanted to ask if those waffles were for me."
"Yes, yes of course." Lancer said almost as if not wanting to upset the boy he just heard called a murder on national TV, "I brought some down in case you didn't wake up before they shut down the continental breakfast." Lancer explained.
"Thank you." Danny said taking a bite of waffle then sitting on his bed in an awkward silence. The news switching to some video about a naked guy waving a branch and smoking pot at a bar.
"I…" Danny swallowed a bite of waffle, "I am called project Z by the Guys in White. The Halfa Project encompasses everything to do with me, everything they've learned from me. Just I am Z. I'm an experiment… or at least I have been for the past… it feels like decades. I really don't know. Time seems to flow differently where there are no drills, no schedules, or time pieces." Danny stared at the waffles then ate a few more bites chewing his words over with the waffle and washing it down with a glass of orange juice that Lancer had also brought up.
"They… they gave me a clock… at the beginning… it was back when I still believed I'd be out of there in a few days. I could still escape, someone would come rescue me and everything would be back to normal… that was at first.
After that it only served to infuriate me, I could swear they kept changing the time just to mess with me when I slept. After I destroyed it tired of seeing the same time after what felt like hours they didn't bother to replace it. It took me only a week till I broke that clock, but if felt like longer. It took me two and a half weeks till I put my fist through the mirror unable to stand the sight of my own face, three till I flipped the bed into the wall never able to get any rest, never able to sleep. They bolted it to the ground after that." Danny stopped to take another bite of waffle slowly chewing it as he had before. The TV started to play a commercial.
"I kept thinking that one day it would get better, but it never did, it only got worse. The more they learned about me the more they wanted to know the more the pushed the more they cut. There was vivisection after vivisection after vivisection… they tried to weapons on me and found new poisons new biological weapons new cures. They only kept me alive to be of use to them. I was just their little lab rat…" Danny let out a crazy sad choked up laugh, "and you know who sent me there?" Danny asked he choked up a bit more and blinked back tears then looked away staring at his waffle eating it little piece by piece. A loud commercial played and some birds hopped merrily outside chirping and conversing with one another. The wind softly blew the trees and Danny continued chewing.
"Who?" Lancer finally asked hating the wait. Danny put down his fork and knife swallowing and then looking full on his former teacher, his face a mask to hide the pain the weight of what he could say through his entire body. A single tear slid down his cheek as he stared at Lancer.
"My parents."
(When suddenly it changes)
"Mr. and Mrs. Fenton, thank you for joining us. We have accommodations ready for you. Please let us handle your bags and proceed down the hall to Commander A's office. He is currently in a meeting with the president so please wait until someone comes out and invites you in." Agent C said in a polished professional manner. Maddie and Jack nodded and headed down the hall pausing before a huge beautifully carved door that had once been oak but was now pointed the sickening conforming sterile white as the rest of the halls.
"Are we doing the right thing Jack?" Maddie asked quietly, Jack stiffened.
"Of course, son or not he's still killed people, and most of all he's still a ghost." Jack responded. Maddie knew there was truth in that but couldn't imagine her sweet innocent boy killing anyone. But that image of the baby he had birthed and held in her arms as a sweet child was tainted now by shocking white hair and glowing acid green eyes. A man walked by with a large splattering of green across his white clothes.
"There's a cleanthiness breach across sections C, O, c, and K. I am en-route to the cleanup area. Please have Mary prepare new towels and fresh underwear for my disposal." The man stared down in horror at the mess all over his front. Maddie might have laughed if not for the circumstances; she knew what could have caused such a mess. A high powered ghost had just self-destructed whether it be voluntary or forced she did not know.
The door opened revealing the inside of an immaculate office where A and a man Maddie recognized from TV stepped out.
"Thank you for your time Mr. President. I'll have a full report to you by the end of the day." A spoke with a genuine smile white teeth beaming at the leader of the free world. Not even Maddie noticed the way he had malice in his veins more plentiful that blood.
"Thank you A, fog being so concerned for a nations safety, this is indeed a perilous time. Please, use all the resources you need." The President responded.
The President departed in a flurry of black suited agents. A then turned his beaming smile upon the Fenton couple.
"Ahhh, the Fenton's is it? I've heard much of your work, you're very good. Even here with our vast technology we are paying you royalties and using your patents. Please come in." A was tall. Very tall. Maddie observed. He had a well-muscled body that looked good in a suit, large shoulders and hands that made him intimidating. He had the face of a model, a nice square jawline and a nose alone that a woman could have a fetish with. His hair though, was white, not supernatural white like Phantoms, but white like the walls; he had pale blue eyes and an all-white suit. Jack smiled offering his hand.
"Jack Fenton and let me tell you I am very excited to be working with you." Jack smiled grinning wide. Maddie smiled herself; it was nice to be appreciated by the government. A led them inside the office where they sat on white couches.
"I'm so glad you've come to aid us in our capture of project Z. Nasty business this is." A commented turning serious, "He's a danger to everyone including himself. I trust you've been given a de-briefing packet?" A asked Maddie shook her head and Jack coughed.
"Useless C, what's he doing all the time scaring children?" A scoffed to himself. Maddie thought that would actually be a pretty good assumption of what operative C was up to.
"I'll have on delivered to you at your quarters, for now contend yourselves with a tour of the premises and then I'll have you taken to your rooms." A said looking annoyed. A's phone buzzed and he checked the screen, "If you'll excuse me I have an experiment I must be present for, I'll reschedule our meeting for say tomorrow at 0700." A stood quickly shaking the couple's hands firmly.
"Thank you once more for being a part of this operation." And with that he led them out of his office locking in and walking briskly down the hallway. Maddie blinked wondering if that could even be considered a meeting.
"Yes, when I get my hands on that Phantom kid! I'll tear him apart molecule by molecule myself!" Jack announced. Maddie resisted the urge to cringe as he said this. Said it… like it wasn't even their son he was talking about. Like it wasn't even Danny. Maddie followed the tour guide lost in thought, wishing that Jack wouldn't say such things about Danny. Then again… Maddie pinched the bridge of her nose. Then again it was her and Jack that had put him in here, in these white walls. She looked around at the darkness that was painted white and wondered why she ever did it.
It was too late for her to change that now. Maddie had sent her son away because he was half ghost. Shipped him off like any of the other samples disgusted by those violently green eyes. Disgusted. Disgusted by her own child. It was too late to regret those actions too late to grow a conscience, Maddie decided, too late to save him. The only thing she could do now was hunt him down and put him back in his prison back in jail to rot like the ghost scum he was.
(violently it changes)
Cold.
That's what Lancer felt as he stared into Danny's dead blue eyes.
Cold.
It wasn't the new Danny that made him feel this way, the new Danny with his harsh looks and night mare, the new Danny with his long hair and the intense look of hate that passed over his face from time to time. No it wasn't the new Danny.
Cold…
He felt cold because of what Danny said. It wasn't the new Danny who had said it. It was Danny Fenton, the clumsy, awkward, geeky, freshman who was betrayed by his own parents. Locked up and left to rot in a GIW facility.
By his own parents.
Lancer blinked as he stared at Danny, he was done eating his waffles and drinking his juice, he was now packing clothes into his backpack and rearranging things so the new objects fit in with them.
Cold.
Danny looked over handing Lancer the backpack he'd packed for the teacher. Lancer took it in his hands, neither of them had said a word to each other since Danny's confession. Lancer was starting to understand why Danny had escaped… but his mind still begged to know: why as he in there in the first place?
Cold.
Danny opened the door and Lancer went out the door Danny closing it behind him. Lancer turned to wonder what to do to find that Danny had vanished.
"Shhh…" Danny said. "I can't be seen with you, I'd rather not be seen at all. Go check out, I'll be waiting in the car." Danny said. Lancer nodded making his way toward the desk Danny watching him go feeling exposed despite being invisible. He'd told Lancer about the experiments, he told him about Project Z and the Halfa Project. He'd told him too much Danny felt. But after watching Lancer stare at the television screen as if deciding something important… Danny had to tell him at least some of what happened to him, if only a little.
Danny phased through the walls still expecting an electrical charge when he used his powers, but for as thorough as the guys in white thought they were, they still had a ways to go. Danny phased into the car looking around to make sure no one and no cameras were watching, then he turned visible. Danny pressed his hand to the dashboard of the car sending out electrical energy, similar to the kind he had used to taser the GIW agent when he'd come busting into Lancer's house. The electricity worked its way through the mechanics and into the engine causing the beat up discreet car to start puttering happily as Danny relaxed against the window head falling against the glass panes.
Maybe he should help drive, driving never seemed like it would be an issue before, because if he had to get somewhere he could always just fly. There was really no need for a car. Danny sighed staring up at the sky. He was grounded, for better or worse. He wondered how long it would take for his ecto-signature to show up on the GIW's radar. It was something he had been wondering about since he escaped. No one had caught him yet. Even as he slowly started using his ghost powers no one had caught him doing it.
He would have thought with everything going the way it had been, with the experiments and finding different ways to hurt him, implanting a tracking device in his arm, that the GIW would have invented someway of tracking him. Someway of finding out him or other ghosts buy using an ecto –signature. Even his parent's devices went off all the time leading them right to him…
Danny groaned suddenly startling Lancer who had just opened the car door.
"Are you alright?" Lancer asked concerned. Danny looked up blue eyes blinking and Lancer was pleased to see he at least looked a semblance of his normal self, if a little too gaunt and pale to be the happy Danny Fenton Lancer remembered.
"Just got careless and managed to think of my parents for the second time today." Danny joked forcing a scary looking smile. Seeing Lancer look away ashamed though Danny stared back out the window as Lancer through his bag in the back seat and got in the car.
"I-" Lancer looked over at Danny who was still staring out the window, "I'm sorry…. I didn't know." Lancer said. Danny looked at him finally.
"You and over half the country." Danny answered. Lancer nodded silently then put the car into drive.
"I'm still sorry." Lancer said. Danny nodded.
"Don't be, you couldn't know."
I hope you've enjoyed this installation of His Last Chance.
I'm starting school again tomorrow so this will probably be posted later… maybe tomorrow but probably not.
Then I still have to edit it.
And I has no internets at home.
Sux.
I'm going to go to the zoo and flip off the monkeys now… or maybe I should just buy new suits, meh you decide.
See ya next chapter.
Oi!
And I've decided not to answer reviews for a couple more times now, till things get moving some more. But please be nice to your amazing spectacular impressive friendly and every good looking neighborhood Con-San and still review.
Peace out.
Here's the right chapter. I feel like a doofus now.
Sorry.