Being Human

Chapter 1 - we are not the monsters.

"And plenty of monsters know how to play at being human."

It must have been Wednesday, because the strong smell of antiseptics overwhelmed his senses and is a much needed change from the everlasting stench of iron and filth from his cell. His- and another boy's. Another one who was like him, half human, but half something else, too. He never cared to find out.

But Wednesdays are the day where they come in and pour 70% ethanol on him and the other boy, as if they were some contaminated animals. They would just douse them with a bucket; if he doesn't close his eyes in time, it'd blind him. It always leaves his skin dry and irritated, but these men weren't willing to deal with the two when they were coated with filth.

They'd throw some food in as well on Wednesday mornings, treating the two as somethings less than humans. He supposed that they were. These men, dressed in pressed, pristine white suits, a stark contrast from the off-colored grey walls of the cell, would come in with their nose wrinkled and take them to their tests .

The other boy - Phantom - they called him, have remarkably similar features to him. Black hair, light eyes (he couldn't quite tell if they are green or blue, there just wasn't good enough lighting for him to see or enough interest on his part to care, for that matter), and an affinity for morbid jokes. Percy never joined. Once upon a time he was like Phantom, but that mirth had been long gone.

Tartarus didn't break him, but these men did.

Guys in White , Phantom had called them. Maybe he should have acknowledged the boy, made friends with his cellmate. But does it really matter? They were both barely alive. They won't even give them enough water , nervous that Percy could replenish himself with that and escape. These guys know who they are dealing with. Once, Percy might have thought that the key to defeating these putrid humans was to play upon their arrogance - putting two obviously powerful half humans in a cell together. He doesn't think so anymore.

"Stand up," the man, blonde and self-assured, opened a crack in the cell and grumbled, not bothering to look at either one of them sprawled out on the ground. Percy did not bother to move or acknowledge as Phantom dragged himself up and trudged to the door, holding his arms out.

The blonde man took out a pair of glowing green cuffs out of his white suit jacket, and wrinkled his nose as he got a waft of Phantom. The only difference between Percy and Phantom was that Phantom was also oozing some sort of green, making him reek of both iron and copper. Percy wondered if the green was whatever half-non-human part of Phantom. The boy looked human enough.

"Clark will come for you in a few minutes," the blonde man commented, putting the cuffs on Phantom ( Danny, his name is Danny, but Percy didn't want to acknowledge that because he felt responsible, ) and taking the restraints that linked Phantom to the cell. Phantom made no effort to resist. In earlier days, he did. But like Percy, they both learned.

The blonde man, Sam, snapped the doors shut. Percy watched Phantom and Sam's retreating figures with disinterest. Any hopes of escape would have been an illusion; he does not harbor any fantasy of that sort.

But Phantom had been interesting. For months, Percy had been trying to figure out just who Phantom was. Granted, there wasn't much for him to do, but when Danny just joined him in his cell, it had initially been a welcome distraction from all his thoughts about Annabeth, his mom, and the safety of his friends. He had time to ponder what the other half of Phantom was, because he seemed perfectly normal. But like Percy, they probably took away the elements that made him powerful.

Percy looked around with disinterest. Nothing really matters in the end, he supposed. These men - monsters - had kept him barely alive, barely conscious from dehydration. They clearly came in with the knowledge that he was the demigod son of a sea god, and he would need to be close to a source of water to have any power. They took away all the pipes and made sure that the humidity in the air was kept at a bare minimum. In fact, they may not even be in New York. The atmosphere didn't taste like home.

Percy did not want his friends to get in trouble saving him, but he'd really hoped that he could have been out of this cell already. It felt like he had been here for months. It's been getting worse and worse, he knew that he had been hallucinating sometimes because of how much stress his body was under, and because of the lack of food and water. He didn't feel human. He's nervous that any day, soon, he would snap and kill everyone in his vicinity via blood bending. Increasingly, that is the only option he sees that he has anymore. For all their experiments , they haven't figured what he could really do.

"Get up," Clark growled, yanking the metal door back. It made a scratching sound on the floor, metal against concrete, but Percy had been so lost in his thoughts that he didn't even register the large, scruffy man glowering right in front of him. Percy knew that his friends must be trying hard to find him. Especially Annabeth, he had no doubt. He could only imagine how furious she had been, and how worried his mother is at the moment. But he knew that he was a little different than before; he was dangerously close to losing the human side in him.

He wondered why the gods did not offer any help. Probably because they weren't paying enough attention, but surely his friends must have notified their godly parents by now - no matter how much they shouldn't meddle in mortal affairs, Percy knew that he was getting close enough to death that his father probably would have (should have) cared a little.

"I said," Clark shouted, "GET UP! Don't make me use this on you." Clark took out the shiny metal prongs and Percy flinched. The wires buzzed dangerously. Percy barely could lift himself off the group, but he complied. Electrocution hurts him a lot, and they know it. They hurt Phantom a lot, too. They share hatred for that device - it was probably something that's normally used on cattle.

Percy got up, supporting himself with the wall. Clark put a pair of cuffs around him and unlocked his tether to the cell. This pair did not glow green, but it hums unpleasantly, ready to zap Percy at a moment's notice. It's not like he was going to try to break out of them anymore, anyway. He's tried. Riptide passes right through all of these humans, and anything around him.

He walked out the cell and down the hall, trailing behind Clark.

While it was refreshing that the cell smells a little less like blood (with a tangy undercurrent of copper) and more like a hospital, Wednesdays are a disappointment. Wednesdays are a disappointment because they always leave the two boys sore and battered, with their morale and spirits destroyed just a little more than usual (not that there are much, anyway.)

See, Danny always liked to crack jokes. That's how he deals with stress. The problem is just that these damned Guys in White disagrees. He would make fun of their suit, their rigidness, and their blatant plagiarism of the Men in Black franchise by calling themselves the Guys in White, but they wouldn't laugh. He'd make fun of how bloodied he is, how no matter what they do, he's half dead anyways, but these men didn't find any humor in that, either.

The problem, most importantly, resides in his cellmate. His cellmate is another teenager who looks to be a year or two older than Danny (or maybe they are the same age - Danny isn't sure because he does look quite young for how old he is; he hasn't aged much physically since freshman year), and someone who is disgustingly uninterested in anything and everything that Danny had to say.

Not that Danny could blame him - being trapped in this cell for months at a time was definitely not an ideal time or place to make a friend, but he was really hoping that his cellmate would have wanted to try to escape with him. Sigh.

This cellmate, Percy Jackson, is not at all amused. Danny doesn't know how long this guy has been here for, but he was already well accommodated into this cell since the first day that Danny got here. He wasn't one to waste his breath - he watched coolly as Danny struggled in his ectoplasmic-proof cuffs and complained about the lack of sustenance and the smell. He didn't warn Danny about Wednesdays, where the Guys in White would take them into separate rooms to run long, painful tests. He didn't talk about the torture that these people would inflict, or why the two of them are here in the first place. He felt like the Guys in White are trying to exploit the two's powers, but for what? It is something that Danny doesn't really know or understand.

Percy Jackson intrigued him. He doesn't pretend to understand what this guy was, but he was definitely something supernatural. Danny could feel his aura, even if it is muted by the cell. Danny knows, too, when he sees another warrior - it's in the way Percy carries himself. Percy would scan the two guys, Sam and Clark, every time they come in, eyes picking out the two men's weapons and thinking, strategizing.

It was unnerving. Danny supposed that he could see why some ghosts are scared of him now, despite his outward casualness. They probably feel threatened by him without him having to show any hostility.

A click called him back to attention. Oh . They were by Room 011 now. His room. Danny sighed. He knew what was waiting for him - it was a routine by now. He'd go in. They'd give him water because he was always kept on the brink of dying from dehydration. It was strange why they made sure to hydrate him so minimally, but it was the least of the strange things that occur constantly around him.

These men also have various vials of ectoplasm laying around; sometimes they inject some of that stuff into him. It always makes him feel weak. Weak, when ectoplasm should be giving him strength. Maybe it wasn't ectoplasm after all. Maybe it's anti-ectoplasm, something that disrupts the copper-chelating complex in the ectoplasm transporting protein. Something about acting like a counterpart to hemoglobin in mammals, as his mother once mentioned… That seemed so far away now. Danny feels like maybe he should care a little less, like Percy does. All this thinking just worries him.

A third man in the suit - whose name might have been Greg - snapped the room's tether onto his ankle. Danny didn't resist. Sometime ago he thought that it would have been a good time to try to escape now, since this tether, unlike the others, allows for his transformation into Phantom. But he tried, and it didn't work, and it landed him in a world of hurt. Fallout from that one little escape attempt took two weeks to recover; he was grateful that he was still in one piece afterwards.

The fluorescent light blinked through the dust and blared on him; Danny couldn't remember this room being quite as bright before. At least the smell of antiseptic left his nose tingling; that part has not changed.

"Drink," Greg said curtly. "Have you forgotten?"

Danny didn't say anything. He took the glass. He hated that he was drinking the water so hungrily. But he drank, and then had four more glasses after that before they stopped giving him anymore. They didn't want the possibility of him wanting to go to the bathroom during the experiment; they couldn't risk him trying to breakout that way.

"It's treadmill today. And then we want to get a skin graft, Phantom."

Danny winced. He hates running like a lab rat, even though that is what he was. He used to refuse to do anything, but cooperation is better. That was obvious. If he does well, they'd give him more water to drink before he returns to the cell. And god knows what precious of a commodity that is.

He was more nervous for the skin graft; he heals, but it always hurts. He also hates that Percy would look at him questioningly afterwards, eyes filled with pity and sympathy. Sometimes he'd notice patches of skin missing from his cellmate, too. It's horrible.

Signing, he strips to his underwear. He needed to do this so they could connect all kinds of probes to him. He's lucky that they didn't ask him to shave all his hair off for the helmet; they'd threatened that before.

Greg was drawing out fluid (the anti-ectoplasm ectoplasm?) slowly via a large syringe; it looked intimidating. Greg didn't look at him as he tapped the syringe to get rid of any air bubbles.

"Transform, and don't make me ask next time." Greg says this every time. Danny always hoped that he wouldn't have to. He'd started to associate his ghost form with pain.

Danny did so sluggish, switching to his Phantom form as slowly as he could. It always hurts when he does so in these cuffs, but it'd hurt more if he does not. The cuffs would force his cells to turn from human to ghost agonizingly one, by one, by one. It'd make him wish that he was fully dead.

So he conformed.

And by god, he wishes more than anything that he did not have to.

A/N - hope that you liked the story! Let me know if this is something you're interested for me to continue; I haven't made up my mind yet. I've always been interested to explore the concept on how humans may be the real monsters all along, though.