Saving Sam: Chapter 5

A/N: I give you Chapter 5! I'm on the second level of Doom III. That game is absolutely incredible. I am happy that you enjoyed chapter, Sakura Scout. I hope this one is similarly satisfying. Thanks for your continuing support, Wiggle Lizard. Chicken Person and autumngold, I thank you both for your comments.

It took a while for Danny to get home, but he managed it at last. He strode up the brick steps, grasped the doorknob and pulled it open. It triggered a beep, audible to him from down in the lab. He heard two pairs of feet come rushing up the basement stairs to meet him.

"Daniel Fenton, do you have any idea what time it is?" his mother demanded, coming up from the stairwell.

"Well-"

"We've been waiting for you for four hours, Danny. It's twelve fifteen."

"Yeah," his father said sourly. "Your mother made me rig that stupid bell so we'd know when you were home."

"You haven't done your homework, your curfew's at nine, and you didn't even bother to call us. You did the same thing last night." His mother's voice softened. "Danny, what were you doing?"

"I-"

"You weren't at a party, were you? Are you addicted to drugs, Danny?" His father asked. "Drugs are bad! They mess up your brain and make you lazy. We'll have to get you some help with that."

"No! I wasn't at a party doing drugs!" Danny shouted.

"Don't take that tone with us," his mother ordered. "If you weren't partying, then what were you doing?"

Danny scrambled for a moment. Somehow, he didn't think that they'd believe he'd been negotiating a hostage crisis with a dead homicidal maniac. "Well, I was out... looking for Sam."

"Why?" his mother asked.

"She's been kidnapped," he explained slowly, trying to decide on a wise degree of truth.

"What do you mean she's been kidnapped?"

"Well, I mean I think she's been kidnapped. "You see, we-Sam and me and Tucker-were out in the city, and we went to do something and she went off somewhere and... And we didn't find her after that," he finished.

"This happened today?"

Danny shook his head. "No. Last night. We thought she'd gone home or something, but she wasn't at school or at home and we couldn't find her, so I wanted to look some more tonight and then call someone about it tomorrow." He thought it was a pretty good excuse. He should talk to Tucker and make sure their stories matched up.

"And you waited until now to tell us this?"

"Yeah. I thought we might be able to find her..."

"Danny, you should have the common sense to know that these things should be reported immediately." His mother sighed and rubbed her temples. "Tell me that you at least let her parents know."

"I was going to tell them..."

"We're calling them right now." His mother picked up the phone and Danny gave them her number. "Nobody's answering."

"That's typical. They're out of town a lot."

"Do you have another number for them? Or their cell phone?"

"I-" Danny blinked in surprise. He did have Sam's cell phone number. He tried in futility to suppress a Cheshire grin. "No, I'm sorry but I don't."

"Well, that's that." His dad began to head back downstairs, but Danny's mother grabbed his sleeve and pulled him back.

"No, we're calling the police right now. And what are you smiling about?"

Danny shook his head. "I have a, um, thing, in my room, that does good stuff." He knew he was making the situation worse, but he couldn't help it. The news was simply way too good. Had he been around anyone else, he would have been flipping cartwheels.

"Oh my gosh, he is on drugs," his dad muttered.

Danny's mother glared at him. "Are you making things up?" his mother asked, hands on her hips.

"Kinda, yeah."

"Well, abduction is not a laughing matter. There really are hundreds of kids out there missing." Danny nodded emphatically. He was gradually getting himself under control. The sooner this was over, the sooner he could call Sam. If she had her phone on. He prayed that she had her phone on. "You can't joke about..." She drifted off, sighed, and rubbed her temples.

"I think this can wait until morning," his father suggested.

"Yes, this can wait until morning. Danny, you're in big trouble, and we want the truth tomorrow. Until then, get upstairs and go to bed."

"No more crack tonight either!" his dad added.

"OK!" Danny ran upstairs, two at a time.

His mother looked over at her husband and shook her head. He smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

Danny was upstairs doing a little snoopy-dance. He grabbed his phone off its cradle and began to punch in Sam's number, but he couldn't remember it and had to dig the scrap of paper she'd written it on out from under a pile of laundry. He started to enter it again. On the last digit, he remembered that Tucker existed. He hummed tunelessly as he hung up and dialed Tucker. He felt as though he hadn't seen him in ages, and Danny wondered what had happened to Tucker. He had happy memories of somebody named Tucker, goofing around with him, going for milkshakes, shooting zombies in the arcade, catching ghosts with a drink holder.

"Ugh, hello?" Tucker's voice was thick and gritty from sleep.

"Hi! Guess what? I have Sam's telephone number!"

"You don't-" Tucker sighed in exasperation, a thick wind of static over the phone. "She's not at home. I double-checked yesterday morning."

"Cell phone." There was silence on the line. "Her cell phone, Tucker. I have her cell phone number."

"You've got to be kidding me. Why didn't we think of that before?" he said, fully awake and jubilant.

"We never see her use it. We're her only friends, pretty much, and her parents are hardly ever home. How do you think we should do this?"

"Do you have a speakerphone?"

"No, but I can-" He heard a sharp rapping on his door.

"Danny! Get off the phone right now and get in bed!" his mother shouted.

"Alright, alright." Danny jumped up and turned off the lights, keeping the phone in his hand, then jumped into bed. "Gotta go for a minute."

"Sure."

Danny hung up and threw the phone on his nightstand. His mother stormed in and snatched the phone. "You're in trouble tomorrow." She slammed the door behind her. Danny jumped up and switched on his computer and waited for it to boot up, drumming his fingers impatiently on the desk. When it was ready, he logged onto the instant messenger, but Tucker was offline. He waited a few seconds before a short noise told him that Tucker was online. Tucker couldn't stay conscious long with his computer off.

"you there?" he typed.

"yep. parents?"

"yep. took the phone"

"I figured"

"so what do I do now?"

"just a minute"

Danny waited. He was getting very tired of waiting for things. "I'm going out to a payphone"

"parents will chain you to your bed if ur caught. wait" In several moments, another message appeared.

"there's a free online phone service, but you need a headset"

"I'll get one" Danny leaped up from his chair and stepped cautiously to the door, listening. He didn't hear anything. Hopefully his parents were already asleep. Of course they weren't asleep. It had been about five or ten minutes since his dad had checked on him, and they were always in the lab anyway. He peeked out the door cautiously. He didn't see anyone, and he didn't hear anyone in the kitchen, either. He tiptoed down the stairs, cautiously avoiding or jumping the creaky steps. Halfway down he heard his parents muttering, and his dad saying, "I'll get it." Danny was terrified. He stood, frozen for a moment. Something very obvious occurred to him. "Stupid." He zapped into ghost mode as his father walked up from the lab, past Danny's staircase, and into the kitchen. He had to be more careful, even though Sam, good 'ole Sam who was always so clever about things and always straightened him out even if they didn't always listen and who was always there and even helped that one time when they were sick, even if he could finally have a chance to talk to that same Sam, he had to be more careful about it.

He zoomed down quickly to the lab, easily avoiding his mother's notice by phasing out, grabbed the headset, and returned to his room. "got it"

"good"

Tucker gave him the URL for the software and Danny downloaded it. Tucker made him test it with 411 to make sure the service was good and the software worked. In what Tucker told him was a miracle of modern computing, everything was fine.

"will you b able to listen in?" Danny typed. There was a pregnant pause before the response.

"no. don't know how, don't want to take the time to learn. call Sam and tell me about it after. still want to hear about this afternoon, too"

"sure"

Danny looked at his computer again. He was finally ready. He was finally going to talk to Sam, saintly Sam, Sam Sam Sam. With fingers like rubber, he slowly typed in her number and pressed the enter key. The message on the screen read, "connecting." Random modem noises came through over the headset. Then, a ring. He caught his breath. Another ring.

There was a click. "Hi," a whispered voice, Sam's voice, drifted over the line in a strangely quiet tone he had never heard before. Danny's world stopped spinning at the sound of it.

She sounded like he'd felt back at the docks. "Hey. It's me."

Her voice cracked a little. "Danny?"

"Are you alright?"

"I'm... I don't know. I want to be, you have to believe that I want to be," she protested, still in that quiet voice. "They just, he just..." He heard her take a sharp, deep breath. "The eyes..."

"Oh my God Sam," Danny said, desperate and exasperated. "Sam you have to listen to me. Listen to my voice. They're not real, he's not what he seems..." he grasped at the air for words, searching desperately for a saving turn of phrase. "Jeez, Sam, I've seen him. I know what it's like."

"I'm sorry and I'm so ashamed of myself that I can't fight it," she was sobbing now. Danny grasped the wire of the mouthpiece.

"Listen to me Sam, you have to listen now because I don't know how much time we have, okay?"

Some sniffles. "Okay." He heard something that might have been a laugh. "It's just so good to hear your voice."

"Same here, Sam," he said. There was a moment of silence on the line as each basked in the mere audio presence of the other.

Danny cleared his throat and spoke. "I'm going to tell you how I think you can make it easier to handle. Ready?"

"Yes."

"Alright. I've seen what he looks like-"

"Please don't remind me."

"I won't, but I have to let you know. The... the dark you see there. It looks empty, right? And it has a way of getting into you, of trying to empty you, but it's fake. It's not real."

"It's real enough to me."

"No, that's not what I mean," he stammered. "What I mean is, well, do you remember what things look like outside? Remember the time when we were done catching all the ghosts for the night, and Tucker dropped the thermos, and they all streamed back out? That stupid box ghost-"

"-made fun of us for the 'cylindrical container.'" she finished.

"And how about when I first got my powers, and Tucker got really mad because you replaced the menu with garbage-"

"That was a really healthy, good idea. And it was recyclo-vegetarian, not garbage."

Danny smiled, and it came through in his voice. "-with garbage, and that ghost lunch-lady took you, and me and Tucker found you in the freezer buried in piles of raw meat?"

"That was just... putrid."

"You know how we found you? Tucker followed the meat-smell all the way there."

"That kid does some goofy things, doesn't he?" she marvelled.

"That's why we love 'im."

"Hm."

"How do you feel?"

She hesitated a moment. "Much better, actually."

"So do you see what I mean? Just remember the things you know are real. The good times we had together, what we've come through before, what you'll do when I get you out of there. Do you understand?"

"Yeah, I do, but it's still really hard. I don't know if I can-" That helpless tone began to reappear in her voice.

"No," Danny stopped her firmly. "You do know you can. Those doubts are him talking; I've felt that part of it too. It's a sickness, but not your sickness. You have to be strong until I can spring you." He stopped. "Sam?"

"Yeah, okay. I will." She sighed.

"I need some information. Can you tell me where you are?"

"No, they knocked me out and I woke up here, in a closet. It's got cracks in the door, but it's dark outside too. It's cold, so it's probably somebody's basement or bomb shelter or something. I would have called you earlier, but right away he... it just seemed..."

"It's okay. I understand. How are you, physically?"

"Hungry. They don't feed me, and they give me really bad water to drink." She snorted. "It's always dark. It might not even be water."

"Are you injured?"

"No."

"Thank God. Can you smell anything?"

"No, why?"

Danny breathed a sigh of relief. "Good. The really bad one-"

"Alex. His name is Alex," she stated.

"Yeah, he told me." He paused, wondering for a moment about that point. "You know, it's odd how he says it. You really remember it well."

"Too well. What about the smell?"

"He has a really nasty place he stays and I was worried he was keeping you there. The fumes inside are lethal."

"Charming."

"That's about all I need to know. But Sam, I wanted to say-" he heard a squeak and a bang in the background, probably a door, then a muffled struggle. "Sam!" he shouted in alarm. Sam screamed. "Sam! Are you-"

"What a touching conversation." The voice sent chills up his spine. "So you hear from her that she is basically uninjured."

Danny jumped up from his chair, afraid and furious. "You stop what you're doing to her right now!"

"Danny," he heard her plead faintly.

"Sam!" he yelled desperately, hoping she could hear him. "It's not real Sam, remember it's not real! Remember the real me and you and Tucker!"

"How cliché, how heroic and chivalrous of you, Danny. I can understand why she's in love with you."

Danny spouted a string of expletives, some of which he had heard used in conversation only once or twice. "Stop it right now or I'll-"

"Or you'll what, Danny? Stop me. Meet me in the alley with the thermos and a tea time with your sister. Now girl, where were we?" And the phone clicked off.

Danny clenched the earpiece in his hand, shaking with anger and frustration. "Sam!" he called. He slammed the headset down on his desk and collapsed across his bed. "Sam." He heard his father's fast, angry steps in the hall. He zapped into ghost mode and flew outside as his father stormed into the room.

Jack Fenton took a long look around the room, the glow of the computer its only illumination. He walked over to the monitor. A couple windows were open, one of which looked like a chat program, probably with Tucker. Danny sounded pretty desperate from what he could see. Jack remembered that Danny's yelling hadn't sounded too cheery either. Another window was open with a phone number typed in. Jack looked at Danny's desk and noticed the headset and the scrap of paper. The paper read, "Sam's cell" and gave a number matching that on the screen. Jack looked from one to the other.

"That poor kid," he said, shaking his head. "Girl problems already."

"What's going on, Jack?"

He looked back at the number. "Danny's fine. He just had some music on."

"Well, alright. But I could have sworn that he was yelling..."

"I turned it off," Jack called back. He shut the computer down and left the room.

A/N: So how's that for ya, eh? Didja like it? I sure hope so. I've been taking heavy fire from another story site I post on, so if I sound at all bitter or cynical in the A/Ns here, that's probably why. Oh well. That which doesn't throw you into a screaming rage makes you stronger. X-D Seriously though, comments and constructive criticism are both welcome.