Author's Note: Please keep spoilers out of the review. If you see something hidden in this text that you think might be relevant to the plot later on, please keep it to yourself so as to not spoil it for those who are less perceptive than you.
P.S. Some of you may be worried about Danny at the end of this chapter. Don't worry. He's not dead. Everything will be explained in the next chapter.
P.P.S. Some of you may have noticed the Rectangles in the previous two chapters. Yeah, FFNet kinda screwed up my quotation marks and apostrophes. I'll be going back to fix them. Also, I won't update be updating for a while until I know for sure that FFNet's new "renewal" won't screw up and end up deleting any new updates on my behalf, which has apparently happened before.
Chapter Seven: Darkness Foreboding
"My name is Suimsalp," said the old man, as he sat on the park bench. He then squinted in the light of the morning sun. "You are the Harvest King?"
Danny tried his best to smile but the old man was far too close for comfort and if Danny didn't know better, he'd have thought the old man had something of a crush on him. Thankfully, he did know better and if he didn't, he would have been wrong. At least, he hoped that was the case.
"Erm, that's what people keep calling me," he said awkwardly and could almost feel the sweat coming down his forehead in sheets, despite that it was so cold that his teeth were chattering.
There was silence as the old man, Suimsalp, he called himself, stared at Danny. It was an awkward silence that seemed to drag out for ages, as if someone had pulled on the fabric of time, stretching it out of shape. What didn't help was the way the old man seemed to stare at Danny.
It felt to the raven-haired youth as if Suimsalp was staring through his eyes at a point somewhere beyond his skull, as if the old man was reading his thoughts or worse, reading his soul.
"So, you're from the Mao Shang?" asked Danny curiously.
"You're the Shou Ge Wang," snapped the old man. "You should know." He shook his head. "Still, don't know why an American was made Shou Ge Wang. What's wrong with the traditional Chinese Shou Ge Wang we've had up till now?" The old man shook his head again and sighed irritably. "I say it's all the fault of the last Shou Ge Wang, Wai Guoming. He should never have let those outsiders join."
"Well, Suimsalp doesn't sound much like a Chinese name to me," retorted Danny in a matter-of-fact tone, which earned him a hefty smack on the head with Suimsalp's cane.
"Don't take that tone of voice with me, boy," snapped Suimsalp irritably. "You maybe the Shou Ge Wang, chosen by the Shi Ti'en Yen Wang, the Ten Lords of Death, but you are still my younger and you whipper-snappers should respect your elders." He shook his head. "It's Confucian Law and the Shi Ti'en Yen Wang would want you to obey the Teachings of all the Three Ways, even if Confucianism is more of a way of life than a religion."
Danny rubbed his head, as he glared at the old man. This was definitely not what he had expected. He had never expected to meet a grizzled old man, let alone expect such a seemingly backwards man to have been on the Internet in the first place.
"I don't get it," he said, without even thinking. "What were you doing on the Internet?"
"Mah-jong!" exclaimed the old man and he seemed to brighten up as he did so.
Somewhere behind the bushes, Sam turned to stare at Tucker accusingly.
"You met him on an online Mah-jong game?" she exclaimed in complete disbelief.
"What else is that silly thing good for?" grunted the old man. He then shook his head. "The youth today," he mumbled under his breath. "You're almost as disrespectful as that one outsider… What was his name? Fordyce, I think it was. Disrespectful. Actually consumed the ghosts he exorcised. We Mao Shang don't hold for Ghost Eaters like him."
Danny suddenly went very pale at the very thought of it.
"Ghost eater?" he exclaimed, and he remembered the voice that had whispered accusingly at him in the garden of Maudsley Institute. He could still remember hearing that voice accusing him of being one and how he could not see the source of the voice anywhere.
The old man looked at Danny in disbelief.
"You mean to tell me you've never heard of Ghost Eaters?" exclaimed the old man. "What kind of a Shou Ge Wang are you? One of your responsibilities is not just to guide the spirits to First Court of Feng Du, but also to protect spirits from Ghost Eaters, those who would inhale ghosts and absorb them."
"Why would they do that?" asked Danny, who was quite sure that he wouldn't like to have a ghost inside him the way he had managed to go inside his Father on so many occasions.
"Why do people smoke and drink?" retorted the old man. "All I knows is that we don't like Ghost Eaters and no Mao Shang can be a Ghost Eater and no Ghost Eater can be Mao Shang."
That sort of answered Danny's next question. He already had an idea of how Fordyce could have possibly been kicked out of the Mao Shang Tribe. He wondered. Was it possible that Fordyce wanted to put him under, in revenge against the Mao Shang?
"So, Fordyce wants to eat ghosts," he muttered under his breath, "and I'm getting in his way."
"Eh?" exclaimed Suimsalp. "Fordyce? Michael Fordyce? You mean you've met him?"
"In a way," replied Danny with a slow nod of his head.
Suimsalp regarded Danny with a strange look in his eyes. It was almost a look of admiration, yet something seemed quite strange in those eyes that seemed partially clouded with age.
"So, you've met him?" he asked again. "How lucky of you to have survived. I hear that he has a grudge against the Mao Shang. Wouldn't have surprised me if he'd tried to kill you, what with you being the Shou Ge Wang and all."
"I don't understand," said Danny with a shake of his head. "How did I become Shou Ge Wang?"
"The Gods," was Suimsalp's reply. "The Shi Ti'en Yen Wang appointed you."
"Yeah, I know that bit but…" began Danny and then he trailed off. There were two questions in his mind and he wasn't sure which one to ask first. They both seemed equally important to him, yet, Danny couldn't help but feel that at least one of them was redundant. "How do you know I'm the Shou Ge Wang?" asked Danny curiously. "How does anyone know I'm the Shou Ge Wang?"
The old man looked shiftily around him for a moment, before he then shook his head.
"The white hair is a start," he said, "but… No! No, no, no!" He shook his bald head. "It doesn't matter. It would be a waste of time for me to tell you. Just know that only those that need to know will know who you are, and if they don't need to know, well, then they won't know, you know? Now I know what're you thinking, but what does it matter if people know who, well, you know, who you are? No, there's no need to know. What can you do if you know who knows and about those that know because they should know?"
Written down, one can carefully pick apart the unnecessary words of what Suimsalp had said and understand what he had said. However, Danny didn't have the benefit of seeing Suimsalp's words written down on paper. He had to listen to the old man drone on about knowing something or another, and was about to ask Suimsalp to repeat himself. But the old man had started up the conversation again.
"Now, I was wondering what is going on here," Suimsalp continued, before Danny could even put a word in edgewise. "The others are worried. They have seen the state of your city and are concerned about its balance, about its Qi." He then set his face into an expression that even a bulldog would have been hard put to emulate, before asking, "Why is the city missing two of its Cardinal Guardians?"
"Excuse me?" exclaimed Danny.
"You know, the Seals of the Si Ling," continued the old man. "As Shou Ge Wang, aren't you supposed to protect the Seals of the Si Ling as well? They are ghosts too."
Danny shook his head.
"I don't understand," he told Suimsalp. "What about ceilings?"
"No, not ceilings," said Suimsalp with an irritated shake of his head and his hands. "Si Ling. The Four Sacred Animals. Guardians of the Four Cardinal Directions. Si Ling." He then stared at Danny, whom stared back at him with a blank expression on his face. Suimsalp sighed.
O'Donnell stood at the edge of the balcony, looking over towards the Fate Determination Machine. He stared at the concave mirror set on top of the machine on what looked like giant, dark, metallic shoulder pads that capped the top of the glass sphere that was practically the main body of the machine.
"So, the Shou Ge Wang captured the Wind Ghost?" asked Zeross sternly, as he sat in the wheelchair behind O'Donnell.
"Yes, Sifu," was O'Donnell's reply, "yes and no." He turned round to face the old man with a strange smile on his face. "The Shou Ge Wang was careless," he told Professor Zeross with a strange, mischievous light glittering in his black eyes. "He left residual ectoplasm from the Wind Ghost and from a ghost resistant to black dog's blood. All we need are the ghost fragments from the Si Ling of the North and the East, Gui Xian and Long Wang, to complete the Life Ghost."
For a while, Zeross didn't say a thing, as if he was in deep thought. He looked as if he was in deep thought, as he sat there with wires and ivy and tubes running in and out from underneath his purple robe. It felt restricting, but he knew that it was necessary for him to stay alive. He needed all that to stay alive and the ivy to keep malicious spirits away from him, ghosts of those that had died in the fire at Streete Court, the fire he had accidentally started.
Ah, the memories of that terrible incident. He did not mean for the fire to start! It was not his intention. How he regretted ever trying to perform that ritual and now… His beloved granddaughter was dead because of his actions. She had been killed by the smoke, not the fire, but still…
Zeross shook his head.
"Will the Life Ghost be able to operate on the Schumann Resonance Frequency?" he asked O'Donnell curiously. "I hope you have not forgotten that we must utilise the Schumann Resonance, as our machine does."
"I have not forgotten, Sifu," replied O'Donnell sternly, as a great expression of seriousness overtook his face. "The Life Ghost will be able to operate on the same frequency as the Fate Determination Machine." He then turned round, looking towards the machine and at the concave mirror, that showed only a vague static like that of an improperly tuned television. "I hear," he began, as a frown appeared on his face, "that you have sent Michael out to try and recapture the Shou Ge Wang."
"We must not take chances," replied Zeross.
"No, we mustn't," agreed O'Donnell with an absent-minded nod of his head, and he sounded as if he wasn't concentrating on what Professor Zeross was talking about. Was that the image of a man he saw in the static on the mirrored surface. "Still, Sifu, I was pretty hurt to hear that you don't have full faith in my Life Ghost."
O'Donnell turned fully back round. He didn't want to see the image in the mirror and he didn't want Prof. Zeross to see it either.
"Especially," he added, "as the ghost of your beloved granddaughter will form the basis for the Life Ghost?"
"What?" exclaimed Zeross loudly and angrily, and he nearly rose out of his wheelchair in rage. "You would dare harm my granddaughter like that?"
"I'd like to think of it as an improvement," retorted O'Donnell. "She will be like the Harvest King, but unlike the Shou Ge Wang, she will resonate on the Schumann Resonance Frequency and not its antithesis. Your granddaughter will not cancel out the frequencies of our Fate Determination Machine. She will enhance it, like the natural Schumann Resonance of the Earth."
A smile spread across O'Donnell's lips.
"I assure you that no harm will come to her, Professor," he told Professor Zeross. "On the contrary, she will only benefit from becoming the Life Ghost. Like the current Shou Ge Wang, she will be capable of using her half-ghost powers to her own benefit, to keep herself safe from all harm. Still, if you don't want that, I could always find a new base for the Life Ghost."
"No, no," said Zeross with a weary shake of his head. "Forget I said a thing. Do what you must. Just bring my granddaughter back in one piece."
"So, do you understand?" asked Suimsalp.
Danny thought about what the old man had told him. He thought about how the approach to every city was guarded in four directions by ghost fragments of the Si Ling; Gui Xian the Tortoise in the North, Qi Lin the Tiger in the West, Long Wang the Dragon in the East and Feng Huang the Phoenix in the South.
"Yeah," replied Danny with a slow nod of his head. "These ghosts act as the Ch'eng Huang in cities where no official has been appointed into that position."
Suimsalp nodded.
"That's right," he agreed. "Heaven is run by bureaucracy, you see, so things happen very slowly. The appointment of a Ch'eng Huang can take many years."
"And you say we're missing two of the ghost fragments?" asked Danny in disbelief.
"That of Feng Huang and Qi Lin," replied Suimsalp with a nod of his head. "I thought you knew that. You are the Shou Ge Wang, after all. Didn't you feel that something wasn't right?" He waited for a while. "Well?"
Now that Danny thought about it, he did feel as if something was wrong. It was something other than the biting cold that seemed to penetrate even his thick clothing.
"Well, I have been having these strange dreams," replied Danny carefully. "It's about…" He trailed off, as if he wasn't sure as to whether he should tell Suimsalp all about Alex. But wasn't that the whole reason for setting up the meeting, so that he could learn more about Fordyce and his cronies and about Alex?
"This guy keeps appearing in my dreams," continued Danny hesitantly, as he brushed his snow white hair backwards. "He keeps calling me Shou Ge Wang and… Well, he keeps calling out to me to help him. And I don't know how. I don't know where to start." He looked at the old man, whom had been nodding to every single word he had said, almost as if he agreed. "Could you… could you help me?"
"It seems," began Suimsalp and then he trailed off. "It would seem…" He stopped abruptly. "Yes, I think…" he began once again, only to trail off. "Yes, it would seem that this person you speak of is dead."
"Yeah, I pretty much knew that already," replied Danny, who had grown pretty impatient thanks to the duration of the pauses between words.
"Go to where he died," said Suimsalp sternly. "Yes, go to where he died. Somewhere there, you will find a way to enter the ghost realm in which he is. From there, guide him to the First Court of Feng Du. There and only there, can he meet his destiny and go on to Heaven or descend deeper into the darkest recesses of Feng Du." He then smiled toothlessly at Danny. "Unless, of course, you wish to represent him in the First Court against the Judge and King of the First Hell."
Danny rose to his feet.
"He deserves to be helped the whole way through," said Danny sternly. "Don't you worry. I'll take care of the remaining two ghost fragments and help Alex." He then was whacked on the head again by Suimsalp.
"Foolish boy!" cried Suimsalp, as he rose to his feet and whacked Danny over the head with the cane again. "Never speak the name of a ghost. If you do, you might render him vulnerable to Ghost Eaters." He turned round, shuffling along the ground. "Useless!" he cried, before turning round and glaring at Danny. He hit the white-haired half-ghost for good measure. "I don't know why I bothered to speak to you. Perhaps it is better if I ask for assistance from other Mao Shang, than rely on a silly American boy like you."
"Hey! That's no fair!" protested Danny angrily. "I can do it!"
But Suimsalp was shuffling away, mumbling under his breath. He waved his hand dismissively at Danny's comments, before he continued away down the park, making good speed for a man of his age.
"What do you guys think?" asked Danny curiously, as he turned to face the others.
"Why didn't you go intangible on him?" asked Tucker curiously. "Didn't it hurt, having him whack you like a piñata?"
Danny rubbed his sore head, which felt as if the skull had suddenly turned to jelly where Suimsalp had hit him.
"Yeah," he replied. "That old guy must be a retired baseball player or something. He really had a mean swing." His hand stopped its rubbing motion, as if suddenly frozen, and a frown arched across his eyes as if he had found something on his head that shouldn't have been there. "So," he began, as the frown disappeared from his face, "what do you guys think I should do?"
"You're not thinking of going back to the Hospital are you?" asked Sam worriedly. "I mean, you'd be walking straight back into the lion's den." She then shuddered at the thought of what the doctors there would end up doing to him. "You're not going back there, right?" she asked him and was disheartened when he didn't reply right away. "Danny, you can't!" she protested.
"I have to, Sam," retorted Danny with a shake of his head. "I can't ignore him. He asked me for help. I can't abandon him when he needs me the most; it would be like you abandoning me when I needed you the most." He turned round, facing in the direction of the Roslyn Hospital and was about to take off, when a hand grabbed his. Danny turned round. "Sam?" he exclaimed questioningly.
There was something in Sam's eyes. It was an expression of concern and as Danny looked into those lavender eyes of hers, he couldn't help but feel as if… Just by looking into those eyes of Sam's, Danny could tell that she cared for him. She cared for him as a friend and she cared for him as a… No. Maybe he was reading too much into the look she gave him.
"Sam, I have to go," he told her.
"I know," replied Sam with a slow nod of her head. "But you can't go by your own, Danny. We'll come with."
"Sam's right," agreed Tucker. "You have no way of defending yourself against these Mao Shang rejects. With us there, we'll be able to watch your back, 'til you can get Alex out." He then said, "But we've got to make preparations, you know. Why don't we wait until tomorrow? We can storm the place in the early hours of the morning. They won't be expecting us then."
Sam frowned.
"Why, Tucker, what's gotten into you?" she asked her capped friend. "It isn't like you to make good suggestions."
"What? It is too!" protested Tucker angrily.
"Oh, yeah?" exclaimed Sam. "Name one good suggestion you've ever made." And her question was met with a raging silence in which Tucker could only fume and feel his anger dissipate. "Yeah, thought that as much," she said in reply to his lack of reply.
Danny exhaled heavily through grated teeth.
"Guys, I hope you won't be doing this when I sneak into Roslyn," he sighed. The last thing he wanted was for their bickering to jeopardise his little mission, the way Tucker normally mucked things up. He certainly didn't want to end up being caught by the doctors that worked there, the doctors that might have been working for Fordyce himself.
It wasn't that he worried about what the doctors would do to him. Danny was far more concerned of what would happen if he failed to rescue Alex from whatever dimensional rift he had been caught inside. He was the Shou Ge Wang, after all. If he failed to rescue Alex, then who would rise up to take his place as Harvest King and guide Alex away from the purgatory that the doctors' had intentionally or maybe unintentionally created for him?
He looked around him and when he was satisfied that no one was around save for his friends, Danny turned back into his human form in a flash of light.
"Come on, let's get going," he said to the others, as he tightened the scarf around his neck. "You guys are right about coming with, but I think we should go tonight. The sooner we get Alex out of there, the better."
Tucker blinked once and then remained completely still. He watched as Danny slowly made his way down the garden path, his hands shoved into his pockets. Tucker couldn't quite put his finger on it, but he couldn't help but feel as if there was something strange about the way Danny had talked then. It was almost as if it was a different Danny that had spoken to them, that had decreed that they would sneak into Roslyn at night without even asking them whether they approved.
"Hey, Danny!" he called out, before running after his black-haired friend. "Wait up!"
"Fenton Works!" announced Daniel's father, as he picked up the phone. "If it's ghosts, then we catch 'em, bag 'em and… er… Well, ghosts don't stand a chance against us. This is Jack Fenton. What ghost can I bust for you?" He then remained silent, as the person on the other end started to talk to him. "Oh, Professor Zeross!" he exclaimed. "Yeah, I've got them ready for you."
Jack Fenton turned to face the large number of crates that had taken up the kitchen that morning.
"Yep," he said with a nod of his head. "That's all one hundred Fenton Ghost Peelers, fifty Fenton Ghost Grabbers, thirty Fenton Ghost Grapplers, one hundred twenty Fenton Ghost Phones, one hundred Fenton Thermos Flasks and five Fenton Foamers." He sighed. "It wasn't easy making them all, but… Yeah, they're all here and ready for shipping out!"
A smile then spread across his lips.
"So, what do you want them for?" he asked curiously. "Fighting against a Ghost Army? Ha!" The smile slowly spread across his lips. "Fine, fine," he sighed irritably. "I'll have them delivered… You're coming to pick them up? Someone's coming to pick them up for you? Oh, okay then… Well, what time? Now?"
The doorbell rang suddenly.
"That was quick!"
"This doesn't feel right," whispered Tucker, as he readjusted his black ski mask. "Wouldn't they be expecting us? I'm sure security here must be tougher than it used to be."
Sam didn't say a word in reply to Tucker, partially because he was stating the obvious. She too knew that Fordyce would have increased security at Roslyn, all to ensure that they wouldn't get back in. She was sure that there was a reason in keeping them out, a reason that was kept secret to everyone except Fordyce and his closest allies within the Hospital. But what was it and what would the patients think, if they ever found out they were funding Fordyce's sordid schemes? What exactly was Blue Bow up to?
They say that curiosity killed the cat. Sam wasn't sure what Fordyce was up to in that hospital of his, but she was sure that a lack of curiosity was the problem and that that lack would end up in something worse than their deaths. She wondered how curious Tucker was and how much that curiosity was quelling his own fears. It didn't seem that he was very excited about finding out what Fordyce's group was up to within the Hospital.
In fact, it seemed as if Tucker was only there because he felt he had to be there to support his best friend. Loyalty and friendship were his reasons, but there was no added curiosity like there was in Sam. Perhaps it was that curiosity which made Sam less afraid than Tucker. Being loyal and a friend to Danny were enough, but that added curiosity as to what Fordyce was up to, perhaps that was what tipped the balance in favour of courage.
"You ready, Danny?" asked Sam through the earpiece she had been given.
"As ready as I can ever be."
Sam nodded.
"Good," she said, as she raised a pair of night vision binoculars to her eyes. She knew that they couldn't be too sure, as she scanned the area around the hospital for clues. "All right, the coast is clear. Let's go."
Under the cover of darkness, the three of them moved out from the bushes. With Danny's help, they moved unseen and invisible, walking through the fence that surrounded the Roslyn Hospital Complex and moving in a straight beeline for the Maudsley Institute.
Danny wondered for how long he could keep up their intangibility. Being invisible and intangible himself was one thing, but transferring his powers to more than one person? He could already feel fatigue.
"We gotta stop," he told them in a hushed voice. "I'm not sure how much longer I can take this."
"Fine, let's stop in those bushes over there," agreed Sam.
"Sir! We've got a breach of the perimeters!"
Fordyce turned round with a frown on his face, as he walked up to the security guard.
"A breach?" he exclaimed in surprise. "What in tarnation do you mean by that, soldier?" He grabbed the back of the seat and swivelled it round, plucking the security guard up by the lapels of his uniform. "Tell me, boy. What broke through our perimeters?"
"I'm not sure, sir," was the reply from the security guard. "It seemed like a ghost, but… but something's strange about the way its resonating."
"Strange?" exclaimed Fordyce angrily. "What's so strange about its resonance. What's so strange about it, boy?"
"The amplitudes, sir."
The Earth's electromagnetic field resonates on the Schumann Resonance Frequency, first measured by W. O. Schumann. The fundamental base figure, as obtained from an average of several measurements, was always given as 7.38 Hertz but could fall into a range from six to fifty Hertz. Ghosts, being made from ectoplasm and electromagnetic disturbances, resonated on a frequency of approximately six times the base figure, mostly cited as 42 Hertz.
The Fate Determination Machine ran on the same frequency as that of ghosts from the Ghost Zone. The problem was that the Machine used a small Ghost Portal to prevent ghosts from escaping into the machine and interfering with its functions. A small portal meant the Schumann Resonance Waves or SR Waves as the Blue Bow scientists liked to call them, diffracted, spreading out like a fan. The design of the machine meant that waves that spread out like a fan reflect off the surfaces and rebound and cause interference or noise.
That was where the Shou Ge Wang or Harvest King came in. His brain activities resonated on the Schumann Resonance Frequency too, but at a different phase. The phase was exactly displaced by one-half, so that the crests of the Harvest King's SR Wave (if overlaid on top of a SR Wave from a ghost or that of the Earth) corresponded with the trough of a ghost SR Wave.
It is like a piece of ground where there are hills and valleys alternating one after another; a hill followed by a valley, followed by a hill, followed by valley and so forth. If you shift the hills into the valleys, you get rid of both the hills and the valleys, creating nice level ground and getting rid of the wave pattern that the rise of the hills and the drop of the valleys created.
That only works if the earth that makes up the hills, is the exact amount of earth that is needed to fill in a valley. In the case of electromagnetic waves, amplitude affects the height and therefore the depth of the 'hills' and 'valleys' that make up the wave. The Harvest King's amplitude was exactly the same as that of the waves the Fate Determination Machine ran on.
"Take a look for yourself, sir," was the reply from the security guard, before he gave Dr. Fordyce the hand out.
"Well, I can't make head nor tail out of this trash," cried Fordyce angrily, as he let go of the security guard. "Where are the labels for the axes? You call this a graph? An untrained monkey could make a better graph than this! Why didn't you add the labels, boy?" He then frowned. "Wait!" he exclaimed. "That…" He thought for a while. "Never mind. Just scan the area with a UV Spotlight. If there is a ghost there, his ectoplasm will glow like the Sun!"
"Danny! You're glowing!" cried Tucker.
Danny looked down at himself and indeed, he was glowing. He was glowing with the same eerie glow that his eyes did and it was making him stand out within the darkened shrubs like a sore thumb that had been painted bright fluorescent pink and yellow.
"This ain't good," he said worriedly.
"We better get out of here," said Sam concernedly. She was all for trying to find out Blue Bow's plans, but she certainly wasn't going to do it at the expense of their lives.
"Easier said than done," exclaimed Tucker, as he peered out of the bushes. "There's like an army out there!"
"Guess that explains why they're called the Blue Bow Army," said Danny, as he brushed a branch aside to look out. He noticed that they seemed to be coming towards them from one direction only. If they acted right then, there was a possibility that they could escape. "It seems as if they're all coming from the hospital. If I distract them, you guys can make a break for it."
"What? No way!" protested Sam. "We can't leave you!"
"Sam's right!" agreed Tucker with a nod of his head. "We need you to make us invisible and fly us out of here!"
"That's not what I meant," said Sam, as she turned round to glare at Tucker angrily through narrowed eyes. "Danny, this is the Blue Bow Army we're talking about. Who knows what kind of anti-ghost techniques they have? I mean, Fordyce and his cronies were Mao Shang, remember? They could take you down faster than you could blink."
Danny had to admit that Sam did have a point. This was possibly going to be the toughest fight he would ever have to face against. He was up against a whole army of ghost hunters, not just the one. There was a possibility that he wouldn't come out of it in one piece or worse.
"I have to do this, Sam," he told her. "I can't just let you get caught up in all of this. Tucker, take care of Sam and get the Heck out of here."
"Danny, we came with so we could look after your back," retorted Sam angrily. "We came so we could protect you against the ghost hunters. And…" She was suddenly interrupted by a plasma shot that nearly took off her left ear.
"Go! Get out of here!" shouted Danny sternly, before he flew right out of the bush and straight at the advancing Blue Bow Soldiers.
"Danny!" cried Sam, as she tried to grab him, but failed.
Her words fell on deaf ears. Danny didn't hear her as he flew straight towards the soldiers. All he could hear was the blood pumping through his half-ghost body. All he could feel were the thoughts that flooded his mind, that made his body tense up with fear and that made him wish that he had been more careful in his parents' lab. He was scared and he wasn't even facing ghosts this time round.
Blue Bow Soldiers were the first to fire a shot.
Danny became intangible, letting the plasma shot go straight through him. He looked down at the masses of them. There were about fifty of them and there was that spotlight that swept its light across the sky to scan for him. He knew that he didn't have a fighting chance. They would overwhelm him for sure, but he had to keep them distracted long enough for Sam and Tucker to escape.
A green glow appeared in Danny's hands. He summoned all his strength and fired an ectoplasmic beam of energy straight down at the soldiers, watching them scatter and dodge it. Danny dodged another few shots fired from the ground, before returning puny little shots of ectoplasmic energy that he aimed at the soldiers.
Something suddenly struck Danny in the chest and he was knocked out of the sky. He fell like a stone towards the grassy ground, spiralling down like a wounded dove only to strike the ground with a heavy thud with such force that he bounced off it once and crashed down on the ground again.
A normal human being would not have survived that fall without suffering some injuries. Yet Danny was not human and being half-ghost, all he felt was a mind numbing pain that he never thought possible.
He looked up and saw the soldiers advance.
"Stay away!" cried Danny, before firing a random shot at the incoming ghost hunters.
Suddenly, a hand grabbed him roughly and pulled him off the ground. An arm wrapped itself around his neck and held him tightly against the body it belonged to. It was a tight hold and nothing Danny could do could let him break free. He tried becoming intangible and walking through the man that held him from behind, but found it impossible.
"Don't struggle, boy," drawled a familiar voice from behind him. "You can't walk through me. There ain't no way you can escape this time, Shou Ge Wang." Then Fordyce pressed a needle against Danny's arm and jabbed it in forcefully. "Let's see how you like a taste of this!"
"No, get off," hissed Danny angrily, as he struggled against Dr. Fordyce's grip.
"You can't win against the Blue Bow Army," chuckled Fordyce, whispering his words into Danny's ear. "Soon, we will control the Kingdom of Death and we will achieve what no doctor before has been able to. We'll become like Gods!"
Danny couldn't stand it. He had to break free. He had to, in order to stop the Blue Bow Army and for the sake of his friends. He had to break free, regardless of what Fordyce had shoved into his blood system.
"I said, 'Get off'!" screamed Danny, before emitting a powerful blast of energy that radiated from his body and resonated at a high frequency that blasted the soldiers off their feet and knocked Fordyce backwards.
Then there was Alex. Yes, Danny couldn't forsake Alex. He had to find a way to free Alex from the purgatory these Blue Bow maniacs had managed to put him in.
With a huge battle cry that was more of a scream of rage, Danny rushed straight at the Blue Bow Soldiers with fists clenched tightly. He rushed straight into them, kicking and punching, dashing his fists against them and fighting his way through the crowd of fifty ghost hunters.
It didn't matter that his vision was blurring. It didn't matter that he felt his limbs weakening. It didn't matter that he seemed to be hearing voices in his head, voices that did not belong to him, voices that didn't seem to belong to Sam or Tucker. He just kept fighting, punching and kicking at the soldiers and knocking them down with blasts of ectoplasmic energy. He was as good as captured, yet still he fought to the very end.
Sam and Tucker turned to look back towards the Roslyn Hospital.
"We've got to go back," said Sam with concern. "We can't just leave Danny behind like that."
Tucker agreed. Normally, he would have agreed, but the very thought of having to fight against human opponents that could harm them… Fear gripped him. It was that fear that made him feel so impotent against the forces of the Blue Bow Army.
"Yeah, but if we go now, we'll be captured," he reminded Sam, and he never thought that he would be the one to point that out to Sam.
"You're right," sighed Sam with a slow nod of her head, "but we've got to do something." She raised her gaze to look back at the hospital, at the lights that came from the Maudsley Institute, at the lights that came from the main hospital building and at the lights that illuminated Arcadia Tower. "We've got to come up with a rescue plan."
"Yeah," agreed Tucker with a nod of his head, and he left it at that.
Sam didn't want to leave Danny behind. She knew that Tucker didn't want to either. They were all best friends, after all, and best friends just don't leave best friends behind. Yet what could they do? How could they fight against the Blue Bow Army?
"We'd better go," she said, worried that Blue Bow would send out guards to search for them.
"Hang in there, Danny. We'll be back for you, man."
The moon was full and shone brightly, illuminating Danny's way as he floated unsteadily across the ground.
Danny seemed to stumble in the air and then collapsed to the ground, onto his hands and knees. He felt so tired and exhausted, after fighting his way past all those Blue Bow soldiers, the security guards for the Roslyn Hospital Complex. Yet he knew he had to keep moving. If he didn't, they would follow him and find him and capture him. That was not what he wanted. That was not something that he could allow.
Yet his surroundings seemed to be blurring before his very eyes. Despite the glow of the moon, everything seemed to be getting gradually darker with every passing moment. He was slowly losing consciousness. He knew that he was slowly being edged out of consciousness by a powerful new entity, a strange thing that now resided inside him and seemed to consume his very inside with a blazing fire of rage.
"You owe me a favour," whispered a voice that seemed to echo around Danny. "Will you honour your promise now?"
Danny ignored the voice, as he staggered up to his feet. He had to keep moving and as he stumbled through the darkness almost drunkenly, he did not notice the red curtains in front of him that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. He didn't even notice, as he stumbled through them.
Red banners hung from the ceiling, a dark entity that couldn't be seen no matter how hard you looked. They were hung haphazardly in the room and all of them were about the same size and pure red with nothing inked on to them and they swayed in a breeze that he couldn't feel.
Danny staggered past them, brushing them aside as he went. He felt as if he had been wounded badly and his right side felt as if someone had stabbed him there and twisted the knife blade. It was a numbing pain that he chose to ignore, as he stumbled past the banners, wondering where he could be.
Through the billowing banners, he could just about see the two figures on the other side of the room. There was a woman dressed in nothing but white robes that fell down to the floor like a cascade of white water. Her hair was worn in the same fashion and was like black ink flowing from a pot, and it was as black as her face was pale and as her smiling lips were bright red.
The woman sat there on a humble-looking chair that occupied a small space at the bottom of the judicial bench, that was like the ones in which judges sit a when in court. Yet this one was as black as night and hung over it was a yellow banner with something written on it in red ink in Chinese.
Sitting there in place of a judge was a man dressed in yellow, silk Oriental robes. He was blindfolded and on the blindfold was painted a few Chinese words in red ink. In the place of the white powder wig that judges wear, this man wore a black hat with two pieces of fabric that curved out from its side and a veil of pearls that hung from the top of the hat to end just above his forehead.
The pain in his side, in his entire body suddenly became unbearable. Danny couldn't take it anymore. His legs felt like rubber and the more he tried to stand up, the harder it became. Just moving felt difficult, as if the air itself was as thick as quicksand. He suddenly fell back down to the ground, finding himself unable to stand up anymore.
"Daniel Fenton."
Danny looked up and in doing so, he saw the raven-haired woman get up. He watched, as she walked down the steps of the dais, walking straight towards him in a manner that made it seem as if she was floating down the steps towards him. And he couldn't help but feel that she was a ghost and so was the blind-folded man that seemed to stare down at him regardless of the blindfold.
The raven-haired woman had Oriental features and there was a gentle smile on her face, as of a dream, as she approached him with a Chinese tea cup filled cradled in her hands. She stopped at the base of the steps and then knelt down on her knees, so that she was level with the kneeling Danny. Then with one gesture, she moved the cup towards Danny, offering the dark liquid that resided in it to the young black-haired boy.
"Drink. Take the drink Lady Meng Po offers you."
Slowly, Danny took the cup into his gloved hands. He looked up at the woman and she smiled at him.
"Drink and forget your troubles."
The liquid looked inviting and though it smelt bitter, Danny couldn't help but feel enticed to drink it. There was something very welcoming about it. Danny didn't know what it was, but it was like he had been handed a hot cup of cocoa after fighting through an Arctic storm for days on end.
"There must be a catch," he tried to say, but the words didn't seem to want to come out.
"Drink and forget everything."
"Even my friends?" asked Danny, as he looked up at her. "I can't forget my friends." He then looked back down away from her gaze, which seemed to bore into him and stare at his soul. He tore his gaze away from her and down towards the cup in his hands and the warm liquid that looked so much like tea. "I do need something to drink though," he muttered under his breath. "And I would like to be rid of those memories…"
Danny shook his head. There was something about the fumes that the tea gave off. Its smell was intoxicating and the more he smelt it, the more he seemed… the more he seemed… Danny could swear that he had made a promise to someone, a promise to free them from somewhere… He couldn't remember where or when or to whom, though.
"I don't want to be Shou Ge Wang anymore," he said to himself, as he raised the cup to his lips and drank from it. "I don't want to be half-ghost anymore."
