Sing to Life
By JadeRabbyt
Chapter 18: Something Stirring
Jazz let her escorts take her to the upper levels, back to McKinley's office. He looked up sharply from a written report, beaming at her. Jazz wondered where all the reports came from—underlings, probably, although you'd think these guys would be using emails.
Wherever they came from, he slid that one into a folder and turned his attention on Jazz. "That was excellent," he said. "I couldn't have hoped for a better response."
"So you can do something now?" Jazz loved praise as much as the next person, but she was dead on her feet. The adrenaline had worn out, and so had her endurance. She was about ready for a good ten hour meditative session with a warm blanket and a pillow.
"Do? Not quite. But we know a lot more. At least there's a direction for the research now."
"That's great… Can I get a bunk, or a couch or something?"
McKinley came out from his enthusiasm long enough to notice her, his face softening in sympathy. Jazz didn't even want to think about how she looked right now. "Of course. There are some living quarters on the upper floors. I might be able to arrange for a window."
He let her go after exchanging a few words with the two men leading her. They left McKinley's office and took her up an elevator and down a corridor, this one much softer than the lower research levels. The worn, carpeted floor didn't make their steps echo like the lower floors' tiling, and the paint looked older—more homey. Even her escorts seemed to relax a bit.
They handed her a key and left her at an old, wooden door with a brass knob and the number fifty-six marked in gold paint. If the interior looked as promising as the exterior, Jazz would be thrilled. And she was; the room was above motel quality. Not freakishly sterile and cold, but more like a dorm. One small bed, a flimsy desk, and a wide window with curtains which opened up an expansive view on the rough hillsides and grasslands beyond. The yellow light of the evening filtered in through the thin curtains, pooling across the thin brown carpet about midway through the room. Perfect.
Jazz stooped to remove her shoes, flexing her toes comfortably before curling up on the bed.
XXX
Something rumbled; Jazz awoke. A desk, some light, a slight chill—she sat up quickly and wondered where she was, what had happened—it all came back to her after a moment's thought. Alex, McKinley, and Danny… She had to call Danny. Check up on him, make sure everything's okay.
The noise that had awoken her sounded again, a knock on her door. She stepped across the carpet, wiping her eyes. From the fresh, chill light out the window, she guessed it to be mid-morning. Late. Jazz reached for the door, thinking at the last minute of the fact that she'd slept in her clothes. She ran her hands through her hair, hoping that if she couldn't avoid the 'lion's mane' style she might at least dodge 'electric chair.' Reaching for the knob, she pushed the door open.
Jazz grinned. "Mom!"
Maddie smiled in the doorway and accepted Jazz's leaping hug. "I am really happy to see you…"
"I'm glad to see you too." They broke away. Her mother looked more than a little worn-through. Faint half-moons of fatigue traced her eyes. "I heard about yesterday. Me and your father are so proud of you…"
The interview, Jazz remembered. "It actually wasn't such a big deal. I mean, initially it was, but Alex isn't all that he used to be."
Maddie laughed. "From what Arthur has told me, that's true enough."
She and Jack, Maddie explained, had been working mainly on the technical side of Alex. They'd only seen him once in person, and that had been several days ago, right after he was brought in. "They cited safety concerns. 'Unnecessary interactions might stimulate undesirable reactions,' was the exact wording."
"That's a pretty good reason."
Maddie shrugged. "I suppose."
XXX
As Jazz talked with her mother, Danny woke up a couple hundreds of miles away to a different kind of light. The sky outside his window had clouded over, dark and foggy. The air felt damp and cold. Danny figured it must have rained the night before. He turned over in bed and hid under the covers for a moment longer, reveling in the juvenile assumption that whatever weird things had been happening would go away if he stayed there long enough.
He got up around 8:30 that morning. Too late for school, not that there was likely to be much of a school left after yesterday's minor apocalypse. Danny showered and dressed, poured some orange juice and cereal for breakfast and thumped down on the couch. He snatched the remote off the glass coffee table, sipping his juice, and clicked on the TV.
"…recent crime wave, riots have broken out all over the United—"
He clicked it off with a sigh and glanced over at the phone. Nobody could leave him a number or anything, oh no. All the scientists plus his family h run away to some mysterious lab in Nowheresville and leave him completely out of the loop. He took another drink of his orange juice. As annoying as all that was, he considered, it could be worse. At least he didn't have to work with Alex. It would be fun to kick the crap out of that ghost, but it would hardly be useful. Besides, Danny wasn't sure he'd be comfortable being within eyeshot of Alex, much less touching him.
He finished his breakfast and dumped the dishes in the sink. They had started to pile up without Mom or Dad around. On an impulse, Danny stuck his hands in the dirty water and started loading them into the dishwasher. He might never have done it if his parents were home, but the splash of the water filled the silence of the house, at least momentarily. If he couldn't clean up the town, he might as well clean up the sink.
The hiss of water and the distraction of his hands bought him some time to reconsider things. Tucker was probably still mad. Better give him at least until this afternoon before calling. He could get in touch with Sam, but Danny had the distinct impression that he really should be doing something else. Danny had the distinct impression that something was lurking just outside his consciousness, nothing revolutionary, maybe, but definitely something that would be helpful that he could be doing. Something to do with yesterday. He flipped open the washer and slid a couple dishes onto the rack. He could hardly believe he was doing 'girly' chores voluntarily. Something really must be affecting him after all.
He remembered with a click of memory. The weird black stuff. He'd seen it before, but where and when? Recently, certainly, and the stuff hadn't been as brazen. Hadn't he been fighting the Box Ghost…?
Another click, and Danny remembered. The last of his morning drowsiness fled as a vision of warehouses and overfull garbage bins flashed to the forefront of his consciousness.
XXX
A half hour later, Jazz found herself in a meeting with her parents and McKinley. It felt good to be back among family, but the meeting bored her to tears. She had been mulling over the session for quite a while, and she was sure she could think of something on her own, but the adults just recycled all the mysticism and confusion they'd told her before. A lot of it was technical and went right over her head, but she couldn't help thinking they were approaching the problem from the wrong side. Finally, she interrupted.
"So you can't interpret the data you have and you can't get any more information, is that right?"
"That's what we've been talking about for the last half hour, yes." McKinley looked peeved. Jazz rolled her eyes. Of course she'd been listening, and it bugged her to think McKinley doubted that.
"What if we tried to get Alex to react? Give him something and see what he does with it, or something like that. Maybe we could get something useful that way."
Maddie brightened. "That's a good idea, sweetie. What do you suggest?"
"Well, something he could get excited about. Something from his human days, maybe. You said he went to school, right? What were his best subjects?"
McKinley answered automatically. "Physics."
"Okay." Jazz sat back in her chair. "That makes things a lot easier. We could try magazines, a game like chess or go… Lots of things."
They all looked at her, an awkward silence ensuing. Jack sighed. "I for one feel stupid. That's the best idea we've had all week."
McKinley rolled his eyes. "Ditto."
XXX
Danny decided not to call Sam. She'd be too vulnerable, and there was no way he was letting her get taken hostage again. He filled up his scooter's gas tank and headed out into the morning, leaving the empty house to echo on its own. He buzzed past the residential and business districts, laying down a thin stench of burnt gasoline to mingle harmlessly with the grander fog of depression weighing down everyone he passed. They dragged their feet, most eyes downcast…
Don't focus on that, Danny reminded himself. Focus on the goal. I am Danny Phantom, and I am going to win because I always win. Also because Alex is a jerk, but mostly because I am brave and capable and… Scared out of my socks.
Pep-talks weren't as effective when you had to give them to yourself, especially if your self was being slowly but surely corrupted by demon slime.
He left behind the tall gray buildings of the business sector and rolled into the choppy, pot-holed roads of the warehouses. Storage sheds and old factories stood lamely on either side of the road, filled with garbage old and fresh. Danny stopped when he reached the place he guessed he'd been before. He checked around the buildings, spotting a dent in one of the cans which, he remembered, had been made by his back when the B.G. slammed him into it. This was the place alright.
Danny hung his helmet on the handlebars and zapped to ghost, checking carefully for other people beforehand. There was no need for it. The place was deserted—dead, almost. Danny's footsteps padded across the mist-shrouded street, peering in windows, wondering what to do. He didn't want to go in, but nothing was coming out. Finally, he got his nerve up enough to phase through the wall of one building and check things out.
XXX
"I brought you something." Jazz smiled, holding the items securely behind her.
Alex craned his neck, trying to look both uninterested and arrogant at once as he tried to peek around her back. "I can see that." He'd apparently decided she was worth getting up off the cot for. This time around, Alex stood nearer to the bars, pacing back and forth every once in a while, but mostly staying put. Progress, Jazz thought.
"What is it?"
She brought out the stack and walked closer to his cage to show him. "Magazines. Take a look." She slid them carefully between the bars. Alex glanced suspiciously between her and the proffered magazines, but in spite of himself, he accepted them.
Alex started noticeably as he glanced over them. "These are science magazines."
"I heard you might like them."
He looked up sharply, a stare of iron. "Really?" Frustration, borderline desperation. "From who?"
"McKinley." Jazz took a couple steps back. "He found a file on you."
She could see the question on his lips, but Alex merely shook his head and returned to the magazines, flipping through them. "Oh. String theory." He scanned the page. "That's… hum." He retreated in his cage, leaning comfortably against the back wall as he looked it over. "Hum…" Jazz waited, wondering what 'hum' meant for her.
Alex looked interested, although starved would have been closer to the truth. He flipped through the pages, enamored with the contents. Jazz gave herself a mental high-five. She'd been right on the money with this scheme, but as she watched, Alex's expression changed from wonder, to disappointment, to stone. He shook his head disdainfully and tossed the magazines back at her through the bars.
"Boring," he said.
Yeah right, Jazz thought. "I didn't think you looked bored."
"Well I was. None of it's any good any more anyway, what with the world ending and all that…"
Jazz shrugged. "That doesn't mean you can't enjoy things while they last. Maybe we'll save it."
"Hah!" Alex stepped to the front. "Not likely. You might as well control the weather by banging rocks together."
"If a butterfly flaps its wings in China—"
"Yes, I know. It affects the weather in the United States," he finished. "That's science fiction stupidity. A popular myth perpetrated by the chaos mystics. Don't take it seriously."
"My brother takes it seriously," Jazz whispered.
"Your brother," Alex said. "Is a moron."
Jazz glared at him. She shook her head and stooped to collect the magazines. "I'll be back next time with a chess board."
"I won't play." He didn't sound certain.
"What's wrong?" Jazz returned. "Are you afraid you'll enjoy it?"
Alex crossed his arms. "Actually, yes."
She rolled her eyes at him. He stuck his tongue out at her. It looked ridiculous and creepy coming from him, but on some level Jazz thought it might be a good sign. "I think you might not be as evil as you think you are."
Alex scoffed. "You're wrong about that."
"Maybe. We'll see." With that, she clicked a button on the iron door, and the guards led her back to her room.
XXX
Bodies. Stacks and stacks and stacks of bodies. Danny yelped and pressed himself against the wall. Utter silence, foggy darkness, enough light to see sightless eyes and limp hands, deadweight masses both human and animal piled like so much meat one upon the other. The breath rushed from Danny's chest as he hugged the wall. Spread before his eyes lay Alex's stash of lifeless, hopeless, futureless victims, accumulated from years gone by. Those who, unlike Sam, hadn't had anyone to save them.
Everything screamed danger. Danger from what he didn't know, but every instinct in his mutated body told Danny to get out of there fast, and he would happily have obliged had he been able to convince his legs to move. Something in the pile was moving.
Moving and slinking, pooling and churning, trickling from the eyes of the dead, from the children and the raccoons and the formally-clothed businessmen, a black sewage that was all too familiar. It crept over the concrete floors, stopping at the base of one pile, accumulating…
Danny told himself to MOVE. But he couldn't.
The blackness began to rise, the pool twisting into a wide pillar, forming itself confidently, leisurely, fluidly. Tentacles rose up around it and twisted to and fro, scenting the air, reaching out, growing all the while; it nearly touched the ceiling now and had become as thick as the dumpsters outside.
Move move move move move… Danny couldn't tear his eyes from it.
The ooze turned about, getting its bearings, twisted towards its frozen roommate, still not attacking. It stared eyelessly at the horror-stricken freshman, made a final contemplative curve—and struck.
Danny moved. He shot up through the room as the blackness crashed down where he'd stood not a quarter-second ago. Danny shot into the air, terrified, trying to get a hold of himself. The stuff chased him up, rising up through the roof and reaching like a kraken, tentacles grasping for his feet, reaching for his body. It moved silently. Danny could hear nothing but his own panicked breaths.
He gasped and dodged a strike that might have killed him had it landed. Danny didn't know what to do. He couldn't think to strategize and couldn't get his balance to run; of all things he thought of Tucker. WHY hadn't he called Tucker… At least to apologize… He yelped, dodging another tentacle. The blackness curled up around him, the kraken closing in.
Danny phased intangible and blasted out of there, away from the warehouses and out over the suburbs, not looking back, dodging erratically, never flying in a straight line. At length he suspected he'd lost it and slowed, sparing a backward glance.
The blackness hovered at the edge of the warehouse district, not venturing into the outlying fields where Danny had gone. It curled pestilential in the air over the warehouse district, blanketing several square blocks. At length it calmed, descending like a fog over the buildings, disappearing back into its prostrate hosts.
Floating over the fields, the afternoon sun obscured by thick wet clouds, Danny watched it settle and retreat. He didn't move for a long time.
A/N: Firstly, I apologize for the whole 'I'm quitting' thing. I swear I thought it over for a week before announcing it. Secondly, yes, I am continuing, but I'm putting this thing on wheels. I want it done, and I want it done now. I have had the entire plot lined up in my head beginning to end since January, and I'm not cutting out any of the events. What I am doing is sacrificing the style. So, if you can stomach this chapter's crappiness, you'll be alright. If you want something better quality... well... tough. Wait for me to finish this sucker and I'll give you more 'Mars.' I will still fulfill requests, but not for quite a while.