On to the main story now. Oh, just a note - I'm dividing the chapters up like '24', 12:00pm-1:00pm etc. This isn't set in real time, it's just easier for me to set out the story. And flashbacks, etc are in italics. Enjoy!
Disclaimer : The city of Metropolis, the Black Dogs and most of the Keepers belong to me. The other characters belong to their respective creators.
January 2026
Edd "Double-D" White sighed heavily as he looked out over the metal banister. Down below him stood dozens of computers, enhanced by their own engineers with the best technology available, and their able team of computer scientists making sure everything ran smoothly. This was Division, and he was at the helm; but some days he really didn't want to be. Division housed another rebel movement, the one he was part of and in charge of, whose primary objective was the overthrow of the Keepers, but they preferred to operate with stealth and precision, rather than adopt the guerrilla tactics of the other, far more violent movement, the Black Dogs.
The Keepers had taken power about twenty years ago, and not long after, a splinter group from the army broke away and began to grow in size and formidability, calling themselves the Black Dogs. At the start they settled for relatively petty crimes which were not usually noticed by the Keepers themselves, until they effected a successful assassination of their Minister for Defence, Thomas Stahl. That was when the Keepers had realised how viable an opponent they were and placed their leaders on a 'Most Wanted' list. Ideologically, Division and the Black Dogs were after the same thing; methodically they couldn't have been more different. They were so opposed to each other in that aspect that the Black Dogs considered them traitors to the cause, as big an enemy as the Keepers themselves, and they'd lost a number of fine recruits in this stupid war of ideas. Yet for all their assertion of power and indifference towards human life, the Dogs' plans had been largely ineffective.
Since the Keepers had declared war on Vismund Cygnus, Double-D would have naturally thought that their reign of terror had finally come to an end, but he still had his doubts. He had to – if you were chief of Division, you could hardly ever be totally sure about anything. Sure, Metropolis was slowly being surrounded by allied forces, but the Keepers were a wily bunch. That and their mounting paranoia made them dangerous, especially to underestimate. There were some real psychos in the ranks, ones that could easily have been protégés of Stalin or Pol Pot. And of course they had their secret weapon, one that had yielded no results up to this point, but desperate men would take desperate measures. If they couldn't get anything out of this guy, they'd kill him, simple as that. Or worse – Division might have to do it themselves.
And that was where he came in. Last night he'd formulated a sketchy plan, considering possible flaws intently and deciding that it might just work. But they'd only get one shot at it – the consequences of failure would be disastrous to them all. He needed some help, though, and he knew where to find it; Mike Masinski, head of Field Ops, and the detainee's two best friends, who worked down in Intel. He walked down the staircase, passing Timmy by on the way.
"Hey, Double-D," the brown-haired lad replied.
"What?" Double-D muttered in a daze. "Oh, hi, Timmy."
"You OK?" Timmy asked him.
"Yeah, I'm fine," he assured him, "just got a few things on my mind. This could be a big day for us, pal. A great day for freedom."
Timmy managed a thin smile in agreement. "Yeah, could be. Well, better get these discs out." He held out some compact discs in his hand.
"You do that. Hey," he offered, laying a hand on Timmy's shoulder, "if you ever feel like you need someone to talk to, you know I'm here for you, right?" Timmy's smile grew a little wider, and Edd cuffed him on the chin. As he hurried off towards the sector that dealt with counter-espionage, and he himself headed towards Intel, Double-D remembered how he'd come to find Timmy eight months ago, sitting shivering under a bridge downtown with his parents dead. Naturally he'd heard about it – events like these always made their way through to him somehow – and headed out to find him and bring him in.
"Stay away from me!" Timmy hissed at him, trying to keep his balance and not plunge into the river, though it seemed an attractive option given what this stranger would probably do to him.
"Timmy, just relax," Edd said, raising his hands to show he came in peace. "I'm gonna take you to a safe place where no-one's gonna harm you. I want to help you –"
"Why?" Timmy interrupted him dismissively, "Why would you even give me a second thought? How would you know what it's like to feel what I'm going through?"
"I know because the same thing happened to me," Edd replied. It was true – his parents were murdered by the Keepers when he was little, too young to remember them clearly enough. "I know what it feels like, but trust me, the safest place you can go right now is with me." The boy's eyes still betrayed his feelings of fear and distrust, though he could see he was starting to believe him. "Look…I'm going to give you my gun. OK? Here." He held out his gun with an outstretched hand, waiting for Timmy to take it from him. Timmy reached for it, his hand hovering nervously over the handle. "If you don't believe me, take it," Edd told him, "then do with it what you want."
Still he hesitated, before withdrawing his hand and murmuring, "I can't." He looked back up at Double-D, his eyes beginning to brim with tears. "I can't, I…I guess I believe you…"
"It's all right, kid," Double-D assured him, kneeling down in front of him. Timmy suddenly threw his arms around his neck. "We're gonna get you outta here, OK? Everything's gonna be all right."
Because he was so distraught, Edd had had to carry Timmy back to Division, keeping as low a profile as he could in case any Keepers spotted him. But they made it back without incident, and he'd had Timmy checked up. Here was a boy who was just like him when Edd was his age – alone and scared, his parents murdered. He'd taken him under his wing that day, making sure that he had someone to look after him and to come to in times of crisis. Right now, he had got Timmy a little bit of courier work, ferrying data from Intel to other departments. He was pretty reliable, but he was pretty intelligent – he might even end up running this show some day, Double-D thought. If, of course, Division was still there.
Over in Intel, Sam Manson and Tucker Foley were still attempting to gather fresh data from the minimal sources they'd been granted. Word was coming through that a prisoner at Camp Cerpin Taxt had escaped last night, and was on the loose somewhere inside the city. They probably weren't dangerous, but the Keepers had decided to take no chances this time, and encouraged all citizens to be vigilant and alert in case they spotted the escapee. If Division managed to bring them in, they might be able to get some information on the camp or the Keepers out of them, but right now, the escapee didn't even have a name, yet alone a location, and Sam and Tucker were running thin on ideas. All of a sudden, they noticed Double-D walking up to the pair of them.
"Sam, Tucker?" he asked, keeping his voice low, "Could I talk to you for ten minutes, please?"
They were stretched as it was, but they still put their sources on hold for the time being. Double-D wouldn't have come all the way down here if it wasn't about something important. He led the two of them to the screening room. Sam felt a little nervous – were she and Tucker being sanctioned for something?
"Please," Double-D offered, "have a seat." They sat down and he did the same. "I realise that your reasons for joining us were partly to do with trying to find your friend, Danny Fenton. To the best of our knowledge, Danny's still alive. I just thought it would ease your worry a little to tell you, and I'm sorry I haven't done it before now."
The bolt from the blue temporarily stunned Tucker, but particularly Sam. She remembered the day eighteen months ago when Danny had simply vanished without a trace. His parents had 'phoned her and Tucker the next day to report his disappearance, saying that they were being refused any help in finding him; according to official records, Danny didn't even exist. They were accused of seeing ghosts, of having unstable minds. Partly because of this, partly out of fear of reprisals if they said anything, the entire community had wiped whatever memories of Danny they had from their collective memory. To them he wasn't a shadow from the past, not even a vagary – he just wasn't there, never had been.
She remembered it particularly painfully because he was on his way to meet her and Tucker up at the park. She was going to tell him for the first time how she really felt for him, how much she loved him…and then he was snatched away. Danny never got to hear what she had to say, and she never got to tell him. For a few weeks, she had tried to keep her feelings of despair and unrequited love pent up inside of her; she'd just stared blankly into the distance, trying not to think about anything, until one evening when she'd accidentally uncovered a photograph of the two of them and Tucker taken a month or so before he vanished. At the sight of his face, everything hit her at once and she'd broken down uncontrollably, sobbing into her hand for about twenty minutes. Yet despite the long time in between, she'd never given up hope of finding him alive again.
"We heard about Danny shortly after he disappeared," Double-D explained, "and through one of our sources, we managed to find out where the Keepers had taken him and what they were doing to him. They planted a camera in the room to document the research they were doing. Our computer analysts managed to hack into the connection and stream some of their footage here."
"But what did they want Danny for?" Sam asked him, "He wasn't of any use to them."
"I doubt that," Double-D replied. "From viewing the footage, we've seen Danny prove to them that he's half-human, half-ghost. I have reason to believe that they want to harness his powers for their own use, and investigate the effects of certain chemicals on his genetic make-up, so that they can alter it and apply it to their own men for future use in the field. With his powers, they'd be unstoppable."
"Have they found anything?" Tucker inquired.
"We assume they haven't," Double-D said, "but also that they haven't given up trying." With that, he loaded a tape into the player and started it up.
Sam felt her stomach contract into a knot when the static cleared and she saw Danny sitting at the end of a metal table. He was looking around his tiled cell desperately as if searching for a way out. The faint sound of a door closing could be heard on the video and Danny looked towards its source, his eyes wide with fright. Two men, burly guards in combat gear, came into shot and stood at ease behind his seat, and a tall, balding man in a lab coat followed them in, stopping in front of the table.
"Hello there, Mr. Fenton," Dr. Joseph Silbermann said, as if receiving him at some macabre social gathering. "Welcome to your new home." So confused and afraid he was hardly able to speak, Danny remained sitting in his chair, a hundred questions running simultaneously through his mind. "You may not understand why I've brought you here," the doctor continued, sitting down at the table in front of him, "though I presume the late Mr. Masters told you of your…uniqueness…before his sad demise?"
Still Danny didn't answer. He didn't understand what these guys could possibly want with him, and he didn't want to find out. All he wanted to do was get back to his family and friends, have some normality in his life again…
"I don't understand…what am I doing here?" he asked, "I'm just a kid, I haven't got anything to offer you –"
Silbermann slammed his fist on the table, almost insulted by the naivety of his question. "Do you even realise how much potential lies within that mortal shell of yours? Intangible, invisible, almost invincible – these make you the perfect stealth weapon." Danny listened in his confusion, still unwilling to speak in case he said something else to piss him off. "Mr. Masters would have been beneficial to our plans as well. But I guess we'll make do with you." He sat back in his chair, his arms folded. "Turn yourself invisible."
Danny said nothing, trying to think of a solution in his head. Why did that stupid machine of his dad's have to have given him these stupid powers? None of this would be happening if –
"Now!" Silbermann ordered, startling Danny from his thoughts.
"I…I don't know," he stammered. Feigning ignorance seemed to be his only window of opportunity. "I don't know what you're talking about, all this stuff, it doesn't make any sense to me –"
Suddenly one of the guards behind him wrapped his arm roughly around his neck. The other entwined his fingers in Danny's hair as Silbermann growled, "Don't play dumb with me, boy. You know exactly what I'm talking about." While Danny struggled with the two goons holding him down, he nodded to one of them. The goon grabbed his wrist and forcefully stretched out his arm, as with an obstreperous child about to have an injection, pressing his hand to the table, palm facing the ceiling.
Danny desperately tried to pull his hand free as he saw Silbermann fish out a knife from his pocket and reveal the blade. His arm was visibly trembling as he felt the tip softly poke the skin in the middle of his palm. His hand was almost glistening with sweat as the tip wavered just above it.
"We can do this two ways," Silbermann said, his fingers clenched around the handle. "Either we can do it now, peacefully and willingly, or…" He trailed off, leaving Danny to figure out the rest of his sentence. The boy was still silent, probably out of fear rather than defiance. Then without warning, he gave the knife a little jerk, watching a claret trickle emerge from the newly-formed wound. Danny screamed as he felt the blade plunge in, and then as Silbermann languorously dragged the knife a further inch down his hand. Fresh blood oozed over his skin, some spilling over onto the cold metal surface.
The doctor's expression didn't change. "It's up to you. You decide when the pain stops," he said before carving another half-inch into Danny's hand.
As she listened to his cries for help echo round the chamber, Sam repressed the urge to reach out and touch the screen, to call his name and let him know that she was there, always would be… The sight of his blood trickling across the table made her gag, and she clutched her stomach. Tucker, feeling pangs of anguish for his both his friends' suffering, laid a supportive hand on her shoulder, feeling it shudder with emotion. He surveyed the date in the corner of the screen; it read 16:38, 25/7/2024 – just a day after Danny disappeared.
Sobbing and gritting his teeth from the pain, Danny looked up and saw the blurry image of Dr. Silbermann say, "I suggest you think very carefully about what you do next."
Only one thought flashed through his mind – escape, by any means necessary. Taking a last, hateful glance at his torturer, he went ghost, hearing two thuds as the goons fell through him and landed on top of each other. His gaze set on the ceiling, he took off, desperate to get out as quickly as possible –
All of a sudden, he yelled aloud as his head came into abrupt contact with the ceiling. Dazed and rendered helpless by the force of the blow, his ghost form dissipated into the air, and without any powers to keep him levitating, he fell back to earth, landing on the metal table with another yell. As he lay on the ground, fighting back the throbbing pain in his head and holding his bleeding hand, he looked up to see Silbermann staring back at him. A small, malicious smile crossed the doctor's lips.
"I neglected to mention," he drawled, "that this metal chamber is also surrounded by a plasma barrier. That means, Mr. Fenton, that even in your ghost form, you will be unable to escape." He walked towards the door and added, "So you'd better get used to it," before exiting the chamber, followed by the two goons. He turned to another scientist and said, "Remove the metal table and cauterise the boy's wound. We don't want to lose him just yet." The bespectacled young man nodded in acknowledgement and Silbermann went through the double doors that led out of the laboratory.
Pushing open the door to Danny's cell, the younger doctor watched his new subject indifferently as he writhed from side to side, tears still streaming down his face. This one would have to be broken in, like all the others…
"Cauterise the wound?" Sam asked nervously, "What do they mean?"
Double-D paused the tape. "They would have sterilised the wound by applying intense heat to it," he answered. "The heat causes blood vessels to shrink and blood clots to form, eventually resulting in the blood flow shutting off. At a guess…they probably passed an electric current through his hand."
"Oh, God," Sam moaned, looking back up at the screen, "Danny…"
"So what happened after that?" Tucker asked, "They keep running tests on him?"
"I'm afraid so," Edd replied. "Within a week of his arrival they started running extreme reflex tests on him, to test how quickly he could transform. Throwing objects at him, attacking him with guard dogs, even firing bullets at him." He loaded another clip. "They've injected him with numerous chemicals, to investigate the effects in case of biological warfare. One left him completely paralysed for three days." The clip appeared on the monitor, this one from April 2025. The light was dim in this one, and they had to look very hard to figure out where Danny was.
"After the chemicals, the Keepers also subjected him to sensory deprivation tests," Double-D said.
Just then, a dishevelled and plaintive voice came quietly out of the darkness. "No, please, not again, please…" There was just enough light for the three of them to see a man in the room bind Danny's wrists to the chair arms, tie a blindfold over his eyes and bring out a set of headphones. At the sound of the maddening noise, Danny tried to pull himself free, but he yelled in frustration and pain as the man placed them over his ears. In spite of all his shouts and tears and pleas for mercy, his calls went unheeded.
"No, please!" he begged, thrashing his head to try and dislodge the headset, "Please, get this thing off me!" No-one listened – no-one probably even heard. Danny hung his head in defeat, starting to sob quietly as he sat alone in his cell.
"Stop the tape," Sam pleaded, averting her gaze from the screen, "I can't watch any more." Double-D complied with her request, pausing the clip, though a harrowing image still flickered on the screen. He pressed a button on his intercom.
"Mike? Could you come in, please?" The door opened and Mike Masinski stepped through. Fifteen years old with long, red hair, her robust attitude and quick thinking made her an ideal second-in-command, plus she was extremely handy with a firearm. "I've informed Sam and Tucker of Danny's present situation," Edd told her.
"OK," Mike said, leaning against the wall. "You said you had a plan."
"Well, I'm sure you're aware of what could happen if the Keepers manage to crack Danny's secret," Double-D said, turning back to Sam and Tucker, " so we're given only two options. One, we break him out. Or two…" he struggled to finish, caught in Sam and Tucker's gaze, anticipating the letdown. "…we'll be forced to terminate him."
"Absolutely not," Sam replied bluntly.
"Excuse me?"
Sam knew that it was madness to oppose him in such a fashion, but she couldn't accept that Danny might have to die. Tucker obviously thought the same, but he had yet to leave his seat. "Danny's been my best friend for ten years. I'm not gonna let anyone put a bullet in him, not you, not anyone else."
Edd sighed as he formulated a response. "I'm sorry, Sam," he replied, "but personal reservations aside, if this is the only choice we're left with, it's what we'll have to do. I don't want Danny dead either, but if the Keepers manage to take his powers for their own…then that's it. The whole fight is lost."
"So you're suggesting," Tucker mulled this over, "that we break into a military laboratory and break Danny out?"
"That's the plan," Double-D replied, "we just need to figure out how to make it work."
"But security at Cicatriz is airtight," Mike said. "It's gonna be hard enough getting in there, never mind getting back out again."
"But that depends on the computerised security system at Cicatriz running the way it's supposed to," Tucker countered. "The Keepers place too much trust in technology that can't do what they want it to. It's elaborate, but we can still pick some holes in it, at least for a short time."
"What do you propose we do?" Double-D asked him.
"Well, we can probably disable the security system temporarily," Sam answered. "We can get inside Cicatriz without the Keepers being able to do anything about it."
"Any chance it can be rebooted?" Edd asked.
"Yes, but not for half-an-hour at least."
"But there's still the problem of the barrier around Danny's cell," Mike said. "Danny's valuable to them, far too valuable to lose. The barrier might be wired up to a different connection in case something like that happens."
Suddenly Sam cam unstuck. She didn't know how to respond to that, and for a moment she had the agonising thought that she'd never see Danny again. All of a sudden, Double-D spoke up.
"An EMP might work. An electro-magnetic pulse bomb. If we plant one underneath Cicatriz and detonate it, the signal sent out would disable all above-ground electronics in the area, including the system inside the lab itself. Unfortunately, we only have pinches big enough to deal a temporary blackout – twenty minutes, tops. After that, the entire Cicatriz matrix comes back online."
"But it gives us an extra twenty minutes," Sam said. "If we can find out where Danny's being held inside the building, we can get him out after the EMP goes off."
"It's definitely feasible," Mike commented, "but the timing needs to be absolutely accurate. There's no margin for error here."
"Agreed," Double-D said. "We're going to need to go into the sewer system if we're going to plant this pinch. If I head that up, it's best if you three break into the building. I need you to draw up a plan between yourselves for entering the compound and report back to me so the two teams can correspond."
"Got it," Sam nodded, and she and Tucker got up and walked back through the door with Mike.
As the two of them left the room, Double-D looked up at the screen again. For the first time that day, he couldn't see the face of a national security threat, but that of a young boy, cruelly snatched away from his family and friends, sitting alone and scared in a cell, and being experimented on by people who thought him nothing more than a lab rat. Cupping his forehead in his hand, he rested his elbow on the desk and leaned on it, accidentally starting the video player again.
"Damn it," he muttered, and made to turn it off before he heard Danny say something. He sounded as though he was crying.
"Mom?...Dad?...where are you?...Jazz?..." As though a siren's call had just pierced through the gloom, Double-D listened, captivated. There were nights when he'd felt the same way, feeling the loss of his parents like the loss of a limb. Sometimes the sorrow would creep up on him and then subside; others it would take him completely by surprise, leaving him unable to even stand. He brushed his hair back as Danny continued.
"...Tucker?...are you there?...Hello?...Sam?...oh, God…Sam…Sam, I love you…" That was the last thing Danny uttered before his words dissolved into quiet sobs. Silently, Double-D stopped the tape and switched off the apparatus, contemplating the things he'd just heard. He was at a real quandary. It was only fair of him to let Sam know. But on the other hand, if she did know, would it affect her judgement if, God forbid, the only available solution was to… It didn't bear thinking about as he opened the door and headed back towards Intel.