The quiet humming sounded unnaturally loud in dark stillness. Danny stopped as he realized that he had been singing Brittney Spears in his nervousness. Sam would have skinned him alive for that if she'd been there.

As if on cue, a remnant of the goth in question appeared in the road ahead. "Sam…" Danny whispered without realizing it. Even though he knew it wasn't real, the sight of her besieged by slayers made him cry out.

It never gets old.

"Leave me alone," the boy muttered, starting forward again. In an attempt to take his mind off the horrifying scene, he decided to think about a theory he had formulated.

But it's so much fun to tease you, amante, Silver protested.

It would be easier to focus on not seeing Sam die if she would stop projecting images of Sam dying into his head. Kat had theorized that Silver was psychically deaf, which would explain her inability to read minds. Some physically deaf people were capable of speech; likewise, Silver could project. She just couldn't receive.

This, of course-

You need to play with me! Say something and play with me.

This, of course, brought up the point that-

A loud shriek split the air. It drove Danny to his knees and filled his ears until he thought he would go deaf. Around him, glass windows shattered and bits of various structures crumbled. It broke off as quickly as it began, and Silver dove into view, laughing.

"I like your powers!" she announced, hovering. She looked extremely exhausted from the brief Ghostly Wail, which Danny noted with some satisfaction. She might have been a super-powerful psychic, but he was still better with the ghost powers.

He stood, rubbing his abused ears, to demand, "What have you done with my friends?"

"And family," she corrected, alighting on the ground. "Wouldn't want to leave them out, after all, would I?" They're safe…for now. She vanished from sight with a self-satisfied smirk to leave Danny with the image of every single person he cared about in the whole city being hanged from the edge of the clock tower.

He blasted at the place where she had vanished for a few moments until he remembered that he had the Fenton Thermos slung across his back. That would have been an excellent time to use it. He slapped his forehead in irritation at himself. Why did he let her get to him like that? Maybe Technus was right: emotion was nothing but a weakness.

A flash of light against metal got him moving again. There were only a few things that could be responsible for such a sight, and he wasn't keen on meeting any of them. Except his mom, or maybe Valerie. They would be good to have around. Both would be even better.

Oh, who was he kidding? Either one of them would still be a better choice than him. Maybe humans weren't useless, but he was. He was so used to being half ghost that he had forgotten what it was like to not have powers. Sure, there had been that little stint when he split himself to take care of Technus and still hang out with his friends, but that didn't really count. Or maybe it did.

No, it really didn't. He hadn't been trying to defeat Technus armed only with his sorry excuse for cunning and a weapon that might not even work. It really was pathetic. Did he honestly think he was going to succeed at this?

Something rattled to his left; he whirled around to see a cat digging around a trash can and lowered his weapon. He had to laugh at himself. Really, he was just way too jumpy. As he turned to go, the cat yowled in fear and pain, a sound that was abruptly replaced by a crash. Danny yelled in surprise and turned back to see the poor creature's tail disappear between the fangs of a sickly-yellow gorger.

The thing stomped forward, its piggy-eyes fixed on the boy. Danny gulped and forced his legs to carry him backwards. Faced with an actual malefactor at last, his little toy gun seemed woefully inadequate. He continued to back away until the creature howled and charged forward. He yelled in response and began firing at random. It was probably a miracle that he hit his target.

Looking down at the creature's twitching corpse, he was torn between joy that Maddie's weapon worked and throwing up from fear-reaction. Sadly, his stomach made up his mind for him as it decided to empty its contents. After a few minutes' illness, he staggered on his way.

"Lucky shot…" whispered something from everywhere at once. He turned in increasingly panicked circles, but Darwin was nowhere to be found.

"I'm not afraid of you!" the boy announced, his voice shaking. Receiving only harsh laughter, he started to go and slammed face first into his tormentor. All he saw was a set of shark's teeth, and that was more than enough. He started running.

"A weak child," Darwin said. "You won't live long in thisss world." Danny didn't try to reply, focused as he was on escape. After a while, he realized that some slayers had taken up the chase and Darwin was gone.

They were just slayers. He could handle slayers. After the way his mother's ecto-rifle had taken care of that gorger, the slayers would be a breeze. It was stopping that he was having trouble with, but he was going to have to do something quickly; they were catching up.

Steeling his nerves, he about-faced and started blasting. There were only three of them, fortunately. They went down quickly. He turned away so as not to look at the convulsing remains and came face to face with that horrible grinning maw, once again.

Darwin licked the points of his teeth and stared hungrily at the frightened boy. "Ssstarving…" he hissed. "Ravenousss…"

"L-l-leave me alone!" Danny exclaimed, backing away.

"Maybe not asss weak asss I thought. Frightened, yesss, but ssstrong. I like a good fighter. They made my job more interesssting."

The creature made no effort to move forward, so they merely stared at each other for a while. Danny had a feeling, based on Silver's vision, that he needed to get to the clock tower, but his legs didn't seem to want to move. After a few eternities, Darwin chuckled darkly and vanished. "I'll be watching you…" he informed the boy.

Somehow, the boy found that less than reassuring.

A light dusting of fog along the ground gave the world of surreal look. The few streetlamps that were still in working order almost made it worse. At least in the relative darkness, the fog didn't look like the Malice. Above, dark clouds had blotted out most of the stars. They crawled across the moon like grasping claws. Danny repressed a shudder and decided he would rather stare at his feet, after all.

So, because Silver couldn't read his mind, she couldn't have known that he was thinking about Sam. He remembered a discussion his parents had been having about how some things that were mistaken for ghosts were really just memories that had been imprinted on a place. He had experienced the phenomena before, in Carnate and Baltimore.

He had, at some point, found himself wondering if Silver was, in fact, responsible for the memories that were dredged up occasionally. Since she couldn't have known what he was thinking, she couldn't have known to show him that particular image. She may have expounded on it once it appeared, but it had been caused by something else.

His theory was that he had caused the image to appear. Like people who saw those memories left in "haunted" houses, his thoughts had triggered a response in the environment. He didn't know what caused it; he was no scientist. But it seemed to make sense.

Something moved in the fog around his feet. It had been for some time, but he hadn't paid much attention. Everything seemed alive, and it was all out to get him, or so his mind tried to convince him. This was different, though. Although there was barely an inch of fog, he thought he saw someone looking up at him from beneath it. That was impossible, of course.

Of course, so was everything going on. Danny started to run, but he had waited just a bit too long. A hand reached up and grabbed his ankle.

"Silver Devil!" she taunted the white haired girl. She knew Meryll hated that name, which is why she used it at every opportunity. A few of the boys had made it up.

Meryll glared and started to pout. "Why are you always picking on me?" she whined, taking a few steps closer.

"Why not? You're a freak."

The girl looked up to meet her eyes; suddenly, she seemed very dangerous. "Uncle Hermes says people like you are worthless."

"Hermes is a freak, too," she retaliated, though not quite as bravely as before. She backed away until her heels touched the edge of the river.

Meryll smirked and lunged forward, knocking her backwards into the water and holding her there. The last thing she saw was a wavering pair of satisfied blue eyes.

Danny finally managed to fight his way free and started blasting at the drowned girl. Although it didn't seem to do any good, it did frighten the creature into leaving. Maybe. Maybe it was a coincidence.

He needed to sit down.

Logically, he knew there were people like Silver in the world. Jazz had given him a rather lengthy lecture on the subject of anti-social behavior, preparing for some speech or other. He hadn't paid much attention, but he did remember something about how it couldn't be cured, and how children who suffered the condition often began with killing small animals.

He wondered how different she would be if Haight hadn't become her mentor. Would they be here now, playing this psychotic game? Or had his presence merely hastened the inevitable? It was no sense trying to figure out who or what to blame at that point, but he couldn't help but wonder.