"Where's Phantom?" asks Kaldur sternly.
"What do you mean? He's right..." Too compliment the cliche comment, I point to where I'd seen him last, where he of course isn't right now. "Ugh, never mind."
Missing something? M'gann's voice sounds in all our heads. We turn to see her floating around the corner. Superboy follows at a fast walk, holding the unconscious form of the long lost Danny Phantom.
"Is he okay?" I ask, going to check him over.
Superboy breezes past me towards the elevator, carefully stepping over unconscious forms. "He was shot from behind when he was helping Miss Martian."
"What happened? Robin, the elevator."
I follow Kaldur's order as M'gann relays the story.
"There was a psychic. She caught me and Superboy off guard. I was pulled into a psychic battle where Superboy couldn't follow. We were equally matched. Then her concentration was lost and I could render her unconscious. When I returned to my own body, Phantom was on the ground but Superboy took down the one who shot him."
"Shot in the back," Superboy growls. "With something strong, too. He's got a bad burn. No heartbeat, either, but he didn't have one in the first place and is still breathing."
"No heartbeat..." Kid trails off.
"Aparato did say he was a ghost. Who's first?" I open the elevator with one more line of code. "Perhaps the hurt one?"
Superboy lets out a grunt of annoyance and shoves himself in the elevator, carefully folding Phantom in with him. As soon as Superboy is out I send up Zatanna and M'gann.
"Get him immediate medical attention," Kaldur commands.
"And I think he's sensitive to both light and sound. Maybe touch, too," I inform as the elevator shuts. As soon as they're gone I realize I hadn't told them to tell Jazz and Tucker. Vision and Aparato have no idea what happened. Unfortunately, the worsening of Phantom's health distracted me from that.
They probably saw him in the cameras, though.
I send Kaldur and Wally next. The leader and the fastest. I wish I'd gone up first, because I have the most medical training, but I'm the only one this well versed in hacking. Geez, I wish Tucker was ready for field work.
"You found him, right?" Artemis asks. A guard had woken up and tries to shoot her, but she roundhouse kicks him in the head and he goes back down.
"Yeah." My voice sounds a little distant, like it always does when I'm deep in thought.
"And?"
"Not good." I shake my head. "The amount of security on him was ridiculous, and his injuries are extensive. They've never given him time to heal, so he has half-closed gashes all over. And, er, there was this villian in Gotham once. Electrocuted people as a kind of shock therapy."
The elevator opens and Artemis and I squeeze in there. We aren't pushed up against each other, but we're too close. I give a little uncomfortable shrug and she smirks a bit. "He's been electrocuted?"
I nod. "Severely. The two impact points are on the head, I think. His hair is really long. But that kind of electrocution is used to cure people of free will. The villian, he made it so they'd obey anything."
"Why didn't it work on him?"
"Who knows? He's a ghost. Maybe it's different."
"We have him now... But something tells me these guys aren't going to just let him go."
I shake my head. "They wouldn't put this much effort into something they weren't intent on keeping."
Artemis suddenly jerks. "The girl! Sam!"
It's one of those memories you remember like a light turning on. It's almost painful how fast I remembered we'd forgot her. Then, slower, I remember why. "There was only one prisoner..." I mutter. "When I looked it up, there was one cell, one prisoner's records. He was the only thing there."
"Then... Where's Sam?"
"Did you get him? Is he alright? Is he-"
"Jazz," Kaldur says, and she immediately shuts up, but her eyes are shining and begging for answers. "Stand aside, please."
She gives a startled look but takes several steps to the right. As soon as she's clear, Kaldur and I split to give Wally the chance to jerk forward with the gurney with Phantom on it. Jazz takes a couple running steps in the direction Wally ran, just to get a glimpse of him. "Was that him? Was that Danny?"
"Yes," I finally answer. "But he's hurt."
"Is that why Batman came over? And Black Canary? And Doctor Fate? Is he going to be okay?"
"Doctor Fate?" asks Superboy, coming with the rest of the team out of the bioship. "Why's he here?"
"I figured he's a ghost, so his physiology is probably resilient to things like morphine," I theorize. "Batman did as well. They're taking him into surgery, but I think he'll be okay..."
"He has a healing factor," Jazz deadpans. "And no heartbeat. Does Batman know that?"
I nod.
"What about Sam?" Tucker joins the conversation, just barely coming in.
I shake my head. "He was the only one there."
They both lapse into silence. Tucker breaks it by asking about Danny again similar to how Jazz did, and Kaldur fills him in. I start to wander off.
"Where you going?" Jazz asks.
"Showers," I reply. "He's going to be in surgery for a while."
"Wait, before you all leave, what happened with the mind link and cameras?" asks Jazz.
M'gann answers. "Psychic field blocked you guys off when I got down there, but I didn't really notice until the link shut down for everyone that you'd been excluded. I bet there was an electric shield, too."
Jazz nods. "Should I get him any clothes or anything?" It takes me a moment to realize she's asking about Danny.
"Probably. The stuff he's wearing is looking a little worse for wear." More like shreds. I couldn't even tell what it had been before.
"Okay." She walks away moderately, somehow both dragging her feet and speed walking. Tucker watches her leave.
"So we've got a broken Danny and no Sam?" he deadpans.
The team files past him, giving him some assurances. I stop in front of him. "He'll get better."
"I know. But what if Sam is..." He doesn't finish.
"Don't do that. She could be anywhere."
He waves me off.
"Because we're just that lucky. Danny was tortured and Sam is dead!" He gives a broken laugh that doesn't sound like a laugh at all.
"Come on, dude," I say softly. "Let's go wait."
Batman
The boy doesn't seem to realize we're there. Robin hadn't been exaggerating when he said this boy was physically destroyed, and fixing him up hadn't been painless. We gave him some anesthesia, but we weren't sure if it had any effect.
He grimaced in pain when I took out the unsafe stitches and restitched them back up. He writhed when we treated his burns, and when we reset his broken arm, hand and ribs. But he didn't notice anymore than that.
It took hours.
After I was sure he was stable, I was able to go to work on disabling the collar around his neck. It looked distinctly like an inhibitor collar, but was green instead of blue or white. The code was solid, and I was still working on it when Superman joined us in the room.
"How is he doing?" None of us answer. Superman finds out on his own. He growls out the next words, "Who would do this to a child?"
Doctor Fate answers a different question, as he'd been using his magic to analyze the damage done to the boy's mind. "His mind is ruined."
"What do you mean?" I demand, continuing to decode the collar.
Superman growls and crunches the collar between two fingers. It sparks and grows dark. I give him a look. "What. You were taking too long." Unapologetic, he pulls the collar from both sides. Underneath shows deep electrical burns. Superman drops the collar and turns to Doctor Fate, who continues.
"I sense deep memory damage. His will is unlike anything I've seen from a human, but it appears that he's traded his memories to keep his sanity."
"It that even a possible trade?" asks Black Canary.
"Sometimes. Holding onto sanity through pain makes everything else fade away." Doctor Fate has no expression, but he almost looks pitiful. "I don't know if he'll remember anything."
"So he won't know his friends out there?" whispers Black Canary, horrified.
"The damage is so great, I don't think he'll even know his own name."
**Man, I wish Danny Phantom and Young Justice were mine, but they're not. They go to their respective creators.**