Danny was cold. And jittery, and tired, thirsty, hungry. They had been feeding him sporadically when he'd first come here, but about five lab sessions ago the Soap Man, Ajax, had said "Let's see how long he can go without eating." and that was that. Time was meaningless now, but from how hungry he was, Danny thought it might have been somewhere between two or three days.
He'd started feeling his core again the last time they'd electrocuted him, and it was a cold, angry pulse in his chest that seemed to wash the pain away. He felt numb, as well as cold. He thought the jitters might have been from the electricity. Or it was anxiety. After all, they didn't seem to have any set lab schedule, just 'hey, I've thought of another test for the ghost mutant, let's poke him with things'.
Danny wanted to sleep, but the cold, and the jitters, and the burning hunger, made that nearly impossible. He couldn't sleep here, anyway. It was too white. He'd tried to break up the white before they took his food away, biting his fingers until they bled and painting the walls red, but they'd just laughed, and Ajax, Soap Man, had forced him into a straitjacket to keep him from hurting himself. Then he'd bit his lips till they bled and splattered the walls with bloody spit. He got a mouth guard locked onto his face for that one, and that's when Ajax had taken the 'privilege' of food from him.
Eventually, he drifted off to sleep. He just wanted the white to go away.
The cold embraced him, so safe, like a warm hug in a fudge scented kitchen. His mother's arms around him, so safe and protective. The love in her voice, the ferocity as she promised to protect him from ghosts when he woke up from a nightmare.
The white snow softly blanketing the landscape felt like coming home, like the protective familiarity of the farfrozen. It felt like sitting on the couch with his dad, watching him with his needle point, and listening to him ramble about ghosts.
It was like knocking on Jazzs' door in the middle of the night, the vanilla scent of her perfume cloying in his nose as she hugged him warmly, promised him a shoulder to cry on, safety, someone to talk to when everything became too much.
He woke up with his face wet, unable to wipe his tears because his arms were bound to his torso. The cold numbed him, and he just wanted to go home.
Danny wondered, had he stayed with the GIW long enough, would he have become as complacent? He recalled that they had kept him in their lab for the majority of his stay, but when they transferred him between his cell and the lab, he had struggled the entire time. Here, all the guards had to do was grab a hold of his arm and lead him down the hall, and he'd stumble along behind them, not even trying to escape.
Could he escape, if he just tried? He remembered that first day, when they had hit him in the head to keep him quiet. Could he have escaped then, if only he'd struggled more?
Danny tripped over his own feet, the hunger gnawing at his stomach making him dizzy. The guard grunted and another smacked him in the back of the head. He was so cold, so empty. The void inside of him where his core should be pulsed with icy cold.
Even now, as the straitjacket came off and they strapped him down to the table, he didn't struggle. The more he fought them, the worse they made it hurt. Danny felt a little like he was floating. Like when he was in ghost form, and it took more effort to stand on the ground than it did to float above it.
Ajax was grinning at him, and Danny shivered. That grin was never anything good. They started with the routine; inject him with ectoplasm, electrocute him to force a change, and then prodded him with various machines, the purpose of which was unclear to him. Then, Ajax lifted a knife into Dannys' line of sight. It glowed green, like ectoplasm.
"Our Hydra friends seem to think they've made a breakthrough," The man started, grin gleeful. Danny felt chills run down his spine, and he shivered. "Do you know what this is?"
Danny would have answered him, called him 'Soap Man' just to spite him, but they didn't remove his mouthguard for electrocution anymore. He didn't scream as much as when they started, there was no point. Danny felt cold.
"This, my young friend, is what Hydra calls 'ectoranium'. They seem to think that any cut made with this will actually last. Let's test it out for them." and with that, Ajax lowered the knife to Dannys' arm and made a shallow cut.
Pain, hot and sharp, cut through the cold numbing Dannys' body, and he screamed. Then he remembered that he didn't want to let them see how much it hurt, and he choked on the sound. It was too late, though, and Ajax was grinning maniacally as he wrote on a clipboard.
"I'm so glad that it works!" he exclaimed, watching as the cut continued to ooze green long after it was inflicted. "Oh, we're going to have so much fun together!"
