The ghost guards floated down the test subject's hallway. Normally, this job was as boring as their lifetime ones had been, but if they weren't working here, they would just be bumming around the ghost zone their whole after-life... at least working for crazy old Sylvester Screech had its perks... like today for example...
'So, Screech reckons if we shock him BEFORE we take him out, of the cell, we won't have any trouble with him...' said one, clarifying their instructions.
'Yea' replied the other, fingering the small remote he had been given, ' but the question is, how MUCH do we shock him until he won't struggle?' He added with a smirk. His companion mirrored his expression, 'well, we just have to find that fine line between in pain and incapacitated'. The two guards laughed as they reached the Halfa's cell. The one with the remote looked in. The Halfa was curled up into a ball on the small cell floor, sleeping with a strained expression on his face, as though in great discomfort. The Guard sneered to his colleague in a mean way before pressing the button on the silver device.
The Halfa jerked back and yelled in pain, hitting his head on the wall and yelping as pain also split his head. The guards laughed cruelly. They watched the Halfa rub the back of his head and get to his feet, irritated, before the first pressed the button again.
The ghost boy screamed in agony and crumpled to the floor, the red light of the shocks from his bonds illuminating the cruelly amused faces of the guards. The one with the remote stopped shocking him after about 10 seconds. "What do you reckon?" he asked his partner, "think he's subdued sufficiently yet?"
The second looked down at the twitching halfa with another smirk. "Here, gimmie the remote and I'll tell you..."
The second guard took the remote, and pressed the button on and off in short bursts, the halfa yelping and grunting in pain every time, getting thoroughly pissed off by the guards, but progressively more worn out by the excruciating pains, until he lay twitching and panting on the floor, slightly dazed and very sore. His head still throbbed badly from hitting his head on the wall.
The door opened and two powerful hands grasped him by the upper arms. They dragged him out and along the corridor; he was facing backwards, heels dragging along the ground. His headache was so bad he concentrated so much on trying to keep it at a bearable level that he did not struggle.
'Well there ya go, Screech is on to something with this subdue before you transport thing..." The guard to Danny's left laughed.
Danny growled. If his head didn't feel like it was being cleaved by the fright knight's sword he wouldn't be going anywhere without a fight. Even if it was a futile effort.

They entered the lab again, only this time, they did not take Danny to a metal table. He began to resist them when they released the green beam holding his wrists together, but a few short shocks were enough to easily restrain him again. Danny found himself, when his headache subsided enough again for him to concentrate on other things, that he was held against a large metal circle... just a white pole in a complete circle, his wrists cuffs connected to it securely by ports either side of him, his legs slightly spread and connected to it the same way. Danny couldn't help but feel like the man of Leonardo DaVinci's famous human anatomy drawing.
The circle was held up perfectly vertical by four poles running diagonally to it from two larger poles either side that were topped by large green spheres, which looked more like something out of a Frankenstein movie than a DaVinci sketchbook.
Danny looked up and glared as Sylvester Screech floated into the room carrying a tray of something. He leered at Danny with hungry eyes and an evil smile.
"You aren't going to try and bring me to life are you Dr.Frankenstein? 'Cause i can do that on my own if you get these cuffs off me" Danny growled angrily. Sylvester cackled. "You Halfas are hilarious, but not for the reasons you think you are. Your wit, or lack-thereof, is not what I'm interested in, however, your human side IS part of my plans... though you will not be getting to change back... I do not need you to, I can do all I need while you are dead, my little guinea pig."
Danny suddenly realised what was on the tray that Screech had brought with him. His stomach dissolved. There were small phials of green substance and a few large needles. Danny swallowed hard. He watched, unable to struggle (his arms and legs were stretched out fully by the circle) as the mad scientist set down the tray and went to a control panel a few feet in front of the metal circle on which Danny was suspended. He pressed a few buttons and the machinery in the poles attached to the circle lit up with ecto-electricity and began humming. Screech looked up and pressed one last button, the guard ghosts standing back to watch the spectacle.
The next thing Danny knew, waves of white ecto electricity swept up over him between the poles. It was extremely painful... it seemed to be some sort of body scan that analysed his every ectoplasmic molecule. Danny threw back his head, unable to scream, his whole body tensed against the agony. He shook violently from the pain, but eventually the waves stopped and Danny's muscles had a chance to relax as Screech looked at the analysis on the console screen. Danny's head hung forward, he was panting, trying to shut out the aching all over, hoping to god that only had to happen once.
"Hmmm, interesting... he is most certainly suitable, just as I had hoped... my-my, but more powerful than I thought... not as though it has helped him..." Screech sneered as he got up and went over to the bench on which he had set his tray. Danny watched apprehensively as he slowly filled a syringe with what looked like ecto-plasma from one of the phials. He floated up to Danny's side with an evil leer and an air of excitement. "Of course, it will take a while to see the results, but we have a long road ahead of us Phantom... no one will hear you scream in this part of the ghost zone..."
Danny growled at him, about to retort, when the syringe needle was jabbed into the crook of his arm and he let out a small cry if pain. He grit his teeth and growled as he felt the hot substance enter his bloodstream. He hated how consciously he could feel it spread through him. A strange burning heat spread across his body and he began to perspire. It felt like hot chilli in his veins, which was not at all pleasant. The sensation passed, but Danny felt feverish, sick and weak.
After another scan, which seemed to leave Screech unnervingly satisfied, Danny was dragged back to his cell, feeling too sick and weak to fight back.
As Danny was thrown unceremoniously back into his tiny cramped cell, he was glad at least, despite the aching of his entire body, that his throbbing headache was gone.

Sam, Tucker and Jazz got out of the Spectre speeder, disheartened at having found absolutely no clues as to Danny's whereabouts.
" I don't understand it..." said Jazz, chucking the booomerang down on a bench, "how could it not work? What could possibly be blocking its tracker?"
"If whoever or whatever has Danny has a deice that can block the frequency it's tracking on, then there's no way we'll find him unless we happen to come across a big sign somewhere in the ghost zone that says 'Danny Phantom is being held captive here'. It's like looking for an intangible needle in an intangible stack..." Tucker said woefully, slumping into a chair and rubbing his eyes.
"Come on guys, we can't give up after only one try, we have to think of other ways to help us find him, we've got to think..." said Sam fervently, obviously fighting her fatigue as she paced the lab while Tucker watched her morosely.
"We've got to sleep. We aren't giving up, but we aren't going to be able to help Danny if we're all totally washed out... come on, its eleven, I better sneak you guys home. Try and fake a sicky for your parents tomorrow. Sneak over here if you can, my parents will let me stay home, no question, and they'll be out rounding up a ghost hunter search team tomorrow, I heard them earlier, so we should have at least 8 hours to keep looking..." Jazz said, trying to sound hopeful, but even she in despair over their failed attempt to find her little brother. The other two nodded and they all headed upstairs. Jazz took one last look at the swirling ectoplasmic portal, leaving it open... just in case...

Danny groaned weakly...
"How much more of this can I stand..." he mumbled to himself in a broken voice and sighed, "great... talking to myself again... I don't suppose these experiments can kill me if i'm a ghost, so that only leaves the option of going completely insane... and if talking to myself is the first sign of madness... what's the next sign I should be looking out for?..."
Danny groaned and curled into himself again, the pain in his stomach stabbing at him again.
Apart from being hungry, the third lot of injections had made him feel sicker than ever. He shivered, one minute freezing, the next, feverishly hot. He hissed as the burning heat came over him again... and just as perspiration dripped down his forehead onto the cold hard floor of his cell on which he laid, a wave of biting cold replaced it, giving him Goosebumps.
He knew it was his ice powers coming through... he had remembered them after his first lot of injections, but they too had proved useless against his bonds. Although his ice powers did not provoke as vicious a reaction from the cuffs he wore. He supposed he exerted less effort to use them than he did pure ecto energy. Yet the cuffs did not smash when iced... they merely melted it with red electric bolts when he tried to use the power to freeze them. He had also tried to just smash the cuffs on the walls and the bars of the door, but as he had suspected, they were made so tough they would probably have withstood a nuclear explosion.
Danny groaned and rolled onto his back as another hot wave passed over him.
He wished over and over that Sam, or Tucker, Or Jazz, or even his parents, might suddenly appear at the door and free him... but the hours passed by, and the only sounds he heard were those of Wulf, who he had realised was also incarcerated there. He howled loudly and was silenced quickly by shocks like Danny's, though his bonds were different. They stopped him from using his portaling ability. Danny wasn't sure why he was there, he couldn't speak to Wulf, even if he could he wouldn't be able to understand him. Danny sighed; his breath frosting and he winced as a jolt of red electricity stung through his spine. He looked at his hands; a small layer of frost had formed on his fingertips. His ice powers were eking out without his control already... he needed to let off some cool, but he couldn't without getting a painful dose of that red electricity from the cuffs...
Danny sat up suddenly, a hot wave passing over as he brushed the ice off his fingers and finding more in his hair as he ran his hands through it. A plan began to form in his mind.
It would be stupid to just wait for rescue if he couldn't be sure it would find him... as Screech had said, they were in an obscure part of the ghost zone, probably not even mapped by Danny yet. But the leaking of Danny's ice powers gave him an idea... it would mean he had to contend with more pain, but Danny knew he would take it if it meant getting out... he would have to suppress his ice powers... let them build until he couldn't hold them... until he could let them off like a bomb and break his way out... the more cold concentrated at his core, the less effort to produce it, the less painful to use it... he might be able to use enough power with out the pain overwhelming him... it was worth a shot.
Danny sat huddled in the corner, knees drawn up to his chest, stomach stabbing with hunger pains, hot sick waves passing through him, but he concentrated on remaining warm and suppressing his cold core, feeling the temperature within him getting lower as his skin prickled with fever.
It wouldn't take long...

Sam, Tucker and Jazz spent their fake-sick day in the ghost zone, searching as far as they could. They checked out Skulkers lair, based on the idea that technology was being used to block Danny's signal from the booomerang, but they came up blank... and had to do some fast flying to escape Skulker, even though they were real world objects, his gunfire worked on both worlds...
They came up empty handed when they found technus, as all he was doing was playing computer games... having hacked a new game that had not been released into the real world yet...
Walker's jail drew a blank, and they found no ghost witnesses, and regretted asking Klumper, who it took them half an hour to loose as he tried to gain their friendship.
Sam slumped in the driver's seat of the spectre speeder as they cruised through dead space. There wasn't much out in this part of the Ghost zone... except a large purple football in the distance...
"Crap, this is hopeless!" exclaimed Sam, frustrated, "We're never going to find Danny like this... maybe we should go see Frostbite... ask if he has anything that will help us track Danny, maybe we can lock onto his ice signature instead of his ecto-"
"Sam Watch where you're going!" Tucker said suddenly.
"Why? It's not like we can hit anything in the ghost zone, remembe-"
THUMP
"OW! CURSES... YOU!?"
Sam jumped and Jazz squeaked. She looked out of the window of the Spectre speeder, which had stopped after hitting something quite solid. Something that did not look happy about being hit... especially by them.
Vlad plasmius frowned and leered through the glass at them with glowing red eyes.
"Plasmius!" said Sam and Tucker in Unison, looking just as displeased to see him.
"What are YOU doing here?" Asked Jazz rudely, scowling at Vlad suspiciously.
"I could ask you the same thing... and why do you think it is any of your business what a ghost does in the ghost zone?"
"Half ghost." Jazz replied coldly.
"Very astute observation, miss Fenton. But by any means, that still does not make it any business of yours. Shouldn't you three be at school?" he said coolly, emphasising the last word.
"Where's Danny? If you've got him plasmius, if I find out it's you, so help me I'll..."
"Daniel?" Said Vlad flatly, raising an eyebrow at Sam. "What on earth are you talking about?"
"Don't play dumb with us Plasmius! We've been everywhere, this has to have something to do with you! You already kidnapped him once!" Said Tucker angrily.
"You better not have done anything to my little brother Plasmius, or I'll tell my mom and dad your true identity and they'll never stop hunting you down..." growled Jazz.
Vlad wore a slightly annoyed expression at her threat. " Oh like they'll believe you, you don't have proof! And besides, I have no idea where your brother is. If Daniel gets himself into trouble that is none of my concern... now if you don't mind, I'm a busy man... Half ghost though I may be, I'm STILL Mayor of amity park, and there is such a thing, children, as responsibility... good luck finding your brother." Vlad sneered, before he turned and flew away towards the purple football.
Sam growled and glared angrily after him. She had half a mind to follow him, almost expecting to see Danny locked up in his basement through the portal that football must be hiding.
"Come on... he doesn't have Danny. If he did, he'd already be using him as leverage somehow, we'd know." Said Jazz in a defeated tone, slumping down in the back seat. Sam and Tucker were both unwilling to stop searching, but knew their time had run-out, unless they wanted to be in trouble like they were after that escapade with Vlad and Danni, and this time she wasn't there to help them with a little overshadowing.

When they got back to the Fenton house, they found it still empty, though Jazz squeaked when she saw the clock. "Come on! I have to get you two home, my parents are due back any minute! "
"But what if they get home and YOU aren't here?" Sam said as they left the basement hurriedly, leaving the portal open again.
"pfft, please! Your talking to an honour student, they'll believe any excuse I give them, I'll say I went to the drug-store to get some cough medicine".
And with that they all got back into Jazz's car, Danny still not far from their thoughts.