A/N: Ha! Broken upload system, I PWN you! -hopes that the format won't mess up- Ahem. Sorry this took so long. Real life again. Finals coming up and everything.
Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom or any characters associated, nor am I making any money off of this.
Chapter Sixteen
I was never an overly intelligent person. Even my two best friends perpetually called me 'clueless.' I got slightly more observant after the accident, but I still maintained a 'C' average and always missed the most obvious things (Bert Rand and M. Bersback come to mind). I mostly relied on Sam, Tucker, and Jazz to notice stuff for me, and even then, there were times when I refused to listen.
So I was extremely lucky when I realized that a.) I could either run or let them take me, and that b.) if I ran away and they caught me, it wouldn't matter a bit whether or not I was human. Of course, if I got away, I'd be hunted for the rest of my life, and it probably wouldn't take them very long to capture me again. But if I didn't, I might not get a chance.
Yeah. It was a bit of a hopeless case. The still-slightly-sore tattoo on my right arm was proof of that.
"Agent? Could I speak to you for a moment?" Jane asked suddenly. The man who'd told me to come, and had engaged in a staring contest with me for about thirty seconds, looked up abruptly. He smiled politely.
"Of course, Dr. Redd," he replied brusquely, and walked over to a corner of my room with Jane.
I sighed in relief for a moment, then I noticed the other agent watching me warily. I raised an eyebrow and pulled myself up into the corner, wrapping my hands around my knees. I watched him with equal vigilance, which seemed to unnerve him slightly.
"You don't have to kill me," I said quietly. He jumped.
"Who -?" he started, then shook his head, and went back to observing me, now significantly more nervously.
At this point Jane and the other man walked back over, and Jane looked at me, almost apologetically. "Danny, go with M and C -" She wore a very meaningful expression. "- I'm sorry we couldn't talk longer, but these things come up."
I nodded, gulped, and stood up. I randomly assigned the two Guys letters, having no idea which was which. The slightly more nervous one was M, and the one Jane had talked to was C. Curly and Moe, I thought with some pleasure.
C grabbed me by the arms, handcuffing them behind my back, and I turned my head to look at Jane disdainfully. I had trust her, I figured, although it was very possible this was betrayal. She shrugged. Just go, she mouthed.
They led me out of the room, and I sighed internally.
"You know, this kind of thing would usually be grunt work," M began. "But you, kid, need top security. Two fully qualified AZ level agents, power disabling handcuffs, all that. Consider it an honor."
I just shrugged, concentrating on the hallway in front of me. This was a bit of a gamble. It only made matters worse that it wasn't my life I was gambling with - it was so ruined that I was far beyond that - but that of the people I had to get out to protect. Jazz would be psychoanalyzing me for weeks after I told her that, I knew.
Door after impenetrable door passed us by. My mind began to fill with worry, but I tried my hardest to keep my face blank in front of these goons. C's firm grip on my shoulder never lessened, and M seemed to have attached himself to my arm. And it was easy enough to feel that my powers were short-circuited for now. I was truly completely at their mercy . . . All the more reason to fear Jane's betrayal.
Why had I trusted her? She'd been a good listener, but then again, so is a police interrogator. She'd locked me up once already, to save her own skin. Still . . . she'd always seemed to care. Kind of. And she'd always told me tidbits of information where other people failed. Again, kind of.
I came to the decision that it was too late now, and that, if I had trusted her for no reason, I had just been stupid as per the usual. I realized with a jolt that if I died I might just become a ghost, and then this would go on forever and ever and ever and . . .
You get the point.
That would not be pleasant. I suppose 'wanted: dead or alive' takes on a whole new meaning with me.
Eventually, C and M shoved me through one of the very few unmarked doors I'd seen. I swallowed nervously when I saw another lab, not nearly as cozy as Dr. Jared's sterile doctor's office of a room. The same sort of strap-down chair sat in one corner of the room, several beakers with decidedly creepy contents - who knew what this place was used for on 'normal' occasions - lined the walls, and everything reeked of ammonia and ozone.
"Sit," C said, gesturing the chair. "Dr. Kowalski will be here soon."
I uneasily walked over to and slid into the chair in the corner. They two men watched me, C simply vigilantly, M, more cautiously.
I slid back, rather uncomfortably, given that my hands were cuffed behind my back. I half expected to be bound to the thing right then and there, but nothing of the sort happened. Stupid, I reprimanded myself. You shoulda run away, Fenton. Now you have no chance at all with these stupid cuffs on . . .
Puny Danny Fenton couldn't . . . oh. That's right. I wasn't 'puny Danny Fenton' anymore, was I? It was true that a bit more physical prowess wouldn't help me in the slightest against a fleet of trained GIW agents, but it still made me feel better to know that I was not in the same shape I was when I nearly failed the Presidential Fitness Test. Sam would be proud.
"He's here?" I heard a voice from the doorway. I cocked my head and looked.
"Dr. Kowalski . . ." one of the two agents began, and then lowered his voice so I couldn't hear. Dr. Kowalski looked over at me, and I looked back, unimpressed. He had a rather blatant unibrow, and his face was ridiculously sallow. He didn't manage to achieve Dr. Jared's original stolidity, either, or Mrs. Roberta's hateful glare. He was completely unremarkable, from what I could see. But you never know.
After about forty seconds of conversation, he walked over to me. "Hello," he said.
"Hi," I greeted.
"I hear you might be up for probation," he said, kneeling in front of me. I raised an eyebrow. So Jane did tell C about that . . .
"I guess," I replied, shrugging.
"We're going to need to take some blood samples, 'kay?" he said.
"All right. You don't need to talk to me like I'm six, 'kay?" I said, putting on the same condescending tone he'd been using on me.
He scowled, and straightened himself up. "Fine. Just hold out your arm."
"Handcuffs?" I said, pointing out the obvious. He nodded, and I twisted around. One of the two GIW agents - I think it was M - walked up and took them off before walking back over to continue guarding the door.
He produced a syringe from within his lab coat, and I extended my arm without hesitation. For once, there actually something in it for me. No circular logic involved.
Dr. Kowalski stuck the needle into my upper arm, and I winced only slightly as it went in. I watched him pull it back out and then I leaned back, not bothering to watch him do the actual examination. That kind of thing - particularly after being at Mt. Ivory for so long - did not interest me in the slightest. And I assumed it would take awhile.
I was wrong. It only took twenty minutes before Kowalski walked back across the room, giving me strange looks. He muttered something to the two GIW agents, who were faithfully guarding the door, and they nearly jumped back in surprise. I watched the processions in what was partly amusement, and partly nervous anticipation.
He eventually walked back over to me, leaning over me, a hand on the arm of the chair. "You're useless," he hissed, hysteria evident in your voice. "No less than twelve extremely dangerous diseases - both human and ghost - had developed in your blood, kid. They're all gone."
"Am I human, then?" I asked, not at all intimidated.
Kowalski inhaled, backing up. "Yes," he breathed, beginning to calm down. "It's remarkable. And you still have your powers, for whatever reason."
I looked at him, barely holding back a grin. "What, exactly, were you saying about probation, Doctor?"
"Take your complaint up with the HNA," he said, dismissing me with a wave of his hand. He had regained his composure. "This doesn't concern me anymore."
C and M, both looking slightly disheveled, walked over to escort me back to my cell. Neither said a word as they shoved me roughly through the door.
I turned around and looked at the thing, then started laughing. I was human. They didn't own me anymore; they couldn't. They no longer had any reason to kill me. Vlad couldn't get at me. And, on top of it all, I still had my ghost powers. I could still go back and fix everything.
I stopped laughing after what must've been at least five minutes, and started jumping around the place, a steady chant of "Yes, yes, yes," finding its way out of my throat.
It was the happiest moment of my life. And why wouldn't it be? In thirty minutes, nearly every bit of self-doubt had evaporated from my mind. I was human. I wasn't normal, but I was human. I wasn't anybody's property. My parents loved me. And there was a very large possibility that I was going home.
Now all I had to was apply with the Head of Nonhuman Affairs for a probation. The next time Jane showed up - and I knew she would - I'd ask her about that.
I'd lost just about three months of my life. Three long, long months. I knew better than anyone that I'd never be the same again. My life, certainly, would never be the same again.
I stopped my chanting and sat back down on my bed, finally wondering about the implications of returning to Amity Park. People knew my secret. They'd want to ask me so many questions, and I wouldn't have the time. I'd be flying around five different cities, trying to repair the damage that'd been done in my absence, and, if I was extremely unlucky, I'd have school to keep up with, too.
Was there any hope of my becoming an astronaut, or even going to college? I leaned back against the wall, and chuckled to myself. Probably not. I would need to repeat the year I missed so much of, and there was no way I'd be able to keep my grades high enough to be accepted into the majority of them. And the space program probably wouldn't even so much as look at me.
I guess the thing that changed most about me in those three months was that I had lost a lot of my original naiveté about what the possibilities for my future were.
And, honestly? I was actually fine with that. I understood, now, that I didn't have a choice in the matter. It was me or nobody. The Guys in White wouldn't handle it; I'd seen that. Valerie and my parents couldn't handle it alone.
Ghost hunting was the life I'd given myself up to. And, as I said before, it wasn't my life anymore. I would've liked it to be; but it simply wasn't and that was that. I'd have to live for the small things.
Remembering my newfound status as a member of the human race, I smiled again.
The not-so-small things helped, too.