When I woke up, I didn't open my eyes right away. I lay there, letting my brain catch up to my surroundings. I could feel Danny still lying on me. His head was lying against my shoulder; my arm, under his neck, was going numb. He had one of his arms slung across my stomach, and I could feel the chill from the limb even through my blanket. I stretched a little, trying to rotate my arm, but it was stuck firmly under him.

I slowly opened my eyes and then I blinked, confused. It was still dark, even when my eyes were wide open. Our one, faithful light bulb had burnt out. Great. Here's to stumbling around in the dark, I guess.

"Okay," I said aloud, "Time to get off me."

I moved the arm that was underneath of Danny again, trying to rouse him, but it didn't work. I pushed his arm off my stomach and shook his shoulder. He rolled a little bit, but that was because of me, not because he'd moved under his own power. I continued to push him, thinking it was strange that he wasn't being roused. I moved him flat onto his back, finally freeing my dead arm.

"Fenton!" I called loudly, shaking him, but there was nothing.

I could hear his breathing, so maybe he was in just a very deep sleep?

"Fenton!" I nearly shouted.

"Sam!"

I started. It wasn't his voice, but one that I felt I hadn't heard in a very long time.

"Maheen?" I turned to where I thought I had heard her voice coming from. I could see two small green lights, her ghostly eyes, staring back at me. "Hi."

"Hi," she said, and then, "He's not going to wake up."

"W-what do you mean?" I stuttered.

"I found out what Vlad's plan is. He and Elliot discovered that I was visiting you and Danny and they locked me away. I overheard things, did some snooping and I figured it out. I don't think I have all of it, but I know enough." Maheen was eerily calm as she told me all of this; there was no emotional tremor to be detected whatsoever.

"What's going on?" I pressed, feeling hysteria welling within me. "What's happening?"

"I'm going to get you out of here, tonight."

"Tonight?" I squealed unable to comprehend such a thing. After months and months, escape was happening tonight and it was all because of the wonderful ghost girl in front of me. "You're joking; you have to be joking, oh my god."

"I'm not kidding. It's going to be hard, but it's going to happen."

"Thank you," I sniffed, tears streaming down my cheeks. There was still a long way to go, so many things that could go wrong from here to there, but I still had far more hope than I did five minutes ago. I leaned forward, snatching her into my arms. She was a literal ice burg, but I didn't care. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet," Maheen warned, though her voice was light. "You're not out. We have to wait about three more hours."

"Why?" I asked.

"Doesn't matter right now," Maheen said mysteriously. "But, I'm going to stay here with you until then."

"Okay." I agreed, and took a deep breath. "So, what did you mean when you said he won't wake up?"

"His injury, the spot in his leg –"

"Yeah."

"Well, Vlad inserted something into him. I'm not sure what, but Vlad has been draining his energy for something – that's the part of the plan that I wasn't able to figure out. But he's been using the device he shoved inside Danny to do it."

"Ouch," I winced sympathetically, absently touching my hand against one of Danny's legs.

"Mhmm," Maheen murmured, sinking down onto the end of the mattress.

I felt the familiar chill of Danny's body against my hand, thinking about what it would be like to be free of the cell. I had been missing from the outside world, from my life, for months. I couldn't even begin to imagine what it would be like to slip back into a routine that included regular showers, regular meals, and family. I wondered what it would be like to see something like my cell phone again, to turn it on and see texts from people that weren't there for me to text again. Thinking of it made my heart and head ache, so I distracted myself from it. I wanted to ask Maheen about my imminent escape: what would happen? Where would I go?

Instead, I asked, "Why are you here?"

"What?" She blurted out.

"How did you end up as Vlad's servant?" I clarified.

She went quiet. Her luminescent eyes appeared and disappeared as she blinked. "It's … a long story," she finally answered.

"According to you, we have time."

"True. All right. Well, my parents went through a messy divorce; I'm not really going to go into details, because that really doesn't matter in the scheme of things. But, afterward, my mom was a wreck, you know? Despite everything, she really did love him and he liked us to be really dependent on him, so it was hard after he left. It got to the point where she didn't want to get out of bed and she started doing some, uh, weird things. I was worried about her but I didn't know what to do.

"Mom, she, uh, she was working for Vlad at the time, at his company but when she got worse she just stopped going to work. After about two or three weeks, Vlad came by. I never thought he would. He sat down and talked to me about my mom and he said that he wanted to pay for her to get help, because we both knew that she needed it. I was only seventeen at the time, a minor. I wouldn't survive if she went away, because I had no idea where my father had gone or if he would even want me. Vlad, who seemed nicer than I could have ever imagined at this point, said that he kept a large personal staff to clean his mansion. He said one of his maids had recently quit, and that I was welcome to have her spot. I could continue going to school and work to earn board and food at his mansion. Didn't that sound great?"

"Yeah," I agreed, breathless. Maheen was rushing through her story in some parts, taking her time in others. I couldn't blame her. She was telling me about a deeply personal experience, one that eventually lead to her death, so I couldn't judge her for not mincing words and wanting to omit parts.

"Mom went to a facility about twenty minutes away from Vlad's mansion, so I was still able to visit her fairly often. I moved into Vlad's, and he tells me that all of his servants go through a little week-long training course before starting work, so that's what I did. I learned how to cook, clean, and I also took a 'formal speech' course, which is why I sometimes sound like an old woman waltzing out of the early 1900s."

I laughed a little, and so did she.

"It wasn't long after I moved into the mansion that I began to notice weird things. Just random stuff; like a lot of locked doors, weird energy surges, and how cold it could be in the mansion. I wanted to investigate so badly, you have no idea, but I needed that job with Vlad. I needed to play by his rules. One day, Vlad comes to me, and tells me to grab some cleaning supplies, which I did. I then followed him to one of the locked doors. I was so excited to see what was behind that door. So, we go into the door and into this room, which looks kind of like a den, nothing out of the ordinary. Except, there was gooey green substance all over the room."

"Ectoplasm?" I guessed.

"Yeah," she confirmed. "Although I never did find out what had happened in that room before I got in there. So, I started doing the cleaning that I was supposed to be doing. I'm on my little step-ladder, trying to clean up the walls, when I feel something clamp around my wrist. I look down and it looks like a thick, silver bracelet, but it's glowing, covered in ectoplasm. I turn around to face Vlad, but it's not Vlad I'm looking at. I'm staring at a hulking man with bright green hair and eyes, wearing what looked like body armour. I found out later his name is Skulker and he is, in fact, a ghost, but I didn't know about the afterlife or anything like that. He had a gun to my head. I screamed, and then Vlad, who was standing behind Skulker said 'this won't hurt a bit'. And then Skulker shot me."

"Oh my God," I exclaimed through my hands, which had, during the course of the story, come up to cover my mouth. "That's absolutely horrible."

The glowing dots that were Maheen's eyes, had disappeared, but the air was still freezing, letting me know that she was still there.

"That's why I'm so determined to see you and Danny bring him down, because he's done so many horrible things." Maheen sighed deeply, and then continued to explain how she came to be down in this basement with me. "The bracelet must have had properties that forced me to stay here as a ghost; I can't explain that any other way. When I woke up in this form, I was still wearing it … I'm still wearing it now. Vlad used it to keep me here. When I first became a ghost, I refused to do anything. They would try and torture me, but none of it worked, because I didn't care. All I wanted to do was live, and they hadn't let me do that. And then … I met her."

"Her who?" I asked, breathless.

"Danielle."

Danielle. I had heard that name before. Not many times, mind you, but as I thought about it, I remembered where I had heard of Danielle before. She had been a clone; Vlad had been taunting Danny about her before he introduced Gregor to us as Elliot. She had obliterated herself, I remembered, because she had been unstable. She had killed other people too.

Maheen continued, unaware of my inner pondering. "Vlad was keeping her chained up in a cell, almost exactly like he has Danny chained up now. She told me all about him, about how she wanted to get back to him because she knew that he could help her. And, so, I helped her to escape. I found out later that Vlad had been planning to kill her and, after that, I found out that she had died anyway. Luckily for me, if you can even say that, Vlad never found out that it was me who helped her get out; he thought that she managed it on her own."

I found myself shaking my head. It was utterly tragic. Everything that Vlad came near, he destroyed. I found myself wondering what would happen when Danny and I escaped. We weren't going to tell the police that it was him that did this to us, but I couldn't imagine Vlad continuing on the way he was. If he was to be left alone, I was confident that he would come after Danny and me again, doing worse than he had this time around. I knew that neither of us would survive if Vlad went on a rampage; we'd be the prime targets. Danny would have to take care of him, I concluded, though I shuddered when I thought about what that would mean.

"Why didn't you ever try to escape?" I asked Maheen, switching gears.

"I couldn't. I still can't," she revealed. "I think it's this damn bracelet!"

Still can't. The words resonated within me, and I realized something, "So you're not coming with us?"

"I can't. I wish I could; I would love to go outside again, but …"

"You can't," I finished.

"No." There was a rustling noise as she moved and she said, "I have to go check on something."

Before I could ask what that something was, there was more rustling and the temperature in the cell lifted considerably. I reclined against the pillows, listening to Danny breathe next to me. I wished that he would wake up, so that I would be able to talk to him about this. I wondered what he would say if I told him that we were escaping tonight; that in a few hours, we would be breathing in freedom (if all went according to Maheen's not-yet-revealed plan). Carefully, I reached across the blankets until I grabbed his hand. I held it with both of mine, squeezing it for dear life.

"Sam," Maheen was suddenly standing next to me. "It's time to go."

I don't own anything recognizable. Thanks to my betas: Foreversky.

~TLL~