Note: this is a continuation of the previous chapter. I had no intention of posting it, but jeanette9a thought it was funny. This is for you, friend. :)
It's strange how your sense of time can give out on you, Danny thought. For instance, when he was in class, forty-five minutes could feel like eons…minutes crawled by like primordial slugs, leaving green slime in their wake…no wait, that was him drooling on his notes. Or during a fight, when seconds burn like wildfires, vanishing in whole chunks of hours and half-hours, missed periods and skipped lunches.
He remembered the portal, which had felt like one of those fights, and yet moved like that primordial slime—like years were going by, but in fast motion, until the slugs had evolved, and developed wings! And advanced weaponry. They had created a cult in which everyone chanted in monotones, and were taking it upon themselves to order the slime-encrusted planet and use it as a launching pad for the tiger club racket…eh, what?
What am I saying? Danny wondered.
His thoughts hadn't been this strange since Skulker had given him that concussion, and he spent the whole night babbling random nonsense. He couldn't remember any of it, but Tucker had kindly recorded it, and liked to play the most embarrassing parts…repeatedly. So had he gotten another concussion? Had he been fighting ghosts? Did Jazz know? If she did, she'd be freaking out—but it was hard to concentrate on such thoughts, especially with the slugs still chanting in the background…it was really annoying, actually. They kept going EEE, EEE, EEE, Almost like… oh.
Danny blinked blearily at the flashing heart monitor next to his bed, which was emitting a steady EEE, EEE, EEE. He was in pain, but it was dull and vague, and his lids felt heavy, like that time he'd downed an entire bottle of Niquil.
"Ugh…what hit me?" Danny croaked.
"A concrete wall, at about eighty miles an hour." A man's voice informed him from the other side of the bed. Danny tried for a moment to turn his head, but decided it was too much effort. He blinked at the ceiling instead, which was an uninteresting whitewashed concrete.
"Geez, is that all? I must be losing my edge."
"Don't crack jokes, kiddo," the same voice said. "Concussion, compound arm fracture, internal bruising, broken ribs…you're lucky you're not in a body cast."
"Yeah, well…I've had worse…I think…"
"Wait till you're off pain meds. It was a close call, Danny."
Danny? How did this random guy know his name? Curiosity was winning out over his exhaustion, and he craned his neck for his first look at the stranger. It was a muscular, dark-skinned man, leaning back in the uncomfortable-looking cheap metal chair with his arms crossed. He looked military—cargo pants, black lace-up boots, and some sort of patch on the shoulder of his button-up shirt. The black beret perched on his head looked military, too, but it also reminded Danny of someone….no way.
"Tucker?" His voice cracked in disbelief.
The man grinned. "Welcome to the future, ghost boy."
Danny thought that over for a moment.
"Okay, I'm going to ignore for the moment that the experiment with the ghost portal went very, very wrong, and I'm probably in waay more trouble than I'd like to imagine. I'm too tired to deal with all that crap. But I have to know one thing."
This grown-up Tucker looked amused. "Shoot."
"Why are you in the military? I would've thought you'd be a huge computer tycoon or something by now."
"You kidding? After all we'd done fighting ghosts, I could never shake the hero bug. So I traded my old red beret for a black one, got into special forces, made myself a reputation for dealing well with freaky situations, and here I am. Exploring alien worlds and fighting snake parasites. Just another day's work for Tucker Foley."