Alex quickly resealed the gaping hole in the warehouse wall before leaving the building. As a final touch, he used a unique type of ecto energy to set the place on fire. Then he left, not looking back as the flames slowly began consuming the place.

There were a few hours left before the people in Fenton Works would awaken for the day. That left plenty of time to explain things. An empty box store served as the area to contain him.

Alex flew in, locking the doors behind him as he went and turning a few lights on. Sitting Alex down in a chair, Vlad phased out of the body, landing a few feet away in shadows. Alex blinked, shaking his head and rising from the chair.

"Hello?" he called uncertainly. "Tucker?"

This definitely isn't Fenton Works. How did I get here? Where is here? I can't remember ever leaving the kitchen, so how did I even get here? Where is everyone?

Something alerted the spy, some sense, that he wasn't alone. He called out, demanding to know who was there. He waited, not receiving an answer.

"Danny! If this is some ghost trick,"

"It is no trick, Alex Rider."

"If that's supposed to be some forbidding introduction, Vlad, you'll have to do better than that. I'm not afraid of my name."

"It isn't meant to be, Alex."

Alex sighed, crossing his arms, and then noticed what he was wearing. His eyebrows lifted in surprise, and black hair fell into his eyes.

"Oh my god… You… What did you do to me?"

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Smoke.

Pain.

Wake… Up!

Danny whimpered, moving slightly and opening his eyes. He saw the ceiling above him, turned his head, and saw the box he had landed on. He was now halfway between being on the floor and being on the top of the shelf.

His body felt like it was on fire. The warehouse was on fire.

With a cry, he sat up, forgetting his pain as he pushed off the box, landing on the ground. His mind was blank as he took off running, gasping. A wall appeared before him through thickening smoke, and he slammed into it, desperately trying to phase through it.

The Plasmius Maximus, its three hour ban of power, was still in effect. There was no other way out. He was trapped.

Danny began beating his fists on th rusty metal, crying out.

"Someone! Please, anyone! Help me!"

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Alex pulled at his hair, horrified.

"Danny wasn't good enough for you, so you made me look like him?"

"Basically, yes."

"Where is Danny?"

"That doesn't matter. I only let you go for a moment to talk to you."

"You took over me? Why would you even do that? What does it even accomplish?"

"If you aren't ready to listen, Alex, then I'll have no choice but to silence you."

"No!" Alex backed away from the voice. "Where is Danny?"

Vlad only sighed, flying back to Alex in the blink of an eye and overshadowing him.

"We'll wait until it's time, Alex."

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"Help! I'm trapped!" Danny screamed. His fists were bloody, and the wall wasn't giving up anytime soon. He sobbed, turning and running until he hit another wall. Here, it was too hot, and he ran away again. Tears were streaming down his face, blurring his vision until it was impossible to see.

He ran, sprinting over sharp bits of metal and clumps of dust and dirt, trying to find a way out, and he came across the smallest ray of hope. In a corner, the wall had begun to fall away, creating a hole the size of his head. Danny wiped his eyes, approaching the wall with the speed of one not wanting to reach the end too quickly, for fear of it being false.

A shaking hand rose to fall through the hole and Danny coughed, tears falling from his eyes again. Here, he had found a way out, a way that was too small and too tough to break through with his human strength alone. A tool was needed, something to break the wall. He had to find it quickly.

Coughing roughly, Danny turned, running as fast as he could back into the smoke.

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Hours later, Alex woke up and went downstairs to meet Jack and the Fenton's for breakfast. He greeted everyone, sitting himself next to his guardian at the table. She looked up at him over the morning paper, smiling.

"Look who's finally up. Hey, the Fenton's were wondering if you knew where Danny went."

"Oh. He's at Tucker's. There was this new game that he wanted to check out. He said he wouldn't be gone too long. I really think he wanted to get out of possibly working with his parents at the camp thing."

"Good point."

Alex smiled, quickly finishing his meal and running out the doors. When stopped by Jazz, he said that he was going to go and get Danny, because the Fenton's had asked him to do so. With a final smile, he closed the door behind him, instantly turning invisible and flying off to the park. Along the way, he caught word of how an old warehouse outside the city had caught fire the night before. According to the gossip, no one had been found inside, and there was no known motive.

Jazz frowned at the door Alex had just left from. If Alex had come all the way from England just for some foolish ghost camp, why would he leave so willingly on its opening day?

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Hours before this, Danny had managed to find a short length of iron pipe. His blistering feet had run into it, and he quickly claimed it as his own, rushing back to the hole in the wall. His body forced him to stop halfway, and he bent forward, hands on his knees as he fell to the ground and began coughing again, more than ever.

A gasp, followed by a groan, and Danny regained control, climbing back up and staggering to the hole. He thrust the pipe into the hole, bending the pipe until the metal wall gave in and bent as well. Soon, there was a hole large enough to barely admit the boy. He slithered out, collapsing on the dry grass outside, got to his feet again, and stumbled off, stopping only when the sounds of the fire were gone from his ears.

Danny looked back, realizing too late that he was lost in some woods.

Too late

Danny's eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he fell to the ground, unconscious in seconds.

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The Fenton's smiled. Despite their children's absences, Jazz at the library and Danny at a friend's house, they were determined to share the happiness of teaching paranormal 101 with each other. A small group of kids had shown up, the youngest with crudely sewn dolls of ghosts.

Maddie smiled at the familiar mop of white hair on one particular doll, pleased that the child at least knew who the ghost was. She, personally, was still deciding if Danny Phantom was really a hero or not, but she wasn't about to force her beliefs off on the child.

"Welcome, young ghost enthusiasts!" the woman cheered, allowing the kids and their parents into the house. "For starters, why don't we introduce ourselves, and one thing we know about ghosts? I'll start. My name is Maddie, and I know that ghosts are able to fly through walls." She decided to play it simple, and talk in a level the kids would understand. Her husband went next.

"Hey kids! I'm Jack, and I know that the ghost punk Danny Phantom is-"

"That's nice, dear. Okay, why don't we start with you?" Maddie pointed to the first kid. The child beamed, launching into a harrowing speech of his identity and the most important thing he knew about ghosts.

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Alex lounged on a bench, eyes closed in a catnap. He was so relaxed; he never noticed the set of feet steadily approaching him in the form of boots.

"Alex?" Sam said, sitting next to him and poking his shoulder. Alex opened one eye, saw her, and closed it again.

"Danny texted me and told me to wait here. Is that what you were going to ask?"

He smiled, opening both eyes and sitting up. Sam looked a little surprised, looking off to the side. Silently, she marked off a strike for Alex. She knew that Danny didn't have a phone. She shrugged.

"Oh, well, we could wait for him together I guess. I actually came here looking for Jack; I ran into her brother just now and wanted to tell her."

"Want me to call her so you can tell her? He probably had something important to tell her."

"Er, no. It's alright. I just remembered that I'm supposed to be meeting my parents at the mall."

Sam excused herself quickly, leaving the park as soon as possible. Once outside the grassy green field, she took off running to Tucker's.

Strike two. She wasn't going to stick around to see "Alex" strike out. The boy watched her stiffly walk away, a bored expression in his eyes.

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Tucker was fast asleep, drooling lightly onto a keyboard. He had stayed up almost the entire night, trying to hack into the CIA and MI6 computers to tell them what he knew about Alex. Sam barged into his room, having been invited into the house by the boys mother. The Goth roughly shook Tucker by his shoulders, instantly waking him.

"Tucker!" she hissed.

"Sam? What?"

"Have you heard the news?"

"I've been asleep, Sam."

"The warehouse we were hiding in burned down last night."

"So what?"

"I was just talking with Alex. He seemed off, because he said that Danny had texted him. Danny doesn't have a phone."

"Maybe it's a spy thing, like a code or something." He yawned. Sam frowned.

"I wasn't sure, so I told him that I had been looking for his guardian, saying that I ran into her brother, and that he wanted to tell Jack something."

"Brother? You mean Yassen?"

"Yeah, and Alex offered to call Jack for me so I could tell her. Alex knows that Jack doesn't have a brother."

"What are you getting at?"

"Alex has been overshadowed, Tucker, by Vlad."

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