A/N: Shhh, I know it's not in chronological order, but it's not going to be. (Also, I haven't finished the scene where Danny gets dragged back yet.)
He had to go in, but knowing that didn't make it any easier—or take away the risks.
"You have to go in," Danny said. "Please. Jazz is smart, but she doesn't know half this stuff. You do. We need you on the inside."
Tucker bit his lip. "Dude, this isn't cool. They know we're friends. They're gonna know I was working with you. They aren't going to expect me to stop."
"Then we give them a fight," Sam suggested. "Something big. Showy. Convince them of your loyalties that way."
Tucker pulled a face. "We can't risk not convincing them, though. If they don't think I'm legit, they'll just wash me. Wipe away any pesky sympathies and whatever else." He wasn't sure what the Guys in White were doing to brainwash people, but he knew it was effective. They all did.
His words sobered the other two. It was only the three of them in this meeting, huddled in an old outpost of what had once been the lobby of Val's apartment building in Elmerton. It wasn't Amity Park, but the ghosts had never made much of a distinction between the two, and they knew its streets from fights long past. From Before.
It was familiar ground, but it wasn't something the Guys in White expected them to know as well as they did. They weren't safe here, exactly—the GiW even knew Danny was Phantom—but this was safer than other places. Besides, the Box Ghost had said he'd cause a distraction, and Pandora had let him borrow her box. It would buy them time, if only because the GiW wouldn't—shouldn't—be expecting a hydra to turn up.
"Then we convince them you're a traitor to our side," Sam said.
Tucker and Danny stared at her. "What?" they asked in unison.
"We can't risk them washing you. We can't lose you. But they won't wash you if they think you have valuable information that might be lost in the process."
"No, they'll just torture me! Newsflash, Sam. That's not better." Anyone the GiW washed white was 'freed' from their past loyalties. The cleansing washed away all their dirty little secrets that helped them hold onto the promise of fixing this mess of a world, but it could also affect memories associated with those loyalties. He wasn't too sure whether it destroyed them completely or just made them too unreliable to count on when it came to information extraction, but if he was labelled a sympathiser, a rebel, it wouldn't matter. They had no qualms about torturing someone until they saw the error of their ways and then begged to be cleansed by them, washed and returned to society. It was sickening but effective. Most people didn't realize their methods, and since they'd begun hammering areas where the information got out, those in the rebellion weren't keen on spreading it around, either, unless they were already on the move.
It was hindering the whole recruiting process, exactly as the Guys in White wanted.
Sam punched him in the arm. "They won't need to torture you if you give up the information willingly."
"What?" he repeated. That sounded entirely too much like actually being a traitor, and the rebellion was too small to afford that. Sure, Danny had made a truce with most of the ghosts easily enough; most of them didn't want to leave Earth, and of those that remained behind, few thought so much of themselves that they believed they could defeat the Guys in White alone. At least, few did after rumours got out about how the first ones had been torn apart, and almost none had tried it since the release of that footage. But the ghosts were more of a hindrance than a help in populated areas, where citizens had been issued basic ghost hunting tech that included the equivalent of Fenton Finders meant to ferret them all out, and it took flesh and blood humans to break through ghost shields and convince others to join their cause.
Just last week, he'd come across a pair of kids not much younger than he was, scavenging for food. He wasn't sure how they'd ended up outside the cities, but he hadn't been about to ask at the time. Instead, he'd told them that they didn't have to live like this, that it didn't have to be this way, that they could change things if they just fought back—
The older one had pegged him as a rebel right away. Threatened to report him and reap the reward. Made it clear he wasn't afraid to fight if it would get him some proof that the report wasn't a false one, that it was an actual lead on the location of the rebels, if not a captured rebel himself.
It was the younger brother who'd asked questions. Who'd given Tucker a chance to explain the truth. Who'd convinced his brother to join the rebel cause, for a place to belong if nothing else. Walker had vetted and approved both of them at the way station. They hadn't been threats, just kids who'd needed help to survive, who'd been willing to do anything for it. He'd helped give them a purpose.
He…he didn't want to throw all that away.
"Tell them something they don't know," Sam said slowly. "Something real. Just something small to start. Let them check it out and confirm it. And then give them something else. And then, when they demand something bigger, give them that, too. It'll hurt us, but we'll be stronger in the end. They won't be surprised that your information is less reliable after the third attack—they have to know we'll be adjusting our plans—but they won't be willing to wash you, either. You might know something they don't realize is valuable, that you don't realize is valuable, and they won't want to lose that."
Tucker shook his head. "They'll want names."
"They have most of our names," Danny pointed out. "Between the death registration and the last census—"
"Then they'll want locations!"
"Yeah, they will, and you'll have to give some of them up." Sam crossed her arms. "I said this'll hurt us. It's not believable if it doesn't hurt us. But you can't chicken out, either. If you lie, it won't work, and they'll wash you white, and then this will have been for nothing. Your knowledge is your leverage, Tuck. Make sure they know what you're bringing to the table, and they'll be too greedy to let you go to waste."
Tucker let out a slow breath. "Even if you're right, even if they let me in without washing me, doesn't mean I'll be put in a position where I can help. Jazz won't be able to help me. It would raise too many flags and blow her cover. And with the number of people watching me, I'd blow my own cover if I so much as hacked my own computer to disable to spyware."
"That's why you need to earn their trust," Sam said bluntly.
Tucker groaned and looked at Danny. "Technus and I can keep hacking into their servers from here, man. We don't need to risk this. Seriously."
Danny glanced away. "I'm not sure that's true," he mumbled.
"What? They didn't actually catch Technus, did they?"
Danny looked back at him and shook his head. "No, but he's running into more blocks every day. Jazz can't make him a back door. You can. And…and the more we can find out, the better. We need more than one person on the inside, and you could establish a reliable communication link for us. Please, Tuck."
Tucker swallowed. "If it doesn't work," he croaked, "if they wash me, I'll…. It wouldn't just be an act anymore. I'd be ready to destroy you."
Danny smirked. "I'm used to the feeling."
It was a lie, or at least the nonchalance behind it was. Tucker knew that. Lying was what Danny did, even now.
"Just feed us what you can," said Sam, ever the practical one. "We won't act on everything, and we'll double check what we can before we do act. We don't want them thinking they've got a mole and feeding out false information to catch them."
Tucker's mouth twisted. "They wouldn't bother with that. They'd just wash everyone for good measure. No skin off their noses. They're too indoctrinated themselves to know the difference."
"Information," reminded Sam.
"That information's gonna have an expiry date," Tucker muttered. "It wouldn't save me forever."
"It doesn't need to be forever. It just needs to be for long enough."
"But what if it's not?" Fine. He was scared. He could admit it. He was terrified. Danny and Sam wanted him to waltz into the lion's den and play double agent. If he wasn't washed, he could be tortured. Or just plain shot.
Or the Guys in White might realize what he was up to and use him to lead his friends into a trap. That was by far the worst option, but it was also the most likely, whether they washed him in the end or not. What if they extracted what information from him that they could, washed him, and fed him that information back? He'd happily use it against his friends then, and it's not like he'd wind up in close enough contact with Jazz for her to tell.
And even if she could, there's no guarantee she'd find a way to send a message. Her communications with them were spotty at best. His going in wouldn't improve that, not when he had to keep his distance from her to maintain both their covers. Come to that, they wouldn't even be able to assure her that he wasn't a traitor, and he wouldn't blame her for thinking he might be once his information proved to be good. And—
And he was thinking about this as if it were already a done deal, risks and all.
Sam reached over and squeezed his hand, which was a big deal, considering she wasn't big on the showing her feelings like that after so many years of hiding what she felt for Danny. He would have taken more comfort in it if he didn't know it was a futile attempt to balance out her not-so-comforting words. "We'll do what we can and make the best of whatever happens."
Danny didn't say anything. He just waited for Tucker to make his choice known. Danny wouldn't make him go in, not even with everything that was at stake. Sam would try, but Danny would let him make his own decision, even if 'making his own decision' included a few dozen guilt trips and pleas before it was actually decision time.
Like it was now.
To say going in was risky was a major understatement, but they couldn't afford him not going in, either. Danny was right: they needed more than one person on the inside, and not just in case Jazz got compromised. They were short allies and needed more information. Anything he could do would help them…until they caught him.
Tucker sighed and looked at Sam. "Maybe you should take a harder swing at me, just to help sell the whole traitor thing."
Sam grinned and cracked her knuckles. "I'll just pretend you're Agent W," she said, and she was on her feet and a fist was flying towards his face before he could change his mind.
He woke up in the ruins of the Nasty Burger with some pickpocket wannabe rifling through his jacket. He could still feel the hard lump of the flash drive sewn into his collar, so he hissed a warning at her and let her get away with her appropriated beef jerky. It was the best he could do for her now. Besides, if they believed him, they'd feed him at HQ, and if they didn't, a lack of food was going to be the least of his problems.
