Chapter 4

Act 1: Containment

Danny woke up groggily, still in the haze between sleep and wakefulness. In that haze, it was just a normal day. He was in his bed, waiting for his alarm clock to go off for school while his mom and dad were downstairs bickering about how to fix their latest invention. Jazz was already awake, working on her college entrance thesis at the kitchen table and complaining about the noise, as overachieving as ever. He was home. Danny tried to stay in that haze a little longer, but as his mind came back to reality, he noticed an unusual weight on his wrists and ankles. He reluctantly opened his eyes and looked to see what it was. It took a second for them to adjust enough to see, but when they did, he saw that all of his limbs had heavy chains shackled to them, leading to a sturdy cast iron eyelet set in the concrete. Danny barely had any room to move now with how short the chains were. He pulled his arm against the restraint, but there was no use in fighting them. They were too strong. He brought his knees to his chest, wrapped his arms around them, and rested his forehead on his knees, hiding his face from the harsh, glaring light. He wanted to disappear.

Danny jumped when he heard a sharp rap of a shoe on the concrete nearby. His head snapped up to look at whoever it was, fearing for a second that it would be the maniac, but when he saw his mom stand from the desk, he felt his anxiety ease. She may not have been as warm around him as he was used to at home, but at least she wasn't cruel like the maniac. She was here for answers and data. He was here for power.

"You injured Dr. Minniack," she said with an edge of sharpness in her voice as she grabbed a spare desk chair and rolled it over, sitting in front of him. It didn't escape Danny's attention that she had strategically positioned the chair just beyond his chain radius. "You gave him a concussion."

"Dr. Maniac had it coming," Danny retorted with a grimace. "Guy is nuttier than a fruitcake."

She was quiet for a second as she registered what Danny had called him. "What caused you to attack him?"

Danny cringed as he recalled it. "After the gas chamber torture he called an experiment and all the taunting, I just…" Danny trailed off. "I needed to try and get out of here."

"You could have killed him," she said sternly.

"He could have killed me," Danny said as fear creeped into his voice, glowing green eyes locking onto hers, trying to will her to understand.

"How can he kill you? You're already dead."

Danny opened his mouth to speak, but stopped the words before he'd uttered them. He turned his gaze back to the floor, glaring at the chains. He wasn't dead. Instead, Danny opted to use the maniac's own words. "When I'm done with you, you'll be a gelatinous pile of mindless ectoplasm," Danny quoted. "What does that sound like?"

She hesitated in responding, realizing her mistake. "I suppose it sounds like death."

A silence fell between them and neither knew what to say to break it. Danny wished she would see him. The real him, her son, not just some ghost boy.

"Speaking of death, do you remember how you died?"

Danny looked back up at her, debating if he wanted to be specific or not. If he told her the whole story, would she believe him? It wasn't like he could prove it. He couldn't change back or talk about anything relevant because of the stupid cameras. He wanted her to know, but not telling her outright would be the safer move. She had to realize it on her own. "It was a lab accident. I was exploring something I knew shouldn't have, but my friends… well, I guess we all thought it would be cool. When I went into," Danny paused, unsure of how to explain the ghost portal in vague terms, "this machine, I leaned up against a button. The next thing I knew, there was a great big flash and everything just… changed. I woke up like this."

"Do you know what kind of machine it was? I have a feeling that might be why you're such a unique ghost."

She was always so quick with things like that. It must be the inventor in her. Danny shrugged. Yeah, the fact that it was a ghost portal was probably a big reason why he was the way he was, not that she knew the whole extent of it.

"You mentioned you were with your friends at the time of the accident. Does that mean you remember your human life?"

Danny nodded, but was otherwise silent as he began chipping away at some rust—what he hoped was only rust—on the shackle with his fingernail. He didn't want to talk about home. He was homesick enough already, and he hadn't even been gone that long. At least he didn't think he'd been gone too long. It was getting harder for him to tell. He wondered why his mom didn't seem like she was freaking out about her son being missing. Did she not know? Was she as much in the dark about what was going back on at home as he was? He wondered what damage was happening there because of his confinement here. With both him and his mom gone, it left Amity Park pretty vulnerable. He hoped Sam and Tucker could handle whatever was happening there without him. Sam and Tuck… he missed them so much. He missed going to hang out at Nasty Burger with them, even though her ultra-recyclo vegetarian food stank up the whole table. Danny realized he actually missed that and felt a heaviness in his chest. He had to redirect his train of thought. "I miss food," he said absentmindedly. "Especially Nasty Burger. Double Nasty Boiler Burger, extra Nasty sauce, and a huge order of Nasty Nat's Chili Cheese Fries." He recited his usual order and saw his mom get that same suspicious look that she'd given him before when he reminded her of his human half. He wasn't even trying that time, he just wanted food. Any food. Even Dad's Jack Fenton toast sounded good, and he hated toast. He thought he felt a pang of hunger in his stomach, but it couldn't be. He couldn't feel hunger in his ghost form, or at least he hadn't before. If that was really what he felt, was being in his ghost form for so long harming his human body?

"Food? That's all?"

Danny shrugged and his face fell as he looked down at the floor. "Food's easier to think about."

The remainder of the sharpness on her features softened. "I understand. I imagine it would be hard to talk about a life you couldn't return to," she said to him in a sympathetic tone.

A life he couldn't return to. Danny knew she wasn't aware he still had a life, but he wondered if she was right. Would he be trapped here forever? "How long have I been here?" he asked without looking at her.

"It's been about a week."

"A week?" He couldn't tell if it felt like he'd been here longer than that or not. Danny ran his hands through his hair, then propped his head up by resting his forehead on them. It felt like there was a permanent fog growing in his brain. This place was seriously messing with his mind, and he hated it. He hated feeling helpless, he hated the experiments, and he hated that maniac that called himself a scientist.

"Are you all right?" Mom asked, keeping her voice soft as she noticed his distress.

"No. I'm so not all right."

The door slammed open, and Danny jumped, eyes darting towards the noise to see the maniac walking in with a GIW agent.

"Get it on the exam table and take it to Containment Room 20, Agent Q," Dr. Maniac said as he turned to the agent.

"Yes, sir." The agent grabbed the exam table and walked over to Danny.

Danny scrambled away from the agent as he got closer. "No! Get away from me!" Danny strained against the chains, trying to get as far away as he could. His heart began hammering in his chest from the fear of what they were here to take him to.

"Stop this! He needs time to recover!" Mom said to the maniac as she attempted to get between them and Danny. "He's showing a decline in cognitive function from all the stress your experiments are causing!"

"Luckily, I don't need its cognitive function for what I'm conducting next."

"If you continue, your results won't be accurate. What is the point of an experiment with unreliable results?"

"Do I have to remind you once again who's in charge of this project?" He marched up to her, then glared down his nose at her. "I have grown incredibly tired of your meddling. Step aside, Dr. Fenton, or I will have you forcibly removed."

She was silent as gave Danny an apologetic look, and Danny's heart sank when she stepped away. For a moment, he sat frozen in a stunned stupor until the agent grabbed at the chains connected to his wrists, lurching him forward and it was like a switch flipped. "Leave me alone!" Danny thrashed like a feral animal, kicking wildly at the agent, managing to land a solid blow to his jaw, but the agent used the chains to grab a hold of Danny's arms and pinned them to his back. Danny continued to kick and attempted to rip his arms out of the agent's grasp. With every jerk, he could feel the agent's hold on his arms slipping.

"Grab his legs!" the agent said as he gripped Danny's arms tighter.

He threw his mom a panicked, pleading look in between his chaotic thrashing as the two of them dragged him onto the exam table, but she didn't meet his gaze. He could feel the metal shackles cutting into him with how hard he was fighting them, but he didn't care. After the last experiment, Danny didn't want any part of what was coming next. He saw a flash of silver from the corner of his eye, but before he could register what it was, he felt a sharp prick on his neck. His thrashing became slower and weaker, but his mind stayed alert. It was like whatever drug the maniac had given him broke the connection between him and his body.

"We have to be quick. This sedative doesn't last very long," Dr. Maniac said to the agent, and they both began switching his shackles from the ones connected to the floor to the ones attached to the table. Just as they finished securing him to the table, Danny could move again and struggled weakly against the restraints as they rolled him out of the room. "No… no, no, no, no," Danny chanted as they got further down the hall. When they rolled him into the new room, Danny was back to normal, but he resigned himself to whatever was going to happen. There was no point in struggling.

"Finally," the agent said under his breath. "I thought he would never stop writhing."

"This one is certainly stubborn, but we're going to fix that."

The new room was about the same as the one with the glass cube, size-wise, and there was a slightly different control panel, but there was no cage of any kind, glass or ecto-containment. What kind of experiment could they do in here where they were fine with leaving themselves exposed like this? Well, as exposed as they could get when he was strapped down to a metal table with a collar that took away all his powers.

Dr. Maniac went over to the control panel, placed the remote to the collar into a slot, and began typing onto the keyboard. "I'll be a few minutes still. I just need to calibrate the panel to the collar. Would you make the table vertical, please?"

"Yes, sir," the agent said as he walked over to Danny and adjusted the table.

The maniac took the same recorder out of his pocket that he had before. "Subject EE0626, Operation Maelstrom, phase one." He took a seat at the control panel as Agent Q went to stand next to him. "All right, it's all calibrated. Ready to get this show on the road, Agent Q?" There was a dark look of morbid enthusiasm on the maniac's face that gave Danny a horrible feeling.

"Absolutely," the agent responded with equal eagerness.

The maniac locked eyes with Danny. "What's your name?"

Danny narrowed his eyes in suspicion, and he hesitated. "You know who I am."

Dr. Maniac's eyes crinkled as he grinned and pressed a button on the panel. A horrible shock much more powerful than the ones before it ran through Danny and he screamed. It had to be the control panel ramping up the power.

"What's your name?" the maniac asked again.

Danny gritted his teeth. What was with this game? "Danny Phantom."

Another shock rocketed through him, eliciting another scream.

"How is that the wrong answer?! That's my—" Another shock cut off Danny's protests before he finished speaking.

"What's your name?"

Danny glared at the maniac. "Danny Phantom!" Another awful shock.

"What's your name?"

Danny's eyes grew darker as a hate-filled scowl deepened on his features. "Danny Ph—" The collar released another shock and Danny let out another scream of pain. There was a longer moment of silence when the shock stopped before the maniac asked him the same question. Danny panted; the shocks and screaming beginning to take a toll on him.

"What is your name?" He emphasized each word sharply.

Danny could tell he was getting irritated, but he couldn't enjoy it. Danny's head hung limply from his shoulders as he realized what he wanted him to say. He wouldn't say it. He refused. That maniac dehumanized him with an 'it' every chance he got. Danny wasn't going to let this sadistic scientist make him do it to himself, too. "Danny—" Another shock.

"What. Is. Your. Name?" He asked slowly.

Danny gritted his teeth. He wanted so badly to say his name, but his mouth wouldn't cooperate. Come on, just say it, Fenton! "Dan—" He barely got a partial whisper out before the maniac shocked him again.

"What's your name?!" the maniac roared.

Danny bit his cheek nervously. As much as he wanted to, he couldn't say his name. He couldn't say anything. Another bolt of electricity went through him and sapped what little energy he had left. He couldn't even scream that time.

"Answer my question. What is your name?" he asked, his tone snippy.

Danny didn't look up. "Subject… EE0626," he said in a defeated whisper.

"What's your name?"

"Subject EE0626," Danny said again.

"What's your name?"

"Subject EE0626." Danny's lip curled as he said it.

"What's your name?"

"Subject EE0626." He squeezed his eyes shut tightly in frustration. How many times was this maniac going to ask him the same question? He got the answer he wanted. What more was he looking for?

"What's your name?"

"Subject EE0626!" Danny shouted angrily through gnashed teeth.

"What's your name?" With every time he asked that question, the wider his cruel grin became.

Danny glared daggers at the maniac as his fists clenched tightly at his sides. "Subject EE0626."

The man grinned when he saw the hate on Danny's face. "That's right. That's all you'll ever be. Not your little superhero persona, not the innocent-looking little ghost child pulling the wool over everyone's eyes. You are just Subject EE0626, property of the GIW, and you will rot here for the rest of your miserable existence."

Danny continued to glare at the mad scientist and vowed to himself that he would do whatever he needed to do to escape, even if it meant bloodshed. He would get out of here. He had to.

Author's Comments:

Well this was an exciting one! I hope you enjoy it as much as I liked writing it. See ya next week for chapter 5!