Author's note: Sorry for the long delay! I did (and won) NaNoWriMo last month, which kept me pretty busy, and then this chapter was nearly 10,000 words, which made it a beast to edit/proofread. I managed to shave off about 600 words, but it's still decently long.
Anyway, I have no idea if the police would actually interview Danny this formally in real life because he's a minor and not a suspect, but I did it anyway for the drama. Please enjoy!
Disillusioned
I still want to protect you
...
"Where should we start?"
The detective had finally arrived in the small interrogation room furnished with only a table and a few chairs. Danny rubbed his arms as new goosebumps prickled under his sleeves.
"Are you cold?" The detective took a seat at the table across from Danny. Tall and rugged with dark hair and a neatly trimmed beard, a brown tie and beige button-up shirt over his broad shoulders. He flipped through some documents in the folder he had brought in.
"No," said Danny, moving his hands under the table and pulling his sleeves down over the makeup-covered bruises on his wrists.
"I guess I should start by introducing myself." The detective set down his folder. "I'm Detective Sydney Calhoun. I'm the one who's been working on your case ever since your mom reported you missing."
"But I'm not missing anymore," said Danny. "So isn't this case over?"
"I just wanted to talk to you and get the details about where exactly you've been." The detective tapped his folder. "I want to make a full, accurate report."
"And that's why you want to talk to my whole family?"
"That's right."
Danny glanced up at the camera in the corner of the room. He rubbed his arms again.
"Are you sure you're not cold, Danny?" asked the detective.
Danny shook his head. "I'm just a little nervous, I guess."
"You're not in trouble," said the detective. "I just want you to be honest with me."
Danny couldn't bring himself to nod and swallowed instead.
"So tell me what happened March twenty-first," said the detective.
Danny couldn't even remember what day it was today. "When?"
"March twenty-first was the night you ran away," said the detective. "What did you do that day? Just start with waking up and go from there."
"I don't think I remember."
"I know it was a month ago now. But just try your best to think back to everything you did that day before you ran away that night."
Danny closed his eyes and tried to think, remember. Past all the pain and torture in the lab, that first moment when he woke up as nothing more than a specimen in shackles.
He remembered running away from his mother that night, yes. He rewound the movie in his head, back and back and back.
"I went to school," murmured Danny. "It was mostly normal, nothing really happened. But…"
He remembered English class. He remembered Lancer walking by his desk and peering down at him, looking concerned.
"But what?" prompted the detective.
Try to tell the truth as much as possible, his mother had coached him while dabbing foundation onto his bruised wrists. The key to good lying is to work in the truth as much as you can.
"I was having a bad day," said Danny, looking down at the table.
"And why were you having a bad day? What happened?"
Danny scratched at his palm, fighting the urge to wring his wrist. "My parents made me see a therapist the day before."
"Right, Brandan Cross," said the detective. "I've spoken to him. Nice guy."
Danny said nothing.
"Why did your parents make you see a therapist, Danny?"
"They…thought I was doing drugs."
"Were you?"
Danny dug his nails into his palm and looked up, remembering more of his mother's instructions.
I already told the police about the painkillers and narcotics. Don't bother lying about them.
"Yes," he whispered.
"What kind of drugs?" asked the detective.
"Nothing like—I mean, it wasn't meth or heroin or anything like that. It was…medication."
"What kind of medication?"
"For pain. Painkillers. Whatever I could find in our medicine cabinet, mostly."
"Mostly? Was there anywhere else you got painkillers from?"
"From, um…my friend's mom. She has a lot of prescription painkillers. Oxycodone, hydrocodone, everything." Danny paused. "I thought she wouldn't notice; she has so much of it. But I guess she did notice and told my mom about it."
"Which friend was this?"
Danny frowned.
"The friend whose mom you were stealing hydrocodone from," clarified the detective. "Who was she?"
"Does that matter?"
"I already know who it is. I just want you to confirm it."
Danny hesitated a moment longer before releasing his breath. "Sam Manson," he said quietly.
The detective nodded. "I've already spoken to Sam's mother about this, and no charges are going to be filed against you in this regard." He shifted his position, softening his tone. "You're not here because you stole prescription drugs, okay? You're here because you disappeared for over three weeks and I need to know what happened to you."
what happened to you—
She brought the knife closer closer closer and tore his eye open—
what happened what happened—
She slammed the sledgehammer into his leg and his bone splintered—
what happened to you—?
He curled up on the ground while she kicked and screamed at him and he was crying crying crying—
¿—noʎ oʇ pǝuǝddɐɥ ʇɐɥʍ
Everything she did HURT—
He gasped and doubled over in his chair, shutting his eyes and clutching his elbows as all of his nerves spiked and bristled.
"Danny?" The detective sat up straighter. "What's wrong?"
Danny opened his eyes and suddenly the room seemed so strangely quiet. The noise in his head had vanished, the memories of all his pain muted.
"Maybe I am a little cold," said Danny, rubbing his arms and shivering.
"It's pretty chilly in here," said the detective. "Would you like a blanket?"
Danny hesitated before nodding. "Yeah. Okay."
The detective opened the door and was gone for a couple minutes. Danny stared up at the camera, wondering what exactly it caught.
The detective returned a few minutes later and handed Danny a dark green blanket. Danny draped it over his shoulders, clutching it with both hands to keep it wrapped around him. But he couldn't stop shivering.
"So you were having a bad day at school because your parents made you see a therapist to discuss your use of painkillers and opioids," said the detective. "Then what happened?"
"Um." Danny swallowed. "Jazz—my sister—took me home after school ended for the day."
"Took you home, what do you mean?"
"She had her car. She drove."
"Does she usually drive you home?"
"No. Usually I hung out with Sam and Tucker after school." He realized too late that he was speaking in past tense, as if this were something that could never possibly happen again.
"So what was different this day?" asked the detective. "Why didn't you hang out with your friends?"
Danny hunched over, kicking one shoe at the floor. "I was grounded. My parents said I had to go directly home with Jazz every day that week."
"Why were you grounded?"
"Don't you already know?"
The detective gave him a small smile. "Yes, I do. I've spoken to your mother about many of these details at length. But I want to hear your side of what happened."
Danny chewed the inside of his cheek and looked off to the side.
"Is everything okay?" asked the detective.
"Sorry, I just…don't really like talking about all of this." Danny turned his head back to the detective but kept his gaze down. "It's kind of embarrassing."
"Why is it embarrassing?"
"Because…it just seems like everyone thinks I'm a drug addict now."
"Do you think you're an addict, Danny?"
No. He was using those pills exactly as they were intended, for pain. He would get beat up in ghost fights every single night, pain that would throb and pulse through his whole body, prevent his brain from shutting off. But he had to sleep because he had school the next morning, so he had no choice but to take something stronger than acetaminophen or ibuprofen to numb everything until morning.
But he couldn't tell the detective any of that, of course.
"I don't know," he whispered.
"Hmm." The detective clasped his hands on the table. "So were you grounded because your parents found out about your use of opioids?"
"No." Danny slowly shook his head. "They grounded me because I snuck out of the house after curfew the week before. I told them that I just wanted to see Sam." He paused. "I didn't tell them the real reason why."
"And what was the real reason why you snuck out that night?"
The real reason. He had been out fighting ghosts. And then his parents showed up. And then his mom cornered him in an alley and forced him down to his knees while aiming a gun at his head.
He pulled in a deep breath and released it in a shaky blow. That memory used to hold such terror and pain for him, but now compared to the torture he suffered in that lab, the countless ways she broke his body, he longed to go back to that week when holding him at gunpoint was the very worst thing she had ever done to him.
"I wanted more hydrocodone," said Danny, his tongue feeling thick with the effort of getting the lie out. The gap at the back of his tongue from when his mother cut off a chunk of it latched onto one of his back teeth.
"So you snuck out on"—the detective checked his notes—"March fifteenth to get narcotics from Sam's mother. And did you get them?"
No. He never actually saw Sam that night, but she was more than happy to lie right along with him to protect his ghostly secret.
He nodded.
"Hmm." The detective wrote something down. "So when did you tell your parents the truth about why you snuck out that night?"
"Not until that weekend, when my mom drove me out to the canyon to talk to me about the painkillers I was taking," said Danny. "I guess Sam's mom had already told her about me stealing her narcotics. So my mom put two and two together on her own and asked me if that was the real reason I snuck out."
"Your mom is a very smart woman," noted the detective.
Danny did not reply.
"Getting back to what you were doing the day you ran away," said the detective, "you were grounded for sneaking out the week before and couldn't hang out with your friends like you normally would, so your sister drove you home after school. What happened when you got home?"
He remembered walking into the living room and seeing Maddie on the couch with her arms folded, her body language and eyes cold as she looked at him.
"I think my mom was having a bad day, too," said Danny.
"Why was she having a bad day?"
"I'm not sure," said Danny with a small shake of his head. "But she was mad about something. She told me she was going to take me to a detox appointment to help me clear the painkillers out of my system and get through withdrawal. But she wanted me to eat this sandwich she made for me first. And then I told her I wasn't hungry and—"
He stopped, wondering if he was saying too much.
"Please continue," said the detective.
Danny's heels bounced against the floor a couple times. "Um. Well, she knew I hadn't eaten much at breakfast and was thinking I hadn't eaten at lunch either because she just knows that, um…that I don't really like eating when I'm not feeling great."
"Is that true?"
"Um." Danny shrugged. "Yeah. I've just…kind of been that way my whole life."
It was my fault. I poisoned you and now you hate eating.
His mother's whispers floated to him in a memory from one night in the lab, when she confessed that all the ectoplasmic samples she kept in the fridge when he was a small child made him throw up, his stomach clenched with so much pain that he stopped eating. He didn't remember any of that but he knew now that eating when he felt anxious or depressed only ever made him feel worse, not better.
"And you weren't feeling good that day," said the detective. "So your mother wanted you to eat because she was worried you hadn't eaten all day."
"Yeah." Danny nodded. "Yeah, she was…really worried about me."
"But you also said she was mad about something," said the detective. "What exactly made you think that?"
"Just…the way she talked to me. I don't know."
"Danny. Please. I need specifics."
Danny looked up at the detective, wary of where this was headed. "It wasn't normal for her or anything. She was just in a bad mood."
"How do you know that? What did she do? What did she say?"
"She…just didn't really like when I said I wasn't hungry. That's all. She said I had to eat the sandwich, that I didn't have a choice."
He couldn't remember what was even on the sandwich anymore. Some kind of deli meat. But chewing and swallowing each bite was so difficult, almost painful.
"I wasn't able to finish eating it before we had to leave for the detox appointment," continued Danny. "And…that just made her bad mood even worse." He lowered his eyes. "I think I disappointed her."
"Does she often get upset with you when you don't eat?" asked the detective.
Danny quickly shook his head. "No. No, this really wasn't normal. She was just concerned about me, my health. More so than usual with the whole painkiller thing."
"Does she get upset with you for other things?"
Danny furrowed his brow.
"Are you afraid to disappoint her, Danny? Are you afraid of what she'll do?"
Unzipping his suit and exposing his bare chest—
Bending his finger in the wrong direction, ready to snap it—
Pricking his lip with a razor, about to force it down his throat—
God yes he was afraid of what she'd do next.
"I don't like disappointing her." Danny's voice was hushed. "Same as any son who loves his mother."
The detective said nothing for some time, his arms folded as he stared at Danny. But Danny looked down at his lap instead, still hiding himself under the blanket.
The detective then cleared his throat and shifted in his seat. "So did you go to the detox appointment?"
Danny raised his head again, jolting back to attention. "Yeah. My mom drove me there."
"And what happened?"
In the car. He tried to tell her he didn't need therapy or detoxification, that he wasn't an addict. He remembered Maddie yelling at him, her face turning red as her pitch rose to a frenzy.
Danny! None of this is a negotiation! You do have a problem, and I'm not going to just stand by and do nothing about it.
He leaned back against the passenger door, unable to escape, forced to listen.
You're a teenager, a child. You have no idea just how serious this is.
First her child, then her specimen—
I'm your mother and I have to make sure you get that help because I am not going to let you hurt yourself anymore.
But she was the one hurting him, smiling every time he screamed—
"Nothing happened," Danny gasped out.
The detective frowned. "Really? Nothing happened at your detox appointment?"
"Oh." Danny blinked a couple times. "Sorry, I thought you meant…" He shook his head and shrugged.
"What did you think I meant?" asked the detective.
Danny hesitated before answering. "Well, the last thing I said was that my mom drove me to the appointment, so…I don't know, I guess I thought you were asking if something happened with my mom on the way there."
"Did something happen with your mom?"
"No. Of course not."
The detective stared at him from across the table, unblinking and silent, arms folded. Danny swallowed and shivered, knocking his knees together under the blanket.
"Tell me about your detox appointment, then," the detective said at last.
Danny released a shaky sigh of relief. "We talked about the pills I was taking and how I felt when I took them. They told me about what withdrawal symptoms I might expect, how to cope with them."
Danny looked off to the side, remembering how awkward that whole interview had been. Even worse with his mom right next to him. Everyone just talking about him like he had made such a bad choice but now things would get better and he really was a good boy, he just needed some guidance and help and love.
"I just remember…" Danny scraped his heel against one of the chair legs. "It was a little embarassing."
"Why?" asked the detective.
"Just…the way they talked to me. Like they pitied me." Danny paused. "Like I was just a child who didn't fully understand what was going on."
"And did you fully understand what was going on?"
Danny tensed and looked down at the table.
"Do you think your mom did the right thing taking you to that appointment?" asked the detective. "Or do you believe there was nothing wrong with your use of painkillers?"
"I don't think the pills were hurting me," said Danny softly. "They made me feel better."
"So if you could start taking them again, would you?"
Danny knew his answer. Yes.
But he said nothing.
"What came next?" asked the detective. "After the detox appointment."
"Um." Danny paused, thinking. "We went home. We had dinner as a family. I think we ordered takeout since my mom didn't feel like cooking."
"Were you able to eat dinner?" asked the detective. "Or were you still not feeling good enough to eat?"
He remembered forcing each bite down, aware of his mother watching him. "I think I was able to eat, yeah."
"Did that make your mom happy?"
She didn't look happy at the dinner table that evening. He could see so much worry etched in her face every time he caught her staring at him.
"Maybe," murmured Danny. "I don't know."
"Hmm. What next?" asked the detective.
"I think I tried to do some homework," said Danny. "I was still grounded and really couldn't do much else. But I don't think I was able to do very much. Hard to concentrate, plus I had to stay downstairs in the living room. Part of my punishment was I couldn't be alone in my room except at night to sleep." He paused. "I just remember my mom sitting on the couch and watching me while I tried to study. And I didn't like it."
"She made you uncomfortable?"
Danny nodded.
"Are you often uncomfortable around her?"
"Not… Not often, no."
"But sometimes?"
Danny wrapped the blanket around himself tighter to conceal a shiver.
"What did you do after homework?" asked the detective.
Danny stared down at his lap. "I went to bed."
He remembered Jazz appearing in his doorway, asking if she could come in and talk to him.
I know you're afraid. I've never seen you so afraid of anything.
He remembered the way her tears glistened in her eyes as she spoke to him, her words so kind and gentle at first.
You haven't been well. Sam, Tucker, and I have all noticed.
And then her tone changed, firmer, more accusatory.
We need to come up with a better way to manage your pain that doesn't involve drugging you up.
Just like everyone else, she thought he was an addict. And apparently Sam and Tucker thought the same.
I'm not going to just let you poison yourself.
She held out an open hand to him, demanding that he give her the rest of the narcotics he had hidden in his wall where his parents could never find them.
You won't let me help you any other way.
She insisted she was just taking them for his own good, betraying him because she cared about him so much, loved him so completely.
But God, it didn't feel that way.
He remembered being so sick of everyone thinking he couldn't take care of himself, handle things on his own.
Do you honestly think you're handling this well on your own, Danny?
Danny shut his eyes, trying to hold back his tears. Because he didn't have an answer for that question then and he certainly didn't have one now.
"I felt so alone," he whispered.
"What do you mean?" asked the detective.
"No one was on my side." Danny tried to control the shakiness in his voice. "My parents, my sister, even my friends—I just felt like everyone thought there was something wrong with me, that I really was an addict that needed therapy and detoxing and all this help. Everyone seemed to think I was weak, that I needed to be controlled and disciplined before I made any more bad decisions."
The detective started writing something down. Danny watched the movements of his pen scratching over the piece of paper.
After a few moments, the detective set his pen down and clasped his hands on the table. "So you went to bed feeling alone, like nobody was on your side."
Danny nodded.
"But that night didn't end with you going to bed, did it?"
Danny froze, then slowly shook his head.
"No, it didn't," said the detective more firmly. "You got up again."
Danny did not reply.
"Danny." The detective leaned over the table. "I need you to tell me everything leading up to when you ran away right now."
Danny nodded but was still quiet.
"Did you get out of bed on your own?" asked the detective. "Or did someone wake you up? Your mother?"
"No," said Danny, trying to keep his voice flat. "I got up because…I wasn't feeling too good."
"What do you mean?"
"I was…in pain."
He remembered getting up and splashing cold water on his face in the bathroom. Then his head swam and he nearly fainted, collapsing to the tiled floor. Dizzying, sickening, in so much pain.
"I couldn't sleep," he continued. "My head hurt too much. So I went downstairs to get some painkillers."
"You got out of bed and left your room to get painkillers?" clarified the detective.
"Yes. My parents took all of the painkillers I had in my room, but I knew there were some in the medicine cabinet in the kitchen."
"The painkillers you like?"
"Not hydrocodone, no. Just over-the-counter stuff."
"Hmm. So what did you take?"
"I don't remember. Tylenol or Advil probably."
"And how did you get inside?"
Danny's brow creased.
"The medicine cabinet," said the detective. "Did you just open it?"
No. Of course he didn't. It was locked and he had to use his powers to phase through.
"My mom put a lock on it," said Danny. "I had to pick it first."
"Are you good at picking locks, Danny?"
The detective's eyes were wide as he stared at Danny, waiting for an answer. Danny's heels knocked against the legs of his chair.
"I guess so," said Danny. A lie, but he couldn't tell the detective he had ghost powers that allowed him to bypass any lock easily.
"Does your mom often lock things up to prevent you from getting them?" asked the detective. "Did you get good at picking locks she put in place?"
Danny frowned. "I don't understand what you're asking."
"Does she ever withhold other things from you by locking them up, Danny?" asked the detective. "Or has she ever locked you in your room?"
Locked in a lab—
Locked in a box—
She locked his head inside some kind of metal box, stifling and amplifying the sound of each breath, the pulses in his neck and temples, blinding him, nothing to see but the corners of this tiny prison just inches from his face for hours and hours and one time she left him locked in there for two days—
"I—" Danny shook his head. "She locked the medicine cabinet because I had been stealing painkillers. She was trying to protect me."
"And you just happened to already know how to pick the lock she used?"
"It—It wasn't a hard lock to pick, really."
"Hmm." The detective sat back in his chair and folded his arms. "Please continue. What happened after you took the painkillers out of the medicine cabinet?"
The pill bottle was in his hand. He couldn't read the label in the dark, but he knew it was exactly what he needed.
And then the light switched on and she was there, staring at him from the other side of the kitchen table. Cornering him, just as she had in that alley when this whole thing started. Surely she was hiding a gun behind her back and would force him down to his knees again.
His heart raced and his neck sweated with the memory. He allowed the blanket to fall off his shoulders and clutched at the front of his shirt.
"My mom showed up," he rasped. "She saw the pill bottle in my hand. She took it from me."
"How did she react when she saw you with the pills?" asked the detective. "Was she angry?"
"No. She was just worried."
"But then what led you to run away? Something must've happened between the two of you that caused you to take off so suddenly."
Danny swallowed as he tried to calm his bristling nerves.
"We, um… We kind of had a fight," he said.
The detective raised a brow. "Just kind of? What exactly did you 'kind of' have a fight about?"
"She thought I was hiding something else from her."
"Something else?"
"Like…besides the painkillers and narcotics."
"And were you?"
Oh yes. He had been hiding so, so much from her, more than she could've ever guessed.
"No," said Danny. "And that's why I got so mad, I guess. Because I was just so tired of her coming at me with all these accusations. Like I was really trying to cooperate and do everything she wanted to overcome this drug problem she thought I had."
"You think sneaking downstairs in the middle of the night to steal painkillers out of the medicine cabinet is cooperating?" asked the detective.
Danny groaned. "Okay, yeah, I know I screwed up that night, but I really was trying. I did the therapy and the detox with no complaint. And it's not like I was sneaking out to get narcotics again, I just…"
He breathed in deeply, then let it out.
"I just wanted my pain to stop. I couldn't sleep. It was a moment of weakness," he continued. "And I didn't like that my mom kept trying to control me, accusing me of being a drug addict, saying my poor grades and lack of friends were all because I was doing drugs, like I was just doing everything wrong and needed her to force me to make the right choices."
He pulled the blanket back up over his shoulders, his shivers returning.
"And then after all of that, for her to say she thought I was still hiding something from her, that there was yet another reason that I was just this broken, troubled kid…" Danny stared down at the table. "I guess I just snapped."
God damn it! I am not one of your research experiments! I am not something for you to study and hypothesize and test!
He was shouting at her. And he could see the tears in her eyes as she stood apart from him in the kitchen.
Can't you just let me have my secrets?
He was so sick and frustrated and still in so much pain that she wouldn't let him drown out with painkillers.
"I just…really wanted her to leave me alone," murmured Danny. "So I ran. I ran out of the kitchen and then out the front door. I didn't even really know where I was going." He paused. "I just wanted to get away from her."
"You wanted to get away from your mother?" said the detective. "Why? Was she hurting you, Danny?"
If your secrets are hurting you, then no. I can't let you have them.
The tears were still in her eyes as she spoke, her voice shaking.
And what makes you think my secrets are hurting me? What if you're the one hurting me?
His final words to her that night. His throat was nearly closed but he was able to force them out.
"I didn't mean it like that," said Danny, not looking at the detective.
"Then how did you mean it?"
"I just…felt like everyone was judging me, talking down at me." Danny raised his eyes. "And I just wanted to get away from all of that for a little while."
"Is three weeks a 'little while' to you?"
Danny lowered his eyes and did not reply.
"So you've told me everything leading up to you running away," said the detective. "You took off the night of March twenty-first, early morning of the twenty-second. And then you returned the night of April fourteenth, early morning April fifteenth. That's about three and a half weeks."
The detective looked through his notes and presented Danny with a printed calendar for March and April with the mentioned dates circled in red. Danny shuddered and glanced at it only a moment, hating the reminder of how much time had been stolen from him.
"So now I need you to tell me about this time frame." The detective tapped the space between the two dates with one finger. "From March twenty-second to April fourteenth, what happened to you?"
Danny took notice of the pointed question, the implication of asking "what happened to you?" instead of "where were you?"
He breathed, trying to remember the answer his mom coached him to say.
"I didn't exactly have a plan or anything," said Danny, his mouth feeling dry. "I didn't really know where I was going that first night. I thought about going to Sam or Tucker's house, but Sam's parents hate me and Tucker—well, I really didn't want anyone to know where I was. I just wanted to be on my own, away from everyone."
"You know, when most teens run away just to get away from everyone, they're only gone a couple days at the most," said the detective. "Not three and a half weeks. So when were you planning on coming back?"
She said she was going to kill him. He fully expected to die in that lab.
"I didn't think I'd be coming back," he whispered, so quietly he could barely hear himself.
"I need you to speak up, Danny," said the detective. "We're recording this, and we need to be able to hear everything you say."
Danny did not respond.
"So if you didn't stay with any friends or family, where did you go?" asked the detective. "Each day, each night from March twenty-second to April fourteenth, where did you stay?"
Danny swallowed, trying to rewet his dry mouth. "I—uh—well, I was never in the same place every night. I was able to catch a few rides with people; some of them even gave me money to stay in cheap motels or buy food. Sometimes I came across campgrounds or parks. Some homeless communities, too."
"Where exactly?" asked the detective. "Give me specific names of motels, parks, towns—wherever you stayed each night."
"I don't remember any specific names."
"Can you think of just one? Surely you can remember the name of one motel. Or one town. Something. Give me something, Danny."
"Um…" Danny shivered. "I remember being in Accord, I guess."
"Accord? The town, you mean?"
Danny nodded.
"Where were you in Accord?" asked the detective, writing something down. "Can you think of a motel name? Grocery store? Anything?"
Danny tried to remember the signage around the gas station he stumbled across in Accord, the first piece of civilization he was able to find after he was freed from the lab. "Um…no. I don't remember any names."
The detective sighed and set down his pen. "Danny." His tone was serious. "I don't believe a single word you're saying right now."
Danny froze, his breath hitching.
"You expect me to believe that you, a sixteen-year-old boy, were able to hide out and get by on your own for almost a month?" The detective locked eyes with him. "That none of the people who gave you rides or money thought to maybe call the police and let them know a teenage boy was all alone on the streets? That not a single person recognized you from the hundreds of missing posters your mom put up?"
"Well, I got pretty far away from Amity Park—"
"Your mom traveled pretty far to put up those posters, Danny."
Danny thought back to the gas station in Accord, hours away from Amity Park. He remembered speaking to the Asian girl at the counter—Jordyn, her name tag read—and seeing his photo on a missing poster just behind her.
"What you're trying to tell me just doesn't make sense," said the detective. "And I think the reason you can't tell me any specific names is because that's not what actually happened."
"I—no, but—"
"Why don't you want to tell me what really happened to you?"
Danny hesitated before shaking his head. "Nothing happened to me. I just wanted to get away from my mom—I mean, everyone, everything. I wanted to get away from everything."
"I've spoken to dozens of other runaway teens, Danny, and they don't act the way you do. You're not acting like a kid that just ran away. You're acting like someone who just experienced something very traumatic."
Danny's nerves were fraying beneath his skin prickled with goosebumps. The detective was silent for a long time after that, sitting back and pinning Danny with a hard stare. Danny put all of his effort into maintaining eye contact even though he desperately wanted to look away.
"How about you tell me what happened to your eye, then?" said the detective.
Danny's stomach sank with dread while his chest rushed with panic. "My eye?"
"That scar." The detective used his index finger to make a sweeping gesture across his own eye. "It goes all the way across your iris, straight through the middle. How did that happen?"
"Oh." Danny had known this question would eventually come and yet he still wasn't ready for it. "I, uh, don't remember…"
"You don't remember?" The detective quirked a brow. "You know, I've been studying a lot of pictures of you. A lot. Recent pictures taken right up until you went missing." The detective pointed to Danny's left eye. "You didn't have that scar in any of the pictures, which means it happened in the last month. And you can't tell me you don't remember how you got an injury like that when it must've happened just weeks ago."
"Sorry, I mean—" Danny stopped to gulp, take a breath. "I mean I don't remember when it happened exactly or what I was doing, where I was going. But of course I remember how it happened."
She held his eye open as her knife came closer and closer and he couldn't escape couldn't move couldn't stop her—
"Go on," said the detective. "Tell me."
Danny breathed deep. "I was, um…running. I mean, I was in the woods—I don't know where exactly, I just remember there were a lot of trees—and I tripped and landed on this big fallen branch that had this knotted spot on it. Or maybe it was another branch sticking out of it. But anyway, it cut my eye open."
"No," said the detective.
Danny creased his brow, frowning.
"That's not what happened." The detective gestured to Danny's scar. "It's too precise, too thin, too straight. There's no way you just fell and landed on something."
He leaned forward with his elbows resting on the table.
"Someone did that to you," he said firmly.
Danny sputtered, trying to say something coherent. "I—no, that's not—it wasn't—"
"I've been doing this a long time, Danny," said the detective. "I know when someone isn't being honest with me. And you're not being honest with me right now. You know you aren't."
Danny dropped his gaze to the table.
"You're not in trouble," the detective continued. "I want to help you. I want to stop whoever it is that's hurting you."
Danny shivered but did not reply.
"Are you trying to protect someone, Danny?"
Danny tentatively looked up to find the detective's expression had softened.
"I understand," said the detective. "It might be someone you really care about, someone you love. I think any normal human being would lie to protect someone they're close to. But protecting her won't stop her from hurting you, Danny."
He loved her and he cared about her and he had no idea why—
Wait, why was the detective using "her"? Who did he mean, did he mean her—?
"Danny," said the detective gently. "I really need you to start being honest with me. Because someone who would abduct you, hold you hostage for weeks, and do such terrible things to you isn't someone you should be protecting."
Danny's heels pushed so hard against the floor he nearly toppled his chair backward. The sound of the AC rushed through his ears along with the pounding blood in his head.
He couldn't speak for a moment, his body racked with uncontrollable tremors that he tried to hide under the blanket, wrapping himself as tight as he could.
"What are you talking about?" he finally rasped out in a shaky whisper.
The detective was silent a long moment before leaning back in his chair. "Let's shift gears a little here. Let's talk about your mom."
Danny's chest thudded. "My mom?"
"Yes. How would you describe your relationship with her?"
"I—uh—fine. We're—we have a fine relationship."
"But she's the reason you ran away, isn't she?"
Danny stared at him.
"If you didn't have that fight with her in the kitchen, you wouldn't have run away, right?" asked the detective.
"I… I guess not."
"No, Danny. I don't want you to guess. Did you have plans to run away before that fight or not?"
Danny hesitated before slowly shaking his head.
"You said earlier that you ran to get away from your mom. When I pressed you about it, you tried to say you didn't mean it that way." The detective tapped the table a couple times. "But I think you did mean it that way."
"No," said Danny, blinking back sudden tears. "I didn't."
"But she wouldn't leave you alone that week, right?" said the detective. "She kept coming at you asking about the drugs, trying to figure out what exactly was going on with you. You said you were tired of her accusations."
"Yes, but—"
"Do you ever feel like your mom is obsessed with you, Danny?"
Danny's mouth hung open. "What?" he finally managed to get out.
"Do you ever feel like your mom is obsessed with you?" asked the detective again, more slowly.
The way she looked at him in the lab, almost lecherous at times—
I just really, really want him.
He remembered the way she sighed with longing, telling him all about what exactly she wanted to do to Phantom, to him.
"She was worried about me," said Danny. "She was just trying to help me."
"I've spoken to your friend Tucker and your therapist," said the detective. "And now I've also spoken to your sister. All of them told me that you think your mother is obsessed with you."
"They told you that?" asked Danny, trying not to sound too incredulous but he couldn't help feeling betrayed.
"Yes," said the detective. "And they said that her obsession with you makes you a little afraid of her sometimes."
God, yes.
"No," said Danny.
"No, you're not afraid of her?"
"She just cares about me. She's not obsessed with me."
"So did your friend, therapist, and sister all lie to me?"
"I—that is—"
"They all said that independently without me prompting them. You expect me to believe that they all just decided to lie about the same thing?"
The detective leaned over the table, looking Danny straight in the eyes.
"Or are you lying to me right now?"
Danny's heart thumped in his chest, almost painful as shudders racked his body.
"I'm not lying," he rasped.
"So you're saying they lied to me?"
"No. I'm not saying anyone lied."
"Someone has to be lying here, Danny. Did you or did you not tell them that you feel your mother is obsessed with you?"
Danny lowered his head, breathing, trying to work through what to say next. Deep, even breaths, just like his mother taught him to prevent hyperventilating.
He looked up at the detective again. "I wasn't talking about me when I said that."
"Who were you talking about, then?" asked the detective.
I won't let anyone else have you.
She whispered those words into his ear right before she let him go. Not for his sake, no, but because she didn't want the police to discover her secret specimen and send him away to belong to someone else.
She wanted to be the only one to possess him. And if she couldn't have him, then no one else could.
"I just meant…" Danny closed his eyes briefly. "She gets really obsessed with her research. And I was her latest research objective."
"How so?" asked the detective, cocking his head.
"I mean, I just felt like I was her latest research objective," said Danny quickly. "Not that I actually was. But I felt like it because of how she kept trying to figure out what was going on with me and my reason for sneaking out and all the painkillers I was taking."
The detective hummed and sat back in his seat, his brows pinched.
"That's all I told them," said Danny, trying to sound convincing. "Tucker, Jazz, Brandan—that's really all I meant when I told them I think she's obsessed. Not with me but with figuring me out."
"And do you think she did?" asked the detective. "Or do you think she's still trying to figure you out?"
Danny hesitated. "I'm not sure," he answered honestly.
"Is it more than painkillers she's trying to figure out?" asked the detective. "Is there something else about you she might be interested in?"
Danny tensed, his knees rubbing together.
"What was she trying to figure out when she cut your eye open, Danny?" asked the detective.
Danny's chest zinged, his pulse shooting up. "Nothing." He swallowed. "I mean, she didn't. It wasn't her."
"If it wasn't her, then who was it? Who else would want to do that to you?"
"No one. No one did this to me."
"Danny. You don't have to protect her. Please let me help you."
The detective's expression was kind but also stern as he stared at Danny from across the table.
"I can't help you if you're not honest with me," said the detective.
"I don't need help," said Danny, pushing the words out through his sinking throat. "I'm home now. I'm okay."
"And why did you come back home, Danny?"
Danny tilted his head, shaking it, frowning.
"Did she let you go?" asked the detective. "You reappeared right after I asked her to come in and talk to me. Did she let you go when she thought she might be a suspect in your disappearance?"
"No," said Danny, tears stinging his eyes. His hands trembled as he clutched the blanket wrapped around him.
"No, she didn't let you go? Did you escape?" asked the detective. "Where was she keeping you?"
"Nowhere." Danny's tears were getting heavy, flooding his lower lashes. "She didn't know where I was. She put up posters; she was trying to find me."
"Your mother is a remarkably intelligent woman." The detective clasped his hands and rested them on the table. "She knew everything she needed to do to make people believe she had no idea where you were and that she wanted so desperately to find you."
Danny shook his head but was unable to speak.
"We know that she went out by herself almost every single night, from about eleven to two or three in the morning," said the detective. "She told your father it was to look for you, but she was actually going out to visit you, wasn't she? Because she already knew where you were. She was hiding you somewhere."
Danny could feel one tear falling. He ducked his head and hoped the detective wouldn't see it.
"What did she do to you?" asked the detective. "In those three weeks you were gone."
More tears were falling and his throat was painfully tight. "She would never intentionally hurt me," he whispered.
"What she did to your eye looks pretty intentional to me," said the detective. "She didn't cut your eye on accident, did she? She did that on purpose."
His body was shaking with more than just chills now.
"That night you ran away, your mom went running after you, didn't she?" asked the detective. "And she found you, didn't she? And then she took you somewhere and kept you there and did terrible things to you, didn't she?"
Even God wants me to have you.
Then just take me already. If having me means so much to you.
She had him trapped and cornered with her gun aimed right at his head. He had nowhere to go except with her. As her specimen, as her toy, chained up in a lab miles away.
"You keep insisting she loves you, that she cares about you," said the detective. "But tell me: Would someone who really cares about you hurt you like that, Danny?"
The person who was supposed to love him more than anyone was also the person who hurt him more than anyone—
Danny gasped and hunched over, struggling to breathe as tears blurred his vision. The blanket fell off his shoulders.
"Danny," said the detective. "Has your mother ever hurt you?"
Everything inside of him broke all at once.
Danny let go of the blanket and pressed his hands over his eyes as the tears rushed out and through his fingers, drenching his knuckles and falling off his wrists onto his shirt and lap in splashes. He couldn't breathe, his lungs seized with heaves and sobs.
He was crying in front of another person and he hated that, hated letting anyone see him like this, so vulnerable and weak.
But he couldn't stop.
His eyes burned and his chest ached and he couldn't make any of it stop. He was so powerless now; when did he become so powerless?
"Danny."
The detective called his name but Danny physically could not respond through his closed throat and convulsing lungs.
"Danny."
He clawed at his eyebrows with his nails as the tears kept coming and coming.
"Hey, little badger."
Danny froze, his sobs catching in his throat as he stopped breathing entirely. He lowered his hands and blinked through his tears to find the detective wearing a smirk he recognized instantly.
"Vlad?" he whispered, his lungs restarting and pulling in a shaky breath.
"Yes, Daniel. It's me." The detective's eyes flashed red. "I have ghosts all over this place overshadowing various people. It's why you've been shivering so much."
Danny could still feel tears falling down his face as he turned to look up at the camera.
"Don't worry," said Vlad using the detective's voice. "That camera has already mysteriously malfunctioned and hasn't been recording anything. And Detective Calhoun himself will only remember what I want him to remember."
Danny's breathing spasmed as even more tears fell.
"But I don't think he'll give up on this investigation." Vlad rested his arms on the table. "His will is far too strong; I can feel it. Even if I try to plant certain ideas in his head, he's going to come right back to suspecting Maddie had something to do with your disappearance. He'd have to be overshadowed for the rest of his career if we wanted to get him to give it up, and that's of course not feasible. And I honestly think his will is so strong, he'd be able to break through eventually." Vlad sighed. "Only a powerful ghost like me could keep him under control, and I certainly can't overshadow him twenty-four-seven."
Vlad paused a moment, glancing up at the ceiling.
"I can see it all in his head," Vlad continued. "He was planning on having your mother come in voluntarily for a custodial interrogation. He was going to read her her Miranda rights hoping she wouldn't be smart enough to know that meant he planned on attempting to get a confession out of her and arresting her after questioning."
Vlad chuckled.
"But of course she was smart enough. She's brilliant. She knew exactly what he was planning. And now the reasonable suspicion he thought he had is no more. Your return has changed everything for him, and he won't be able to arrest your mother after all. And he won't remember anything damning from any of your interviews. I'm personally making sure of that."
Vlad turned in his seat, crossing an ankle over his knee.
"You and your dear mother will need to be very careful with what you say or do in the future. But for now, you can just catch your breath and calm down. I'll bring the detective back in when you've composed yourself."
Vlad clasped his knee and said nothing more. Danny looked down at his lap, feeling Vlad's gaze on him as he tried to reopen his airway, quell the shaking in his chest, calm the flitting adrenaline rippling through his veins.
His eyes hurt. He could feel the inflammation rimming them, the broken blood vessels popping up and making them itch. He pressed his fingers over his eyelids and pushed out the moisture, flicking the tears off his face. He gasped involuntarily a final time, blowing the breath out.
God, he cried so easily these days.
He slumped in his seat and stared at Vlad across the table for several long moments. Vlad stared back with his characteristic smile that looked so misplaced on the detective's face.
"Why did you leave me?" whispered Danny.
Vlad rolled his eyes, his smile fading. "Daniel…"
"You saw me. You knew what she was doing to me, and you just left me there." Danny's voice cracked. "Why didn't you help me?"
Vlad unclasped his knee and sat up straighter. "I wanted to help you," he said. "Remember? You wouldn't let me. You made that choice."
"You were unfair. The choice you gave me was unfair."
"I'm sorry you saw it that way. But I really did want to give you a better life with me."
A better life. Vlad's idea of a better life was escaping one type of enslavement for another.
Strapped to a table in the lab, Danny could only listen as Vlad proposed his impossible deal in exchange for rescuing him.
"You wanted me to hurt people." Danny could feel the tears threatening to return. "You wanted to take me from my family to never see them again. You wanted me to join you, force me to do awful, criminal things." Danny shook his head. "I would rather die than become anything like you."
"It was an admirable choice, Daniel," said Vlad. "But nonetheless, it was your choice. And that's why I couldn't help you."
"Then why are you helping me now?"
"Your secret being exposed puts mine in jeopardy as well. And your mother is in dire trouble now, too. I could never let any harm come to your mother."
"But you would let it come to me."
"Daniel, our relationship has always been a very complicated one."
"What exactly is so complicated about helping me escape so my mom would stop torturing me?"
Vlad looked at Danny tiredly. "I am quite fond of you, truly. I did not delight in the thought of your mother torturing you in that lab. And I certainly don't delight in your suffering right now."
"But you don't care either," said Danny. "You've only ever wanted to use me. Even right now, I'm sure you're only helping us because you're hoping my mom might leave my dad for you instead."
"It's certainly worth a shot," said Vlad with a sneer. "And I'm sure this investigation will cause some tension between your parents, so I will of course be available if she wants to get away from your father for a while."
Danny pouted and slouched.
"But speaking of your mother, she doesn't know about my visit with you in the lab, does she?" asked Vlad.
Danny's pout deepened as he shook his head.
"Good," said Vlad. "I think it would be best not to tell her."
"You don't deserve that from me," grumbled Danny.
"Your mother doesn't need any additional aggravation," said Vlad. "Wouldn't you agree?"
Danny stared at Vlad with half-lidded eyes, ready to get back to his room and crash into bed.
"I won't tell her," he said. "But then I don't want you ever trying to take me like that again. Or kill my dad. Or any of your other schemes to hurt or control my family."
"I bet it feels good to finally have something to hold over my head, doesn't it, little badger?"
Danny did not respond, his eyes still partly lidded.
"Are you ready for me to bring the detective back in?" asked Vlad, his eyes pulsing with a red glow.
Danny blinked and looked down at himself, at his wrists. His tears had washed away a little of the makeup covering the yellowing bruises.
He grabbed the blanket and pulled it over him, hugging and covering his whole body up to his neck. He shivered and then nodded at Vlad.
Vlad smiled, and then the glow in his eyes fizzled away, melting into the normal dark brown color of the detective's eyes. He looked at Danny very seriously but said nothing. Danny stared back, recalling the last question the detective had asked before Vlad overshadowed him.
"No." Danny locked eyes with the detective. "My mother has never hurt me."
All of his tears had left him. Nothing inside of him for the moment.
