Chapter Text
Warm light washed over the room, draping his figure in its yellows and oranges. From the monitors, Danny could see how the olive undertones in his skin seemed to be at home in the welcoming backdrop. Still, it didn’t stop the sweat from trickling down his neck as the halo of lights slow-roasted him from every angle.
It was to humanize him, reporter Harriet Chin had explained from her seat, watching as a sound engineer fastened the lapel microphone to his shirt. They wanted to make him feel like anyone’s next-door neighbor. Not a scary ghost, just a victim of an unfortunate legal system.
An unfortunate legal system, Danny had internally repeated, fighting the urge to rub the raised lines under his button-up shirt. That was one way to put it.
But right now, he just felt hot, and he didn’t much like heat. He could feel his body reacting in kind, burning deep from the fried nerves fighting to repair themselves inside him. Just as they had been doing for the past…
…how long?
“Here,” Harriet Chin said, her words ripping through his discomfort. She turned the tablet around to face him.
Too keenly aware of the cameras surrounding him and the lapel mic recording his every breath, he fitted as neutral of an expression on his face as he could as he looked down at the screen.
A face he knew too well stared back at him. It was a man, his senior, with a square jaw and high cheekbones. His strong nose sloped downward at the point, and his forehead was smooth, blending impeccably into his bald scalp. In one ear was a hooked earpiece with a curly wire jutting out from behind.
Old school, of course. Danny remembered when the wire went out of fashion for the new Bluetooth earpieces.
Very little changed in there, after all.
Harriet hit play, and the man began speaking. “Our goal was to uncover who the kid had been. If we could understand that, then we would know his human past, what makes him tick, and most importantly, why he became the ghost he is today.”
The camera cut to an older woman with pale skin and poofy gold hair that curled up at the end. Deep lines creased her face, and pale pink lipstick brushed her lips, adding an almost hint of youth to her wise demeanor.
“And what did you find? In that conquest?” the woman asked.
The camera cut back to the square-jawed man. He sat there in a moment of what was supposed to be read as contemplative silence, though Danny knew just how rehearsed it was. Then after his onerous pause, he sighed, shook his head, and said, “What we found was something so disturbing, it made us question our own reality.”
Danny felt his jaw set. He could have mouthed along to the following words; they were so deeply carved into the trunk of his memories. But he suppressed the urge, just as he suppressed the way his pulse quickened and the prickling heat on his skin intensified.
But he remembered. By god, he remembered. He didn’t even need to close his eyes to be brought back to that moment, back to that day.
Harriet paused the video, but Danny didn’t take his eyes off the screen. Off the man—no, off Operative O.
12:00:00
Danny tugged on his hood, hoping it covered the bulk of his hair. Under the table, his leg bounced, his anxiety refusing to let his body obey his pleas to act natural, just act natural.
He didn’t know where he was, not exactly. He hadn’t been paying attention to the road signs as he flew. More than likely, he wouldn’t have been able to read them anyway—not with the world so blurry around him.
All he knew was that he was far away from Amity Park. And hopefully, he was deep enough into the rural country to become completely unrecognizable.
But of course, no one would recognize him here. The only houses around were so run down that Danny would be shocked if any of their residents owned cable. Sure, the diner had a few small televisions on, but the few scraggly patrons around either had their noses shoved into their newspapers, or their eyes were keyed onto the fuzzy television playing today’s football game. No one cared about him, the tired, skinny-looking kid.
“You decided yet?” a voice above him said, nearly sending him flying from his booth.
Danny balled his clammy fingers into a fist and tried to awkwardly smooth out the menu paper he’d crinkled.
Act natural, act natural.
He risked a glance up to see a pale, stocky woman with bright red curls tied loosely into a bun. The blue apron fastened around her waist sported ketchup stains that Danny was sure were at least a week old.
But he could hardly judge, with how he must have looked to all of them.
On the other television mounted on the wall behind her, the silent commercial break ended to reveal the top of a news segment.
His mouth dried. Should he make a break for it? Surely, they would run the Anti-Ecto laws segment at the top, wouldn’t they? But if they got a national news station here, wouldn’t that mean the employees and regulars of this diner would be able to recognize him?
He must have frozen for too long because the woman's disinterested face was beginning to morph in a way that Danny didn’t like.
He blurted out, “Uh, are you still serving breakfast?”
“We serve breakfast all day, hun,” she said.
He knew that. It was at the top of the menu. Great, now she probably thought he was strange and illiterate.
Wonderful.
The familiarity of his internal sarcastic quips managed to shave off just enough stress for Danny to give what he hoped wasn’t a grimace as he said, “I’ll have the blueberry pancakes, thanks.”
She nodded at him, then turned back into the kitchen. Danny tracked her eyes, but she hadn’t looked up at the news.
Not that his face was on it. Yet.
Maybe he should leave. Not even risk it. Focus on finding somewhere to sleep tonight.
But no, he was safe. No one was looking at the news. The goddamn football game was on. Nobody cared about some stupid Anti-Ecto laws or the stupid Guys in White.
“Sacked!” one of the men huddled on the stool in front of the football television shouted.
Another, bigger man joined in the groans with, “He shoulda run!”
“It’s the offense. They’re all shit,” the first man said. Danny wondered if his wiry, overgrown mustache itched or if he’d simply gotten used to it. “Not a single goddamn person open! Shit, I’m tellin’ ya!”
“S’why he shoulda just run instead of lookin’ for an open guy,” the bigger man said.
They could have been speaking ancient Ghost Speak for all Danny knew, but so long as their attention was focused on that television and not the other, muted one, then Danny would be okay.
The woman rounded the counter again, this time holding a tray with a plastic cup full of water and a coffee. She set both down in front of Danny, who reached for the coffee with greedy hands. It burned at his touch, but he was too thankful to care.
“Figured you might want it,” the woman said. “With you traveling and all.”
Danny must have flinched because she immediately amended, “It’s just that I don’t recognize your face, is all. I don’t mean to pry into personal business.”
“Oh—I—” Danny swallowed. What was his rehearsed cover, again? “I’m going to see my cousin.”
She peered down at him, her eyes narrowing. “Your cousin’s out here?”
Behind her, the TV playing the news began their headline report, and Danny’s stomach plummeted to the floor.
Act natural.
His adrenaline was quickly taking over, and he had almost forgotten the question before he blurted out, “Chicago.”
However, her suspicion didn’t melt off her face like Danny envisioned it would. “Hm, okay.”
“I just got hungry,” Danny said.
The TV was now showing his face. Both of his faces.
Maybe she noticed how all the blood seemed to drain from his cheeks, or the way he kept glancing behind her, because she started to tilt her head back when Danny blurted out, “And, you know, diners in the middle of nowhere always have the best food.”
The screen cut, replacing his faces with the faces of Operative O and a reporter. Her lips were moving, but the black captions appeared a few seconds later. “What was your goal with all of this?”
“Are you trying to butter me up?” the waitress asked.
Danny ripped his eyes from the screen. For a second, he forgot again what they were talking about. Then he remembered he was trying to stall until the segment ended, and nerves hit him like a tropical storm all over again.
“Only for the free coffee,” he answered.
“Free coffee, huh? Well, I think I can bargain for that just this one time. It’s not often we get visitors, you know.”
Her voice may have been sugar, but Danny could still see how her eyes swept over him, pausing over every scruff in his hoodie.
Ancients, he must have looked like a right mess.
He glanced back at the screen to see Operative O saying, “What we found was something so disturbing, it made us question our own reality.”
What they found…about him? What a bunch of psychopaths.
Psychopaths that can end you, he reminded himself.
But he didn’t need that kind of optimism right now, so he tried to focus back on the waitress, but what were they talking about again? Something about…coffee?
“We discovered a ghost who had taken the body of a dead child and was using him like a doll. And no one knew. Not family, not friends. No one.”
Danny’s eyes bore craters in the TV. Though no sound was playing, Operative O’s tone was powerful, and nothing if not crystal clear.
And the message was cruel.
The screen cut back to Danny. Both of Danny, with Operative O’s lingering captions stamped below. And the real Danny, the one who was sitting in the booth, stood.
What else was there to do, anyway? After Operative O had told the whole world that Phantom was an evil ghost using a dead kid like a meat puppet for its own sick satisfaction?
“I just realized I forgot my wallet,” Danny muttered uselessly. He slipped past the waitress, and she let him go.
After all, she’d turned around. She’d seen the screen.