Gravitational Phantoms

Chapter Four

Danny was tied to a cold metal table, his arms and legs secured with glowing green straps. He struggled weakly to escape, but his efforts were fruitless. The door to the lab room creaked open.

Maddie and Jack entered, followed by several of the agents. The woman who had raised him lifted a gleaming ectoradium scalpel, a cruel expression on her face.

She set it against the already created mark and began to slice. Danny's back arched off the table as he screamed.

"No-nonononono please stopstopstop I'm your son! Please! I'm your son! Your son! Stopstop!" Danny screeched in agony as the green blade ripped his abdomen apart.

A fist slammed into the side of his head as black encroached on the edges of his vision.

"Quiet!" Jack bellowed. "You're not my son! You're just a worthless ghost freak."

"I swear!" Danny sobbed hysterically. "I swear I'm your son! I swear IswearIswearIswear! Stop Stop Stop Stop! Please!"

Danny thrashed and shrieked, but nobody moved to assist him.

Instead, electricity arced down the straps and onto his body.
The white ring formed around the Halfas waist. It split in two, and Danny changed back into his human form. More pain raked throughout his entire body. Danny struggled to break free from his restraints.

"-ny! Danny! Wake up! It's just a dream!"

Somebody was shaking him and shouting. Danny shot up with a howl of pain and fear. For a moment he had no idea where he was, and terror overwhelmed his senses.

Danny sprang from his position as jumped back into the corner. Burning erupted from his spine, and Danny whimpered in distress and surprise.

The lamp clicked on, and Danny squinted his eyes against the bright light. Dipper was crouching in front of him, a worried expression on the boy's face.

There was a pounding sound outside of the door, and it slammed open. Stan and Ford ran into the attic with Mabel on their heels.

"What's going on here?" Stan asked. "We heard screaming. Is everyone okay?"

Danny curled into as small a ball as he could. Dipper stood up.

"We're fine. Danny was having a bad nightmare, and that was the screaming you heard."

"Must've been a really bad nightmare," Stan muttered.

"N-not really," Danny stuttered.

"I-I've had worse."

They all looked at him, all surprised that he had spoken without prompting. Uncomfortable with the attention, Danny ducked his head back down.

"Do you want something to eat?" Mabel asked. Her family members all blinked at her. The twelve-year-old shrugged. "What? Sometimes I get nightmares when I don't eat dinner."

Danny lifted his shoulders slightly in a half-shrug. "I-I guess I could eat something."

Mabel beamed. "I'll go heat up the soup!"

She bounced off down the hallway.

Dipper glanced at his stomach. "I heard you yelp. Did your stitches break or something?"

"J-just bumped my back a l-little bit," Danny answered nervously.

"Well, it's been long enough since you took the first two for you to take some more pain pills if you need them. Are you sure that you're okay? Does anything hurt?"

Danny stiffened. The last time that he had heard those words...

"Does that hurt, Phantom?" Agent G asked, snapping the whip down across his spine.
Danny whimpered as a reply. The whip cracked down even more harshly this time.
"Liar!" The agent growled. "You can't feel pain! You're just an ectoplasmic cluster of post-human consciousness! Nobody would ever care about something like you!"

Danny shook his head quickly. "N-no. I'm fine."

Mabel bounced through the door, carrying a bowl.
"I brought you some food! It's still kind of cold, but that's okay!"

She held it out. Danny tentatively took it from the brunette, flinching a bit as she handed him a spoon.

Danny took a small bite. It was still a bit cool, but it made it a little easier to eat; with his core in the dangerous condition that it was there was no telling what too-hot food could do to it.

The soup was pretty good, actually, and Danny ate slowly. Not just because it tasted nice, but also because the Pines family was watching him.

When the bowl was empty, Mabel snatched it from his hands and charged back out of the room. She grabbed Stan and Ford, somehow managing to drag them out of the room. Dipper helped Danny to his feet, the hybrid only trembling slightly when Dipper's hand grazed the edge of one of the cuts on his side.

Danny lay beneath the sheets, listening to the crickets and night animals outside of the house.

It suddenly occured to him that he had no idea where he was.
Another part Illinois other than Amity Park? Danny didn't know if the lab had even been in Amity, much less how far it was from where he was now. Maybe he could ask in the morning.

From across the room, Danny noticed a faint glow. Dipper had lifted the covers up over his head, and they were thin enough to show that something was gleaming beneath it. Maybe some kind of flashlight? Although it was a little bit too purple-white-blue for that.

Danny closed his eyes and sank of into sleep, where hopefully he wouldn't have a nightmare for once.

The world around him was bright green, with violet dancing across it. Danny was standing on a floating island, the bottom breaking off into a deep chasm. Just ahead of him, the green sky met an expanse of grey, white, and black. The colors blended strangly, not actually mixing.
The strange grey was full of doorways and windows, that Danny somehow knew not to touch. Strange blue light began to creep toward him, undulating and gleaming.

It grabbed at the green and purple, dragging it into the grey. They two colors were swallowed up, and Danny realized that it was being eaten, destroyed by the parasitic grey light.

A voice whispered and echoed across the gloom, growing louder and stronger until it boomed from all directions:

"A darkness approaches.
A day will come in the future when everything you care about will change.
Beware the flames, young Halfa, and do not succumb to the demons, despite how tempting they may seem."

An eerie laugh began to grate across Danny's ears, and he clapped his hands over them. A bright white ring of symbols appeared around him, scorching its way into his retinas. Somebody else was talking now, saying something to him. Straining his ears, Danny managed to hear what it was saying.

"So, DP, what are you going to do?"

Danny awoke to the sound of screaming.