Touch Of The Past

Chapter 18

"Where's Phantom?" asks Kaldur sternly.

"What do you mean? He's right..." Too compliment the cliche comment, I point to where I'd seen him last, where he of course isn't right now. "Ugh, never mind."

Missing something? M'gann's voice sounds in all our heads. He turn to see her floating around the corner. Superboy follows in a fast walk, holding the unconscious form of the long lost Danny Phantom.

"Is he okay?" I ask, going to check him over.

Superboy breezes past me towards the elevator, carefully stepping over unconscious forms. "He was shot from behind when he was helping Miss Martian."

"What happened? Robin, the elevator."

I follow Kaldur's order as M'gann relays the story.

"There was a psychic. She caught me and Superboy off guard. I was pulled into a psychic battle where Superboy couldn't follow. We were equally matched. Then her concentration was lost and I could render her unconscious. When I returned to my own body, Phantom was shot to the ground but Superboy took down the one who shot him."

"Shot in the back," Superboy growls. "With something strong, too. He's got a bad burn. No heartbeat, either, but he didn't have one in the first place and is still breathing."

"No heartbeat..." Kid trails off.

"Aparato did say he was a ghost. Who's first?" I open the elevator with one more line of code. "Perhaps the hurt one?"

Superboy lets out a grunt of annoyance and shoves himself in the elevator, carefully folding Phantom in with him. As soon as Superboy is out I send up Zatanna and M'gann.

"Get him immediate medical attention," Kaldur commands.

"And I think he's sensitive to both light and sound. Maybe touch, too," I inform as the elevator shuts. As soon as they're gone I realize I hadn't told them to tell Jazz and Tucker. Vision and Aparato have no idea what happened. Unfortunately, the worsening of Phantom's health distracted me from that.

They probably saw him in the cameras, though.

I send Kaldur and Wally next. The leader and the fastest. I wish I'd gone up first, because I have the most medical training, but I'm the only one this well versed in hacking. Geez, I wish Tucker was ready for field work.

"You found him, right?" Artemis asks. A guard had woken up and tried to shoot, but she just roundhouse kicked him in the head and he went back down.

"Yeah." My voice sounds a little distant, like it always does when I'm deep in thought.

"And?"

"Not good." I shake my head. "The amount of security on him was ridiculous, and his injuries are extensive. They've never given him time to heal, so he has half-closed gashes all over. And, er, there was this villian in Gotham once. Electrocuted people as a kind of shock therapy."

The elevator opens and Artemis and I squeeze in there. We aren't pushed up against each other, but we're too close. I give a little uncomfortable shrug and she smirks a bit. "He's been electrocuted?"

I nod. "Severely. The two impact points are on the head, I think. His hair is really long. But that kind of electrocution is used to cure people of free will. The villian, he made it so they'd obey anything."

"Why didn't it work on him?"

"Who knows? He's a ghost. Maybe it's different."

"We have him now... But something tells me these guys aren't going to just let him go."