A/N: An AU in which the Guys in White are competent, to the point that they destroy the Ghost Zone, banishing ghosts to this plane of existence and using the resulting fear to overthrow the government and otherwise create a dystopia. This is just a fraction of the universe that's in my head, so if there's interest, I might flesh it out through this story, scene by non-chronological scene. Standard disclaimers apply.

Logically, she knew she had to take the shot, but she wasn't sure she could bring herself to do it.

"Just take the shot. Jazz, please, they'll know if you don't, and they'll hurt you."

He was right, of course, they would, and she'd be punished, slated for programming, and they'd take away her will and wash her clean. Wash her white.

Just like they'd been trying to do to everyone who had resisted since the Merge.

Danny hadn't told her the little he'd known of the plans of the Guys in White at the time, but she was certain he hadn't known that this was coming. He'd have asked for her help if he had. Even Vlad—

But Vlad hadn't known the truth, either. Even when he'd been playing at mayor, he'd kept the GiW at arms' distance. He'd been careful to protect his secret. And, whether it had been his intention or not, he'd been careful to protect the Ghost Zone and all its inhabitants.

But the Guys in White saw ghosts as a threat, and they had never abandoned their effort to destroy the Ghost Zone. Danny had told her afterwards that he'd thought this world would cease to exist if the Ghost Zone were destroyed, but it hadn't. Reality had…wobbled, instead, as it had struggled to absorb its mirror, and now ghosts were a reality no one could deny.

Ghosts were a reality, their threat indisputable, and the Guys in White were more powerful than ever, given how they'd seized control of the government after declaring a national state of emergency.

She'd never realized they had factions in other countries, too.

She'd never thought she'd be trying to defend her little brother against a global threat.

She'd never thought she'd fail this miserably.

"It's okay," Danny said. He made no move to avoid her, even though the half-demolished shell of a building on his left wouldn't stop him any more than the empty air on his right. He knew the risks they'd already taken and how much greater those consequences would be for her if he ran now. He thought it was worth staying. She didn't. She knew what would happen if this went wrong, if they didn't play it just right. "Just take the shot."

It wasn't okay. It wouldn't be okay either way. But the cameras were on them, and Jazz couldn't lower her gun. She had to keep pretending. Pretending that she thought her brother an abomination, that breathing in the choking dust of their ruined world was a necessary stepping stone as they remade it from the ashes of the Merge, that she was on the right side of this because she stood with the Guys in White.

"You were supposed to be gone by now," she whispered. Technus had knocked out the audio in this sector, but she couldn't be certain that it was still off. Tucker had already alerted them that he'd been forced to restore visual, and if too many others were watching, he couldn't take too long fixing the audio without it being suspicious.

He was a plant, pretending to work for the Guys in White, just as she was. They were fighting from within, bolstering the resistance.

But they were losing.

And Danny was supposed to have left this sector long behind, and he hadn't, and her team would be expecting her to report in, and she'd already be in trouble for not staying with her partner as protocol demanded.

They'd be suspicious of another glitch in her suit's camera, in another fault in her gun, and she'd spent too long on the training course under careful scrutiny to claim bad aim. With the sun directly overhead, she couldn't even claim that as an excuse—not that the visor in her government-issued helmet made that excuse viable, anyway.

Danny smiled at her. "We need you on the inside. Besides, I'll recover."

"Not fast enough," Jazz countered. "If I fire, there'll be a search. You won't make it past the shielding, especially not now that they know who you are."

Danny wasn't a shapeshifter, and now that his identity wasn't a secret, he couldn't hide.

He was being hunted.

By people who cared less about him than she did.

"You can't let me go. It'll blow your cover."

Her hesitation was already endangering it, but— "Fight me."

"What?"

"Fight me. I'll call for help, fire and miss, and then you can fly, Danny. Hide. Dive into the earth if you have to to avoid the ecto-pulses, but just hide." It was the only thing she could think of. He was too valuable to risk, but he was right, too: so was she. "It won't be the first time we've had to pretend to fight."

"We were more evenly matched before," Danny said, but he let his hands light up green in preparation of sending a ghost ray her way. He wasn't wrong, of course. That had been years ago. She'd been wearing the Fenton Ecto-Skeleton, and he'd been weaker than he was now.

"If you pull your punches," she said quietly, "they'll just think it was out of some lasting vestige of misguided affection. From Before."

He nodded, and then he shifted his stance, and she shifted hers, and she aimed for his shoulder knowing he'd feint right before swinging left and she'd miss and—

Red light engulfed Danny, and all Jazz could hear was his scream.

He dropped.

His screams cut off as he crashed into the ground, but they still echoed in her ears.

Jazz couldn't breathe, but her eyes met Sam's. Sam's lip curled before she picked her way across the wreckage. "You broke protocol." Sam's voice was cold. Hard. Cruel. "You let that ghost separate us and then you pursued without waiting for backup." She reached Danny and kicked him in the side, hard. Jazz winced. "Still animate. Come on. Let's secure it."

Jazz took one wooden step forward. Then another. And another.

Her reluctance wasn't missed by Sam, who sent another sharp look her way after she snapped the Eco-Cuffs onto Danny. "Remember your allegiances, Fenton," she hissed. "I saw you hesitate. Don't think I won't report you if this one conveniently gets away before we get back to base."

"I know," Jazz murmured. She knew the risks of what she was doing. She knew what she was fighting for, who she was fighting for, and why.

Sam had been captured when a rebel stronghold had fallen two months ago, and her loyalties had been washed away, replaced with the lie that had been fed to the rest of the world. Jazz had thought requesting her as a partner would enable her to keep an eye on Sam, but it was Sam who was watching her, and Jazz couldn't guess how long she'd stay silent about what she'd already seen.