I blinked blearily at the whiteboard, trying and failing to focus on whatever was written up there that was supposedly related to Shakespeare.

My stomach curled in on itself when a tiny, almost nonexistent trace of ectoplasm wafted into my nostrils. I felt my claws poke out of the tips of my fingers, ready to attack whatever ghost- or more likely, Mom and Dad's experiment- had dared venture too close. My fangs quivered in my mouth, barely held back from descending and making themselves known.

It was horrible, I'm starving, but I'm not. My human stomach is completely full, comfortably not hungry, but my ghost stomach is empty and for whatever reason, someone thought it would be a good idea to put spikes in it and it is stabbing itself and everything is very unpleasant, and I haven't eaten ectoplasm since O got here three days ago and everything sucks.

Why on earth did anyone think making the ghost kid need ghosts as a form of sustenance was an actual good idea because I have a first hand account that it is not in any way okay.

Luckily, O will leave later today and I will be able to eat all the ectoplasm I want and it will be glorious.

But first I have to get through the school day.

A spasm tore through my body when the smell of ectoplasm got stronger. My vision blurred even more, making the world look like a blobby mess. Hot tears formed at the corners of my eyes, threatening to fall.

I battled through the pain, not even making a sound. Until a ghost phased through the white board.

The other students, even Mr. Lancer ran away screaming when the ghost lobbed an ectoblast weakly toward Mr. Lancer and put a hole through the wall instead of his head.

The smell of ectoplasm was too strong and my vision tunneled. The only thing I could see was the ghost, and it looked delicious.

I felt the pressure that had been building in my chest explode, finally releasing the chilled tension in my body.

I lunged.

It dodged.

I fired an ectoblast.

It was thrown into the hallway.

Everyone was watching. Some people had their phones out.

I tore into the ghost.

Every drop tasting like heaven, the sour taste feeling like it echoed around my body, energizing me and making the pain go away.

I heard someone yelling my name in the crowd, but I couldn't bring myself to care.

I licked my fingers, swallowing what was left of the ghost and turned to my classmates. Looks of horror and confusion marred their faces. Sam and Tucker were edging around the hallway, trying to get into the classroom, probably to find me.

"Students, evacuate the hallway. I'm going to take care of this ghost." O's booming voice came from behind me. The students scattered, Sam and Tucker scurried into the classroom and hid behind the door, peeking around the corner to watch. "Ghost," I turned to look at O, his suit was a crisp white and sunglasses hid his face. " you're coming with me."

He pulled out an ectogun and charged it up, aiming it right at me.

The edges of my vision went black, I felt my body shake and weaken, the high from the ectoplasm wearing off. I was crashing.

The pressure returned to my chest with a flash of white light. The world tipped sideways and was dissolved by darkness.

The world blinked back into painful, aching existence. I reached an arm up to rub away the headache that was quickly forming between my eyes. Or, I would've reached up, but my arm was held firmly by my side, something cold and stiff holding it in place.

"Wha-?" I sat up as much as I could to look down at my wrists. Metal cuffs tied my hands and feet down to the edges of a hospital bed.

The hospital room, that I am apparently in, was painted a soft, yellow color, that brightened it up quite a bit. A large window overlooked an evergreen forest. A television hung just above a series of whiteboards marked with medical jargon and a telephone mounted on the wall. To the left of my bed, an uncomfortable looking seat held a man, O, snoring and drooling on his nice suit. I cleared my throat, trying to wake him up.

O jerked out of his sleep, his eyes flitted around the room anxiously before they landed on me. "You're awake." He stretched and sat up, adjusting his suit and grimacing at the damp puddle of drool.

"Just woke up. What happened?" He wiped off his face and looked down.

"Your parents told me everything when I brought you in. Did you really think it was a good idea to go without ectoplasm for three days?"

Memories came flickering back. Starvation, the ghost in the classroom, Sam and Tucker, eating the ghost, then darkness. "Well, no, but I couldn't eat any around you, you would've found out. Not that it matters much now…" I trailed off and sighed.

"Yeah, well, your parents should've called me right when it first happened. I don't want them to go to prison."

"So don't tell anyone."

"Danny, we're in Wisconsin. We're in the GiW HQ medical wing. Everyone already knows."

Panic "What-but, what about Mom and Dad?"

"I told everyone it was the first time anything happened. It was sudden. Your parents had no idea, because there was nothing to have an idea of. They thought you were still human, you thought you were still human, and there were no symptoms of your species change until it was all triggered all at once because of the ghost in the classroom."

O looked guilty. Why? He saved my parents, and me probably. "Thank you."

"It was no problem, Dann-o. But you know what this means, right? You have to pretend like you have no idea how to use your powers or anything, but remember that I've supposedly explained all of this to you. So pretend like you know about it, but don't actually know. If that makes any sense." I nodded grimly and his face brightened into a smirk. " Honestly, what kind of godfather would I be if I arrested your parents for something like this?" He put on a fake smile and ruffled my hair.

"Not much worse than you are now." I snarked. "But can I get out of these cuff things, they're kinda restricting."
He snorted. "They're supposed to be. I need to go get the doctor. Hold on." He stood and walked over to the door, opening it a crack and calling into the hallway. When he came back, an older woman, dressed in a labcoat was with him.

"Hello, Danny. I'm . I'm your attending physician. I just need to check you over and we can get you out of those restraints. Could you please lay down?"

I did as I was told as the doctor bustled around, checking the IV that had been carefully jabbed into my arm, slowly feeding me ectoplasm from the drip. She slid it out of my arm, holding a pad of gauze up to it to staunch the bleeding and taped it up.

After a few more quick checks and a little bit of fussing, she undid the straps at my wrists and helped me sit up, giving me a glass of water to drink before clearing me and scurrying out of the room with a polite goodbye.

"What now?" I asked O. "Do I get to go home?"

O winced and took a deep breath. "Uhm, well-no."

I felt my heart drop. "What?! Why not?!"

"Because of the agreement between your parents and the government. Technically you're the property of the GiW. While you were out everyone was debating about what should be done with you. You'll be able to go back home when you're not on a mission or in training, and your family will be able to visit you if you're not busy. But we can call you in whenever to go on a mission."

"Why are you letting me see them?" I narrowed my eyes at him distrustingly. It's a fair question, I mean, I'm basically their slave or whatever, so why would they let me keep my old life?

"You've already established a life for yourself in Amity Park. It would be suspicious if you suddenly disappeared without a trace. Suspicion makes people investigate, and when people investigate, they find things, and the next thing we know, this whole experiment is on the front page of papers. Not everything that's been going on here has been exactly… constitutional, if you catch my drift. Human experimentation is technically illegal with things like this, and we've got 14 skeletons in our closet from the Halfa Program alone, don't even get me started on all the other experiments we've tried out."

Oh, so they're letting me live a semi-normal life just to save face. Nothing else. No reasons like 'because he's still half human and has feelings and shit'. Just for publicity. That makes me feel super safe. "What happens now, then?"

O walked confidently out the door and into the hallway, with me trailing behind. "You need to be trained. An inexperienced kid going up against a ghost with powers you can barely control? That's a lawsuit waiting to happen." We rushed through the endless white hallways and eventually reached an elevator.
The inside was, surprise, surprise, white. O pushed a button labeled 34 and the elevator lurched into action, bringing us up to the 34th floor. The doors slid open with a ding, and we stepped out and walked down more white hallways.

We finally stopped in front of some large double doors, white, obviously, and imposing. O opened the door and strode inside, setting a large hand on my shoulder.

Lab equipment was shoved into one corner of the massive room, possibly a gym. Exercise equipment was scattered throughout. In the corner with the science junk was a man, tall and lean, a thin ponytail of white-gray hair tied neatly back over his neck. He heard the door slam shut behind me and O and turned around, his crystal blue eyes set deeply into his face, edged with crow's feet, beneath them bags drooped, giving his face a more elongated appearance. His eyes landed on me and a sickly sweet smile came to his thin lips. "You must be Daniel," He sauntered towards me, hand outstretched. I felt O tighten his grip on my shoulder. "I am going to be training you. I'm Vlad Masters."