.

Brian supposed it could have been worse.

He was fairly certain that he was, at the moment, in some kind of psychiatric facility. Which was a good thing, because he was in the middle of a psychotic break. Of course, the persistent hallucinations made it hard to tell.

In any case, he was absolutely sure that he hadn't been kidnapped by men in black ripoffs. The white clothing gave it away. Obviously they were orderlies. His left arm also hadn't gained mysterious and unpredictable superpowers, nor did it occasionally change color. No sir. That had to be some kind of alien hand syndrome, which, most likely, had been caused by the head injury that had caused him to pass out on his hike a month before he had been 'kidnapped.' His head injury, which was definitely the reason he had passed out, rather that a result of passing out. He hadn't done anything ridiculous, like lose consciousness because a tear in reality had opened up on his arm. That would be insane!

His doctor certainly agreed that he was, and prescribed him antipsychotics. Then the orderlies (not government agents) had broken down the door and carried him away.

So he knew, in general, what was going on, though he couldn't be sure of the details. He really wished his hallucinations weren't so all-encompassing and internally consistent. It was depressing.

Sadly, it wasn't the only depressing thing.

Brian, and every other patient he saw at the facility, had to wear thick, electronic cuffs that he assumed were tracking devices either around their wrist or ankle. That in itself wasn't too bad. He could understand why he should wear one. The problem was what happened when he went to a doctor's appointment (definitely not a session of amoral human experimentation) and one of the doctors took it off.

The thing was, when the cuff was on, his arm looked normal and the orderlies treated him, well, like a patient at an asylum (even if they said things like 'sorry you got possessed,' instead of 'sorry you have a weird mental illness'). But when it was off, well... His hallucinations got sort of... abusive.

It was disheartening to have things like 'The only reason we haven't dissected you is because you've stolen a human body, ecto-scum!' and 'We're going to find a way to remove you and your kind from the face of the Earth and eradicate you like the disease you are!' shouted at you, even if you knew that it was all just random noise dreamed up by his subconscious.

Paradoxically, those statements gave him hope. Maybe the doctors were getting closer to finding a cure for what he had!

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Linda was fairly certain she wasn't crazy. Fairly. Before she had been dragged away here, she'd had a lot of independent confirmation that, yes, some weird (painful) green thing had snapped open across her abdomen while she was cooking one day, and, ever since, she'd had superpowers. Fifty-two was a really weird age to have a psychotic break, or come down with schizophrenia, anyway.

Sure, she'd gone through that phase, much like Brian was. Everyone here did. But it took too much energy to keep that delusion up and running.

The facts of the matter were that they'd all acquired superpowers, and that they'd been kidnapped by some shady organization (which may or may not have ties to the government) that thought they were possessed- though whether they were supposed to be possessed by ghosts, demons, or extra-dimensional monsters wasn't clear. Linda was fairly certain she wasn't possessed at all. If she was, the creature doing the possessing was so good at it that Linda couldn't tell the difference!

The facility, creatively called 'holding' by the 'agents,' was set up like an unholy, nightmarish mix between a prison, an asylum, and a research lab. It could have been worse. The 'agents' and 'doctors' were concerned enough about the mental and physical health of the 'possessed humans' to allow them certain privileges. For example, exercise, and socialization.

Counting Brian and Linda, there were twelve prisoners. Four were Chinese. Two were from Mexico. Two were from France. One was from South Africa. The last was an Arabic man that point-blank refused to associate with rest of them, though that was probably as much to do with the language barrier as anything else.

Brian (Canadian) and Linda (American) often found themselves together for a similar reason. They were both native English speakers. Similarly, they often were grouped with the two Francophones (Charlotte and Leo), since Brian, despite being incredibly deep in denial, was fluent in French, and the one South African man (Abraham), who spoke some English. The Mexicans also stuck together, as did the Chinese.

It was depressing, really. She was in her fifties. She shouldn't have to deal with cliques.

Feeling melancholy, Linda stirred the cornflakes that were her breakfast this morning.

Abraham slid in next to her.

"They moved someone new into the men's hall last night," he said.

"Oh," said Linda, shooting a glare across the table at Brian, who had told her nothing of the sort. "Did they?"

"Mhm. Yes. I heard them through my door."

"Think we'll see him today?" asked Linda. Usually, people were 'processed' before being brought here, but sometimes it happened after.

Abraham shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe not."

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Honestly, when his secret had been exposed to the GIW, Danny had anticipated worse. Much worse. Then, when he'd actually been captured, through a combination of stupidity and bad luck, his imagination had gone into overdrive. He kept waiting to be strapped down to a table, and for the agents to break out the scapels and syringes.

Shockingly, the GIW proved to have morals... At least where 'possessed humans' were concerned. Not terribly many of them, no, but some. Enough that, perhaps, Danny could leverage an escape. He would be heading straight for the Ghost Zone if he did, though. No more hiding out in the human world. That's what got him caught this time.

At least, that's what Danny thought before being led into a room with... others. Twelve others, to be precise. His core strained against the power-damping cuffs the GIW had fitted him with. He had five, wrists, neck, ankles. The others only had one apiece.

Danny could feel them.

The sensation was ever so faint, but it was there, and unmistakable. These people were halfas.

Okay. This would be trickier.

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Abraham generally considered himself a brave man. He had, after all, survived gang life in South Africa, and had done quite well for himself in semi-retirement. Yes, some of that was due to his odd talent of being able to step through walls, something he'd picked up after being (as far as he could tell) struck by lightning during a job. Even so, running with the gangs, being respected in the gangs took guts.

He hadn't just laid down when the GIW took him, either. He had fought. Then, when it became evident that they had more guns than even he did, and were much more willing to shoot directly at him, he had run. Running didn't last long, but it was the principle of the thing.

This boy- This boy scared him. Scared him in a way even looking down a barrel of a gun (and he had done that more times than he wanted to think about) did. It was something primal. Something deep. Something cold. Something about the way the boy moved- It was predatory, even with the guards' ray guns (or whatever they were) trained on him.

During his one stint in prison, Abraham had seen people like that, a very few of them, and he had always been sure to stay far away.

None of them had held a candle to this boy.

(Or maybe this place had just made him soft?)

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Charlotte watched the new prisoner carefully as he walked to the kitchen widow to get his food. He'd be replacing her as the youngest, unless she missed her mark. He might not even be an adult yet.

He was pale, dark haired, blue eyed. He could be European. She hoped so. She hoped he spoke French, or at least German. As much as she liked Leo, he was old enough to be her grandfather, and Brian... Well, Brian was nuts.

The boy turned, food tray in hand, and scanned the room. This time Charlotte wasn't quick enough to look down.

Charlotte was immediately struck with the impression that the boy didn't belong here. Which was stupid and obvious. None of them belonged here. But it was more true for him, somehow. He was- He was something wild. Something that should be free. Something powerful. A god in miniature.

She looked away, swallowing. Those eyes- They burned. Charlotte felt like they had seen right through her, right down to her soul. The boy- What was he?

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As Danny swept his eyes over the room, and met the eyes of the other prisoners, he was rewarded with tiny flashes of light and color, the ectoplasm in their eyes rising to the surface as their core responded to the perceived threat, and then subsiding again as they were suppressed by GIW cuffs. Interesting. The cuffs didn't suppress things all the way, then, not even for their relatively weak cores.

That could help in an escape. Maybe. He hoped it would, because even if he was confident he could manage his own escape, he wasn't going to leave all these people here.

Now, this would either be like school, or like prison. Danny, luckily (sadly), had been to both. For either one, the place where you sat could have potentially dire consequences. Unluckily, Danny hadn't ever been able to figure out a pattern to those consequences.

Danny decided to just sit down at the least populated table. If he was going to get everyone working together to escape, he might as well start with the outcasts, right? He had a feeling it would be easier, anyway.

The middle-eastern man sitting there glared up at him. Danny offered up a smile, and pushed his... food around on his plate with his spork. The man's core felt warm and golden, like a grain of sand.

"Go away," spat the man in Farsi.

"Why do you want me to go away?" asked Danny.

The man almost choked. "You speak Farsi?"

"A little bit," said Danny. He'd picked up a number of languages since his half-death. The Ghost Zone was a poly-lingual place, layered with cultures from all across time. He had to admit that he was much more familiar with dead or archaic languages than anything modern.

The man gave Danny a very suspicious look. "Did they send you, the white ones?"

"Pft. No. Not unless you count locking me up in here as sending me."

"You're the only one in this hell that speaks Farsi."

"Well, I guess it isn't a very common language?"

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It quickly became apparent that the new kid, an American named Danny, was some kind of genius, in addition to being massively creepy. He made Marco's skin crawl. But in, like, a good way? It was weird.

But then, ever since that weird seizure (that he was pretty sure wasn't a seizure at all at this point) he'd had a couple years ago, he'd been way more into creepy stuff. Before that, he'd been really freaked out by things like roadkill, dark, empty spaces, and horror movies, but afterward, they all just really spoke to him, somehow. Like they vibrated in his soul.

Considering that, he should have liked this place. It definitely had a 'cursed asylum' feel to it. But it was hard to like a place you were imprisoned in.

Anyway, the kid. He just- He moved so smoothly, so evenly. It was like he was gliding, ghosting over the ground. How did a person move like that?

Marco scratched his nose, and leaned over to whisper to Maria, "I think," he said, "that whatever we have, he has more of it."

Maria chewed on her lip. His lips twitched up slightly. It was cute. The two of them had been- Well, not dating, not here, but they were together. Sort of. Marco doubted that he would have had a chance, except that they were stuck in here, and they were the only ones who spoke Spanish. Maria was way out of his league. As far as Marco was concerned, their relationship was the only good thing to come of all this mess.

"Yeah, I think you're right," said Maria. "He looks too young to know so many languages, don't you think?"

"A bit, yeah. He looks, like, fourteen, or something. And, I mean, English, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, or whatever..." Marco gazed across the room to where Danny was talking to the Chinese people. He'd taken an English class in high school, before he'd been forced to drop out to support his family (God, he hoped they were doing okay without him), but he'd been terrible at it.

"Do you think," Maria glanced nervously at the guards, "do you think, maybe, with him, we could, you know. If he can talk to everyone?"

"Maybe," said Marco.

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If any of the others had spoken Chinese, hell, if any of them had had an ear for Asiatic language, it would have been obvious that Sumiko, Suk-Ja, Fen, and Yun were from three different countries. As it was, it was apparent that all the others thought they were Chinese, even with the language barrier being a kilometer high. The three of them got by with Suk-Ja's broken Chinese, kanji, and a lot of mime. At least at first. At this point, they had managed to make a sort of pidgin, and got on alright.

That's why it was such a shock that this kid, this western kid, could speak all three languages. Maybe his Japanese was weird, old fashioned, and not particularly grammatical, and he kept leaving off the honorifics, but it was Japanese. Sumiko's mother tongue.

His name was Danny, and his skin was colder than ice.

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It was apparent that the GIW were unhappy about Danny's meteoric rise to popularity. Why was it apparent? Because after the next few 'exercise periods' and 'meal times,' they kept him locked in his 'room.' Danny was more than a little annoyed. This put a serious damper on his nascent escape plans, and being stuck in such a tiny space was making him go crazy.

Although, to be fair, the GIW didn't leave him in his room the entire time. Oh, no. If they did that they couldn't have run their little experiments on him. These experiments were too horribly painful, but they were uncomfortable and annoying. Especially because they would have been an ideal time to attempt an escape, what with how the GIW scientists turned down the intensity of their cuffs while they ran them. Sadly, Danny didn't know where everyone else was during the experiments, so he couldn't try it.

On the other hand all the time gave Danny time to think, figure out how far he could push his powers with the cuffs, and meditate. Before he'd gotten revealed, Clockwork had been teaching him how to do it, and how to use it. Danny wondered if this was why. If Clockwork had known it would help him.

Meditating, Danny could feel the fabric of reality, its warp and weft, its thickness. It was thin, here. Worn. Not quite so much as in Amity Park, there it had outright holes, but still thinner than other places Danny had been. Danny doubted that it was by design. It would be stupid to store a bunch of part-ghost people in a place where the two worlds were almost touching. Then again, the GIW were kind of stupid. They might not even realize how thin reality was, here, even if that was one of the very first things Danny's parents had made a tool for. It was how they had selected Amity Park as the location for their portal.

Whatever. The GIW's loss. Danny's gain.

Maybe.

Proximity to the Ghost Zone would help his powers, anyway. A little bit. Kind of. It would be more useful if he had a portal, or if he could make portals, which he could not. Yet. He hoped to learn how, eventually.

So Danny spent what felt like several days trying to come up with a plan to get thirteen people up out of this hole. He had to assume they didn't have much in the way of control over their powers, and that the GIW would have ways to negate what powers they did have, above and beyond the stupid cuffs.

A few days in, Danny woke up in a cold sweat. The cuffs, the stupid cuffs. What if they weren't just stupid cuffs? What if they weren't just a way for the GIW to suppress the powers of their prisoners? They were certainly large enough for them to pack in more than that. If they could get microphones and GPS into cellphones, then they should be able to put that stuff into these giant cuffs. Heck, they could probably put in tasers, or a shot of some kind of sedative, just in case they needed to knock one of them out in a hurry.

That's what Danny would do, if he were designing them.

Okay. First thing Danny needed to do, was figure out how to get rid of the cuffs. Until then, Danny couldn't even talk about escaping, because the GIW might be listening in. Of course, that had been a concern even before, with all the cameras and guards everywhere. But if the cuffs were listening in on them... If they could be used to knock them out... That changed a lot.

How could he get rid of them?

Well, the GIW took the cuffs off for the tests. Danny bit his lip, trying to remember how they'd done that. He brushed his fingers over the outside of the cuffs. During the tests, they had inserted a small, thin metal rod, attached to a wire, into a small hole on the cuffs. He could probably make something that shape, but the wire made him think that it might be electrified, or something like that, and he hadn't seen if there were any finer features on the rod.

Danny groaned as he realized he would have to wait for the GIW to run experiments on him again before he could start his escape, just so he could see how the key worked. Or if he could steal it.

This sucked.

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Linda was getting worried about the new boy, Danny. He reminded her of her children, and he had been missing for over a week. Sometimes, if someone got violent with one of the guards, or if they needed extra recovery time after one of the 'treatments,' they would be isolated from the general population for a few days, but this was getting excessive. Linda wasn't sure what he could have done to warrant that kind of treatment, in any case. Danny had seemed so gentle. Yes, there was something unnerving and exciting about him, but after talking to him for a little bit, Linda could see that he was a very nice young man.

Everyone had been on edge after the second day Danny was missing. He had connected the twelve of them, with his incredible command of languages, in a way they hadn't been since they had been brought here. Linda now knew more about her fellow prisoners than she ever had. They were sitting closer together than they had before. They were communicating more than they had before. They almost felt united.

Linda had never hated being here more, had never hated this situation more.

She wanted out. They all wanted out. Except, maybe, for Brian.

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Brian was worried. It was the new patient. The one he wasn't sure was real. He had done something. Maybe. If he was real. Things had changed. Everyone was talking about... things. Things that sounded an awful lot like escape. They hadn't said the word, but Brian could feel it.

Or was that his mental illness acting up?

He didn't know, and it was driving him crazy. Crazier. The new patient had been weird. He had walked in with a cloak of mystery, with a cloak of- of power, and strength, and a bunch of other things and he was terrifying. Brian's vision rippled green in his wake. Green and wild. Beyond that, beyond that, it was like a false clarity had swept over him, and him unwilling. The lies, the hallucinations, they were more vibrant than ever, and no matter how he begged the orderlies, they wouldn't do anything about it.

It was a relief that he was gone. But it was also oddly disappointing. When he'd been here, when he'd been here, it had taken Brian a while to come up with a metaphor, it had been seeing the sun again, or like it. And how long had it been since he'd seen the sun, anyway? That was a little odd, wasn't it, even for a high-security mental hospital?

Brian's brain stumbled over the thought. That was wrong, wasn't it? When was the last time he had even seen a window? Were there any windows in here?

Before that could bother him too much, though, the new patient was prodded into the room by a pair of orderlies. Brian scowled, but couldn't keep it up long. It quickly transformed into a confused frown. It really was like he was the sun.

The new patient, Danny, Brian reminded himself, retrieved his food, and begged a cup of ice from the sever. He sat down with a faint smile on his face, and started to talk.

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Danny was worried about how closely the GIW were watching him, so he decided to go slow with his escape plan, and try to lull them into a sense of complacency. Well, that and make sure that everyone trusted him. Having them trust him was important, if they were going to listen to him when they escaped together.

In the meantime, Danny examined the contents of his tray. Everything was made of paper, or weak plastic. Could he turn the spork into a shiv? Maybe. He couldn't imagine it would do much good against the armor the guards were wearing. Maybe if they got one of them into an eye... Danny's mind cringed away from that. Even though it was the GIW, he had a hard time even imagining killing anyone.

He picked an ice cube out of the cup. He'd more than half expected the server to refuse him the ice. He moved the cube under the table, and sent a tiny pulse of his ice powers through it. He wanted to see if he could keep it cold and shape it. If he could do it, he could use the ice to mimic the key to the cuffs. He had been in for experiments again, and he had seen it. He'd also been able to determine that, yes, the darn thing was electrified. He didn't know how he'd mimic that, yet. Tiny ghost stingers, maybe? Pulling wires out of the wall? Ugh, this would be so much easier if he could just overload the cuffs. Too bad his new friends couldn't do that, or they would have already escaped. Double-ugh.

The shaping was going well.

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Abraham had a growing collection of shivs hidden throughout the facility. A rapidly growing collection of shivs. He knew he should be more careful about making them, that he shouldn't rush, otherwise he might get caught. He couldn't afford to get caught. If he got caught, they would take all the shivs, and he'd be shut in his 'room' as punishment. He didn't want that.

Ever since Danny had come, Abraham had the feeling that something big was going to happen. There was a tension in the air. Abraham didn't dare talk about it, in a group like this there was sure to be a snitch. Or was there? This wasn't exactly a traditional prison. Maybe everyone here was on the same page he was. Maybe they were all who they said they were.

So when it went down, whatever 'it' was, Abraham had to be ready. He had to be ready, with a weapon in hand.

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For a first time in a long time, Charlotte felt a growing sense of hope. Nothing had really changed, except that there were now thirteen prisoners instead of twelve, but it was like Danny was surrounded by an aura of hope. It followed him. At least it felt like that. Maybe, if there really were ghosts or spirits inside them, Danny had managed to pick up an angel.

Charlotte had been starting to make little preparations. If the kitchens served food that would keep, Charlotte would hide a little bit. If she saw a bit of loose thread, she would roll it up and hide it in her sock (they weren't allowed shoes). Sometimes she would pull threads from her clothes. There was a lot she could do with a bit of thread.

She had kept it up when Danny had disappeared for a week, and she was glad she had. She smiled at him across the table. It was too bad he wasn't older. When Charlotte was in high school, he was the kind of person she would have liked to have dated.

Danny smiled back.

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The ice grew and twisted under Danny's fingers, but he straightened it out, and tested a pulse of electricity. Yes. That seemed to work. Okay. It had been half a week since he'd been let back into the common areas, and he had made twelve icy keys. He was lucky ghost ice, even weak ghost ice, didn't melt normally, otherwise he'd only have one.

He'd spent the time talking to his fellow prisoners, working out who did what, and who knew what, and getting a feel for the layout of the facility. He had discovered that he wasn't the only one making plans to escape. Abraham was making shivs. Charlotte was hoarding food. Sumiko had something. Danny wasn't sure what.

None of them had told Danny any of this, and that made him nervous. If he could figure these things out, what did the GIW know? If they didn't know already, how soon would they?

Danny needed to do this soon. The longer he waited, the more chances the GIW had to stop him. At least Danny had something of a plan.

He licked his lips, and glanced at the guards. Then he leaned forward. Yun had been here the longest, so, Chinese was the language of choice for this bit of information.

"Have any of you ever tried to, you know, get away, before?" he asked.

Yun, and the few others who spoke Chinese, glanced nervously at the guards. "Yes," said the elderly Chinese woman, "but it did no good. They gassed the room. There's only pain in that direction."

"They gassed the room? Are you sure?"

"Yes? Why?"

"How long can you hold your breath?" asked Danny. He repeated the question in all the languages at the table. He got various answers. Short answers. He shook his head. "Try it now," he said.

Even Brian took a deep breath and held it. Danny counted silently, and smiled as they all passed the fifth minute. It had taken a while for that particular perk to kick in, at least for Danny, but all of these people had been half-ghost for some time. Okay. Good. Good. It was more than ten minutes before any of them had to inhale.

Everyone seemed to understand, then, what this meant. Their cores flared with excitement. They reached down, under the tables, to their socks. That was the favorite hiding spot here, apparently.

The guards also seemed to notice something wrong, because they started towards the tables, hands on their batons. Ha. That was a mistake. Everyone leaped up, and assembled on the opposite side of the table. Linda pushed Brian underneath. The tables were bolted down, but they were a good momentary blockade. Charlotte had pulled a length of cord from her sock, and Abraham a shiv. Several shivs. He started passing them out. How had he gotten so many shivs in his sock?

Not important. Danny pulled off his own socks, so he wouldn't accidentally break the keys, jumped up on the table, and promptly introduced a guard's face to the bottom of his foot. He felt the man's nose crunch. He cringed internally. He didn't like hurting people, even if they were GIW jerks. He ducked and rolled, grabbing the man's baton as he did so.

Meanwhile, Charlotte and Abraham were double-teaming the guard on the right. Charlotte was using her cord as a garrote- Sort of. It was pretty clear that neither she nor the cord were really up to the job. Abraham was trying to stab the man.

To Danny's other side, the others were alternating between trying to stab the man and hitting him with the flimsy plastic trays. They weren't doing much damage, but they were occupying the man, which left Danny with the remaining four, one of whom was standing by the door, talking into a radio. A quick blow across the face with the baton took out the first of these took out the first, the others were more prepared. Two of them came at him at once, and succeeded in bringing him to the ground. He used his teeth, then, making neat rows of puncture marks on the man's shoulder. When the man tried to pull away, Danny smashed his fist into his gut, and twisted to kick the other one.

By this time, the last one was coming at Danny too, and Danny was starting to regret not taking the time to try to take off his cuffs. Would it really have taken so long that he couldn't afford it?

Marco brained the man with one of the batons. Danny wormed his way out from underneath the weight. Marco sported a number of painful looking bruises, as did some of the others, but the last man was now outnumbered thirteen to one. It wasn't much of a fight.

Danny ran back over to his sock as a hissing sound started to fill the room. That would be the gas. Everyone took a deep breath and held it. Danny shook out the keys, and passed them out. Danny stuck the key into the first of his cuffs, and prodded a bit of electricity through it. Too much. The cuff came off, but the key cracked. Next one. He had to get his off first, so that he could batter down the door. He didn't think the others could do that. He broke two more keys before he had the trick of it. Everyone was too close, watching him. His hands were shaking. He wished he could take a calming breath. The one on his neck was the hardest, because he couldn't see it.

His powers came back to him, sparking through his veins. He started in on the others. He unlocked three, and broke another key. He had to be more careful. What if one of them didn't unlock the first time? He manged to do a streak of four without breaking any. Finally, everyone was unlocked, and with keys to spare.

They were running out of air. Danny walked to the door, and put both hands on it. The metal turned cold. Ice built under his fingers. He pushed, and the door bent away.

Beyond the door were guards in gas masks.

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Marco felt wild. He felt free. It was so odd, like he had been wearing something too small, and now he could move properly, now he could expand. He punched a man, and sheer force followed the arc of his arm.

Maria was right behind him, and it felt like she was feeding him somehow. Giving him power, faith, something. He felt like he was going mad. He punched someone without touching them, and they went flying back into a wall.

Maria pulled him back momentarily, and pulled a gas mask over his face. What would he do without her?

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Sumiko had never been in a fight this wild. For that matter, Sumiko had only ever been in one fight, that is, one physical fight, and that was when these people had taken her. It obviously hadn't gone in her favor.

She could hardly believe what she was doing now- No. Scratch that. She could. It was only a different application of the strange powers she'd been manifesting before her imprisonment. What she couldn't believe was what everyone else was doing. Specifically Danny.

He still looked human, except for his eyes. He wasn't like her, or the others, who each had a limb or some part of their body change into something strange and monstrous. But he was doing more than all the others. He was wielding ice and green fire and shields- He made them all untouchable.

She pried a gas mask off one of the unconscious men, and ran over to Danny, who didn't yet have one. He put it on smoothly, without really paying attention, like he had done it before.

Before she knew it, the fight was over. They had won. The hallway was theirs.

"Okay," said Danny. "I don't suppose any of you have a map? Anything else useful?" He said somethings in different languages.

"I have a map," said Sumiko.

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Danny had been in wild fights in the past, battles where people on both sides worked at cross-purposes to themselves because they didn't know how to work together. This fight hadn't been like that, and Danny didn't understand it, because it should have been. The other halfas, or part-ghosts, or whatever they decided to call themselves at the end of this, shouldn't have fought this well, this smoothly alongside him.

Of all the people Danny had fought with, he had only worked that well with Sam, Tucker, Danielle, and sometimes Jazz, and for all of them but Ellie, it was a feat won through many battles, practice, and hard work. It wasn't something that had come naturally, it wasn't the work of a moment. It wasn't effortless. Again, except for Ellie. But then, Ellie was his twin, his clone, a picture of himself as another person. It was reasonable that they work well together.

But maybe that hadn't been the only reason... He remembered when he had first met Vlad, before he'd revealed himself to be a total fruitloop. Danny had liked him. Had been drawn to him, even. He couldn't help but wonder if something similar was happening here, if this was a ghost thing, or a halfa thing.

Danny looked down at Sumiko's map. It was crude, and had many blank spots, but it lined up with what Danny knew of the place, and gave him insight he hadn't had before.

"I don't suppose any of you can fly?" he asked, his voice made strange by the gas mask.

The others shook their heads. No, they could not. Danny hadn't expected them to, not with their incomplete transformations. He licked his lips, and examined the ceiling. The GIW would have, or should have, used anti-phasing material in the construction of this building. But the GIW were morons. They might cut corners. After a moment of hesitation (what if they had something like the thermos, that would only affect ghosts?) Danny went ghost, and floated up to the ceiling to test it.

He heard gasps from below, and smiled nervously down at his new friends. They were startled. Clearly, they hadn't been expecting this.

Danny floated back down. "I can bring us through this ceiling, I think," he said, "but we all have to hold on to each other. So, um, grab anything you think you can use," he gestured at the weapons the GIW agents had used, and then held out his hands.

It took a few precious minutes for everyone to arrange themselves, but then Danny spread his intangibility and flight to them, and they went straight up. There were agents on the next floor with ectoguns, but Danny kept going, hoping the next floor wasn't proofed against intangibility, either. He made it up three floors, before he ran into a glowing green shield. Danny hissed at it as it burned his skin. He dropped down to the floor, and looked around. No agents here, not yet.

The shield ran flat along the ceiling. Danny let go of his ghost form, pulling it back into a tight ball in his chest.

"Lift me up," he said, and the two tallest men, Abraham and Mouhammed put him up on their shoulders. Danny, with his human hand, touched the shield. It went through. He sighed in relief. So that would still work. They hadn't come up with something that would trap halfas in their human form. Not yet. Or maybe they just hadn't been able to make something impenetrable to halfas without also making it impenetrable to humans.

"Okay," he said. "We need to find some stairs up."

"That way," said Sumiko, pointing. "I think."

"Are you sure?"

"No, of course not. But that's where they are on other levels, and they seem to like thing pretty uniform here."

Danny nodded. Rooms and rooms went by, and the fluorescent lights were turned off, so that the only illumination was the glow of the other half-ghosts and the shield. Apparently, the GIW thought it would be harder for them to see in the dark. They couldn't be more wrong. Without the harsh white glare of the walls, Danny's eyes were sharper, from the mutters of surprise shared behind him, the others had discovered the same thing.

They came to the end of the hallway, a door marked as a stairwell. It was locked, but that was no barrier. Danny froze the lock and broke it.

There were echoes coming up and down the stairwell. Above, the stairs disappeared into the shield.

"Make yourselves human again," said Danny.

"How?" asked Fen, and Maria, and Linda, and Leo, all in different languages.

Oh. Danny hadn't anticipated this issue. He could hear boots coming up the stairwell, and down.

"You pull it in," said Danny, "towards your core. You had to have done it before, before the GIW took you. Right?"

"It wasn't this much back then," said Linda, gesturing at her torso, which had grown a glowing blue sweater, and at her neck, whose skin had grown mottled and grey. Her other hand was wrapped around Brian's wrist. She'd been dragging him along all this time, even though he'd been having some kind of panic attack.

"Just- Just try, please. Think of how it feels to be human, the temperature, the weight. Think of bringing the power, the energy, back in."

The ghostly limbs began to fade, but not fast enough. Not nearly fast enough. He caught a flash of white from below, and called up a shiny round shield around his little group. He felt the shocks of blaster fire hitting the shield, but he also noticed that where his shield touched the other, his shield pushed the other out. He stepped towards it, and it bowed out more.

"Follow me," he said, pushing up the stairwell. His little bubble traveled with him, the people in it just barely keeping up. GIW agents were thrown back, into the walls and railing. Keeping up a shield for this long was tiring, especially in human form, but he didn't dare stop to change. The lapse in focus would make his shield flicker. He couldn't afford that. There was too much force behind those ectoblasts the GIW were shooting at them.

The shield reformed behind them, as Danny's bubble passed cleanly through it. They jogged up, and up. They reached the top of the stair, and Danny threw out his hands. The others grabbed on, and he dropped the shield as he went ghost flew up, and up.

They came out in a pale blue sky, a desert populated only by square white buildings below them. A road led away, meeting a larger one at the edge of his vision. Danny, straining himself, turned them all invisible, and flew to a set of low hills. They would be out of sight, this way.

As soon as they set down, Danny dropped his ghost form, so as not to show up like a beacon on whatever scanners the GIW had. He looked at his new people, and they looked back at him.

Brian was staring at him, as if seeing him for the first time. "This, this is real, isn't it?"

"Yeah," said Danny.

"I've been trying to tell you that since I met you," said Linda, half scolding.

Brian shrugged. "So... What now?"