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Shift

Characters: Danny, Guys in White

Prompt by Nocturna Starr: It turns out that the views of agents O and K are not held by the rest of the Guys in White. Basically, the GiW scientists are horrified when the two newest agents being in a fourteen-year-old half-ghost kid for "painful experiments".

As far as lab work went, it had been a quiet day. A bit of spectrophotometry here, a touch of titrating there, and then the only task left after lunch was to autoclave a stack of petri dishes. The half dozen agents milling around the facility was a touch ridiculous considering the sheer lack of work for them to do, but hey, when you got paid by the hour it wasn't as though anyone was about to volunteer to clock off early.

Still, there were only so many times that one could check that the samples had all been stored properly and that the labs were perfectly clean. Agent H would have gone out to at least pretend that he was trying to catch a ghost or something, but the radar had been quiet all day except for a couple of blips that the field team claimed to have already dealt with. Realistically, it was probably Phantom who captured whatever ghost had managed to slip through the portal, and H resigned himself to a boring afternoon. Maybe when O and K returned he'd tease them a bit for letting the town's resident spook one up them again, but even that joke had started to get a bit old.

There was the distant crash of heavy doors swinging open with enough force to hit the wall, accompanied by annoyingly familiar shouts, and H rolled his eyes. Speak of the devil, and unfortunately, that stupid field team would return early. "Should we go see what they've messed up now?"

Agent J sighed and stopped pretending to check the bunsen burners for rust spots. Not that it mattered, but they had to look busy somehow. "I suppose," he drawled.

The pair strolled into the hallway without haste, but then an echoing scream sent a jolt of dread sliding down H's spine.

"Please, let me go! I'm not dead!"

J shot him a worried look over the rim of his glasses, and they jogged around the corner.

Agents O and K were dragging a glowing net between them, their suits spotted with splashes of ectoplasm and something red. "We got him!" O crowed when he caught sight of them, giving the net a particularly hard tug. Whatever was inside sobbed at the sudden movement, kicking weakly against the confinement. A white boot, smeared with filth, simply tangled more firmly in the net. "We caught Phantom!"

The ghost took a deep, shuddering breath, and H finally noticed the growing pool of ectoplasm and something… else…

"I'm not dead," the ghost child sobbed, and J audibly gasped as glowing tears dripped off his chin.

"What do you think you're doing?" H hissed, rushing closer and kneeling in front of the trapped creature. Ectoplasm, cool to the touch but lacking its customary freezing bite, soaked through the knees of his white pants, along with what looked a lot like swirls of garish red blood.

Phantom was bleeding heavily from a gash across his chest, his suit hanging in ragged tatters around the wound. He recoiled within his prison, hands flying up in a tangle of net to hover between them.

"We're… we're bringing him in for experiments. Lots and lots of painful experiments. Because he's a ghost."

H glared at K. "Your work here is done."

Phantom scooted back as far as he could, tremors racking his small body. He was just a child, and there was so much blood…

"But—"

"I am your superior!" H roared, leaping to his feet with a growl. "You two are field agents. Field. Agents. You do not get to conduct experiments. You do not come into this building except to bring us samples. And you do not harm anything with a heartbeat!" He leaned over and grabbed Phantom's wrist, ignoring the way the boy flinched and tried to pull away. The gore-streaked glove came off easily, and it only took H a moment to find what he was searching for. "He has a pulse," he snapped, "though you should have realised that as soon as you saw blood!"

He felt J step up behind him. "You two can make yourselves useful by cleaning your mess off the floor," he instructed, before moving around to crouch behind Phantom.

H nodded to his partner, and together, they slipped their arms around Phantom and lifted him into the air, net and all. He sobbed and curled in on himself, but seemed to have the sense to stop struggling. The other agents had gathered behind them, drawn by the noise, and H jerked his head at the closest one. "Go get me a trauma kit," he ordered.

The agent sprinted back down the hallway, and J steered H through the closest door. It was just another lab, nothing too special, and they gently deposited their load onto one of the benches.

Phantom shivered, his eyes and freckles glowing brightly as tears continued to slip down his cheeks. "Please don't hurt me," he choked, wrapping slender arms and a good helping of net around himself. "I d-don't wanna b-be dissected."

H removed his reflective glasses and met that terrified green gaze. "Take it easy," he soothed. "We'll cut you out of that net, and then take a look at your injury, okay?"

Phantom ducked away when J leanded closer with the scissors. "What, so you can make sure I'm not a damaged sample?"

H shook his head and held out empty hands. "Phantom. What do you think we do here?"

"Cut up ghosts." Tears clung to his eyelashes, and he sounded so hopelessly resigned.

"Do you see any dissection tables here?" J asked gently, isolating a strand of glowing rope and cutting through it.

Phantom glanced around. "It's in another room then," he insisted. "O and K always say—"

"O and K are field agents who almost never set foot in the actual laboratories," H interrupted. "They're hunters, not scientists, and they should have stopped shooting when they saw blood. We would have taken it from there, and you certainly wouldn't be bleeding all over my suit. You're not the first hybrid the Guys in White have come across. Why didn't you ever tell us you're alive?"

Phantom stared, his mouth hanging open as the arms clamped around his body began to relax. "I… I didn't know," he breathed. "You always talk about dissecting ghosts…"

"I think you're confusing us with the Fentons," J huffed, making another cut. The net fell away from Phantom's head and slipped over his trembling shoulders, pooling around his waist.

"Oh." He looked down at his hands, still hopelessly twisted in the rope, and fluid began to drip off the counter. His voice had suddenly grown very quiet, and J didn't like how the colour had leached from Phantom's cheeks and lips. "I guess… they do talk about it a lot…" His forehead creased and he leaned back against the wall, breathing in sudden short gasps.

"Forget the net," H said, shrugging off his lab coat and pressing it over the gash. "Go see what's taking them so long to get that damned trauma kit!"

He felt the tiny body go limp beneath him.

"Hey," Phantom rasped.

"Don't talk," H ordered as J ran out of the room. "You're gunna be alright, kid." He was so young, and H's hands shook as he applied pressure over the terrible wound. The first hybrid in two decades, and he was a child who was bleeding out right beneath the agent's fingers…

"Please," Phantom breathed, and white light flickered around his waist, "don't tell m' parents."

"Where's that first aid kit?!" H screamed, pressing down harder on the boy's chest as that light swept away the ghost and left a sickeningly familiar kid in his place.

The Fentons' son gave a wan smile with colourless lips, face grey and bloodless. "Don' tell 'em," he slurred again, and his head lolled forward as dull blue eyes slid closed.