Chapter 3—

Danny shot out of the house like a torpedo from a submarine. The weightlessness of flight making him giddy and excited to the point where he had lost all common sense and logical abilities. This freedom was so intoxicating—making him feel like this is what he had wanted all along—a special secret of his own. The sight was amazing as he flew over the ops center and floated just above the silver roof. The whole town was larger than he thought; he could even see the river that separated Amity Park and Elmerton from where he was. The sun was still high since it wasn't even noon yet and he knew he had a few hours to fly around before his parents were come out of the basement and wonder where he was.

He heard something to his left and looked over to see the trouble. It was Ms. Benson, their crabby single lady neighbor. She was out clipping her giant hedges again, her giant scissors making the noise that had distracted him.

"Hi Ms. Benson!" he shouted, waving from above the ops center.

The lady stopped clipping and looked over her shoulder, wondering who had called her. She shrugged, muttering about stupid kids, and went back to moodily clipping her plants. Danny, after realizing his mistake, clamped a hand over his mouth. He was also surprised at how far his voice had carried. He wondered why that was, however, exploring wouldn't wait.

Ignoring the uninteresting neighbor, he shot forwards and headed in some random direction to test his new abilities.

The wind ran through his hair, pulling the shaggy length back along his hairline. He held his fists out in front, a straight line of black and white in the clear morning sky.

"This is so cool!" Danny spun sideways, instinctively catching another updraft to carry him further in the air. "Mom and Dad would so totally freak right now."

At the thought of his parents, his mind when dark and he came back down to earth—quiet literally. As soon as his thoughts turned to his parents, it was as if someone had put the gravity back on for him, only he was impossibly high in the air when that happened. He yelled, dropping faster then he thought was physically possible. He tumbled over the currents, trying to get his flight back but nothing he tried worked.

"Crap!" he yelled in the air. "What do I do? What do I do?"

He remembered how it had felt to fly. Completely wreak-less, no care in the world whatsoever, freedom that you could practically breathe—he had to think like that, had to feel that. When his thoughts turned back to that freedom—the freedom of the skies—he felt his body become weightless again and he stopped his decent. He was twenty feet from the ground when his flight kicked back in from his nosedive. He brought himself back up, seeing that he almost ran straight into a van that was coming straight at him. He yelled and covered his face, but his body compensated for the solid metal of the vehicle and turned him intangible, letting him pass right through unharmed.

"Oh," Danny said, hovering over the street when he realized he was intact. "That's beneficial."

He gained altitude, for safety measures, and decided to land on a roof and figure things out before he went too far. He landed on top of an office building and dangled his legs over the sides, watching traffic buzz through the streets.

He hadn't noticed the change in his eyesight either until he slowed down and decided to think. The whole world was in black and white now, with slight green discharges from energy signatures—like the exhaust of a car or the many computers being used in the building below him right now. Anything that gave off energy was in a bright green to his eyes while the rest of the town was like an old cartoon. There were no shadows, only black and white lines, but it was surprisingly easy to see and disconcert everything from where he was.

This was only more of a reminder of why he had stopped flying.

"Mom and Dad are so going to freak," he mumbled to himself. "If they ever find out about this, I could become a science project, they'll take these powers away. But, who says that they need to know?" the thought introduced itself at the thought of losing his new freedom. "Who says that any of them have to know?"

Then Sam entered in his mind—about when she had asked him in the hallway if he would tell them if something was wrong. Well, nothing was wrong in a way, just different, but he would feel bad if he kept this from Sam and Tucker. They had been his best friends since forever, they didn't keep secrets from each other—well important ones. He would have to tell his friends—now Jazz. Jazz would just get overprotective like their parents—she would rat him out, thinking it was for his own good. She couldn't be told, and he wasn't sure if he could ever tell his family about this at all.

Sighing, he got back up and thought about freedom, the weightlessness of flight, and he was off again.

After a while, he figured out how flying worked. To be able to lift himself up into the air, he couldn't just think about flight, he had to think about how it felt to him—just like his reflection instructed. The feel of flight gave him the ability of flight, so maybe half of this ghost stuff was all in his head. He knew that to make himself solid, he had to think about what it felt to be solid, the feelings that came with being human and held down by gravity. So to become intangible—

Danny got down closer to the skyline of the office buildings he was hanging around and spotted a large satellite dish atop one of the roofs. It was light enough to where he wouldn't get seriously injured if this didn't work. He came down close to it and thought about going through the plastic, at how he wanted to become anything but solid. A sliver of doubt entered his mind that he couldn't do this, but he wanted to see if his theory was correct.

His face slammed into the dish, making him fall the few short feet to the roof. He sat up and rubbed his abused nose, staring at the dish in distain. So much for that plan.

Sighing, he got back to his feet and wiped the dust off of his backside. Deciding he should probably get back before his parents thought something was up, he lifted himself in to the air was ease and started for home. He past a few billboards on the way, many proclaiming the stress-free life the town, others were advertisements for entertainment. One was for a Circus Gothica that Sam was raving about—they were supposed to be coming sometime in March and Sam was dead set on going to go see it. Others were for the concert Ember McLain was giving at the stadium in October and Axion Lab's job openings.

He spotted home in the distance and started to fly in that direction, but something made him turn his head over to his left, towards the old building of Axion Labs. Recently, they had to move the large facility to the new buildings across town—thus the need for new workers—and the old building was still in debate in city hall. Many weren't sure what to do with it so for now it sat there and collected rumors about itself.

"Always did want to see what was over there," Danny shrugged, all thoughts about home forgotten.

As he came closer, his vision picked up small bugs as they crawled across the white debris of one of the walls of the old building. A storm had ripped through the town recently, causing the old building a large amount of damage. That was why it was closed off, large chain fences and gates padlocked to keep out intruders. All Danny had to do was fly over the barbwire twisted atop the fences and land in what use to be the parking lot.

The whole building was white to him, the corners and roof black and the bugs changing color as they crawled from roof, to wall and back. If they crawled up to the black, they turned white, if they crawled to the white, they turned black. However, what grabbed Danny's attention was the slight green glow inside the compound. If this place was abandoned, then why was something going on in there?

Danny walked through the debris as if it wasn't there and headed inside the creepy building. That feeling that made him turn off course was getting stronger as he headed closer to that green glow. Then it vanished without warning. Danny stopped, hands forward and knees bent as if he was ready for an attack. A great sense of warning washed over him as he listened to every creak and squeak of the building.

There, a growl—right below him.

Danny shot up and to the side as a large green animal broke through the surface of the cement flooring. Danny covered his face so the flying floor could scratch him up, but he had instinctively gone intangible again so the chunks passed right through him. He removed his arms and looked through the dust, trying to find what had attacked him. He had his back to a wall so he figured it was in front of him, but that thing had just broken a cement floor as if it was cardboard.

He was flung forward, face-planting on the cold floor as that same something attacked through the wall he had his back too. He turned onto his back and froze. He had to lean back to look into its face, those slobbering jaws and beady red eyes looked down on him as if they were ready to kill him. The whole body was glowing green, that same white aura around it as it was around Danny.

"A ghost dog?" he whispered to himself as the dog came close and began to sniff him.

As the dog got up close and sniffed his hair, Danny saw the black studded collar around its neck, the Axion symbol printed on the tag.

"A ghost guard dog," he realized. "They must have gotten rid of the old security system with the move."

The dog's eyes came back to him and the thing growled, shaking the ground and making Danny tremble.

"I'm trespassing aren't I?" he asked the dog, but there was no way it could understand him.

The dog tipped its head, as if considering his question.

"I'll just be going then," Danny slowly backed up on his elbows and feet, trying to get away from underneath the giant dog.

The dog didn't move, but it followed him with its eyes and let him stand up on his feet. Danny watched, not trusting the animal to not jump and attack him, but as long as he made small movements and was quiet, maybe he could make it out of here intact. He slowly inched backwards, towards the way he had come in, but the dog followed him at the same speed, but it didn't seem to want to attack, only follow. Danny stopped and looked up at the dog questioningly, the dog stopped at the same time and stared as well.

"Are you following me?" Danny asked it.

The dog replied by wagging its tail happily. Danny looked at its face, trying to see what exactly the dog was thinking, but when he made contact with the eyes, he gasped. He felt like he was being pulled somewhere, but he didn't see anything and the scary thing was, he understood things he couldn't see and feel. He gasped again when it felt like he was being slammed back into his body, stumbling back a bit. He looked back up at the dog when the sensation past and realized something.

"You're lonely," he said realizing he had seen the dog's desires. "You just want someone to play with. You don't understand that you're—"

The dog whined and tipped its head again. Danny didn't complete his sentence, sure it would lead to a very angry dog if he said anything about death.

"You aren't going to hurt me," he said, floating up to eye level with the beast.

The dog became cross-eyed as Danny came closer to its face.

"I'll come back later tonight," Danny promised before heading through the crumbling ceiling.

Back home, he landed in his room and the light coiled back in on itself, changing him back to his old self. The reflection had no comment as he walked past the mirror and opened his door. His mother was in the living room, reading a book when he came down.

"You look better," she commented, smiling at him.

"I guess I just needed some rest," Danny shrugged, shocked it was so easy to lie to her like that.

"Are you hungry sweety?"

"Yeah, what do you have?"

Ten minutes later, Danny was enjoying homemade soup, his mother watching him critically.

"Did you have a good dream or something? You're really happy all of a sudden," she asked him.

"Uh, yeah, it was amazing, like flying," Danny said, smiling at his own inside joke. "Just like flying."