Notes: Hey, there! I had a multi-chaptered fic in mind named "Gone" a few years ago but never got to sit down to write it. I did an angsty one-shot based on what that story was about and now I decided to do another. You can read this story as a continuation of "Gone" (posted in my profile) or as a stand-alone story. Thanks for reading :)

Warning: character death and autopsy.

Graveyard Shift

"Sorry I'm late. Family crisis. You know how it goes," a young woman with curly chestnut hair exclaimed loudly as she rushed into the room. She walked towards a small but organized desk closer to the entrance to leave her cellphone; it would usually ring in her pocket at the most inopportune times.

A man in his mid-thirties wearing a blue scrub suit and a surgeon cap gave her a disproving look that made her flinch in embarrassment. "Sorry," she said in a lower volume. "Forgot you like to keep this place dead silent."

He rolled his dark green eyes. "Ha, ha, very funny. I was just about to start without you," he replied as he motioned with a gloved hand to the body placed on a metallic table in front of him, a camera ready in his hands.

The woman scoffed. "Oh, c'mon, Jim. The last two times there were ghost attacks, okay? It's not like I always come in late."

Her partner pointed a finger at a cup in her hands. "You had enough time to stop at the coffee shop downstairs, apparently."

She blushed slightly, taking one last sip of her favorite brew before leaving it on the desk next to her phone. "Okay, fine. But don't blame me if I'm cranky at three in the morning for not having enough caffeine in my system."

"Thanks, Angie. I always love your commitment," Jim said with a small smile. "Can we get to work now? We apparently got a SAV here."

Angie adjusted her glasses as she stared at the body and took the pair of gloves her companion offered her. "Spectral attack victim?" she asked in complete astonishment. "We haven't had one since Phantom took control of the situation. Jeez, he's just a kid."

She couldn't help staring at the lifeless boy in front of her. He was still clothed, sporting what any teenager would at that age: dirty red Converse shoes (size 6, she noted), a pair of dusty blue jeans, and a white t-shirt with red accents that looked pretty generic. His messy dark hair still covered a part of his young face. It looked so unsettling for some reason and sent chills down her spine. There was also something familiar about him. "Daniel James Fenton." she read from the chart next to the boy. It then clicked. "Fenton? Like the ghost hunters?"

Jim nodded solemnly. "Their youngest child."

"Ouch," Angie whispered, imagining all the reasons a ghost would have to attack the son of two renowned hunters. "What happened?"

"They don't know. His sister found him like this in his room. There was no blood or signs of an attack. Apparently he went missing for a few hours and got his parents all freaked out."

A knot formed in the young woman's stomach; her usually perky self seemed long forgotten. She had just argued with her parents about her sister's curfew; they had been worried sick after she was only two minutes late and Angie thought they were overreacting. But this kid represented every parent's nightmare.

"You all right, sport?" Jim asked worriedly.

She couldn't let this case get to her. Her family lived a very different situation, so it was really not a good idea to find parallelisms between both of them. "Sure, let's get this over with," she answered in a more collected tone, trying to jump back to her usual mood.

Jim complied and continued to take photographs of the boy, documenting any possible detail that could be relevant. He was no expert in ghost forensics, but working in Amity Park before and after the ghosts showed up gave him plenty idea of how to interpret some info from the SAV's evidence. For example, he noticed green stains on the left side of his shirt, but he knew these were not from the current attack since they looked at least a week old. He had a suspicion that if a ghost was involved, it probably did something to this boy internally.

Once Jim was done, Angie proceeded by taking some samples from the kid. As she was about to clip one of his fingernails, she noticed something underneath them. It looked like skin and a green substance. Probably ectoplasm. "Do you think this is from his attacker?" she asked her partner.

The man, who had been labeling the samples, moved closer to Danny's hand to check what Angie was talking about. "Maybe," he muttered. "It would be weird, though. Ghosts can't get hurt like we do. It would take a lot of energy to get a mass consistent enough to leave evidence like this on a body."

"Then how the hell do you explain this?"

"Let's just try to find the samples and find the cause of death, all right? That part of the research is for someone else to solve."

Angie huffed at the condescending tone Jim used, but knew he was right. She collected the material underneath the fingernail and continued with the rest of his body. "Well, no other traces of foreign residue," she noted.

Not bothering with a response, Jim silently began to remove the boy's shirt. As his abdomen became visible, he saw Angie gape in astonishment. "What?" he questioned alarmed by the woman's reaction.

"Look at all those scars," she answered while she placed her hand over some of the marks on the kid's torso. The sight was enough to terrify anyone. Not only did a ghost possibly hurt this kid, but someone else probably beat him up on a regular basis as well. Images of jocks, gangs, ghosts, and even his parents came to mind. She even thought self-harm could be involved. "What do you think caused all these?"

Jim looked as lost as she was. "Whatever it was, it sure wasn't done tonight. Could've been bullies, you know?"

"What kind of bully would do this?"

"A vicious one, apparently," he mumbled and continued to discard the white t-shirt from the body.

Once the examiners finished undressing and cleaning the body, preparing it for the autopsy, it was clear to them this case would be stranger than usual. "Are you sure you're all right?" Jim asked again, surprised to see his colleague so quiet. She usually didn't have a problem being detached. "I can do this alone, if you want."

Angie shoved him playfully and grinned. "Yeah, right. You wouldn't be able to handle this on your own."

"You know? I resent that. I was practically doing this all by myself before you showed up," he replied in a mock hurt tone, relieved at the woman's reaction.

"Oh, boo-hoo. Did I come to ruin things for you?" she shot back.

"Only when you don't stop squealing all giddy whenever you find something interesting. It gets creepy, you know."

Jim regretted his words once he noticed Angie quiet again. "Sorry if I'm not being giddy this time," she said more solemnly. "I have a sister his age. She means the world to me. But I'm good to go. Seriously."

After considering it for a second, he moved the instrument tray closer to Angie, who picked a blade to make the first incision. She knew she had to be more careful not to touch the body's skin longer than necessary. For some strange reason, his temperature was lower than the norm for a corpse. Her breath had been practically visible and fogged up her face shield. So, placing a steady hand over his shoulder, Angie slowly dug the blade into his skin.

"What the—?" she exclaimed once a green ooze was drawn from the incision. "Jim, are you seeing this?"

When her partner didn't answer, Angie turned to face him. The burly man seemed vacant for a second, standing completely still. "Jim?" the woman asked again.

"I think you've seen enough," Jim replied in an eerily unfamiliar voice.

Before Angie could respond, she felt a dark sensation taking over and clouding her thoughts. The last thing she remembered was a strange figure looming over the boy's body.

Angie's head was killing her. She felt weak for some reason and couldn't recall what had happened. She opened her eyes and woke up in the downstairs cafeteria. She was sitting on a table in front of a cold cup of coffee.

"Hey, sport!" a masculine voice called from the other side of the room as he entered the cafeteria. "You asked for a 10-minute break and it's been over an hour," he said sternly, but once he saw her confused expression, he changed his stance. "Is everything okay?"

She took off her glasses and pressed her fingers against her closed eyes. What had happened? She had a vague memory of Jim acting weird. There was also something about the autopsy they were performing, something her mind was practically screaming about, but she couldn't even remember the patient well. "How did I get here?" she decided to ask. If it had been a weird nightmare, she would only be embarrassing herself.

"We finished working on that kid and you said you needed a break," he replied, furrowing his eyebrows in confusion.

As the brunette put her glasses on, she tried to remember those words or movements, but nothing came to mind. "Wait, we had that Fenton kid, right?"

Jim nodded slowly. "Yeah, poor kid, huh?"

"So you said we finished examining him?" Angie questioned. She tried to picture the standard procedure and what steps she remembered doing, but it was all fuzzy. "What did we find?"

"Uh, well, you found out he had a heart disease. His family thought it was a ghost but apparently he had been sick for a while," the man replied.

Something didn't feel right. Her gut told her there was something more about this kid. Why wasn't she able to remember? "Does his family already know?"

The man nodded again. "Yeah, I just told them. You wouldn't believe who came with them: our own mayor, Vlad Masters. He's apparently friends with the family."

Angie sighed. "Great, a celebrity. I hope we're not asked to do interviews this time."

Jim patted his partner on the back. "Oh, cheer up, sport. I told you this shift wasn't completely dead."

The woman chuckled lightly, unable to get the unsettling feeling out of her system. But really, what could be so bad about a sixteen-year-old boy's autopsy? Maybe that was it. Maybe she was linking the whole situation with her own sibling. It wasn't a good idea to find parallelisms with her own life, she knew. Maybe she could try calling her sister in the morning before she left for school. She just hoped she didn't know this boy.