Chapter 2

Valerie cradled her hand against her stomach, resisting the urge to faint. "N-not…g-good," she hissed out in pain. 

"Not g-good…" The flame that had torn through her hand died out once smothered by the heavy material of her suit, but the deep burns remained, as did the unsettling crackle of skin and the seeping of blood.

Tears blurred her vision as she forced herself to take another step in a dizzy struggle.

She was down an arm and a jet sled and an air filter. She had to get to the Containment Labs now; there was no other option to survive.

Step after step, she sped back into a run, rasping hard as the building around her rumbled. All those years of chasing Phantom and other ghosts had expanded her endurance. All those days of seeing her father sitting quietly at a broken dinner table inspired her to keep running.

..

"Baby girl," her father said, resting his hands on her shoulders. "You've captured the ghost you were after. Why do you still want to hunt ghosts?"

Valerie pulled away and grabbed onto an ecto-blaster from the kitchen table, holstering it. "Phantom's not the only threat, and you know it. 

Maybe we can't destroy the powerful ones, but I can capture them, and we can put them in stasis. We can stop these ghost invasions from the Zone and stop being sucked into alternate dimensions like that disaster with Pariah Dark."

"Can't somebody else do that, though, baby?" he pleaded with her. "You're all I have left, and this new organization you're with...it sounds so official and secretive. And I know how these kinds of places can be."

"Uh, yeah," she said. She leaned against the wall, giving him a look. She pulled out a copy of her latest paystub, waving it in front of him with a confident smile. "It comes with some pretty nice perks. Enough to get us both our own apartments."

"Valerie."

"I love you, daddy," she said, tilting her head. "But I'm nineteen. Let me make my own decision for, like, once. Okay? And you know I can take care of myself."

Her father gave her a pained look. "I know you can. But, baby, you shouldn't have to do everything alone."

"Don't worry. I'll have a whole government agency to back me up."

...

The pain in Valerie's right hand was relentless, fizzling her vision with white sparks and tunnel distortions, but raw adrenaline saved her from fainting. Shakily, she reached for another doorway, moving mechanically based on memory alone. Battery-powered emergency lights lit the way dimly.

When was the last time she'd visited the Containment Labs for herself? Had it really been at Phantom's capture?

"And here," Valerie rasped to Phantom, "I thought was gonna let you rot by yourself."

The battle to capture Phantom had been quiet, with the usage of simple darts to take him down in a moment of distraction. The element of surprise. Nothing had felt so good as dragging his unconscious form to the doors of the newly minted CGIA and demanding a seat at the table. More funding and weapons.

And she'd thought at the time it was better to never let Phantom see her again. To move on, find other targets, because movement was life, and Phantom was a ghost. (Even if he did have a cute face.)

As she descended the stairs to the basement, she shakily inhaled the cooler air, grateful for the respite from the heat and acrid smoke above.

At the base of the stairs was another door, and she locked it behind her, in hopes that it could hold off the fire for a time. "This better work," she breathed, heart pounding hard.

She turned around, overwhelmed. The wall reinforcements for the Containment Labs had been an old idea to ensure Phantom could not escape the building, even if his self-powered cryostasis pod were to malfunction. 

But it hit her that without a larger power source from the building itself, the only safety they would provide was enhanced protection from the fire.

Not from Phantom.

"Oh, man," she breathed. "That pod and that damn Spectral Energy Deactivator better still work. Or I'm a sitting duck down here." 

With her good hand, she patted her side to confirm she still had a few weapons on her belt, only to realize that her second weapon was no blaster at all, but an odd, malfunctioning device built by the Fentons and paid for by the CGIA. 

She made a face, upset that it would be useless in a possible firefight.

She must have picked it up by accident in her mad dash to exit the building.

"At least I got one good weapon," she said.

Still shaking, Valerie moved to run the manual crank for the reinforcement walls. The smooth crank, supported by an intricate hydraulic system, allowed for slits in the ceiling to expand and lower down interlocking, metal panels that created an inner hull for the basement level. The effort still left her breathless.

But it was the first time she felt like she could breathe.

Valerie leaned against the walls, afraid to look too closely at her burned hand. She closed her eyes, chest heaving unsteadily. "This, ah, this isn't bad," she said. Her voice echoed. 

"Yeah, it's totally fine down here. I'm not in a building on fire, no. Not in pain. Definitely not hanging out in the prison cell for Danny Phantom either."

But her eyes opened to focus on the inner room before her, the letters on the doorway reflecting with a sickly glow in the darkness.

She swallowed hard.

..

Central Containment Vault

Chamber 1 - Experiment 01274

Proceed with Extreme Caution

..

"I captured Phantom for you," Valerie declared to the CGIA, crossing her arms. "So, where's my reward? You put a bounty on his head, and I want to collect it, along with the security clearance to keep hunting these ghosts for you."

A CGIA agent reviewed the report notes. "Hm, yes. We did put a bounty of $100,000 dollars on the ghost known as Danny Phantom. If you can provide me with your banking information, Miss Gray, I'll have the funds wired directly into your account."

She planted her hand on the table. "It's Agent Gray now."

Behind the financial agent, a stoic man stood, arms crossed. His work badge indicated he was Agent O. "We use pseudonyms here," he deadpanned. "You wouldn't be Agent Gray, as that's not a pseudonym."

She held the man's gaze evenly, unafraid of authority. "I just captured your number-one enemy," she said. "Something your group hasn't been able to do in the last six months since you built this place. You want a pseudonym? Then the ghosts call me the Red Huntress, but I'm not gonna change my name. I like being Valerie Gray."

Agent O was measuring her up, testing her for compliance against her potential value as an employee. "Hm. Very well, then. Agent Gray. It's your funeral if the ghosts come to recognize who you are outside the suit."

"Oh, please, like I'd let a ghost kill me," she said with a huff as she leaned over and typed her banking information into the CGIA's system to get that sweet, sweet cash.

"Mayor Masters and the city of Amity Park," the financial agent said, as if reading from a script, "thanks you for contributing to the safety and security of our town."

Valerie raised her chin with great satisfaction. "That's what I'm all about."

..

In two years, Valerie hadn't seen him. But in that moment, a raw, unsettling emotion tore through her. 

She knew cryostasis pods were cold, and that ghost-infested rooms were cold, and anything that could calm the stinging burn in her hand and the sweat on her brow sounded like a relief. Was it possible that Phantom's room itself held the answer to numbing her injured arm?

Was there maybe even an emergency medical kit in the Containment Labs?

Valerie shakily stepped forward, as if in a trance. "I can't believe," she said, "that it always comes back to you, in one way or another. But maybe for once, you can do something actually constructive for me. How 'bout that, huh?"

Awkwardly with her one good arm, she turned the large X-lock on the door. It spun like a bank vault and opened, the biometric security protocols offline from loss of power. The door creaked on its hinges, and the sound set her on edge.

Something wasn't right.

The instant she stepped inside, her heart stopped. Her knees weakened, and she grabbed for her good blaster in terror.

The Containment Lab was cold, carrying the unnatural tinge of a ghostly presence. Computer monitors glitched on and off and cast unnatural illuminations throughout the large room. It lit up an experimentation table. Cupboards. Boxes.

But the largest ray of light stemmed from the cryostasis pod in the center of the room. The glass was not foggy or cold with active cryostasis protocols, and instead it revealed a glowing, male figure leaning his forehead against the anti-ecto glass.

The infamous Danny Phantom was awake.

And he stared right at her, his electric green eyes boring a hole into hers.

===================

Don't forget to throw some power Stones, to keep the story going.

...

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