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There were a lot of things to be said about living under the GIW’s observation.
For one, there was no privacy, which was a given.
Practically all around the clock, researchers were coming in or calling him out to check his reactions to different stimuli or substances, his reactiveness under different circumstances, his powers or reflexes—it was hard to keep track of, so he mostly just went along with whatever. It helped make him feel like he almost had a choice, if nothing else.
If not that, then it was agents coming to interview him, to see if he would have different answers to the same questions they always asked. Every once in a while, there were new ones, which was about as exciting as things ever got without being painful.
Even when he was left alone, he wasn’t, not really. They’d never made an effort to hide the cameras and bugs placed all throughout his quarters (the word they used was ‘cell,’ but he preferred to keep a more positive outlook, and it really wasn’t all that bad). If nothing else, he appreciated their transparency.
Another thing was the sedatives.
In some ways, they helped; he was pretty sure they were the main reason he was okay with 90% of the things he was asked to do on a daily basis, and they worked wonders as painkillers. In other ways, they were a pretty big hindrance. The fog they seemed to put over his brain was pretty unpleasant. Believe it or not, he actually liked being able to form complete thoughts. But you can’t get everything you want, he supposed.
He also didn’t like the way it made his entire body feel heavy, making it difficult to so much as twitch his fingers right after a fresh dose. But on the other hand, it made sleeping that much easier, so he couldn’t complain too much; though, it did give him some pretty weird dreams, if he dreamt at all.
That was one good thing about being passed off to the researchers, though; they always wanted him as alert as possible. Though there were times the tests they ran made him grateful to sink into that barely-aware haze for a few hours. Still, it got old pretty fast.
There was also the fact that things followed a pretty strict routine.
There was a schedule, not that he’d ever seen it—in fact, he wasn’t sure he’d so much as seen a clock the whole time he’d been there, like they didn’t want him to know that time was passing. Maybe that was for the best, though; the idea of himself staring listlessly at a clock, watching minutes and hours tick by with glazed eyes for most of the day was enough to send a shiver down his spine. It was probably for the best that he spent most of the day just napping instead.
Every morning, an agent would come to rouse him and administer his “breakfast” (that was another thing: what passed for food here made him almost glad his taste buds were pretty much dead most of the time). After that, he would be told he had an hour to get ready before being sent to the research labs (which was meaningless to him, but he supposed they had to give him some kind of value).
He would then use that time to shower, (he used to prefer bathing at night, but if he tried with the way things were currently set up, he was sure he’d fall right over if he tried) relieve himself, and change into a fresh set of clothes which were set out for him every day. The uniform was really just a gray prison jumpsuit, but it was comfortable enough, so he couldn’t complain.
After that, he would wait around for someone to come get him and escort him to the labs (sometimes it was the same agent, sometimes it wasn’t; he didn’t really take much notice of it either way). There, he would spend an allotted amount of time which he guessed was the same every day and seemed to be longer than the hour he spent getting ready in the morning (if it really was an hour).
Once that was done, they’d stick him with some sedatives and ship him back off to his room while he could still walk on his own. There he would sleep for some vague amount of time (or he was pretty sure he slept; he suspected being awake in that state wouldn’t be very different. It was hard to remember) until the time came for the next item on his schedule.
When the effects had faded enough for him to be somewhat lucid but not enough to filter what he was saying, an agent would come to question him. He usually remembered those conversations well enough, but they never really changed enough to stick out from one another. It had been a while since he’d been asked anything new.
When the questioning concluded for the day, he would be given his second and final meal before being sedated once more, after which he would pass out for another night of deep, dreamless sleep.
Rinse and repeat. Every single day.
He couldn’t say how long it had been.
He was pretty sure it had been a while, at least. Enough that memories of before were hazy, though he suspected that was more due to constant use of the heavy sedatives they administered to him than anything else. He’d brought it up once, (or maybe a few times, he didn't really know) but the researchers had seemed unconcerned.
He guessed that made sense. It wasn’t like it was all that important. He didn’t exactly have much of anything to go back to from that time, nor much worth remembering, if his limited memory served him right. That was the whole reason he was even there in the first place.
Because no matter how monotonous his life had become, no matter how much his sense of taste and smell and even touch faded away, no matter how much he felt more and more like a specimen, (Subject P-13, they called him, in lieu of a name) an object, than a person with each passing day, it was still better than the alternative.
It was still better than being alone.
The stiff mattress that could have been replaced by a slab of concrete without him knowing the difference would always be better than sleeping on the streets. Sleeping most of the day away without doing much of anything was better than spending it wandering around different spots so he wouldn’t get caught loitering, avoiding cops so he wouldn’t get questioned as to why he wasn’t in school before making a break for it so they wouldn’t find out the truth. Anything was better than drifting through life out of obligation, knowing he had no future and not even having a past to reminisce on.
At least this way he knew he was serving some sort of purpose—a scientific marvel, they’d called him. It made him kind of proud, even though he hadn’t been addressed when it was said. He was only ever directly spoken to when given orders, really. But that was fine.
But God, did he miss the sky.
He missed flying. Soaring through the air without a care in the world was the only time he’d ever felt truly free, as far as he could remember. They rarely told him to demonstrate flight for them, and even then, it wasn’t the same within such a closed off environment.
And as much as it had been a pretty thankless job, he missed fighting other ghosts. He missed how alive it made him feel, strange as it sounded. Even when it hurt, even when he thought it might really have been the end, it was just so fun in a way that nothing else really was.
But then, one day, it just wasn’t anymore.
The Red Huntress had gone off the college, and suddenly there was no one at his side to banter and share the workload with. Even if she acted like she hated him, she was the closest thing he’d had to a friend. All that was left were the Fentons, who had always made their opinion on him clear. There was no one to distract him from the insults and whispers from the citizens of Amity Park who thought of him as anything but a hero.
Really, he was lucky to be here. If that operative hadn’t tracked him down and given him an opportunity to surrender himself when he had, he really might have lost his mind.
It was just better this way. Amity’s population had made it clear they didn’t want him as Phantom. As a human, Chicago was a bust, to put it kindly, and Hell on Earth to put it less kindly. Here, he was fed, clothed, and housed, not to mention appreciated, if not necessarily liked.
What more could he ask for, really?
Driving back home for the first time in months, Valerie was seriously reconsidering every choice she’d made in her life since starting high school.
She chanced a glance at the man beside her, looking exceedingly normal, if not a bit scruffy. It was strange to think that he was really anything but.
Tall and doe-eyed, she had to admit he made for a nice sight, if a little scrawny for her taste. On the surface, the only thing about him that might have marked him as strange was his salt-and-pepper hair, heavy on the salt despite otherwise not looking any older than her.
But overall, he looked and acted normal enough that, when it was clear the traditional (and even some less traditional) modes of research weren’t going to produce any more answers about him, it was decided that he could somewhat integrate with regular society.
That was where she came in, to her chagrin. But the pay was handsome, and as much as she loved it and despite the best efforts of the city council, independent ghost hunting wasn’t exactly a lucrative business, at least not in her case.
And so, here she was, fresh off a months-long stint in Chicago that was partially legitimate work and mostly meant as a cover while they briefed her on this latest assignment, with the Illinois Phantom staring out of her window like he was a kid seeing his first snow.
While she didn’t share all of the Fentons’ ideas on ghost hunting ethics or the sentience of ghosts, that didn’t mean she liked this in the slightest. While she had no interest in causing unnecessary pain to (because she wasn’t blind, she knew they could feel it when they took a hit just as much as any other person) or flat out eviscerating the ghosts she faced the same way many of her peers did, she still wasn’t exactly friendly with any of them, not like Phantom had been back when he had been active.
She had to wonder what exactly they’d done with him all these years. While he seemed unharmed and perfectly happy with his life, (afterlife? While they’d tried to give her a general rundown of what exactly was so strange about Phantom when he’d been handed off to her, she still wasn’t totally clear on it. Though, she supposed, the only reason she was even in this mess was because they weren’t either) well… they had mentioned the heavy sedation they had kept him under while they had had him, and it seemed being a ghost didn’t make him immune to lingering side effects.
She wondered if they had predicted that, or if it had even been the plan from the start. That was one part of her assignment: to monitor how he responded as he was taken off them. A part of her was naturally unenthused about handling a ghost going through withdrawal, but she could admit that if there was anything she would be glad to help Phantom through, it was this. It just wasn’t right to see him so subdued.
In any case, as much as he’d always annoyed her to no end when they were teenagers… she had to admit that it was nice to see him again, relatively safe. The fact that he’d actually grown had been quite the shock to the system, but honestly, she’d already faced weirder things than the idea that the ghost she’d once spent hours chasing and bickering with might not be quite as much of a ghost as she’d thought.
She didn’t really understand how it was possible. By all known scientific law, it shouldn’t be. But seeing him transform in front of her back at the facility, testing his slow but present pulse beneath her fingers, it was undeniable that there was at least something about him that was still human.
Seeing the welcome sign for her hometown drew a quiet sigh out of her. Naturally, given that this was the GIW they were dealing with, she couldn’t really explain the situation to her dad. Honestly, she didn’t think she would have nearly as much of a problem with the whole situation if they could have just made things easy for once. It was Amity, for God’s sake, the most haunted town in America; they knew the drill. Unfortunately for her, it had been decided long before she’d even been called that Phantom’s civilian life had to be kept entirely separate from his ghost persona.
It was one of many conditions, all of which were of varying levels of reasonability, in her opinion. She had been skeptical of the GIW simply letting Phantom go in the first place, but with the long list of specifications, the pre-arrangements, tracker, the sedatives… it had quickly become obvious to her that this was simply another experiment. They only loosened the leash to see what he would do with his newfound ‘freedom.’
So now Valerie, as she parked in the street across from her dad’s apartment building, was steeling herself for what was bound to be one of the most painful conversations of her life.
She closed her eyes, letting her head fall against the steering wheel with a groan as she fought to compose herself. As she sat up, she cringed, spying the silver band glinting on her finger.
Plain but nice enough, she thought she would have liked her wedding ring under different circumstances. Like if she were actually married.
Or if her ‘husband’ wasn’t Phantom.