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News travels fast in the underground. People talk, even when they’re not supposed to. Especially when they’re not supposed to. What’s the old saying? Loose lips sink ships? Loose lips sink a bullet or two in your brain, more like. If you’re lucky that’ll be the worst that happens.
Even as the boy sits crouched on the rooftop of a high-rise apartment building in the seedy part of downtown, rumors have started. Everybody’s seen the news reports: the gory, drawn-out deaths of several prominent businessmen, the dissection of the mayor’s secretary, a high school girl who appeared to have had her heart ripped out and eaten. The whole city’s on edge. The people who consider themselves in the know—the people who knew that the businessmen were plotting against the mayor, that the secretary was attempting to hack into his files, that the high school girl had turned a gun on him—hide themselves in their apartments. They clutch pistols or machetes to their chests and keep their eyes wide open. They know that if he comes, it won’t help.
The boy on the rooftop closes his eyes and sniffs the air. If he concentrates, he can smell the different people in the city. Their paths all intertwine, he realizes, each person touching, directly or indirectly, everyone else’s life. He takes a moment to breathe in the connections. A smile ghosts across his face.
When he opens his eyes, they glow green.
He presses a button on the walkie-talkie clipped to his shoulder. “Phantom to Technogeek,” he murmurs, barely audible. “Can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear, Phantom,” crackles the reply. “You’re in position?”
The boy smirks. “Position is relative for me.” A beat passes. “But yes, I am. System status?”
“Just about ready. Stand by for another minute, ‘kay?” The walkie-talkie shuts off with a hiss of static.
The boy closes his eyes again. He’s not sure how exactly he got himself into this particular line of work—maybe a newspaper headline caught his attention, blocky text proclaiming another gruesome killing. Maybe it had been another ordinary day, except suddenly there had been something itching inside of him, a craving that was impossible to satisfy.
His mind shoots back to last night. Well. Nearly impossible.
He supposes it doesn’t matter how he started. All that really matters is what’s happening right now.
Technogeek’s voice comes back on the line. “You’re clear, Phantom.”
Phantom’s eyes shoot open again, the green of his pupils emitting a toxic glow. He grins. There are too many teeth in his mouth for him to look human. “Roger that,” he says. “Initiating.”
He drops through the roof. He falls, still in his crouching position, until he reaches the seventh floor of the apartment complex. He stands up, fading slowly back to corporeality. Gazing around the room he’s in and noting its sparse decor, he softly calls out, “Dr. Addams?”
A stifled gasp from the other room. The boy turns his head. In the doorway stands a man in a white button-up shirt and slacks, his tie hanging loosely around his neck. “White’s a good color on you,” the boy remarks casually. “But I think red looks even better.”
The sheaf of papers that Dr. Addams is holding falls to the floor, leaving him surrounded by a flurry of white. His eyes are wide behind his spectacles. “It can’t be,” he whispers fearfully. “They said…they said I was safe.”
The boy grins again, feral and sharp. “And you believed them?” He takes a step forward. Then another.
Dr. Addams stumbles back. “No. Please!” His hands brace against the walls on either side of the hallway. For a split second, his brown eyes meet the glowing green of the boy in front of him. He turns and runs down the hallway.
The room he barricades himself in is a bathroom. It doesn’t have a window. He searches frantically for something—anything—he can use as a weapon. He’s got his fingers around the razor he shaved with this morning when there’s a sharp rap on the door.
“Helloooo?” the boy calls out. “Dr. Addams? You in there?”
He closes his eyes and crosses himself. He’s always been more of a man of science than of religion, but if there were ever a time to pray, it’s now. The razor slips in his sweaty grip.
Suddenly, the boy’s torso appears through the door. He bares his teeth. “Don’t you know it’s rude to hide from your guests?” he growls.
“G-get away from me, ghost,” Dr. Addams says, holding up the razor. He’s proud that his voice only trembles a little bit.
The rest of the boy’s body phases through the door. “What’s the magic word?”
Dr. Addams doesn’t trust the glint in his eyes, but he speaks anyway. “Please.” The boy hovers in midair. He’s blocking the only exit.
The boy cocks his head to the side and stares at him for a minute, considering. In a flash, he leans forward, his face inches from the doctor’s and whispers, “Boo.”
The shriek that rips through the air isn’t Dr. Addams’. Neither is the way his body flails backwards, his fingers scrabbling for purchase, before he lands heavily on his rear in the shower. His breath is coming more quickly now. He knows he’s only seconds away from hyperventilating. Somehow, the razor is still in his hand, a warm, solid weight.
“You’ve been researching me,” the boy says, leaning against the sink. He glances over at the doctor, still sprawled in the bottom of the shower. “Find anything interesting?”
He doesn’t trust himself to speak right now. Instead, he nods mutely.
The boy looks at him disinterestedly. “Like what?”
Dr. Addams swallows. His throat has never been this dry. “I…you…you were human once,” he says, his heart hammering wildly in his chest. Nearly five years of research, all to reveal one secret that disputed everything he thought was true.
Green eyes seem to glow brighter. The room seems to darken in comparison. Was it this cold when he first came in here?
“I was human once,” the boy says, a wry smiling flitting across his face. Then his expression hardens. He floats towards the doctor. “Was human. Once. Not anymore.”
He reaches forward. His hand fades away, leaving a thin black stump at the end of his arm. Slowly, he pushes the now-intangible hand into Dr. Addams’ leg. “You know my M.O., Doctor,” he murmurs. The grin comes back, all sharp teeth that glint inhumanly in the fluorescent light. “This will only hurt a bit.”
His hand rematerializes. Inside the leg. Dr. Addams wrenches his head back and lets out a howl of pain as the flesh is displaced. The skin around the boy’s hand bulges with the sudden addition of muscles and ligaments before popping, spraying a thin mist of blood across his legs and shirt.
The boy pulls his hand out. His fingers are entirely coated in blood; it drips down his palm and wrist. Without speaking, he turns his hand invisible again and reaches into the other leg.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
Three more times and Dr. Addams is begging. “Please,” he gasps between choked breaths. “No more. No more. I’ll give up my research, I’ll never look at a ghost again, I-I’ll do anything you want, just—no more, please!” He knows that even if by some miracle the ghost boy leaves now, he’ll never be able to walk again.
The boy leans back on his haunches and smirks at him. “Begging so soon? That’s cute.” He grabs the side of the doctor’s neck, plunges his hand into the stringy flesh. “Don’t worry,” he adds, as if it’s an afterthought. “I won’t damage your esophagus.” He leans closer, his breath tickling the doctor’s cheek. “After all, it’s no fun if you can’t scream.”
This time, the blood splatters on the boy’s face, collecting and running in rivulets down his cheekbones. A few flecks collect in his snow-white hair. Dr. Addams’ mouth opens in a howl of agony. He’s screaming, he can’t stop screaming, all he can feel is the hollow places that used to be part of him and all he can see are those awful green eyes—
The boy sighs. “They never last as long as I want them to,” he laments, pulling his hand out of the man’s neck. He glances over the body. Experience tells him that he has about fifteen minutes before the doctor dies. He doesn’t feel like waiting that long.
The man draws in a ragged breath, coughing as he exhales. The boy runs his fingers over the wound on his neck almost tenderly. “Must hurt, huh?” he asks quietly.
Dr. Addams’ eyes flicker to his, wide open and terrified.
“Let me give you something for the pain,” the boy murmurs, before phasing his hand into the man’s stomach. Blood and viscera practically leap out of his abdomen, splattering against the tile walls of the shower and onto his black jumpsuit. The doctor’s clothes are soaked in blood. He was right, earlier; red is a good color on him.
The boy presses the button on the walkie-talkie still clipped to his shoulder. “Phantom to Technogeek,” he says. “How much time have I got?”
“Agent ETA approximately thirty seconds,” his partner’s voice replies tersely. “You take too long. Finish him off and get out of there.”
Phantom grins again, this time revealing two separate rows of fangs. An unnaturally long forked tongue darts out to wet the corners of his lips. “With pleasure.”
He leans forward.
By the time the GIW kick through the thin door of the apartment, he’s leaning back, his teeth and the entire lower half of his face soaked in blood. He stands up, giving one last glance at the doctor’s barely-recognizable corpse. It was a good thing he’d made his last stand in the shower, he mused; it would make cleanup a hell of a lot easier. His last victim had run to a room with a thick white carpet on the floor; he could only imagine the cleaning bill.
One last thing. He reaches forward, dips his index finger in the gory hole of the doctor’s stomach. He stands up again and scrawls his symbol on the wall.
Floating a few inches into the air, he turns intangible, blood dropping to the floor and creating a small puddle. There’s still a few bits of viscera stuck in his teeth; he’ll just have to deal with those later. He fades out of visibility, shooting through the wall into the cool night air just as the agents kick through the bathroom door.
When he’s half a mile away, he activates his walkie-talkie again. “All clear,” he says.
“Great,” Technogfeek’s voice crackles. “Five thousand for that one, right? I’ve been wanting a software upgrade for a while. And we could really use a nicer apartment, the bloodstains in the sink won’t come out…”
Phantom stops listening, instead focusing on the wind whipping through his hair. Just for a minute back there, the clawing sensation inside him had stopped, as if he’d finally managed to quell something deep inside him. One day, he knew, it wouldn’t be enough.
He bares his teeth to the wind. He can still taste the doctor’s blood on his tongue.