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Danny woke to a loud, wet snapping sound. Something underneath him seemed to give way, lurching so part of it was higher than the rest. He stayed put, trying to make sense of his surroundings. He was still in his bed. Said bed was on the fifth floor of a dorm room in Chicago. That didn't stop the sense that he was in the middle of a half-frozen pond as it creaked and popped underneath him.
The clock on his nightstand read 3:52 in glowing blue numbers. Barely two hours since he'd finished his Geochem paper and collapsed into bed.
Ghost bullshit never did care to follow his schedule.
Danny took in a deep breath. He closed his eyes and let himself fall through the ice.
The water was clear even underneath. It was almost as if there was light coming from below. Danny turned over, expecting to see... he wasn't really sure. A sandy pond floor? Mud? The ghost zone's infinite green?
He hadn't expected to see the depths of space, the dark void of eternity stretching back as far as creation. There were no constellations to map the darkness here. Unlike normal space, there was only one star. Well, not really a star. Not yet. It was a protostar. Danny was watching it form, the young core drawing in a disk of cosmic dust from the nebula that was its nursery. Eventually the cloud would collapse in on itself, forming a true star.
Only, something was wrong here. The core had something growing on it, branching out from an angry red splotch. The red spread across the surface of the protostar like veins inflamed by infection. Even from across space, Danny could feel the way it stung. He couldn’t imagine how that felt, but he didn't have to. He remembered it. Blood blossoms were a special kind of pain.
This was a ghost crying out for help.
"Who are you?" Danny asked. "Where are you?"
The ghost didn't talk, but the vision before him changed. It turned into a skyline that he had seen before in news and movies, but never in person. Tall skyscrapers decorated with gothic gargoyles reached up to a cloudy gray sky. There was a spotlight that lit up a part of the clouds, aside from the dark shape of a bat.
"Gotham?" Danny asked, bewildered. Ghosts were sort of telepathic, or empathic, but not over long distances. Not unless they were connected to the other person deeply. This wasn't someone Danny had ever met before, though. He’d know if he’d met someone else with a soul like a star.
A distant hope sparked in Danny's mind. There were stories of soulmates who could telepathically connect without meeting. He'd been told before that he was too alive to have a soulmate. The souls of the living were too mutable, inconsistent.
"I'll find you," Danny promised. "We'll fix this."
The scene wavered. The ghost cried in pain, a long, high keen like a firework.
Reality came back into view like a bright screen after a long time in the dark. The ceiling was about four inches from his nose. Danny dropped back to the bed with a bounce.
So much for sleeping tonight.
The visions came more and more often the closer to Gotham he got. Danny had to stop flying briefly to make sense of them. At first they were just as abstract as that first vision: a bright light slowly turning red, a sun in the sky being eclipsed. As he reached the city limits they seemed to snap into clarity.
There was an alleyway with a stinking blue dumpster, now decorated with a grimy handprint that slid down the side. A masked face, worried but not comprehending, stared down at him while his body burned. The next vision was of fighting, being forced by the masked man to stay still as the burning in his veins demanded he do something. Then Danny saw a distinctive bridge leading out of town.
Following that bridge finally kicked on his ghost sense. Danny was able to follow it to a cave with a locked and shielded door inside.
There was nothing for it. Danny had to help this ghost. He blasted the door apart along with its ghost shield generator.
The ghost's mental cries for help were overwhelming. Please. Help. It hurts. Danny flew blindly ahead, through natural pillars and cave walls and then metal ones. Danny coukd see there were other people around (human, no apparent ectoweapons) but he had tunnel vision. All he cared about was the ghost.
They were in a cell. Nearly four inches of metal on each side with a clear front. The ghost inside banged their fists on the clear wall so hard they bled.
They bled red.
Danny wrapped his arms around the half-ghost's chest. It felt right. Like a piece of him that had been missing his whole life just slid into place. The ghostly cry stopped, replaced by a comfortable hum. Safe. Help is here.
They both fell to the ground. His soulmate's body was exhausted, his soul nearly delirious. Danny could feel the blood blossom infection in the guy’s veins, still burning their way to his brain.
He looked up at the people arrayed around the cage. Batman stared at them, as did a couple other vigilantes that Danny didn't know offhand. So much for Danny trying to keep off the radar of anyone outside of Amity Park.
A deep breath settled his thoughts. This wasn't about him. This was about saving his soulmate. As far as Danny knew, there was only one way to do that.
"We need to infuse him with my blood," Danny said. "Now."