Story Synopsis: Set during Dick’s three-year absence in “Catcher.” White Ghost finds his soul mate—kinda.

“The Challenge”

White Ghost always loved a challenge but rarely did one present itself.

The “people” his master brought to him were unusually easy to break and would squeal at the first drop of blood or slap across the face.

Which is what made the boy underneath his knee so interesting.

Practically sitting on the teen, White Ghost fisted one hand in the boy’s hair, keeping the teen’s face below the dirty tub’s water level. The second he clamped over the boy’s cable-tied wrists, keeping control of the younger’s struggling. Not that White Ghost truly cared. The more the boy struggled, the harder he would be to break.

But he would break. They always did.

He would have let the boy breathe by now if he would have given up, but the boy never did. He was strong, but strength only lasted one so long.

The master would not like it. The master wanted the boy unscathed physically, so the Detective would not have any hard evidence of his torture. But White Ghost had no choice, and he would enjoy what was to come.

Finally letting the boy breathe, he dragged his victim by the wrists across the grimy floor, scraping the boy’s bare back against the jagged concrete. He reached the chains, cutting the wire about the boy’s wrists and locking him the metal clasps. Hacking and reacquainting himself with oxygen, the boy could not object, but once he was hanging in the middle of the room, secure in his restraints, his ethereal eyes glowed through his sodden bangs, hypnotizing, entrancing, innocent. Yet they had no effect upon White Ghost other than his failure to taint them.

But he would.

With a fingerpad, he tilted the boy’s chin up uncomfortably high and smirked.

“What is the American phrase? Let’s give them something to talk about.”

And he did.

The End