Jimmy Olsen, opting to make some spare money on the side (there's a new camera that just dropped and it's worth more than his normal salary can afford), signs up for a Clinical Trial.
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It'll pay more than enough for that new camera he wants, and he just has to use his two weeks of saved vacation time from work to do it.
But he should have read the fine print.
Because he went to sleep in his bed, and woke up in what looks like a hotel room without any windows.
He pushes the emergency button on his watch, trying to summon Superman, but nothing happens.
Wherever he is, it's so well fortified that Superman can't hear the frequency the watch is going off at.
After the initial freak out though, the doctors come in and explain how the trial will work; two weeks of taking a pill in the morning and getting a shot in the afternoon, blood draws once every three days to monitor any side effects, consulting with a personal doctor every day, and he gets to basically actually have a two week vacation.
The secrecy, the doctors say, is due to it being a Government Run Clinical Trial, and they really are sorry for drugging him, but they figured it would be less stressful than throwing a black hood over his head on the way to the location.
Jimmy does not forgive them.
But also, the doctors very notably did not say he could leave before the trial was up.
The best thing he can do is play along until he can find a chance to escape.
Except that the pills glow a little. The shots definitely glow, and not just a little. If he struggles, they sedate him and give him the meds anyways, and he wakes up in his hotel/prison cell, groggy. If he doesn't talk to the doctor about how he's feeling physically every day, they strap him down and run tests with various scanners.
There's no windows. The doors, every single one of them, need a key card and a thumb print scan to open. There is no cell phone signal; he knows because he overheard the armed guards complaining about it. No matter how many times he whispers for Superman, the Man of Steel doesn't come.
Hell, at one point, when Jimmy was actively struggling against getting injected again, he quite literally screamed for Superman, only for nothing to happen.
Everything is soundproofed, then.
He's not sure how long it's been, but he's fairly certain it's been over two weeks, unless they changed the schedule for the pills and the shots without telling him. Also, his hair is getting longer than it would have in two weeks.
And things are starting to get weird. Well, weirder.
His eyes sometimes glow red. One time he accidentally started floating. They held a jar of some strange glowing orb near him and his breath started frosting over.
He can feel his heart slowing down more and more every day.
And he knows that, for some reason, that's the goal; when he'd been in a sleepy haze, and the scientists and doctors had thought him unconscious, he'd heard them talking about him almost having the same biology as 'Phantom', and that all that was left was the brainwashing stage.
That they were just waiting for him to die before they did that.
But the closer he gets to death, the stronger he becomes. He hides it, of course, but it's difficult to hide a bent metal chair leg. He doesn't know if that happened due to enhanced strength or...or something else.
Then one day he looks up to see his eyes glowing red, but in the way that Superman's do before he uses laser vision. The floating gets more pronounced. He accidentally froze his morning coffee when he blew on it.
For some reason, his body appears to be developing the same or similar powers to Superman, and he has no idea why, or if it's permanent.
But he won't get answers if they refuse to tell him anything face to face.
So he pretends to be unconscious more; that way they'll talk more around him.
He learns that Phantom was a hero, despite the bullshit they're saying he knows one when he hears about one, who they took down.
That they experimented on him until all that was left was...the small glowing orb in a jar they kept shoving at his face.
And something in Jimmy knows that Phantom can still be saved.
If he can time it right, he can try to punch his way through enough of the guards and scientists to get to a part of the compound in the open air, somewhere he can get help.
Somewhere Superman can finally hear him.
He just has to do half the work.
The more he plans, the more he feels an odd attachment to the orb in the jar. To Phantom.
Something inside him knows that's just a kid, and he can't explain how it knows.
Then, one day, when the timing is right, and he feels like he's on the cusp of...something, he strikes.
He takes a deep breath, just as they go to inject him again, feels his heart finally slow to a stop, and throws the metal table at the doctors in the room.
He doesn't even pause to acknowledge that his feet aren't touching the ground. That he's flying.
He's already across the room and grabbing Phantom, using the momentum to punch out the steel door.
The weapons they try to use on him to stop him sting, but Jimmy tanks it and barrels forward, breaking down door after door without stopping.
Then, after getting blinded by a sun he hasn't seen in an unknown number of days, he's out in the open air.
With an army rallying behind him, a rescued hostage in his arms, and Jimmy actively fighting off a nervous breakdown, Superman hears him.
Clark has been out of his mind with worry.
Jimmy Olsen has been missing for seven months, and no one can pinpoint where he is.
He can't hear Jimmy's heart, and the only thing preventing him from believing that Jimmy's dead is the staunch refusal to do so, and Bruce reassuring him that the evidence in Jimmy's apartment indicated that whoever took him wanted him alive.
So after seven months of no word, he finally, finally hears Jimmy's hoarse, terrified voice scream for him.
He's there before he fully realizes that he's moved, and...
Jimmy doesn't have a pulse.
Jimmy's very clearly alive somehow despite that, ragged with unkempt blue hair and beard so pale the blue is almost white, skinnier than he should be, glowing pale red eyes, and cradling a jar with a glowing orb inside of it.
"They did to him what they were trying to do to me, and I don't know what they did," Jimmy gasps, hands shaking. "I can fly, I have laser vision, I have frost breath, I don't know what...I don't..."
Behind Jimmy, a small army of men in white suits rushes out of a hole in the wall, leveling strange weapons at his friend.
The same friend they experimented on, for seven months, and probably did irreversible damage to if they managed to foist Kryptonian abilities upon a human body.
Clark reaches out and closes Jimmy's eyes, cutting off and containing the laser vision his friend was gearing up to use from stress alone.
Then, slowly, Superman turns to look down at the men in white suits below him, who appear to be having the sudden and startling revelation that they'd messed up.
The Man of Steel loses a little time after that.
Or; The GIW opens a Clinical Trial to try to create a new halfa after experimenting on their captured subject, Phantom, so much that Phantom was forced into his Core.
The Clinical Trial only lasts for two weeks; but after that they can keep whoever signs up for it indefinitely, because at that point they're so ecto-contaminated they don't count as human and fall under the anti-ecto acts. Then, they can create their own halfa and brainwash the halfa into doing their dirty work.
Jimmy Olsen, desperate to escape, has been slowly adapting to have the powers of Superman, who is his friend and who would absolutely be able to save not only Jimmy, but whoever these scientists turned into a glowing orb. Since ecto is adaptable, it adapted to the powerset that Jimmy thought he needed.
This includes the very last ability he got; invulnerability, but on a lesser scale than Superman's own, hence why anti-ghost weapons only stung him.
