The Chosen
part 1

"Have you guys seen Donny?" Leo asked as he walked towards the couch.

Neither Raph nor Mikey looked up, both too intent on their video game.

"Nope," Raph answered, gnashing his teeth and swaying with the movement of the character he was playing. "Check his lab."

"I just came from there," Leo said. "I checked the garage too. Don's shell cycle is gone. He usually tells someone when he's going out."

"Not if he's going to see the Professor at the junkyard," Mikey said, leaning forward as his onscreen character dodged a laser blast. "Call him."

Leo pulled his shell cell from his belt and placed a call to Donatello's phone. After counting off twelve rings, Leo gave up.

"He's not answering," Leo said. "That's not like Don. I'm going to grab his scanner and try to track him."

As he jogged over to Don's lab, his brothers saved their game and turned the televisions off. They got up to join Leo when he came back with the scanner.

"Got him?" Raph asked.

Leo nodded. "This shows he's at the junkyard. Or at least his phone is. Come on, we need to find him."

Taking the elevator up to the garage, the trio jumped into the Battle Shell and Raph quickly drove towards the junkyard. They were nearly there when Leo's shell cell rang.

"Donny? Where are you? I tried to call and . . . ." Leo began.

"I'm at the Professor's junkyard," Don interrupted in a harsh whisper. "I turned my phone off so it wouldn't give away my position. I think someone is following me. I didn't want to go back to my shell cycle in case they've got someone watching it."

"Stay hidden," Leo instructed, exchanging glances with Raph. "We're nearly there."

"Be careful," Don whispered. "I don't know how many there are."

Raph stepped on the gas pedal and the Battle Shell shot forward. It wasn't long before they reached the junkyard, but rather than pulling in as they usually did, Raph parked around the corner.

Entering the junkyard together, the brothers spread out. Remaining in the shadows, they moved towards Don's location, watching for signs of the people who were stalking him.

A slight difference in the shape of a junked car's shadow caught Leo's notice. Staring at it intently, he saw it shift.

Mikey realized that Leo had stopped moving. Looking over at his older brother, he saw Leo signal towards the car. With a low hiss, Mikey got Raph's attention. Keeping still, they all watched as a slender, red-headed man slipped out from behind the car and ran lightly over the ground to a new hiding place.

After waiting for a few minutes, the turtles became certain that the man was alone. With great care, the brothers moved into positions surrounding him.

A gesture from Leo sent them forward all at once. Startled, the man swung a fist at Mikey, who pushed it aside just before Raph jumped on the man's back and drove him to the ground.

Grabbing one of the man's arms, Raph yanked it behind his back and pulled up on it. Fear of having his arm broken stopped the man's struggles.

"Who are you? Why are you following our brother?" Leo asked as Don walked up to join them.

Coughing out a mouthful of dust, the man exclaimed, "I'm Razorfist! Please guys, we need your help!"

"Razorfist?" Don stared at the man as Raph climbed off of him and helped him to his feet. "You are! Why were you trailing me? Why didn't you just walk up and introduce yourself?"

"I needed to make certain neither of us was being followed," Razorfist said. "My real name is Shane by the way."

"Okay Shane, what's the deal? Who needs help?" Raph asked.

"All of us; all of the people the Foot turned into monsters," Shane said. "We keep in touch with each other and the people you know as Cyclops and Insectoid have gone missing. We've been very wary of our surroundings since that happened to us and we never go anywhere without letting the others know where we'll be."

"Guys, maybe we should continue this discussion elsewhere," Leo said. "If someone is after the underground survivors, we shouldn't be out here in the open."

Don went to retrieve his shell cycle and the other four took extra precautions as they returned to the Battle Shell. Taking different routes to the lair, the group kept a close eye on their back trail to make certain they weren't followed.

During the ride, Mikey tied a bandana over Shane's eyes. "Sorry, but our Father doesn't like for anyone to know where we live."

"That's okay," Shane said. "Right now I'm sort of wishing I had a secret hideout."

They didn't talk again until they had all reached the safety of the lair. After taking Shane down in the elevator, Mikey removed the blindfold and indicated he should have a seat on the couch.

"It's been more than a year since we cured you guys and you came back above ground," Don said. "How have all of you been doing?"

"Pretty well," Shane said. "It took some adjustment to get back to our lives. The hardest part was coming up with a story for our friends and family to explain what had happened to us. Fortunately we've had each other to help make the transition easier. Greg, the guy you know as Stonebiter, and Cyclops are actually rooming together. Greg is freaking out."

"How long have the two been missing?" Leo asked.

"Insectoid, Rachel, has been gone for three days," Shane answered. "David, that's Cyclops' real name, disappeared the day after that. What's worse, I haven't been able to reach Sydney this evening. She and I are . . . together. She told me she was going to try to find our friends and that if she went missing, I was to go to that junkyard at night and keep going each night until I saw one of you.

"This is the worst feeling in the world," Shane continued, running his hands through his hair in agitation. "Worse than when we were first taken. We've never known why we were chosen and now it seems we've still got targets on our backs. I have to find Sydney, I can't live without her. She means too much to me."

"Could the Foot be after them again for some reason?" Raph asked, looking at Don.

"It's possible, but I don't know why," Don said. "Shredder shut down the program once he'd determined that the Utrom weren't underground. That's all he cared about. As far as he knew, his 'experiments' had been destroyed. I found no sign that the archived video logs were ever transmitted beyond the genetics lab."

"Wouldn't he have noticed when his scientists didn't 'phone home'?" Mikey asked.

"Maybe he didn't care," Raph said. "They spent his money and didn't give him what he wanted."

"After a year, we thought we could relax a little," Shane said. "Sydney's got a good job working nights as a systems engineer and I found a new band to play in. I'm a musician. Night before last I sensed someone lurking in the shadows in the alley behind the club where I was playing. That's exactly the scenario from when I was captured the first time. I went right back inside."

"You didn't get a look at whoever it was?" Leo asked.

Shane shook his head. "I didn't take the time. We'd already lost touch with Rachel so we were all being extra cautious."

Something in Shane's turn of phrase made Don curious. "You said you 'sensed' that someone was hiding nearby. What did you mean by that?"

"It seems that we've all retained some attributes from our previous mutation," Shane said, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. "I'm pretty sure they used some scorpion DNA when they mutated me. I can still feel vibrations from my surroundings and my sense of smell is much sharper than it ever was before."

"Fascinating," Don said.

"Admire it later, Brainiac," Raph said. "Right now we need to figure out what's happened to our friends and put a stop to it."

"Where was Sydney when she went missing?" Leo asked.

"She was taking a cab to her office when I last saw her," Shane said. "Sydney was going to turn over a couple of projects to co-workers and then ask for a few days off. She planned to backtrack both Rachel and David to see if she could get a clue about what happened to them. I told her to wait until after I played my final session for the night and I'd go with her."

"Then the first thing we should do is find out if she made it to her office," Leo said. "Did you talk to anyone there?"

"I called one of her co-workers when she didn't answer her phone," Shane said. "He told me Sydney never came in."

"Did you see Sydney actually get into the cab?" Don asked.

Shane frowned. "No. She called for one the way she usually does. It's more expensive than taking the subway, but none of us really likes to walk the streets by ourselves anymore."

"Which cab company and what's your address?" Don asked.

"Yellow," Shane told him and then gave him the address of the apartment he and Sydney shared.

"Okay, let me check the cab company's call logs," Don said, heading for his computer.

"So you guys work night jobs," Mikey said. "How about the others?"

"Most of us do now," Shane said. "It's hard for us to sleep at night, partly because we're afraid of intruders and partly because we want to enjoy the daylight."

"Do you know where Rachel and David were before they vanished?" Leo asked.

"Rachel waits tables at an all-night diner," Shane said. "She worked her shift and got off at three a.m., but never made it home. David is a technician at a vet hospital. He watches over the animals at night. The technician who takes over from him at five a.m. said David handed off some instructions and then left. He wasn't seen after that."

"How do they usually get home?" Mikey asked.

"They both use ride sharing companies," Shane said. "Greg is night manager at a twenty-four drug store chain. He has a company car and sometimes can get away to give us lifts to the places we need to go."

"Sounds like ya' guys are really close," Raph said.

Shane shrugged. "Share a life-altering experience like we did and you're sort of bound together. We all have certain leftover skills from the mutations. It's hard for us to get close to anyone outside our group because we don't want to explain why we're so different."

"We can relate to that," Mikey said.

"I may have something," Don said excitedly as he rejoined them. "I found the number for the cab that was dispatched to pick up Sydney and then called the guy who's assigned to that cab. He said when he got to your building, there was a cab from a different company in front and that a girl matching Sydney's description was getting into it. Since he didn't know who he was waiting on, he sat at the curb for twenty minutes and then left. He remembers because it happened only a few hours ago and because he was angry."

"She took a different cab? Did you check on their records?" Shane asked.

"That's just it," Don said. "There is no such cab company listed anywhere. Whoever picked up Sydney knew her routine and was waiting for her in one of the few places where she feels safe."

"If you can fake a cab, seems like it wouldn't be that hard to fake a ride sharing car," Mikey said.

"Easier actually," Don said. "I can hack into the dispatch systems for any of the ride share companies and easily find out when a certain person has requested a ride."

"Sydney was right," Shane said. "Someone is kidnapping the survivors from the underground."

"Yes they are," Don said. "And whoever it is, they are smart and they have resources."

"So are we," Leo said, looking at Shane with determination. "You came to us for help and you'll get it. We're going to find Sydney and the others and learn who kidnapped them. Count on it."

TBC….