Thanks for reading. This is going to be a disturbing plot line. Please DO NOT proceed if you do not like seeing one of your favourite turtles tortured and in pain. 'The Mechanic' is not a continuation of any of my other stories; it is very different and not for under 18's.
I would love someone to volunteer to do Beta reading for my story.
Disclaimer: I do not own the turtles or make any money off them. I wish I did because then I would probably be rich.
Chapter 1 – Homewards (Current time)
Slick streams of rain water gushed through the grating as cars speed by, sending long sprays of water hitting the road and sidewalk above. The steady rush of water disappeared into the sewer system, being carried away quickly into the raging dark labyrinth as efficiently as it had always been for the last hundred years.
Barely noticeable in the underground gloaming a shaking hand reached out to brace itself against one of the sewer walls. The hand was twisted in on itself at a strange angle, protecting the three fingers from the wall with the back of the hand being the part braced against the wall. The creature the hand belonged to was breathing heavily and on its knees, painful wheezing sounds coming from him as he struggled to gather enough energy to continue onwards.
With a sharp intake of breath, the creature heaved his left knee forward into the muck of the tunnel. His right arm hung limply at his side and dragged through the rainwater and sewage, knuckles scraping the concrete bottom. With every movement forward he paused, struggling more than it seemed necessary to take in life-giving oxygen. The chill wind that blew up through the tunnels cooled his feverish skin which was an unnatural colour in various patches from where infection had already taken hold.
Some time later he paused under a sewer grating where light streaming down from above lit the bruised and unhealthy pallor of his once bright green skin. Red patches showed up in the pale light where some of his scales once were, while the rushing water reflected something metal and bloody sticking out from the shoulder of his useless arm.
His mind was so accustomed to the constant pain accompanying him that it was foggy and slow, but somehow he still sensed he was approaching home and safety. What he had no current brain capacity for was pondering how, at the rate he was going, and in his condition, it was still going to be a marathon effort to reach home before death embraced him. He knew deep down that no one was looking for him. He had been gone too long; so long in fact that he had long accepted his family had given up all hope.
The water continued to rush around him as he laboured over simply pushing one knee in front of the other and bracing against the wall for support.
After many hours of painstakingly dragging himself forward, he moved his hand down from the wall so that it was in front of himself causing a wave of dizziness to hit, making him lurch forward. The water gushing into his nostrils caused him to choke as the lead weight that was his head became too much to bear. He was unable to spit it out and spent several long minutes coughing and trying to dislodge the water from his burning lungs. His head was now braced against the wall, so he sat like that until long after the storm had passed and he had somehow swallowed the foul water that he was unable to spit out.
Shivering, he awoke with a sudden fright, lurching upwards away from the wall and twisting his head violently back and forth. Both his eyes were swollen over almost completely, but he could detect no approaching shadows of humans in pursuit – how would he evade them in his condition anyway? He held still and listened, but over his shaky and laboured breathing he heard only the quiet trickling of water; the calm after the storm.
Another day, and many hours later, he reached it – the familiar entry to the storm water runoff junction. He knew choosing the right tunnel from inside the junction was vital to finding his way home, and once in the tunnel, it would only be a matter of counting past three tunnels on his right-hand side and going down to the reinforced steel door of his home at the end of the fourth tunnel. He leant forward over the edge of the drop off into the junction and pushed himself down with a thump onto the concrete below. His carapace took the majority of the impact, but the pain jolting through his many injuries sent him unconscious for another half a day.
When he came to, he braced himself as best he could for the burst of pain as he rolled over and slowly crouched back onto his bare knees. His knees were scraped raw from the long journey, but he didn't notice – there was far too much pain in other parts of his body. Apart from his fall, his mind was still blanking out the pain – for it was too much to bear. Shuffling forward he peered up at the tunnel openings at the junction. They looked different from last time he was here. A work crew had been through and had repainted the lines and numbers on the tunnels in bright yellow. He spent a long time trying to lift his head high enough to see the top of the tunnel openings without getting dizzy, and also trying to see the numbers without his vision blurring. Eventually, he decided the tunnel that was his destination, then slower than an unmutated turtle, set off towards it.
Some time later – no..
A long time later.. he reached it. Sheer willpower had brought him this far. He had nothing left, no energy as he could only raise his head to look only to the bottom of the reinforced steel door. He sat there braced against the wall for many long hours, unable to summon up the energy to reach up far enough to grip onto the wheel and turn it. What then? Would anyone be home? Did anyone even live there now? Could he even turn it? Would the security system even recognise him and allow him to turn it the whole way? He used to be strong, but he could barely hold his head up now. His mind receded into a haze as he worried and doubted and feared and tried to summon strength within that was absent or too deep down to take the final step.
Eventually, he pushed himself off from the wall and grabbed onto the wheel with his good hand that really wasn't that good. Knees apart on the ground he leant forwards, pulling all the weight of his skeletal broken form down with him, causing the wheel to squeak around and down. The door with a hiss opened quicker than he could react, and he fell. Uncontrolled, he tumbled downwards into his home, head and shoulder hitting the ground first, before coming to a stop as his plastron thumped against the ground and his broken form lay sprawled and crumpled across the entranceway that was normally an easy drop off to navigate.
Feet quickly approached, and voices were raised in alarm, but he had already slipped back into pain and unconscious oblivion.