A/N: Many apologies to those waiting patiently for updates to 'Curse of the Broken Pearl' and 'The Beauty of Grey'. Both of these stories will be updated in the hopefully not-too-distant future. I certainly haven't abandoned either.
In the mean-time I have this little offering for you. This story may well be the start of a randomous collection of one-shots, all featuring stories told about the TMNT, and mainly from the POV of 'Joe Bloggs' who gets exposed to an aspect of the TMNT in some way. Other than this premise, the stories in this collection will likely not share any real connection. Nor will they be based in any one turtle-verse, or restricted to a certain genre. Which is actually a very good thing since this story actually features the first canon character death that I've ever posted. And with that we'll head on to the warnings...
WARNINGS: Horror; blood an' guts. Not a lot of it explicit, but if you watch SVU as much as I do you'll should't have much trouble visualizing what's going on. One canon character is dead, and a few others make small cameo appearances. Not all of the canon cameos are turtles.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own the TMNT, or any related characters (much to their relief, I'm sure!).
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Let me tell you a story...
Snr Detective J.B. Hennessey
Working the New York streets as a cop for more than 30 years, I've seen some weird shit. In one case that has stayed with me however, I heard the most appalling things.
The case was never closed. Not enough evidence apparently. Bushwah. There was plenty of evidence, till the darn Feds got their hands on it. According to current NYPD records, the case never even existed. But, far as I'm concerned, it's still wide open.
Couple of years ago I get called in to lead an investigation into a multiple homicide. Nothing new about that, I'd already seen just about every way a human body could be butchered. But this. This was something else. Five laboratory staff had been… puréed.
Some of the cuts were clean, precise. Other wounds looked like they'd been ripped apart. And then there were the bones that had been snapped clean in two, skulls caved in by something blunt. It took the Forensics Team half an hour just to confirm there were in fact five bodies in the room, the poor souls had been carved up and scattered about to such an extent. We found blood spatters in an overhead Air-con vent that had lost its' cover, in a room with a 10 foot high ceiling.
The place was like a morgue. No, literally, like a morgue. One of those labs where they dissect specimens; all bleached white tile lining the walls and floor. Huge lights set on the ceiling that could be moved about every which way, and this big stainless steel table sitting in the middle of it.
For the devastation around it you'd think the table would be wrecked too, but it wasn't. It had barely been touched at all. There was a stain of blood upon it, running down to the drain in one corner of the surface. I figured it was from whatever the victims had been working on last, since it didn't fit with any of the other splatter patterns in the room. Forensics took a sample of it, of course. But that got confiscated by the Feds before we could run any tests on it, along with all of the other evidence we collected from the scene. Including the tape.
That damn tape.
It was made by one of the victims. They were obviously working on something that had them excited. You could hear it in their voice, despite that detached monotone morticians always adopt. The microphone had been smashed, wrenched from its' cord dangling from the ceiling of the lab. However, we found the remainder of the recording system intact in the next room. I can't say why, but something compelled me to listen to the playback straight away, rather than simply bagging the tape for later analysis.
One of the scientists was dictating all they could see. At first the measurements meant little to me. It sounded like they were describing a muscular short person, until they started detailing things like the digits, scute sizes… and the way they described the features of the head. Whatever it was, it sure as hell wasn't human.
After the "gross external anatomy detailing" was done, the victim then went on to describe all of the distinguishing marks this thing had. 20 minutes. 20 damn minutes it took them to record all of the scars on the "subject". I can't say for sure what that meant, but I took it to mean that thing had been friggin' aggressive during its life-span.
Then they started on the autopsy proper. One of the Forensic Team, Jacobs, who listened to the tape with me, informed me it was normal process to begin with the chest cavity. Not that he needed to tell me, there is something distinctive about the sound of a ribcage being cracked.
I have to admit a lot of the relevance of the weights and measurements of the various organs was lost on me. Probably would have been no matter what the victims had been dissecting, I've never found the detailed inner workings of bodies all that fascinating. In fact, I was relieved once the victims started referring to the "cranium", knowing the examination was drawing to a close even as the shrill squeal of the bone-saw made me wince. The victims sounded surprised as they recorded the mass of the brain.
And then there was this odd creak in the background, so quiet we almost missed it. I remember leaning forward, trying to catch what the amp was telling me, when this scream erupted. This God-awful scream that was like nothing else I've ever heard. I almost fell out of my chair hearing it! I don't think it was one of the victims. It had this raw edge to it. It was like rage given a voice, animalistic. And then the victims started screaming.
For a couple of minutes the sounds that came out of that speaker were… sickening. The screaming didn't last long at all. The only discernable words were a heart-wrenching cry of "Donnie! No!" I can only guess this was one of the victims calling out to another, we never got to the point of discovering their identities. After that the wet sounds of flesh being torn, the dull cracks of bones being fractured were all we heard for what seemed the longest time. When it was over I glanced at Jacobs sat beside me. He looked about as green in the face as I felt.
I think we both looked back at the speaker then, the silence from it somehow foreboding. I know I sure as hell jumped at the next thing we heard. A quiet sobbing started. And then there was this voice, so calm and controlled it was eerie.
"Hush Mikey. We're not finished yet. We need to get our brother home."
"Home? Home?!" demanded another voice. I have no doubt in my mind it was the one responsible for the original scream. "How can we take him back to Splinter like this? How can we…?" He… Its' voice cracked before it cried out again. Something gave a loud crack, and I remembered seeing a tile in the morgue wall with three holes punched clean through it deep into the cement behind. I have no idea what could've done that kind of damage. All the while the sobbing continued unabated in the background.
"We will clean him up first, make sure our brother is… as whole as we can make him. You know it needs to be done." said the one in charge. It didn't sound like an order, exactly. But the tone wasn't one I'd be arguing with. There was a growl in response. A low sound so full of malice it made my skin crawl. It ended abruptly with a sharp fttzak! And then silence. True silence. That was obviously the point at which the microphone had met its' demise.
Jacobs and I sat staring at the speaker for easily more than a minute, too shocked for words. And then the damn door got kicked in, damn near gave me a heart attack! It was the friggin' Feds. A heap of these black-clad guys swarmed into my crime-scene. They took the whole thing over in a matter of minutes as the smug bastard leading them informed me my "services would no longer be required", adjusting his sunglasses all the while. If I hadn't listened to the tape straight away, I would have lost the only lead I got to keep from the whole fracas. Safe, in my own head.
I have attempted to follow the case up, despite being officially cautioned against it. It was all just too strange to let it go. And I'll be damned if I was gonna leave it the hands of an arrogant moron who was dense enough to wear sunglasses at night.
Every piece of information I've managed to uncover about it since has just made things even more bizarre. I had no idea at first what the "subject" could have been. Terms like "scutes" and "plastron" I had never heard before. However a chance meeting with a marine biologist while investigating another case meant I discovered they were terms often used in relation to chelonian shells; tortoises and turtles. But that doesn't make any sense to me at all. Those things were definitely not some kind of ponderous, hulking reptile!
That fact is reinforced when you take into consideration the sheer logistics of a small group managing to invade the lab, kill everyone so brutally, and then somehow sneak a dismembered body out of there. The place was a private research company, chock-full of state-of-the-art security systems. Only some kind of elite squad, special ops or marines or something, could have pulled off a job like that. I would've suspected that was the reason for the Feds getting involved, to cover it up, if it hadn't been for the 'Leader' calling the "subject" his "brother". Obviously they were not your run-of-the-mill military recruits.
I've scoured the NYPD database for any references to an organisation or individual known as "Splinter", with no luck. My guess is it's a reference to some classified or terrorist program for developing these… things. Somehow, some of them have gotten loose. Or been set loose.
Either way, I'm not gonna let this case go. I can't! There are times I wake in the night, that animal scream still ringing in my ears. There's some weird shit in this city. And there are still at least three of them out there.