I hope that this chapter isn't so messy, I've tried to keep it very clear and easy to read since it's now takes place at two different places at the same time.
- Note: Congenital analgesia, aka congenital insensitivity to pain, is simply a disease where you can't feel any pain at all.
Chapter 4: Sudden betrayal
There was so many questions and emotions swirling around at the one rooftop where four giant turtles and what seemed to be, at least, a young girl. As in a turn of the dices Haylie has become someone of a fearsome character, not hesitating once over killing them on sight.
"You've gone too far Haylie! Answer me! Why are you doing this?!" Leo yelled furiously as his katanas collided with Raph's sais that Haylie had taken from him in a flash, measured his strength with a girl that usually couldn't even beat Mikey if she wanted to. She had stopped Leo's fully forced attack with them, making them face one another eye to eye. Was she to push him away or disarm him? He didn't know, and that was the scary part. Haylie didn't say anything, which made Leo almost pass as Raph by the rage that created. He broke himself free from her hold on him, aiming his katanas for several of the human body's different weak point. But every time he seemed to get a hit, she blocked it with the sais. But it was at the point where he accidently stabbed her through her hand, but when he did she didn't do as much as blink as a reaction.
"What the…" Mikey said out loud and was trying to get things together.
"How's that even possible?!" Don shouted surprised. "We all know that she doesn't have congenital analgesia or anything!"
Don couldn't make sense of it, no one could. But they did know that if they didn't do something and fast, they might not be able to find out what's going on here. Both Mikey and Leo was attacking at the same time, somewhat holding back since they all have a picture in the back of their head in how she's been through the whole time she's been with them. A funny young girl, somewhat unsure about herself and isn't afraid of anything what they know so far. They used kicks and pushes in hopes of her being knocked out so they wouldn't have to attack her anymore, but their kicks didn't seem to do any effect at all!
"I don't get any of this!" Mikey shouted out confused as he swung his nunchakus. "Usually big and ugly dudes should have a K.O right now, why don't a little girl have it?!"
"Somethings not right, it's like she's not even human!" Leo said as he avoided her attack time after time after time.
"This will get us nowhere, we need to end this now!" He then shouted in a serious tone, taking a step back to analyze the situation better.
"Right back at ya' bro!"
They both ran towards her, Mikey slightly ahead and caught the most of her attention so that Leo could get a clean shot at her. She avoided most of it in the last minute but he did create a gash on her upper arm, making the blood pouring out of it as well as the wound in her hand. But she didn't even make a face, instead she threw a punch straight at Mikey's face, making him stagger for a bit. Haylie got a hold of his arm, pulled him towards her as she kicked him not only once, but twice in the stomach before turning around and delivered a strong kick to the head, making him hit the ground hard.
"Mikey!" Leo shouted as his brother that didn't get up, but started to move a little a few seconds later. The fight kept on going for quite some time, Leo and Haylie did both manage to cause harm to one another. But Leo didn't have the intention of killing her as she did for him. Don managed to get up again, so did Raph, but it didn't take too long for them to be knocked out again.
Leo looked around him, every single one of his brothers were lying unconscious on the ground because of the pain of their wounds, heavy blows to their heads. His stamina was running low, his forehead wet by sweat and eyes fixated on her.
One last time he attacked her, but she redirected his swords to the side, took a steady grip of him and threw him onto the concrete with his shoulder first, making it dislocated. An agonizing cry of pain came from his mouth. Haylie just stood there, looked at him with an emotionless face and gave him a kick to the head, making his surroundings turn black. She threw the sais on the ground in front of him, made her way towards the edge of the rooftop and jumped down.
Mikey woke up shook some life into Leo, realizing that his shoulder was dislocated. It was harder for them to wake Don and Raph back to the present, but they did eventually. They all helped one another out so they would all make it back home again, but it sure took them a while. "Please someone do something about the pain!" Mikey pleaded as he was laying down on the sofa an hour later, trying not to move anything except for his mouth.
"Can't you just be quiet for one minute Mikey, one minute?!" Raph asked with his normally harsh voice and grimaced as Don tried to apply bandage to his torso, making several flashes of pain to through his body.
"I'm trying but my stomach hurts too much!"
"Too bad it wasn't your jaw!" Raph replied, one again grimacing for moving his torso.
"Michelangelo." Master Splinter warned with a strict but calm voice. "Show some respect to your wounded brothers."
"The painkillers will take effect soon Mikey, you just need to hold on until then." Don assured him, but reassuring wasn't going to help him.
"Now my sons." Master Splinter said with a calm voice, sitting on the floor facing his sons lying in both couches and armchairs, covered with in- and external wounds. "Tell me what happened."
The guys told him exactly how the situation had played out and in the end how Haylie fled, making them all putting on a quite confused face.
"Don, what do we know so far?" Leo asked the purple masked turtle and Don walked away to get his laptop so that they could find out.
"Well, we do know that she claims herself to be the daughter of David Bower and that she's has an older brother. Other than that we don't have any more information about her except casual facts as her strength, sense of humor and disliking liquorish."
That wasn't much to go on, and the only good piece of information they got they weren't really sure if it was accurate or not. They all sighed, feeling like they would spin in circles if they didn't accidently bump into her again.
"Hey guys, remember the pin I gave her?" And the attention was drawn to Donatello.
"Yeah, what about it?" Raph asked.
"You see, I didn't program it to send a distress signal whenever problems were about to occur but also to constant tracking."
"That means we'll be able to find out where she is right now!" Leo said, making it all clear.
"Then where is she!? I have unfinished business with Red!" Raph said with a rough voice.
"Then let's see.." Donnie said while he was tapping his keyboard, making all sorts of commands before pressing enter and a city map was reviled in
front of him witch a red signal slowly blinking.
"Um, guys. You won't believe this.."
"What is it?" His brothers asked curiously.
"She's at the Bower Industries main building now!"
"Why would she go there? And more importantly, she might actually hurt someone!"
"The signals weak, it might be that's she's underground with some heavy isolation. It doesn't sound very likely for Bower industries to keep a girl on the loose in captive.."
Leo put on a thinking face as he walked back and forward, trying to figure out the best way to approach all of this.
"If I am correct she should be in some kind of basement, therefore the weak signal. So I just need to download these blueprints and…" His voice faded as it didn't make any sense, attracting Leo's attention.
"According to these blueprints there are no such thing as a basement, but the gratitude and longitude shows that she's underground."
Leo squinted his eyes as he tried to make some sense of all of this.
"What are they hiding…" He said thinking out loud. "Don, can you access their system?"
"Not from this computer." Donnie said with his eyes fixed on the screen as he tried to hack their system.
"They have six class S firewalls, it will take me weeks to hack that from here!"
"We don't have weeks, perhaps not even days!"
"Then we have to hack the system ninja style!" Mikey said with his usual goofy voice.
"We sneak inside and while exploring the place don uses his super brain to hack into their system! It'll be like the mission impossible movies! We glide down the side of the building, take us through the glass with some sort of-"
"You watch too many movies Mikey!" Raph said, interrupting his brother.
"Oh yeah? Well it's better than you who can't understand them!"
"Now you've done it Mikey!" Raph shouted, refused his pain and went up to go after his brother. Mikey screamed by surprise and jumped off the sofa to avoid his brothers hands, accidently ran into the coffee table and stepped on the remote, making the TV turn on.
"Now to a special press conference held at the Bower Industries entrance hall"
"Be quiet you two!" Don said with a determined voice but Raph didn't stop, just punching Mikey a little bit less hard than he usually would do.
"So that is supposed to be David Bower?" Leo asked as soon as a blond muscular man in a suit appeared on screen.
"Yes, he's one of the world's sharpest minds when it comes to biological research and medical equipment, as I told you before. I can't see why he would be involved within anything suspicious since his researched has been used to improve health care all around the world."
"David Bower sir! Rumors say that the Bower Industries are currently working on some sort of serum to reduce the healing process on the human body, is the rumors true?"The owner himself took a few seconds to reflect upon this, when he eventually smiled and took a breath to speak up.
"Bower Industries does not have any theory about such a thing as to reduce the healing process of the human body, but it would be nice, wouldn't it?"He said it with a sense of humor, making the people in the conference room laugh slightly. But neither Leo nor anyone of his brothers was laughing.
"He's lying." Don said with a coldly.
"How you know?" Leo asked a bit curiously.
"I don't, I just have that feeling." He said and then turned his eyes to Leo. "So what do we do now?"
Leo thought about it, looked at the TV where the long muscular man was still standing and talking, making Leo frown slightly.
"We need to get to the bottom of this, when our bodies has healed a bit we're sneaking inside the Bower Industries main building."
"Mr. Bower sir." A tall young man with brown, bushy hair and green eyes address the owner of the company as he stepped inside his office.
"I'm apologizing for disturbing you like this shortly after the press conference but we have picked up a signal from unit 001."
"What?!" A deep and dark voice said out loud in surprise. "What's the status rapport?"
"It's not very far from here and moving towards us, it's expected to be here within ten minutes. We don't know the extent of damage taken to the unit but the teams are on stand-by."
"Good, report to me when you've done a complete body scan and looked over the damages caused to the unit and system disturbance that has occurred."
The young man bowed down before leaving the room and closing the doors behind him. In the end of the room there was a desk with a chair facing the giant glass-wall behind it, showing all of New York through it. But then the chair turned around to revile a muscular man in his early forties, blond short hair and blue eyes with a bit of facial hair.
"My little daughter…" He said murmuring, slamming his clenched fist down the desk, making all the loose objects placed on it to rattle. "I'll make you
pay for disappearing for almost two weeks… my little darling…" He rose from his chair, walked across the big spacious room and out through the big door. The man, David Bower, just walked forward to the elevator to go to the lowest point in the building – the basement.
"I want a full status report." He said the moment he walked into the big white basement, many people running around and working on the computers. Team of doctors was gathered around the table to provide samples to the scientists and computer engineers.
"So far have we discovered several shattered bones, one stab through the hand, a minor gash on its upper left arm and multiples bruises all over unit 001."
"What about the chip?"
"The computer engineers are currently working on that at the moment sir, but it seems to have suffered damage as well. Therefore the loss of communication to the unit 001, which has been temporarily restored due to a much stronger signal. It seems to be a signal-related problem sir."
"Good, and how are progression going with unit 002?"
"Stable and ready to go sir, we'll collecting errors stored in the data log from unit 001 and later to base an update and apply to unit 002."
"Good." And he walked over to the table and observed the different teams working on Haylie, unit 001, lying unconscious with closed eyes and bruised face. Bruises started to unfold themselves all over her body, but as long as the exaggerating embodiment system is up and running the body of the unit can take up to four hundred percent in critical damage before giving up.
"I want those fractures healed, this is a great opportunity to test the new cell-duplication serum. If successful it will only take days for the unit to become one hundred percent restored."
"Yes sir, as you wish." And the doctors were ordered to test this new developed method the Bower industries have created, in order to speed up the human healing process, defying nature as some would say. He turned to leave the floor and to go home, when he stopped.
"And don't forget to look through the memory unit and save the record from the encounter she had on her way here. I want to know who damaged the unit this bad and make them pay."
And with that said he left.
"Haylie…" A distant voice called to her, making her groan slightly and frowned in her sleep. Then suddenly her memory went by like a flash, remembering who the deep but kind voice belonged to.
"Jayson!" She called out and threw her arms around her tall brother's neck, hugging him tightly before realizing that her body was screaming from pain. She collapsed on the bed again, holding her arms around her ribs in agony. Her face was facing the floor and suddenly salty teardrops hit the floor, making her brother crouch down in front of her, holding a warming hand on her shoulder.
"Does it hurt that bad?"
"No…" She said sobbing and met her brother's eyes. "I'm just so glad to see you again…"
He gave her a smile filled with warmth as he embraced her once again, feeling her warm tears flowing down his shoulder. Then he held her shoulders, made some distance between them and looked her in the eyes.
"How are you feeling? You've been out for about five days now."
"Five days?!" She shouted out surprised.
"Yeah.." He said, not really sure how to continue.
"Haylie, who did this to you?" He asked, now with a more serious voice. "One day you were just gone, dad told me you ran away!"
"No, that's not true!" She said without such as thinking twice about it. "Jayson, listen to me. Something isn't right here, I don't know what it is but something just isn't."
"And why do you think that?"
"Because all I remember was that I was suddenly out in the streets one day, standing in the middle of a fighting against a big gang of young adults where it was everyone against me. I ran for my life but they chased after me, I thought I was about to die that day when they cornered me up on a rooftop where I had fled to in hopes of avoiding them and…" Her words faded as she realized that it was just that exact moment she's been trying to remember when being with the guys. Then pieces starting adding up now.
"And four mutated turtles saved me!"
"Haylie, just listen to yourself…" Jayson said doubting. "It's the morphine they gave you that talks."
"No! Just listen to me! I'm not lying to you!"
"Haylie…" He said, begging her to stop this by just on the tone of his voice.
"No! They saved me from those men, but due to a hit to my head I couldn't remember where I lived and I couldn't see anything either since I got temporarily blind. So they helped me, took care of me and then we were up on the rooftops again when everything got blank… next thing I know I'm here…" She looked up at him with a confused and slightly scared look.
"Jayson, you have them too, right? Those weird black-outs…"
The look he gave her made her certain that he got them too, it's just not something they've discussed before. Now it was her turn to put her hands on his shoulder.
"We need to get out of here, do you hear me? I will get out of here."