Enigma
AN: A very heartfelt thank you to my two reviewers for the previous chapter FeatherGirl13 and Hyperactive Kitty, I do hope you both are enjoying this and find this chapter acceptable ^_^. It brings me great joy to see my work appreciated and given some sort of sign others are reading it. I feel both flattered and excited that people are still finding strength and time to write reviews when it's so uncommon nowadays. This instills in me a great inspiration to keep going :). So, a big thank you to the both of you from the bottom of my heart!
Very precise, very careful Donnie gently prodded the glass slide with the pink head of the Q-tip he'd swabbed in the folded crease of the retrieved blood bag when he'd finally been at peace enough to test the bag; it had been calling to him from the refrigerator for two days because he'd been so busy preparing, making things, making modifications for what could be something horrible to come. Just what would this show? How much would it tell about the missing Specter kin and the project behind what had once been Wireit facility? The anticipation of delving into another scientist's work made him shudder gleefully to the point where he almost skewed his sample. Don had to calm himself before getting the last bit he could off the Q-tip without putting fibers from the head into the blood.
He could feel his brothers' eyes piercing the back of his head as he lowered his face to the microscope and observed. Donatello had demanded they wait at his door, as he didn't want to damage any of his equipment or let his beloved instruments feel the eager, imaginative wrath of Michelangelo. "Mmm…" Donatello pulled the microscope out of zoom after eyeing the blood cells that looked real despite their synthetic label and felt around gently to hook his microscope up to the computer to transmit and freeze the image. "Come on in, I have it now…" the genius stepped back from the microscope and brought the image up on his computer in the frozen state, armed with the tracing pen technology to aid him in teaching his brothers a very late biology class. Cautiously Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo entered the neat and tidy lab where inventions they'd known for years, upgrades, and totally new projects were given their own odd place in the room below the walls plastered with blue prints, news, grafts, and any other piece of interesting information Donatello had collected throughout the years to feed his yearning brain.
"These," Donnie said circling a regular red blood cell cluster, "are genetically modified human blood cells. Now if I were to zoom in on this I could break down the components that a normal human would have in a cell such as oxygen, pigment, and things like this. Wireit was making a synthetic blood to defeat various illnesses still present in the society so these started out human." he drew the pen away from his sensitive computer, wondering what to say next. Leo crossed his arms over his chest, thinking.
"So you're saying something is out of place?" Leo inquired, knowing eventually Don would point out something wrong…especially since he said 'these started out human'. His genius little brother nodded.
"Look over on the left, Leo. These things here are vast amounts of mitochondria…nearly insane amounts of them. After I pull up the structure…" Donatello zoomed in on a lone mitochondria and literally went into the inner workings of it, isolating a DNA strand. "We can see it's closely related to human DNA, but only slightly. This is indicative of ape DNA, especially given this gene often found in furred creatures." the brothers watched the slowly whirling picture of ape DNA blink and rattle off Latin-based genes that gave the silverback gorilla its scientific Latin name no one probably cared to remember, or even bothered to learn. Raphael was beginning to feel a bit uneasy. Intuition screamed 'genetics lab' like the one they'd found underground when they first met Quarry before helping them out and reversing their mutation with the crystal moon. "And, lastly, look at this." he pulled up the last DNA oddity and magnified it, just like the other set.
"This is blood from a bull." off the web he pulled the DNA image strand of a standard black bull and compared it side-by-side in a split screen to the one frozen in the blood sample. Mikey's eyes grew wide. So somebody was playing Dr. Moreau? Just the image of the large alpha-male gorilla and a feisty bull made him wary. He was debating on drawing it, but whoever decided to blend those two animals wanted something aggressive and strong! Raphael was definitely worried now, as was Leo.
"So we got some weirdo playin' God with animal blood? How do we know this Specter guy didn't do it? You know…like a geeky revenge deal?" the brother stowed the sai he twirled to keep his hand busy as he grew flightier by the minute with worry. Donatello scowled, believing and yet disappointed in the fact Raphael would try to pin this on a man trying to reverse sever illnesses, and a defenseless, kidnapped man no less!
"Why sabotage his own work?" Donatello pointed out. No scientist in their right mind would! Especially not Specter who'd spent many years on such immaculate work!
"True…" Leo considered, "but what if he knew someone was going to take it, wouldn't he sabotage it then?"
"Maybe," Donatello considered, "but he'd be aiming to spoil the healing properties in it, not totally remodel it to include animal DNA. There's plenty of other ways he could've ruined his own work and trying to fuse animal and man wouldn't have been one of them." he explained. "And look here…" Donatello drew the bag under a large magnifier so his brothers could see what he'd found hours ago serendipitously. They all leaned over the large circle of glass to see the overblown folds of the label Donatello had managed to keep on his person. "Despite the rips and tears Bishop's men caused to the bag they didn't cause this." his pointer finger grew monstrous as he drew attention to a hole in the plastic.
"A hole…" Mikey said, rather unamused and not really caring that the bag had a hole in it when it was already in such a ragged state.
"Looks to me like a needle hole." Raphael grumbled, hating needles in every sense. He'd hated them since he was little and knew well what those puncture holes were; to this day his muscles still jolted under his skin in a panic when Donnie sewed up an open wound.
"Indeed, but it was an injection needle point…" Don whispered, growing quiet as the thoughts turned wheels and cogs in his brain. Raphael rolled his eyes.
"No, Don, it was a sewin' needle. Someone wanted to make the bag pretty." the genius turtle ignored his cranky brother.
"So we're looking at possible mutations." Leo leaned delicately against Donatello's work table and frowned. This would be very bad. Mikey gave a crooked frown, glad the bet between he and Donatello was unofficial. Eighteen pizzas was a lot of money.
"And likely forced mutations. Humans weren't made to be animals, Leo, no matter how little we think of them when we patrol and see their nature. This is either going to cause deaths by inadaptability or we're going to have a mutant outbreak."
"And like the classic villains out to get us, these mutants will be out to get us, right?" Mikey asked, finally stopping the whirl of his nunchucks. Donatello and Leo nodded. Mikey scoffed. "Figures. Evil dudes are so predictable…"
"But unlike ya precious movies, Mikey, this is real. These people are gettin' mutated and who knows how they're gonna deal? Who knows how many of 'em have already been made, or who knows how many samples of this whacko blood they got to play with?"
"Well…there's nothing we can do about it. I've been looking up Dr. Specter's research files and I keep hitting the same screen. Apparently he made some sort of key…an extra security to hide the more intimate layers of his work. I can't crack it without that. If I could crack it we could send it to the media anonymously and have them go sniffing. That would cause almost an immediate abortion of this sick operation." Don sighed, aggravated at the screen that kept waiting and blinking on him. PRESENT KEY. What key?
"Do you not remember, my sons, the very advice I gave you when we feared the Shredder would have our lives in the very first encounter?" Splinter had been eavesdropping unnoticed at the threshold of his son's lab. It was so like them to bounce thoughts off one another and assume the worst of any given situation as they tried to find a way to fight it head on, to take the battle to it. Whatever 'it' was. His sons stared at him, some wearing ashamed looks of forgotten wisdom and others just totally confused, even surprise that he would be there. Perhaps they figured him too old to understand the complexity of blood work, but he wasn't. Splinter smiled, radiating the elderly aura that often calmed anyone that experienced it.
"Let it come to us. We must sit and wait, but we will let it meet us."
"Oh!" Mikey grinned, snapping his fingers, "I remember that now! Except 'it' was 'he' or 'the Shredder' whenever you said 'it' just now. Well, we can still call him an 'it' because he is an 'it', he's a weirdo he-OW!" Raphael silenced the hyper rambling with a well-aimed smack.
"Raphael, do not hit your brother!"
"Sorry sensei."
"Good morning Mae!" Rilien had to keep a positive face, for her. He was just happy the sedative had long worn off and she could talk as she pleased without hindrance. But, of course, like her father who was strong by nature and his marine training, she refused to speak, knowing the enemy was in her vicinity. She gave a cold hug to her uncle and wished she could gush out her worries to him like she would when she was human, wanting to know someone was worried too and that she wasn't in this alone. A pang shot through her…she was already reminiscing about being a human, no longer considering herself one. Why should she?
Within herself Maeleyn knew this wasn't a solo effort—this survival here, the adjustment—but she felt farther gone than her uncle. She was the one they had mutated, not him. Maeleyn was the one they were testing all aspects of until she felt, already, at day three she was wearing thin. These scientists were stressing building her abilities in the water, and being mostly turtle she had a good base, but the thought worried her. Were they training her to be some sort of underwater spy or operative?
Was she going to be used for the military, be their little slave that hid in the ocean and sabotaged ships? The thought sickened her, especially since she knew her own flesh and blood was out somewhere in the Atlantic. Her father…how she missed him. Maeleyn wondered if he'd tried to call uncle Rilien's home yet, and wondered if he was worried (had he tried to call in the first place). Had he even heard the news out on the boat?
She hadn't heard from him in weeks! Oh daddy…Maeleyn drew in a shaky breath. It was hard for her to believe she was emotional enough, scared enough, to mentally call out to her father using a childish word she hadn't dared utter for roughly fifteen years. The eighteen year old swallowed the hard lump in her throat and with great melancholy dined on a breakfast much more suitable for a human than her last meal had been. This morning's breakfast was catered towards another day of swimming: bananas to fight fatigue and light foods like bagels, cereal, and crackers that would give her energy when fully digest a mere two hours later. Waiting the alleged thirty minutes before attempting to swim Chaplin made sure Rilien was secured with chains bolted to the center of his small work station in the aquatics room and, when satisfied, signaled Maeleyn to dive in. "Wait…what the hell does she have that jacket on for?" he pressed a button for a yellow light to flash underwater, her signal to come up.
Her head broke the surface and she scowled. "What?" she asked snappily, kicking her feet to keep from treading water.
"Take off the jacket."
"Bite my ass, loser!"
"Chaplin, I believe she should keep it!" Rilien gave no hint that he'd realized his own road block; he was sure not even Chaplin knew of the screen in his work prompting for a key. The Specter man had realized it when he watched the way the water made the teeth of her jacket zipper shine like silver. Chaplin gave his mentor a nasty look, clearly telling him that he was in charge while they were in the Foot facility, not him. "If anything," Rilien shot the glare right back, "it'll build up her strength and add as resistance to her form. Once she gets good time with it on she can remove it and her time would increase from the lack of material to slow her down." pointed out the older scientist, flaunting his logic and older years that had brought him many experiences and realizations. That logic Chaplin couldn't argue with.
"Never mind," he waved Maeleyn's angry expression off. "Submerge again. We've got to get you off this three hour block of yours." he muttered, more to himself now that Maeleyn was submerged underwater. Not that three hours being able to fully function beneath the water was a bad thing, hardly at all given her recent mutation but it could be better. Rilien licked his lips nervously, the guards no longer standing by his sides as an hour finally passed; they were standing next to Chaplin poolside at the ready for any mouthing off or ignorance from 001. Now was the time.
Maeleyn would still have food in her belly to keep her going and she'd easily be able to make it out. They were stupid enough to think he wouldn't find a way to help her, or Stockman to find a way, rather. She couldn't deny that every time she went down to the ten-foot depth in the Olympic-sized pool that her eyes floated to the gate. They were dangling freedom right in front of her; but the door was mechanized and by the red light glowing subtly in the water it wasn't going to open just because she wanted out. "Chaplin," Rilien started out in a soft tone, playing the part perfectly of growing frantic as the time-triggered entrance of "Stockman" viewing the files and saving them to a hard drive killed the timer for the exercise and began to unknowingly target the pool system instead of the live recording feed.
"Chaplin! Stockman is doing something weird over here!" Maeleyn broke the surface, watching the escalating mayhem curiously. Only Rilien was looking at her. Chaplin's two Foot guards were turned to the two brains, wondering what was going on. Rilien looked dead at her, squinting. She looked down. The lights were flashing red this time, just like the door. Maeleyn's heart pounded furiously in her chest.
She took a large gulp of air, not caring if that gave her away. The newly made turtle female of three days shot like a rocket into the water, relying on what her uncle deemed 'Red Eared Slider' nature to shuttle her through the rising door as the darts from the Foot guards gun sank all around her, trajectory and speed reduced by the water. A risk taker, brilliant, she took the first little height the door gave to give herself more time for a getaway; while the humans were waiting for a door to accommodate their weak certainty she'd be long gone. Or so she hoped.
Maeleyn rose panting out of the waters, confirming the fact she had indeed been in an underground laboratory as she hid carefully amidst the fluid, weak collection of grass that made the island the Statue of Liberty stood on in her stone-made glory. She was still in New York and Manhattan no less! Her luck was finally turning around. While thoughts of her uncle, what they might do to him, plagued her she took a second deep breath and plunged deep into the icy water to look for some sort of sewer pipe or sewer-leading opening.
It was too risky to go on land. They might capture her and send her right back in, or put her in a zoo. Twenty minutes later she found a great gaping hole that was indeed a sewer tunnel and continued her even pace despite her burning arms as she traversed them. All connected, all splitting here and there…she only hoped she was leading herself towards an opening. Maeleyn shuddered and feared the thought that she might die in these very waters as she sought escape, and no one would find her because she was in the sewers.
Logic soothed her when she realized lights were built in to many of the tunnels, allowing her visibility and enhancing her turtle-given water vision as she kicked along into a different intersection of pipes. Humans must have to come down her and repair pipes even here, she thought as she reversed her swimming pattern after nearly an hour of going east when a dead end met her. The girl was trying as best she could to keep track of her time; if she surpassed the three hour limit…no! She didn't want to think like that!
Her father had raised her to be a tough girl, a princess warrior, he'd called her when she was little…despite the fact it embarrassed her when she got older. Like every other little girl she'd wanted to be a princess but she loathed the idea of having to wait on a man to save her. So, her father began teaching her how to save herself, and the Maeleyn the Princess Warrior was born in a bedroom during story night as Kier Spector tweaked the tale Snow White to fit her female supremacy fantasies. Forty minutes were wasted reversing from dead ends as each branch from this intersection she'd been in for what felt like the last hour showed no promise. Only about an hour of air left.
Somebody up there better be looking out for her! Mom…she thought softly, as if to call telepathically to the mother she never knew and silently begged for guidance. It always hurt her that she grew up without a mother, but now was not the time to think of that. Now was the time to trust her gut, to have faith, and focus on finding a pocket or opening big enough to let her breathe! She wasn't used to swimming this long without a break!
Chaplin's swimming exercise compounded with the swim for her own life was really taking a toll. And the jacket! God the jacket! Maeleyn thought only once about unzipping it, nearly throwing it off but she recalled the painstaking, clumsy way uncle Rilien had repaired her jacket after she'd ripped nearly all of the seams out of the right arm on a tree branch, and how the following fall knocked teeth out of the zipper line and kept it. Maeleyn held onto it for the sentimental value and for the fact it may be the last thing she owned with uncle Rilien's touch.
She couldn't imagine what they were doing to him! On her last thirty minutes of air, trying to force the tension and burn out of her body so it wouldn't ruin her swimming technique, she was finally making headway. Every pathway she'd come across since following the long tunnel east had only had one option in it, making a winding 'S' shape around to the west and back once more to the east. Her lungs began to cry for air and she saw the water around her turn fuzzy as her consciousness began to wear then, and she panicked. Maeleyn swam faster, desperate not to die, hoping the next few feet would somehow save her life. Inside herself she gave a great cry of relief as a halo of light shimmered on the bottom of the sewer floor; she swam towards the opening with the vigor of a dolphin intending on jumping through a hoop.
"Ah! Oh god…god…" she breathed hard as she broke the surface, panting. Maeleyn tried to raise her tired, burning body out of the water and gave a cry of distress. Her jacket was hooked on something! No god, don't do this! Don't do this! I have air…but my legs hurt so much! I can't keep supporting myself! Fuck you Chaplin, fuck you! If I die I swear to God…!
"You must pay attention, Raphael" instead of a great white light she was hearing voices? Maeleyn struggled to keep her head from bobbing back into the water like it had four times already, gasping for air and determined to keep her nose afloat. A green body crashed to the ground not too far from her weak line of vision, rolling to an abrupt stop when it met the orange stone wall near her. A male turtle! Her heart raced with joy, people lived here! People could save her!
And they were turtles no less! Had Chaplin gotten a hold of them, too? The jade green turtle did a double take with his glinting brown eyes framed in the crimson red mask as she gave the tiniest cry and let her head give out for a few seconds before attempting to hold it up again. Even her soaking hair was adding innumerable pounds to her exhausted body. "Please…" she managed to say through the water, barely over it, "please help me. Stuck. Caught. Can't keep swimming…"
" 'Ey yo, sensei! I got somethin' over here! Don't just stand there, guys. Gimme a hand!" Raphael was more than capable of snatching this…thing out of the water, though. It looked slender and small compared to the depth of their in ground pool Donnie had made. The asparagus green hand trembled as it shot up out of the water, seeking land and something hard to hold onto. He clutched it, put his feet shoulder's width apart and pulled ferociously. One great tug had the figure dislodged and rocketing out of the water to head butt him; they fell back to the stone floor with a great thud.
All motion stopped. Maeleyn coughed water from her body and shivered, happy to be alive and have air filling her lungs. "Jesus…" instinctively she gripped the right arm of her jacket, feeling cool air penetrate the fabric. Maybe she had snagged random threads as she swam, she thought, and the final catch had caused the seams of the right arm to nearly disappear as the tree branch had those many years ago. 001…the tattoo captivated Splinter's sons.
She was…female. By the way her ruined jacket peeled and flapped away from her frame she was turtle. She was like them. Splinter was the first one to approach her, worried for the condition of this creature that had invaded their home. It reminded him of the swimming period for his own boys, and how they would sometimes forget where they were swimming, hit a minor block, and then panic like they were going to die in mere seconds. "Are you alright?" Splinter asked gently, sinking to his knees before the turtle creature with perfectly straight, soaking obsidian locks highlighting her heavily breathing asparagus green face.
Maeleyn groaned, still catching her breath from the adrenaline trip. "Swim practice…training…Chaplin, damnit Chaplin…fuck Chaplin…uncle…errors…guards." Donnie felt like his eyes were going to leap from their sockets and fall out his mask.
"Y-you're Maeleyn Spector. You're alive!" she caught her breath as she gently swung the sacred, temporarily ruined jacket off her body. Carefully, she stood, eyeing them all with caution, distrust, and confusion.
"I was Maeleyn Specter." she corrected him, folding up the soaking jacket, "Now I'm 001…thanks to Chaplin." Maeleyn scoffed nastily, giving her right arm a lose wiggle so they could see the tattoo. Raph felt the tension in the lair mount as the brothers came to the same realization, and probably simultaneously. It was already beginning…
"And if I help you?" the voice on the phone asked nervously. Bishop smirked.
"I can wake the dead, and that's something you're very interested in." there was a pause and Bishop knew he had his pawn, his in-between. Ragged, nervous breathing filled the line. Bishop could understand, the Shedder was something to fear, being an advanced Utrom possessing ninja skills and whatnot, but he was also something to be feared. Especially after he got his hands on some animals for his super soldier project.
"What do you want?"
"Give me all your current records on Specter's synthetic blood and whatever experiments you've undoubtedly, idiotically made by now. One of every kind you have."
"In time," promised the voice with utmost honesty, a pinch of fear in his voice. The Shredder must be coming, thought Bishop. "We're still cleaning out cages from the mishaps. We haven't had very many survive at all!"
"How many have?" Bishop inquired.
"As of right now? A cat-human hybrid, a bat-sugar glider hybrid, and a turtle."
"A turtle?" cried Bishop nearly incredulously despite his desire to stay cool and stoic. Had these people really managed to catch one of Splinter's children? When he attempted to even dissect them while General Blank and the Triceratons hunted for the Fugitoid that long while ago he'd very much tasted Raph for even uttering 'dissection' when the rat found him.
"Yes," said the new mole, "but she escaped earlier this afternoon."
"She?" had he heard that correctly? They had made a female turtle? How interesting. Things just got very interesting. "Good enough for now," Bishop hissed into the phone. "Go, get what you can, I'll have my men meet you with the cargo outside the pier. Act like you're dumping the bodies."
Click. Yes…Bishop pushed his glasses up on his nose with a smirk. Things just got very interesting. He clapped his cell phone shut. "Maybe it's time I pay Master Splinter a visit. Or…" he quieted when the lab tech analyst nervously approached him, a clipboard in his hand.
"Sir, we've analyzed the blood bag we pulled from the turtle."
"And?" the pointed glare caused the messenger to falter a little.
"The DNA was a silverback gorilla and a bull." Bishop smiled. If he couldn't face Splinter head on, which he wouldn't try anyways after more preparation, maybe he could make a temporary soldier to stake out his latest key to creating perfectly controllable super soldiers. "Put what you have into the gestation chamber. I expect to see a mutant tomorrow morning."
"Yes sir!" when the underling left Bishop lounged happily in his favorite chair, flicking his cell phone open and shut as he thought aloud.
"Now if I were a turtle," he said, "and I'd found a female turtle, what would I do? What would my annoying rodent father do?" Bishop saw the reflection of himself looking into an off computer screen and smirked. "I'd be trained to fight and right a wrong." that meant Rilien. "The question is," he whispered to himself, "how long do I have to wait?"