: Chapter 7:
When we arrived back at the MMC building around noon, Polaris was at the door ready to greet us. She embraced each of us with a smile on her face until…
"I'm so glad you guys are alright. Ew! You two reek!" She let go of Jinx and pinched her nose with one of her hands.
"That's what happens when you fall into a pit of dead bodies." He smirked.
"How did that go?" Polaris asked.
"Well…" I began but the sight of the soldiers as they walked in the door was more than enough of an explanation. Their battle with the mutant had been a very costly one. Their faces were all bloody and some of them walked with a limp. Worst of all, it looked like another man was missing. Two people had to die today just so I could get samples, as if my "leaving home" guilt trip wasn't enough.
"It went fine, but they lost a few men." Jinx answered after I had been choked up by the scene. "Come on Don, let's hit the showers and then we can take your samples to the lab." He placed one hand on my shell and led me out of the lobby.
"I'll ask Morpheus to get everything set up." Polaris said from behind us.
"Do you have anything that can jog my memory?" I asked Jinx while we walked through the building to his room.
"I would imagine someone like you would be used to seeing death at that rate." He snorted.
"I had been used to it, years ago. After we defeated our last enemy, things just slowed down for us, for me at least." I sighed.
"Your complicated life gives me a headache Donatello."
Once we reached Jinx's room, he offered to let me have the shower first. I took up his offer, hoping that a nice, relaxing shower would help clear my mind. His bathroom was small but as long as it had running water, I could care less. I turned on the shower faucet so that it was hot enough to allow steam to accumulate on the mirror he had over his sink. For a while I just stood there and looked at myself while the first signs of fog began to creep along the mirror like a hungry animal stalking its prey. The dried blood I had on my arms started to drip down to my finger tips and rest there until they finally had enough power to fall onto the floor in a puddle.
"Don!" There was a hard knocking at the door. "Come on man, it's not like water freely flows into the city anymore."
"Sorry." I jumped into the shower and quickly scrubbed my skin with a wash cloth. It wasn't a perfect job, just as long as the smell didn't make people drop around me like flies.
"Softie." Jinx used his body to push me into the threshold while we exchanged turns in the bathroom. Right before I was about to turn around and tell him off, he smiled and said he was only kidding. I knew he was only trying his best to keep my mind on track, but it seemed like my entire life was all running downhill from here just because of what I witnessed at the plant. "There's a sandwich on the coffee table for you, don't ask how I got it either." Jinx shut the door to the bathroom after pointing over in the living room.
I refused the food but I did drink the bottle of water that was sitting next to it. The liquid hurt running down my dry throat but it felt good after my hot shower and helped ease my nerves a little. After Jinx was done and smelling better, we headed up to the distribution room to meet Polaris and Morpheus.
"Alright, let's take a looksee." Morpheus handed me a white, lab coat and a pair of goggles.
"Alright Don, we'll be in the lobby if you need us." Polaris and Jinx walked out of the room, leaving me alone with the mentally disturbed scientist.
"How did the trip go?" He asked while eyeing the small test tubes I had in my hands.
"Fine, thanks for asking." I walked past him and into a little room in the back. It was very well lit and appeared to have everything I would need to run the tests, except for the autoclave. "Where's the autoclave?"
"Oh right, you were ganna fix that weren't you? Umm…let me go get it." He walked out of the room with an obscure smile on his face.
"Alrighty then." I rolled my eyes and started to pull out supplies that I would need. There were plenty of petri dishes, syringes, sponges and stuff to choose from and even the atomic microscope had been moved from the basement and brought up here. "Cool." I was quite amazed with the device considering I had never seen one in real life. They say that the microscopic lens is so fine, that even the slightest vibrations could cause it to break, even the sound of someone's voice. After a few minutes, Morpheus returned with the autoclave attached to a cart.
"I've got it right here." I witnessed Morpheus forcefully try to push the autoclave through the doorway that was obviously too small for it.
"It's fine just leave it out there!" I held my hand out for him to stop in fear that the vibrations would disturbed the precious lens on the microscope.
"No no, I think I can get it…" He backed up and then with another forceful push, tried to shove the cart into the room. All the chaos from the struggle had caused the microscope's lens to vibrate violently.
"Morpheus stop! You're ganna break the…"
He tried one last time, insisting that he could do it but after the cart slammed into the wall again, the lens vibrated out of control and bent to the side, causing it to shatter into a million pieces all over the floor.
"AH!" I gripped the top of my head with my hands and gasped at the sight. "MORPHEUS!"
"Oops."
"Y-You! I told you to stop, why didn't you listen?!" As badly as I wanted to grip the top of his lab coat and slam him against the wall, I found the will to hold back and control myself through the outrage I was experiencing.
"I am so sorry Donatello." The look on his face made his apology seem like a false accusation. As I watched him stare at the mess on the floor, it almost looked like he was…smiling. "I'll go see if Lemming can get another…"
"Forget it. Those lenses cost thousands of dollars." I knelt down on the ground and picked up the small glass fragments in my hand.
"Do they?"
"Yes, they do."
"That's a shame you broke it then."
"What?!" I stood up abruptly and looked him in the eye. "I didn't break it!" I couldn't believe I was beginning to lose my temper. I was normally a very mellow guy, but if someone got on my bad side, I could be a real *insert choice word here*.
"Well you were yelling pretty loudly…" He said as-a-matter-of-factly.
I took a deep breath and allowed myself to cool down before I decided to speak another word to him. I didn't feel like pulling a "Raphael" anytime soon. That would probably end bad for him anyway.
"Look, I just need to do my work ok?" I said politely. "So if you may please…let me be."
"Sure thing, I won't be in your way."
"What?"
"I mean, you don't mind if I stick around and take a peek do yah? I'm just really curious that's all." He smiled and rocked back and forth on his toes.
"With all due respect, I think you've done enough."
"Alright, call if you need anything, I'll be right out here."
Finally, after he left the room to continue his work, I was able to start getting some stuff done. By detaching the autoclave from its cart, I was able to bring it inside and place it on the lab desk to be fixed. It took me about a half hour to figure out what was wrong and correct it but it was finally up and running. The circuit board was just fried from the liquid spill so I was able to rewire it no problem.
I took my test tubes filled with each chemical sample and poured a small fraction of them into separate petri dishes. This was going to take a while now that I didn't have the atomic microscope. Why do I fell like someone wanted it to be that way?
::
"Don you're alive!" Polaris raised her arm in the air as I walked over to her table in the cafeteria and sat down. "You've been up there almost 7 hours, how is everything going?"
"Yeah turtle boy, find out anything yet?" Jinx asked.
"All the diagnostics are being printed now. I ran my final tests through the scanner and they'll be able to show me what exactly is going on in a report. I did find out that each "class" is proven to be a different type of animal. Some unnecessary information but I thought you might want to know." I answered.
"So what will we be looking for?" Polaris said while handed me a bottle of water.
"I need to see if the chemicals found on the mutant's bodies are different from that found at the plant. I'm also checking the radioactivity of both samples."
"Sounds boring. Wake me up when you're doing something exciting." Jinx smirked.
"I will be doing something exciting. I'm going to need to go to the hospital to collect supplies to start making the cure."
"What?! You don't even know what's up with everything yet!" He exclaimed.
"Yes, but I'm going to need to go either way."
"Damnit Donatello!" Jinx slammed his fists on the table causing a few people around us to stop talking and stare.
"Relax Jinx; I'm sure everything will be alright." Polaris tried to calm him down.
"You wanna come with us to that Hell hole Polaris? No, you don't cuz it aint pretty!"
"None of you will be going because I decided that I'm going on my own."
"WHAT?!" Polaris and Jinx said simultaneously.
"I can get in and out faster if I'm by myself. I'm a ninja; I've trained for these kinds of things." I said.
"You could be a ninja or you could be the Incredible Hulk it doesn't matter!" Jinx stood up from his seat and leaned in close to me. "No one has ever gone in there and come out alive." He whispered. "Lemming sent a team in there about a year ago to collect medical supplies for some injured civilians we had rescued. We lost contact with them a few days later."
"I guess I'll be the first to survive then." I said calmly.
"You're screwed up in the head turtle boy." He shook his head and walked away.
"What's up with him?" I asked Polaris after Jinx had left the cafeteria.
"Jinx doesn't make friends very easily. Now that he's finally got someone who's so much like him, I think he's just afraid you'll die out there." She sighed. "He's not the only one either."
"Two people already died because of me, Polaris. I don't want to put his life in danger any more than I already have." I reassured her.
"You're sweet Donatello, but it's his choice if he wants to go with you."
"I guess you're right." I leaned my head into the palm of my hand and sighed. I already lost three brothers, so to speak, and I really didn't feel like losing anyone else right now. "My report is probably done. Want to come with me to get it?"
"Sure." Polaris pushed her tray of food into the center of the table and joined me on the walk to the lab room. "Everything with Morpheus go ok?" She asked me.
"I guess it went alright…" I refrained from telling her anything else including his breaking of the microscope. "I really just want to get my diagnostic and finally find out what's going on around here."
"You're not the only one." She giggled. Once we got to the lab room, Morpheus was strangely absent from his normal post. "He must have gone down for dinner."
I walked over to the printer in the back of the room and started to look through the papers that were lying there. My heart started to beat faster as I neared the end of the pile without a sign of my paperwork. Finally, on the very bottom of the stack, was the first paper that was labeled with my name and the date. To my surprise, when I went to collect the rest of the results…
"Oh my God…"
"What is it?" Polaris ran over to me in a hurry. "What's wrong?"
"My report…it's gone!"
DUN DUN DUUUN
