Eleven

Strange things happen to them.

It's just a fact of life.

Mike thinks they have some kind of karma that attracts weirdness. Don has a theory about low-frequency events tending to occur in clusters. Raph calls it Turtle Luck.

Leo just tries to accept it.

There are so many things in the world, in the multiverse, that most humans would deny the existence of. And the people who wouldn't, are called crazy.

Sometimes he wonders if his whole life has been one long hallucination, and he's really a human sitting catatonic in a mental hospital somewhere.

Am I a man dreaming I'm a turtle...?

Sometimes he wishes he were normal. But then he looks at the humans, moving like robots through the same mundane routines, never opening their eyes to the wonders of the world, and he doesn't want to be like that.

Or a turtle dreaming I'm a man?

Somewhere between the unusual and the unlikely, he's happy.

Something jars against the mattress, and Mike reflexively raises his arms to protect himself.

"Jesus," says a voice in the darkness. (A voice of stories, a voice of crushing hands.) "Break my neck, one of these days."

Mike can feel his brothers around him, awake and tense.

"Holy -" Raph starts, but Mike shushes him.

"Hello?" Mike says tentatively.

"In here, Jay," the voice calls back.

"What?" says a different voice, on the other side of the room.

"I said, I'm in here!"

"I didn't -"

Thunder-sound.

"What the -" Stumbling footsteps. "What's all this?"

"It's not yours?"

"No." The footsteps move across the room, and Mike twists to follow them, even though there's nothing to see. "What's with this place lately? My locker keeps jamming, half my instruments are on the fritz..."

"Tell me about it. We should've had renovations years ago."

"I guess no one really wants clean water after all..."

The voices drift away into the kitchen.

Mike kneels on the cold floor.

"Sensei," he says. "I'm being completely serious when I say I would really like to know the rational explanation for this."

"I'll second that," Don says.

"I am not sure that you would call this explanation rational," Splinter says. "But I believe that these presences are... imprints, if you will, of the people who worked here. They are echoes, endlessly repeating the patterns they enacted in life."

"So we just gotta live with 'em?" Raph asks, clearly unhappy with the idea.

"On the other hand," Splinter continues, ignoring the comment, "they seem to be affected by the changes we have made to this place. They are aware, in some way, of the physical plane. And so we may be able to reach them."

"How?" Leo asks. "And to what end?"

"If we address them clearly and directly," Splinter says, "then they may hear our call. And if we can help them resolve their unfinished business in this world, then they may be able to go to their rest in the next."

"Are you serious?" Mike says, even though he knows that this kind of irreverence, during a Splinter Lecture, is likely to earn him a rap on the knuckles. "Or are you quoting from Return to the Haunted House I Accidentally Moved Into Last Summer?"

"Have you ever wondered why these movies you watch are all so similar to one another?" Splinter asks.

"No," Mike says. "Well, okay, yeah, but only when I'm really bored and can't sleep."

"It is because they are true," Splinter says.

"That's ridiculous," Don says. "The Ghost That Ate My Sister is not based on a true story."

"It is based on many true stories," Splinter says. "Fiction is rarely as interesting as fact."

Mike swears he's going to give up scary movies.

For real, this time.

"Maybe we should all go back to sleep," Leo suggests, "and then in the morning we can -"

"No way," Raph says. "I vote we do it now."

"You always vote we do it now," Leo says.

"Now would be good," Mike says. "I can't sleep with these guys around. This is four nights... by morning I'll be a Scary Mutant Zombie Turtle."

Leo seems to have no further objections.

"Then let us call them," Splinter says. "Donatello, if you will?"

"If I will what?" Don says, then, "Oh." He clears his throat. "Turn on the lights!"

The lights go on.

Raph glares around the room, looking for anything out of the ordinary.

The first thing he notices is that the heap of scrap metal is in even greater disarray than the haphazard pile he left it in.

The second thing he notices is that Mike is trying to climb inside his shell with him.

"What?" he says, irritated, and Mike points.

Raph looks.

Two of the shadows on the wall are peeling off.

It has to be a trick of the light. He pushes Mike off, grabs his sai from the floor, and stalks over.

No.

Definitely peeling.

He can't tell whose shadows they are; all four seem to have moved and changed shape.

He reaches out, making to draw his sai across one of the lines, to see whether it will twang like a guitar string or snap like a tendon.

"Raphael," Splinter says sharply.

He retreats.

Splinter meditates with one eye open.

He knows how hard it is to be anchored in two worlds at once, to watch both the physical and the astral planes, to live one life while having memories of another.

The two shadows are hanging half off the concrete, like old wallpaper, and the two clouds of energy are floating slowly through the void.

They're near, and moving closer, but distance and direction mean little on the astral plane, where an act of will is sufficient to move one across the universe, where Leonardo's spirit can hover over them all even when his body is still miles away.

(And maybe, just maybe, can hold back their enemies long enough for them to escape.)

He tries to forge a connection between the clouds and the shadows, to give the energy a form, if a thin one. There's nowhere else to put it.

(Not his sons, not his sons.)

The shadows peel.

Leo watches Splinter with one eye, and the shadows with the other eye, and he watches his brothers through his skin.

The shadows peel, and walk.

"Again?" one of them says.

"He's one of those guys," says the other. "Gets the flu three times every winter."

"If he'd wait another week, it'd be spring."

He can feel them all waiting for him.

(Diplomatic actions are always his territory.)

But how do you tell someone they're dead?

They're waiting.

Raphael is impatient.

Come on, Leo. Talk to them. Do your leader thing.

It's been almost a year since the battle with Shredder, and Raph is not going to wait any longer.

Five seconds, Leo. One... two...

Leo scrapes together everything he knows about ghosts (not enough, not enough), and arranges the words inside his head. It's a good speech, full of warding phrases and noble invocations. But when he tries to say it, all that comes out is: "Don't come any closer."

"Don't come any closer?" he berates himself. This is how you protect your family?

Come on, Leo, you can do better than that.

The shadows stop.

"That you, Rod?" one of them says. "You really shouldn't be here, if you're contagious."

"You shouldn't be here if you're sick," says the other, with much more compassion.

They're people, Leo realizes. Talk to them like people.

He scrapes together everything he knows about humans, and prays that it's enough.

"Don't be afraid," he says, and hopes it comes off as reassuring and not creepy.

"Who are you?" the first shadow challenges.

"We want to help you," Leo says. "You -"

"We? We who? Is this some kind of prank?"

"No," Leo says, trying to be patient and project calm. "If you'll just listen a minute -"

"No, you listen," the shadow says. "I am the shift manager, and if you don't come out right now I will call the plant superintendent and -"

He doesn't think this is a real possibility, but he's not even going to listen to it.

"Don't you threaten me," he ices. "This is my home."

"Bullshit," says the shadow. "This is a sewage plant."

"It used to be a sewage plant," Don says. "The scrap heap one of you tripped over used to be your water tank."

The shadows are silent a moment. Then one of them says: "I'm giving you one more chance to get out."

This isn't going well. The shadows are completely entrenched in their current reality. They're living their second life as a translucent continuation of their first, and have completely forgotten about the Change.

There is nothing his sons can say that will make them believe. He will have to show them.

He gathers his energies, and focuses them carefully. His sons do not remember their first lives at all, and there is no reason to make them do it now.

He fixes the shadows firmly in his mind, and pushes the wave outward.

"Go and look," Leo says. "We're not -"

He freezes as something unseen whispers past him.

Leonardo remembers light glinting off a curve of broken glass.

Michelangelo remembers a long, gray face, spattered with green.

Donatello remembers climbing on wriggling bodies, looking over a tin rim.

Raphael remembers a fall, a crash, fear, pain.

Splinter opens his eyes.

His sons are sitting very still, staring blankly at nothing.

"My sons," he says softly, and they recover, turn towards him.

"That was creepy," Michelangelo says.

He wants to ask what they saw, but now is not the time.

"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God..." one of the shadows is saying.

"Who are you?" says the other.

Leonardo understands.

Splinter has touched the minds of the ghosts, made them remember who they really are, up to the very last moments of their lives.

The moments when they realized they were dying.

Now he can talk to them as the people they were in those moments, the people they were before they regressed to less than themselves.

"My name is Leonardo," he says. "These are my brothers Michelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael, and our father, Splinter."

"Are you some kind of hippies?" the shadow asks suspiciously.

"No," Leo says. He waits. Then he prompts them: "This is the part where you tell us your names."

"Uh," says the shadow. "Gary."

"Jason," says the other.

"So..." says Gary. "We're dead? Are you, uh..."

"No," says Raph.

"We live here," Leo says, even though this didn't go over well the first time.

"Yeah," says Gary. "I really gotta ask - why are you living in a - in a former sewage plant?"

"And when did this place close?" Jason asks.

"You can't see us, at all?" Mike says tentatively.

The shadows seem to shake their heads.

"There are good reasons," Leo says. "Please accept our word for it."

"As for why the plant closed," Don says, "in a word, you." He repeats the salient details from the newspaper article.

"Wait," says Jason. "How long have we been dead? Is it the 5th?"

"Today is August 12th, 2005," Don says.

"2005?" Gary shouts.

"Are you time-travelling aliens?" Jason asks. Mike recognizes the desperation in his voice, the thin hope that a mistake has been made, and that things are not quite as dire as they seem.

"Wrong," says Raph, "and wrong again."

"I'm a good person!" Gary's shadow jerks around in agitation. "I go to church every week!"

"You must have gotten stuck -" Leo tries.

"This is your fault!" Gary yells at him.

"No, it isn't!" Leo's hands curl into fists. "You -"

"Everybody calm down!" Mike waits for the shadow to back off, for Leo to breathe himself into calmness. "Nothing is anybody's fault." He looks at the shadows. "What do you guys want? How can we help?"

The shadows shift on their feet.

"My family?" Gary asks. "Are they -? Can I -?"

"They can't come here," Leo says, "and I doubt you can go there."

"You could write a letter," Don offers.

"Okay," Gary says. "Let's do that."

"Can I write one too?" Jason asks. "I'm kind of late getting home from work, I guess, and my parents will be worried..."

"Your parents?" Mike blurts.

"What? You guys still live with your dad."

"We're only eighteen," Leo says.

"I'm twenty-four and paying off college loans," Jason says.

The mutants look at each other.

"Okay," Leo says faintly. "Where do they live?"

"'Course," Raph says, "they mighta moved."

"I'll look them up." Don stands and heads to his lab. The Jason-shadow drifts after him.

"Also," Raph says, "we don't got any paper."

"Yes, we do," Mike says. He rolls to his feet, goes over to the lockers, and rummages through them. There's a slightly battered spiral notebook. The front is full of someone's algebra notes, but the back is empty.

He returns to the mattresses. "There are pencils in the kitchen," he says.

Leo gets up and goes in that direction.

"Who are you writing to?" Mike asks.

"My wife," Gary says. "And my son." The shadow shifts, as though it's sitting down. "He'd be about your age..."

"Is that Nicholas?" Mike asks.

"How'd you know that?" Gary demands.

"Yeah," Raph says. "How'd you know that?"

"You told me," Mike says. "You used to tell him bedtime stories. You love him very much." His eyes flick to his own father, sitting quietly on the other mattress.

Leo returns then, and Mike takes the pencil from him.

"I'm not ready," Gary says. "A few more days won't matter, right?"

"No," Mike says, though he remembers the pain of waiting, every day waiting, for a brother who doesn't come.

Donatello has lived his whole life in the shadows.

Still, it's disconcerting to be followed by one that isn't his own.

Jason moves around the walled-off space while Don waits for his monitor to come back to life.

"Chlorine leak, huh?" Jason says. "I told them the meter needed replacing. They just kept putting it off. 'Oh,' they said, 'we'll just fix everything at the same time.'" He shakes his head. "This is what happens when you let bureaucrats be in charge of the engineering, instead of the actual engineers."

Don jiggles the mouse again. Don't be dead, he thinks at the computer. If you're dead, I'll tear out your guts and turn you into a navigation system.

"Hey," Jason says. "This is my stuff."

"Not anymore," Don says, tapping some random keys.

"What did you do to my sensor array? What is this thing?"

Don glances at the receiver. "It doesn't work."

"Oh, that's nice. You wreck my equipment for something that doesn't even work."

"Come on!" Don growls at the monitor, shaking it a little. "Start!"

"Oh, get out of the way," Jason says. Don springs aside before the shadow can get too close to him. It reaches out a filmy gray arm, and instantly the monitor lights up.

"How'd you do that?" Don asks.

If the shadow had a face, it would be wearing a cocky grin. "You just have to know how to ask."

Leo watches the Gary-shadow pace back and forth.

"Guys," Mike whispers, leaning towards them. "I'm really tired. I think I'm gonna die."

"You're not gonna die," Raph whispers back. "Nobody dies from being tired."

"Dude," Mike says, "that's so not true. One time this guy stayed awake for a hundred hours, and -"

"Yeah, okay," Raph says.

Leo gets up and goes over to the shadow. "Walk with me," he says, and makes his footsteps loud so the ghost can follow.

They go into the dojo.

"We need to make some rules," Leo begins.

"Yeah?" Gary shoots back. "Who died and -" He breaks off.

"Look," Leo says. "I know this is a very strange situation. I don't think you can leave this place, so for now we're going to have to live together." He hears his own words, and tries again. "To share space. But I would like to treat you as a guest, and not as a prisoner."

"I'm listening," Gary says guardedly.

"If you're a guest," Leo says, "then I'm the host, and that means I make the house rules. And the first rule is, whatever's happening to Mike, it has to stop."

"I didn't do anything."

"It stops."

"I never -"

"You don't touch him," Leo says, exuding all his anger through his voice, because the shadow can't see how dangerously narrow his eyes have gotten. "You don't go near him. Am I making myself clear?"

"Yes," Gary says coldly.

"Good. If you hurt any of my family, I will see to it that you suffer. For a very long time." He makes himself breathe, and relax. "I don't know whether you sleep, but we need to. You can use this room until morning. Is there anything I can do for your... comfort?"

"You could make that cat stop glaring at me," Gary suggests.

Leo scoops up Klunk, ignoring her attempts to slash his wrists. "Good night," he says.

"Good night."

Raph sits still while Mike slips lower on his shoulder, trying half-heartedly to stay awake. He watches the shadows on the wall sag and run together.

"I think they are harmless," Splinter says.

Leo trudges out of the dojo and kneels heavily on the mattress. "I told him to stay in there until morning," he says. "But I'll stay up and watch..."

"No," Splinter says. "I will watch."

"Thank you," Leo says. He releases his death grip on Mike's cat, who immediately claims a prime spot and plants herself in it. Leo stretches out beside her and pulls up the blankets.

Mike succumbs to gravity and falls sideways, his head thumping against the pillow.

"Donnie's alone with that other guy," Raph says softly.

"He is safe," Splinter says. "Go to sleep."

Raph glances toward the lab, then nods and slides down in the makeshift bed, turning on his side and curling around Mike's shell.

In a moment, he's asleep.

Don is methodically hacking into federal census data, despite the fact that his vision is blurring and his head seems to weigh about as much as the Empire State Building.

"So," Jason says. "2005. Are people living on Mars yet?"

"No," Don says.

"Oh." Jason moves to the other side of the little space. Don has long since given up trying to track his endless wanderings. "Do we have telepathy helmets?"

"No."

"Moving sidewalks?"

Don closes his eyes, just for a minute, and rubs his forehead. "Would you please stop talking?"

"You don't have to be grouchy about it," Jason says, and lapses into blessed silence.

Don forces himself to focus, and carefully works his way around another firewall.

Somewhere around the seventh level of security, he falls asleep on the keyboard.

Tick. Tick.

It's getting later, and there's no more tap tap from Donatello's computer.

Splinter stands up and pads silently to the plywood wall.

When he peers around it, he sees exactly what he expected to: the slumped form of his son, fast asleep at his desk.

He thinks about waking him and sending him to bed, but Donatello would only argue, refuse sleep in a more suitable location, and continue his work.

Splinter notices that the computer is not making its characteristic hum.

"I turned it off," says the shadow in the corner. "Before it went nuts from him face-mashing the keyboard."

"Thank you," Splinter says. He still senses no malevolence from these spirits. Confusion, fear, anger at the situation... but no ill will, no desire to harm. "Would you like to join your - partner? He is in the cistern room."

"My boss," the shadow says. "Yeah. I'd better go see what you guys have done to my tanks."

He drifts out of the space, and Splinter watches him go across the main room and into the dojo.

He looks fondly at his quiet son, the one who stoically works himself to exhaustion for everyone else's benefit.

Then he returns to his other sons, who work hard and play hard and then, forgiving themselves for all the things they haven't yet finished, sleep with the untroubled innocence of children.