Chapter Thirty-Seven

Different Kind of Scientist

George hit the floor rather hard back in the real world. He stood up holding his head as Raph, Leo and Don materialized beside him.

"Hey," George said looking himself over. "I think the trip to and from the game healed by bite wounds. Sweet." Before the scientist could do anything else, though, he suddenly found a cold steel blade under his chin. He froze for a second before sighing. "Well I lost," he said putting his hands up, then moving them into his pockets. "Go ahead."

"What? Just like that?" Sharp asked.

"What?" George asked back.

"You're gonna die," Sharp pointed out. "Doesn't that mean anything to you? You're just gonna let it happen?"

"No sudden trick up your sleeve or anything?" Mikey asked.

"Oh sorry, am I ruining the moment for you?" George asked. "I said best two out of three, and I lost the first two games. It's rather sad really, but a good player knows when he's passed his prime. So go ahead, slice my throat, you were all so eager to earlier."

"You have to admit that it's very anti-climatic," Razor put in.

George smiled annoyingly. He looked like he was going to say something, but nearly chuckled.

"What's so funny?" Alex growled.

"Eh, nothing," George said. "Okay, well actually two things," he admitted after a moment. "One: I don't think you can do it," he directed at Leo. "And two: you guys aren't being very logical about this whole thing."

"And you know about logic?" Jeff asked.

"Yes… somewhat." George ducked underneath Leo's sword. Everyone tensed but no one really stopped him. "I don't like repeating myself, could someone wake them up?" he asked, indicating the ones that had fallen asleep after gorging on the food they had stolen from George's vending machines.

Psych looked to the side and those on the floor jerked awake from dreams cut short. They looked around and jumped to their feet unsure of what was happening.

"Now then," George started. "If I may just point something out; you have captured and completely outnumbered not only the head scientist of these very isolated labs, but am also specialized in genetics and numerous forms of biology, along with a little psychology but that doesn't really matter at the moment."

"Get to the point," Alex near growled, tail blade scraping the floor behind her.

George sighed like a teacher sighing at a somewhat slow class. "My point is… can I have my keyboard?"

"No," Psych said flatly, still holding the scientist's wireless keyboard hostage in his hands.

"Seriously, I just want to show you something. It's completely harmless," George promised and held his hand out. "You want to search my mind for lies?"

There was a long moment of silence before Psych held it out. The experiments gaped at the gesture, but they trusted Psych's judgment nonetheless.

George held the keyboard on one arm while he managed to type with only one hand. "Let's address one thing at a time," he stated, turning towards the projected screen on the wall. A window came up to fill the entire screen. "Let's see, it's been roughly around two months since you people showed up from New York? If you were to kill me now, steal a jet, and make it all the way back to the states, don't you at least want to know what you'll be running blindly into?"

The New Yorkers looked at each other. When they had been kicked out of America the world was in a bad state against the experiment. Many of them could try to be optimistic, but they had to face the fact that everything outside of the island had probably turned for the worse in their absence.

George opened up a slideshow that was buried in a collection of files. With a keystroke the lights dimmed until only the projector's light illuminated the room with a dull glow.

Everyone stared when they saw what the slideshow consisted of.

Death, and nothing but.

Humans of all ages and race stood by dead bodies giving thumbs up and looking completely triumphant, like they had just won a race. Pictures showed men holding guns up to the heads of blindfolded experiments chained to poles. In others bloody bodies lay still with the mutilated remains of hacked off wings protruding from crimson backs. The corpses of aquatic soldiers were seen floating in shallow waters, their gills duct taped over. Experiments that would usually have extra limbs were photographed huddling against walls, gripping bleeding wounds where the limb no longer existed.

The pictures made them want to look away, but they couldn't. It was horrible, and cold, and made them feel sick and twisted inside, but they couldn't turn their heads from the slideshow.

Bomb technicians that could be remembered helping Bomber create the bomb to destroy the glass wall from the old Labs, were seen tied down with vests wired with explosives strapped to their chests.

The final picture showed up and Dev nearly choked. It was of a tall stoplight pole in a city. Hanging by nooses across the pole parallel to the ground, in a row, were fliers with their wings tied down. One of which, he knew well.

"Double D," he muttered in disbelief at what he was seeing. "He gave me blood, he- he can't be dead."

Psych managed to pull his gaze from the pictures. He covered his face with a hand, never feeling so useless. He had been with all of them since day one, but when they needed him the most, he hadn't been there.

George put the keyboard down. "Now tell me," he said, turning back to the shocked group. "What can you do to all this if you leave right now?"

Silence reigned for a long time, all of them speechless in their states of shock and depression.

Finally Leo said "And how do you think you could help?"

George shrugged. "I can't do anything about the ones that are already dead. But I can assure one thing."

"And what's that?"

"I can make sure that you don't die as soon as you get back to the US," George replied. "I promise you, as soon as you step foot in front of a human over there, there'll be a bullet through your skull faster than you can think."

"How could pull that off?" Don asked.

The scientist smiled at the green mutants. "I can make you human."

Wow, i haven't done anything in a long time. You people probably thought I abandoned the story, didn't you? well I didn't, and I'm still alive so I'm still writting, and this story will be finished some time in either the near or distant future.

On a side note: any suggustions as to what the turtles will look like as humans?