"I don't like this." Raphael growled as they all entered the abandoned cargo area. His eyes widened when he saw the bodies of the foot clan members lying dead on the cargo lift.
One of the two guards lying in front of the lift seemed to be coming around and was patting his comrades face to wake him up. When the guard saw the turtles coming out of the prison corridor, he quickly reached for his gun.
"Watch out!" Raphael grabbed Mikey and Donnie, turning around to shield them from the bullets.
Leo and Ten, on the other hand, didn't budge.
After the loud bang, Raphael was surprised to have not felt a bullet collide with his shell. He heard another shot, paused, then looked over his shoulder to see the guard had shot his comrade in the head then ended his own life.
Donnie shook his head in disbelief, "Why did he do that?" Even if he thought ending his own life was his only option, Donnie was baffled with the guard's decision to also end the life of the unconscious man as well.
Raphael went ahead of the group to pull aside the dead guards into a pile before stepping onto the lift and tossing the remaining three bodies out. One of the bodies were carelessly tossed in Ten's direction, forcing the man to side step out of the way. "How do you know this guy, Leo?" Raph asked the question on everyone's mind. Killing people was never apart of their morals and, even if Raphael abandoned that moral for justice, Leo was still more faithful in Splinter's teachings than all of them. Yet he considered this killer to be a friend? It didn't add up.
Leo stepped onto the lift in deep thought until Raph shoved his shoulder, "Hm, what?"
"How. Do. You. Know. Him." The red banded ninja growled, shoving a finger in the man's direction. The man hadn't said a single word to anyone yet seemed to have some unspoken connection with Leo, "And what's going on here? Is this some sort of...telekinetic thing?"
"Telepathy, Raph." Donnie corrected as he suspected the same thing. He stepped onto the lift with Mikey, taking his place closer to Raphael's side.
"Yeah, well if he doesn't say anything out loud, then I don't trust him."
"What if he's a mute?" Mikey offered, giving the man the benefit of the doubt.
Raphael's narrowed his eyes, considering the idea. In the end, even that didn't matter. There was something just plain wrong about this guy. The fact that Leo wasn't offering any sort of explanation-or the fact that Leo had become so distant all of the sudden-was unnerving.
Donnie was looking over Leo and the man with much of the same confusion that Raphael had. Leo was eerily calm and seeming to follow unspoken orders instead of his own freewill. How did Leo know this man could be trusted? Has he met him before? He certainly didn't look very trustworthy. In fact, he looked happy to be here whereas Leo didn't look happy at all.
All of this deep thinking caused Don to involuntarily step even closer to Raph's side, "Mikey, hit that button beside you."
Mikey looked over and pressed the button that activated the lift before turning back to the man with a more general question, "Do you have a name?"
"...His name is Ten." Leo answered instead.
"Ted?"
"No. Ten. As in the tenth subject in a new experimental study lead by Baxter Stockman to create the perfect mutant army for Shredder. He's a test subject who was born with a sixth sense that was heightened during the tests." Leo looked at Ten who wore an unreadable expression, "The tests began when he was given cloaking abilities but once his telepathy reached higher levels of-" Leo stopped talking and there was a stare down between both Leo and Ten.
Raphael narrowed his eyes at the two before looking up the elevator's open shaft for the first level. He felt Donnie's hand brush against his own before slowly intertwining their fingers together. Raph dropped his sight down to lock eyes with his younger brother. He didn't need to speak telepathically with him to know that he was just as nervous about this situation as he was.
Mikey on the other hand wasn't apprehensive or confused. He was filled with a panic and fear. His mind had picked out a vital clue from Leo's description of Ten's backstory that brought up a disturbing memory. Standing before Mikey was a man that had cloaking abilities...Could that possibly mean that he could turn invisible whenever he liked?
Mikey never forgot the moment he found Sensei in the control room where they had saved Raphael from drowning. He distinctly remembered the trippy feeling of touching someone who wasn't there; someone who was invisible. He knew he had felt another presence in that room but, until now, he had no idea how to explain it. Now the facts were clear to Mikey. This man, Ten, an experiment gone wrong who was initially created to join a mutant army for Shredder...was the same man who hurt them...
"That's why he doesn't talk..." Mikey murmured out loud as his mind worked out the details, piecing it all together. The man who had tortured them was only recognizable by his voice. If he said anything out loud, it would have easily given his identity away! This must be how Donatello felt when doing his random puzzles. He was feeling like a goddamn genius and before he started to consider why Leo wasn't pounding the guy's skull in or what was happening telepathically between the two, Mikey first had to declare dibs on figuring it all out first, "I know you!"
Unfortunately, that seemed to be a mistake...
