Splinter followed closely behind his sons, leaving the rest of the mutants milling in the plaza as Stephen led them back along 42nd Street. The boys looked well, aside from the grimaces on their faces as they bent their heads against the icy wind. Splinter did not know who the woman they had arrived with was, or how it had come about that she had brought his sons back to him, but it seemed as though his family had a trusted new ally. That could only be to the good.
The boys sighed in relief as Stephen led them into Grand Central Terminal, strongly built and heated by the movements of many bodies. Some of those bodies were hurrying in the opposite direction, and Splinter could not help wondering whether they had heard the news of the mutant uprising, and were making all haste to the historic scene, without noticing that they had brushed right past Splinter and Unum on their way out of the subway station. Or perhaps they were just ordinary New Yorkers, always on the move.
The boys looked around in wonder as Stephen led them down the famous steps in the central atrium of the ornate building. Unum looked too, his eyes resting on the painted constellations.
"Are we taking the train?" Leonardo asked. "We don't have any money."
"I have the money," said Dr. Lamb, who was carrying a bulging canvas bag over her shoulder. "What's left of it, anyway."
"Don't worry about it," Stephen said. "I'll swipe you all on my pass."
This he did when they came to the gate, and though the electronic screen did not display the words ADMIT SIX MUTANTS, TWO HUMANS, the metal turnstile accepted them all, making no distinction between the furred, the feathered, the scaled, and those with plain skin.
"Which way are we going?" Raphael asked. He was carrying a suitcase that Splinter did not recognize.
"Any Green train will take us to our destination," Stephen replied.
The eight travelers waited on the platform. The Turtles were bundled up in the same coats they had left home wearing, while Splinter had only his robe and Unum wore something resembling hospital scrubs. The cold did not bother them. But their faces drew stares from other commuters, most of whom moved away to wait on other parts of the platform.
The train arrived with a rush of hot wind, and Splinter made sure that everyone boarded ahead of him. None of them - save for Dr. Lamb and Stephen, of course - had ever been inside a subway car while it was operating. At least, that was what Splinter thought.
"Mom," Donatello said, seeking his mother's hand and her reassurance as they sat on an empty bench, "I swear this looks exactly like I remember. Have they not updated the trains in ten years?"
"They're not pretty," Dr. Lamb replied, "but they do run on time."
Indeed, as other passengers watched them wide-eyed from the far ends of the car, the train whisked them downtown at an astonishing speed. The noise was deafening, the announcements about upcoming stops indecipherable. Splinter appreciated that in the future he might enjoy the freedom to ride the subway whenever he liked, but he thought that in general, he would prefer to walk.
"This is our stop," Stephen said, as the doors slid open, and the little group emerged into an entirely different part of the city.
Splinter had never spent much time in the Financial District. The police tended to be more aggressive about deterring homeless people in this area, so there was often less competition for garbage. But the risk of being sighted by a wealthy and powerful individual seemed somehow more dangerous than the risk of being seen by a more average New Yorker, and so Splinter had typically avoided Wall Street and the surrounding neighborhood.
Stephen led them to a gleaming skyscraper, and opened a tall glass door that pivoted silently on its hinge. The mutants filed inside, followed by their human guides. A swift elevator ride brought them to the twenty-second floor, where Donatello hesitated to step into the hallway, mumbling something about how five floors had been enough for this week, and then they were walking down the deeply-carpeted corridor, past mahogany doors with brass signs.
Litwick, Peterson, & Dubreuil said one of the signs, and that was the door that Stephen gestured them through.
The receptionist's jaw dropped as they all walked past, but Stephen just said, "No calls, Rebecca. I'm with an important client."
"All right," he said, when they had all seated themselves in his opulent private office. "Now, tell me everything."
Quickly, methodically, and with colorful additional commentary from his brothers, Leonardo recounted the same story he had told to Splinter in hushed Japanese on the train: how they had attended a protest in favor of their own rights, been arrested, spent a night in police custody, arrived at the lab of Dr. Baxter Stockman, cooperated with the scientists' research, experienced life in an ordinary community, and returned to Manhattan after seeing Splinter on the news.
"Were you charged with anything?" Stephen asked, when Leonardo had finished.
"Michelangelo abducted a cat," Leonardo said, shooting a dark look at his brother.
"But he wasn't charged," Donatello put in. "The detective decided to let it go."
"And what were the conclusions of the research studies?" Stephen asked.
"Exactly what we thought they would be," Donatello said.
Stephen leaned back in his chair, taking a moment to mull over what he had learned. "All right," he said finally. "Now, Splinter and… Unum?"
The eagle mutant, who had not yet said a word in the Turtles' presence, nodded his head, a sharp and jerking movement.
Stephen rubbed his eyes, with forefinger and thumb, before he said, "Please tell me how you came to be marching in the streets today, along with what appeared to be hundreds of other mutants."
"We will do so," Splinter said. "Allow me to begin at the beginning."
It was morning, and his sons had not come home.
Splinter meditated. He had made a promise to Donatello, that today he would finally search for answers about their family's past. But he was frightened for their family's present, and every bone in his body told him that he should search for his sons, that he should assure their safety before doing anything else.
It was difficult. It was possibly the most difficult decision he had made since that awful choice to leave Donatello - Gekkei Keiren - in a cardboard box in a dark alley. But his sons were not sickly infants anymore. They were powerful young men, with the strength and intelligence and courage to take care of themselves. They had each other. They would be all right.
Splinter rose, went into the kitchen, laid a dozen plates on the floor, and filled them all with cat food. Klunk and Snowflake could not understand the reason for this unexpected feast. But they showed their appreciation to the source of the sudden bounty, just before beginning to inhale the kibble. Splinter only hoped they would save some for later.
He packed a small bag - the two halves of the broken TCRI canister, carefully wrapped in old towels, his knife, and a bit of food for himself. Then, with a final look at this place that had become such an important home to his family, despite the short length of time that they had lived there, he closed the disguised door and walked away.
He went first to the place where he and his sons had been mutated. He actually had not returned to this spot since the day he had retrieved the broken pieces of the canister, the pieces he now carried in his bag. Fear had kept him away - fear of the change that had happened to him in that place, fear of the boy who had stared so intently down the sewer grate. What if someone came looking …?
And yet the place was burned in his memory. Though he had hardly even thought of it in the past fifteen years, he could not forget what it looked like, what it smelled like, how it lay in relation to other parts of the sewer. He made not a single wrong turn on his way back there.
And then he stood, reflecting on his life before, and his life after, and that one inexplicable moment that had made all of the after possible.
He looked up through the grate, half-expecting to see a truck still sitting sideways in the street. Half-expecting to see a man, once a boy, still looking for his lost pets. But there were only ordinary cars driving in ordinary rows, and ordinary people walking one way or the other, not looking down, not knowing what had happened here fifteen years ago.
Splinter took a breath, refamiliarizing himself with the scent of the place. He reached into his bag, unwrapped the broken canister just a little, and reminded himself of the strange odor that had never fully evaporated from the thick glass.
It was time to begin.
The boys sat in silence. Splinter had never told the story of their origins in quite that way before.
"I… never thought about it like that," Michelangelo said finally. "I always thought you never went back there because you were too busy taking care of your cute kids."
"Did… did you ever wish you hadn't been mutated?" Leonardo asked.
"That is a story for another day, my son," Splinter replied, and then he continued.
His sons had gone to the surface, and Splinter found that he could do no less. He was following the trail more by instinct than by scent, but he followed it aboveground, weaving his way among the human pedestrians on the sidewalk.
"Are you Splinter?" asked one man. "From the Channel 6 interview?"
Splinter was baffled by how anyone might think he was some other mutant rat. Was there some important development that he had missed? The man was staring at him questioningly.
"I am," he said.
The man fumbled in his coat pocket, and Splinter took a step back, automatically on alert for a weapon. But the man only pulled out a notepad and a pen. "Can I have your autograph?" he asked.
Splinter knew what an autograph was. But he did not have a signature. He had only ever written his own name in print, in the course of teaching his sons how to write theirs.
"Do you charge?" the man asked, when Splinter only looked at the notepad without taking it.
"Excuse me?" Splinter asked.
"Five dollars for an autograph?" the man said, and he reached into his other pocket and pulled out his wallet.
Splinter shook his head quickly. "I do not need your money," he said. "I am honored to write my name for you." And he did, inscribing the word that Master Yoshi had chosen to represent his beloved pet, before handing the notepad back to the man.
"We can get paid for writing our names?" Raphael said in surprise. "I mean, who needs a real job?"
"I sure don't," Michelangelo said. He elbowed his brother. "I can charge twice as much as you, Raphie, cuz I have to write more letters."
"You can charge 71% more," Donatello said. "Or maybe 60% more. You know, volume discount."
"He don't know," Raphael said, as Michelangelo just looked puzzled by Donatello's suggestion. "Go ahead, Sensei."
The request for an autograph was not the only offer Splinter received that day. Several pedestrians inquired whether he would be so kind as to take a photograph with them. One young lady, after gushing about his performance in the Channel 6 interview, and discussing at length how much more mature he was than all the other fifteen-year-old boys, invited him on a date.
Splinter politely declined all these offers. He had more important business.
"Hot damn," Michelangelo said. "How come girls don't say things like that to me?"
"Perhaps," Splinter suggested, "if you act with greater maturity, they will."
"Oh," Michelangelo said. "Yeah. But, I mean, that's not any fun."
"Can we get on with the story?" Leonardo asked.
Splinter found himself standing in front of an electronics store, watching the televisions in the display window. Some were showing daytime soap operas, and he found it a bit difficult to not check in on his favorite stories. He had been missing them since his family's television was destroyed by the Mousers. Other screens were showing funny animal videos. But several were showing a news program. The banner at the bottom of the screen explained that the host and the guest were discussing the "mutant problem".
"What would cause people to dress up in mutant costumes and protest for mutant rights?" the host asked, and this helped shed a little light on why the man Splinter had met earlier had been uncertain as to Splinter's identity.
"Some people," said the guest, "being social outcasts, will do anything to fit in. They'll ally themselves with other deviants, to form a counterculture in which they can view themselves as normal. These mutants are the perfect cult leaders. They've inspired a group of confused individuals to conform to their twisted lifestyle. And not only to conform, but to lobby for their bizarre choices to be recognized as valid."
"Will the arrest of the mutant turtles put a stop to this?" the host asked.
"Unlikely," replied the guest. "I fear it will only bring attention to their cause. Subtle social shaming is often a better way to deal with these kinds of people."
"Gross," Donatello said.
"Could you just get to the part where TCRI is a super-secret mutant experimentation racket?" Dr. Lamb said.
Splinter was stunned. There, in the middle of a neighborhood he must have passed underneath hundreds of times, was a sizable building with the letters TCRI emblazoned on its side.
If that combination of letters had not been so pivotal in Splinter's life, the building would have appeared completely unremarkable - just a square, squat office block among many similar constructions. But to Splinter, the place seemed almost to glow with a mysterious energy. The secret of what had happened to him and his sons was about to be revealed, and he had no idea what further change that knowledge might bring to his life.
He almost approached the front door. There was a part of him that wanted to walk into the main lobby, present the broken canister, and demand answers. Whoever he encountered would surely know who he was. By now it seemed there was no one in America - perhaps no one in the world - who had not viewed, or at least heard about, the Channel 6 interview.
And yet, caution still ruled his actions. He hid himself among the crowd of pedestrians, and moved around the outside of the building, seeking another entrance.
Off of the main street, he found a short concrete staircase leading down from the sidewalk. It ended at a metal door - surely some sort of service entrance to the basement. It did not take long for Splinter to pick the lock.
There was nothing of interest in the cellar - only ordinary-looking mechanical equipment. Splinter searched the area carefully, then entered a dingy staircase and began to climb to the higher levels.
After a moment's thought, he decided to skip the lobby level and continue further up the building. He listened carefully at each numbered door, and it was on the fourth level that something told him to exit here.
He crept into the hallway, and quickly hid himself behind a janitor's cart. The building did not seem crowded, but there was a buzz of activity - busy-looking people, presumably the employees, hurried up and down the corridor, and there was a hum of voices from nearby offices.
Splinter waited for the people to pass. Then he moved swiftly to an open door, where he pressed himself against the wall and listened.
"What is the status of experiment #8473720?" asked a man.
"It is a failure," replied the woman seated at the desk. It appeared that this was her office.
"What if -" the man began.
The woman shook her head firmly. "It is a failure," she repeated. "I see no possibility of success in this line of research."
"That is unacceptable," said the man. "All the resources we have invested -"
"Then do not invest more," the woman snapped. "It is a loss. We will try something else."
The man made a noise of frustration, but he departed the woman's office. Splinter followed him soundlessly. A short distance down the hall, the man entered another room, where an older man was operating something that Splinter took to be an unusually elaborate coffee machine.
"What is the matter?" asked the older man, when he saw the younger man's expression.
"We have failed again," said the younger man. "Just when I thought we were so close. This is an enormous setback."
"You have suffered enormous setbacks your entire career," replied the older man. "Why is this one so difficult?"
"I am uncertain," said the younger man, as he pulled out a chair and sat beside the small table. The furniture was of a post-modern design, all smooth lines and minimal detailing. "The early reports had been so promising. I had gotten my hopes up."
The older man did not answer.
"Are you preparing liquid nutrition for me?" asked the younger man. "Or only for yourself?"
"Kleve took the last cup and did not refill the pot," said the older man.
"That is typical," said the younger man, as the older man filled two large mugs with a steaming concoction, and then carried them to the table. "Thank you, Lorqa."
"It is no trouble, Mortu," replied Lorqa, and then the two men unbuttoned their shirts, and a most astonishing thing occurred.
Splinter had a rat's natural instinct to be stealthy, and he had spent many years perfecting the art of going undetected. But when he saw two pink blobs crawl out of where the men's stomachs should have been, he could not stop himself from exclaiming, "Nandeyo?!"
The two blobs pivoted towards Splinter from where they sat on the smooth table, and the heads of the men turned as well. "Mortu!" exclaimed the blob that had emerged from Lorqa's body. "There is an intruder!"
"Sound the alarm!" Mortu ordered him.
"I cannot reach the alarm!" Lorqa replied, while Splinter stood frozen to the spot.
"Why did we put the alarms inside the hosts?" Mortu cried, and then he shouted, "HELP! INTRUDER!"
Finally, Splinter came to his senses, and he tried to flee. But the woman Mortu had spoken to moments ago was already rushing towards him. Splinter drew his knife and fell back into a defensive stance, ready to meet an attack.
"Ma'riell!" shouted Mortu. "Detain the intruder!"
The woman, though she was not large, hit Splinter like a freight train. He was not prepared. He flew back against the wall, and then everything went black.
"What the actual fuck," said Raphael.
"This is a joke, right?" Michelangelo said. "The twist is you were still standing in front of the TVs, and they were playing a classic sci-fi movie."
Splinter shook his head.
"Then what the hell is going on?" Dr. Lamb demanded. "And," she said, pointing directly at Unum, "who is that guy?"
"I have much more to tell you," Splinter replied. "Please listen."
He awoke in an entirely different room. The human bodies that had been called Mortu and Ma'riell were looking at him. The pink blobs were nowhere in sight. Perhaps he had imagined it.
"Glurin," said Ma'riell. "What is it?"
"I don't know," replied a bespectacled man, whom Splinter had only just noticed standing on his other side.
He was lying on a bed. Not a bed, exactly - some sort of cushion, mottled red and orange, and pulsating gently. There were no obvious restraints, and yet some sort of attraction prevented him from getting up.
"Who… are you?" he asked.
The three humans looked at him in startlement. "It speaks!" said Mortu. He leaned forward. "Do you understand our language?"
"Certainly," Splinter replied. "What place have I come to?"
"It is no matter," Ma'riell said soothingly. "You will forget soon."
Splinter struggled violently against the invisible bonds.
"You will be unharmed," said Glurin, even as he worked with something outside of Splinter's line of sight. "You will be returned to a suitable continuity… as soon as we figure out what that is. You simply will not remember."
"I have not come here to forget," Splinter growled. "I have come here for answers."
Glurin turned around and moved towards Splinter with an alarming-looking implement, but Mortu held up a hand to stop him. "What answers?" he asked. "What do you know of this place?"
"That it made me what I am," Splinter said, looking Mortu straight in the eye. "I am from Earth. But somehow, this place - TCRI - turned me into this. After so many years, I want to know why."
They held each other's gaze for a long moment. Then Mortu said: "Release him."
The strange pull against his body lessened, and Splinter sat up. "What are you?" he asked. "Did I really see -" And he made an uncertain gesture towards Mortu's stomach.
"We do not wish to harm you," Mortu replied. "You have discovered our secret. We know nothing of you. But let us see if we can learn, together, what you wish to know." As he turned away, he added, "We can always erase your memory later."
"This is wild," Donatello muttered.
"You realize I cannot present any of this in a court of law without substantial physical evidence," Stephen said.
"You will have all the evidence you need," Splinter said. "Allow me to continue."
Ma'riell and Mortu - "Utroms", as they collectively introduced their people - led Splinter to another room, leaving Glurin to his work.
"We are not from this world," Mortu said, a fact which Splinter found it reassuring to learn. "We are what you call aliens. We arrived here by accident, many years ago, when a regrettable accident caused our ship to crash-land on your planet."
Splinter turned in a slow circle, taking in the tangle of technology in the room. He could not make heads or tails of it. "What is this?" he asked.
"This is how we have hidden on Earth for so long," Ma'riell explained. "As you have observed, we disguise ourselves in human bodies. This is one of the labs in which we create those bodies. We live in them for a time, then move on to another." She smiled. "In this way, we hide our long-lived nature, as well as our true appearance."
"They are… robots?" Splinter hazarded, as he looked again at the maze of metal that wound its way across the room.
"They are alive," Mortu said. "More akin to host organisms than to prosthetics. They have some independent intelligence, but, with the neurotoxins that we Utrom naturally secrete, we are able to control their movements."
"And so," Splinter said, "you have been living on Earth, hiding in these false bodies? To what end?"
"To this end," Mortu said, and he led Splinter to a smaller room, where a raised platform on the floor took up nearly the entire space. "We wish only to go home. Since our arrival on this planet, nearly a millennium ago, we have worked to shape and advance human technology, hastening the time when vehicles capable of intergalactic travel will first arise on this world. But we must move cautiously, subtly, so as not to reveal ourselves. And so the level of technology that we require is still many, many years in the future."
Splinter spared another glance at the metal dais. "This looks like no spaceship I have seen," he said carefully.
"It is not a spaceship," Ma'riell replied. "It is a Transmat, a type of instantaneous teleportation technology. A few decades ago, it became possible for us to begin assembling one. Observing the trends of scientific advancement on this world, we predicted that teleportation off your planet might become feasible sooner than departure by space vessel. And so we began to invest many of our resources in constructing a Transmat. But the project is failing. The final components that we need are not yet available, and despite our best efforts, human interest in pursuing that branch of science is flagging."
Splinter nodded. He understood - at least on some level. But he did not yet see how this tour of the TCRI facility was telling him what he wanted to know about his own past.
Reaching into his bag – which had been returned to him as he departed Glurin's laboratory – he pulled out the two halves of the glass tube, and unwrapped them in front of the Utroms. "What is this?" he asked.
Mortu and Ma'riell startled again when they saw the letters TCRI, in blocky print, stamped on the shattered canister. "That is a power unit," Ma'riell said. "We have been able to produce the liquid fuel that the Transmat requires for some time now, and we use it from time to time to run various tests of the equipment. The fuel is stored in containers like that."
"How did you come into possession of that?" Mortu asked, and there was an angry undertone to the question.
"Fifteen years ago," Splinter said, "this container fell out of a truck and down a sewer drain. It hit the ground and broke open. A rat and four baby turtles were exposed to the substance inside. I am that rat. The four turtles are my sons."
"And the turtles are…" Mortu began.
"They are like me," Splinter said. "Once ordinary animals, we all now move and think and speak like men. Tell me, Mr. Mortu: What has TCRI done to my family?"
Mortu and Ma'riell looked at each other in shock.
"We knew that a power unit had been lost fifteen years ago," Ma'riell said at last, "while it was being transported from another of our facilities. We had never been able to recover it. We were likewise unable to identify who had witnessed the accident… and we had no idea that the fuel had such effects."
"This is disastrous," Mortu said to Ma'riell. "We must erase him immediately."
"I do not blame you for this accident," Splinter said, even as he prepared to defend himself from any efforts to erase his memory. "In fact, I thank you. And I will not tell anyone your secrets… so long as you help my family overcome our own."
"We apologize for the hardship we have caused to you and your sons," Ma'riell said. She laid a hand on Mortu's arm, calming his agitation. "We would like to work with you. But we cannot offer you sanctuary on our own homeworld until we are able to return there ourselves, which is not likely to be within your lifespan. I do not see what we can do to help."
"I think I know a way," Splinter said.
"I don't understand," Leonardo said.
Donatello had gone pale. "You… you used the stockpiled Transmat fuel to mutate hundreds of animals?" he said. "And somehow artificially aged them, and coached them on a made-up story? Just to protect us? That's… Sensei, that's barbaric."
"That is not what we did," Splinter said.
"Then what?" Raphael asked, and he gestured to the mutant eagle, who had sat silently this entire time. "Who is this guy?"
"Unum," Splinter said. "Would you please show them?"
"It would be my pleasure," said Unum, and then his head tilted to the side, and a hissing sound escaped from his chest, and a pink blob crawled from his abdominal cavity to rest on Stephen's desk.
"What the hell," Michelangelo shrieked, as he leaped up from his chair and danced into the far corner of the office. "That is so not okay."
"Greetings," said the pink blob, in a voice quite different from Unum's. "My name is Mortu."
"Unum is an Utrom?" Raphael shouted.
"Are… are they all Utroms?" Donatello said. "All the mutants at the rally today… they're Utroms in fake mutant bodies?"
Splinter nodded slowly.
Raphael gripped his head. "All the mutants at the protest…" he said. "And all the mutants at the rally… they're all fake? We're the only real ones?"
"No others have come forward," Splinter said quietly.
"Why?" Raphael shouted at the ceiling. "Why did this happen to us?"
"I cannot apologize enough," Mortu said. "Had we known the Transmat fuel had such effects, we would have been even more cautious with it."
"That's not -" Raphael started.
"Can we table that for later?" Leonardo broke in. "Let's focus on what's important. For one, where are Ma'riell and Glurin and Lorqa? Are they at the UN pretending to be mutants?"
"They are at TCRI personifying scientists," Mortu replied. "They have been issued new identities, and they will live those roles until the personas are no longer needed."
"What does that mean?" Stephen asked.
"We Utrom have done this for centuries on your world," Mortu explained. "We create a new host. We attach a life story to it. We live that story until it reaches an end. We dispose of the host body and take a new one. We have much practice at this."
"This is ridiculous," Dr. Lamb said. "It made a hell of a publicity stunt. But there is no way this ruse is going to hold up. You'll all be discovered, and then we'll have a problem of mutants and aliens."
"As I have said," Mortu replied, "we have been living on Earth for centuries. We have never been discovered."
"You have never been so in the public eye," Stephen pointed out.
"That is not true," Mortu said. "You have no idea how many famous figures - present and past, political leaders and captains of industry - have been Utroms."
The humans in the room looked at each other.
"First of all," Dr. Lamb said. "No one is going to let these Utrom mutants -"
"Mutroms," Michelangelo offered, from the corner he was still occupying.
"No one is going to let them into society without, at the least, a thorough physical exam," Dr. Lamb finished. "How do you intend to pass that?"
"You are Dr. Emma Lamb," said Mortu. "An experienced veterinarian. Splinter has told me about you. I welcome you to examine my host body."
Dr. Lamb did so, although even she hesitated to approach the mutant eagle, which was sitting in a catatonia-like state and had a gaping hole in its stomach where Mortu would normally hide. "I don't believe it," she said. "Pulse and respiration. Neural activity?"
"Brain scans would show normal activity," Mortu said.
"They're going to want to dissect us when we die," Donatello said quietly. "Your host body won't withstand that."
"It would not," Mortu acknowledged. "But in every age and every culture, we have found ways of recovering our kin, disposing their used-up host bodies, and transitioning them into a new persona. Do you know, ancient Egyptian mummification practices came about after a doctor inadvertently witnessed an Utrom extraction process, and did not understand what he had seen?"
"I did not need to know that," Michelangelo said.
"What about the scientists?" Leonardo asked. "I mean, the Utroms who are playing scientists."
"They are bearing their share of the risk," Mortu said. "They may be sentenced to life imprisonment for what their personas have done. But we have transitioned them all into host bodies that are nearing retirement age. They will experience planned death in no more than two decades. That is no time at all to an Utrom."
"What about TCRI?" asked Donatello. "I mean, the Transmat, and the host body factory, and all of that? Won't you lose everything?"
"We have spent the past days dismantling our equipment and quietly moving it to another facility," Mortu replied. "We will lose almost nothing."
"Okay." Donatello buried his face in his hands. "So when inspectors inevitably show up at TCRI, they won't find a bunch of alien technology. But they also won't find evidence of experimental mutation, which is what you've told them to expect. How will you explain that?"
"With the advanced artificial intelligence we have access to," Mortu said, "it took no more than a few hours to fabricate years' worth of research documentation. When inspectors arrive at TCRI, they will find some of that documentation - along with evidence that the scientists have very recently destroyed much of the rest."
"That… all seems very well thought out," Leonardo said. "But even if this plan works, I don't see where it gets us. How does it help our cause to have more mutants running around?"
"First," Mortu said, "there now are enough mutants that you - we - cannot be ignored. But second, there are still few enough that we do not appear as a threat. As part of our story, we will say that the mutagen in the lab has all been destroyed, and that the TCRI mutants were all sterilized by the scientists long ago, so there will not be any more mutants in the future." He paused, looking around at his audience before continuing. "And third, we have already framed ourselves as the victims in this situation. The humans will make a place for mutants out of pity. And they will humor us until we are gone."
"Um," Leonardo said, and he gestured carefully to himself and his brothers. "But what about our ability to make more mutants?"
"We can't," Donatello said, before Mortu could respond. "We're almost certainly sterile. It must be an effect of the mutagen. We should just say that, and simplify the story."
"What?!" Raphael roared. "What do you mean, we're sterile?"
"What do you mean?" Donatello countered. "I thought you knew."
Raphael gestured to himself, as if that shed any light on the situation. "Why did you think I knew?"
"Mikey knew," Donatello replied, "and he can't keep a secret."
Raphael turned to Michelangelo with a dark expression on his face.
"Michelangelo," Splinter said, before Raphael could move. "How did you know this?"
"Donnie told me!" Michelangelo squeaked.
"I told him because he asked!" Donatello said, in his own defense.
Splinter raised a brow at his youngest, not needing to state the obvious question.
"I asked because I heard okaasan tell you that we're sterile and I wanted to know what that word meant?" Michelangelo said in a small and shrinking voice.
Dr. Lamb leveled Splinter with an unimpressed gaze. "I told you you should tell them."
Splinter could only look away.
"Is this really our plan?" Leonardo asked. "To say that a group of rogue scientists created several hundred mutants, and also a handful of mutants were accidentally created outside the lab, and now all the mutants have escaped, and the mutagen has been destroyed, and there won't be any more mutants, so humans should just put up with us until we all die, and we cross our fingers that nobody discovers that most of the mutants are fakes?"
"Yes," said Mortu.
"Well," said Leonardo. "Here goes nothing."