CHAPTER 8

Big break

With skilful precision, Donatello coupled his T-Phone into the access panel beside the door to the premises. After just a few seconds he was connected to the systems controlling the building then, tapping away on the device, he found the program he'd written and loaded it up. Keying in the necessary variables for the lock in question, he let his software work its magic.

It gave him no small amount of satisfaction to watch it whizz through all the possible key code combinations before it came up with a winner. It was encrypted, naturally, but breaking through that and then recoding the commands he wished to enter was a cinch.

With another tap, he sent the amended instructions to the system. There was a moment or two where nothing seemed to happen, then the flickering red light switched to static green as he overrode the console and deactivated not only the locks but also the alarms.

Finally, with marginally more effort, he disabled the closed circuit camera system and took a copy of the files from the previous night to put into the folder structure. Just in case anyone should happen to go digging through the file system for the videos.

"Aaand… We're in." Donnie said, with a degree of pride in his abilities. "Alarms are down and cameras are showing last night's feed."

Mikey grinned. "Awesome, D!"

"Like a turtle do!"

"All right, let's go." Leonardo dictated, ever focused on the task at hand.

Testing the door, it opened easily and the leader slipped into the building. Donatello followed, with Michelangelo bringing up the rear.

Once inside, they were initially faced with what looked to be an everyday receptionist desk, of the sort you might find in any corporate building. The area was overly grey with bland, inoffensive décor. A couple of uncomfortable looking chairs for waiting visitors were sat nearby, while a water cooler gurgled invitingly and an oversized pot plant wilted gently.

Given it was the middle of the night, the reception was unsurprisingly unmanned. Despite that, the turtles hesitated for several moments, ensuring that there was no sound or movement to suggest that anyone was lurking within the building apart from themselves.

"It doesn't seem like Bebop and Rocksteady are here." Leo whispered, moving stealthily forwards and sticking to the shadows.

Mikey, less cautious, walked openly to the next doorway. "Dude! There's like, an awesome secret lab through here!"

"It's not that secret, Mikey."

"It was." Mikey pointed out, before concluding dramatically, "Until now!"

"No it…" started Leo, before conceding the point. "Ok, fine. I guess it was a secret from us."

As a group, they moved through into the body of the laboratory. Donnie's eyes widened as he gazed around at all the equipment.

"This is… This is amazing!" he gushed, abandoning stealth in favour of rushing over to paw at several contraptions set out on a surface nearby. "A bio mixer, and a top loading vortex balance!"

"Yeah!" Michelangelo agreed, though his confused expression betrayed the fact that he had no idea what had just been described. Regardless, he pointed enthusiastically at a huge device next to where he was standing. "And what's this one?"

"That's a fridge, Mikey."

"Oh. Well, it's awesome!"

"Stop messing about." Leonardo chided. "We're here to find out what they're doing, and how to shut it down."

"Yeah, yeah. Don't get your mask in a knot, Leo." Donnie muttered, sliding into an operators chair and scooting across the floor to one of the computer terminals.

This was his bread and butter. For once there seemed to be no immediate time pressure and, better yet, no battle raging around him. Cracking his knuckles, he booted up the system and started hacking in to give himself permissions for the information databases.

Pulling a flash drive out, Donatello plugged it into the station. First thing he did was to download a copy of the data, so whatever he didn't get chance to process or gain access to straight away he'd be able to analyse back at the lair. Naturally, while this was happening, he went and amended the access and audit logs to ensure his activities couldn't be tracked.

Meanwhile, Leonardo and Michelangelo prowled round the rest of the lab, seeing what else could be found that might offer more clues about exactly what Shredder was trying to do this time.

It was Mikey that made the next discovery, calling out excitedly as he did.

"I found another egg!"

Leonardo straightened from where he had been searching a series of cupboards. "Bring it over."

Donatello only briefly glanced up from the computer terminal, vaguely listening to the conversation but mostly letting the two of them enjoy their discovery for now while he worked within his element.

"It looks like another mutant turtle!" Mikey declared, holding the egg up to the light and gazing at the hazy silhouette inside. "I hope it's me!"

"Having my own clone would be too awesome, dudes. I would be beside myself! We'd be best friends, and I could make it do all my chores!"

"Well, you're in luck." Donnie confirmed. Having finished his initial processing, he reached over to scan the serial code on the box Mikey brought over and compare it to the information on the computer. "It does, indeed, have your DNA."

"Sweet!"

"And Leo's."

Leonardo looked up in confusion. "Huh?"

"It's some kind of hybrid." Donatello continued, his mismatched eyes flicking left and right as he quickly skimmed through the information. "Made from a combination of DNA from both of you."

"You can be the Mom." Mikey whispered to Leo.

"What? No way!"

Donnie then came to the critical information at the bottom of the report he was working through. "Oh wait. No, never mind. It failed, the egg is a dud."

"Ooaaww!" complained Mikey.

"It looks like that's what they've been trying to do. Splice all of our DNA together to create a… Super mutant turtle! With my height, Raph's build, Mikey's agility and Leo's… Uh…"

As Donatello faltered, Leonardo fixed him with a defiant look. Michelangelo meanwhile was waiting with fascinated expectancy, eager to find out what genetic element of his eldest brother that the enemies would want to replicate.

Caught between wanting to irritate one brother but not wanting to upset the other, Donnie eventually went with, "Face. Leo's face."

"My face?" Leo repeated, incredulously.

"Aww, dude, they like your face!" Mikey beamed.

Donnie shook his head. "They haven't succeeded. The set we saw earlier were the first batch they managed to successfully produce, which are straight clones. The hybrids have all failed."

"Lucky for us. Let's shut this place down, before they make any more." decreed Leonardo.

"But all the equipment…" Donatello lamented.

Michelangelo was significantly more excited. "We get to break stuff?"

"No." said Leo. "We don't break stuff. We, er… Well, actually, yeah. In this case, let's break stuff."

"Woohoo!"

Donnie quickly stood. "Wait, we just need to destroy the samples and wipe the computer systems."

"So where are the samples?"

He pointed. "They'll be in the fridge."

"I knew the fridge was important." Mikey gloated.

Then, suddenly, all of them heard it. The familiar electronic squeak of a Foot-bot after it sighted a target and was readying to attack.

They all spun round to face where several of the robotic creatures were peering in from the window. Another squeak alerted them to several more blocking the doorway through which they came.

"Looks like you didn't shut things down quite as well as you thought, Genius." Leonardo snarked at Donatello.

It was more likely to be that Bebop and Rocksteady had reported the earlier encounter and the robotic goons had been sent out to make sure the turtles didn't return. But Donnie didn't get a chance to expound his hypothesis before the robots launched their attack, brandishing their haphazard selection of ninja weapons and corrupted alternatives threateningly.

As Leonardo drew his blades and leapt straight into the fray, Donatello darted back to the computer terminal where he'd been working to finish what he'd begun. Yet again, he realised agitatedly, he was coding under pressure.

Michelangelo meanwhile waited for the Foot-bots to bring the fight to him. "You wanna see a magic trick?" he asked, grinning.

As the first one arrived, he neatly opened the fridge and kicked the unfortunate robot into it, slamming the door. Grabbing a nearby handful of test tube tongs, clamps and stands he then animatedly stabbed them into the sides and the door of the fridge, in a variety of different places, before stepping back to admire his handiwork.

"And now," boasted Mikey, "As you can see, my lovely assistant is…"

As he opened the fridge, the samples and several chunks of the impaled robot dropped messily onto the floor.

"Completely destroyed!"

"Nice work!" Leonardo acknowledged, leaping in and cutting two of the Foot-bots in half with a whirling blow.

At the computer terminal, Donnie unplugged his flash drive and hit the final combination of keys to trigger a complete reformat of the system. The screen flickered a few times, then advised that all the data was deleted.

"No more data, either." he called.

Leo raced by. "About time!"

"Hey, where's my respect?" Donnie complained, smacking an approaching Foot-bot to the other side of the room with his bo staff.

Mikey bounced over. "You definitely showed that computer who the boss was, Dude!"

"Darn right."

"I could use a little help here!" Leonardo called from the other side of the room, as he picked up the bio mixer and brought it down onto a robotic head, with terminal consequences for both the mechanical foe and the apparatus.

"Ahh!" Donnie wailed, "I could have used that…"

"Could you use this?" asked Michelangelo, picking up another piece of equipment from the nearby workbench.

"Yes."

"And this?"

"Definitely."

"What about this one?"

"I've wanted one of those forever!"

Mikey growled in frustration. "Dude, what can I use?"

Donnie looked around. "The chair. Hit them with the chair."

As instructed, Michelangelo picked up the operators chair and flung it into several charging Foot-bots.

"We don't have time for you to go shopping, Donnie!" Leo snapped, as more Foot-bots piled through the door.

"Especially now the building is on fire." Mikey added, gesturing to where flames were starting to flicker on the far side of the room following an electrical spark. It quickly gained momentum as it caught several lab coats hanging nearby.

Donatello's eyes widened as he took in the canisters of propane stacked slightly further along the wall, presumably to provide fuel for the Bunsen burners. "Yeah, time to go!"

There was a mad scramble as the three of them bolted for the exit. They left the building with all possible haste and had barely reached the far side of the road before the first explosion rocked the laboratory and sent a rippling shockwave across the area.

"Looks like we broke everything after all." Mikey said, watching the carnage and flinching as a second explosion added to it.

Leo nodded. "Let's just hope it means they can't keep trying to clone us."

"There's likely to be an offsite backup of the data somewhere." Donnie explained. "And they still have the clones that they escaped with. Assuming they hatch successfully, the DNA is right there."

"Great. Just great."

"At least they don't have the Raph clone!" Michelangelo chipped in, optimistically.

Unless they made more than one, Donatello contemplated. Given Leonardo's mood, he decided it was probably best not to voice the thought. However, curling his fingers tighter around the flash drive, he made a mental note to check later just how many of each clone had been made.

"Speaking of Raphael, we should get back to the lair and see how he's doing." Leonardo decided.

In the distance, sirens could be heard.

"Ninja vanish?" Mikey asked Leo, reaching eagerly for a smoke bomb.

"Ninja vanish." the leader confirmed.

By the time the emergency services arrived, there was no trace of them remaining aside from the broken remnants of the smoke bomb shell on the sidewalk.