I have to admit, I'm a little sorry for this one, guys. And it will get worse still. I'm sorry for that, too. But not quite sorry enough, I suppose!
Enjoy!
Raph opened his eyes, the ringing of a shockwave just receding in his ears. It was dark, wet, and he was crammed up against other turtles. He needed a moment to clear his head before he remembered Bishop's lab and the explosion that had been rigged to destroy them. He moved an arm to see where they were, only to find himself against unfamiliar scales. Raph blinked a few times, his eyes finally adjusting to the darkness.
He was sitting on Mikey, who seemed to be shaking off the effects of the blast himself. To one side was Leo, eyes open and watching him for signs of consciousness. On the other side of Leo, Monique was crouching, her face mostly hidden in the shadows. Across the small, dark space, Nick was standing and holding onto something. It took another heartbeat for him to understand.
They were being carried in Godzilla's clawed hands.
Raphael jerked instinctively in terror, managing only to slowly topple off of Mikey and find himself pinned to the huge, dark fingers – or front toes, or claws, or whatever they were – as upward momentum held him down.
"It's okay," Leo's voice was both muffled and amplified by the water. "He's carrying us to safety."
"You sure about that?" Raph replied coarsely.
"Positive." The red-banded turtle could hardly believe that his older brother, the paranoid one who didn't trust anyone outside of their clan, and sometimes not everyone in the clan, was so calmly accepting help from a multi-story monster who could eat them for lunch as easily as looking at them. But then he saw Leo's eyes focus on the human scientist in their midst, and Raph looked, too. He couldn't quite read the look in Nick's eyes, but something about the geek was comforting.
"Anybody get the number on that truck?" Michelangelo asked dizzily, fighting the water's pull to stand and eventually giving up and staying where he was.
"Just another minute," Leonardo said. Monique nodded in agreement, but the humans couldn't be heard through their scuba-type masks without being connected to their radio frequency. Monique must have said something, because Nick turned to the turtles and gave them a thumbs-up before turning back to the massive scales and staring at them.
A moment later, light burst through the cracks between Godzilla's hands and the upward movement stopped. Nick took off his mask and smiled.
"It's okay. We're at the surface." As he spoke, the scales that held them moved suddenly, and after a disorienting moment, all five found themselves on top of a grey, lumpy, scaly surface.
"Dude!" Mikey cheered, pulling of his mask and jumping to his feet. "This is awesome!"
Raph realized they were sitting on Godzilla's massive square head, the mutant carrying them like some kind of demented, giant ferry. He pulled off his own breather and stood up, lending an arm to Leonardo who had ended up sprawled on his shell. The humans took off their own masks as well.
"Our boat got trashed," Nick continued calmly, "so we're getting a ride back to our home base."
"Thank you," Leonardo said heavily. He looked uncomfortably around at the enormous creature carrying him and continued, "I'm not sure how you got him to us so quickly, but we owe you and Godzilla our lives."
"We gave your brother our word we would serve you in his absence," Monique said suddenly, "so we could not do less."
"Yeah, and about Donnie…"
Nick turned from the blue-banded turtle long enough to flash a look at Monique. He knew she had skillfully redirected the conversation to save him from explaining his relationship with Godzilla. Unfortunately, the most efficient and effective way to do that brought up the other topic he didn't really want to discuss, but it was better than the alternative. He refocused on Leonardo.
"I'm not sure it's up to me to tell you anything Don hasn't told you himself," Nick hedged.
"You said he was 'occupied.' What does that mean, exactly? What is going on with you and Don?" Leo pressed, ignoring Nick's statement.
"Didn't you hear the man?" Raph asked, stepping between the scientist and his brother. "He ain't gonna squeal on Donnie. Don't yell at him for that."
"Okay, then I'm happy to yell at you. So what set you off so bad?" Leo returned. "You know something, Raph. I can tell. You're better at keeping secrets than Mikey," he jerked a thumb to the third turtle, who squawked indignantly, "but you aren't stupid. You wouldn't have pulled a stunt like this without a shell of a good reason."
"Yeah?" Raph crossed his arms. "If you're so smart, you tell me what I ain't tellin' you, then!"
"Raphael, if you know something, it's your duty to tell me about it!"
"No, it ain't!"
"Guys, chill!" Mikey said, trying to get between them. Which was difficult, given that the pair of turtles were now beak-to-beak, inches apart. "Why don't we just ask Don?"
"What?" Leo asked, surprised out of his fight enough to turn to his brother.
"Whatever he is doing at HEAT's place, he's there. And whatever happened earlier today, that was him too. And since Raph didn't pull his disappearing act until after Don left, that's probably part of it too. So if anybody knows what's going on, it's Donnie, and unlike SOME turtles we know, Don will probably just tell you the truth," he said reasonably.
"Mikey, I hate to admit it, but you're right," Leo sighed. He looked back to Raphael, who had not backed down or cooled down an inch. "Just tell me this much, Raph."
"What?"
"When I get answers from Don, and you know I will, am I going to be even more angry with you, or am I going to want to do exactly what you just did?" The sincerity, and the mix of worry and resignation in his voice caused even Raph to stand down.
"That depends," the red-banded turtle replied, not belligerently, but darkly.
"Depends on what?" Leo wanted to know. Raphael looked at his feet. Monique moved to face the turtle directly. Her eyes were hard, her voice absolutely businesslike in its precision.
"On how much he chooses to tell you."
-==OOO==-
"Hey there, D-man! How're you feeling?" Randy chirped.
Donatello blinked, sure for a moment that he was staring at Godzilla and Nick who were bizarrely the same person. But then his dizziness cleared and he could see Randy leaning over him, bright smile belied by his worried eyes.
"Kinda like I just had brain surgery," Don replied wryly. He put a cautious hand to his head, feeling the familiar skin-pull of stitches beneath a mountain of bandages. But the compress was dry to his fingers, which was good.
"Well, you did!"
"Oh, that was a brilliant deduction," came Mendel's voice from across the room. "Why don't you tell him he's a turtle while you're at it?"
"Why don't I tell you you're a geek?" the hacker returned.
"Guys! You're giving me a headache and I don't have a hole in my head. Knock it off!" Elsie admonished the pair. She rose from her workstation and joined Don at the table. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah," he sighed. "I passed out, didn't I?"
"Yup."
"Figures. Turtle luck working true to form," he muttered to himself. Then, remembering, he sat bolt-upright. "Raph! The guys! They needed my help!"
"Relax," Randy put a hand on his shoulder. "Monique and Nick got it handled. They already called in. Everybody's fine and they're on their way. Should be here soon."
"Nick and Monique?"
"I think," Elsie smiled broadly, "that Monique is really starting to like you guys. It's not every day she loads up that much firepower to bail somebody out."
"This is Monique we're talking about," Craven said without even looking up. "She always loads up the weaponry. But she doesn't usually bail anybody out, even us, if she can help it."
"I guess that makes me feel a little better," Don breathed in relief. His brothers were all right. That was all that mattered. "So, doctors, what's my prognosis?"
"Jefe said you heal fast, so the incision should close in a few days, and the dizziness will pass soon, I think," Randy said. Then he stopped. "Oh. You meant…yeah. Sorry."
"Don't sweat it." Donatello swung his legs over the table's edge, holding still when the world dipped and his stomach lurched. He had no desire to pass out again, so he took it a little more slowly. But there was only so much that could distract him from the awful feeling growing inside. Surely Elsie and Mendel would have something by now?
"Maybe we should wait for your brothers to arrive before we tell you what we've got so far," Elsie said gently.
"No." Don's voice was cold and absolute. "Tell me before they get here."
"But…" Craven finally looked up from his own workbench and joined them. "I mean, they're your family. Wouldn't you rather they be here to help you with…?"
"No. Tell me now. Please," he was nearly pleading with them. Elsie and Mendel shared a look, and as one, sighed.
"All right. Well, there's something there. Something foreign, with a different genetic structure than your own. Completely different, so there's no way it's a tumor or anything like that." Elsie reached around behind her for a pad with some information printed on it. "But it's leeching off your blood and your body like a tumor. Or a parasite."
"But what is it?" Don felt his stomach constrict even more.
"Well…"
"Just tell me!" the turtle nearly exploded. "Please!"
"As far as we can tell," Craven said slowly but deliberately, "it's an embryo."
"Wait, did you just say 'embryo?' Like a baby?" Randy interrupted.
"Yes." Elsie met Don's eyes. "It's a living being, implanted in your brain and growing like an embryo in a female's womb."
"Bishop must have implanted it while I was unconscious," Don said, automatically piecing together certain facts. "But what is it?"
"It…appears to be a clone. Of Godzilla," Craven said. "And it's getting big fast."
"So you're telling me I've got a baby Godzilla in my brain? But I thought Godzilla came out of an egg, like all reptiles?" the turtle asked, his mind racing.
"It's not identical. Not an exact clone of Godzilla. It's been modified. There are traces of things in its DNA that are similar to the cure you helped us produce, and some things that would be human if they weren't mutated. It's some kind of hybrid." Elsie put down the pad and put a hand on Don's shoulder.
"So, what now?" Randy asked.
"Well, that's the problem. It's been implanted inside Don's head, right up against his brain. It can only grow so large before it starts to impair cognitive function. But we ran a few more tests and scans while you were out anyway and…" Mendel trailed off uncertainly. At a desperate look from the ninja, he swallowed heavily and continued, "Well, the thing is that it isn't completely isolated."
"What does that mean exactly?" Don wanted to know, a sinking feeling telling him he already knew.
"Just like when a mammal is pregnant and the female's body connects to the developing baby to pass along nutrients, there are some connections in your body that have been diverted to this embryo. But not just the ones that give it blood and other things it feeds off of. There are, well, some neural pathways that seem to be intertwined, too."
Elsie stepped up, the hesitation in her face completely gone. When she spoke it was clinical and precise, as if she were keeping herself from feeling the truth of her own words.
"Your brain has been hooked up to this thing, and with every bit that it grows, it connects itself more and more to your neural pathways. It's becoming a true parasite, and if it gets too much larger, it's going to do more than crowd your mind out of its physical space and cause neurological damage. It's also going to become part of your cognitive processes. It will influence your thoughts, and if it has any consciousness of its own, it will be aware of you, as you will be of it. It's a question of what happens first. If it gets big before it develops neurologically, it will crush your brain against your skull. If it gains any sort of awareness or cognitive function, it will be tapped into your mind directly."
There was a long silence with only the hum of computers and the occasional whir of lab equipment to break the eerie, dire tension.
"What can you do?" Randy asked at last, his mouth dry. He stole a glance at Donatello. The turtle was still sitting, his face locked and pale, his hands clenching the edge of the table so tightly he could see the metal beginning to warp very slightly. He could almost hear the turtle's heart hammering in his chest, and a vein in his neck was throbbing.
"Well, we can try to remove it surgically, but there's no guarantee." Elsie stopped as a lump in her throat caught her.
"No guarantee of what?" the hacker pressed. If Donatello wasn't going to ask, he sure would! But it was the genius turtle who turned to him with a haunted look in his eyes as he answered.
"No guarantee that I'll ever be able to think again."
-==OOO==-
When Godzilla dropped his inadvertent passengers at the HEAT dock, Leonardo made all possible speed into the building, Mikey on his heels and Raphael a little behind. He burst into the lab, shoulders set, determined to get answers. Striding forward confidently, he approached the turtle in the room who was sitting at a computer, his back to the door.
"Don! What the shell is going on? Where were you?" Leo spotted the new, and rather large bandage on his head. "And what happened? Did you get hurt?"
The air in the room was suddenly heavy. The blue-clad turtle broke his eye-contact with Donatello's shell long enough to analyze the remaining HEAT members present. Mendel was staring at his feet, his face more clouded than usual, looking anywhere but at another living being. Randy was pale and completely subdued. Elsie turned to meet his gaze, and the turtle was surprised to find that she was furious, her eyes shining unusually brightly.
"Nick," she called around the turtle to where Nick and Monique had answered. "You want to see this." There was something so somber and serious in her voice that Leo felt his resolve cracking. Nick slipped to one side and picked up the pad she slid across to the table.
"What? What is it?" Michelangelo asked. "What's going on?"
"Donnie," Raph said, his voice so soft and coaxing both his other brothers turned in surprise, "you don't have to…"
"Stop it!" The fourth turtle spun in his chair, jumping to his feet. He was pale, and obviously struggling to control his emotions. His eyes looked like harsh points of light burned into his mask. "You just…you don't…you don't understand," he finally forced out.
"But we want to understand, Don," Leo said, his voice shifting to gentle. "Tell us what's going on. Please."
"I…I can't. Explain it to them," he waved brusquely at Elsie. Then he turned on his heel and stalked out the door towards the dock.
"Don!" Mikey made to go after him, but Nick stepped in front.
"Give him some space. I'll talk to him."
"But," Leo began.
"No, Leo," Raph said sadly. "Let the doc talk to Don a while. We gotta hear this, all of it. We can't help him until we know how bad it is." The red-banded turtle looked at Elsie, and she was surprised that his face looked almost like he was drowning. "How bad is it?"
"Bad," she said, controlling her own emotions as three brothers crowded around her in terror for the fourth. "Just prepare yourselves, guys. Because it's at least as bad as you fear."
-==OOO==-
Don sat on the lower dock, dangling his legs in the water. He'd been avoiding his brothers for so long, and now he was doing it again. But he just couldn't bring himself to admit it. To say out loud what he knew and could prove and sketch on a graph or countless simulations. To say it to them. That would make it real, and though he knew scientifically that it was real anyway, something stubborn in his heart wanted to pretend just a little longer.
"I'm sorry," Nick's voice didn't surprise him, nor did it cause him to turn. "Don, I'm sorry."
"Yeah, I know. And it's not your fault," the turtle replied automatically.
"Actually, it sort of is," the scientist eased himself onto the dock beside the turtle. "It would never have happened if you hadn't had to go with Bishop. And you wouldn't have gone with Bishop if you hadn't been protecting my team."
"We can rehash this however you want," Don said sullenly, "but it's not your fault. What if I'd never gone out to the island at all? What if I'd waited for my brothers before going to check on Mendel and Elsie? What if I'd fought instead of giving up? It happened. You can't dwell on whose fault it is. It's mostly Bishop's fault anyway. Don't blame yourself."
"I'm sorry I didn't catch it sooner," Nick said after a moment. "From what Elsie's findings said, it's been growing for a while, but it was invisible to our tests until we knew what to look for. It's…it's pretty well tying itself into your nervous system now."
"I know. I saw the results, too."
"Don, if there's anything we can do, you know we'll help. All of us."
"You're probably going to have to operate," Donatello said, staring at the dirty water around his calves. "There's no other way that I can think of."
"Yeah, but…"
"There's no other way," the turtle repeated more forcefully. "It can't stay there. You know that."
"You're right," Nick said slowly, "but if anything goes wrong, you might, well. You know."
"Nick, what choice do we have?" Don kicked at the water, wishing there were something he could crush beneath his feet. "If you don't operate, it's going to grow until it destroys my brain one way or another. If you do operate, at least I stand a chance. Yeah, it might go wrong and I might lose my brain anyway, but we've got to try. I mean, what else is there?"
Nick put a hand on the turtle's shoulder, surprised that it was very cool to the touch in spite of the warm evening. But there was nothing he could say. Donatello was perfectly right. If they did nothing, he would certainly die. If they acted, he might still die, or suffer brain damage, but it was his only chance. Nick gulped, remembering when he'd thought he was losing his mind to Godzilla, how it had felt to know there was an invader inside the one thing he ever truly considered his own, and his heart ached for the mutant beside him.
A sudden crash startled both, their heads turning in unison towards the lab. Nick could guess what had happened – one of the others had just reacted to the news of their brother's prognosis. He rose from his seat and backed away a little.
"Don, I know this is enormous. But, if there's one thing I know, it's that hiding it from the people you are close to only makes it worse. Don't let this keep you from your family, okay? You need them more than ever now."
Donatello exhaled, but said nothing. He also didn't move from his place, so Nick took that as a good sign. He turned to walk along the dock to the other side of the lab, hearing the door behind him open. There was nothing Nick could do for his friend that his brothers couldn't do, except go back inside, sit down in the lab, and find a way to save a bright soul and a brilliant mind from what had been done.
-==OOO==-
"Hey."
"Hey." Don didn't look up at the familiar shapes that were near. He pulled one knee up and leaned his elbow on it, resting his chin on his arm. The others hesitated a moment, before there was a shuffling and Michelangelo was sitting on Don's left.
"Thanks for telling us," the orange-banded turtle said after a silence.
"He didn't," Leonardo automatically corrected. "Dr Chapman did."
"Leo, leave off," Raphael scowled. "He let us know. Isn't that enough?"
"I guess so. I just…" Leo sighed and sat down at Don's other side. "I just feel so helpless, Donnie." His voice was small. "I don't know what to do."
"Me too," Don said quietly.
"How long have you known there was something in your head?" Mikey asked, not accusingly, but sadly.
"Just tonight. But we've been testing for what Bishop might have done since I first came to visit HEAT afterwards. It's only been a week or so since we realized he'd penetrated my neurocranium, and just today that they took a sample to test." For an instant, the genius's voice sounded like its usual self. Then he took a shaky breath. "So it's not much newer to you than it is to me."
"That's what you were doing when you couldn't come to get Raph," Leo nodded. The eldest turtle turned back to where the remaining brother still stood. "I guess I do owe you an apology. You knew, and you went after Bishop for revenge."
"I didn't know all this," Raph shook his head. "Just that he put somethin' in Don's head. He told me after storming out of the lair."
"Still, that's a pretty good reason to go after Bishop. I mean, it isn't, but I understand it. I asked you if I'd be mad at you or Bishop when I found out the truth. I guess I'm not mad at you."
Leonardo turned back to the water. What he'd said was something of an understatement. When the final results had been so carefully explained by Dr Chapman, when there was no denying the danger to his brother, the damage done by a sworn enemy, he'd lost his inner balance for a moment. Leo had whipped out a katana and flung it as hard as he could against the wall, embedding it so deeply it had taken a strong two-handed yank to pull it free. But he couldn't help it. This was a nightmare, his worst nightmare. His brother had been hurt, again, and there was nothing, nothing he could do to make it right.
"Donnie?" Michelangelo asked, breaking into the quiet. "What can we do now? Do you want anything?"
Donatello looked up into the worried face of his youngest brother. The cheerful bounce that seemed permanently glued to Mikey's eyes was totally absent, and he looked forlorn, lost. Don tried to smile, but from the answering widening of eyes, he apparently only managed to make his expression worse.
"I don't know, Mike. I'm not sure what to do yet. This is worse than the outbreak virus. That did take my mind, but it happened before I knew what was going on. Now that I know why I've got headaches, now I can see what's already happening. I can feel it hovering at the edges, like fog creeping over me. I…I can feel myself starting to slip." Don closed his eyes and buried his face in his arm.
"Bro," Raph's voice was gentle again, and he knelt to put a hand on his shoulder, "you're not gonna get lost again. We'll fix this. I swear, we will. Those guys said they'd try to help you."
"I know," came the muffled reply, "but none of them, no one on earth, is really qualified to do the kind of brain surgery this requires. Even Bishop can't undo this one for us."
"If it were one of us, Donnie, what would you do?" Leo asked.
"I…I don't know. I'd probably try it myself, though, if we didn't have any other options like dissolving it chemically. We don't know any real doctors, and even though I'm an engineer, I know more than anyone else about us and our particular physiology. I've never done brain surgery, but neither has Leatherhead or Nick or anybody else on HEAT. At least I'd have an equal chance as them of doing it okay."
"But even you can't do brain surgery on yourself," Leo nodded. "I understand."
"It's my brain, Leo," Don finally met his older brother's gaze, and Leonardo was struck by how vulnerable their usually unshakable genius looked. "The one thing I really have going for me. I'm not a leader, I'm not crazy strong or fast, but I can do this. And if anything, even the smallest thing, goes wrong, I'll lose it. I think I'd rather die on the table than wake up and never be able to think again."
"Donnie…" Mikey breathed.
"I hate it!" the purple-clad turtle shouted suddenly. "I hate it! It's not fair!" His words echoed across the water. "It's not…fair." Don put his head down, and started to shake.
Faster than any of them could have believed, three sets of arms wrapped themselves around the fourth, enfolding him against the night, though they could not protect him from what he carried within. Donatello didn't cry, but he trembled with terror and shame and pain, and Leo, Mikey, and Raph held him as tightly as they could. They had to hold onto him, had to keep him there and with them. Because all three realized that, in a new and terrible way, they were on the precipice, and one wrong move and they'd lose their brother forever.