Chapter Eight


The three turtles gasped, and their battle was refuelled with anger at the guards. Whilst Raphael and Leonardo punished them, Donatello acted quickly. From his faithful bag, he took out a jam jar and unscrewed the lid. Ignoring the pain as the tiny shards pierced his skin, he wiped the mess of liquid and glass into the jar, before screwing the lid on tightly.

"Come on, let's get out of here," he said gruffly, aggravated that the task of giving his brother the antigen was now more difficult and more time consuming than it was some seconds ago.

"But what about C-56?" Leonardo asked, not yet ready to put his swords away.

"I've got it covered," Donny called back. He made a break for the door before the guards got to him, his bag or the jar inside it. Raphael and Leonardo shot each other looks and swiftly followed, slamming the door to the fire exit behind them before the guards could pursue. By the time their opponents were outside, the turtles were long gone, having clambered into the van and began speeding down the streets of New York. They quickly arrived back at the lair and climbed out of the vehicle.

"Would someone please explain to me exactly why we're leaving without any antigen for Mikey?" Raphael demanded as he followed his brothers into the elevator that would take them back to their lair.

"I never said we left without any antigen," Donny said as the doors closed.

"I hate it when he does that," Raphael muttered to himself, feeling that the last thing anyone needed at that moment was for his genius brother to talk in riddles that no one really understood. "Get to the point, Donny."

"I gathered some of the liquid from C-56 that was on the table," Donny said, feeling the reverberations as elevator began to come to life. "I should have enough to study, analyse, and re-create the drug for Mikey."

"Can you do that?" Leo asked incredulously.

"And how long will it take?"

"We haven't got any other options; April and I searched that place, and what we found was all the C-56 there was. I'll recreate it, and I won't stop working until it's finished," he said with determination.

"All right," Leonardo sighed, knowing that they had no choice. "If anyone can do it, you can, Don."

"That goes for me too, bro," Raph added, forcing the encouragement. At that time, he was very worried about Michelangelo's state of health, and he knew already they had spent a great amount of time in the AMI building. How much more time could Mikey spare?


The three turtles entered the lair a short moment later, each having a task in mind for when they returned. Donatello aimed to immediately start working on reconstructing the C-56 drug, and then giving it to Mikey as soon as it was ready. He had looked into reconstructing molecules previously, and had all the equipment needed to do it. By nature, he was more a physicist than a chemist, but he knew what to do. As soon as the drug was ready, he would give it to his brother and pray for a full recovery.

Leonardo would begin by filling in Splinter about what had gone on at the AMI building. There had been many developments there, and he knew his Master would want to know about them. He would also find out from Splinter how Mikey was doing, before seeing for himself.

Raphael would probably go straight to Mikey, to check up on him and sit with him, and the other two brothers did not question this. There was an unspoken bond between Raphael and Michelangelo, one that the other members of the family had come to accept. Even though he would tease his brother at times, Raphael was always the first to sort out any other being that tried to hurt Michelangelo. And, at times when Raphael was at his most enraged, Michelangelo would be the one to break through the anger and calm his brother.

Of course, each of the turtles' plans was thrown straight out of the window once they opened the door and were greeted with the unexpected scene before them, of their Sensei lying on the floor, bound at the wrists and feet.

"Master Splinter!" Leonardo cried. He and Donatello sprinted to their master's side to untie the ropes.

Splinter opened his eyes, and relief washed over his face to see three of his sons had returned home safely. "Ah, my sons," he said gratefully as he sat up and rubbed his sore wrists, trying to get the circulation back into his paws.

Raphael, meanwhile, had quickly looked about the lair for his brother, to see if he was safe. He was more than dismayed when he could not find him. "Master Splinter, where's Mikey? He's not here!" He exclaimed, drawing a sai from his belt out of habit.

"I believe that some of the humans, the scientists, from the AMI building located our lair," Splinter explained. "There were too many of them to hold off. They took Michelangelo away with them."

Realisation dawned on Donatello. "The bug – of course! When I overheard their conversation, I thought they had mistaken us for bugs instead of turtles. When they fought with us in the alley, they must have planted a bug on one of us somehow, or maybe on Mikey, to trace us back to the lair."

Raphael let out an irate growl and hurled his sai across the room. It landed, point first, in the wall, and a large crack split around it. "This day just gets better and better!"

"Did you find a cure for Michelangelo's malady?" Splinter asked, fearing that there was bad news on the way. He was proved right when Leonardo explained all that had happened in the AMI building, from discovering the human test subjects in the laboratory to the vial of C-56 being damaged before they could get it home. Splinter listened intently, absorbing the information before pondering it for a few moments once Leonardo had finished the account.

"The priority is to go to the building and escort Michelangelo home, safely, and as soon as possible," Splinter said, considering a plan of action.

"But Master, I need to stay here and reconstruct the C-56 drug," Donny said insistently. "He needs that cure as soon as possible."

"Yes," Splinter said with a nod, "I understand. We have the dilemma of having only two of you to get Michelangelo out of the building. And we must act quickly, they may not stay there for long."

After a pause, Leonardo remembered, "They'll be there for even less time after April's called the police! We can't let the cops find Mike!"

"Then we act now," Splinter decided, speaking more calmly than he felt at that moment. "I will remain here and assist Donatello with anything he needs for recreating the antidote. Leonardo, call Miss O'Neill, and Raphael, alert Mr Jones. Tell them to meet you both at the AMI laboratory, to bring back Michelangelo."


Michelangelo opened his eyes slowly, and wondered why he did not see the slightly tatty poster of his favourite rock band on the wall of his bedroom, where it always was. He wondered why, instead, he saw the boggling eyes of a human poring over him, wide and not blinking as though he did not want to miss a milli-second of anything that he was looking at.

Mikey shrunk back, trying to move away from those wide, grey eyes. He found he could only move a few inches. He swerved his head from side to side, trying to work out why he could barely move. His eyes quickly spied the leather restraints around his wrists and his plastron, and, he assumed, around his ankles.

All of a sudden, the sensations that had been plaguing him over the last twenty-four hours came back to him, flooding him like a colossal tidal wave. The exhaustion, the fever and the nausea all returned with a vengeance, and Mikey had to close his eyes tightly and swallow hard to prevent from emptying his stomach.

"Why... are you doing this to me?" Mikey said through gritted teeth. It was by no means in a hurt or pleading tone. He was too ill to feel like that. Right then, apart from the physical discomfort, he felt only frustration and anger towards these men. He knew very well who these men were. These were the men that attacked him once in the alley, who used him as a guinea pig for some formula or other, and who disgraced him by making him appear drunk. These were the men who somehow tracked him to his home, beat both him and his Sensei, and then kidnapped him, taking him to their science laboratory to study like some unidentifiable alien or monster. These people had no decency whatsoever, Michelangelo decided. They did not have the decency to answer him, sparing him no more than an unreadable glance. And they apparently did not have the decency to cure him from whatever genetically modified disease they had injected him with in the first place.

Suddenly, Michelangelo felt very tired.

"Sir, his heart rate is beginning to drop," one younger scientist said from where he was observing a heart-monitor attached to the turtle.

"How rapidly?" A chief scientist asked curtly.

"Slowly, but steadily," came the reply.

"Damn those reptiles," cursed the supposed leader of the whole operation. "If they hadn't come in and started meddling with the experiment, we could have data on this creature to compare with that of the humans. At the moment, he's managed to outlast two of them, but we could have led endless studies on the comparisons between him and humans. Forget Y-56, we could have made billions from the studies and the comparisons alone! If only those damn creatures hadn't messed it all up!"

As thoughts of anger at scientists for hurting him turned to those of pure hatred for cursing his brothers, Michelangelo drifted into a state of unconsciousness.


"Hey, guys, what's the plan?" Casey asked, puffing and panting from the run from his downtown apartment to the AMI building. He was equipped with his hockey stick in one hand, and baseball bat in the golf club bag slung over his back, brought with him for good measure. He was out of his apartment in record time after receiving the call from Raphael. No one kidnapped one of his friends and got away with it, not without answering to Casey Jones first!

"There is no plan," Leonardo stated, "We haven't got time."

Raphael, April and Casey stared, open-mouthed, at Leo. It was hard to envisage the leader turtle without some kind of a plan, let alone hear it from his own mouth. After absorbing this, Raphael carefully asked, "surely, you must have some kind of a plan, right?"

"All right, I do. We burst in there, find Mikey, do whatever it takes to get him out, and get him out of there and back to the lair," Leonardo replied. "Happier now?"

"Much," Raph said gruffly. "C'mon, let's go!"


Only two guards patrolled the corridor of the first floor leading to the basement. Casey and his hockey stick made sure that, for the time being, they would not be causing any problems for Michelangelo's rescue. Once they had been taken care of, the turtles began to search the building.

"We'll look for Mikey as a group," Leonardo decided. "It's a small building, but there are a lot of guards and scientists in here, and we won't want to meet a bunch of them if there's only two of us. It won't take long to search as a group."

The four of them ran through the corridors, glancing in each room as they went. They searched every floor, but found no sign to say that anyone apart from themselves was present within the building.

"One floor left," April said, once they had finished searching the rest of the building. The others nodded, and quickly they headed towards the stairwell leading to the basement.

The fact that two guards were patrolling the basement corridor was a sure sign that there was something down there to be protected. Leonardo and Raphael stormed past the two guards in the lower corridor with April hurrying behind, leaving Casey to deal with them. They knew that for their brother, every second mattered, and in order to save time they had to keep the amount of fights they engaged in to the limit.

The group burst into the large basement room, which had earlier contained ten beds lined up with human test subjects occupying them, along with cages of animals. The beds and the animals were gone, and now the room contained one metal slab placed centrally in the room, surrounded by scores of machines and hundreds of wires, buzzing and beeping with activity. A dozen scientists looked up when they saw the intrusion, and gasped to see that the turtles were back. When they peered over each other to see who was at the door, the turtles and April could see that Michelangelo was the one lying on the metal slab of a table.

As Casey joined the others in the room, Leonardo stepped forward and said simply and firmly, "We've come for our brother."

"And what will you do with him afterwards? Only we have the cure," the leader scientist said, he himself advancing a step.

"Oh, we have your little C-56 drug," Raphael retorted in a cocky tone.

The scientist sneered, "We've been informed otherwise. All you have is a broken vial, we hear."

"We're getting it," Leonardo assured them.

"You're bluffing," said another scientist, the one with the moustache.

"Try us," Raphael sneered.

All at once, the furious fight began. The odds were four scientists to one of either Leo, Raph or Casey, but the scientists were amateur fights, and were a little easier to tackle. Whilst the fighting took place, April snuck through the confusion towards the metal table where Michelangelo laid, eyes closed, oblivious to the goings-on.

"Mikey," April said gently, shaking him slightly on the shoulder. "Come on, Mikey, we have to get you out of here."

Mikey stirred, and his head fell to the side, as though following the sound of April's voice. He cracked his eyes open, and let out a soft groan. "April?"

"Yeah, it's me, Mike," April said encouragingly. She knew she had to work fast, before one of the scientists spotted her. She hastily began to remove the wires stuck to Mikey's plastron and arms and said, "Quick, Mikey, we have to get out of here. Think you can walk a little, if I support you?"

Mikey nodded, and paused for April to undo the straps that secured him down. Then, he slowly slid off the metal table and to the floor, where he stood on shaky legs for a moment, before April put his arm around her shoulders and took some of his weight.

"This way," April said, moving past the commotion. They exited the room, and April breathed a sigh of relief to see that the two guards in the corridor were still on the floor, unconscious. The two made their way up the fire escape that she had gone through with the human test subjects not two hours earlier. She helped Mikey towards the van, around a corner where Leonardo and Raphael had parked it. They knew that their brother would be unable to travel through the sewers, and so had taken the van to the AMI laboratories. In the far-off distance she heard sirens, and she knew that the police were on their way. If, by that time, they had not dismissed the reports from herself and some of the test subjects about AMI, neighbours would have surely called the police due to the disturbances that had come from the building that evening.

Meanwhile, in the basement, the turtles and Casey heard the sirens. "Time to get the Shell out of here," Leonardo called to the others. Most of the scientists were out of action by then, and it took only a few moments to finish dealing with the rest and to run out the same alley-facing fire escape that April had taken Mikey up.

The three ran to the van and Leonardo immediately took the wheel, knowing that the police would be combing the area within minutes. In the back, Raphael, Casey and April sat with Mikey, trying to keep him comfortable. The walk from the laboratory table to the van had sapped what little he had left, and he had passed out once inside the van.

"I just hope Donny's got that cure ready," April said, expressing what was running through everyone's thoughts at that moment.


It had taken Donatello less time than he had expected to recreate the C-56 drug. He had managed to salvage a fair amount of the original drug from the table in the laboratory, thus had more to work with.

"I can't believe I'm doing this," he muttered to himself, putting the new chemical into a beaker, ready to inject into Michelangelo when his brothers returned to him. He had temporarily removed the word 'if' from his vocabulary.

He tried to imagine how long it had taken the scientists to develop the drug in the first place. Weeks? Maybe even months? And he had done it in less than two hours. But then, he thought wryly to himself, despite the scientists possessing the tens of thousands of dollars of equipment that could create the drug easily compared to his own equipment, they did not have the original drug to work with.

"I just hope it works," he murmured, looking at the clear liquid in the beaker.

"I have complete faith in you, my son," Splinter said positively. No one could be sure of the extent of Donatello's intelligence, but they could always be sure to never underestimate it. At that time, they were relying on it to save Michelangelo's life.

A few minutes later, the telltale noises of the elevator alerted Splinter and Donny to the fact that the others were back. The doors opened, revealing Raphael and Leonardo supporting their ailing brother, who looked quite weak at that moment, with April and Casey hanging back a little. His brother helped Michelangelo to the couch, where they laid him down and made him comfortable. Mikey did not make a single sound throughout the entire process, which sent alarm-bells ringing in everyone's heads.

"Don, did you finish making the stuff?" Raphael asked, a hint of urgency in his voice.

"Yeah, it's here," Donny said, bringing the beaker and the syringe over to the couch.

"Nice work, Donny," Leonardo said gratefully, feeling ever-so-slightly more at ease knowing that they had some kind of a cure for Michelangelo, if not the original one, but what he hoped to be an accurate duplicate of it.

With haste, Donatello injected the fluid into his brother's arm, leaving a small mark just below the original mark, which was fading after two days. "Now, we sit back and wait," Donny said, taking the equipment back to his workbench. And hope, he silently thought to himself.