My thanks as always to those who read and reviewed the last chapter! There's not long to go now - one more chapter after this one and a short epilogue. And apologies for the cliffie!
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Bishop was granite faced as he drove the black SUV from the base, followed by several other such vehicles. They just had to hope they found 00582 before the fuel ran dry. It wasn't like they had any more.
The radio the teams were using to communicate spat static, the occasional query as to whether or not there was any progress in the hunt. Every one came back negative.
Three helicopters had been dispatched to search for the mutant, their powerful searchlights scanning the area. There were several teams on foot, others driving. Anyone who cared to pay attention had to realise that something was amiss with the military base, but Bishop decided that he would have to think about that later. The priority was to contain the threat, while it still could be contained. As things were, he could explain away the awkward situation. But if that thing managed to be seen by civilians, or worse, to maim or kill them – that was going to be a problem.
"Agent Bishop sir... sighted! Mutant sighted!... sewer runoff... co-ordinates now."
The on-board computer began bleeping and Bishop smirked. Finally, they had the damn thing. It was tough, but it wasn't indestructible and now they could contain it somehow. It might take a ton of tranquillisers but they would recapture it. The serum that Lee had come up with before his unfortunate accident had far reaching implications and he wanted further studies on the creatures they had before they started on any more subjects.
It was a shame that Lee had succumbed to the serum, but his work was no doubt on the lab computers. And 00582 had reached the end of its usefulness anyway. No great loss.
Of course, he reflected grimly as he transmitted the co-ordinates to the other agents, the fact that the mission was running with less than a third of the men he would like was a hindrance. But there had been too many casualties in the explosion at the base, still more because they had been so unprepared against the creatures and the pair had been able to take them easily. That mistake would not happen again. He had convened all the available agents, including those who were not typically sent out in the field but had some experience. They needed everyone they could get.
Arriving at the location, he took in the scene and nodded in satisfaction. There was a cliff, its sheer face meaning the mutant had not been able to get any further on land without taking a major detour. But set in the cliff face was a large circular grate, maybe six feet in diameter, letting rain water and other runoff from the sewers drain out when the system was overflowed. The grate had been ripped off, leaving the tunnel leading down into the sewers accessible, where the mutant was no doubt still wandering, lost and not easily able to find another exit. Bishop doubted it would be smart enough to use a manhole and too large for the many smaller gratings the system boasted. It would be a long time before it got to an exit similar to this one.
Meaning it was trapped and could be captured with ease.
But to do so would require stealth and skill rather than an all-out assault.
More SUV's pulled up, more agents piling out. Among them were the three turtles, looking ready for battle, Donatello sporting a bandage on his head and his two brothers with assorted cuts and bruises. Bishop paused for a moment, wondering if it was a good idea to send those them after 00582... but what harm could it do?
"I want three teams down there," he said authoritatively. "Raphael, Michelangelo, Donatello, you're Team A. King, Crichton, Brite, you're Team B. Elton, Pratchett, Harris, you're Team C. Split up, locate the target and try to drive it this way. Incapacitate it, but do not neutralise it unless there is no choice. We want it alive people."
Mikey spotted Layla among the agents nodding their understanding – of course, she was the 'Harris' that he had mentioned. For a second Mike debated questioning the wisdom of sending a rookie into the tunnel, no matter how well she had done in basic training, then bit his tongue. There would be no thanks from her, Bishop would probably ignore him anyway and he would have to deal with months and months of jibes from the rest of the base. Better to remain silent and concentrate on containing the creature before she had to put herself at risk.
Raphael didn't seem happy about the situation, but motioned for his brothers to follow him. They had their usual array of weapons, all of them refusing to go in unarmed after the disaster at the base. Mikey had snatched up some of his own personal playthings before they left on the mission, an array of explosives, arguing it was better to have them and not need them than the other way around – and as it turned out, they could come in useful for sealing off tunnels and forcing the creature in the direction they wanted. Donatello had given in to his scientific curiosity, snagging items he could use to collect samples as well as his field medical kit. All the agents were armed with infra-red goggles and tranquilliser guns and all of them had taken the time before leaving to dress in black combats and T-shirts, Kevlar vests and heavy boots. They were prepared for just about anything. Or so they hoped.
Raph knew that once inside, there would be a number of routes to follow and there the three teams would split up. It made sense for the three turtles to stick together – they were used to working together and knew each others strengths and weaknesses – but he had no idea how well the other teams would work together and at least one of them was a rookie, the girl that Mikey had been working with. But they had no other choice. They had to work with the people they had.
Team A, the turtles, entered the tunnel first, Raph in the lead, immediately followed by Teams B and C. Almost right away the tunnel split into two, a mid-sized tunnel on the left, a larger one on the right.
"Teams B and C, take the right, we'll hang left," said Raph in a low voice. He chose the uneven split for a reason – it was more likely that the larger tunnel would fork off again further along the path and then the two teams could split up to search them. But maybe the creature hadn't got very far and then either there would be more people to face it – or it would be up against the turtles.
After the scene at the base, none of them were feeling especially merciful.
For half an hour they trailed further into the tunnels, infra-red goggles in place, searching for the creature. There were several places large enough for it to hide but they checked all of them and there was no sign of it. Occasionally they checked in with the other teams and with Bishop above ground, but none of them had sighted it either.
"Man, maybe it didn't come in here," said Mikey eventually, discouraged. "Maybe it just pulled off the grate and went somewhere else."
"It was wide open out there," pointed out Raph. "The copters would have seen it if it were anywhere else. It has to have come down here."
"And its instinct would have been to hide," added Don. "Any animal fights when it's trapped in a corner, like this thing was, but I doubt it'd want to risk being shot at and set on fire again."
Raph shot Don a look. "You wouldn't happen to know anything about this creature that you're not telling us would you? Like how it came to be stomping around the base?"
"Raph!" Don scowled at his brother. "If I'd had anything to do with it – which I didn't – I would have made sure it was contained properly. And I sure as hell wouldn't have let one of the scientists come into contact with it."
"I know, I know." Raph sighed irritably. "But it has to have something to do with whatever the labs are working on down there. And you're connected to the labs – heard anything at all that might be connected to this thing? Anything at all?"
"Not really," replied Don hesitantly. "But one thing did occur to me. This synthetic mutation had to come from somewhere. What we saw of Lee, he had improved resistance to physical trauma and he'd grown, increased mass – I think there's a couple of things that might have caused it and both of them are linked to me. I was one of the team working on the greys and Bishop took a sample from the one we managed to regenerate less than a week ago. Entirely possible that Lee's team were working on it too, he wasn't working with us. Aden there's another thing..."
Mikey frowned as Don trailed off. "What?"
"When we three were mutated, we were exposed to something that made us larger, stronger, more resistant than humans." Don's voice was reluctant. "Over the years, there's been a lot of blood samples taken from us and it'd be naive to think that no one's tried to replicate what was used to make us what we are. It's in our systems and it wouldn't be impossible to isolate it."
Raph tried to split his attention between the tunnel and his brothers words. "But we never went insane and started ripping people up."
"We started of life as reptiles, not humans, not to mention we were infants. Might make a difference. And what we were exposed to isn't exactly the same as what they would have managed to synthesise. It's only a possibility."
"One that I don't like," growled Raph. "I don't like being used as a guinea pig!"
Mikey snorted. "We've known for years that they were trying to find out why we are like we are, or why the tests? I mean, I try not to think about it too much, but what Donnie said isn't that far fetched."
Raph shrugged. "We can figure out the whys and hows when we get that thing contained and get back to the base. What's left of the base. Can we just concentrate on the matter at hand?"
They walked on a little further – and the tunnel abruptly split into four. Mikey rolled his eyes. "Oh, this is great."
"The old turtle luck running true to form," muttered Raph, wishing vaguely that there were four of them. He checked out the tunnels, briefly raising his infra red goggles and turning on his torch. The tunnel on the far right seemed to be the least likely candidate, large enough for them to walk through without ducking, but not the creature they had seen at the base. There were rusting pipes running overhead and cobwebs that looked like they hadn't been disturbed in a long time.
There was only one option, much as he disliked the idea. "We'll have to split up. Ignore this tunnel for now, Don you take the one on the left, Mikey, you take the right. I'll go down the middle."
"Got it," said Don.
"Yeah," said Mikey without enthusiasm, no doubt thinking of the many horror films he watched and the terrible repercussions of the protagonists splitting up. Still, there wasn't much choice.
For his part, Raph had chosen to go down the tunnel he thought most likely to lead to the creature. It didn't seem capable of sophisticated decisions and was more likely to continue in a straight line, if they were heated in the right direction at all.
"Keep in radio contact at all times," he said sternly. "Neither of you is to engage it unless you have to. You see it, call for backup and stay out of sight."
Raph headed down the centre tunnel, replacing the goggles over his eyes and turning off the torch. The creature was to get no warning of their impending arrival if they could help it and that meant no light, just what could they could see through the infra red. But there was little to see, save for the occasional rat scampering from the intruder in their typically quiet lair. He didn't want to check the walls and further than he had to – there might be bugs and if there was one thing he hated, it was bugs.
And then the sound of distant gunfire reached him and his head shot up, looking in the direction it seemed to come from . The tunnels made the sounds echo, but he thought it was louder to his right...
Shit! Mikey!
He grabbed for his radio. "Mikey! Mikey, what's happening?"
"...not me shoot..." came back the response. "...other team must ha... see what's happening!"
"Mikey, no! Wait! Ah, shit." Raph shoved the radio into his belt and turned to race back to the junction, hoping to cut Mikey off at the pass. But Mikey was fast and Raph exited his tunnel just in time to see his brother vanish from sight, going down the tunnel that Raph had dismissed as the least likely option. It still struck him as being improbable that the creature had gone that way – but the gunfire sounded louder down there and maybe it led to the others. It headed in that general direction after all.
"Dammit!"
Donnie raced out of his own tunnel. "What the hell..."
"Mikey's gone after the other teams," growled Raph, already heading after the erstwhile turtle.
Don ran after him. "Didn't he learn anything from what happened at the base?"
"Sure he did," replied Raph. "But it's not gonna stop him. You know what he's like."
Together they raced down the fourth tunnel, but they had already lost Mikey somewhere up ahead. Raph hoped that they could catch up to him – fast as Mikey was, endurance wasn't his strong point. Whether or not they could catch up to him before he ran into trouble was another matter.
Raph and Don came to another fork in the tunnel and hesitated, unsure of which way to go. It should have been a matter of following the sound of weapons – but in the time it had taken the pair to get to this point, the gunfire had ceased. That could mean that the creature had been contained. Or it could mean that there was no one left to fire the guns. That there had been shots fired at all was a bad sign. Everyone knew containment was a priority and shooting at the thing was not supposed to happen. It indicated that something had gone awry.
And if something had gone bad and Mikey made it to the other team, faced the creature before they caught up to him... it didn't bear thinking about.
Raph chose the right-most tunnel again, deciding that it was most likely to get them closer to where the other teams had gone and presumably to the scene of whatever was happening. Had happened. It sounded like the fight was over and his brother was missing...
So when they saw Mikey up ahead, standing stock-still, Raph felt a rush of relief that his brothers head was still on his shoulders. Until Raph took it off for disobeying a direct order and behaving so stupidly.
"Mikey, you moron..." Don began. Raph made a curt gesture for him to be quiet. He could see Mikey through his goggles, unmoving. And something else too. Several something else's, also not moving, lying on the floor.
Through the infra red goggles, Raph could see the fading heat signatures emanating from the shapes, that came to him in a variety of hues rather than a coherent picture. He had lots of experience using the goggles and usually it wasn't too hard to work out what was what or even think of the way they looked as weird. But this was a first.
"I lost it," said Mikey in frustration. "It must have been right here but it was gone when I got here."
"Good thing too bonehead." Raph made his way to Mikey's side and checked out the scene. Three bodies floated in the few inches of water that remained in the sewer tunnel, the remains of Team B. At some point the two teams had split up without notifying the turtles and this had been the result.
Don pulled off the goggles and pulled out his own torch, shining the light onto the bodies, hoping to see a sign of life from one of them at least and maybe save some lives – but the sudden bright light told them all they needed to know, not to mention gave them nightmare fodder for quite some time to come. One agent had been hit so hard that his head hung backward at an unnatural angle, his eyes still open as if he were looking behind himself. The second had deep slash wounds his leg that had almost severed the appendage, the artery cut through, blood turning the dirty water around him red. The third hadn't fallen victim to the creature but was no less dead, a bullet having gone wild and entered the back of his head, the exit wound in his forehead obliterating his face.
"I think I'm gonna hurl," said Mikey shakily.
"Where did the others go?" Raph glanced around, wondering why they had split up without notifying them. What had made them do that? Had Team C fled when the creature attacked?
There was a noise ahead of them and the creature stepped into the mouth of the tunnel.
Don swung his torch up in that direction and for the first time, the three got a good look at the thing they had been pursuing Taller than them by at least two feet, its left side was charred from the fire at the base and blood leaked slowly from numerous wounds, none of which looked mortal, the fluid seeming tinged with a white ichor. It's eyes bore into them, red and wild, teeth bared as it spied them.
Time stood still.
Raphael drew his gun, feeling stuck in slow motion, hoping the creature didn't recognise the gesture. His eyes never left the creature as he drew a bead on it, remembering the one at the base and how a few well placed shots to the head had immobilised it. Ankle deep in the corpses of other agents, the tranquilliser gun didn't even occur to him...
"Raph, NO!"
Don slammed into Raph, not hard enough to knock him off his feet but hard enough so his balance was thrown, the gun swinging wide. Managing not to pull the trigger, Raph regained his balance and risked shooting Don a glance that spoke volumes.
"What the hell are you doing Don? We have to stop that thing..."
"Look at it!"
The torch wavered wildly in Don's grip, but Raph could see everything he needed to. Some big bastard that could rip them apart with its bare claws, staring at them from the end of the tunnel, its numerous injuries only minor when they should have put it down for good.
Mikey gasped. "Does it have a shell?"
"Bishop said it was a test subject," snapped Raph, slightly unnerved, but remembering finally that he had a tranquilliser gun and pulling that out instead.
The creature roared once, loudly, its head thrown back, the sound echoing around the tunnel. Then it turned and disappeared back the way it had emerged.
"Damn!" Raph glanced down in disgust, realising they would have to make their way through the remains of their colleagues to pursue it. "Let's get after it!"
"No, wait." Don's voice was without inflection, sounding odd. "That wasn't some animal test. Not at the size it was."
"Don, what the hell are you talking about?"
"Dr Lee had grown in proportion to his mass, some kind of growth enhancement at a guess. If the creature had the same serum, then it's in proportion to the doctors transformation too."
"So?"
"Don't you see?" Don turned to Raph and Mikey, the light of the torch revealing a haunted look in his eyes. "It's about two foot taller than us, it has a shell, it's got the same physical characteristics as we do, down to the facial structure or at least what I'd guess the facial structure to have been prior to this new mutation."
Mikey blinked. "You're saying it was a mutant before it turned into a monster?"
Don nodded. "Not just a mutant, it had to have been adult or teenage to begin with due to the size of it. It must have been mutated years ago."
"Let me get this straight." Raph replaced his gun and used his free hand to massage his forehead. "You think the scientists at the base somehow managed to create a mutagen, turn test animals into mutants and then do this to them? Why?"
"In the name of science probably," said Don, dismay written all over his face. "That's what they do at the base, break boundaries. Although this was probably an accident, since Dr Lee was infected too and the creature got out."
There was a moments silence, then Raph sighed. "However it came about, we have to go after it anyway. It could hurt more people."
"And what? Just deliver it back to Bishop for more tests?" Mikey rarely lost his temper, but he seemed to be holding together the frayed ends of his nerves at that moment.
"He's right," said Don. "Even if it was an accident, the implications of this kind of thing are far reaching. If some of the samples from that creature got into the wrong hands..."
"Bishop is the wrong hands," said Mikey heatedly.
"But Bishop hates mutants, us included," said Raph. "His life's mission is to keep the Earth for the humans. Why would he keep the experiment going?"
"Knowing the way Bishop thinks, for some kind of super-soldier project, an ultimate protector of the human race," said Don. "Hell, you saw how hard that first one was to put down and this one's been through the wars already. If they could be controlled..."
Raph nodded. "We go after it, destroy it totally. Make sure it can never be used for anything like that."
"Bishop'll probably just use the damn serum on us in that case," muttered Donnie.
"Not happening," replied Raph, more confidently than he felt. "This is the perfect opportunity. We get that thing, obliterate all traces of it – then we can use the sewer system to get the hell away from here."
Mikey looked shocked. "You mean, go AWOL? How?"
"Easy. We do what we have to, ditch the radio and take off. No one will even notice for a while. Now's the only chance, since for the first time, it's just the three of us away from the base."
"You're wrong about that."
The three turtles had been so caught up in their discussion that they had failed to notice the person approaching from their blind side, the tunnel that the creature hadn't taken. Layla Harris, Mikey's latest protege, a gun in each hand,trained in their direction.
"Bishop always knew this would happen one day," she said calmly, no trace of the slightly shy and uncertain rookie that Mikey had been trying to train. "I suggest you give up your weapons. Now."
