MARK OF THE BEAST VII: BROADCAST
"Five…four…three…" I mouthed 'two' and one' silently to my brothers, before clicking the button on screen, waiting a moment as the decade-old hardware whirred furiously under the desk and the little green LED of the digital camera flicked on across the room. The screen showed a somewhat grainy, low-resolution Leo staring straight into the lens before the dimly-lit laboratory background, with myself leaning over the keyboard on the side of the screen and the other two seated between us.
"Hello." Leo spoke calmly to the camera. "My name is Hamato Leonardo, and these are my brothers. We're not aliens, or monsters, or anything else you might have been told is out to harm mankind. We're turtles, born, mutated, and raised in New York City by another mutant. A couple weeks ago, the world found out about our existence, and we've been hunted down by armed soldiers and criminal organizations alike, having committed no crime and been offered no trial."
"Our pursuers found us here in the Adirondacks, harassing our human allies, killing our mutant friends, and starting a wildfire along the way. They failed to take us down, though, and now we have their leader: Oroku Karai, heir of the Oroku Saki Memorial Foundation and leader of the international criminal syndicate, the Foot Clan. Now that the running is over, we're not bringing any harm to Karai, but she won't be surrendered to the proper authorities until we've been guaranteed free exit back to our home and this mutant witch-hunt is put to rest."
"I can't blame you for wanting to learn more about us, but under no circumstances will we be made into government science experiments for the sake of curiosity. We've been fighting crime in the city for the better part of a decade now, and my brother Donatello has presented you an invention that, his disguise aside, is an original and world-changing device. Anyone who cares about mankind enough to fight for them and make their world a better place doesn't deserve dissection; at the very least, they deserve their rights and their privacy. We'll tell you about who we are, what we've been through, and everything, but you'll only learn what you want if we can talk on our own terms."
"Our father taught us to protect humans, but warned us that we were too different to every be accepted by them. Our friends, now passed, told us that mutants were superior to humans and wanted to bring down the society that created them and shunned them. Now, we have no choice but to hope the world can prove both of them wrong, can prove that you're decent and we can coexist peacefully, all humans and all mutants. Until then, we'll be waiting."
Seeing he wrapped his speech up, I clicked the stop button onscreen. Behind me, Mike started a slow clap with an expectant look on his face, only to be slapped on the back of the head by Raph. Leo turned with a satisfied grin.
"Let's go." He uttered, scooping up Russet and Steele's bags we'd saved from the hangar. "Don, send it quick. We don't know how long we have until more soldiers come."
"We don't even know if the fire's been put out yet." The video attachment loaded into my email, and swiftly I typed the addresses of April, Casey, and press contacts at the New York Times and the Guardian before hitting 'send'. "Just hold on a minute. I think this Air Force tech might have access to NASA's databases."
"Now ain't the time for rocket science, brainiac." Raph grumbled.
"The world has our message now. But it's time to show them we mean business, too." I opened up a new window and began weaving some masterful code. In under ten minutes (which would have been even less if the computers weren't pre-2005), the screen revealed the satellite map, familiarly calibrated to show the locations of mutant DNA similar to our own. Opening the text box for what molecular sequence it was gauged for, I mashed my fist across the keyboard, and copy-pasted thousands of characters' worth of gibberish. Submitting the nonsense, the colored shades cast across the map began to scramble around and blink, followed by the map turning blank as the words "Geotracking Offline – Lens Damage". Content, I closed all the windows and spun the computer chair around.
Pacing to the AV cart where Karai had been lain out for the past few hours, I inspected the wire stitches I'd put in and was happy to see the healing had already started. I used the salve leftover in Steele's luggage and burned off the tincture just like Russ had done for Raph. His axe had just narrowly missed her axillary artery, but deeply nicked her clavicle and scapula bones. The stitches would stop her from bleeding out any further, but she'd need medical attention if the bone and nerve were to heal properly.
The military base was a tangled mass of tunnels underground, where the surface was marked only by storage buildings and airstrips. From within a laboratory room, I'd found bags of saline and a dusty old IV stand, but had no way of knowing if she'd recover. As I wiped the dried blood away and attempted to get a read on her pulse. Mike and Raph went back to scouting the web of tunnels attached to the room, while Leo lingered around me, carefully observing the heap of torn armor and bloody flesh that was Karai.
"Think she's gonna make it?" He asked curiously.
"She'd better. This is our bargaining chip." He hummed in understanding, and for a moment, we sat in silence but for the creaking ventilation fans and whirring antique computers around us.
"Your speech was perfect, by the way." I told him, and felt his face light up over my shoulder.
"You think it's going to work?"
"That's a tough call." I sighed. "When was the last time the US government gave up on a pursuit just because their targets had a hostage?" Before he could mull over a response, Mike and Raph came crashing back into the room.
"We found a way out!" Mikey cheered.
"Correction, moron. We found an exit sign." Raph grunted. "But no idea how far it goes. These tunnels run practically through the whole mountain."
And through the whole mountain we strolled, our path lit only by torchlight. The rusty squeak of the cart's tires echoed around the endless hallways as I pushed Karai, her IV stand in the bo staff holder on my back.
"Check this out." Mike waved his torch closer to the beaten canvas journal he'd found in Russ' bags. "'Today, he asked me why our tattoos look so much like barbed wire. I told him they looked tough, and that's all the answer he was looking for. He'd think the metaphor of being willing to walk through barbed wire for him is too sappy. I mean, he's got to know that I'd give my life away to make sure he was safe. What's a little blood for my beast?'"
"Have a little respect for the dead, Mike." Leo ordered flatly. "Why are you reading that anyways?"
"It's cool, finding out the ol' moose was a mega sweetheart. This sounds like some shit you'd write for Donnie." That elicited a laugh from Raph.
"'I'd do katas for a week nonstop just to smell Don's headband.'" Raph mocked, and Mike nearly doubled over with laughter.
"That's enough." Leo grumbled with a blush.
Finally, after following the endless path of dim red exit signs, we found a flight of stairs leading up into a bulkhead. Leo and I hoisted Karai's makeshift stretcher up the steps, and Mike cautiously placed a hand on the door handle to check if it was hot. Creaking the latch open, we were greeted by a rush of daylight and smoky air. Overhead, army green helicopters buzzed up from the lake, dropping gallons and gallons of water onto the blaze behind us. Before they could spot us in the small clearing where the rusting bulkhead jutted out from the earth, we rushed back under tree cover.
Our path had put us out where the fire hadn't yet touched, so not being familiar with the area, we simply ran as far from the blaze as we could. Navigating a rickety AV cart through untamed woods was a doozy; we ended up carrying its whole weight through most of our escape. After a while, we stumbled upon a beaten gravel path that, given the state park's current condition, we had faith wouldn't be used by human travellers. Finally able to set the stretcher down, we caught our breath as we continued north at a slower pace. That lasted until, in the distance, a roaring pickup truck kicked up dust down the trail. Hoping we hadn't been sighted yet, we steered off into the bushes as the truck raced closer.
Holding my breath, every fiber of my body was ready to attack or run as we crouched in the dense shrubs just off the path. The crunch of the tires slowed to a halt, but rather than shutting off the engine, the driver turned to reverse, his truck bed stopping just short of the bushes we were in. From the cab, I heard the rear window latch pop open.
"Get in, ya idiots! We don't have all day here!" I poked my head up through the leaves to see Casey's steely eyes in the rearview, and a little three-fingered hand waving excitedly from April's lap. We scrambled into the truck bed, opening the latch to haul Karai up with us, and unfurled a plastic blue tarp left there to cover us as the truck skidded back down the trail.
"What on earth are you doing here?" Don shrieked. "A burning forest is no place for an infant!"
"No place for a turtle, either." April shot back through the window. "We were on the road thirty seconds after we got your email. Other than crashing the gate to get in here, we've been fine."
"I put bull bars on this truck for a reason, babe!" Casey soothed. "Better than driving three hours out here just to turn around 'cause of a fence."
Three hours. It had only taken them three hours to make the distance we'd trekked in days? The land seemed so endless on foot. I could only hope the drive back wouldn't be nearly half as long, suffocating under the sweaty tarp with no seatbelts in the bed of a speeding pickup.
Not particularly sure if this is the end of MOTB, or if it'll be followed by interludes, or another series, or what.
Thank you for reading, though!
