When the vibration signaled across his wrist, Donatello bolted upright from the tense position in wich he was resting on the couch.
"Did something bite you?" Jenna laughed.
He didn't answer her - he was too busy flipping through the main menu on the small display of the timepiece. Brandon. "Shell. Shell, shell!"
The powerful aftershock that had occurred a few minutes prior had rattled everyone, but Donatello still hadn't expected this.
"Don, what is it?" Jenna demanded.
"It's Brandon. He just set off his beacon!" Donatello was on his feet and calling for his brothers before the raven-haired woman could speak.
Leonardo swung in through an open window from the fire escape, and landed on the carpet without making a sound. The blue-masked turtle was slightly damp from the rain that had been falling intermittently while he'd been on the roof, and his dark eyes were wide with concern. "Who set it off, Don?"
Leonardo was the only brother that Donatello could convince to wear the watch on a regular basis, even when they weren't in immediate danger.
"Brandon," Donatello said shortly. "I hate to think the quake had something to do with it, but I don't know what else it could be. He wouldn't set it off unless he had to."
"What about Brandon?" Raphael joined their conversation from the hall. "Did you hear from him?"
"No, Raph, he set off his alarm!" Donatello returned.
"And he's not answering his phone," Jenna added as she lowered her device. "I don't think the call is even making it through."
"Can you start trying to raise Greg, Jen?" Donny requested, just as April came into the room.
The redhead took one look at his expression, and stopped in her tracks. "Its bad news, isn't it? Have you heard anything? What do we know?"
"Nothing, yet," he replied, as he went to yank his laptop out of his duffle bag.
While Donatello booted up the computer on the coffee table he felt several pairs of eyes watching him, and instinctively knew that the others had joined them as well.
"Where is he, Genius?" Raphael was in typical impatient form.
"I don't know yet. I need a couple of minutes for the software to load so I can triangulate his location from his homing device."
Donatello could hear his red-masked brother pacing, and tried to ignore the sound as he began tracking Brandon's coordinates. When he looked over his shoulder, he found Calley and Karina staring at him mutely, waiting.
"Where's my brother, Donny?" Karina asked after a couple more beats of silence.
"The Javits Federal Building. April, what did you do with that radio? The stations might have some information about the damage from that last quake. We're probably going to need to find out the best way around traffic."
April dashed out of the room, right before the last two figures in the apartment made their way inside. Michelangelo's blue eyes roved across the space, his confusion evident.
"Are we going somewhere?" he asked.
"We are - you're not," Donny replied. "Sorry Mike. With the condition your lungs are in, I can't even consider allowing you to take part in a rescue."
"Rescue who?" The orange-masked turtle's voice surged to life. "Is this how it's going to be? You guys decide, and I don't even get a vote?"
"No one wants to leave you out in the cold, Mike, but Don's right," Leonardo said smoothly. His questioning gaze turned to Donatello. "Do you think this is going to be a full scale operation?"
"Your guess is as good as mine, Leo. We won't know what's actually wrong until we get there, unless we can contact Brandon-"
"Brandon's in trouble?" Michelangelo's brow furrowed and he glanced down at his wrist where his watch should have been.
"Yes, Mike, he is. Jenna, are you still trying to reach Greg?"
The man had gone back out to the makeshift Triage center where Luke was still being "held" to visit with the doctor and Katherine. Donatello remembered Greg saying something about picking Brandon up sometime before he came back to the apartment.
"It rings, but then I'm getting a busy signal!"
"Then stop dialing - he's probably trying to reach us."
As if on cue, Donatello's phone vibrated on the coffee table, and he hurriedly snatched it up. "Heff?"
"Where is he?" Greg sounded completely out of breath. "Where is Bran, Don, I need to know now!"
"He's still at Javits."
Greg swore fiercely on the other end of the phone. "I knew he set the watch off for a reason! I was hoping he'd already left the building, that all he needed was a ride-" The man interrupted himself to swear a second time.
Donatello cleared his throat. "Heff, do you know something that we don't?"
He heard Greg take an anxious breath. "They have a couple of different radio stations broadcasting here at Triage. The Civic Center took a worse hit with this aftershock than it did in the original quake! Brandon could be trapped, Don, we have to get down there!"
"You took the words out of my mouth, Greg. How soon can you get here?"
"It's going to take a few minutes, and Kat isn't going to let me escape with giving her some kind of information."
"Just move, Heff! We can't go anywhere until you get here!" Nerves skyrocketed through his whole body as he hung up the phone.
"What did he say, Donny?" Raphael asked immediately. "Does he know something about the building?"
The purple-masked turtle hesitated. "The radio is saying the Civic Center took a worse hit. We have to get prepared for the destruction we might be dealing with."
"Well...at least it won't be the first time," Leonardo said quietly. "Don, do you still think you can use the scanner to help us avoid hot spots?"
Donatello nodded with a frown. "But we don't have any tools like we used for the United Nations."
"We'll have to make do without them," Leonardo said determinedly.
"The debris field could be completely different," Donatello said thoughtfully. "We may be dealing with more of an implosion effect than an explosion."
"There's a difference?" Raphael wanted to know.
"Definitely," Donatello murmured distractedly, his eyes still on Leonardo.
The blue-masked turtle gave Karina an encouraging smile. "He was able to set off his panic button - that means he had both mobility and the presence of mind to do so. We're going to get your brother back, Karina."
The woman was already breathing a little rapidly. "Would you bring yourselves back in one piece too?"
Raphael stopped his "caged lion" pacing long enough to wrap both arms around Karina from behind. "Don't be scared, Kari. We know what we're doing, and Donny can steer us clear if there are fires."
"I like how you say 'if', like there's some chance there won't be," Karina said dryly.
Jenna threw her shoulders back resolutely. "Take a good look at me, Karina. I was inside the UN when those bombs went off, and I lived to tell about it. A lot of people did. Brandon will be okay too."
Karina nodded uncertainly, and Donatello noticed the way Raphael hadn't let go of her. The entire room stiffened when they heard April cry out from the next room. Donatello strode toward the kitchen, with Leonardo directly on his heels.
"April?" Don queried.
The woman was bent over the counter in front of the radio. When she spun around to meet them, she had tears in her eyes. "A major portion of the Javits high-rise collapsed. The rest of the frame isn't going to hold out indefinitely. They think the whole building could come down at any time. Emergency workers are still heading in, but there's a shortage of hands..." April's voice wavered as she finished.
Donatello shivered at the sense of acute nausea in the pit of his stomach.
"We don't have time to waste," Leonardo said briskly. "Don, Greg is coming, isn't he?"
"That's what he said."
"Then we have to be ready and waiting downstairs when he gets here. Whatever you think could help us in the building, let's get it pulled so we can get down to the street level."
Several expectant faces were waiting when the two turtles emerged from the kitchen.
"The news isn't good," Leonardo volunteered flatly, and looked at Donatello.
"The Javits building suffered major structural failure," Donny explained, and he gazed around the room as the news sunk in.
Raphael had still been supporting Karina, but now he directed her toward the couch as she swayed.
"I don't want to stay behind." Michelangelo was the first to speak. "Brandon is family as much as everyone else. I'm not sitting this out."
Donatello crossed the room to meet his younger brother, and he laid an arm over Mike's shoulder. "Will you be helping Brandon if you end up passing out or not breathing? I'm sorry, Mikey. I don't want to do this to you, but we don't have a choice."
"I'm not an invalid! I didn't slow us down when we were escaping the sewer, did I? Did I cause any problems in the Park to make you think I'm too weak to handle this?"
"No one's calling you weak, Bro," Leonardo said. "But your lung issues aren't under control. You already stopped breathing once in the past couple weeks, and just last night..." He didn't bother finishing the statement. "No, Mike. Not this time."
Michelangelo turned a pleading gaze on Donatello that made the purple-masked turtle feel like his heart was breaking in two. "You can't just leave me here, Don. You can't."
"Mike, listen to me. We're coming back, okay?"
The orange-masked turtle blinked back a couple of tears. "Let me ride with you at least."
"Forget it, Chucklehead," Raphael said firmly. "Knowing you, you'd find a way to worm yourself into that building, and it's not happening. You gotta trust us, Mikey. We've always come back before, and this time will be no different."
Donatello was so tense he almost jerked away from Jenna when her fingers glided onto his wrist. He'd been completely wrapped up in Michelangelo, and hadn't noticed when the woman came to his side. The expression in her light blue eyes was just as pleading as Michelangelo's had been. As she bent toward him, he lightly kissed her forehead.
"We need to get to work," Leonardo said decisively.
Donatello embraced the woman for a quick moment before letting her go, and gave Mike a parting glance. "We'll find him, Mike, and we'll be careful."
"Yeah, you'd better be," he grumbled in return. "If I have to come in there after you, I'll never let any of you live it down."
Brandon's hand felt around the back of his cell-phone, as he tried to get his battery into the slot correctly.
Geesh, it fit to start with, there's no way the battery is too large to get in there. I just hope that little move will correct whatever the heck I did to the phone.
After a couple more seconds of fiddling the thin battery slid into place properly, and he exhaled softly.
That's more like it. Now, let's see who-
"What are you doing to your phone, James?" His Director interrupted the thought.
Brandon looked up. "My device is a lot smarter than I am. It's capable of running off of a satellite feed, but you have to know how to switch it over. It also has an internal booster that helps amplify the signal from the towers. Back after the first quake I did something to mess up my settings. I'm hoping taking the battery out and putting it back in might reset them so I can get the booster working."
"I'd let you use my phone, Brandon, but I couldn't get a signal before the ground crumbled under us, and I think it's even less likely now."
Brandon shook his head. This really stinks. I wish I was alone down here, for more than the obvious reasons. Did I do the right thing setting off the panic button? I guess it's irrelevant. I'm sure they've already seen it, and they're probably coming after me.
The thought of Matthew Kelley seeing the turtles in the flesh was as disturbing now as it had been a few minutes ago. I wonder if they could disguise themselves, and he'd never have to know? How could I prevent him from getting a good look at-
Brandon's phone rang in his hand, and nearly startled him out of his wits.
Kelley stared at him as if he'd just made contact with an alien colony. "How's that possible?" He gasped.
Brandon didn't reply, jerking the phone open instead. "Hello? Hello?" He repeated the word so fast that the caller couldn't have gotten a word in edgewise.
"Can you hear me, Brandon? It's Donny!"
The man released a shuddering breath. "Thank God! I can't believe all I had to do was remove the battery."
Donatello didn't bother asking what that meant. "Are you okay?"
"Um...yes, and no. I'm not dying, but I'm hurt and trapped..." Brandon hesitated for an instant. "And I'm not alone. Director Kelley is here too."
"Can you tell me anything about where you are?" The turtle didn't seem fazed by his news.
"We were on the stairwell when the quake hit, maybe around the third floor. The ground just caved in under us, Donny. We're stuck inside of...I don't know what, it feels like a giant hole. There's still debris coming down. I'm afraid we could get blocked in completely." Brandon made the statement evenly, though his heart skipped a beat with the admission.
"Bran, we're coming, okay? How badly are you hurt?"
"I don't know. Something hit my head on the way down, and I was unconscious for a couple of minutes, at least. I think I must have landed wrong on my collar bone - I'm pretty sure it's fractured. Listen, Don, this is a huge risk to take. You can think about it. You don't have to do this." Brandon felt Kelley's eyes on him, but ignored the man for the moment.
"You mean because of your boss?" Donny sounded incredulous. "Bran, we'll cross that bridge when we get there! We're not leaving you to die just so we can protect our own shells. You'd never do that to us, and you know it!"
"Please be careful," Brandon said hoarsely.
"We will, Brandon. Hang in there, all right? Don't you dare go to sleep or anything."
"I'm too scared to be tired, Don."
"That may not last if you have a concussion. Greg's pulling up, I've gotta go! We'll be on our way shortly!"
Brandon sighed inwardly as he hung up the phone. I knew they wouldn't back down, darn it. What are we going to do about Kelley?