(I would like to warn you of two things; I wrote this chapter while hoped up on a great deal of niquil and theriflu, also there is some of that darker content in it.)

Chapter 11

"The harvest"

Raphael groaned as he slowly woke, for the second time this month, from a drug induced slumber. The first of his senses to become aware was his hearing. Beeps and buzzing sounds followed by shuffling feet and voices saying things he couldn't quite put together in his groggy mind. Then his sense of smell was assaulted by the crisp scent of a space thoroughly bleached down, and her. That honey sweet and ginger smell, light and teasing. He tried to lift his hand to his face to rub the sleep from his eyes but he couldn't.

He opened his eyes to a painfully blinding light. He blinked a few times to get them to adjust as he turned his head to see what had his wrist pinned.

"The turtle is awake." Someone stated from somewhere in front of him. "Get Bishop."

Finally his vision focused on the restraint that held him to an inclined mettle table, which seemed to have been made to accommodate the arch of his shell. He pulled against it, when it didn't give he began to struggle fervently, gritting his teeth as he pulled hard enough to draw blood from his wrists and ankles.

It was a recurring night mare. At least he was hoping it was. But the reasonable part of him, the part that was quickly remembering what had happened, was telling him otherwise.

"Raph?"

The voice came from somewhere behind him and she sounded terrified.

"Arayah!" Raph tried to turn craning his neck trying to catch a glimpse of her, to know she had not been harmed. But, between his shell and the restraints, he just couldn't turn enough. "Arayah,You ok?"

"She is well." Bishop stepped onto Raphael's view, giving him a not so reassuring grin.

"If you hurt her Bishop, I will…Hey, get back here you son of a bitch!" Raphael struggled against his restraints again. Intent on finding some way to protect her from whatever Bishop had planned.

Bishop had no interest in Raphael's threats, however. He had a reason for bringing them here and the mutant only played a small part in it.

He walked around to look over the woman that lay restrained to her own mettle table. He watched as different emotions flashed across her face as if she couldn't decide what to feel about the situation she found herself in. He loved this. Every creature that had ever lay on his examination table, and there were many, though few were human, reacted the same the first time. Uncertainty, confusion, then eventually they would settle on fear or maybe obstinance… but in the end fear.

Arayah pulled fruitlessly at her own restraints as she looked around the room trying to take in as much as possible hoping to find some bit of information that could ease the fear that was storming through her. She heard Raphael but she wasn't sure if she found his presence to be a comfort or an added worry. There were people in white lab coats bustling about laying out surgical tools and syringes connected to long needles. An IV was imbedded deep in her arm pumping a clear unknown liquid into her. And then there was him, that bastard that had ransacked her office and attacked her. He stood there looking at her like death, come to collect her soul.

"What do you want?" She asked in a hushed whisper.

Originally Bishop had intended on using the woman named April Jones. But Raphael had, unknowingly, made obtaining Arayah so much easier. Her almost complete lack of connections to anyone, aside from work, made her an optimal choice. The only set back was that he didn't know her fertility. A question that would be answered soon enough.

He had no intention of answering her. He wanted to anticipation to get to her to fill her with fear and make her squirm.

Bishop sat on a stool and rolled it up to Arayah's side. "We need tissue samples from both." He said to a lab tech.

The lab tech offered him a specimen dish which he sat, with in reach, on a tray.

The noise of Raphael fighting his restraints stilled as he tried to arch himself again so he could see what bishop was doing. But all he could see was an array of surgical tools spread out upon it. Raph's struggles renewed as he watched Bishop reach back and take a pair of large snips off the tray.

Hearing the turtles new found drive Bishop leaned back into Raphael's view, grinned, and snapped the snips open and closed for the turtle.

"You son of a bitch." Raph snarled as he wriggled and pulled against his restraints. The blood from his wrists and ankles becoming sticky and cool making his struggles more painful, but he didn't care. He had to get to her. He had to stop Bishop. "Just let her go Bishop! I'm who you're after."

The worry and renewed struggle that Raphael put forth only brought Bishop's grin to widen.

Arayah, on the other hand, had stilled. Her eyes fixed on the snips. She knew what they were for. She had used a similar tool many times when removing a smaller irreparable limb from an injured animal or in docking a puppy's tail.

She swallowed hard as she watched Bishop take hold of her left hand. She didn't understand why he was doing this. As a doctor, even as just a veterinarian, she knew full well that he could get small tissue samples from any number of arias without the use of snips. And what on earth did any part of the government need with a tissue sample from her anyways?

He applied pressure between the bones forcing her to open and spread out her hand. Carefully he slid the snips between her pinky and ring finger. Bishop took a moment to look up, to see if she was still watching.

The man that looked up at her was completely insane, something having long since snapped in his mind. Arayah had not seen someone find so much raw joy in another's pain since she was a child, but with her now the victim and not the witness, it now terrified her.

"Please." The plea was no more than a whisper, but she knew it wouldn't have mattered how much she begged and pleaded. It would not change his directive.

Bishop's attention dropped back down to Arayah's hand and he squeezed the snips, by no means quickly, reveling in her pained scream as he rocked the snips through the bone of her pinky finger just below the last knuckle.

At the sound of Arayah's scream Raphael saw red, pulling at the restraints with all his might. He pulled till his muscles ached and his wrists were in agony, but succeeded in only bending the table's edges and scathing his wrists further.

The bone made a cracking sound and the snips scraped together. After catching the finger in his hand Bishop sat it in the specimen dish, which was immediately taken by a lab tech.

It took everything Arayah had not to vomit. The throbbing in her hand only made worse when a lab tech got to work stemming the bleeding and stitching up her damaged hand without bothering to numb it. Arayah's bright green eye glistened with the tears that filled them before slipping slowly down her cheeks.

Feeling pleased with his handy work Bishop removed his bloodied gloves and dawned a clean pair before rolling his stool around to grin at the large struggling turtle that lay bleeding and cursing on his table. "Don't worry she'll live." Bishop mocked.

"You son of a, fucking, bitch! I'm going to break every god damn bone in your…" Raphael's threat was stopped as a small bone saw was held up and inspected by his captor.

Bishop sat the saw back down on the tray he had picked it up from. "I'm sorry Raphael, what were you saying."

Raph answered with a scowl. "Don't you have enough from the last time? I don't think there was a single organ you forgot to take a piece of."

"Hmm." Bishop grinned as he held up another nasty looking tool. "I will have to check. But in the mean time I require a couple more pieces of you. I don't suppose you are going to be cooperative?"

"Go fuck yourself." Raph seethed.

Bishop merely grinned picked up a clean pair of snips then wasted no time in slipping them around Raph's large outer finger. Keeping a grip was not easy as Raph was struggling more than Arayah had and the blood that already was dripping down the turtle's hands made it difficult to get a good grip. So when Bishop clamped the snip's closed, pulling a pleasing yelp from Raphael, he didn't get as much of the appendage as he had wanted. But as he held up the tip, last knuckle to top, of the thick green finger, he decided it would do.

Ignoring the turtle's new slew of threats and curses bishop turned to a couple of free lab techs. "I want you to harvest as many viable eggs from her as you can get, and a seaman sample from him. The rest of you," he addressed the other dozen or so lab techs in the room as he held up Raphael's detached digit. "We have splicing to do."

*scene change*

Leo checked the time again, then slowly scanned the roof tops for any sign of anyone that didn't belong.

"I don't see anything, do you see anything?" Mikey asked as he shifted back and forth on his feet.

Leo eyed his brother curiously for a moment. "Will you take a deep breath or something Mike you're fidgeting is making me nervous."

"I can't help it I chugged down two monsters before we left." Mikey drummed his hands on the wall behind him as he scanned the shadows not entirely sure if he was seeing movements in the shadows or just over buzzed.

Leo shook his head at his brother. "Why?"

"I was planning on gaming all night before you drug me out here, dude." Mikey griped

Leo sighed and looked back out at Arayah's building. "I don't see anything. Her apartment's on the other side. Come on."

With a jittery Mikey close behind Leo led the way across the roof and then down to the broken apartment window. The glass crunched beneath his feet as stepped onto the fire escape landing. Arayah's clothes spilled out of a trash bag that sat amongst the glass.

Leo's heart started to pound as the possible explanations went through his mind. Carefully he pushed back the crime scene tape that was strewn across the window and cautiously stepped inside.

"Wow." Mike said at the state of the apartment.

The apartment door broken open, with more crime scene tape strewn across the entry way, and the apartment itself looked like a herd of elephants had crashed through it.

"What happened?"

"Nothing good, Mikey." Leo frowned. "Let's get back to the layer. We'll get Don to track Raph."

Mikey nodded and followed Leo back out the window. He stopped for a moment and considered the bag of Arayah's things then, deciding she might need it at some point, scooped it up and threw it over his shoulder before following Leo into the sewers.

*scene change*

Raph lay curled up inside his cell, a metal box with only two small holes to let in air, feeling violated and hopeless. Because of a thousand if onlies, he had no one to blame but himself. He couldn't stop them from doing what they did to him or from taking what they took from her. He didn't even know where she was or if she was alive. He had traded her safety and so much more for the price of a kiss. He hated himself for it. God! He could still hear her screams. And there had been nothing he could do. All his size and strength had amounted to nothing.