Save You

It couldn't be. It couldn't be.

Mikey snatched the communication device from Donnie's hands and put it closer to his own face, in the hope that it would somehow change the numbers.

As if the universe wanted to mock him, the numbers did change from 11:30 to 11:31.

How could it be? Mikey might have lost track of time, but not to that point. And their passage through Dimension X had been so short, and wasn't time supposed to pass faster here than on Earth anyways? The very first time, Mikey had been trapped here alone for months, whereas his brothers had jumped into the same portal not even a minute after he had.

Although on other occasions, time had seemed to flow the same in both universes.

So maybe Mikey shouldn't feel so surprised, so betrayed, by the place he considered himself an expert in.

Not that it mattered now, and Mikey resolved to stop looking for an answer. He would ask Donnie when Donnie would be a turtle again, which would happen soon, so very soon, because otherwise…

Mikey didn't want to think about otherwises. He didn't need to imagine himself being the only ninja turtle in the world, watching his brothers from afar, forever forgotten from the people he cared most about. Such thoughts only made his stomach tighten in knots and replaced his kneecaps with jelly, and he didn't need that if he wanted to avoid a disaster.

It was now 11:32.

"Please keep to your designated area so the decontamination process can unfold," the mechanical voice repeated.

"I think you should do what it says," Donnie said gently. "We don't want to attract attention to us, especially not until the decontamination process is over."

Mikey gave the communication device back to Donnie, trying desperately to force his lips and his tongue to move, in order to tell him that the last thing in the world they could afford right now was waiting. He felt a headache coming, no doubt caused by the pink genie trying to prevent him from turning the tide, and he ignored the growing pain.

In vain.

He turned to Raph and Leo, in case the result would be different if he tried with a different brother.

Raph gave him a curious glance, as if he could read on Mikey's face that something was wrong, but his face was nowhere near reflecting the impending sense of doom that Mikey was feeling.

Suddenly, his space suit felt choking. Mikey started peeling it off himself, unable to wear it any longer.

Donnie reached out to stop him. "Please, don't do that! I'm only managing to conceal our identities because of these suits. If you trigger their anomaly detection system, it will bypass my countermeasures."

"He's panicking," Raph said. "We need to get him out of here."

Mikey was not panicking, because he couldn't afford to panic. He was neither breathing too fast nor disregarding Donnie's sound advice, although his space suit was now in pieces on the floor, which he didn't remember doing, and he needed to convince his brothers that they were his brothers, and he needed a plan, and… and…

Take deep breaths, my son, Splinter's voice said in his head.

And he knew it wasn't really Splinter, only his brain imitating Splinter, because he was not meditating and there was no floating figure of his father travelling through the astral plane anywhere nearby, but it was close enough.

Mikey obeyed the voice, and the fog in his brain cleared enough for him to notice that Raph had grabbed his arms, and Donnie was telling him to calm down and follow his breathing, and Leo was keeping watch on Mikey didn't know what, and…

"Anomaly detected," the mechanical voice said. "Contamination probability: 90%. Proceeding to the destruction of the samples."

Mikey wondered what these samples were. Then the gas filling the room seemed to change in nature, and he instinctively held his breath.

But the mention of contamination had given him an idea, and he ran to the space where the portal had stood.

If they went back to Dimension X, if this time, time passed faster here like it was supposed to, Mikey could continue bonding with his brothers until they remembered him… Maybe the pink genie's curse wasn't even applicable if they weren't on Earth, and…

Before he could try reopening the portal, Donnie threw himself on him, flattening him against the ground.

Mikey didn't understand why until he heard the blast. When Donnie stood up, staggering, Mikey saw that there was now a huge hole through the wall, and that the back of Donnie's space suit was in very poor shape.

Donnie's bō staff was nowhere to be seen, probably reduced to pieces. Mikey idly thought that Raph would now reinitialize his counter of the number of days Donnie went without breaking his staff, which he usually brought out when Donnie was in the middle of a particularly neighbor-unfriendly experiment, before realizing that neither Raph nor Donnie remembered any of it at the moment.

"Let's go," Donnie said, pulling Mikey by the hand and running out of the decontamination room.

Leo and Raph followed. Their space suits had also been impacted, and all three of them removed it as soon as Donnie stopped, a respectable distance away from the explosion.

Mikey would have expected an alarm to be blaring by now, but the only sound troubling the silence of the corridor was the thud of the space suits hitting the floor.

That was, until Raph straightened up with his hands on his hips.

"I know I said we had to get him out of here, but I didn't think you would explode the wall!"

"Were did you even find explosives?" Leo asked, visibly baffled.

"In a storage room on our way to the mutagen tower," Donnie answered. "It had an evocative pictogram, with one of these alien brains being blasted, so I thought it would be useful."

So Donnie had managed to escape Mikey's surveillance after all. It wasn't above his brother to be this sneaky, so Mikey wasn't too surprised.

Raph and Leo, however, gaped at Donnie.

"What?" Donnie shrugged. "I wasn't going to leave it behind. It was alien tech!"

"Yes," Raph said. "Precisely. Were you even sure that our space suits could take it?"

"No, I wasn't. But if I had waited any longer, the gas they were sending inside the room would have reached a sufficient concentration to become explosive, and that would have been too much for our space suits for sure. After all, the goal was to eliminate us."

"You got that right," an unknown voice said. "Hands up, and no sudden moves. Now turn around."

Mikey slowly obeyed, as did his brothers.

There must have been an alarm somewhere after all, because they were facing a commando armed to the teeth. Their rifles didn't look like something Mikey's shell could endure.

A plan. He needed a plan.

"It would have been a shame if you had died in that room, though," the man who had spoken first went on. Mikey assumed he was the commanding officer. "We would prefer to capture you alive, but if you don't cooperate, I have no qualms killing you on the spot."

"What do you want with us?" Raph asked, as if they hadn't introduced themselves into a secret military base without invitation.

And Mikey had learned the hard way it was rude not to have an invitation before going into someone's private place, for example Raph's room.

"I have questions for you," the commander said. "Like how did you come to be inside my base, or how did you escape Zone 151."

Mikey blinked, confused. He had no idea what the man was talking about.

Although he counted himself lucky that the commander wanted to chat. It gave him time to think about an escape route.

Donnie was quicker to understand. "You mean the place in the pit we fell? The one that was deserted?"

"Yes. We couldn't believe it when we were notified that someone had entered the zone. We've monitored the entrance ever since, but you never went out." He paused. "Until now. You'll be glad to know you're ranking high on some very private wanted lists."

Donnie gulped. Mikey might have too, if he hadn't been busy noticing that the ground below their feet was unstable. Donnie's explosion must have weakened the structure.

Now he only needed a distraction...

More people joined the commando. The newcomers carried different weapons, that Mikey recognized to be tranquilizer guns. He guessed this was why the commander hadn't tried to come closer.

He was a careful man, unwilling to take unnecessary risks.

Mikey pondered his choices. He couldn't allow them to capture him and his brothers, not when he had so little time left. On the other end, he couldn't start moving or the soldiers would fire.

Mikey wanted to yell. Why was his turtle luck so bad today? He was supposed to be a lucky turtle, bait situations excepted. He was supposed to be able to get out of any predicament.

He was supposed to have brothers who had his back.

A powerful roar suddenly echoed through the hallway.

"Commander, another mutant has escaped!" one of the soldiers yelled.

"He won't go far," the commander said. "He's trapped here. That's why we moved the operations from New York to this place." He slightly turned his head. "Team Retrieval, go catch him! The others, stay with me. It's time to…"

Mikey never knew what time it was for the commander, because he had seized his opportunity. While the soldiers were listening to their new orders, he jumped as high as he could, retreated in his shell, and hit the ground with all his weight.

It collapsed in a life-saving cloud of dust.

Mikey didn't lose any time. When the firing started above their heads, he had already grabbed his brothers and started running.

They seemed mostly unscathed, which was everything he had hoped for.

What time was it now? Out of habit, Mikey reached for his T-Phone. The precious item wasn't at his belt anymore, and Mikey had no idea when he had lost it. It must have self-destructed by now.

He kept running, trampling with each step on the part of his mind that wanted to curl in a corner.

He was a fighter. He would make it, time limit or no time limit.

"So they truly wanted us dead," Raph said gloomily. He glanced at Leo. "I'm surprised you're not an exception. Aren't you supposed to work for the government?"

Leo shrugged. He had pulled out a gun, the one that had come with his space suit. "We were forbidden to go inside that hole. It was recently reopened, and…"

"So you can disobey orders after all," Raph panted. "Who would have guessed."

"It certainly looks like my career is over," Leo said.

Mikey wasn't going to cry over that. Leo wasn't made for such a trade anyways. He had another calling, a much better one, and…

"Watch out!" Leo yelled, firing at the same time at Mikey who retreated his head in his shell–

Far too close behind them, a body fell to the ground.

"What were you thinking?" Raph yelled as they accelerated to try and put some distance between them and their pursuers. "It was way too close! What if he hadn't reacted on time?"

"I… I don't know," Leo said. He sounded confused. "It's like I knew he would."

Mikey's heart beat with a bit more hope at the words. The fabric of the pink genie's lies was falling apart at the seams. If only his brothers could pause and think about what they were feeling…

Mikey managed to briefly hug Leo while running.

"Now we're even," Leo told him.

Mikey rolled his eyes. They didn't keep track of who saved whom. At least Mikey didn't, and he was pretty sure Leo and Raph didn't either. Donnie might, if only because he remembered everything.

It was besides the point, and Mikey forced himself to refocus.

What was he thinking about?

Ah, yes. Time. The thing he didn't have.

Leo had taken the lead, and was turning left and right through the network of corridors without the slightest hesitation.

"For my information… do you know… where you're going?" Donnie asked despite being almost out of breath.

"No," Leo admitted. "If you have to know, I'm following a rat."

"A rat." Raph let out a sound that was half-distressed and half-amused. "At this point, why not? Besides, I've always loved rats."

Mikey didn't miss this piece of information. He wondered whether it was because of Splinter.

If only his father was here, he would know what to do. If only…

Leo stopped abruptly as they reached what looked like an elevator shaft, without the elevator. They weren't hearing their pursuers anymore, but Mikey had no doubt it would be a bad idea to stay put.

However, if they could climb inside the shaft and find a hiding place, his brothers could pause and think and hopefully, hopefully it would be enough for them to remember.

Even if he had still had his T-Phone, at this point Mikey might not have dared to look at it.

He brushed the walls of the shaft. They were too smooth to be climbed, but Mikey could see a support structure high above. He took his kusarigama, but the chain was way too short.

He heard footsteps in the distance and bit his lip.

"Take this," Leo said, giving him the rope from the grappling hook he had broken during his fall to save Donnie, back when Mikey still had two weeks to save his brothers, and not whatever minutes they had left now.

Mikey used the amazing ability of his brain to ignore what he didn't want to know and added the rope to his kusarigama before trying again.

It was almost enough.

Meanwhile, Donnie was watching Leo's grappling hook.

"It's broken."

"Yes, I know." Leo was watching Mikey and his attempts rather than really paying attention to Donnie. "It happened at the very beginning, when I fell after you in the pit."

"You could have told me. I would have fixed it."

Donnie sounded like it was a personal offense done to him, and maybe it was. As much as he pretended to hate having to repair their belongings, Donnie couldn't stand stuff staying broken. He had to repair everything he could, the way Mikey had to chew every gum he found.

You couldn't go against such urges.

"It can't have been broken from the start," Raph protested, as if it was the right moment to start arguing with Leo. "You used it to find this alien building, remember?"

Leo frowned. "I… It was another one."

He reached inside his jacket and took the grappling hook Mikey had given him. He retrieved the rope and handed it to Mikey.

This time, the cumulated length was enough. Mikey coiled the end of his kusarigama around a beam and turned to grab his brothers.

But Leo fell to his knees before Mikey could complete his gesture.

"Aah!" Leo grabbed his head as if he wanted to tear it apart with his bare fingers.

"What's happening? It's not the time," Raph said, his voice laced with badly hidden concern.

The footsteps were coming closer. Mikey couldn't afford to give Leo time to settle.

He reached out and touched his brother's hand.

The pink smoke around Leo's turtle shape was so thick and so dense that Mikey was afraid his brother would choke. Bolts of blue lightning traversed the smoke, and Mikey suddenly realized why the pink genie had partially loosened their grip on Mikey's freedom of movement.

Whatever they were doing to Leo obviously took a lot of their strength.

Mikey wanted to yell his brother's name. It was a shame his mouth was sealed. Names held power, he knew that. They weren't just useful to mark your stuff so your brothers knew they belonged to you, like he had for his grappling hook.

Like he had. For. His. Grappling. Hook.

The one he had given to Leo.

Which meant Leo must have seen the name. His name. Mikey's name. Mikey hadn't thought about it at all when he had let it fallen, and maybe that was why the pink genie hadn't reacted stronger at the time.

Mikey reached out, but he couldn't go past the smoke.

Leo, he thought as loud as he could. Leo, it's me. I'm here.

Mikey opened his eyes and realized that he was lying next to Leo. Raph had a hand on his shoulder.

"Hey." Raph's relief was visible. "Are you back with us? You had stopped moving, I was starting to get worried."

Donnie was trying to help Leo, who had started shaking. He looked at Mikey and Raph with an expression very close to sheer panic.

"I don't know what's wrong with him!"

"My… My…" Leo whispered.

Raph leaned forwards encouragingly. "Your? Your?"

Leo suddenly stopped shaking and raised his head to meet Mikey's gaze, and for the first time in a long time…

"Mikey."

…For the first time in a long time, his eyes were seeing Mikey, with the love and fondness and concern that Mikey knew with all his heart, and as he spoke Leo lifted his arm, extending his hand towards Mikey, and Mikey tried to catch it…

…then Leo's figure dissolved in front of him.

For the briefest of moments, Mikey was alone in the nothingness…

Until he wasn't alone anymore.

It's midnight, the pink genie said. You've lost.