Endgame, chapter 4

[tori_angeli]

One of the gangsters lunged for Mike. The nozzle of an aerosol spray looked huge.

The aerosol hit Mike, but he held his breath. It wasn't pepper spray. It might have been some sort of sedative, as his hostage suddenly went limp and heavy in his arms. Mike jerked backwards, tightening the chain around his victim's neck. His heart was pounding, but he was taking in no oxygen to feed it. Air! I need air! But there was more spraying from the aerosol, and he couldn't let himself breathe as he struggled to escape it and still maintain control of his hostage. Can't let them control me. Can't let them win. Can't let them take me.

Oh god. They used a flashlight on Raph. What'll they use on me?

Hun didn't care if he lived. The others didn't know he was here. Mike was Mike's only hope.

The aerosol paused for half a second, and he gasped in a short breath of air before it began to hiss again. Dimly, his pounding ears heard voices.

“He can't hold out forever. Keep going.”

“Just kill him already. It ain't worth this.”

“I wanna have fun with him first. He's a twitchy one. I wanna see how loud he screams.”

Mike was starting to see spots. He backed up enough to give his chains some slack, then used the arm not holding a chain around his hostage's neck to fling a length of chain at the one with the aerosol. The spray stopped abruptly as he felt the chain hit flesh and heard a sudden curse. He backed up further, gasping in air to feed his starved lungs, and bumped into someone behind him. Without thinking, he flung a chain backwards. There was a strangled cry behind him—the impact resounded back through the chains enough to tell him he hit a skull. Mike jerked backwards, crushing the man between his shell and the wall as hard as he could. Gotta get out. I have to live. I have to be okay. He trembled so hard he wondered how he still managed to keep hold of the contents of his stomach, let alone his hostage. I'm the only one who can keep me okay. I have to do what it takes. I have to get back to my family. I have to get out of this.

If it happened to Raph...

Then there was fire. Agony, beginning at his thigh and ending nowhere.

His head snapped back. Every muscle in his body became porcelain, and he involuntarily clutched at his hostage, tightening the chain. He could feel hundreds of tiny pulses tearing through his body as his limbs jerked and spasmed. There was pain all over, in his cranium, in his legs and feet, in his arms and hands and eyes, but most of all, his wrists and ankles were on fire, white-hot, and he could swear he was screaming “Stop, stop!” but didn't hear his own voice, only theirs. Warm wetness ran down his legs and puddled around his feet. The flesh beneath the manacles lit up and crackled, burned, died. It never ended, the relentless torture, not for what felt like hours, or at least the longest thirty seconds of his life. Then it was done, and everything went slack. His knees gave way. The pain was gone from his body, but his wrists and ankles still burned as he collapsed to the floor, barely managing to catch himself. Tears were caught in the rims of his eyelids, and one was jerked free when he hit the concrete floor. His eyes swerved upwards to see the device that had been used on him.

Taser.

“Toldja,” said a man behind the one with the taser. “Now do it again.”

Every member of the Purple Dragons found out how loud Michelangelo could scream.

 

If I'm infected, I'll never be able to do this again.

“Okay,” Don whispered, shutting the plastic facing on the keypad. “It's unlocked.” He placed his hand on the doorknob and met Leo's eyes. “Ready?”

“Yes,” Leo said immediately, barely waiting for Don to finish. Don nodded and pushed the door open.

The warehouse was lit only by the lights coming through the windows from the streets. They still stuck to the walls, in case there was some sort of back-up motion-detecting security system in place. Leo followed Don, who seemed to have an idea where they were going. Neither had to remind the other to be quiet. This particular warehouse had no cameras that Leo could spy, but he didn't trust there weren't sound sensors in place. There was, of course, a plethora of boxes stacked up on metal shelving that seemed to go on for miles. Leo had no idea which ones held what they wanted. Fortunately, he could see labels tacked over each shelf. There is a system in place.

It didn't take long to find the section holding medical supplies. It took a little longer to find the boxes that held testing supplies. Don refused to let Leo climb them himself. That's right. I can't get hurt. No blood.

He shivered.

Leo waited on the floor as Don scaled the shelves. He had barely spoken a word out loud since they had left the lair, but his head ached with words he could never release. Don wouldn't let him talk the way he was thinking. However, it gave Leonardo a sense of order and control amidst the chaos to plan things out, to make various decisions based on each possible outcome, to plan for the best- and worst-case scenarios. It was practical. Practicality kept him sane.

If I'm infected, there will be a new leader. Probably Don. The guys will find the right meds, and in the best of all possible worlds, I'll retire and live peacefully at home for a few years.

He hated the idea of settling down. Hated it. It would mean he wouldn't be a ninja anymore.

If I'm infected and they can't get medication for me, things wouldn't be so prolonged. I'd have to live with it less. If I went out to live on my own, I could even be less careful. I could practice without worrying about hurting myself. I could be a ninja. And when I died, it would be without everyone watching.

He doubted that. Once things got bad, his family would keep checking in on him, and wouldn't leave him until it happened.

If I'm infected, I could kill myself.

That idea sickened him less than the other two.

Don was near the top shelf, grappling with a very large box that was pressed tightly against the next shelf up. We shouldn't be doing this. The tests will be missed. There will be an investigation. But he still watched silently as Don struggled to pull the box out. This is getting ridiculous. We shouldn't have done this. It won't change anything.

The box suddenly came loose, tumbling past Don. Leo opened his mouth. In slow motion, Don grasped the shelf with one hand and grasped in vain at the falling box.

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit...

In slow motion, Leo dashed to catch the tumbling box.

In slow motion, Leo was too late.

The box crashed into the floor.

Suddenly, Leo was deafened by the sound of alarm bells.

 

Mikey never paid attention when Raph was in charge. It was the one thing Raph didn't take personally—Mikey always paid equal inattention to any brother who happened to be in charge at the time. It was more a matter of carelessness than open defiance, as remaining hidden from humans was, to his nine-year-old brain, more of a game than a necessity for survival. Right now, he was getting on Raphael's nerves, probably deliberately, by singing some song he'd heard on television.

“A ram sam sam, a ram sam sam, goolie goolie goolie goolie goolie ram sam sam!” Mikey belted shrilly, despite Raph's furious hushes, childish voice echoing piercingly through the abandoned alley. “A rafi, a rafi, goolie goolie gool--”

Raphael finally clamped his brother's beak shut with a silencing hand. “Shut up, idiot!” he hissed. “You're gonna get us caught!”

In response, Mikey slithered his tongue through his lips and slobbered deliberately on Raph's hand, causing the older brother to jerk away in disgust and wipe the slimed appendage on a knee pad. “By who, dorkface?” snorted Mikey. “There's no one here.”

“There will be if you keep making noise,” Raph retorted. “People're gonna wonder what died.”

“What's dying, doofus. If it were dead, it wouldn't be making noise.”

“Whatever. Look, they're takin' out trash. Let's hide and see what they put out.”

They ducked behind a pair of aluminum trash cans and watched a group of four humans emerge from a back doorway into the alley. Raph frowned. Maybe they weren't taking out the trash. They were all shouting, and one of them looked scared, wide-eyed, jaw set, posture that of a threatened man. The other three raised placating hands, one speaking slowly, urging him to calm down. The scared man raised a gun.

“I wanna see!” Mikey whispered excitedly, and ducked from behind the trash can.

“Mikey, no!” hissed Raph, seizing his brother roughly by the shoulders and yanking him back.

“But he's got a real gun!”

“Yeah, and it can really kill you!” Raph squinted at the gun the man was holding, feeling a strange sense of urgency. Splinter didn't know they were topside, and he would definitely kill him if he didn't take care of his brother. Oddly, the gun seemed to grow out of proportion as it was slung wildly through the air by its hysterical wielder, catching the light of the streets and inflating to a size beyond reality. A chill took Raph. The man had a real gun, and it could really kill them.

He tugged Mikey closer.

One of the other men suddenly leapt forward and tackled the armed man to the ground, seizing his wrist and jerking it up over his head. There was a flash of fire and a deafening crack, and the aluminum can hiding Mikey toppled with a monstrous clang of torn and battered metal. Raph heard Mikey's scream louder than anything he had ever heard in his life, and instinctively, he threw his arms around his little brother and pulled him away from the sounds of danger, of bullets hitting frail aluminum and men shouting in alarm as they realized they were not alone.

There were footsteps headed toward them. There was no time to waste. Raph yanked his trembling brother to his feet. Mikey's knees buckled and gave. Raph jerked him up again and clenched his arm in his fist as he ran, clinging to the shadows, dragging his distraught little brother away from the noise, the bullets, the hostile eyes. Another crack ripped through the air, and he could feel its shockwave hit him. After two heartbeats told him neither he nor his brother were hit, he glanced behind and saw black shapes, three standing, one lying motionless on the ground. Dead. He felt ice-cold.

Raph dove into another alley and peeled a manhole cover back, pushing his brother through to safety before entering himself. The sounds of his own footsteps gave way to the hammering of his heartbeat as he descended into the depths of the sewers. Swallowing hard, he gasped a few deeps breaths to slow his heart. Mikey couldn't know how scared he was, how scared he had been back there.

Mikey...

Mikey was crying.

“Raph?”

The gunshot. The aluminum can ringing as it was hit.

Raph turned and seized Mikey by the shoulders, squeezing hard as though he planned to wring the truth from him. “Are you hurt?”

The sniffles and sobs continued. “N-no.”

Something in Raph unwound slightly, but not all the way. “You sure? The bullet didn't hit you?”

“No, b-but I could hear it—it was real close.”

So close.

Raph drew his weeping brother into his arms as though raising a wall around him, a barrier between Mikey and the universe, the bullets, the shouting men. The world had gone strangely silent in Raphael's ears, in spite of the trickle of water and dull echo of rats scurrying. Mikey's sobs only served to emphasize the hollowness of sound, the futility of the senses, the mystic abstractness of time and space in a world where things ceased to exist without notice.

They had almost been killed tonight.

It was the first time death had ever entered Raphael's world as an entity of truth. The figure motionless on the ground could just as easily have been Michelangelo, and nearly had been. As he clasped his arms around the hard plating of his brother's carapace, he became aware of the fragile veins pulsing through the delicate skin under his jaw, the thin membranes of eyelids fluttering against his bare shoulder, the flesh slipping easily against small, juvenile bones, and the bare whisper of breath against his throat. Even beneath the flex of leather-tough plastron was the desperate work of a heart too easily stopped.

Mikey would be fine in the morning, after the shock passed and the jitters wore off, replaced by his unyielding good humor. He would be just as likely to be killed by his own recklessness then as he had been tonight, and he wouldn't care. Death was not close to him, as it was close to Raphael. But Raphael would give his own life before seeing his little brother cold and nerveless. It was the only conclusion he could come to. Mikey was too careless, too likely to die. Raph had to protect him. That was all there was.

It was the way Raph lived his life until, the summer of his sixteenth year, he found himself unable to protect even himself.