Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Fan Fiction ❯ Bad Places II: Rebirth ❯ 7 ( Chapter 7 )

Part 7

Back inside the stairwell, Leonardo's brothers had forced the other door open, using their weight to snap the arm holding the long handle up. They carefully made their way over pieces of foot soldiers strewn across every step. Raphael lead the way, kicking arms and legs and occasionally complete bodies down the center of the stairwell while Donatello and Mike came up side by side, not wanting to be the last one. Although the red lights were enough to see by, the shadows were darker and the still-dripping blood gave the illusion that the walls were crawling. Every now and then a body spasmed or turned on its own as they passed. When one actually groaned, Mike stepped closer to Donatello.

"It's okay," Don whispered. "It's a rattle. It's normal, just air escaping and the muscles contracting. Sometimes bodies'll sit even up."

"Not helping," Mike said softly. "This whole thing's a big horror movie. I keep thinking I'll turn around and there'll be a bunch of zombies coming after us--"

"Mike--" Don started.

"--or the dead chick in that movie's gonna be climbing up the stairs--"

"Mike--" Don said a little louder.

"--or a big monster with claws and fangs is eating the bodies and decides it wants something fresher--"

"Mike!" Don and Raph both yelled, startling him.

He looked down and fell silent. Donatello put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently.

"It's okay. Nothing bad's gonna happen. We just have to get Leo out of here, that's all."

"If he lets us," Mike said, gesturing at the gore they climbed through. "Look at all this. Does he even know what he's doing? Can we bring him back at all?"

"I don't know," Don said. "We won't know until we get him home and start blood transfusions. It could still be awhile before he's anywhere near normal again."

"We'll get him home," Raph said. "He might not come willingly, but at least he won't hurt us. Worse case scenario, we have to stop Shredder while we get Leo."

Mike frowned. "How we gonna do that? Leo's the one who beat him last time."

Raph didn't look back. "We'll manage." Somehow, he thought, but he didn't say it out loud. Somehow he would find his older brother, get him away from Shredder, kill Shredder if he had to, drag Leo back down through the tower, and get him home. And keep Mike and Don safe. And make sure no one saw them. And stop any foot ninjas who weren't dead from attacking them on the way out.

He kicked another body out of the way. Only six months and already he could see why Leo had run from responsibility. It wasn't fair to put all of it on one turtle. And now he didn't have his big brother to lean on during a fight. One on one fighting was no problem, and neither was a fight with all four of them, but fighting while he had to watch out for the other two...Don wasn't a fighter at heart, and even though Mike could do well on his own, his playfulness often got him into trouble. He had no doubt that Mike had tried to give the elites after him and Casey the run around and instead got both of them backed into a corner.

Funny, being in charge had seemed like something he could rub in Leo's face forever.

A scream echoed down the stairwell from a higher floor. Raphael froze. That hadn't been a scream of fear, it was more like a grief-stricken wail. It reverberated through the metal, sending shockwaves like tangible anguish through the tower, passing over them and down into the darkness of the bottom floors, dying into nothing.

"That sounded like Leo," Mike whispered.

"How could you tell?" Donatello asked. "It didn't sound like him at all."

"I felt it through my chest," Mike said, putting his hands over his plastron. "It was so loud..."

No longer caring about the bodies, Raphael began stepping over and on top of the dead, stabbing the ones on the rail with his sai and using them for leverage as sloshed through the gore. When he didn't hear his brothers right behind him, he looked over his shoulder and found them struggling over the dead, still loathe to touch the corpses.

"Dammit, get over it," he yelled at them. They looked up in surprise at how sharp his voice was. "Leo's up there, God knows what's happening, and you're worried about a little blood?"

"Hey, lay off!" Mike snapped. "It's hard to climb through all this without falling. You want us to break our necks?"

Raphael growled but couldn't argue. He only wished his siblings had edged weapons to give them a bitter grip on the bodies. "Just hurry up," he said, but he couldn't afford to wait for them. He set a much faster pace and left them behind, going so fast he often slipped and hit his knees or legs or arms against the hard steps and railing.

A few minutes later, there was a loud popping noise, and a minute after that, a hellish shriek. Raphael went cold but didn't stop climbing. He recognized that sound, not from his brother but from dark corridors in a blood-soaked pocket dimension. Unless Shredder possessed some of Stockman's leftover experiments, Raphael knew that something inside his brother had broken.

"Just hang on," he whispered, "just hang on, Leo. I'm coming. I'm on my way." He slipped again and hit the steps hard, landing face first in a mutilated chest. He coughed and leaned up on his elbows, shaking off blood as he caught his breath. Four or five floors beneath him, he heard his brothers following in his footsteps.

With a grunt he pushed himself back to his feet and continued up. The cold blood was drying on his skin, itching and making him shiver. He didn't want to think what the rest of the smells around him were. By now some of the bodies had been dead long enough to completely relax and empty out whatever bowels they still had. He grit his teeth and moved on. Soon he'd be home with his family and Leo on the way to recovery, and then he could take a shower. How can I even be thinking of a shower right now? he wondered. He wondered if Leonardo was as covered in blood as he was now or if his brother even noticed anymore.

*

Five minutes earlier, the Shredder watched the turtle comport himself, bringing himself back from whatever hallucination that had caused him to scream. And then slowly the turtle turned, staring at the glass. Or at least Saki thought he was staring. The black eyes made it difficult to be certain. Was Leonardo staring directly at him?

One moment Leonardo stood facing the mirror, simply breathing. The next, glass exploded into the small observation room. Saki shielded his face and backed up, shards crunching under his boots. He watched as Leonardo landed on all fours and rose slowly, ignoring the broken glass sparkling on the floor. Despite a brief respite from killing, he still dripped with blood. They faced off, neither moving, and Saki became aware of a low noise, hardly audible as the last bits of glass dropped off the mirror. It grew louder until he realized that Leonardo was growling. What on earth had the turtle hallucinated? And what had happened in the months since he'd died? This couldn't be the same creature he'd fought before.

Regardless, this room left him little space to fight. He slipped a hand into his belt and grasped a smoke bomb, but after a second look at Leo's mask, he switched to a flash bomb instead. He threw it to the floor and dodged backwards just as Leonardo leaped. As light exploded through the room, he pushed open the door and ran, hearing Leonardo's pained cry behind him.

He was all the way to the elevator halfway down the hall before he looked back. Smoke wisped out of the room, trailing along the edges of the door. There was no sound and he wondered if he'd incapacitated the turtle already and the fight was over. Then he heard a loud scraping noise, like metal being cut, and Leonardo walked out dragging his sword behind him. One hand covered his eyes as he staggered sideways, hitting the wall with his shoulder before he steadied himself. With slow, purposeful steps, he walked towards Saki, never looking up, dragging his sword.

Saki pushed the elevator button again. The beeps as it passed each floor came so slow that he looked up to make sure it was moving. When he looked back, Leonardo was only a few steps away and swinging. Saki stumbled backwards and brought his metal arm guard up, barely deflecting Leo's sword. He pushed the sword away but Leo was already bringing his arm back, slicing towards Saki's face.

As fast as he dodged, Saki still felt the wind from the blade pass over his eyes. He fell to all fours and used his arms to brace himself as he mule-kicked Leonardo. The hit threw Leo back down the hall, but as Saki watched, Leo turned in mid-air and landed on his feet, his sword hand outstretched to balance himself. Saki stared. It wasn't that Leo had righted himself but the way he'd done so that disturbed him. Instead of a steady turn, Leonardo had thrown one shoulder around, practically jerking himself about face and landing catlike without even watching where he was landing.

The elevator door finally opened but the Shredder couldn't help staring at Leonardo as he stood up, his head still bowed, breathing easy. From his past encounters with him, Saki knew Leo should have been panting for breath, nervous, always on the defensive. The loss of his normal eyes was unnerving enough. Saki wondered if he tore off that mask, would Leonardo's black eyes would remain?

He stepped into the elevator and hit the button for the top floor. The doors closed quickly, and he heard Leonardo running towards him. For a moment he thought Leo might make it and he even saw the tip of the sword just as the doors closed. The turtle pounded on the doors and raked the sword across their metal surface, but he couldn't get through. Saki let go a breath and leaned against the wall.

He bolted upright when Leonardo screamed. Unnaturally loud and shrill, it sounded less like his enemy and more like an enraged animal. The scream echoed through the elevator and made the metal walls vibrate. It even reverberated through his chest and made his whole body run cold. As it died away, Saki found himself breathing a little faster. He put a hand to his forehead and actually found beads of sweat. With a curse, he slammed his fist against the wall.

Damn mutant. Even in deadly combat, he'd never felt fear. Why had that scream frightened him? He'd faced thousands of men before but...Saki looked up. Men. He'd faced men before, but that scream sounded like an animal deprived of its meal. He'd never been on the menu before. His lips pressed into a thin line. He'd make that mutant pay for making him afraid.

The shriek of twisting metal drowned Leonardo's scream and Saki wondered what was happening down there. The elevator was nearly fifteen floors up already. Why would the turtle bother to pry the doors open only to climb more than a hundred feet, especially when there was another stairwell down that hall? The noise stopped suddenly. The only other sound was the elevator's steady hum. He looked up at the row of numbers across the top of the door and watched as they clicked one by one. Soon he would reach the top floor and then he'd show that creature the meaning of fear.

Somewhere around the fiftieth floor, he felt soft vibrations in the elevator walls. With every passing floor they grew stronger, as if something constantly struck the shaft, coming closer with each strike. After seeing Leonardo's previous jump, the answer was obvious. Leonardo had forced his way in and was coming for him. Somehow he was coming up the sheer walls. Saki drew his sword. The elevator now seemed very cramped.

*

Back inside the stairwell, Raphael turned the corner on the last floor, nearly colliding with the mass of debris and mortar blocking the next flight. He stared at the pile of bricks and metal pipes, pausing to catch his breath. No way Leo had gone through that, he figured. That left only the door slightly ajar beside him. He tried to push it the rest of the way but something on the other side was stuck against it. With a grunt he put all of his weight against it and shoved, squeezing through the narrow space.

When he came around to the other side, he saw two foot ninja on top of each other in a heap, their crumpled bodies bracing the door. He bent and grabbed one's shirt, yanking the body out of the way so his brothers would be able to pass through. The body flopped sideways like a rag doll and air rattled out of its lungs. Raphael looked around. From the positions of the dead, Leonardo had killed them before they could get far. Some of them still held their throwing stars and swords. The first ninja must have been hiding on the ceiling and been cut apart, falling on top of the one behind the door before Leo impaled him. Stepping over and on top of them all, Raphael finally coming to the last door. When the handle wouldn't turn, he kicked it in.

Silver canisters lined the wall. A faint hiss came from one of them and he stepped closer, one hand over his mouth as he held his breath. Experience with Donatello's experiments had taught all of them not to breathe in when strange gasses filled the air. He turned the small handle to the right, tightening the valve. At once the hissing stopped.

That done, he stepped over to the shattered mirror and looked inside. It reminded him of the police interrogation rooms he saw on Mike's cop shows. Gingerly stepping over the broken glass, he waved away the last wisps of smoke lingering inside. The smoke smelled vaguely of gun powder, probably the source of that popping noise he'd heard earlier. Since there was no damage, he guessed it was like one of Leo's flash bombs.

"Which means Leo couldn't see," Raph said to himself. He followed the trail to the next hallway and gasped.

The elevator doors were halfway open, but unlike the rest of the tower, this hallway held no traces of blood save for the smears on the sides of the elevator doors. He put his hand on them and found them to match his own handprints. Footprints like his own, stained red but drying brown, stopped at the doors and repositioned themselves to better brace for the struggle to pry them open.

"He forced them," Raph said to himself, matching Leo's stance. It put one shoulder against one door and his hand against the other. He easily pushed them a few more inches, but he was amazed that Leonardo had been able to do so. Where had he found the strength after months of struggling with mere paint cans? There was a stairwell not ten feet from the elevator. Why hadn't Leo taken the stairs again?

"Raph," Mike yelled from the room with the canisters, "Raph, wait up!"

Raphael stood back from the doors and watched his brothers run towards him, both of them cleaner than himself. "Took you long enough."

"Raph," Don said, grabbing his shoulder and looking at his eyes, "you didn't breathe in any of that stuff, did you? Are you seeing anything strange?"

"Besides this whole place?" Raph said. He batted Don's hand away. "What gives?"

"Those canisters are filled with tryptamine alkaloids," Donatello said. When Raphael didn't react, he explained. "It's a hallucinogen, psilocybin to be exact, the same stuff you find in amanita mushrooms. I don't know how they managed to make it airborne but--"

Raph groaned and looked at the floor. "You mean Leo's even more out of his mind now?"

"Maybe. If the canisters were open before, Leo might have breathed in a lot. I don't know for sure how it would affect us--"

"The first scream," Raph said softly. "That's what it was. He must've seen something really bad." And after all this time, he could hazard a good guess as to what.

"Hey," Mike said, "what's with the elevator?"

"Leo went in," Raph said. "I don't think he'd of gone through the shaft if the elevator was there. He's chasing someone."

"Three guesses as to who," Don said.

"So now what?" Mike asked. "Up after 'em?" He started for the open shaft but Raphael grabbed his shoulder and stopped him.

"Uh-uh," he said. "There's no way I'm climbing up in the dark after him, not now. We'll take the stairs 'till we find another elevator. Let's go."

As they entered the next stairwell, Mike glanced around the walls and steps. There were no bodies, no splatters of blood. Without corpses along the way, he felt like they were in the wrong place. "How'll we know where they are?" he asked.

"I'll bet they're going all the way to the top," Raph said. "Shouldn't be so hard now without anything to trip over."

A loud pop made them all look up. Several floors above them, a red florescent light flickered wildly and then went out with another pop. A few seconds later, the next floor went dark, and so on down towards them.

"Aw shell," Mike winced, "it really is just like that movie."

"Donnie--" Raph started, but Donatello was already digging through his bag.

"Way ahead of you," Don said and pulled out three flashlights. "It'll be a little awkward holding them, but at least we'll be able to see." He handed them out just as the lights around them went out, going down as if sinking.

With all three lit, they had a circle of light that ended at Mike's heels. Michelangelo quickly stepped next to Donatello and refused to look down the stairs. They followed just behind Raphael, careful not to lag. Mike glanced at Donatello.

"If the power's out, are we gonna have to climb all the way up these stairs?"

"I hope not," Don said. "With any luck the elevators have a different power source. Either way, I doubt we'll be able to take this one stairway up. We'll have to find another one when this section of the tower ends."

Mike nodded once but he couldn't help wondering how his big brother was doing if the elevator he was following suddenly stopped.

*

Several floors higher, Shredder paced his small compartment. The vibrations were just a few feet below him but he had no way of stopping Leonardo. For a moment the soft thuds stopped, and then a heavy weight hit the bottom of the elevator. The turtle was right beneath him now. He stared at the floor, wondering if Leonardo would find a way through the solid undercarriage. With any luck he'd be trapped under the elevator when it stopped, and then Saki could simply send it back down to the last floor, crushing his enemy beneath it.

Halfway to the next floor, the lights flickered and went out as the elevator slowed to a stop. He froze. Had they lost all power now? Damn elevator, it was between floors. He could force the doors open easily but knew that the moment he did so, the turtle would be right on top of him. Leo might even come up fast enough to back him into the elevator itself. Maybe he could escape out of the hatch above--

The doors started to open anyway. Leonardo was coming through regardless. He watched them open an inch at a time, listened to the metal grind in protest. White light gleamed through the small opening. At least this floor still had real electricity and not red backup lights. Saki gripped his sword a little tighter and waited. Whoever actually opened the door would be vulnerable either to a first attack or to allowing his enemy to slip by. If he could get through the doors first, he could escape the elevator, turn and dodge Leonardo's attack. The space between the doors was nearly wide enough now. He knelt and put his hands on the doors, feeling the vibrations as Leonardo strained to open them. The same moment that the vibration stopped, Saki sprung forward, grazing his shoulders on the doors but getting through, rolling on the floor and coming up with one word ready.

A sword crashed down on his and slid down to the hilt, nearly knocking it out of his hand. Saki pushed against Leonardo's katana, throwing him back and following after with a slash towards Leo's throat. Instead he gashed the wall as Leonardo rolled away, coming back up with a single cut towards his face that missed. With both swords to one side and too close to stab at each other, Shredder took the opportunity to reach out his hand, snatching off Leonardo's mask and tossing it aside.

Leonardo yelped and backed away, one hand over his eyes. Saki stepped backwards despite himself. As fast as Leo had moved, Saki had still glimpsed his eyes, as pitch black as the mask itself. For an instant he wanted to know what had happened to his enemy, curious as to what had driven him from the light, but the instant passed almost immediately. He could ask the other three turtles when they arrived. Right now he had the chance to destroy the one who'd nearly killed him and he advanced on his enemy, chuckling lowly as Leonardo stumbled backwards, trying to find his way back to the darkness of the elevator shaft. Blinded and appearing to be in pain, Leonardo couldn't see Saki's katana raised into the air, aimed at his throat.

TBC...