Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
--W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming
Casey goes up to the training room and finds Raph at the folding table, working on a
circuit board, trying to hold something steady.
"Shit," he says under his breath as Casey comes in the door.
"Want a hand with that?"
"Sure," Raph says, not looking at him. "I don't know how the hell Don manages to hold
these stupid tiny..."
Casey grabs a chair sits across from him, takes the sliver of metal, holds it steady.
"Thanks," Raph says, picking up the solder gun. "How ya feeling?"
"I'll heal," he says.
Raphael gets the solder started, dots a tiny drop on the sliver. They work in silence for a
few minutes.
"I don't get it."
Casey asks, "Get what?"
"You told me you were never gonna be like your dad. You were never gonna take out
your shit on your wife, or your kids, or anybody."
Casey looks over at him, says, "Yeah?"
"Well, what the hell do you think you're doing? I don't know what crawled up your ass,
but you've been making April's life a living hell for months, and since Don
disappeared..." He puts the solder gun down, stares at it.
"Shit, Casey, I could really use a friend right now, we all could, and all we get from you
is..."
Casey puts his hand out, touches Raph's shoulder, and Raph's face eases a little. "I've
been an asshole. I know."
Raphael looks up with half a smile. "I'm not gonna argue with that."
Casey takes his hand away and they go back to work. After a minute, Casey asks, "Did it
ever occur to you guys that it would've been a little easier for me if you told me Don was
gay before he disappeared off the freakin' face of the earth?"
"Look, for one thing, we thought you knew. The rest of us knew, and by the time we
realized you didn't know, you were busy being an asshole, and we figured when
you did find out you'd be obnoxious about it, and that Don was not the whole
friggin' reason you and April were fighting..." He looks up a Casey, feigns disbelief.
"Shit, Casey, whaddya know? We were right!"
Casey looks down at the circuit board. "So what is this, anyway?"
"Don had it almost done-- don't remember what he called it-- basically, it makes your
hacking about ten thousand times harder to trace. If it works. He told me what he had
left to do on it, so if I do it right, we should be okay."
"When are you gonna move?"
"Len's going down pretty soon. We just gotta figure out who's gonna do it."
"You want him."
"Oh, yeah," Raph murmurs, leaning down to get a better look at the board. "They're
afraid I'll flip out and puree the sonuvabitch."
"When are you getting Don out?"
"Weekend after Christmas. We figure security'll be down to the bones then. Less people
to try to get out, too. We're gonna quiz that Ed guy on the details tonight...hate waiting
that long, though."
"Not much more'n a week."
"It's still too friggin' long."
Ed dreams that someone's holding him down, wakes with a start and finds the edge of
a knife at his throat. He goes to scream, but he's gagged, and he struggles against
whatever's holding him down.
"Panicky, ain't he?" a voice says; he assumes it's whoever's holding the knife.
"Calm down and we'll take the gag out," another voice says.
He stops thrashing and the gag comes out.
"The money's in the safe--"
"We don't want your money," the second voice says calmly. "We want a favor."
"I'm not doing you thugs any favors--"
"You don't understand," the voice answers. "You're gonna do us a favor and we're gonna
be nice and keep you alive."
"Who are you? What do you want?"
"You can call me Mike. We don't want much. All you gotta do is answer a couple of
questions and take some work home tomorrow night."
It hits him then. "This is about Project Chelonia."
"Hear that, bros?" The first voice again, oozing sarcasm. "He catches on fast."
"She told me I wouldn't get hurt," he says, his voice edging on hysteria.
"She doesn't even know this is happening," a third voice says. "We're not going to hurt
you unless we have to, so stay calm."
Jane's been in the institution for two days now on anti-delusional meds, and she's
already figured out how to lie to the psychiatrists about what's really been happening. "I
don't remember the animal, well, now," she tells them, "but I can remember the anger I
felt. I've done experiments before, I understand the need for it, I'm a scientist, but
this...this creature was being horribly mistreated. They couldn't control it, so they
drugged it. The drugs were so strong that its reflexes were completely wrong, so they
gave it different drugs to try to control the delay, and when that didn't work, they tried
electric shocks...I remember that. There's no doubt in my mind that that
happened."
"So you wanted to liberate the creature, knowing it would be hostile?"
"It...it killed one of my co-workers, escaped its cage at one point, but it never touched
me...it doesn't operate out of rage, rage is a human trait-- like any animal, it'll only kill
when threatened. Animals don't kill for revenge; they only kill to try to protect
themselves."
Raphael's going over the rooftops and he hears a scream, muffled, then stopping.
It's at one of the crappy motels; when he finally gets to the room it's all over, the kid's
dead and the guy who bought him's catching his breath.
Insomnia had been gnawing at him even before Don disappeared, worse than usual, and
he's gotten used to the city's back alleys, the strange dramas of the drunks and the junkies
and the whores and the insane, and a few of them even know him now, they'd never seen
his face but they recognized his coat and the way he moved.
He knew this kid. He'd told Raph he was fifteen but Raph figured he was a couple years
younger.
And a dim light goes on his mind, and he figures it out. And it's perfect.
When they break the door down a couple of days later, it takes them a while to figure out
that that mass of blood and tissue is really a whole body.
Len gets up, switches on the light, pokes around for a vein, shoots up, is getting back
into bed--
Ahem.
He whirls around and sees the shape: can't be him, he's at the university...
"His brother," the shape says. "We drew straws. I got lucky."
The room's still spinning. Bad sign.
Something's wrong with the horse.
"Lucky?"
"Mmm."
"What-- why are you here?"
"To watch you die," he says calmly.
"I-- I'll call the cops," Len says, backing toward the nightstand.
Raphael shrugs his shoulders. "Go for it. You really think I'll stick around to see if
they'll arrest me?"
"I'll call an ambulance."
"Sure."
He picks up the phone, dials 911, takes him a second to make out the numbers but it's not
that bad...
Pain hits his body and he drops to his knees.
Through the fog of pain, he can hear the operator saying, "Hello? Hello?"
"Yeah," he manages to sputter, "I got some bad shit. Yeah, I need some help...I don't
know, but it's bad..."
Raph stands up, tightens the gloves, opens up the window to the fire escape, crawls
outside and watches.
Len curls up on the floor. He's vomiting when the paramedics come in. As they're about
to drag him off, one of them makes the fortunate decision to look in the bathroom.
Raph can make out the first words: "Holy Christ..."
The New York Times, December 23, 1993
Professor's Sordid Death Leaves Campus In Uproar
MANHATTAN-- When Dr. Leonard Johnson announced a research project, the saying went, the _________ University administration rejoiced. Johnson had become an
international celebrity in the world of biology for his uncanny knack for discovering new
species in areas from Central Park to the Amazon rainforest. Any project of his was
virtually guaranteed financial support, and his name was an important part of _________
University's prestige, especially in the biological sciences. As a result, the university
featured Johnson in practically every campus publication, from their annual Alumni
Updates and fundraising letters to their glossy admissions brochures.
Which has given _________ University a rather unusual public relations problem.
Johnson died yesterday of unknown causes. The loss of a respected professor is not that
uncommon; what makes _________ University's situation unique are the circumstances
surrounding Johnson's death. When Johnson called the paramedics he blamed his
symptoms on a bad dose of the heroin he'd been addicted to for years. Inside his
apartment, the paramedics found the body of a fourteen-year-old male prostitute. Though
authorities are still investigating the strangulation, most of the available evidence points
to Johnson.
April stares at the article for a long time before she realizes Shadow's tugging at her
hand. "Mommy, mommy, what's wrong?"
"Nothing, honey," she says. "Just something in the news, that's all."
The attendant notes that Jane's gotten quite docile since Christmas. "At the current rate of improvement she could easily be released by the first of January," she writes. "The district attorney should be pleased."
"Are we in?" Raph asks.
"We're in," Leo says. "I'm gonna start on the guards; you get the explosives ready."
The plan is to scare them out first, use the fire alarms and a couple of smoke bombs,
make it look like an animal-rights group snuck in and trashed the place. If you trip the
alarms, most of the outer doors will close but not lock, but the inner rooms will lock
solid, and that's where Don is. Leo starts the 'fire' in the women's bathroom nearest the
back door, decides to let it spread slowly through the place.
"Get a smoke bomb over there, will ya?"
"Done."
They'll get everyone out they can, open the cages, then blow the inner rooms. Looks
good on paper, but Leo's out of his league trying to get the computer to follow his orders,
and there are gonna be some things that won't match up.
He can't worry about it now. He focuses on the screen, setting off a second alarm,
watching the next security guard leave. The cameras are already looping over
themselves, playing last night's tape over and over again.
At least that's what he hopes they're doing. Doing this without Don is like trying to stand
with one foot missing; it takes a lot of practice time they don't have.
Mike has the easiest and the worst job: getting Don.
Jane and Ed had warned them it wasn't going to be pretty, but Mike had never imagined it
would be this bad. He turns the IV off first, like Leo told him to, stares into the
cage.
There's nothing left of him, flesh hanging off the bones, his eyes half-open and
empty.
The stench is close to unbearable; they've got some kind of tray at the bottom of the cage-
- like you'd use for a hamster or something-- and it hasn't been changed since Friday
afternoon.
"Donatello," Mike says gently. "I'm here."
No response. Mike can see where the restraints have dug into his skin, his wrists and
ankles raw, they didn't slap this much shit on Hannibal Lecter, for crying out loud.
"Hey, Don, it's me," he says, unlocking the cage. "We're gonna get you out." He tries
humming something while he gets the restraints, trying to calm himself down, but he's so
close to the edge it only makes things worse. He releases the first wrist and caresses it,
trying to get some fresh blood into the hand. Don groans something he can't catch and
pulls his hand back. "C'mon, work with me," he says, trying to sound positive, trying to
stop his voice from breaking. "We're gettin' outa here." He unlocks the second restraint
and kneels down, trying not to breathe in any more than he can help.
"Who--" Don creaks, and Mike looks up from the ankle restraint.
"What, Donnie?"
"Who are you?"
"That's the last security guard," Raph says, tracking the little dot out the door. "One
person left."
"Who is it?"
"Dr. Alphonse Chretien," he reads off the screen. "In charge of special
projects...including Project Chelonia."
"Shut him in."
"Leo?"
"They'll think it was an oversight," Leonardo says firmly.
Raph pushes the button.
Al hears the door clink shut behind him, but he figures it's just a draft; it's a fairly new building, but the air circulation's kind of weird, doors are always opening and shutting without notice. He hears the bolt slide in, and that worries him, but he dismisses it. Just hearing things, he figures. The chemical analysis is almost done, and he's very pleased with the results; just what Jane and Ed had predicted.
Raph and Leo start opening cages, they avoid the diseased animals, but the rest of
them are home free, dogs and cats and rats-- "just what New York needs," Raphael
mutters, "more rats running around--", mice, anything and everything including a few
species they don't even recognize, the result of some kind of genetic manipulation, and
they pull the plug on the ones beyond help, the ones without lungs or brains or spinal
cords.
"That guy said Don wasn't in good shape, what the hell did he think about
these?"
Leo answers, "I don't think we wanna know."
April's promised the computer system will be fried by midnight, they're having her do
it over Don's system from Casey's car, accessing a phone booth across town by remote.
Leo hopes to hell that invention of Don's works. Ed planted a virus in the system a week
ago and between that and the purge program April's cooked up, there shouldn't be enough
data left to even prove that this lab existed. They get into the room where Don's being
held, find Mike walking him around the room, supporting most of his weight for him, not
that there's that much weight to support--
They stop dead once they get a good look.
"Take it easy, guys," Mike says. "He's a little zonked."
"You want me to take him?" Leo offers.
"We're fine," Mike says. "Can we go now?"
"How fast can you move?"
"Not very."
"Then we better get started," Raph says. "We'll cover you."
Al's thirsty. He checks his pockets for a quarter, two quarters, a dime, two dimes--
he's got enough. There's a soda machine right around the corner; he's just gotta open the
door.
Funny. It must have locked.
He takes his keys and tries to open the door; no dice.
He's just about to call the guards for assistance when the explosion throbs through the
building.
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