Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Fan Fiction ❯ Bad Places ❯ 10 ( Chapter 10 )

Part 10

The floor was metal and cold against his face. Mike sat up, blinking fast and wondering who'd turned out the lights. As his eyes adjusted, he noticed something glowing on the floor and he crawled closer, putting his face right in front of it. It looked like veins running along the edges of the wall, and they glowed in pulses, like a heart beat. They also gave off heat, and he backed away again, too unnerved to touch it.

"No way you're Leo," came a voice, and Mike turned towards the voice, trying to see the person talking. "You breathe too loud. So who the hell are you?"

"Huh? I'm his youngest brother, Mike. Who're you?"

"Name's Felix. Guess he didn't mention me."

Mike edged away from the voice. It sounded a little like the actors playing psychos or drill sergeants on tv, only there was no hate in his voice. As Felix spoke, he figured out what it was. Felix' voice was pure anger, not irrational, not insane, just angry.

"He hasn't spoken much at all," Mike said. "Don't take it personal."

"I'm not. Get up." Felix had never let go of his knife and now he only tightened his grip. He completely ignored his gun. "You got anything sharp on you?"

"Nope, just nunchucks."

"Nunchucks...yeah, I remember those. Bruce Lee had 'em in that movie. You that good?"

"No one's as good as he was, but I'm pretty close." Mike stood up and walked closer. The light from the floor was starting to work now, and he could make out Felix's silhouette. All he'd seen before was a flash of a big black man in dreadlocks and fatigues, hardly unusual in itself, but the long knife with the wickedly serrated edge glinted in the faint light.

"I hope so, for your sake. If you're Leo's brother, maybe you fight as good as he does. Stay close, keep quiet. And for the love of God, will you stop breathing so loud?"

"Uh...okay..." Mike hadn't known he was. He slowed his breathing down and hoped that did it.

Following just a few inches behind, Mike quietly closed the door and looked around himself as much as he could. This had to be the place Raphael had described, but Leo had never mentioned the glowing veins along the floor, or the howls and screeches that echoed all around him. In the dark, all he could see were the pulsing glow and the faint outline of a corner farther ahead, turning into a new corridor.

"Oh hell," Felix whispered, and Mike looked around. A moment later, he heard the scrape of claws on metal, hungry growls, and it was coming closer.

Felix started running and Mike did his best to keep up, occasionally bumping against walls as he followed the sound of the man's feet, unable to see at all as they ran. When they reached the corner, he realized it too late and ran into the wall, turning his face aside just before he hit. Already Felix' footsteps were hard to hear over the scraping and howling. It sounded like Leonardo sharpening his swords, the high pitched screech of metal on metal, and he put his hands over his ears.

A hand fell on his shoulder and spun him around, covering his mouth before he could scream. The hand was familiar, three fingered, and he noticed the glint of a sharp edge, much longer than Felix's knife. Somehow in the darkness, Leo had found him.

"Quiet," his brother whispered. Mike thought he saw him looking back and forth down the hall, but it was hard to tell if he saw movement or just imagined it. "Raph, grab his hand and follow us."

Raphael's hand, much stronger than Leo's, took his wrist, and now he was yanked down the hall. Resentful and relieved at once, he kept his mouth shut and ran at full tilt, hoping Raphael could see their brother better than he could. Probably, since he didn't hit another wall.

The next corner they turned, they ran into the first wave, their snarls deafening. For all the dark, Mike could see the creatures enough to recognize their outlines. Big ones on two legs, small ones on four, and all of them glinting in the faint light. He wondered how they could be shining until he realized those were teeth and claws. Raph's hand disappeared as he pulled both sais, and Mike drew out his nunchucks.

After the first hit, he realized they weren't going to be enough. There wasn't enough room to generate enough force in his swing to break bones. He cracked one of the big monster's jaws, sent another spinning into the wall, but they were too resilient to be deterred by crushed bones and the little ones moved to fast to target, let alone hit. One of them skittered across the ceiling and leaped at his face, jaws wide. Mike stumbled back, too slow to do anything.

Halfway to him, it jerked in midair, all four legs flailing as it screeched. A spray of blood hit his face and he tried to wipe it off, starting to tremble as shivers ran through his body. The end of a sword held it aloft for the instant it took to kill, then slashed downward, cutting another in half even while throwing off the first one. The hall filled with the screams of the dead and dying, and then Raphael grabbed his wrist again, pulling him along. He thought they were close to a broken water pipe or a running faucet, but as he splashed through the hall he realized that the puddles weren't of water.

He closed his eyes. They were useless now anyway. The most he could do for now was run and hope he didn't slow them down. His first fight, and he'd hardly helped at all. Despite himself, he started to slow down, the chills in his body turning into nausea. Raphael yanked his hand, forcing him faster.

"They're down this way, too," Felix said somewhere ahead of him. "They're everywhere."

"We've got to get to a room," Leo said. "I think the screamers've been breeding."

"Not much else to do here," Felix said.

Mike realized they were whispering, and he only then noticed that the halls were quiet again, that the screaming had stopped. More creatures still moved down the same corridors but they were wary now, the killers had come back. He let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. Quiet had never been so comforting.

"Or...wait," Felix said. "There weren't screamers on the bottom levels, only feeders. Maybe we're higher up."

"I hope so." They rounded the next turn and faced another batch, hacking and cutting. There weren't as many this time, and Raphael never let go of him.

The screams seemed to be louder, the scrape of metal more shrill. He could actually hear Leo's sword cutting through flesh and bone, hear Felix's knife stabbing through a stomach and ripping through the soft tissues. He pressed a hand over his mouth and hoped he wouldn't throw up. Noise, everything was noise. Was this sensory overload? Was that even possible in the dark?

"I think I see a door," Leo yelled over the screams. "Straight ahead, on the left."

And they proceeded to carve a path. The smell of blood filled the hall, and Mike wondered if it would flood like in the Kubrick movie with Jack Nicholson. What was the title? Why was he even thinking of that? Home, he wanted to go home right now. And Donatello, where was he? Was he somewhere in the dark? That staff would be useless here, no room to swing, no way to slash with it. Oh God let him be back in Stockman's lab. Dreaming, this had to be a nightmare, and the screams wouldn't stop, they beat on him worse than fists--

The screams stopped but the echoes lingered. Expecting to be pulled again, he looked up as Raphael simply held still. Felix and Leo didn't move. All he heard was blood dripping down the walls. The pulse of the luminescent webs was louder, pounding almost. After a few seconds he noticed that the pounding didn't match the webs' pulsing, and that it was coming closer. The metal floor started to vibrate.

"First demon," Leo whispered. "It's between us and the door. Mike, Raph, stay behind us."

No answer. Mike wondered if Raph was in shock, too, but the hand never loosened its grip.

And then the demon roared like seven thunders.

Felix and Leo didn't hesitate, he heard them running to cut off its attack. Mike put one hand on Raph's shoulder and drew closer. He couldn't see the web of light farther down the hall, the thing had to be blocking them with its sheer mass. And it was fast, the tremors made by its claws slamming the floor rattling the whole hallway. How could Felix use a knife against something like that?

With so little light, he only saw motion, not the shapes, but he heard them working flawlessly together, their teamwork honed over three months of constant warfare. And in this moment, knowing what awaited him if they failed, killing was a good thing. Blood flowed past them, up to his ankles, followed by his brother's joyful yell "got it's throat!"

A moment later, the floor rattled as it crashed down, a last breath rasping through its throat, and then it came to rest. Instead of stopping, his brother kept cutting, and the wet splat of blood and flesh hitting the floor told him what they were doing. It was too big to climb over. Raphael took his shoulder and led him through, helping him through the carcass, still hot and steaming in the cool air.

If there was a room down this hall like Leo had said, they didn't stop. Drunk with death, Felix and Leo continued walking, leading them down the silent corridors. The only sound was their own breathing, and he absently remembered to breathe quieter. The darkness began to swallow him.

Now he understood. The silence was worse than the screaming; this game of waiting left him empty inside, as if killing was the thing real.

Inside Stockman's warehouse, Donatello sat down on the floor, breathing a sigh of relief. The black dots were gone for now, although he wondered what was so special about the one black dot the white dots had taken so long to get around. He picked up the clipboard again and looked for an explanation.

Stockman's handwriting was worse than Raph's, and he briefly considered calling April over to help decipher the notes and methods, but he rejected that immediately. If he couldn't have it figured out before the night was out, then he'd call her, but he wanted her as far from this place as possible. If Leo and Felix had come back, then other things might be able to follow through as well.

Somehow Stockman had created his own pocket dimension. Donatello's loathing mixed with admiration. The technology was pure genius, if insane. He followed equations and theory until he decided that it wouldn't help him and flipped through the pages, searching for a fail safe function or an escape subroutine. He found it on the second to last page, detailing a way to destroy the structure within the dimension, collapsing it and killing everything inside. That would have to wait until everyone was back. He spotted the mechanism that would return them to the real world, but he groaned when it he saw it had to be operated from the inside. No remote save there.

There had to be something he could do. But as he went through the paperwork and slowly admitted that he'd have to search the computer files instead, the most he could do for now was call Splinter and tell him what had happened.

And not to expect them home today. Outside, the sun rose over the horizon, beautiful and clear.

TBC...