Chapter Text
In the unlit safety of his train car, Casey pulls his laptop closer to him on the bed. The laptop had been gifted to him by Master Donatello when Casey had expressed interest in starting online classes once things had settled down. An older but still efficient model, Master Donatello had told him apologetically, like Casey knew enough about 2020s-era technology to be picky about it. Master Michelangelo had taken it upon himself to decorate the laptop with hand-made stickers as he gave Casey a run-down of how to navigate the operating system, carefully placing anthropomorphic animals and cartoon lightning bolts across the back of the laptop and beneath the keyboard. After asking Casey if he was right- or left-handed, he'd stuck a small, sparkling orange heart to the left of the touchpad with a particular kind of carefulness that didn't escape Casey's notice. Master Michelangelo didn't say anything about it, so neither did Casey.
This family seemed to be good at that, Casey thinks. Not talking about things. He supposes he must have gotten it from somewhere.
Now Casey traces the sticker as he looks at the USB stick in his hand. It's slim and cool to the touch, the Genius Tech™ logo printed on the side. If he's honest, he's afraid of what he'll find when he plugs it in. Terrified, actually. His Master Donatello's death was still a raw wound in his side, a smarting, rudely scarred lesion. To a young Casey, Uncle Donnie had been a fleeting spectre that rarely left the lab they'd cobbled together in the Brooklyn base, but he'd also been kind, and attentive, and loving in the way that he knew how to love best.
It was only later, toward that awful end, after Uncle Donnie had escaped from the Technodrome, that there'd been something to the softshell that began to leave Casey feeling a little unsettled. Later, much too late, when Sensei would leave Uncle Donnie's lab ashen-faced and furious, when Sensei and Tío 'Angelo would have hushed arguments in the war room where Uncle Donnie's name would slip oil-spill-slick beneath the door, when Casey would see how Uncle Donnie rejected more and more of his mutant body in favour of Krang tech modifications, Casey would understand why.
Casey would understand everything when he watched Uncle Donnie blow himself up in the Rhode Island colony, his eldritch remains indistinguishable from those of the Krang's.
The Hamatos hadn't spoken of Uncle Donnie after that.
Casey takes a long, deep breath. He jams the USB into the laptop's port.
The screen flashes purple, the Genius Tech logo burning into Casey's eyes. He blinks past spots to find a single folder open on his desktop: "Contingency 5.12_CJ Jr. Variable." Casey's heart thuds against his chest, fingers hovering over the trackpad. Nothing's changed but you. He double-clicks on the first file.
And then he's filtering through pages upon pages of information. There's DNA and blood sample analyses, transcripts of dictated lab notes and their accompanying audio files. He finds heavily censored reports from the EPF, some scrubbed footage of the Invasion. The swooping sensation in his stomach only starts when he moves on to the technical drawings of what looks like the Technodrome, rendered with chilling accuracy. The feeling grows when he finds the schematics and designs for some kind of hardware update to Master Donatello's tech vambrace, a redesign that would make it look uncannily similar to Uncle Donnie's vambrace, and it becomes worse when he skims through a meticulous plan that has words like "infection" and "colonisation" and "eradication" in it, becomes a yawning, gaping black hole in his very core when he finds a twelve-page last will and testament of Hamato Donatello, dated to two days ago and addressed to Casey Jones Jr.
—Casey. Sensei's hand, heavy and cold where it grips his shoulder. The slider's eyes are wide and crazed with grief, with rage where they bore into Casey's. When you're done saving the world, do me a favour. The hand, vice-like, bruising. Casey buckles beneath it. The Krang hounds, screaming, the white-hot sizzle of Tío 'Angelo's remains, the blood spitting from between Sensei's lips. Grab a slice! The force and rush of the throw, the scorching-crackling of the time gateway enveloping him, the bright red light of the heavens—
Casey slams the laptop lid closed. He presses the heels of his palms to his eyes and chokes back the wild, animal feeling of despair that suddenly threatens to engulf him.
—The hand, the weight of it on his shoulder. I don't want to lose you! His fingers barely span the width of Sensei's wrist—
He inhales through his nose once, sharply, ignoring how his breath catches on a sob. He holds the breath, viciously digging his palms into his sockets until he sees stars. When the burn of his lungs grows unbearable, when the tension in his shoulders and his chest builds and stretches and pulls until he's a rubber band overextended and about to snap—
He exhales.
He exhales through his mouth hard and fast, driving the feeling from his body just like Tío 'Angelo taught him to all those years ago. He exhales and exhales until he's hunched over himself, lightheaded and gasping, until the urge to vomit overwhelms the urge to scream.
The laptop whirrs gently in the quiet of the room.
Casey allows himself exactly one minute to get his sh*t together. He may not be many things, but in this he's an expert. He knows how to compartmentalise what overwhelms him, how to consolidate what can be made useful of a wreck. There was no room for despair in the Resistance and there's no room for it here. And Casey can be useful, he knows he can. What's a bifurcated time branch but another chance to redeem himself?
Nothing's changed but you.
His vision is spotty and swaying by the time he finally manages to lower his hands and open his eyes, but it's enough. It has to be enough. He has to be enough this time.
When he reaches for the laptop again, he doesn't hesitate.
It's 3AM when Casey approaches the doors to Master Donatello's lab. The others are already asleep in their individual quarters, Master Leonardo restlessly so when Casey had poked his head in to check. Casey had lingered at the slider's door, watching as Master Leonardo had tossed and turned and muttered, the sheets twisted around his legs. His face had been pinched in sleep, mouth set in a troubled line. It took more effort than Casey could have anticipated to prise himself away.
Now he feels only dread and determination in equal measure as he steps up to the lab doors, USB stick in one hand and the other hanging loose at his side. There's a tightness under his skin, a friction clinging to him from a lack of sleep, from too much adrenaline and not enough output. He wishes, selfishly, that he had his staff, if only for the familiarity and comfort of having it between his hands. With his staff he's certain of himself, confident, quick among the dead—the miracle child of the Resistance; Sensei's ideal soldier. But there's also something nauseating about the thought of bringing a weapon to talk with Master Donatello, somebody he sees as family, as clan-kin. Talking with clan-kin doesn't need a precaution, he reminds himself. Master Donatello isn't a threat, he tells himself.
Not yet, something soft and insistent at the back of his head warns. His hand clenches and unclenches around empty air. Not yet.
He's barely raised his fist to knock before the lab doors open, cold air rushing past. Immediately his forearms break out into goosebumps, a shiver passing through him. Outside in the hallway, he steels himself. He breathes slow, even, his jaw set, his back straight. The darkness of the lab yawns out before him. He steps into it.
The doors hiss shut behind him, sealing off any and all sound and light and warmth from the lair beyond. He stands in place until his eyes adjust to the near darkness, until he spies low, neon purple and blue bleeding out from beyond. Until he sees the figure sat in the artificial halo of the lab's core, washed pale and indistinct beneath the matrix of screens and displays, watching him.
Silence but for the hum of machinery. Casey's fist tightens around the USB stick. Master Donatello's gaze ticks to the movement, back to Casey's face. The light reflects strangely in his eyes.
"You read through it," Master Donatello states, rupturing the silence.
"I did," Casey confirms.
"And?"
Casey takes a steadying breath. He thinks of the sunset, of amber light and cool rooftop breezes, of the burning touch of his Sensei's hand on his shoulder.
"I'll agree to your terms, but only—" Casey continues firmly when Master Donatello begins to shift in his seat, "—only if you answer some questions first."
Master Donatello stills, considering. The machines around them drone their low-frequency calculations, a hundred unblinking eyes and bodies watching—always watching—in the darkness where the core's light can't reach. They and Master Donatello observe Casey in a way Casey refuses to acknowledge makes him feel cornered.
"Alright," Master Donatello eventually agrees, leaning back into his seat. Casey thinks he sees one of Master Donatello's brows quirk up. "You can come closer, you know."
Casey doesn't want to do that. He pushes himself forward, moving until he's only a couple feet from Master Donatello but no closer. The distance isn't lost on the softshell, who's brow only rises higher.
"So?" Master Donatello prompts. "Your questions?"
Casey reminds himself to breathe. He lifts the USB stick into view. "Why come to me with this?"
"Because you're the only one who understands this whole situation, obviously." Master Donatello flicks his hand dismissively. "Next question."
"No, that's not—" Casey stops himself, shoves down the reflexive frustration that threatens to flare. He reminds himself that he's overtired. He's stressed. He's at a disadvantage here and he can't afford to get angry in the way he had with Master Leonardo, not with Master Donatello. "What I mean is what do you want me to do about 'this whole situation,' Master Donatello?"
Master Donatello stares at him. "The terms I outlined in the contingency plan make it quite explicit what I want you to do about 'this whole situation,' Casey."
"But why me?" Casey gestures toward the softshell. "My knowledge of the Krang is probably far less comprehensive than yours given that—well—"
"I was a spaceship?" Master Donatello supplies dryly, recalling Master Michelangelo's words. Something about the tone cuts Casey wrong, finds that very same tender, exposed part of him that Master Leonardo had found and picks at it. "Yes, I know. But this isn't about your knowledge of the Krang. It's about having a man on whom I can rely to ensure my contingency plan is carried out knowing what's at stake if it isn't."
"But nothing has to be at stake," Casey argues. "It's still early days. We can come up with some other solution."
But Master Donatello is as cool and immovable as the machinery around him. "There isn't one. I've anticipated and accounted for every possible outcome. According to the numbers—and numbers never lie—the only solution is the one you have in your hand."
Casey clenches his jaw, reminds himself to keep calm, to remain level-headed even as the slow-roiling anger stirs. He's so f*cking tired.
"With all due respect, Master Donatello, we stopped the Krang before—"
"Contained them," Master Donatello corrects sharply, eyes flashing. "We contained the Krang. Whether it's the Prison Dimension or Agent Bishop's Cabin in the Woods-style containment centre, the fact of the matter is that the Krang can't be stopped, only contained."
"They can be destroyed—"
"No, their numbers can be temporarily taken out. They're a highly advanced organic colony species; if one of them is blown up, another assumes their place. So, unless you have some kind of portable deus ex machina on hand to exterminate the whole Dante-damned colony at once, you can only pick them off enough to give yourself time to contain them. Biologically, they outpace death. They can't be stopped, simple as that." He punctuates his point with a shrug. "You of all people should know that."
In the end, it's the shrug that does it. It's the flippancy of it, the blatant indifference to the reality of the situation and to Casey's badly hidden concern, his outpouring of desperation and foolish hope and so, so much love that he practically aches with it that finally snaps something vital from its resting place in Casey's chest. The past few months come crashing down around him, tearing what tenuous hold he's had on his emotions clean from his hands so that he's adrift, untethered, a single, screaming point caught in the ruthless fury of his own personal riptide. His next words are out of his mouth before he even registers that he's speaking.
"Then how the f*ck are we supposed to stop you, huh?" he spits, venomous and white-hot. "You're just going to strongarm me into agreeing to let you kill yourself and then leave your brothers to the clean-up? Again?"
His words lash against the lab walls, needle-hooked and piercing. Master Donatello sucks in a sharp breath. It's the loudest thing Casey's ever heard.
Casey jolts into his body for what feels like the first time in a decade. All at once he's acutely aware of himself, of Master Donatello sitting wide-eyed in front of him. Whatever festering, blistering rage had overtaken him turns cold and heavy in his stomach.
"I—" Casey stumbles, breath catching in his throat. He's back in his bedroom only hours ago, despair a terrible, rearing thing in his chest. "I didn't mean—Master Donatello, please, I didn't—"
"You did," Master Donatello interrupts, cutting Casey off. Master Donatello clears his throat, looks away. "You meant it."
Something passes over his expression then, fast and devastated.
"You mean everything you say, Jones," Master Donatello says, staring at a far-off point in the darkness. He grips the arms of his seat. "You're as incorrigibly earnest as 'Angelo, and just as bad of a liar." A laugh, short and without humour. "Truly, two blinding, brilliant, dum-dum sunspots of the apocalypse. I'm glad you had each other, in the end."
Casey's stomach lurches. "What?"
Master Donatello glances back, and Casey feels horror bristle up his spine when he recognises a different Master Donatello meeting his gaze. For a moment it's like the earth has tilted on its axis. Like Casey's turned his head too quickly and the resulting vertigo has resolved itself into him peering sidelong across the smooth double barrel of the space-time continuum, finding an older Master Donatello seated in his younger self's place. Something's wrong, a thought at the back of his head presses. Beneath the stillness, the precision of muscle and mind, Casey sees an old exhaustion, a terrible, awful resignation in the face of a terrible, awful inevitability on Master Donatello's face. Something's wrong, the thought urges.
—Casey. Uncle Donnie, alone and unmoving in the bloody centre of the Rhode Island colony's labour camp. Above, heaving and screaming, a mass of Krang, descending. Casey, pinned beneath rubble and dirt. Tell him it wasn't his fault. Uncle Donnie's fingers poised above his vambrace. His death, already named, timed, and signed off by his own hand. This was all by design. Uncle Donnie, resigned. Casey, reaching out, bloodied hands. Casey, you should look away now. Casey, howling—
"I didn't want to die, Casey," Master Donatello says in a voice that shouldn't yet be his, in a voice Casey hasn't heard in years. "I was so afraid of dying, but I did it anyway. How absurd is that?"
He laughs again, louder, older, something manic clipping at the edges of the sound, his dark, dark eyes creased at the corners from the force of it. His hands are white-knuckled around the seat's arms.
"It was the bravest thing I'd ever done," he continues. "The most selfishly selfless act I could conceive of to protect everyone. And yet—ha! And yet, the thought of doing it all over again has me sh*tting myself. How absurd is that?" He shakes his head, gaze drifting back to the darkness. His shoulders still tremble with laughter even as his next words grow strained, grow quiet and trembling. Terrified. "How f*cking absurd is that?"
Casey doesn't understand. Casey understands too much. There's a buzzing sensation beginning to build at the base of his skull, in his jaw, in the fleshy spaces behind his molars the longer he looks at the person seated in Master Donatello lab. He knows in the fundamental, intrinsic way of most animals that he's seeing something he shouldn't be seeing. That he should run, that he should find cover, away away away. He knows this, understands it absolutely how only the lived experience of the impossible can make a person understand. But once more he's unable to move, pinned in place where the double barrel of the continuum presses hard and cold to a single pulsing point beneath his breastbone. For the first time in a long time, Casey feels real fear.
The name crawls out of him. "Uncle Donnie?"
But Uncle Donnie—and it's him, it's unequivocally, impossibly him—doesn't respond. Casey watches as the laughter dies a molecular death, fading from the creases of Uncle Donnie's eyes and mouth, his furrowed brow smoothing as he stares out into the darkness. Slowly, slowly his grip on the arms of the seat loosens, knuckle by joint by ligament, his body settling into alien stillness. His expression folds into something awfully, absolutely blank, and suddenly the body in the seat is neither Uncle Donnie nor Master Donatello.
Horribly, Casey is reminded of corpse bloat, the aftermath of it, when the body is scraped clean of its essential mass. A vessel, empty, with none of the identifying markers that had once signalled it as living, as whole. As Hamato-clan.
The buzzing sensation grows stronger, grows piercing, the shriek of high-frequency static, like something screaming from beyond the stars. Something's screaming. Something's screaming, something's wrong—
"You can't stop the Krang," the body says, the resonance of its voice hollow and haunting, an echo at the end of the universe. Casey can feel it resounding in his head, in the tissue around his lungs. Dark eyes slide to Casey's. "But you can stop me."
Cold realisation sweeps through Casey. He takes an involuntary step back. "I'm not killing you."
And the body honest-to-God rolls its eyes in response. Abruptly, cruelly, the earth rights itself and Casey is once more standing in front of a sixteen-year-old Master Donatello instead of a corpse, instead of a man that should have been dead a long, long time ago.
"Scoff," Master Donatello retorts. "As if you could kill me. Please, let's not dabble in hypotheticals any more than we already have tonight."
And Casey doesn't know if he should be insulted or not, too busy reeling as Master Donatello continues to talk as if nothing had happened, as if he hadn't just recalled his own future death to Casey. As if Casey hadn't seen Uncle Donnie right there, right in front him, heard him, felt him speaking to Casey as if he were alive. As if he were dying again.
"—quite frankly the only person capable of taking me out is myself, and you know I know the best way to do it."
"The contingency plan," Casey guesses faintly. Blackness is starting to creep at the edge of his vision. The buzzing is a full-body sensation now, the screaming reaching a feverish pitch until he can feel it penetrating bone, puncturing past brain matter and down through the soft palette.
Something wet and warm drips from his nose down onto his upper lip, his chin. He reaches for it, finds red on his fingers. Oh, he thinks, staring at the blood. He should probably sit down.
Master Donatello is still talking, drawing Casey's eyes back to him. The softshell is now pulling up purple schematics and designs from his tech vambrace, the screens flickering with activity around him. He seems entirely unaffected by what just occurred. Was he even aware of it happening, Casey wonders? Because Casey definitely was—aware of it, at least, though whether it had really happened or not is suddenly and alarmingly up for debate. He should really, really sit down.
"Precisely. Now, as I previously stated, I need you to make sure that the contingency plan is carried out to the letter when the time comes—"
"Will you tell them?" Casey interrupts him. "Your brothers?" His voice is muffled in his ears, words thick and metallic in his mouth as more blood drips from his nose. "Or can they just expect to find what's left of you?"
Master Donatello's head snaps up from the schematics. He draws short. "Casey—"
"Please tell them," Casey says, and oh, he's on the floor now. His body must have made that decision for him, he thinks distantly. Master Donatello makes a startled sound from somewhere above. The blackness at the edge of Casey's vision is void-like and creeping, and he's seized, abruptly, with a clawing sense of urgency. "Tell them," he insists, voice slurred and bloody in his mouth. "You need to tell them. It's—I can't—please, Sensei can't see that again—"
Master Donatello is next to him, his hands cradling the back of Casey's skull, mouthing something that Casey can't make out. Did he hit his head on the way down? Casey doesn't remember, doesn't care, knows only the screaming and the barrel of the continuum digging into his breastbone and the wrong something's wrong nothing's changed it should have changed you should have CHANGED—
One of his hands manages to find Master Donatello's arm, clumsy fingers wrapping around his thin wrist. Casey barely registers Master Donatello's flinch at the touch, at the blood he's smearing on him, too busy trying to speak, to make Master Donatello understand before the blackness takes him, before the safety is notched back and time's unflinching mark pulls the trigger and finally takes Casey out for good.
"—he can't see that again—" like a chant, like a prayer, words and blood pouring from between Casey's lips as he stares up into the yawning infinity of the cosmos in Master Donatello's dark, dark eyes, "—he can't see that again, he can't see that again—"
The screaming crescendos. The blackness tugs, hard. Then nothing.
The kneeling body splitting open, parasitic Krang-flesh and soft innards spilling hot and steaming out onto the blasted concrete. He smells it instantly, the unmistakable smell of cooked flesh, of electrical wiring burning. And the blood—
"All by design," Uncle Donnie tells him from Master Donatello's mouth. His sightless eyes stare up at the red sky, upper body tipped back and plastron gaping open like a mouth. His arms are prostrate at his sides as if in rapture, in ecstasy. "The atom has split, and we are the time bomb."
There's so much of it. The blood. It's on Casey's armour, in his hair, in his mouth. Warm. Acrid. Coppery.
"All by design," Uncle Donnie repeats, breathless, transcendent. Transcendent. Transcendent. "The atom has split, and we are the time bomb."
Casey's fingers, dragging through the blood. He rakes his bare hands through it, through the dirt, through organs and flesh and singed purple fabric. Beyond, the Krang wail their inevitable approach.
"How wretched," Uncle Donnie says to the burning sky. "How divine."
"—busted his damn skull on my lab floor. I wasn't fast enough—"
"—did what you could, Don—"
"—bleeding so much—"
"—looks worse than it actually is with all the capillaries—"
A hand, cool and familiar, brushes across his forehead. There are hushed voices above him. One is younger and different but still warm, and the other is younger but the same but still cold and a dead man. A dead man, Casey remembers, eyes fluttering as consciousness pinpricks at him, a dead man that spoke to him of atoms and held his head and bled out onto concrete and was so terrified of dying despite already having done it—
When Casey's eyes crack open, the dead man is staring down at him.
"Oh, good, you're still alive," Master Donatello says from the dead man's mouth. That's not right. "'Nardo would have skinned me if I'd somehow managed to kill you."
A snort from Casey's left, the hand leaving his forehead. "Bet."
Casey squints up at the fluorescent lighting of what he slowly recognises as the infirmary. There's a low, dull throbbing in his head that seems to be doing its best to pulsate throughout his whole body, made worse by the light. The slightly blurry form of Master Leonardo leans over him, mouth quirked in a half smile.
"How're you feeling, bud?" he asks, voice light.
Casey groans. "Like if beef tartare had feelings."
"You know what beef tartare is?" Master Donatello asks sceptically from somewhere. Master Leonardo jerks his elbow back and there's the sound of a hard smack. "Hey—ow!"
"Ignore him," Master Leonardo tells Casey, winking. The gesture draws Casey's attention to the fact that he's not wearing his mask, which is strange. Then Casey realises that Master Leonardo isn't in his gear at all, actually, but is instead in his pyjamas, stupid night cap and all. "He's cranky because he thought he killed you."
"I was concerned, thank you."
"What happened?" Casey finally asks, pushing himself up onto his elbows. A stupid decision, he realises, as pain starbursts across his skull at the movement. It rips a strangled sound from his throat, his vision dipping, and then there are two pairs of hands hastily pushing him back down into the cot. "f*ck, my head—"
"That'll probably be the concussion, bud," Master Leonardo's voice swims out to him. "Let's maybe wait on the sudden movements for a bit, yeah?"
Nausea rolls through him and his stomach clenches. He gags before he can stop it, and two of the hands tear away from him as if burned, Master Donatello's voice cutting through the quiet.
"If he hurls, I'm not staying, Leo."
"Literally two minutes ago you refused to leave 'cause you thought he was dying."
"That was before Vomitello entered the picture."
"Yeah, well, 'Vomitello' can put his big boy booty shorts on while I get pain meds and check on the patient."
Casey swallows against the nausea and presses his palms to his eyes in an attempt to stop the world from spinning out from under him. There's the sound of shuffling, the opening of cabinets, the rattle of bottles. He feels the presence of Master Donatello make itself known next to him.
"Potential vomit aside, the nausea and head pain are unsurprising," Master Donatello's voice states. "You did hit your head rather spectacularly back there."
"Back—where?" Casey grits out. "I don't remember anything."
"Concussion, babe." That's Master Leonardo again, back at the cot. He gentles his words for Casey, making Casey at once grateful and incredibly embarrassed. "Sorry, bud, but we gotta go through the whole concussion rigamarole now that you're awake. You probbles know the drill. There'll be water and tylenol in it for you at the end, should help with the beef tartare feelings."
Casey can only grunt.
Master Leonardo carefully helps him sit up, rearranging the pillows behind him until he can stay upright up on his own and lowering the lights so that he doesn't feel like head is about to split open. Casey does, in fact, know the drill and does his best to get through the examination and questions with minimal flinching, though he sucks a breath through his teeth when Master Leonardo feels the back of his head and hits a very tender spot at the base of his skull. Master Leonardo murmurs apologies and finishes the check-up with his usual efficiency. He presses a glass of water and some pills into Casey's hands when he's done.
"Defo a concussion," Master Leonardo tells him, standing back. "And you're gonna have one hell of a bump on the back of that pretty little head of yours. But!" he adds, smiling crookedly. "You didn't break skin and don't have any other concerning symptoms, so I'm not too worried."
"So, bed rest and no missions for at least fourteen days?" Casey estimates, to which Master Leonardo hums an affirmative. Casey tries to ignore the surge of panic at the thought of being grounded for so long. "Alright."
Master Leonardo's eyes are on him as he pops the pills into his mouth and takes a small sip of blessedly cool water. He cringes when he tastes metal.
"Was I bleeding?" he asks. He touches his face and grimaces when he finds a path of something sticky encrusted above his upper lip.
"Nosebleed," Master Leonardo confirms. "Started just before you passed out, according to Don." He's still wearing that easy half-smile of his, but there's a new, calculative slant to his voice that Casey doesn't miss. "You guys get too hyped up about whatever super-secret science-y thing Don's got going on? Too much uranium talk or something?"
Casey's gaze slides to Master Donatello. Master Donatello, for his part, doesn't react to the underlying question, though Casey has no doubt that he hears it. For all that Master Donatello struggles to read people, he's as finely tuned to Master Leonardo as he is to his tech.
"My work does have that effect on people, yes," Master Donatello drawls. He splays a hand theatrically on his chest. Unlike Master Leonardo, he's in a hoodie and leggings and retains his mask. Casey's drawn to the brown-red patch on the cuff of his sleeve, recognition flickering. "An unfortunate by-product of my genius."
It's easy bait and they all know it, but Master Leonardo must be more exhausted than he's letting on, because his tired eyes glint as he glances at his brother. "Nosebleeds and concussions, huh? Now is that from your 'genius' or from your latest failed project blowing up in someone's face?"
"Gasp! An uncouth and personal attack on my professionalism! I'm afraid your sleep deprivation has impacted your memory, brother mine, for I have never once had a project 'blow up' in someone's face." An indignant sniff, and then Master Donatello drops his hand and the act. "But seriously, 'Nardo, you should get back to bed. Your eyebags don't fit your whole nouveau glam-rock aesthetic."
"Um, excuse me? These are Summer 2022 Armani eyebags. Very chic, very now."
"In grad student circles, certainly," Master Donatello scoffs. He wraps his hand around his brother's shoulder. "Get some sleep, dum-dum. I've got things from here."
"You sure? You were the one half-convinced that you somehow killed Junior over here—"
"Who's still here," Casey interjects.
"And now your surprisingly sound medical expertise has cleared him of my admittedly overzealous concerns," Master Donatello says effortlessly over the both of them. He squeezes Master Leonardo's shoulder, his voice lowering. "Seriously, 'Nardo. I'll keep an eye on Junior from here on out. Thank you for coming when I called."
Master Leonardo leans away from Master Donatello's touch, brow raised. "Esperar, you're thanking me?" He narrows his eyes. "Do you have a concussion I don't know about?"
Any softness that Master Donatello had possessed promptly vanishes. "And that's the last time I try to show you genuine appreciation. To bed with you, ingrate."
Grasp tightening around Master Leonardo's shoulder, Master Donatello all but hauls his brother to the infirmary doors and unceremoniously throws him through them. Master Leonardo has barely stumbled back upright, protesting loudly, before Master Donatello seals the doors shut and locks them with a tap of his vambrace and a curt "goodnight!"
And then it's just them.
Master Donatello wavers for a fraction of a second at the doors, expression tightening. Then he schools his expression and swiftly turns on his heel toward the cot. He drags a stool over to Casey and sits down, where he deposits his gaze on the wall at the opposite end of the room. For a moment there's nothing but the low buzz of the lights and the whirring of the AC between them. Casey searches for something to say, tapping his fingers anxiously against the glass in his hands, but Master Donatello beats him to it.
"I am genuinely glad that you're alright," he says. He breaks his stare-down with the wall to focus on his hands on his lap. "You gave the both of us quite the scare back there."
Casey watches him fiddle with his hoodie sleeve, the one with the dark spot. It looks a lot like dried blood. "Did you really think that you'd killed me?"
"In my defence, you did just start bleeding and then immediately drop comatose to my lab floor. You'll forgive me if I thought the worst had happened."
"What did happen?" Casey presses. "The last thing I remember was going to your lab. We were—talking? I think?"
When Casey tries to pull at the memory, all that he can reach are the blues and purples of Master Donatello's lab. The hum of machinery, the cold of AC. A person, seated, looking at him. Something about the person he recalls making him uneasy, but the more Casey tries to pry at the feeling the more nauseas he feels, the image itself fracturing between his fingers like, like—
Atoms, his thoughts supply. The time bomb.
His head throbs.
"We were talking, yes," Master Donatello agrees carefully. "You came to ask me some questions."
"Questions," Casey echoes, brow pinching. He thinks he remembers something cold and small in his hand. A USB stick? Yes. More of the memory resolves itself, blues and purples sharpening. Casey starts to feel nauseas from more than just the concussion. "Oh. The contingency plan. I wanted to ask about it."
Master Donatello hums. His stoicism is betrayed only by the fine line of tension that's been running through his body ever since Casey first woke up, a whipcord-tautness that pulls at him as if restraining something back. Master Donatello continues to pick at his sleeve, fingers skittering around the dried blood.
Casey pushes on. "I asked you about—about the Krang," he says. His hand tightens around the glass. Unease slithers through him.
"Yes."
"And you said that they can't be stopped. Just contained."
"Yes."
"We got into an argument, I think."
"Yes."
Casey shudders on an inhale, the rest of the memory slotting into final, terrible place. "And then you were there."
Master Donatello just lifts his head to look at him. The dark, dark eyes of the dead man that had sat haloed in the lab's core, had spoken to him of atoms and time bombs, had bled out right in front of him all those years ago—years to come—meet his own. Uncle Donnie never did blink much.
It's like a punctured lung, the confirmation. Breath and spirit leave Casey all at once.
"Oh," he rasps. And then the tears come, hot and sharp, and he chokes on a sob. "Oh, God."
"Yes," Master Donatello says, and it's enough.
"You're here." The agony of the realisation is acute, rending. Casey can barely speak from the sudden force of it, powerless and disbelieving and eyes stinging with tears. "How are you here? I watched you die."
The word cracks where it meets air, splinters and snaps ugly and jagged down the middle. Master Donatello's expression flickers at the sound of it. Another cruel bifurcation.
"I watched you die," Casey gasps, chest heaving. Around him the world blurs, the taste of blood growing sour in his mouth. "You died and there wasn't even enough of you left of you for a funeral and I—and I—and Sensei—"
And then there's a real crack, loud and piercing, and the glass in Casey's hands shatters.
Master Donatello launches out of his seat with a curse. Casey stares down at his lap in shock, knocked out of his breathless haze by the sudden, bright pain lancing through his palms. He watches, bewildered, tears streaking down his face, as blood wells up from between his closed fingers and into the sheets. For a moment, he's too stunned to fully process what happened.
"Newcomb's sweet ass, Jones!" Master Donatello exclaims from next to him. He's gaping incredulously at the blood and glass, hands frozen in the air in a half-aborted gesture. "Must you insist on bleeding profusely every time you're in my vicinity?"
Casey drags his gaze away from the blood pooling in his lap to Master Donatello as the softshell rushes for the sink, wrenching open taps and cabinets and unleashing a string of blistering expletives as he goes. The cursing only grows in volume and intensity by the time he's marching back to Casey's bedside, arms loaded with a bowl of warm water, disposable gloves, and medical supplies. His expression is absolutely murderous—the sheer force of which is enough to jolt Casey somewhat out of his stupor and for him to press back into the pillows as the supplies are dumped onto the bedside table.
Too quick for him to react, his hands are snatched up and prised open, Master Donatello's now gloved, nimble fingers fishing the larger pieces of glass out of Casey's palms and dumping them into the bin by the cot. The onslaught of rebukes barely lets up even as Master Donatello yanks Casey's arms over the side of the cot to pour the bowl of warm water over his bloody hands, scowling as the water splashes against the tile and his legs.
"Reckless, foolish imbecile," Master Donatello seethes as blood and glass are flushed from Casey's smarting palms. The water runs pink across the infirmary floor. "Please, I insist that you accrue more injuries while under my care, Jones. Nothing would bring me more delight." Enraged eyes meet Casey's. "That was sarcasm, by the way, in case your apocalypse-fried brain didn't catch it."
Casey winces. "Think I got it." Master Donatello only snarls and dumps more water on his hands.
Once satisfied that majority of the glass has been flushed, Master Donatello sets aside the bowl, kicks his abandoned stool closer, and begins to attend to the cuts, tech goggles over his eyes. The cursing reduces to stern muttering as he treats Casey's hands with exacting, ruthless scrutiny. Casey stays quiet throughout, still too overwhelmed to do more than watch and try to gather himself.
He feels a little like he's seven again, back when he'd scraped his palms up while out on one of his first scouting missions. He'd been tearfully trying to hold back a wail as Sensei had washed out the gravel and dirt and blood with the last of his water pack, Sensei muttering soft, nonsensical things as he worked. His hands had been so big around Casey's tiny ones—
"Alright," Master Donatello says, straightening. Casey blinks back into the present, his vision blurred with fresh tears. He hadn't even realised he'd started crying again. He blinks past them, forcing himself to focus on Master Donatello's voice. "The lacerations were shallow enough not to warrant stiches," Master Donatello is saying. "I've applied non-stick gauze to stop the bleeding, and you should change them and the bandages every twenty-four hours to prevent infection. The scarring should be minimal with proper treatment." Master Donatello pushes his goggles onto his head with the back of a gloved hand, clicking his tongue. "The glass likely endured more damage than you did."
Casey stares down through tears at his newly bandaged hands. The wrapping is precise and almost perfectly symmetrical, because of course it is. He feels a little hysterical looking at it.
"Thank you," he manages, voice thick. "I'm sorry about the glass. And for getting more blood on things."
"Hmph." The reusable gloves are snapped off and thrown into the bin, followed by shuffling. "Here, take these. I can only handle so many of your bodily fluids at once."
He's handed several tissues from the box on the bedside table. Casey bites back a flinch at the ripe burst of pain in his hands as he gingerly dries his eyes, careful not to get the bandages wet. The world slowly, unsteadily starts coming back to him.
"In any case," Master Donatello continues, now busying himself with throwing towels down onto the wet floor, "I suppose that if we're in the business of apologies, I should say sorry too."
Casey pauses wiping his eyes. An apology from Master Donatello is, in his experience, a bad sign. "For what?" he asks cautiously.
"For causing you distress," Master Donatello says plainly. Another towel is tossed to the ground before the unused bandages are collected. "For this whole situation. For what happened, in the future, and for what will happen now." Dark eyes flick to Casey's and pin him place. "For Leonardo's death."
Casey sucks in a breath. "You didn't cause it."
"Not directly, no," Master Donatello agrees, focusing back on the bandages. "But my future self certainly contributed toward the circ*mstances that caused it. Being at the helm of the Technodrome is a two-way tango, after all."
At that Casey stiffens, skin prickling. All at once he's alert, his bleeding palms forgotten. "What do you mean?"
Master Donatello doesn't respond immediately. He expertly rolls strips of bandages across his fingers to form neat spools, then sets the spools down in an ordered line in a clean spot on the bedside table. Unused patches of gauze are stacked, bottles of ointment and rubbing alcohol capped. That done, he begins to gather the bloodied paper towels and cotton balls from the bed and surrounding space, expression unreadable throughout. It's only then that he begins to speak.
"Think of the Technodrome as the cerebral cortex of the Krang colony," he begins. "It contains the memories and thoughts of the colony across millennia, and those that merge with it have access to what is, in essence, a superhighway of classified information."
"Which is how you got all that recon intel in the future timeline," Casey fills in, not liking where this is going. "You were able to infiltrate their plans from the inside."
"Correct. From the inside. By merging myself neurologically with the ship."
"Neuro—it had access to your thoughts?" Casey demands. Cold panic rushes through him at the thought. His hands curl into fists without thought, ignorant to the pain that slashes through them. "The Krang had access to the Resistance's plans?"
"No," Master Donatello says firmly. "Not with the inhibitors I had in place. I was hasty, certainly, but not stupid. I had already theorised how the Technodrome functioned, and I had adjusted my plans and body accordingly prior to merging with it. That being said, what the Technodrome did have access to, what it left behind was more—complex."
Master Donatello goes quiet then. His hand lingers on a heavily bloodied paper towel, eyes settling on the deep red penetrating white. That fine line of tension is back, holding him rigid and in place as he stares down at the paper towel, thumb hovering above where it's the bloodiest.
"'Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster,'" he eventually says in the quiet of the room, more to himself than to Casey. "Nietzsche. Jenseits von Gut und Böse. I wonder how he would account for cosmic indifference, if he was there as I was, at the twin helm of creation and destruction. Monstrosity doesn't seem so bad when your very existence means nothing in the first place."
A new, unfamiliar note enters Master Donatello's voice at this. It's a subtle inflection, barely there, but Casey knows Master Donatello across two timelines, knows his vocal idiosyncrasies as surely as he knows every nick and groove in his staff, and he doesn't recognise this.
Master Donatello pauses, jaw tight, body still. Casey watches him, steadily becoming aware of the squirming, awful feeling that's been steadily hooking itself into his stomach since Master Donatello first started talking. That animal instinct crawls through him, heightens his awareness. He can feel his heartbeat in his head, in the soft junction of flesh between his jaw and throat, in his scraped-up palms. He's seven years old again, the apocalypse in his periphery, but Sensei isn't here, and he's not sure who—or what, something traitorous at the back of his head whispers, or what or what—is at his side right now.
"My hypothesis for this whole situation," Master Donatello says, "is that my and my future self's connection to the Technodrome across multiple timelines has had more of an impact on the continuum than previously anticipated."
He presses his thumb into the bloody centre of the paper towel, testing. Red weeps up from under the pressure, creeps into the cotton and green skin. Casey is reminded of Rhode Island, of razed red earth and punctured organ meat. Atoms. The blood welts like a wound around Master Donatello's thumb, who watches, unmoving, as he speaks.
"During the Invasion," he says, "when this current version of me merged with the Technodrome, I was given access to that same cerebral cortex. I saw everything and then some. At the time, this should have been statistically impossible. However, since we as a group had already destabilised the timeline and invited the impossible in, it was more than possible—it was true.
"Consequently, I theorise that when I was merged with the Technodrome, I was able look at the colony's memories across time rather than from inside it. As such, I remembered everything that the Technodrome remembered, both past and future." There's a pause between his words, weighted. Inexorable. "But it also remembered me."
The tension he holds is audible now, leaching into his words even as delivers his explanation with the detached objectivity he reserves for his work. It sharpens the unrecognisable note in his voice, reinforces its unfamiliarity. Master Donatello presses his thumb harder into the paper towel, skin whitening around his claw from the force of it, watches as more blood ripples across his skin, down his knuckle. Casey stares, transfixed, the squirming in his stomach growing, festering with dread.
"I'm calling the phenomenon we encountered earlier a 'temporal haunting,'" Master Donatello states. "Causal loops and fixed points state that I shouldn't have these memories, so when I try to reconcile my current memories with ones that I should no longer have but have already had in the doomed timeline, the continuum overcompensates in trying to correct itself and I—" a breathless sound, so minute Casey almost misses it, "—I also exist across time rather than inside of it."
Blood streaks down Master Donatello wrist and disappears beneath his sleeve. Master Donatello stares after it, bowstring-tight and blank.
"What the Technodrome did was ontological, Casey," he says, and the anomalous note unravels itself, unfurls tentacled and gibbering into something cold and old and dead at the edge of Master Donatello's words. It makes the hairs on the back of Casey's neck stand, makes the base of his skull begin to buzz warningly, make the lights in the room seem to falter. "It was beyond meaning. It was divine design, beautifully and unerringly rendered. It was magnificent. It was transcendent."
Transcendent. Transcendent. Master Donatello stares and stares with those dark, dark eyes at the line of blood streaking down his hand and wrist, the red stark and terrible against his skin. When he speaks, Uncle Donnie's voice slips out of his mouth, aberrant and perfect. "It was devastating."
Casey stares, heartbeat thrumming, sick with the unknowable.
Abruptly, the softshell releases the paper towel, letting it tumble into the bin, and wipes his hand on his leggings.
"I'm haunting myself, Casey," he declares, brusque and final, speaking as Master Donatello once more. All at once the buzzing in Casey's skull ceases, the breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding staggering out of him. "And because you're part of the paradox, you're also affected by the temporal hauntings, hence the incident in my lab tonight. An addendum, then: I'm haunting the both of us, from in and across the continuum." He gives one last, perfunctory swipe of his hand across his leggings. The skin around his claw is stained red with Casey's blood. "Mazel."
Casey doesn't know what to say to that, doesn't know where to even begin with this information. All he knows is the taste of old blood in his mouth and the pulsing in his straining fists and the terror making its home in his chest.
"But what does this have to do with Sensei?" Casey forces out. He hates how shaky his voice sounds, how unsure he suddenly is of everything. He refuses to think about the presence that lingers just beyond Master Donatello's words, refuses to acknowledge how the shadows in the room seem to skitter and writhe in its proximity. He clings to his training, to his instincts as a soldier. "What does this have to do with the contingency plan?"
Why do you have to die twice because of it? he doesn't ask.
Master Donatello levels him with a calculating look. "Even now you put the mission first. Ever the child soldier, I see."
"Not a child," Casey snaps immediately, fear lashing at him. "Tell me what this has to do with the contingency plan."
Master Donatello only raises a brow. "Sensitive subject, then. Very well. I said helming the Technodrome was a two-way process, correct? Well, neural inhibitors can only do so much in the long-term, particularly against Krang infection. I tried to alter what Krang DNA and technology I could to lengthen the time I had before total colonisation, but that too had its consequences."
Brutal, mercenary workshopping of rapidly failing body parts, mystic steel and Krang armour more flesh than Uncle Donnie's own. It was the first time that Casey had shied away from Uncle Donnie's infrequent touch.
"I knew that soon enough the inhibitors would fail—I would fail. You must remember that the Technodrome was still intact when I escaped from it, so it was inevitable that the Krang would know what I knew and that I was infected. They knew it was a matter of months before the infection colonised my brain, and then they would have unfettered access to the entire scope of the Resistance. I refused to let them have that chance."
"So you were infected in the doomed timeline," Casey summarises, gut churning. "And here—now—you're infected again. And the infection—"
"Is growing," Master Donatello says grimly. "It's taking all I have to keep it from forming a neurological link. Neural inhibitors prior to merging would have given me more time, but—well." His mouth tips upward, mirthless. "I wasn't privy to that kind of foreknowledge until recently."
"But—but it's different now," Casey tries to insist, a little desperately, and some of the soldier slips into the seven-year-old child. "Yes, you're infected, but we destroyed the Technodrome in this timeline. We don't have to worry about the Krang getting access to your thoughts and—and jeopardising the Resistance here. We just need to focus on clearing the infection. That has to mean that things will be different this time, right?" He searches Master Donatello dark eyes, feels the desperation climb, grow jagged, the hot, squirming, twisting in his stomach hooking itself deeper. "Things will be different, right?"
"That's the thing, Jones," Master Donatello eventually says, something unreadable passing through his expression. "We didn't destroy the Technodrome, just like we didn't eliminate the Krang. The Technodrome is still alive."
Casey blinks at him. He almost laughs out of pure, hysterical reflex, but it catches in his throat.
"It's—what?" A shaky, disbelieving smile curls at his mouth. "That's—no, that can't be right. It was cut in half, right through the root! I saw it! No biological entity that we know of can survive that, alien or not. It's—it's just not possible!"
"You forget," Master Donatello says, "that we invited the possible in that day. It's alive, Jones." He doesn't blink. "You're looking at it."
The smile dies. The universe as Casey knows it fractures a little more.
"What?" Casey breathes.
"It needed a host," Master Donatello says, dark gaze drifting to the shadows of the infirmary. "It knew it was going to die. I was the closest living thing to it, and it remembered me. It remembered my neural pathways and my arteries and my marrow. I was familiar. I was known. I was useful. So it stayed and made in me its home. That's why I have to die, Casey," Master Donatello adds suddenly, viciously, gaze snapping back onto his. His tone turns unyielding. "If I can't fix this, then I have to die. Where there's a helm, there's a helmsman. And I refuse to become the thing that kills my brothers. Again."
"You're not just infected," Casey realises. "You're—"
"The centrefold of the cosmos," Master Donatello finishes. "The helm and the helmsman. I'm sorry to say that when you thought you left the apocalypse, dearest nephew, you simply stepped back into the same one. 'Angelo couldn't have known, nor could have 'Nardo. This was all by design."
—Uncle Donnie's fingers above his vambrace. This was all by design. The kneeling body. Casey, blood in his mouth and on his hands. Casey, you should look away now. Casey, howling—
Master Donatello looks him dead in the eye. His gaze is unflinching, consuming, the cosmos whole and absolute within the confines of a dead man's body—at once Master Donatello and Uncle Donnie and the corpse-flesh of the universe, the triple-faced being of the inevitable itself.
"Nothing's changed but you, Jones," he says, that old and cold and dead thing in the periphery of his words, hollow, resounding, descending, as the Krang had. "I'll most likely die, as I did before. You'll continue onward, as you did before. The world will turn until the centre no longer holds, and then this singularity will collapse, as all singularities did before. And in the meantime, we'll do what all Hamatos do best: sacrifice every molecule of ourselves in the name of duty."
He rises to his feet, smooth and flawless and unnatural. His presence is unknowable in that moment, utterly unfamiliar, a strange, alien thing at the foot of Casey's bed, a void untouched by the artificial light of the infirmary that Casey can't tear his eyes from.
"Duty is just as much a parasite as the Krang, Casey," Master Donatello says, his dark, dark eyes impassable. "It's heredity. It's a blood-borne genetic disease handed down by the century to all of us Hamatos. We would sooner garrotte ourselves than betray our clan. And I suppose I'm just another f*cking idiot too loyal to his family to break the cycle."
He moves to the infirmary doors. He gets as far as unlocking them before he turns, blood-streaked hand on the doorway. His gaze meets Casey's helpless one.
"It would be within our best interests if you didn't tell the others about this until I have more conclusive data," he tells him. "And it would be best to keep some distance between us until I find a way to negate the temporal haunting's effect." A pause, the silence between them like a gaping bullet wound. "Get some rest, nephew."
And then he's gone, and Casey is left alone in the infirmary, blood drying into the sheets.
He doesn't sleep.
"The soup okay?"
It's been three days since he was discharged from the infirmary. He's been relocated to his bed in his car with a rotation of visitors, who bring him food and company and near-constant surveillance under the guise of making sure he doesn't get bored while he recovers. Really, Casey can't blame them. Two head injuries and two infirmary stays in the span of a couple of weeks is a little too reminiscent of those first few days after the Invasion. He knows the attention comes from a place of care, overbearing as it is. And his visitors are keeping him distracted from the worst of his injury, making the aching head and nausea and stinging palms a little easier to ignore. But Casey also knows that if he doesn't get out of this bed and do something about the terror and despair that's slithering heavy and coiled in his chest, he may do something drastic.
He hasn't slept much since that night. Of what little sleep he's caught, it's been perforated by dreams, strange and terrible and thrashing. He startles awake most nights and mornings, his skull buzzing, his heart in his throat, body seized with fear. Twice now he's woken to blood streaming from his nose, in his mouth, cold and sour. He hasn't told anybody about it.
Master Donatello still hasn't come to see him. Casey doesn't know if he's grateful or uneasy.
He swallows his mouthful of matza ball soup. The chicken broth is lightly salted and aromatic with bay leaf, oregano. "Soup's great. Thanks again for making it, Master Michelangelo."
"Of course!" Master Michelangelo chirps. He's seated at the other end of Casey's bed with his own bowl, his face breaking out into a grin. He's allowed to wear his mask again, tied over the gauze on the side of his head. "I thought maybe something other than chicken noodle for today."
"It's nice. Different. How do you get the dumplings to float?"
"Seltzer and egg whites! Or baking soda in a pinch. You know the deli near us in the Hidden City? The one with the most amazing rye? The owner taught me the seltzer trick. She's great."
Casey hums. He chews through a bite of tender carrot and celery, pushes the matza balls around the broth to watch them bob in place. The soup is tasty, but the lingering nausea means he's not particularly eager to eat.
"Any updates that I need to know about?" he asks.
"Leo and Raph are still cooking up a plan for the EPF." Master Michelangelo dips his spoon around the vegetables and matza balls to get at the broth. "They're actually working together, for once. April's been trying to do recon, but she's got that big midterm coming up."
"Right. The anthropology one." He forces himself to take a bite of a matza ball. It's chewy, but not unpleasantly so. "Has S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. set up the scout drones on the Infected sites?"
"Up and running this morning. He's got a whole fleet out there!"
Casey focuses on his soup, keeping his voice even as he plots out his next words. "And Master Donatello? Is he still on research?"
"Man, I have no idea what Donnie's up to," Master Michelangelo complains, oblivious to the way Casey's fingers are white-knuckled around his spoon. "We're lucky if we see him at all. Like, I haven't even seen him use the coffee machine. Donnie! Not using the coffee machine! And I'm in the kitchen all the time. I swear, Case, if he's got his own fancy espresso machine up in his lab and hasn't told me about it—"
Master Michelangelo's voice washes over him, the words churning into nothing but noise. Nausea creeps through him, the soup turning ashy, and all he can think about is a dead man and blood in his mouth and on his hands. He has to put his bowl down when he starts to shake. He says something in response to Master Michelangelo, some kind of agreement. To what, he can't recall. Time must pass, and he must get up, lurching through the blurring vision, because the lair's nighttime lighting is on, bathing the space in soft red, and he's made it somehow to Master Leonardo's car, pushing open the doors.
Master Leonardo startles from where he's laying on his bed. He drops the comic he was reading to the covers. "Whoa, Case, you shouldn't be—"
"Needed to get out," Casey interrupts him. His voice bangs against his aching skull. He stumbles forward, barely giving Master Leonardo a chance to react before he's falling onto the bed and into the slider's side, hands fisting into Master Leonardo's sweater. "Gonna go nuts if I'm stuck in bed any longer." It's not a lie, really.
"So your solution was to stick yourself into another bed?" Master Leonardo asks dubiously, even as he loops his arms around Casey's shoulders. "My bed? Not following the logic here, bud."
Casey says nothing, just curls himself close into Master Leonardo's plastron. He presses his face to the fabric of the slider's sweater, grounds himself in the smell of grapefruit laundry detergent and rain and that awful cologne Master Leonardo got to impress Master Yuichi at the Run of the Mill. He breathes through the dread that crawls through him.
Master Leonardo's voice sounds softly, uncertainly when it's clear Casey won't reply. "Hey, you okay?"
Casey can't bring himself to answer the question, wouldn't even know how to answer the question in a way that wouldn't shatter him right then and there in Master Leonardo's messy bedroom, so he stays silent, squeezing his eyes shut as his head pounds and his stomach churns.
"Not talking right now, huh?" Master Leonardo says above him, voice rumbling through his plastron and under Casey's cheek. "That's okay. Don gets like that too sometimes."
At the mention of Master Donatello, the breath in Casey's chest catches. The stillness of the corpse in the lab's core, the impossible, transcendent entity at the foot of Casey's bed. Dearest nephew. As quickly as his hands tighten around Master Leonardo's sweater they loosen again, but Master Leonardo is dagger-sharp and notices the reaction immediately.
"Casey?" he asks, voice turning serious. "Did something happen?"
"It's fine," Casey rasps, but he can't stop the shake in his voice, the tears pricking the corner of his eyes. "Nothing happened."
But Master Leonardo is insistent, arms slipping from Casey as he makes to sit up. "Seriously, Casey, you and Donnie have been acting weird all week—"
Terror, misplaced and acute and sickening, lances through him. Casey reflexively pulls Master Leonardo back down by the sweater, wraps his arms around the slider's waist and tangles their legs together until they're locked in place. He feels more than sees Master Leonardo's surprise.
"Just—drop it," Casey pleads before Master Leonardo can speak. "Please. Not now."
Surprise gives way to dissatisfaction, thrumming hot and impatient through Master Leonardo's tense form, but he rewraps his arms reluctantly around Casey and stays silent all the same. Casey buries his head into his sweater, biting back tears.
They stay like that for several minutes, the room quiet but for the churning of the lair beyond. Distantly, Casey can hear the sound of Master Michelangelo in the kitchen, pots and pans and steady, rhythmic chopping, and further than that, if Casey strains his hearing, the sound of the projector and Master Raphael and Grandmaster Splinter's voices from the living room. Drawing his attention closer, Casey focuses on the feeling of Master Leonardo's plastron gently rising and falling with each breath, on the texture of the sweater, soft with age and frequent washes between his fingers, on Master Leonardo's cool scales against his bare ankles. Tucked away like this in the dim light of the train car, Master Leonardo a single, stable point beneath him, Casey could almost fool himself into thinking that things would be alright.
Nothing's changed but you.
"Would you tell me?" Master Leonardo asks suddenly, disrupting the quiet. Worry dogs at the heel of his words. "If Donnie's in trouble. If he's hurt or being stupid or—or if he's hiding something from us. Would you tell me?"
Casey thinks of Sensei's face when they'd found Uncle Donnie's remains. How agony had rippled through him when Casey had explained what happened, what Uncle Donnie had told him to say. He'll never forget the way Sensei's expression had shuttered, closed off, the life and light swept from him as swift and awful as his twin's death.
Casey doesn't think he can put Master Leonardo through that again.
He stares out into the dim train car. Despair is a low, pacing thing in his chest. "Yeah." His hands remain perfectly still. "Of course."
It's another mission. Casey really shouldn't be in front of this many screens right now, but with him and Master Michelangelo down and the EPF converging on two large bands of rogue Infected in Queens, somebody needs to be in the chair.
Half of the screens in the lab's core are patched into the borough's network of security cameras, the others relaying S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N.'s scout drones' remote viewing systems as they track the brothers, the EPF, and the Infected. Earlier, the scout drones had alerted them to the Infected emerging from a still-ruined apartment building in Flushing, their dwelling disturbed by nearby reconstruction efforts. By the time the brothers had portaled there, seven civilians were dead.
Casey's head pounds as he squints at the screens, fingers flying across the control panel. The commands come to him as easily as they did in the doomed timeline when he had manned Uncle Donnie's tech. As soon as he had touched the control panel over an hour ago, the entire operating system had opened up under his hands, seamlessly reacting to his commands as it would only for Master Donatello. It's taking everything in Casey's power not to think about the implications of that, about being in the lab's core again, about Master Donatello.
Master Michelangelo shifts nervously at his side, wide eyes sweeping across the flurry of footage. He has his nunchaku at his belt despite being told in no uncertain terms that he was to stay out of the fight. He's been passing his fingers over the chain of the nunchaku for the past forty-five minutes, ripe with anxiety as he could do nothing but watch.
"Infected and EPF coming in hot on the right side of the Sheraton," he murmurs.
Casey grunts and relays the information to the others. He directs a security camera to zoom onto Farrington just as several EPF agents open fire at the Infected. The artillery does little except send them stumbling back, mangled, alien bodies skittering and jerking across the sidewalk and road. Even through the slightly grainy camera feed, their shapes and movements are uncanny, their flesh alive with screaming, weeping mouths and eyes. Casey thinks of the Technodrome. He thinks of Uncle Donnie. Nausea rolls through him.
Master Leonardo's voice crackles through the comms. "One-way trip to Miami, coming up!"
A spitting portal opens beneath the agents' feet, sending them hurtling downward and out of sight. Multiple bursts of neon blue streak across the feed from the shadows, and the Infected's shrieks echo over the comms as they're doused in herbicide.
"Got 'em," Master Raphael's voice booms.
Casey catches a flash of something in the corner of the Farrington feed, and he immediately puts in a command to the system to scrub it from the footage. They had agreed that the brothers should focus on long-range attacks, both to keep out of reach of the EPF's guns and to remain as undetected as possible. Casey has no doubt that the EPF already knows the brothers exist, but the less evidence they can provide the better.
"Please tell me that was the last of them," Master Leonardo's voice pipes up. He sounds winded. Casey's unsurprised; the long-range strategy has forced them to adapt to a new attack pattern, and it's lengthened what would ordinarily be a relatively short mission. "I'm running out of ideas on where to send these assholes."
"Language, Leo."
"Yeah, yeah."
"I'm not picking up on anything else," S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N.'s modulated voice answers. "I've got a couple dudes scoping out the building the zombos came out of, but they're not seeing anything."
"Just as well," Master Donatello's voice adds, and Casey focuses very hard on the screens. "We're running out of herbicide."
"Case," Master Leonardo's voice calls out. "You reckon we're good?"
Casey appreciates the last word being deferred to him. His shoulders unwind a little at the prospect of the mission nearly being over. "Just clean-up. We need to make sure we leave nothing behind for the EPF to find. Glass, remains—it all needs to be removed."
"Ew, you mean I gotta touch the zombie goo? With my bare hands?"
"With the fancy gloves Donnie made, Leo. Stop bein' a baby and help Raph get rid of the evidence before they send in more suits."
"I'll go get some food and stuff ready," Master Michelangelo tells Casey over the sound of the brothers' arguing. He scurries off before Casey can reply.
Lowering the volume of Masters Leonardo and Raphael's voice channels for the sake of his thumping head, Casey does a final sweep of the area, flicking through the screens. He's already rerouted the police away from Flushing, giving the brothers time to work on clean-up. Hesitating, he diverts to Master Donatello's pinned location. There's a street camera off of 34th and Collins, one that looks onto a parking lot. Under the glow of the streetlamp, he makes out Master Donatello perched on the trunk of a car. The video quality is, quite frankly, sh*t, but it's good enough for Casey to be able to discern the half-empty vial of herbicide that dangles between Master Donatello's fingers, the softshell's head tilted down at it.
Master Donatello is still where he's crouched atop the car, a sharp, dark, angular thing in the derelict parking lot. He should be moving by now. They're under a time-crunch despite their tentative win, and they'd agreed to return underground as soon as they could whether the mission was successful or not. But Master Donatello remains where is, unmoving, staring. The herbicide glistens between his fingers. The light of the streetlamp doesn't quite reach him.
Casey watches, uneasy. He has a bad feeling about whatever it is Master Donatello is thinking.
He snaps back into focus at Master Raphael's voice, turning his head to the left just in time to see the air splinter with a portal. "Headin' back."
Ozone floods the lab as the portal opens. Masters Leonardo and Raphael step through, almost lost to the darkness of the lab in their new black gear—modified versions of the shinobi shōzoku the brothers wore during their fight with the Shredder, now with armoured plating. The frigid air of the lab clouds around the filter cartridges of their full-face respirators. Another precaution, this time against airborne transmissions of the Krang or EPF kind. Casey's stomach curdles at the acrid, chemical-sour smell leaching from the biohazard bags in the brothers' gloved hands.
Casey glances back at the screen. Master Donatello is no longer in the parking lot. He drags his gaze back to the brothers as the portal snaps close.
"That was," Master Leonardo announces, unclipping the respirator and pulling it from his head to reveal his sweat-dotted, pale face, "the worst. The literal worst. Are you sure we can't, like, hire a clean-up crew for this? I don't think I can handle that much goo at once."
"Raph's tummy ain't feeling too good," Master Raphael admits. Under his respirator, he looks greener than usual.
"The decontaminant chamber is at the entrance to the lab," Casey tells them. "Remember to put your weapons through too. If you can help it, try not to vomit in the biohazard bins, Master Raphael."
Master Raphael just nods, lips pressed tightly together as he makes for the decontaminant chamber. Master Leonardo is slower to follow, pausing at Casey's side, eyes flitting from the screens to him critically.
"Head okay?" he asks Casey. "Any black spots, blurring vision?"
Casey grimaces. "Just a headache. I'll lie down once I'm done here."
Master Leonardo's gaze narrows. "Holding you to that, bud." His gaze flicks back to the screens, pausing on the image of the now-empty parking lot. "You know where Donnie is?"
"On his way back, I think."
The look on Master Leonardo's face is unreadable, the red crescents across his eyes bleached in the blue and purple of the core. "Right."
Casey waves him off, turning his attention back to the screens. Once he hears the hiss of the decontaminant chamber door opening and closing, he runs back the parking lot footage. On screen, he watches as Master Donatello slips off the trunk of the car, liquid and smooth. Casey tracks the blue glow of the herbicide as it’s slipped into a pocket, the unease growing for reasons he can't pin down. Master Donatello does something with his vambrace, and then he looks up, right into the sightline of the camera.
Casey goes rigid. It's still too dark, the footage too unclear for Casey to make out his face, but he knows with unwavering certainty that Master Donatello is looking directly at the camera, at Casey. His skin prickles in the cold of the lab, the low ache in his head pressing flush to his skull, to his jaw. He licks his lips without thinking, expecting blood.
Master Donatello turns away from the camera, swipes a hand across his vambrace. Tendrils of purple light twine beneath his gear, and then he's disintegrating into the night.
Casey rewinds the footage. Watches it again. Watches the herbicide disappear, watches Master Donatello watch him. He runs his tongue over his teeth. There's no blood, but he tastes it all the same.
"You're a lifesaver, Casey Jones."
Heat- and blood-blasted earth. His hands sink into it, past rubble and rock and into the cavern of Uncle Donnie's gaping abdomen. Plastron between his fingers, split apart like a fig hull, the meat inside bomb-ripened and sinuous. Awash with Krang parasite, writhing worm-like and multi-eyed.
His shoulder, buckled beneath a metal hold. Urging him deeper. His words, carved out from him.
"I learned from the best."
At the kitchen counter, Casey picks at freshly washed arugula, separating yellowing leaves from feathery, soft green ones. The older leaves are still peppery in taste, with a bite that reminds Casey of the Sichuan peppercorns that his mother, true to form, eats plain and by the handful, like nuts.
She's nuts, Casey thinks. He's only encountered her a few times in this timeline, and he doesn't really know what to think of her. They're the same age here and now. She's similar to the woman he remembers raising him, brash and bombastic and ruthless, but every interaction with her feels like a literal misstep, like Casey's hurtled down a set of stairs he knows as surely as his own limbs only to stumble on the very last step. It's a breathless, wrenching feeling that comes with each misstep, with each time her grin ticks downward uncertainly, hesitantly at something he says or does—so unlike the inimitable Captain Cassandra Jones, so unlike the mother that forged in him an iron will and singing confidence. Instead, she's a young woman, his age, unsure of herself and her place in the world for all her posturing. Casey looks at her and sees his own face looking back, frightened and frantic and so very, very desperate not to be alone.
They don't meet up much.
Hot, peppery, herbaceous. His tongue stings from the arugula.
A bandaged hand comes into view, holding out a small tub of roughly cut-up, green tomatoes.
"Tomatillos," Master Michelangelo explains. He waves the tub at Casey encouragingly. "Try one."
Casey does. He picks up a smaller piece, pops it into his mouth. It's like a cherry tomato, only earthier, the skin thicker.
Master Michelangelo beams at him. "Good, right? Thought they'd be nice in the salad." Master Michelangelo helps himself to his own piece, chewing happily as he resumes grating parmesan. "Miles likes 'em too. Says his mama makes a mean salsa verde out of 'em."
Casey swallows his mouthful, considers Master Michelangelo as he works. "'Miles,' huh?" he says, keeping his tone light as he turns back to the arugula. "He has good taste. In friends too."
Next to him, he hears Master Michelangelo's chewing stop, then slowly start again. When Master Michelangelo speaks again, he doesn't try to backtrack on his slip-up. "I hope so. I hope I'm a good friend."
"I'm sure you are."
"Maybe." Casey spares a glance to the side. Master Michelangelo's brow is furrowed, his grip on the grater a little too firm. "I think I could be better."
Casey gently detangles a knotted bunch of leaves. "What makes you say that?"
"Dunno." His movements are meticulous, practiced, cleanly shaving slices of parmesan that flutter in thin, delicate curls to the cutting board, but his gaze has turned hard, voice uncharacteristically biting. "Doctor Feelings thinks I could do more to support him."
"And Doctor Delicate Touch?"
He scowls. "He's made it clear what he thinks."
Casey contemplates his reply. This conversation, he realises, isn't entirely about Miles, his gaze catching the nunchaku sticking out from under Master Michelangelo's apron. He scoops the last of the yellowed leaves into the compost bag, spreads the remaining arugula across a clean tea-towel to let it air-dry. He flips the cutting board over and gives it a quick wipe with a damp cloth, then grabs the small hunk of pancetta off to the side and begins to dice it.
"I think," he begins carefully, his eyes on the knife, "that being a good friend is about more than the friend in question. I think we spend so much time worrying about supporting our friends or being good enough for them, that we forget how to support ourselves. Be good for ourselves."
The pancetta cuts smooth and velvety beneath the knife, the fat perfectly and evenly marbled. "I think," Casey continues, as Master Michelangelo's grating slows to a stop, as he feels Master Michelangelo's eyes on him, "that you're a good friend to Miles, but maybe not so much a good friend to yourself." He skims a sticky piece of fat off the flat of the blade. "Is it a case of being 'better,' or being 'enough'?"
The kitchen falls quiet, noiseless but for the hum of the appliances and the soft thud, thud of Caseys' knife meeting the cutting board. The cutting board has been recently oiled, the grain of the bamboo vibrant. Casey lets the quiet linger, puts his focus into his task, into the smell of fresh greens and salted fat and the feeling of the age-smoothed handle of the knife in his grasp.
"Ha, wow," Master Michelangelo eventually murmurs, voice thin. Out of the corner of his eye, Casey sees him put down the grater and reach for the cloth hooked on his apron. "Dang. You straight up read me like a book. Thought I was the only psychoanalyst in the crib."
"I may know a thing or two. It comes with the territory of being a time-traveller."
Master Michelangelo huffs a laugh. He dabs at his watery eyes with the cloth. "Yeah, I guess it would." He smiles at Casey, dim and small and so very young. "Guess we're both hypocrites, huh?"
"Hm. Guess so." Casey doesn't deny it. "We should start a support group. A 'Hypocrites Anonymous' type of thing, maybe."
He smiles when that makes Master Michelangelo laugh properly. "We should! We could get the whole fam in on it."
"We'll call it the 'HHA.' 'Hamato Hypocrites Anonymous.' Only it won't be all that anonymous."
"Still, I like it. It's got snap, some good alliteration to it." Master Michelangelo dries his eyes one last time before slipping the cloth back into the loop of his apron strings. "And gosh knows this whole ding-dang family needs some therapy."
Casey chuckles. They fall into comfortable chatter, finishing their tasks. Master Michelangelo shows him how to fry up the pancetta on the stovetop until it's crispy, how to drain the fat and then deglaze the pan with cooking wine to make a quick, rich sauce. He learns why cooking wine isn't good for drinking—Master Michelangelo admitting, with zero shame, that he'd found out this out the hard way in a brief moment of teenage rebellion—but what wines would theoretically go with the handmade butternut ravioli currently chilling in the fridge. That's how Casey learns Master Michelangelo has several years' worth of pocket wine guides by some guy called Hugh Johnson, all hidden behind his cookbooks stacked on top of the kitchen cabinets, and that the Commander has been buying them for him every year in secret.
"Miles thinks I should open a tapas joint when I'm older," Master Michelangelo tells him, something new but firm at the corner of his mouth. "A six-seater, bar-top, small plates and wine pairing kind of deal in the Hidden City. When I'm eighteen and things are back to normal again."
Casey notes the deliberate choice of "when" rather than "if," the flinted edges of Master Michelangelo's words. He speaks in absolutes, and a part of Casey aches at his optimism, his hope, furious and relentless in the face of all that's happened, is happening. Another part of Casey can't help but feel buoyed by it, a swell of protectiveness building in his chest, and he clings to that instead.
"We'll be your first customers," Casey promises, fiercely. "Me and Miles. You'll have to drag us out of there every night you're open."
Master Michelangelo blinks in surprise at his tone. "You mean it?"
"Of course I do." He thinks of Master Donatello's words. "I mean everything I say, Mikey."
And Master Michelangelo's—Mikey's—smile is a beatific thing. Casey is determined to do anything to safeguard that smile.
"Thanks, Case," Mikey murmurs. "That means a lot to me." He passes a finger over the spine of the wine guide. "You should meet him. Miles, I mean. I think you'd like him."
"Yeah? I'd be honoured to meet him."
"Tch, maybe don't go that far. He's nice 'n' all, but he's also a pain in the butt sometimes."
Casey laughs. "All the best sorts of friends are."
"Big bros, too," Mikey adds, nudging him meaningfully. Casey's laugh catches painfully in his throat. "Love you guys, but y'all can be annoying as heck."
"I'll—I'll keep that in mind," Casey says, and if Mikey notices that his voice comes out a little shaky, he doesn't say anything.
"'Angelo."
Casey stiffens. Next to him, Mikey squeaks and slaps the book back down onto the counter.
"Dee! Hey—oh. Whoa, you good? You don't look so hot."
"Fine. I thought I'd let you know that I won't be in for dinner, so there's no need to dish me up a plate."
"Dee—"
"I'll eat once I'm home, 'Angelo."
"Aight—but you sure you're okay?"
Casey dares to glance up from the counter. Master Donatello is standing at the entryway, arms crossed tightly across his plastron. He's pale in a way Casey's never seen before, and he's tense, to the point where the tendons in his neck are standing out against his skin. Against his arms, his fingers drum an agitated, frenetic path, never quite settling into one place.
"I'm fine," Master Donatello reiterates, firmer this time. "If Leo asks, I'm doing field research on Infection sites."
"Can't the drones do that?" Mikey asks, now confused. "I thought—"
"They'll attract too much attention for what I'm testing."
Mikey frowns, clearly unhappy with that response. Casey takes a breath. He curls his fingers around the knife in his hand, tight enough that the tang bites into his still-healing palms.
"What are you testing?" he asks. It's the first time he's spoken to Master Donatello in nearly a week, and he has to pry the words out from behind his teeth.
Master Donatello's dark eyes flit to Casey's. The hairs on the back of his neck stand at the contact, his heartrate ticking up, but he refuses to balk now that he's made himself known, meeting Master Donatello's gaze head-on.
"A hypothesis," Master Donatello says. He doesn't elaborate.
The lacerations on Casey's palms sting in protest as the tang bites deeper. "Anything we need to know about?"
"No. Hypotheses are, as you know, tenuous, at best."
"And at worst?" Casey challenges.
Master Donatello doesn't blink. The hollows of his eye sockets are shadowed and deep, swallowing the gold of his irises until they're black. "Symptoms of mania."
Casey says nothing. The tang of the knife is all but splitting his injuries open anew from the force of Casey's grip, and his shoulders are drawn high and back as he and Master Donatello consider one another in silence. Mikey's gaze darts between the two of them uncertainly.
"Call me if you require my assistance," Master Donatello eventually says. He steps back and away from the entryway. "But it would be best if I remain undisturbed."
"Sure, yeah," Mikey agrees, quick to jump on the break in tension. "Let us know if you need anything, Dee."
Master Donatello just nods, eyes lingering on Casey, and then he disappears into the dark of the lair. Mikey watches the space he left, expression pinched.
"He really didn't look good," he says softly. He looks at Casey. "D'you know what's up with him?"
And isn't that the big money question, Casey thinks. His shoulders drop, and he loosens his grip on the knife, biting back a wince as his injuries throb. "Stress, most likely," he not-answers. "He's had a lot on his plate after the Invasion."
"I guess." Mikey's gaze turns searching. "You and Dee seemed. . . off. With each other. Did y'all have a fight or something?"
Casey is careful with his answer. Mikey, like Master Leonardo, is cannier than people give him credit for. "We had a disagreement about strategy, is all," he chooses to say. He makes sure to pour reassurance into his smile. It feels strained on his face. "But we're working it out, don't worry. Too many cooks in the kitchen and all that."
Mikey seems sceptical, but he nods in understanding. "I can get that. It's like when Raph and Leo try to be leader at the same time."
"Kind of, yeah."
"Hm." Mikey picks up the wine guide and dusts it off. "Well, we'll put together a plate for Dee anyway. If he sees we took the time to plate something up just for him, I know he'll feel too guilty not to eat it. He can't say no to me."
"Weaponizing your little brother privileges. A solid strategy."
"It's all in the puppy-dog eyes and threats to beat his ass if he doesn't take care of himself."
Casey can't help but laugh. "Tío 'Angelo used to say the same thing," he says. He wipes the blade of the knife down with a cloth. "I guess some things never change."
Except you.
"Nope," Mikey says, popping the 'p.' "I'll be two hundred and still reminding Dee to drink water. Now, c'mon, the pasta won't boil itself."
Master Donatello returns around 4AM. Casey knows because he's hidden in the stairwell between the lobby and garage, waiting for the telltale roar of the Shell Hog barrelling down the tracks.
He doesn't wait long, and soon enough Master Donatello is cresting the curve of the tunnel and slowing to a stop next to the Turtle Tank. A squadron of S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N.'s drones follow after him, their blades humming like insects in the quiet of the lair. The drones are grouped into pairs, with each pair sharing the weight of a protective case. Casey counts six cases in total.
Master Donatello dismounts awkwardly, jerkily, fingers at his vambrace as the Shell Hog slots itself back in place in the tank's chassis. He's not dressed in their new field gear but is instead entirely decked out in tactical gear. Very specific tactical wear, Casey notes with apprehension as Master Donatello takes off his helmet. The EPF insignia emblazoned on the arms of the combat shirt are hard to not notice.
"Take the cases to the lab," Master Donatello barks at the drones. Under the fluorescent lights of the garage and without his mask to conceal most of his face, he's sickly pale, skin drawn tight around the planes of his cheekbones. "Ensure cases four and five remain pressurised."
The drones buzz in acknowledgement before sweeping upwards into the rafters. Casey tracks their flight path until they're eaten up by the darkness, then looks back to Master Donatello, who's started to shuck off the tactical gear. That tense, agitated quality Casey had witnessed in the kitchen seems to have worsened since Master Donatello has been out, the softshell all but ripping off his Kevlar vest, his movements short, sharp, spasmodic.
"Out, out, out." The word spills out of him, aspirated and harsh. "Out. Out."
The Kevlar vest is thrown to the floor, and Casey watches, apprehension turning to alarm as Master Donatello jerks a hand up to grab the back of the combat shirt and wrench it off with too much force, his claws tearing through the fabric and across his shell and the back of his neck. Blood welts fast and ugly, but Master Donatello doesn't even seem aware of it, his claws twisting down his arms, scoring dark, mottled lines into the skin of his biceps, his forearms, the backs of his hands, up and down and up and down, as if to scrape something out from underneath the very muscle and fat.
"Out," Master Donatello hisses, words feverish in the chill of the garage. "Out."
In his frenzy, he sinks the claws of his right hand into the meat of his left forearm, puncturing flesh. His whole body jolts at the action, a gasp tearing out of him, and Casey jumps to his feet, heart thudding hard in his chest, ready to step in, but the look on Master Donatello's face stops him.
"Ha," Master Donatello breathes, staring down at the blood pooling between his claws. His eyes are wide and dark and consuming, his body suddenly, terribly still. Casey's skin breaks out into goosebumps at his next words, soft and dangerous. "There you are."
An awful, viscous squelching as claws are pried from flesh. Blood, dark and thick, spills out onto the concrete. Master Donatello wraps his bloodied hand across the wound, picks up the discarded Kevlar vest and combat shirt with his free hand. He wipes the blood from the concrete with the clothes, then shoves them into one of the wheel wells of the tank.
Casey presses himself into the shadow of the stairwell as Master Donatello approaches. He holds his breath as Master Donatello unsteadily ascends the stairs to the lobby, his steps near silent despite the weight of his combat boots. Casey watches until Master Donatello, clutching his arm tightly to his plastron, slips into the low, red light of the lobby, waits until he can near nothing but the ambient sounds of the lair. It takes about three minutes to reach the lab from the lobby, four if taking the stairs instead of the service ladder. Casey waits in place for five minutes, unmoving, eyes trained onto the top of the steps.
Slowly, carefully, he creeps out from his hiding place. He slips into the garage and toward the tank. Reaching into the wheel well, he pulls out the Kevlar vest and combat shirt. He's hit instantly with the smell of blood, the fabric sticky with it. But underneath the blood Casey catches the smell of brackish seawater and sulphur, finds salt rime at the ridges of the Kevlar vest that crumbles under his touch. As far as Casey knows, there are no Infection sites along the shores of the New York side of the Upper Bay—at least, none that would be as close to the water as Master Donatello seems to have been. Staten Island maybe? The sulphur smell would certainly track, at least at low tide. But what would Master Donatello need from Staten Island? Why the tactical gear? The cases?
He passes his fingers over the EPF insignia on the combat shirt, tracing the long, sharp lines of the eagle's wings. The last time he'd been close enough to touch an EPF insignia, a man's throat had been between his hands.
The continuum presses death-soft to his sternum.
He carefully puts the shirt and the vest back into the wheel well. Unease curls through him, insistent. His head tips back to look up into the darkness of the rafters, where the drones had disappeared with the cases. His hand itches for his staff.
Something's wrong, presses a thought at the back of his head. Something's wrong.
The files on the USB stick are incomplete.
Casey breathes slow through the kata. His movements are fluid, his arms and legs cutting through the air in long, clean strikes. He's careful to avoid the more strenuous techniques even though his hands and head are screaming for it, for some sort of release. He's been underground for nearly two weeks. He's slept for less than forty of those three-hundred hours. His stomach is a pit of coiling, writhing dread, his throat tight with a fear he can't name.
He's spitting up more blood.
His fist meets the imagined cheek of an opponent. He's desperate for the impact of bone on bone, for the crack and split of teeth, ripped out at the root. Of saliva and blood, hot and sticky, skimming across his knuckles, of his nerves washed alight and singing with adrenaline.
Master Donatello isn't telling him everything. After the incident in the garage, Casey had gone back to re-read the files on the USB. There were fewer files than there should have been for the USB to contain the whole truth. The contents were chosen with care, with deliberation, crafted in such a way as to provide the exact amount of information needed for Casey to fulfil his duty as executioner and executor and no more. And a good soldier would follow orders without question. A good Hamato would acquiesce to the need greater than his own. A good nephew would protect his family.
A parasite, Master Donatello had called it—duty. Worse than the Krang.
His hands shake where they strike the air. He doesn't know if Master Donatello is right.
Casey nearly bolts out into the evening air when he finally clears the manhole on the eastern side of the lair. He feels like a dog pulling against a leash, all teeth and heaving flanks. He's quick to muzzle the feeling, though his skin still prickles and feels tight against his tendons as he helps the Commander up and out of the manhole. She grunts her thanks, too busy concentrating on not tipping over from the sheer weight of the bulging, overstuffed backpack she carries.
"Goddamn," the Commander wheezes, cheeks flushed. "Way harder going up than it was down."
"Are all those books really just for one class?" Casey asks, hands hovering at the Commander's sides as she gets her feet under her. She bats his hands away, and he reluctantly pulls back. "It seems a little much."
"You're telling me. Oof."
She straightens up as much as she can, though her shoulders curl forward some to balance out the backpack. She inhales sharply through her nose, exhales long and slow through her mouth. Her makeup is only a little smudged from the sweat beading at her brow.
"Okay," she says, sounding slightly less winded. "We're good. I don't think I pulled something this time."
"'This time'?"
"You still good if we stop by the library first? Get some more books on top of these 200-buck bricks I'm paying to cart around and read one chapter out of?"
"I'm not sure that I'm really getting how university works," Casey tells her honestly. "But yeah, the library sounds great."
The library at Eastlaird University is a smaller, less grandiose model of the Bobst Library—a fact that NYU students, the Commander tells him with distaste, take great measures to remind the Eastlaird students of. Casey prefers the Eastlaird library to the Bobst. It looms less, and there are fewer portraits of old white men in robes staring down their noses at him. The Commander finds that last bit particularly funny.
It's packed tight with students, as it always is, but it's quiet, and the lighting doesn't make his head hurt like it does at the mall, which Casey appreciates. He feels calmer by the time he follows the Commander up to the second floor, more settled, finding relief in the sheer fact that he's no longer underground. They pass through a set of double-glazed doors and into the stacks. The stacks are warm and dry, and the entire floor smells of old books and dusty carpet. Casey sneezes immediately.
They step into a row of shelves, down the length of them until they reach a section near the back by the recessed windows. The Commander lugs her backpack off and over to him to hold while she hunches down to squint at the spines of the books. The muscles of his arms start to burn after less than a minute of holding the backpack to his chest, and he feels very real concern for the state of the Commander's spine.
As the Commander searches, he drifts along the shelves, examining the titles. He recognises a little over half of what he reads, the rest blurring into jargon he can't even begin to wrap his head around. He picks out a book at random—a heavy manuscript, something about ethics, with a plastic dust jacket that sticks unpleasantly to his hands—and flips through it, the pages soft, almost ready to crumble between his careful fingers. He skims the introduction, brow furrowing the longer he reads. The author talks in clinical, academic terms of Aristotelian rhetoric, rationalism, a rigid system of conduct through which to exact judgement on a global scale. It's partisan at best, utter bullsh*t at worst, disconnected from the lived reality of debating ethics during times of conflict. Casey reshelves the book, disquieted.
He looks up when he hears the Commander greet somebody. Two students are walking toward them, one of them pushing a book cart and the other ambling alongside. He moves automatically to the Commander's side, wary of the newcomers, though he makes sure to keep his face neutral as the Commander throws them into hushed introductions. The one with the cart is majoring in information science, and the other is a journalism major like the Commander. Casey learns the three met in an archival research course, where they bonded over the supposed horrors of group projects. When all three make faces at the recollection, then burst into quiet giggles at each other, his caution gives way to self-consciousness, realising, as the conversation continues, that it's perhaps him who's the interloper here, not the newcomers.
"Are you new to Eastlaird?" the information science student asks him, their eyes huge behind their glasses. "I haven’t seen you on campus."
"He's just visiting," the Commander answers quickly. "This is the cousin I mentioned to y'all. He's new to town, been staying with my brothers."
"Oh, the cousin," the journalism student says, sounding dangerously interested. His eyes sweep across Casey, stay on his staff holstered over his shoulder. "Casey, was it? You from out of state?"
"Yes, and yes," Casey says. He feels painfully out of place now that he's no longer playing the guard dog, his hands all but white-knuckled around the Commander's backpack. It occurs to him, not for the first time, that he's very out of practice speaking with people his age who aren't mutated turtles or the Commander. "From out of state."
"Huh. How're you liking New York?"
"It's fine. Different, I guess."
"Yeah? Good or bad different?"
"Well—" he glances at the Commander, whose shoulders are slowly starting to tense, "—the hot dogs are better than where I'm from."
The two students laugh at that, and Casey sees the Commander's shoulders drop. She sends him a brief, grateful smile, then pats the book in her hand.
"Well, I've got what I need," she announces. "It was nice seeing y'all, but me and Casey gotta bounce. We still good for Tuesday?"
"Tuesday," the information science student confirms. They smile at Casey. "It was great to meet you, Casey."
Casey smiles tentatively back. "Yeah, you too."
He and the Commander watch them disappear into the stacks. Once they're out of sight, the Commander sighs, sounding just as relieved as Casey feels.
"They seemed nice," he offers, a little awkwardly.
"They're great," the Commander agrees. She takes the backpack, grunting with effort as she hauls it back on. "Nosy, but good people. They saved my ass in that research class."
"Do you guys get together a lot?"
"Nah, not much. Our schedules don't really line up, but we try to hang at least once a month. It's nice, y'know? Nice to have friends outside of y'all hooligans. Nice to have friends, for once." That last part is muttered, bitter at the edges.
Casey doesn't know too much about the Commander's life before she met the brothers, but he knows about lonely, isolated high school years, a lingering, deep-running desire for a sense of normalcy in the endless rush of weirdness that defined so much of her life. Tía April was never granted that normalcy. She all but eschewed the idea of "normal" as the apocalypse closed in, but Casey sees how vital it is, normalcy, here in this timeline. Here, now, watching the Commander interact with her regular, human friends, attending a small but well-regarded university in the hopes of joining a career not decided for her by war, Casey sees how the Commander clings to the normal just as tightly as she clings to the weird. Casey hopes for her sake that the two can coexist. That there's no further collapse.
"I'm glad you've got them, then," Casey decides to say.
The Commander smiles. "Me too, Case."
They check out the library book, the librarian polite but very clearly bored. Casey is both impressed by the Commander managing to get another book into the backpack and worried for the backpack's dwindling survival rate. The Commander leads them to the university's food court, where they share a large takeout container of greasy, starchy sweet potato fries. The fries come with two little plastic cups of chipotle aioli, and Casey decides that the sweet, smoky combination is far superior to regular fries and ketchup. He wonders if he can convince Mikey to recreate the recipe.
"—worried about what I'm researching, but I think she's trying to chalk it up to a really weird term paper," the Commander is telling him, gesturing in the air with a fry. "She thinks the whole 'black-ops unit' thing with the you-know-who and the Infection spots is me spending too much time in conspiracy forums." She snorts. "Like she doesn't see victims of the Infected at the hospital."
Casey winces sympathetically. "She's probably still a little shaken from the Invasion. I mean, I know my mom would be overprotective for a while if I went missing during a terrorism event."
"Yeah." The Commander chews her fry contemplatively. "Except Cass would have gone all in on the conspiracy forums."
Casey snorts. He dips a fry into the aioli, fingertips spotted with oil and chipotle spice. He watches the ebb and flow of the food court, notes the laptops and notepads haphazardly flung across any available surface and the students hunched over them. It's midterm season, so there's a harried quality to the atmosphere that isn't all that dissimilar to the Resistance's mess hall prior to a mission. The world nearly ended three months ago, but right now exams are the scariest thing to happen. Resilience in motion, Casey thinks. Or flat-out denial. New Yorkers are apt at both.
"So," he begins, popping the fry into his mouth. Could do with more heat, he thinks. Maybe red chili powder in addition to the chipotle. "'Cousin,' huh?"
The Commander co*cks a sharp eyebrow. "We're damn near the same age, Case, can't exactly call you 'nephew.' Do you know how many questions that'd lead to? 'Sides," she adds, mopping up a drop of aioli from the container with her finger, "I ain't no auntie just yet."
"So you're, what, my cool, older cousin?" Casey asks, smiling despite himself.
"Duh." The Commander licks the aioli off her finger, then wipes her hand on a napkin. "It's pretty much the same gig as a big sister, just a different title." She winks at him, her smile warm and cheeky and just that little bit vulnerable. "Easy-peasy."
Casey's smile softens. Of course, he thinks. "Easy-peasy."
They polish off the fries. He sees her off to the apartment she shares with her mom. Smelling like sweet potatoes, she hugs him at the base of the steps to the building. He has to wrap his arms around her neck to hug her back, the backpack too bulky for him to reach around. As is becoming tradition, she kisses him on the cheek before she lets go. Just as she reaches the top of the steps, he calls out.
"Hey, April?"
She looks back, patient, waiting, unsurprised. He runs his fingers down the strap of his holster, fingers strumming across the grooves in the leather like guitar frets.
"Thank you," he tells her. It's insufficient. April will understand anyway. "I've never had a big sister before. It's—nice."
The apples of her cheeks round when she smiles. He waits until she's safely through the front doors, then pivots on his heel back toward the street. It's getting dark now, even though it's only just turned 5PM. The wind is biting where it catches at his face as he makes for a narrow alley, cold skittering down the neck of his jacket as he grapples up the side of a building. He's shivering by the time he reaches the roof, gravel and the odd browned, crispy leaf crunching beneath his boots as he makes for the edge. He sits on the parapet, legs swung over the side to dangle over the drop below. The roar and rumble of the street stretches upward, not quite reaching him.
He missed the sunset, he realises distantly as he looks out over the city. There are still remnants of it, amber straying at the very lip of the horizon, but it's hardly the same. The trees have almost fully turned since he's been on bedrest, and some New Yorkers have started putting up Halloween decorations. In the windows of the apartment building below, he spies small, decorative gourds, strings of paper lanterns in the shape of ghosts and skulls and bats that lead out onto balcony railings. One resident has already carved out a family of pumpkins, candlelight guttering from inside toothy mouths. October, already. And he has nothing to show for it.
His phone buzzes in his pocket. He fishes it out, taps the screen to life. A text from Master Raphael, asking him when he'll be home and if he wants hot chocolate. Master Raphael had been especially reluctant about letting Casey go out with April tonight. The business with the EPF has meant his anxiety has gotten worse, and Casey can't really blame him for wanting to keep tabs on his family.
He's in the process of replying when another text comes in. This time it's from S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N.
S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N.: get ur ass 2 the lab NOW
Panic flares through him. Instantly he's on his feet, shoving his phone back into his pocket. He's swinging between buildings within minutes, hurtling between alleys and down into the abandoned subway tunnels at breakneck speed. He's broken a record somewhere, but all he can think about is the icy fear gripping at his chest as he all but slams through the auxiliary lab doors that S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. opens for him, staff held fast at his side.
The drone is darting frenetically over the figure slumped on the floor. The room stinks of rot and ozone and the floor is washed with blood and a neon blue liquid. A boxcutter lays on the ground, the blade sticky with blood. Crushed in the figure's hand is a glass vial.
"Boom!" goes the herbicide.
Casey's stomach lurches. "What did you do?"
He starts to rush forward only for the figure on the floor to suddenly spasm, Master Donatello's raw, wretched voice lashing across the floor. "Don't—" he gasps, heaving, fangs flashing in the dark. Casey freezes. "The infection—we don't—"
"He wouldn't stop," S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. warbles, high-pitched and terrified. His chassis roars with overpowered energy, every bit of his form lit up with artificial power in his distress. "He wouldn't—he just wouldn't stop, dude! I got him to drop the boxcutter but then he got the herbicide and—and, f*ck, man!"
"Okay," Casey breathes, heart beating hard and fast in his chest. He catalogues Master Donatello's shaking form, the bruised, bleeding scratches across arms and shoulders and the deep laceration on his left arm. The same arm he had injured in the garage. f*ck, that's a lot of blood. "Okay. We need to triage this. S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N., you're already equipped with a med scanner, right? I need you to run diagnostics to see if he hit anything major, and I need you tell me exactly what happened. Okay?"
But S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. only whines, LED eyes flickering wildly. "He'll be okay, right? It's just, like, a flesh wound, right? It can't be anything bad—" he hovers close to Master Donatello, jerks back, words tumbling together, climbing higher, sharper, piercing, "—it's nothing bad, my dad wouldn't do anything bad—"
Casey slams the blade of his staff into the ground with a hard, ringing crack. "S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N.," he barks, startling the drone into silence. "That was an order. Okay?"
The drone stares at him, shock writ bright across his features. "O-okay. Yeah, okay, of course."
"Good." The herbicide sizzles and hisses as it eats away at the blood on the ground, at the exposed flesh. Master Donatello shudders, blood pooling beneath him. "I need to get some PPE."
As he finds and wrenches on gloves and a spare respirator, S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. scans Master Donatello's form, his tremulous, halting words following after Casey.
"N-Nothing major was hit," S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. reports. "Most upper extremity lacerations are moderate. Laceration on the—on the left forearm is serious. Immediate medical attention recommended."
"And the herbicide?" Casey asks, his voice muffled by the respirator. He grabs the lab's first-aid kit, some extra gauze.
"It's reacting to something in him. Dad, he was—he kept saying that he needed to get something, like, out of him? And I swear I couldn't see anything when I scanned him, but he was, like, convinced, so he got the boxcutter out and when that wasn't enough he went for the herbicide and—and I tried to stop him, honest, I tried! But he—" S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N.'s voice turns tight, hurt, "—he overrode my controls."
Casey breathes out hard through his nose, respirator lenses briefly fogging up. "Okay," he says, hands fisted tight around the kit and gauze. "I need you to lock and monitor all exit points. Station yourself at the north entrance, and unless I authorise it, absolutely nobody gets into the lab. Understood?"
S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. flinches. He casts the figure on the ground one last, frightened look. "Okay." He flies out of the room.
Casey approaches Master Donatello's form. The softshell stirs at his approach, attempting to push himself away only to collapse on his injured arm. Thick, almost black blood floods out of the laceration, and Casey's stomach sickens at the sight of exposed tissue, dark and wet. A low, horrible keening sound scrapes out from between Master Donatello's bared fangs, like a predator gored and bloody. It makes the hairs on the back of Casey's neck stand.
"Ha," Master Donatello breathes, the words punching out of him. The vial in his hand splinters, trailing glass and blood across the tiles. "I wouldn’t—get closer."
"I'm not going to let you bleed out," Casey snaps as he gets to his knees, training overriding his fear. "Keep still, I need to clean the area." He reaches for Master Donatello's arm.
Master Donatello's snarls, dark, dark eyes glazed and feverish. "Idiot, the temporal haunting—"
Casey's gloved fingers close around Master Donatello's arm. The scales twists under his hold, the laceration gaping wide, and Casey sees the torn skin blackened by the herbicide, the subcutaneous flesh pulsing with blood, and beneath that—
Writhing. Coiling. An organic, tentacled motion, intelligent and seeking, and then, encased between membranous fat and tissue, a honeycomb colony of roving, unlidded, multi-pupiled eyes, all of which snap toward him.
Casey recoils with a shout. He scrambles to his feet, but his hand slips on blood and herbicide and he topples, kicking the first-aid kit over. Its contents go scattering across the floor just as he slams into the ground, his head ricocheting off the tiles. Pain, bright and hot, explodes through his skull, the breath driven from him.
"f*ck!" he yells. He clutches his head, choking through the agony ripping down his spine. "Oh, f*ck."
Master Donatello shakes as he pulls himself upright, the vial crunching beneath his hand as he puts all his weight into his uninjured arm. "You—you must recognise it," he hisses, the words wet, heaving in his chest. "Surely—you must."
Casey rips off the respirator, gasping. Buzzing, heavy and encompassing, accompanies the splitting ache, rattling through his skull and into his jaw. His vision is blurred and swimming.
"The helm," Master Donatello says, stark, echoing, his dark, dark eyes latched onto Casey as he draws himself forward, crawling toward him. "You saw it."
Casey can't get enough air. His head is splitting apart, his lungs spasming, his entire nervous system seized by stunning fear and pain that courses through him. "f*ck—I—I can't—"
"By design," Master Donatello says, crawling closer, a strange, terrible thing dragging itself through the dark. Blood and tissue ooze and glisten in the core's light, the room flooded with rot and cold. "This was all—all by design."
"I can't—I can't breathe—"
"Nephew."
A hand cups his cheek, the touch slick with blood. Uncle Donnie is perfect and whole and aberrant above him. Casey can do nothing but stare, blackness flooding the edges of his vision and blood trickling down into his mouth, can do nothing but let himself be pinned in place by dark, fathomless eyes of a dead man.
Uncle Donnie's words are a proclamation, an indictment and a promise from the edge of the cosmos all at once. "I'm here now. Breathe."
And Casey, a good soldier, does. He breathes, and he lets Uncle Donnie guide his head back down to the ground, lets his hand linger at Casey's cheek as the continuum tugs at his sternum. He breathes, and then he sleeps.
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