Light.
Not a pleasant glow, not a light at the end of the tunnel. It was searingly bright, literally white-hot as it baked April's face. It burned scarlet even through her closed eyelids; she tried to jerk away, but her head and neck were held immobile in some kind of vise. No, a helmet. Metal, heated seemingly to the temperature of the sun by the light; a burning agony throbbing through her skull and cooking her brain even as dozens of tubes seemed to be sucking it out. A shaft of harsh white tinged with sickly magenta seemed to pierce her right between the eyes, and April screamed. Though it burned and scraped at her throat, her cry sounded strangled to her own ears; something was muffling her voice, though her mouth was free.
"NO!" April bolted upright in bed. Glancing towards the window, she cringed; the heavy blue blanket covering the glass had fallen to the side, allowing just a sliver of light in. She stood up, wincing at the feeling of cold wood that went instantly through her sock feet, and padded over to the window. As she thought; snow had fallen overnight, and the morning sunlight reflecting off the white drifts was achingly bright. The new snowfall had covered the foundations of the old abandoned buildings from the 1950s, the camping debris of the previous teams stationed here, and even the entrance to the mine itself; from her vantage point, April could see nothing but walls of powdery snow and the occasional black filigree of underbrush beyond, at the tree line.
They had been at the abandoned mine for close to three months now, since high summer, though it could hardly be called such even in July. It was bitingly cold every day, and the frost-stunted pine trees did nothing to shield the research team from the icy wind that blew off the enormous lake beyond. April's father had accepted a commission from the government to study mental changes in teams working in isolated areas, and you could hardly get more isolated than Canada's far north, just forty miles south of the Arctic Circle. Though it had been unspoken, April knew it was to protect her; despite the Kraang's defeat, neither she nor her father had slept soundly since. Here, the comparative silence and monotony of the wilderness was somehow more comforting than NYC's endless crush of traffic noise and flashing lights, though April never managed to shake the feeling that she wasn't really safe. She kept it to herself, though; it was a decent existence. With satellite Internet, she could continue her AP classes, and even e-mail her friends, though it was too slow for instant messaging.
Friends.
That word always gave April pause as she gazed out over the northern desolation. To tell the truth, she missed her turtle friends most of all; the other faces and voices she'd known over the years faded into a blur compared to Leo's quiet strength, Raph's electric intensity, Mikey's sunny warmth and vigor for living...and, well...
April's mouth set in a hard line as she flopped back down on the bed to struggle into her snow boots. That was a daily ordeal even with the slippery fur lining, but at least it was a distraction from her isolation for a few minutes. Shrugging into her yellow parka, she easily did up the zipper, storm flap, and ties despite fingers already numbed by the omnipresent cold. Easing the heavy cabin door open, April emerged into the northern dawn with a chosen blankness of mind, grateful for the cold that nipped at her nose and forced her into clarity of mind.