There is no opposition beyond the gallery's great doors.
It's a command centre with a lab aesthetic. Buttons gleam blood-red on rows of machines. Experiments bubble in tubes. Scientists dot the consoles and lurk hesitantly near unfinished contraptions designed for murder. In the frame of that grand entrance she is tiny, but she can feel their eyes upon her, their suspended breaths.
She is not sure she wants to know what they see. Perhaps not all of the fear is commanded by the missile launcher hoisted on her shoulder.
"It's over," she says simply. They scatter, like roaches. She is one woman, but they run. Not all of them can be indentured and eager for freedom, but they run. To exits in the side walls, to sheltered parts of the lab, they run.
All but one. A greying man shambles from behind a console with wide and disbelieving eyes.
"Mistress Karai …"
He doesn't stop. He moves mechanically in her direction.
She'll probably have to kill him.
But she shrugs off the missile launcher, letting it clang to the floor. Her arms are tired. It's heavy. Everything is heavy. Instead she draws out a pistol from her waistband and levels it at Chaplin's heart. In spite of everything, she can be kind. Better than a missile to the face.
Near the door he slows, takes in the wreckage in the gallery chamber. April can see his mind ticking over, tallying the damage. Playing 'Where's Wally?' amongst the shattered corpses of a dozen Karai-bots in search of the original muse.
"She's gone. It's over," April repeats dully. If he'll snap, it'll be now. The handgun seems to hum expectantly in her hand.
But he doesn't snap. Instead he folds, all soft at the edges like a pile of dropped laundry. She lowers the gun once she hears the whimpering; it sounds altogether like a broken heart.
"Yeah," she says softly. "I know how that goes."
She leaves him. Onwards. Somehow. A console is beneath her hands, but she can barely remember walking to it. She just knows what needs to be done. And it's all here, at her fingertips. The better part of a lifetime scrambling for any semblance of control and now she has it all. She has everything.
Everything and nothing.
The entire security grid goes first. Automated armaments on the outer walls of the Shredder's base die with a whine and cease tearing holes through her rebels. Networked units of the Shredder's deadly automata in his daughter's image fall silent and still. Security feeds fail, leaving pockets of remaining Foot blind … and vulnerable. Electronic locks fail and prisoners are released to cause chaos wherever they had been confined.
Finally, the city screens go dark. Dishevelled streets that have echoed with Karai's commands fall silent for the first time in decades, and the Shredder's visage on every monitor corrupts and sputters to nothing.
April commences the upload. The progress bar blurs through a veil of tears, and then the city screens speak once more.
The message is different.
Citizens of New York City.
The Shredder is no more.
Rise up, join us, and take back what is yours.
April's voice. April's words. It's a signal tens of years of sweat and tears and blood in the making. In her pocket, her communicator cries for her attention; her suddenly growing army is waiting for her word. There's still work to do.
The weight of three bodies left behind in the gallery crumples her to her knees.
It was all worth it, says her brain.
Liar, says her heart.