this is the sequel fic to Information Not Found - I really suggest reading that first, as it takes place (technically) in the middle of this fic.
tmnt = viacom.
The Other Side of the Wrong Door
Prologue: Day three
April doesn't know how long she's been here.
The Kraang don't talk in years, they talk in cycles when they talk near her at all: one Kraang cycle, ten Kraang cycles, they wear stupid little party hats sometimes when they walk her from her cell to the laboratory. Sometimes, she's asleep for more than one cycle, and wakes up forcing tank fluid from her lungs and looking at the new crop of her selves gestating in the pods.
Sometimes, she wakes up still bruised from her last escape attempt.
At least I'm breathing, she tells herself, on the nights they leave her in her cell, and on the days when she hears her own voice from another mouth. I'm still me. They haven't taken that yet.
It's been cycles since she's seen the sun.
She misses light. She marks time passing by which freckles still remain on her arms — the rash of them that cropped up when she was thirteen and in Florida are gone within the first twenty cycles. She misses her father, but she's missed him for so long now that the loss has sunk into her bones. She misses her mother, but how could she not? She misses heat, from daylight, and from warm clothes, and from hugs and affection. She misses the warmth that came without touch, and the sounds that came without noise.
It has been so long since April saw a familiar face that was not her own.
The day she gives up is the day a group of her doubles manage to escape. She watches them race down the hallway, hand-in-hand, dodging pink lasers before vanishing from sight.
They've done it, haven't they? Bested the original.
The next time she's taken to the tank, she doesn't expect to come back out again.
But she does, every time, her lungs screaming at her. Sometimes, the Kraang let her sleep afterwards instead of more tests, instead of anaesthetic (they learned, quickly, that drugging her had a logical function), and sometimes, when she can't smell the incinerator, or the thick, hot scent of mutagen, she can't help herself.
They aren't coming for her. It's been too long, now.
That doesn't stop her from imagining they had.
It's better than imagining the alternatives, the realities: they forgot about her, or, they lost, or, they're all dead. It's better than replaying that night again and again — Casey's smug swagger as they'd broken in, and the way he'd howled her name when they'd been set upon by dozens and dozens of robots that dragged her away.
Once, wishing for her rescue had made her strong, and given her hope. Now, it's a comfort as she waits for the inevitable.
So on the day that Casey slams into her cell, four dozen or more cycles after she was first taken, Casey looking weatherbeaten, unshaven, and so much older than she remembers, of course she doesn't believe it.
:3 part 1 in the next few days!