"What bothers me," Leo said after a moment, "Is why haven't we noticed them following us? Close enough to see us fight, and recognize us by our masks?"

"We have been a little busy with mutagen and mutants, lately," Mikey ventured, and Leo hated to admit to himself that the logic was sound, "Maybe a little too busy to notice anything else."

"It gets worse," Don told him, "Here's from a more recent post: 'My concern for The Pack grows. As the weather turns colder, I fear for their survival. As uniquely rare as these creatures are, it is vital that as many of them survive as possible. It only makes sense to cull the weakest from The Pack, so that the others are not burdened with sharing resources with it. It will also give me the opportunity to study one in captivity. Unfortunately, they are so quick and athletic that simply darting them is out of the question, we'll lose sight of them by the time they go down. Thus, we will have to take measures to trap one, and then dart it for transport.'"

"They went for Mikey and caught Raph instead," Leo realized, "Because they think Mikey is the weakest. They wanted to catch him and cage him."

"It's a lot worse than that," Don said, "They wanted to do that without knowing anything about him. Drugs don't affect reptiles the same way they do mammals. Something harmless to a human or other mammal can be deadly to a turtle. And anyway they had only a vague idea of how heavy Mikey actually is. They don't know what we eat, or anything about how we live. Even if we were wild animals, which we're not, you'd have to know a heckuva lot more than this guy does before you could have any hope of keeping such an animal alive and healthy. It would be very easy for them to overdose on the drugs, for example, and kill us outright, especially if you couple that with the trauma of having been shot. What we're looking at is the blog of a would-be scientist, someone who actually has no idea what they're doing, but likes to pretend. And apparently has the resources to do it."

The turtles were silent for a moment, while that sunk in. Then Don went on.

"Fortunately, there's a more recent post," Don said, though he had trouble keeping his voice level as he read, "'Red is more violent than expected, vicious even. He has limited capacity for speech, and seems to understand when spoken to. But because his first impulse is to attack, it was necessary to restrain him for examination, and to sedate him in order to treat the injuries he incurred on capture, and to transport him safely. Unfortunately, his species seems particularly affected by the drug used and the creature was very ill prior to transport. It also has a faster metabolism than expected, and was fully awake upon its release, at which time it again tried to attack researchers.'"

Leo was not often given to fits of anger, but he felt a quiet rage building up against the people who'd done this. Somehow, it was more insulting to be used as Raph was being used than to be killed outright. Leo guessed Raph felt the same way. It was not only degrading to be tied down and have people do things against your will, it was also that you were being violated.

He could well imagine the helplessness Raph must be feeling, probably no small about of shame in his inability to escape as well. It was worse than that these people could've killed him through sheer ignorance, they'd also clearly humiliated him. There was a healthy sort of humility, but it did not spring from the sort of treatment Leo suspected underlay the mild wording of the blog.

Their 'measures to trap one' had been a bullet. Leo shuddered to imagine what the meanings behind 'restrained' and 'examination' were. He was glad to know his brother was alive, but that knowledge came with a new horror, bringing to his imagination a thousand possible things he hadn't even considered previously. Against his better judgment, Leo found himself thinking of Leatherhead, and all that he had gone through at the tentacles of the Kraang.

"Well, at least we know he's still kicking," Leo managed to remark, albeit somewhat shakily.

"Sure, for now," Don agreed, "But for how much longer?"

"Is there some kind of name or location for this place they took him to?" Leo asked.

"Yeah, Doctor Irving Laurenson," Don said, then went on, "But it's hundreds of miles north of us," he shook his head miserably, "We'd never get that far unnoticed, especially not in the Shellraiser."

"We'll just have to take that risk," it was Mikey who said this, and there was a surety in his gaze that Leo didn't see very often, "This is our brother. We have to try."


If Leo had concerns about Splinter's forbidding them from going so far, they were alleviated almost at once upon their return to the lair. Hearing what Donnie had found out, he had one thing to say:

"Go. Find your brother. And bring him home."

They were gearing up for a lengthy road trip. Now they had a pretty good idea where Raph was, based on the general area, revealed by the blogger's profile, as well as bits and pieces of information Don was able to put together by information contained in various posts on the blog, they abandoned all other endeavors to track him down. It was going to be a long haul northward, and every second might count.

"We can expect snow to get in our way before we're through," Donnie warned, "So we should be prepared for that. And we also want to take all the medical supplies we can."

He didn't explain why, and he didn't have to. Leo had not forgotten the concerns Don had sort of skirted the edges of earlier. Drugs, wounds, incorrect food... all of that was bad enough. There was no telling what kind of shape Raph would be in by the time they reached him, even if nothing further was done to him. If Leo had known Raph was being held outdoors without adequate shelter, he could have added prolonged exposure to his list of worries.

But the list was plenty long enough already. The turtles had never undertaken a journey of this sort, though of course they had dreamed of road trips, and it was tough to know where to start. Splinter helped where he could, and warned them of possible hazards they might meet on the road, but it had been many years since he had traveled, and he had not traveled in quite this way.

Fortunately, Donnie had been clever about equipping the Shellraiser for emergencies, and it was almost like a mobile home all on its own. Almost. They were about to test the significance of that word.

Briefly, they were interrupted in their preparations by Don's laptop dinging, letting him know about a new post on the blog, which he read aloud to Leo, who listened grimly.

"'I am beginning to reconsider Red's apparent aggression. When approached by me, he shrank back and hid, and even the enticement of food could not lure him out. It is possible, even probable, that his apparent aggression has its root in fear. Fear of humans is not unusual in species which have close contact with man, though his reaction is more extreme than any other animal I am presently studying. Assuming he is typical of his species, it is possible that we are looking at a scavenger species rather than a predatory one, which would make their organized pack structure highly irregular.'"

Don sighed and sat back, shaking his head with evident disgust, "Armchair scientists. They hear a couple of facts, watch a few documentaries, and develop strong, complicated views on subjects without even testing their beliefs. Worse, some get a degree and then throw away everything they've learned without even doing a real check to see if it's accurate or not. And then they start running and publishing studies and people believe them because they've got a degree but no sense. Next thing you know, it takes decades to untangle fact from fiction, and that's if you're lucky enough to be able to tell which is which. In the meantime, you've got tons of people getting filled up with nonsense they think is fact. Nothing more dangerous in the world than an incompetent fool with a valuable piece of documentation pegging him as an expert in his field who thinks he's right all the time and everyone else is wrong."

"Okay..." Leo said, "I think you need to take a breath, and remember that the important thing isn't how stupid this Laurenson guy is, but the fact that he is holding our brother prisoner."

"Which is something he wouldn't be able to do if he didn't know just enough science to support his faulty ideas," Donnie replied sharply, "You can't base a study on an entire species with just one captive animal. You need more before you get any useful data. And you need to observe them in the wild, without human interference as well."

"Thanks for the science lesson, D, but we need to stay on track," Leo persisted.

The reason Donnie was harping on the subject was obvious. Donnie was brilliant, and largely self-taught. He'd received fundamental lessons from Splinter early on, but had quickly outpaced his master when it came to matters of science and technology. He was wrong more often than he was right, but that was always the case with inventors. But the thing was, he'd read and digested every article he could find on the subjects of interest, researching them thoroughly, coming up with theories, and testing them carefully. He lacked a degree, and thus the credibility inherent to one, but he was a true scientist. All the non-scientists practicing in his fields of study angered him, whether they had degrees or not.

Leo didn't know if this Laurenson character had an actual doctorate, or if he'd just put that on the blog name to sound professional, and he didn't really care. He sounded like another in an increasingly long line of crackpot doctors the turtles had bumped up against. All Leo really cared about was that Irving Laurenson had stolen his brother, and that made him a bad guy.

It concerned him that he and his brothers would be exposed for a long period of time. They were used to traveling in the city, which they knew very well. There were plenty of out of the way places they could take the Shellraiser where no one would see it. It was fully capable of acting as their own personal tank to protect themselves. Assuming they needed to abandon it for any reason, there were a million places they could go and disappear. They knew the alleys, the rooftops, the abandoned buildings. Every bit of the city was an extension of their home, and they could find their way back to the lair from almost any point that allowed them access to the sewer system.

But on an extended drive, they'd often be far from any tunnels, possibly away from places to conceal the Shellraiser as well, and completely in the open. Not a problem at night, which was when they usually drove around the city, because people mostly weren't out and couldn't see well in the dark. But what about during the day? Could they count on being ignored in a vehicle more readily identifiable than the Mystery Machine? They would have to. Leo didn't like it one bit, but that's how it was.

It was either that, or abandon their brother to fate. And that was something they could not do.

"I want to keep us moving," Leo told Donnie, "We're looking at a minimum of seven hours travel time, longer depending on traffic and whether or not we get lost, and we don't know what we're walking into, so I want us to go in shifts. Donnie, you'll take the first shift, I'll take the second."

"Ooh, ooh, what about me?" Mikey asked hopefully.

"No," Leo replied.

"Aw..." Mikey frowned.

For just a brief moment, Mikey had seemed like himself again, wanting to touch things he shouldn't, and being disappointed by Leo's refusal to let him. Then he got quiet again, and the sober look returned to his face. He took one of the boxes Donnie had packed with supplies and carried it to the Shellraiser. It was such a normal action, but it physically hurt Leo to watch him, because Mikey just wasn't himself.

Though it was Raph who had been taken, to Leo it felt like his other brothers were fading too. Mikey was so hurt he hardly even talked. And Donnie had been run ragged, and spent far too many hours in a row gazing intently at a computer screen. He was tired, easily distracted, unusually irate. Leo didn't realize that he was also behaving strangely, giving orders without confidence, and frequently looking lost as he searched for something that wasn't there.

Raph needed their help, of that there could be no doubt.

But they also needed him.


Finally, the Shellraiser was packed. The turtles said goodbye to Splinter, and then they set out. Leo made a go of trying to sleep in the back so he'd be rested enough to drive in the morning. He slept only in fits and starts, often interrupted by nightmares.

Mikey, who could usually be counted on to get into some sort of foolishness, sat largely inert, staring blankly out the windshield. Periodically he would be taken by fidgets, but otherwise he sat still. He was too worried to even ask "are we there yet?" over and over again.

The tension radiating from Mikey made it even harder for Leo to try and sleep. Eventually, he gave up, and went up front to sit near Donnie, and stare out at the dark city streets.

Clouds filled the sky, and the temperature had dropped in the last few hours. There was a clear promise of snow in the air. It felt strange to Leo that he was going to be leaving the city, and wouldn't see the first snowfall of the year. He couldn't remember a time when he and his brothers hadn't slipped to some storm drain near the surface to watch the first snowfall. It was a natural part of their lives, something they didn't even really think about doing. They just felt the change in the weather, and went somewhere they could observe that change take place. Then they would go back to the lair, glad they had somewhere warm to hang their masks, happy they had a home, and a family.

It was one of those things they did together. April had talked about planning to get together with her friends to do something, and not seeing relatives for weeks, months or even years. To Leo, it was unimaginable. His brothers were always nearby, and he saw them every day. To him and his brothers, that was normal and right, just like living in the lair, and just like watching the snow roll in overnight.

Now, quite suddenly, all of that had changed. With time to do nothing but think, it finally struck Leo how their lives had been turned upside down by a single moment. The moment a man had decided to curtail their freedom with the bullet from a gun, not because he had any reason to hate them or feel threatened by them, but simply because he could.