Part 2 - Free
"If I could change, I would; take back the pain, I would/
Retrace every wrong move that I made, I would/
If I could stand up and take the blame, I would"
-Easier to Run (Linkin Park)

"Leo, we're lost, aren't we?"

For a second, Leo thought there was a double meaning to Donnie's question. But when he looked back, he saw that Don was looking over Mikey's shoulder at the map and shaking his head. Leo pulled to the side of the road with a sigh, and climbed back to look at the map too.

All the turtles had an impeccable sense of direction. Though Mikey couldn't even read a compass, he could undoubtedly have gotten out of the Shellraiser and oriented himself so that he was facing directly at the lair. Any one of them could. Leo had never tried to explain it to himself or anyone else why that was so. Simply put, they could just feel the direction their home was in.

To a lesser degree, they could figure out the direction of almost any other location they were vaguely familiar with by feel. That was fine when they were running rooftops and could simply hop a building if it was in their way. And of course they had explored the sewer system so thoroughly that they didn't even need a directional sense to navigate down there.

But with the Shellraiser on the street, it had suddenly proven to be a different story. The streets never seemed to quite line up the way that Leo expected them to, and it was evident that either Donnie could not read a map or that New York didn't look like the map in the Shellraiser computer system. Either way, they always had trouble finding their way to mutagen canisters, and not just because Donnie's mutagen detection device was flaky (though there was that too).

Now, a long way from home, they found everything unfamiliar. Nothing looked right. Roads branched off and Leo didn't know whether to get on one of the branches or stay on the main road. The closer they got to their destination, the less sure he became. Mikey's navigation instructions had become so incomprehensible that Don had taken over. They were all feeling pent up in the van, anxious to get to their destination, worried about being so far from home, scared they wouldn't find their brother. It was working on all of their nerves. Donnie was merely expressing what they were all feeling at this point.

But Leo couldn't admit to his own doubts. He was the leader, the others were looking to him for reassurance and direction. So he lifted his head slightly, and quietly cleared his throat.

"No, we're not lost," Leo said confidently, then wavered slightly, "I just... I'm not sure... exactly... where we are. But... but that's okay, because... um... well, we're almost there."

"Leo, how can you possibly know that if you don't know where we are?" Donnie asked critically.

"I... uh... well..." Leo bit his lower lip, avoided looking at Donnie and shrugged in what he hoped was a casual manner, "I just..." he never had to finish the sentence, because Donnie's computer dinged.

"Laurenson's got another post up," Donnie reported, supplementing this after reading for a few seconds with, "Oh no."

"Now what?" Leo asked, trying to keep the panicky edge out of his voice.

Ever since he'd seen the pictures of those dogs, his mind had been filled with images of horror that he couldn't get out of his head. He still didn't know where or how Raph was being kept, or what condition he was in, but he now knew how this so-called doctor cared -or rather failed to care- for his captive research subjects. Leo's imagination had run riot with that information, clouding his thoughts with renewed fear for his brother's life.

"'Despite precautions,'" Donnie said, reading the post aloud with a shaky voice, "'Red found a weakness in the fencing and escaped, injuring himself and another animal in the process. I have called in a team to search for him. Hopefully he can be darted and recaptured. But... for the safety of people living in the area, it may be necessary to...'" he choked, unable to finish the sentence.

Mikey didn't get it, "To what? Raph's not gonna hurt anybody. Not unless they try to hurt him first. He wouldn't. Donnie, what are they gonna do to him?"

Don simply looked down, and didn't answer. His silence seemed to be enough of an answer for Mikey, who actually paled slightly, eyes wide in shock.

"No," Mikey declared after a moment, scowling, "No, they can't. Leo, tell him they can't do that!"

"Mikey," Donnie shook his head, struggling to meet his brother's eyes, "If we don't find Raph first, I'm afraid they'll be able to do whatever they want."

"That won't happen," Leo said firmly, glancing at his brothers in the rear view mirror, "Raph won't let it. He's smart, and he knows what he's up against, maybe better than we do. He'll keep clear of them."

Mikey and Donnie didn't say anything aloud, but exchanged a glance which said exactly what Leo was thinking. Since when had their brother ever had sense enough to avoid a fight?

Raphael's brothers might have been more worried if they'd known that fighting was the last thing on his mind right now, because of what that said about his physical and mental state. Every fiber of his being had been focused on getting out of the pen. That goal accomplished, he sort of lost his sense of direction. His head wouldn't stay clear long enough for him to finish a train of thought.

Though the barn was not conditioned, it was fairly well closed off to the elements, and there was hay piled in corners and stalls. Raph couldn't make a meal of hay, but he could use it as a place to lie down for a little that was dry and relatively warm. Intending only to rest for a moment, regain some warmth and energy, Raph was not later certain if he had slept or lost consciousness. By the time he came to, the place was in an uproar, because his escape had been discovered.

Noise filtered through the walls of the barn, but Raph listened to it with a kind of detachment. He knew that there were people looking for him, he could hear boots crunching on gravel and people shouting to one another. He also knew that he could expect a repeat of his initial capture if he was found, complete with darting and a return to a cage. He knew that the barn would likely be searched eventually.

But the near-choking had taken more out of him than he'd realized at the time. Now the panic adrenalin had burned itself out, he was left just feeling shaky and deflated. Now he'd gone down, he didn't feel like getting up. Despite his earlier speech to Spot, and the conviction that had carried him so far, he felt almost too tired to care now, and his inability to think made planning how he was going to keep clear of the people hunting him impossible. If he couldn't think of what to do, it seemed like there wasn't any real point in getting up.

Spot had already been recaptured, but Raph didn't think he'd been put back in the pen Raph had escaped from. There was persistent activity near it, and when the voices were loud enough for him to make out their words, it sounded like they were looking for how he'd gotten out, and watching to make sure the other animal didn't get out.

It took some time for Raph's foggy brain to process the singular term. More snippets told him that the wolfdog had gotten out of the pen, and they couldn't find her. Raph didn't think that she could have gotten over the fence the way he had. She was too big to fit between the strands of barbed wire at the top like Spot had, and didn't have hands to swing herself over like Raph did. She had to be in that larger enclosure. All the searchers seemed to agree, and they weren't looking too strenuously for her. They were more concerned about Raph, because they were certain he'd gotten out of the larger pen.

Apparently the lizard had remained exactly where he was. Possibly he knew he couldn't climb the fence. Possibly he was too cold to try. Possibly, like Spot, he had simply given up the idea of escape.

Hearing footsteps coming his way activated a reflex in Raph, one trained into him since he was very small. Though he couldn't have run if he'd tried, and couldn't actually think of what to do, Raph went back to some of his earliest training without being conscious of it. Splinter had known that his sons needed to stay invisible in the shadows, and that one day they might be hunted and feared. He had trained them to stay hidden, to use whatever was available as cover.

Raph dug into the hay, pushing his way under it and even digging a little into the dirt floor of the barn, disappearing completely from view, and then lying perfectly still, waiting and watching.

That had been the ultimate purpose behind Splinter's having his boys perform exercises over and over. So that, when the time came, they would be able to act even if there was no time to think, or if they were pushed beyond the usual limits of endurance. The training was so deeply ingrained that they could hide or fight to defend their lives with no advance warning, regardless of what else was going on. Doing so with forethought would always be better than acting on instinct, but sometimes instinct was all there was left, and sometimes there was no time for thinking.

And Raph's instincts had always been very strong, particularly his instinct to fight when he felt threatened. Sometimes he had difficulty separating emotional threats from physical ones, which served to make him unpredictable and even dangerous at times, especially as his instinct to flee in the face of danger was severely underdeveloped, despite Splinter's attempts to teach him the virtues of discretion. In this instance, however, he was too weak to fight.

So long as the men didn't find where he was hiding, Raph had no inclination towards a violent response. If they caught him and tried to pen him up again however, all bets were off.

Fortunately, the men looking through the barn weren't terribly thorough about their job. They looked into each stall, and rattled the gates on the stalls in an attempt to startle anything in them out of hiding, but they didn't go looking under the hay. They didn't think it was piled deep enough to conceal something the size of Raph. They also didn't really seem to think he had gone into the barn.

Peering through the hay, Raph got a glimpse of the guns they were carrying. He couldn't be sure, not being any expert on guns (well, not the kind that humans tended to carry), but he didn't think those were loaded with darts. That changed the landscape of things considerably. It was one thing to give in to capture, knowing he'd have another chance at escape. It was quite another to let himself be caught if they had decided that he was too dangerous or inconvenient to keep and intended to kill him.

Raph watched the two men go, knowing they would eventually be back. A general search of the area would be followed by something more thorough if they didn't find any signs of his having left. These people had been competent enough to catch him, they would be competent enough to find him if he did nothing to thwart their efforts or vacate the premises.

It was enough for Raph to gather what little strength he had left, though it seemed his only option at this point was to run, to get as far away as he could as fast as he could. All things considered, that wasn't likely to be very far or very fast. But he intended to do whatever he had to, until he wasn't able to do anything more.

"You're sure this is the right area?" Leo inquired.

"Positive," Donnie replied, "I just don't know... exactly where."

The sky was thick with clouds. A few stray snowflakes were making their escape towards Earth, only to be snatched up by a chill wind which tossed them through the air. It was still early, but rapidly getting dark. The days were short at this time of year, especially this far north.

After much arguing, Donnie had taken over the driving, and had brought them to an area where the roads branched off without street signs, and driveways composed of anything from asphalt to dirt to gravel stretched away out of sight, some marked by mailboxes which seemed not to have any number on them, and some lacking mailbox and driveway altogether. They were looking at a lot of square miles of real estate, and the last thing Leo wanted was to deploy his brothers out into this unfamiliar area, especially in daylight, and with the temperature plunged below freezing.

But there was a lot of land they couldn't see from the road, due to distance and trees, among other things. Leo had a tendency to listen to his head and his heart rather than his gut, his reason and feelings rather than his instincts, but right now they were all telling him that time was short.

There had been no further blog updating, which Leo had to assume meant Raph had so far evaded capture. But that wasn't necessarily a good thing. If he got away, Raph could go anywhere. Leo knew that he would orient himself and head for home, but not only was it likely impossible for him to make a beeline for it, not knowing the precise spot he started from meant that they couldn't draw a straight line on a map from point A to point B and look for him along that line. They could miss him by inches or miles. And the longer he was running loose, the less they would be able to predict what he was doing or where he was. If Raph was recaptured, things could be even more dire, as he might very shortly thereafter be dead. Leo wasn't sure whether to hope Raph got away or was caught. If it was the former, there might be nothing his brothers could do to find him, and he would be on his own. If it was the latter, they might find him, but possibly too late to help him.

"Okay, let's find somewhere to park the Shellraiser," Leo decided, "Then we'll split up and search the area. Be sure to keep your T-phones on you. Full ninja mode. Do not let anyone see you or hear you."

Not everything along the road was fenced, and it was a small matter for Donnie to find a place where he could drive the Shellraiser off the road and park it behind some trees and bushes so that it was screened from view. After that, Leo decided who was going in which direction.

"Everybody remember where we parked. And keep in touch."

Leo was uncomfortably aware that he was endangering the lives of his entire family, just on the thread thin hope of being able to save one single member of the same. But he saw in the eyes of his brothers that they would have it no other way. Long ago, it had been decided among them that they would live and train with each other, fight alongside each other, and -if necessary- die together for what they believed in. That was how they would spend their existence, no matter what happened or where fate took them.