Chapter 21

"Sonofabitch!" I yelled in frustration as I threw my helmet to the ground after dismounting my cycle. My brothers and I had just returned from another night of scouting, and again nothing new turned up. No major gang activity, no clan activity, nothing. It's like the city just became fucking crime free overnight.

The sound of the battle truck echoed throughout the garage as they pulled in shortly after me; I ignored a furious Leo as I stormed my way back to the lair.

"Raph! Get back here," I heard him shout. Whatever, he could shout till he couldn't breathe anymore, I didn't want to hear any of his shit. I moved faster to the lair. I needed to get to the dojo and hit something. He apparently had caught up to me and put his hand on my shoulder, "Stop when I'm trying to talk to you!"

Fine, I'll just hit something now. I swung my arm around, knowing that he would easily duck it, but he wasn't expecting me to ram his entire body into the side of the sewer tunnel. I could hear him exhale loudly, but didn't care as I punched his sides. He got his bearings and began to fight back, but it was only until I felt Mike and Donnie pull me away from him did I finally let up.

"Leave me alone, Leo, I'm not in the mood right now," I snarled out as I turned back towards the lair once again.

"Well, when are you in the mood?" he spat back, "You've been like this ever since Elena went missing."

"Yeah, four months ago! Four fucking months ago Leo!" I snapped and began coming back at him again, but stopped when I saw all three of them ready to defend themselves if need be. "Did you even realize it's been that long?"

"I have," Donnie piped in rather quietly, "Each and every day."

"So have I," Mikey added irritably. "You know you're not the only one who's worried about her."

Leo came up next to me and hesitantly put his hand on my shoulder as I faced away from them. His hand was light at first, thinking I may swing at him again, but after realizing I wasn't he squeezed it a little harder. "Look, we're all worried about her. But you're not helping anything by getting reckless out there."

I snorted in derision and shrugged him off as I walked off towards the lair once again; I vaguely heard everyone else fall in step behind me. Leo still talked, but I was only half listening. Apparently he didn't appreciate my way of doing things. Since the clan took her, I went back to my original idea of busting as many heads as I could to find any scrap of information on where she could have possibly been taken.

Tonight had been a little dicey, as I had rushed into a fracas between the purple dragons and a smaller rival gang. There wasn't even any crime involved, just two gangs who wanted to fight. I truthfully didn't care what it was they were fighting over, maybe the dragons just wanted to do a pissing contest, but I just wanted to beat as many asses as I could and maybe grab the head honcho of their little group to make him talk.

Well, it didn't work out quite like I had planned and we all had the bumps and bruises to prove it. In the end some punk kid had been in charge and I couldn't get anything out of him; Leo had to prevent me from permanently fusing his skull into a wall.

No one else talked as we got back to the lair. Whatever, they all needed their time and I needed to go hit something. Or lots of things.

"Raphael," dad's voice cut through my yelling as I punched the bag for the millionth time. Great, Leo must've talked to him and tattled on me.

"Yes, father," I replied as I turned to face him. He had silently come in and sat on the tatami mat he preferred and motioned for me to sit next to him. I silently groaned, not wanting to sit still and talk about my feelings, but even my hard head knew not to cross him.

"Whatever it was Leo told you he's blowing it out of proportion, I swear," I murmured as I crossed the room over to the floor, "Yeah, there were a lot more than I thought there were, but they were common thugs…not even like skilled dragon members yet, so we were fine."

Dad stroked his beard a few times as he contemplated his words, "Your brother did not come to me at all, but you have shown me who the problem was this evening."

I smacked my forehead; of course I'd be the dumbass who gave myself away.

"My son," dad put his hand on my shoulder, "I know your soul is torn at the moment, like a piece has been ripped away from your core." He let the words sink into me for a moment. "But you needn't be careless in your efforts to find her."

We sat there for a few silent moments. I hadn't thought about it before, but that's exactly what it felt to have her torn from me. It felt like someone dug into my heart without any anesthesia and just ripped out a piece of it.

"Dad, I…" I began hesitantly; I hadn't told anyone about this, "I can't sleep right, dad. All I see is her reaching out to me, wanting me to help save her…but I couldn't get to her dad. I couldn't protect her like I should have. And then when we saw that thing in the morgue…"

I breathed in slowly, not wanting to lose what composure I had remaining. Even before I had healed properly I had snuck out to hit the streets in order to find any possible information; I had called Casey to come help since I knew my brothers would have just tried to stop me. Every time I tried to close my eyes I'd see that same image, hearing her scream my name in desperation, but I couldn't stop them from taking her. I had to get out of the lair and hit the streets; it was the only thing keeping me sane at the moment.

"Raphael," dad's voice echoed in my head again. I looked up to see him looking at me straight in the eyes. "You will find her. I have no doubt she is still alive. Considering who we are dealing with, we would have definitive proof if she wasn't. Do not let the past haunt you, but let hope for the future keep you going."

I nodded my comprehension as we both stood up to exit the dojo. I needed to eat something; Mikey had been harassing me about that lately, even though I had no appetite whatsoever, but maybe I could appease him a bit. Maybe dad was right. I'm going to have to be on my game for when we do find her. I can't go in half-cocked and do something that could get her killed.

I went into the kitchen and saw Mikey grabbing some leftovers out of the fridge; he saw me and grabbed a second plate so he could heat up extra. I sat at the table and watched him; I could tell he hadn't been eating or sleeping well either.

It finally hit me; none of my brothers had been eating or sleeping since she had been taken. I wasn't the only one. I mentally smacked myself for not noticing it sooner. I had just been so busy doing my own thing I hadn't been paying attention to them as much.

"Mikey, I…" I began to talk, but he interrupted me by lifting a finger.

"Dude, I get it, I do. I'd probably be just as big of an asshole as you've been if I was in your position," he laughed slightly as he pushed a plate towards me, "We'll get her back though, ya know?"

I nodded after a moment, dropping back into silence as I ate my food while he heated his up. I guess he figured since I was talking and not yelling for once that I had finally come to the realization on just how much of an ass I had been.

Leo ran into the room and noticed both of us sitting by the kitchen, "Good, you two are together. We may have gotten a hit."

Mikey and I locked eyes for a split second before dropping our meals and running into Donnie's lab. The sounds of his frantic typing could be heard well outside his lab and into the living room. He was balancing the cellphone on his shoulder talking to someone as he typed.

"Ok, so the hospital, are you sure? OK, April, I'll do some deeper scans and see if I can confirm anything. Hopefully it'll point us in the right direction. Let us know if you hear anything else, ok? OK, good, thanks April, it helps a ton. Bye…"

Nerd boy dropped his phone as he went between multiple computers and screens on the wall; he was so focused on his task that he hadn't even heard all of us entering the lab.

"So? What's the word?" I growled slightly, hating to be kept in the dark when he obviously knew something.

"Everyone's here?" he jumped in surprise at the sound of my voice in his lab. "Oh, ok. So here's what I got," Donnie rubbed his tired eyes as he swung one monitor around to us.

"April has been using some of her old news sources to find out anything weird thats been going on with the purple dragons, or even any mentions of clan activity lately. We all know that it's been pretty quiet on all fronts, which is abnormal."

"Anyway," he adjusted his glasses as he went back to point at another monitor which showed a map, "April's sources have been showing an increase in purple dragon sightings over by New York-Presbyterian Hospital. It's odd because it's normally not even in their usual list of meet ups. Word on the street is recruitment exercises are taking place around there."

"Ok, so just an increase in sightings, but what are they doing for their recruitments?" Leo piped in; his arms were crossed and his hand rubbed his chin in thought.

"Well, it differs from my research," Donnie pointed out, "sometimes it's just a massive free-for-all and like the last few who come out on top get recruited. Then there's small petty theft or tasks they may send them on to see if they've got the skills needed."

Another screen popped up with security feed from the hospital's system, "All I've pulled up so far is that they go in through a back door here at nighttime," he pointed to the security feed, "but then I never see any footage showing where they come out from. "

"Isn't that the hospital where Dickford works at?" I pointed out irritably, remembering our past searches. "You said you never found anything weird about it before."

"Yeah, but that was early on right after she…went missing," I could hear the hesitation in his voice. "These videos are only from the past month or two; we had already moved on to other sectors in the city by then."

"So you're saying the hospital is eating people. That's super creepy dude," Mikey piped in with his wisdom. I sighed as I backhanded his head and ignored his cry out. "Hey! Stephen King wrote a book like that though!"

"Is there any other weird things going on with the hospital?" the question came from where Leo stood.

"That's what I was doing when you guys came in here, one second," Donnie went back to typing on one of his many keyboards. Different maps and readings began popping up randomly on all of the screens and he took a moment to interpret the flood of information.

"Oh wow, now that's kind of odd," he said more to himself as he read the screens. I came forward and looked at the screens, but couldn't even tell what the hell we were looking at.

"Ok, so this is kind of an anomaly. See, the hospital is undergoing a large renovation in this wing here," he pointed to a section of the building on one of the maps. "So it's pretty normal to see a large use of electricity there during the daytime because of all the activity and all going on. See I decided to run a scan of all the power grids and usage to see if anything stuck out, and when I included the hospital I just analyzed it as a whole, not specific sections, you see?"

His fingers clicked over the keys some more until a few more zoomed in pictures of blueprints showed up on nearby screens. How the hell he could focus with all this shit I could never tell, but if it got us one step closer to finding her I'd pick on him about it later.

"So, in general a hospital uses a ton of power. Makes sense. But this gem just showed up on a wing-by-wing analysis of their energy consumption," his mouse circled a section of the map under the hospital that didn't have any maps or blueprints.

He turned around and stared at all of us before sighing in exasperation at our cluelessness, "My scan picked up that this place is connected to their same power grid, so it's technically tapped into the hospital's power source. There's a lot of energy being used in a section of the hospital that shouldn't exist. Really guys? Is this that hard?"

I think it finally clicked for me as I ran through the scenario in my head, "So these dragons are sneaking in, not coming out, and there's a mysterious part of the hospital no one knows about?"

"Precisely," Donnie turned back to the screens as we all ignored Mikey whispering about the hospital eating people still. "Looking at the schematics of the hospital I can plot the most obvious route for them to take once they go in through that back entrance and how to get to this unknown area."

"It makes sense, really," Leo pointed out, "The best place to hide is sometimes in plain sight."

A frenzied beeping began on a monitor off to the right, alerting nerd boy who had rolled over there and leaned close to look at the screen. He read through the information for a few moments before sitting back fast and gasping.

"What?!" I jumped over to look at the screen. It had a ton of records pulled up on it, including one that had Brad's and another guy's photo. "What is it Donnie?"

"So when you guys gave me all that information on Dr. Grant I never really had a chance to dig into his background, but after all of this went down and we came up with nothing I decided to get into his personal records. That guy right there," he pointed to the other man's photo next to Brad's, "He's Brad's uncle, the one that Elena said he was working with on the genetics research."

"Yeah, she said he was like Uncle Barney or some other equally stupid name," Mikey called over from his spot. Both he and Leo had begun to make their way over to the chair that nerd boy sat in. The four of us were pretty big, so it was a bit crowded at the moment.

"Barney Stockman to be precise," Donnie interjected. "As in brother to Baxter Stockman."

"Wait, so how is 'Uncle Barney' Brad's uncle then?" I asked, "Baxter never had any kids."

"Never any that took his name," D pointed at a file of Brad's he pulled up, "Looks like he and Brad's mom never got married, so when Brad was born he took on his mom's maiden name. And from the looks of this he didn't really start putting in effort to find his dad until a few years ago. He must've found Barney instead."

"The last anyone reported seeing Dr. Stockman was right around the time of the Kraang invasion. He and Shredder haven't been seen since, and, Donnie," Leo pointed out, "you yourself said you haven't found any information on their whereabouts. Maybe the foot have allied with the dragons now? Has there been any changes to your search for the Shredder?"

"Nope, not a one. I'm assuming Barney must've told Brad everything he knew about us though, which would explain why he would have said some of that stuff to Elena."

"Okay then," I stretched my arms out as I walked away from the crowd and checked for my sais, "Looks like we know where to go, so let's get going."

"Wait, wait, wait, Raph," Leo went over and blocked my exit from the lab, "We can't go up there right now. It's morning now and there are going to be a ton of people at the hospital. We can't just go traipsing around there."

I narrowed my eyes at my older brother, "Are you seriously shitting me right now? The first good lead we've got and you want to wait?" I cracked my knuckles as my anger began to rise, "What if she's there right now, what if they're doing stuff to her, you just wanna let her sit there for another 12 hours before we can go in?"

"You know we don't want her in there as much as you do, but we can't go rushing in after a full night of patrols," Leo sighed in exasperation. "It's not going to do her any good to bust in there, in the middle of the day, to the largest hospital in the nation. Do you realize the amount of collateral damage and lives at stake there could be? She might not even be there either; this could be just another piece of the puzzle."

"As much as it pains me to also say this, your brother is correct," dad's voice came in from behind Leo. He moved out of the way so we all could see the older rat. "If indeed the purple dragons and foot are behind her disappearance they will not hesitate to harm those who are innocent."

I wanted to throw things, take Donnie's table and flip it over, just go back into the dojo and pummel that damn dummy to a pile of sand. But I understood what he was getting at.

"Fine," I spat out angrily as I inched my way past dad and out into the common area. I grabbed my plate and shouted over to my brothers as I went into my room, "You bastards better be ready to roll outta here right at sunset, or I'm going on my own."

I knew I needed to eat even though I wasn't hungry, and try to get some sleep even though I was wasn't tired. I was amped and ready to go.

We're coming for you babe, you just gotta hold on a little longer.