Leonardo was trying to remain optimistic. Don seemed convinced that being held captive by Baxter Stockman constituted a constructive step towards their goal of becoming legal humans. Leo didn't get it. And he was becoming worried by Don's track record of saying things that sounded logical but turned out to be disastrously wrong. Still, he was trying to remain optimistic.
Optimism, of course, was not a passive thing. Just because he was hoping for the best didn't mean he was going to sit around twiddling his thumbs. There were moves he could make, even while locked in this glass cage.
First, he spent a while sitting in the straw, patiently unlatching each and every zip tie, straightening them out and laying them neatly alongside one another, while the guard continued to ignore him. When he was done with that, he distributed the plastic strips to his brothers. He didn't know what use they might be. But at least the four of them would be equipped with something.
With a half dozen of the zip ties in his own pocket, he then made a slow circuit of the room, looking carefully at everything. The disinterested guard couldn't be the only form of surveillance in here. There had to be cameras, recording devices, something that was transmitting instantaneously to observers in another room. It seemed like potential hiding places for such things were in short supply in the barren enclosure. But still, Leo couldn't find anything.
"Where are the cameras?" he said softly, when he finished his explorations and knelt next to Don again. Don was no ninja, but he had his own form of paranoia, and he knew about security systems. He'd surely been thinking about the problem.
"If I were Stockman," Don replied quietly, "which I hope I never am, no matter how rich and famous I become as a scientist - I'd put them in the observation room. Why make it easy for the prisoners to get access to them?"
Leo nodded. That made sense. "But the microphones would have to be in here," he said. "They'd never hear us through that glass."
"I think the glass is the microphone," Don replied, and Leo wasn't sure he had heard that right. He shot his brother a quizzical look. "Glass is good at picking up vibrations," Don explained. "Especially a big pane like that. There could be some electronics around the edges to convert the vibrations back into sound. Then, it's not difficult to sync that with video and broadcast it to wherever they're watching us from."
"What can we do about that?" Leo asked.
"Well, don't touch the glass," Don advised. "Other than that, speaking in code seems like a winning strategy to me."
The subtext of that suggestion was obvious. Leo was fairly confident that nobody would crack Hamato Japanese any time soon, especially if they were careful about how - and how much - they used it. But if they didn't speak English, Don would be in the dark.
"I mean if you don't want them to understand you," Don added unexpectedly.
Leo frowned, not seeing what his brother was getting at.
"What's our best play here?" Don asked, and then answered his own question. "Getting an eminent scientist to vouch that, aside from the obvious physical differences, we're basically indistinguishable from humans. How do we do that? By acting like regular guys." He fell silent for a moment, mulling over his own plans. "Speaking in code, looking for the cameras… it makes it look like we have something to hide. I think we need to stick to what we started in the interview: be friendly, be open, be normal. Show everyone who we really are."
He looked up, meeting Leo's gaze. "I know your instinct is to do the ninja thing and try to disappear back into the shadows. But remember, that's exactly what we don't want." He rubbed at his arm. "And, listen… I know you hate the idea of scientists studying you. But I promise, it's not like you think. You have to trust me on this."
"What did they do to you?" Leo said in barely a whisper, and this time it was about more than just avoiding being overheard.
But instead of answering, Don turned towards the window, where Lynn had just reappeared.
"Um, sorry," Lynn said, which Leo had to admit was not how he ever would have expected a scientist to address him. "But did you say the WAIS?"
"Yes," Don said. He didn't bother to get up, and he really did seem at ease with talking to someone in a lab coat like this.
"I mean, not the WISC?" Lynn asked. "How old are you?"
Don turned back to Leo, with casual slowness. "Do you want to take this one?"
Leo understood. Don knew the answer - Leo vividly remembered telling him at the farmhouse - but he was giving Leo a chance to practice explaining something that wasn't much of a secret anyway.
Leo hardly liked talking to anybody who was standing while he was sitting, so he got up before he answered. But he stayed away from the glass. Partly because of what Don had just told him. Partly so that he was still within arm's reach of his most vulnerable brother, in case anything happened. He could sense Raph moving closer, to cover his back. Mike had spent most of the past couple hours wedged into a back corner of the enclosure - doing what, Leo didn't quite know - and stayed there now, watching silently.
"We don't know exactly how old we are," Leonardo said, in a steady voice. He tried to channel the focus he had felt while answering similar questions for Vernon. "We know that we were babies in the summer of 1988. We're not sure if we're biologically related, but we think we all came from the same hatching, from a breeding facility, probably in New Jersey."
"I've been in New Jersey?" said Donatello, who Leo only realized then was hearing this part of his story for the first time. "Wow. The number of states I've visited in my life has just increased by 50%."
"I mean, if you want to call New Jersey a state," Raphael said, without taking his eyes off of Lynn.
"While I understand what you're trying to say," Don replied, "it's a geopolitical fact that New Jersey is a state. What?" he added, noticing that Lynn was gaping at them.
"This is unbelievable," Lynn said. She was practically pressing her nose against the glass now. It really was difficult to read her behavior as hostile, and she was clearly more curious than afraid. "I'd love to get you guys in front of a Turing test."
"Oh, I would never pass a Turing test," Don said, waving a hand. "The judges would definitely think I was a computer."
Lynn boggled again. "You know what a Turing test is," she said faintly.
"Of course." Don tilted his head at the young lady, as if she must be a bit dim. "Who doesn't know what a Turing test is?"
As one, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael raised their hands.
"Guys, you're killing me," Don said. "But to get back to your question," he said to Lynn, "I've been taking the WAIS for the past couple of years. The WISC is too easy."
"And the rest of you?" Lynn asked.
"Test-naïve," Don supplied, saving Leo from having to answer a question involving acronyms he didn't understand. "Have fun."
Leo didn't really like the way Lynn's eyes were shining. "Do we have a deal about living arrangements?" he asked.
"Oh, right," Lynn said. "I talked to some of the senior researchers. They gave me a hard time about changing the protocol. It means lots of extra paperwork. I'll keep working on it, but it definitely isn't going to be today."
Leo crossed his arms. "We won't do anything for you until we have beds, food, privacy. We can talk, but we're also very good at being silent."
"Oh, of course," Lynn said. "I'm going back for round two later this afternoon. I'm going to point out to my colleagues that if we change your accommodations in the middle of the testing, the results will become uninterpretable. If you're going to be moved, it has to be right away. And I think I can make them understand that not moving you would be…" She hesitated. "… Inhumane."
This young scientist had some strategic acumen. Leo could appreciate that.
"We can wait you out on beds and privacy," he said. "Food has to happen soon."
"There is a raging debate going on about what to feed you," Lynn assured him. "Would you mind - Oh, damn."
Leo looked down, following her gaze. It didn't take him long to figure out what had distracted her. Don had started shivering all over, and he appeared to be in the process of slowly slumping to the floor. It seemed like he was trying to call attention to this problem, but he wasn't getting any coherent words out.
"Hector, the med kit," Lynn snapped, even as Leo dropped to his knees to prop Don up.
"Donnie, come on," he said. "You can't do this now."
The next thing he knew, Raph had sidestepped behind his shell to block Lynn, who had let herself into the enclosure. "Don't touch him," Raph snarled.
"I'm guessing he's going into diabetic shock," Lynn said. Now she seemed afraid, but her determination to do whatever she was trying to do was giving her courage. "I told them this was going to happen. But they're busy squinting at blurry blown-up images of your teeth and arguing over whether you're able to eat meat. Now are you going to get out of my way?"
Raph didn't answer, and Leo knew he was waiting for a decision from his leader. "What's in the med kit?" he asked over his shoulder.
He heard Lynn snap the little box open, letting Raph look at the contents. "I've read his entire medical history, remember? I wasn't going to let them bring you here without having insulin supplies on hand."
"It looks like his stuff," Raph reported.
Leo couldn't hold back a growl, but he said, "Fine," and immediately Raph let Lynn approach.
"Donatello, can you hear me?" Lynn asked, as she knelt at his side. Leo had to give her credit for talking to him like a human patient. But the needles in the box were giving him fits.
In the minute that Raph had been waylaying Lynn, Don had stopped speaking entirely. He was just staring at the floor and having occasional violent twitches. "Okay," Lynn said – more an attempt at reassurance than a serious assessment of the situation, which clearly was not okay – and then she poked the smaller needle into his finger.
Mike had materialized at Leo's other side, and he watched closely as Lynn performed the blood test - pressing Don's punctured finger to the little piece of paper, putting the paper in the meter, and watching the number pop up. Then she studied a paper card and reached for a bigger needle.
"How much are you giving him?" Mike asked, as Lynn searched for a vein on Donatello's dark skin. When she didn't answer, he asked again, more urgently, "How much are you giving him?!"
"Eight milligrams of diazepam," Lynn said brusquely, without looking up from her work. "He's hypoglycemic and needs sugar. We'd rather have him conscious so he can take it orally."
"Aw, no," Mike said, his eyes going wide. "That's way too much."
"It's the standard dose for his weight," Lynn said. She grabbed a little alcohol pad, pushed Don's sleeve up, and swabbed a spot on his arm. "He's about 140, right?"
"Yeah, but the standard dose?!" Mike said, in a high-pitched voice. He gestured to Don. "I mean, does this look standard to you?"
Lynn just grabbed the paper card again and flicked it at him. Mike snatched it up, scanned it frantically, and jumped another octave. "This is human dosing weight! We always take less of everything! You can't -"
But Lynn already had.
"Oh shit," Mike said. "Why did you do that? I told you not to do that. Nobody listens to Mikey. And now I sound like Stockman. That's how mad I am about what's happening right now."
"It's fine," Lynn said. She was holding the empty needle poised in midair, not putting it back in the box yet. "He's coming around."
Don drew in a rasping breath, and sat up in Leo's arms. Then he slumped again, his eyes sliding out of focus.
"Donatello," Lynn and Leo said, almost in unison. "What's happening?"
Don was panting, struggling to breathe even as his breaths came faster and faster. He was shaking, and sliding towards the floor even as Leo tried to get a better grip on him. "I can't… see the…" he said, and then it wasn't clear if he was still awake.
"Shit," Lynn said.
"That's what I told you," Mike replied.
But Lynn had already jumped to her feet and run out of the enclosure, making sure to push the heavy door closed behind her.
"You're running away?" Raph howled after her. "What did you do to my brother?!"
"She overdosed him," Mike said, and Leo had the disconcerting sense that Don was using a previously-undisclosed telepathic ability to speak through Mikey's mouth. "She wanted him to be awake so he can drink, cuz otherwise they gotta give him sugar in a needle. But she doesn't understand about shell weight and reptile speed. She dosed him like he's 140 pounds of human metabolism. So, uh…" He gestured at Don, who was going a darker shade of green all over, and then looked at Leo and Raph in dismay. "Basically this is what happens to people who take too much heroin."
"Don is ODing on heroin?!" Leo yelled. He still owed Don four stories about who he had killed and why – assuming Don lived to hear them – and one of those stories had to do with an out-of-control heroin addict. If Leo hadn't killed that guy, the drugs would have done it, and not too much slower. There was no way he was letting his brother go out like that.
"No!" Mike squeaked. "He's ODing on the stuff his mom gave him the first time we met him. It's like heroin!"
"Forget what it's like!" Raph shouted. "What do you do about it?" There clearly wasn't a lot he could provide right now, but he looked determined to somehow do whatever Mike told him Don needed.
"I told you," Mike said. "He's gotta drink."
Raph looked around wildly, as if there might be a water cooler, a high-end refrigerator, or a small pond that he had missed earlier.
"I can piss," said Raphael, a resourceful ninja to the core.
"Ugh, no," Mike said, before Leo had to say yes or no to Raph's proposal. "He's gotta drink something with sugar. But first, he needs that."
Leo whipped around. Lynn had just come back in with three other people he didn't recognize. They approached Don as if they didn't quite notice he was surrounded by three agitated brothers ready to fight off all comers with their bare hands.
"They're EMS," Lynn said loudly. "Medical staff. Let them work."
Leo fixed the nearest staff member with his most threatening glare, as the guy knelt to examine Don. "You weren't kidding," the medic said, in response to whatever Lynn had told him on the way here. "About either part."
Leo wasn't sure which two parts Lynn might have boiled this whole situation down to, but Mike quickly made a guess as the medic pulled out another needle and then just held it, not seeming to know where to stick it.
"Give it to me," Mike said.
"Wha?" said the medic.
"You want to find a vein?" Mike yelled. "Give me the fucking needle!"
"Hey, I can't –" the medic started.
"Let him try," Lynn ordered over the chaos.
The medic handed over the syringe, and without hesitation, Mike plunged it into Don's bicep. "Where's the other one?" he demanded, as soon as he had emptied the cylinder.
The medic was either impressed or terrified into not questioning Michelangelo's ongoing co-opting of his job. "Here," he said. "You have to put this one in his thigh. And then turn him over. He'll vomit."
"Thanks for the heads-up," Mike muttered. "Raph, get his pants off."
Raph couldn't be bothered to make any crack about how long he'd been waiting to do that. He just yanked off Don's slacks. Mike jabbed the needle into the muscle of his thigh, and then Leo quickly rolled him sideways. Sure enough, a minute later, Don threw up in the hay. He didn't regain consciousness, though.
"He needs to go to the medical wing," Lynn said. "He'll need hydration. Insulin. Better monitoring than we can provide here."
"We're going with him," Leo said, holding his limp brother closer as the medical staff reached to take him.
Lynn shook her head. "I can't let you do that," she said. "The security issues would be -"
In a rare flash of Raphael-like anger, Leo didn't even consider alternatives. He just leapt to his feet and slammed Lynn against a wall, his forearm pressed to her throat. The other fraction of his awareness tracked Don as the nearest medic caught him. "We are going with him," he said. "Right now."
"Okay," Lynn rasped.
What happened after that was largely a blur. The medics loaded Donatello onto a stretcher they'd left waiting in the observation room. Leo, Mike, and Raph followed Lynn and the medics to another part of the building. Don was transferred to a bed - apparently not an impossible thing to find in this place - and given IV fluids. The world came back into focus when he sat up and started talking.
"Okay but food?" was the first thing he said.
"Guys, please," said Lynn, who looked relieved nearly to tears that she hadn't killed her prize research subject. "Help me out."
"We eat whatever you eat," Leo said. Then he crooked a finger at Don. "Except he's diabetic and vegetarian."
Lynn blinked at him. "What?"
Leo just shrugged. "He likes animals."
"Okay," Lynn said, and disappeared to argue with the nutritionists.
In a while she was back with sack lunches. (Or dinners. Leo had lost track of what time it was.) She distributed them amongst the Turtles, then immediately headed for the door again. "I'm going directly to Dr. Stockman," she said. "You're not going back to that room." She hesitated, then added, "Please don't destroy anything here. Or try to escape. If you do that, I can't help you." She met each of their gazes, then left.
"You think she means it?" Raph asked.
Leo just shook his head. He didn't care about that question right now. Instead, he sat on the edge of the hospital cot and looked at Don with a worried expression.
"Are you going to be okay?" he asked.
Don seemed exhausted, but otherwise not too much the worse for wear. "It's not the first time," he said. "They're doing everything right. I'll be fine." He gestured to the paper bag by his feet. "What did they bring me?"
Leo opened the bag and examined its contents. "Looks like grilled cheese."
"Ooh, fine dining," Don said, and reached for the sandwich.
Leo let him have it. While Don devoured that and then a tangerine and then a carton of milk, Leo picked at his own lunch - similar to Don's, only with ham on it. Raph and Mike likewise ate their food. The medics had all left them alone for the time being, though Leo was certain someone was posted just outside the door.
"I'm sorry, bro," Mike said morosely. "I tried to tell her it was the wrong dose."
"It's all right," Don said. "It -"
"Don't say this is somehow advancing our cause," Raph interrupted.
Don just shrugged and wiped his hands on the white blankets.
"But seriously," Raph said, "what's our next move?"
"Nobody is doing anything until Don is on his feet again," Leo snapped. "After that, if we don't like their plans, we can barricade ourselves in here."
"I like it," Don said. "Can't be construed as escaping. And doesn't count as destroying, either, as long as we're careful about how we do it."
"But then we're trapped in a hospital room," Mikey pointed out.
"Fine with me," Don said.
"Not fine with me," Raph said, equally quickly. "Seriously, Fearless? We're going to get in a standoff with Stockman? What's our leverage?"
"Well, the part where they want us to be cooperative," Don said. "It's in their interest to negotiate with us. Plus, they really don't want us to be unattended in areas where they didn't expect us to be in the first place." His eyes trailed around the room. "If I can't find a way to cause some trouble for them with the stuff in here, then I'll be… really… disappointed in myself." He stopped there, looking puzzled by his own words.
"That was pretty weak, bro," Mike said, but it seemed Don had already figured that out.
"Sorry." Don rubbed his forehead. "There's a reason I'm still in this bed. I'm not up to any kind of battle right now."
"But we're not going back to the hay room," Leo said, just to clarify that Don wasn't suggesting they surrender if Lynn came back with no better offer for them.
"Oh, hell no," Don said. "If they try to take us back there, I'm sure you guys can hold them off until I come up with a way to make them regret putting us in there at all."
Leo narrowed his eyes as he looked around the room himself, trying to guess what Donatello might be able to do with the various medical equipment. "You didn't do this on purpose, did you?" he asked.
"What?" Don replied. "Fake a blood sugar crash so our unwitting enemies would take us to the hospital wing? You guys watch too many movies that aren't about mild-mannered veterinarians."
Leo was pretty sure that was a no, and he decided not to ask any more questions about Donatello's constant machinations.
It wasn't long after that that Lynn returned. After quickly checking Don's vital signs and declaring them to be "much better", she held up both hands as if she was about to give them surprising and exciting news. And then she delivered.
"I have an apartment for you," she said.
"What do you mean, an apartment?" Leo asked. Surely it couldn't be that simple.
"I mean an apartment," Lynn said. She looked very proud of herself. "It's small, but it has everything you need. It's not far from here." Then she turned serious. "We can give you a ride there as soon as Donatello is stable. Then we'll send the van each morning to bring you back for testing."
"Wait," Raph said. "Are you saying the apartment's not here in the lab? What's the catch?"
"No catch," Lynn said. "I mean, except that you have to promise to not skip town as soon as we leave you alone. And it would be nice if you took the testing seriously." She looked at each of them in turn. "I'm trusting you guys, here. Do we have a deal?"
"I don't know," Leo said. "Do we? How did you get Stockman to agree to this?"
"Well, because I pretty much sold my soul to him," Lynn said. "In exchange for you guys living off-site, I'll be camping at the lab."
Leo frowned. Something was still missing. "Lynn, what are you saying?"
"I'm trading places with you guys," she said candidly. "You're going to live in my apartment."
"Right," Raph said. "Like your friends aren't setting up spy cams there right now."
"I'm pretty sure they're not," Lynn said, "since there's only one key, and -" She dug in the pocket of her khakis. "Here it is."
"We have no way of knowing that there really is only one key," Don pointed out.
"That's true," Lynn agreed. "But I'm making a big gamble that you guys won't take the offer, then rob me blind and vanish. So I'm hoping you can trust me a little too."
"So, really?" Mike said. "You're going to let us live in your apartment, with all your stuff in it?"
"I mean, it's not like I have anything worth stealing," Lynn said. "The most valuable thing I own is tens of thousands of dollars' worth of student debt. But yes, Michelangelo, that's basically accurate."
"One more question," Leo said. "Why does Stockman have any faith that we won't run away the first chance we get?"
"He said," Lynn replied, "and I quote, 'Surely those Turtles have realized that they need my genius.'"
Leo exchanged looks with his brothers. Don was wearing a triumphant told-you-so expression. Mike was looking cautiously optimistic. And Raph was clearly conveying that he didn't trust this tiny woman as far as he could jump-kick her.
"Lynn," he said. "A word."
She nodded, and he followed her out into the hallway. His brothers' eyes stayed on his shell until he shut the door behind him.
"You really messed up Don's meds," he said, after a quick glance up and down the corridor told him all he needed to know about their prospects of making a break for it right now. "But you did the right thing afterwards. We're in your debt." He bowed his head. "We will accept your generous offer. And…" He hesitated. "You can experiment on me if you want to."
Lynn looked like she had just hit the scientific jackpot. But the total lack of any malice in her expression made Leo not instantly regret what he had said. "We can go to the testing room as soon as you're ready," she said. "It will probably be a few hours until Donatello can be released from observation. Medical observation," she added quickly.
This woman was astute. She was picking up on the Turtles' triggers, and she was willing to work with them.
"Let me talk to them for a minute first," Leo said.
"Sure," Lynn said. She pulled the key from her pocket again, and held it out to him. "Like Donatello said, I can't prove to you that this is the only key. But I'll give it to you right now. If I'm telling the truth, now you have access to the apartment and I don't."
"We appreciate everything you've done," Leo said. He took the tiny silver key and put it in his own pocket, next to the zip ties. "Wait for me a minute."
Lynn nodded, and Leo went back into the cramped hospital room. As soon as he was inside, he took the key out of his pocket again and gave it to Raphael.
"Are you kidding me?" Raph said.
"As soon as Don is able to move," Leo said, "go to the apartment. I'll catch up later."
"What do you mean, later?" Raph narrowed his eyes. "Where are you going?"
"I'm going to do this testing for Lynn," Leo replied. "We owe her that."
"We don't owe her nothing," Raph shot back. "She helped Stockman take us out of New York and put us in a cage."
"And thank goodness she did," Leo returned. "Do you think Stockman himself would have lifted a finger to help Don? Do you think he would have offered us a place to live outside his lab? Not likely." He looked around at his brothers. "Guys… an apartment. Let's act like that's our home and the lab is our job. Let's see if… if we actually could live like humans."
Mike's eyes slowly widened. Raph looked a little afraid of the challenge Leo had just put in front of him. And Don just looked startled by how suddenly this had happened.
"Remember," Leo told them. "This was always the plan. It probably won't take long for the media to figure out what's happened. Don't give them anything bad to report." He squeezed Raph's shoulder. "I'll see you guys tonight."
Without allowing any time for anybody to have an emotional breakdown, he walked out. "I'm ready," he told Lynn.
"Okay," she said, and without a word about handcuffs or shock collars or any other form of restraint, she escorted him a considerable distance to another part of the building.
The room she led him to was not large, but it was clean and well-lit. It featured two chairs and a mid-size table, as well as a filing cabinet in a back corner.
"Please have a seat," Lynn said, gesturing to the chair on the far side of the table. That was fine with Leo. He didn't like sitting with his back to a door.
Lynn rummaged in the filing cabinet, then came back to the table with an armful of supplies. "We're going to try a few different tests," she said, as she began assembling something in her lap, where Leo couldn't see it. "I hope these first ones don't insult your intelligence," she went on, "which obviously is greater than anybody would have anticipated. I realize it's unscientific of me to already be drawing that conclusion, so I have to redeem myself by sticking exactly to the protocol." She placed two small boxes in the middle of the table. "Can you please tell me what you see."
"I see two boxes," Leo said. He was already wondering what kind of test this was.
"How are the boxes different?" Lynn asked.
Leo looked again, but the answer seemed obvious. "One is blue and one is red," he said.
Lynn nodded; apparently Leo was already passing. "Would you please open the boxes," she said.
Leo did so. "There's a couple of grapes in the red box," he reported, even though Lynn hadn't asked him anything about that. He really did want to try his best for her.
"You can eat them," Lynn said.
Leo did. He hadn't been brought up to turn down food.
While he was doing that, Lynn put the boxes back in her lap and did something with them. Then she put them back on the table. "Would you please open the boxes again," she requested.
"Now there's an orange slice in the red box," Leo said, when he had opened both boxes.
"You can eat that too," Lynn said.
On the third try, Leo found a couple of pieces of banana in the red box. On the fourth try, Lynn instructed him to open only one of the boxes – whichever one he preferred.
Leo didn't. "I think you mean for me to open the red box," he said. "But I don't want to."
"Why not?" Lynn asked.
"Well, the red box probably has food in it again," Leo said. "But I shouldn't open that one."
"You're welcome to open either box," Lynn repeated.
"But the red one isn't mine," Leo said.
Lynn looked perplexed. "Why not?"
"Because -" Leo gestured to his face, then remembered he wasn't wearing his mask, and gestured to his shirt instead. "Because I'm blue."
Lynn looked him up and down, seeming only more confused by this explanation. "You're wearing a blue shirt," she said.
"Yes," Leo said. "Because blue is my color. Red is Raph's color. If something is in a red box, it must be for him. I don't want to eat his food."
Lynn looked downright startled by this explanation. "You have concepts of personal property and altruism?" she asked. "That's unheard of in reptiles."
"I - I don't know what any of that means," Leo admitted.
"Personal property," Lynn repeated. "You have an idea that some things belong to you and some things don't."
"Of course," Leo replied.
"And altruism," Lynn went on. "You do nice things for others without expecting anything in return."
Now it was Leo who was confused by the explanation. "Are you saying that's unusual?"
"Among non-humans it is," Lynn told him.
"Well," Leo said. "That's why we think we should count as humans."
"Let's try something else," Lynn said. She opened the two boxes, and Leo saw that he had been right about the location of the food. "The peanuts are in the red box," Lynn said, a fact Leo had already observed. She reached under the table and pulled out a doll. "Shirley sees the peanuts in the red box."
Leo furrowed his brow. He didn't know where this was going, but he was determined to pay attention.
"Shirley leaves the room," Lynn told him, putting the doll back under the table. She pulled out an action figure. "John moves the peanuts from the red box to the blue box, then closes both boxes." John was poorly articulated, so Lynn did the movements for him. Then she switched the dolls again. "John leaves. Shirley comes back. Shirley is hungry and wants to eat peanuts. Where will she look?"
Leo was baffled by the seeming simplicity of the question. "Did… did John really put the peanuts in the blue box?" he asked. "Or was he faking?"
"No, he really put the peanuts in the blue box," Lynn said. She and Shirley watched Leo expectantly.
"And did he tell Shirley that?" Leo asked.
"No, John and Shirley haven't talked to each other today," Lynn replied.
"Then Shirley will look in the red box," Leo said slowly, certain he must be missing something. "But she won't find the peanuts there."
"Yes, that's exactly right," Lynn said. She put the dolls away and pulled out several more small boxes.
"I don't understand," Leo said, as he watched her work. "Does anyone get this question wrong?"
"Young children do," Lynn said, as she arranged the little cubes seemingly at random. "They're not able to think about what other people know."
Leo thought about Don's advice to be open with the researchers, and decided not to share just yet that he was especially good at thinking about what other people knew.
"Would you please sort these boxes by color?" Lynn asked.
Leo studied the boxes, and in one movement, divided them into three piles.
"Now, would you sort them by material?" Lynn asked.
Another twist of his fingers, and Leo had separated the cubes into metal, plastic, and wood.
"You're very dexterous," Lynn noted.
Leo wasn't sure what that word meant, but Lynn said it like a compliment, so he replied, "Thank you."
Lynn pointed to one of the groupings of cubes. "What do you call this material?" she asked.
"It's metal," Leo replied.
"Can you tell me some other things that are made of metal?" Lynn asked.
"Sword blades," Leo replied immediately. "Dumpsters. Manhole covers."
"Unusual choices," Lynn said. "But not incorrect." She swept away the blocks, and stood up to rummage through the filing cabinet again. "Let's try something else." When she sat down again, she pushed a piece of paper towards Leo. "Can you read?" she asked.
"Of course," he replied.
Lynn pointed to the first line of text on the page. "Would you read that, please? Out loud?"
Leo leaned over the paper. "CAR is to DRIVER as AIRPLANE is to," he read. Then he frowned. "Is that a sentence?"
"No," Lynn said. "You need to fill in the blank." She consulted her own sheet of paper. "Is the missing word WING, FLY, PILOT, or SKY?"
"I don't know," Leo said. "It's not my sentence."
Lynn didn't seem to know what to do with that answer. "What do you mean?"
"This is someone else's sentence," Leo repeated. "I don't know what word they meant."
Lynn sat back in her chair and looked at him, and Leo had the sense that her opinion of his intelligence had just gone down a little. "Leonardo," she said, "do you know what an analogy is?"
"No," he replied.
"Okay, look." Lynn flipped over Leo's sheet of paper and hastily scribbled BIRD is to TREE as WHALE is to. "How is a bird related to a tree?"
"Birds live in trees," Leo said.
"Right," Lynn said. "And where do whales live?"
"In the ocean," Leo replied.
Lynn wrote OCEAN at the end of the phrase. "There, see? Your job is to fill in the missing word so that the second pair of words has the same relationship as the first pair of words."
"I don't understand," Leo said. "What's the point of that?"
"There is no point," Lynn told him. "It's just testing your verbal intelligence. Your ability to use and understand words."
"Okay," Leo said uncertainly, and when Lynn turned the paper back over, he studied the original problem again. "A driver is the person who controls the car," he reasoned. "So I guess the missing word must be pilot."
"Yes, exactly," Lynn said. "Now please read the next line."
Leo had to blink a couple of times to make sure he was seeing the letters right. Then he slowly read, "All greeblebobs are dookydees. Some dookydees are flitterwits. Are some greeblebobs flitterwits?" He looked up in dismay. "Lynn, I don't know any of those words."
"They're not real words," Lynn said, which only made Leo more confused. "It's a logic problem. You need to use reasoning to decide if the answer is yes or no."
"I… I have no idea," Leo said.
"Think about it for a minute," Lynn encouraged him.
Leo read the problem again. He tried to visualize the answer. But he had to shake his head and say again that he didn't know.
"That's okay," Lynn said. "Try the next one."
"Two friends are standing next to each other," Leo read. "They face in opposite directions and each walk three meters. Then they turn left and walk three meters. Then they turn left again and walk three meters. Now how far apart are they?" He gaped at the words on the page. "What kind of math is this?"
"Try to solve it," Lynn said. "You can draw a picture if you want to." She offered him her pencil.
Leo waved it off. "No, I -" He put his head in his hands. "If they're facing away from each other and then they both turn left, that's not the same left. So they're walking further away from each other. Then when they turn left again, they're walking towards each other. So… they're…" He lowered his hands and read the problem again. "They must be six meters away from each other."
This time Lynn didn't tell him whether he was right or wrong. She just made a note on her own page and asked him to read the next problem.
The test went on like that for a while, and then Lynn handed him a different page. This one only had a picture. "Would you please look at that picture and tell me a story about it," she instructed him.
Leo studied the cartoon image. It showed a bunch of people in what looked like a city park. "This woman with the baby stroller is waiting for a meeting with her john," he said. "But he's been delayed by a run-in with a rival. The man with the ice cream cone doesn't know that he's going to be mugged tonight while waiting on the subway platform. And the little girl hasn't told anyone that she's being molested by a teacher."
"Um, wow," Lynn said. She had started taking notes when Leo began speaking, but had stopped somewhere in the middle of his story. "You have an interesting imagination, Leonardo."
"We see a lot of the dark side of New York," he said, and dropped the cartoon back onto the table.
"Okay," Lynn said, letting that one go for now. "I want to try one more test, and then I'll calculate your score." She shuffled the papers in her lap. "I'm going to read some numbers, and you'll need to repeat them exactly. It's a memory test."
"I'm ready," Leo said. He trusted his memory. He knew he could do this.
"Six nineteen eleven," Lynn said.
"Six nineteen eleven," Leo repeated.
"Six nineteen eleven twenty-four."
"Six nineteen eleven twenty-four."
Leo made it to nine numbers before he couldn't correctly remember them all. Then Lynn started with a different string of digits. They did this several times, and then Lynn told him they were done.
"Well, Leonardo," Lynn said, after tallying some numbers on her scoresheet, "you got a 91 on the IQ test."
Leo couldn't help a little swell of pride. "That's almost perfect, right?" he said.
"Well, no," Lynn told him. "On many tests, 100 is the best score you can get. But on an IQ test, 100 is average."
The sense of pride turned into a feeling of crushing failure. That's what he got for being full of himself. "I'm below average?" he asked.
"You're within the normal range," Lynn said quickly. "But if I were to compare you to a random sample of humans, I would say your intelligence is not exceptional." She watched him carefully for a moment. "I'd like you to try the test again in your preferred language."
If Leo hadn't been on the defensive already from being told he was slightly stupid, he was now. "What?" he snapped.
"You weren't speaking English to your brothers, in the other room earlier," Lynn said. "We couldn't figure out what language you were speaking. But we conjectured it's one you're more comfortable with."
"You were watching us," Leo said. He'd been right: there were microphones somewhere in that hay room.
"Well, of course," said Lynn. "This is an amazing research opportunity. It's changing everything we thought we knew about ourselves as humans. We have to collect as much data as we can." She paused for a moment. "You realize that's another thing we're sacrificing by letting you live off-site. But you've made it pretty clear that if we don't straighten out your living situation, you won't let us get any usable data."
Leo ignored that last part. "What my family is going through," he said, "this battle to be recognized as legal humans - it's not so you can learn more about yourselves."
Lynn was not fazed by this. "Why are you doing it?" she asked bluntly.
For a moment, Leo held her gaze. Then he looked at the table. At his hands. How to boil down the whole tumultuous decision process? "I don't know," he said finally. "Because Don is stubborn as hell."
"What was it like?" Lynn asked softly.
Leo looked up again, puzzled by the question. "What?"
"Meeting him?" Lynn asked. "Thinking there were only three like you in the whole world, and then meeting a fourth?"
That, Leo couldn't even begin to encapsulate. "It makes you wonder," he said finally. "If there's a fourth, why not a fifth? Why not a sixth? Why not thousands?"
"But there couldn't be," Lynn said, shaking her head, almost in a kind of reflexive horror at the idea. "How could there be thousands of mutants in the world, and nobody has known about them until now?"
"It wasn't that long ago that advanced civilizations didn't know there were several more continents out there," Leo said. "Sometimes, surprisingly large things can be hiding just on the other side of the horizon."
For a moment, there was silence, as Lynn contemplated that statement. Then she said: "You know, Leonardo, you don't just talk. You have a way of speaking."
Leo just shrugged that off. There were other things he wanted to speak about. "Lynn," he said. "You seem like a good person. Why are you working with Stockman?"
"Why wouldn't I?" Lynn asked. She looked puzzled by the sudden question. "His own idiosyncratic manner of speaking aside, he really is a genius."
"He's a criminal," Leo pointed out. "He robbed banks."
"Oh, no," Lynn said. "That was a problem with the artificial intelligence."
"What?" Leo said.
"It's always a hazard with machine learning," Lynn explained. "The Mousers were programmed to detect, chase, and capture rats. After mastering that task, they started teaching themselves to pursue targets they calculated to be of higher value: money, jewelry, stock certificates, other kinds of things you find in bank vaults. Of course Dr. Stockman was accused of robbery. But he showed that he had properly documented the risk of the Mousers doing something like that, and he had planned for how to handle the situation, and as soon as he realized what was going on, he implemented those safeguards by commanding the Mousers to self-destruct - along with his entire lab. He was cleared of all charges."
"That's not true," Leo said. "Stockman didn't destroy the Mousers and his lab. We did."
Lynn looked at him, uncomprehending. "Excuse me?"
"Stockman programmed the Mousers to rob bank vaults on purpose," Leo said. "He practically admitted as much earlier, when he was telling us how his rich and powerful friends got him off the hook. If you were recording us, you must have recorded that too." He leaned forward over the table, as Lynn stared at him in stunned silence. "Lynn," he said. "You remind me of someone Stockman has a particular vendetta against. I don't think Stockman hired you because you have special knowledge about mutant Turtles. I think he hired you - and is interested in having you spend as much time as possible at his lab - because he's out for some kind of vicarious revenge."
"You don't scare me," Lynn told him.
"I'm not the one you should be scared of," Leo said. He sat back in his chair. "Are we done? I want to see this apartment."
"Sure," Lynn said. "Just give me a minute to find out what's happened while we were in here." She stood up, put the papers back in the filing cabinet, and then locked it. Leo probably could have broken it open as soon as she left, but he didn't think there was anything of value in there, and Lynn hadn't yet given him a reason to not keep his word to her. He waited, listening to the murmured conversation in the hallway but unable to make it out.
After a few minutes, Lynn came back. She had traded her white lab coat for a small handbag. "Your brothers left about an hour ago," she said. "I can take you to the apartment now."
"I'd appreciate that," Leo said.
Lynn gestured him out of the room. As soon as he went into the hallway, a guard - instead of yelling "Halt!" or pointing a gun at him - offered him the coat that had been taken from him at the police station.
"I was wondering what had happened to that," Leo said.
"You didn't have anything else, did you?" Lynn asked, as Leo put the bulky coat on. "The police report said they confiscated a lot of rice. But they weren't able to return it."
"It's fine," Leo said. "We weren't carrying anything we need back."
In truth, he was aching for his swords. But they were back at the Lair, and even with his talent for envisioning possible futures, he was having trouble seeing when he would ever be there again.
"The car is this way," Lynn said, and gestured him in a direction he hadn't been yet.
After several twists and turns, she let him into a kind of staff garage. The place put him on edge immediately: an easy location for an ambush. Stockman's goons could jump out from anywhere, push him into one of these ordinary-looking cars, and take him someplace he didn't want to go. He had no way of knowing that hadn't already happened to his brothers. For that matter, it was just barely possible that Lynn was playing Stockman's good cop, luring Leo with faux friendliness. He was about to willingly get in a vehicle with her, and who knew what she might do after that?
"Are you okay?" Lynn asked. Again, that attention to other people's moods and thoughts. Exactly what one would look for in a would-be double-agent.
"Where did you say we were going, again?" Leo asked.
"My apartment," Lynn said. "Your apartment, now. It's about a fifteen-minute drive."
"Which car?" Leo asked. He didn't really want to walk any further along the dimly-lit rows.
Lynn pressed a button on the key fob in her hand, and a car just a little further down honked, loud in the echoing space. Leo glanced around again. The garage really did seem deserted of people. He had lost all track of what time it was. Maybe the garage was full of cars because it was still only mid-afternoon. Maybe Lynn wasn't the only employee Stockman wanted to keep around after hours.
Lynn glanced at him again, then went ahead and got in the car. Leo heard her start the engine. The garage wasn't heated. He had a coat, but no rice bags. It didn't take long for him to decide to get in the car.
As he put on his seatbelt, he wondered why the chair seemed so warm. Lynn, meanwhile, put her hands on the leather steering wheel and smoothly accelerated out of the parking spot.
The garage door rolled up for them silently, and closed again after they had driven out. And then they were on the streets of Ardsley.
Leo noticed right away that it was dark. Of course, it was January, so it might have only been early evening. It was snowing just a little.
"This is a nice car," Leo observed. He'd been thinking that as soon as he'd laid eyes on the sleek black sedan. It didn't seem to fit with Lynn's story about being a poor young intern.
"It's not mine," Lynn said. "I borrowed it from the facilities pool. Usually I take the bus." She paused to look both ways at a stop sign before rolling forward. "I'm broke, Leonardo. When we get to the apartment, you'll see it's nothing fancy. The only reason I can afford to live here at all is that my parents are helping with the rent."
"Stockman doesn't pay you well?" Leo asked.
"Not as much as I think he should," Lynn replied. She shifted her hands on the steering wheel. "Which makes me think maybe you're on to something when you say it's not my qualifications he's interested in."
"It's not really our intelligence he's interested in, either," Leo said. He looked at her profile in the dark, as streetlights swept over them. "Stockman is dangerous, Lynn. Not least of all because he's so well-respected as a scientist. You might want to think twice about spending the night in his lab."
"Getting fired from a post-doctoral internship was not a great way to begin my career," Lynn said. She checked the mirrors and made a right turn. "I've barely been in this new job for a week. If I can finish the project and have my name on a paper about mutant cognition - even as second author - then I'm back on track. If I get myself into trouble again, I'm probably flipping burgers at McDonald's for the rest of my life."
"I doubt it," Leo said. "If you get yourself into trouble with Stockman, probably the rest of your life won't be long enough to flip any burgers at all."
"You have a very dark mind, Leonardo," Lynn said, as she waited for an oncoming car and then swung a left. "I'm really not sure how seriously I should take you."
"If you had seen what we've seen," Leo said, "you would have a dark mind too. You should be sure to account for that when you're doing your evaluations."
"Thanks for the tip," Lynn said, and they covered the next couple of miles in silence.
"By the way," she said, as they turned into a more residential area. "Everything that happened since we left the lab is off the record and won't be in my notes anywhere. But I just wanted to tell you… in a dark car, looking at the road, I wouldn't have guessed you were anything other than a mildly paranoid teenage boy."
"I know," Leonardo said, and he didn't speak again until Lynn pulled up in front of a building that looked like it probably hadn't been in much better shape when someone had hastily erected it several decades earlier. Then he said: "Thanks for the ride. I'll -" He frowned as Lynn turned off the car and unbuckled her seatbelt. "Are you coming in?" he asked.
"Just to throw some clothes in a suitcase," Lynn said. "I mean, unless you and your brothers have some use for a young woman's business wardrobe."
"I doubt it," Leo said.
He waited for Lynn to get out of the car, then followed her up the icy steps. It didn't seem as though anybody had tried too hard to clear them. Lynn pressed a button on the intercom system, and a moment later a falsetto voice buzzed through the speaker box.
"Who iiiiis it?"
"Mikey, open the door," Leo ordered.
"Sorry, I don't know anyone named 'Mikey open the door,'" the voice said sweetly.
Leo leaned closer to the box. "Michelangelo, open the door or I will climb in the window."
"Wow," Mike said, in his normal voice. "If I had known it was that kind of neighborhood, I wouldn't have agreed to live here."
"Are they always like that?" Lynn asked, as she pulled the door open.
"Oh, no," Leo assured her. "This is their best behavior."
They trudged up the stairs. Even with half of the fluorescent tubes burnt out, Leo could see that the carpet was dirty and stained. Lynn wasn't lying about being broke. Or Stockman had scrambled to rent the cheapest apartment he could find as part of some ruse Leo couldn't quite figure out.
"Here it is," Lynn said, and gestured to a door painted a shade of green that didn't quite match any of the Turtles.
Leo knocked - the secret Hamato rhythm - and steeled himself for more of Mikey's shenanigans. Fortunately, it was Raph who answered. "Can't find any cameras or microphones," he reported immediately, not caring that Lynn was standing right behind Leo.
"Found some underwear, though," Mike said, from right behind Raph.
"Where's Don?" Leo asked.
"Having a field day with the laptop," Raph said. "Guess he's feeling better."
"Guys, come on," Lynn said. "That's my computer."
"Why'd you bring her up here?" Raph asked.
"Because that's my computer," Lynn reiterated. "And my underwear," she added, snatching the panties from Mike's hand.
"This was so much more fun before the grown-ups got here," Mike said.
"I agree," Raph said. "Why don't the two of you go back to the lab?"
"Very funny," Leo said. "Let her have her stuff."
Raph grudgingly stood aside to let Lynn enter her own apartment, and Mike followed her around whining that she was taking all the cool toys.
"Now, I know I left that on the lock screen," Lynn said, when she found Don hunched over the laptop, clicking around in file folders. "With a strong system password."
"Oh, you did," Don confirmed.
"And yet you have unlocked it," Lynn pointed out.
"Well, of course," Don said.
"I'm not going to ask about this until we're back in the lab and on the record again," Lynn said, holding her hand out for the thin computer.
"Works for me," Don said, and with a broad smile he gave her the device.
"Don't destroy anything and don't escape," Lynn reminded them, when she had finished her circuit of the apartment and returned to the front door. "Oh, and maybe don't spend this all in one place," she said, handing Leo a long white envelope.
"What is it?" he asked.
"A stipend," she said. "Money. There's a strip mall down the block with a grocery store and a laundromat. Will you need anything else?"
"Heat?" Leo asked.
Lynn pointed to the little round thermostat on the opposite wall. "Rent and utilities will be paid."
"And remind me again what the catch is?" Leo said.
"We'll call you in the morning and request the honor of your presence at the lab," Lynn said. "If you say no, I'll probably be unemployed and homeless by lunchtime. Or dead, if Dr. Stockman is as unhinged as you say."
"We'll see you tomorrow, then," Leo said, and once the door was safely closed, he made triply sure to lock it.
"Wow, Leo," Mike said. "What have you been telling the nice lady with the pretty underwear?"
Leo decided to ignore every aspect of that question. "Don, how are you feeling?" he asked instead.
"I feel great," said Don, who was showing zero remorse about snooping in Lynn's laptop, and also zero ill effects from his earlier catastrophe. "You should check this place out."
Even Mike's best efforts to pretend they were on an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous couldn't make that tour last very long. There was a combined living and dining area, a cramped kitchen, a tiny bedroom, and a bathroom Leo could barely turn around in. The real highlight was the amount of food packed into the refrigerator and cabinets.
"They dropped it all off right after we got here," Raph explained. "But they said we're on our own to get more." He gestured to the envelope that was still in Leo's hand. "How much did they give us, anyway?"
"I don't know," Leo said.
They gathered around the minuscule dining table to count the cash. "Two hundred dollars?" Mike squeaked, when Leo had laid it all out. They had never seen that much money in their lives.
Except, apparently, Don had. "That won't buy us much," he informed them. "Groceries are expensive."
Leo knew of something else that was probably expensive. "What about your meds?" he asked.
"They gave me enough to last for weeks," Don assured him. Then he gestured to the pile of twenty-dollar bills again. "But how long is that supposed to last?"
Leo frowned. "She didn't say."
"We should be sure to ask tomorrow," Don told him, and Leo nodded.
There was only one chair at the table, so Mike had to express his dramatic feelings by slumping directly to the floor. "Oh, man," he said. "Living like a human sucks already. I thought we were rich. But we're poor. How can we make some bank? Without doing too much work would be great."
"Quit your whining," Raph snapped at him. "Right now, we got plenty of food. What we don't got is plenty of beds. And I know you and me ain't first in line for that one." He hooked his thumb at the bedroom just steps away from where they were all huddled in the dining room.
"To be fair," Don said, "I took my turn sleeping on the couch these last couple weeks. So now that there's a bed that can be accessed without climbing an unsafe homemade ladder, yes, I would like to have it."
"Except there ain't a couch, either," Raph pointed out. He eyed the floor suspiciously. "And I don't want to put my face any closer to this carpet than I have to."
"Guys, knock it off," Leo ordered. "We're starting out as first-dan humans. We'll sleep on the floor and like it. Maybe someday we'll earn our beds."
"How come Donnie earned a bed already?" Mike asked. He seemed to be taking seriously what Raph had said about the carpet, though it hadn't yet motivated him to get back on his feet.
"Because he's a third-dan human, or something," Leo said.
"How many Dons are there?" Don asked in confusion.
"EVERYBODY STOP," Leo said loudly. "I put up with Lynn and her testing all afternoon. I'm not going to put up with you guys whining and arguing. We're going to have a nice, quiet evening."
"Wait," Raph said, "do you mean you're not going to tell us what's on the tests?"
"No, I'm not," Leo said. "We're going to do as well as we can on the tests. We're not going to cheat on them."
Raph went a little pale. "But I'm gonna get an F!"
"There's no such thing," Don informed him. "And anyway, you're not as dumb as you think." He tilted his head at Raph. "Just remember what I told you when we fixed the hot water."
Leo didn't know what Don was referring to, and Mike didn't seem to either. But Raph mumbled "Yeah," and then Don asked, "So, what are we going to do tonight?"
Leo looked slowly around the tiny, bare apartment. "Well," he said, "now that Mikey's not translating…"
Don looked at the floor. "Okay," he said.
They all wound up sitting on the small bed, hardly more than a cot shoved into a corner of the bedroom. "I want you guys to understand," Don began, "practically everyone I know is a scientist. And they're my family. Just as much as Splinter is yours."
"Give me a break," Raph said. "Scientists aren't anybody's family. All they do is hurt people."
"Scientists aren't in the business of hurting people," Don replied calmly. "Ninjas, on the other hand, are."
"We're not that kind of ninja," Mike said. "And what about all those experiments on animals?"
"Most of those experiments are done towards discovering cures for awful diseases," Don said. "Like maybe diabetes, some day. Although I realize it's harder to rationalize animal testing when you have a special attachment to rats."
"Or when people think you're an animal," Raph said.
"Right." Don picked at Lynn's blankets. "Guys, I'll get straight to the point: Yes, they experimented on me. But it's not like you think."
"How could it not be like we think?" Raph growled. He glanced at the wall behind him - probably paper-thin - and lowered his voice. "What else could it be?"
"Well, for one," Don said, "they always asked my permission. Even when I was little. As far back as I can remember, they told me what they were doing, and asked me if it was okay. And if I said no, then they didn't do it. And second, most of the experiments were done towards curing me."
Leo frowned. "But diabetes isn't curable. You just said so."
"I know." Don stared at his lap a minute, then reached for his shirt buttons. "Let me show you something. And please don't get mad. Remember this all happened before I met you."
Leo had a half-formed, sneaking suspicion that made him feel sick inside. But before his own nightmare could fully take shape in his mind, Don told them the truth.
"When I was twelve," he said, turning towards the wall. "I let them cut out a piece of my shell. You can still see it. It never grew back right."
Leo didn't have to look. He had already seen it, that time he did shiatsu for Don on the kitchen table at the farmhouse. He hadn't known then what it was. He hadn't wanted to know. He wished now that he could erase it from his memory.
"Why the hell did you let them do that?" Raph asked in a strangled voice.
"Because I didn't know what I was," Don said. He put his shirt back on, pulling it around himself protectively. "Because I thought I was dying of a rare and freaky skeletal disorder. Because I just wanted to be normal." He couldn't look at any of them as he said, "I am so, so jealous of how you guys grew up. It must have been so good just to know."
Leonardo's heart hurt for his lost brother. He didn't know what he would have done in Donatello's place. Probably he wouldn't have had the strength to survive.
"But after you met us…" he said, "after we told you… you still wanted to 'cure' yourself."
"I know," Don said. "And after that whole thing on the astral plane, in a way I still do. That's how it is when you grow up with scientists. Everything is a problem that has to be solved. Fixed. I don't think anymore that I'm the one that's broken. But I won't be able to rest until I fit somewhere. Until I've figured out this whole mystery of where I belong in the world." He looked up, finally. "I said yes to the scientists because I wanted to know. I'll go into the lab tomorrow because I'm not done learning."
"You're a Turtle," Raph said flatly. "What else is there?"
Don just shook his head. "That's only the beginning," he said. "What kind of turtle were we? What reptilian traits do we still have, and which parts of us are more human? How did that happen on a molecular level? And what does all that mean for our status in society? Those are the questions I need to answer."
"I mean, I want to know some of that too," Mikey said cautiously. "But I didn't think finding out would have anything to do with scientists. I thought it would happen when we finally tracked down TCRI."
"Well, TCRI is probably a group of scientists," Don said. "But we'll know soon."
Leo furrowed his brow, a completely different kind of uneasy feeling growing in the pit of his stomach. "Why do you say that?" he asked.
"Um," Don said. "Don't get mad about this either. But I told Splinter, if anything happened to us at the protest, he should look for TCRI."
"What?!" Raph bellowed, either forgetting or not caring about the walls.
"He told me a few weeks ago he's known all along how to find them!" Don said, cringing a little in the tight quarters. "He'd just never done it!"
"Yeah, but you told him to go hunt for them now?" Raph yelled. "While we're locked up with the cops and then playing houseguests with Stockman? Instead of looking for us?"
"We're totally fine!" Don said in a small voice. "I promise you guys, you are never safer than with a scientist. They're literally required to ask your permission for everything."
"But what if Sensei's in trouble?" Mike asked. "Because we're not with him?"
"Don't worry," Don said. "He's probably making a lifechanging discovery about TCRI right now."