One day Splinter woke up, and his children were gone.
It wasn't metaphorical this time. They really were gone.
Still, perhaps he should have seen this coming too. The day before, his sons had not wanted to discuss the distressing encounter with David from the previous evening. Instead, they had shut themselves in Leonardo's room to hold a lengthy private conversation in low tones.
Splinter had suspected they were up to something. He had considered eavesdropping on them; it would have been easy. But he had decided to give them their space, respecting that they were going through a difficult time, and trusting them to handle it maturely.
And now they were missing. The possibility existed, of course, that they had been snatched from their beds overnight. But there were no signs of a struggle, and Splinter could not detect any presence of an intruder. There was only a fresh scent trail of his sons leaving their rooms and exiting the Lair.
Splinter followed the trail, and was unsurprised when it led directly to the manhole in front of Dr. Lamb's building. His sons' scents were all over the ladder. They had been here, and more recently than when he had been with them.
It was broad daylight, but Splinter spent hardly a second considering whether he should risk a journey topside to contact Dr. Lamb. Though his sons had left home of their own volition, they were almost certainly doing something irresponsible and foolhardy. He could not wait until nightfall to go after them.
Quickly, he climbed the ladder and slipped into the alley. Though he tried to hold out hope that his sons were simply making an illicit visit to their brother, he was not surprised when he reached the window and saw Dr. Lamb running frantically around her apartment.
He tapped on the glass, and she flung the window open and pulled him bodily inside.
"David is gone," she said, as she slammed the pane shut and yanked the curtains closed.
"So are my sons," Splinter said. "Are you certain they are not here?"
Dr. Lamb shook her head. "They're not up here. They're not in the clinic. Splinter, you have to see his room."
She grabbed his arm again and dragged him in that direction. Splinter had not been manhandled in this way since his mutation, and the forthrightness of the move somehow bypassed his reflexes. Where normally he would have quickly escaped from such a hold, he instead found himself following his captor.
"Look," Dr. Lamb said, pushing open the door of David's room, and Splinter saw his sons' signatures everywhere.
David was gone. So was his cat. So was the tangled nest of medical equipment Splinter had found the first night he had crept in on his missing child. The machine on the desk had been tampered with, its various parts all askew, but the knot of cords holding it together seemed to be mostly intact. The books on the shelves were untouched, and, Splinter observed, so were the clothes in the closet.
His sons' handiwork, indeed.
"What happened here?" Dr. Lamb asked him, after he had gotten a good look.
"Okaasan," Splinter said, "I believe my sons have kidnapped their brother."
Dr. Lamb looked at him, aghast. "What is wrong with your children? Do I have to revoke their visitation rights?"
Splinter flattened his ears. "I do not know what they are planning. The important question is where they have gone."
"Did they go back to your place?" Dr. Lamb asked.
Splinter shook his head. "They are certainly not there."
"Where else would they go?" Dr. Lamb looked at the barren bed, stripped down to the sheets.
Splinter stroked his chin. "None of them have much knowledge of the outside world. Nor can they travel very far on their own. Whom might they have asked for assistance?"
The answer came to them at the same moment.
"April O'Neil."
"I don't know where she lives," Dr. Lamb said.
"I do," Splinter said. "I have not visited her home directly, but my sons have. They told me its location, and I guided Miss O'Neil there once. I can lead you as well."
"Then let's go," Dr. Lamb said, already striding out of the room. Splinter turned to follow, only to pull up short when Dr. Lamb did the same. "But wait. What if David calls home? That's what he would do, if he could get to a phone."
"Do you not have a portable speaker?" Splinter asked. When Dr. Lamb responded with a blank look, he mimed holding one of the devices he had seen to his ear. "We have observed that many humans have an invention into which they speak while travelling. We assumed it was some sort of communications device. Otherwise, I fear that much of humanity has gone insane."
"Oh, they have," Dr. Lamb said, resuming her movement towards the front door. "But you're talking about cell phones. No, I don't have one." She grabbed a purse from a hook in the hallway. "David kept telling me to get one. I guess I should have listened."
"It seems that both of us could do a better job listening to our children," Splinter replied.
Dr. Lamb pressed a hand to her face. "Okay. We're going to go to April's. David is going to call home. How are we going to receive his call." She phrased it as a statement, and in a moment provided her own solution. "Terri."
"Who is Terri?" Splinter asked, as Dr. Lamb took off towards the kitchen.
"She's been my best friend since high school," Dr. Lamb said. "She's known David since he was a baby. She's going to come here and watch the phone, and she's going to give me her cell phone, so if David calls her, she'll call me."
Splinter had not known that Dr. Lamb had her own strategic talents, and he was impressed by this quick thinking. Without wasting a moment, she had dialed the phone in the kitchen and was talking to her friend.
"Terri, you need to come over right now," she was saying. "I'll tell you when you get here."
Terri arrived about twenty minutes later, with a teenage girl in tow. Neither of them seemed to notice that Splinter wasn't an ordinary person.
"Terri, Anna, this is Splinter," said Dr. Lamb. "He's David's brothers' father."
"Nice to meet you," said Anna.
"It's about time," said Terri. "How are you? Where have you been?"
Splinter wasn't sure how to answer, but fortunately Dr. Lamb interrupted. "Terri, this isn't a social visit. David is missing. Splinter and I are going to find him. I need you to give me your cell phone and stay here. If David calls, call me. Or, yourself. You know."
"Honey, I get it." Terri's face had turned worried, and she dug in her capacious handbag for her phone. "I'll take care of everything."
"One batch of cookies," Dr. Lamb said. "There had better not be more than one batch of cookies when I get home."
"Go find your son," Terri said, pressing her cell phone into Dr. Lamb's hand and pushing both of them out the door.
Splinter was not sure what had just happened. He had never encountered such a formidable person.