David must have slept a little, because he was woken by an insistent knocking, followed by someone trying to open the bedroom door.

"Hey, D, it's - Huh?"

The door jiggled back and forth. The chair screeched against the floor, but held firm.

"What's the matter, Mike?" someone shouted from downstairs.

"The door's jammed."

"Want me to kick it in?"

"No, I'll go around." Mike raised his voice. "I'm coming, D!"

That wasn't exactly comforting. David nudged Snowflake under the covers and pulled the blankets up like a shield.

In a second, Mike appeared outside the window, pressing his nose to the glass. "Hey, you're awake," he said, his voice muffled by the pane. "Your door is -" His eyes flicked up, and his face fell as he registered the chair wedged under the doorknob. "Aw, bro, really? You're trying to keep us out?"

David pulled his oxygen mask down, letting the plastic cup flop loose around his neck. "Yes, I'm trying to keep you out. You're trying to kill me."

Mike furrowed his brow. "I'm pretty sure we're not trying to kill you." His expression relaxed; he didn't seem to think there was anything unusual about carrying on a conversation through a closed window. "Did Raph tell you that? He threatens to kill us all the time. It's how he shows his love."

"I'm not coming out," David said.

"I know you gotta eat," Mike said. For all his seeming airheadedness, he did catch on quick. "I'm making omelettes."

"No, thanks." David gestured towards the roasting pan on the desk, the IV lines attached to his arm swinging with the movement. "I have plenty of cereal."

Mike craned his neck to see what David was pointing at. "I thought the pantry seemed emptier this morning. I figured Raph just went on one of his late-night snack binges." He settled back, looking at his brother again. "But you gotta come out sometime."

"I really don't," David said. "I've spent my entire life in a Manhattan apartment. I survived the Y2K bug with a mother who thinks technology ended at the abacus. We still haven't eaten all the canned food she stockpiled. I can hole up in here for a long time."

"Look," Mike said. "Bro. I totally feel you. But Leo's orders are you're going to the lake today. We don't want to break Casey's house and drag you out of there."

"Well, good," David said. He sat up slowly, pressing the oxygen mask to his face for a moment before pulling it off over his head and hanging it back on the IV pole. He reached down to turn off the CPAP machine, then pulled out the IV needles and tucked them into their sterilization case. "I'm going to make breakfast," he said, and Snowflake chased his ankles as he crossed the room to retrieve a box of cereal.

He'd forgotten to appropriate dishes or silverware, so he just shook the bran flakes into his mouth, straight from the box, while sitting cross-legged on the bed. "I would be in so much trouble if I were at home right now," he commented.

Mike had settled on the wide porch roof, his back to the window. "Why?"

"My mom doesn't allow food anywhere but the kitchen," David said. He crunched another mouthful of cereal. "I feel so rebellious right now."

"How would your mom feel about you climbing on the roof?" Mike asked.

"She'd kill me," David replied without hesitation.

"You seem to think a lot of people want to kill you," Mike said.

David lowered the box, looking at the greatly-magnified raisin on the front without really seeing it. "My mom always told me I was an accident. A reject. A loose end. Someone's science experiment gone wrong. And if they ever found me again, they'd kill me."

"Yeah," Mike said. "That's kind of what our dad told us too."

Snowflake stuck her entire head inside the cereal box, and David pushed her away. "Who is TCRI?" he asked.

Mike understood the reference to the mysterious broken canister that bound them together. "We really don't know," he said. "Maybe you can help us find out."

"I looked," David said. "I got several possible hits, but the most likely is an organization called the Techno Cosmic Research Institute. I had my friends check them out - their ownership, their tax records. Nothing. They're too clean. It's got to be a front for something."

"Like what?" Mike asked.

David breathed, in and out. He'd been thinking about this for weeks, piecing together a theory. "You're not going to like this," he said. "But Splinter's story - it makes no sense and no one can really corroborate it. What if TCRI is a front for the kind of renegade science lab my mom always thought created me? What if I'm not one of their experiments, but Splinter is? A human turned half-rat, or a rat turned half-human… it doesn't really matter. What if he escaped with a vial of retrovirus in solution, and then, out of loneliness or sadism or whatever, he used it on some babies? Human babies, turtle babies… again, doesn't matter. One, he got rid of because it was too defective. The other three he held prisoner through fear, telling them they had nowhere to go because anyone except him would kill them on sight." He looked up, at the shadow of leaves on the wall. "Now you're learning he lied to you. You have friends. They helped you escape. Are you going to go back?" He turned slowly to fix Michelangelo with a steady gaze. "Or are you going to hold on to your freedom?"

Mike stared back at him. "Bro," he said, with a completely straight face. "You are tripping. I don't even know if you seriously believe that, or if you're just feeding me a story. I thought I was good at manipulating people, but damn, D."

David turned slowly away, as though he didn't care what Michelangelo decided.

"But let me tell you a story," Mike went on. "We helped you escape. And like we said, we'll take you back if you want to. But right now you are living it up, eating cereal in bed. And if you want to climb out on the roof, you can see the most amazing sunrise, and I promise I won't ever tell your mom that you're a rule-breaking badass."

David glanced at the window. He could tell the sun was low in the sky, but it was too far around the corner of the house, where he couldn't see it. He had never seen a real sunrise before; back in New York there were too many buildings surrounding his own.

"You won't push me off the roof?" he asked guardedly.

"I won't push you off the roof," Mike said. "I only do that to Raph. It's how I show my love."

With a firm "stay" to Snowflake, David unlatched the window, pushed up the pane, and stuck his head out into the cool morning air.

Mike helped him climb onto the gently-sloped shingles, held him steady as he peered around the side of the house at the sun and then squeezed his eyes shut against the brightness.

"I don't know why I'm doing this," David said, as he cautiously sat down beside his brother.

Mike put an arm around him. "You want your freedom more than you're scared of dying," he said simply. "Every story is a little bit true."