Please note: this chapter contains sexual violence and a graphic description of drug use.

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TWO

Amber gasped as she was hurtled across the room, crashing against a table that stood in one corner. The momentum knocked her back against the wall, and she collapsed to the ground, gagging. The table corner had connected hard with her gut. She continued to cough and retch as her captors strode into the room after her, slamming the door shut on its hinges.

A second later a hand was in her hair, and she was wrenched upwards and once again thrown back. The impact of her body against the floorboards sent a cloud of dust rising up in the air, and she rubbed her eyes and cowered back against the wall. A bare lightbulb suspended from a cord in the ceiling was switched on, sending its moon of light lurching around the room as it swayed back and forth.

There was a snatch of laughter, a few quiet words exchanged, and then approaching footsteps, flat and hard on the creaking floorboards.

"So this is her?"

Amber blinked in the harsh light, looking up at the man standing over her. He towered above her, hands on his hips, a grim smile splitting his face in two.

"Yeah, this is Nightwatcher's bitch. We seen her getting' on his bike few times a week most'a time."

The big man squatted down on his heels, staring into Amber's face. His nose had clearly been broken more than once in his life, and never very well reset. A thick, twisted mass of scar tissue coiled itself down one cheek, cut diagonally across his lips and traveled further over his jawline and neck. His head was shaved, rough and choppy, a blonde fuzz of stubble over its crown. His eyes were small and vicious and they looked at her blankly, even as his mouth smiled.

"She sure is one ugly fucking bitch," he said as though she wasn't there. "Ya think Nightwatcher woulda chosen a hotter piece'a meat. Bet there's plenty of these whores willin' to give it to him."

"Maybe he can't get it up!" one of thugs in the background crowed, and his pals snickered. "Maybe he's into kinky shit only this bitch will do."

The big guy's expression didn't change.

"Didja drop off the messages?"

"Yeah. One in each joint he's been seen goin' into."

"We'll give him three nights." The big guy stood up straight again, turning away from her. "Then dump her."

She stayed silent. She already knew everything that was going to unfold in the coming hours.

This was war.

They would beat her, possibly rape her and then kill her.

They would do it to get to Raphael, who they would also try to kill, but not before telling him what they'd done to her. She was pretty sure they wouldn't succeed in killing him, but she knew she stood no chance against them.

"After that, go to all the joints he likes to visit, and dust 'em. We'll get him."

The big guy clicked his fingers and motioned towards the door. He led them toward it, and they fell into file behind him, chatting and cracking jokes as though they had not just turned their backs on a girl they'd taken by force; a girl they were planning to kill. The door slammed shut behind them, and she heard a key being turned into a lock and a couple of bolts sliding into place. Their footsteps retreated down the hall, laughter echoing.

The second they were gone she began fumbling with her knapsack. She'd cheat them, then. Fuck 'em. If there was just one thing she could ever do for Raphael, this was probably it. She wouldn't let them have that victory.

In a second, she'd opened the plastic Hello Kitty! lunchbox and found the foil packet. With shaking hands, she knelt forward on the stone floor, carefully unfolding the tightly wrapped package. She could see at once that it wasn't enough, not to finish her off. She swore, feeling savage and robbed, and punched the floorboards so hard her hand went numb.

But it would stupefy her. Make her less fun.

She got a tube of lubricant out of her bag and squeezed a huge handful out, rubbing it vigorously into her genitals and around her anus. It would help, provided they didn't wait too long.

Then she prepared the shot hastily, winching her arm tight. Miraculously, a vein appeared almost instantaneously, and she readied to inject.

Then a thought occurred to her, halting her hand.

This was war.

There was another fit in her lunchbox. A used one, but it didn't matter. She would get her own in, as much as she could.

-------

Raphael panted harshly on a rooftop, trying to get his thoughts together.

Obviously, it was a trap. They were going to try and ambush him. He'd probably pissed them off somewhere along the way – fucked up an operation, beaten them witless – and now they were determined to kill him and get their own back. Vengeance.

His blood boiled; inside the suit he was sweltering with the fury and viciousness of his anger, of his urge to descend upon them and rip them to shreds.

How, how could he have been so fucking stupid? Letting him and Amber be seen so openly like that. Allowing –

He clutched his head in his hands and groaned, and then slammed his fists hard against the concrete. He had to think. It was a trap – he couldn't just go in unprepared.

He tried to think rationally. Chances were, she was already dead. If their intention was to kill him – and he'd have bet money that it was – then they were counting on it not mattering if she was alive or not. Or maybe they figured they could catch him and then make him watch while they – he'd heard stories like that before. His stomach tipped upside down at the thought.

For the twentieth time, he pulled out his mobile and flipped open the lid, scrolling through for Donatello's number. Then he flicked it shut again, hissed in conflict, and threw it across the roof, where it skidded to a halt with a metallic clink.

He needed his brothers, but getting them involved meant coming clean about the Nightwatcher thing. That would start a whole new world of trouble.

He forced himself to slow down and think. He drew in deep breaths and made himself relax his clenched fists, waiting for the pounding in his head to slow down, clearing his mind.

The Nightwatcher was not a ninja. He did nothing by stealth. The Nightwatcher's style was brute force; savage, simple and direct.

They had laid a trap for the Nightwatcher. Not for Raphael.

He stood abruptly and began pulling the suit off. Unbuckled the slim pack that disguised his shell. Unfastened the elbow and knee pads. Pulled off the boots and gloves. Piece by piece, they clattered or thunked to the ground at his feet. Finally, the suit was unzipped and shrugged off his shoulders. Methodically, he gathered the suit together, stowed it carefully back into the duffel bag and hid it in the rooftop supply room, to await collection when he was finished. The berserker fury had settled down into a simmering rage that gave vicious intent to his every movement. It hovered just below the surface, steadily burning and gathering heat, ready and keen to erupt at the right moment.

If they had killed Amber, he would kill them. All of them.

This was war.

-------

She was dreaming.

She was dreaming of the first time she'd shot up by herself. They'd made a pact, the four of them. A pact to only ever do it together. It was the experience that led them out of their childhood friendship into an adolescent bond.

But she didn't want to do it that way anymore. She wanted to be alone. They were a distraction now, with Billy demanding her attention – he got so needy when high. He didn't understand that she just wanted to drift away. That she wanted to leave life and enter into another plane – one with nothing that was familiar. Including him. His arm around her as she floated was becoming like a weight, gagging her and hauling her back down.

She'd gone and bought the stuff that afternoon from their dealer. It had cost her entire weekend's pay, and she knew she would need to figure out another way of making money. Afterwards, she'd locked herself in her room and laid out everything on the bed.

Insulin needle. Spoon. Cotton. Lighter. Belt. Water.

Then she'd drawn in a big breath and carefully unwrapped the little paper packet, setting it carefully on her pink and red bedspread. It was her first time alone, and she wasn't sure how much to do. Greg always did it up for them. She was beginning to find his measurements inadequate, though.

Carefully, she tipped a little of the off-white granules into the spoon, and then uncapped the syringe, sticking it into the glass of water and drawing up a few CCs. That was squirted into the spoon. Taking a breath to keep her hand steady, she lifted the spoon, picked up the lighter and held it beneath the basin. The water boiled quickly, the heroin dissolving into it. She set both the lighter and spoon down again carefully on her bedside table, then tore an edge off the piece of cotton. Dropping it into the spoon, she watched it absorb the mixture, before picking up the syringe again and sticking the tip into the cotton ball. She drew back on the barrel and felt a rush of triumph when she saw the liquid sucked into the syringe. This was easy.

She placed the syringe back down, picked up the belt and winched it around her arm. Billy always did this for her. She wasn't sure she'd got it tight enough and struggled with it for a few seconds, trying to draw it tighter. Then she pumped her fist a couple of times and watched with pleasure as her veins rose.

Now.

She was so excited that she trembled violently as she picked the syringe up, holding it against her soft flesh, the crook of her elbow.

Now.

The needle was so sharp, it was no effort at all to insert it. Hand still shaking, she carefully drew back again, just a little. She wanted to cheer when she saw the swirl of blood fill the bottom of the barrel. Success, on the first try. This was so easy.

She depressed the plunger.

A few seconds later, it hit her in fiery, golden waves, ricocheting through her body like an orgasm, except deeper, more intense, more complete through every inch of her. She swayed a little and dropped the syringe, and then bolted from the bed to grab her wastepaper basket, throwing up into it.

Through the haze of pleasure and giddiness, it occurred to her she might've done too much. She tried to walk to the door, to unlock it, to go into the bathroom and get a glass of water, but even just a few steps made her sway and rock, her stomach lurching. So she fell back onto her bed and let the world race away.

And then the door opened and her head, heavy as a bowling ball, lolled to see who it was. It was Raphael, not in the suit, just there. He smiled at her in that gentle, relaxed way he sometimes did, when he was feeling really happy or really calm, when he wasn't brooding or furious about something.

"I didn't think I would see you again," she said, her tongue thick and filling her mouth so that her words were muffled.

He came and laid down beside her on the bed. "They couldn't stop me."

She nodded. "I think they're going to kill me."

He moved closer to her, the thick, pebbled flesh of his thigh brushing against hers. "That's why I had to come. Gotta say goodbye."

Blinking, she looked at him. His strange, inhuman face with the unbelievably expressive eyes, constantly alive with a variety of emotion. The too big mouth; the strange blunt snout that had once been a beak. His broad shoulders and heavily muscled arms, entirely devoid of fat so that the skin clung to each muscle, hard as rock. The chest plates – the plastron – hard like bone. She ran her fingertips down them, smoothed them over the membrane covering his side, back around to his hard shell, rough and smooth at once on her hand. He'd never let her touch him so much before. It really must be goodbye.

"I just realised it doesn't matter," she told him. He seemed to understand her.

"No, it doesn't," he agreed. She didn't think that was something he would really say.

"I'm sorry we wasted so much time. Should've realised before."

He shrugged, and one of his hands lifted, stroking her cheek. Two fingers, big and thick, traced a line down to her jaw.

"Can't be helped. You're very pretty like this."

Of course. This wasn't her as he knew her. This was thirteen year old her. Still with puppy fat and budding breasts and a full face.

"You should've known me now," she said and shifted closer to him. He dropped his hand, put it around her back and drew her up against him. It wasn't like being up against Billy, with his smooth, firm chest and soft belly and wiry arms. Raphael was hard; hard all the way down his front, like bone. His arm was big and strong. "Things were different now."

"I know you," he said seriously, and then he rolled on top of her.

She shut her eyes and felt her body begin to jerk, felt the back of her head scrape back and forth against something hard, felt a force vibrating through her body again and again, and heard the muffled sounds of men's voices rising up around her like fog.

She opened her eyes and saw on top of her, not Raphael, but some nameless stranger, someone she had never seen before. She stared at him curiously, trying to remember when and where she'd picked him up and if she'd got the cash before they started.

When he saw her eyes open, he increased his pace, his force. She could feel how savage he was being, but it didn't hurt. Her head still felt too heavy to lift, and she was very sleepy.

Gradually, she became aware of the other men around her. They were insulting her, calling her ugly. She wondered why they could never think of something else to say. Unable to help herself, she yawned.

The man on top of her froze with fury, his eyes bulging and his face contorted. Then he backhanded her. When her head snapped back, bright sparks illuminating the cloud in her mind, she remembered everything.

This is the best they could think of? She wanted to say it to them, but it was too much effort to get the words out. Rape? Why was it always the same with men? Why were they always so fucking mundane and predictable?

Abruptly, the guy on top of her stopped and sat up in something he made look like disgust, but seemed unnerved and edgy beneath it.

"This fucking bitch doesn't even care. Too fucking used to it. Is that what your problem is, slut?" He shouted down at her, his desperate aggression becoming increasingly frail. "You used to this?" Some of them jeered, but she just lay there and blinked at the ceiling. The guy spat at her. "Waste of fucking time. "

A couple of the men hissed and kicked at her, swearing and calling her names, but she wasn't really paying attention. She wondered how many had had their go. They wouldn't have used condoms. Stupid fuckers. She hoped they had got her bleeding, and that their dicks had been drenched in it.

The guy who'd been on top of her was buckling his pants, still looking at her in disgust. "Let's get the fuck outta here. Creepy fucking bitch. José, you stay."

A thought occurred to her as they turned to go, walking over her like she was a sack of potatoes, and abruptly, she laughed.

They rounded as one, their eyes bright with fury and fear.

"What the fuck are you laughing at, cunt?" one of them said. He was handsome, with curly dark hair and a bandana around his head. She wondered if his mother knew where he was.

She swallowed around her thick tongue and blinked up at them. "That'll be a hundred bucks, thanks."

They hovered for a moment, too frozen with shock to react, then they descended upon her.

-------

On the tenement across from 188-200 West 83rd, Raphael adjusted the night binoculars and assessed the situation.

188-200 was a long disused tenement, crumbling and abandoned. It was possibly used as a squat now and then, but it was too decrepit for any but the most desperate. The ceilings sagged in many of the rooms that he scanned through the shattered windows, and there was exposed wiring and fallen beams everywhere. He counted the floors up to the fifth, slowly panning across each window.

When he got to fifty-six, he tensed. Four men, all of them packing some serious heat. Automatics. Uzis and glocks. His grip tightened on the binoculars. Uzis were trouble. The apartments on either side – fifty-five and fifty-seven – had two men in each. He scanned the rest of the floor, but there was no one else in any of the rooms. They were probably in the corridors, waiting. He panned up to the floor above, sixty-six. Two men in there. Below to forty-six, three men. All with automatics.

He sat back on his haunches and tried to figure it out.

Thirteen in total. In numbers, they weren't more than he could handle. The problem was the guns. They were too powerful and too fast. If he entered through the window, all his effort would go into trying to dodge the rapid-fire bullets, probably without success. With four guns like that all aimed at him, he wouldn't be able to avoid them. Not to mention the mugs around them, who would start firing or rush to join in when they heard the racket start.

Right now they were relaxed; a card game was going on in one room, and a small portable television set was on in another. The men were drinking and chatting, and their holds on the guns were loose. Didn't mean anything. It would be the work of seconds to get them into position, and in those numbers, he wouldn't have time to disarm them all. One or two, maybe three, at most. He was going to have to do this really carefully.

He scanned the roof, but there was no one waiting up there. Once more, he wished his brothers were here to back him up, but even if he could definitively change his mind, he'd broken his phone back on the rooftop. He was in it alone. If he died, then Amber was fucked. If he died, his family might never know what happened to him. He couldn't hold back a bitter chuckle as he imagined the sort of lecture he'd get from Leonardo in the afterlife, if there was any such thing. About abandoning the family without another word, endangering a girl's life, getting her killed, getting himself killed, leaving them all to worry and wonder and mourn him til Doomsday.

No way he wanted that lecture, so he guessed failure wasn't an option.

He began scanning the building again. He couldn't see Amber in any of the rooms the men occupied, but she might be hidden in a room that didn't face the windows. Now that he thought of it, there might be men in other rooms, as well. Obviously they'd all man the windowed rooms in case he decided to enter that way, but they might have reinforcements where he couldn't see them.

He became aware of a fine sheen of sweat on his brow. Damn it all, this was going to be fucking tough.

He began to scan the other floors, searching for any sign of Amber. If he could find her – he could just get her directly. They were counting on the Nightwatcher to come blazing in, baying for blood. They didn't think he could forgo all that, the big confrontation, but he could.

If he had to.

He wanted them hurt. He wanted to get these guys, to punish them for taking her, for hurting her and for making him feel – this. This unbearable fear and worry. The need to ignore the voice that kept screaming she was already dead. She couldn't be dead. Not like this. Not taken from him like this. He wouldn't be able to bear it. Not when – when they had been so close – and he was sure now, that they had been. Not when he –

And once again he was struck by the unfairness of it all. Not when he cared about her and they had been so close. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut and bowed his head, struggling against the surge of emotion that nearly overwhelmed him. He'd worked so hard to suppress it, to ignore the need, even if he couldn't squash the desire. Ever since the night, five years ago, when he'd been playing tag with Mikey.

They'd left the drainpipes in an unspoken conspiracy, wanting to climb to the rooftops – to test their strength and dexterity, and for the extra room. They were young and fit and desperate to stretch their limbs and test themselves, glowing with thirteen-year old arrogance, sick of rope climbing arm over arm. Mikey was it and Raphael was pushing it. Even then, Mikey was damn fast, but Raphael didn't have as much muscle bulk and was keeping a reasonable distance between then, leaping up fire escapes, flipping his body over rails and pushing himself into jumps. Already his quads and biceps were burning, but he was nowhere near exhausted, and the exhilaration of feeling the strength in his arms comfortably hauling his body weight upwards, one arm at a time, was adding speed to his movements.

He'd had to bite back on the urge to shout, remembering they were no longer in the sewers, that there were humans mere feet away on either side. He glanced across at the windows on the opposite building, suddenly wondering if he could be seen in the darkness.

Abruptly, he'd stopped as though he'd hit a wall. He forgot about Mikey, forgot about reaching the rooftop, forgot about the people all around him. He froze still and stared, jaw dropping open suddenly.

Opposite him, framed by a window, a woman was dancing. Her room was dark but for one small light, and she swayed back and forth lazily, her head lolling from side to side. She wasn't wearing much clothing – just a bra and panties, mismatched, the elastic on the panties old and stretched. She wasn't real slim, but she was beautiful. Her breasts were small and her hips were really wide, her skin was dark and her hair was piled up on top of her head. There was a bottle of liquor on the dresser next to the stereo, which played some soft, gently rocking music. She grabbed the bottle by the neck and took a swig, spun around in a circle and kept on swaying, her eyes shut.

Mikey pounced on him out of the darkness, about to squeal TAG, but he swatted him over the beak and pushed him off.

"What is it, Raphie?" his confused brother asked, following his gaze. "Oh. Wow."

They'd sat there in silence, watching the woman dance, her movements slow and carelessly sensual. And then her hands traveled up to her hair, pulling out the pins holding it up. It fell down around her shoulders like a curtain; masses and masses of tightly curled, dark hair, glittering a little in the dim light. They both drew in a deep breath. She spun one more time, her hair fanning out around her, and Mikey said 'wow' again.

They watched her lazy dancing until she picked up the bottle again and left the room. They left without a word exchanged, and when they made it home, he'd gone into the bathroom. He sat there for awhile alone, in front of the mirror and knew.

Even when Amber had first entered his life, it didn't occur to him that there was a chance. He'd talked to her out of curiosity, because she'd been so calm and cool in the face of her death, as though she'd been expecting it. And then because it was good to have someone else to talk to, someone completely different. Someone who was just – just his. And Amber wasn't risky. She had no friends, she had no ties, and she didn't bother prying. Maybe she was even safe. She wasn't attractive and didn't try to be.

He'd been just barely seventeen when they'd met. Seventeen and struggling with everything life was throwing at him with the full knowledge of their isolation. Puberty, loneliness, frustration, always having to stay hidden and be careful. Rarely spending time in the sun. Confinement.

And desire. He couldn't suppress it, but he could stop giving it material to feed off of. It made watching television difficult, so he worked out instead. On the streets he trained himself only to see the victims.

It didn't really work, but it helped.

The closer he got to Amber, the harder it became to ignore. And although he knew he should walk away, he just didn't want to. It was nuts, and it was stupid, but he'd dug his heels in.

And now this had happened.

Raphael opened his eyes again, coming out of his memories and back to the rooftop, gritting his teeth as he raised his head and looked across the street to the tenement. He felt the gravel beneath his fingertips, the sweat cooling on his neck and forehead. He could smell the garbage wafting up from the street below. He could feel his muscles suddenly flood with adrenaline, tensing as he stood and readied himself.

They would not take her.