In his dream, he was hovering over New York. His lungs seemed to be full of some previously undiscovered gas which both gave him boundless energy and provided exactly the right amount of lift to grant him neutral buoyancy in air. From his lofty position, he could see the warehouse that sat over the lair. He tried to move toward it, to go home, but he couldn't seem to control the height or direction of his float. The buildings of the city were moving, also, periodically obscuring his view of the warehouse.

Then Donatello was floating next to him, holding a bottle of thick glass. Cough, Don told him.

He coughed into the bottle. His lungs deflated just slightly, and he found he could steer himself by controlling his breathing.

Leo was there, too. Good, he said. Control your breathing, control yourself. He started some meditative chant, folding himself into the lotus position in mid-air.

Michelangelo swam up beside him. Let's go to Iowa! he said.

They did. It was full of sheep.

He woke up feeling terrible. He barely noticed Splinter, alert and watchful in the chair. He wondered when it had gotten so warm in the lair.

He realized he was in desperate need of a bathroom. "Help," he said, his throat too dry for more words. Splinter was at his side instantly, offering the crutch and his own shoulder. Raphael rolled out of the hammock, barely managing to stay upright on his one working foot, and attempted to convey through urgent motions of his head and arms the speed at which he wished to travel.

He made it to the toilet. He didn't think he could have lasted one more second.

He stuck his head under the faucet and drank deeply before leaving the bathroom. Master Splinter was waiting for him.

"What color was it?" Splinter asked him.

"What color was what?" he said blearily. His brain didn't seem to be working too well, and his father's question wasn't making any sense.

"When you..." Splinter's eyes darted around, looking anywhere but at his son. "... relieved yourself."

"Uh..." He hadn't really been looking. "Normal color?"

"Ah." Splinter finally came to his side and helped him towards the stairs.

It took a concentrated effort to divide his attention between walking and thinking. Speaking was just barely within the realm of possibility. "Master Splinter, what...?"

"There was no hallucinogen."

It took his mind a while to process that. No... Then he understood. Splinter's medicine. Don's suspected chemical.

There will be evidence.

There was no hallucinogen.

Damn.

Somehow they had made it to the kitchen. He was already sitting down. He rested his head on the table.

"...feel well?" Splinter was asking.

"What?" he mumbled.

A hand pushed him back in his chair, then felt his forehead. The hand went away and he slumped forward again. His gaze bored vacantly through the wood grain.

Someone was saying his name. "Raphael." His father. "Put this in your mouth."

He forced one eye open, saw Splinter holding a thermometer. His arms were too heavy to lift. He opened his mouth and Splinter put the thermometer in for him.

He closed his eyes again. Waited, heard the beep, felt the thin device slide out from under his tongue. Heard his father hum.

"This cannot be right." A hand on his shoulder, urging him to stay in the present. "Raphael, did you drink something?"

The question was too hard. He groaned. Splinter went away.

The world was blessedly empty for a few minutes. Then people.

"I hate it when I'm right." Don. "C'mon, Raph. Take these."

He didn't care what they were. He took them blindly. Water. Swallow.

"Infirmary. Now."

He couldn't even move. Someone carried him. Words he couldn't understand and a warm circle on his back.

He didn't know if he was still awake.

He was in the infirmary again, lying on his back. It was exactly where he didn't want to be.

He sat up.

There was a thermometer in his mouth before he could speak. Don. He glared.

Don glared right back.

The thermometer beeped.

He took it out, blocking Donatello's grab, and looked at it. "Crud," he said.

"Crud is right," Don said, swiping the thermometer and reading the number. "Who told you you could sleep upstairs?"

He shut his mouth and staunchly refused to incriminate anyone.

"I keep telling you, that hammock is a health hazard." Don went to the sink and furiously washed the thermometer. "It's bad for blood flow and it can't be doing your back any favors. Why did you think it would be a good idea to sleep there when you can barely breathe?"

"I like it." He threw off the blankets. Too hot.

Don wheeled around, brandishing the thermometer like a weapon. "No more hammocks!"

He got out of the bed. "You touch my hammock," he said calmly, "I break every test tube in your lab." He looked to the wall. "Where's my crutch?"

Don pointed the thermometer again. "You. Bed. Forever."

"Make me." He bent forward defiantly and walked out on his hands.

It turned out that being upside-down wasn't good for his lungs either. He spent the next several minutes sprawled on the couch, coughing violently. Part of his mind, watching Don patiently hold the metal bowl, reflected that being sick was at least a good way to distract his brother from his fits of anger.

"On the subject of test tubes and my lab," Don said eventually, and Raphael marvelled at his brother's ability to hold onto a train of thought, "I didn't find anything unusual in your blood, aside from high concentrations of antibodies. Because you have pneumonia," he added, in case Raphael hadn't already figured this out, or wasn't feeling guilty enough for his failure to avoid illness.

"So there's no hallucinogen," he said dully.

"Not necessarily." Don set the bowl aside. "As usual, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

"Donnie." He pointed to his own head. "Sick. Use English."

"Just because I didn't find anything, doesn't mean there's nothing to find." He leaned back against the table. "It could mean that my equipment isn't good enough."

"There's no hallucinogen," he said again. "And if there's a healing agent, it isn't working."

Don was looking at him in a way he didn't entirely like. "You keep saying 'hallucinogen'. Is that the word you mean?"

"I know what I'm saying, Don," he said peevishly.

Don held up his hands. "I'm not arguing with you. I just don't know where you're getting this idea. I never ventured any guesses as to what the Foot might have drugged you with."

He really didn't want to talk about this. "It doesn't matter. 'Cuz it's not there."

"No, I said -"

"Splinter checked. It's not there."

A long pause. Damn. Said too much.

"Why did Master Splinter think -"

"Don." He really, really didn't want to talk about this. He rolled over and stretched out across the couch. Splinter's cushion was still on the table; he grabbed it and stuffed it behind his head. "Drop it. It doesn't matter."

"Have you been seeing things?" Don pressed. "Hearing voices? That could -"

He didn't let Donatello finish that sentence either. "What part of 'drop it' is causing problems for you?"

"Gosh, Raph." Don's ire was rising again. "Maybe the part where you're having symptoms you didn't tell me about. That would be another item for your list of stupid medical decisions. Decisions which are, actually, causing a lot of problems for me."

"Whatever," he muttered. Meaningless phrases were a good way to win an argument with Donatello. His doggedly logical brain couldn't get any traction against them.

"No, not whatever." Don shot down the paper obstacle. "You're a terrible patient. That just means I have to be a better doctor."

They regarded each other for a moment. Raphael could tell that Don was abandoning the interrogation strategy, and was now going to focus all of his considerable observational skills on his sick, secretive brother. He was going to have to be careful. He was going to have to think before he spoke.

He heard Leonardo's soft, measured footsteps coming down the stairs. He thought fast. Leo might know what I said to Master Splinter. Move conversation to another topic.

"So," he said casually. "Did you guys go out last night?"

"Yeah, we did." Leo perched on the arm of the couch, by Raphael's feet. "How are you feeling?"

"Great," he said quickly. "You find anything?"

Leo looked at Don, but Don was keeping silent. "We found a camera," Leo said. "Definitely Foot issue."

"Any Foot?"

"No." Leo frowned. "No one was there, and no one came. Either they're not monitoring their feeds, or they're waiting for something else."

"So you just smashed the camera and came back?" He'd been hoping for a more interesting story. Don wasn't distracted enough yet.

"No, we brought it home." Leo glanced at Don again, waiting for him to say something, then continued. "Don might be able to figure out a tracing system. Find out if the Foot are watching any of our other hang-outs."

Raphael spotted the flaw in the plan instantly. "Don't you think the Foot might have put their own trackers in the camera?"

Don couldn't resist responding to that. "Thanks for the vote of confidence, Raph, but I destroyed anything that could possibly record information or send a signal before we came underground." He looked briefly at Leo. "Which doesn't leave me a lot to develop a tracing system from."

"At any rate," Leo said, "we won't go to that pizza place anymore. And we need to be careful where else we go. The Foot could have cameras anywhere."

Don rubbed the ridge between his eyes. "I said it was possible. I didn't say it was likely."

"And what percent risk is acceptable to you?" Leonardo asked sharply. When Don looked appropriately cowed, he asked, "What are the chances the Foot could have infiltrated our surveillance systems?"

Don glanced over at the monitors, which were currently being watched by Splinter. "Well, it wouldn't exactly be difficult to feed us a loop of an empty sewer. But," he added quickly, "that's assuming they were able to either find my hardware or hack my firewalls. Which I highly doubt."

"Check anyway," Leo said. "We have no idea how long they might have been working on this."

"Maybe they're not working on anything," Raphael said, even as the word tracker hung in his thoughts. "Maybe they just got lucky on Tuesday, and thought they'd be clever and stick up a camera in case we were dumb enough to come back."

"Well, that's the question," said Leo. "Did they get lucky, or were they waiting? Did they put the camera there before or after the attack?"

"What did they know," Don mused, "and when did they know it."

A lame joke came to mind, and he spoke without thinking. "Are they now, or have they ever been, members of the Foot Clan?" As the words went out, some part of his brain reeled them back in. It seemed like the question had been floating just below the surface, waiting for a hook to draw it up. A tracker. He held onto it.

He realized his brothers were staring at him.

"Sorry." He scrambled to cover for his bizarre outburst of free association. "I thought it was cliché historical questions time." The incident didn't seem to be quite smoothed over yet, so he kept talking. "Y'know, Donnie, you're not the only one who watches the History Channel."

"You only watch for the war specials," Don said. "And while this is all very fascinating, I apparently have to go run diagnostics on my security systems, and then walk the tunnels to check every single camera for bugs. So I'd better get going." He stood up and headed for his lab.

"What is up with him?" Raphael asked, as soon as Donatello was out of earshot. Yes. Change the subject. He turned back to Leonardo. "What's up with you? You're even more paranoid than usual."

"Someone has to be." Leonardo sighed heavily and looked at his feet. "Our enemies don't take a break because we're angry, sick, and hiding from each other." He stood up. "Do you need anything?"

He looked at the table. The remote was conveniently within reach. "No." Yes. "Wait. My crutch."

"Where is it?"

"Don't know."

"I'll look," Leo said, and went to do exactly that. A few minutes later he came back, propped the crutch behind the couch, and headed off on his own business.

"Hey Leo," Raphael said suddenly. Another thought was swimming out of the fever haze of his mind, attracted by that word. Tracker. He heard his brother stop. "Tuesday night. Why did you come after me?"

There was a pause. Then: "You don't know?"

"Would I be asking?"

Leo came back. "I was setting the table when my phone rang. It was you - I mean, the call was from your phone - but you weren't saying anything. So I grabbed Don and Mike and we followed you." He tilted his head. "You don't remember calling?"

"I didn't call," Raphael said. He was sure of it.

"Maybe you hit the button by accident."

Raphael was about to deny ever touching the phone, but Don was coming across the room, crossing the threshold of hearing range. He kept his mouth closed.

Donatello was carrying his bo and a duffel bag stuffed with tech gear. "Diagnostics are running," he said. "They'll take a couple of hours. In the meantime, I can do the unnecessary but time-consuming legwork you so generously assigned me. Maybe I'll step on a land-mine. That would be exciting."

"If you want me to come," Leo said, "you can just ask."

"No." Don hiked the bag onto his shoulder. "I don't need any help." He turned to go.

"You know what," Leo said. "Take Mike."

"I said I don't need any help."

"Take him anyway. He hasn't been out of his room all day and I'm tired of his attitude."

"Very nice." Don stormed towards the stairs. "I'll just solve that problem too. Thanks, Leo."

"You're welcome!" Leo shouted after him. Don's only reply was to stomp more loudly. "I can't do this anymore," he muttered. "I'll be in the dojo if anyone wants me, though I'm sure they won't." He went away.

A few minutes later Don came downstairs, trailing a silent and reluctant Mike. They left the lair, sealing the door behind them.

The lair was quiet again, but this time he didn't like it.

This has got to stop. Someone has to do something.

His head hurt. Thought came slowly. He pushed methodically through the list of people who might do something, and came to the conclusion that 'someone' would have to be him. None of his brothers had any more to give. A few more minutes of thinking led to the conclusion that he didn't know what the 'something' was, but that he did know someone who might point him in the right direction.

He flung out his arm, grabbed the crutch and hauled it over to the front of the couch. He held it there for a long moment, mustering the energy to get up.

He stood in one fast push - Better to get it over with - and then realized that strategy wouldn't work for the next thing he needed to do. It was going to be a long slog.

He was intensely relieved, when he finally reached the surveillance center, to see that Master Splinter had long since noticed him coming, and had vacated the chair. He lowered himself into it and rested his head against the high back.

"How are you feeling?" Master Splinter asked.

Like crap, he thought, but he said, "Not too good."

"I am sorry, my son. You seemed well during the night -"

"No," he said. "It's not your fault. I should've listened to Don." He rolled his head forward. "Or to what he would have said if I'd bothered to ask him." He took a moment to gather his wayward thoughts. "Sensei - I'm worried about us. About all of us."

Master Splinter, perched on the edge of the console, went into full-on Wise Teacher mode. "There is great strife in our home," he said. "This dishonorable attack by the Foot Clan is very upsetting to your brothers."

"It's more than that," he said, pulling up his uninjured leg, jamming his bare knee under the arm of the chair. "This wasn't a single attack. Something is still happening. Keeps happening."

Master Splinter mirrored his posture. "Your visions."

"They're not right, Sensei. They're too real."

"This is sometimes the case."

He was afraid to go any further in that direction, so he backtracked. He hoped desperately that Splinter could give him a convincing argument for what he wanted to be true.

"What if they aren't visions, or hallucinations? What if I'm just imagining it?" He struggled to remember their previous conversation. "What were you saying about my subconscious?"

"The subconscious is very powerful," Master Splinter said. "Dreams can fool us into believing we are awake. The things you imagine may be powerful enough to affect the physical world."

"Then why can't I imagine something better?"

Master Splinter looked at him sadly. "Raphael, you have been greatly hurt. Your spirit is trying to excise the damage. You cannot recover until you face what has happened." He smiled faintly. "You must have already begun, for your wounds to heal so quickly."

"Have I?" He looked at his arms. Old scars, but no trace of his recent trauma. "Did I…?"

"Modern science is only beginning to recognize the ancient wisdom of mind over matter." Master Splinter straightened into a meditative posture. "You have a powerful spirit, Raphael. These things are not beyond you."

"I don't care about this," Raphael said, with a twitching gesture that encompassed his overheated forehead, his abused lungs, his ruined ankle. "I want to fix us. Leo, Don. Mike."

Splinter looked across the lair, at the evidence of their lives. "Your brothers are also hurting. For themselves, and for you, through the connection you share. They cannot be healed by an act of your will. To do so would be to ignore their need to face what has happened, in their own way."

Raphael had heard this before. He and his brothers had always had a connection, something deep and reptilian, beyond even Splinter's ability to sense. As an inexperienced parent, Splinter had assumed that it was a normal understanding between siblings until Michelangelo had begun to regularly inform him that his brothers "smelled" happy, sad, or afraid. Having already been disappointed to discover that his sons were nearly anosmic, Splinter quickly recognized that his most distractible son had an innate talent for sensing energy fields and an unusual tendency to perceive them as odors. Soon after, he realized that Michelangelo not only sensed energy, but was able to exercise some control over its flow. Splinter had immediately ordered the untrained child to stop playing with his brothers' chi, to little effect.

"How can I make them do that?" Raphael asked. He recognized Splinter's you-have-not-been-listening expression and changed his wording. "How can I help them start?"

"You must begin with yourself," Master Splinter said. "Show them the way, and they will follow." His ears twitched, as though he were listening to something else. "I have not had a chance to ask you - did you have any of these visions, or dreams, last night?"

"No," he said. He could feel part of his mind ticking slowly, putting something together. Begin with yourself. "I mean, I had a dream, but it was okay. It was just a dream."

"What was it about?" Splinter asked.

"Um..." He tried to remember, but the images were fading. "We went to Iowa."

Master Splinter looked surprised, which was unusual, but he recovered quickly. "Why do you think you dreamed of Iowa?"

"I don't know." The other part of his mind was clunking like a stuck gear. "I don't even know where Iowa is."

"That is not true," Splinter said. "You are very good at geography."

It was true that his mental maps were as impeccable as his internal clock, but it was also true that his brain only drew maps for places he had visited in person. And he had certainly never been to Iowa.

The gear slotted into place and suddenly he knew what he wanted to say. "Sensei," he said. "The visions - the dreams - that guy - he only comes when I'm alone." Master Splinter didn't answer immediately. "I was alone on Thursday night, right?"

"Yes," Master Splinter said slowly, checking his own memories.

"And I was alone in the alley." He was picking up speed now, seeing how the engine of events worked. "Every other time I was asleep or unconscious, someone was with me. The guy only comes when I'm alone."

"Even though he does not physically exist," Master Splinter said, following in the wake of Raphael's thoughts. "Your subconscious shuts him out when other minds are near."

Raphael's well-oiled mental train abruptly crashed into a wall. "Which means whatever this is... I have to face it alone." He suddenly felt terribly far away from his father.

Master Splinter stood up and touched his son's hand. "Recovery is a two-fold path," he said. "There are parts you must walk alone, and stretches where your family can guide you. It is a long road, and one that you have begun well."

His eyes turned inward, and he watched the wheels of the train spin furiously in the air. "I have to sleep alone tonight."

"No, my son." Master Splinter leaned forward, trying to catch Raphael's gaze. "Why do you hasten away from us? Rushing to heal will only lead to a half-healing."

He watched the engine explode, igniting each of the cars behind it. "No," he said. "This can't wait."

When Don and Mike came back several hours later, he was lying on the couch, reading his book.

"Hey," said Don. "Where's Leo?"

He stuck his finger in the book. "Dojo."

"Okay. We need to talk about some things." He tagged Mike on the arm as Mike tried to sneak upstairs. "You stay." Don crossed the room and rapped smartly on the door of the dojo, then crossed back and disappeared into his lab. Mike stood rigidly in place. He glanced sideways, saw Raphael looking at him, and tried to find a way to stand that would hide himself from his brother's vision.

Leonardo came out, sheathing his swords. "What's the news?" he asked. Mike only shuffled his feet and shook his head.

"I'm coming!" Don called, ducking from the lab into the infirmary. He emerged a moment later and came towards them with his hands full. He addressed Raphael first. "Did you eat or drink anything in the last hour?"

"No."

"Good." He produced the hated thermometer from the tangle of stuff in his hands. "Take it. No arguing."

Raphael took it with his best imitation of good grace.

"Now." Don dumped the rest of his things on the table and parked himself on the floor. "The systems are clean. No bugs, no spyware. Can we please get off high alert."

Leonardo was standing, rather than sitting or leaning, near Raphael's head. "You're sure? There's nothing?"

Don glared up at him. "I can't believe you're even asking me that."

Leonardo practiced his penetrating gaze on Don. "Okay," he said finally. "Watch is cancelled. Mike -" He made a vague gesture, and Michelangelo went to the monitors. Raphael couldn't tell if Mike spoke or not - the thermometer chose a most inconvenient moment to beep - but Splinter abandoned his post. He and Mike came to the couches as Don stuck his hand out and Raphael passed over the thermometer. Don glanced at it cursorily. "I still want that tracer," Leo said, pointing to the partially-dismantled camera on the table.

"Yes, Leo," Don sighed.

"It is getting late," Splinter said. "I will prepare dinner. We will eat together."

And just like that, a semblance of normalcy was restored.

But only a semblance. Michelangelo fled for his room; Don poked moodily at the camera; Leo looked at them all and then followed Splinter to the kitchen.

"So," Raphael said. "Am I still sick?" He felt less hazy, but breathing was still a chore.

Don sorted out his tools. "Your fever is down, at least."

"You know," he said conversationally, "this isn't nearly as bad as last time."

"Of course not." Don picked a diminutive screwdriver from the pile and attacked a tiny screw. "Have I taught you nothing about the immune system?"

A snide response came to mind, but he kept it to himself. Just in case he couldn't fix what was wrong with them while he was sleeping, he was going to try to fix it while he was awake. Not further aggravating Donatello seemed like a good place to start.

Don worked silently, methodically taking apart the camera and laying out the various pieces on the low table. When it seemed there would be no further conversation, Raphael unfolded his book and began reading again.

He had no sooner gotten back into the flow of the narrative when Don decided he had something to say.

"This hallucinogen of yours," he began, while his fingers untwisted a knot of wires. "Does it have anything to do with the man with the fishing pole?"

Raphael lowered his book and looked at his brother incredulously. Don's eyes were on his work. "How do you do that?"

Don glanced up. "Do what?"

"Do you remember everything?"

Don put down the battery pack he'd been dismantling. "Why yes, Raph, I do listen when you talk to me." He pointed at his brother with a tweezer. "I also notice that you're avoiding the question. Which means I'm right."

He snorted. It burned his throat. He rolled onto his side, dropping the book, grabbed the bowl, and coughed vigorously.

"Hardly," he said, when he'd gotten his wind back. "You're screwing around with me. You're trying to get me confused so I'll tell you what you want to hear."

"Is that so?" Don opened the plastic casing and popped out the button batteries. "Pray tell what it is I'm fishing for."

"Slick, Don. You've been practicing your Jedi mind tricks."

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about," Don said airily.

"'Fishing'?" He reached forward and picked up one of the camera lenses, disturbing Don's neat arrangement of parts. You're not the only one who can play games. "Could it be that you're trying to jog my memory about a guy with a fishing pole? Is there some small possibility, just some tiny chance, that you're so desperate to find a connection, that you're trying to trick me into constructing a false memory?" He rolled the circle of glass in his fingers. He noticed that his band-aid had fallen off at some point. "Pretty sad, Don."

"Indeed." Don compulsively rearranged the rows of camera parts. "It would be almost as sad as your wild invention of nonexistent mind-altering drugs in order to pretend that the confusing and unwelcome things that were happening to you weren't really happening."

He was pretty sure that whatever game they'd been playing, Don had just changed the rules. "Say what?"

Don picked up the broken pieces of the camera's transmitter card and slotted them back together. "You thought you were having hallucinations. There's no evidence that you are having hallucinations. That means that something you were hoping was only in your head, is real." He looked up. "What is it?"

Raphael was momentarily speechless. "Damn, Donnie," he said at last. "How do you do that?"

"There is a straight line between any two points," Don said, inserting the cracked transmitter card into a small device, which was in turn attached to his PDA. "All you need is a pencil and a straightedge."

He put the lens down. "Where can I get some of those?"

"You have them, Raph," Don said. He poked some buttons on his PDA. "You just don't use them enough." He mumbled something at his equipment, then laid it aside and picked up the batteries, fitting them into some kind of scanner. "So what is it you don't want me to know?"

"I can't tell you," he said heavily.

"Why not?" Don put the scanner down. "Why have you been acting like I'm out to get you?"

He turned the bowl around and around, looking at his distorted reflection in the brushed metal. "If I was going to do something, and it was something that might be dangerous, would you try to stop me?"

"Sometimes I feel like I spend my entire life trying to stop you from doing dangerous things."

"So...?"

"Yes. Yes, I would try to stop you."

I have to face this alone. "That's why I can't tell you."

Dinner was an awkward affair. It was the first time they had all eaten together since Tuesday's disastrous dinner-retrieval mission. Raphael's stomach was resisting food, Mike was unwilling in a general way, and Don hadn't entirely dropped the subject of what Raphael was intending to do, even though he was managing to refrain from actively demanding answers.

Splinter was trying desperately to stimulate conversation. "I have never seen the kitchen so clean," he said. "Thank you, Michelangelo."

"Welcome," Mike mumbled. It was obvious that he was trying to avoid attention.

So much for normalcy, Raphael thought.

"So," Leonardo tried, when no one said anything. "What's happening tonight?"

"Someone needs to put the sheets back on the cot," Don said. "They're in the drier."

"What are they doing there?" Raphael asked.

"You sweated on them appallingly," Don told him. "I thought it would be nice if you had clean sheets tonight." He watched Raphael's reaction closely. "Please tell me you weren't planning to sleep upstairs."

He was saved from having to answer by Leo's compulsive honesty. "Don, I'm sorry," Leo said. "I let him go upstairs last night. I thought it would be okay."

Raphael used the temporary reprieve to work on the problem of how he would arrange to sleep in his room, alone, without letting on why he wanted to.

"No hammock tonight, Raph," Don said. "I forbid it."

"I'll sleep on the floor," he said. Plausible reasons why this was better than sleeping in the infirmary were not coming to mind.

"I wish you wouldn't," Don said. "I really hope you're not doing these things just to spite me."

"No, I -" He blanked. Excuse! Now!

"Can't we put the cot upstairs?"

Where did that come from? I didn't -

He realized everyone was looking at Mike.

"Would that be okay?" Leo asked anxiously, turning to Don.

Don looked at them all. He looked longest at Master Splinter, and Raphael had the feeling that something he couldn't read was passing between them.

"Fine," Don said. He pointed his spoon at Michelangelo. "You get to help me move it."

The conversation turned to a stiff discussion of local news, mostly centering around the on-going clean-up from the alien invasion. Raphael tuned out, his thoughts consumed with the task he had set for himself.

Don and Mike had dragged the clunky old bedstead upstairs and put the sheets on it while Raphael sat on the couch feeling useless. He wanted to do something, to distract himself from what might happen when he went to sleep. He wanted to go to bed, so that whatever was going to happen would be over with that much sooner.

Leonardo sat down next to him and reached for the remote.

He faked a huge yawn. "I'm wiped," he declared.

Leo retracted his hand. "Do you want to go upstairs?"

"Yeah." He reached for his crutch. Leo pulled him to his feet, and they started towards the bedrooms. It wasn't any easier than it had been the day before, and this time he didn't even have the comforting motivation of his father coming to watch over him. There was nothing waiting for him but a bed he didn't like and the looming possibility of an unpleasant encounter with a strange, potentially imaginary person. Dread coalesced in the pit of his stomach, adding to the weight of the liquid in the bottom of his lungs. His body was too heavy to lift; for a fleeting moment he fantasized about leaving it behind and continuing his life as a floating pair of eyeballs. Then the bed was in front of him and he fell into it.

Don and Mike had adjusted the boxspring to sit within arm's reach of the floor, so Leo laid the crutch just under the rusty bedframe, where Raphael could lean down and grab it.

"You'll be okay?" Leo asked worriedly.

"Yeah." He propped himself on his elbow and punched the pillow a few times. It had been too many days since he'd hit anything. He looked up at his brother, hovering uncertainly in the doorway. "Hey. Don't let Donnie rag on you. If he's got a problem, he can take it up with me."

"No, I shouldn't -"

"Leo." He waited for his brother to come back from his guilt-laden reverie. "Ya done good. We're safe. We're gonna be okay."

"I'm glad someone thinks so," Leo said. It wasn't clear which statement he was responding to, but Raphael could tell he appreciated the vague compliment. "Good night, Raph."

"Night, Paranoia-Boy."

Leo turned off the light and went out, closing the door behind him. Raphael lay in the dark, his mental fingers hovering reluctantly over his sleep-switch.

There was a soft knock at the door.

"Come in," he said.

Splinter entered, carrying the small decorative gong he kept in his room. He set it on the floor by the head of the bed, along with the accompanying soft-headed mallet.

"If anything happens during the night," Splinter said, "use this. I will hear it."

The light from the doorway was falling over his shoulders, outlining him sharply while leaving his face in darkness. He was casting a Splinter-shaped shadow onto Raphael's blanket-shrouded form.

"Thanks."

Splinter leaned forward and kissed Raphael on the forehead. "Sleep well, my son." He backed out of the room and shut the door softly.

Raphael lay in the dark. Now or never. He breathed as deeply as he dared, once, then flipped the switch. Immediately he plunged into a darkness more penetrating than the mere absence of light.