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Chapter 10

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Don woke up sweating. He crawled over to the water bucket and splashed some water on his face. He drank a little and collapsed on the floor; even crawling the short distance across the room had exhausted him. The cold floor felt good against his burning face.

He'd felt it coming on the day before, but the fever was now beginning to rage. Fighting off… the infection… He lay there without strength, his breathing shallow. He didn't think his captors were about to start pumping him full of antibiotics any time soon. Got to try and fight it off...

The past week had been an experience Donatello could not, and would not, ever describe. Being from a family of ninjas, studying up on the effects of torture and pain management was almost a pre-requisite for him. They had all received training on how to deal with pain using certain techniques. Master Splinter had shown them how to effectively ignore most wounds in battle, an essential skill for maintaining focus on your attacker.

Nothing in Donatello's training could have prepared him for this. It had been a little over a week here now, and he did not remember a moment when he wasn't in agony. He sighed. It was alright. He just had to hang on a little longer, surely his brothers were on their way. In the back of his mind, he knew that without his help they were probably struggling to locate this facility. Lacking his knowledge and resources would no doubt slow them down. If they're not all locked up in here too, that is. He pushed the thought away, desperately hanging onto the hope that this nightmare would soon end.

When they had him on the table, the shocks came every ten minutes. He counted the seconds between each one, keeping his mind occupied. It was in this way that Donatello was able to get a rough estimate on how much time was passing. At first he tried to keep from crying out, but as the hours passed he was aware of a slow moan emanating from deep inside his throat. As each shock ravaged his body he became rigid, every muscle turned to solid stone. Dozens of shocks later, the accumulation turned his vocal chords against him, and he could contain it no longer.

He had thought of it then, as he lay gasping between shocks, and the thought returned to him now. My body can heal, he thought bitterly, but there's no telling what damage this is doing to my brain. It was a cruel fate. How ironic that the smartest amongst them be subjected to such torture. Maybe it's not coincidence, he thought, maybe they know exactly what they're doing. Could the Foot Clan really know that much about them? Best not to underestimate them, he guessed.

He shifted on the floor and winced at the pain in his shoulder. The wound was hot with infection and he was unable to move his left arm at all. As he drifted on the edge of sleep once more, he imagined the infection eating his flesh, dissolving it. It felt like thousands of bugs crawling in his wound, devouring him. He yelled out, clutching at the opening with his hand. Snapping out of it, Donatello tried to shake the fuzzy feeling from his head. Uuugh… fever's getting worse. Starting to hallucinate a little. On top of the shock treatments, he knew that the fever and general exhaustion were also starting to take their toll on him.

Desperate to hold onto what was left of his rational mind, Donatello pulled himself into a sitting position. Getting his back up against the wall to steady himself, he crossed his legs and closed his eyes. He began by reciting a familiar mantra in his head: To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill. If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles. If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain to be in peril…*

He controlled his breathing, keeping it steady but increasing it in slight increments. Next, his heart beat, blood pressure – all were rising slightly. Within minutes, pure adrenaline was coursing through him. His eyes snapped open, but he saw nothing with them. He was fully entranced.

In a normal situation, entering such a state of deep meditation would take many hours, possibly days. Getting there in a matter of moments was an anomaly; even Master Splinter himself was unable to achieve such a thing. Perhaps it was the shocks to his brain, or the fever… regardless, this was anything but a normal situation. Necessitation drove him now. More so than to escape from the pain, he had to try and connect with any of his brothers.

It was black. He projected his soul outwards, searching, scanning the universe for a familiar energy. A cacophony of voices, the sound of millions of beings, rushed through his body like a wave. He let them ebb and flow through, looking for the right one. Like static on a radio, a quick sound grabbed his attention. He moved towards it, shutting out the rest of the noise. It was a voice cutting the stream, becoming louder now. Donatello felt a calm relief with the voice, he felt like he was coming home.

White lines began to bleed in, slowing forming shapes. He became aware of a circular shape in front of him, and focused hard on it. Colors filled the shape and bled outwards, creating a wall with pictures hanging. As he stared, the round shape became a wall clock. It was the clock in his lab. The rest of the scene formed, adding his computer, his books, his piles of junk. He was standing in his workshop in the lair. He turned, heading towards the voice that had pulled him here. His movement was thick and slow, almost as if he was swimming. As he moved, the environment around him blurred significantly, making a hazy effect that obscured detail. It was like seeing the world through frosted glass; disorienting, but he pushed on, determined.

Within moments he found his brother, asleep in bed.

"Le… o… nar… do…," the words came, slow and reverberating, like an album being played backwards.

Leo snapped awake and looked startled. "Donatello?" He squinted. "Is that you?"

"Leo… need... help…" He labored with the words.

"Donnie! Where are you?"

"…don't know… prisoner…"

"Don! Please!" His voice was dripping with desperation. "We've been looking, but we don't have any clues. Help me!"

"…no… win… dows... Foot… sol… diers… white… so… tired…"

The scene began to shudder and quake. Something was pulling him away, back into the real world. "Don! Don't go!"

"…please… don't… give… up…"

As Don came out of the trance, he heard Leo's last words echo in his brain. Be strong, my brother. We will come for you, I swear it.

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"Now that we have your attention, it is time for you to decide. You now know what this contains." She said, acknowledging the needle. "You can save yourself from this pain."

She leaned in close, her breath warm. "Tell us where to find your lair."

Michelangelo just stared coldly at her. His face only showed one emotion, burning hatred for his captor. Inside, he felt like screaming. Gotta be tough… can't show them fear…

"Very well." She motioned for the man in white to come forward with the needle, but stopped him just short of plunging it into the vein.

"Last chance, warrior. It is only a matter of time before we find your hole ourselves, why not try to save yourself and help us?" She caressed the side of his face. "All of this could be over, with a word."

Mike spit into Karai's face. It felt good to do it; he thought it was something Raphael would've done. The room erupted. A guard lunged at him, striking him in the face. Turning back, Michelangelo locked his hate-filled eyes back into hers.

Karai made no expression. She stood still, wiping the saliva from her face as though she were just brushing away an eyelash. She spoke a quick command word, and the guards fell back.

"Disappointing. But perhaps you will change your mind, given enough time here." She motioned and the man in white completed his task. She remained for several minutes, watching the drug take effect. As Michelangelo writhed and screamed, a cold, satisfied smile crept over her lips.

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Ripped out of his meditative state, the guards began dragging Donatello out of the door. He was in the hallway before he'd completely snapped to. Back in… for more, he thought exhaustedly. This was how it had gone; they'd shock him for hours and then return him to the cell for a while. Rinse, repeat.

Donatello didn't struggle, but hung limp in their arms. Fighting them was useless; he hadn't the strength to take on even one soldier, let alone the half dozen that escorted him now. Besides, his thoughts were becoming more and more muddled and he was less aware of his surroundings with each passing moment. So hot… think I saw Leo…? That's right! Leo was alive, looking for him. The vision had been real, he was sure of it.

As he struggled to complete his thoughts, something caught his attention. A sound, faint… it sounded like… yelling? He strained to hear. Someone was screaming, far off. Another prisoner? It sounded like - no, it couldn't be. No, he must be imagining it. His state of mind was suspect at best right now, he couldn't trust in his senses. A chill crept up his spine nevertheless.

As they strapped him down, Donatello's weary mind tried to make sense of what was happening. He tried to hold onto the thought that Leo was still out there at least, Leo would find him. Find us? Hallucination or not, the screams Donatello had heard were instantly recognizable. He knew them to be that of the youngest brother, Michelangelo. No. Not Mikey, please… out of any of us, don't let it be him.

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Leonardo had elected not to tell Raphael about the dream. No sense getting his hopes up. Besides, it was just a stupid dream.

When he'd connected to Michelangelo, it was different altogether. They had all been trained extensively in meditative techniques, but Leo was by far the most talented of them in that respect. He easily spent the most time meditating in general; to the others it seemed that when Leo wasn't training his body, he was in his room training his mind. In this, he was on par only with Master Splinter himself. There was no doubt – he'd touched Michelangelo, though his relief was overshadowed by the horror he'd experienced in doing so.

Leo crept along in shadow, keeping in close proximity to Raphael. They'd spotted a marking on a warehouse door a few blocks back, recognizing it as a symbol the Foot sometimes used. Though they didn't understand the meaning of the mark, it signified that the Foot did indeed occupy this area. It gave them some hope that they were on the right track.

His thoughts returned to the dream again. Donatello, pleading with him for rescue. Obviously his subconscious brain created this, his guilt at losing his brothers to their worst enemies was now haunting him in his dreams as well. Not to mention toying with the fact that Donatello was alive at all. He sorely wanted to believe it, but couldn't shake that last image of him from his mind: he wanted to die with honor.

He paused, leaning against a wall.

"Leo? Whatsa' matta'?"

"Even if we do find them, what kind of shape are they going to be in?" He looked at his brother gravely. "They could be injured, drugged… or worse." They could be insane. They could be dead.

"Doesn't matta'. We'll figure out what ta do once we find 'em." He softened. "Leo, don't do this to yerself."

Leo's hand went to his temple. "You didn't feel him, Raph. I was only in Mikey's head for a few seconds… I don't know that I could endure that myself, let alone Michelangelo. What if… what if we're too late?"

"Look, Leo," Raphael stiffened up. "I don' care if we haveta drag two corpses outta there, we're goin' in and takin' our brothers back." A shadow passed over his features. "And then I'm personally gonna fucking kill every one 'a them bastards."

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*Passage taken from Sun Tzu's The Art of War.