I stretched my arms out in front of me and laid my head on them. I was so bored and so hungry. Captain Morales didn't want me above decks, so I was stuck down here until we got wherever we were going. I'd asked her if I could contact Splinter, but she said it was impossible to send a transmission at the speed we were going.

I idly drummed my fingers on the tabletop. My stomach twisted again, half because it seemed to want to eat itself, and half because I was worried about my brothers. I knew that chances were slim that they'd escaped. I'd already been in the water, but they'd all been on the beach or in one of the cabanas. I knew a lot of people had it out for TMNT agents, but it didn't take a wild guess to know who'd send commandos down to get us.

It had to be the Foot. We'd been kicking their tails pretty regularly even before we got assigned to the mission. If they'd somehow found us, I didn't want to begin to think what they could be doing to the guys.

Anger joined the guilt and hunger pains. Here I was sitting on my butt doing nothing to help them. I'd seen my chance for escape and I'd taken it. I left them behind to be kidnapped, and though I hated to think it, probably tortured. They could even be… they could even be… No. I couldn't think like that. Yes, I abandoned them like a coward, and I deserved all these horrible thoughts and more, but I wouldn't let myself think that. If I let those thoughts in, they'd never go away, and then I wouldn't be any good to anyone anyway. No, they had to be alive; they just had to be.

I resettled myself in my chair, trying to get comfortable, but the inactivity was just killing me. I had just about decided to go up on deck, Martinez's orders withstanding or not, when I heard the hatch creak open.

"Come on up, Michelangelo," Martinez's voice floated down to me. "We're finally here."

Splinter and April took seats around a table at TMNT headquarters. Splinter surveyed the men and women seated before him. After explaining his plan to April, he had summoned the heads of all four teams involved in the current operation: Atlantian, Nexus, Samurai, and Sentry. To his left, sat Sanders, followed by Alyssa Hittle of team Nexus, and on her other side sat Morgan Brown of team Samurai. The leader of team Sentry, however, was conspicuously absent.

Splinter nodded to the group as Casey Jones slide through the door. He muttered a hasty apology before sitting down on April's right. "Team leaders, I have asked you here today to discuss with you a very grave matter." He made eye contact with each leader before continuing. "We have discovered a mole within the TMNT organization."

Sanders put a hand to his mouth, surprise evident on his features. Hittle shook her head, and Brown let out a loud exhalation. "I can see that you all comprehend the gravity of the situation. That being said, with a stroke of Ms. O'Neil's brilliance, we have managed to flush out the traitor. Ms. O'Neil?" Splinter gestured to April, who smiled shyly at the assembled commanding officers.

"Uh, yes, as Splinter so flatteringly put it, I did design a method of detecting the mole. We knew that the mole had been accessing confidential data. Obviously, they had to be someone high enough up within the organization to have clearance. That narrowed it down to team leaders, Director Cunningham, Vice-Director Shallahan, and those employees in the upper-management track. With this information in mind, I checked the computer terminals to see which ones had been used to access data on the current mission, infiltration of the Foot. Three separate terminals had been used to access that data. From there, I could see which employees used those terminals.

"Unfortunately, that still left us with three potential suspects: the leaders of teams Sentry and Samurai and Vice-Director Shallahan. With this in mind, we decided to begin tailing these three individuals." April paused to smile apologetically at Brown. "Having done this, we've eliminated Brown and Shallahan as suspects, which just leaves…" April trailed off and looked expectantly over to Splinter.

Splinter stood up, hands placed firmly on the table, "It just leaves the leader of team Sentry, Martina Morales."

When I came to, it was to the sound of Raph yelling, loudly. I shook my head from side to side slowly. I could almost feel my brain sloshing back and forth. I grimaced internally. You can feel your brain sloshing? Really? I ignored my inner voice. Those must've been some drugs they hit us with.

Before opening my eyes, I tested my limbs. My hands seemed to be unbound, but I could feel metal cuffs around my ankles. I pulled gently at the chain and gauged mentally that I had about two feet of chain between my feet and enough from my ankles to the wall to give me some mobility. I decided to chance opening my eyes and winced when the light hit them. I was lying on my side in a carpeted room. Raph was standing in my line of sight, face as red as his hair, as he continued to yell.

We appeared to be in a basement room of the mansion. A small window was set into the wall across from me, and I could see a line of earth along the bottom. The walls were light colored, off-white, peach maybe; it was hard to tell. There were a couple of oil paintings on the walls; two, red wing-backed chairs; a chaise lounge, also red; a door set to the left of the window; and a set of stairs leading up.

I got my hands underneath me and worked on sitting up. Raph finally noticed that I was awake and came over to give me a hand. He hooked one hand under my upper arm and heaved. We both shuffled over to the chairs and sat down. He still had the blood on his face from earlier.

"They took Donny," he said flatly.

That would explain the yelling. I took a second to process this. We were obviously back in the main house and under the captivity of Dr. Morris. I still didn't have enough information to categorize the man. I had done research on him since our last encounter, but the information was scarce. He was a scientist with degrees from several prestigious universities, he was interested in renewable energy, and he had once worked with our parents. Add to that the fact that he now owned several research labs under the name TCRI, and that was all we knew about him, all anyone knew about him, it seemed. Well, that, and the fact that he wanted my brothers and me. Alive, if the current situation was anything to go by.

I rubbed a hand over my short, dark hair. The dried sea water made it stand straight up and left little flakes all over my palm. "Do you know what Dr. Morris wants with him? With us?"

Raph shook his head. "He gave us the same spiel about our parents. He says he's still got their bodies in those creepy, cryogenic chambers of his. What did he say last time? He just wants to 'reunite' us with them? Out of the goodness of his heart, I bet," Raph finished sourly.

"He did work with our parents once," I reminded him, having shared all that I learned with my brothers. "Although, I doubt he's doing this out of a feeling of nostalgia."

Raph opened his mouth to reply when the door opened to admit two guards and none other than Dr. Morris himself. The two guards wore fatigues, but Morris was in a black suit with a white undershirt. Over that, he wore a lab coat. His rectangular glasses perched on his nose.

Raph and I stood, and Raph demanded, "Where's our brother, whackjob?"

Morris sighed, "I am getting extremely tired of your attitude. I tried to be nice about this. I tried to unite you four with your parents, and this is the thanks I get?"

It was my turn to sigh, "Dr. Morris, we never bought that line to begin with. You pretend to be trying to revive our parents for our own benefit, but after everything that's happened, don't you think it's time to drop the charade?"

Morris stared at me, face implacable. "As you wish," he replied, "Your parents have something I want. When that lab exploded, everyone thought it was gone for good. Dead, just as surely as your parents were. Maybe it should have died with them. It might have saved us all some trouble." Morris paused, pensively, staring into the past, reliving scenes only he could see. "But then, even then, I thought I might be able to save them.

"I had been working on my cryogenic chambers for some time then. I had never used them on humans before, but here was the perfect opportunity. I gathered their remains and sealed them into the chambers. I set off a secondary explosion, leading TMNT to believe that their bodies had been completely obliterated. With my tracks covered, I set about trying to revive them. In the beginning, at least, I was working to save dearly loved colleagues. I knew they had children. I dreamed of the day I could reunite them, the day I could put a family back together. But, my work was unsupported. I could not get funding; I could barely afford to live from one day to the next. They threatened to take my lab away, to destroy my life's work. I couldn't let that happen, so I turned to weaponry. You would be surprised how well people are willing to pay for such simple machines. It doesn't take much to end a life." Morris looked at us and smiled bitterly.

"I had created so much in my life, but the only thing people ever cared about was how easy I could make it to end another life. At first, I was angry, but then I came to realize, why not? The world is already full of death and destruction. What does it matter if one more man contributes to that? If one more person turns to killing to make a living? I finally had my funding; I finally had a way to maintain my real projects, and I took it.

"Now, I have only one thing left to strive for, the ultimate piece of my machine, the ultimate means to power and fortune. A secret locked away in the depths of your parents' minds, and one of you four is the key."

"Nice monologue and all, Dr. Psycho, but did you have a point in there somewhere?" Raph demanded.

"The bone marrow," I answered softly. I was no Donny, but I could put the pieces together. It was what he had wanted all along. I was why he had taken Mikey and Donny the first time, and it was why he was after us now. "He still needs bone marrow to bring our parents back."

"Very good, Leonardo. I see Donatello isn't the only one with a brain. Although your brother makes a compelling argument otherwise," he added, pointedly, staring at Raph.

Raph just grunted, unimpressed. Donny was the smart one, and that was good enough for him.

Dr. Morris dismissed him, addressing his next comment to me, "We'll test you all and see who's a match. Unfortunately, we seem to be missing Michelangelo, or we wouldn't have need of the rest of you." He turned towards his guards. "Gentlemen," he proceeded through the door ahead of them, "Why don't you leave the door open? The procedure can be quite painful without an anesthetic." With that chilling statement, he swept through the door, followed by his henchmen.

Raph spun to face me and gripped my arm, painfully tight. "What did he mean, Leo? What's he gonna do?"

I clenched my teeth, anger coursing through me. "He's going to take bone marrow from Donny," I forced out. "He's going to force a wide-gauge needle through his back all the way to his hip bone and suck out the marrow. It'll be like getting stabbed."

Raph's jaw went white. His whole body tensed. He looked at me, silently asking me to do something. We couldn't just stand here and listen to something that was tantamount to torture. I looked anxiously around the room. Anything, anything to get these chains off, I thought. Aside from the furniture, the room was barren. My mind whirred. Anything can be a tool, if only you look at it right. If all we had was the furniture…

"Raph, check out how these chains are attached to the wall. I'm going to rip the springs out of the chair cushions and see if I can get these cuffs off at the ankles." The cuffs weren't your typical, medieval-style chains; they were modern day locks, designed to be nearly impossible to remove without the right equipment. Well, the right equipment was just going to have to be a furniture spring because I was not just going to wait around for my brothers to be tortured.

I only worked faster when I heard the first yell.

If I could have ripped the chains out of the wall with brute force, I would have. There wasn't much that could stand between me and one of my bros. Steel chains bolted to the foundation of a mansion might just be, though. There was no way we could free the chains from this end. I turned around to see how Leo was doing.

He had completely demolished one of the chair cushions and was now trying to bend one of the springs into a usable shape. I followed his lead and grabbed a spring of my own. I'd just finished straightening it when I heard Donny's yell. When you've got a job like ours, you're no stranger to pain and no stranger to each other's pain either. I knew what it sounded like when one of my brothers was hurt, and that was definitely no cry of joy I was hearin'.

My fist tightened of its own accord, bending the wire back out of shape. I re-straightened it and got to work. The second yell was cut off abruptly, and I breathed a small, guilty breath of relief. Donny was fighting. He may not be able to get away, but he wouldn't make it worse for us. He'd stay quiet if it killed him.

I tried to work faster. Don was trying, and we would too. I'd never let one of my brothers down before, and I sure as shell wasn't gonna start now. I growled in frustration. The wire was just too flimsy. I couldn't get it into the lock without it bending. I was just about to try ripping the chains from the wall any way, when I heard Leo's quiet "yes." He slipped one chain off his ankle and had the second one off in no time flat. He came around to my legs, and though it took a little bit longer to free me, he finally got the manacles off.

We glided like shadows to the door and peered out into the hallway. The hall was fairly short, ending maybe thirty feet from where we stood. There were two doors, one on either side. One was closed, but one was open, white light streaming out into the darkened hallway. That was definitely it. We crept to the open door and paused to listen.

We could hear labored breathing, Donny, and the voice of Dr. Morris. "That should be enough for the bone marrow aspiration. Hand me the second needle and we can begin the biopsy." A faint, strangled noise came from Donny at the mention of a second needle. If I hadn't wanted to kill these guys before, I definitely wanted to now.

Leo nudged my shoulder and held up a hand. He counted down from five before launching himself into the room. Leo took down the guards and left Dr. Morris to me. Very considerate of him. I wanted to take my time. I wanted to make this guy pay. I wanted to hear the same pained groan I'd just heard from Donny, but I didn't. I executed one precisely-placed kick and knocked him into the wall five feet behind him. Yeah, I wanted to beat the shell out of the guy, but nothing came before my brothers. Not even that.

I walked around the bed Donny was curled up on and put a hand on his shoulder. His eyes were squeezed shut, and his hands were locked, white knuckled, to the edges of the metal bed. He slowly let his eyes open and looked up at me, through eyes the exact same color as my own. "It's ok, Donny," I said softly, "We're here now."

He stared at me for a second, "Took ya…long enough."

I grinned, not bothering to reply. Leo was behind Don, examining the area where the needle had gone in. I watched as he grabbed some gauze and bandage tape off a rolling tray. "This might hurt a little, Donny. I've gotta stop the bleeding."

Don nodded, but didn't say anything. I squeezed his shoulder, and he half-smiled up at me before grimacing. "Jeez, Leo."

"All done." Leo gently tugged down Donny's purple t-shirt. "That should stay, at least until we get somewhere where we can do a better job. You feel up to getting out of here, Donny?"

"You know it," he answered, slowly sitting up. He slid off the bed, and I slid an arm around his back, carefully avoiding the bandage. He hunched a little, like he couldn't straighten up all the way.

"You good?" I asked.

"Yeah, yeah," he waved a hand at me, "let's just go."

Leo went out first, and we followed behind. "You guys start up the stairs," he ordered. "I just want to check something real quick." He vanished through the other door in the hallway.

Donny and I continued through the room Leo and I had been chained in and headed up the stairs. The door at the top wasn't locked, thankfully, and we only had to wait a minute at the top for Leo to catch up with us.

He ascended the stairs with a smile on his face and a katana in each hand. They must have stashed his weapons in the other room. "Let's get out of here."