Chapter 28

The rain stopped by mid-afternoon but the skies remained cloudy and threatening, lending an appropriate sense of limbo to the day. Night and day locked in stalemate, blurring together, neither leading, merely circling each other round and round.

Raphael rose, gulped a plastic cupful of water and leaned against the kitchen counter, closing his eyes for minute, balanced maddeningly between his need to sleep more and his inability to do so. Donatello slept huddled under a blanket in the corner, the curve of his shell rising and falling steadily. Raph looked around the rest of the room in annoyance. The novelty of being in a real aboveground apartment had worn off days ago, and he missed his own bedroom, the stocked fridge, the ability to come and go at will through the tunnels, and Splinter.

He refilled his cup and stalked towards the bedroom, stepping over Michelangelo's lightly snoring form. "Some guard," Raph snorted under his breath.

The woman's chin was slumped down to her chest, half-dozing, but she jolted up when she saw Raphael enter the room. He stood studying her for a minute; he hadn't really seen her last night- just a glimpse through a red haze of rage- but the few hours of sleep he'd gotten had siphoned the heat out of his system and he was able to notice now that she had a nice shape to her shoulders and arms, a heart-shaped face that was pretty in an unconventional way, and long-lashed eyes that regarded him expectantly and with steely resolve, growing wide when he drew his dagger.

He knelt and cut the ropes that bound her feet, then undid the ropes tying her arms behind the chair. Stiffly, painfully, she moved her arms, rubbing her sore wrists. He handed her the cup of water and she drank it all. She looked towards the bathroom and he let her stumble towards it, her legs wobbly from hours of immobility. When she returned, he tossed his blanket in the corner of the room, along with the half-eaten bag of beef jerky and a power bar. He shrugged. "All we got," he explained.

She nodded, and he waited. For a minute, he watched her eat, then he averted his gaze, looking instead at Mike's slumbering form just outside the doorway. He didn't want to think about how that pretty little blue head held locked inside it the location of the man he so urgently needed to find.

When she was done, he held up the rope and, resignedly, she put her hands out. He bound her wrists together snugly, then her ankles. He motioned with his head towards the blanket in the corner and she curled herself into it, overwhelmed, exhausted, and soon, asleep.

The sky was clearing and daylight fading as he climbed to the roof of the apartment building. It would be a clear night. The city felt fresh, cleansed. By this time, he and Mike were usually setting out into the streets on what now felt like a futile hunt.

He sat on the edge of the roof and looked across the block. The home of Evan Chambers emanated warm, orange light. Through the massive rear bay window that spanned the upper two stories of the townhome, he could see a large wrought iron chandelier hanging over a spiral wooden staircase, and the tiny figure of Holly Chambers coming down the steps with a man, presumably her father. Perhaps they were going to speak with one of the journalists parked out on their curb. Raphael squinted but could not see much more from this distance. The man had saved Raph's life last year and now, they had saved his daughter's, and this was as close as he would ever get to them.

After tonight, there would be three more days before he had to return to the Foot compound to face Kan Masataro and his troops. He hadn't given up all hope yet, but he had to face the probability that he would be empty handed. Leo's final edict notwithstanding, the fact that he would return was not in question. This clan, his family, needed Leonardo, needed him most of all. There it was: a truth he'd jealously resented, hated even, but had always known, proven out well enough, he thought with shame, by his missteps over the last several days.

He opened the small metal box that he'd brought up with him and ran his finger down the row of nestled syringes. He wondered, in idle curiosity, how much money Doshida made off of each of these boxes. To think that he'd once brought food and cash to the hounded Foot fugitive would have made him laugh had it not been so painfully ironic. He freed one of the syringes from the box and held it up to the ambient streetlight, turning it this way and that. No instructions; no doubt they were provided separately.

"Don't do it." Donatello stood over him, looking from him to the open box and back again. "Please."

Raphael closed his hand around the syringe. "We don't need Doshida after all. We've seen what this stuff can do. I can get Leo out."

"Even that won't get you through a whole compound of Foot ninjas."

"It would be enough. I'd do enough damage that Leo would find a way through."

"And what, exactly, were you expecting me and Mike to do?"

"Find him, and cover his escape."

Donatello gave a pained laugh, running a hand down the side of his face in disbelief. "You are an idiot sometimes."

Raphael frowned at his brother, too emotionally worn out to get really angry. "I don't see what's so damned funny."

"Nothing. Nothing's funny." Donatello sat down next to him. "You have no idea what the dosing quantity and frequency is supposed to be. You don't know how it would affect a mutant. And if you'd seen the medical reports on the deaths that Mike and I discovered, you would know that there's a good chance it would kill you."

"It might not," Raph said, "It doesn't kill everyone."

"It might not," Don repeated. He leaned back on his arms, looking out across the expanse of rooftops and streetlights. They sat in silence for several minutes before Don, still gazing out at the city, said, "Do you know what we were doing this time last year?" Without waiting for a reply, "You were comatose; we thought you were done for. We had no antidote to Blackroot poison, and the Foot had just nabbed Doshida." Tension had crept into his frame just from the memory. "You should have seen Leo completely lose it when we found that office trashed."

Despite himself, and perhaps a little smugly, the corners of Raph's mouth turned up. "He really did lose his shit, did he?"

"Screaming, cussing, throwing his katana across the room... yeah, I'd say some shit was lost." Don smiled, able to do so now. At the time, it had been anything but humorous. He became serious again. "That night, Mike took April home. She'd been with you all day. Leo was a wreck; I left him like a zombie in the hall. I came here." He pointed at the Chambers residence. "I went in through that side window over there, I went up those stairs, into that bedroom at the top." His finger traced his path in air. "I was thinking: this is either the most brilliant or the most patently stupid thing I've ever done in my whole life. And that includes the time I tried to outfit Mike's skateboard with a nitroglycerin rocket."

An inadvertent grin broke out on Raph's face. Don smiled crookedly, then took the syringe from Raph's fingers. "You owe me, brother," he said. "You owe it to all of us, not to get killed." He returned the syringe to the metal box and closed it firmly. "We'll find another way."

###

The smell of something hot and appetizing wafted up to them as they climbed back down to street level. Raphael's stomach clenched in painful longing. When was the last time he'd had an actual meal?

"April and Mike are fixing up some real food," Don said.

"April's here?"

"She just arrived. I came up to the roof to tell you." He set his mouth into a straight line, tucking the metal box under his arm a little more securely.

April had brought over two rotisserie chickens from a grocery store deli, a large tub of potato salad and a salad mix kit, which Michelangelo was assembling in its black plastic bowl with great flourish, as though he were a contestant on a Food Network reality show, making something out of shaved radicchio, prosciutto, and chervil instead of iceberg lettuce and a plastic baggie of cherry tomatoes and sliced cucumber.

"What have you guys been living on?" April exclaimed, shaking her head at the counter of wrappers and cracker crumbs. "I should have come over earlier, but like we hoped, this story just started snowballing. Raph!"

April threw her arms around Raphael in a tight hug. He lifted her off her feet, burying his face in her shoulder. Some of his strain melted; where there was April, there was sunshine. He realized he hadn't seen her for over a week; every moment he'd been awake, he'd been out searching the city. When he set her down, she pulled back and looked at him with concern. "How are you holding up?" she asked.

"Better now that you're here." He smiled nonchalantly, but his eyes were incapable of deception and the concern on her face only deepened.

"Let's eat," she said.

Raph reached past Michelangelo for the disposable tableware in April's grocery bag. Mike had already taken out one of the plates, heaped some food on it and set it aside on the kitchen counter. "She's still sleeping - it's for when she wakes up," he explained. He left it at that, but he put a hand briefly on Raphael's arm in passing, too tactful to mention in words that he'd noticed what his brother had done earlier, recognizing it for what it was: his rough attempt to make amends.

The small folding table could not accommodate all of them, so they pushed it aside, laid a blanket out on the floor and sat around it. "Like a picnic," Mike declared.

There was a knock at the door. Everyone stopped in mid-motion. Raphael's first, ridiculous thought was: I'm not leaving this food. If it was the absentee landlord, he was just going to have to knock him unconscious and squirrel him away in the closet with the For Rent sign until he'd had a chance to eat this chicken drumstick.

"Guys? April? You in there?" Casey's voice.

Exhalations of relief. April jumped up to open the door and let him in. Casey gave her a squeeze around the waist at the doorway. "Can't stay, babe," he said, "Got an evening shift tonight. But I brought over a guest." He stepped aside. The turtles looked up and fell silent. Mike dropped his plastic spoon. "Master Splinter," he exclaimed.

"I'll be going then," Casey said, shooting a sympathetic glance in Raphael's direction.

"Many thanks, Casey." Splinter closed the door behind him and pushed back the hood of his cloak. With an air of unhurried curiosity, he took in the small, dim apartment before looking over the flabbergasted faces of his three sons. His grey whiskers lifted and spread in what the turtles recognized as bemusement.

"Ah, I am told this is what happens. Children grow up, move away and forget to invite their father over for dinner."

The turtles hastened to stand and bow in belated greeting. "Forgive us, sensei," Don said. "I know, we haven't been back, we've barely called..."

"There is nothing to forgive, Donatello," Splinter said. "You have had important and dangerous matters to preoccupy you. Thankfully, April has kept me well informed as to your investigative progress, and Casey has been kind enough to introduce me to a great deal of sports television. However, I decided that tonight I must see my sons."

On any previous night, Raph thought, he would not have found them all together. Splinter could be uncannily psychic like that sometimes.

"Raphael," Splinter picked him out, hanging back slightly behind Mike. "I had hoped that you would reconsider your message, and come back to speak with me."

With difficulty, he met his father's gaze. "Sorry, sensei."

Splinter said sadly, "Did you believe I would blame you?"

Raphael was unsure how to answer, so he did not. Splinter lowered his head for a moment, then raised it and said in a more cheerful voice, "I see you were about to eat. Let us do so. There will be time to talk afterwards."

It did not take long for three famished young turtle-men to devour every last scrap of food. Mike even ran his finger along the inside of the plastic container to spoon out the remnants of the potato salad, a move that Splinter would have frowned upon at home, but that he was willing to overlook at a 'picnic.' The mood was as good as could be expected under the circumstances, those being of course, Leonardo's gaping absence, Raphael's moroseness, and the fact that they had a captive enemy ninja tied up in the other room.

As they tidied up, tossing all the disposables into the plastic grocery bag, April filled them in on the latest developments from the day before. "So far, Alliant has refused to speak to the press but has suspended its bid for additional government contracts pending an 'internal investigation.' Some family members of the victims have stepped up to say that they suspected Alliant of condoning and even providing performance-enhancing drugs to its employees."

"Any evidence that makes the link to Agete and Doshida?" Don asked.

"Not yet, but given Holly's role in this, the police agreed to examine the death of Craig Stevenson, and another man, Jeremy Martin, who worked at the regional health authority and opened a formal review on the Alliant deaths at Craig's urging."

"It's hard to believe what a can of worms we opened," Mike said.

"You have done well," Splinter said to Don and Mike. "In protecting Ms. Chambers, you also exposed and weakened Doshida's criminal business. April, we are, as always, in your debt."

"Are you kidding me? This is been the biggest story I've broken in a while. I should thank you guys." April looked over at Donatello. "Speaking of Holly, her father arrived this morning. That's really helped her. She was shaken by what happened in the subway station."

"I can't blame her," Don said. He recounted the events of the previous evening, starting with his detection of an intruder behind the Chambers house, up to his capture of Tami, and ending with their inability to determine from her the whereabouts of Saito Doshida. He left out the emotionally raw details of their exchange last night. Raphael was silent. Michelangelo said, "Excuse me a minute," and took the plate of food from the counter into the closed bedroom.

"So that is the person whose scent I detected when I entered," Splinter said.

Donatello glanced in the direction Mike had gone. Dropping his voice to a hush that would not be overheard, he mused, "What do we do with her?"

"Would he come for her?" Raphael wondered, speaking up for nearly the first time since dinner began. "Doshida- would he come, if he knew we had her?"

Don thought about it. "I doubt it. For one thing, why would he come himself? He could just send over a few of his pharmacologically-enhanced fighters to retrieve her. Besides, I doubt he would place the fate of one person above preserving himself and his business."

Mike returned and Splinter addressed him as he sat back down. "Do you believe she is still a threat to Ms. Chambers?"

Mike rubbed his head, considering. "She knows that Holly's story is now public, so she doesn't have anything to gain from going after her again. I'm not saying she won't act out of spite, but...I don't think she will." They were all speaking in whispers now, the temporarily warm glow of dinner chased away by the strange tension of debating the fate of the person on the other side of the door.

"And she is immovably loyal to the Rising Hand and Saito Doshida?"

Mike nodded.

"We cannot hold her indefinitely, we have no way to prove to the authorities that she has committed any crime, and we cannot honorably execute her." He tugged the tuft of fur on his chin. "It seems we have no choice but to release her."

Raphael felt as though the earth was turning into quicksand beneath him. "She's the only card we have," he said slowly, trying very hard to keep his tone even. "If we let her go, she'll find a way to warn Doshida, and that'll be the end of any chance we had of getting that bastard."

They were silent; they all knew what was at stake. April was sitting very still, her mouth hidden behind clasped hands, as if she were afraid to breathe. Michelangelo, who had been staring at the ground, raised anguished eyes. "I was the one in the video that Doshida used to provoke the Foot. Maybe if I went to Kan instead..."

"No." The change in Splinter's tone, from calm and ruminating, to stern, iron-clad authority, made even April cringe. "I forbid any of you from acting alone in an attempt to free Leonardo. Is that understood?"

"Yes, sensei."

"Hai, sensei."

Splinter's bottomless black eyes pinned Raphael in place with the weight of an anvil. "Hai, sensei," he mumbled. The words tasted like chalk, fake and gritty. He felt a crawling heat rising up his neck into his head. First Mike, then Don, now Splinter... the gall of each of them in turn, forbidding him to act, to do something, anything.

"Maybe Leo will find a way out," Mike said hopefully, although they could tell that even he recognized how difficult that would be. "Doshida managed to escape that place."

"Once he drugged his guards, Doshida could throw on a mask and walk out looking like any Foot solider," Don pointed out. "Leo can't."

"Then we must negotiate for an extension of time," Splinter said. "And at the least, hold the Foot to an honorable resolution."

Honorable resolution. In ninja-speak, that meant a fair, feud-ending duel, if not seppuku. Presumably preferable to straight out defeat and execution. Raphael felt the crawling heat reach his eyeballs. "Why are we talking as though we're giving up?" he demanded.

"No one's giving up," Don replied. "But if we haven't been able to find Doshida yet, I'm not sure what else to do in the next three days, unless you have an idea."

He didn't. Raphael ground his teeth; it was infuriating him, driving him to the brink of an all-consuming obsession, this inability to turn the tables on the leader of the Rising Hand, when, looking back, it was clear that the man had them figured out long ago. Just thinking about it made Raphael insane. For his own gain, Doshida had exploited their family loyalty, knowing that by making one of them vulnerable, the others could be contained or manipulated. It was his perpetual advantage, the predictability of their bond to each other, while as he cared only for...

"Money," Raphael said aloud.

Several pairs of eyes turned towards him. "What about it?" Don asked.

The jumble of his thoughts spun wildly, broke apart, coalesced. "You're the one who said it, Don. That Doshida wouldn't place the life of one person above himself or his business. His business. " Raphael leapt to his feet and paced furiously. "Damn it to hell, all this time I've been killing myself trying to hunt that weasel down. I should've been thinking of luring him out. Doshida's not the kind of ninja we're used to; he'll send his juiced-up cronies to fight for him. But he can't send 'em to meet clients and close deals - that's his specialty."

Donatello said, "He's on to something, sensei."

Splinter nodded. "Go on, Raphael."

"We need something that'll get his attention, something worth a lot of money, that his greedy little heart will care about."

"A meeting with a wealthy client, over some plump job," Mike mused in agreement. "How?"

April cleared her throat. They'd almost forgotten she was there, hearing so much more than they would usually discuss in front of her. "I have an idea."