"Wait—what do you mean I was there?"
April sat on one of the sofas in the den, glancing back and forth between the turtles. Leo stood near the TV with his arms folded, while Raph slouched in his favorite chair. Mikey was lying on the other couch, sighing heavily. Donnie sat next to April with his hand on her shoulder.
"What we mean is that you were there—or more accurately, someone who looked like you," Donnie said.
Leo nodded. "She could have been your twin, April. And she was on the Kraang's side."
"Yeah, she was shooting at us and everything," Mikey said, making a gun with his fingers and pretending to shoot April. "Not cool."
"She was fast," Raph added.
"Back up," April said. "I still have no idea what happened with you guys after we split up. Did you find the little kids the Kraang kidnapped?"
Raph snarled a curse and threw his sai across the room, where they sank spire-first into the practice dummy. "We were too late."
"What do you mean you were too late?"
"We only found a few of them," Donnie said, almost impossibly cool and collected. "All but one little girl had been...well, the Kraang had done experiments on them. They didn't survive."
April jumped to her feet. "What? Why—why would the Kraang do such a thing?"
"Because they're evil," Raph growled.
"Yeah..but…they've always left kids alone," April said. "I mean…as far as we know." Her stomach twisted. There was a moment of silence, during which the lights flickered again. "What happened to the girl who survived?"
"Your doppelganger came in and helped fight us off before we could get her," Donnie said.
"Look, guys," Leo said, heaving a sigh. "I think I speak for all of us when I say we failed this mission. But that last little girl needs us. So we've got to regroup and save her."
"I wish Mei and Splinter were here," April said. "We could use their help."
"Yeah, or Casey," Raph said.
"Or Karai," Mikey added.
Leo's face fell.
"Whoops, I, uh…sorry, Leo."
"Forget it," Leo said, scowling. "I'm going to go meditate for a few minutes, then see if I can come up with a new plan. I'll be open to suggestions when I get back, so in the meantime…brainstorm."
April's heart sank even further as she watched Leo trudge from the room. The lights flickered again.
Donnie looked up at the ceiling. "Huh. I've checked the power grid again and again and I still can't figure out why they keep doing that."
"You literally say that almost every time it happens, Donnie," April said. "It's as annoying as the headaches I keep having. Don't you think we have more important things to worry about?"
Mikey, Raph, and Donnie all stared at her, blinking.
"What?"
"Nobody said anything, April," Raph said.
"I mean, I was thinking about the lights flickering," Donnie said. "But I didn't say anything."
April's head throbbed with pain. "You know what? I think I need to lie down for a few minutes." She closed her eyes.
"Not a bad idea." Donnie gave April a pat on the shoulder.
April got up from the couch and headed to her room in the lair, where she stretched out on the old lumpy mattress. Her mind was dizzy with thoughts—thoughts of the mysteriously dead Kraang; acute, painful sorrow for the children the Kraang's experiments had killed; and fear for the life of that one little girl who'd lived. But most nagging of all was the idea that a clone of her was working for the Kraang. If they had enough DNA to clone her, why did they still need her?
Just what game were the Kraang playing in all of this?
Leo sat in the dojo, drawing deep breaths, trying to enter into a trance as easily as he knew Master Splinter did.
He had no such luck.
With a grunt of frustration, he threw himself down on his back and looked up at the ceiling. All he could think about was Karai's face as he suggested that they adopt a child.
"It would be easy enough," Leo had said. "You just go to an adoption agency and adopt a child as a single mother. They allow people to do that."
Karai's face had been a scowl. "Kids? Three months together, and you think we're ready for kids?"
"Well, the process takes a long time. We might as well start now. It will probably be a year before we find the right baby..."
"I'm not ready for kids, Leo. What kind of mother would I even be?"
"An amazing mother. We'll have Splinter and Mei to help us out along the way. Please?"
Leo sighed. Had it really only been two weeks ago? He clapped a hand to his forehead, wishing he had never suggested this whole thing in the first place. Maybe if he hadn't, Karai would be at his side to help him figure out just what to do about the kids.
Of course, if he hadn't, they wouldn't even know about the kids in the first place, and the Kraang would have been able to keep running their phony adoption agency as a front for gathering up children.
"Leo?"
Leo sat up and looked over his shoulder. Donnie stood in the doorway, holding his mutagen tracker. "What is it, Donnie?"
"Well, I had an idea. I modified my mutagen tracker to sense human DNA instead. If we break into one of the Kraang's facilities again, we can use it to quickly find any kids. Maybe…maybe even Karai, too. It should work, provided I can work out the glitches."
"What kind of glitches?"
"In theory, it should work…but the signal is really faint. It barely picked up April when I tested it a few minutes ago."
"Speaking of April," Leo said, "have you noticed anything...weird about her lately?"
"She's always getting headaches. Of course, that's been going on for almost a month now."
"No, I've just noticed this in the last week or so. The other day, I was thinking about how thirsty I was, and she offered to get me a glass of water. I chalked it up to coincidence. But then she told Mikey to stop talking nonsense while we were all watching TV, and he hadn't said anything."
"I don't remember that."
"You were in the lab. Anyway, we all looked at her funny, and she was like, 'What?' None of us said anything, because then she said that she felt really tired and left the room."
"Hmm." Donnie put a hand on his chin. "Something like that just happened a few minutes ago, actually. Mikey and Raph were pretty weirded out by it. I told them she must have imagined hearing it or something, but they didn't seem convinced."
"I'm not either."
"Well, what else could it possibly be? Maybe she's just really intuitive and is imagining we're saying stuff when we're not."
"If she's imagining we're saying stuff when we're not, then her dad should run some psychological tests on her or something." Leo frowned. "But how could she know what we're thinking?"
"She doesn't know, is my guess. She's always been really intuitive, though. Remember when she had that feeling about Rockwell being the monkey? I think that's all this is. Occam's razor and all that."
"Occam's razor?"
Donnie sighed and rolled his eyes. "You know, 'the simplest explanation is usually the best'?"
"Maybe." Leo climbed to his feet. "So, we have your human tracker. I say we head back to the lab in a few hours—all of us—and try to do a silent infiltration. I'm thinking you'll go first with the tracker and then report back to us. Then we can all move in and see if we can find the girl, or any other kids. But this time, we'll need something to give us an edge. Can you coat all our weapons in that laser-reflecting paint?"
"That's going to make stealth a lot more difficult. It lights up like reflective tape. The Kraang will definitely see it."
"What about my swords? I can keep them in their sheaths until I need them."
"It doesn't come off once it's on, though. So unless you want your swords permanently reflective…"
"Okay, I get it." Leo chewed on his lip for a moment, trying to figure out what else they could use. "I guess we'll just have to go in as is."
"I'll make sure the headsets are fully recharged, and I'll see if I can't calibrate this scanner a bit better."
"Sounds good. I'll tell the other guys the plan."
Donnie nodded and left the dojo at a brisk pace.
Leo sighed as his thoughts drifted back to Karai.
It had taken nearly a week and a half of wheedling, but Karai finally agreed at least to go talk to a social worker. After the first visit, she had come back with a smile on her face, holding several pictures of adorable four-year-old to seven-year-old children who needed foster homes.
"These ones don't need diapers," Karai had said. "They come potty trained already…no bottle feeding…I see no downside."
"Yeah, but shouldn't we get a baby?" Leo had replied. "That way it's used to seeing me, and grows up thinking I'm normal, instead of…some kind of freak."
"Can we at least think about one of these?"
Leo finally capitulated to the idea, and they had announced their plans to the family the morning before Mei and Splinter left for their honeymoon. Karai went back to the adoption agency the same day.
That was when everything went wrong.
And now, thought Leo, it's time to make everything right again.