As soon as Leo lays eyes on the pit, he knows why the Bull sent a child through the city to mark this decaying ruin: the Bull wants them to finish the fire the Boar started, all those years ago.

The irony isn't lost on Leo. He almost smiles in spite of what's in front of him, because of course he would have to come back here, where the echoes of his pitiful, defiant screams still haunt the corridors. He still has work to do. He has to make sure this place is ash.

It won't be difficult. Even soaked by cold spring rain, the building will go up like driftwood when they set it on fire. The teeth will burn, like so many dry leaves, and New York will be safe from this particular nightmare.

One tooth. That was all it took, one tooth buried deep in Casey's side, and four of those monsters had invaded the lair. It doesn't take a genius to know that the rustling, gleaming teeth ringing the pit would be enough to overrun the city: thin green forms racing through the streets, dragging down everyone they could catch, each wound a new, fertile field.

He knows from experience how weak the dogs are. He knows it doesn't matter. They have numbers, they have terror, and they have the Boar, guiding them from the dark. New York wouldn't stand a chance.

So set the fire and go. He reaches for the flares in his belt, his hand numb, then pauses as something shifts in the light at the center of the pit. It holds Leo's eyes even though his instincts tell him to set the fire, get his brothers up the stairs, and run. They won't move on their own; their eyes are just as fixed as his, drawn inexorably to the almost-imperceptible movements deep within the light.

He tries to give the order — go, now, don't look back — but his mouth falls open and stays that way while a heavy, warm blanket of exhaustion falling over him. They can look a moment longer, can't they? It's like Donnie always says: all information is worth gathering, and what if they miss something by setting the fire too soon? The Boar's had all the advantages. Leo can afford just one look. He's not too tired to do that. And he's not too tired to make out the body at the pit's center, its chest split open and its ribs cracked wide, with teeth pouring out of the hole like wild, overgrown ferns.

Disgust and horror pass through him, blunted by how damn tired he is, and disappear. Leo has seen worse, caused worse, and he knows the Boar could do worse by twitching its littlest finger. The only surprise, from Leo's perspective, is that there's only one body.

Maybe not so surprising, Leo thinks. He shivers, and the exhaustion cast over him begins to recede. The Boar eats.

"Guys," he manages to whisper. "We need to —"

The light dims as it turns, but falls clear and bright on tarnished metal and scales. Against the sea of green and white, the rich magenta stands out like fireworks. The rest of Leo's exhaustion shreds away as what he sees in the pit meshes with a face he'd long forgotten.

"That's —" Raph gives himself a massive shake. He turns his head slowly and stares at Leo with half-awake but furious eyes. "Leo, it's —"

"Fishface," says Leo, exhaustion forgotten, replaced with his own anger. The body twitches as the light revolves, but there's no sense or intelligence in the movement. Nothing remains of Fishface but this: a half-rotted corpse at the bottom of a burned-out building, left as food for other, stronger monsters.

A swift wave of pity startles Leo. Fishface is — was — a bastard, more than happy to play his own vicious games with Leo and his family, even when Shredder didn't explicitly give the orders. Leo will carry the marks of those games for the rest of his life, and so will his brothers. But Fishface had his honor, twisted and unpredictable as it was.

You should see what happened to the ones who said no, Slash said.

I see, Leo thinks, pity flaring into a new kind of anger. Fishface said no, Stockman said no, but the Boar used them anyways, and probably laughed the whole time.

"Do you guys think he's alive?" Mikey asks. "I mean, I know it looks like — but —"

But the Boar has many powers, and many appetites, and keeping Fishface alive while this garden grew, as punishment for his refusal, is just what Leo would expect.

"No," says Raph. His voice is clear, not quite a shout but without any dreamy exhaustion. He's mad, he's ready to fight, and Leo's lost too much time. "He's dead. Even if he's not, we're not gonna leave him like this." He gives Leo a belligerent look, daring Leo to disagree, and rocks back on his heels, satisfied, when Leo nods. "All right, then let's wreck this place."

"No," says Leo, holding up a hand when Raph pulls his sai from their holders.

"Are you kidding me?" Raph snarls, while Mikey gapes at Leo. "Dude, are you seeing this?"

"Yes." The pit is all Leo sees: tiers of glass-sharp teeth, green and gleaming, each one full of cheerful, mindless hate. "What do you think you can do, Raph? Break them all?"

"It's a start." Raph spins his sai. "So? You got a better idea?"

Raph knows better than to push Leo in these moments; he's grown up, he's learned to wait, but the Boar's touch is everywhere, tainting them all, and Leo wouldn't notice it now if Donnie hadn't pointed it out, so tired and resigned. Leo won't forget again, even if Raph and Mikey have.

So he takes a deep breath, and pulls the flares out of his belt. "I've got a better idea," he says, holding them out to Mikey and Raph.

Mikey gets it first. The wide-eyed what're we gonna do look evaporates off his face, and he takes the flare with a grim little nod. He waits while Raph glares at Leo, arms folded over his plastron.

"You think some flares are gonna fix this?" Raph asks. Leo doesn't bother to reply. Time's slipping away from them. Who knows how long they stood there, silent and sleepy, with the lair open to the cold air and half their family injured?

Injured, or gone. He swallows, all too aware of the gaping empty space at his shoulder, and holds Raph's gaze.

A second later, the belligerence fades, and Raph's face hardens, just like Mikey's. He takes the flare without another word, his eyes dark with something far past anger — pity, Leo thinks, and defiance, and something else that he can't place.

"You sure this'll work?" Raph asks.

Leo smiles, a hard sliver of teeth that feels cold as the moonlight up top. "Remember the farmhouse, last fall?" Mikey snorts, and Raph nods. There had been a bonfire, but nothing to light it with — till Donnie brought out a handful of his flares, and then the fire blotted out the stars. "It'll work," Leo says, not letting himself think about how it would be better, more certain, with four instead of three.

Raph nods.

"On three," says Leo. "One, two, three." He thumbs the igniter, holds the flare away from his body as the ruby-red sparks pour from the tip, and tosses it into the pit. Mikey and Raph follow him, and the pit ignites with a hollow, dry fwoom.

"All right," Mikey hisses. "Smell you later, ghost dogs."

Raph gives Leo an impressed nod while the pit crackles and burns, Fishface's pathetic corpse lost in the flames, but Leo's attention is far away. At the very edge of his hearing, past the flames and his brothers' satisfaction, he hears something roaring, in bewilderment and rage.

"We've got to go," he says, adrenaline making him clumsy as he grabs Mikey and Raph's arms. "Come on — we've got to run."

All the way up the stairs and through the corridors, Leo hears the flames devouring the base from the bottom up, but it's not loud enough to drown out the Boar's voice, not at all.

Leo keeps running until his lungs burn and his legs threaten to give out under him. Raph's started to gasp for air, and Mikey's slipping a little further behind with every step, so he slows to a walk once they jump to the next rooftop. They're nowhere near the lair, they can't stop moving, but they have to be able to fight.

It's been years since he had to think this way, weighing the merits of speed against stamina. His family hasn't gotten soft — he'd die before letting that happen — but they've gotten complacent. Too many years of easy patrols, without the Kraang or the Foot to keep their instincts and skills honed to a fine razor edge.

They may end up paying for it tonight. Leo strains to hear over the night-noises of the city, but all he catches are sirens, riding the wind.

"Looks like we got someone's attention," Mikey pants, pointing to where a patch of sky glows a bright, hungry red. "Yo, Leo, you think we can take a breather for like, thirty seconds?"

"A break won't hurt," Raph adds. "We're three miles out. No one's gonna find us." He sucks in a huge lungful of air, then lets it out in a burst of coughing.

Leo shakes his head. His brothers are used to long runs; three miles on a normal night would be a vacation, but three miles at breakneck, life-or-death speed? Not even Donnie, who loves running almost as much as he loves Bill Nye, would handle it with grace.

The empty spot at Leo's shoulder gets a little colder.

"We can't stop," he says, as he grabs Mikey's arm — not hard, just enough to pull him along when Mikey groans and tries to sit down. "We have to get home, soon as we can."

"What, you think it's not —" Raph cuts himself off before Leo can slap his free hand over Raph's mouth, then gives Leo a narrow, wary look. "You think it'll hit us twice?" he asks instead.

Leo climbs onto the edge of the roof, scanning the path ahead of him, still listening to the wind. The sirens are quieter now, but the wind is just as sharp. It would carry the roar to him, if the Boar was still voicing its displeasure.

Maybe it's not roaring because it's already on the move, he thinks. His back tightens under his shell, and he fights the urge to curl up and hide, away from gods and fires alike. It's not cowardice, it's just instinct. If they're not being hunted now, they will be within hours, and nowhere in the city will be safe.

"I don't think it's a good idea to wait for the storm," he replies, bending his legs. Then he lets go of Mikey and jumps. There's the heart-freezing instant when he thinks he's misjudged the jump, but his feet land on sharp, icy gravel. Mikey and Raph groan, but an instant later their footsteps follow his, and the three of them take the next jump together.

They run in silence, and Leo isn't aware at first that a new certainty is taking shape in his head. No, not new — it's the same bedrock certainty that came to him when they faced the Boar for the first time. He knew then how to get his family out alive — by not looking like prey — and he knows now that the Boar won't attack them tonight, knows it as well as he knows the sound of his brothers' footsteps.

They haven't dealt the Boar a mortal blow, or even crippled it. All they've done is take away a few of its toys. But Leo knows that while the Boar may have screamed at first, it's silent now. In the shadowed space it calls home, the Boar is surprised.

That won't last, but they have time to get ready for the Boar's reprisal. Hours to plan, to hide, and most importantly, to minimize collateral damage.

Leo knows exactly where, and how, his brothers will break. He knows how far to push them, and he knows the difference between a goad and a challenge. And he's the best, except maybe Mikey, at compartmentalizing. Being a leader is so much more than saying go here, do this, because I say so. It's being able to draw a line and say here, and no further, and then carrying the weight of what comes after.

What he's going to do next may break Raph and Mikey. But it's the last time he'll be able to wield mercy and compassion, even if they can't see it that way.

Minimize damage. Get the innocents out of the way. Leave no one behind who can be a target.

Do no harm, April intones, from far back in his memory, but take no shit.

He's formed a plan by the time they're a mile out from the lair, and all he sees is Donnie's tired, hopeful face, smiling at him.

Leo hopes that means he's made the right call.

Usagi knows, as soon as Leo meets his eyes. Not the fullness of Leo's plan, but its vague shape. The samurai opens his mouth, ready to protest — Leo can already hear the words, Leonardo, you cannot do this alone, I will not let you — but Casey jumps in front of him, favoring his side and talking at light-speed.

"Dudes, you're not gonna believe this — local news is going crazy. There's some fire at the old Foot headquarters, they got like three fire companies on it and it just keeps burning — I'm gonna say that was you guys, and screw you for not lettin' me come along — and now Channel Six is sayin' there's been some kinda animal attack two blocks away from Murakami's — some homeless guys say they got attacked by wolves that just like, ran off out of nowhere. You think?"

Leo blinks, trying to process Casey's news, and sees Mikey and Raph staring at Casey blankly to either side. "We think what, Casey?" he asks, pathetically grateful for the delay.

"Use your words," mutters Raph, stomping down the stairs to pull up Casey's shirt and prod at his side.

Casey hisses and shoves Raph away, wincing the whole time. "You think they're connected? I mean, how many wolves you think are runnin' around New York? And the fire, you guys were just there. What'd you do?"

Splinter comes out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a cloth, and Angel peers up at Leo from her place on the couch. Raph and Mikey stand at ease, trying to hide how proud they are at the destruction they wreaked. It twists Leo's heart — they should be proud, they did a good thing and now he's going to punish them for it — but he takes a slow, deep breath, and stares back at Usagi.

"Mikey," he asks. "Donnie and April didn't take the power cell back to Kurtzman, did they?"

Usagi's blink is his only tell.

Mikey coughs, shuffles his feet before he answers. "Uh, no. They still had…sciency stuff to do. It's still here. Why do you —"

"Usagi," Leo says, before he can lose his nerve completely. "I need your device. The one that opens a portal from your end."

"Leo, what're you —" The pin drops for Raph as Casey shouts "You're not leavin' me behind this time!" and Angel stares wide-eyed at them all from the couch. Splinter frowns at Leo, not understanding, and Leo feels a vicious, petty urge to shout why do I have to explain this to you? in his direction. Leo is the leader, he took this mantle willingly, but Splinter is still their father. Why can't he take this from Leo, just once?

"Leonardo," says Usagi. "I will not let you do this."

There's a heartbeat of silence, broken only when Mikey snarls, betrayed, and Raph whirls on Leo, fists up.

"It's what has to happen," Leo says, over the roar of everyone shouting at him. One way or another, he's stuck finishing what the Boar started, whether it's a fire or breaking his brothers. "We set the fire. The Boar will come for us."

"Then let's be ready!" Casey shouts, his wound forgotten. "One stand, with all of us? And the Kraang tech — I can pull it together, and we got bombs, we can do this!"

Usagi stares at Leo, his face a frozen, tragic mask.

"Leonardo," says Splinter. "Are you sure of this path?"

"We're getting you all out of the way," Leo says. Every word feels like a stone, falling out of his mouth to rest on his plastron. Even breathing is getting harder. "You're hurt —"

"Eat shit, Leo," snaps Casey, slapping Raph's hand away again. "Seriously, eat shit."

"— none of you can fight, but you can get out." You can live, is the unspoken, central truth.

The most treacherous part of Leo's soul hopes for a split second that Mikey and Raph can be convinced to go, too. They won't, they'll never leave him, and the unending weight of his love for them knocks what little breath Leo has left straight out of his lungs. He's stuck with them, until the end.

Somewhere between setting the fire and turning back to see the flames, Leo realized that this would be the final battle. Donnie is gone, April is gone, and there's no one left who can stop the Boar. Leo's not proud enough to think that they'll even slow down its relentless, starving march across their world. But they might hamstring it, and give Donnie a fighting chance when he comes back.

It's all for Donnie, Leo says, but that's not quite the whole truth. It's for Donnie, and it's for the family clustered in front of him, bruised and bleeding. The Boar has powers Leo can't comprehend, and it's malicious beyond all telling. This act of love and protection may not be enough. The odds are against him and his brothers doing any good. The odds always have been.

He'll take them.

Leo holds out his hand to Usagi, willing him to understand, as the empty air behind him gets colder, and colder.

Where are you, Donnie? he thinks, as Usagi's shoulders slump, and the samurai digs in his robe for the thin, circular disc. He drops it into Leo's waiting palm, where it gleams in the light from the muted TV. It's featherlight. Leo could crush it by clenching his fist — but not yet.

He looks back at Usagi, at the near-pleading look in his friend's eyes, and commits it to memory. Casey's breathing comes hard and fast nearby, and Raph murmurs something — but Leo doesn't look. And he doesn't look when Mikey moves to Splinter's side, and squeezes their father's arms before sitting down with his arm around Angel's shoulders. It'll be all right, Leo hears him whisper. Angel nods, her eyes fixed far away.

The controller only works one way. The other half, Leo's half, is in the lab.

"Once you're —" His voice breaks, but he pushes on, his heart beating slow and heavy against his ribs. "Once you're through," he says, "we'll blow the portal."

And then, we fight.

Elsewhen.

Donnie half-tumbles off the bed when he jolts awake, tangled hopelessly in his blanket. What woke him is a total mystery; he didn't heard any loud noises, and what little furniture fills the room around him is still in order. He presses his hands to the side of his head, trying to calm his breathing and the scattered beat of his heart, and sees a white light shear away into the night, on the far end of Manhattan.

A comet? He kicks free of the blanket and moves silently to his window. But the cloud cover's too heavy to see anything. Maybe a satellite falling, or —

The light floods his room, bleached white and soundless. Donnie flinches away from his window, one arm raised to shield his eyes. At least the mystery of what woke him is solved; now he just wants to know what the light belongs to. Blinking away the afterimages, he leans close enough to bump his nose against the dirty glass. He belatedly remembers to shield his eyes, and manages to look away before the light comes around again. This time, he counts thirty-one seconds before the light completes its circuit and fills his room again.

Definitely not a comet or a satellite. Donnie unwinds a few feet of linen from his leg wraps, and uses the wadded material to scrub a clean spot in the ash and dirt coating his window. Maybe it's in one of the skyscrapers — but the light is coming from the north, and there are no skyscrapers for the light to roost in out there.

Something new, then.

Donnie stops scrubbing and back away. If the light is coming from the north, then it's close to the lair. The back of his neck prickles, and the sensation spreads over his shoulder and under his shell. His hands lock together around the linen, kneading and wringing.

Whatever the light is, wherever it's coming from, it's a mystery he'll investigate in what passes for daylight here. He thinks of the grey, flimsy sky, pouring ashes down on New York, and tries not to shudder. The prickling on his neck doesn't go away, even after he turns back to his bed.

Leonardo refused to elaborate on his plan after they finished eating. You need to rest, Donnie was told, when he asked to see the spear, and then Mike led him to this room, this bed, and gave him a weary little smile.

It's not much, but it's home, Mike said with a shrug. Need anything, just holler. Bathroom's two doors down.

Then, he tossed Donnie a handful of paper towels — for when nature calls — and shut the door. Without locking it, as Donnie discovered as Mike's footsteps faded away. They even left him his bo. It's almost as if they trust him.

Not that Donnie would have much of a chance against an entire base filled with soldiers, especially not ones led by these echoes of his brothers. They have numbers, they have decades of experience —

And they're tired, he thinks, sinking down on the bed as the light passes through his room again. Numbers and experience will only get you so far. When the fight's kicked out of you, then you've lost the war.

Donnie rubs his face and pulls his legs up onto the bed. He can cover his face with the threadbare pillow and hope that shuts out enough of the light to let him sleep. With a grim little smile, he reaches for the blanket, then freezes as someone knocks on his door.

"You're awake," whispers the red-headed woman. "Can I come in?"

Donnie flicks a glance at his bo — within reach, just where he left it — and sits up.

"Sure," he says.

A ribbon of grey-yellow light unspools into his room as the woman steps inside. Her hair hangs loose past her shoulders. It doesn't soften her eyes or the grim set of her mouth, but it makes her look a little younger — closer, Donnie thinks, to her actual age.

"Figured you'd have questions," she says, nodding at the window. She hovers at the door, hands at her hips, her expression carefully blank. "Hit me."

Donnie's had too much practice to give himself away by looking at his bo for reassurance, but he doesn't bother to hide how he checks her for weapons. A gun, a baton, maybe a knife — it's possible she'll want to keep things interesting for him. She raises her eyebrows, then lifts her hands, palm out, and turns. "See? Not a threat." Her voice is as empty as her face, but Donnie knows who trained her, and he almost laughs.

"Really," he says, touching the raised lump on the side of his head. "You're here so I can play Twenty Questions? How thoughtful."

The woman's eyes narrow, and she tenses, but Donnie waits her out. It's just a knee-jerk reaction, and he'll be ready if she attacks this time. His readiness isn't necessary; she deflates as quickly as she tensed, and gives him a wry smile that unexpectedly, viciously tugs at his heart.

"I'm not here to apologize," she says. "My unc — the others might be glad you're here, but there's no way it's for real." Her mouth tightens, but she goes on with barely a pause. "If you're a trick, you're the best we've seen. And I don't blame them for wanting to believe. So, to make it easier on them — and because I'm in enough trouble for, you know —" she gestures at her head, but most of the movement is lost in another flash of light. "I decided to come and play nice."

"Again: really." This time, the woman's gaze is hot as molten iron, but Donnie doesn't care. She's furious with him, or at least the other Donnie, the one who wore this same face before he vanished, and she hates him, and still, he doesn't care. Her anger is the answer to her mystery: only family can cut you so deeply you never stop bleeding.

"Oh, go to hell," she snarls, spinning on her heel and heading out the door. "Whatever you are, just go to hell. But don't take my family with you."

"Wait!" Donnie calls. His one conduit for information — he can't let her walk out the door, no matter how hostile she is. He hopes no one is listening in on this conversation, but he knows better than to put much faith in the dorm walls. The woman stops with only her heel still visible, then turns back to face him. "What's the light?" he asks.

The woman tucks her hair behind her ears, and the curl of her fingers is so familiar that Donnie shuts his eyes, and slams the mental door one last time. The little gesture has April threaded through it, and he remembers, he knows, what April's hair feels like under his own fingers.

Not the time or place, he tells himself.

After a long, silent moment, during which the light flashes twice more, the woman sighs. "It'll be easier to show you," she says. "We've got a good view up on the roof."

The light floods the room again, covering his flinch. It's been weeks since he felt April's fingers brush his own, or heard the flutter of black silk — holding her, having her, at his sides and in his arms, pushed back the horror — but he can't escape the memories now. April is gone and he sees her fall, again, and again, and again.

"I'm not going to push you off, if that's what you're worried about," says the woman. The light's faded, and Donnie has enough control back to meet her grim smile with one of his own, one that almost feels natural. "Take your bo. Come on."

She holds the door for him while he rises and slides his bo into its holder, but pauses when he clears his throat.

"What's your name?" he asks.

Her shoulders shake, for just an instant. She doesn't face him as she answers, and her voice is perfectly flat again.

"I'm Alice," she says. "Let's go. It's a long climb."

"So," Donnie says, through his panting. "You weren't lying about the climb." It's one thing to sprint in a straight line over a few rooftops, and quite another to haul body, bo, and shell up a few dozen flights of stairs at top speed. I can never tell Leo about this, he thinks, before he can catch himself, and inhales a sharp lungful of icy air to distract himself from the memory of Leo's face.

Alice's mouth quirks in a dry smile. She's out of breath too, and shivering, even though they're sheltered from the worst of the wind by a maintenance shed. "Leonardo used to make me run it twice a day," she says, halting over her words, picking at the ends of her hair. "You know, build up my stamina. Whenever I complained, he'd just give me this look." She laughs, tired and humorless, and ties her hair back with an elastic.

"Sounds like Leo," Donnie replies without thinking. "I mean…"

"You don't have to tiptoe around me," Alice says, her voice full of high scorn. "I can take it. You've got some big, happy family backstory, you'll make us realize what we've lost, and then we'll all come back together for one last shot at beating the Boar."

The light floods across the roof. When he glances in her direction, the white light from the north floods her face, leaves her features stark as a skull. Donnie crushes the urge to back into the shadows behind him. Hiding won't do any good, but there's something about the light that makes his stomach go sour.

"I mean, it's not a bad idea," Alice goes on. "It's about the only trick the Boar hasn't pulled. Got a great sense of humor. Like with — look! Quick, before the light comes back, down there!"

Donnie follows the line of her arm past the edge of the roof, down to what used to be April and Casey's high school, to Murakami's shop — and then his stomach isn't just sour, but curdled, acid rising high and thick in his chest.

His first thought is Fireflies? In winter?, but then the truth cracks through his head, and he jerks his head at Alice, who keeps pointing, her hand shaking.

"Are those cars?" he asks. "And streetlights?"

"Yeah," Alice says heavily, and crosses her arms over her chest. "That part of the city still has power. Dad — he could never figure out how. Not like it mattered."

She gives him a sidelong look, ready to pounce on his reaction to the truth, but what's there to say? It hasn't been a mystery for hours. Donnie stares back, trying to hide his pity, trying not to apologize — it's instinct now, to take on all the broken things. There's no apology that can bridge this chasm, no matter how badly he wants to try. After a moment, Alice turns back to the city, and the narrow, darting streaks of light.

"The lights and the cars are real, as far as we can tell. Kind of makes sense — why waste energy on illusions if you've already got the props, right?" Donnie nods, horrified at how part of him is fascinated, ticking away everything Alice says in case it might be useful later. Alice rubs her nose, then scuffs her feet in the gravel. "Anyways. The whole thing's a fake. You know how angler fish have the lights to draw in their prey?"

Donnie nods again, and Alice gives him a cold, nasty smile.

"Same principle. People see lights and cars, and they think, it's safe and warm out there, let's go, why stay here?" Her smile trembles, then disappears completely. "We still lose people."

Donnie waits for the light to pass again before he opens his mouth. "What happens when they get there?"

"Oh, please, don't act like you don't know." Alice rolls her eyes. "They're dead. Who cares how?"

"I do," Donnie says. "All —"

"All information is worth having. Right."

"It's true."

Alice laughs, teeth bared. She's so bitterly tired, her bones crumbled to dust by anger. It was easier, Donnie thinks, when she only wanted to kill him. He doesn't know what to say to her, what to ask.

He could ask, What happened to April? But he already knows, doesn't he?

"You don't want the details. Or maybe you do," Alice says, her voice rising. "How should I know? It's not like I know you. God, I barely know what's left of my family."

It takes every molecule of his self-control, but Donnie keeps his mouth shut. Now that Alice has started, she can't seem to stop, words exploding out of her at a near-yell that the wind carries away, over the city.

"You want to know? The ground opens up under them, just like quicksand. Sometimes it leaves their faces, or just their mouths — that's always fun, because then they can scream until —" Her hand clutches at the collar of her jacket, white-knuckle tight. "Once, I saw a guy run down past the old movie theater, and we thought — we thought he was going to get sucked under, but he didn't. He kept running, and then he just…something tore him apart, like he went through a meat grinder." Alice covers her mouth, breathing hard through her fingers. "She told me not to look," she whispers. "She always told me not to look, but she never tried to stop me. I don't…"

The light comes, again and again, and Alice keeps shaking. Donnie stays where he is, ready to listen, and doesn't move a step closer. He has no right to help.

But oh, he just wants to fix this, as much as he can, because the Donnie she needs isn't here to do his job. Their job.

Where are you? Donnie stares out at the city. What happened to you, and why did you leave? They needed you here, not out there looking.

"Sorry," says Alice abruptly. "I shouldn't have…oh, shit." She wipes her eyes. "I hate crying," she adds. "Waste of time."

"Waste of water," Donnie jokes, wincing. He has no right, no right at all.

But Alice laughs into her hand, and almost smiles at him. "Nice," she says. "Really nice."

"I have my moments." Donnie shrugs. He feels lighter than he has in hours, even with the cold biting into his skin and the eerie lights flickering below him, but he doesn't let himself push the moment. "So, the big light," he prompts, once Alice has her arms crossed over her chest, and is glaring down at the city again "What is it?"

"That," Alice says, "is the Boar's friendly way of letting us know it's watching. No one's gotten close enough to get a good look at it, but it's like…a lighthouse, I guess."

"The Eye of Sauron," Donnie murmurs. He startles when Alice snorts.

"Yeah, kind of." She pushes a piece of hair out of her face. "You won't be able to see it during the day. It mostly comes at night."

Donnie waits a beat, long enough for Alice to glance his way, then clears his throat. "Mostly," he adds, and gets another snort.

"Aren't we cute?" Alice asks the rooftop. "If this were a movie, it'd be all hugs and laughing over how we get a second chance." Her mouth curls in a snarl, and she turns back to the staircase. "This isn't a movie. You can't just step in —"

"Alice." Donnie catches her arm as she passes him, but he's not ready for the jolt when he says her name and that almost-life brushes against his own. He doesn't even have a right to talk to her. "I'm not a trick," he says, holding on when she tries to pull away, letting go when she hisses through her teeth. "And I'm not trying to take anyone's place, but…"

"But what?" she asks, glaring at him with eyes hard and dark. "You're here to fix us, right? One last stand, carrying the spear high?" She yanks the door to the stairwell open. "Did Leonardo tell you what his plan was?" When Donnie stays silent, she shakes her head, laughing, back to the brittle, jagged-edged woman from when he first arrived. "Yeah, of course he didn't. Come on. One more stop on the tour."

Alice leads him through a repair bay that spans the entire base of the building. Her flashlight illuminates thin slivers at a time, but what Donnie sees in the brief flashes makes his fingers itch: bales of copper wire and fiber optic cables, canisters of frozen nitrogen, something that might be the turret of a tank.

Supplies for an army, he thinks. Why haven't they used them?

"Impressed?" Alice whispers. She moves easily through the narrow spaces between work tables and piles of materials.

"My lab's in a sewer," he whispers back. "And I built a battle truck that shoots manhole covers. Yeah, I'm impressed."

Alice's steps hitch. "The Shellraiser, right?" she says, speeding up again. "I think — I heard about that." Before Donnie can reply, she sweeps her flashlight in a wide arc in front of her. "It's gone now. Went up when they burned the lair."

"They burned it?" Donnie asks, too shocked to stop himself. My lab, he thinks, the two worlds blurring in his head. Why would you burn my lab?

"Leonardo's policy," Alice says. She looks over her shoulder, but in the dark it's impossible to make out her expression. "If we can't carry it, we burn it. Nothing gets left behind for the Boar. We'll burn this place too, if we decide to leave." She sighs, and rubs the back of her neck. "Not that we will."

The wall appears in front of them, dirty, smoke- and acid-stained bricks swimming out of the darkness. Alice moves a little to her left, leaning against the hood of a cannibalized Jeep, and flips open the cover of a keypad lock.

"You've left before?" Donnie watches her hide the keypad with one hand while she punches in a long string of numbers with her thumb. He ignores the part of his brain that memorizes the code — it'll be there later, if he needs it.

"Yeah." Alice waits until the keypad glows red, then presses her hand flat against part of the wall. Something rumbles behind the bricks, and the wistful, barely-audible sound of decompression fills the silence before she speaks again. "We used to go south, for the winters. It gets so cold now. No sunlight. You know. It's actually May right now, if you can believe it." She flicks the flashlight up to the ceiling, twirling it in lazy circles, seemingly unaware of Donnie's quick jolt. Two months, gone. "But we always came back."

"Why?"

She shrugs. "Leonardo. Why else?"

"That's not really an answer," Donnie tells her, feeling his patience fray. "If you don't want me asking, just say so. I can talk to Leonardo in the morning."

Alice snorts. "Yeah, good luck with that. He's a cagey pr —" She coughs, then slides off the hood when a piece of the wall peels away, leaving a bright, too-clean wedge of light spilling into the repair bay. "You want to know why we kept coming back? Why we don't leave anymore?" She steps aside to let Donnie slip past her, into the white, pristine room behind the wall. "Because Leonardo wants to be here if my dad comes home."

The room is nearly empty. Donnie's footsteps echo flat and hollow on the tiles. He hadn't spared a thought for what the room held, too preoccupied with Alice's thin, spiteful trickle of information, and now, he finds he's underwhelmed. There's just a long wooden box, sitting in the middle of the floor.

"Behold," Alice says. "Leonardo's great plan. It's not locked." She makes an indistinct noise that could be a laugh or snarl. "Like anyone would open it except…"

"Except him," Donnie murmurs, sinking to his knees in front of the box, as Alice says, "my dad."

The wood smells like mold and dirt, and sends up a faint cloud of dust when he lifts the lid away. The contents rattle a little, then go still.

"You haven't asked how she died," says Alice.

No, he hasn't, even as part of him screamed, silently, to know. But really, why does he need to know how, when the only thing that matters is that she's gone?

It doesn't matter what world he's in. He's never going to be able to save her.

"I'm sorry," he says. He knows it's the last thing Alice needs to hear from him. From the other Donnie, but not from him. He has no right. None at all.

"The Shredder and the Boar, they found a Kraang cache," Alice says. "There's always a new rock bottom, right? So Mom, she — she and Grandpa went in alone. Minimal risk, minimal collateral damage." She waits, silent until the bones in Donnie's chest have twisted and he can't breathe to tell her to stop, because he doesn't want to know how badly things went wrong and how much was lost, and then she sighs, a quiet, stripped-bare sound. "Shredder made an example out of them. And we could only watch while Karai —"

This time, when Alice's voice drops away, she doesn't speak again. Donnie opens his eyes, and stares at the dirty, brittle spear in front of him, the metal tip dulled and stained. It weighs almost nothing when he lifts it, but it thrums faintly, and warms at his touch.

There's power in this weapon. It slept, but now it's waking, ready for its final bloody work.

"It's for real?" Alice whispers. Donnie tears his eyes away from the spear long enough to meet her wide-eyed gaze, her face caught between doubt and a fragile, reluctant hope. "You feel something? No one else did."

"Yeah." Donnie turns back to the spear, feeling the thrum building in the wood. "I feel — it's like it's awake."

"God." Alice shifts back toward the door. "It's a trick — it's —" Donnie looks again, in time to see her spin away, hair flaring around her like a corona, and then she darts off into the black repair bay, her footsteps fading into silence.

Donnie inhales slowly, and stands. The spear gets heavier every moment he holds it, swelling with power, with purpose, and yes, yes, this is a real weapon, this is a god-killer. Donnie sees it so clearly, the dulled head of the spear growing sharp again, the rust and stains melting away. All it needed was a Champion.

A lifetime of doubt can't be shaken off in a second. But Donnie hefts the spear, spins it slowly, and thinks, maybe.

Movement flickers at the edge of Donnie's awareness. Jarred out of his daydream — it's almost alive, the spear, warm and thrumming like a song — Donnie turns to find Leonardo filling the doorway, his black coat blending into the darkness behind him.

"I never thought…" Leonardo coughs, shaking his head. "We had almost stopped hoping, you know. But now…" He smiles, that sweet, aching smile again, and for a moment, he's the Leo Donnie knows, the brother Donnie loves. The brother Donnie would die for.

"Thank you," Leonardo says, blank eyes fixed on the spear.

Donnie grips the spear tighter, and realizes a moment later he's smiling back.