CHAPTER SUMMARY
Leonardo kidnaps his own daughter.
CONTENT WARNINGS
Swearing, mentions of murder.
NOTES
As a joke, I named A Summer for Saya's Word file "The Cheese." So when I started a prequel-because what I had REALLY wanted when I started Saya was Karai and Leonardo FUCKING rather than HATING each other-I naturally called it "Cuppa Milk." Hahahaha do you see what I was doing wow I'm so clever
The prequel ended up being shitty. Not because it was terribly written, necessarily, but because (a) it was kinda boring? and (b) it managed to suck the intrigue right out of Saya. Rather than hamstring my golden child, I opted to let Cuppa Milk die. But that didn't mean that there wasn't some good shit in it.
I really liked the kidnapping sequence in particular.
A KIDNAPPING
There was a blind spot between the birth center and its back door. A shop awning and the canopy of a tree blocked off a whole portion of the parking lot from rooftop surveillance. Manicured bushes shielded large portions of the street. There would be a space of a second where he'd be visible from almost every angle—the six feet between the omnipresent birth center vans and the back door. To mask his unique shape, he padded himself out with pillows and used cardboard to extend the thrust of his shoulders. A cap, a wig, a scruffy beard; face paint to normalize the unnatural color of his skin (black was best); stuck his thick awkward hands into padded gloves. Half of the secret of getting past security was acting like you belonged. Stride up to the back door, use the stolen key, walk in like you owned it. No running, no frantic fluttering. Like all predators, the Elites could not resist signs of panic.
The back door led to a utility room—mops and brooms, shelves of chemicals in disarray, coats on a hook, someone's forgotten hat—and past that, the in-house Laundromat. Take off the winter coat to reveal the blue staff uniform, pop the collar, lower his head so that the hair hung over his face. Make certain his face was unremarkable and his silhouette was natural—no awkward lumps. Then move. Time is of the essence.
The layout of the building allowed for spacious rooms in the upper floors. Take the elevator to the floor just beneath the top, where the suites for the crème de la crème overlooked the park.
The room below Karai's had not yet been filled. Part of that was his fault, since he had bungled the plumbing in the private bath the night before. Of course there would be Elites on the top floor, most of them dressed as staff. As many as six or seven, he guessed. Too many to fight should something go wrong. Much better to avoid that hallway altogether.
So he got off of the elevator one floor below. Naturally, there were two Elites standing guard near the elevator here as well. This was where he counted on them to catch him: his disguise simply wouldn't stand up under close scrutiny. He slipped the two tiny blades into his palms, and exhaled softly as he pushed his cart out of the elevator.
At that moment, the universe conspired to give him perfect cover. Two nurses had joined him on floor seven and jumped out on his stop at floor nine. In a nearby room, a woman shouted something incomprehensible, and voices slurried praise and assurance. The two Elites had leaned over to peek through the door. It was with a thrill that he thrust the cart past them.
He pushed the cart into the vacant room, and shut and locked the door. The sheer darkness was soothing. Despite this, he dropped slowly to the floor and crawled across it, then raised his binoculars to scan the rooftops, to make sure that the spotters he had knocked off had not been replaced. Yes, there were the still shapes, still leaning against their scopes; their replacements would not arrive until two AM. There was also the van down on the street to think about, but they were focused more on foot traffic, and since they hadn't called him in yet…
Take a deep breath. Take a very deep breath. It was the timeless moment before the plunge. Don't ask yourself questions. Questions only slow you down.
He unlocked the window, then shimmied outside and up to Karai's window. Quickly, oh god, quickly: if anyone in the van caught sight of his movement, they'd call the Elites. He had his earbud tuned to their frequency on the radio, and listened intently for the call as he jimmied the window. Nothing but static.
Slowly, he pushed Karai's window up, and slipped inside as noiselessly as a cat. Shut the window, slowly. Slip to the side to miss the vases of fresh flowers and the mahogany end tables, settle on plush carpet thick enough to sleep on. Fine art on the walls, tasteful décor, a Jacuzzi, the faint scent of lavender.
He had counted on Karai's thirst for privacy, and he was right. She lay with her head turned toward a bassinet, chest rising and falling in sleep. Must've taken it out of her; usually she slept so lightly. The little blades in his hands suddenly seemed like the most real parts of him, and he wondered: if I cut her throat now, if I let her die now, they'd never know it was me. They'd never know.
But instead, he flattened himself against the floor and crept to the bassinet. His heart was pounding stupidly. What if he were wrong? What if it were a human child, and she had been mocking him the entire time? What if the Bunker papers documented some other experiment, and his flesh and blood lay helpless elsewhere?…
No. No. Questions were for later.
He rose to a crouch on the other side of the bassinet and peered inside, but the shadow was too heavy. He lifted his flashlight, cupped it in his hand, and turned it on. What he saw made his heart drop. He hooked a finger into the swaddling cloths and pulled them down as gently as he dared. There they were, the soft buttery plates on the chest. There was the shell, the oddly textured skin, the broad mouth, ears and nostrils like half-baked afterthoughts…
The ugly little face squinted up into the light, eyes unfocused, and then the infant grumbled—the coughing, whining prelude to a crying fit. Swiftly, he grabbed the sheaf of documents sitting on the nearby table and scanned them. Saya, a girl. Delivered by Karai's personal doctor—Dr. Susan Takehara of Bunker fame. No mention of a father at all.
He stuffed the documents into his waistband and twisted the flashlight head, and shadow fell thick again. Nausea was welling up inside of him. He took deep breaths. Don't ask questions. Don't ask questions. Keep to the plan.
But he couldn't move. He was loath to touch her. This terrifying little bundle, a thing he had never agreed to, had never planned upon. God, what was he thinking? What was he doing? And then a rush of rage at Karai: what did she think she was doing, bringing something like this into the world? Why involve him at all? How could she expect him to stand by and do nothing?
The crossroads forked in three ways before him. On one side, Saya with puckered scars on her back and breast and belly: perhaps a face and body contorted into some semblance of humanity, the worst of her incongruities hidden beneath shirt and jeans. In a flash, he cobbled her life out of commercials and movie scenes: at a piano recital in patent leather shoes, in an embroidered kimono for Girls' Day, training underneath strange masters in Japan. She would live in a world where he didn't exist, not even in her imagination. If she thought of her father, she would think of a human man, and Karai would smile indulgently and say nothing. If Saya did see him, she would be overwhelmed with horror. She'd blame him for what humanity she couldn't claim.
Then again, perhaps Saya would fail Karai; perhaps the shell would be locked to her muscles and bones the way his were; perhaps her brain or body would not be exactly right. Perhaps they would shuttle her below into the Bunker's sunless white halls, and she would live her life in unimaginable torment, a subject of experiments and solitary confinement.
Finally: a life with him.
He'd thought it out meticulously: he'd take her to the farmhouse and hide her from the family. He would tutor her himself; he had plenty in his savings for textbooks and clothes and toys. He'd already bought the necessary supplies and stuffed them into the back of the car—all purchased with Karai's money, something that had given him grim pleasure earlier. But there was nothing funny about this.
Suddenly he couldn't imagine anything past the window.
He pressed his fingers up against his face. When he drew them away, they were wet.
A faint rustle.
His chin jerked up. The moonlight pooled across the floor in a long white trail. There against the ruffled bedsheets was the glinting crescent of Karai's eye, boring into him, brow furrowed with hate. Her finger hovered over the Call button beside her bed. Her arm trembled from fatigue and there was thick weariness in her face. He could feel her willing him not to see it.
You can leave now, her eye said, and I will forget this ever happened.
He had planned on a discussion should she wake up. But there was no room for discussion in her face; one word, one movement out of place, and she would give him up, she'd throw him to the wolves waiting just outside the door.
Suddenly the agony of his uncertainty was gone, eaten up in a blaze of icy fire.
You think you can control me, like you control everyone. He glanced into the bassinet. You're wrong.
Her finger slammed the button at the very same second he snatched Saya up. The infant screamed into his throat; her body was as hot as a brand. The door banged open, a flood of light hit him like a thunderbolt, four black shapes stormed into the room. Karai struggled to a sitting position and screamed at him. Shielding Saya with his arms, Leo lunged across the room and crashed shell-first through the window.
He snagged a cornice one-handed and swung down the building façade, glass and wood tinkling around him. Nothing was left in him but purpose. He chanted a mantra to himself on the beat of his every footstep: You can't have her like you had me.
He hit the ground and sprang off, clutching the screaming baby to his chest, aiming for the dark alley. Tires pealed down on the street, and he saw shadows pouring out of the back of the van, but he laughed mirthlessly and put all his rage and loss into a madcap sprint. A dart whistled over his head and tumbled harmlessly in the street; another snagged in his pants leg, another sank harmlessly into his shell. And then he was safe between the hulking walls.
His car was waiting just two streets away. He took the quickest route, spring-boarding over walls and wrought-iron gates and dumpsters. The little black Honda chirped as he approached; he'd deactivated its interior lights. The keys were in his hand; the door flung open; the engine roared, the gas pedal smashed to the floor. Tires squealing, he bounced over a curb and was gone: gone into the midnight, down the half-dead streets, heading for the closest living artery. He slowed down only to lose his nondescript vehicle in the stream of cars heading toward the interstate.
Somewhere over the state line, Leo started feeling the glass, like a hundred aching pinpoints of fire. He could ignore this. But he could not ignore Saya. She screamed and spasmed for half an hour, only falling asleep from sheer exhaustion, and would wake up intermittently to squeal again. Finally, he drove into a little town and stopped at a gas station, then squatted beside the car to look her over beneath the streetlight.
Her swaddling cloths had come undone, and she furiously swung her fists and feet in uncoordinated circles. Although she didn't appear to be hurt, her squawking seemed weaker than before. A pang of horror hit Leo: he hadn't thought about needing to stop before Northampton.
"Can you wait?" he asked. His voice was hoarse.
Saya replied with a hiccupping wail.
He gently set her on the front seat and shook himself out. Blood and glass spattered on the pavement. Suddenly he felt inexpressibly tired. When he looked up at the golden windows of the convenience store, where a bored teenager craned his neck around the cash register, Leo's breath came out cold: he could feel him judging, thinking…
Leo ducked and looked at his reflection in the car window. He no longer wore the wig and cap, and the face-paint was smudged to hell. A faint thrill of panic raced through him. A brief thought of snapping the cashier's neck ran through his mind; then he shook his head.
What was he doing?
Leo gently buckled Saya into the car seat. As he fumbled with the latches, he wondered how he had stumbled into someone else's life.
"It's not much longer," he said softly. "Just hang on."
He swept loose glass and detritus out of the front seat, checked his gauges, and shut the door as gently as he could. It didn't seem to matter. Saya howled afresh.
Hunched over, Leo rolled out of the parking lot and into the darkness, back toward the welcoming shadows of the New England hills.
By the time he rolled down the driveway to the farmhouse, his whole body throbbed with pain, and Saya's sobbing had faded off into a mewling protest. The clock had bored a hole into his brain: she was overdue for her meal, for her diaper, for every solitary thing that a newborn could possibly be late for. Suddenly he was filled with dull, laborious dread. Donatello had no idea that he was coming, much less why. If only Donatello had been in New York so that Leo could commandeer the farmhouse: its silence, its remoteness, its darkness.
He drove the car behind the barn and popped the trunk. Saya tried to squeal about this new, unjust sound, but her cry was terribly small.
Leo looped grocery bags over his arms and ducked into the back, lifting Saya out with all the care he could muster. She beat her little hands on his neck. Should she feel this hot, he wondered?
He had almost reached the porch when the front light turned on. A disembodied voice rang out through the screen.
"Who's there?"
"It's me," Leo said. "Leonardo."
"As overjoyed as I am to see you here at 5AM, I can't help but inquire…" Don pushed the screen door open. "…as to why I hear a baby."
"Long story," Leo said. "Please, let me in."
Leo shielded Saya against his throat as he pushed into the front door. He couldn't look Don in the eyes. Quickly, he threw his bags down in the kitchen.
"Holy hell," Don said. "What happened to you?"
"I don't have time for a full story," Leo snapped, laying Saya on the floor. "Not yet."
"I think you do," Don said, and grabbed Leo by the shell. He jerked something out and waved a black dart under Leo's nose. "That's Foot weaponry if I ever saw it. Care to explain?"
"I will! Not now!" Leo drew out the formula with shaking hands, then the bottle, the bottle brush. Did he need the brush yet? He thrust his hands through the sacks. The book, he needed the book…
"What… what is that?" Don's voice hit a horrified note. "Leo, what did you bring into this house?"
"My daughter," Leonardo snapped. "My daughter, my daughter. Karai made her. Why would she do this? My god, why would she…" He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. No, shut up. Follow the plan.
Don squatted beside him and squinted into his face.
"What do you need?" he asked.
"I need to feed her," Leo said. "I've waited too long."
"You don't look coordinated enough for cooking," Don said. "Gimme that." He ripped the formula out of Leo's hands and turned it over, eyes racing over the instructions. "Looks easy enough."
Leonardo took deep breaths. "No. This is my responsibility." He rose to his feet. "I didn't mean to involve you in this." Why couldn't you have gone to New York?
"With all due respect, no. Sit down. Clean the kid up. Make up a good story." Don smacked the container onto the counter. "It had better be a good one."
Saya finally settled down when Leo swaddled her and gave her the bottle. She suckled hungrily, little breast heaving, wondering eyes latched on the bottle. Don emptied the car, throwing the bags beside the table, and then dropped the car seat beside the sofa.
"We can just set her in here, I guess," he said. "And then we can pull glass out of your ass."
"Sure," Leo said distractedly.
Don dropped into the sofa. "Should I call someone?"
Leo shook his head.
"What I mean by that is, should we warn Casey and April? Are they going to be in danger because of what you did?"
Leo rubbed his hands over his eyes. "My God."
"I'll take that as a yes." Don drew a cell phone out of his coat pocket. "What did you do?"
"Karai used my DNA to make… this child," he said. "She was a Bunker experiment."
Don sucked on his bottom lip, then leaned back in his seat and waggled his foot. "I feel like you're giving me two sentences from the end of a very, very long paragraph."
"That's what happened. What more do you need?"
"Let's start with why Karai would have your DNA to begin with. Or why you would say 'Karai' and not 'the Foot' or 'mad scientists.' Oh, and how you would find out about a Bunker experiment at all. Ah, and also, how and why someone would mix one of us with… a human being? However the hell that works."
Leo jerked his chin at his backpack. "Whatever you want to know… all the documents I stole are in there."
"Documents from where?"
"The Bunker, the birth center. I haven't read everything, and I don't understand half of it."
Saya sucked noisily and flapped an arm half-heartedly in agreement.
Don punched a button on his cell. As he raised it to his ear, he grabbed the backpack and dragged it over to his chair, then started to pull documents out.
"Yeah, Case? This is Don. I know what time it is. Look, Leo did something incredibly stupid." There was a pause; Casey's incredulous snort was loud enough to hear across the room.
"No, he's not in New York. He's here in Northampton, with me." Don rolled his eyes. "Case. Casey. Jones. Listen. I am telling you this because the Foot might be coming after you. You might want to take a small vacation until we figure out what's going on."
"WHAT?" Casey said.
Leo flinched.
"No. He can't. He's got his hands full." Don pulled a wrinkled pile of papers out of the backpack and flipped through them. "I'm trying to figure it out right now. He's got pap…" Don froze. "He kidnapped… Karai's daughter? He had a daughter with Karai?" His jaw dropped. "He… holy shit, Leo, you were sleeping with Karai?"
Casey's voice boomed. "What the fuck? What the everloving fuck?"
Don held the phone away from his ear, grimacing. "Don't make me deaf yet. I'll need my ears to listen for the nine thousand fucking assassins Karai just sent after us."
Leo struggled to tune Don out, and opted to focus on Saya's face. She stared up at him with the same curious expression, then dropped the nipple and coughed. Leo's spine prickled. Should she be looking at him like this, he wondered, as though she were trying to figure him out?
"But the apartment!" Casey shouted. "We can't leave! All of our money is tied up here!"
Leo ran his hand over his face.
"Tell him to take the kid back now!" Casey said. "Take her back!"
"You know what, great idea," Don said. "Leo, give Karai a call and tell her you're…"
"No." Leo rose to his feet. "She's my daughter, too. I have no assurance that she'll be safe if she returns."
Don groaned. "Leo. Please. For the love of Jesus. We just stopped being mortal enemies with the Foot. I don't want to go back."
"Fuck you, Leo!" Casey shouted. "So help me, if you don't take that kid back now…"
"She'll go to the Bunker!" Leonardo snapped. "You have no idea what goes on down there!"
Casey's voice had hit a fever pitch. "Yeah, well, I have a kid here too, buddy! If you put Shadow in danger, I swear to God, I'll shove you in a woodchipper!"
Saya began whining, face scrunching up. Leo hooked her up into the car seat, his face blazing hot.
"Holy shit," Don said, fanning the papers out over his knees. "What have you been doing, Leo?"
"What do you mean?"
"You were working for the Foot?" Don said.
"Just a few missions," he said. "They weren't… what you think they were."
"Are you sure? Because this looks like the assassination of a judge." Don lifted a page and waved it at him.
Leo froze beside the car seat. "Wait. How did…"
"Looks like Karai had a file on you, that's what," Don said, riffling through the stack. "Ah, here's a beheaded whistleblower! I remember this one from the paper."
Leo's voice was dull. "He was corrupt, Don."
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said anything. I know how much murder means to you."
Over the phone, Casey was swearing, and they could hear April's horrified voice, then Shadow babbling. Then Mike picked up the phone.
"Hey!" he said. "What's going on? What's this I hear about kidnapping? Hello?"
"Mike, hi," said Don. "Uh, well. Run. That's all."
"Run?! Run where?"
"Somewhere that's not New York City?"
"But… but why?"
"This was a mistake," Leo said softly. He pressed his fingers to Saya's forehead; she scrunched her face up again, and whined in protest.
"Wait, wait. I think that our fearless leader just admitted his error." Don held the phone down. "Leo, call Karai. Now."
"You misunderstand." Leonardo stood with difficulty. "I shouldn't have involved you. I'm leaving."
Don's eyes widened. "Wait, you're… leaving Northampton? With a newborn infant? You can't do that. She'll need to eat every few hours. How are you going to heat up formula without a microwave? Are you gonna use the fucking sun?"
"You don't understand." Leonardo lifted the car seat, and Saya squealed in frustration. "I can't let Karai have her."
A flash of pity crossed Donatello's face. Just as quickly, it was gone.
"For God's sake, Leo. Sit down. I won't… kick you out."
Leo's shoulders sagged. "I won't stay long, Don. I just need to sleep, and we can be on our way."
"Don't be so goddamn dramatic. You're still covered in glass and paint. You aren't going anywhere."
"I think she's tired." Leo shuffled toward the stairs. "I'm taking her somewhere quiet."
"Don't lie down on the sheets like that!" Don shouted.
Leo didn't hear him. He slogged up the stairs to the room at the end of the hall, set Saya's car seat down beside one of the guest beds, and slumped onto his face. He rested his hand on Saya's breast, and one of the tiny hands latched around his finger and clenched…
From far away, he heard her voice slowly sink away into a mumble, then a soft and fretful sleep. In a half-remembered dream, Master Splinter stood over her and babbled something in an unknown language.