Chapter #4

*Two days later*

"*sigh*" Donnie rubbed the sides of his head in frustration as he stared at his computer screen. It had been about a day and a half since the flash drive had been stolen and he was having a difficult time tracking it down.

Everyone had been assigned a job to complete in order to try and find the girl who had stolen from them. Leo was instructed to look up articles on unique and gifted women throughout the state, Raph was told to look up records for the top female criminals throughout the state, Mikey was given the task of searching through popular social media outlets for anything suspicious, and Donnie was using his technology to search for signals of the flash drive being used. There was a tracking code within the data that was on the drive, so Donnie should have received a signal of when and where the drive was being used. But so far, nothing had happened.

The guys had hoped that there would be a lead somewhere, maybe an article talking about a criminal who was known for stealing whom the cops were on the lookout for, or a student who had made a recent discovery that was related to the info on the drive, anything that would give away any hints as to who may have entered their lair.

Leo and Mikey were sitting at the table, while Raph was sitting on the couch on the opposite side of the room where Donnie sat.

Mikey was enjoying his portion of the search, but Leo and Raph weren't as interested.
"Ugh come on Donnie, how much longer do we have to do this? There's no police statements talking about any major criminals, and you also haven't heard of any recent Foot activity. So why are we still sitting around? I say we take to the streets and look for this chick!"
Leo rolled his eyes. "Raph, we don't know anything about this girl. We don't know how old she is, what she officially looks like, where she's from, not a single thing. All we know is Sensei's description of what she looks like and that's it."
"So?" Raph glared across the room at Leo. "We know she has black hair and black eyes, so let's start there. Maybe check out some usual spots where criminals like to hang out at, I'm sure she'd be somewhere like that!"
Donnie sighed. "That's the thing Raph." He spun his chair around, taking the first time in hours to look away from his cluster of monitors. "We don't know if she's a criminal. What if she's just a gifted student who found a way to find this place? We can't just go attacking random people."
"She STOLE from us! How does that not make her a criminal? Why are we defending this chick?"
Leo stood up. "We're not defending her, we're trying to analyze the situation! If we run in and just start attacking any and every black haired girl we can find in New York then this situation is going to get a million times worse!"
"Guys chill, I can't investigate with you all yelling."
Leo took the phone that Mikey had been using and rolled his eyes after looking at the screen. "Mikey, how is watching BuzzFeed videos on MySpace helping us try to track down this girl?"
Mikey nervously laughed, trying to lighten the mood, even though his eldest brother was glaring down at him, and he could feel Raph's eyes glaring at him from behind as well.
"Ahhhhh, hehe, well, you see-"
Donnie tried to intervene "Uh guys?"
"MySpace?" Raph was confused. "Why are you using MySpace? Who the hell uses MySpace anymore?"
"I do Raph, I'm new to this! You know we're not allowed to go on social media sites!"
"Guys?"
Leo then turned to Raph. "Wait, how do you know that? Do you go on these types of sites?"
"Uhhhhh" Raph looked away nervously. "Sometimes I like to see if we can get ahead of the enemy, you know?"
"You don't post anything do you?"
"Guys!"
"Yes Leo, because my goal in life is to post online and let people know of our existence! I mean I can understand you questioning Mikey but questioning me, seriously? I'm not stupid!"
"Heyyyy" Mikey frowned. "What are you trying to say?"
"I'm saying that-"
"GUYS!"

All three brothers looked ever at Donnie.
"Guys, Raph is right about just sitting around. Instead of having you guys spend all day looking at electronic devices just waiting for something to change, you guys can just check back every once in a while throughout the day, and I'll be the main one to be on the constant look out for a signal of the device being used."
"Thank you!"
"Wait!" Leo held up his hand to stop his brother. "Don, that's not fair to you though."
Donnie shook his head. "It's no problem. I know more about this this stuff anyway, and I want to be ready for when this girl makes a move, so it's best if I'm the one sitting around all day looking at these screens. Besides, I already do that on a daily basis" he chuckled.
"Alright, but if anything important comes up then tell us immediately."
"Immediately!" Mikey pointed at Donnie.
Leo chuckled at his younger brother who was trying to make it seem like he had any idea of what they were talking about.
After that, the three brothers left the room to go do whatever. Donnie turned back around to face all of his monitors. He kept waiting for a signal to pop up. If whoever has stolen the device was smart enough to disable so many of his cameras, then it was extremely likely that they would want to look at the information on the drive as soon as possible, so what was taking them so long?
And that's when it hit him, what if it wasn't necessarily that they wanted to wait, but that they had to? He then pulled up a tab on one of the many monitors and searched for a list of high schools throughout the state. He decided that while he waited for the signal, he would hack into the main databases from each of the schools on the list and look for both current students and also graduates from the past couple of years, and search for and note as many of the black haired females with black eyes that he could find from each one.
"Well, at least it's a start. Let's get to it."

*Same day, Monday*

Today was Monday, so I was in robotics club after school. Club got out in about five more minutes, then I would be on my way to a library halfway across town.

There were six places that Jay had taken me where I would be allowed to use computers that had the software to be able to prevent the files from getting hacked or stolen while I was reading them: Jay's work building, the university that he had attended, a library, a hospital, a bank, and an art studio. Luckily he had friends at all these locations that gave me a pass that would allow me to go inside on my own time. They all were thrilled to know that someone was interested in their software and what they used it for, and since they all knew my brother so well, they believed they could trust that I wouldn't do anything stupid or reckless at their workplace. Bless these people's souls for that.

I decided to go to the furthest location first which was the art studio. The passes didn't have any specific information on them about who I was, only that I was a guest who was to be allowed inside and where I was allowed to go inside the building.

Right after club ended I went home and changed. When I got to my room I put on a blonde wig, blue contacts, and I used some make-up to make my skin look paler than it already was. I hated seeing my hair be blonde. I don't have a problem with blonde hair, but I don't think it suits me very well. I packed a small cross-body bag with my phone, keys, any important passes or cards, and both my own and the stolen flash drive. I should have been in more crowded public areas tonight, so I didn't bring a weapon with me this time.

By the time I was ready to go it was about five in the afternoon. I left through the exit in the back of the apartment building and then walked towards a wooden fence that lead to another alley. Once I got through, I then left through that alley and entered the streets of New York. This was in case there were any cameras nearby, hopefully they would see me come from a different direction than from my actual building. I headed down towards the subway and rode the train for about another half hour, arriving at the studio by six. Once inside the building, I tried to act normal and not super excited that I was finally about to look into the device. I made my way to an empty room with about ten computers. I punched in a code that Jay's friend had given me and entered the room. I sat down at a computer and quickly got a post it note and put it over top the camera on the front of the computer screen. Then, I plugged in a flash drive of my own that contained a security system that should help warn me of any intruders, and then plugged in the flash drive I had taken. A folder popped up and after I clicked on it, tons of new folders flooded the page. I decided to start with the folder at the very top of the screen labeled "TCRI's past." I was then brought to multiple typed up documents talking about past experiments that were conducted at TCRI. I began to wonder if the area I had discovered was an underground base for someone who worked for TCRI, I mean hey that would be a genius idea for a hiding place. The sewers definitely wouldn't have been my first guess as to where someone's hiding spot would be.

As I was reading, there was a highlighted section within the document. The highlight's talked about a chemical of some kind that was going to be used for medical research and how the chemical was used on five animal test subjects. From the way the document was worded, it seemed like someone didn't want every individual piece of information from this experiment known. It seemed suspicious, but I wanted to see what else there was to read about.

I then went back and clicked on a link titled "Our DNA." A few charts then popped up that talked about regular human DNA and also about altered strands. I wondered if this had anything to do the animals that had been tested on in the previous document that I had read, but why did it say 'our' then?

Suddenly, a pop up stated that an unknown user was trying to access the information I was looking at. I then started typing in some codes that would block this person from viewing what was on my screen. I had to be quick. Dang, I hoped that I would have had a longer time to look at the info that was on the drive, but just like I had suspected, the owner was quick to pick up on my location.

After a few minutes of quickly punching in codes, I was able to block the intruder, but I knew it would only be a matter of minutes to seconds before they found another way in. I quickly took out the flash drives, took a breath to calm myself, and walked out of the room.

The whole way home I wondered if the intruder could be anywhere nearby by coincidence. Gosh that would be insane if they happened to be in that building for whatever reason, or just happened to be on this subway car at this exact same moment that I was.

As I got back to the alley, I took off my wig and tucked it under my shirt. I entered the building and went straight to my apartment, setting up my security devices once again. I was scared, but at the same time intrigued. I was curious as to what this chemical was, and why it was so important. I decided that I would research about it more tomorrow, and for now, I was going to try to stay calm and just focus on my school work, heading back to my ordinary life.

*Same day, Monday*

Donnie had made a decent sized list of all the girls with black hair and black eyes that were between 13 and 25 years old. He then had his brother's look for anything they could find about the girls on the list. There were a few leads, but nothing that hinted that these girls could figure out how to sneak into the lab. Plus, the majority of them had been out with friends all that Friday night according to their social media pages.

Just as Donnie began looking into an article about one of the girls in college, an alert popped up on his monitor.
"I got it…..GUYS I GOT IT!" The other three looked up and hurried over and stood behind their brother.
"Where is she?" Leo questioned.
"She's at…..got it, an art studio."
"Soooooo, what're you doing dude?" asked a curious Mikey.
"Well, I'm using a security program to hack into the computer she's using. It should allow me to steal all the information on the flash drive and basically wipe it clean while all the info is transferred to my computer where it will stay safe. But I just need to hack into the studios database and then into whichever computer she's using."
"Ahhhhh….right…"
Donnie chuckled. "I'm moving the info on the flash drive somewhere where our thief can't touch it anymore."
"Dude, why didn't you just say that before?"
Donnie continued typing away. "Aha! I'm in, now I just need to…crap, she's blocking me out already?!" Donnie continued to type away furiously. It was quiet for the longest time, no one wanted to break Donnie's concentration. After a while, the brainiac of the bunch sighed in defeat.
Leo scrunched his forehead. "What happened?"
"She got away. AGAIN."
"How did she do that?" Raph clenched his fists, this girl was really starting to piss him off. He didn't like seeing his brother so stressed out, and the fact that she beat Donnie at something he was a genius at worried him even more.
"She knew the right codes to use in order to block mine. Just as I was about to dive back in, she must have pulled the flash drive and left. There's still ways for us to hunt her down, but this would have made things a lot easier for us, well more so easier for me specifically."
Mikey frowned, he knew that his older brainiac brother was mentally stressing and complaining about himself for not being able to win this electronic battle.
"So what do we do now bro?"
Donnie began typing again. "If I can get access to the buildings security cameras, which I'm doing now, we can look and see who was in the building and maybe even who was in the room of the computer that was used to get a better visual of who the thief is. Then maybe we can narrow our search down a lot more."
He pulled up one of the buildings cameras on each screen. The four looked back and forth from each monitor, but they couldn't find a black haired woman anywhere. Donnie then figured out which room was used and pulled up the video from the time that he was trying to hack into the studios computer. He could only see the side of the girls face, but to his surprise, he was staring at a woman with blonde hair rather than black.
Leo looked and saw his brothers jaw drop.
"Now what's wrong?"
"Well, there's a few scenarios as to what I'm seeing. Scenario A. she is or at some point was wearing a disguise. Scenario B. she has already shared or lost the flash drive and now someone totally different has it. Either way, she's made the whole situation a lot more complicated. If this person on the screen is the same person who stole from us, then this chick is good at what she does."
"So what do we do now?"
"I'll have to keep waiting. It might take a few days, but if I can get signals from where she's at, I can try to figure out some generic ideas as to where she lives based on the locations of the buildings she's in. Also, the more places she visits, the more camera angles we can get. If we can get closer looks at her, and also angles that show which ways she heads home, we may be able to pin point her home location."

All four brothers smiled. Finally they had a plan that could lead them to catch this girl. It was a risky plan, but hopefully the result would end up in their favor.
_

*4 days later*

It took him four more days, but Donnie had finally started to plan how he and his brothers would try to capture this girl.

Donnie smiled. "Alright, it's time to take action."
Leo walked over to his brother. "How did you figure out who we should go after?"
"Get ready, it's a long explanation." He breathed in as his other two brothers also walked over to hear how everything went down. "Each time I got an alert that the drive was being used, I would try to hack into the computer that was being used and retrieve what I could, and I was actually able to secure some of the documents. Once the girl had fled the scene, I analyzed any video footage I could get my hands on: videos from the building the thief had been in, security cameras outside of the building in the direction she had gone once leaving the building, subway cams, etc. That's when I began to notice a pattern in the thief's schedule. Usually she would read over the documents later in the evening or sometime at night, but on Thursday the thief had observed the documents in the early afternoon rather than closer to night time as usual."
Leo nodded. "So that's why you had us check all those school databases for absentees, right?"
Donnie smiled and nodded.
"Exactly! I found a few female absentees who had similar body figures like the girl we had seen in the videos. Once the options had been narrowed down to about twenty girls or so, I began looking into some of the women's more personal information. Based on academic records alone, the options were then narrowed down to about ten girls, and the location of Thursday's visit narrowed this down to three. After A LOT of research, I discovered that one of the three girls was in contact with someone who has connections to multiple people in each building that the signal for the drive being used at. I looked into information about this girl and learned that she has been in school clubs like robotics and mathletes, and she also plays soccer and dances. Her AP and SAT scores are ridiculously high and she participates in competitions like science fairs. She has to be our girl!"

Raph raised in eye brows in shock. Even though he knew his brother was a genius, it still always shocked him how quickly he could figure out the solution to any situation within a matter of days.

Leo nodded his head and smiled.
"So you think it's time we approach this woman?"
"Well, I figured out that she's living with a man under the last name Park and where his main location is, and based on some of the routes the camera angles showed her taking by bus, train, and on foot, I've been able to pin point that they live together in the same complex. So as soon as possible we should carefully approach her and get the flash drive back."
"We should be doing more than that!" Raph was getting angry now. "This chick came into our home and stole from us! I think we should bring her back and question her motives! How do we know she won't be back again?!"
"We're…we're not gonna hurt her right?" Mikey was concerned with where this conversation was going.
"Well fearless, what's the plan?"
Leo stopped and paused for a moment.
"Alright, Donnie figure out the best way for us to get to where she lives. We'll CAREFULLY try to approach her and see if we can either talk there, or bring her back here where it's safer for us so that we're not seen. BUT-" as he looked over at his youngest brother "if she starts getting violent or threatens us in any way, then we begin to use force. If it's obvious that just talking is too risky for our safety and secrecy, then we bring her back the hard way. In the end, it will be her choice as to how everything plays out."

Raph grew a nasty smile. From everything he had heard so far, this was no ordinary girl, and he couldn't wait to see what she was made of. He had waited a whole week to finally go out and catch the thief who had threatened the safety of his family and he was excited to finally get some answers.
He cracked his knuckles and faced his brothers. "Alright boys, tonight's Friday night, let's have some fun." And with that, he left the room to go exercise and get himself pumped up for whatever was in store for them later when day turned to night.
Mikey's eyebrows rose as he followed his brother out of the room.
"Hey, are we going somewhere?"