This story was written for theherocomplex's 2014 Mini-bang, and illustrated by fivefootoh (you can see the illustrated version on my A03 account). It is both the biggest writing challenge I've had to date, and also some of the most fun I've had writing.

For as long as she could remember, April had known exactly what she wanted to do with her life. Yet, it seemed that with every turn, she was faced with something else forcing her carefully-laid plans off the rails. The fire. Her father. The years of having to take time off school to waitress in order to pay down her debt. Oh, the job at Channel 6 had been a dream come true, until April had realized that all they needed was a pretty face to jump up and down on things. And then, the biggest wrench in the works of all. The chance encounter on the rooftop that had sent her life spiralling out of control.

She never would have thought that spiral could have been the launching pad she needed to turn it all around again, yet here she was. April O'Neil: Investigative Reporter.

I wish this lab was a little more…. lab-y, she thought as she checked her reflection the reflective glass of a bookcase - McNaughton never hesitated to bring it up if she looked anything less than professional. She turned her attention back to the rest of the room, surveying it with a critical eye. The racks of test tubes on the workbench along the wall said "science", she supposed, and it would do as a backdrop in a pinch, but it was all very neat and orderly. The networked computer monitors in the corner were a little more promising, displaying a bewildering stream of numbers and 3D renderings of what appeared to be rotating molecules. The poster on the wall above of a grinning alien displaying the words "scientist salarian" didn't hurt, either.

"Sorry to keep you waiting, Miss O'Neil. The test ran long, and we couldn't stop mid-cycle."

April turned as the subject of her interview entered the room, and had to fight back disappointment there, too. It wasn't that he wasn't photogenic — he was actually very handsome, in a put-together sort of way, and there was something familiar about him that could have been endearing if he wasn't so stiff and formal. His dark skin contrasted sharply with the flawless white of his lab coat, and the smart button-down and tailored slacks he wore beneath it could have belonged on any businessman. Even his hair had been groomed to military precision. At least now she knew who was responsible for the orderly nature of the majority of the lab, but it would have been nice to have a little more "Back to the Future" for the camera. Or at the very least, a de Grasse Tyson or a Nye. She really wanted the viewers to stick with her on this one.

"That's all right, Dr. Stockman," she said, extending her hand. "Thank you for taking the time to meet with me."

Stockman shook her hand, his grip warm and firm, which she appreciated — too many of the scientists in these interviews shook her hand like she was some kind of doll. She also appreciated that his gaze hadn't drifted downward as so often happened with other interviewees, but his attention was on the camera over her shoulder. "Is this going to be live?"

"Nah," Vernon replied, lowering the camera and checking his levels. "Just getting as much footage as we can. We'll edit it together for the broadcast. Make sure you look good."

"I appreciate that," Stockman said, straightening his coat. "I'm afraid I don't do well on the spot. I much prefer being in the lab than in front of people."

"I understand," April said, glancing to Vern. At his nod, she raised her mic. Game time. "Now, if you don't mind, Dr. Stockman, your recent breakthroughs in nanotechnology have been the cover stories of both Science and Wired this year. Can you explain how this technology stands ready to revolutionize biomedical research?"

The nanotech was only part of the reason she'd gone after Stockman for an interview, but she took it seriously all the same - she hadn't nearly gotten herself killed on the Sacks story and fought her way to a re-hire with a promotion just to half-ass it. But as the interview progressed, Stockman made the work she loved almost painful. It wasn't that she couldn't understand what he was talking about — she hadn't been reading up on his research in mainstream and academic journals for the past week for nothing — but there was no way that her current core viewership, who still felt the need to write long e-mails about how she should undo a few buttons on her top, would be able to folllow the complex scientific details.

Stockman was starting to feel the pressure, too. After the third time she rephrased her question, trying to get a more direct answer from him, he threw up his hands in defeat. "I really don't know what else to say, Miss O'Neil. If it's not perfectly clear that the genetic refraction index of the polypeptides governs the sensory apparatus of the biomechanoid interface, then I don't know what to tell you. Please, excuse me. You can show yourselves out."

April exchanged a panicked look with Vernon. She couldn't let this opportunity slip away. If she blew this story, she'd be back on the street interviewing the vendors at the International Frankfurter Festival and giving out paper crowns to the owners of the "longest wieners." McNaughton would never let that go.

She darted in front of him, blocking his escape route. "I think we've got what we need," she said, ignoring Vern's raised brows on the other side of the camera. "Now, if you have any colleagues we could talk to, I'd like to get some colour commentary on how inspirational your work has been." Unseen by Stockman, Vern flashed her a thumbs-up.

Stockman preened a little at her words, mollified for now. "Well, there is my graduate student. Perhaps you could have a word with her." He turned to the doorway of the lab he'd refused to let the camera into for "confidentiality reasons" and raised his voice. "Langenstein, would you come here?"

"I really don't think I should leave this unattended," a woman's voice called back.

With a small moue of distaste, Stockman excused himself and vanished into the workroom. Moments later, the owner of the other voice emerged, and April couldn't help the grin that spread across her face. This was her viewer-friendly scientist. And if she didn't miss her guess, she was looking at the owner of the sticker over the computers too.

The young woman was probably in her late twenties or early thirties, but where Stockman was the model of a 1950s starched-shirt NASA scientist, his graduate student looked like she'd wandered out of some kind of nerdy rave and into a lab coat. Her short hair hung in messy waves, cut close to the nape of her neck at the back but hanging past her chin at the front. It had been dyed a light purple, probably done herself, as some of the under sections hadn't been bleached out and showed black through the colour. Her right hand was tattooed, and as the young woman glanced back at the lab, April caught sight of a Hebrew character inked at the nape of her neck.

"Hi," April said, holding out her hand. "April O'Neil, Channel 6 News. This is my producer, Vernon Fenwick. We'd like to talk to you about the work you do with Dr. Stockman."

"Irma Langenstein," she said, shaking April's hand. "He said you wanted me to make him look good?" She frowned at the camera and then glanced down at herself. "Am I going to be on TV? I didn't exactly dress for it."

Beneath the lab coat, she wore jeans, sneakers with colourful koi embroidered on them, and a blue shirt with a stylized "R" logo and the words "REYNHOLM INDUSTRIES" emblazoned across the front.

April smiled. "You're perfect. So what do you do for Dr. Stockman?"

"Far too much for what he pays me," she said, then glanced askance at the camera. "Wait, were you filming that? Please tell me you didn't just film that."

"You're safe," Vern said, his grin matching April's. "I promise we won't air anything that'll get you fired."

"Oh, good." Irma leaned back against the desk. "I was hired a couple years ago to do the back-end coding for the nanobot programs, which is where my Ph.D. thesis is focused, but I've gotten roped in to anything Dr. Stockman doesn't want to do." She started listing off on her fingers. "Preparing electrophoresis slides, maintaining the experimental cell culture, TA-ing his classes so that his students actually stand a chance of understanding something he says—"

"Wait, that last one," April said.

Irma grinned. "Oh, yeah. Stockman's brilliant, but nobody without a Master's at the bare minimum can understand a thing that comes out of his mouth—" she caught herself and glanced at the camera again.

"Safe," Vern assured her.

"So," April said, "you can translate Dr. Stockman's words into plain English."

Irma nodded. "That's what I get paid the nonexistent bucks for."

"So, this nanotech stuff—"

"Oh, the official explanation goes on for several pages and has a textbook worth of footnotes, but all you really need to know is this." Beckoning, she walked them over to the glowing computer screens. "This is the good part. See this molecule here? It's part of a compound that lets us tailor our experimental cell cultures to do exactly what we need them to do. At the same time, it acts like a homing beacon for the nanobots. So let's say you've got an inoperable brain tumour, right? You bond the compound to one of the cancerous cells, and it'll spread to the brain tumour — but only the brain tumour — and it flags it for the nanobots to come and break the cells down. Bam! No more cancer."

"Okay, see, that? That sounds revolutionary." Vern glanced over the camera. "Why couldn't Stockman just have said that?"

"Because then he wouldn't sound smart," Irma replied. "I'm oversimplifying greatly, of course, but that's the gist of it."

"Okay," April said, brushing her hair behind her ear. "We've got a great start. Now, let's get some of the details down. Tell me about the programming work that you're doing."

Compared to Stockman's half of the interview, Irma was gold. She had a habit of snarking before thinking, which meant editing was going to be tricky to cut the unusable lines out, but she was incredibly good at boiling the complicated concepts down into easy-to-understand terms. More than that, she was animated. She clearly adored the work that she was doing, and it showed. No wonder she was in demand as a TA. After half an hour with her, April was almost regretting her decision to go into journalism instead of science.

"Okay, I think we got it," Vern said. He glanced at his watch and swore under his breath. "We're gonna be tight for the deadline, O'Neil, I'll meet you in the van. Nice work, Ms. Langenstein."

Irma toyed with a lock of hair as Vernon dashed out the door to start cutting the interview together, and glanced at April. "You think so?"

"Definitely," April said, packing her mic into its case. "How come I haven't seen you in any of the material on Stockman before?"

"I'm a girl in computer engineering," Irma said. "You're in a boys-club industry, too. You tell me."

April winced in sympathy. "Well, it's their loss. You're really good at this."

Irma smiled, and some of the guarded wariness she'd worn since she stepped into the room began to slip. "Really? I've thought about going into science journalism after my Ph.D., since, y'know, I'm good at talking about this stuff in ways that don't make people want to defenestrate themselves out of boredom. You think I've got a shot?"

Slinging her bag over her shoulder, April dug out one of her cards and handed it to Irma. "Tell you what. I've gotta run if we're going to make our deadline, but send me an e-mail, and we'll have lunch sometime and talk it over."

When she made it back to the van, she had only four words for Vernon. "Make her look good."

The cut that made it to air just under the wire was spectacular, and Irma fairly shone. They watched the broadcast from the back of the van, and when it was finished, April turned to Vern with a grin. "Maybe now they'll start taking her seriously."

"We did a good thing, O'Neil," Vern agreed. He took a breath, raising a hand to scratch the back of his head with a deliberate casualness. "So, I was thinking, it's been a long day, and there's this great Korean place just around the corner."

"Vern," April sighed. "We talked about this. We tried—"

"And it didn't work, yeah, I know. And we're friends. At least, I think we're friends—"

"We're good friends," April corrected.

"Right, right," he said. "And I'm totally cool with that. But friends, you know, friends go out to dinner from time to time, and—"

April rested her hand against his arm and he fell silent, watching her. "We're friends. And we will go out to dinner from time to time. But right now, there's somewhere I have to be."

"Of course there is," he sighed, leaning his head back against the editing monitors. "So how did you end up being a single mom of teenagers at your age, anyway?"

"Just lucky, I guess," she answered wryly. Grabbing her bags and slinging the strap of the heaviest over her shoulder, she let herself out the back of the news van. "Good night, Vern."

"Night, April," Vern answered with a crooked grin. "Good work today."

"Yeah," she said, and smiled at him. "You too."

It was strange how the trip down into the sewers felt so familiar. She'd only been taking this particular route for a few weeks, but it felt like coming home. Weeks of salvage, done over countless furtive, clandestine trips, had finally come to fruition. The result was a home that, while laden with the familiar objects that carried with them the memories of fifteen years of growing and learning together, also spoke of something new. New beginnings. New family.

April shook her head with a small, self-deprecating smile. You've been writing too much copy, O'Neil.

The brick she pressed her palm against looked like any other in the wall, but the telltale thrum beneath her hand told her it was the right one. A few seconds later, she heard the heavy thunks of the locking bolts releasing, and she threw herself against the door.

For the first few seconds, the door inched open as she struggled with the weight of the heavy concrete. Then, it jerked out from beneath her, and only the massive green hand that reached out to catch her kept her from toppling to the floor.

"Hey, April."

With a grin, April reached up to pat the biceps larger than her head. "Hey, Raph. Donnie still hasn't done anything about this stupid door, huh?"

Raphael answered her with a rare grin before he shrugged. "He said something about pulleys and pneumatic something or others, but that was about when I tuned him out." Without offering or waiting for an answer, he plucked one of the bags from her shoulder and headed down the corridor. But since the stupid thing had been incredibly heavy, April didn't complain. She just trotted down the hall after him to where the rest of the family waited.

"April!"

She braced herself for the blow as the streak of green and orange barreled out of the kitchen and grabbed her into a hug so fierce that her feet left the ground. A soft squeak wheezed out of her as she stared into Mikey's beaming face.

"Dollface!" he crowed. "Didja bring me something good?"

"A smack upside the head?" Raph growled from behind April. "Please say it's a smack upside the head."

"It's better than a smack upside the head," April said, "but only if you wait your turn."

"Awww," Mikey protested, but gentle hands intervened and pried April loose from his enthusiastic grip. April cast Leo a grateful look, and was rewarded by his knowing smile as April shifted her bag and crossed the room.

The chaise had been her gift, bought with the first paycheck she'd received after landing her new job. In this home of patchwork and worn edges, it stood out as one of the truly new things here, but it was soft, and warm, and good for aching bones that needed time and care to heal. April knelt next to the chair, smiling at its occupant. "I brought you something."

Splinter had come closer than any of them to not making it through the night that the boys had first brought her home, and though he still helped the boys with training, he still needed a great deal of rest. The chill of their new home hadn't helped much, but thanks to a large number of YouTube tutorials and yarn remainder sales, she and Raphael had begun crocheting an afghan. Half completed, it lay across his lap, the bright colours vivid against his dark fur. But though his healing was taking its time, Splinter's eyes were bright as he regarded her, smiling warmly as he laid a gnarled hand against her hair.

"You have brought so much already, April. You did not need to."

She couldn't help leaning into the touch, just a little. There wasn't a day that passed that she didn't miss her father, and everything that had happened with the Shredder, with Sachs, with the turtles themselves, had opened those wounds again and laid them raw. Splinter wasn't her father. Could never be her father. But the warmth of his touch — it took some of the sting away.

"I wanted to," she corrected. Reaching into her bag, she pulled out the tissue-wrapped bundle within and passed it to the rat.

His hands were steady as they unfurled the bright paper, and the observation filled her with relief. Even a week ago, they hadn't been so. A soft breath left him as he pulled the delicate little teacup out from the wrapping. "It is lovely, April."

"I saw it in the window of this little shop when we were wrapping up our shoot, and I thought of you," she said, sitting back on her heels. "I'm glad you like it."

"Soooo," came the voice at her elbow, and April smiled despite herself. "I waited my turn." Looking over her shoulder into Mikey's earnest face, she knew she should at least make a token attempt to be stern, but she just couldn't do it.

"You don't have to give him anything," Leo pointed out.

"No." April reached into her bag. "He did wait his turn."

Mikey was practically vibrating in place as she pulled out the six-pack, and he let out a squeak as the dim light in the lair fell on the electric green of the cans. "Dew!" He grabbed them from her, hugging them to his chest. "My girlfriend is so awesome!"

"Mikey," April laughed. "Remember our talk."

"And by girlfriend I mean girl who is a friend whose boundaries I respect and whose beauty I appreciate in a totally platonic way!" The words left him in a rush as he bounced to his feet, pausing only long enough to kiss the top of her head before he took off for the kitchen at a run. "I love you, April!" His words drifted back from the next room.

"Well, at least that got him out of the way." Leo took a seat on the battered couch they'd dragged back from some scavenging run a couple weeks ago. He tossed her a pillow, and she gratefully shoved it between her butt and the cold floor. Furniture was still on the to-do list, and she'd spent most of her money on Splinter's chair. The look Leo turned on her was amused, but there was that edge beneath it that she was coming to recognize as Leo's business face. ""So," he said, resting an elbow on his knee. "What did you bring for the rest of us?"

April smirked. "I take it you watched my piece?"

"We wouldn't dream of missing it," Splinter said, pausing in his examination of the delicate painting adorning the teacup.

"You looked good," Raph added, without meeting her gaze. He'd come to rest on a stool across the three-legged coffee-table, the fourth corner of which was held up by a pile of cinder blocks. She'd bought the biggest crochet hook she could find, but even the 10-millimeter hook was dwarfed by Raph's hands as he worked diligently on the next square of Splinter's afghan.

"Thanks," April said, wrapping her arms around her knees as she turned her attention back to Leo. "And we were right. That Stockman guy totally fits the profile. Creepy lab. Long hours. Unique research field nobody else is into." She frowned. "He didn't seem worried, though. Maybe it's a dead end." She blew a strand of hair out of her eyes and looked up at Leo. "Am I just connecting the dots for the sake of a story?"

"Aww, hey, now," Mikey said, returning to the room with a can of Mountain Dew and a contented expression. "I dunno what's got our girl down, but whatever it is, it ain't right." He dropped down to sit next to her, offering her his can. A few weeks ago, she would have turned him down. Now, she just shrugged and took a sip before passing it back.

"Mikey's right… sort of," Leo said. "Just because Donnie can't find a connection between the work the missing scientists are doing doesn't mean there isn't one."

"Yeah, dude doesn't know everything," Mikey said, nudging her gently, which almost bowled her over. "I mean, he knows way more than me. But not everything."

April frowned, looking around the room. "Where is Donnie, anyway?"

"Date night," Leo and Raph chorused in unison, followed by a snort of laughter from Raphael.

April stared at them. "Date night?"

"It's date night?" Mikey exclaimed in dismay. "Why didn't somebody tell me it was date night?"

"Date night?" April repeated with slightly more emphasis, looking from the boys to their father.

"Date night," Splinter said wearily.

From the back of the lair drifted the aggrieved, slightly nasal tones of the missing brother. "It's not a date!"

"Aw, man!" Mikey pushed himself to his feet, passing his soda to April. "I can't believe I'm missing date night!"

As Michelangelo sprinted to the back room where Donatello had set up his command centre, April set the abandoned soda on the tilted coffee table, catching it before it could slide off again and bracing it there with the TV remote. Once she was sure it wasn't going to drench her with processed sugar syrum, she turned her attention back to the others. "I can't be the only one who sees a potential problem here."

Leo just smiled and shook his head. "Don't worry. He's not stupid. He goes online with this girl a couple times a month to do some game… thing. Voice only. Mikey's decided he needs to be part of it, but Donnie makes sure he doesn't let anything slip."

"I don't believe this," April muttered under her breath, and looked over at Splinter. "And you're okay with this?"

"Don't look at me." Splinter folded his hands over his teacup. "In my day, a date was a piece of cheese and giving up your turn on the running wheel." A clawed hand stroked his whiskers. "Donatello is cautious. I trust him." His dark eyes met hers, and there was something unspoken within them. An echo of words spoken a seeming lifetime ago drifted through the back of her mind. I knew one day they would want to explore the world above. They would be ridiculed.

And she finally understood. Donatello was cautious. Doubly so, after the security breach that April herself had caused, which had nearly destroyed them all. But this one thing that Donatello had discovered — it gave him a chance at something that wouldn't have been possible even a few years ago. It gave him a taste of normalcy.

"Go on," Leo laughed. "I know you're dying to check it out."

She didn't need any more encouragement. In seconds, she was on her feet.

Of all the rooms in their new home, Donnie's command centre looked the most like it had before the attack on the old lair. It wasn't particularly surprising — Donnie had managed to amass an astonishing collection of tech that would have been hard to replace (she figured it was probably best that she didn't know where it had come from in the first place), and the mainframes had been enough away from the bombs to shield most of the computers from the blast. April had spent enough time with the guys in IT to know that tech types could be incredibly picky about their setup once they had it the way they liked it.

Beneath the glow of the wall of screens, Donnie held a flailing Mikey at arm's length, his hand planted firmly over Mikey's mouth. "I don't know," he said, and April ducked against the doorframe, suddenly unwilling to be seen. "Are you seeing a difference in multiplayer with the new patch?"

"Totally," came the answer through the computer speakers. "Loadout takes half the time, and I don't get shot by my noobs nearly as much."

Donnie snorted, seemingly oblivious to Mikey's increasingly desperate flailing. "I can't believe you're still carrying them around. You sure they're not doing it on purpose?"

"You've never seen them on a mission. The safest things on the map are the things they're trying to shoot on purpose." That got a laugh from Donnie, the mystery voice joining in. "Come on, Donnie, someone's gotta train 'em. And I'm way nicer than a lot of the jerks in Victory squad."

April's brow furrowed as she leaned a little closer. That voice was annoyingly familiar.

"Personally," Donnie continued, "I'm more excited for when the arsenal expansion pack finally drops on the—AAAAUGH!" He let go of Mikey as though he'd been burned, glaring at him through his thick lenses. "Did you just lick me?"

"Is that Mikey?" The voice on the other end of the mic was clearly laughing.

Donnie sighed. "Unfortunately."

"Irma!" Mikey crowed.

April hurriedly clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle her gasp. Of course she knew that voice. How in the hell was the world that small? But Mikey, now unleashed, wasn't about to be stifled again.

"Irma Irma Irma Irma Irma!" Mikey leaned over Donnie's shoulder and flipped a switch.

Donnie scowled at him and flipped it back. "Stop that."

"Irma, sweetie baby dollface, tell me you got the good stuff for me," Mikey crooned, ignoring Donnie's attempts to push Mikey's elbow out of his face. "Please please please please please."

"I got you covered, buddy," Irma said. "But if I do this thing, you give me and Donnie some alone time, right?"

"Right right right. Bring it on, girl!"

Irma's snort was audible. "Donnie, incoming."

"Yes!" Mikey danced expectantly from foot to foot as he stared entreatingly at Donnie. Heaving a long-suffering sigh, Donnie leaned forward and clicked on a link that had popped up on one of his monitors. In response, a video sprang to life on a smaller monitor in the corner. A large cat sat on top of a shelf, washing its paw as a small kitten frantically spun in a circle beside it, chasing its tail. A second later, the kitten toppled off the shelf, as the large cat belatedly reached out with an ineffectual paw. Mikey watched with obvious delight, bursting into a gale of laughter at the end. "Ohhh, girl, you know what I like. Not like some people." He swatted at Donnie's shoulder, initiating a flurry of smacking that ceased only when Irma forcefully reminded them that she could hear them. Finally, Mikey settled to watch the video on a quiet loop, snickering softly to himself as Donnie turned his attention back to his monitors.

"You still there?"

"Mmmm." The sound of typing drifted over the speakers. "Just deleting a few e-mails from this dating site. I really need to deactivate my profile one of these days, but they make it an awful lot of work."

"Why would you want to do that?" Donnie adjusted his glasses, frowning at the speaker.

April knew the weary fatigue in the answering sigh all too well. "I'm just tired of getting all these e-mails and going through all the work of setting up dates just to have it go nowhere. High investment, zero return."

Donnie snorted. "Why wouldn't it go anywhere, though? You're smart, you're funny, and you can clear the Antares Base in under ten minutes. What's not to like?"

April's lips curved into a fond smile as she leaned her head against the doorframe, even as her heart gave a small pang of regret. With all the machismo and bravado and endless pop culture references she had to navigate when talking to the turtles, it was the offhanded, unintentional kindnesses like that which had made her come to realize just how good they were at heart, and it saddened her that if Donnie and Irma were to meet in reality, she'd be more likely to run away screaming than to last long enough in conversation with him to witness it.

The warmth in Irma's voice said clearly that Donnie's oblivious sweetness wasn't lost on her either. "Thanks, Donnie. Really. But interested girls on this site are pretty much nonexistent, and for most of the guys, all that stuff just isn't enough," Though her sigh was audible through the speakers, her next words were soft enough that April almost missed them. "I guess I'm tired of opening the door on dates and feeling like the first words out of my mouth should be 'I'm sorry I'm not pretty.'" She cleared her throat, the sound followed by several forceful keystrokes. "Enough about that. I've been waiting for this since I got to work this morning. Are we going to do this thing or what?"

"You betcha." Donnie tapped a few keys. In answer, several monitors changed their displays to show an alien landscape and a stern woman in bulky, futuristic armour toting an implausibly large gun. "So how was work today?"

Irma groaned. "Long. But interesting, at least. The prof I work for was supposed to be getting interviewed by this news crew, but they ended up getting foisted off on me, so I guess I was on the—"

At Irma's words, Donnie's hand slipped on his mouse. In response, the space commander on his monitor let a rain of bullets fly from her gun. There was an answering scream from the game on the other end of the line, followed by Irma's irritated, "Donnie, what the hell?"

"That was you?" he asked, his voice squeaking with incredulity.

"Yeah, it was me. Geez, and you think my noobs are bad when it comes to shooting me."

"No, no, I mean — gah, sorry, hang on, I'll use a medi-pack — I mean on the news."

"You saw that," Irma replied.

And now April recognized the voice. Where before there had been casual familiarity and warmth in Irma's voice that rang through even the tinniness of Donnie's speakers, now it was the same one April had spent the night listening to. There was a distance there; she was guarded. Wary. Bracing for something. Not that it took much reasoning to figure out. Irma was a girl gamer who'd just been outed on the internet, and unlike April, she also had no idea what Donnie was going to do with that information.

But Donnie ploughed on, oblivious. "Oh, yeah! My friend—" he caught himself before he could out April, too. "Uh, likes to, erm, watch the news."

"Nice save, brah," Mikey whispered, restarting his cat video again, ducking the empty coffee cup that Donnie lobbed at his head.

"And you were great! Those algorithms are pure genius, and the way you solved for the sequencing variables? It must have taken you weeks to come up with that. What's it like to have that kind of technology to work with? Have you found anything statistically relevant yet? Did you…. Irma?"

Donnie fell silent, finally realizing that the girl on the other end wasn't responding. He called out her name again, and even Mikey paused his video, listening to the odd series of thumps coming through the speaker. Donnie reached out and turned up the volume, his brow furrowing. Something shattered on the other end. Slowly, Mikey rose to his feet, drifting over to stand at Donnie's shoulder. "Irma?" Donnie said again, his voice tense with uncertainty.

There was a sound like a distant, muffled scream, which cut off abruptly. A window popped up on Donnie's main screen to let him know that the call had been terminated.

"Oh man," Donnie breathed. He kicked off against his desk, rolling his chair to the keyboard he used on the primary mainframe, which handled all of the lair's security protocols. His fingers flew across the keys with an agility April always found astonishing for their size. His eyes flicked from monitor to monitor as the screens began scrolling with the stark white-on-black of lines of code. "Please don't think it's creepy, please don't think it's creepy, please don't think it's creepy…"

"What?" Mikey poked at his shoulder. "What are you doing?"

"Isolating her ISP to get her location and hacking the nearest traffic camera. Y'know. Just to be sure."

Mikey just stared at him. "No, dude, that is totally creepy."

April was inclined to agree. Leaving the safety of her doorway, she stepped forward, intending to put a stop to this before Donnie went too far. But even as she did so, his large central monitor switched to an infra-red image of a dark street. As they watched, horrified, several masked men dragged a kicking, struggling, figure in pyjama pants and a tank top out of the basement apartment of one of the row houses to the van that waited at the curb. Despite the fact that her wrists were behind her back and a bag over her head, their captive managed to land a solid kick to the groin of the man holding her feet. As he doubled over and dropped to the ground, another stepped forward, striking her hard across the head before jamming a sparking rod that was all too familiar into her ribs. She went limp, and her attackers took the moment to secure her ankles with zip ties before tossing her in the back of the van. Seconds later, the camera flared as the basement was engulfed in flames.

Donnie spun around, his horrified gaze meeting April's and Mikey's before he opened his mouth to bellow the one thing they all were thinking. "Leo!"