Chapter Text
Donatello woke up to a chill traversing all the way through his limp body.
His limbs felt heavy and drowned in static, like he'd been lying on them for too long. There was no way in Jersey he was moving a muscle.
"Guys... Did Splinter put the AC on full blast again?" Donnie murmured in a sleepy drawl. Wow, was he tired. He didn't remember going to bed, but maybe he collapsed on his desk after another overnighter...? That wasn't unheard of.
When the needles in his arms and legs began to ease up on their pricking, Donnie grew more aware of his situation. He was lying on a flat, cold surface; It was coarse, hard and so, so uncomfortable. It reminded him of the concrete floor in the garage. Was that where he fell asleep?
His arm still felt heavy when Donnie raised it to his forehead with a groan. He rubbed his eyes before even trying to blink them open, the lids feeling as if they'd been glued shut. But after some effort, he managed it, and his surroundings slowly came into focus.
Donatello's body was sluggish even when his senses alerted it into action. He sat up unbalanced, and had to catch himself from falling over to the opposite direction. His eyes had flown wide in an instant at the sudden reality crashing upon him.
Donnie was in a cage.
Metal bars, climbing from floor to ceiling, formed into three identical walls around him and one with a door. A door! Though all his neurons weren't firing yet, he managed to crawl to the possible exit and clung to its cold bars with a vice grip. He pulled it, pushed it, then shook and rattled it. The door wouldn't budge.
Breathing heavily, Donnie slumped against the next wall of bars and laid his palms flat against the floor. Okay. He was in a locked cage. By himself. Not an obstacle he couldn't overcome, but still a rather shocking one.
As quickly as he could, he spun his head left and right, trying to look around the otherwise strange and empty room. He couldn't recognize the place, but that didn't mean it really was unfamiliar. He drew in one more deep, stabilizing breath.
"Very funny, guys! Leo, you can step out and go on with whatever, quote, unquote, "hilarious " prank you believe this to be. I'm unbridled with joy already, brother," he spoke loudly into empty air, hoping to bait one of his siblings into answering. Nothing.
He decided to try something else.
"Daaad? Is this one of your unscheduled training exercises? Because you know I'm just going to look up the answer on my—"
Donnie gasped.
"My phone!" he whispered to himself, patting down his shell until he located the smart device. He pulled it up, immediately filled with relief as he gazed at the colorful icons of his home screen. Full battery, no bars—
No bars?
"Rats! Did he learn how to cut off the Wi-Fi?" Donnie muttered while tapping at his screen, "No matter." Putting the phone away, he reached for the cuff around his wrist instead. If he couldn't use the internet, at least he could still connect to his other inventio—
"Wh—? All this has is my current Battle Shell. Where are my other devices?"
Donnie found the vigor to stand up, and he grabbed the bars around him, totally not because he was wobbly still, but because he needed something to grip in his anger.
"WHO'S HACKED INTO MY SYSTEMS? REVEAL YOURSELF, YOU COWARDLY SECOND-RATE TECHNICIAN!"
Silence. Donnie grimaced. The odd stillness of the place was starting to get eerie. You know, on top of the fact that he was still very much locked inside a cage.
"Okay. There's no need to panic. Yes, I'm alone, but is it truly being alone if I still have my genius?"
He pulled up the Notes -app on his wrist cuff and started tapping to create a new memo.
"Let's tackle the issue step by step, shall we?" he mumbled to the empty room, "Observation One: I'm surrounded by metal bars on four sides with one door, locked from the outside. Observation Two: The room outside is currently unrecognizable to me. The floor is grey concrete. The walls are of red bricks, laid evenly from floor to ceiling. There's one overhead light. There is a single door made of metal with a square window at the top. It is unknown whether it's also locked."
Donnie began to pace while he recorded his situation.
"Observation Three: I woke up in an uncoordinated state that may have been the side-effect of a chemically-induced state of unconsciousness. Symptoms include, but may not be limited to: Sluggish thoughts, shaky and tingling limbs and difficulty moving around. All of these are fading rapidly as of now. Observation Four: There is no evidence of this being the doing of a friend or family member."
He stopped and took another long look around. He drew a deep breath through his nose and released it past his lips. As much as Donatello didn't want to admit it, he might really be in a pickle.
"Hypothesis: Under circumstances I'm unable to recall, I must've been drugged and taken into "custody"—Read: "Imprisonment"—by an enemy."