Chapter 5: The Game Begins
Baxter Stockman had always been a man of ambition, but now?
Now, he was a man of calculated power.
And power, like any tool, needed to be wielded properly.
Sitting across from April in his dimly lit lab, he could see the conflict in her eyes. She wanted to trust him—wanted to believe that his newfound confidence, his vision, wasn't just another downward spiral.
So he had to make it clear.
This wasn't the old Stockman.
This was something new.
And he wasn't going to ask for trust.
He was going to earn it.
---
Stockman leaned back in his chair, hands steepled. "April, let me ask you something—do you want to change the world?"
April scoffed. "What, you think I'm some idealist?"
He smirked. "No. I think you're a realist who knows when she's staring at an opportunity."
Her jaw tightened, but she didn't deny it.
He pressed on. "You've seen what I can do. You've seen the designs. TCRI? They're sitting on technology decades ahead of what we have access to. If I get into their systems, I can accelerate prosthetics, medical advancements, AI research—things that could revolutionize society."
April crossed her arms. "And put yourself on every government watchlist while you're at it."
Stockman chuckled. "Not if I do it right."
She narrowed her eyes. "And how exactly do you plan on doing that?"
He slid a small tablet across the desk. "With this."
April picked it up, scrolling through the lines of code.
Her eyes widened. "Wait… this is a—"
"A backdoor algorithm," he finished. "It won't steal data. Just… peek inside TCRI's firewalls, see what they're hiding. No alarms, no digital footprints. Just knowledge."
April hesitated.
Stockman leaned in, lowering his voice. "You know they're hiding something. Don't you want to find out what?"
April exhaled, staring at the tablet. She had spent years digging into the secrets of corporations, exposing the truth where others turned a blind eye.
And TCRI?
They had always been at the top of her list.
She looked up at Stockman. "I must be crazy."
He grinned. "No, April. You're finally seeing things my way."
---
Unbeknownst to them, across the city, a pair of glowing red eyes narrowed.
Deep within the Foot Clan's hidden compound, Oroku Saki studied a holographic feed of Stockman's lab.
The hidden surveillance drones had been monitoring him for days.
But this?
This was new.
Stockman had always been a brilliant scientist, but this level of confidence, of control? It was unnatural.
And Saki did not trust what he could not predict.
A Foot Ninja stepped forward, bowing. "My lord, shall we intervene?"
Shredder's voice was like steel. "No. Not yet."
He turned away from the monitor, the shadows stretching behind him.
"Let us see how far Baxter Stockman is willing to go."
End of Chapter 5.