The broken tile.
Even to herself it was a weird focus and yet it was all she had, the only thing different in the whole world she had personally witnessed. That broken tile, plain white with a crack of grey, surrounded by others, each perfect and unremarkable, that very perfection making them invisible amongst their kind, laying edge to edge the stretched across the ceiling to the walls, then down and out of her sight, each tile without blemish becoming lost in a sea of others.
Her head was locked in place, as it had been since as far back as she could remember, a white leather strap across her forehead and two plates to each side of her face yet out of her sight, each well padded with cotton to remove there touch leaving only a slight pressure. Her body was the same, held gently yet firmly, insulated for sensation to leave her adrift and floating, no weight or felling, nothing to see or touch, no words or sounds, just a cracked tile, a single line of grey to keep her from breaking completely.
Her ears picked up a muted hiss from behind, a sharp tang she was familiar with slowly filled her senses as her eyes started to grow heavy, the grey line slowly being swallowed by the white glare as her mind sunk under a tide of sleep, eyelids fluttering closed her sight failed, sleep claiming her into its embrace as the hidden door opened, by the third sharp footstep she was gone from the world once more, to awaken only at the whim of one she had never seen.
The pressure all around her was different, foreign, alien.
Her eyes snapped open to be stung by the unfamiliar weight that touched them, her body jerked in surprise and her breath expelled soundlessly into a silver cloud of bubbles, something was on her face, covering her mouth and nose, she reached up to touch it, her hand where free! She could move, more bubbles spilled as her breathe stormed out of her control, her heart, its slow steady beat picking up speed until it hurt her chest.
The crack was gone, everything was so strange, so alien that she sought out the only thing she knew to be familiar, her stinging eyes looked past the streams of silver that tickled at her face, beyond the strange distortion that bent everything on the far side in strange way, all in search of a single crack, a crack that was not there.
Half concealed by the bubbles, distorted by the barrier her hand weakly touched was two blurs of colours, her stinging eyes could barely see them, one red and pink, the other, taller, green, grey and golden, they looked at her even as she stared at them before a sudden coldness flooded her body and sleep claimed her once more, she ran to it willingly, the darkness a comfort, it at least was something she knew, somewhere to hide from what she did not understand.
False memory, one not of her own but one she had been given produced the word she needed to describe herself, Fear, she had been afraid of the changes. Willingly she sank into oblivion, the strangeness outside her mind vanishing as she curled within her white dreams full of grey cracks, a place free of fear.
The tanks occupant stilled quickly as the fast acting sedatives took affect, banks of complex medical equipments stopped their shrill alarm warnings as monitors displayed the girls vitals returning to the slow rhythms of sleep.
Sealing the IV injector port Sakura turned to her mentor with a worried frown, casually disposing of the empty syringe into a waste material container for later disposal, her teacher was reading a rather slim set of notes on the subject, neither of the two medical prodigies where happy with what they knew already from just a glance at the female floating within the medical solution.
"ShishÅ, Her heart rate has stabilised but the ECG is still showing that echo, her blood pressure is still extremely high even when sedated, if I didn't know better I'd suspect a secondary heart but that would tear her arteries apart not to mention the train on..."
she was interrupted by a snort from her master, a single dismissive noise that stopped her in her tracks and focused her attention fully on the older women.
"Sakura, what have I told you about making groundless assumptions? Until she's stable enough for us to perform a full chakra scan we cant be sure of anything with this girl, all we have is a preliminary on site report from Ino. no medical records, no mention of bloodlines or history, nothing except what we can see with our own eye's, the basics from a diagnostic jutsu and what these machines can tell us and that's not much, starvation, long term incarceration with limited movement, albino, subject to multiple medical procedures, extensive tissue damage, both external and internal from unknown chemicals, tissue samples and pictures recovered from the lab also point to multiple vivisection on her and her departed sisters, until she can be taken from that tank without the risk of infection all we can do is trust that she has survived this long and will continue to do so for a little longer"
"Has Shikamaru found the purpose of that lab ? Why they would do this to these girls?"
"weapons research, was his best guess, improved humans to turn into perfect ninja, from his report these girls where all tank breed, test pieces before the serious work started, that girl in there was created for the soul purpose to be tortured to death to provide resistance and compatibility data, she's tough but they made her to fail, proof testing of a prototype design, inhuman, immoral and if it had worked, very profitable."
" why would they take one of Ino's clan for this? There is no connection, all they did was draw attention to this... this!"
"You cant have a massed produced soldier that needs years of training and get a quick profit Sakura, Naoki yamanaka was to help test a memory implant device, a device that was destroyed by Naoki before his rescue, although from what his report on its function suggests it was also an early model, fully able to add selective information but unable to force connection, more the dream of a memory than the memory itself, this girl owes her survival to that device, she was its test subject and the only reason she is alive is that he assures me she has a mind, between him and the machine she is more than an empty shell, although how much more remains to be seen. Now go get some rest Sakura you have a mission tomorrow, Shizune will keep an eye on her tonight"
"Hai, I'd like to see how Naruto is recovering first though, he's been over doing his training again.
"Go on Sakura, just remember to get some rest."
The older woman smiled at herself as her student left, the war between Hinata and Sakura over Naruto's heart was amusing if only for the fact the young blond had yet to realise either was actively hunting his attention, turning to the glass tube the Hokage laid her hand on its cold surface.
"You stay alive a little longer girl, then we will see if you someone else under his memories".