A/N: The thing with the dates is really strange, so I should probably explain.

The Japanese Naruto manga began publication in 1999. I took that as the year the series started (as in, Naruto became a Genin in 1999 in the Naruto universe). Orochimaru is 50 years old at series start. Therefore, he would have been born in 1949. The year on Kenji's records is 1974, making Orochimaru roughly 25 years old.

Now, we know that Orochimaru left the Leaf Village 10 or 11 years prior to the series starting (in his fight with Sarutobi, he said that it was 10 years).

This still works, because we know that Orochimaru was doing experiments while he was in the Leaf, anyway.

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or any of the characters in this fanfic (except Kenji).

Instinctively he winced away, dreading what could crawl out of such a space. Nothing happened, and the hole gaped dumbly at him. He pulled a kunai out of his pouch, and flung it into the wall. It clattered to the floor almost instantly. The hole was obviously just that, and not a tunnel.

He went back to his lab, and dug through the still-open junk drawer. A matchbook lay right on top of everything else, but even after relieving the entire drawer of its contents he couldn't find a candle.

In fact, it seemed that there was no candle to be found in his entire lab. Kabuto knew perfectly well where he could get one…but he didn't want to leave the records closet in such disarray.

Especially since Sasuke's alone in the autopsy room…

He rolled his eyes at his own paranoia. He had just given Sasuke enough morphine to knock him out for…well, he didn't know exactly how long, since he botched the dose so badly. It was a fair assumption, though, that the boy wouldn't stir for a while.

That decided; he went to see Orochimaru.

He was never actually able to speak with his master, as he had been fast asleep in his room. Kabuto wondered if giving him that strong of a sedative had been wise. Perhaps not, in the long run, but for now it had actually worked to his benefit. He was too frazzled to confront Orochimaru.

Through some lucky poking around, he was able to find dusty candles. In the same place he saw a few matchbooks. After a moment of thought, he shoved two of them into his kunai pouch.

When he got back to his lab, he walked straight through it to the storage closet. Sasuke began to wheeze. Kabuto slammed the door to the autopsy room shut. He did not want to hear Sasuke's sniveling while he was trying to work.

Staring at the hole, he lit the candle and took a deep breath. It occurred to him that he should get a dust mask or some sort of protection. The last thing he needed was to get sick from some toxic mold or long-dormant bacteria. However, after having to run around for a candle, he simply didn't feel like waiting any longer.

The opening in the wall was low, and he had to duck down to get into it. In the back of his mind, he hoped that the ceiling in the hidden room was higher than the top of the portal, but he had no such luck. He was forced to remain in a crouch, and even then, his shoulders brushed the ceiling. The thought of slime coating his back brought about a shudder.

The chamber was empty, save for an unremarkable cardboard box sitting in the center of it. Slouching and dust-coated, it was a booby prize for all of his efforts. Even so, Kabuto was fascinated by it. If the box itself was any indication, the contents of it were old. Very old.

Leaving it alone was the best option, really, but curiosity prevailed once again. After all, he was a spy, and gathering potentially secret information was his life. Switching the candle to his other hand, he knelt next to it, and pried the rotted cardboard flaps away.

The box was packed tight with files and folders. Medical records, from the looks of them, although they were probably far from official. The folders were crumpled and bent, and no reputable doctor would have left them in such a state. His eyes brushed over unfamiliar names, scrawled messily on the tabs.

He picked up a folder at random. "Kosuke, Kenji." The papers inside were torn and yellowed with age. Kabuto leafed through them, his fingers running over lines upon lines of neatly printed analysis. The handwriting was his master's.

April 15, 1974
Name: Kenji Kosuke
Age: 17
Sex: M
Height: 175.3 cm
Weight: 72.5 kg
Cell: 186
Notes: In suitable health. No kekkei genkai. Chunin from the squad of Kiyoshi. Excels in Ninjutsu; Genjutsu and Taijutsu abilities questionable.

October 27, 1974
Name: --
Age: 18
Sex: --
Height: --
Weight: 50.8 kg
Cell: 154
Notes: Significant weight loss. Muscular reinforcement failed. Subject is no longer able to move major muscles.

On other pages were detailed accounts of the experiments, diagrams, and instructions for mixing different drugs. The papers were seemingly shoved into the folder at random, for between two consecutive record sheets, he found a quick summary of Kenji's death, written on what appeared to be a frayed piece of a shroud.

These were records of Orochimaru's experiments.

The dates of the records, scrawled quickly on the folders, varied immensely. Some were from decades past, some from recent months, some even indicated future dates. Kabuto giggled. His master obviously hadn't foreseen the acquisition of his own doctor. He rarely experimented anymore; that was Kabuto's job. The thought of working alongside his master in the lab was surreal and somewhat amusing.

But Orochimaru had done such things once. The experimentation required to develop Fushi Tensei had been staggering, and what he had found was probably only a small portion of the whole. Even so, that box contained the histories of hundreds of people, thousands of cruel experiments, hundreds of thousands of drugs and poisons.

What he was doing was dangerous. These records had been hidden from him. He couldn't imagine why, but they were. And that he was seeing them…he could get into a lot of trouble. He found that he didn't much care. This was all too interesting.

Orochimaru had never told him about the types of tests he had done, and Kabuto had never dared to ask. As a medic (and fellow lab junkie), he was intrigued. At the same time, he was getting a look into Orochimaru's life before he had entered it. This was a subject that had always fascinated him, as he often saw himself as an extension of his master. The fact that Orochimaru could have possibly existed without him was something that he had never been able to wrap his mind around.

Kabuto sat in that tiny, dark chamber for what could have been hours. He pored over the papers, drinking of the information found on each one as a vampire takes blood. He found himself wishing that he had taken another candle, instead of another matchbook, as the last parts of this session were read by the brief light of individual matches.

His master was a genius, pure and simple. Orochimaru's methods and ideas were strange and perverse, but revolutionary nonetheless. To actually come up with such experiments, and even then…to actually carry them out. It would take a brilliant, sick mind.

But for how godlike his master was, he wasn't very organized. Although the folders were roughly alphabetized, Kabuto could find no trace of order whatsoever in the documents within them. Stray pages were shoved between folders, and he could make precious little sense of these, for lack of context. Bloody fingerprints littered everything; smears of unknown fluids and greases joined them. This disappointed Kabuto, in a way; he was always one for neatness. Even so, he found it easy to overlook the poor condition of the files in favor of their content.

He had been in the middle of the ninth folder when he realized that he was supposed to be caring for Sasuke, among other things. Just how much time had he spent looking at these old records? A sudden panic struck him, and he shoved all of the folders and files back in the box. He prayed that his master didn't have some sort of obscure order, for now it was surely disturbed.

When he was back in the records room, he stared for a few seconds at the gaping entrance. His eyes flickered from the hole to the filing cabinets. After deliberating for what felt like hours, he moved both of the displaced cabinets back to their original positions.

Kabuto headed to the main compound. As he passed the autopsy room, he heard nothing, and broke into a smile that soon faltered. Surely Sasuke hadn't suffocated while he was going through those old records?

It would be wise to check in on the boy, and Kabuto did so, knowing that every moment he lingered was another stone in his tomb. A useless stone, as it turned out. Sasuke slept and was breathing comfortably. Actually, he seemed to have improved in the past few hours—

Best not to think of that.

He ran through the dark halls, mentally berating himself the entire time. Not only had he stumbled upon something that was none of his business, he had neglected—no—abandoned his master's next host. The consequences if Orochimaru ever found out were unimaginable.

Kabuto had no set destination; he was running blind. Regardless, he found himself in front of his master's bedroom door. He stood for a moment, wondering whether he really wanted to be there at this moment.

He knocked.

No reply.

He tried again, and got the same result.

A deep breath and he opened the door.

"Orochimaru-sama…"

His eyes took a while to adjust; it was even darker in Orochimaru's room than the rest of the compound. The snake lord insisted on using delicate tapers instead of the standard torches. The latter apparently gave off too much smoke, while the former, in Kabuto's opinion, gave off too little light. Dark or not, it seemed that his master wasn't in the room.

This worried him. Not knowing were Orochimaru was always made him nervous.

A low gurgling startled him for a moment, and then he realized what it was. His stomach obviously didn't care where his master was or wasn't; it clamored for food. Casting one more glance around the room, he left.

Kabuto went to the kitchen and set about the task of making…a meal of some sort, anyway. He glanced at the glaring clock and was alarmed to see that it was near seven-thirty. Fear placed a dark hand on his shoulder. Orochimaru usually wanted to eat around five. Surely he would have been looking for Kabuto for quite some time now.

As his mind fed on thoughts of his master, his stomach began to have second thoughts about food.

As Kabuto was making his dinner, Orochimaru stumbled into the kitchen. He yawned gapingly and blinked sleep-clouded eyes. Kabuto watched him for a moment, and turned back to the counter to continue preparing his meal. A sly smile crossed his face. His master had been napping, and it seemed that he had been doing so for at least a few hours. Orochimaru sat down at the table. When his food was done, Kabuto joined him.

"Good evening, sir. Would you like some dinner?"

He offered his own plate: thick slabs of glistening pork, an apple, steaming rice topped with oil and spices, and a few dumplings. Orochimaru peered at it for a moment, then extended his tongue to seize a piece of meat. Kabuto sat down next to him and, opting to use a pair of chopsticks, began to eat. His master finished chewing and frowned.

"How is Sasuke?" The tongue flickered out again, and the apple was gone.

"He's getting better. I just checked. His fever is dropping slowly, but he seems to be getting more stable." The lie was a risky one, but it would be worse to tell him that Sasuke hadn't been attended to all day. Besides…Sasuke might have improved since Kabuto last saw him. That had been hours ago.

Orochimaru visibly relaxed and his tongue crawled out once more, only to find that the plate empty. Kabuto had been across the room; he came back to the table with two glasses of water and sat down.

"So what's wrong with him? Do you know?" Orochimaru asked, attempting offhandedness and failing. Kabuto scowled.

"Yes. He's simply got the flu. A perfectly normal illness that seems to be interacting with the cursed seal in an abnormal way. It's a little concerning, but I think I've got it under control now. He'll probably be good as new in a few days," Kabuto explained. His master sighed and melted into his chair.

"Good."

"Did you ever doubt my abilities, sir?"

"Of course not. However, when I think of Kimimaro…"

Kabuto rose from his chair so abruptly that it fell to the floor with a clatter. One of the water glasses fell to the floor and shattered. In a moment, Kabuto was gone. Orochimaru shook his head and sighed.

Two days later, Kabuto was back in the hidden room.

On par with his own predictions, Sasuke had almost fully recovered. The curse had crawled back to his neck, and the rash had subsided. Only a light but persistent cough troubled him now. He was still on medicine, and had needed emergency treatment after a rough training session or two, but otherwise, all was normal.

Sasuke was more bothered by his lingering symptoms than Kabuto was, though. The pale-haired medic had found that forbidden fruit was very effective in distracting him. Sasuke and Orochimaru trained quite often, and Kabuto was left to his own devices. Naturally, he always headed straight to the records room and beyond.

For fear of destroying some unknown order, he had sworn to be careful about his snooping. He was, after all, a spy; this was something that should have come easily to him from the start. He would remove the folders one at a time, and he made sure that each went back to the same place it was found. The same went for the individual sheets within the portfolios.

There was always the chance that he would be found out, of course. Certain things could not be concealed: the movement of dust, and any wear on the box or papers. But these things were minor, and he would do his best with them.

He wasn't all that worried, anyway. Orochimaru had shown no signs of realizing where his servant had been. To Kabuto, this meant one of two things. The first was that Orochimaru didn't often access the records, in which case he was safe. The second was that Orochimaru didn't care that Kabuto had found them, in which case he was also safe.

However, a shadowy third scenario lurked. It was possible that Orochimaru had been so distracted with Sasuke's sickness that he wasn't paying much attention to anything else. In this case, when Orochimaru did notice what was going on, Kabuto could be in very serious trouble.

In response to his own concern, Kabuto had pointed out that no ninja lived a "safe" life, much less a spy. Danger was only a matter of degree. The idea had prompted a bitter chuckle. Life was very funny indeed.

To be continued…