Chapter 4 - Abandoned

Time went by, counting heartbeats, and they visited sometimes - very irregularly. First they gave her new clothes, and made her strip naked in front of them. She had been embarrassed, but too afraid to deny them. Hot shame had flushed her and she quickly changed. They gave her grey trousers and a grey shirt. To make her feel even more empty and lose more of her colour.

She was sick, that much she knew. The itching beneath the skin, the aching of her bones. But she couldn't understand her symptoms and she couldn't state a diagnosis.

She saw things. Things in the dark. She didn't know what it was, but it definitely had something to do with the man she had killed. She was dull eyed and her expression resigned as she inspected her wounds from her fight with the man she had-

Sakura closed her eyes. The man she had killed.

Her hand unconsciously went to her hair, reaching for comfort, for something normal, but found nothing. Sakura blinked. Right. They had shaved her head. Her pale petal hued locks had fallen away to the dirt and the careless cuts on her scalp from the scissor's edge burned and itched still. She had somehow forgotten. She scratched her buzz cut scalp instead, the dune like feathery hair was matted by sweat and grime.

They visited mostly to observe her after that, but sometimes they gave her injections. She could never struggle, because if she did then large men came inside her cell and beat her down. They were scary, she admitted to herself, and not because of their deadly fists. Their skin was white, an unnatural paleness tinged with bluish nuances, and their mouths had been sewn shut. Their eyes looked decomposed, as if they were blind. They wore long white robes, or what had probably been white once. It seemed the blood on their robes couldn't be washed away. She referred to them as the Nikuya, butchers, because that was probably their profession as they butchered her every time she said no.

If she had counted her own heartbeats correctly, she had been held in the cell for three days. She got bowls of overcooked rice porridge twice a day, a slurry grey and cold mass that was barely edible. The sludgy rice always got stuck in her gum. And whenever they came in to pump her with more drugs or to evaluate her mental state, they called her 'it'. Not Sakura, not even her, only it. Well, they hadn't asked for her name anyway. Sakura wondered if it was a way for them to further dehumanize her, to have distance to her body, and to only see her as an object and not a person.

It seemed to work. Since she started questioning herself and if she was truly a human being. Because what human deserved the treatment she received?

She had started to smell, too. The old vomit and feces in the corner didn't help. The pus from her old unattended wounds smelled slightly too. The stench had become a part of her, as the small voices in the back of her head. At her best she ignored them, at her worst she talked back. She wondered if the voice was another effect of the illusion or the if it was because of their own concoctions they had fed her with.

Then on the fourth day, they dragged her into a large hall. A metal tank was in the middle of the room, and she could see a watery liquid inside through a circled window. Strange markings covered the metal, blended with old fraying scriptures fastened to the surface. People with blank faces surrounded her, some with masks, others who looked like shinobi. It seemed they were there to watch.

"Bath time." A doctor said and ordered her to take off her clothes. She did, as she glanced to the butcher's by the doctor's side. Naked and helpless and shivering, they made her walk up the staircase leading to a plank which was connected to a hole in the water tank. To Sakura's surprise they unlocked her chakra choker.

"Don't be stupid." Was her only warning from the doctor called Daisuke. She sighed. What could she do anyway? With the little chakra she had - which even was suppressed?

"Down." The female doctor ordered her, clucking impatiently.

Sakura gulped and looked down into the hole in the water tank. It was the size of a coffin, and there were no fluorescent lights in it. Just darkness. Only by looking at it she felt claustrophobic.

"Why?" She asked stubbornly. It wasn't a normal bath, she was sure of it. A slap across her cheek made her eyes teary and Daisuke pushed her towards the edge.

Sakura shivered uncontrollably at the edge of the plank. I'll drown! Then a hard hand pushed her over the ledge and she fell tumbling down into the cold water of the tank. Everything went black as they locked the tank.

Then she couldn't remember anything more as panic and water filled her lungs.

Waking up, she gasped and spat and gurgled. But it was only saliva that escaped her mouth, and she looked wildly around, seeing only the same walls of her cell. Her chakra choker was back around her throat and her clothes had been put on. She was dry.

Sakura tried to remember what had happened, but she couldn't.

Bad dream of drowning.

On the sixth day, after having eaten the grey mass of rice porridge, Sakura moved uncomfortably. Something felt sticky between her legs. She moved again and started walking in circles around the cell, cracking her joints. And then she felt it. Something ran slowly down her leg and she touched her inner thigh, her fingers met by sticky liquid. Her fingers were red.

Gods, not now.

The moon blood had to come some time, I guess.

Sakura stared at her bloody fingers. Then she looked down at her grey dress and it was stained with blood. It seeped and grew and coloured the whole lower part in vermillion. Her green eyes widened as her legs suddenly were stained with currents of blood running down from her thighs to the cell floor.

She screamed as blood flowed from her body, slushing to the ground and splashed at her bare feet, coloring her foot nails red. The pinkette stepped back and slumped down on the ground. The blood kept pouring out from her insides and started gathering around her legs and bottom.

It's not real.

Before the doctors came in, the room had filled to the roof, and she had drowned in her own blood.

Waking up felt like emerging from water, only denser, and with limbs encased in stone. She woke by a voice, scratchy as it was, and still she was glad she had not truly drowned in her own menstrual blood and died. Sakura blinked and coughed, and only yellow slime welled in her throat, not blood. It had been another illusion, but it had seemed so real. She had felt the blood flow, she had felt it reach her knees, her throat and the consistence had tasted so real.

The doctors had thrown a ragged towel at her and stood inside the glass cubicle at the entrance to her cell, watching her. Their voices drifted to her sensitive ears.

"It seems to have gotten its period. This might be problematic in further experimentation, and I see no purpose of it bleeding from its ovaries. I say we perform a quick hysterectomy. Ana?" The doctor with rash blood red hair murmured and tapped the window thoughtfully. He glanced at Sakura when he noticed her movements and he pointed at the towel. His stern line of a mouth snorted as she wobbled to pick it up. The female doctor called Ana next to him sighed and her manicured yellow nails rasped against her clipboard. Flecks of her short hair shimmered in a indigo nuance in the stark fluorescent lights above.

Sakura obeyed and cleaned up between her legs, without much shame. It wasn't that much blood she realised and quickly finished, and disposed the towel into a trash bin. The other doctor sniffed and nodded. Sakura hadn't focused on their words, but problematic and hysterectomy echoed in her mind. That did not bode well.

"Yes. It probably won't be alive long enough to bear children for further experimentation anyway." The female doctor Ana hummed.

Sakura felt ice gather in her stomach and shoot spikes into her heart. They were going to sterilize her. Unconsciously she let her hand press at her belly. No children? Sakura felt panic rising inside and her eyes glazed over. Now Sasuke would never look at her again. She would be useless! She wouldn't be able to help him revive his clan. She would never stare at her own baby's eyes and see a smile resemble her own.

Shivering, she tried to reach out for the doctors.

"Please, don't…" She croaked, her voice unused and scratchy. Pleading, begging. They just couldn't do it. Her hand touched the glass, smudging it with dried blood, and the doctors looked at her without as much of a hint of emotion in their eyes.

"Shut up." The male red haired doctor snapped and tapped the glass window. "Don't dirty the window, subject."

Sakura stumbled back and fell on her back. Shivering, she cradled into herself. Rocking back and forth, she started hearing the voices again.

"They'll take your only purpose away!" A voice cackled from somewhere inside the room, laughing until it wheezed. "Isn't that funny?"

"Stop." Sakura mumbled and her eyes swam with tears. The voices again. "No more."

"Don't worry dear Sakura-chan, they'll put you out of your misery soon enough!" The female voice roared with laughter.

"Will you even be a woman after they take your reproductive organs away?" Another voice chimed in and it sounded disturbingly similar to her father's. "You're a disgrace."

"It's for the better anyway. You'd just have ugly no good babies. They'd be boneless and little cowards, just like you. It's better that they'll never exist." A shrill voice concluded.

"Her stress levels are the trigger to her hallucinations, it seems." The masked red haired man mumbled and wrote something down on his clipboard outside her cell. Sakura barely heard him, as the voices grew in number. She clenched her head and murmured intelligible words.

"As the stress levels rise, its paranoia and fear syntaxes are put to pressure, and sends signals with the help of the opiate to its visual and auditory cortex. Quite similar to schizophrenia and psychosis." The doctor drawled and glanced at his colleague. "What would you suggest to be the next stage of experimentation? We need to know what it really does."

"Since the subject is only in the middle between the prodromal and active stage, I wonder where the limit lies. Hmm. We should proceed with a surgery to examine the fluids in its brain and add dopamine to the neurons to strengthen the effect after the hysterectomy. If all goes accordingly, it should fall into the residual phase, or maybe create a new phase altogether, Daisuke." The female doctor said.

"More drugs!"

"Finally they'll pump you up like like the little addict you are. You like this, don't you? Don't you?"

"Yes, I will prepare for the surgery room. I suggest we add norepinephrine and serotonin to its neurons as well, to maximize the effect." The red haired doctor called Daisuke said and Sakura could barely keep the voices out of her head.

"They will cut you up like a chicken! And you'll lay paralysed as they pick your bones, cut you up sweet and nicely! Like a chicken! Bwaak bwaak bwaak!"

"What will be left of you?"

"Bwak bwak buh-waak!"

"We have to discuss that addition. It would be such a waste if it died. Oh… Should we contact him for the procedure?" Ana said and scratched her head. "Not that I really want to, but…"

"The Warden? He- might be interested. If we can reproduce the opiate it would work perfectly as a biochemical weapon, especially if we succeed to transform it into a gas form. We could sell it, or use it as we see beneficial for Sound. But before that we need to perfect it, since there are still unknown effects. It can still function, somehow." The male voice drifted as a cacophony of voices drowned everything around her, and Sakura bellowed as her head felt like exploding.

"You're alone, Sakura-chan."

"Talk to us!"

"Sweet Sakura."

"Bwaak, bwaak, like a chicken!"

"Splendid."

"I will call for a messenger. Hose it down before the surgery. It stinks already."

At the edge of her hearing, water was dripping and turned into a trickle. And all was a static noise as Sakura passed out.


They had a mirror above the surgery table. Sakura blinked and saw her own reflection. She was naked and restrained with cuffs at her ankles and wrists. Her ribs poked out from her chest and her hips were markedly visible. Her dune like feathery scalp showed her skull's definitions. Drainage channels covered the metal table underneath her and Sakura felt dread fill her body.

The doctors stood beside her and prepared an IV drop and a woman who seemed to be a nurse set out the tools.

The female doctor Ana fixed the IV drop, and pulled a liquid vial into it. Sakura had seen the switch. But she couldn't say anything as her mouth had been gagged and her eyes widened in realisation.

"Ready." Daisuke said and pulled out a scalpel.

They cut into her and she squirmed violently, the pain flaring her sensitive skin. Blinding agony racked through her vision and she gagged, bile splurging into the fabric.

"What- she should have been put under!" A nurse screamed and tried to hold Sakura down.

"What happened to the anesthesia, Ana?" The red haired male doctor shrieked as they tried to fasten restraints on her body.

"I don't know!" Ana screamed. A moment of glee in her face flashed, then it was gone and overturned into a worried expression.

"You don't make mistakes like this." Daisuke commented dryly as he fixed the IV drop. Sakura panted through her nose and she could see the blood trail down her pale body in the mirror above her. Numbness spread through her and the relief was more than welcomed.

"The Nikuya changed the IV." Ana said and frowned. "They must have taken the wrong vial."

She heard tidbits of voices when she was half awake as they cut into her brain. She was numb. And tired. All she could see was the mirror above her head, green glowing hands poking into her brain. Other doctors cut into her lower parts, removing her reproductive organs. She saw Ana looking at the organs, and waved at a nurse to put it in a glass container. Then she didn't want to see anymore, so she closed her eyes.


Barren at twelve years old. Sakura thought drowsily. She woke up in the cell later, exhausted and in a lot of pain. Her fingers felt around her belly, and she could feel the stitches. However, she had no time to rest since the prison door opened.

"Ana." Sakura whispered as the woman in a white coat stood before her.

"Subject." Her voice was sweet, like syrup. And Sakura prepared herself the best she could for what that single word promised.

"Did it make you feel powerful?" She drawled as her hands vibrated in a sudden green light, and her voice was strained. Medic chakra? "Did it make you feel hungry for more?"

"What are you talking about?" Sakura asked weakly. Her stomach throbbed in dull pain, and she felt like a bottomless shell. Was Ana going to heal-

"Did you enjoy it? Killing him?" Ana asked again and she walked up to the girl and her fingers trailed softly down Sakura's cheek. She shivered. Sakura had only killed one man in her life, and of course Ana had known him. Of course.

"I am the Head of Medicine in this facility. Do you know what that means? I'm the best medic in here. I can stitch people together so we can continue experimentation." Ana smiled. "You've met the Nikuya, right? They're barbarians with no clue as to how be dignified in torture. They have no class, no specific methods. The Nikuya have only one thing in mind- to break. Fast and quick. But I'm not like them, you see."

Sakura said nothing. Ana went to draw her fingers down the pinkette's prisoner shirt, rasping her long manicured fingernails against the fabric. Sakura defiantly took a step back.

"I like to break slowly. I like to draw it out. And I can make you pass out in pain as the body can't handle it, and I can wake you up just like that." She snapped her fingers for emphasis. "I'm lucky this night. We won't need to evaluate you until tomorrow afternoon. We have all night to enjoy ourselves."

"I'm sorry." Sakura whispered, because she knew she had killed a man the woman had loved. Ana's eyes lit on fire and her face distorted into a grimace.

Sakura shrieked as Ana took hold of her chakra choker's chains and ripped it forwards so the girl fell on her knees. With a kick of Ana's foot Sakura fell backwards and landed on the cold floor with a grunt. Chains swept around her body as fast she could barely see, a technique?, and bound her to the floor. Ana ripped her grey prisoner shirt off, so Sakura lay half naked on the floor, and she kneeled besides Sakura's pale body.

"Please." Sakura whispered as Ana's eyes filled with mischief.

"I am methodical, unlike the butchers. I have a schedule put out for you. Isn't that great?" She hummed as her fingers trailed down Sakura's collarbone and down to her navel. "Isn't this a perfect canvas. Smooth and pale, without scars. I'll fix that for you."

Sakura shivered and didn't know what to do.

"Did you know that I like to paint?" Ana asked as she drew a nail filled with chakra across Sakura's stomach in swirls, drawing bubbling clear blood. Sakura panted in pain and her eyes swam. "I will engrave the most beautiful painting on your skin, subject. You don't deserve it. But it will be a gift to Yuji. When you die and walk amongst the shore of the River, he will see your body and it's message. He will see my love." Ana said and fanatically drew another bloody nail on Sakura's ribs. "Let's see. A ferocious tiger, what about that?"

So much hatred filled her voice. It was the first time in Sakura's life that she had met a person that hated her so much. Like it was breaking Ana apart just touching her, even though it was a touch that filled Sakura with pain.

Sakura was tired. Tired of the constant pain Ana made her feel. Her body was battered, scarred and trampled. Why did she need it again? To live? It was a hollow fleshy shell of the person she had once been. Cracks ran through her skin in a spider web that trailed with blood.

"It's pretty beautiful." Ana huffed satisfactory. Sakura felt immense relief momentarily as she thought she's done, she's done, she'll leave me alone.

"There are 206 bones in a human body." Ana hummed and went to grab Sakura's hand. "But we'll narrow it down a bit. There are 3 bones in the upper arm; the clavicle, the scapula and the humerus. Four bones in the lower arm; the ulna, the radius, the carpals and the hand - which has the whole of 27 little pretty bones! Do you know how it feels like to break them?"

Sakura gasped and Ana's hand glowed in a green light, pulsing and fluttering.

"No…" She wailed.

"The ulna, lower arm." Ana sang and her chakra teared into Sakura's arm, through the muscle and fat and tendons, and crack it broke cleanly. Ana continued and Sakura felt adrenaline pump in her body, wondering when the pain would start, because she couldn't feel anything. Then she saw the swelling, and when Ana came to the radius, Sakura felt the pain. The ulna, then the carpals, then the radius. Like the ticking of a clock, at each tick, the pain grew and seared through her muscles. It hurt even more as she squirmed.

Sakura screamed and her throat was raw and dry and she asked for forgiveness, over and over, and said she was sorry and it hurts and it hurts. Ana was deaf to her callings.

Ana told her what bone she broke each time and Sakura found herself in a burning fire, blistering pain scorching her arm.

Cackling, Ana rose her glowing hands to wipe sweat from her forehead.

"Look at you!" She laughed. "Like a sack of potatoes!"

Sakura couldn't say anything, she only coughed wetly and her body ached in a numb cold fire. Then Ana went to her hand. It was limp in Ana's cold hands and she inspected it, interest in her hot eyes.

"See these thin bones on the back of your hand?" Ana quirked. "Let's see if I can pick them up."

And then her long chakra filed nail dug into Sakura's back hand, blood gurgling, Sakura wheezing, and then she hooked the bone inside her hand and dragged it up. It sprouted in an unnatural position and Ana continued to dig them up, one by one, until Sakura's hand was ravaged with blood and muscle and sprouting bones. It almost looked like claws as Sakura's eyes swam with tears.

"Hungry?" Ana asked and pulled something out of her pocket. Sakura could barely see it in the blinking light of the light bulb above her, but she could see that it was a glass container. Of course she was hungry, she hadn't had the spiny rice porridge for two days. She was starving.

Ana took whatever it was out of the glass container and put something at Sakura's mouth. It was tacky and wet, but she opened her mouth and chewed. Metallic liquid spread in her mouth and she gagged.

"You didn't really need it anyway." Ana mumbled. Sakura felt more tears gather in her eyes and she tried to spit it out, but Ana's hand violently slammed against her mouth, and she saw stars as she had to swallow her own reproductive organ.

Ana laughed heartily. The woman then looked at her wristwatch and huffed.

"Time's up. I have to clean you up, subject. The others won't notice a thing that happened to you- I'm that good!" She sing songed and the green chakra in her hands sparked. "I don't want you to feel relief just yet, though. Did you know that there's circulatory methods when healing to make it smoother, less painful? I don't like those methods so we'll go without them."

Sakura felt a constant throb in her arm; like she had bruised herself badly. No matter what Ana said about her healing methods, Sakura almost breathed in relief at the thought.

As Ana healed her arm, Sakura realised that it was almost worse than when she had broken it. Sakura couldn't scream anymore so all she did was gasp and breathe and cry as her bones retracted and healed in excruciating pain.

"Until next time, subject. Then it'll be the ribs. And maybe a cocktail of your marrow fluid?" Ana saluted her and went out the door, leaving Sakura empty and hurting.

How is this worth it?


A/N

Thought I'd just put this up as well since I was done with it anyway. Always appreciate reviews!