A/N: In the last two chapters I've focused heavily on Neji's situation. Which is quite odd, seeing as the summary has nothing to do with him and I was planning on making Sasuke's situation the main premises of this fic. Unfortunately (or fortunately, whoever you like best I guess), Neji has stolen the spotlight away from Sasuke, but only for now. I will not drop Sasuke's part completely, nor will I get rid of Sakura's and Tenten's, or Naruto's and Hinata's part. It's all part of the main storyline, and if I get rid of that, then I won't have a fic now will I:P I just wanted to get that out in the open for anyone who was curious lol. Sorry for the slow update on this chapter… Onto the fic!

o(O)o(O)o

Even as a child I saw the coming of this day.

I knew that I would be a witness to it, Judgment Day!

-Claudia Wolf
Silent Hill 3

o(O)o(O)o

Chapter 3

Sasuke was exhausted.

He was sitting on the couch in front of his TV, remote in hand and futilely pressing the power button. He knew it wasn't the batteries, or the power, it just wouldn't turn on. Like his clock that stopped, his phone that didn't work, his windows that wouldn't break, and his door that wouldn't open.

After about five days of this, Sasuke had just about stopped trying.

It all started that morning five days past. He'd woken up from his nightmare again, but this time, he hadn't even made it to the kitchen before he was woken up by a loud noise, like the sound of metal on metal.

At first he'd thought something had just fallen down, or that maybe he'd left a window open, but all that vanished when he walked out of the hallway.

The apartment was small enough to see end to end, and only had a single bedroom. He was fortunate enough to have his own laundry, and he was rather high up so as to avoid having to invest in heavier curtains (although he sometimes wished his neighbors would. He could sit there all day and still not know what the fuck they were doing). He couldn't hope for a better apartment with his salary, but lately, he'd started wishing they'd stuck him in another room.

When Sasuke had walked into his living room that Tuesday morning, he could have killed someone.

Pulled tight across his door were thick chains, overlapping and intersecting, some even joined together with a padlock or two for good measure. The reinforced metal was impossible for him to break, and no matter how hard he tried he couldn't seem to break the door down.

To make matters worse, someone named Walter had written across his door in red, "Don't go out!"… A statement written on the inside of his apartment door along with the chains that couldn't have possibly been attached from the outside, seeing as he could, well, see them. This meant, as Sasuke knew for a fact that there was no one inside the apartment, he was housing some invisible little tenant named Walter that made his TV go weird and had really bad penmanship. Possibly a foreign little Walter then, as he spelled out the sentence on his door like a two year old. Or at least that was Sasuke's theory.

"It's not like it matters… no one can hear me, no one can see me. Sure people will come looking for me but they'll never get in." Sasuke flopped back on his couch throwing the clicker across the room. He was stuck. He'd soon run out of food, and then he'd starve to death. If only "Walter" had given him some sort of warning, then maybe he could have gone and stocked up on groceries or something.

Sighing softly, Sasuke began to dose off on the couch, wondering if he'd wake up in his bed again. That was the other neat thing about his new and improved apartment. No matter where he fell asleep, be it the couch, the shower, the table, he'd always have that retarded dream, and he'd always wake up in his bed. It was a pretty nifty if he was too tired to take the ten foot trip to his bedroom.

Suddenly, Sasuke was snapped out of his nap by a loud noise coming from the direction his bathroom. He jumped up off the couch and took off down the hall, ecstatic that something was finally happening. Now he'd have something to do for a while!

He threw open the door and was floored by what he saw.

Where his mirror and toilet roll once were there was now a huge, gaping hole.

"What in the fuck…?" Sasuke muttered as he stooped in for a closer inspection. The hole was long, longer than it should be and it didn't go through to the apartment next to him, oh no, it went further than that. He could see the end though, the little spot of light at the end of the long dark tunnel and, even though the laughing coming from it was really weirding him out, he decided it was better than staying where he was.

He grabbed a broken pipe from beside the toilet "just in case", and started climbed into the tunnel in the wall.

All of his training was telling him to stop, to go back, that it wasn't safe but hell… the man who taught him all that hadn't been holed up in his apartment with literally nothing to do for the past week.

That was enough to get his ass going.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

"I can't go out there…" Neji muttered as he stared at the lipstick marks on the mirror in front of him. Some chick had an idea to draw some cultish symbol on the mirror in hooker red lipstick, and since he'd walked in he hadn't been able to take his eyes off of it.

He'd gotten a couple weird looks, but no one had bothered him yet, except for the young Goth girl who'd stopped beside him to reapply her lipstick and had asked him what he was in for. Apparently a man in the women's washroom was a commonplace around there…

He couldn't leave the washroom through the door. He'd checked three times and he still hadn't moved. If Neji could say anything about him it was that he was pretty damn persistent.

Neji tore his eye's away from the insignia on the mirror (it was starting to give him a headache), and caught a glimpse of a window on his right.

He grasped the bottom of the window pane, hoping it wasn't locked, and pulled. With his luck he expected it to set off an alarm, but to his surprise, it opened easily, "Just like at the amusement park…" He thought, but he quickly pushed that to the back of his mind. He didn't need that right then and there, especially sine he'd just caught a lucky break.

Hopping out the window easily, Neji found himself in a run down, cobble stone alleyway with the exit to his left completely blocked off, "I guess I'm going right then." He muttered to no one in particular, taking off down the alley. He hadn't had much luck with alleys before, (especially two weeks ago) but it was broad daylight and there were bound to be people there somewhere, maybe unloading trucks or something. If he screamed, he was sure to be heard. Besides, he'd gotten out of his rut. He didn't seem to be having such bad dreams anymore (at night anyway), and people were actually starting to leave him alone. Except for that day, things were going fine.

That is, until he reached the end of the alleyway.

"Son of a bitch," Neji cursed, "Who parked this here?"

Parked in the exit to the alley was a huge rig. Both sides were flat against the fence/wall, and there didn't seem to be any way of moving it.

Leaning up against the brick wall, Neji caught sight of a door right beside him marked "Employee's ONLY!"

He shrugged and figured that it wasn't the first time he trespassed, and besides, he wasn't supposed to be in the alley either, "Out of the frying pan and into the fire…" He said, sighing as he opened the surprisingly unlocked door (he was finding it hard to believe that the owner would be so stupid as to install the locks if he wasn't going to use them), "Oh well."

Neji tried to get into a more public place of the mall as quickly as he could. He couldn't quite explain it, but after his run in with Kiba, the thought of being alone terrified him. He was never scared of being alone before, no abandonment issues, nothing. He tried to rationalize it but that just made it worse. All he could do was try his hardest to get the hell out of there, and fast.

So when Neji walked through a door into a main branch of the mall, he couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief, although that relief was quickly cut short.

What was just a few minutes ago bustling and occupied, was now trashed and deserted.

The fire gates were lowered over every door, potted plants scattered across the floor, and the mall sound system was emitting this strange (and annoying) static. Every store was locked and empty, and it did nothing to calm Neji's nerves.

To make matters worse, the wreckage seemed to form a trail to one of the covered store entrances, the only entrance in which the fire gates over that door were ripped in two. Whoever had gotten into the… "Delilah's Dress Boutique" must have been determined.

Neji didn't know if who had gotten the gate open was still inside the store or not, but if they were, then maybe they could explain to him what was going on. Besides, he had no other choice. All the other exits were either blocked off or boarded up.

Watching his footing amongst the smashed displays and pottery, Neji ducked under the half opened door and stepped inside the store.

The first thing that caught his eye was the gun lying on the ground before him. Being a shinobi, he never had any use for guns, but he at least knew one when he saw one, and he knew that you wouldn't usually find one sitting on the floor of a dress boutique, deserted or not. The fact that he had only ever seen a real gun was during the incident, and that the gun lying on the floor looked identical to the one that had been shoved into his mouth that night had him completely engrossed. He didn't even hear the shuffling coming from the corner until after he picked up the weapon.

Neji was startled out of his trance when he heard a wet thump from the opposite corner of the store, almost dropping the gun that he'd just picked up, "Please don't be him… please, please, please…" Neji pleaded under his breath, his hands shaking at the thought that his… attacker could very well be standing in the corner. Taking one last deep breath, Neji slowly turned his head towards the source of the sound.

His heart stopped and he didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Standing in the corner, chewing the face off of some poor, dead sales associate wasn't the No Face man or one of his lackeys, but the creature from his dream.

Neji took a step backward as the creature began to stand up, its thin body leaning entirely on the support of its massive arms, dragging its small deformed legs behind as it made its way towards him.

Neji raised the gun to eye level, trying to remember how the creep who attacked him shot it, "Okay, he pulled the little thingy at the back… He aimed…" Neji took another step backwards, holding the gun as steady as he could, "Stay back, you fuck!" Another step, "Get the hell away from me!"

The first shot echoed through the small space, making his ears ring.

The bullet hit, but the thing kept approaching. Neji fired a second time, a third time, a fourth, fifth, sixth… and then all he was left with was a sharp clicking as he desperately pulled the trigger. Nothing…

"No…" Neji breathed, his heart hammering in his chest. Why him? After all the shit he'd been through lately, why him!? He leaned back against the racks of clothes and closed his eyes.

When nothing happened, he decided that it might be a good time to open them.

"Apparently it takes a while for these things to die." Neji mumbled as he kicked the thing on the ground. It seemed dead enough, but he decided to kick it again for good measure. Sighing, Neji shoved the gun in his jacket pocket. It was empty, but if he ran into one of those things again, he could at least whip it at them.

It was kind of scary how accustomed he was getting to this shit.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

"Shit, shit, shit!!!"

Kiba slammed the door to the men's restroom almost as fast as he'd opened it. Barring the door with whatever he could find, he began to search the room frantically for a way out.

He had just been standing there, waiting for Neji to drag his ass out of the ladies room, when he'd heard a crash down the hall. He'd though that maybe someone had fallen or hurt themselves or something and, being the good (and deathly bored) Samaritan that he was, he decided to go investigate.

He'd walked all the way down to the subway station in hopes of finding something to bide his time while he waited for his mission target to finish powdering his nose. What he found however, was not a little old lady trapped under her walker but a big, oozing hole… kinda stuck in the middle of an advertisement for a new chewing gum. That was nothing. He'd seen weirder shit than that before, usually on missions harder than this one but at least he wouldn't be as bored anymore.

Curious as always he'd walked closer, only to be grabbed by a sticky, grimy hand that shot out of the hole in the poster. Luckily, since he was on a mission, he was required to have some means of defense, and was able to get away, but that didn't stop the now handless thing from walking out of the hole in the wall.

Once he saw the strings holding the floating, human like thing back snap, he'd taken off like a shot.

Now, he was stuck in the men's room of the Konoha Heights shopping mall, with a dripping, bloody mass of human like… something waiting outside the door.

Kiba sighed as he sat down beside the sinks, resting his head on his knees. That thing had given him a huge migraine for some reason, "Thanks a lot Neji," Kiba said under his breath, "You ruined my Saturday."

TBC.

A/N: FINALLY! I wrote and rewrote this thing over and over, so I apologize if it's a piece of crap.