Disclaimer: The characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto and the Naruto franchise
Author's Note: I've been looking forward to writing this chapter for quite a while, hence the speedy update! Unfortunately, there may be a two week break coming up, either between chapters 13 and 14, or 14 and 15, so apologies in advance. In the meantime, firstly, thank you to Rosebunse and Hot's and Clogs, who are still sticking with this story! And thank you to Sakura117 for your guest review. It was lovely to hear from you. Thank you also to all those who have favourited and followed since last time and to all readers still reading this. I have a feeling the style's changed quite a lot since the beginning. About this chapter, any resemblance to the opening Diver is entirely incidental! I hope you enjoy this installment and I look forward to hearing what you think. ;) Best, Zen
Like one, that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
and having once turned round walks on,
and no more turns his head;
Because he knows, a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
- excerpt from 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1798)
The first one who dared to move was Kakashi. Whilst the Kages stared up at the masked man in silence, Kakashi took a step backwards and leaned against the door to the conference room. He tested the handle. He met resistance and looked down, where he saw a dark red stain spreading out from the gap under the door.
He went back to Tsunade and lowered his voice, "We're locked in."
"The guards?"
"Dead. Heaped against the door outside."
Tsunade swore. They returned their attention to the man in the bright orange mask.
"Settle down, settle down. Make yourselves comfortable," the masked man said, patting the air with his hands. Kakashi would have laughed. He sounded like a schoolteacher trying to get nursery children to sit down for story time, but the air was fraught with an electrifying tension and a undeniable sense of danger.
"We will stay standing," said the Kazekage curtly. "You say you have Uchiha Sasuke. What proof do you have?"
A gust of wind blew. The next instant the masked man was holding a long straight-edged blade in his hands and removing its sheath. The one glowing red eye crinkled upwards in a smile. "I'm sure some of you recognise this."
Eyes turned to the contingent from the Land of Fire. The Raikage was breathing down his nose like a bull readying to charge. Kakashi nodded in confirmation. It saddened him as he said, "That's Sasuke's chokuto."
"But that is only proof you have a sword, not Uchiha Sasuke himself," the Kazekage persisted, sand creeping out from the gourd to curl around his shoulders. "If you're lying, we have no reason to listen to you."
"Consider your current situation, Kazekage. I don't think you're in any position not to listen to me," said the masked man slyly, indicating the map of Plague spread with a sweep of Sasuke's sword. "My name is Uchiha Madara. Yes, I am what many of you define as a criminal. I am the leader of an international organisation of freedom fighters - "
" – terrorists," growled the Tsuchikage.
"- clowns?" supplied the Mizukage.
"Oh, if I had any feelings, I think they would have been hurt just then," the masked man put a hand to his heart as though in pain. He chuckled. "But, even if you think all these terrible things of me, I assure you that I want a cure for the Plague as much as any ninja here. There's little point trying to change a world if there is no longer a world to change. Now, Kages, what would your precious ninjas say if they heard that their beloved leaders had tried to kill a man offering a cure for the Plague?"
The Kages exchanged a look of disgust and dismay. Then all of a sudden, the sand swirling about the Kazekage began to slowly, ever so slowly, inch back into its gourd.
The Tsuchikage spluttered, "Kazekage, you can't surely be suggesting we listen to this man -"
"He's saying he has a cure," the Kazekage said, raising his voice, "and we don't have any choice. He's locked the room and the guards are dead. He has no intention of letting us leave until he's finished his business."
The Raikage cracked his knuckles and growled, "Out with it, Akatsuki rat. What do you want?"
"I will keep things simple." The masked man stretched as luxuriously as a cat. "I have Uchiha Sasuke in my possession. I have hired the most capable scientist there is to carry out research on him, with the aim of developing a cure for the RAMK Plague. The research is being carried out within international standards of ethics, so you need not worry about the source of the cure. Sasuke-kun volunteered to take part in the experiments and has signed," he drew a sheet of paper from the neck of his robes, "the appropriate forms of consent. The results have so far been rather promising."
"Do you really believe Sasuke went willingly with this man?" Tsunade hissed out of the corner of her mouth to Kakashi.
Kakashi shook his head, unwilling to reply, but deep down he knew it was probably true. Sasuke had vanished from the forest as though into thin air. This man, Uchiha Madara, was capable of using a form of teleportation jutsu. It was highly likely he had helped Sasuke escape. Not only that, they still didn't know what had convinced Sasuke to join the Akatsuki in the first place. It was possible that the Akatsuki had some kind of leverage, some kind of hold on the boy, that had been used to manipulate Sasuke into obedience.
"I have Uchiha Sasuke, I have access to secret files left by Orochimaru, and my principal researcher is none other than his own right-hand man, Yakushi Kabuto," the masked man continued, noting with satisfaction that Tsunade and Kakashi both flinched at the sound of the name. "My laboratory is closer to finding the cure for the Plague than any other research facility here, and I am willing to give every one of you the cure when it is completed."
"For what price?" the Tsuchikage demanded, as the other Kages began to mutter in discussion with their aides.
The masked man balanced the blade across his knees and smiled.
"The Five Nations can have the cure in exchange for giving me the Eight-tailed and the Nine-tailed Jinchuurikis."
There was a loud crash. Splinters of wood flew in every direction as the Raikage smashed apart his table with his fist and roared, "Akatsuki scum! You will never have my brother!"
"And I'll say the same for the Nine-tailed Beast's Jinchuuriki,"Tsunade said, her eyes flashing with rage. "The Jinchuurikis will not play any part in these negotiations –"
"Now before the Hokage and Raikage rush to defend their respective Tailed Beasts, let me make this clear," the masked man leaned forward from the rafter, "if Konoha and Kumo do not give me the Nine and Eight-tailed Beasts, then nobody will get the cure. Not even Suna, Kiri or Iwa."
The Raikage growled and ground his teeth. He crushed a piece of his table in his fist. "Bastard."
The masked man laughed. "So Tsuchikage, Mizukage, and Kazekage, will you stand by and let the Hokage and Raikage make the decision that will deny the cure to your own peoples?"
"What does the Akatsuki want with the Tailed Beasts?" the Mizukage asked, her voice cutting through the chaos in the room. "We know that you have been extracting the Beasts from the Jinchuurikis. What do you intend to do with them?"
The masked man, for some reason, clapped his hands with delight, as though he was infinitely pleased that somebody had finally asked the question that he had been waiting to be asked all along.
"Let me explain the Moon's Eye Plan."
Hands in the dark.
With the horrifying certainty of a dreamer, Sasuke knew they were there.
He couldn't see them but he knew they were behind him. He could hear them twisting and stretching behind his back. Joints clicked. Skin rustled dry as paper. Arms brushed over each other like snakes in their haste to reach out to him with their translucent fingers and shining white knuckles.
His heart was drumming. His pulse throbbed in his ears. He turned slowly to look over his shoulder. Hands rushed forward and he took off with a yell, throwing himself into the dark.
He was feeling his way with his feet. His bare soles slapped stone that wasn't stone. The path beneath him was paved with bone. The warm shadows enfolded him like water and held him close. He ran, straight and fast, away from the hands crowding the road behind him.
As he ran into the dark, the shadows filling his ears and his nostrils, dripping under his eyelids, warm and numbing, so comforting, he realised that the dark was seeping into him. It was soaking through his skin and claiming him for itself.
He didn't care. He had chosen to run in the dark on the path of bones and if this was what he needed to do to keep running forever, then so be it.
Still the hands were coming closer. He could hear their tendons, tough as cords, creaking as they stretched. He could hear the click of finger-bones even through the velvety darkness in his ears.
Hands snatched at his back. They seized at his arms and legs. Their fingers tangled in his hair, brushed against his face. They dragged him to a halt with his heels scuffing the cool ivory of the road. No, he didn't want this! He raged against the hands as he had never raged before, demanding why they wouldn't let him run, snarling at their ignorant unfairness, shouting that they were nothing more than hands, grasping hands, and they slipped from him, one by one, until only the most persistent remained.
Icy cold fingers touched his forehead and a shock ran through his body.
Sasuke opened his eyes in the dark, still dreaming. The hand drew away from his face and slipped back over his shoulder. It was a hand unlike any of the others. It was cold and slippery, rough with feathery edged ice, covered in fronds of frost as delicate as any filigree, and blue – blue from the ice, and the pallor of a dead man's skin.
His eyes followed its movements. The next instant those hands, slippery with ice, were hooked under his arms and they were pulling at him with the strength of a thousand other hands. They pulled him not only backwards, but upwards, and he couldn't fight them. The hands covered in frost rushed him through the warm darkness, and as he struggled in their hold they were joined by another pair of hands that were white hot and burning gold.
He didn't need to turn to see them. They glowed in the corner of his eyes, as intrusive as sunlight, and together, the hands of frost and the hands of gold, they lifted him up and out from the warmth of the dark into shockingly cold air.
And it was then that he realised - that the warm syrupy darkness he had been running in, that had been filling his nose, eyes, ears and mouth, had been nothing more than a thick wall of blood and the path of bone went nowhere but deeper, deeper down into a bloody well that went on forever.
Blood streamed off his face and arms as he surfaced, and Sasuke knew, with the horrifying certainty of a dreamer, that it was not his own.
The hands of gold had vanished. The hands blue with frost remained, and they touched his forehead one more time, icy and cold.
"If we gave you the Eight-tails and the Nine-tails, you will give us the cure, and all of our peoples will be saved," the Tsuchikage said, sitting down at his table, his eyebrows knitted together, "but only to have you cast them under an eternal genjutsu! This is preposterous!"
The Kazekage shook his head. "Either one way or the other, the world will end."
"Wrong," the masked man said cheerfully. "One way everybody will be alive in a new reality, and the other way everybody will be dead of the Plague. Is the choice so difficult? All I ask for is the Eight-tailed and Nine-tailed Beast, delivered to me within a month of this meeting."
The Mizukage spoke up quickly before the Raikage could shout the man down. "How will we find you?"
"I will contact the Hokage and Raikage directly, after they make the appropriate public announcements, stating their intentions concerning their Tailed Beasts." The masked man sheathed the sword. He stood up on the beam with a smile. "Now, since you have much to discuss, I shall leave you all to it. Enjoy the rest of your conference, although I can't imagine why you should have any problems. A couple of Jinchuurikis, in exchange for the lives of every ninja in the Five Nations? I honestly think I'm generous giving you a month to think about it!"
Air whipped through the conference room, sending notes, fragments of table and sheets of paper flying up to the ceiling. Kakashi shielded his head with his arm. There was a click from the door behind him. Somebody had unlocked it.
When Kakashi lowered his arms and looked up at the beam, along with the Kages and the other aides, the man in the mask, Uchiha Madara, was gone.
Sasuke woke up.
He touched his forehead, and he was startled to feel something cold and wet there before a drop of condensation dripped down from the ceiling. It splashed between his eyes.
He sat up slowly and looked around, trying to get his bearings, and remembered that he was lying on his pallet trying to sleep off the effects of the morning's general anaesthetic. His heart wasn't racing but it felt like it had been. He ran his hand down his face. It came away clammy with sweat. His mouth was dry.
"Damn anaesthetics," Sasuke muttered.
Strange dreams, abnormal heart rates, and a dry mouth? What had Kabuto used on him this time? His head ached like it was going to split. Kabuto would be taking more samples from him later. He had said something about thymus and spleen samples before disappearing to the main laboratory and leaving Sasuke to dose himself with whatever he felt necessary.
Sasuke pushed back the covers and left his room. He met one of the grey-winged moths in the corridor and it followed him closely as he went to the main laboratory.
If you try to use your chakra with hostile intent, these moths will know, and they will help me keep you in line, Kabuto had said.
Despite agreeing with Madara to remain quiet until Kabuto had formulated a working antibiotic, vaccine and cure for latency, Sasuke had never agreed to completely surrender himself to Kabuto's mercy. After the very first day of lab-work, when Kabuto had been too engrossed in his reports to notice, Sasuke had gone looking for potential weapons.
It was a futile effort. Madara had taken Sasuke's attempt to kill himself seriously enough to make the cave complex entirely knifeless. The food in the larder had already been prepared. There wasn't a single can or roll of foil with which Sasuke could fashion a makeshift blade. Stalactites had even been shaved off the ceiling. When it came to laboratory equipment, Kabuto counted up the scalpels, scissors and needles at the end of every day, before doing the same for glassware. He knew Sasuke would attempt to arm himself if he could.
Sasuke refused to think he was vulnerable, but with the constant trials and studies being inflicted on his body, he was physically in no condition to be a threat to Kabuto without a weapon and, infuriatingly, Kabuto knew that too.
He came to the laboratory. Sasuke rested his hand on the handle and, just as he was about to open it, he paused. He found himself staring down at his hand, cold and waxy-looking in the dark.
The hands in his dream had been blue and covered in frost.
"Snap out of it." He pushed the door open with his shoulder and shook his head furiously.
The laboratory was empty for once. Kabuto wouldn't have expected Sasuke to be awake for another hour or so. He must have slithered back to his room. The grey moth fluttered in behind him and went to perch on top of Kabuto's microscope.
Without Kabuto's presence and oily commentary of his work, the laboratory seemed larger than usual. Sasuke went to the work bench where Kabuto had left his notebooks open and turned through their pages. Images of Sasuke's modified chakra system had been inserted under the heading 'Chakra System Immune Memory'. The next few pages were notes on phagosome-lysosome bridging molecules.
Sasuke frowned as he read them. With every page of Kabuto's scrawling notes, every word, every diagram, every arrow and underlining, every journal reference and memo to check a file collected from one of Orochimaru's laboratories, he began to feel unsettled, sick…No. It was worse. He felt violated.
He snorted. There was little point thinking like a victim now. It had been his choice to go under Orochimaru's knife - his choice, now it was his responsibility to live with it.
Sasuke was about to shut Kabuto's notebook when a line of ink on the back page caught his eye. He flipped the book open again. The moth was still fluttering its dusty wings on Kabuto's microscope.
"MK," he read out loud. It was a page on the old strain of the disease. Not even a page. It was largely a paragraph complaining about how difficult it was to obtain a sample.
Sasuke shrugged and closed the notebook. Opening a cupboard, he pulled out a microscope, took off its cloth cover and began mechanically setting it up on the bench behind Kabuto's. He had the time. He might as well check his RAMK colonies and see how they were growing on their plates.
He finished adjusting the lenses and walked across the room to the storage cupboard, where he had stacked the plates inside an incubator the day before.
The room on the left is where most of the supplies are stored.
It was a big hefty door and Sasuke was still getting used to the heaviness of its handle. He started to turn it using both hands, ignoring the stabs of pain coming from his hips and his chest where Kabuto had been taking samples from.
The room on the right is a freezer, Kabuto smiled in Sasuke's memory, but you need not worry about that.
Sasuke stopped. He turned to look to his right, to the door of the freezer, to the small misted up window. It was a very large freezer. He wondered what could be inside it. He had seen Kabuto come out of it once, but Kabuto had never sent him in there to fetch anything.
You need not worry about that.
It wasn't locked and Kabuto had never explicitly said he couldn't go in there. Sasuke glanced over his shoulder. The moth had moved. It had stopped this time on a test-tube rack and was preening its wings under a lamp. It shouldn't react if he opened the freezer door. It had been 'bred to respond to sudden changes in adrenaline levels combined with a fluctuation in chakra' after all, not changes in atmospheric temperature.
He put his hands on the freezer handle. The metal was cool to the touch.
Hands blue from the ice, and the pallor of a dead man's skin…
Sasuke closed his eyes. This had nothing to do with his dream. Kabuto was taking apart his body, bit by bit. If Sasuke couldn't get hold of a weapon to keep Kabuto on edge, to remind him that Sasuke was neither an object nor a laboratory pet, then he could get at Kabuto in other ways, starting with finding out what he was keeping in the freezer.
The handle twisted. There was a hiss as the door opened and cold air rushed against Sasuke's face.
Kabuto picked up the notebook from his workbench. Before he had gone up to his room, it had been left open at the page he was working on. Sasuke must have woken up early and come to the laboratory. The moth that had been watching the boy was fluttering by the sinks, Kabuto's notebook was now closed, and a microscope had been set up on the other workbench. Of Sasuke himself, however, there was no sign.
The corners of his lips turned up in a smile. Kabuto couldn't help it really. There was a chill in the laboratory air that hadn't been there when he had left and, more damningly, the door to the freezer had been left a little ajar. It was obvious where the boy had gone.
Kabuto sat down at his microscope. How should he entertain himself? There was plenty to be doing. He chose a slide mounted with a section of the boy's alveolar tissue, put it under the lens, and waited for Sasuke to come out from the freezer.
Not long later the hinges groaned and the door swung open. A cool gust of air swept through the laboratory, sending the moths into a flapping panic about Kabuto's head.
Slow crunching footsteps approached him. Ice was stuck to the soles of Sasuke's shoes. Kabuto neither looked up nor turned around. He hunched over his microscope, staring at the purple and red lace of the tissue and waited.
The footsteps came to a stop behind him.
"Kabuto," Sasuke's voice was low, guttural and trembled with menace, "why do you have Itachi's body in the freezer?"
Next time: Why indeed?
It might be a very short chapter, but a very necessary one.
Thank you for reading!
P.S. Did anybody suspect there was something up with Kabuto's payment or the freezer? Would love to know!