27. Taken
The old factory was foggy and grey. It hadn't been used in what seemed decades, but Minato could spot footprints on the dusty floor as he walked silently down the first hallway. By placing his thumb on one of the walls he could sense where the people were located inside the building.
"General," he said. "There are people inside, but not more than about twenty. They might've placed barriers that prevents me from detecting anyone else."
"Keep going, Minato."
Minato listened by a wooden door, but couldn't hear anything. Slowly, he pushed it open.
It was empty, apart from a few work benches, emptied for tools long ago. The windows sent the last streaks of sunlight through, and the dust in the air was a clear powder, floating around the room. He kept going.
The next room was empty as well. He realised he would have to try several rooms before he would find anything, yet no door and no room was left unchecked. He walked into workshops, offices, lunch rooms and toilets, and the sun sunk lower for every room he visited.
At last, the sun had dropped behind the forest, and the sky was turning a darker shade of blue.
It appeared that the people he had sensed were spread across the higher floors, so after visiting every room on the first floor, he concluded that it was empty and headed down to the cellar. He hadn't sensed anyone there; the chance that there were children hidden behind a barrier was higher downstairs than upstairs.
He landed in the cellar, which was dark and quiet. There were few doors.
The first door led to more toilets. The mirrors were broken, the sinks out of function and the cubicles as empty as the rest of the room. It was the same situation with the next room, which was also a toilet.
The next two doors were far apart; the rooms were either of big size, or the cellar very small. He placed his thumb on the door; there were no people to sense. Nor were there any disturbance in the air of a barrier.
He pushed the door open. It was a large room, but too dark for him to see. He silently marked the wall outside with his seal for an escape, and turned on the light.
It was a large storage room. Shelves upon shelves were placed in order along the walls, filling up the hall of a room, and the fluorescent lamps in the roof were long and unshielded and the tubes blinking slightly in a cold, blue light. Minato crossed the storage, looking through the empty shelves, but as he reached the inner corner, he had to conclude that there was no one there either.
The next room was a storage that hadn't been emptied. It was larger than the previous, and the lamps weaker and older. Boxes were stacked on top of each other on the shelves, some of them opened and containing nothing but stale air. Bubble wrap and carton was spread on the floor in pieces, worn and dried by the years. The dust on the floor flew as Minato walked between the various shelves, looking both for anyone particular and at the boxes; they had once contained everything from tools, nails and screws to toilet paper. He even found a few bluish, wet boxes that by the smell of it had once contained dumplings.
He gave the mouldy dumplings no more attention and decided to climb the stairs to the second floor. As he did so, he placed his mark on various places, giving him alternative escape routes if he needed them. Voices became clearer as he walked the hallway of the second floor, but they were coming from one floor above him; undisturbed, he checked more of the rooms in the building.
On the fourth door, an office appeared before him. This office was not like the previous ones – empty, dusty, dark – this one still had its lights turned on, papers were spread across a clean desk, the windows were opened just a crack to let fresh air in, and the room was free from the dusty layers.
He sneaked inside. This was a perfect chance to harvest information.
"I found an office," he whispered to the general. "It's been used recently. I'll see if I can find anything."
The general grunted his approval, not wanting to give Minato away by any unnecessary noises. Minato ploughed through the papers on the desk, but had to be disappointed once more. The papers were mostly for constructions of buildings, approvals from the Earth's feudal lord and the Tsuchikage, files on people who had been hired for the job of reconstructing the building. Nothing that seemed suspicious at all. The bookcase was empty, and the drawers in the desk was filled up with pens, empty sheets of paper, tissues, a few bottles of water -
"Nothing," he whispered. He left the room.
The recently cleaned toilet didn't contain much information either. Minato was beginning to get desperate of finding any information regarding the children; he was on the verge of rolling out every sheet of toilet paper in case something was written on it, but as he began, he shook his head and realised it was stupid, left the rest of the toilet paper alone and continued to the next room.
Eventually, he began to climb the stairs to the third floor. Very carefully, and very silently, he peered up from the steps; the voices were coming from the rooms, not the hallway, so he stepped onto the landing and tried to decide which direction to make.
He placed a thumb on the walls again and registered every empty room. He could worry about the occupied rooms later.
All of the rooms were cleaned and furnished for use, and Minato was beginning to suspect that the kidnapper had left false trails to the building. It seemed like the only thing the building was used for at the moment, was reconstructing the factory that had once been there, making electronic artefacts such as televisions and radios. Many of the people in the building were not even shinobi; they were construction workers, engineers and suppliers. Minato realised halfway through the fourth floor that the only reason why the shinobi were there, was for the security of the workers; the factory was, after all, very close to the border.
Angry and disappointed that he hadn't found anything, Minato closed the last door and contemplated whether or not it was a good idea to check the occupied rooms, just to make sure he hadn't missed anything.
"I think it's useless to stay," the general said as discreetly as he could. "You should retreat. Unseen."
But just as Minato was going to make an answer, he heard voices reaching the top of the stairs. He hurriedly opened a door that went outwards and placed himself behind it, hand firmly on the doorknob to keep the door still. The footsteps came closer.
"... And I want his head, I don't want him alive."
Minato froze. This didn't sound like factory talk.
"I've already put someone on the case." It was a man talking this time, and they came dangerously close. "They headed off seven days ago."
Minato prepared to transport to the lower levels of the building, but he had finally found something worth listening to.
"Good," the woman said. She sounded frustrated. "Exactly what is it they're doing?"
"Can you just help me with – oh, the door's already open," the man said.
Yeah, you're welcome, Minato thought as the two persons passed the door he was hiding behind. The man dumped something heavy onto a table before he spoke.
"They're trying to find someone close to him, because I think fighting him directly in his own village would be a suicide mission," he said. "They headed off to investigate."
"Good work," the woman said, now more pleased. "Hopefully he'll take the bait. I've waited for this for years ..."
"I know," the man said. The woman walked out of the room, and headed back for the stairs.
The man was rummaging in what sounded like a wooden box, taking out several heavy iron objects and placing them carefully on the table. Minato tried to listen to anything else he was doing, but nothing more eventful than that happened – not until two more came running up the stairs.
"Mujin!" one of them shouted.
"I'm in here!" the man in the room, Mujin, shouted back. The two newly arrived men ran towards the room, but luckily for Minato, they didn't move the door.
"Where's boss?"
"She just left," Mujin said. "I think she's heading back to headquarters. Why? What's the rush?"
"Go find her," the first man told the other; footsteps could be heard running to the stairs again. "Mujin, the mission's done."
"Seriously?" Mujin said, somewhat astounded. "So quickly? I hadn't expected you back for another two weeks -"
"No, no, he wasn't in the village."
Minato frowned.
"And?" Mujin said. "Who did you get?"
"Well, we searched his house," the man said eagerly. "I'm not sure it's his house, though, looks like it belongs to someone else, but anyway, he wasn't the only one living there."
"Uh, all right," Mujin said. Minato could almost hear the puzzled frown on his face.
"Yeah," the man continued. He sounded as though he could be jumping up and down of delight. "Boss is gonna be pleased."
"And you're sure it was his house?"
"No, like I said we thought it belonged to someone else -"
"Cut the crap. You're sure he lived there?"
"Oh, yes. We found some mission papers with his name on, and a couple of those special Hiraishin kunai you said he uses -"
It felt as though a stone had been dropped in Minato's stomach.
"Anyway, someone else lived there and we found some pictures – and she came home just that moment so we decided to go for it -"
Horror rose inside Minato. His hand clenched tighter around the doorknob as the words rang through his mind and he feared what they were talking about – who they had taken -
"It's his girlfriend, he's bound to show up. She put up a hell of a fight but you know Mana – big, violent man, he knocked her out, they should be at headquarters soon."
"Did you get her name?"
"Yeah, we did," the man said in a pleased tone. "Her name's Uzumaki Kushina."