AN: Thank you everyone as always for the reviews! They are my writing fuel and I read each one. :)
aka-chan - thanks for the suggestion. I'll take it under consideration although I don't know if I'll write more stories after this one since it's taken me sooo long to complete. XD If I wrote an asylum story it would be another saga, I expect. Maybe I'll do the library one-shot once I'm done with this.
Now my lovelies, it's time to go on the emotional rollercoaster! Evil cliffhangers are inevitable, so please keep your hands and legs inside the vehicle, and strap in tight!
Red Storm
Chapter 20: Unearthed
"We do not remember days, we remember moments."
~Cesare Pavese
"Where is he?" asked Naruto, straining his head in his bindings to try and peer around the room. He had officially reached his limit of nasty surprises.
"Where is who?" asked Kabuto with an innocent smile.
"Orochimaru." Naruto said, his voice tight.
Kabuto lifted his eyebrows in feigned surprise.
"I'm hurt, Naruto. Not even a 'Hello, how are you?'"
He lifted the corner of his lip in an almost undetectable sneer.
"Particularly after I've changed so much."
He gestured to his cracked and damaged face. His hand was the same texture. The skin was much like Obito's own candle-wax flesh but drier, flakier, still repairing.
"You look surprised to see me." He leaned forward. "Did you think I died when you and Sasuke left me to burn to death in that fire?"
Naruto curled his fingers into a fist, pressing his nails into his palms.
Meanwhile, Kabuto pulled at the Velcro around Naruto's wrists.
"You'll be glad to know Orochimaru does not work with the Akatsuki. He did that once before and it didn't work out too well."
Naruto winced as the restraints were yanked tighter.
"No. Thanks to you, he is still sitting somewhere in a jail cell."
Kabuto's eyes flashed, but his voice was calm and clinical as ever.
Naruto relaxed slightly, not that Orochimaru's absence made things safer, but it was a small consolation. The feeling of relief was not long to last, however, when Kabuto pulled over a metal trolley. It rattled as it came up to the bedside. On it lay sharp, metal instruments and one large syringe.
"What are you going to do?" asked Naruto, a slight shake in his voice betraying him. He dug his nails further into his palms.
Kabuto smiled. "Much the same work as we have done before, Naruto. I have been cooperating with the Akatsuki."
He shot Zetsu a pleasant smile, who was watching the exchange silently from a corner of the room, his arms folded. The man seemed to have a knack for always hiding half of himself in shadow. As for Hidan and the other man, they had left.
Kabuto brought Naruto's attention back as he picked up a bottle, pouring clear, white liquid onto a ball of cotton.
"After you left me for dead and burned down everything we worked for," Kabuto paused for a moment and Naruto could see a small muscle twitch in his jaw. He continued, "I had to find other ways to continue my research. Police managed to confiscate almost everything that was left from our labs, but they couldn't take this."
He tapped his head lightly.
Kabuto turned Naruto's arm and wiped the inner crook of his elbow with the cotton swab. The liquid alcohol was cool against his skin.
"I've missed our times together, Naruto." said Kabuto. He picked up a large syringe from the tray and turned his back as he continued speaking.
"You have been an interesting subject albeit bothersome. If this goes the way I expect, then I look forward to working together for a good while longer...in a slightly different arrangement of course."
He turned around to face him, holding the syringe now filled with a pale pink liquid.
"What your parents created is truly remarkable. I underestimated them."
"What they created?"
"Of course, you don't know." said Kabuto with a pitying smile. "Well, I suppose you wouldn't have known. You were just a child."
Kabuto regarded Naruto for a moment, the boy spread across the gurney like an animal awaiting dissection. Perhaps that is all he was to the scientist. He could feel Zetsu's eyes on him too, watching from the corner in silence.
"You've heard the stories, I suppose." began Kabuto, tapping the syringe. "Akatsuki were taking over the city. Rumour was they had a new drug they were preparing to put out on the street – one that would have people hopelessly addicted after one, single taste. Well, it was an early version of our own Bliss pill and this current concoction."
He held the syringe up in the light. The pale pink contents shone like liquid cherry blossom.
"Imagine the power, Naruto." said Kabuto in almost reverent tones. "A town of addicts and only one source. Our drug was an entirely new chemical recipe, one that could change the very functions and mapping of the brain itself."
He sighed. "Well, of course, it was a threat that needed to be addressed. That was where the Konoha Special Ops came in."
He paused. "Your parents contributed to the development of an antidote, a cure-all if you will - something to combat the effects. Naturally, the Akatsuki caught wind of this and realized that this was not something they wanted available to the open market. They had to find it and destroy it before it destroyed their plans."
Kabuto loomed closer to Naruto. Shadow shrouded his face, the strong, overhead surgical light silhouetting him from view, and his eyes disappeared behind the harsh glare reflected on his spectacle lenses.
"Do you remember that night, Naruto? The night your parents were killed?"
The words hummed through Naruto.
"I suppose it must be a blur for you." said Kabuto, "You stayed at a safe house, remember? It was a pokey, damp sort of place. I can still remember the smell of that dank maroon sofa. You'd think they could have gotten something better for Konoha's elite, but then it was a last-minute arrangement, not much to entertain a child. You stayed there, but they were foolish enough to leave. That was their first mistake."
Old, deadened memories began to unearth themselves from Naruto's consciousness. Smells and sounds echoing from a day he'd long tried to forget. That maroon sofa that had moldered in the small, gray house, his mother's face lined with worry as she spoke in hushed tones with blurry-faced strangers, that one word they said so often that was on the tip of his tongue, and the long syringe in his father's hand as he approached Naruto with sad eyes. The first time he had felt true fear.
"What did they do to me?" whispered Naruto.
"That, Naruto-kun, is a story for another time. Survive this, and perhaps I'll tell you." said Kabuto raising the syringe and flashing him a cold smile. "Now, stay still, this won't hurt a bit."
Naruto tried to yank his arm away as the needle loomed closer, but the restraints held him fast. Kabuto steadily pushed the needle in, and Naruto could only watch as the pink liquid was pressed down, forced through the hollow metal point and into his vein. He screwed his eyes shut awaiting the familiar sensation of bliss, the bittersweet emotion of longing and revulsion.
But it never came. Instead nausea flowed through him, and then a sharp pain as the needle was yanked out.
"Get away from him!" cried a deep voice.
Naruto's eyes snapped open. Kabuto stood with his arms pulled forcefully behind his back, anger and indignation colouring his face. The man restraining him wore a windowed visor and a heavily armoured, black uniform. Clear, blue eyes narrowed behind the plastic window.
"Cuff him." said the stranger, his voice muffled by the mask, "This one's high level security, so I want all available eyes on him until he's in a cell."
He handed Kabuto to another man in uniform who promptly placed shiny, metal handcuffs over his wrists. It was then Naruto realized the room was full of armoured officers crowding in and pointing dangerous-looking automatic weapons at Kabuto and Zetsu. Zetsu knelt onto the floor, hands on his head and a sullen expression on his face. A gun was aimed directly at his head.
As the two men were led out of the room, the stranger walked up to Naruto's bedside. He pulled off his mask and put it under his arm, gazing at Naruto keenly.
"Do you know who I am?"
Naruto frowned as he looked into the man's stare. He recognized him, but the man's face seemed to swim before him. Naruto swallowed. His throat felt thick and suddenly breathing was taking a concentrated effort.
"I don't…I don't feel well." He whispered with a frown. Something was wrong.
The man tossed his mask to the floor, pulled off a glove and pressed a couple of fingers gently on the side of Naruto's neck. The calm expression on his face dropped.
"Okay, we need to get you to a hospital now." He said before shouting at someone in the room. "I need a medic stat! Let's get him out of here."
He leaned over and quickly removed Naruto's restraints.
"Ok, Naruto, listen to me." he said, "We're with the police and we're going to get you out of here and to a hospital, so just relax, okay?"
Naruto nodded numbly. Shouldn't he be feeling…things…emotions or something? He raised his hand and looked at it. It moved as if in a dream, and his skin shone like moonlight.. It would have been pretty if it wasn't so odd.
Hands hauled him up and he found himself standing uncertainly on the concrete floor, propped up by two black uniformed police officers. His legs were weak. They gave immediately.
"It's okay. I've got you." said the man, supporting him.
The next few moments passed in a blur. The police officers half-dragged Naruto out of the maze of building and into a waiting ambulance. He barely got a glimpse of the outside as the kindly officer got in beside him and shut the doors.
Naruto's tongue felt thick, and the room around him was spinning. He shook his head and sat up, trying to focus on the man in the mask. Something about his eyes.
"We're going to get that stuff out of you, ok, Naruto? I need you to stay with me, stay focused on the sound of my voice." said the officer pushing him gently onto his back as a paramedic began stuffing him with tubes.
He could hear the beeping sound as he was hooked up to a heart rate monitor. It was slow.
He nodded, unable to form coherent words. The juddering of the ambulance made his head hurt. At some point it ground to a halt and he was carted onto a gurney before being whisked into the hospital building. Grey, mottled ceiling tiles and door overhangs passed by in a streaking blur until finally, everything went black.
When Naruto awoke it was to the sound of soft beeping. For a split second, he thought it was his alarm clock and he let out a groan. He was exhausted.
His head gave a piercing throb and he opened his eyes taking in the clean white of the hospital room and the smell of sterile chemicals. The heart-rate monitor continued to beep softly.
"You're awake." said a familiar deep voice.
Sitting in a high-backed maroon chair next to his bed sat the officer who had helped him. He was no longer wearing his mask or his uniform, dressed in a simple shirt and denim jeans. Unobscured by the mask, Naruto could finally see without hindrance the blue eyes edged with light laughter lines. The man's golden blond hair fell around his face in soft spikes similar to Naruto's own style, only this man's was longer, reaching down to his shoulders. In fact, this man looked familiar, very familiar, and as Naruto studied the light, blue eyes his own widened in amazement.
The man asked the same question he had at the Akatsuki's lab.
"Do you know who I am, Naruto?"
For a moment, there was silence as Naruto searched desperately for the right words to say. Years of dreaming, of planning and fantasizing about this moment, and in the end he was only able to form one word, one word that blurted from his mouth in one short, unimpressive syllable.
"Dad?"