The descent was silent except for the hum of machinery and the minute shift of muscles as everyone settled against the elevator's cold, brushed steel walls. Naruto fidgeted with his earpiece, squeezing it deeper until the silicone tip pinched his cartilage, then forced his hands to his pockets, determined not to betray how hard his heart was pounding. Sasuke stood nearest the panel, arms folded tight, face stone-set and eyes fixed on the softly ticking floor display above the doors. Next to him, Gaara looked more corpse than living thing, his gaze not resting on any object but rather on the space between, as if seeing all possible outcomes and not liking a single one. Kiba bounced on his toes, exuding a nervous energy that made the hair on Naruto's arms stand up.
The elevator plunged deeper, its digital display gone dark. Naruto's stomach dropped with each floor they passed, the absence of numbers only intensifying the sensation that they were descending into something unknown.
Then Shikamaru's voice, dry and casual in their left ears. "Comms check. If you hear me, say your name."
Gaara responded first, voice low: "Gaara." His eyes flicked to Naruto for a second, then away.
Kiba blurted, "Kiba here," too loud. Sasuke rolled his eyes.
Sasuke answered, "Uchiha," in a monotone that made it sound like an accusation.
Naruto swallowed and tried for steady: "Naruto."
Shikamaru's exhale barely registered. "All good. Temari, you on?"
"Always," Temari replied, her voice sharp and clear, cutting through the staticky ether like a razor.
The elevator doors parted with a hydraulic hiss, revealing a sterile hallway stretching before them like a throat ready to swallow them whole. Overhead, fluorescent tubes buzzed and stuttered in their metal cages, casting a sickly greenish-white glow that leached the color from their skin, turning knuckles to bone and veins to ink beneath the surface. Something acrid hung in the air—formaldehyde mixed with burnt coffee and an underlying metallic tang that coated Naruto's tongue and made his stomach clench into a fist. Thirty meters ahead, the corridor ended with a white door, its clinical white walls lined with identical brushed-metal doors and rectangular observation windows reinforced with wire mesh, all sealed tight as tombs against whatever secrets they contained. The glass reflected their approach in warped, funhouse distortions. Not a single light shone from any room, only darkness pressing against the panes like something alive and waiting.
Sasuke was out first, his stride short and deliberate, each footfall landing with predatory precision. His obsidian eyes scanned the corridor—sweeping across the ceiling's exposed pipes, probing the shadowed corners where walls met floor—before he signaled the all-clear with a sharp flick of two pale fingers. Gaara followed, the red of his hair the only splash of color in the sterile hallway. Then came Kiba, who pivoted a full 180 degrees, his nostrils visibly flaring like a wolf catching scent, before grunting through clenched teeth, "No one here. At least, not anyone alive."
Naruto trailed last, each step landing with a betraying squeak that echoed off the walls like tiny screams. The rubber of his orange-and-black sneakers dragged against the polished linoleum, leaving faint smudges that vanished seconds later. The emptiness felt wrong—hollow and accusatory—as if the space had once been crammed with bodies and machinery and now only the ghost of noise lingered in the recycled air. His eyes darted from window to window, half-expecting the frosted glass to suddenly illuminate from within, for a bloodied face to press against the pane, for desperate fingernails to scrape down the other side of a metal door. But the only sound was the military click of their footsteps and the asthmatic hiss of recirculating air.
They fanned out in twos: Sasuke and Kiba took the left side, moving door to door, peering into each window before moving on; Naruto and Gaara took the right, Gaara's pale fingers brushing the metal handles as they passed, as if testing for a pulse or a remnant of heat.
Naruto's neck ached as he whipped his head toward each window they passed. His pulse quickened at a red emergency exit sign reflecting off polished metal, at a lab coat hanging from a hook that swayed when the ventilation kicked on. Each time, disappointment crashed through him. The rooms offered nothing but dust-filmed monitors, papers curling at the edges, and chairs pushed back as if everyone had left in a hurry. One desk calendar still displayed last Tuesday's date. A coffee ring stained its corner.
At the T-intersection, their shoulders bumped as they pressed against the wall. Sasuke's breath warmed Naruto's ear. Sweat trickled down Kiba's temple. Gaara's fingers twitched against his thigh. Twenty feet ahead, a white door caught the stuttering fluorescents, flashing like a lighthouse beacon in the clinical dark.
"This place is empty," Kiba whispered, shoulders slumping.
Temari's voice crackled through the earpiece: "Keep looking." Then, with forced calm, "Tell me what you see around you."
"Scientific equipment. Abandoned workstations," Gaara's lips barely moved as he spoke, his pale fingers hovering over a rack of test tubes, each labeled with faded alphanumeric codes. A digital readout on a nearby incubator still blinked, its red numbers reflecting in his colorless eyes. "We're standing in what was once a laboratory."
Naruto pressed his back to the wall, his fingers alternating between fists and splayed tension. He imagined Kurama alone in some cell, waiting for rescue that might never come—then immediately hated himself for the thought. What if his brother wasn't here at all? What if this was another dead end, another wasted night while Kurama suffered somewhere else entirely? The emptiness of the corridor seemed to mock him, amplifying both his hope and his doubt until they collided like cymbals in his skull.
Sasuke motioned for silence, then approached the door. He pressed an ear to the seam, held it there for a full ten seconds, then shook his head. "Nothing."
"Open the door slowly," Gaara murmured.
Sasuke's fingertips pressed against the cold metal, easing the door forward with millimeter precision. The hinges didn't make a sound. He angled his body through the narrow gap, one obsidian eye visible in the slice of darkness. Naruto held his breath. The air changed—thicker here, pressing against his eardrums like deep water. His first step into the circular chamber sent vibrations through the soles of his sneakers that died instantly, swallowed by whatever waited inside. White countertops gleamed under surgical lights.
He almost called out for Kurama, but Sasuke caught his arm and shook his head once: Wait.
They spread across the room, fingertips skimming over countertops so aggressively sanitized they squeaked at the touch. Naruto crouched to examine a drain in the floor—bone-dry but ringed with the faintest rust-colored stain that wouldn't scrub away. Kiba sniffed at empty cabinets whose hinges still held the oily residue of frequent use. Sasuke ran his thumb along the edge where wall met counter, finding nothing but the faint ridge where adhesive tape had once secured plastic sheeting. Gaara stood motionless in the center, pale eyes cataloging the ceiling tiles—one slightly newer than the others, its edges not yet yellowed by time. Four pairs of footsteps echoed against the polished epoxy floor, each step revealing nothing but their own reflections staring back, distorted and grim.
Gaara joined him, his face unreadable as he examined the room. "This makes no sense."
Naruto's palm cracked against the wall, sending dust motes spinning in the fluorescent light. The sound bounced down the corridor—a lonely, tinny echo that returned to him like laughter. His nostrils flared, catching something beneath the bleach and ammonia—a whisper of cinnamon and cedar that vanished when he inhaled deeper. He pressed his forehead against the cold cinderblock, eyes squeezed shut, fingertips digging into the rough surface until his knuckles whitened.
Sasuke hunched over the control console, fingers flying across the keyboard. The screen flickered once, then displayed a single message: "Data Wiped." Naruto caught Sasuke's muttered curse, the sound of it landing like another weight on his already crushed hopes.
Naruto's shoulders bunched under Gaara's palm. "We're not done," Gaara murmured, his voice barely audible over the hum of the ventilation system. "Even the most careful people leave traces. We just need to find where they slipped."
Naruto nodded, then caught Sasuke watching him from across the room. Their eyes met for a heartbeat—long enough for Naruto's stomach to plummet, for his throat to constrict around a knot of panic and longing that threatened to choke him. He tore his gaze away, pulse hammering against his ribs like something trapped. The room suddenly felt airless. Sasuke's scent—pine and smoke and something uniquely alpha—would flood his senses if he got any closer, and then what? He'd crumble, right here, in front of everyone. He gestured toward the twin exits, fingers trembling slightly. "Gaara and I will check the door on the left," he managed, his voice a miracle of steadiness while his insides twisted like wet rope being wrung dry. Sasuke's jaw tightened, argument visible in the set of his shoulders, but after a moment he simply jerked his chin in acknowledgment and motioned for Kiba to follow him right.
They split up.
Gaara jerked his head left. Naruto followed him through a swinging fire door that wheezed on its hinges. The hallway beyond pinched inward—narrower than before, with something cruel in its proportions. Polished linoleum stretched ahead, so glossy it swallowed their reflections like black water. Small windows punctured the cinderblock walls at measured distances, each framing an identical square of darkness. Naruto counted as they passed—twelve cells, at least, their interiors waiting like open mouths.
Naruto paused at the first. The glass was thick, slightly warped, and on the other side, a cot bolted to the wall, a single metal toilet in the corner. The mattress was thin as a sheet of paper, the blanket folded with institutional precision. There was no pillow. The next two were the same. At the fourth, Naruto stopped. His fingers hovered at the reinforced glass, as if he could touch what was gone.
The air here tasted of bleach, with an undercurrent of something older—old sweat, old fear, the memory of too many bodies pressed into too little space.
Gaara checked the other side of the hall, his movements methodical, eyes hooded. He paused at each door, peering inside, searching for signs: a scratch on the floor, a scrape of fingernail against paint, some hidden message that said "I was here." But nothing offered itself up, just the same sterile cots, the same worn marks in the linoleum.
Naruto pressed forward, counting off the cells as he passed them. Seven, eight, nine. At the tenth, something caught his eye—a flash of color on the mattress, just at the edge where blanket met wall. He stopped, stared, his heart twisting in his chest.
"Gaara," he called, voice a dry croak.
The redhead crossed the hall, each footfall silent as a shadow, his jade eyes never blinking. Naruto's heart hammered against his ribs as he forced himself to grasp the rusted handle of cell number ten. The door swung inward with a damp, greasy squeal that echoed like a wounded animal. He stepped inside, shoulders immediately brushing concrete on both sides—a coffin masquerading as a room. The smell of industrial antiseptic burned his nostrils, the chemical sting barely masking something bitter underneath: old sweat, fear, and the metallic tang of blood that no amount of bleach could fully erase.
He knelt by the thin cot, its metal frame bolted to the floor with thick screws crusted with rust. His fingers stretched toward that flash of vibrant color against institutional gray. His hand trembled violently, like autumn leaves in a storm, and it took three desperate attempts before he could pinch the edge of the coarse wool blanket between his thumb and forefinger.
There, tangled in the synthetic mesh, were three strands of red hair—brighter than anything else in this world, and so familiar it made his vision blur.
Kurama.
Naruto's knees hit the floor with a sharp thud. His vision tunneled to those three crimson strands, the rest of the cell dissolving into gray static. His heart seemed to stutter, then race, then plummet, each beat a hammer against his ribs. With fingers that wouldn't stop shaking, he plucked the hair from the blanket, holding it up to the cold fluorescent light.
It caught, glowed, and suddenly his throat closed like someone had their hands around it. Behind his eyes, a pressure built—not quite tears, something worse, something that might tear him apart if he let it loose. For a heartbeat, he was eight years old again, standing at the window of their old house as Kurama mussed his hair and promised they'd always have each other. The memory of that laugh hit him like a physical blow, hollowing him out from the inside.
His lungs burned. He'd forgotten to breathe. When he finally gasped in air, it came as a ragged, broken sound that bounced off the cell walls and returned to mock him. He closed his trembling fist around the strands, pressing them against his chest where something vital seemed to be cracking open. Hope and despair warred inside him, neither winning, both tearing at him with equal ferocity.
A weight settled on his shoulder. Gaara's hand, cold but steady against the fever of his grief.
"We'll find him," Gaara said, voice soft but iron-clad. "This proves we're on the right track."
Naruto wanted to believe it. He wanted to speak, to say thank you, to say anything at all, but the words stayed locked in his throat. All he could do was nod, clutch the strands, and let the hope spark again, brittle but alive.
Gaara knelt beside him, their knees touching the same scuffed linoleum. "They didn't get rid of everything," he said, looking around the cell with new focus. "Means they left in a hurry. Means they'll leave a trail." He met Naruto's gaze, his usual detachment gone. "We'll follow it."
Naruto looked down at the red strands in his fist, then back at Gaara. The world steadied around him. "Yeah," he whispered. "We will."
He pocketed the hair, rose to his feet, and followed Gaara out of the cell. For the first time since entering the underground, Naruto didn't feel alone.
—
Kiba prowled ahead of Sasuke, the crunch of his shoes on the tile too loud in the vast, echoing laboratory. The overhead LEDs cast everything in a hostile blue-white, hardening the emptiness into something aggressive. Stainless-steel tables stood in rigid rows, all the drawers yanked open, their innards gutted. Along the walls, pale rectangles marked where equipment once hung—computers, monitors, control panels, now vanished and leaving only the shadow of their outlines.
"Whatever happened here, they took the time to clean house," Kiba muttered, sweeping his flashlight over the nearest table. "If you told me a murder happened last night, I'd believe it."
Sasuke ignored the commentary, moving with deliberate precision. He checked each table for overlooked drawers or dropped evidence, then paused at a door marked "Office." Unlike the lab, this room was pitch black inside; he flicked on the light, half-expecting someone—or something—to be waiting.
Instead, the space was as stark as the rest: a single desk, black as oil, its surface buffed to a paranoid shine. Sasuke closed the door behind him and crossed to the desk, examining it for traps or signs of tampering. The computer monitor was gone, but the keyboard and mouse remained, unpowered.
He sat, methodically opening each drawer.
Top right: empty except for a pencil with the eraser chewed flat. He rolled it between his fingers, then let it clatter into the wastebasket.
Middle: blank, sterile, no papers, no pens, not even a crumb.
Bottom left: locked. Sasuke fished a multitool from his pocket, flicked open the thin blade, and popped the latch. The drawer slid out with a satisfying resistance. Inside, nestled alone on a white cloth, was a USB drive. Standard black plastic, but the surface was scratched in precise block letters: SASUKE.
He stared at it, the implication settling into his bones. Orochimaru—or whoever ran the operation—had left this behind on purpose. A message? A threat? Or bait, pure and simple.
He pocketed the drive, left the pencil, and stood, surveying the room once more before exiting. In the hall, Kiba waited by a door with a heavy, retrofitted padlock.
"You find anything?" Kiba asked, too quickly. His hands jittered at his sides, unable to settle.
"Maybe," Sasuke said, showing the drive for a split second before tucking it away. "Nothing for you to sniff, though."
Kiba rolled his eyes, but relief flickered through his face. He turned to the door he'd found. "This goes somewhere," he said, rapping the metal with his knuckles. "I'd bet my last tuition payment it's a service elevator. Could be our way out, or maybe the next level down."
"Don't get ahead of yourself," Temari crackled in their earpieces. "Sweep the rest before you start pushing random buttons. We have one shot at this."
"Copy that," Sasuke replied. He moved down the corridor, checking the storage lockers one by one. Every shelf was bare, except for a crumpled surgical glove stuck behind a bottle of bleach and an inventory log taped to the wall. The log had been scrawled over, every entry blacked out with marker.
They regrouped at the junction. Gaara and Naruto were already waiting, Gaara's face its usual blank, Naruto's tense but holding together. Sasuke wondered what they'd found—if anything—but Naruto's fist was clenched tight, knuckles white, and he suspected it was less a clue and more a heartbreak.
Kiba glanced at the group, then jerked his chin at the locked door. "So… we going, or what?"
Temari's voice over comms was all business, but softer than before. "We've got everything we can get. We don't know what is on the other side of that, be careful."
They circled the door, searching for any mechanism—a keypad, a handle, anything. The smooth metal surface offered no purchase, its edges flush with the frame like the entrance to a vault.
"Move aside," Gaara said, his voice flat. From inside his jacket, he produced a crowbar, its metal gleaming dully under the harsh lights.
Kiba's eyebrows shot up. "Been planning a break-in all along, huh?" Gaara merely fixed him with an empty stare, the crowbar already wedged against the seam of the door.
Gaara strained against the crowbar, muscles taut, but the door resisted with mechanical stubbornness. Sasuke stepped in without a word, adding his weight to the effort. The metal groaned, giving way by millimeters. Naruto and Kiba lunged forward in unison, fingers wrapping around cold steel. Four bodies leaned as one, and the seal broke with a pneumatic hiss. Beyond the threshold stretched a corridor of perfect darkness, swallowing their flashlight beams like a hungry mouth.
Temari's voice crackled through the comms. "Report?"
"Long corridor. No visible exits," Gaara replied, his tone flat. "We're proceeding forward."
A string of muffled expletives filtered through before Temari's resigned sigh. "Watch yourselves." Gaara wedged the crowbar into the threshold, preventing the door from sealing shut behind them, and they advanced into the darkness.
Their footsteps echoed against concrete as the passageway stretched before them, featureless and oppressive. Minutes bled together until Naruto's sense of time distorted. When they finally reached the end—a blank wall with a rusted ladder ascending into darkness—Naruto noticed the persistent hiss in his earpiece. They'd moved beyond Shikamaru and Temari's transmission range, leaving them truly alone.
Sasuke gripped the lowest rung of the ladder. "I'll check it out," he said, already pulling himself upward before anyone could object. The metal creaked under his weight as he disappeared into the darkness above. Naruto held his breath, counting each second of Sasuke's absence, his pulse hammering against his ribs. The scrape of boots against metal announced Sasuke's return before his figure emerged from the shadows, dropping the final distance with practiced ease.
"Found another exit," he reported, brushing rust from his palms. "Leads to some abandoned warehouse. When I reached the top, Shikamaru's voice came through again—we're about a mile from campus. We either climb out and walk back, or retrace our steps underground."
Gaara's eyes narrowed. "Shikamaru confirmed the exit location?" When Sasuke nodded, he gestured back toward the way they'd come. "We should return through the tunnel. Whatever's waiting up there is best tackled in daylight."
No one argued. They retraced their steps through the corridor, shoulders tense until Temari's voice burst through their earpieces, sharp with barely contained worry.
"Sound off. Now."
"Still breathing," Naruto muttered, exhaustion weighing each syllable.
Sasuke merely grunted his acknowledgment.
"Heading back," Kiba reported.
"Unharmed," Gaara said flatly.
The static carried Temari's relieved exhale. "Get topside. Rendezvous at the usual place."