The factory floor was a maze of rust and shadows.
Sasame led us through the labyrinth of pipes, her movements quiet and practiced. She knew which vents vented hot steam and which ones were just noisy. Condensed water dripped from the ceiling with a rhythmic plip-plip-plip, creating slick, black puddles that reflected the grim machinery.
She knew which cameras were duds.
We stopped near a loading dock door, pressing ourselves into the gloom.
"We met the quota!" a man yelled. His voice cracked, desperate and thin against the roar of the machinery. The wind whipped through the open bay doors, carrying the scent of ozone and the sharp, sour tang of desperate sweat.
He stood in the center of the alley, illuminated by a flickering purple chakra lamp. He wore a flak jacket that was two sizes too big, hanging off his bony shoulders like a costume. Shiin. The foreman of the Fūma clan.
Tayuya sat on a crate nearby, cleaning her flute with a scrap of velvet. She wore the standard Sound tunic, but hers was tailored, sharp. Her red hair fell over her face, hiding her expression. She didn't even look at him. She ran a fingernail down the length of the instrument, the faint scritch sounding impossibly loud in the tense silence.
"Your clan is tone-deaf trash, Shiin," she spat. "And you're a terrible conductor. Lord Orochimaru doesn't want rice. He wants results."
She brought the flute to her lips.
FWEEEEET.
A single, sharp, dissonant note cut through the air.
Shiin flinched violently, clutching his head with both hands as if he'd been slapped. He stumbled back, his face twisting in pain. The note vibrated in my own molars, a phantom toothache that lingered even after the sound cut off.
"I... I can be useful," Shiin whispered, his hands trembling as the echo faded. "I have the aptitude. I can take the curse mark. I can take the enhancements!"
Tayuya laughed. It was a cruel, melodic sound that chilled the air more than the draft.
"You? You're not vessel material. You're barely mulch."
She vanished in a blur of speed, leaving only the faint scent of ozone behind.
Shiin stood there, alone in the alley. The purple light buzzed overhead. Zzzzt.
His fists clenched so hard his knuckles turned white. He looked up at the tower looming over the factory, where the orange glow of the labs pulsed like a heartbeat. A moth fluttered too close to the lamp, sizzling with a snap that mirrored Shiin's fraying sanity.
"I'll show you," he hissed to the empty air. "I'll become something you can't ignore. Even if I have to tear myself apart to do it."
I watched him from the doorway.
His chakra felt sour. Like milk left out in the sun. It wasn't the scary, deep void of Orochimaru. It wasn't the cold precision of Kabuto.
It was just... pathetic.
And desperate.
"Let's go," Naruto whispered, tugging on my sleeve. "That guy's a nobody."
I followed Naruto, but I cast one last look at the trembling man.
A nobody, I thought. Those are the ones who do the craziest things to become somebody.
We moved deeper into the facility, past the blast furnaces and into the cooling tunnels.
The air changed. The metallic tang of the factory faded, replaced by the damp, earthy smell of the underground. It was quieter here. The roar was muffled to a dull thrum.
The humidity spiked here, pressing against my skin like a damp, heavy towel.
We rounded a corner and froze.
A guard was sitting in a chair by a service elevator. His head was lolled back, snoring loudly.
It was a wet, congested sound, echoing off the concrete walls like a growl.
I relaxed slightly. Sleeping on the job. Classic.
We crept past him on silent feet.
As I passed, my sensory perception glitched.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
I stopped. I turned my head.
Two heartbeats. In one body.
I looked at the guard. He was definitely asleep. But on the back of his neck, nestled in the thick muscle of his trapezius...
A face.
It was sleeping too. A second face, fully formed, eyelids closed, mouth slightly open, protruding from the flesh like a tumor. A bubble of drool expanded from the second face's lips, popping silently, proving it was alive, breathing, and parasitic.
I stifled a gasp, clapping a hand over my mouth. The nausea hit me instantly—a visceral, biological wrongness that made my skin crawl.
"Sakon and Ukon," Sasame whispered, her face pale. "They share a body. Don't wake them. When they sleep at the same time, they are dead asleep. But if one wakes up..."
She didn't finish the sentence. She just pulled us toward the elevator controls.
I shuddered, stepping into the cage. The doors rattled shut, cutting off the view of the two-headed monster. The smell of them—unwashed skin and musk—lingered in the cage even after the doors sealed.
The elevator descended with a groan of rusted cables. Dust rained down from the shaft above, coating my tongue with the taste of rust and iron.
Clank.
The doors opened onto a dirt tunnel. The air here was suffocating, smelling of wet soil and... something musky. It smelled distinctively fungal, like mushrooms rotting in the dark, mixed with an acrid, nutty scent.
Naruto took one step out.
"YAAAAAH!"
He yelled, pointing at the floor, his face twisted in horror.
I lunged forward, grabbing him and slamming my hand over his mouth.
"Shhh!" I hissed. "Do you want to die?"
Naruto's eyes were wide. He pointed frantically at the ground.
I looked down.
The floor wasn't dirt. It was moving.
It was a carpet of mole crickets. Thousands of them. Their brown, segmented bodies writhed over each other, their shovel-like front legs digging into the soil. The floor rippled like a disturbed pond, a living carpet of brown chitin and twitching legs.
The sound was a low, constant chitter-chitter-chitter.
I stared.
Ugh.
"Uh," I whispered, fighting the urge to climb the walls. "Let's... try not to step on too many, I guess."
I swallowed hard, feeling the bile rise in my throat as the "carpet" crunched sickeningly under Naruto's sandal.
We crunched our way through the tunnel. It was gross. Every step was a squish.
"Hey, Sasame," I asked, trying to distract myself from the insect massacre under my boots.
I looked at the kunai she had given me earlier—the one with the seal that could disrupt Kagerō's chakra. I held it up to the dim light of the tunnel.
"Did you draw this seal? It's beautiful. The calligraphy is incredibly precise."
Sasame blushed, shaking her head. Her orange hat-mask bobbed.
"No," she said softly. "Arashi made these. He used to be an artist. Before... before he volunteered for the experiments."
"An artist?"
Sasame reached into her pouch. She pulled out a small, folded piece of paper. She handed it to me.
The paper was soft and fuzzy at the creases, worn thin from being folded and unfolded a thousand times. I unfolded it carefully.
It was a charcoal sketch. It depicted a group of people sitting under a tree—the Fūma clan. They were smiling. They looked healthy. There were no smokestacks in the background. No neon lights. Just trees and wind.
The lines were delicate, full of life and movement. The charcoal was smudged slightly at the corners, stained with the oil of fingerprints—a physical memory of the artist.
I looked at the sketch, then at the dark, oppressive tunnel we were walking through.
"He captured the wind," I murmured, tracing a line of ink. "He must have really loved his home."
"He did," Sasame whispered, her voice cracking. "He did all of this to save it."
I folded the paper and handed it back to her.
"We'll find him," I promised, giving her a faint smile. "And I'll tell him his art is amazing when we do."
Sasame nodded, wiping her eyes.
"The main lab is just ahead," she said, pointing to a heavy blast door at the end of the cricket tunnel. "Be careful. The air... it tastes like snakes."
A cold draft seeped from beneath the heavy iron door, carrying a chemical sterile scent that made the hair on my arms stand up.
She was right. I could taste it already. Copper and venom.
We stepped over the last of the crickets and prepared to knock on the devil's door.