The Pit

They were pulling at her.

Grubby, cold hands reaching, grasping, tugging at her arms, her legs. Working their fingers into her hair and twisting in their frantic hold.

Their lifeless, all-seeing eyes never blinked, as if they'd lose track of her, if they did.

Rin felt the carpet of bodies beneath her squirm like maggots in the pit, each drawn to her warmth, driven by her lifeforce.

She screamed.

Gaping faces surrounded her and she knew them all.

Failed, discarded experiments; the lesser of her kind, cast into the shadows like day-old bread.

Her eyes shot up to her guide, who was watching from his frozen stance, like a sentinel in the night. "Haru! Help me! Please!"

He didn't move an inch.

Arms found their way to her chest, tearing away at her clothes, gumming mouths coming to her exposed skin.

She winced when various broken teeth nibbled at her arms, sinking deep into her shoulders.

Why wasn't her guide coming for her? Something was wrong about all of this, beyond the obvious hellscape.

"Wait... they aren't actually biting me."

One young girl, she recognized as the former version of "Subject 8," slid up to her side.

Rin wiggled her fingers in her wide mouth and found them going through.

"This isn't happening to me. This is a memory. Oh god, this is a memory of Haru's."

Her gaze whipped around at the squirming experiments she thought meant to tear her apart and realized what they were actually doing.

"They're dying. Every one of them is dying in this pit."

The sinking realization they weren't fully dead when they were left, harrowed Rin to her core.

How long did they last in this pit? How much time went by surrounded by pain and covered in the stench of piss and blood and fear?

Their last moments were spent in agony and so were Haru's.

She remembered the sight of the kunai sliding into his chest, the spray of blood on her face, how he toppled forward onto her lap, before he was carted away to the incinerator.

They told her he was dead.

They lied.

They didn't even have the decency to burn him.

Rin pulled her hands to her chest, holding herself away from the writhing bodies.

His restorative jutsu kept him alive.

Her eyes turned to top of the pit, where a golden light passed over; the sun.

It passed by again and again, four...five...six...seven times.

Seven days he laid in this pit of filth, infection from the bacteria working its way through his body, killing him over and over.

Until, mercifully, it stopped.

Rin closed her eyes, exhaling a long breath and letting his memory take her.

She heard the world hush, the dying moans of their comrades thinning into silence, one-by-one.

Her senses dulled, the pain in her chest faded from sharp tremors, into a soft buzzing, but that could have been the flies crawling in and out of her open wound.

This is when Haru died.

Suddenly, she felt hands come to her arms and her guide lifted her from the pit. Her head lolled against the quick movement and he steadied her shoulders with his skeletal hands.

The world shifted around them.

No longer was she in the turned-over fields or standing over a gaping pit. She jumped from the darkness and into piercing light, that worked its way into her brain like an ice pick to her skull.

"Where am I?" Her mouth moved to ask and the guide placed a finger to his broken lips, shushing her.

Rin shook her head, clearing the dizziness of mind-melding and focused on what was before her.

A grey, metal gurney, much like the one she spent her early life strapped to, waited in the cold lab room. However, this wasn't anywhere like she'd seen before.

It certainly wasn't in their living quarters, she would have heard him, where was this?

Her gaze traveled along the stone walls, the rickety yellow lights sputtering single-file on the ceiling. It felt cold and smelt like dirt.

The broken creature beside her, left his post and settled on the gurney.

Rin covered her gasp when his skin grew back in sheets over his arms, his recently inflicted gut wound closed up and finally, his deep blue eyes, that held light and mischief in them, rolled back into his head and searched the room in a panic.

"Haru." She whispered.

"Welcome back, Subject 15. You stayed under for so long this time. We worried we'd lost you for good."

Rin's eyes shot to the shadows where a man stepped out, clipboard in hand, glasses sliding down his nose.

"Kabuto." She growled.

He sauntered closer to the gurney, scribbling down notes. "Tell me, how do you feel?"

"Where am I?" Haru's voice was rough in his throat.

Rin's heart ached in her chest; this was the first time she'd heard it as it was in the past. Not missing his tongue or as a broken mockery of who he was, but Haru, just as she remembered him.

"You're underneath the main laboratory."

"What?"

Kabuto hoisted his pen in the air. "The main laboratory is above us. You've been transported to the lower level."

Haru tried to sit up and found himself bound to the chair. "Why? What's going on?"

The scientist sighed and set his clipboard on the counter. "Must we go through this every time? You, Subject 15, have a very unique gift, one that is being studied under extreme conditions, for maximum results."

"Maximum...what?"

Kabuto spoke slower. "Maximum results. You've stagnated upstairs. It's clear you won't progress under such comfortable conditions. Yours is the kind of jutsu that thrives in adversity. We had no idea you'd be able to completely regenerate after so much and yet, you have! Congratulations. Most impressive, 15."

"I don't understand." Haru groaned, the pain in his head throbbing.

"Ah yes, there seems to be some cranial damage even you can't repair from. Interesting in its own right. I've been wondering why your brain is the slowest thing to regenerate. We lose a bit of your memory every time. I'm curious how long it will be until you don't remember anything at all?"

"Bastard." Rin snarled.

Kabuto stepped closer and studying his subject's expression. "Let's see what you remember. What are you called?"

"Haru."

"Haru? Who is Haru? We certainly don't call you that."

He hesitated, not wanting to place Rin in danger. It wasn't clear how much they knew already. Why couldn't he remember what he'd told them in the past?

The scientist smiled. "Ah yes, that's the name Subject 18 gave you, isn't it? How quaint. Do you remember what you named her? It doesn't matter really, I'm just curious."

"No."

Kabuto's smile wavered. "Assistant, please apply corrective action level 3."

"Level what?"

An older man stood behind Haru and shocked him with a cattle-prod, holding it against his chest for three seconds.

Kabuto's head tilted to the side and he raised a hand to stop the action. "I don't enjoy being lied to, 15. It muddies the results. Tell me what you remember or I'll have to increase the discipline. Now, how old are you? Organically speaking."

"Seventeen."

"Good. What is your most attractive trait to the Sound and Lord Orochimaru? What were you made for?"

Haru panted from the lingering effects of the shock. "I possess restorative jutsu. My body can heal itself from damage. Lord Orchimaru desires that to further his cause."

"Yes."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a picture. "Who's this girl?"

Haru's eyes took in the image of Rin, staring back at him with a neutral face. He recognized the stance; the scientists took progression photos every few months... her hair was longer.

His tongue ran across his dry lips. "Subject 18."

"Good. You're doing even better than last time."

"Last time? What happened last time?"

Kabuto flicked up his glasses, the faint traces of a smile at the edge of his mouth. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. One level at a time."

He placed the photo back in his pocket and withdrew a scalpel from the metal tray by the bedside.

It shone in the yellow light, looking wicked in contrast.

"So, we've recorded that you can heal from various elemental jutsu; water, fire, earth. I'm curious how you'll fare against non-organic methods."

"What are you going to do with that?"

The walls of his mind wavered around them, as Kabuto came to the top of the gurney and poised the scalpel by his eye. "I'm going to start with the right and see if it grows back quicker than the left."