Chapter 3: Steel and Submission!
The corridor stretched on like the throat of some great beast, swallowing us deeper into the earth with every step.
I followed Kabuto in silence, cataloguing everything I could. The walls were hewn from raw stone, rough and unfinished, lit by torches every now and then. The air grew colder the further we walked, carrying with it the smell of damp rock and something else. Something chemical.
Then the cells started to come into view.
At first, I thought they were empty. Just dark alcoves carved into the walls, barred with iron, holding nothing but shadows. But as my eyes adjusted, I saw movement. Shapes huddled in corners. Eyes catching the dim light and reflecting it back.
People. Other test subjects.
Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds.
Some cells held one or two figures, pressed against the bars or curled on thin pallets. Others were crammed full, bodies packed together like cargo, barely enough room to sit. I saw children. I saw old men. I saw a woman with bandages wrapped around her eyes, rocking back and forth, her lips moving in words I couldn't hear.
None of them spoke as we passed. They just watched, their gazes tracking me with the hollow attention of people who had long since stopped hoping for rescue.
These are Orochimaru's test subjects, I realised. His collection. Or his prisoners.
The thought made my stomach turn. I'd known, intellectually, what kind of person Orochimaru was. The anime had shown glimpses of his cruelty, his experiments, his casual disregard for human life. But seeing it like this, smelling it, feeling the weight of all those eyes...
This was real. These were real people, and they were going to die in this place, and there was nothing I could do about it.
Not yet, something whispered in the back of my mind. Not yet, but maybe someday.
I held onto that thought like a lifeline as Kabuto led me past the last of the cells and through a heavy door that groaned on its hinges.
The room beyond was different from everything I'd seen so far. Clean. Sterile. White tiles covered the floor and walls, gleaming under bright lights that made me squint after the dimness of the corridors. Metal tables lined the walls, covered with instruments I didn't want to identify. Monitors beeped softly. The air smelled of antiseptic and something underneath it that the antiseptic couldn't quite mask.
A medical room. Or what passed for one in a place like this.
In the centre of the room sat a bed. Metal frame, thin mattress, leather straps dangling from the sides.
"Please." Kabuto gestured toward it with that same pleasant smile. "Make yourself comfortable."
I looked at the bed. At the straps. At Kabuto, still waiting with his hands clasped behind his back.
Survive, I reminded myself—step one. Everything else comes later.
Apprehensively, I walked to the bed and lay down. Not a great move, I know, but what else was I supposed to do?
The mattress was cold through my thin, ragged clothes. Kabuto moved efficiently, securing my wrists first, then my ankles, pulling the straps tight enough that I could feel my pulse beating against the leather. He checked each restraint twice, tugging to ensure they held, his expression never changing from that mild, helpful smile.
"There we are." He stepped back, surveying his work. "Lord Orochimaru will be with us shortly. Try to relax, 402. Tension only makes these things more... unpleasant."
I didn't dignify that with a response.
The minutes stretched as I stared at the ceiling, counting the tiles, trying to keep my breathing steady. The straps bit into my skin whenever I shifted. The monitors beeped their steady rhythm. Somewhere, a pipe dripped, the noise causing my anxiety to grow steadily with each drop.
Then the door opened.
"Ah, Kabuto. I see our guest is ready."
That voice. Silk and poison, sliding into the room ahead of its owner.
Orochimaru stepped into view, and up close, in the harsh white light, he was even worse than I remembered. His skin had the pallor of something that had never seen sunlight. His hair hung lank and dark around a face that seemed to have too many angles, as if someone had started carving a human and gotten bored halfway through.
Those golden, slitted eyes fixed on me with an intensity that made my skin crawl.
"Subject 402." He moved to stand beside the bed, looking down at me the way a child might look at an insect. "I have been looking forward to this."
That makes one of us.
I didn't say it. I just lay there, strapped to a table, watching Orochimaru standing over me, and tried very hard not to think about all the ways this could go wrong.
"The preliminary data from your cellular structure has been... fascinating." Orochimaru reached out, and I flinched as his cold fingers brushed my arm. "Your body accepted modifications that killed every other subject. I am quite curious to understand why."
"Perhaps we should begin with the blood sample, my lord," Kabuto suggested. He had moved to one of the metal tables and was preparing something I couldn't see.
"Yes." Orochimaru's smile widened. "Let us see what secrets your blood holds, Kagemaru."
The needle was small. Professional. Kabuto slid it into my arm with professionalism, and I watched my blood fill the vial, dark red against the glass.
"Excellent." Kabuto withdrew the needle and pressed a small bandage to the puncture. "I'll prepare the microscope."
What followed was surreal. I lay strapped to a table while two of the most dangerous people in this fictional-turned-real world peered at my blood through a microscope, murmuring to each other in terms I didn't understand.
"Remarkable," Orochimaru breathed. "The cellular structure is unlike anything I've seen. It's almost as if..."
"The cells are adapting in real time, my lord." Kabuto's voice had lost some of its pleasant detachment, replaced by genuine scientific interest. "Watch what happens when I introduce the foreign sample."
A pause. Then Orochimaru laughed, soft and delighted, the sound of a man who had just discovered something wonderful.
"They're absorbing it. The foreign DNA is being integrated into the cellular matrix." He looked up from the microscope, those golden eyes finding me with renewed intensity. "Your body doesn't just accept foreign genetic material, Kagemaru. It consumes it. Makes it part of itself."
I said nothing. But inside, the system pulsed quietly, as if confirming what he'd discovered.
The Chimaera Ability. That's what they were trying to create.
"I want to see more." Orochimaru straightened, his expression hungry. "Kabuto. The sample we prepared."
"Of course, my lord."
Kabuto moved to one of the workstations, retrieving a small glass vial. Inside, I could see strands of hair, dark and coarse.
He brought it to the bed and held it out to me.
"Eat it."
I stared at the vial. At the hair inside. At Kabuto's pleasant smile and Orochimaru's eager eyes.
"You want me to eat... hair?"
"The DNA must be consumed for the integration to occur. This is the easy way." Kabuto's tone was patient, like a teacher explaining something simple to a slow student. "This sample was collected from a shinobi with a particularly useful kekkei genkai. If our theory is correct, your body should be able to absorb and replicate his abilities."
I looked at the vial again. The hair sat innocuously at the bottom, just dead cells and protein, nothing that should have the power to change what I was.
But this world didn't follow the rules I'd grown up with. Here, people could breathe fire, walk on water and live for centuries by stealing other people's bodies. Here, eating hair might actually give you superpowers.
And if I refused...
Orochimaru was still watching me. Patient. Hungry. The kind of patience that said he had all the time in the world, and I had none.
Of course, I have no choice...
I opened my mouth.
Kabuto tipped the vial, and the hair fell onto my tongue. It was coarse, tasteless, wrong in a way that had nothing to do with flavour. I swallowed convulsively, fighting the urge to gag.
For a long moment, nothing happened.
The monitors beeped. The lights hummed. Orochimaru and Kabuto watched me with identical expressions of anticipation.
And, nothing...
"Curious," Kabuto murmured, his brow furrowing. "There should be some visible reaction. Perhaps the integration takes longer than—"
"Perhaps it was a failure after all." Orochimaru's voice had gone flat. Disappointed. "The blood work was promising, but if the ability cannot manifest externally..."
I barely heard them.
Because something was happening inside me. Something the monitors couldn't detect, and their eyes couldn't see.
The system blazed to life behind my vision, text scrolling faster than I could read.
[DNA SAMPLE DETECTED]
[KEKKEI GENKAI IDENTIFIED: STEEL RELEASE]
[INTEGRATION IN PROGRESS...]
[INTEGRATION COMPLETE]
[NEW ABILITY ACQUIRED: STEEL RELEASE LV 1]
Allows the user to transform their body into black steel, providing enhanced defence and offensive capabilities. Current mastery: Basic.
Heat flooded through me, starting in my chest and spreading outward, racing down my arms, pooling in my hands. It didn't hurt exactly, but it felt like something was rearranging itself beneath my skin, my cells shifting and changing and becoming something new.
"—a shame," Kabuto was saying. "I had hoped for more definitive results. We may need to adjust the parameters for the next."
That's when I felt it. A sudden power flowing through me. It wasn't much, but something in my arm wanted to burst out.
I looked at my right hand.
The skin was darkening. Shifting. Hardening into something that gleamed under the bright lights like polished metal.
Black steel crept up my fingers, across my palm, spreading toward my wrist. I could feel the weight of it, the density, my hand becoming something that wasn't flesh anymore.
Kabuto stopped mid-sentence.
Orochimaru went very, very still.
And then, slowly, a smile spread across his face. Not the pleasant, professional smile he'd worn before. This was something else entirely. Something hungry. Something triumphant.
"It would appear," he said softly, "that the experiment was not a failure after all."
I stared at my transformed hand, at the black metal that had replaced skin and muscle, at this proof that the system was real, that the ability was real, that I had just demonstrated to Orochimaru exactly how valuable I was.
What have I done?
The steel gleamed under the lights, and Orochimaru's golden eyes gleamed with it, and I realised that I hadn't just survived.
I had shown them exactly what I was capable of.
And that might have been the worst thing I could have done.