Disclaimer- If I owned, the Kyuubi would be Madara's seeing-eye fox.

The White Room

Chapter 2

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The third time I went to the lab, I was fifteen.

This time, though, my mother wasn’t with me.

She was dead.

It had all happened so fast. But not fast enough.

There was an accident, at her lab. An explosion of sorts. It was something about chemicals. Something about test subjects. Something about something.

She had rushed home, apparently, in a company car. She burst through the door, calling my name, sobbing my name.

“Sakura…” She moaned, “Sakura!” She cried. “Please, Sakura… Please!” She begged.

I wasn’t home.

I was downtown. Being rebellious. Drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. Painting my fingernails black and dating older guys. It wasn’t like she cared. It wasn’t like she loved me. She was always gone, at that damned lab in that damned white room observing children just like me. Trying to find out how they ticked, why they did what they did. She wasn’t my mother, anyways. We looked nothing alike. She had curly red hair and freckles, dark green eyes and a tan.

I was sickly white, had straight pink hair that reached my waist, and unnaturally green eyes. She was pretty, curvy and tall. I was ugly, short and anorexic-looking. She looked like a model; I looked like a lab rat.

Which I was, I guess.

I didn’t have a father. She never told me about him. No family, other than her. No grandma to bake cookies with. No grandpa to tell me stories. No Christmases with my uncles and aunts, cousins or siblings.

Just me and just her.

I hated her. Everything she was. I hated her freckles and her cold burritos. Her white lab coats and her black hair dye. I hated her mandatory C average.

I was alone.

I was alone in a club full of people and booze and boys and smoke. I was sick, I was drunk, and all I wanted was my mama. Not my mother, not the one now with the fake smiles and the cold fingers. I wanted my mama with the burnt spam and the genuine laughs and the warm arms.

I stumbled home, breaking my heel and skinning my knee. The blood ran down my legs. Staining my socks and dripping over my shoe. It was too blue, too cold. Normal blood wasn’t this pale, I told myself. Normal blood was dark and warm.

I looked away, disgusted. I was just some lab rat with fake blood. I wondered if I could die, If I could kill myself.

I wondered if I would.

I looked back down at my knee, stopped and wiped the blood away with my sleeve. The scrape was gone, leaving sickly white skin in its place.

I wanted to puke. I was a freak. An abnormality. An experiment.

I started healing like this when I turned thirteen. I was sitting in the bathroom, thinking of reasons to slit my wrists.

I had none. No reasons to die. None to live, either, really.

I drug the blade over my wrist, enjoying the sensation of the warm blood dripping down my arm. But it stopped. The blood went cold. I looked down to see a faint scab disappearing where the cut had just been, leaving a thin white line. A few seconds later and even the line was gone, leaving unmarred skin and dried blood.

I tried again, cutting deeper, into the artery.

The warm blood gushed out of my wrist, staining my dress and the bathroom floor. I was only just getting dizzy when the blood turned cold and blue. The gash disappeared before my eyes.

I stared down at it much as I looked at my knee, with disgust.

It was another “symptom” I suppose.

The first had been my incredible learning ability; the second had been a photographic memory.

I told my mother about neither. I didn’t want to go back to the lab, didn’t want to go back to the room.

Never again.

I stumbled up the steps to my apartment, tripping over the last one and falling onto my door. I fumbled with the keys and walked in. I didn’t notice the dried blood on the door knob.

I walked into the living room, turning on every light as I went, throwing my jacket on the table, knocking over the pile of microwave burritos. I threw my shoes at the TV, my socks at the fan.

“Are you home yet, mother?” I called, “Are you done torturing children at that lab of yours?”

I laughed, walking into the living room.

My mother was there all right.

Lying on the couch, blood dripping from her open mouth, pooling on the pillow and running to the floor.

“M-mom?” I asked, all traces of alcohol disappearing from my system.

“Sakura…” She said weakly. My name barely left her lips before she started coughing. Tremors ran throughout her body as more blood poured from her open mouth, “Honey, is… Is that you…?”

“Yes, mama.” I called, pulling off my shirt and wiping the blood away from her face. It didn’t work. More just poured out of her mouth. She was bleeding in other places, too, I realized.

She was missing a finger on her left hand, a piece of flesh was gone from her arm, and there was a gash running to the bone on her leg.

“Oh, mama…” I said, “What happened?” I tried to stop the bleeding in other places. I tied a sock around her hand, my shirt around her arm. I was looking for my jacket when she grabbed my shoulder with her working hand.

“Don’t leave, Sakura.”

I fell to my knees next to the couch, “O-of course, Mama.”

“I’m sorry, Sakura.” She whispered, coughing up more blood, “So… So sorry.”

“You don’t need to be sorry, mama.” I said, “You never need to be sorry.”

“But I do. I left you. I abandoned you.”

“I-its okay, mama.” I said, tears pouring down my face and mixing with her blood on the floor.

“No,” She whispered, “It isn’t.” With that, she closed her eyes. Eventually, her breathing became slower, and then it stopped altogether. She lay motionless on the couch, blood pooling in her mouth.

I didn’t touch her. I crawled to the corner and stared. I sat there until morning. Eventually, the the doorbell sounded, making me jump.

I crawled past my mother’s body and to the front door. I pulled myself up with the knob and checked to see who it was.

It was the man, from the lab. With the same eyes and the same hair, as always. There was a bandaged cut on his forehead.

He wasn’t smiling.

I opened the door.

“Hello, Sakura.” He said. If he noticed the blood, he didn’t say anything, “Is your mother home, by chance?”

I turned around and led him to the living room. His eyes widened when he saw her body. He walked over to her and checked the pulse on her neck. He moved her head by accident. The blood spilled out from her mouth and into his shoes.

“Sakura, I-“He took a deep breath and turned around, “I’m so sorry.”

“She’s dead.” I said. There was no emotion in my voice, just fact. “She drowned in her own blood.”

Minato stared at me for a moment, his face the picture of shock. Then he turned around and picked my mother up. He carried her upstairs and put her in the bathtub.

“I’ll call someone to pick her up.” He said once he returned, “You’d better come with me.”

“To where?” I asked, my voice still emotionless and monotone.

“The lab.” He sighed and stretched his arms over his head, “I’ll explain what happened on the way.”

“I don’t want to go back there.” I told him, “Not to the room.” I could hear the anger and fear hinting at the edge of my voice, I’m sure he could, too.

“Don’t worry,” He said, trying to form a smile. It turned out a disfigured grimace. He sighed again and turned toward the door, “We’d better get going.” He said.

With a lingering glance at the blood soaked couch, I followed him, not bothering with shoes or even a shirt.

Once we were outside, he handed me his jacket. “Don’t want to die of pneumonia.” He said with a short laugh. “Not that you would, of course.”

I ignored him, grabbing the jacket and stumbling after him. We walked down the block a ways, the early morning chill seeping through my bones. I was silently thankful for the jacket.

We stopped at a sleek black corvette. I absently wondered how he could afford such a thing, while my mother and I could only barely pay rent for our apartment. He opened the passenger door for me, “Hop in.” He said, walking around the car and getting in.

I obediently got in, slamming the door and clipping the seatbelt. Once we were settled and cruising, he began.

“Sakura,” He said, “You know what you are, don’t you? Your mother told you?”

“I’m a freak.” I replied bitterly, motioning to the dried blood on my leg. I realized that he wouldn’t be able to tell my blood from my mother’s. “I’m a bloody mutant.”

“You are bloody,” He said. I assumed this was a joke, “But you’re certainly not a freak, or a mutant, for that matter.”

“Then what am I, exactly?” There was so much venom running from my words that I wondered if he was afraid to answer.

After a while, though, he replied, “You are a very special girl.” He told me, “You were the first of our experiments, our creations, to survive the gestation period outside of an artificial womb. You were incubated in your mother, like any other child. When you were born, though, there were some minor issues.” He motioned towards my hair, “Your DNA did not fully combine in some areas. Many of us thought it was a disaster, that you would die in a matter of hours. You didn’t die, though, obviously. But there were other… Issues.

“We thought that your uncombined DNA would disintegrate. It wouldn’t have killed you, at first… We weren’t sure what it would do to you. We monitored you for months. There was no sign of your DNA disintegrating, but there was no sign of the abilities that we had programmed into you, either. We figured that your body had combated the possible failure of DNA by replacing your original genetic code. We didn’t have any use for you after that, but it we still wanted to monitor you. We needed space, as well. So, we gave you to your mother. We told her to watch you, and to call if you did anything abnormal.

“The first time she called, she had found you reading advanced scientific material. She brought you in and we monitored you. You were pretty young, though, I doubt that you remember much of it.”

I shivered, of course I remembered it. I remembered every minute of that torture.

“You didn’t do much, just sat and cried. Your mother wanted so badly to make you feel better, but our boss, at the time, Dr. Sarutobi, wouldn’t let her. He said seeing a familiar face would damage the data we were collecting on you. He sent me, instead. We were sure you wouldn’t cooperate for any advanced experiments, so we drugged you. We took cat scans and blood. The works, really.

“We discovered that your brain was working at seventy percent. It was unheard of, really. No child could have that kind of cerebral activity. To adult, either. See, the brain normally functions at around ten—”

“Ten percent.” I interrupted, “I know.” I realized that I was gripping my seat, denting the leather.

“Right,” he said, “Of course. Anyways, we ran your blood after that. We discovered that your mutated DNA hadn’t been replaced, as we’d thought before. It had just been dormant. It was on some sort of genetic time-release program. New abilities appeared when your body was mature enough to handle them.”

He looked at me, his eyes bright with some unfamiliar emotion, “You don’t know how important that discovery was to our experiments. Without you…” He trailed off again, “Without you we would be, literally, eons behind where we are now.”

“Fine, then.” I said bitterly, “I’m some sort of genetic hero, then. What have I done, exactly, for you? Allowed you to do this to more children? More freaks like me?”

“You’re not a freak, Sakura.” He said softly, cupping my face with his hand. It was warm, I realized, not cold like my mother’s, “You’re a miracle.”

I slapped his hand away, “Then what are you going to do with me now? Put me in some cage like a lab rat? Deactivate me or something?” I was angry and scared. I wanted to jump out of the car and run. To anywhere, I didn’t care. As long as I was gone.

Far, far away.

“No, Sakura. I’m bringing you to the lab for safe keeping. There have been some… Disturbances, lately. I’m afraid for your safety.”

“Disturbances?” I taunted, “Haywire experiments, you mean. Are your mutants rebelling?”

“Yes,” he said, “And no.”

He didn’t say any more after that. I looked up and realized where we were, at the lab. Just a plain white building, surrounded with plain grey asphalt. There was nothing particularly special about it. It was just a building, I told myself.

Just a building.

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A/N:

Wow. Two chapters in under twenty four hours!

Don't expect updates to be this regular. I have a looot of school work and such to catch up on...

Heh. I should be doing that now.

Anyways, feedback is lovely and wonderful and I survive off of it.

Without feedback, I suffer and become imaciated and die.

And then there are no updates!

(A cookie goes to whoever figures out what the "Disturbance" is.)