The morgue was not silent. That was the first misconception of the living. To the uninitiated, the rows of pale, stiffening bodies covered in white sheets represented the absolute end of noise. But to Ren Yamanaka, the morgue was a cacophony.
It was a choir of fading static, a low-frequency hum of residual electrical impulses trapped in dying synapses. It was the sound of secrets rotting.
Ren stood over Slab 14. The air in the underground processing bunker was kept at a frigid temperature to slow decomposition, causing his breath to mist in front of him. The smell was a cloying cocktail of formaldehyde, rust, wet canvas, and the distinct, copper-sweet scent of opened flesh.
"Subject: Unknown Jonin, Hidden Stone," Ren dictated, his voice raspy. He didn't look at the scribe sitting in the corner. He stared only at the body. "Cause of death: Blunt force trauma to the thoracic cavity. Chakra coils severed. Time of death: Approximately eight hours ago."
He picked up a scalpel. His hands, once prone to trembling from anxiety and exhaustion, were now rock-steady. Unnaturally so.
"Proceeding with cerebral extraction," Ren murmured.
He placed his left hand on the dead man's forehead. The skin was clammy, like cold wax.
Ren closed his eyes. He didn't use the standard Yamanaka hand seal for mind-walking. He didn't need to anymore. The pathways in his own brain had been burned open, widened by the traffic of a dozen souls over the last week.
He didn't just read the mind. He inhaled.
THE GATE OPENS.
The sensation was immediate and violent. It was like opening a furnace door. The dead Jonin's residual will rushed out, desperate to escape the rotting casing of the brain. It hit Ren's mental defenses, a wave of panic, pain, and unfinished business.
Usually, a Yamanaka would build a barrier, filtering the data like straining tea.
Ren didn't filter. He dropped his walls and let the floodwaters hit him.
Images flashed: The sound of a hawk screeching over a canyon. A secret code hidden inside a hollowed-out rock: 7-Alpha-Red. The sensation of kneading clay for explosives. The specific ratio of earth chakra to fire chakra—3:1. The face of a woman with a scar on her lip, whispering, "Come back to me."
Ren's body arched backward in the physical world. His head whipped back, his mouth opening in a silent gasp. The scribe in the corner didn't even look up; he was used to the "Processors" twitching. It was a dirty job.
Inside the mindscape, Ren was feasting.
He isolated the memory of the clay explosion technique. It appeared to him as a glowing, pulsating orb of orange light. He grabbed it with his mental avatar's hands. It burned. It struggled. It was the culmination of twenty years of this man's training.
Mine, Ren thought.
He absorbed it.
The sensation was orgasmic and sickening all at once. It felt like drinking hot honey mixed with ash. The knowledge rushed into his neurons, rewriting his synapses. He felt his own chakra coils expand, groaning under the pressure, stretching to accommodate the stolen energy. The nausea rose in his throat—the body's rejection of foreign spiritual matter—but Ren swallowed it down. He was getting better at holding it in.
He moved to the next memory. The code. 7-Alpha-Red. He ate that too. It tasted like dry paper.
Then he reached the memory of the woman. The wife. The love.
Ren hesitated.
I don't need this, he told himself. This is trash data. It's useless to the village.
But the hunger… the hunger didn't care about utility. It cared about flavor. And emotions were the sweetest meat. The despair of a dying man, the hope of a lover—these were delicacies.
Just a taste, the shadow in his mind whispered. To honor him. To keep her alive.
Ren consumed the image of the woman. He felt the dead man's love wash over him—a warm, protective, heartbreaking wave of affection. For a second, Ren loved a woman he had never met. He missed her with a grief that tore his heart open.
Then, the digestion finished. The emotion faded into a dull data point stored in the library of his brain.
Ren opened his eyes in the morgue.
He exhaled a long, shuddering breath. His pupils were blown wide, swallowing the irises. Sweat dripped from his nose onto the dead man's forehead.
"Intel confirmed," Ren croaked, his voice sounding deeper, layered. "They are using a cryptographic cipher based on hawk migration patterns. Sector 4 is rigged with C-rank explosive clay."
The scribe scribbled furiously. "Good work, Ren. That's the third one today. You're a machine."
Ren wiped his face with a trembling hand. "Yeah. A machine."
He pulled the sheet back over the corpse's face. He felt a strange, twisted sense of gratitude toward the pile of meat.
Thank you for the meal, he thought. I will carry your skills better than you ever did.
The Aftershocks
Ren walked through the corridors of the support base. It was evening, and the halls were crowded with tired shinobi returning from patrols. The air smelled of sweat, stew, and fear.
Ren moved like a ghost. He kept his head down, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his blood-stained lab coat. He felt… crowded. Not by the people in the hallway, but by the people in his head.
He had processed fourteen bodies in six days.
Fourteen lives. Fourteen childhoods. Fourteen deaths.
They were compacted into the back of his mind like files in an overstuffed cabinet. Sometimes, the drawers popped open on their own.
As he passed a group of Chunin playing cards, one of them laughed—a sharp, barking sound.
Flash.
Suddenly, Ren wasn't in the hallway. He was in a forest. A trap was snapping shut. A bear trap crushing an ankle. The pain was white-hot.
Ren stumbled, slamming his shoulder into the wall.
"Whoa, watch it, freak," a ninja grunted, pushing past him.
Ren gasped, blinking rapidly. The hallway returned. The pain in his ankle vanished, leaving only a phantom tingle. It was a sensory echo from Subject 9, a trapper from the Grass Village.
"Sorry," Ren muttered. But the word came out wrong. "Sumimasen."
He paused. The intonation was off. It was the dialect of the Land of Iron. Subject 5 had been a mercenary samurai.
Ren clamped his hand over his mouth. Get it together. You are Ren Yamanaka. You are Ren Yamanaka.
He hurried toward the mess hall, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. He felt like a vessel cracked in a dozen places, leaking contents that didn't belong to him.
He grabbed a tray of food—gray rice, pickled plums, watery soup—and found a table in the darkest corner. He ate mechanically, not tasting the food. The physical food was ash in his mouth compared to the vibrant, spicy taste of chakra he had consumed an hour ago.
"Is this seat taken?"
Ren jumped, his kunai dropping into his hand under the table before he realized where he was.
He looked up. It was Inoichi Yamanaka.
Ren froze. Inoichi was the future clan head, a Jonin of immense renown, and a man whose sensory abilities were legendary. He was royalty; Ren was the dirt beneath the clan's feet.
"Lord Inoichi," Ren stammered, standing up halfway.
"Sit," Inoichi commanded gently. He placed his own tray down and sat opposite Ren. His long blonde hair was tied back in a high ponytail. His eyes were sharp, probing, but not unkind.
"I've been reading the reports from the processing unit," Inoichi said, picking at his rice. "Your output is… prodigious, Ren. You're clearing bodies three times faster than the veterans."
Ren stared at his soup. "There is a lot of work to be done, sir. I'm just doing my duty."
"Duty is one thing," Inoichi said. "But the Mind Body techniques are taxing. Even for a master, diving into a necrotic brain is dangerous. The barrier between life and death is thin there. The soul clings."
He leaned forward, his voice dropping. "I sensed your chakra earlier, Ren. When you walked into the hall."
Ren stopped chewing. "Sir?"
"It's… loud," Inoichi said, searching for the word. "Your chakra feels like a crowded room. It's agitated. And the texture… it's shifted. It has traces of Earth and Water natures clinging to it."
Ren's grip on his chopsticks tightened until the wood snapped. "I've been working hard, Lord Inoichi. Maybe I'm just absorbing some residual energy from the environment. It happens to sensors, right?"
"Not like this," Inoichi said sternly. "Ren, are you using forbidden techniques? Are you using stimulants?"
"No!" Ren looked up, feigning outrage. It was a good mask. He had stolen the ability to lie from a spy from the Cloud Village. "I would never. I am just… I found a rhythm. I found a way to be useful. For the first time in my life, I'm not the battery, sir. I'm the reader."
Inoichi studied him for a long, uncomfortable minute. His eyes seemed to bore into Ren's skull. Ren pushed his mental walls up—a patchwork fortification made of stolen discipline.
Finally, Inoichi sighed. The village needed the intel. The war was going badly. He couldn't afford to bench their most efficient processor over a hunch.
"Be careful, Ren," Inoichi warned. "The human mind is a mirror. If you stare too long into broken glass, you'll cut yourself. Don't lose sight of whose face is looking back at you."
Inoichi stood up and left.
Ren sat alone in the corner. He touched his face.
"Whose face?" he whispered.
He felt a sudden, terrifying urge to check a mirror. He needed to make sure his eyes were still teal. He needed to make sure he didn't have a scar on his lip or a tattoo on his neck.
The anxiety was suffocating. He needed to calm down.
And the only thing that calmed him now… was another session.
I need to go back, the Hunger whispered. There was a Mist Chunin brought in twenty minutes ago. A sensory type. We could use more sensory range. It would help us avoid Inoichi next time.
The rationalization was smooth, slippery, and seductive.
It's for protection, Ren told himself. I'm doing this to protect the village. To protect myself from suspicion. I just need a little more control.
He dumped his uneaten food in the trash and headed back toward the morgue.
The Scavenger's Jackpot
The night shift was quieter. The scribes had changed shifts, leaving only a bored Genin dozing by the door.
Ren walked to the "High Value" storage locker. This was restricted access. But Ren had eaten the memory of the code from the officer who died yesterday. 3-9-2-4.
The lock clicked open.
Inside, on a solitary steel table, lay a corpse that radiated menace even in death.
It was an old man. His skin was gray, covered in intricate black tattoos of scorpions and centipedes. His fingers were calloused and stained purple.
A puppet master from the Hidden Sand. And not just a grunt—an elite from the Puppet Brigade.
Ren's mouth watered. Literally. Saliva pooled under his tongue.
Puppet masters possessed incredible dexterity. They could manipulate chakra threads invisible to the naked eye. They could control ten independent objects simultaneously.
If I had that dexterity, Ren thought, I could weave hand signs faster. I could control multiple weapons. I could be… formidable.
He locked the door from the inside.
He approached the body. The smell of poison was faint but present—aconite and pufferfish toxin.
Ren didn't bother with the scalpel this time. He placed both hands on the old man's temples.
"Let me in," Ren whispered.
He dove.
This mind was a labyrinth. It was protected by mental traps—false memories, psychic dead ends designed to drive an interrogator insane. The old man had died guarding his secrets.
Ren navigated the maze. He used the brute force of the Iwa earth chakra he had stolen to smash through walls. He used the fluid adaptability of the Mist water chakra to slip through cracks.
He found the core. The sanctum.
There, sitting on a throne of wooden limbs, was the projection of the old man's soul.
"Thief," the soul hissed. "Carrion bird."
It wasn't a memory. It was a fragment of will, still fighting.
Ren's mental avatar stood before the throne. Ren looked like a monster in this space—a shifting, glitching silhouette made of a dozen different chakra signatures.
"I am not a thief," Ren said, his voice booming like thunder in the mindscape. "I am a tomb. I am keeping you safe."
"You are a maggot eating rot!"
The old man launched a barrage of mental needles.
Ren didn't dodge. He opened his chest—or rather, the chest of his mental projection. A massive, gaping maw lined with teeth made of white light appeared in his torso.
"I am the Eater!" Ren screamed.
He lunged. He engulfed the old man's avatar.
The struggle was violent. Ren felt the old man's hatred burning his throat. He felt the poison of the man's personality—his cynicism, his cruelty, his pleasure in suffering.
Ren absorbed it all.
He screamed in the real world. He fell to his knees on the concrete floor, clutching his head. Blood poured from both nostrils, splashing onto his white coat.
His fingers began to twitch. Twitch. Snap. Move.
His chakra flowed out of his fingertips, forming thin, blue threads. They were erratic at first, then stabilized.
Ren looked up. He focused on the scalpel lying on the tray five feet away.
He didn't touch it. He moved his index finger.
A chakra thread connected.
The scalpel lifted into the air.
Ren laughed. It was a wet, jagged sound. He moved another finger. A tray lifted. He moved a third. A pen flew across the room and embedded itself in the wall.
He was controlling the room.
"Look at me," he whispered to the dead puppeteer. "I can do it better. I can do it without the puppets. I can use the world."
But as the power settled, the personality bleed began.
Ren felt a sneer curling his lip—a specific expression of the old man. He felt a sudden, intense desire to craft something, to hollow someone out and fill them with mechanisms.
He shook his head violently. No. That's him. Not me.
He stumbled to the sink in the corner of the room. He splashed freezing water on his face, scrubbing at his skin until it was red and raw.
"I am Ren," he chanted. "I am Ren. I am Ren."
He looked in the polished metal mirror above the sink.
The face looking back was his. But the expression… the eyes were cold, calculating, and amused.
And behind his own reflection, for just a split second, he saw them.
A crowd.
Goro the Iwa Commander. The crying wife. The Mist spy. The trap master. The puppeteer.
They were standing behind him in the reflection, watching him. They weren't screaming anymore. They were waiting.
Ren squeezed his eyes shut. "Shut up! All of you!"
He smashed his fist into the mirror, denting the metal.
The pain in his knuckles was grounding. It was real.
He panted, staring at his fist.
He was a mess. He was fracturing. Inoichi was right; he was losing himself.
But then he looked at his other hand. The chakra threads were still dancing from his fingertips, beautiful and deadly.
He clenched his hand, extinguishing the threads.
He couldn't stop. The war was escalating. Reports said Iwagakure and Kumo were pushing the front lines. Konoha was losing ground.
If Ren stopped now, he would be sent back to the front as a Chunin. He would die in a ditch like Hideo.
But if he continued… if he ate enough…
He could be a Jonin. He could be a hero. He could be safe.
Ren grabbed a towel and wiped the blood from his nose. He smoothed his hair. He adjusted his coat.
He walked back to the scribe's desk and picked up a fresh scroll.
"Subject 15," he wrote, his handwriting shifting slightly to match the calligraphy style of the dead puppeteer. "Processing complete. Valuable ninjutsu retrieval successful."
He paused, the quill hovering over the paper.
He wrote one last line, a rationalization that would become his mantra.
"The dead do not need their weapons. The living do."
Ren turned off the lights in the main bay, leaving him alone in the blue glow of the emergency lamps.
He wasn't just a scavenger anymore. He was becoming an apex predator in a graveyard. And tomorrow, he would eat again.