Days had passed since that meeting with Gaara. Naruto was half convinced that Gaara was a lost cause, until his phone vibrated against his thigh—a sudden, electric pulse that jerked him out of a half-dream state on the student center couch. He blinked blearily, checked the screen—new message from Gaara.
need to meet ASAP. library stacks. L3/19. come alone.
Naruto sat bolt upright. His heart thumped double-time, adrenaline spiking all the way to his fingertips. He checked the time: 2:17 PM. Classes were still in session, which meant the walkways would be mostly empty. Good. He crammed his notebook into his battered backpack and hustled out into the overcast afternoon.
His shoes pounded the pavement in rhythm with his racing thoughts. Gaara's message replayed in his mind—was he in danger? Had he uncovered something about Shukaku? Or—Naruto's heart skipped—could this be about Kurama? His brother's face flickered like a dying light bulb behind his eyelids. Naruto tugged his hood lower as he sprinted across the quad, the hair on his nape standing on end. His fingers found the suppressant tin in his pocket, warm and solid. Click-click-click went the pills as he fidgeted with the container, its weight grounding him while his mind spun through possibilities and worst-case scenarios.
He passed the honors dorm and cut through a gap in the hedge, taking the shortcut to the library annex. The air felt colder here, as if the sun had given up on this quadrant of campus. Naruto ducked into the library's side entrance, ignoring the hand sanitizer and the "Quiet Please" signs, and made straight for the third floor.
L3/19 was one of the smaller study carrels, a box canyon between shelves of chemistry and environmental science. Gaara was already there, hunched over a manila folder and a half-empty can of Red Bull, his posture that of someone who'd spent the night negotiating with ghosts. He looked up as Naruto approached, those green eyes even brighter in the fluorescent gloom. For a second, neither said anything—Naruto didn't want to break whatever spell kept Gaara from flying apart at the seams.
Gaara slid the folder forward. "You need to see this."
Naruto sat, backpack forgotten at his feet. He flipped open the folder and scanned the first page—an organizational chart, the kind printed for a boardroom. The header read "Juinjutsu, Inc. — Corporate Oversight Committee." Underneath, a branching tree of names: half familiar, half strange. Kabuto Yakushi was there, third line down under "Medical Research & Testing." Below him, a familiar label: "Orochimaru, Adjunct Consultant."
He looked up, mouth half-open. "Is this…?"
"It's their internal employee list," Gaara said, voice flat. "Temari didn't believe me at first. Then I showed her the records." His eyes flickered up, hollow with exhaustion. "She knows what kind of man our father is. After that, she got this from someone in IT—wouldn't tell me who. Said I was better off not knowing."
Naruto flipped through the remaining pages, his fingertips catching on the edges of transaction logs and grant approvals. A spreadsheet swam with figures that blurred together—dates, dollar amounts, reference codes. His eyes snagged on the words "CHIMERA Protocol—Active Funding Phase" above a yellow-highlighted list of sponsors. The numbers themselves meant little to him, but even he could see the pattern: money flowing like a hemorrhage, each transaction ending at the same destination—an account labeled only as Juinjutsu, Inc.
He tapped the name. "Your dad… this is where the payout came from, right? After Shukaku—"
Gaara nodded. "Temari said it matched exactly. The transfer amount, the timing. Everything lines up." He took a shaky breath, the sound half a tremor. "She also found a code in the memo line. 'UCH-02.' She thinks it's a subject number. Or a project phase."
Naruto stared. "And what about the others? The names we found from the Chimera folder?"
Gaara flipped a page. Beneath heavy black marker lines, Naruto could make out partial information—columns of student identification numbers and names with single-letter alterations from their actual ones, all categorized by academic year and an additional classification: UCH-02, -03, -04. His finger moved down the list, connecting what had been labeled as "withdrawn" students to what now appeared to be a selection of victims. "They're turning them into lab rats?" Naruto whispered, the question souring on his tongue.
Gaara's eyes flicked toward the door before he leaned in closer. "That's our theory. But there's more. My sister's fiancé, Shikamaru—genius-level hacker type. Last night they infiltrated the system. Downloaded what they could before security protocols kicked in and they shut down."
Naruto's mouth went dry. "Anything useful?"
Gaara's eyes slid away from Naruto's face, fixing on some invisible point beyond his shoulder. His jaw tightened, the tendons in his neck standing out like cords. Naruto's stomach dropped. "Whatever it is," he said, his voice rougher than he intended, "I need to know."
Gaara's fingers shook as he turned to the final document. The paper—crisp and official with "Uchiha Corporation—Innovation and Research Division" emblazoned across the top—landed between them with the weight of an anvil. Naruto's eyes caught on the third paragraph where "Chimera Protocol" appeared in stark black type, followed by a clinical string of figures and timestamps. His gaze froze on the name "Uchiha" repeated three times in bold, each occurrence like a knife to his chest.
Naruto's breath hitched. The Uchiha name swam before his eyes, refusing to make sense. He blinked hard, squinted, as if the letters might rearrange themselves into something less devastating. "This has to be... what, a subsidiary company? Or maybe someone with the same name?" His finger traced the letterhead, searching for any loophole, any explanation besides the obvious one staring back at him. "Is this really...?"
"Yeah," Gaara said, voice just a notch above a whisper. "They're funding it. The Uchiha Corporation." Gaara let the words sit, cold and heavy on the study table.
Naruto's hand tightened around the folder. He felt the air squeeze out of the room, the revelation looming larger than the stack of evidence between them. In his mind, he saw Sasuke's face—cool, unreadable, the weight of all those secrets hiding just behind the mask. He thought about the kiss, about the fierce need in Sasuke's eyes that night, and then about the way those same eyes had gone empty when he talked about his family. The connection felt like a noose tightening.
"Are you okay?" Gaara asked, breaking the silence.
Naruto blinked. "Yeah. Just... processing." He closed the folder, his fingers lingering on the Uchiha letterhead. No. Not Sasuke. The company, maybe. His brother, maybe. But not Sasuke. The certainty rose in his chest like a physical thing, solid and unshakable. He stood abruptly, backpack half-forgotten on the floor, and rounded the table to pull Gaara into a quick, fierce hug—awkward and tight, their shared determination to protect the people they loved binding them together.
Naruto squeezed Gaara tighter, the folder pressed between them. "Thank you," he whispered, voice rough. "This changes everything." He pulled back, meeting Gaara's exhausted eyes with a fierce certainty that surprised even himself. "I need to show Sasuke. He wouldn't—" Naruto's fingers tightened protectively around the evidence. "He needs to know what that corporation is doing."
Gaara stood frozen a moment, then his hand found Naruto's shoulder, fingers pressing firmly through the fabric of his shirt. The touch lingered, steadier than Naruto expected. "Be careful," Gaara murmured, his green eyes lifting to meet Naruto's with an intensity that made the warning feel like both a plea and a promise. "Don't just trust Sasuke at face value."
Naruto stepped back, throat tight with everything he couldn't say. Sasuke's face flashed in his mind—those dark eyes that had looked at him with such intensity. His fingers curled into his palm. "I will," he promised, voice barely controlled as he met Gaara's exhausted gaze.
Naruto grabbed his bag and sprinted out of the library, not bothering to hide his worry. He ran the whole way back, lungs burning, the September air stinging his throat. By the time Naruto reached the third-floor landing, his calves were cramping and his breath sawed out in ugly gasps. The manila folder, sweat-damp and wrinkled from his grip, thudded rhythmically against his thigh as he fumbled the key into the lock of 327 and crashed inside.
Sasuke was at the desk, back straight, hands moving in that mechanical, almost beautiful way they always did when he was writing. A physics textbook lay open next to a perfectly parallel row of highlighters—yellow, blue, then pink, each uncapped and ready. Sasuke's eyes tracked the page with the intensity of a sniper, completely still except for the flick of his wrist as he notated the margin.
Naruto slammed the door behind him and doubled over, sucking air, one hand braced on the cheap composite wood.
Sasuke glanced up, only then registering the state of him. "You look like hell," he said, monotone, but there was a warning bell behind the words. "What happened?"
Naruto caught the flicker in Sasuke's dark eyes—that barely perceptible narrowing that always betrayed his concern. His fingers tightened around the folder's edges, and Sasuke's gaze dropped to track the movement, suspicion hardening his features. "What's that?" The question hung between them. For a heartbeat, Naruto considered tucking the folder behind his back, burying the truth somewhere Sasuke would never find it. But the impulse evaporated as quickly as it had formed. This was Sasuke. If he couldn't trust Sasuke, he couldn't trust anyone.
Naruto dropped his bag and shoved the folder onto the desk, knocking the highlighters out of line. "I met up with Gaara in the library," he said, his words tumbling out unsteady. "His sister found something—she's been digging into that company, the one that paid off his dad after Shukaku disappeared." His fingers trembled as he flipped open the folder. "Look at this. Orochimaru. Kabuto. The whole project." He looked up, meeting Sasuke's eyes, his own voice strangling in his throat. "But Sasuke... the money trail. It leads back to Uchiha Corp. Your family is bankrolling the whole thing."
Sasuke's pen hovered above the page for a single, awful second, then clattered to the desk with a tiny, shattering sound. His face went the color of copier paper; the pulse in his throat twitched once, twice, then stilled.
"Say it again," he said, very quietly.
Naruto swallowed. "The paper trail, it's all right here." He jabbed his finger at the financial records, the signatures at the bottom of each page. "Every dollar funding the Chimera Protocol comes from Uchiha Corp accounts." His voice cracked on the name.
Sasuke stared at Naruto, eyes narrowing to obsidian slits, searching his face as though waiting for the punchline. Finding none, he snatched the folder, fingers white-knuckled against the manila as his gaze darted across each line, each signature, each damning piece of evidence with the methodical precision of someone dismantling a bomb.
Naruto backed away, giving Sasuke room. Each second stretched like taffy as Sasuke's eyes crawled across the documents, his shoulders growing more rigid with every line. When the trembling started—just a slight vibration at first, then violent enough to wrinkle the papers in his white-knuckled grip—Naruto's arms ached to reach for him. The instinct to comfort Sasuke crashed against the uncertainty of what comfort could possibly mean in this moment.
After what felt like an eternity, Sasuke lowered the papers to the desk with mechanical precision. "Sasuke?" Naruto's voice came out smaller than he intended. When Sasuke's eyes met his, Naruto flinched at the raw hurt swimming in those dark depths. Something had shattered behind Sasuke's carefully maintained facade—but Naruto couldn't tell if that pain was directed at him for bringing this news, at his family for their betrayal, or at himself for not seeing it sooner. The uncertainty left Naruto frozen as seconds stretched between them, until Sasuke finally tore his gaze away and rose to his feet.
Sasuke's chair scraped against the floor as he stood. In one fluid motion, he yanked his jacket from the back of it and brushed past Naruto, the fabric of their sleeves barely touching. At the threshold, he paused. His jaw worked silently, eyes meeting Naruto's for a fraction of a second—dark, wounded, unreadable—before he stepped into the hallway, pulling the door shut with a soft click that echoed in the sudden emptiness of the room.
Naruto stood there, paralyzed, the afterimage of Sasuke's face burned behind his eyelids. For a second, he couldn't move. The air felt wet and heavy, thick with the smell of graphite and leftover cologne—clean and cold and unmistakably Sasuke.
He reached for his phone, fingers shaking so badly he could barely punch in the code. He dialed Sasuke—straight to voicemail. Again, again, again. Nothing.
Naruto's heart was still thudding, but now it sounded different: hollow, echoing in his chest the way Sasuke's voice had echoed in the empty room. He looked down at the evidence on the desk, the careful lines of color broken, the pen bleeding a slow pool of ink onto the margin.
He let himself sink onto the mattress, the cheap springs creaking under his weight. The whole room felt smaller, colder. Sasuke's absence pressed in from every side.
Naruto closed his eyes and lay back, staring at the ceiling and the cracks in the paint that looked like they might one day open up and swallow him whole. He waited for Sasuke to call back—but the only thing that came was the long, thin, unbroken silence.
He listened to it for hours, heart still racing, the shape of Sasuke's absence bigger and heavier than any truth in a manila folder.