Chapter Text
Part 1
He ducked down when he reached the corridor, sneaking past the row of large windows. Some of them were busted through, the wind entering the building through the holes unfiltered. Remains of the shattered glass were still on the floor and he did his best to avoid stepping on the shards. He froze when a flock of pigeons suddenly flew past the windows, casting temporary shadows across the dirty floor.
For a tense moment, he hovered awkwardly underneath the window, pricking his ears in an attempt to catch any sound that might betray there were others nearby. All remained silent, except for the wind still whistling through the gaps in the windows. Taking a deep breath, he continued his half-crawl, half-walk through the corridor, keeping his eyes aimed on the door at the other side. If he could get through that door, he should be able to finally leave this place. At least if the floor prints had been correct, but he didn't see any reason why they shouldn't be.
The world might have turned into an utter shithole in less than two years, but that still didn't mean that buildings could suddenly change shapes. The prints had clearly shown there was an exit through that door, a fire escape that should bring him back onto the street. He had no clear plan yet in mind where he would go once he was outside, but everything would be better than this town.
Upon reaching the door, he straightened up slowly, casting a cautious look around. Still alone, good. Adjusting the right strap of his backpack, he tested the doorknob, crowing silently in excitement when it easily gave away underneath his touch, swinging open. Finally something was going his way! Just a bit longer and he would finally be out of here!
The room he walked into clearly had seen better days, just like the rest of this building. Debris laid spread out across the floor; deep cracks in the ceiling proof where the debris was coming from. A pile of broken wood that might have been some furniture at one point had been discarded in the left corner; dusty cobwebs clinging to the wood. Two other doors aside from the one he had just walked through were on opposite sides of each other. One of them simply led to another room and was of no use to him. The other one, however, would be his ticket out of here.
Growing more excited despite all the shit that had happened since he had arrived here, he scurried to the door, which was missing the upper left corner, allowing a thin beam of daylight to sneak through the gap. The wind was picking up speed gradually, judging by how much it was whistling.
He snatched the doorknob, pulled the door open quickly and –
Almost teetered right over the edge. Heart beating hard, the sound of his blood rushing filling his eyes, he managed to catch himself against the doorframe right on time before he would fall through and become nothing but a red splatter on the pavement below.
Naruto stared in disbelief at what should have been his way out of this place. The fire escape had somehow literally been pulled out of the brick wall and was braced against the other building. Even if he dared to make the jump and would be lucky enough to land right in the middle of the ladder, there was no safe way for him to go down. The lower half of the ladder had been warped beyond repair; there was no way to safely hold onto it and get down from it.
This had obviously been done deliberately. As shitty as the building itself looked, the way the fire escape had been removed from the wall looked too deliberate to have been the result of an accident. This twisted fire escape was meant to keep people inside.
Did he know?
His heart, having only just calmed down from the recent fright, started thudding quickly again when the question unbiddenly rose up in his mind.
No, he couldn't have known. Yes, he obviously knew that Naruto was here, but there was no way he could have possibly guessed that Naruto would go all the way up here to use the fire escape to get down again.
Had he tampered with most escape routes?
Naruto bit down hard on his lower lip when he was forced to consider that possibility. He couldn't have, because it wasn't doable, but … Hadn't he proven before that there was nothing he couldn't do if he set his mind to it?
There were footsteps coming in his direction.
They were barely audible, the owners of those footsteps aware they needed to be quiet, but Naruto picked up the sound nevertheless, hyper aware as he had become of even the smallest peep. The ones approaching him could be good – or they could belong to him, in which case he would be utterly fucked in more way than one.
Taking a split decision, he grabbed his hat and threw it outside, where it snagged on a protruding bolt. He didn't stay to see if the hat would remain there or would fly away. Instead he closed the door behind him and hurried as silently as he could to the other door. He slipped inside just in time to hear the door to the corridor open.
Feeling like his heart was going to burst straight through his chest at any moment now – at least that would end this bullshit quickly then – he basically dove underneath the bed, forcing himself into the cramped space. He covered his mouth just in time to prevent a sneeze from building up when dust started to dance around him. When he briefly turned his head, he had to bite down hard on his tongue to keep himself from yelling in shock when he saw what was lying at barely an arm's length away.
Not a what, but a who.
The dead woman, whose hair had become so drenched with her own blood that he couldn't even tell what colour it had been, was staring with empty eyes back at him; a knife impaling the centre of her forehead. Her throat had been slashed through, turning the gaping wound in a morbid mimicry of a mouth. Her skin was a mottled grey and blue colour and she looked rather bloated; flies buzzing nastily around her. She couldn't have been dead for more than a couple of days at best, which meant the killer had been here when Naruto had still been wandering around in the lower levels of the apartment building. He had come so close to having been caught …
He automatically held his breath and froze when the door was pushed open and a pair of heavy combat shoes stepped into his field of view.
"Nothing but a dead woman," a woman spoke up disinterestedly. She audibly gagged. "Eugh, the stench is unreal. I don't think I'll ever get used to that smell."
"You think he was the one to do her in?" a man piped up curiously.
"No, she looks like she died a couple of days ago," she replied and audibly walked around the room. She came to stand right next to the dead body, prodding it with her foot.
Naruto's heart thudded so loudly, he could barely hear what she said next.
"Besides, he's too focused on getting away from here," she commented and a pale hand dipped down, grabbing the knife impaling the dead woman's head in order to wiggle it back and forth. Nasty wet squishy noises filled the room with each tug back and forth. "I doubt he would have just left a knife behind."
"Which means that my initial guess has to be correct!" the man said triumphantly. "You're going to believe me now that he used that fire escape? We saw his hat! Not to mention, but fuck, I doubt anybody can stand hiding in this shithole!"
"Call the boss," she ordered aggrieved. "We'll let the boss decide whether he really could have made that jump."
A moment of silence followed as one of them presumably called the boss in question.
"Sorry for bothering you, boss," the man began, "but we're in that apartment building he was seen last?"
Naruto closed his eyes, cursing every deity out for having him be trapped in this godforsaken hellhole.
"We think he lost his hat when he tried climbing down that fucked up fire escape," the man went on lightly. "You think he's that much of an escape artist that he could have made it down?"
Whatever their boss answered, it had the man snorting. "See, told you, we're not dealing with an idiot here."
"I never said we were, dipshit!" the woman snapped and she stepped away from the dead body. "But that fire escape looks too fucked up for anybody to try their luck with it."
"Not fucked up enough for somebody who thinks he's playing hide and seek," the man chortled amused. He sighed explosively next. "Yeah, yeah, boss, I know. Don't worry, we'll find him. He might be Houdini's reincarnation but he can't hide forever."
They must have hung up, because the woman muttered darkly, "One of these days you're going to end up at the wrong side of his mood, Suigetsu, and I'm not so sure I'll be inclined to help you."
"Mah, who else is the boss going to send on this wild goose chase?" the man, Suigetsu, said dryly. "He knows we're the only ones insane enough to follow his orders. Well, this specific order at least."
"We're the only ones he trusts to find him," the woman corrected him primly. "That's an important difference."
"Whatever helps you fall asleep at night, babe," Suigetsu scoffed and his footsteps retreated out of the room. "Now come on, if I was an Omega hellbent on escaping where would I go to next?"
Whatever the woman ended up saying in reply was cut off when the door fell shut behind them.
Even so Naruto remained under the bed and didn't dare to move.
He didn't dare to move for a long time.
With the fire escape being completely out of the question, Naruto was forced to retrace his steps and go all the way back to the third floor, where he managed to find a direct route outside by climbing from one balcony to the other. It took him a while like this to reach the ground and by the time his feet hit the footpath, his muscles were burning from having to bear his weight.
Keeping his back to the wall, he looked around but of course saw nobody. He had waited long enough for the moon to have reached its highest point in the sky. If there had been anybody waiting for him to show his face, they had given up for now. If they truly had believed his ruse with the hat, they were already long gone, chasing ghosts.
He grimaced when his stomach cramped and he spent way too long standing hunched over, gritting his teeth as he waited for the pain to subside. When it finally did, allowing him to straight out again, he felt slightly light-headed.
Maybe he should have risked staying another night in one of the apartments, but considering how close he had come to being discovered already … He couldn't remain in one place for too long; it wasn't safe. Especially not when this town was being controlled by him.
The sooner he left, the better.
One arm wrapped around his stomach, though he knew from experience that would do fuck all, he began walking, keeping as close to the buildings as possible. With no idea where exactly they had gone to, he couldn't leave himself in the open too much. He already had had three close calls, he could do without another one.
Looking around, he tried to orientate himself mentally. He had to be somewhere on the southern side, no? That meant he had to be close to a highway. If he could just find the road leading to the highway, he cold finally get the fuck out of here. He had no idea yet what the hell he would do once he was back on the highway – especially when his only form of transport had been tampered with when he had first set foot here – but that was a problem for future him.
Another painful cramp took him by surprise and he sagged abruptly down against the door of a delipidated shoe store, breathing harshly. He smacked his open hand against the ground, pissed at himself. If he just hadn't been so goddamn stupid to enter this town of all the fucking places he could have ended up at, he wouldn't be in this miserable position right now!
Getting pissed off at himself would do fuck all to solve his issues, of course, but he couldn't help himself. If he could just find a safe place to bunker down tonight or, another painful cramp had him pulling his legs up, a couple of days until he would feel better, this would all go so much easier …
"Wait, do you guys smell that too?"
Naruto was running before the owner of the voice could fully turn around the corner. A shout echoed through the air, followed by a thundering of footsteps and close after that, the sound of a car racing through the streets.
Blindly running around with only the moon to guide his path, Naruto practically dove through the busted door of the first large building he came across on his flight.
The building in question turned out to be a mall, which was both good and bad news. Good in the sense that it should offer him enough hiding spots. Bad in the sense that he had no idea where the fuck he could immediately find an exit if shit turned sideways even more than it already had.
Everywhere he looked there were busted doors and windows, the floors littered with all kinds of crap; the sharp shards of glass glittering where it caught the moonlight seeping through the broken ceiling. Chairs – some whole, some smashed to smithereens – were strewn around everywhere, making it more difficult to navigate properly in the dim space. He turned left, pushing himself off against the corner of a sweet shop to propel himself further, forcing his body to go as fast as he could. Dark spots that had nothing to do with the shitty lighting in the mall were dancing at the edge of his vision and his legs were gradually filling themselves with the consistency of rubber, but he pushed himself to keep running.
He had to find a hiding place right the fuck now, something that would keep both his physical presence and most importantly his scent hidden, but where the fuck would he find such a thing when morons had already torn this place apart, leaving him with nothing us-
There.
He could almost cry from sheer relief when he ducked into a small perfume shop. Even now the scent of different colognes clung to the air heavily, stifling it. The odour wasn't as strong as it once had been when the shop had still seen business, but it would be enough to act as cover for now.
Right as he locked himself up in the storage room in the back of the shop, he picked up the muted sound of a car slowing down to a gradual stop near the mall's entrance. On his haunches, braving another cramp, Naruto could only sit there in tense silence and listen to a pair of footsteps slowly, leisurely, making their way through the mall. He didn't even need to see to know who had arrived.
He was here.
"I know you're here, Naruto."
His voice, a lot closer than Naruto had expected, had Naruto covering his mouth just in time before he could scream. Even so he felt like his heartbeat was loud enough to be heard throughout the entire mall with how hard it was beating, loud enough that the other one wouldn't even need his scent to track him down.
"Why keep making it so hard on yourself?" the other one asked and clucked his tongue disapprovingly.
He wasn't even talking that loudly, wasn't yelling or shouting, but Naruto could still hear him as clear as day.
That wouldn't change.
"You know I can take good care of you if you let me," the Alpha went on, sounding even closer still. "That hasn't changed. That won't change."
Naruto squeezed his eyes shut, but that did nothing but make the dark press down around him even further.
"There's a reason why you ended up here again," the other one continued. "Why don't you just admit that you missed me too, hm?"
There was that taunting tone in his voice, the one that had never failed to rile up Naruto before and make him react. The type of tone the Alpha was banking on would make him react now. And it almost did. Even when he should know better, there was still that instinctive reaction within him that wanted to burst free, that wanted to jump in front of the other one and punch him in his smug face.
He kept quiet, however, quiet and still, not allowing himself to be baited.
"We can do this the easy way or the hard way, Naruto," the other one said, almost friendly.
He was right in front of the perfume shop. He was standing right in front of the door and even though it wasn't possible, even though there was no way the could see straight through the pitch black darkness and through a layer of thick wood, Naruto swore he could feel those piercing eyes staring straight at him.
"It's all up to you. I can do both, you know that very well."
He kept standing there because he knew.
He knew.
"You tell me when you have enough of playing this game, Naruto. Because I have all the time in the world."
Fuck.