Absolute Anarchy
A Darksiders/SCP Foundation crossover nobody asked for but is here regardless.
Summary: SCP-8103. Object class; undetermined. There's a new entity at the Foundation. Four D-Class have already been supplied with weapons and pitted against it, only to be cut down before they could get more than a couple of shots in. Eager to determine which calibre of rifle can pierce its armour, they send you in next - D-1935 - to accomplish what your predecessors couldn't. It's too bad they never taught you how to actually use the rifle...
This has the vague semblance of a plot btw, but I'm trying not to be too finicky, and just to write as it comes to me, so hopefully it'll still be easy enough to follow and enjoyable at the same time.
Tw: Blood, guns, death, imprisonment, threat, violence, trapped, typical SCP violence.
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If there was ever a moment where you should have felt the stars aligning to determine the path your life might take, it would have to be the moment you decided to steal that godforsaken sports car.
It was an instance born of desperation – a tantalising lure cast by the owner of a chop-shop who made heartfelt promises to lift you out of poverty, only to throw you under the proverbial bus when the heat ventured too close to his illicit operation.
He only wanted the money from that Ferrari.
You reduced yourself to grand theft auto for a chance to escape the homeless shelter and land on your feet.
And where did you land instead?
Behind bars, that’s where. Tossed into some dingy prison that seemed only built for the sole purpose of hiding away society’s miserable, forgotten dregs.
You thought you knew what rock bottom looked like.
How were you to know the depths this pitiless world could drag you down to?
“D – One-nine-three-five!”
A strident voice bellows a set of all-too familiar numbers at what must be the top of his already bursting lungs. The door to your cell is wrenched violently open, spilling light into a room that’s a damn sight smaller and bleaker than the one they pulled you from in St Ives.
Bureaucracy had been your ultimate enemy, in the end. A signature in the wrong place, a ‘t’ dotted where it should have been crossed, and an ‘i’ absent from your paperwork had all lead you to a place you couldn’t have imagined in your most turbulent nightmares. A place that shouldn’t - and so far as the public is aware - doesn’t exist.
The SCP Foundation.
Specifically, site 12; a rancorous offshoot of what you’ve come to learn through eavesdropping and rumour, is a worldwide operation.
It turns out the people in charge here couldn’t less of give a hoot whether you’re a petty thief or a renowned and unrepentant serial killer. If your name is on their list, they won’t bother to see a difference. You’re all Disposables, in the end, and no amount of pleas for your innocence or requests for an evaluation will get you any closer to that glorious taste of freedom.
You’ll serve your time or die trying. And as of yet, you haven’t heard of anyone who’s reached the end of their ‘sentence.’
The bed springs underneath you shriek with relief as you scramble up onto your feet, nearly tripping over the long hems of your jumpsuit.
Heart thundering like a jackhammer, you cower before the imposing shape silhouetted in your doorway, warily eyeing the M9 Beretta that’s being aimed directly at your forehead.
You’d hoped that by now the guards here would have learned that you’re not a threat. Hell, it didn’t take you long to figure out that anybody even vaguely considered a troublemaker in this place will earn themselves a one-way ticket to a fate that would make you beg for a bullet between the eyes.
That first week, you ended up trying to plead your case to the wrong scientist and wound up on the bi-weekly rota to clean SCP-173’s cell. Twice.
How you got out of there with your neck facing the right way is one of life’s greatest mysteries. If it hadn’t gone for your poor cellmate first…
“You listening, Scuzz!?” The handgun jerks to the left of your doorway. “Get your ass outta that cell!”
Ah... Mullins. One of the guards assigned to your particular block.
A meaner son of a bitch, you’ve never known. Rumour has it that the towering brute used to be a D-Class, like you, but through shows of force, an unflinching disregard for his fellow man, and an uncanny ability to survive, the Lab Coats bumped him up to guard status, if for no other reason than to keep the inmates in line.
You’re loathe to admit it, but he is damn good at his job.
Ducking your head, you scurry from your bed through the open door, pressing yourself as close to the frame as possible to squeeze past the Beretta that he keeps trained on your head. You don’t even have to look at him anymore to know that there’s a wide smirk on his face when he jabs the barrel at the back of your skull, shoving you into an awkward stumble down the hallway.
“Move. Got a new assignment for you today,” he goads, falling into step behind you, his thick, rubber boots thudding purposefully on the linoleum.
In contrast, your plimsoles make rather pathetic ‘slaps’ with each, hurried step you take.
You know the drill by now. Head down. Eyes front. Mouth shut.
You’ve walked this path to the lifts a hundred times before.
It's been weeks since you stopped asking him when you can go home.
‘When you’ve served your sentence,’ became ‘When we damn well feel like it,’ became ‘You still think you’re getting out of here?’
“SCP-Eight-One-Oh-Three~,” Mullins sing-songs at your back, entirely too cheerful all of a sudden, “This one just came in. The Lab coats don’t know nothin’ about it. And guess who’s the lucky little D-Scuzz who gets to ‘further the advancement of science?”
Although your body trembles like a leaf in a hurricane, you don’t make a sound, not even when the moisture in your eyes wells up into a fat, salty teardrop and breaks over the dam of your lash line, carving a damp path down your grubby cheek.
An unknown SCP?
Your odds of making it to the end of the day in one piece have just plummeted into the single digits, and you once again find yourself asking, 'why me?'
‘We’re doing this for the good of humanity,’ one doctor with a particularly punchable face had once announced to a room full of orange-clad prisoners, and you can still remember wondering when you and your fellow inmates stopped being a part of that same Humanity this Foundation seems to keen to protect.
The cold steel of a gun jabs you again in the base of your neck, pushing a quiet sound of protest from your lips that you hurriedly clamp down on, fists balling up at your sides.
“That’s right!” Mullins continues, “Damn, you gotta be feelin’ proud as a peacock, kid. Not every day someone gets to be the first to make contact. Hell, maybe you’ll get lucky, and it’ll be a Euclid.”
The row of lifts appears as you turn the next corner and come to a stop obediently in front of the closest one, head still hanging nearly to your chest as you wait for Mullins to reach past you and jam his thumb on the ‘down’ button.
“Wouldn’t bet on it though… That thing has Keter written all over it.”
With the damning chime of a bell, the heavy, metal doors slide open, and Mullins shoves you roughly into the claustrophobic space with one fist to your spine. Jesus, trapped in this finite space with him, the smell of cheap brand cigarettes wafts from his jacket and drifts up into your nose, sitting stale and musty on the back of your tongue.
The walls are dull in here, unreflective, which you nearly count as a blessing.
It means you don’t have to see the mess you’ve become.
----
It’s only when you’re standing outside the containment cell that you realise Mullins was either lying, or just plain wrong.
You aren’t the first D-Class to make contact with this SCP.
In fact, if the stiff-faced scientist shoving a rifle into your hands is to be believed, you’re precisely the fifth.
“That,” he begins with an aloof air of bored professionalism, watching impassively while you fumble to find purchase on the heavy gun, “Is the CZ-Five-Fifty. And today, you will be testing its armour-piercing capabilities.”
‘Armour?’ you think, swallowing thickly, ‘What the Hell kind of monster have they brought into this place?’
The cold circle of steel still pressed to your shoulder blade reminds you of Mullins’s unpleasant presence.
“No funny business,” he growls, “You couldn’t get the safety off before I put you down like a lame bitch.”
Charming.
You don’t fancy telling him you couldn’t get the safety off anyway. And that it... hadn't occurred to you to even try and turn it on him and the scientist, though it probably should have been the first thing you thought of.
The weapon sits like a dead weight in your hands, heavy and fundamentally useless. You don’t know how to fire a gun, let alone one this powerful.
But the scientist doesn’t seem to know that, lazily racking off the terms of your contract and your ‘obligation’ to the Foundation.
Yes, you imagine it would get tiresome having to rehash the same speech five times in a row… Perhaps he just assumes you know how to use it?
Bastard.
Wetting your lips, you peel them apart and croak out a question, wincing at the pathetic crack in your voice, dry and reedy from disuse. “What happened to the others?”
At that, the scientist’s lips purse, and an eyelid twitches then settles.
They all hate being interrupted. Especially by a D-Class.
At least the guards acknowledge your autonomy through rage and demeaning names and acts of violence.
To the Lab Coats, you’re just cannon-fodder. Nothing. Empty vessels for them to use as they see fit.
Even so, the one in front of you straightens up and peers down the length of his nose at you, sighing as though he were trying to explain the concept of algebra to a dog. “The D-Class personnel-“ he begins, and you have to bite your tongue to hold in a scoff. ‘Personnel’ is a funny way of pronouncing ‘Prisoners.’
“-who came before, all failed their assignments.”
Behind you, Mullins pipes up with a distinguishable sneer. “Emptied their whole clips into the thing before they got turned into Swiss cheese.”
Oh… God.
“Didn’t even make a dent,” he concludes, sounding not in the least bit sad to have wasted four lives.
“Yes, well-“ the scientist clears his throat, “The first step to knowing your enemy is knowing how to kill it. And the supplied Rugers proved… ahem… inefficient. But at least we now know the three-five-seven calibre isn’t strong enough. We’re hoping the point six hundred will be.”
“Six hundred Overkill…” Mullins whistles appreciatively. “Elephant killers.”
Your stomach twists into a tight, clenching ball. You think you might be sick if there was anything to bring up except bile.
So, this is the SCP that finally kills you.
Shit.
In a whirlwind of sudden, dizzying movements and barked orders, you’re unceremoniously surrounded by three more guards who bodily ‘escort’ you into the loading dock – an empty room set in the midway of two descending doors that are made from several feet of a solid titanium alloy. The primary door slides open with a mechanical hiss, and you’re shoved roughly into the space between it and the secondary door.
On trembling knees, you gape up at the grey metal, noting with no small degree of alarm that it’s tall and wide enough to admit the shipping container of something titanic.
Above your head on the wall, an orange light pulses as the primary door slams shut behind you, and the sound of enormous locks sliding into place fills the room. Your rifle almost slips from your grasp, leaving you to fumble for it with sweat-slicked palms.
The drawback of not being a hardened death-row inmate is that when it comes to moments of great danger, you’re inclined to neither fight nor flee.
Instead, worst of all, you’re the type to freeze solid.
Now is no exception.
As the light flashing above you turns green, signalling for the second door to ascend into its slot high in the ceiling, your spine promptly goes rigid, fingers locking up around the gun whilst your feet turn to two blocks of cement.
All of a sudden, you can’t help but let out a shriek when something flops down onto the ground on your side of the door once it’s been raised a couple of feet, and at first, you assume something is trying to crawl through the space to get at you.
Once you realise what the dark object actually is, you almost wish your initial assumption had been correct.
What lays on the ground, spread across the threshold between the dock and the cell, is a body. ‘A human body!’ your addled brain registers.
Or what’s left of a human…
Swiss cheese might not have been an exaggeration after all.
Entry and exit holes have torn the poor bastard apart from head to toe, shredding to ribbons what remains of a grubby, orange jumpsuit, much like the one you’re currently garbed in. Bones and muscle and sinew show through torn flaps of skin, and the stench of blood mingles with gun smoke, seeping into your nostrils before you can scrunch your nose up to block it out. You could have done without the acrid taste of iron resting on the back of your tongue.
‘That’s gonna happen to me,’ you gasp silently, choking on a sob, unable to tear your gaze from the body, ‘Oh god, that’ll be me in a minute!’
Jesus Christ, they hadn’t even waited for the blood to dry, the assholes!
With a ‘click’ and a ‘thud,’ the door slides gracefully to a halt, utterly and completely open, exposing you to whatever entity lays in wait beyond the threshold. The fear of what lies ahead outweighs your horror of seeing a fellow D-Class on the ground. In an instant, you wrench your eyes away from the body and gape out into the room in front of you.
Sturdy, grey walls lit by an overhead fluorescent light are a familiar view, as are the bloodstains spattered across the stone slabs.
The pockmarks littering the adjacent wall are new however, each about the size of your fist. There are hundreds of them, like someone took a gatling gun and sprayed it all over the cell. They look… far too large to have been made by any ordinary rifle…
A hard blink sends twin tracks of tears leaking down your face. The room beyond angles sharply to the left right outside the door, and it plucks at your frayed nerves to realise you can’t see what’s around the corner…
Nearby, facedown on the floor just several feet from the entrance, is the second body, a gun laying close to their side and an arm outstretched towards you, their final act in the throes of death. They must have skidded around the corner and were making for the door when they were cut down…
Despite the carnage, the cell is eerily silent, not a breath nor a shift to give away where the SCP might be.
Is it lurking just around the bend to ambush you?
Is it seconds away from tearing into the pocket of space and doing to you whatever it did to these sorry sods?
Aside from quivering fit to bust, you can’t move a muscle.
You won’t.
You won’t go in there, they can’t –!
“D-Class!”
A sharp staccato shout is thrown from a speaker in the corner of the dock, causing you to nearly leap out of your skin. But worse than your visceral flinch is the sound the voice elicits from something inside the cell.
It’s like a roll of thunder, soft then loud then soft again, a guttural growl, so rich and deep it shakes the walls and travels up through your plimsoles, undulating across each section of your spine until you can feel it hum behind your eyes.
The reverb hasn’t even faded before the same voice barks, “Proceed into the containment chamber at once.”
“To Hell with that!” you retort, feet still rooted firmly to the ground.
“You will proceed or you will be reassigned.”
It’s a threat that’s worked before.
And Hell… It works again now.
Reassignment is an absolute. A guaranteed death sentence. At least in here, even with an unknown entity, there’s a slim, albeit nearly imperceptible change of survival or at the very least, a quick death. Besides, the previous victims look well and truly dead, and that’s frankly a fate that’s a Hell of a lot better than becoming a living hive for a colony of insects or a tumour-riddled larder for giant, cave-dwelling rodents.
“D-Class. You have precisely three seconds to-“
The inescapable terror of a worse ending is your greatest motivator down here. You don’t even wait for the countdown to start.
Heaving in a wet breath, you squeeze your eyes halfway shut and yank one leg stiffly into the air, planting it forwards, once, twice, three times until you pass the body on the threshold and step out into the cell. Into the open. Like a doe entering a meadow when she damn well knows there are hunters lurking in the trees nearby.
Your eyes are still clenched almost shut when you turn yourself to the left and spot the remaining pair of bodies, one almost laying on top of the other, weapons still locked in their cold, dead hands,
Another, blood-curdling growl blasts through the air around you, sudden and violent enough to nearly send you toppling over onto your backside.
Flinging your eyes open with a gasp, you immediately wish you’d kept them closed instead. You wish the SCP had just killed you outright.
You wish you never stole that wretched car.
You were expecting big.
This SCP is bigger.
You can see why the scientists want to find a calibre that can pierce armour.
The creature that hunches before you, eating up ample space between the floor and the ceiling dozens of feet overhead, is almost solid metal from top to bottom. And armoured, you realise in horror, covering flashes of grey, scaly skin the colour of iron.
Bipedal, is the second thing you note, towering all the way to the roof on a pair of long, lithe legs, each ending in a three-toed foot with claws that remind you of some long extinct theropod.
A scrawny waist feeds into a contrarily powerful chest and monumental shoulders that are made even larger by the armoured struts encasing them.
Your eyes, wider than saucers, travel along the length of its arms – the first hanging down to its bent knee with a hand that looks large enough to wrap around your whole body and crush you between its fingers. The other arm, however, doesn’t end in a hand – clawed or otherwise.
It ends instead, from the elbow down, in a four barrelled gun the size of cannon.
And all four of those chambers are aimed directly and unwaveringly at you.
Behind the sights, several cylinders spin over one another like a minigun ramping up to fire, clanking angrily in an obvious threat.
You don’t dare pull in a breath, not when your gaze locks onto one of the chambers of the gun arm, and from somewhere deep in the pits of those long barrels, a dim, red glow sparks to life, the same light you imagine the fires of Hell would kick out if Satan ever eventually sets foot in this horrible place.
And that’s without even mentioning its other apparent weapon.
You think it must be some kind of tail, arched up and over the SCP’s head like the tail of a scorpion, swaying very gently from left to right and back again. Whip-like, it tapers to a point, and from what you can see from down here, the grey of its scales beneath the armour fades into an angry red right near the tip, glowing the same colour as the lights in the barrels of its gatling arm.
Vivid images of your body being impaled on the end of that wicked appendage flicker through your mind’s eye, and you have to drop your gaze to banish them, moving on to take in the rest of the monstrosity.
A pair of metal horns sweep forwards from the sides of an avian helm, long and sleek and ending in deadly points perfect for goring, like the tusks of an elephant. There’s a mane sprouting from its back too, a vibrant purple that stands out fiercely against the silver of its armour. Each strand of hair seems to wave and snake about through the air as if they’re alive.
And then you make the mistake of meeting its gaze.
You’ve seen SCP’s with no eyes, some with too many eyes, a few that are made up entirely of eyes and even those that have eyes in places where eyes have no business being.
These though… you don’t like these eyes at all, even despite the fact there are a regular number of them.
Gold as gleaming bullion, unnaturally bright and forward-facing, all nature’s warning signs that you’re staring up into the eyes of a predator.
Once they’ve locked you in their sights, it’s nigh on impossible to tear yourself free.
The snarling visage opens up like a steel trap, baring black fangs the size of axe heads, and a burning heat behind its jaws that rises like-
“D – One-nine-three-five!”
“Shit!” You don’t mean to yelp aloud, nor do you intend to nearly drop the gun, scrambling to secure your grip on it before it can fall from your hands. In the blink of an eye, the entity’s gigantic head swings around to hiss furiously at something you’d missed completely when you stumbled into its cell.
An observation window dominates the far wall, and behind it, several figures donned in white coats stand watching, their faces only slightly blurred behind the thick – presumably bullet-proof – glass.
Just above the window on this side of the cell, another speaker has been fitted into the wall, and from it, the same nasally voice as before barks a command.
“You are to proceed with testing the Overkill’s capabilities.”
… Are they serious?
The SCP’s tail has swung around to follow its head and aims warningly at the glass, though its weaponised arm stays fixed on you.
Your own weapon remains useless, hanging from your grasp, pointed at the ground. You can’t muster the courage to raise it.
What defence could it possibly provide? What could such a tiny rifle do, really, against a weapon that made holes that size in the concrete walls?
The scientists are insane. The lot of them...
Well, to Hell with them, and to Hell with this stupid experiment.
Still blurred over by salty tears, your eyes reluctantly trail back up to the entity’s head. If you’re to die, you want to look this thing in the eye when it kills you. You might have lived as a coward, but you’re not so eager to die as one.
You’ve been afraid to defy them for so long, terrified – paralysed by the possibility of what these people might do to you in retaliation of defiance. But somehow, being here surrounded by the bodies of your fellow prisoners, knowing you’re about to meet the same fate, you can’t think of anything more satisfying than not giving the Foundation what they want.
Oh certainly, you imagine they’ll soon get some other D-Class to do the job you failed to do, but if causing the Lab Coats a mild inconvenience before you die is how they remember you, you think you’ll be okay with that.
You have to be okay with it. There’s nothing else you can be now, seconds from having your body turned into, as Mullins so eloquently put it, Swiss cheese.
Stiffening your upper lip, you aim a shaky scowl at the window, eyes bloodshot with tears and fatigue. And in an act you hope looks as rebellious as it feels, you open your arms and let the gun fall to the ground with an almighty clatter, drawing the SCP’s attention back onto yourself.
A strangled noise escapes the speakers before you hear, “D – One-nine-three-five! Retrieve your weapon at once!”
Ignoring him, you roll your gaze over to the SCP and let your arms flop defeatedly to your sides, teeth clenched shut to try and hold onto your sobs.
That enormous, horned head cocks sideways at you, and through your tear-streaked vision, you almost believe you can see its gatling arm drop ever so slightly, and the glow in its barrels fade from red-hot to warm-orange.
“Please,” you find your voice, blindly toeing a plimsole forwards and giving the gun a weak kick, listening to it slide a few feet away from you. You’re unaware that the beast’s gaze tracks your discarded weapon across the room. “Just… make it quick?”
The body closest to you still has his eyes intact, and they stare up at you from the floor, glassy and unseeing. You wonder if his death was quick. You hope so. It looks like it should have been.
The entity regards you with its wide, fiery snarl, unblinking, calculating. As the seconds tick by, you find yourself fidgeting and sparing glances between its gun and its armoured face.
What the Hell is it waiting for?
All of a sudden, two slitted nostrils appear above the SCP’s mouth, glowing with the same liquid gold that shimmers in its eyes. They flare hotly for a moment, kicking out a noisy whumph of air, and then…
Against every odd…
The SCP snatches its head away from you and… and drops its gun arm with a gruff snort, glaring at the wall opposite the scientists.
You blink once.
Seconds later, you have to blink again, clearing your vision slightly.
Why… are you still alive?
“Um…” you utter, for lack of any better ideas.
The SCP doesn’t turn to acknowledge the sound of your voice. In fact, it seems entirely adamant in subjecting the concrete wall to a fearsome glower instead as it thumps the barrels of its gun to the ground and leans its weight on that arm, its mighty chest heaving in and out with a huff.
… Perhaps you’re going mad. That’s it. That must be part of its power. It makes people go mad. Why else would you be plagued by the feeling that you’re being deliberately ignored?
On the other side of the glass, a young scientist hovers over the microphone, trembling with unprofessional agitation and apprehension.
“D-Class!” he barks shrilly, pushing down on the button so hard his fingertip turns white, “If you don’t pick up your rifle at once, I will have no choice but to-!”
“- Quiet Spencer…” Another voice - older, authoritative – snaps, causing the shrieking man to immediately fall silent and cower away from the microphone as obediently as a beaten dog. It even hushes the mutters of every other scientist in the observation room. Narrow eyes stare unblinkingly through coke-bottle spectacles, observing the interaction beyond the observation window with cool interest. “This is the longest a D-Class has survived with this specimen…” she points out, listening to the intern beside her scribble down the minutes, “I’d like to find out why.”
She watches the Disposable’s face turn towards the glass, trying to meet any of the scientists’ gazes, apparently seeking some sort of explanation to the SCP's behaviour.
Join the club.
“… Ma’am?” someone asks after several seconds pass without an answer, turning to face her, their expression inquiring.
For a further minute, she elects to stand there in silence, thoughtfully tapping a manicured nail against the microphone button, contemplating the magnificent creature and the miniscule human currently sharing a space.
Then, with a deliberate slowness, she slides her finger from the button and folds her arms, lab coat wrinkling around her elbows.
“The D-Class gets five minutes inside before extraction,” she declares, shooting a nod at her intern who scrambles to fish a stopwatch from his pocket and stabs his thumb on the button. Once she hears the sharp ‘beep,’ she returns her attention to the staff around her and adds, “No external input.”
There are murmurs of varying approval rising and falling all throughout the room, but once again, she only has eyes for the SCP.
“Let’s see if this D-Class proves more useful than the predecessors…”
---
“Hello?” you whisper-shout at the scientists behind the window, keeping the entity in the corner of your eye, “Um...”
Christ, this is awkward... "Can I... Can I leave, or...?"
Silence.
Impassive, boring silence.
Aside from the occasional motion made to scribble something down on a clipboard, none of the scientists seem inclined to offer anything more through the microphone.
Gradually, the tired muscles in your shoulder tighten.
You’ve seen this before. D-Class call it the ‘silent treatment,’ where scientists are more interested in seeing what you can find out about SCPs of your own volition.
Are you supposed to have survived for this long? Your mind races with the thought that your predecessors might have been subjected to the same thing before they met their end. You may end up a smear on the wall yet. Half of you is weary enough to hope that’s the case. You’ve just defied a direct order from one of the Lab Coats. You shudder to imagine which SCP they’ll toss you to after this.
It’s that thought alone that spurs you to take a single step towards this entity, intending to get this over with, but no sooner have you moved closer than it whips its head towards you again, and that gun is back up, the cylinders clicking furiously in response to your proximity.
You realise at once that you’d become too bold without its weapon pointed at you because now, that same fear has returned tenfold, sending you staggering backwards again to put some more distance between you and that deadly arm.
Slamming your eyes shut, you raise your hands up in front of your face, breath hitching as you wait to feel the first of many bullets slamming into your flesh.
… You count no less than ten heartbeats without feeling a thing.
------------------------------------------------
“Two minutes to go, ma’am,” the intern quibbles at her side.
Eyes gleaming, she watches you stand shaking in front of the SCP, arms lifted in what she presumes must be surrender. “Fascinating,” she murmurs, “The entity still hasn’t fired a single round…”
“You think it’s run out of ammo?” one of the other scientists asks, bolder than his fellows in the face of their superior.
“Perhaps,” she muses, eyeing the SCP’s ‘tail’ that hangs slack behind it this time, not poised to strike over its head like a cobra, “But perhaps it’s just as likely that it won’t fire unless it’s fired upon first.”
The intern, apparently emboldened by another voice speaking up before him, says, “Um, would that class it as a Euclid then?”
Someone scoffs derisively.
“That cannot be determined at present,” she returns cooly, “We haven’t enough data… That being said...”
Stepping closer to the window, arms coming to clasp loosely behind her back, she tilts her head sideways and regards you with the mild interest of a spider watching a fly struggle in her web. “Thanks to this D-Class, we now know far more about the SCP than we did before… And all because an order was disregarded…”
“Impertinence,” someone spits.
“Initiative,” she returns sharply, the beginnings of a rare and pensive smile lifting her cheeks, “Mullins.”
The guard near the back of the room snaps to attention.
“Prepare for extraction in one minute’s time… And return our lucky D-Class to isolation. Forty-eight hours, I think. Regular meals. That should give us enough time to make arrangements for the next test.”
“Ma’am,” he grunts, moving up to the primary door.
“Er…” The intern beside her shifts on his feet, casting apprehensive glances between the SCP and the D-Class, “What is the next test…? Oh-! Um, Ma’am?”
What indeed? Her mind is already swirling with possibilities, the first of which sticks in place as she contemplates the logistics of it, turning it over and making mental arrangements that’ll need to be put in place.
“The next test?” she replies absently, gazing up at the entity’s fangs that are still being bared down at you, though it hasn’t made a move against you yet, “We’re going to see what, if anything, this SCP likes to eat.”
