Power - SCP Foundation

I remember the first time I ever put on a white suit.

You never forget that feeling. The sense of raw… power; You feel untouchable. For all intents and purposes, you might as well be. I mean, it’s bulletproof power armor with an invisibility cloak. And just the shape of the thing, lots of geometric shapes, very strong-looking shape. And the shiny white polymer exoskeleton? It's just… Mwah.

Yeah…

…

I remember when that feeling was shattered for me too.

Years back my old team had a mission as part of a Joint Strike Team. It was a raid on a Foundie facility.

The Chaos Insurgency, terrorist organization that they may be, the Foundation is undeniably their enemy. And guess what, the Foundation is our enemy too. But the thought of the Coalition collaborating on anything with the Insurgency is… concerning, to say the least. Wasn't my place to argue then, it isn't my place to argue now.

I do have to say, fighting side by side with those guys was freaky, not because of how many times we’ve fought each other, that was a given, I knew that. I think it's because they were just so awfully quiet. It’s contagious or something I swear, my team was ordinarily pretty talkative, social people, but standing next to those guys? Dead silent.

Another thing, they’re big. I don’t know what they’re feeding those guys but I swear they must have been nearly 7 foot, just as tall as us in the white suits. All of them, were tall, the men, the women and the children too. Kidding, they didn’t have any children, thank God.

I mean, devil's advocate, their entire organization has the fashion sense of a 14-year old emo kid: All black, all the time. Although, our logo does have a pentagram on it, so glass houses, I suppose…

Our joint team was handling ground force stuff. I think it was the south gate. Foundies had set up turrets and barricades, they really clamped down on defense there. I suggested we try stealth. Everyone else voted for shock and awe. I mean hey, fair enough. There's definitely something to be said for that initial rush of adrenaline.

We rushed the guards, with thundering footfalls and raining gunfire, or whatever other poetic shit you can imagine. It was great.

Well, getting shot, back at, that wasn't as fun. Getting hit with a bullet, especially 50 cal, even in one of those suits, you’ll definitely feel it, especially if it’s to the head. But like I said before, suits are bulletproof, no chance of death on my part. So the guards didn't stand a chance. What could I say, they didn't have power armor, we did.

Once we cleared the first gate, things were going great. It was a sort of courtyard area. We were closing in on their front door basically speaking. I was walking in front of everyone else, I was the scout.

I hear a helicopter, I don’t see it, I call back to my team. Sure enough, a helicopter shows up, those things are really loud, did you know that? Basically deafening if you’re standing too close. Pretty much everyone starts shooting at it, next thing I know, I hear this awful screeching sound.

I’m waking up, helmet covered in mud. Fire all around me, I couldn’t see anything, I couldn't feel my legs. I crawled until I felt a wall and slumped up against it. When I finally managed to clear my eyes, it was a lot. Bodies everywhere. Little white armor pieces everywhere.

Helicopter wreckage across the whole courtyard. A wall of flame as far as I could see. I saw some Foundie guards running past. I guess they thought I was dead. I can’t blame them, I probably would’ve thought so myself if I was in their position.

Now I’ve seen a lot of fucked up shit in my time serving the Coalition, but this next thing, it’s definitely up there.

I see this big fucking metal skeleton lurches out of the flames. It’s barely held together by stringy bits of muscle and melting skin. Its guts were just kinda hanging out of its body. It was like the robot in the Terminator movie, but just plain gross.

The Foundies open fire on it, which is rather uncharacteristic if you ask me, isn’t their whole thing supposed to be science and shit?

Anyway it goes fucking berserk. I couldn’t look away, not least because it hurt to move. No, what I saw was that it… It tore them apart like ragdolls. It never stopped or slowed down, it was like a tornado of limbs. I would tell you I heard the guards screaming, but I don't think I could have. My ears were still kind of ringing from the explosion not more than a minute ago. I imagine they must have been though.

My point is, this thing, this Chaos Insurgency soldier, it went psycho, started breaking skulls open, started ripping people open, crushing their guts with its skeleton hands.

Ugh… Makes me shudder.

When it killed all the guards, it just stood there.

I don’t know for sure why. My theory is that being hit by a missile, the concussive force would turn anyone’s brain into pulp no matter how thick their skull is. I can’t describe just how horrible the feeling was when it turned around and looked at me with its beady fucking cyborg eyes. I wanted to vomit, I mean… I couldn’t fucking move, I was paralyzed. I thought it was going to rip me apart too. Longest few seconds of my life.

Instead of turning me into paste, It looked me in the eye. It was like it was thinking, contemplating, with its concussed pulp-brain. It just stood there, staring at me. Maybe seeing me reminded it of something. Maybe I reminded it of itself. I don’t know.

Anyway, after a while, it just walked back into the fire. I don’t know why. Perhaps it was too depressed to keep on living with the knowledge of what it was. Maybe it was fireproof. Damned if I know.

I don't remember much else. I ended up falling unconscious, got medevaced about an hour later. I lost a lot of blood, turns out a piece of shrapnel cut my inner thigh. Missed my femoral artery though. Even so, I probably should have died anyway. I got lucky.

The mission was a failure, ultimately. Ground assault failed, couldn’t hold position long enough. I’d say it was out fault, but we weren’t the only ground assault team. Sometimes failure is a group effort.

After that the CI broke ties. Their relationship with the us, the Coalition, it's definitely a patchy one, very on-and-off; Every few years we agree on something, we run a few joint missions, and then like clockwork they break off again and start killing us. The fact that it's happened more than once? I don't even know.

The moral of the story? Power. We chase it every day we pick up a gun, every time we don a suit of armor. And that’s all fine and dandy, but there’s a limit, a line that you’re not supposed to cross. Making a soldier into a weapon themselves, that's what I mean. At the end of the day, I can put a gun down, I can take off my armor.

And then… If I get hit with a missile? If I get shot with a gun? I’ll die.

The human body is fragile. And there’s something… comforting… about knowing that.