Condemned To Live - SCP Foundation

Priscilla Locke couldn't see herself. She could move her head with some effort. Looking down she couldn't see her own body. She was in her house; the second floor of a modest duplex their grandparents had spent their fortune on long before the Cuban influx had sent the well-off Whites fleeing north, and then before the re-gentrification which brought the neighborhood's value back up.

Rhiannon was there, standing in front of the couch and looking at her, face strained and hands trembling. There was no confusion or shock at the sight of her. She was dressed in what had become her usual attire; a turquoise tank top, worn-out jeans, and a red plaid jacket wrapped around her waist. She didn't wear the same thing every day yet for some reason Priss could not remember her in any other attire.

"What's wrong with you?" Priss asked cautiously, not wanting to rile her up.

Rhiannon grimaced, tears welling in her eyes, "Do you know why I did what I did?"

Priss's vision reddened as if the house had suddenly caught fire, "Because you're a selfish, spoiled, lazy, arrogant brat!" Her voice came out much louder than she'd intended. "All you ever think about is yourself and— No, not that. All you ever think about is having fun. That's all that matters to you is having fun. Everything about you is just to have fun. That's why you bailed on your own graduation ceremony, that's why you insisted we have mom and dad's funeral in that seedy fucking shithole of a funeral home right across from the drug park…"

She trailed off and ran out of breath. Rhiannon didn't move, her lips barely parting, while her voice came out very clear and precise, "I did it for you."

Locke couldn't stop moving. Stopping meant blinding, incessant pain that went through the muscles, feeling like something was twisting and tying up her muscles and then pulling as hard as possible to try to break them. A flick of her wrist eased the pain at first. Then she had to flail her arm or her leg. Soon she had to thrash and punch and kick and writhe wildly in order to keep her body from breaking.

They'd tied her down to the hospital bed at first, until the skin of her wrists and ankles was shredded from her constant thrashing. Then they loosened her restraints, just enough to pad them or replace bloody padding. Everyone going in and out was in a fully enclosed hazmat suit and had to do all this with clumsy gloved fingers. The bacteria inside of her was fighting; the tube they stuck up her nose to help her breathe had to be replaced after blood gushed onto it, only to stop when it was removed. A breathing tube put down her throat was quickly clogged with vomit. For a few moments, she would be able to breathe clearly and control her limbs. Then the pain and the blood would return, accompanied by an incoherent panic that set off every nerve cluster in her body, stinging every inch of skin.

"This is different." Dr. Marlowe watched the video of Priscilla Locke on her computer, a three minute clip from the first several hours the medical staff spent trying to stabilize her. They didn't have an anesthesiologist on-site so they could only give her some local anesthetics, then sit back and watch as the flailing and thrashing intensified elsewhere on her body. She'd long stopped screaming, now making guttural clicks and gags as she struggled just to breathe. Drs. Kohn, Reich, and Alton were with her.

Marlowe opened up another video file and set it next to the one of Locke, rewinding it and re-playing it while playing the one beside it. It was from China, part of the document release the Jinyiwei had given the Foundation before they disappeared. A tall, athletic Chinese woman was strapped to a bed, much like Locke. Her thrashing was different. Kohn leaned in closer to watch while the others sat back and watched from afar, not interested in the specific details.

Locke thrashed and flailed violently, shrieking in pain. She was like a confused, enraged animal struggling to escape. The Chinese woman, Shi Mingxia, thrashed and flailed and shrieked in pain. But her movements were steadier. More uniform. It was as if she had lost control of her body and her body was struggling to reorient itself. Locke's movements were inconsistent, wild, driven by clear pain and fear. The Chinese woman's movements were consistent, almost deliberate. It looked as though she were struggling to get up and walk around. Other bursts of movement seemed consistent with everyday physical activities. If she were upright and unrestrained it might've looked like she were exercising, or dancing, or having an animated conversation using her whole body.

"It's the same bacteria, you say?" Dr. Alton asked.

"As much as we could examine it, yes. Some very slight differences, but it's the same bacterium. Not a mutation or anything. I'm not an expert on bacterial infections. They say it's the same."

"Yeah, but we already knew that." Kohn sat back down in his seat, but remained animated, "What do we know about her?"

"Shi Mingxia. A Jinyiwei agent posing as a lab assistant to a resident doctor called Sienowicz. He caught the bacteria and died, then she caught it and died. Before she did, she observed that the bacterium was receptive to both extreme heat and extreme cold, and could easily mutate. She also said that while she was observing a sample of the bacterium they were discussing an unrelated bacterium, and the sample began to mutate along the lines of the unrelated bacterium they were discussing, displaying either some form of sentience or familiarity with human language."

"Despite that, you're saying the sample taken from Locke is identical to the sample we got from the Jinyiwei?" Dr. Alton jumped in.

Marlowe shrugged, "I- That's what they told me. Either neither sample had mutated or they both mutated in the same way. Maybe they mutated upon exposure to human cells."

She clenched her jaw as she saw Alton give a quick, dismissive look and turn his gaze back to the screen. She wasn't an expert on bacteria; they knew it, she knew it, yet still she felt like they were shaming her for it, like she had to know every detail of every scientific discipline herself or she wasn't doing her job. Painfully, painfully, painfully, painfully average Jaime Marlowe.

Kohn got back up and leaned in closer to the screen, "This is different." He reiterated what Marlowe had initially said. They all paid close attention when Kohn said it. They respected him more than they did her and they had trouble hiding it.

"If the bacteria are sentient, which given everything we've seen so far seems to be one of the leading hypotheses, then they're singling out humans for some purpose. They're infecting people and trying to adapt quickly enough to avoid getting their asses kicked by our immune system," He tapped the screen over the Chinese woman, "It might be too early to tell but it looks to me like they're succeeding here." He tapped the screen over Locke, "Here…"

"It's a fight." Dr. Reich bit out, voice straining from a cold.

"Locke's immune system is fighting back. Hard. And it looks like the bacteria are struggling."

"What do we do?"

Kohn slowly started to rise to his feet, "If she survives and stops thrashing long enough, get some blood samples. Start doing research on the Chinese woman, too, if practicable. Find people with similar blood. Fingers crossed, we might end up with at least something to fight back with."

Marlowe didn't want to be the first to make a fool of herself and blurt out the word 'cure'. She sat still, eyes on the screen as everyone else began to file out. Everything had been pushing her to drop Locke in some way. Her connection to her sister and the Anabasis leak. Even Locke's own behavior, her anger problems, and her confrontational nature had added to the cacophony of voices pressuring Marlowe to re-assign her. For whatever trivial, insignificant reasons of familiarity or discomfort with change, Marlowe had resisted. And now it looked as though her decision to keep Locke on-site might end up saving the world. Apart from the work to come, she would have to come up with a more compelling reason for sticking up for Locke than being pathetically averse to change.

Priscilla Locke couldn't see herself. She could move her head with some effort. Looking down she couldn't see her own body. She was in her house; the second floor of a modest duplex their grandparents had spent their fortune on long before the Cuban influx had sent the well-off Whites fleeing north, and then before the re-gentrification which brought the neighborhood's value back up. The first floor was crammed with old furniture, supplies, junk, debris. It was uninhabitable. Living things crawled into the first floor and never crawled back out. The persistent south Florida humidity melted them with the junk. Mold layered everything and was beginning to creep up to the second floor.

Rhiannon was there, standing in front of the couch and looking at her, grin plastered wide on her face. She was trembling, giddy, eager to bounce on the couch and dance like a fool. She was dressed in what had become her usual attire; a turquoise tank top, worn-out jeans, and a red plaid jacket wrapped around her waist. She didn't wear the same thing every day yet for some reason Priss could not remember her in any other attire.

"What's wrong with you?" Priss asked cautiously, not wanting to rile her up.

Rhiannon snorted, unable to hold back a giddy yelp of delight, "Do you know why I did what I did?"

Priss's vision reddened as if the house had suddenly caught fire. Rhiannon's laughter broke through it all, and she was suddenly in Priss's face, wherever her face was.

"I did it for you. You idiot. You moron. You absolute buffoon. You stupid…fucking…idiot…dumbass…"

Her voice had long since given out. Priscilla Locke felt the stomach acids churning in her esophagus, scalding and burning relentlessly, rising higher when she mustered up the energy and the courage to try to swallow it down. She could easily believe that just one more minute of acid sloshing up her throat would finish the job, burn through her throat completely and suffocate her.

The pain didn't relent, but she was getting tired. Sometimes the pain would stop long enough for her body to rest. Then all feeling would stop, and she'd panic. Then feeling would return and bring pain with it. She came to prefer the pain over the feeling of nothing at all. Pain was only temporary, she thought to herself as it went on for another hour, then another, then another. It might've only been three hours. Or it could've been the third full day. It was still only temporary, she thought to herself, as another wave of acid slid out of her stomach and nibbled away at her esophagus, just in time for muscle-twisting agony to return to her arms.

Fats woke up to the sound of gunfire. She remembered everything from the day before; the explosion, the train slowly dropping off the tracks and onto the ground. Traffic had stopped on South Dixie Highway long enough for her to drag herself across. She saw the scorch marks on the concrete pillars that held up the track, and the way the improvised bomb had blown away enough concrete to weaken the support. The weight of the train coming by was enough for the track to start to bend. The resilience of the track had slowed the fall enough for the train to lay itself out on the bare ground, no crashing and burning and violently twisting metal.

She had thought about trying to chase after that WestCivvie but in the immediate aftermath of the crash, it was pure fantasy. She walked through a grassy alley between two short office buildings and out into an upscale residential neighborhood to a small park. There she sat against the trunk of a tree and held her hands together, squeezing her wrists. Pain shot through them but it was manageable. She could still move her wrists. The shade provided some relief from the sun, but the humidity was relentless and she fainted.

She woke up at nightfall to the sound of gunfire and voices in Spanish calling out to one another. Women, men, old and young. It was coordinated. Organized. Some group of people had been planning some manner of violent uprising for a while, and it just so happened to be as she was investigating the whereabouts of a local cult leader who had been asking around about trucks, vehicles, transportation, and whose cult presumably had an ample supply of guns.

She woke up again the next day. A girl was standing over her, holding a water bottle out to her. Fats looked up at her and saw a gun bulging in her pants pocket. The lackadaisical way it was shoved in her pocket, it might've gone off and blown a hole through the girl's skinny thigh.

Fats held a sore hand up and clasped the bottle, drinking just enough and pushing the bottle away. She drew in a sharp breath and looked over the girl. She had to be in her mid-teens, thick hair cut short, clothes well off, but not too well off. Likely a solidly middle-class girl getting involved in something way over her head.

"Rhiannon Locke?" Fats asked once the water had soaked her throat enough to speak clearly.

"Quien?" The girl asked.

Fats wanted to say more but she was still sore and tired. She laid back against the tree again and closed her eyes for a moment. She must have dozed off because the girl was gone when she opened them.

Fats slowly gathered herself up. Her legs were aching worse than her wrists, making the progress even more sluggish. She made her way out of the neighborhood and to the grassy alley she'd come in from the day before. Fewer cars were driving down South Dixie Highway than usual. The wreckage of the Metrorail was still there across the streets. Gunfire still went off in the distance. No police had shown up, but someone had been thoughtful enough to put up a semicircle of old mattresses and cardboard boxes around the crash site.

She nearly flipped as someone grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her back into the alley, pressing her against the wall. It was the WestCivvie. He was dressed differently. She hadn't thought he might've come back for her. She barely realized it had been an option to go home after the bombing.

"That's not us." The man said. "It's not us, it's not Rhiannon Locke."

"What? Which?" She murmured, not sure if he meant the bomb or the gunfire. Or both.

"You want the truth about Rhiannon Locke and her cult? It doesn't matter. It's as dead as she is. A meaningless distraction. All the while, the Hispanics were waiting, building themselves up until events boiled over and they could strike. A full-on revolt. Revolution. It's why I joined the WestCiv party. You want to die, or you want to live with the Civ?"

Fats snortled, taken aback by the absurd little catchphrase he threw in at precisely the wrong moment. "I don't give a shit about you or them. I'm looking for Rhiannon Locke."

"Rhiannon Locke doesn't matter. No one person does. Not anymore. This is bigger now, beyond even me and you."

She shook her head, shrugging helplessly, "How do you know that? What do you know?" She figured she was dead already, so she might as well keep him talking to see if he had anything useful for her. Just to satisfy her own curiosity before he either killed her or beat her and left her for dead.

He gripped her shoulders harder and leaned in closer to her. She tensed up and turned her head away.

"I need you to breathe."

She shuddered again and exhaled, glancing sidelong at him.

"I said breathe. Slowly."

She breathed, trying to keep it slow and steady.

"Deeply."

She sucked in her next breath from her mouth, deeply.

"Breathe me in."

She winced. Whether he meant for her to kiss him or breathe in his breath, she didn't know and didn't care. He didn't move or try to force himself on her.

"Breathe me in."

She squeezed her eyes shut, another moment that went by longer than she realized. He was walking away from her. The pain in her wrists was mostly gone, but her legs still ached; she'd probably been sitting on them for a full 24 hours. She stayed where she was and called out after him, "So you don't know anything useful? Just stupid rambling and an awful pun for a slogan?"

He didn't respond. She couldn't chase after him, her legs were still sore. She didn't want to tempt fate any more than she had already.

Priscilla Locke couldn't see herself. Looking down she couldn't see her own body. She was in her house; the second floor of a modest duplex their grandparents had spent their fortune on long before the Cuban influx had sent the well-off Whites fleeing north, and then before the re-gentrification which brought the neighborhood's value back up. The first floor was a dank, mildew-infested tomb. Everyone that had been stuffed down there ceased to be recognizable as human.

Rhiannon was there, standing in front of the couch and looking at her, expressionless. She was dressed in what had become her usual attire; a turquoise tank top, worn-out jeans, and a red plaid jacket wrapped around her waist. She didn't wear the same thing every day yet for some reason Priss could not remember her in any other attire.

"What's wrong with you?" Priss asked cautiously, not wanting to rile her up.

Rhiannon didn't move, her voice sounding weak and meandering, "Do you know why I did what I did?"

Priss's vision reddened as if the house had suddenly caught fire. A hot rush of pain went through her, then she broke down and started to sob.

"You did- You did it for me…"

Rhiannon didn't move, but her voice was closer, "You don't belong here, Prissy. You never have, from the day you were born. You've done all you could to try to fit in, to change yourself, to change what you could in the world as best you could but you never succeeded. You never fit in and you never will because you just don't belong here."

She looked up again and saw Rhiannon looking back down at her, tears welling in her eyes.

"Everyone else."

Rhiannon shook her head, "I don't care about anyone else. I care about you. I love you, Prissy."

Priss stared up at her incredulously, "You killed everyone else. Billions. They're all dying because of you."

Rhiannon shook her head, "I got some people killed. At Key Biscayne. That is my crime and I've paid for it."

"I'm not talking about Key Biscayne."

Rhiannon sat back on the couch, "How would an under-employed woman in her mid-20s with few friends and fewer prospects have managed to set loose a highly contagious and highly lethal anomalous bacteria in southern China without ever leaving her neighborhood on the other side of the world?"

"Someone in your…"

"Maybe. But how? It's not from this world."

"Someone with access to an Anabasis."

"Like you."

Priss looked down at Rhiannon, suddenly fearful. This wasn't the real Rhiannon Locke. This wasn't actually their house. She knew it was all in her head. So the idea could only have come from herself.

"Are you saying it's me?"

"You don't belong here, Priss."

"I'm not… from this world."

"I love you, Priss. You're the only thing that matters to me."

"I'm not from this world."

She woke up suddenly. Her hands and arms still twitched and jerked but her body had settled down. She lifted her head and immediately fell back onto the pillow. They kept her room clean but the bed she lay on was still smeared and caked in blood. She had settled down enough to have an IV in her and nasal tubes in her nose. The cold oxygen stung her sinuses and dried blood still caked them. For the most part it was over, and she was alive.

Locke had spent 65 hours in near-constant motion, writhing, thrashing, bleeding, and suffering. The bacterial infection died off slowly, all while giving off the same symptoms in her that had been experienced by nearly a billion others who had succumbed and died to the same bacterium. She probably wasn't the only one immune, but she had the luxury of living on the other side of the world, contained and secured, and in the right position to be of help to others.

But first, she slept. They spent a full week keeping her quarantined, cleaning her up, cleaning her bed, and monitoring her. Through it all she slept, waking up only long enough to eat and drink and struggle to give barely cogent responses to simple questions leveled to her by people in full hazmat suits. By the end of the week, she woke up to find a D-Class serving her, unprotected and looking unconcerned. She scowled. Disgusting to abuse D-Class to test if someone was still infectious. She saw the same D-Class the next day and the day after. Another week went by before Marlowe herself came in to see her, unprotected.

"What happened to Sharpe?"

Marlowe frowned, still looking over Locke's limbs. Her toes and her fingers still twitched and tensed. She had to ask her again before Marlowe responded.

"She's alive. Not doing as well as you. But you've definitely helped. We're working on antidotes now. Testing them. Also working on a vaccine."

Locke lifted her head and tried to look past her, out the small window in the thick door, "Testing on who?"

Marlowe turned to face her, resenting the unspoken implication in her tone, "It's here. It crossed the ocean. We thought it would dissipate but it made it to California. We're sending samples of your blood to test with some possible antidotes, but it's going to get much harder. We're in a state of emergency and civilian air traffic has been shut down. People are being evacuated east."

Locke twisted her head about, cracking her neck and sitting upright in her bed. She was sore all over, and the acid reflux had stuck around. How long had it taken for her to come down to this miserable state? How many years would it take to get a working vaccine? How long would it take to vaccinate tens of millions going through what she'd gone through at the beginning?

"You should also probably know… There's been an uprising. Political stuff, a few uprisings around the country. But really bad here, specifically. Hispanic militants out west, Doral and Kendall. They've been moving fast. Very fast, very well organized. It's gotten bad."

Locke furrowed her brow, "How bad?"

Marlowe shrugged, "Foundation agents have been infiltrating and trying to set up contact with the leader or leaders…"

"What does that mean?"

Marlowe sighed, "I don't know, it's political stuff, Locke. I'm not in charge of that kind of thing."

"You mean the Foundation expects these militants will take over Miami and so they're looking to buddy up with them?"

"It wouldn't be the first time."

Locke sighed and eased back onto her bed, "Well, that… That sounds like something you should probably be more involved in than just dismissing as 'political stuff', you know."

Marlowe clenched her jaw but said nothing. She stared vacantly at the IV bag for a long moment before speaking, "We're cockroaches."

"Maybe," Locke mumbled, "What?"

"We, the Foundation, we're cockroaches. We're everywhere and nowhere. Always just under the surface. We linger under the house and we don't concern ourselves with who moves in next."

Locke frowned but Marlowe turned and left before she could ask her to leave. She knew Marlowe was a pain in the ass to a lot of people but she never figured her to be such a fucking weirdo.

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