Immediate Actions - SCP Foundation

There were explosions on site. It wasn't entirely unheard-of, but these didn't seem controlled. Also not unheard of, but it still made Iris nervous.

The door to her cell opened, and an agent stood there. He was younger, with Mexican features, and she didn't recognize him.

"105. Get up. We need to move you." She could tell he was new. Most of the Site 17 personnel were used to calling her real name, outside of official documentation. The shrinks thought it would be helpful in keeping her emotionally stable. You had to laugh.

"Should I take anything?" she asked as she got up from her seat.

"No time. We'll send someone for it later." He motioned for her to hurry.

She walked to the door. She was long past the time where she resisted or tried to escape. Where would she go? She'd probably just end up somewhere worse.

He led her into the hallway and didn't bother to resecure the door. She realized then that things were extremely wrong, rather than the baseline of very wrong she'd grown accustomed to.

He hesitated a moment, then said "This way." She almost offered to guide him, but he probably wasn't prepared for a "skip" to show that kind of initiative.

There were gunshots nearby. "Stay behind me." The agent pulled out his sidearm.

There were dead bodies in the next hallway. Two were site security. A third wore an unfamiliar black uniform.

As the agent walked through the next door, there was a gunshot, and the back of his head blossomed outward.

Iris crouched in the frame of another door, pressed as hard as she could into the shallow alcove.

She listened as someone walked up to the door. She held her breath and waited to see if they'd walk in or lean in far enough to see her. After a moment, she heard them turn and walk away.

She stood still a moment longer and then quietly reached down and picked up the dead agent's sidearm. This broke any number of rules, but rule one was to avoid dying in a senseless firefight, and you had to prioritize in these situations.

She took a different hallway. Hopefully, she'd run into someone who could help her. Hopefully, they wouldn't shoot her. That would be nice.

There were containment rooms, but she avoided those. You never knew what was in there, and anyway, that was probably what the guys in black suits were after. Unless they were really interested in Doctor Jones's paperclip collection.

In the next hallway, the containment chamber had been opened, and the door torn off its hinges. There were several black-clad bodies on the floor. Standing above them, tearing the flesh off a humerus, was an ogre. Eight feet tall, with bulbous nose, pointed head, and sharpened teeth, he smiled wickedly from around his meal. "Ah, ma chère, you join the party?"

She tightened her grip on the sidearm and forced herself to remain calm. "Fernand."

"Will you take a quick pique-nique with me?" he asked. "I am having my morning exercise."

"N-no thank you," she said. She began to walk past him. Not fast. Not running. Predators chase things that run.

"As you like. Perhaps we meet again later, eh? A little rendezvous, tres romantique!" He chortled around his clenched teeth. Iris suppressed a small shudder. Still, bad as Fernand was, he couldn't hold a candle to him.

As she entered the next doorway, she saw the shape of a cow, but completely, utterly black. The area around it appeared slightly distorted, as though it were doing something with the light. It started moving towards Iris, who immediately turned tail. She'd take her chances with the men in black. At least she knew what the bullets did.

She heard it picking up speed, and she turned a corner, slipped through a door and closed it. As she leaned against the door and caught her breath, she heard the staccato call of gunfire.

She dropped to the floor, counted to three, cursed the cow-thing silently and then looked up.

There were five of the black-clad men firing down the hallway, perhaps ten feet away, using an overturned desk as makeshift cover. She couldn't tell what they were shooting at from her position, but the bullets flying overhead suggested Site security wasn't quite out of the fight yet. However, there wasn't too much gunfire coming from that direction, compared to the amount of lead the black-suits were throwing down the hall. It seemed like the Foundation was outnumbered, at least in this hallway.

She considered her options. She could wait and hope the Foundation would send reinforcements. But that seemed chancy. Whoever this was, they were organized, and probably had a good evacuation strategy planned. Once they realized she was there… She could try playing dead, but even a dead skip could be a useful skip, and they'd figure out she was pretending pretty quickly. She considered it unlikely whoever it was would treat her as well as the Foundation. Only one option, then.

She took a knee, carefully took aim, and shot the closest man in the back of the head. Then the next one. And the one after him. It was easy. That was what she hated about it. How easy it was. There was a click, and the gun refused to fire.

Without even thinking, she went back to her immediate actions. She slammed the magazine with the heel of her left hand, then slid the rack back, and a jammed bullet flew out. The other two were starting to realize there was a problem, so she shot the fourth. The fifth almost had her, but then gunfire from further back took him down. It was only as he fell to the ground she started to feel again, and the gorge rose in her throat.

"It's me," she called. "SCP-105. They're dead." She dropped the gun, kicked it forward, and then knelt down with her hands on the back of her head until the agents got her and took her to safety.

"You need to see this, ma'am." The man was nervous, but he was always nervous. Like a small dog, really.

"What is it?" she asked. She was still a bit tired. It had been a long night the night before. It usually was. But the last time he'd told her she needed to do something, there was an active attempt on her life. She was good at picking up things like that.

"Footage from the latest containment breach. I, ah, think you should pay special attention here." He jumped to a point on the tapes to show a young woman.

"Yes?" she said. Then, "Yes. I see." She thought for a moment. "Yes, good work, Henri. You were right. I did need to see this." She opened a very special program on her phone. "We'll all need to see this, I think."