All Alone on a Friday Morning - SCP Foundation

06:58, Cafeteria

07:23, Cafeteria

07:48, Third Floor Lounge

09:32, Executive Wing Offices

10:42, Site-17 Hallways

11:23, Humanoid Common Room

Afternoon

Night

Sterile. That was the word Marya was looking for. The cafeteria looked sterile. Desolate wasn't the right word, as it was clearly meticulously maintained (though the lack of a finished ceiling was evident). It wasn't lifeless either, as even before many of the anomalies had streamed in, and it was staffed with guards at even intervals, each one placed so they could look down carefully spaced aisles in between the metal tables. Sterile was a good word for it, its harsh lights and barren walls a far cry from Marya's home, the pervasive smell of cleaning solution in stark contrast with the miasmas her mother had lovingly cultivated to promote her growth from harvested tissue.

Despite the cold air blowing out of the very audible AC units, Marya felt her shirt stick to her. The reasoning, she figured, was twofold the medicated lotions she had to apply to the glands on her neck and back, and the slight sweat that came from the knowledge someone was watching.

The staff at Site-17 had been far nicer than the ones at the old site, with her having transferred after finally being recognized as a humanoid. It only took a mere 18 months of learning how to do paperwork in English. "Don't be nervous," they had told her. "We'll be making sure everything proceeds smoothly. We're here for your protection as much as anyone else's." A nice sentiment, Marya thought, though the result of someone watching her movements was the same, even if now they did it with a smile and a moral high horse.

She scratched at the chitin underneath her loose-fitting shirt that covered most of anything 'abnormal' and slouched down, making her way towards the food service counter. She'd learned that looking down at guards set them on edge, and now wasn't the time to draw attention to herself. She'd learned English, practiced an American accent, and found a decent food to request all so she could be here. Despite her mother's expectations, she enjoyed the company of the type of person born from another's womb rather than one of Ion's zealots. Everything she wanted to learn about them, she had to teach herself. All her mother taught her were things like how to turn a Mekhanite inside out with her words.

Though the last thing she ever taught her was how to raise her arms and surrender in a language the men with guns would understand, so maybe there was a bit more to her than Marya felt ready to think about right now.

The man behind the counter smiled at her as she approached. "Hey! Can I get you something?" Everyone here was chipper. At least when the guards at the old site acted like they hated her, she could tell they were genuine.

No, no, that wasn't a good line of thinking. She should be happy to just be able to talk to him like this. "Hello. I have a form here," she said in a voice that sounded a bit more nervous than she expected. She hoped that was just what passed as normal for here, though.

The man took the paper from her and scanned it, combing through her dietary restrictions and requests. "Oh, right. I got this earlier." He turned his back to her - which was a first for Foundation staff - and rummaged through a cooler. From what Marya could see, it looked like a truly eclectic collection of things that could hardly be called foodstuffs in there. She really shouldn't pry, but… maybe one of these could be a conversation starter? She leaned over to get a closer look…

…And bolted back to how she was standing when the man turned around, proudly flaunting a length of gently undulating spherical tissue. "How's this look? I seasoned it like they do where you're from. Well, I think."

Marya winced. The seasonings were fine, even if she mainly just wanted the blood, but the links looked to be made of artificial cellulose instead of intestine. Of course, she wasn't expecting what she normally got from her mother, just pig intestine, but the texture wasn't the same. "The lining…"

"What?" The man yelled at her, louder than she was expecting. Marya just frowned. The hall was filling up behind her, and unlike her, the people streaming in didn't seem to particularly care how they sounded. Marya just nodded her head.

The man took off three sausage links and tossed them into a pan. They hissed angrily as they landed. Marya watching their lining turn opaque as the blood inside curdled to a darker color. Now would be a good time to ask him to take them off, as she still wanted some liquid on the inside. But how do you ask that? Was there some special convention for chefs? Or is there something in English she was forgetting? If she came off as rude, she was already off to a bad start in talking with people here. Would it be rude to interrupt him at all? The sausage was hardly overcooked, but Marya hadn't specified how she wanted it cooked in the form, so-

The sausages were plopped onto a waiting tray and handed to her. "Here you go! I could tell you were hungry from how you kept eyeing them."

Marya hesitantly poked one with a finger. Totally solid. "Don't worry," the man said, "I made sure I cooked it all the way through."

A smile and a "Thank you" was all Marya responded with before turning around to leave. Nothing for it.

Welp, the only thing left for Marya to do was find a seat and start eating. At least, she assumed as much from how everyone else who was getting ready to eat was sitting down. She'd never actually eaten in a communal setting before. All her meals were taken straight from the site's blood bank and animal feed stores, which was rather degrading, if technically nutritious.

Marya straightened her slouching back out to try and get a better view of the room, but frowned when she saw that the tables were already filling up. There was hardly anyone milling about, even. Aside from the guards, it looks as though everyone in the room was hunched over their meals, with only the odd Foundation staff member or significantly different anomaly standing it.

A good chunk of the tables were populated by staff members in equal or greater parts than the 'anomalies,' which Marya wrote off. The staff here were certainly nicer than at the other site, but they tended to be overbearing. Another was populated mostly with other girls, and Marya figured that she could be considered a girl, even if she was mostly just a mass of tumors masquerading as one. Though, on second thought, it just looked like the blonde one was verbally berating everyone else, so perhaps she shouldn't insert herself into that. There was a good chance there was a reason there were empty seats at the table.

Starting to lose hope, Marya's eyes drifted over a table on the side of the room. Someone had a globe where his torso should be, another person had a fish's head, and a third one was picking spines out of his skin, along with a few normal-looking diners. Nothing too bad by Marya's standards, and it looks like there were a few open seats. She took a couple of steps forward…

"Wha-" One of the normal-looking people at the table suddenly shot out of his chair, a look of abject horror on his face. He spun around to look at one of the guards with pleading eyes, who looked back only with confusion. "Not agai-"

Just as suddenly as he had stood up, he collapsed in on himself, disappearing entirely. Marya froze in place. At least when her mother turned people inside out, there was something left of them.

Most disconcerting, however, was the fact that only about half the cafeteria seemed to even notice what happened. The blonde woman from before made the sign of the cross, and the black woman next to her shook her head, but nobody seemed to care.

It was at this point Marya gave up on trying to sit next to anyone. Her food was getting cold, and she was beginning to realize how little she actually knew about the other people here. She glanced over to an empty table near the front of the room. Part of her figured there was probably a reason the thing was empty, but with how many people were starting to look at her, it seemed as though someone who didn't have a place to sit was more worthy of attention than someone up and disappearing into thin air.

Hunching over again, Marya scurried over to the unoccupied table and sat down facing the rest of the room, doing her best to not look like she was making sure people stopped looking at her. After a few seconds, though, they all went back to their food, and Marya decided she should do the same. She jammed her fingers through the lining of the sausages - not quite as thick as real intestines - and was disappointed, though not surprised, when she saw that all the blood had fully coagulated, the grey-brown filling clumping together rather than the warm, red liquid she was hoping for. Beggars can't be choosers, though, so she gathered up a clump of the broken-up sausages and slurped them into her mouth. The texture could have been better and there was more seasoning than she was used to, but Marya figured that it was nice to be eating off a plate again if nothing else.

Midway through the second sausage, Marya heard a man's voice from behind her. "Uh, hey, do you mind if I…"

Marya turned around to see the man who was pulling spines out of himself before, now notably absent of spines. He was holding a glass of water and a sad-looking plate of dubious slop with a plastic fork sticking out, and his expression had changed to one of poorly concealed distaste. Why was he…?

Oh, right, forks. Marya looked back down at her tray to see a lonely piece of black plastic silverware relegated to the corner of her tray and reached over to pick it up before turning back to the man with a smile as if to present to him that she did, in fact, know what a fork is.

Shaking the look off his face as quickly as it had come, he took a seat one spat away from Marya. Close enough to signal interest in conversation while still giving her some space. Marya appreciated it, but had herself planned to sit one spot next to the seat directly across from someone. Easy to keep eye contact without turning your head while still maintaining the ability to look off at nothing in particular directly in front of you. Though Marya realized that in the time it took her to assess this, an uneasy silence had fallen over the table. Should she-

"I noticed you were sitting alone over here!" he said in a chipper tone. Marya slouched some more, though not intentionally. Had she really looked that sad? "You're new, yeah? Don't get me wrong, I know how freaky everything can seem." Ah, so it was just sympathy for the 'new girl.' Marya had been expecting this - banking on it, even.

Marya tried to calculate how much of her life and biology she could leave out of an introduction before it became lying by omission, but the man continued before she could respond. "Oh, those sausages? Pretty sure I helped get them ready! Even put in a little extra spice even though they told me not to, but hey, gotta look out for each other, yeah?" He leaned over and nudged her on the shoulder, almost falling out of his seat when it became clear he misjudged the distance between the two of them.

Watching him right himself with a side-eye, Marya sighed quietly. She should just focus on the positives, she told herself. At least his heart was in the right place. No need to dwell on the fact that he made her sausages worse or the way his attitude reminded her way too much of those doctors who were convinced they could trick her into thinking they were her friends. He opened his mouth to speak again, and Marya cut him off before he could start running his mouth. "What are you called?"

She cringed. That wasn't right, the correct question was 'What's your name?' Nobody would want to talk to someone who spoke broken English, she thought. Despite this, the man puffed out his chest. He didn't seem annoyed by the question. Quite the opposite, in fact.

"They call me… Cactusman."

"…Huh?"

"Well, some call me Cactusman," he said, in a slightly more reasonable tone. "But you can just call me Daniel."

…Marya had a hunch before, but this guy was an idiot, wasn't he?

But this guy had to go his whole life being an idiot, so Marya could spare a few minutes to introduce herself. "My name's Marya. And I'm new here, yeah." She was quietly pleased with her use of contractions.

"A-And I'm Stacey."

Marya and Daniel both jumped to face whoever had just said that out of the blue. It was just a sad-looking teenager, who jumped when she saw the other two people at the table look at her in unison. She shrunk down into her seat. "S-Sorry… Just wanted to… say hi…"

Even hunched over, Marya was looking down at the girl. Should… should she be… talking to her? Marya wanted to get to know people, sure, but this was an actual, literal child, and she didn't even look funny, but even Marya knew you have to be nice to kids. Was this one of the staff members' kids wearing an anomaly's uniform as a joke?

Oh, god, Marya wasn't going to go anywhere questioning things like that. She just had to say something, and luckily it looked like Cactus- Daniel was still trying to figure out where Stacey came from. "Hello, Stacey. Are you new here too?"

"Oh!" Stacey seemed surprised by the fact Marya was speaking to her and took a moment to fix her long black hair as though that would make her ugly uniform any less garrish. "Oh, no. Just, uh… wanted to say hi!"

Alright, well, that clearly wasn't the case, but Marya didn't know any of these people well enough to pry. "Okay. Hello. How are you?" She sounded a little stilted, perhaps, but it was best to keep her questions generic at this stage.

"Okay, just a little-" Stacey cleared her throat, looking slightly more determined to finish a coherent sentence. "-A little hungry."

"Well, I helped make some of the food for breakfast today!" Daniel perked up upon hearing an avenue to direct the conversation toward his 'heroics.' "If you want, I could ask about something specific for you next time."

"You could do that?" Stacey perked up and leaned in from across the table. "Anything I want?"

Some of the wind went out of Daniel's sails upon hearing the question. "Well, not anything. 'All contained humanoids are required to fall within recommended dietary guidelines' and all that," he recited. "Plus, uh, I've asked, and it's a little hard to get new new stuff. We got an order for blood sausages and we had to get the blood from some excess feed for some weird freak monster they got here." Daniel suddenly realized what he had said and spun around to Marya. "B-But I made sure it was all very clean, I swear!"

Marya just blinked. She honestly wasn't expecting anything better, but Stacey seemed a little defeated. Though in all honesty, Marya was a little more concerned about that 'weird freak monster' Daniel had just totally brushed past.

"That's okay, I guess," Stacey muttered.

"I feel ya, kid," Daniel said. "All I get is a different flavor of sugar water every few days. It can get a little boring."

"Well, shit, I can make anything interesting!" came a voice from the right of Marya.

Before she had time to react, a lanky woman with black hair that held only the suggestion of having been brushed slid gracefully into the seat across from Daniel, wearing a large, superficial grin and leaning into the table conspiratorially. Her attitude told Marya that she wasn't a member of the staff before she even had the chance to take in her uniform.

"Um… who are you?" Daniel said in a slightly confused voice. Marya thought it was rich that he was acting like the new woman was offputting after the way he'd been.

"Anne, Anne Byrne." She offered her hand to Daniel, who eyed it suspiciously before the looming faux pas of leaving someone hanging forced him to shake it.

"Ah, are you new here?" Considering her demeanor, it seemed to Marya that she should try to get a word in edgewise before she got rolling.

Anne tapped a finger to her mouth thoughtfully. "Not really, I've been here for a few weeks, but today's my first day out and talking."

"Why's that?" Stacey said in a quiet voice, appearing to shrink when three pairs of eyes suddenly remembered she existed.

Just when she looked like she was about to say sorry, Anne rubbed the back of her head and turned away slightly, mumbling. "Oh, you know… plea deals and full cooperation. But!" She quickly regained her volume to brush past what she had said before anyone could process it. "I can tell you're all a little blasé about things, and it's hard to blame you - even if everyone running this operation is great and everything they do is objectively morally correct and defensible," she added hastily, looking over her shoulder. After a moment, Daniel and Stacey did too, and even Marya couldn't help but scan her surroundings for staff members.

After a few seconds, it became clear that Anne was waiting for someone to bite and ask her where she was going with this, but Stacey didn't seem up to the task, and Daniel looked like he was cooking up another spiel. Choosing the lesser of two evils, Marya turned to Anne and asked in a tone that was so drab she hoped it would put a damper on her, "What are you trying to get at here?"

Contrary to Marya's hopes, Anne produced a small candy, more brightly colored than anything else near them. Stacey silently oohed and ahhed. Marya frowned, but Anne continued, egged on by the reactions of the others. "The doctors and techs give these things out like… uh, like, you know." Anne cleared her throat. "Maybe trying to condition us for good behavior, maybe they just know positive reinforcement is a good idea but lack any real incentives, who cares. Nobody'd get on us for trading candy, right? That's just building up friendly relationships."

Anne looked around the table with raised eyebrows, her enthusiasm refusing to be dampened despite the faces looking back at her ranging from confused to distasteful. "I figure, why don't we get a few… friendly bets going, hm?"

Daniel sputtered. "If they find out we're gambling-"

"Woah," Anne cut him off with an open hand. "You've never made a bet with your friends before? C'mon, aren't we at least the closest thing we've got to friends in this…" She bit her lip. "Wonderful, wonderful facility?"

Stacey seemed to be listening intently. Marya's brow was furrowed. This woman seemed like a charlatan, but it beat looking for interaction from people who didn't know how to make sausages.

Daniel looked around the table and cleared his throat. "I mean, that would just… get a little boring, is all." He was starting to change his tune, sensing that the consensus wasn't as negative as he had originally thought.

"I said anything, didn't I?" Anne chuckled to herself. "Alright, three sticks of gum say the scrambled eggs here are undercooked."

Anne moved her eyebrows up and down in a manner that reminded Marya of a stuck worm, but only met unamused stares. If Marya was being honest, it didn't seem like the worst way to pass the time, but it was just a little too…

"I-I'll go look!" Stacey squeaked once she found the courage to talk, adding "I can trade a piece of chocolate for it."

"Ope, got one!" Anne snapped her fingers and pointed towards Stacey. "Alright, go grab some and we'll see."

Once Anne had watched Stacey disappear into the crowd, she leaned back a bit, appearing content with her progress in corrupting the youth. Seeing that her two remaining conversation partners were still looking at her with a mix of confusion, she threw her arms up in mock surrender. "Hey, what's the issue, guys? I'm not running a sting operation here."

Daniel narrowed his eyes. "You just seem… a little suspect, is all." Marya wanted to roll her eyes. Everyone here was a little suspect. That was, as she understood it, the entire point.

"Well, I…" Anne stroked her chin while trying to think of something, eyes lighting up after she scanned the rest of the room. "You see that blondie over there? The one who looks like she's trying to bitch out everyone at her table?"

Daniel squinted, only for his eyebrows to raise back up when he recognized who she was talking about. "You mean Iris?"

"Yup, that's the one. We're real good friends, y'know? She trusts me."

This was some sort of appeal to authority, Marya realized, though it was lost on her. Daniel, though, seemed downright flabbergasted. "With her? She doesn't like anybody."

"Oh, with her, it's just a matter of…" Anne looked away in the middle of her sentence, feeling up her teeth with her tongue. "...Getting in close."

Blatantly trying to change the topic again before she was pressed - or at least Marya thought it was blatant, Daniel didn't seem like he was thinking much of anything - Anne redirected her attention towards Marya. "C'mon, you look like you want to ask me something too! I'm all ears!"

Marya narrowed her eyes. Anne was doing a good job of acting natural, but she just seemed a little too interested in other people. Like she was trying too hard to integrate into the community…

…Which was pretty much what Marya was doing, she realized, and figured she probably wasn't going to get very far in socializing if she was so suspicious of everyone. She sighed. "What even made you want to come over here in the first place?"

"Oh, that one's easy," Anne chuckled. "I saw you shoveling that food into your mouth. Your jaw unhinged like a snake. Pretty cool."

Marya's hand shot up to cover her mouth as she averted her eyes to the floor, warmth spreading to her cheeks. Damnit, after all that practice she still forgot to keep her jaw fixed while eating. Was that what Daniel was staring at her for earlier? Had other people seen?

"Oh god, just relax," Anne laughed. "If anything, I was more curious as to what you could do with the thing. I've seen way weirder shit, it takes more than that… to…"

Her face shifted as she trailed off, but Marya figured she should give her a bit of time to recollect herself. She began to realize that perhaps Anne was distracted by something when a shadow enveloped her and Anne whispered "Why do I open my stupid fucking mouth?"

Marya noticed something was definitely wrong when Daniel didn't say anything to break the silence, instead looking at something behind Marya with a silent look of horror. Well, all she could do now was take a deep breath and turn around. At least, if something disemboweled her, she'd have died trying to get to know someone. That had to mean something to… someone.

Slowly, she turned around, eyes wide but her face otherwise neutral. Marya wasn't really sure what she was expecting, but the thing that was looming over her… certainly wasn't it. Just an arm's length away was an imposing mass of worn chitin - Marya would recognize it anywhere - in what looked like the shape of a human torso and legs. Craning her neck back, she couldn't see the face of the thing very well, as it was silhouetted against an oppressive fluorescent ceiling light, but she could barely make out two massive, bulbous eyes staring gown at her, unblinking.

"P-Privet." The word hung in the air for several seconds as the noise of the rest of the cafeteria faded into the background. Eventually, Marya became aware of what had slipped out of her. Did this thing speak Russian? Did it speak English? Was it mad at them for some reason? Its oppressive gaze gave nothing away, so Marya tried to correct herself. "I-I mean… Hello-"

A burst of static noise cut her off, drowning out any attempt at further communication. The thing's posture changed, though whether it was an expression of excitement or aggression wasn't immediately clear. Cringing, Marya looked at the guards closest to her and saw them… rolling their eyes. Oh, wonderful. It looked like shit like this was common here.

She flinched again when the humanoid monolith in front of her moved its arm, but instead of reaching out towards her, it put its hand behind its back and pulled out a… radio receiver? As it began fiddling with dials on it, Marya looked back to Daniel and Anne, who, for their part, had not fled the scene. They just returned her concerned look before quickly looking back to the chitin man.

"…ello? Hello? Hello?" Eventually, the radio filtered out enough static for a voice to come into focus. It sounded like an older man, one with an accent similar to Marya's normal one. The man's back straightened out once the voice became clearer. "Can you hear me?"

As confused as she was, Marya could at least understand that the thing she was talking to was probably close enough to a human to treat like one. She had some distant relations that were perfectly cordial while looking… much, much worse. "Yeah, I can… I can hear you."

"Ah!" The voice from the radio crackled excitedly. "You are in my spot."

It took Marya a second to process what the man meant, until she remembered how the table was suspiciously empty before. It was his spot. Marya and Anne didn't know, and Daniel was just an idiot.

Marya felt more embarrassed than scared. She'd understand if some horrible creature wanted to eat her - not that it would turn out well for said creature - but she just felt like an asshole for taking somebody's spot. "Sorry, I'll-"

"No, no! I am glad!" The man brought his hands up to stop Marya from getting up. Marya just furrowed her eyebrow. Now that she could get a good look at his face, the bug eyes just looked… a little silly. Even Daniel seemed to keep himself from flinching. "Nobody ever sits with me!"

"Oh, don't beat yourself up about that, big guy." Anne seemed to have regained her nerve and had already moved on to buttering up the newcomer. "Everyone's scary to everyone before they get to talking. The whole, uh, Kamen Rider-looking helmet doesn't help."

Anne looked around to see if anyone understood what she had just said. Nobody did.

"That is a nice thing to say, but I could see you were scared. But you!" He pointed at Marya as the static threatened to overpower his voice. "You were less scared. You are from the Motherland, yes? Your English is very good."

"Uh, yeah. Thanks." Marya was going to end it there, but she thought about what Anne had just said, the part she understood, anyways, and hesitantly tugged down on her collar a bit to show part of the chitin on her collarbone. "And… I don't think you're that scary."

"Ah, what a good kid." The man clapped her on the back as he sat down next to her. Hard. She felt one of her voice boxes get knocked clean out of her throat, but kept it in her mouth and tried to swallow it back down. "My name is Alexei."

"Marya," she croaked in what she hoped sounded like her normal voice.

"Anne. Anne Byrne." She flashed a smile and made a friendly gesture with her arm. "I'm pretty new here, but I catch on quick."

"My name's Daniel." Marya didn't need to look at him to know he was probably trying to strike some dumb pose. "But there are those who call me-"

"Ah!" Alexei clapped his hands. "And who's this young lady?"

Marya turned away from Daniel to see what Alexei was looking at. Stacey had come back and was now silently quaking with a tray of eggs jiggling slightly in her shaking hands.

"Ah! There you are!" Anne clapped her hands and turned to Stacey, quickly noticing the absolute state of the poor girl. "Oh, that's just Alexei, he's a friend. Don't worry about him."

It sounded a little inauthentic for her to be referring the Alexei as such when they'd barely said two sentences to each other, but Marya supposed some people were just like that. Or they were just trying to be manipulative.

"Oh. Hi." Stacey greeted Alexei in a quiet voice and looked at him for a few seconds before realizing there wasn't really a way for her to gauge his reaction visually. "I, uh, got the eggs."

Anne reached out her hand. "Let's see 'em, then," she said as Stacey handed them over to her. Picking up a fork the same way a surgeon picked up a scalpel, she set about performing an autopsy on the eggs. Everyone looked on intently, even Alexei, despite the fact that he lacked context.

"Hm, slightly overcooked, if anything," Anne said in a serious tone.

Stacey grinned shakily. "So… does that mean I won?"

Anne held up a yellow piece of egg with a slight brown crust and narrowed her eyes. "You were gone for a little while, yeah?"

"Uh…" Stacey's face dropped. "I guess, yeah…"

"Stacey…" Anne set down her fork and looked at the teenager with an expression more solemn than anything Marya had seen. "Did you ask them to cook a new batch of eggs like this?"

"Ah!" Stacey almost jumped backward at the accusation, but just looked at the ground in shame. "…Yeah."

Anne slowly and deliberately adjusted herself to look at Stacey. A grim air had fallen over the table. "Stacey. Do you know what that makes you?"

"A… A…" The poor girl seemed terrified. "A cheater?"

Several seconds passed as Anne simply looked at Stacey with a solemn look. Slowly, she lifted up her hand-

And produced three sticks of gum, seemingly from thin air. "That makes you smarter than me," she said with a smile.