Freakuency: Overture - SCP Foundation

I.

The site-wide alarm, piercing, insistent, repeating.

Sam winced and looked up from the orientation material she had been unsuccessfully poring over for the past fifteen minutes. As much as she needed a distraction, the knife being poked into her eardrums was decidedly unwelcome.

The assault paused for a few brief, blessed moments, just long enough for a professional voice to say, "Attention, all non-essential and off-duty personnel, report to Reception 1. This is not a drill. Repeat, all non-essential and off-duty personnel, report to Reception 1. This is not a drill."

"Shit," Sam hissed as the alarm resumed. Non-essential and off-duty? That was her, either way. With a grunt of effort, she pulled herself off the couch, grabbed her jeans and jacket from the coffee table, and quickly dressed.

As she slipped her feet into her boots and started lacing them up, she tapped the face of her phone and said, "Hey, Helpi!" The artificial intelligence construct popped up in one corner, but Sam interrupted before it could say anything. "I need directions to Reception 1, please!"

The construct snapped its fingers to open the phone's map app, then drew a line from Sam's position, into the hallway, and off the screen.

"Thanks, Helpi!" she said as she finished tightening the final lace, then grabbed the phone and launched herself through the door of her E-Class accommodations. A by-now familiar shift of weight hit her right-side jeans pocket just as she passed the threshold, nestling in beside her keychain.

There were already a few other Foundation employees in the hallway, some jogging along like Sam but most stirring more slowly toward the reception area, looking as if they had only just woken up. Given that it was nearly one in the morning, Sam figured that was exactly what had happened.

The alarm, still ongoing and occasionally interspersed with the call to action, was less intense in the corridor but still painful. To Sam it felt as if it was actually residing inside her ear canal, partially embedded within her brain and slowly rotating in slow circles.

She did her best to block out the sensation. Years of practice ignoring offensive stimuli clamped down, allowing her to push forward through the thickening crowd without simply falling to her knees, ears covered and throat screaming.

By the time she reached Reception 1, thankfully, whoever was in charge of the siren had dialed it back to about half power, most likely because it seemed like everyone who was still on the Site-272 grounds had managed to congregate there. A few of those gathered were wearing lab coats, undoubtedly doctors performing late night research, while most appeared to be dressed more casually, like Sam herself.

A handful of orange D-Class jumpsuits were also there, which surprised Sam a bit. It really had to be an emergency if they were letting some of the guinea pigs out of their cages to help.

Right in the middle of the crowd were three security officers, standing at least two heads taller than anyone else, probably on chairs or some other bit of furniture that Sam couldn't see. They were conversing briefly with the people directly in front of them, making quick notes on their tablets, then sending the person they were talking to off to some other area.

Sam was perfectly willing to simply blend uncomfortably into the crowd and wait her turn, but one of the nearby lab coats turned out to be a familiar one. Mustering up courage and tamping down anxiety, she scooted through the crowd to tug on the coat's sleeve.

"Oh, Sam!" Dr. Anna O'Neil exclaimed, startled but smiling. "I suppose I should have expected to see you here in the thick of the excitement!"

"Well, you know me," Sam replied with a shrug. "Any idea what's goin' on here?"

Anna shook her head. "All I know is that Delta-10 went on a mission in the city this evening," she said, "so my best guess is that we're about to be dealing with the fallout. Whatever it is, I'm sure I could pull a string or two and get you away from all this?"

"Nah, sweet of ya to offer, but y'all need help and I'm here ta help. 'Sides, I'm fine. Ish. Maybe we could push on in, tho', see if they're gonna send us someplace quieter?"

"Shouldn't be a problem, since I don't think anyone else here is too eager to see what Delta-10 has stirred up."

To little surprise it was just as Anna predicted. There was not a complaint heard as the pair slowly moved forward, the leading prow of a non-existent ship that was nevertheless purposefully heading toward the jagged rocks. In less than a minute they found themselves standing before one of the three officers, specifically one that Sam vaguely recognized as Site-272's head of security himself.

"Dr. Anna O'Neil," Chief Bumgarner intoned clearly but dispassionately, reading from his tablet. "Foundation Employee ID B-48923. Senior Researcher, Physics Department. Report to Reception 3 to provide provisional containment and categorization of multiple anomalous and suspected-anomalous devices."

Anna lightly squeezed Sam's shoulder and gave her a quick thumb's up. "Good luck!" she said, then disappeared back into the crowd.

"Samantha Masters," Bumgarner continued once the doctor was gone. "Foundation Employee ID E-2172. Provisional Containment Specialist with notable close-quarters combat experience. Report to Reception 2 where you will be placed in charge of an anomalous or suspected-anomalous individual. Guide them to an examination room for intake, provide security during the exam, repeat until all individuals have been processed."

Sam briefly considered asking the chief what exactly was going on, but before she could even get out of the planning stage, he had already moved on to the next person and clearly forgotten that she even existed. No answers forthcoming from that source, she quietly moved on.

Reception 2 was less crowded than 1 but decidedly more hectic, having been hastily converted into something more akin to an emergency room than a lobby. As she entered, Sam was nearly run down by a gurney being pushed by three harried people and carrying a Mobile Task Force member that had a wide gash across his chest that had torn through his armor and into the skin underneath.

More gurneys and injured people, both MTF and civilians, were littered about the room, awaiting their turn to be rushed out for medical attention. The few doctors that had been on call and already processed through Reception 1 were rushing through initial examinations of the wounded. A hint of blood and singed flesh floated on the air.

"Hey, Samantha, right?" a voice suddenly yelled at her above the din. A short figure holding a phone between her ear and shoulder was waving her over to the main desk.

"Sam," she corrected automatically as she approached the other woman. "What-?"

"No, uh uh," the receptionist said, cutting her off with a sharp gesture before readjusting her phone. "Go grab a freak and get 'em to intake, like pronto."

Sam followed the woman's pointing finger to see a small group of what appeared to be more civilians being guarded by the few MTF Delta-10 members that were still relatively intact.

"Okay, but-"

The receptionist had already gone back to her phone conversation, ignoring Sam completely. With a resigned sigh, she returned the favor and moved toward the indicated group.

Some of the civilians, she noticed on approach, were alert, looking around them in confusion and fear. A good deal of that fear, strangely enough, was reserved for the other people around them. Vibes of paranoia were radiating off of them, but they seemed either unwilling or unable to extricate themselves from the pack.

The others, in contrast, didn't seem to be paying anything around them any attention at all. Their faces were sullen, their eyes open but not looking at anything in particular. And it was just as Sam had singled out one of the withdrawn people as her new ward that she noticed almost every person in the group was a teenager.

Two of the Delta-10 members nodded at Sam as she reached between them to take one of the girls by the upper arm. "Be careful," one of the soldiers said quietly, his face drawn and wary. "Serious."

"You bet," Sam replied solemnly.

As she gently pulled the girl along with her to the doorway marked Exam 2A-2F, Sam noticed the handcuffs firmly locked around the girl's thin wrists.

The hallway beyond the door was mercifully quiet. The alarm barely reached within, which Sam decided to attribute to soundproofing of the examination area. The young girl shuffled alongside her, making no sound herself, no attempt at a struggle.

Sam found the first open door and guided her ward through. Inside was the standard Foundation interview setup: a metal table, two uncomfortable chairs, a two-way mirror taking up most of one wall, and a man in a lab coat seated in one of the chairs.

The girl seemed so frail, so small in her denim jacket and hoodie as Sam maneuvered her into the other chair. Sunken eyes fixed themselves on a point somewhere just under the table's lightly scarred surface. Once she was in place, the soft lift of her shoulders with every breath was the only sign she was even still alive.

The doctor across the table glanced up briefly from his clipboard, coughed lightly, then looked more pointedly at the anchor ring sunken into the tabletop.

Sam frowned and very nearly said something, but remembered quickly where she was. As harmless as the teenager appeared and might even actually be, nothing could be taken for granted. With only a slight pang of conscience, she took the girl's handcuffs and fastened them securely with the anchor ring's chain.

With that done, she closed the exam room's door and stood to one side, already intimately familiar with the usual security guard position from her time as a D-Class.

Silence, save for the soft scritch of pencil on paper as the doctor checked a few boxes and made one last note on his clipboard. That done, he set the clipboard and his phone on the table, tapping the screen until a recording app popped up.

"This is Dr. Andrew Billings, conducting induction interview of Person of Interest 272 dash 822B dash 9F regarding Provisional Anomaly 272 dash 822B." He sounded official, tired, and bored at the same time, not even bothering to look up as he said, "Please state your full name for the record."

The girl sat perfectly still, her face almost entirely covered with her long hair. Sam wasn't sure if there was a game that was the exact opposite of a staring contest, but she felt as if she might be witnessing it for the first time. She was just about to reach out and put a hand on the girl's shoulder when a thin, scratchy voice finally answered.

"Laura," the girl said. "Laura Melody Allen."

"Thank you. Can you describe the events that occurred at Broken Cliff High School today?"

A reedy sound rose up from the girl's chest. "I-" she started, then curled into herself slightly more than she had already done. "You won't get it."

"Maybe. But the reason I'm asking is so we can, in fact, 'get it'." Another quick note on the clipboard. "Can you describe the events that occurred at Broken Cliff High School today?"

"You can't," the girl insisted, her hair swinging as she shook her head. "You won't. You can't, you won't."

Brief irritation on the doctor's face, another note on the clipboard. "We'll start simpler, then. You are a student at Broken Cliff High? You were in attendance today?"

"Yes, yes, no. No. Yes."

"That is," Billings sighed, "less than helpful. Are you or are you not a student at Broken Cliff High School?"

Sam could see a brief flash of white behind the girl's hair, definitely not a smile.

"Not anymore." Agitated. "No one is. Not anymore."

"Did you attend classes today?"

"I-I don't-" Spoken through teeth. Faster breathing. "I shouldn't-"

"Would you feel more comfortable if your parents were here? What are your parents' names?"

"They promised. They promised."

The doctor looked up, his interest finally piqued. "Who promised what?" he asked. "Did your parents promise something?"

The girl, so thin, almost nothing, slammed her bound fists on the metal table, sudden and loud, causing Sam and Billings both to jump in surprise.

"They said everything would be fine," she seethed. "They promised us everyone would come back, that we were doing the right thing, that they would fix everything!"

"Who did?" the doctor asked authoritatively, trying to get things back on track. "The teachers? The principal? The other students?"

"DUMB!" she screamed at him, slamming her fists down again and rising from her seat.

"Hey, hey-" Sam said as she stepped forward, but the doctor waved her back impatiently.

"Please, we just need to know-"

"You can't know!" The girl was yelling in earnest now, standing hunched over table, pulling the restraining chain taut. "You can't hear! You're DEAF! You're ALL DEAF!"

Billings opened his mouth to say something else, but before he could, the girl's mouth opened too. She leaned backward as far as she could with her shackled arms, her hair falling back from her pale face as she opened her mouth and screamed.

Sam slammed her hands over her ears, felt more than saw the doctor doing the same. The scream was piercing, inhuman, seeming to cut through skin and bone to conduct directly to the center of her brain in a way that made her wish to return to the gentle ministrations of the emergency alarm from before.

Up and up it went, impossibly high, and the pain went with it. Sam felt her knees buckle and only barely saved herself from hitting the ground by catching herself on the table with one elbow. Her sinuses were ringing with the sustained sound, and she knew that if it kept going much longer, she would be bleeding from her nose, her ears, her eyes.

Then, suddenly, mercifully, it was gone.

For a moment, she thought that maybe she had gone deaf. The girl was still leaned back, mouth wide and neck straining, by all appearances still wailing from the top of her lungs. But Sam could hear the ragged draw of her own breath, the shuffle of fabric as she pulled herself back onto her feet.

"Doctor, what-"

But Dr. Billings was in no position to answer any questions. He was on the floor, in the corner, his chair knocked to one side by his flailing legs. Hands over his ears and face in a terrible rictus, it seemed as if he could still hear the unnatural scream even if Sam couldn't.

"Okay, uh, Laura, was it?" Sam said, approaching the girl slowly, her footing still unsteady. "I don't know what the hell's going on here, but I'm gonna have to ask you nicely to cut it the fuck out. Can you do that for me, sweetie?"

No response.

"Hey!" she yelled at whoever might be behind the mirror on the other side of the room. "Can we get some help in here or what?!"

Still no response.

She stumbled back to the door and opened it, leaned out and yelled down the hall in both directions.

Nothing. Even the dim sound of the alarm had gone away. Sam turned back to the girl and pulled out her phone.

"Okay, little miss, last chance," she said as she started sorting through her contacts to find the Foundation's emergency number. "You've got until I finish this call to stop whatever it is you're doing or I'm gonna bounce your head off this table."

Just as she hit dial, she look up at the corner of the screen and noticed that she wasn't getting any signal. With a heavy sigh, she put the phone back in her pocket, grabbed a fistful of hair at the back of the girl's head, and slammed her forehead into the table's metal surface.

The girl crumpled immediately. Still breathing, pulse steady, but eyes rolled back and tongue lolling. Sam gently put her back in her chair, then looked over at the doctor, who was no longer writhing in pain but obviously just as out cold as the girl.

Sam stood up straight and wiped away a sheen of sweat.

"Well … shit," she breathed out explosively. "Now what?"

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