Correspondence - SCP Foundation

"For fuck's sake." I told him. 'Him' being Robert E. Brooks, chief of human resources at Site 19. "We've been working on this SCP for the past four months and we've gotten nowhere. It doesn't do anything besides play shit with people's minds and act as a short-range microwave. My team is tired - I'm tired - of running test after pointless test, always getting nothing, because there is nothing. There isn't anything left to figure out."

"Dr. Daveson, I told you already, there is nothing we can do. You signed on for the term, you can't transfer until it's over. I'm sorry." His sausage fingers rifled through a stack of forms.

"Fine. Just look over the papers. Look over what we've done, look for openings anywhere. " He tried to reply, I could see him forming 'No', with his lips. So I turned around and left. Nineteen has these enormous wooden doors leading into offices, I made sure to slam them on the way out.

There was a hallway between me and the security checkpoint when I started noticing the assistants rushing up and down between labs weren't making eye contact with me, they probably thought I was about to kill someone. I walked down the checkpoint, two guards were ready to meet me. "Intimidating", that's one word to describe the security at nineteen. Massive men with jet-black body armour and face masks. They gave me the rub-down, I gave them a blank stare.

I let out a heavy sigh when the garage lamps buzzed into life. I checked my watch, it was a half hour to midnight, I never realized how late it'd gotten. Lights flickered above me, and even though I couldn't see the outdoors it felt like the night. Most of the vehicles were gone, but the night staff's were still here. The stiff scent of old concrete covered everything, but I greeted the musty smell of my Cadillac with a sigh. I turned the key in the ignition, and frowned as the car started.

I lied when I told Brooks that we had done all we could. The last experiment alone had given us plenty of questions that were still unanswered. We had Foundation grants to work with, enough D-Class to last us a decade. My team was happy with the work, and I liked it too. It's none of that which made me want to leave. It was what happened when I slept, it was the dreams.

The same dream. Every. Single. Day.

I open my eyes.

Everything is vivid, but blurry. Goddamn it, it's like broken glasses, giving me a headache. I try looking around, and realize that these 'glasses' are covered in paint. I blink, or at least I try to blink. It doesn't seem to work. I try wiping my eyes, my arms don't seem to work either.

I feel like an observer, like I'm looking through my eyes but I don't control them. I see shapes move, and my - are they really mine? - eyes follow them. They all glow, softly, warmly. I can't make out their features, but I have the overwhelming feeling that they're good people. They all take seats in something in front of me. A table. A few more blurs shuffle into the room and sit down, they bow their heads. Something comes through the walls, these bright, yellow things. They sit around the corners of the room, they don't move much. I think they have wings. The blurs lift their heads, and suddenly everything changes.

The sound of breaking glass, my vision clears. They're all people, I know now, all the blurs are people. Some young, children. They all look scared. The yellow things are sharper, whiter, golden. Feathery wings rest at their sides, hovering above the ground almost gracefully.

Everything changes again, damnit the paint is all over my eyes, an explosion, all the people are rushing, screaming, shouting. I see panic on their faces, the little children cry. Figures in black. They come down the stairs two rooms over. Pain courses all over me, bullets fly, they kill one of the children. They kill all the innocent. It hurts so bad to see them die, but I can't even cry. The yellow things' wings fly out, they descend like enormous shields to protect all the blurs, the people. One of the dark men toss up a canister, it erupts in a red cloud. All the yellow things, all the - the, angels? they perish. Die, all the people choke, cough, collapse.

The men come closer. They examine the bodies, check for life, but they already know that no one survived. I know it too. They come closer to me, I can see the insignia on their uniforms. It is that too familiar symbol of containment, circle and arrow, it is the Foundation.

A few weeks passed, and then the day came. "Tim!" I knew that voice. Claire was a seasoned doctor, but she always seemed to have the enthusiasm of a junior researcher.

My groggy eyes rose up from behind a pile of forms to see her "Yes, Dr. Claire?"

"Results from the latest spectrum analysis!" She dumped a stack of papers onto my desk, her smile hovering slightly above the top of the pile. If it was any other person I would have thought they were trying to piss me off, but Claire was different. Besides, getting angry at her would have disrupted her walk out of my office, viewing her from behind was a highlight of my days.

As the door shut, I felt the gentle gust of wind that accompanied it. Some papers caught it, their edges lifting up, but clips made sure they stayed in stacks. The room became silent again. I remember hating it. It was a tomb made of drywall, forms and similarity. Whenever I was in that room I looked forward to leaving it.

I read into the sheets Claire had left behind. The SCP we had been working on, all data analysis of wavelength variation. After the last experiment resulted in a containment breach of half a dozen SCPs, O5 restricted personnel exposure. All we had left was wavelength analysis, and psychological testing. Everything else was off-limits, I appealed, I thought we could get more done if we had just a few more tests, but it was denied. The other doctors thought that preventing long-term exposure, and keeping the guards rotated would stop it from reaching out to other people. I don't believe that anymore.

Time doesn't work right in my dream. Sometimes things move faster, sometimes slower, sometimes not at all. You only get bits and pieces, you can grasp a few things but lose others. But most of it, I understand. All the pain when your family dies, all the anger, hate, suffering. I would be angry, too.

A thousand things all pass at once. The time in my dream skips. Suddenly I arrive in a room, a white room, a single light illuminates the box around me. A bed colored gray is against the farthest wall, it lacks a pillow, and is just a thin cushion against a cold metal frame. But it is not for me, or the eyes which I see through, I don't have a body which could rest against that bed. A shelf and desk lay to the right of me, both cold, hard metal. The shelf is filled with mostly old, tasteless, and useless literature. The desk has only a pen and a stack of paper.

I don't know the time, I only see half-formed shapes move outside the room. They move quickly, too quickly to be human. Or is it that I'm moving too quickly to see them as human? It doesn't matter. All I know is that this is alone, this is isolation. I don't like it.

Across the room, in the reflection of the wall, I see myself. I don't have a body, I don't have arms or legs or anything. I - It is a symbol of love?

I looked at the stack of papers on my desk, graphs, charts, diagrams abundant. I slid them all to the side, and reached down to a low knob on my desk drawers, the wooden frame opening with a loud creak. A thick pile of melange folders bulged out of the wooden coffin. I carefully pushed them forward, searching for the lowest folder. Ah, there it was, just above an oddly-shaped lump I had placed there not long ago. I pulled the folder out, and laid it on my desk. Photographs spilled over the wood, accompanied by a number of written files.

The drift of my hand caught the edge of the folder, it opened to let its contents be read. Pictures of the bodies of people killed, pictures of that SCP in that damned room. I was trapped in here by the Foundation, by our protocol, by our duty. We were supposed to safeguard mankind, but all we did was produced an imaginary farce for the world to live in while we stymied the tides of unknown, efforts which only made humanity more and more vulnerable. The SCP of my dreams was trapped by the Foundation, by our protocol, by our duty. It could have given so many gifts to our world, but all we did was lock it away.

I didn't realize all this at first, the first time I had the dreams. It was three days before I authorized the first D-Class testing under the supervision of Dr. Dier that I first had them.

Suddenly the door flies open, a figure bursts in. Everything slows down to normal speed. It's a person. I see the face for a moment, before things start getting faster. He is a D-Class, he is a slave to the Foundation. He walks around, reads, leaves, returns, claws himself. I don't understand.

I hear his voice, he calls out. His pain, he is so alone. Then I, I? Something responds, from me, but I didn't say it. It is the eyes I see through which speak to him. They tell him not to fear, that soon all the pain will be gone, that his suffering will serve to help him. He fears, but accepts my, my? The words. He accepts. He grows weaker, or is it stronger? His form changes, becoming closer and closer to the image in the metal mirror. He becomes closer to love? He contorts, his body is in agony. Somewhere, deep beneath his body something stirs, his soul?

All the blurs think he suffers. But they don't understand. They watch, and despite all their safety, despite all their precautions, the symbol, I? It? enters them, enters into their memories. They don't realize it, but I do. Just through their sight of it, because they remember it, it will forever be with them. It will watch them. But there's something about the memory, something strange. It is diluted, unfinished, imperfect.

Oh my god he changes, the man on the ground, he changes oh god he changes so different. I recognize that image, it's the same as the reflection, it's love. Everything relaxes. Heart stops. Brain stops. But he does not die.

Everyone thought D-3466 was going to die. Everyone thinks that D-3466 is dead. I thought that he would die. But as my eyes looked over those files, as I thought about my dreams, I realized, I did not give him death, I gave him eternal life.

The dreams made me eager for work, eager to learn more. But they also made me afraid. I leaned back and forth, I wanted to stay but I had to get out. I went to try to get transferred, but Brooks put up a wall I could not pull down. The dreams got stronger, I started day dreaming them, they kept coming and coming. I didn't understand them, I didn't know what was happening to me. But on that afternoon all those days ago, Dr. Claire didn't stir me from work, she awoke me from my dreams. She awoke me from when my dreams changed, she awoke me and I understood what I had to do.

I sighed, looked down onto old hardwood. I reached into the bottom of the opened drawer, and my hand drew out a Colt Single Action Army.

A fear in me grows, quickly, unstoppable. My dream should end when I see the angel of D-3466. No. This isn't right. Why is it going? Why do the men outside the room darken? I can feel their hatred, why won't it stop? Stop! STOP!

I want to cry. I want to cry so badly, I don't understand why does it keep going. The lights are brighter, stronger, they flash and turn red, get erratic, spray the room in their glow. Alarms screech in the air, get louder and louder and louder. Shadows of men pass outside the room. What the fuck is that? Gunshots?

The door of my office closed, a tomb of drywall which I would never enter again. I felt my breath against my lips as I exhaled, as I stepped closer and closer to the point of no return. My mind leaked, the dreams entered by wakened mind. Oh my god…

"Sir? Are you alright?" A young guard asked me as I passed through the checkpoint between me and my dreams.

"Get the fuck out of my way." His brains exploded into the wall.

Fucking bullets, fuck. Glass shatters, all the sounds glass breaks containment breached. Women on the intercom tells me containment is breached. Why must this happen to me? The blurs are all people. All people. All people.

EVERYTHING WILL BECOME CLEAR.

Red lights were everywhere, I stumbled down the hallway covered in blood. Its face was everywhere, alarms blared so loud, but its voice even louder. I stumbled forward, looked back. Men in dark armor turned the farthest corner.

I felt bullets fly past, the glass separating the observation and containment rooms shattered. Its face was everywhere, everywhere. The blood that falls from my chest turns into the face of my dreams. Gunshots gunshots gunshots everywhere behind me they are all behind me. Researchers within the room screamed, worried, panicked. I stepped over the broken glass, into my future.

A man, he falls into the containment cell. Bleeding, broken. Why? He crawls forward to it. No, he becomes closer to me. To me. He becomes closer to his dreams. He become closer to his god. God. God. Closer become god god god look at me LOOK AT ME AND SEE

UNDERSTANDING.

Don't know, what? own future. All of the men flood the room, all of them looked at me with their hate their fucking hate monsters. I see Claire, I see all the other doctors. I felt death pierce my lungs, my chest. I looked up, my arms outstretched to myself on the wall. Fucking headache. I lost my feeling, everything turned sideways as I fell onto the ground and my vision grows dark. Then before everything faded I saw them. I saw the monsters. And they all saw me.

IN YOUR DEATH THEY WILL ALL REMEMBER ME. IN YOUR SACRIFICE THEY WILL ALL REMEMBER YOU.

Oh I remember fuck I remember why

I understand

THEY WILL ALL DREAM THE SAME DREAMS.

Addendum-Σ-5-1: On ██/██/████, Dr. Timothy Daveson breached the containment of SCP-███. Security team ECHO-████-█ engaged [REDACTED] report a glowing instance of SCP-███ briefly appearing on the corpse of Dr. Daveson. Shortly thereafter site personnel within 20 meters of SCP-███ lost consciousness for 340 seconds. Medical analysis of affected personnel showed eye movement consistent with REM sleep. After awaking, personnel showed [DATA EXPUNGED] SCP-███ covered 80% of the skin, including observers outside of the 20 meter [DATA EXPUNGED] ██ escaped from security zones, and remain at large.