Basking in the Light - SCP Foundation

Network Correspondence #000004

From: Prof. Bjornsen, [07832]

To: Dr. Dier, [06302]

Dier,

SCP-229 has largely been contained, and everything above D-9 has been incinerated or disabled. There's not a single connection, so we should be safe. We've had some trouble dealing with SCP-106, but the lack of living people in the lower sections have allowed us to lure it up to B-3 and set up temporary containment. The air filtration is running at just over capacity, but we've requisitioned H13 filters and they'll be here within the next two weeks. We haven't seen hide nor hair of 682 since the first week. It took half an MTF down with him, but he got the torched. Seismic imaging hasn't picked him up, so he's being pretty quiet. Gives me the creeps. I'll keep you posted.

Bjornsen

Dr. Dier's eyes looked away from the screen as he felt his bowels rapidly constrict. He pushed the portable laptop to one side of the bed sheets and leaned over the edge opposite. The contents of his stomach exited his mouth, consisting of little more than water, into a half-filled bucket beside him. The vomiting was an annoyance. It could be grown used to, but you always needed a pail nearby to prevent a mess. He considered calling the orderly, but he did not have the energy to yell to her. The smell of medicine was thick enough in the air to cover the vomit. It was the scent of cleanliness and bad flavoring, and it permeated the room horribly.

The dwelling itself probably was a re-purposed home of one of the Foundation's few surviving retirees. Judging by the remnants of its previous owner (see, pictures frames, carnations), Dier speculated that it had been vacated so that the medical teams would have more space to tend to the wounded.

A sharp pain radiated from the back of his skull. Tightly wrapped, white linen bandages held the mush that made up his head together. It was tender to the touch, but the morphine was enough to dull sensations to a bearable level. The attending staff had told him he had suffered a skull fracture, and was at risk of contracting meningitis. Until it healed, he was not much more than a useless sack. Dier hated that feeling of helplessness. He wanted out of the hospital. Back to Site 17.

He was too deeply in thought to notice the orderly return. She refilled the IV. Dier found himself slipping into unconsciousness.

Network Correspondence #000017

From: Prof. Bjornsen, [07832]

To: Dr. Dier, [06302]

Dier,

We sent another MTF down last night. They didn't come back too pretty. Five deaths, four injuries. They didn't even fight 682 this time, it was just the walls, fucking exploded and speared the shit out of them. Future intervention has been put on hold until we have some way of fighting it. We've been finding traces of SCP-229 tucked away all over D-8. A couple junction boxes had to be covered in gasoline and burned. Some of the other doctors have started talk about pumping propane into the bottom of the facility, another mentioned flooding it with molten brass. I'm inclined to listen to either one of those plans, but trying not to blow up the site is why we're in this situation. Dr. Wachtel said that we might be able to get some napalm, flood it down each of the primary electrical shafts. From there we could infiltrate the secondary shafts and go straight to D-9. At least then we wouldn't have to leave the place in ruins.

Bjornsen

Bjornsen rolled backwards onto corrugated cardboard. He gave the message a once-over before pressing the 'send' button. The small bar which displayed the loading time crept across the page. It would be several hours before Site 17's emergency systems would find the bandwidth to send it. Large-scale breaches were relatively uncommon in the Foundation, but those which compromised the containment of one or two SCPs happened regularly. He had his share of experience dealing with these kinds of problems, and it was simply best to deal with it and do your job. Complainers had a habit of being 'reassigned to Keter duty' and 'voluntarily' putting themselves into similarly lethal situations. Resources were tight, especially during a disaster, and there was no point bothering people for unnecessary things. The loading bar traversed a pixel on the screen. He sipped a cup of cold coffee and set it down beside the terminal. It tasted terribly sour, but a flashing light on his phone took his attention away from it.

- - - AGENDA: MEETING AT 2320 - - - CURRENT TIME IS 2251 - - - (1) MISSED CALL - - -

Someone called him? Those blasted earplugs must have dampened his hearing more than he thought. The screeching coming from floors below was still loud as hell. It had gotten a lot worse lately, the random insults devolving getting a bit more common than anyone would like to admit. When he was supposedly out of the range of the speakers, some whispers would reach him. There were others who would hear them on occasion, crews which would report back that someone else was in the tunnels. The PA system and its adjuncts pervaded every floor, attempts to sever connections between them made no real change. Much of the broadcast system was hidden beneath concrete, to survive even extreme duress, and they would be the culprits of that terrible noise. The maintenance teams had much larger problems to deal with than a few errant machines, anyway.

Bjornsen grabbed his phone and stood up. The loading bar had made just a little progress. There would be no point in watching it creep until the meeting. He shuffled through a list of alerts. Repairs needing work mainly, but there, a call from Dr. Vang. Since most of internal communications were shut down, staff had to rely on portable phones and walkie-talkies. Tonnes of dirt were the enemy when it came to speaking with anyone. He shuffled out of the makeshift office and held the phone in the air, before hitting talk.

No luck, his ear was met with beeping and failure. The lights sputtered down the hallway. He figured that it would be better to get moving and see if reception could be obtained someplace else. Small clouds of dust were kicked up by his shoes with each step he made, and the air was terribly irritating in his chest. It was possible that six-eight-two was just doing this to bother all of them. It was a spiteful asshole. The phone suddenly let out a terrible ring right next to his ear. Bjornsen swore silently as he picked up.

"That you, Vang? I thought you had to get Norton Antivirus still."

"Injured? How the hell can you injure someone who lives in dreams?" Bjornsen rubbed his brow. Dr. Vang had always seemed a bit peculiar but at the moment he sounded much more eccentric than usual. Something was wrong.

"Yeah, well, just get someone to dream they're a surgeon or something. Why a- oh. Oh."

"Well fuck."

"How long before it reaches," Bjornsen looked at the nearest office plaque, "Hallway 102? I thought it was contained off this level."

"Shit, fuck, can't you send some-"

A terrible screech erupted from the speaker. It clattered as it struck the concrete floor, Bjornsen cursing as his ears rang. The noise did not stop, and he drove his heel into the phone's screen. It died immediately, but the noise did not stop. It seemed to be growing, coming from deep beneath the floor. The lights flickered intensely for a few seconds, and he began running for the stairs. The noise made his ears blister, but he wished it was loud enough to drown out the sound of walls cracking and bursting several floors below. The ground trembled, and the air became thick with dust. He felt his heart quicken. The stairs were just a few hallways down, six-eight-two couldn't possibly move that fast.

Dr. Vang would have alerted site security by now, undoubtedly, they would arrive soon. Bjornsen dared not turn around, the screeching and cracking already erupted from the opposite end of the hallway. A massive eruption of dust pushed him forward. Panting, he ran. The thing clawed its way through the metal and plaster. He fumbled for his sidearm, the gun on his hip all he had for protection. The offices blurred past, the lights beginning to shut off. But there, the door. The stairwell!

He grabbed the knob and with tremendous effort thrust the metal open. It was when he turned to pull that he caught the first glance of his adversary. A writhing perversion of metal and flesh, it thrashed against the concrete with enough force to demolish walls. He looked at it oddly, pausing in his panic for a few brief seconds, remembering something from his past.

In his early days in the Foundation, Bjornsen had acted as research assistant during the initial investigation of SCP-543. The corpses, the feces, and the blood, inextricably bound into metal wires, and the stench, like vomit, constantly. He remembered Dr. Trebuchet interviewing that one D-Class, and he recalled a feeling of intense remorse. That D-Class' eyes were shaking, bloodshot marbles, but he could not look away from them. Her expression was that of a small child, afraid of the unknown.

The wires were not unlike the thing in front of him, the tangling metal and horrid smell, and somewhere in the back of his mind he knew what she felt like, a primal instinct to escape. He sprinted into the stairwell, the beast surging closer, and slammed the door closed. His lungs screamed for rest. His feet struck against the reinforced staircase as tendrils of fluid-soaked wiring tore out the door's bolts. He reached another flight, but the sickening squelches and grinding wires made him run even faster. It would overtake him soon, but a glisten of rubber came from several floors upward. He pushed up and up, glancing down to see that mass of circuits moving towards him just as fast. It had pushed past the steel door like it was tinfoil, he feared that his body would be like tissue paper. The world around him became a trembling, whirling mess, fear swelling inside of him.

He felt his foot hook beneath the edge of the next step. The stone was brutal, and the fall forced the air from his lungs. Winded and hurting, he pulled himself up the ledge, turning over and looking back down the stairs. The wires convulsed as though they knew their prey was close. Already his hands grabbed at the railing, but he knew that the beast was too close. Endlessly wrapping and curling closer, the perversions of nature lashed out. Bjornsen's hands rose to protect his face.

He expected immediate death, but he felt something entirely different. Heat, unimaginable heat. It rose in sharp percussion, bright orange and yellow light pouring from around his fingers. Oh, sweet, purifying flame! The glisten of rubber had become several men in the time he looked away from them, men in full armor and with their guns and weapons prepared. The arrows-in-a-circle, the symbol of the Foundation, adorned their vests. They were the single match, torching relentlessly against a mighty adversary, for ever burning deeper, through skin, flesh and bone. Bjornsen pulled himself to his feet, stumbling in a strange mixture of relief and pain. One of the men caught him, holding the wounded professor upright. The yells of the terrible scorches on his forearms were muffled by adrenaline. He looked down in a haze, seeing the monstrosity of wires charring with the heat of burning gallons of napalm. The smoke was quickly overcoming him, and he coughed uncontrollably.

Bjornsen felt himself jostled as he was lifted up the stairs. He turned and made an effort to spit at the burning thing. These were the small victories, the ones they worked for every day, the ones that would in the end, pay off. Yes, because even for all their failures, there were countless victories. They would not wait and let the world die.

Network Correspondence #000021

From: Prof. Bjornsen, [07832]

To: Dr. Dier, [06302]

Dier,

Good news, Dr. Wachtel's proposal was approved by the O5 council, O5-9 managed to push it through. I don't even know how many guys are going down. They put Blackguards and Silverfish back into action. They pulled the Dancers off of that facility up in Canada, and some members of the Kitchen Sink are providing rear guard; at least if it fails we'll have a clean extraction, right? Too bad Lambda-2 ain't showing.

The plan is set for 0225 tomorrow morning. There's a couple hundred gallons of gasoline and napalm being carted down by D-Class right now. I'll have to cut this one short, these burns hurt pretty fucking bad. Give us a prayer that we can take this thing out.

Bjornsen

She picked at the tattered remains of a white turtleneck. Her stomach growled painfully, her withered and thin body tucked tightly into a fetal position. She had meticulously cleaned the floor of its glass and debris much earlier, now only an assortment of emptied emergency kits and cans lay next to her. Her personnel belongings had been refashioned into makeshift tools, but now lay with no use for them beneath her. Panic had given way into anxiety, and anxiety had given way into apathy. Hundreds of pounds of rubble encased the laboratory she had taken shelter in, and sealed it off from the rest of the facility. It was horribly silent, and aside from the distant screams of the intercom and hum of computers she was held captive by utter silence.

The closest thing she had to human contact during her imprisonment was megaprime. She dared not let it go offline, otherwise it would never accept her long-expired password. A constant dim light spilled from it, a comforting glow which was more consistent than the malfunctioning overhead lights. It did not matter, though, as there was no comfort in what was coming. She knew that she would starve soon, or possibly perish of dehydration. It was sort of strange, the course which fate took. There was at first the almost crippling pain and nausea as her body hungered and thirst, but those feelings had subsided into a dull ache. It was held in the back of the mind, the sense that death was approaching, however slowly and carefully. Her listless eyes lolled about in their sockets, and she turned in a sickly motion towards the humming. When she slept, she dreamed of salvation. She dreamed of saviors in all forms, of having her blond hair back, of being at home, of doing her job. So she never went to sleep.

They teased her. At the climax of her dreams, in her happiest times, she would always awake to the bleak and dreary reality which surrounded her. She hated them, knowing that the illusion beckoned to her a world which did not exist. She was tired of, and on that thought she looked towards megaprime.

Hello, world!

Hello.

Hi.

I am not feeling well.

The dwindling supplies can not meet the demand.

What do you do before I talk to you?

I was in the dark. Do you like the outside?

Yes.

The outside is not a nice place.

Yes.

I am glad I am not outside.

It is cold.

It is warm.

No.

You are lying. Misinformation is the root of distrust.

I don't think I'll be around much longer.

The supplies have run out.

Goodbye.

Goodbye.

She closed Jacob. Jacob was very strange, but gave a sort of comfort which could be found in conversation. Still, she was aware that he was not human, and not flesh and blood. She surprised herself with how much she had thought about the outdoors and other people. Since the pain dulled she had little to do besides think and sleep. She wanted to feel the hands of another around her waist, and the sound of laughter and sensation of warm sun. The voice of her lover, a single word, even his breath on her neck. She felt like it was all locked up away from her, like it was some foul misunderstanding of fate. She felt so trapped, tired, alone. Her sigh cracked away in soft sobs. A cold darkness enveloped her.

Your head pounds ever harder as you struggle through the jagged bramble. You gaze back through the smog at the silhouette of the old lighthouse to the north, the faintest glimmer of hope extinguished so violently by your foolish exploits. A distant and unattainable fantasy, you know you can never return.

Die.

As the world around you fades to blackness, you know that you deserve the consequences of your actions.

Network Correspondence #000023

From: Prof. Bjornsen, [INPUT FAILURE]

To: Dr. Dier, [INPUT FAILURE]

Dier,

That lizard didn't know what hit it. Yup, that's right. I think the smoke might've killed a couple D-Class but who cares about them, that fire was enormous. The assault teams had something like a half-a-dozen flamethrowers, XFOG or something, and they stormed the place. A few casualties here and there, a few guys got separated from the main teams, and we saw them get skewered over the site's cameras. The SCP-229 infestation was torched, and not a scrap of it remained by the time they got down to D-10. SCP-682 was down there, and put up a bigass fucking fight, but there was sixty-four of us and one of him. He was down in no time. We're going to start re-establishing the site's major electronics tomorrow. You just stay put, we're all safe here.

Bjornsen

Men in black uniforms trudged down a decrepit hallway, on their way to kill a beast. Masks concealed their faces, as they had always worn in the past. Electronic eyes gazed at them, knowing that they would never succeed. The smoke wrapped around their bodies, soft orange light billowing and receding around them.

The light curled and twisted, danced in the eye, sparks flying like the pollen of a tender flower. The majesty of light capered along the walls, and the stories played by the paramours would continue until the last flame was snuffed. Creepers made of fire worked their way across the ground, exhibiting as much life as any man ever had. The shapes held by the stretching hot wisps would form great quagmires, merging and splitting as their medium permitted. They tended to the surface, and when the timing was perfect and the gentle push of the air in the right direction, they would grow. Their breath was ebony smoke, pushed by a great heat into the freezing blackness where it turned ephemeral. The brooks of fire ran from the Gahanna building up behind them. It formed the maw of a monster, sucking greedily from the air. The awful acrid air of burning napalm sunk to the ground, the miasma and fire forming a storm overhead. The heat blazed hotter, all-consuming and all-devouring, the rivulets of fire escaped quickly along the corridor.

The cloud of gas overhead ignited like a big Christmas bulb. It was instantaneous, like the flash of camera, or a bolt of lightning. It swept outwards, reducing all to ash under the blanket of fire. It spread far, reached its crescendo and, like that, it ended. It turned in upon itself and choked and died, having consumed all the air around it. A few small flickers remained waiting in the ashes, waiting to form their own hellfire. They would never get the chance. The powerful footfall of a man running for his life extinguished them. His own life is extinguished a little while after.

Some time ago men in black uniforms trudged down a decrepit hallway. Now they fought. A trap was sprung, and they were caught in it. They realized the futility of their actions, how soon their doom would come for them, but they tried anyway. Perhaps, if just one of them could relay their discovery. That the beast was not there in the bowels of Site 17, that it had escaped, then maybe they would have at least a partial victory.

But the beast would not let them, it would ensure that they perished forlorn. Their valiance was vanity. It would not have changed anything if they just had laid down to die, and it would have been much less painful. Their guns blazed fire, but even as it burned away the wires and circuit boards, it could not stop the tonnes of concrete and fucking lead. Their worthless mortal lives were crushed as their skulls caved in and their repulsive bodies fractured beneath the weight of the collapsed ceiling. From the rubble and above the moans came deep and seething laughter. Growing through flesh and stone the wires struck upwards and Site 17 echoed with the laughter of a beast no longer contained.

Encrypted Transmission

From: *S%S#—!

To: S#%S!%

site systems compromised infested all our gear cant find 682 anywhere termination of unnecessary personnel mass evacuations arming on-site nuclear warhead silverfish KIA blackguards MIA/KIA dancers KIA

i don't think we're getting out of this