The Generally Uncomfortable Laboratory Adolescents Group - SCP Foundation

“…are you sure this isn’t against regulation?” The 21 year old anomalous MTF agent asked as she waited in front of the door to the humanoid containment chamber.

“Yep! Took a HELL of a lot of paperwork, and I could only justify it as ‘cross SCP testing’. That said, I still only got clearance for like 20 minutes, so we ought to hurry.” The junior researcher said quickly as he rifled through his bag, ignoring the buzzing from his phone every few seconds.

“…do you want to get that?” Iris said, mollified by the explanation, but still confused as to why she was standing in front of SCP-3009-C.

Junior Researcher Benedict Kim, as his name badge said when it shuffled to the top of his bag as he kept rifling through it, rolled his eyes. “Nope.”

Almost on cue, four more insistent buzzes came through his phone.

Iris raised her eyebrow, but decided not to press the issue, turning to the more relevant point on her mind.

“So…this is a cross-test, right?” She asked, mentally running through her gear, and kicking herself for not bringing a firearm. Dealing with other SCP’s was emotionally taxing at best, and even if a gun wouldn’t help against most of them, it would make her feel better.

“I mean, technically, yes.” Researcher Kim said offhandedly as he almost shoved his whole hand into the bag.

“…so is there anything I should know about this SCP?”

“Uhhhh…no? Not really?”

At his words Iris’s eyes narrowed. Going in blind to SCP’s usually meant memetic or telepathic anomalies.

“Alright.” She said, cracking her neck slightly in preparation. “What are my objectives?”

“Aha!” Kim said victoriously, holding up an earpiece. “Here.” He continued, passing it into Iris’s hand, and she obligingly hooked it into her ear.

“Testing?” She said, finger on the earpiece to activate it. Distantly, she heard her voice echo from the observation room, and the junior researcher gave her a thumbs up.

He quickly moved to the door, cracking it open slightly, and looking inside, wincing.

“Shit.” He whispered. “That’s not a good sign. Oh well. Might be more effective for you to come in now.”

Iris’s pulse, hardened to gunshots and helicopter blades, jumped, and she grimaced, but nodded.

As she walked forward, Kim spoke up. “Oh, and your objective is…talk to her?” He said with a bit of a shrug, before opening the door to let her in. “Good luck.”

‘Talk to it’, standard Foundation doublespeak for ‘Interrogate the shit out of them’. She could do that.

Iris was silent and strode in.

The room was…not what she was expecting.

Normally SCP containment rooms were either entirely empty, or if not empty, had the walls coated with the remains of the last people who’d entered the room.

This one was just…normal? Standard humanoid containment cell from the looks of it. Some magazines, psychology textbooks, and uneaten food on the sole table in the room.

If she didn’t know better, it was just an empty cell. But soon her eyes were drawn to the lump on the bed.

Something was wrapped in blankets and curled up on the bed, and Iris took a wild guess that this was the SCP she was supposed to interrogate.

She decided to take a position just out of arm's reach of the curled up ball, and began.

SCP-3009-C, formerly known as Stacey Lee, was not having a great day.

Admittedly, she didn’t have a lot of good days in the past year. Finding out at the tender age of 15 that you had a sentient snapchat account claiming to be you (and who honestly seemed more like “you” than you were) before being locked up by a shadowy organization to protect “normalcy” puts a real damper on your sense of self and mental health.

She’d…gone to some dark places in the past year.

Fortunately, the shadowy organization that had removed all sense of privacy from her life also had a vested interest in keeping her health, mental and physical, in top shape, so she received treatment…as well as some burly men visiting in the middle of the night to remove all sharp objects from her room.

Which, while slightly traumatic, she admitted probably was for the best. And after she’d received an antidepressant regimen, as well as newfound purpose with her study of psychology, she was doing much better.

…but some days were worse than others.

Sometimes, Stacey, or “3009-C” as she called herself in her darker moments, would just wake up, and decide to curl up in her blankets, and ignore the world.

Naturally, this was the day Researcher Kim, one of her only friends in her captivity, decided to throw someone new into her room.

She could hear their boots trudge on the hard floor. They walked with the hard purpose of the burly men who’d taken her knives, and Stacey unconsciously curled harder into a ball.

Her mind raced through every event in the past several weeks, running over anything that could have warranted a security man in her room, but she couldn’t think of anything. She’d been good dammit, she’d been doing really well, why would the Foundation send someone to her room again?!

“SCP-3009-C, I’m Commander Thompson-”

The voice was…unexpected. It was high, and feminine. And young. Normally the security sounded more like they belonged in a gym screaming obscenities at a minority. This one sounded like she belonged in a library.

“-I will be your interrogator.”

SCP 3009-C froze, and her breath caught slightly. She curled farther into a ball, and her thoughts ran into overdrive until they started blurring together into something approaching a fit.

“What are your-” The voice stopped suddenly, and the tinny sound of an earpiece interrupted her.

Through her panic, 3009-C found herself a bit curious, and she peeked an eye out of her blanket.

Agent Thompson paused, listening to the earpiece.

“I’m doing what you asked, interrogating the SCP.” There was another pause as minute squawks came from the electronic. “'Talk to her?' That’s what you said, and that’s an interrogation, right?”

“For fuck’s sake Kim, I’m an MTF agent, what the hell are you expecting from me?”

At the mention of Junior Researcher Kim, the lump of blankets opened slightly more. Whatever it was, it knew of him and…trusted…him? Or was at least curious.

Suddenly, the agent’s entire body froze, and Iris's voice turned something deadly, and guilty.

She turned away slightly from the lump of covers, and whispered, though the tiny room meant that the lump could very much hear every word the agent said.

“Junior Researcher Kim, what the fuck do you mean ‘She’s only sixteen’?” She whispered, her voice full of righteous rage.

When Kim was presumably done explaining the issue, she slowly turned back to the lump on the bed, which had pulled its blanket shut again.

The MTF agent looked somewhere between guilty, and enraged as she walked back over, but her voice, far from being commanding and authoritative, was even, and apologetic.

“Hey.” she started. “Sorry about that. I…didn’t know everything about your…situation.” She continued awkwardly.

“…you mind if I take a seat here?” Iris said quietly, gesturing to the chair next to the table. When there was no response, she did so, and pulled off her cap. She stared at the logo on it for a second, thumb running over the embossed “α-9” on the front, as well as the little arrowed symbol of the Foundation, before gently placing the cap on the table next to her.

She sighed, and undid her ponytail slightly, before running a hand through her dirty blonde hair.

Her voice was something…softer…when she continued.

“…I’m guessing you don’t want to talk much right now.” She said with a grimace. “Honestly, I wouldn’t blame you.”

“Do you mind if I take a wild guess about a few things?” Iris continued. The lump under the covers didn’t respond, but it did shift a little, indicating it was awake.

“I’m going to guess that your life was completely normal.” She started. “Or whatever the hell passes for normal these days.”

“Went to school, had friends, hobbies, family, etc.” She continued. “…then something weird happens. Maybe it was a little thing that nobody would have noticed, and you just ignored for a while. Or maybe it was all at once, I dunno.”

Her head hung down a little. “Then something happens. Something big. Something that you can’t just play off as weirdness. Something you can’t ignore, and more importantly, the rest of the world can’t ignore it either.”

“And then these men in suits show up.” Her voice had dropped to a near whisper. “They take you somewhere…else.”

“They start running tests on you. See just how far your weirdness goes. And then-” Iris’s voice caught slightly, much as she tried to hide it. “-and then they tell you that you can’t go home.”

“They tell you, your life isn’t normal anymore. They say ‘we don’t know enough about what you can do, so you have to stay here’.” Iris stopped there. Almost so long that the lump moved slightly to check that she’s still there.

“…and you get angry.” Iris continued once more, sniffing slightly. “So, unbelievably, angry. You might even pretend to be normal for a while, just to convince them to let you go.”

“But then the anger…it stops.” Her voice hardened slightly. “Because the real reason you’re angry is you know they’re right. What you can do is weird. And you don’t know how you can do what you do, or what extent it goes to. You might hurt people, you genuinely don’t know.”

“…and then you get tired.” She said, rubbing her wrist slightly. The blankets shifted slightly, allowing the person under it to look more closely at Iris. “So, incredibly, tired.”

“Because what’s the point?” Iris said with a hint of a snarl. “What’s the point of being…around…if all you have is a cell and nothing else. No friends or anything else.”

“…and then you do something drastic, and dumb.” She said quietly, before rolling up her sleeve, and unbuckling her combat gloves. The woman stuck her arm out, towards the opening in the blankets. While they were faded and long since healed over, there were unmistakable white scars across her wrist and up her arm.

There was a sniff from within the blankets, and a tentative arm extended from under the blankets. It extended just enough for her hand and her forearm to stick out. Once that was fully exposed, it twisted, exposing the underside of her arm, and a similar array of scars, the main difference being their red hue instead of white.

Iris smiled slightly, and twisted her hand to give a handshake.

“Hello. My name is Iris Thompson. I’m also designated as SCP-105. I…was brought here when I was 15, about six years ago.”

The arm sticking out of the blanket, after a hint of hesitation, turned slightly, gently grasped Iris’s hand, and shook it slightly, before pulling her arm back.

Eventually, the blanket was slowly pulled back, revealing a tired asian girl who still didn’t meet Iris’s eyes.

“…hi.” She said quietly. “I’m SCP-3009-C. You can-you can call me ‘Stacey’.”

Iris smiled softly at her. “Pleasure to meet you, Stacey.”

The two were silent for a few moments, before Stacey spoke.

“So…you’re an MTF agent? I didn’t know SCP’s could work for the Foundation.”

Iris grimaced slightly. “It’s not exactly common, but as long as you’re not some eldritch god bent on destroying the earth, it’s possible. Alpha-9 and the Scrubs are both composed entirely of anomalies.”

“Really? Wait, eldritch god?”

Iris took a shot in the dark. “…you have no idea what the hell goes on in this place, do you?”

“…I…am starting to think I don’t.”

Iris let out an audible sigh. Her eyes flickered to the observation window, before she took her cap and put it on Stacey’s head. “Tell you what, kid, how about a story, to give you an idea what working for this place is like.”

Stacey raised her eyebrow slightly under the cap and snickered. “…you know I’m not twelve, right? Also, isn’t everything classified here?”

“Eh, if they hate it they can just amnestitize us.” Iris said with a smirk, before getting up and sitting next to Stacey on the bed. “Alright, story time, whippersnapper. Lemma tell you about the time I and a whole MTF had to fight a horde of zombie teenagers…”

By the time Iris was walking out of the room, Stacey was more mobile, and was eating some of the food leftover on the table.

“Thank you, Iris.” The researcher said as she came out.

“No problem.” the woman responded. “But next time, maybe give a girl a heads up?”

“Sorry.” He said sheepishly, handing over a sheaf of papers. “Here’s the file for your next visit.”

Iris’s eyes narrowed. “Next visit?”

“3009, of course.” he said, ignoring her confused look to walk ahead, causing her to hurry after him.

“…”

“…”

The silence reigned for several seconds, before the woman in the computer screen turned to the side and shouted.

“BENNNNNNY! I think the woman you brought me is broken!”

Iris shook herself out of her reverie.

“Oh good, you’re alive!” came the electronic voice again, and the girl, a slightly younger, but otherwise almost identical version of Stacey Lee, waved hello from the tablet she was communicating from. “Hi!”

Iris’s brain was slowly but surely catching up with her situation, but it still needed a few more seconds to adjust, so she said the first thing that came to mind.

“Benny?” She said, curious.

“You know, Junior Researcher Kim!” She said with a chirp. “My Foundation-mandated best friend!”

“…really?” On the one hand it was just weird enough that the Foundation might try it, but on the other it was just nice enough that it was a little out of character for them. “…are you sure that’s his role?”

“A-hem.” Stacey said with faux seriousness, and mimed being some mindless foundation bureaucrat with the accompanying British accent to boot. “The formal name for Benny’s profession is ‘Junior Researcher responsible for fulfilling SCP-3009’s social needs due to his proficiency using electronic messaging systems’”

“…oh my god, that’s exactly what he is.” Thompson said with surprise. A pang of jealousy went through Iris that derailed her thought processes, because why didn’t she get a Foundation-mandated best friend when she first got there? Do they have any idea how useful that could have been?!?

Iris’s thoughts ground to a halt as she looked at the girl communicating through videochat.

…maybe, after her, they did learn how useful a best friend would be in confinement.

“Soooooooo…now that we’ve talked about the boys in my life, tell me a bit about yourself! Ooh, did Benny bring you to teach me how to be a secret agent?!??!” She began miming ‘karate’ moves on the screen, and Iris snickered slightly.

“I…kinda doubt that, Stacey.” She said with a smile.

“Oh, you can call me 3009, everyone else does here.” The girl said with a smile and dismissive wave that was a bit too forced to be genuine.

Iris frowned a bit. “I’ll…stick with Stacey, if that’s all right. I don’t like it when people call me ‘SCP-105’ so I feel bad calling other people numbers.”

The girl paused, mid-karate chop, and she blinked in surprise before returning to a normal stance and looking more closely at Iris.

“Wait, you’re…you’re an SCP too?”

Iris smiled sadly. “Yep. Been here since I was 16.”

“Woooowww…” The girl in the video said. “I’m…well you probably read my file, but, uh, I’m a living snapchat account!”

She looked a little flustered, and her eyes roamed up and down Iris’s body, absorbing the tactical gear that she had yet to change out of.

“What…what do you do?”

Iris bit her lip slightly, and looked to the camera staring at them, before turning back to the tablet that held the girl.

“…you know, I might be able to show you.”

Iris moved her hand towards the screen.

“Huh? What are you doing? Is this some kind of mind control thin-” 3009’s voice cut out as Iris’s fingertip touched the screen, and instead of tapping the touchpad, went through the screen, towards Stacey.

“Ooof, that’s a weird sensation.” Iris said with a grimace. “Like sticking my hand in an ice bucket. But yeah, I can touch things through pictures. I can also see them in realtime, but that’s not really as big of a deal now that videocalls are a thing-”

Iris flinched, and she looked at the screen to see Stacey holding her hand with her own, looking at it with wonder.

“I-I can touch you.” Stacey said with a dry voice.

Iris’s heart broke a little at the joy in the girl’s voice, and she just kept her hand there, holding Stacey’s.

The girl seemed to break out of her shock and her face went beet red when she realized she’d been almost fondling Iris’s hand, and she pulled away like she’d been electrified.

“OmgIamsosorryIjus-”

“Stacey.” Iris said with a firm, commanding voice, before she softened it. “You can keep touching my hand, if you want.”

The girl looked on the verge of tears when she nodded, dropping into her seat and grabbing the Iris's ghostly hand with both of hers, pulling it to her forehead where she rested her head against it as her body wracked with suppressed sobs.

After a few seconds, Iris put her other hand into the screen, and gently moved the girl’s hair out of her face slightly, before cupping her cheek and wiping away a stray tear with her thumb.

Stacey almost nuzzled the second hand, leading to another set of tears to flow from her eyes, but Iris didn’t move her hands.

For a while, the two just sat there, Iris caressing her, and Stacey sitting there, crying.

“I-I’m sorry.” the girl said with a sniffle. “I just…I can touch things. In here, right?”

Iris nodded, and gave her a reassuring squeeze on Stacey’s shoulder when she realized the girl couldn’t see her.

“But like…they can’t touch me. Like, really touch me.” she paused, and bit her lip. “And something about…this…means that usually stuff like that doesn’t make me sad and stuff. Not like…you know.”

“I’ve met the other Stacey, yes.” Iris confirmed.

“So I was fine.” She continued. “I really really thought I was fine. But then I could feel you. Really feel you. And…everything just hit, all at once.”

She sniffled. “I’m so sorry, I’m not usually like this.”

“Stacey, relax.” Iris said with a huff. “Trust me, you have no idea how much I understand what you’re going through.”

The two sat in a comfortable silence for a few moments, Iris’s hands just resting on the girl’s shoulders, when Stacey spoke up.

“Iris, can…can you do my hair?” She asked quietly. “Like, it shows up however I want in here, so technically you don’t have to, but like it’s been so long since I’ve actually had someone else do it and I just-”

“I’d be honored.” Iris interrupted, and pulled her hands back to run them through Stacey’s hair.

She pretended not to notice the girl’s tears returning.

Junior Researcher Benedict Kim was pondering an ethical question.

By all rights, SCP-105 should never be allowed into SCP-3009’s or SCP-3009-C’s containment cells ever again.

Her little “story” in 3009-C’s chamber was definitely classified, and Kim could tell that because he didn’t know about the story before she told it, despite Alpha-9 gossip being the most popular scuttlebutt in the entire Foundation.

Furthermore, interacting with SCP-3009 violated even more Foundation guidelines on cross-SCP testing. If Iris could reach into SCP-3009’s snapchat account, it brought up the possibility of her bringing things out of it, and that raised a bunch of ethical, logistical, and scientific questions.

…which made it very odd that Junior Researcher Benedict Kim was debating adding those little…indiscretions…to his report.

He knew why, of course. If he added them, the two month wait he’d had just to schedule Iris the first time would turn into an outright rejection of subsequent visits.

But if he left them out, then there was a chance he could book Iris with the girls again…though if he was found out he could potentially lose his job in the process.

His phone buzzed, and he took that as an opportunity to procrastinate his decision.

It was a Snapchat text, from 3009 herself. Against his better judgement, he opened it.

Hey. Uh. Benny. May I ask…is there any chance you could book Iris to come by again? It was…nice…meeting her.

Benedict Kim pinched the bridge of his nose slightly. He knew he shouldn’t have answered that.

With a groan he wrote up the “sanitized” versions of what happened earlier that day.

Besides, if they ever found out he lied, they could just amnestitize him.