Domino Effect - SCP Foundation

The room was well lit. The floors were polished, and there wasn't a single speck of dust to be found. Bishop found it unsettling to walk into a place devoid of dirt, but then again he had spent the last week or so cooped up in a hospital bed. As he closed the door behind him, he noticed that it had a lock, one that he hadn't seen before. But he could have been just ignorant of his surroundings; his physical therapy made that a very harsh reality. He turned to the woman at the desk, which had a lingering smell of freshly laid varnish. The only objects placed upon it were a laptop and Newton's cradle, another unsettling detail for Bishop to worry over.

"You wanted to see me, Isabel?"

The Site Director looked up from her screen.

"Yes. Please have a seat, I'll get to you shortly."

Bishop obeyed, and grabbed a chair from the corner. His sense of distance and grip had gotten better since the incident, perhaps as good as when he had had two working eyes, but he would have to wait for the results first.

The Director closed her laptop and pushed it aside, staring directly into Bishop's eye. It penetrated every mental barrier he tried to erect.

"Nice to see you back from the hospital, Nathaniel! We were worried that you wouldn't make it."

Nathaniel blinked.

"Oh, uh, thanks. I got discharged just a few days ago."

Isabel beamed.

"That's nice to hear, we can't wait to get you back in the workforce soon. Now if you just give me a second, I'll grab something you'll need to read up."

"Sure."

Bishop was feeling reserved today. Not much for talking, except when truly needed. Sometimes he was caught off guard, but most of the time, it was easy to handle. Now that he thought about it, he seemed to have gotten better at conversing with people. Maybe all that speech therapy from Primary School did actually help out.

"Ah! There we are! Incident-3502-A! Take a quick look at it."

She slid the file over the hardwood desk, Bishop catching it with his fingers. There was a single piece of paper, which read:

On the 31/06/2016, Dr. Nathaniel Bishop was conducting an interview with Michael Palmer (now designated POI-3502 -"Kangaroo Jack"). After the interview concluded, Class-A amnestics were provided to POI-3502. However, whilst Dr. Bishop was entering the interview room after administration, he was ambushed by POI-3502. During the scuffle, Bishop's eye was forcibly removed, and POI-3502 escaped containment. His whereabouts are currently unknown.

The painful memory made Bishop wince. While it had been almost 2 weeks since it happened, he still couldn't get it out of his mind. The phone call that made him look away, the ambush, the scuffle, the loss and escape: it was permanently burned into his mind, to be forever remembered.

"I'll just need you to sign the bottom there, Nathaniel."

Bishop shook himself free of the images, and took at look at the signature line:

This signature states that one, Dr. Nathaniel Bishop, acknowledges the events listed, and approves the publication of this material to the file "SCP-3502", with appropriate modifications.

_ _ _ _ _ __ _ _ __x

By order of the Site Director, this document is to be copied, then shredded and placed in a file storage system, with access granted to only the Site Director.

Bishop couldn't read the line under the signature, but just assumed it was some clause about the terms and conditions of the Foundation, which he had already memorized when he first joined, as much as it bored him to tears. Without a second thought, he placed his full signature on the line and handed it back to the Director.

With an unchanging smile, she went over to the corner of the room and turned on a small shredder. Within 2 seconds, the document was completely unreadable.

Nathaniel was safe to say a bit stunned.

"I, uh, h-how, that's n-not..?" He couldn't form any longer words without reverting to incomprehensible stutters, this wasn't standard procedure after all, and any standard procedure was his procedure.

"Hm?" The Director turned around. "Oh! Don't worry about that, I just needed to witness you sign it, is all."

She walked briskly back to her seat, singing a whimsical, lighthearted tune. Nathaniel really wanted to leave at this point, but the click of a remote lock made him stay put. He hadn't personally met the director until now, from what he had heard, she was hard as steel, impenetrable, no nonsense. But what he was seeing now, was akin to a child trapped in an adult's body.

"With that out of the way, we can now discuss important matters, specifically regarding Michael."

She brought her laptop back and opened it. After a few moments, she typed in something and turned it to Bishop. The image stared into his soul, the eyes were the part that got him the most. Even when he wasn't trying to kill him, the eyes still bulged out, unblinking.

Before he could say anything, the screen flickered to a different image.

It almost made him gag right then and there.

It was a scene of carnage. Four bodies lay dead. Each in their own pools of blood and god knows what, baking in the desert sun.

"See that, right there? This was taken just a few minutes after you called security."

She pointed to each body.

"These guards, these people, weren't murdered by some animal or anomaly. They were murdered by the man that took your eye."

Nathaniel ran his fingers over the patch that covered his glasses and eye socket. His false eye felt unnatural, incomplete - not that he could use it in public; they'd gotten the colour wrong. Bright blue and dark brown, what a horrid combination.

"This monster went along and murdered perfectly good gunmen in cold blood, violence absent of mercy. Do you really want someone like that to roam free in the wilderness?"

Bishop shook his head.

"And do you know what started this all? What toppled the dominoes?"

The screen flickered to a map of Yaraka, the town where their station was located, albeit in the outskirts to avoid suspicion. There were points on roads leading in and out the city, each pertaining to a sign.

"Those signs. Those anomalous Kangaroos. They are the cause of this tragedy. If it weren't for them, none of this would have happened, yes?"

Nathaniel nodded.

Isabel smiled, the shadows on her face making her look god-like.

"Now then, how about we take care of that little chain before the dominoes fall again?"

Bishop's head hurt.

He was standing outside the door, without a clue as to why. He checked his clothes for anything missing, and sighed in relief. But then he felt a small piece of paper in his coat pocket.

Without thinking, he took it out and unfolded it. It seemed to be normal paper, from a sticky note. But there was a weird drawing on it, an assortment of lines, in a seemingly random pattern. It felt like it was burning into his retina, traveling directly to his mind and consciousness.

Without realizing it, he ripped the note up and threw it to the ground. He had a burning inside him, and it needed to be released. His fists clenched, hard. His teeth grinded together, his jaw tight.

He took a deep breath.

"THOSE FUCKING KANGAROOS!"

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