Once the scientist left, Michael began to take in the situation. He could feel the excitement building in the pit of his gut. Up until he looked down at said gut and was reminded of his now pudgy body. He frowned at the sight.
'How did this Tommy guy even survive for so long?' Michael wondered.
In the end he just shrugged, “Well no time like the present I suppose.”
He dropped down to the floor and began to do his usual warm up routine, tuned back on account of his new body's stamina. He needed to find its limit, how far could he run, how much could he lift, he just didn’t know any of it yet. Not knowing is what got you killed in a dangerous situation, so he had some work to do.
While Michael did crunches, facing the two-way mirror of course, you gotta give them a show, he thought about what supplies he should ask for. After some time he had a list of items he was somewhat happy with.
1. A week's worth of rations minimum.
2. Body armor.
3. Workout equipment.
4. A magazine fed shotgun and a place to practice shooting.
5. Proper combat attire.
6. A small tank of air and mask.
7. Fire Starting Kit.
8. A quality knife and crowbar.
9. Gas Mask.
10. Glow Sticks, Flares and a Flashlight.
He could be forgetting things, but that’s all he could come up with at the moment. He showed the camera he was done with the list, and a man in a bright orange jumpsuit quickly came and took it. He had the letters D-4214 written in bold on the back of his jumpsuit. A couple minutes later, the man was sent back into my room and the speaker buzzed to life.
“Attention SCP-507, you will be cohabitating with the individual D-4214 for an unspecified amount of time, a separate cot will be moved into the room in just a moment.”
'That's odd,' Michael thought. 'This rooms large enough for several people but the fact there moving someone else in here so soon after what happened to me says a lot about this company. Either way I should probably introduce myself to the guy.'
“Hey, names Michael, what's yours?” Michael asked.
“...James,” the tired looking man answered in a quiet voice.
'Not the most talkative guy,' Michael noted.
“Well how long have you been in this compound James? Anything I should know about the place?” Michael asked knocking against the thick steel door for emphasis.
James just looked over at him with reluctance.
“Look Michael, I’ve been told not to talk to you. I’m just supposed to sit over there and do absolutely nothing. Now please just leave me alone so I can get this over with,” James said, avoiding eye contact with Michael.
Michael just stared at him a moment before he shrugged and went back to his workout. If the guy wanted to be all mopey there was nothing he could do about it.
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Just like that the better part of a week passed. James was taken out of the cell a couple days in to this stay and Michael hadn’t heard from him since. Didn't matter much to Michael though, no company was better than bad company. The workouts had been going well, no results were showing yet, but that was to be expected. It'd only been a week afterall.
That’s when Dr. Hearthgrieve walked into my room.
He had a smile plastered on his face, “Good news Mr. Stevens, I got your supplies approved.”
He handed Michael the list and he took a glance at it.
1. A week's worth of rations. (Approved
2. Body armor. (Approved)
3. Workout equipment. (Approved)
4. A magazine fed shotgun and a place to practice shooting. (Partially Approved)
5. Proper combat attire. (Approved)
6. A small tank of air. (Approved)
7. Fire Starting Kit (Approved)
8. A quality knife and crowbar. (Approved)
9. Gas Mask. (Approved)
10. Glow Sticks, flares and a Flashlight. (Approved)
“Why was the shotgun only partially approved?” Michael asked. Truthfully, he'd been expecting it to flat out be denied. You don't just start arming prisoner's willy nilly and he had no misconceptions on where he stood in this facility socially speaking.
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Hearthgrieve scratched the back of his neck awkwardly, “Well, we can’t really have you walking around here with live ammo, so you’ll be provided with rubber bullets instead. It's how we treated Tommy and more than fair in my opinion.”
Michael narrowed his eyes, “You expect me to go explore other dimensions with non-lethal ammo? Dimensions that you've admitted have monsters in them? No wonder this body's previous owner kicked the bucket.”
Hearthgrieve gaze didn’t budge as he stared towards Michael, “Just be glad you’re even getting this much. We only gave Tommy a pistol with rubber bullets. At least your gun’s going to have some stopping power. Either way your request to practice in the shooting range has been approved. With a chaperone of course.”
“A chaperone huh? How much of a prisoner am I really? Be honest with me,” Michael calmly asked.
Hearthgrieves expression suddenly became serious, “You can never leave the facility, you should accept that a fact and just move on. It’ll be easier for all parties involved.”
Michael raised his hands in mocking defense, “Whoa there, I never said I wanted to leave. This is the most interesting thing to ever happen to me. I’m not about to run away from the people who seem so interested in funding my little adventures. However-”
Michael moved in closer to Hearthgrieve, “I’m not Tommy, I’m not an idiot. From what I've gathered over the past week I get the impression that he was one. Don’t try to fuck me over like you did him. I'd bet my life that he died due to your people's negligence. Well I refuse to die alone in some parallel dimension like that, so go and get me some goddamn real ammo.”
“Are you trying to threaten me Tommy?” Heathgrieve coldly asked.
"It's not a threat, just a conversation letting you know where I stand on the issue. Provide me with my resources and I'll be a model prisoner. Don't and we may begin to have issues. I've done nothing wrong and I followed directions to a t, so lets make this relationship beneficial for all parties involved can't we?"
Hearthgrieve stared down Michael for a long time, but in the end grinned slightly, "Then perhaps we can make a deal. If you can manage to retrieve items with anomalous properties from the other dimensions and bring them back here, I may be able to provide you with some of our...more lethal items. They'd have to be useful to the foundation of course, but it would work wonders with building up our lacking trust in you.”
'That reaction right there said a lot,' Michael thought. 'It feels like they'd prefer I didn’t die, but they won't care much if it ends up happening. So I'm expendable, but only to an extent, interesting.'
A sly grin creeped its way onto Michael’s face, "I can work with that, just remember everything I said. Now take me to that shooting range, I wanna see my new shotgun."
"Not my job, a guard will be by shortly to escort you," Heathgrieve answered.
Dr. Hearthgrieve began to move towards the door.
"Before you go, I want to ask something that's been bugging me. How the hell did Tommy even live as long as he did?" Michael asked.
Hearthgrieve scratched the back of his head, "Well, his usual survival method was to run off and hide in a corner somewhere, usually crying. Nothing our organization could do to convince him otherwise, that man was scared shitless of his own ability."
With that said, he walked away.
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Not long after Hearthgrieve left the room, a guard came to escort Michael to the shooting range. The walk from the cell was uneventful, but provided some much needed information. The facility seemed to be a series of long white hallways that occasionally opened up into rooms containing huge metal doors labeled with various numbers preceded by SCP. From what he gathered they kept monsters behind those doors. The body he'd ended up possessing was mundane compared to them. If rumors from guards and the orange suited D-Class could be trusted.
Upon arriving at the shooting range, a man with a greying beard and sharp blue eyes greeted Michael with a wave.
"Well if it isn't Grognak the destroyer, how's it going?"
Michael looked around, hoping beyond hope that this wasn't another one of the horrible nicknames Tommy had gone by "Are you talking to me?
The man's expression dipped at Michael's response, "Well, looks like Hearthgrieve wasn't messing with me. That sure is unfortunate. Ol Grognak was a good guy."
"Just to be clear you're talking about Tommy, right?" Michael asked.
"Tommy? Oh, that's just what Dr. Hearthgrieve called him. Grognak only went by nicknames, nobody in the facility actually knows his real name," the guard responded.
Then he smiled and reached into a cabinet, pulling out a pristine shotgun, long and sleek.
"Anyways, this right here is a Saiga-12, and your new best friend. I'm going to teach you everything you need to know about this bad boy. I've also thrown in something extra for you, I've taken the liberty of suppressing the weapon. I figured you'd need it, just be aware that it's still plenty loud so don't expect nobody to hear your shots if you're just in the next room,” the guard said with a chuckle.
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Over the course of several hours the instructor taught Michael how to properly maintain his gun, as well as assisting with improving his marksmanship. Michael found the process easy to follow, and aiming the weapon came naturally enough.
Just like that the rest of the week continued on smoothly. With Michael spending most of his time either exercising or training his accuracy down at the firing range. He wasn't a bad shot, but moving targets proved to be somewhat difficult past a certain distance.
Once the two weeks had finally passed, things changed. Michael couldn't put down any of his gear and nobody was allowed to touch him. The dimensional shifts were random and Michael would only take things with him that he was touching during the time of the shift.
Apparently that included people, he’d need to request a have a group go with him next time. Though he had doubted whether the higher ups would approve it. He was still expendable after all. But hey who knew what they'd say.
Then on a random Tuesday afternoon three days past the two week deadline Michael had leaned back in his cot to relax, when suddenly a feeling of weightlessness took over his body. It felt like falling through water, and when it finally stopped Michael found himself laying in a place he didn't recognize.
Michael stood up and scanned his surroundings, holding his shotgun close to his chest. He stood in a small wooden cottage, a fire blazing in it's hearth. Farming tools littered the walls and the smell of drying herbs filled the room. Noise could be heard from the adjacent room as two figures moved to enter the room, stopping in the doorway. Michael leveled the rifle towards them.
He then flicked on the light at the tip of his rifle, no use staying in the dark if he'd already been spotted and revealed the two people that stood in the doorway, which appeared to be a couple. One tall well built man and a stout looking woman. The uncanny thing about the two though was the mask they both wore. Which appeared to be made of rotting flesh, beating and pulsing as if it were alive.