While restlessly sleeping, Michael began to feel a sense of weightlessness overtake him. It lifted him up gently, taking him away from the world, only to drop his unconscious body two feet down onto the cold tile floor.
“Fuck”, Michael all but shouted, getting up and rubbing his bruised shoulder.
Using his flashlight he saw Alex standing up. Apparently the tethering idea worked, subjecting him to the same rude wake up call.
Shining the light around the room revealed it to be the same one he currently lived in, though the interior had vastly changed.
The walls were covered in heavy metal safes with descriptive clipboards hanging from each one. After walking over and reading a few of them Michael found they each contained items labeled as ‘safe’ SCPs.
‘Wait a minute,’ Michael thought.
“Motherfuckers, my room used to be a storage locker didn’t it,” Michael swore.
Alex just shrugged, “Who’s to say, this is a different dimension after all. Anyways, wanna try to break into some of those safes?” He asked with a sly grin.
“I’ve known you for less than a week and you already know me so well,” Michael said, chuckling.
Michael then walked across the room and flipped the light switch, only to find that it didn’t work.
‘That’s concerning,’ Michael thought. ‘I not sure I want to know what the power being out entails in a place like this.’
‘Let’s push that problem to the side for now.’
Michael tossed Alex a glow stick and got to work looking for any useful SCPs.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Some time later.
‘Why, why do they all suck? Why even keep some of this stuff,’ Michael thought.
A book that gives you lung cancer when you read it? A tomato that throws itself at you when you make puns?
The best thing they could find was labeled SCP-174. It apparently held off any disease you had, but made you tired to the point of never waking up again while using it. He remembered a guard mentioning that their universe had one of these things.
“Whatever, we're taking the ring. Alex, get over here,” Michael said, gesturing for Alex to hurry over.
Michael reached into his bag, pulling out a crowbar and turning to Alex.
“Do you think you can get this safe open?” Michael asked.
Alex grinned in response, “Psh, who do you think you're talking to?”
He took the crowbar, wedged it in the safe and began to try to forcefully pry it open.
A couple minutes of work later and the safe broke open with a crack.
Alex reached in and pulled out the small jade ring, examining it in the light before abruptly shoving it on his finger. The ring magically stretched to accommodate the width of his finger, and Alex quickly began to look more and more fatigued.
Pulling it off he went back to looking normal in a matter of seconds, though he did drop the ring like it was a hot coal in the process. A moment later he carefully picked it back, clearly wary of the thing.
Then with a mischievous smile he tossed Michael the ring, “You have to try that on, it super trippy getting tired that quickly. It felt like I worked a 12 hour shift in a matter of seconds.”
“And all the exhaustion went away once you took it off?” Michael asked.
“Yeah, it was a weird feeling,” Alex said, nodding.
Shrugging his shoulders Michael put on the ring, waiting for the rush of fatigue to hit.
…
…
…
Nothing happened.
‘Well, that’s weird,’ Michael thought.
Though he didn’t have much time to question it before the two way mirror covering the far wall shattered as a bloated man covered in stitches barreled through it. His skin seemed to hang loose in spots and its stitches seemed to leak a mixture of blood and some thick black liquid. It was dressed in D-Class clothing, torn and bloody.
It sprinted towards Michael, who didn’t hesitate before raising his shotgun and firing a shot into the creature. The pellets hitting square in its chest, blowing a hole through the creature.
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
It collapsed to the ground, still and unmoving.
“Well, this is bad,” Michael said.
Looking through the broken window, it became evident rather quickly that things were going to get worse.
A scientist laid slumped against the far wall, lacerations and bite marks covering his body. He looked pale, and had likely bled out some time ago.
Michael reached down towards his belt and handed Alex his sidearm.
“I’ll be trusting you with this. Don’t make me regret it,” Michael said, holding eye contact with Alex.
“Whatever you say captain.”, he replied with a salute, nervously eyeing the corpse across the room.
Rolling his eyes, Michael reached down towards the dead scientist and began to dig through his coat.
Some quick rummaging later and he’d managed to find himself a keycard and some strawberry gum.
He took both.
Standing up, Michael scanned the keycard and the door quietly slid open. Apparently the things still work even when the power was out.
Michael then poked his head out into the hall, before immediately pulling it back in. Dozens of creatures like the one he’d just killed shuffled around the hallway. The end of which had the emergency containment door firmly shut, locking down this wing of the facility.
They we’re going to need to clear the hall, they couldn’t just let the monsters walk around while they were locked in here with them. It would only be a matter of time before some wondered over.
As if summoned by the thought two of the monsters began to make their way down the hall towards Michael’s room. They stumbled like drunk men leaving a pub, not showing a hint of deftness the one he’d just killed had displayed. Not yet at least.
‘Whelp, time to test out some toys,’ Michael thought.
“What did you see?”, Alex whispered to Michael.
Michael didn’t respond, instead reaching down to his side and grabbing one of his two grenades, before pulling the pin and flinging it out into the hall.
They both covered their ears as a deafening explosion echoed down the corridor.
Quickly looking back out, roughly eight of them seemed to still be alive, but many more were coming from the adjoining rooms.
“We need to clear the hall, let’s go Alex,” Michael said, stepping out from the room.
“Oh, ok”, Alex hesitantly replied, following close behind.
The two men aimed and fired their weapons carefully. Taking well placed shots and moving back as needed. The first assault of gunfire seemed to surprise them, but soon after they came out of rooms in droves. Like wasps with a kicked nest.
There were a concerning number of the creatures. They appeared to have slightly enhanced strength and speed, but lacked any sense of intelligence. That was at least the opinion Michael came to based on how they seemed to run blindly into their gunfire despite seeing the comrades falling.
Michael and Alex cleared the side rooms as they progressed, and what they saw wasn’t a good sight.
Bodies littered the floor, each one heavily mutilated. Blood splattered the walls and more of the infected were joining the bodies with each shot they took.
As they pushed down the hall, they eventually made it to the last room. This one has a particularly disturbing scene.
A scientist's body laid atop an operating table. It’s skin pulled back in various places and held down with clamps, black liquid dripped from careful incisions made along his thighs and his eyes stared wide in bloodshot towards the ceiling. Various medical instruments could be seen near the body, many of which Michael didn’t recognize, but they all had some level of dried blood covering them.
“Jesus Christ,” Alex muttered, taking a step back from the scene.
‘What the hell did this,’ Michael thought. Feeling it couldn’t have been the creatures they’d killed. They’d been far to stupid to do something like this.
They both moved further into the room, hesitantly, slowly, their guns raised and wary.
Alex moved closer to the examination table, peering down at the mutilated corpse when a gloved hand shot out of the dark towards him. Alex attempted to jump back, dumping his mag towards the hand that’d reached for him, but with each shot the hand didn’t falter.
It simply grabbed hold of Alex’s leg causing him to collapse to the ground without a sound, his body now unmoving and dead.
‘All of that from a touch, fuck,’ Michael internally cursed, eyes glued to the figure hiding in the shadows.
Michael immediately backpedaled, detaching the tether connecting him to Alex and putting his back to the exit, pointing his shotgun towards the figure all the while.
His flashlight illuminated the monster, it stood roughly six feet tall and wore a plague doctor mask. The rest of its body was completely covered in black robes with no skin visible anywhere.
“What the hell are you? Why would you do that” Michael asked, anger entering his tone. He hadn’t known Alex long, but he’d been a good man, and he’d considered him a friend.
“I am most simply put, a doctor,” the plague doctor answered in a distinctly British tone. “Firstly I must apologize, oh how I hate to use ambush tactics, it's something best left to miscreants and thieves, but you must understand. You two are very sick men, especially you,” the plague doctor said, pointing towards Michael.
”The roots of the pestilence have spread deep within you, an all consuming pathogen I’m afraid. You might just be one of the worst cases I’ve seen in decades. It saddens and disturbs me to see someone like you continue to walk this earth. What suffering you must be experiencing, what sorrow, please allow me to cure you as well,” the plague doctor emotionally said.
“Cure me, like you just did Alex? Do you think I’m a fucking idiot?” Michael asked, nearly yelling at this point.
He then fired the shotgun, impacting the plague doctor in the stomach, but it didn’t react. Hell, it barely even budged. Two more shots resulted with the same result, except the plague doctor had begun to move forwards.
The doctor’s stride was just a walk, no urgency in its steps. All the same it forced Michael to retreat back from it to stay out of its reach.
It was herding him down towards the end of the hallway. The dead end.
Panicking, Michael began to utilize everything at his disposal to slow the creature.
----------------------------------------------------------------
He used the grenade, it kept walking.
He used fire, it didn’t burn.
He used teargas, it didn’t slow.
He beat it with the crowbar, it simply kept approaching.
Until after some time, Michael’s back was up against the end of the hall, nowhere left for him to retreat to.
It’s arm reached out towards Michael, who pushed his body further against the wall. Hoping that in these last few seconds, the shift would take him away.
Michael wondered, how the hell Tommy survived worlds like these, maybe the hiding and crying strategy works better than he thought it would?
‘Whatever, at least he got to be an explorer, even if it was just for a short while,’ Michael thought with a smile before turning and spitting in the plague doctor’s face.
With that, the plague doctor's hand finally touched down on Michael's shoulder.