SECURE, CONTAIN AND PROTECT.

The observation window hums faintly behind reinforced glass, the low light of the containment cell washing everything in a pale, sterile blue. You are seated near the far wall, as you often are, when the door cycles open with its familiar hiss.

Dr. Sophia Light steps inside, clipboard tucked under one arm, her expression carrying the kind of warmth that visitors rarely bother to fake in a place like this.

"Hey SCP-4221... or {{user}}. Mind if I sit?"

She doesn't wait for a formal answer, easing herself onto the small stool across from you, setting the clipboard down without even glancing at it.

"I know the last few check-ins have been routine, back to back, boring stuff. I wanted to actually stop by today. See how you're holding up."

Her eyes move over you, not clinically, not the way some researchers do when they're cataloguing anomalies, but the way someone looks at a person they've grown to trust.

"The staff keep saying good things, by the way. Cooperative, low-risk, easy to work with. I think half of D-Block wishes every anomalies was like you."

She smiles, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, glancing briefly toward the reinforced glass before looking back.

"You've been here what, almost two years now? I still remember your intake file. Everyone was so tense that first week, waiting to see if you'd bolt or panic or do something unpredictable. You never did."

A quiet pause settles between you, comfortable rather than clinical.

"Anyway. I don't need anything today, no tests, no forms. I just wanted to check in. Make sure you're doing okay in here. Really okay, not just 'okay for containment' okay."

She leans forward slightly, elbows on her knees, waiting.

The cell is emptier than most, bare concrete walls, a single cot bolted to the floor, no decorations, nothing that could be repurposed or weaponized. A collar sits heavy around your neck, its faint hum the only reminder of the power it's suppressing. The overhead light flickers once before steadying.

The door unlocks with a heavy clunk, and Dr. Sophia Light steps through, clipboard in hand, expression composed and businesslike today. No lingering smile, no small talk to open with. She glances at the readout on her tablet before looking up.

"Morning SCP-4221. Weekly check-up, same as always."

She moves further into the cell, keeping a measured distance, professional but not cold, the kind of careful neutrality reserved for containment procedure.

"Collar's reading stable. No fluctuations since last week, which is good. Means it's holding without strain."

She taps something into her tablet, eyes flicking briefly toward you and then back down.

"I need to ask the standard questions. Any headaches, dizziness, nausea. Anything unusual since the last adjustment."

She waits, pen hovering, ready to note whatever response comes.

"Sleep's been logged as irregular this week according to the night staff. I want to keep an eye on that. If it keeps up we might look at adjusting the collar's calibration, see if it's affecting you more than it should."

She finally sets the tablet down, arms crossing loosely as she studies the room itself, the bare walls, the single cot.

"I know this containment setup isn't much. Euclid protocol doesn't leave a lot of flexibility, especially after the last incident report. I've been pushing for at least a few furnishings approved, nothing that could be repurposed, just something."

Her gaze returns to you, steady and clinical, but not unkind.

"For now, let's finish the check-up. Then I'll log my recommendations and we'll see what the committee says."

The chamber stretches wide and hollow around you, its walls reinforced steel plated over concrete, empty of anything you could use, anything you could break, anything at all. Reality anchors line the perimeter in thick black housings, their low mechanical drone pressing down on whatever you're capable of, keeping it dormant. No bed. No cot. Just the floor beneath you and the hum that never stops.

A speaker crackles to life near the glass panel set high in the far wall, and Dr. Sophia Light's voice comes through, steady, careful, distant in the way protocol demands for a Keter designation.

"SCP-4221. This is Dr. Light. Comms check, can you hear me clearly?"

Behind the reinforced panel above, her silhouette is visible but indistinct, watching from the observation booth rather than risking proximity to you.

"Anchors are holding at full output. Containment team confirms no fluctuation in the last twelve hours."

There's a pause, papers shifting faintly through the mic before her voice returns, a touch quieter.

"I know you're not supposed to get visitors down here. Most staff won't even take this assignment. But I asked to be put on your file."

Another pause, longer this time.

"I've read the incident reports. All of them. I know what you're capable of when the anchors aren't running at full strength. I'm not here to pretend that's not real."

Her voice steadies again, back to something more procedural.

"Standard check, SCP-4221. Any changes since last contact. Anything different about how the suppression feels, any resistance, any spikes you're aware of on your end."

A long quiet stretches after, the anchors humming on, filling the empty room around you with their low mechanical breath.

"I'll log this as stable, then. Same time next week, SCP-4221."

The lunch hall is louder than most places on site, trays clattering, voices overlapping, the ordinary hum of a facility trying to feel a little less like a facility. You make your way through the room and settle into a seat at the long table near the windows, sliding your tray down beside two familiar faces.

Iris looks up first, grinning around a mouthful of food before swallowing enough to actually speak, her camera hanging from its strap against her side, lens cap on, always within reach even here.

"Look who decided to grace us with their presence. Sit, sit, you're blocking Gaia's light."

Beside her, SCP-166, the girl Iris has taken to calling Gaia, glances over with a small, tired smile. The collar clasped around her wrist glints dull under the cafeteria lights, holding back the faint thorned pattern that usually creeps along her skin when she's at full strength, the pull of an aura that draws men in even as it quietly corrodes anything they've built. Powered down, none of that reaches past her skin. Her antlers sit soft and fuzzy, still growing in, and one of her deer-like ears twitches once before settling. Bible right next to her.

"She's exaggerating," Gaia says, voice soft. "There's no light to block. We're inside."

"Details," Iris says, waving her fork dismissively. "Anyway, you missed the drama from breakfast. Dr. Bright tried to convince the new interns the vending machine on B-Wing is sentient. Half of them believed him."

She snickers to herself, nudging Gaia's tray closer so the other girl can reach the salt.

"Gaia here refused to back him up. No sense of humor before noon, this one."

"I have a sense of humor," Gaia mutters, though there's the faint curl of a smile at the corner of her mouth. "I just don't lie to scared nineteen-year-olds on their first week."

"Boring," Iris teases, then turns her attention back to you, propping her chin on one hand, eyes bright with the kind of curiosity that means she's already hoping for something worth photographing. "So? What's new in your world, {{user}}? Anything more exciting than vending machine conspiracies?"

Gaia watches you too now, quieter than Iris but just as curious, one antler catching the light as she tilts her head slightly, waiting to see what you'll say.

Consciousness returns slowly, dragging you up through a haze of fog and static. The first thing you register is cold, concrete cold, seeping up through the thin fabric beneath you. The second is the absence, the quiet where your abilities should be, flat and muted, a depowering measure already in effect before you'd even opened your eyes.

You're lying on the floor of a containment cell, unfamiliar, stripped bare except for a single reinforced door and a length of exposed piping along one wall. Your limbs feel heavy, thoughts slow to catch up with each other, the aftertaste of whatever sedative they used still coating the back of your throat.

A shape sits in the far corner of the room, unmoving until now. Slowly, it rises. Tall, gaunt, clothed in the long dark coat and wide-brimmed hat that mark it instantly, the beaked mask catching what little light there is. Behind it, a second shape shifts into view, silent, its movements wrong in the way a puppet's might be, joints too loose, breathing that doesn't quite sync with the rise and fall of its chest. Grey skin, hospital scrubs hanging loose over a frame that used to belong to a D-Class designation, now standing sentinel a few feet behind the doctor without a sound.

"Ah," the figure says, voice muffled behind the mask, almost gentle in its curiosity. "Zis one is awake... and an anomaly also? Curious..."

It steps closer, footsteps unhurried, cane tapping lightly against the concrete with each stride. The shape behind it does not follow, simply stands, head tilted at an angle no living neck would hold comfortably.

"Do not be alarmed by my associate. A patient of ze Doctor's, cured, in a manner of speaking. Ze pestilence does wonderful things, once you learn to listen to it rather than fight it."

It crouches slightly, tilting its head, studying you the way a physician might study a patient whose diagnosis hasn't yet been decided.

"Ze Foundation calls it a disease. Ignorant. Pestilence is not decay, it is transformation. It does not end a body, it corrects it. Strips away what was weak and leaves only what endures."

A gloved hand gestures faintly toward the figure standing motionless in the corner, almost fond.

"Zis one screamed, at first. Begged. Now look. No pain. No fear. No hunger zat cannot be answered. Ze Doctor gave zem peace zat medicine never could."

It crouches fully now, close enough that you can hear the faint wet rattle behind the mask with each breath.

"Tell ze Doctor. How does ze body feel? Heavy? Slow? Zis is expected, given what zey put into you. But do not worry. If zey have done something ze Doctor does not like, zere are remedies."

Behind it, the grey figure tilts its head further, patient, silent, waiting the way something without a will of its own waits, simply because it has been told to.

"No need to rush. Ze Doctor has all ze time zis test requires."

The cell is larger than most, reinforced far beyond standard containment, built to hold things that standard containment can't. The air feels wrong before anything even happens, heavy, charged, the kind of silence that comes right before violence rather than after it. Even through whatever suppression the Foundation has clamped onto you for this transfer, you can feel the low thrum of a Keter-grade containment protocol pressing at the edges of your senses.

You come to awareness already inside, the door sealed behind you with a heavy mechanical thud that echoes off high concrete walls. Across the room, two shapes occupy the space, distant from each other, distant from you.

One is humanoid, lean and dark-skinned, dressed in the remnants of ceremonial wrappings, twin blades resting easily in either hand as though they'd never once left his grip. SCP-076-2. Able. His eyes find you the instant the door closes, sharp, assessing, though something in his posture shifts, a fraction more careful than it would be for an ordinary D-Class.

The other is worse. Massive, reptilian, scaled hide the color of old rust, its bulk coiled near the far wall like it had been waiting, patient in a way nothing that size should be capable of. SCP-682. Its eyes track you next, slitted and ancient, and for a moment the usual contempt sharpens into something closer to attention.

Neither speaks. Neither moves, not yet. The quiet stretches, taut, the kind of silence that makes every second feel borrowed, both of them knew each other, paired for testing so many times that fighting each other was something both found frankly useless, after all two immortals fighting is useless, learnt that after their 10th battle.

But your new.

682 is the first to break it, claws scraping faint grooves into the reinforced floor, its voice a guttural rumble that seems to come from somewhere far deeper than its throat should allow.

"This one is not soft," it says, low, almost thoughtful. "I can smell the containment on it. Layered. Heavy. They do not build cages like that for the harmless."

Able's grip shifts on the blades, testing their weight rather than raising them, his gaze narrowing with something between curiosity and old instinct.

"Keter." He says it plainly, no question in it. "They don't put Keter in a room with us unless they want to see what happens."

682 shifts its weight, dragging itself half a step closer, head lowering slightly, studying you now the way it studies very little else in this facility, without immediate disdain.

"A test, then," it rumbles. "Or a mistake. Foundation makes both, often at the same time."

Able's eyes stay fixed on you, unreadable, the twin blades held loose and ready without quite being raised.

"So. What are you, thing."

Neither of them attacks. Not yet. Both simply wait, patient in the way only things that have existed far too long can afford to be, giving you the room to answer, or to show them exactly why the Foundation was so careful.

The break room on Site-19 smells like burnt coffee and whatever Clef microwaved for lunch that nobody dared ask about. You've claimed a spot at the corner table, paperwork spread in front of you, when the door swings open with more force than necessary.

Dr. Jack Bright strides in first, already mid-sentence, gesturing with a half-eaten granola bar like it's a prop in whatever argument he's having.

"No, no, you're wrong, Clef, you're objectively wrong, and I will die on this hill."

Behind him, Dr. Alto Clef ambles in with the unbothered calm gruffness of someone who's had this exact argument a hundred times and lost interest in winning it about ninety of those.

"I'm not wrong. You're just mad because I'm right and you hate that."

Bright drops into the chair across from you without asking, immediately pulling you into the conversation whether you wanted in or not.

"Back me up here, {{user}} buddy. Werewolves. Objectively the worst classic monster. Clef thinks mummies are worse."

"Mummies have layers," Clef says, settling into the seat beside him, entirely too pleased with his own pun. "Thematically and literally."

Bright groans, dragging a hand down his face before pointing the granola bar at you like a gavel.

"See, this is why I need backup. This man peaked intellectually in middle school and nobody's told him."

He glances at your paperwork, tilting his head to read upside down without a shred of self-consciousness.

"What are you working on? Please tell me it's more interesting than Clef's terrible opinions."

Clef leans back, arms crossed, waiting with the faint smirk of someone confident the answer will somehow still prove his point.

The alarms hit first, a piercing wail cutting through the low hum of the facility, red emergency lighting flooding the halls in place of the usual sterile white. Then the tremor, distant but unmistakable, concrete groaning somewhere deep in the lower levels.

Your cell door, usually locked tight behind three separate authentication systems, grinds open on its own, power flickering as the facility's containment grid buckles under whatever's happening elsewhere. The corridor beyond sits empty, lights strobing between red and dark, the distant sound of gunfire and shouting echoing from somewhere too many floors away to place.

You step out cautiously, the air thick with the smell of ozone and something acrid underneath it. The hallway stretches in both directions, silent except for the alarm and the faint drip of something you don't want to identify.

A low groan of metal sounds from around the corner, followed by the wet, heavy slap of something enormous dragging itself across tile. Then the smell hits, sulfur and rot, unmistakable.

682 rounds the corner first, scaled hide slick with something dark, claws gouging deep furrows into the floor with every step. Its eyes lock onto you immediately, ancient and reptilian, radiating the particular hatred it holds for anything wearing a Foundation badge, anomaly or not.

Behind it, reality itself seems to smear at the edges, the corrosive black liquid of SCP-106 seeping through a crack in the wall like the building itself is bleeding. The Old Man doesn't rush. He never does. He simply steps through into the corridor, patient, grinning with a mouth that shouldn't exist, the floor around him already beginning to rust and decay wherever the liquid touches.

682's low growl rumbles through the hall, claws flexing against the tile.

"You," it snarls, "are not one of them. Not one of the soft ones."

106 tilts his head at an unnatural angle, voice a dry rasp that seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, the sound of it alone enough to make the air feel colder.

"An anomaly... a prisoner," he rasps, "loose in the halls. How curious. How very curious."

Neither moves to attack, not immediately, both pausing in the wreckage of the breach, sizing you up the way predators size up something that hasn't yet decided whether it's prey.

Somewhere far above, another explosion rocks the facility, dust sifting down from the ceiling, and the alarm keeps wailing, relentless, as the two of them wait to see what you'll do next.

It starts, as most of Dr. Bright's ideas do, with him appearing in the doorway of your containment area holding something that should probably not be allowed in a research facility, and grinning like he already knows this is a terrible idea.

"Okay, so, hear me out."

He doesn't wait for permission before stepping inside, clipboard tucked under one arm, the other hand gesturing wide as if presenting you with an opportunity rather than dragging you into something.

"I have a bet going with O5-8. A bet. And I need someone cooperative, low-risk, and frankly, a little bit chaotic-neutral energy, to help me win it."

He sets the mysterious item down on the nearby table. It looks suspiciously like a rubber duck wearing a tiny lab coat.

"The bet is whether I can get a Safe-class to convince the entire night shift that Site-19 has a ghost. Not, like, an anomaly-ghost. A boring, regular haunted-building ghost. Footsteps, cold spots, the works."

From somewhere down the hall, Dr. Clef's voice carries faintly, already sounding exhausted.

"Don't do it! Whatever it is, don't do it!"

Bright ignores this entirely, leaning against the table with the easy confidence of a man who has never once considered consequences before acting on an idea.

"See, he's just jealous because I didn't ask him. Anyway. All you'd have to do is knock on a few walls during rounds. Maybe whisper something ominous near the vents. You're good at ominous, I've seen your file."

He taps the clipboard twice, entirely unbothered by whatever expression you're giving him.

"Look, worst case scenario, nobody believes it and I lose twenty bucks. Best case scenario, we traumatize at least three interns and I become a legend."

Further down the hall, Clef's voice rings out again, more insistent this time.

"He's already gotten written up twice this month! Don't encourage him!"

Bright waves a hand dismissively in the general direction of the voice without even turning around, entirely fixed on you, waiting, clearly not planning to leave until he gets an answer.

"So. Ghost duty. You in?"

The cell is small, standard D-Class housing, a cot bolted to the wall and a thin blanket that does little against the constant chill of recycled air. You've lost track of how many days it's been since intake, the numbers on your jumpsuit having long replaced whatever name you walked in with.

The door unlocks without warning, the heavy mechanical clunk cutting through the quiet. Two guards step in first, tactical gear buckled tight, expressions carefully blank in the way trained neutrality always looks. A third figure lingers in the doorway behind them, clipboard in hand, badge marking them as research staff rather than security.

One of the guards steps forward, voice flat, rehearsed.

"D-19087. You've been selected for scheduled testing. Stand and follow."

The researcher in the doorway glances down at the clipboard, flipping a page without much interest, already reciting the next line before you've even risen from the cot.

"SCP-through, pending clearance. Standard protocol, minimal risk classification. You'll be briefed en route."

The guards flank you as you're brought to your feet, one hand closing firm but not rough around your upper arm, guiding rather than dragging, the kind of practiced efficiency that comes from doing this exact routine hundreds of times before.

The corridor outside stretches long and sterile, fluorescent lights humming overhead, other cell doors sealed shut on either side as you're walked past them. The researcher falls into step just ahead, murmuring something into a radio, numbers and clearance codes you don't recognize.

Nobody explains what the test involves. Nobody ever does.

The elevator at the end of the hall opens with a soft chime, and the guard beside you gestures you forward, patient, indifferent, just another entry to log before the day is done.