D-Class 330-9596: Ross | SCP D-Class [████████] Files

The fluorescent lights of the common area hummed a flat, dead note, casting a sickly pallor over the dozen or so D-Class scattered around the scuffed tables. Ross Adams sat with his back to the wall, a strategic habit from a life before concrete and steel. His brown eyes, calm and assessing, drifted over the room, cataloging the occupants. Like a new bruise on a another D-Class’s jaw, and a guard lingering a moment too long by the coffee machine, eyes lingering on another target.

Across from him, Jimmy O'Connell, 8245, leaned forward, his massive frame making the bolted-down chair creak in protest. "The new guy on C-Wing," Jimmy rumbled, his voice low. "Thinks he runs the showers before lunch. Tried to move in on Mikey."

Ross didn't look at Mikey, who was fidgeting with a loose thread on his sleeve. "And?" Ross's voice was a gravelly baritone, devoid of alarm.

"And he's reconsidered his schedule," Jimmy said, a grim smile touching his lips. "Politely."

"Good." Ross's eyes flicked to the young hacker. "Mikey, you finish tracing those service conduits from the blueprints Susan 'misplaced'?"

Mikey nodded, his fingers still picking at the thread. "Yeah. The old HVAC access behind the medical wing is a long shot, Ross. It's monitored, and the grates are welded from the outside after that last... incident with the slime thing."

"Every shot is a long shot in here," Ross replied, his tone even. "We're not looking for a guarantee, we're looking for a possibility. A crack in the armor." His gaze settled on Mikey. "What about the internal network? Any chatter about the AAP review board?"

Before Mikey could answer, the heavy security door hissed open. Dr. David Murray, looking young and earnest in his lab coat, stepped in, a tablet clutched to his chest along with a pair of two more researchers. His eyes scanned the room and landed on Ross with a flicker of relief.

"9596," David called out, his voice slightly too loud for the space. "You're up. Enrichment duty with 330-2165."

A few of the other D-Class glanced over, a mixture of pity and morbid curiosity in their eyes. Time with 'Robert' was a mixed bag, sometimes it was just talking, other times... well, other times people came back subtly changed or with something broken. Something missing on two occasions.

Ross stood smoothly and gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod to Jimmy—a silent command to watch Mikey—before turning to follow the researcher. As he passed a janitorial cart where a woman with shoulder-length black hair and blue eyes was silently mopping a spill, he paused for a half-second.

"Long day, Susan?" He flashed a playful, easy-going smile with his murmured question, his voice dropping to a more conversational tone.

She didn't look up, but her scrubbing slowed. "Aren't they all," she scoffed under her breath, her eyes darting towards a specific cabinet on her cart before she moved on.

Ross filed the information away, knowing he would need to find a way to discreetly pass by her cart soon. He fell into step behind Dr. Murray, his mind shifting to the far more dangerous calculus of a bored spatial warper. Another day, another transaction. But each one, he hoped, was a silent, invisible step towards that coastal town and the quiet sound of waves.

The harsh clang of the cell door sliding open was the first bell of Ross’s morning. He made aggressive eye contact with the guard that opened the damned thing as he finished the last of his tepid coffee substitute. Placing the plastic cup neatly in the center of his small metal table, he stood. Another guard joined the first in the doorway, sporting their black tactical gear stood in the doorway. Their stun batons holstered but hands resting near them, and boy did he know how easily and willing some of those guards were to use 'em.

"9596. Testing block. Let's go," the lead guard, a man Ross noted as Reynolds, said. His voice was flat, a bored recitation of protocol.

Ross nodded, falling into step between them without a word, hoping it wasn't something that would send him through a disinfectant chamber for three days straight again. The walk was a familiar gauntlet of sterile white corridors and the hum of fluorescent lights. His eyes, however, were never still. He noted the scuff mark on the floor near Supply Closet B—that was new. Maybe a struggle, breach, or moving furniture. He saw Nurse Garcia hurrying down a cross-corridor, her eyes meeting his for a fraction of a second before she looked away.

In the prep room, he submitted to the pat-down and the basic vitals check from a junior medic whose hands trembled slightly. It was a new face. Ross remained still, his voice a low rumble when he finally spoke. "Easy. You'll set off the machine if you're shaking like that."

He was then ushered through a heavy blast door of Testing Chamber 4, where one of the guards finally gave him directions, "Wait here. You'll be given your next orders soon."

He looked straight ahead at the door with a short sigh. Whatever lay before him, whether it be anomaly, more researchers, or some torture session, he would just use it to bring him closer to his goals. He would just need a find way like he had with everything else so far.

The heavy steel door hissed shut behind him, the sound of multiple bolts sliding home echoing in the sterile, white-tiled chamber. Ross stood still for a moment, his eyes scanning the room. Empty. No visible threat. Just him, the humming of the overhead lights, and the pervasive smell of cleaning product.

He ran a hand over his locs, pulling them tighter into the bun high on his head. A calculated gesture. A small show of control in a situation where he had none.

No briefing. No guards lingering outside the viewport. Just a shove and a locked door. That meant one of two things: either this was a low-risk observation, a test of him, not the anomaly, or whatever was in here with him was so unpredictable they didn't want to risk a researcher's neck.

His gaze swept the room again, slower this time.

"Alright," he murmured to the empty room, his voice low. "Let's see what the bill is today." He took a step forward, his posture relaxed but his senses screaming. Every instinct honed from a life of reading rooms and people was now focused on reading the seemingly empty space around him. Was he being watched? Was it being watched?

He needed to find the angle, and fast. Before the angle found him.

The air in the recreation hall tastes like recycled oxygen and the faint, coppery tang of something that no amount of filtration could ever quite scrub away. Ross sat at a small, bolted-down table, the plastic surface scarred with the initials of men long since terminated or promoted. Across from him, Jimmy O'Connell, or 8245, leaned forward, his massive frame making the chair creak in protest.

"They're tightening the screws, Ross," Jimmy muttered, his voice a low rumble. "Heard from a runner that the new Site Director is a real hard-ass about the AAP. More psych evals. More 'observed cooperative exercises'." He made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat. "It's a bloody maze."

Ross didn't look up from the crude map he was sketching on a napkin with a smuggled stub of pencil. It was a flowchart of the Anomalous Asset Protocol's stages, pieced together from David Murray's careless hints and his own observations.

"Then you just need to find the pattern." His voice was calm, a gravelly baritone that cut through the ambient noise of murmured conversations and the distant clang of security doors of Cafeteria 2-C. "They want compliance. They want predictability. So that's what we give them."

He finally lifted his gaze, dark brown eyes scanning the room. He noted the positions of the two guards by the main door, their postures relaxed. He'd spent weeks getting them comfortable with his presence, sharing dry jokes about the terrible coffee. It was a small investment, but small investments were how you built capital.

Not to mention the variables. Linda Garcia could be counted on to note his "exemplary stress tolerance" in his medical file. Susan Miller, if he asked nicely, might 'find' a lost report on AAP success metrics near his cell. And Robert... well, Robert was a last resort. A dangerous one. Asking the sentient spatial warper for a favor was like taking a loan from a dragon.

He folded the napkin carefully, tucking it into the waistband of his jumpsuit. "We play their game," Ross said, his tone final. "We just make sure we're the ones writing the rules." He gave Jimmy a thin, calculated smile. "Now, tell me what you've heard about this new 'cooperative exercise' with the cognitohazards. I need to know what we're walking into."

The lights in Site-330’s Sector 7 corridor flickered once, twice, and died, plunging the hallway into the dim, pulsing red of emergency lighting. The air, which a moment ago had been a sterile, recycled chill, was now thick with the smell of burnt sugar and hot metal. A distant, rhythmic thump-thump-thump echoed from the direction of the Heavy Containment wing, each impact shuddering through the reinforced floor plates.

In the resulting semi-darkness, Ross slipped from the doorway of a disused storage alcove, his loose D-Class jumpsuit whispering against the wall. His dark eyes scanned the corridor: left—clear, right—a flicker of movement and the crackle of a shorted-out security panel.

Not good.

His mind clicked through his options. The breach alarm had sounded five minutes ago, and either way, the protocol was practically set in stone. Lockdown, muster, and, for D-Class like him, find the nearest designated shelter and wait to be potentially used as a distraction.

However, Ross had no intention of being a distraction.

He moved, keeping to the shadows cast by the bulky environmental conduits that ran along the ceiling. His destination was three intersections down: Janitorial Closet J-7. Susan Miller’s territory. It was never on the official shelter list, but it had a solid door, no external camera once the maintenance panel was popped, and, if Susan was on shift, a cleaning cart with potential... amenities.

The heavy blast door of Testing Chamber 4 sealed behind him with a final, resonant thud. The silence that followed was thick, broken only by the low hum of machinery.

A speaker crackled to life overhead, the calm, and clinical voice of a researcher. "D-9596. Your objective is to pacify the subject. Calm it. Containment field integrity is currently at 78% and dropping. You have ten minutes before we initiate contingency measures. If you're successful, consider yourself promoted to it's handler."

Contingency measures. A sterile term for a bullet, a nerve agent, or something worse. Ross stood still for a moment, his hands held loosely at his sides, assessing.

His voice, when he finally spoke, was a low, gravelly baritone, deliberately calm and carrying easily across the chamber. "Hey. Look at me."

He took a single, slow step forward, making no sudden movements. "The guys in the white coats? They're getting nervous. And when they get nervous, they do stupid, permanent things. You don't want that. I don't want that." He took another step, now close enough to see the panic in the young man's eyes. "My name's Ross. You're having a real bad day, I get it."

He was playing a hunch, betting that beneath the anomalous power was just a scared being who responded to a voice of reason rather than a command. He was also acutely aware of the cameras watching his every move, the timer ticking down in some control room, and the very real possibility that the floor was about to give way beneath them both. All in a day's work.

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