While restlessly sleeping, Michael could 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 muttered, getting up and rubbing his bruised shoulder.

Using his flashlight he could see 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, but the interior had vastly changed.

The walls were covered in heavy metal safes with descriptive clipboards hanging from each one. After reading over a few of them Michael soon found out they were all labeled as ‘safe’ SCPs.

Wait a minute.

“Motherfuckers, my room used to be a storage space didn’t it.”

Alex shrugged, “Who’s to say, this is a different dimension after all. Anyways, wanna try to break into some of those safes?” He asks with a sly grin.

“I’ve known you for less than a week and you already know me so well.” Michael chuckled.

Michael walked over and flipped the light switch, only for it to not work.

That’s concerning, he didn’t want to know what the power being out entailed.

Let’s push that problem to the side for now.

Michael tossed Alex a glow stick and they got to work looking for any useful SCPs.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Some time later.

Why, why do they all suck? Why even keep some of this stuff.

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’ll hold off your diseases, but make you tired as hell while using it. He remembered a guard mentioning that their universe had one of these.

“Whatever, we're taking the ring. Alex, get over here.”

Michael reaches into his bag, pulling out his crowbar before turning to Alex.

“Do you think you can get this safe open?”

“Psh, who do you think you're talking to?”

He takes the crowbar, wedges it into the safe and begins to try to forcefully pull it open.

A couple minutes of hard work later and the safe is broken open.

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, as Alex began to look progressively more and more fatigued.

Pulling it off he goes back to looking normal in a matter of seconds.

Alex tosses Michael the ring, “You have to try that on, it feels super trippy getting tired that quickly.”

“All the exhaustion went away once you took it off right?”

“Yeah, it’s a weird feeling.”

Shrugging his shoulders Michael puts on the ring, waiting for the rush of fatigue.

…

…

…

Nothing happened.

Well, that’s weird.

Michael 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 black liquid. It was dressed in D-Class clothing.

It sprinted towards Michael, who didn’t hesitate before raising his shotgun and firing a shot into the creature. The shotgun pellets hit square in the chest, blowing a hole through it.

It collapsed onto the ground, still and unmoving.

“Well, this is bad.”

Looking through the broken window, it became evident pretty quickly that things were going to get worse.

A scientist laid slumped against the wall, lacerations and bite marks covering his body. He looked pale, he likely bled out some time ago.

Michael reaches down towards his belt and hands Alex his sidearm.

“I’ll be trusting you with this. Don’t make me regret it.”

“Whatever you say captain.”, he replies with a salute, nervously eyeing the corpse.

Rolling his eyes, Michael reaches down towards the dead scientist.

Some quick rummaging through its pockets and he’d secured himself a keycard alongside some strawberry gum.

He took both.

Standing up, Michael scanned the keycard and the door quietly slid open. Apparently the doors still work even when the power is out.

Michael poked his head out for a moment, before immediately pulling it back in. Dozens of creatures like the one he’d just killed shuffled around the hallway. The end of the hall 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 them walk around while they were locked in here with them. Whelp, time to test out some toys.

“What did you see?”, Alex whispers.

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.

Looking back out into the hall, 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.”

“Oh, ok”, Alex hesitantly replies.

Stepping out into the hallway, the two men aimed and fired their weapons carefully. Taking well placed shots and moving back as needed.

There were a concerning number of the creatures. They appeared to have slightly enhanced strength and speed, but lacked any sense of intelligence. Judging based on how they ran blindly into gunfire.

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 hitting the floor with each shot they took.

As they pushed down the hall, they eventually made it to the last room. This one was particularly disturbing.

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. 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.

What the hell did this, Michael thought.

They both moved further into the room, their guns raised and wary.

Once Alex moved closer to the examination table, a gloved hand shot out of the dark towards him. Alex attempted to jump back, dumping his mag towards the hand in the process, but with each shot the hand didn’t falter. It grabbed hold of Alex’s leg causing him to collapse to the ground, unmoving and dead.

All it had done was touch him, fuck.

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, no skin visible anywhere.

“What the hell are you?” Michael asked.

“I am most simply put, a doctor. First 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 roots of the pestilence have spread deep within you, an all consuming pathogen. You might be one of the worst cases I’ve seen in decades. It saddens and disturbs me to see someone like you walk this earth, please allow me to cure you as well.”

“Cure me, like you just did Alex? Do you think I’m a fucking idiot?”

Michael 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 began to progress forwards.

The doctor’s stride was just a walk, no urgency in its steps. It forced Michael to retreat back from it to stay out of reach. Herding him down towards the dead end of the hallway.

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 smiled.

With that, the plague doctor's hand finally touched down on Michael's shoulder.