━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━

|| The splatters dripped, dripped, dripped to the floor. ||

━━━━━━━━━▼━━━━━━━━━

The blaring of alarms echoed through the facility, loud and unending as instructions were hastily given out over the intercoms. You had been alone, passing through a stairwell, when the alarm began which effectively meant that the moment you went into a hallway, it was already empty. This was fine. You were totally okay with a containment breach happening when you weren't actively aiming to escape the facility.

Nothing was said about which SCP had broken containment but you assumed that it likely got out of control and there were now multiple ones roaming around now. There had to be some sort of protocol for staff evacuations or safe rooms but nothing for SCPs (or was that just for you specifically?). Were they just expecting you to survive? What a load of bull. The MTF would probably take forever to arrive so it would make more sense for you to try to find a place to sit around rather than wait for them.

The only good news was that you still had Clef's keycard. It would definitely save you a lot of time since you wouldn't have to run around searching for more keycards like last time. If you could get your hands on a level 5 keycard again though... Well, you could save that for later. For now, you had to decide where to go.

You could cross your own containment chamber off the list. It wouldn't be safe to stay in there if you got cornered. You didn't especially feel like going to Heavy Containment Zone and Light Containment Zone, where you were at right now, wasn't particularly interesting either. Maybe you could wander around until you found someone who could actually be helpful.

Since the breach had only just started, all the lights were fully functioning which gave you less to complain about in terms of lighting. It didn't quite suit the horror universe aesthetic when the lights weren't flickering every five seconds though. Well, no matter. It would all eventually fall apart anyways. As you walked through the now vacant halls, it struck you how silent everything felt without the ever present murmurs of various people walking about. Perhaps it was strange how quickly you had gotten used to the ambience of Site-17 after transferring.

Where would everyone be, you wondered. Many of the doctors you had met (the important ones? It sounded cruel when you worded it like that.) would probably be running around, taking advantage of the chaos. You had the feeling that this containment breach wasn't arranged by any of them but that didn't mean they couldn't further their own agendas during it. 073... he probably evacuated or something. Since he had been at Site-17 for far longer than you have, he likely knew what to do here during a breach. That or the staff actually evacuated him considering how important he was. Either way, he was far less fragile than you were. He would be fine.

You stepped forward and your feet sunk into the soft ground. Oh. Oh no.

You were careless.

The price you paid for just a moment of inattentiveness would bare its teeth here as a rotting hand grasped your ankle. Slowly, the dark puddle you stepped into grew wider and wider. Then, in a swift motion, the entirety of your body was pulled into the pocket dimension. A haunting laugh followed. Idiotic, you were absolutely foolish. You should have known that nothing would go smoothly so long as you were still alive.

And now, you were alone.

It was dark within the pocket dimension, your eyes still adjusting from the bright lights of the hallways. Unsteadily, you stood upright, noting the dull ache in one ankle where 106 had grabbed you. The smell of rotting flesh permeated throughout the dimension. Although you didn't like the sterile cleanness of citrus in the facility, it was far better than this.

106's pocket dimension was exactly what you expected it to be. That was to say, it looked the same as the one in SCP Containment Breach. SCP: Unity was unfinished, discontinued, so the pocket dimension was never actually implemented into the game. You would have been perfectly content with never entering it in the first place but too late for that now. You had to get going, otherwise, 106 will pick a way to torture you himself.

It didn't really matter which corridor you picked, one way or another, you were going to die. The fact of the matter was such: there was no universe in which you were lucky enough to get the exit room on the first try. With great difficulty, you walked forward into one of the halls. Slowly, step by step, you descended into darkness.

In an instant, the world filled around you. The room you ended up in was the one with pillars. Tall columns stood over the abyss below with you in the center-most pillar. 106, who was floating upside down, was watching you on the furthest pillar. The principle of this room was simple. You needed to get down and walk to the pillar with a well that would drop you into a random room in the pocket dimension. In the meantime, 106 would progressively teleport to closer and closer pillars as you blinked, eventually catching up and killing you.

Nice and easy.

You looked over the edge of your pillar. Carefully, you dropped down from the top to the mossy ledge and stayed close to the base as you slowly descended, bit by bit, around the pillar. On the last drop, there was a small walkway that was connected to another path. You swayed unsteadily as you walked. One wrong step and you would fall into oblivion. Upon reaching the second path, you turned right and continued to the hole within the column.

Without hesitation, you fell down and let the dimension take you elsewhere. 106's pleased laughter rang as you cleared the area. Honestly, screw that guy. Did he really have to pull you in here at the very beginning of the breach? Your slowly deteriorating health was going to suck until you got a medkit and the longer you stayed here, the worse it was going to be.

If you died, you wondered where you would end up. Probably back in the initial room in the pocket dimension since life could never give you nice things like dropping you back during a more convenient time. You'd live and survive no matter what life threw at you though.

Still, when you got out, how much of your body would be gone to the corrosion? What kind of image would your corpse leave? Flesh bitten by rot, melded into the floor, or simply dissolved into mucus? Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. It would be better to not think of such things when death was the better option compared to eternal torture.

The next area you ended up in looked like the metal corridors in the Heavy Containment Zone. The ground was solid beneath your feet, the doors were closed, there was no bloodstain on the floor and the lighting was all wrong. A trick. It was almost too easy to tell when things felt off here. Your ankle still throbbed as you placed weight on it and the world still smelled like sulfur and rot.

Blood began to trickle down your nose. You reached up to wipe it away. The splatters dripped, dripped, dripped to the floor.

"I see..." you murmured. "We can't win all the time, huh?"

Stumbling to one side of the room, it didn't really matter which, you hit the button, smearing your blood on it. The door opened up to reveal darkness. You simply dropped down without a care in the world and waited to see where you would end up as wind rippled through your hair. The world cleared to reveal a stone path. Just the place you needed to be. You could make it out, that is, if you didn't get hit by the pendulum and die first.

You walked forward, staying towards the left side of the path, stopping halfway to the bend. The pendulum swung in front of you, just barely missing your nose. Ugh. Doing this in real life was so much worse than doing so in the game. In life, you could feel the wind from the pendulum swinging (and damn was it fast) and you could feel how your health steadily corroded as the throbbing in your ankle got worse. You were beginning to feel light-headed. When you blinked, the image of 106 flickered behind your eyes.

You had to keep walking forward. Even with the dirt and blood that filled the gaps between the stones, you needed to continue.

Pause at the bend, wait for the pendulum, move to the right and keep walking. In a brief moment of weakness, your foot slipped, going right off the edge. Ah, you knew that the ankle 106 grabbed would come to bite you eventually. At that very second, the pendulum swung back around and hit you. And it ended just like that, you becoming a smear on the pendulum, a mere puddle of blood on the stone path.

At least it was a quick death.

The problem with knowledge was that just because you knew something didn't mean you would be able to execute it in reality. There will always be limitations, things beyond your control, things you can't do. It would be easy to say "just do this" and survive. It was more difficult to actually achieve those things when almost everything and everyone around you was out to kill you.

Human bodies were so very fragile. One slight misstep would set your plans back, one minor injury could mean the difference between life and death. If only things were as simple as willing them into existence. Oh well. No point wishing for things that would never come true.

You awakened in the first intersection of the pocket dimension because, of course, the universe never made anything easy for you. Your ankle definitely didn't feel as bad as it did before. If you could make it out quickly this time, you may just be able to survive this containment breach without irreversibly f*cking up your health. Which hall should you go down? Let's see... just not the one directly in front of you that you went through last time. You might as well just go down the one next to it.

Once more, you ambled down the corridor and into the darkness. You caught a brief glimpse of the main intersection again before tumbling down into another area.

"Oh sh–" you cursed as you fell.

How mean. You totally thought it was just going to spit you out back to the original intersection. No matter, the four-way intersection was a fairly good place to end up too. You could try your hand at the pendulum again without your ankle hurting as bad. Assuming you got past it, of course, or even reached it in the first place. Two in four, one in two chance, for you to get the stone path. You picked a random hall and went down.

As anyone would expect, you did not end up at the pendulums. Rather, it was the room of coffins. Ah, right. Lore. Backstory. Possibilities and potential what-ifs. Well, what was there to say about 106? Not much, in actuality. The main tale accepted as his backstory would be "The Young Man" where 106, or Lawrence as he was called, was a corporal in World War One. From the look of this coffin room, you figured that was the one that was canon here.

Regardless, the other possibility was connected to SCP 3001. The short of it was that 106 was actually Dr. Scranton who finally escaped the red reality. Obviously, the experience had twisted him quite a bit. The tale itself, "Until Death" was more focussed on his wife, Anna though. That didn't particularly matter when that tale wasn't canon though. 106 would be here happily torturing hapless souls, Dr. Scranton would be... somewhere, and Anna would still be working at the foundation, never to see her husband again.

All's well that ends well. You had bigger worries than sorting out other people's tragedies.

You made a cursory glance around the coffin room. Faint coughing and wheezing occasionally passed, ominous as ever. There were six coffins on each side of the room, too far up for you to see what was in them. You looked down to the floor to see the message left in the dark puddle on the floor. You pointedly ignored the severed finger nestled between the gaps of the tiles. The message read 'My name is not 106'.

"Yeah," you muttered spitefully, "none of our names are numbers. But that's what happens here when you don't tell anyone your name and nobody remembers even if you do."

Maybe you were being hypocritical, especially when you were the one to tell others that calling you by your number was fine. With nothing else to see, you turned around and began shimmying back to the intersection. The ground swayed and wobbled as you stared down the halls. Two in three chances of getting to the pendulum. You could do it, right?

You chose the hall directly in front of you and walked forward without hesitation. The path continued onward, suspended over darkness. The pendulum swung in the same figure-eight pattern as usual. You couldn't say you weren't relieved to have not dropped into the red Throne Room. That would be another problem entirely. Your ankle still throbbed but less than last time when you were attempting to cross the path. You took a deep breath in. Alright. Time to go.

The same as last time, you walked forward along the left side of the path, pausing about halfway to the bend. The pendulum swung past you and you continued walking on the same side until the bend. Blood dribbled down your nose. You took the moment you remained still to wipe it away. After the pendulum passed you again, you moved to the right side of the path and didn't stop walking. If you stopped, you would undoubtedly die.

Your head was throbbing again. You winced as the image of 106 shook when you blinked. Being in the pocket dimension sucked. Trudging along unsteadily, you made it to the end of the path and practically threw yourself down the hole at the end. In a smooth motion, the mossy stone that surrounded you transitioned into darkness, then, into a vaguely familiar hall.

Relief crashed over you like a wave. You tumbled over to the wall closest to you, trying to take pressure off your injured ankle. There was probably still blood smeared all over your face, wasn't there? Whatever, you would deal with that later.

"Haa..." you sighed. "Finally done with that f*cker..."

You were out.

———

New SCPs in this chapter:

N/A

———

Published: October 31, 2022

Word count: 2,499

Death Counter: 20

———

Hi, I'm back, hiatus wasn't very interesting but school has legitimately been trying to kill me so writing time has been at an all time low since September. Literally just trying to pass my courses, man, I have no time at all to write. Also life has been rearing it's ugly head (health related complications with family member) which sucks. Also my laptop isn't functional at the moment so do forgive me for formatting errors. Unedited chapter because busy.

Happy Halloween! Thanks for reading!