[Third Person]
Rain fell in cold, silver curtains, a veil concealing the four-person team huddled in the undergrowth across the perimeter fence of Low-Security Depot 734. The facility seemed asleep, a beast of concrete and steel snoring beneath the storm.
"Perimeter power grid is on a closed loop. Five minutes until I can create an overload to fry it," Eva whispered into her comm, her fingers dancing across the keyboard of her reinforced terminal, shielded from the rain by a camouflage tarp.
Leo, lying beside her, closed his eyes and activated his new skill. The world didn't vanish, but transformed.
[Tactical Analysis Lv. 1 activated]
A ghostly, pale green data overlay appeared over his real-world vision. He saw the fence not as a mere obstacle, but as a system. Lines of code indicated points of highest electrical tension, a subtle glow marked the location of vibration sensors buried in the mud, and a blinking arrow pointed to the nearest security camera, indicating its blind spot with pinpoint accuracy.
"Eva," he whispered, "the overload will draw attention. Camera three, in the northwest corner, has a 1.7-meter blind spot directly beneath it. If we cut the fence there, we can slip through without frying the entire grid. Quieter."
Eva stopped typing. She turned her head and stared at him in the darkness, her usual skepticism battling against the logic of his suggestion. "How in hell do you know that?"
"I had a lot of time to study Foundation security manuals while I was hiding," Leo lied smoothly. It was a half-truth. He had spent countless hours on game forums and wikis, memorizing map layouts. His System was simply applying that forgotten knowledge.
Silas, listening over the comm, made a decision. "Do what the kid says. Silence is our friend tonight. Axel, get ready to cut."
Eva looked annoyed, but nodded and shifted her focus. Ten minutes later, the fence was cut without a single spark, and Delta Cell slipped into the Foundation compound like ghosts in the rain.
The distraction was anything but silent. Silas and Axel placed a demolition charge on a secondary generator in the facility's west wing. The resulting explosion was a thunderous roar that lit up the night, followed by the shrill shriek of alarms.
"That's our signal," Silas said over the comm. "You've got twenty minutes. See you at extraction point."
As emergency lights began to flicker and the shouts of guards echoed in the distance, Leo and Eva crouched and ran towards a service door in the east wing. The electronic lock yielded with a soft click under Eva's technological magic. They entered.
The interior was sterile and cold. Long, identical corridors, illuminated by the red glow of emergency lights. "Server room's two floors down. I'll watch the hallway. Don't take long, ghost," Eva hissed, drawing her silenced pistol.
Leo nodded and slipped down the stairs. He found the door, swiped the access card Eva had cloned for him, and entered the heart of local security. The hum of the servers was a constant chorus. Using [Tactical Analysis], the security console lit up in his System vision like a Christmas tree. He saw the firewalls, the surveillance subroutines, the log files. Eva's instructions, coming through his earpiece, were clear, but his System augmented them, pointing out the exact commands to input, predicting the Foundation software's countermeasures. It was like playing an incredibly tense rhythm game.
Video loop on cameras 1 to 12... ACTIVATEDVault 3-C pressure sensors... DEACTIVATEDLast hour access logs... ERASED
"Ghost in the nest," Leo whispered into his mic, feeling a surge of euphoria. "Local systems bypassed. Vault is blind."
"Well done, ghost," Silas's voice replied. "Regroup at Vault 3-C. Axel and I are on our way."
They rendezvoused in front of a circular steel door with a large "3-C" painted in yellow. There was no keypad or card reader. Just solid steel.
"My turn," Axel growled, pulling on goggles and igniting a thermal lance. The device roared to life with a furious hiss, spitting a jet of hot, white plasma. The smell of burning metal filled the air as Axel began to cut a circle into the vault door.
Minutes later, a massive steel disc crashed inward with a clang that echoed down the hallway. They stepped into the darkness, their flashlights cutting through the gloom. The vault was enormous, much larger than the blueprints suggested, filled with metal shelving that disappeared into the darkness. On the shelves, dozens of objects sat in plexiglass containment boxes, each with an SCP label.
"There," Eva said, pointing her flashlight. In a reinforced display case, SCP-127 rested. It looked like a twisted mass of bone and muscle, vaguely pistol-shaped. Beside it, on a padded pedestal, was SCP-1139, the silver pendant, its milky gem seeming to absorb light.
Silas smashed the display case with his rifle butt and grabbed SCP-127. The living weapon twitched slightly in his hand, adapting to his grip. Eva, wearing insulated gloves, carefully picked up the pendant and placed it in a lead container.
"Assets secured," Silas reported. "Back to extraction point. The party will be over soon."
It felt too easy.
The moment they turned, a heavy, metallic clang resonated throughout the entire facility. Massive steel blast doors, hidden in the ceiling and walls, slammed shut, sealing off the entrance they had created and all other exits. They were locked in.
A new alarm, a piercing, repetitive squawk, replaced the previous sirens. The red emergency lights turned to a pulsing, sickly amber. And a cold, recorded, emotionless voice spoke from the vault's loudspeakers.
"WARNING. INTRUDER CONTAINMENT PROTOCOL 'CERBERUS' ACTIVATED. BIOLOGICAL CONTAINMENT SUBJECT SCP-939 RELEASED IN SECTOR. GOOD LUCK."
"Shit!" Eva screamed, her composure finally breaking. "There wasn't supposed to be an active biological containment here! It wasn't in the intel reports!"
"Intel can fail," Silas growled, raising his rifle. "Defensive formation, now! Back to back!"
The main lights in the vault flickered and died with a hum, plunging them into near-total darkness, broken only by the trembling beams of their flashlights and the pulsing amber light. From the depths of the vast room, beyond the reach of their lights, they heard a sound. A wet, scraping drag. The sound of heavy claws on concrete.
And then, a voice. A small, terrified, little girl's voice.
"Hello? Is anyone there? Please... I'm scared..."
Leo felt his blood run cold. It was a trick he knew well from the game's recordings.
"DO NOT RESPOND!" Silas roared. "IT'S A VOCAL LURE! THEY ARE SCP-939! THEY HAVE NO EYES, THEY HUNT BY SOUND AND MOVEMENT! PREPARE FLASHBANGS AND FIRE AT WILL ON CONTACT!"
The dragging sound drew closer. A trembling flashlight beam, Eva's, caught a shape at the edge of the darkness. It was large, quadrupedal, with translucent, hairless red skin. It had no eyes, no facial features at all, in fact, apart from a massive, needle-toothed jaw that split open to a ridge along its spine.
[Tactical Analysis] WARNING! Multiple biological signatures detected. Rapid movement.
"Contact!" Leo shouted.
The creature lunged forward with terrifying speed. Axel opened fire with his light machine gun, the thunder of the shots deafening in the enclosed space. Bullets tore chunks from the monster's red flesh, but it didn't seem to slow it down. It kept coming, a nightmare tank made of claws and teeth.
The creature, SCP-939, lunged at Eva. Time seemed to slow for Leo. His System flooded him with data. He saw the monster's trajectory, the tension in its leg muscles, the air pressure shift around it.
Vulnerability detected: Respiratory plates along base of skull.
Acting on pure System-processed instinct, Leo lunged forward, shoving Eva out of the way. He hit the floor just as the creature passed over her. Leo raised his submachine gun and emptied the magazine into the exact spot his System had indicated.
The bullets impacted the base of the monster's skull. There was no roar of pain, but a sharp hiss, like high-pressure gas escaping. The creature stumbled, disoriented, and Silas and Axel raked it with fire, finally bringing it down in a trembling heap of flesh.
"Thanks, rookie!" Eva gasped from the floor.
But there was no time to celebrate. From another direction, they heard a new voice. This time, it was a Foundation guard's, filled with panic.
"They're everywhere! We need reinforcements at Vault 3-C! Repeat, multiple containment breaches!"
"It's another trick!" Silas yelled.
"Nine o'clock!" Axel shouted.
Another of the creatures materialized from the darkness, using the confusion to attack. This time it was faster. It lunged at Axel, its claws tearing deep gashes in his leg and knocking him down with a cry of pain.
"Axel!" Silas roared.
Leo fired, but the creature was incredibly agile. It scuttled away into the shelving, disappearing back into the darkness. Now there was only the ragged breathing of the three survivors and Axel's groans of pain.
"My leg... I think it's broken," Axel grunted, trying to push himself up. "And... I can't remember... what were we doing?"
"Class-C Amnestic!" Eva hissed, checking his vitals. "Their bite or their breath... it'll make us forget everything if we get too close."
They were trapped. Wounded. Hunted in the darkness by predators who could use their own voices and memories against them. The amber emergency lights flickered over the scene, painting everything in nightmarish hues. From the depths of the vault, they heard the dragging sound again, this time from multiple directions.
They weren't fighting one creature. They were fighting a pack.
Leo reloaded his weapon, his hands trembling. He had proven his worth, but victory seemed further away than ever. He looked around, at the impenetrable darkness surrounding them, and his System showed him a dozen possible attack vectors. They were completely surrounded. The successful raid had turned into a desperate fight for survival, and Cerberus Protocol had only just begun.