Act I
Now
The spotlights shine down upon Able as he readies himself for combat, the cheering of the crowd in his ears and the anticipation of the coming fight in his heart. All around him are stands of people from all worlds and factions gathered for the thrill of what has come to be known in supernatural communities as one of the most spectacular shows of any dimension.
Across the arena floor from Able, an elevator ascends. The form of a bovine heart with arthropod legs and long, lashing tendrils emerges from below atop it, a menacing stinger circling over it from behind. A constant droning, rambling voice comes from it, one that will soon be buried under the sounds of incredible carnage.
As soon as it's thawed from the cryogenic state holding it, the heart bolts forward, attaching two long tendrils to nearby buildings to slingshot itself toward Able, accelerating instantaneously. The arena is currently filled with a portion of an abandoned small town, taken from a dead world to be the backdrop for the violence that is to unfold. Able uses this to his advantage, ducking around the side of a building to avoid the heart's initial dash forward.
The scorpion-like heart slams into the side of a building as it adjusts its course to give chase, showing no signs of having even felt the impact despite the visible crater left in the brick wall. The beast's stinger spews forth a fluid that ignites in the air, coating the ground in fire that it traverses over without thought or injury, blocking off paths of retreat for Able.
Able keeps his sword ready, keeping on the back foot while observing his unfamiliar foe for any potential weaknesses to exploit. The heart, however, slows none, lashing forward violently with two horizontal whips of its front-facing tendril.
Able performs a quick maneuver to avoid the tendril, using his powerful legs to perform a backflip over the first attack before landing into a backwards handspring and propelling himself into the air again. He lands back on his feet after the second swing.
His acrobatics alone don't prove to be enough, however, as the heart of darkness propels itself forward using two of its tendrils as leverage, slamming into him and sending him flying into an advertisement banner on the edge of the arena, leaving a visible dent behind.
Able recovers his strength quickly, bolting back towards the center where the buildings are more dense, intending to use the terrain to his advantage. Followed relentlessly by the heart, he weaves between the buildings before briefly stopping on the porch of a former bookstore, from which four weight-bearing wood beams extend up to hold two more floors that extend out over it.
He ducks to the right just in time to avoid a wide swing of a tendril that takes out three of the beams; a quick slash of his sword demolishes the fourth.
The crowd roars as the masonry all tumbles down onto the heart, causing it to collapse in place. Cheering of countless eager spectators in his ears, Able climbs up the debris and exchanges his summoned sword for an enormous battle axe. He leaps from the highest point of the toppled structure and slams the axe down with his combined might and weight directly onto the stunned beast, cleaving it nearly in half and finally slaying it.
He raises his axe in the air, reveling in the glory of his most recent triumph. There was a time when glory was an after-thought to Able, when he'd first arrived, but it's now almost as important as the act of killing itself. It is to him an extension and celebration of combat, something he's grown to appreciate, a payoff for his passion.
This was of course, the intent of the man who'd selected him. Of countless Ables in countless worlds, he was decided on for the arena's premiere gladiator and something of a mascot, being on the more cooperative and satiable end of the spectrum. His bloodlust remained as always, but as far as infinitely-regenerating killing machines go, he was perfect.
Soon, he is to return to his room, more luxurious than the cryogenic cells of the less eager participants, though his rest will be short before he takes to his personal training course to continue his fighting until the next match he's scheduled for.
Then
Elliot Emerson was a curious young man with a passion. He loved the supernatural, studying all the limited information he could scour to do with it. He was among many who were rather vaguely aware of the anomalous, strange side of reality, but as much as he'd always loved the idea of making a name for himself in anomalous circles and having any influence at all over the supernatural world, he knew the dangers. Death, bodily harm in ways that shouldn't be possible, and perhaps most common, forceful loss of memory courtesy of the Foundation were all possibilities.
Knowing these risks, he contented himself to merely watch from a window as several men on the street below, dressed in all-black tactical gear, herded a black bear into a nondescript black truck. The bear was clearly not anything ordinary; it had eight legs and from beneath the muzzle put over its maw a light indicative of a great deal of trapped energy glowed dangerously bright.
He didn't know where the men or the bear had come from, but from his own judgement he determined they likely weren't Foundation; if they were, they'd be wrangling up witnesses already to douse with amnestics and toss back out with a pat on the back. Judging by their disorganization and commitment to the color black, they were likely Chaos Insurgency.
From down the street came figures in robes, who engaged with the Chaos Insurgency men, energy being shot from their hands exchanged with bullets from silenced weapons. He wasn't much familiar with the more fantastical and magical side of the anomalous, but if he had to wager a guess, he'd place these newly-arrived adversaries of the Insurgency as Serpent's Hand members.
He watched the engagement fervently, pulling out a small notepad from his pocket to jot down a few notes, both as a refresher and in case he were caught in the inevitable cover-up that was to come. He continued taking notes as the robed men retreated and the Chaos Insurgency drove away.
Tempted as he were to follow from a distance in hopes of learning anything more about the current happenings, he was a smart man, and he knew not to push his luck too hard. As such, he exited the building as soon as he was sure all parties involved had left the scene and hurried back to his home. As long as he was in his home when the site of the incident was checked for witnesses and he didn't mention what he'd seen to anyone, he was unlikely to be caught and amnestisized.
On his way home, he replayed the events again and again in his mind. If they were Chaos Insurgency agents, they were sure to have some use for the anomalous bear; he deeply wished he could see it without risking both his life and his memories, for though he dearly loved a good spectacle, if there was one thought he dreaded, it was losing his knowledge of the supernatural.
He allowed himself to daydream as he arrived home and hunkered down in his bedroom, fantasizing internally about the things he could accomplish with just a bit more influence, and about the things he could see. More than anything, he desired to see the clash of such impossibly powerful beings as he knew to exist, but he knew he'd little chance of ever seeing it.
Now
As the crowd slowly disperses, filing out through exit portals on either side of the arena, Emerson leans back in his chair in the commentator's booth. The guest commentator for the match has just left, so Emerson is alone for the moment to replay each exchanged blow in his mind, a wide, contented smile spreading across his face.
Hollis enters the booth, holding a tablet in her hands. "Today's match has gone over well, sir; with expenses factored in, our overall profits are in the ten-thousands range."
"Excellent," Emerson replies, not looking up from where he rests before the windows looking out over the arena, "What's the status on Able? Has he returned to his quarters yet?"
"Able's fine, sir. Cooperative as usual, though after his next loss his training course will need some maintenance, rough as he is on it. Hard to keep him out of there for long enough until then, of course."
"Good, good, just have the maintenance crew on that. He's scheduled for some tougher matches soon, so we should have time before anything important breaks," Emerson comments, "anything else?"
"We've received some more donations lately," Hollis reports, scrolling through the list on her screen, "The Global Occult Coalition from the world we took our latest kaiju-class fighter from sent us a pretty penny in thanks and as a show of good faith. It was evidently giving them a bit of trouble."
"Wonderful, wonderful," Emerson is far more pleased about this news than what they'd made from the show, even though he's yet to hear any precise numbers. The respect and collaboration of such powerful organizations is of far greater value to him.
"That should be all for now," Hollis finishes her report.
"Alright. Before you go, make sure the marketing team has our advertisements ready for the upcoming matches tomorrow. They should know where to put them. And tell them they're fired if our advertisements reach outside of anomalous circles again; you know how the Foundation gets when that happens. Gotta keep them happy," Emerson gives his commands before shooing her off with one hand.
Hollis has no trouble being shooed off, not particularly desiring to be in her boss's company more than she needs to, which with her job is quite frequently. As assistant and secretary to Emerson as well as a security manager, she always has plenty of work to do, though she generally doesn't much mind it. It pays well, and she prefers to be able to keep an eye on things regardless.
Most staff quarters and managerial offices are on the highest level alongside the arena, so it's just down the enormous grand stands of the arena and through a side door into the corridors of the facility's many departments from scheduling to marketing.
Hollis takes only a moment to pass along Emerson's demands to the marketing team before heading to the editing room to watch the men diligently working away at putting all the angles of the day's fight together, using every visual effect available to present it in full cinematic glory. Snippets will be used in marketing material later, and full fights will be made available for purchase in retailers across hundreds of worlds.
The editing process isn't terribly exciting all things considered; they go through each individual strike carefully to select the best viewing angles and subtly spice them up by adjusting the audio and tweaking the pacing. The occasional slow-mo replay helps with the latter.
Hollis watches from a chair in the back of the room for over an hour while keeping one eye on her work tablet in case she's needed elsewhere. Suddenly, her eyebrow quirks as she witnesses a replay of one part of the fight, and after a brief moment of deliberation, she gets up and hurries out of the room.
Then
Emerson walked down the quiet sidewalk alone, deliberating the previous day's unusual events. Hand on his chin, eyes unfocused on where he was going, he was rather zoned out, entranced by the strange world just out of his reach.
Then, quite suddenly, something got his attention. As he walked past an alley heavily shaded by the buildings around it, he made out a strange shape moving within it. It was clearly not a man, though it was vaguely in the shape of one.
Its body was black in coloration, which made it harder to make out in the shadows, and the top of its head fanned out in a shape not too far from a rather shallow conical hat. It had no visible limbs but instead many folds of black material that might've been fabric or skin draping over it, bearing some resemblance to robes.
On what might be called its face, it had what looked similar to a single vertical eye, pure white in coloration, which widened when it glimpsed him, standing out tremendously from the dark.
Emerson took a hesitant step back, having been seen by whatever this was. However, the strange entity made no move towards him. It spoke not verbally in words or phrases but in ideas, ideas that entered his mind clearly when he looked into its singular eye. It beckoned him forth.
"What… are you?" Emerson asked to the strange being, which gave no response to this question.
Instead, it presented an idea to him, and a tantalizing one at that: the power to read worlds as simple narratives, like books in his mind, a library of infinite size existing within his head for him alone to learn from. This power would give him the knowledge he needed to avoid the greatest pitfalls of his world while building his influence. His dreams could become reality.
While the vast potential of this rippled across the surface of his mind, the entity pulled one long appendage from under its body and wrote upon the wall with mud from the ground. What it wrote was a contract.
Emerson studied the contract. It wasn't terribly many words, formal as the language may be. It described no cost, no requirement, no bargain. There was no trading away his soul, his empathy, his control over his own body, or any material possession. There were truly no strings attached.
Elliot looked the strange being in the face once more after he read it, confused as to why such power would be offered seemingly arbitrarily. The entity explained to him in its strange way of communication its own desires in a way that language could not, and Elliot was able to understand and trust with as much confidence as he could muster the entity's motivations. Like a kid in a sandbox giving a piece of bread to just one beetle of several, it wanted to see what would happen.
With such meddling giving him the advantage, he had little trouble accepting it, and after a moment's hesitation, he signed his name.
Immediately it overwhelmed him, not with knowledge encroaching upon him in a wave his mind couldn't process fast enough, but like the walls of his own understanding expanded rapidly away, leaving only infinite potential.
This power wasn't without limits, of course; it could not describe to him anything hazardous to know or make stick what could not be remembered by man, and useful as such a vast amount of knowledge was, it was ultimately read by his mind like a story, and as such minute details were lost in transcription. Most of all, he could see only the past and present; in no world could he see its future in full, only make his own most educated guess.
Elliot looked up after the shock of obtaining such power subsided, only to find the creature gone, no longer by his side. He was alone in the alley.
He resumed his walk home in silence, but his walk gradually turned into a run, then a frantic dash, eagerness overwhelming him as new ideas flooded his mind, plans forming that would make all his dreams come true, plans he needed to start writing down as soon as possible.
Now
Gentle, flickering candlelight illuminates a dinner for one in the luxurious private quarters of Elliot Emerson. He cuts into his medium rare steak, salivating for a delicious, expertly-prepared meal to round off another day of excitement and spectacle.
Just as he is about to take the first bite, a knock comes at the door. Not expecting visitors at this hour, Elliot ignores it and hopes whoever is there goes away. When the knocking comes again, louder, he finally gives. "Come in!"
Hollis enters the room, closing the door quietly behind her. She pulls the unoccupied chair opposite Emerson to the side and sits down. "Sorry for interrupting, but something caught my eye while I was watching them edit the tapes of Able's fight today," she begins.
"Something important enough to get between me and this steak?" Emerson asks.
"When oh-five-eight slammed him into the side of the arena, he left a dent in the banner when he hit it. A decent-sized one, too," Hollis explains.
Emerson sighs, "Yes, I suppose you're concerned about the safety of our… banners?"
"Sir, I know you've seen enough fights to know that those banners are covered by the protections put up all around the arena. Or at least they're supposed to be," she continues.
"I'm sure it's fine, Hollis. If the protections really weren't holding up, Able would've left a crater, not a dent. I've seen what that thing can do to a person before," Emerson responds, "Perhaps they need a bit of maintenance, but I'm sure we've more than enough time for that. If it really concerns you, go talk to Scott or one of the other engineers about it. And please do let me return to my dinner."
Hollis hesitates a moment before conceding, "Alright. I'll go do that, then."
Emerson returns to his meal as Hollis slips back out the door.
She walks at a brisk pace down the hall away from the owner's more luxurious accommodations towards the nearest of the main lifts that connect all five floors of the facility. As she hurries off, she passes Irantu and Nanku keeping guard in the corridor, Onru and Munru undoubtedly watching over another section nearby.
Members of the legendary task force Tau-5, "Samsara", they were assigned to assist in security at the arena by a grateful SCP Foundation from a world that nearly ended until its threat was whisked away to do battle at Emerson's whim. The assignment proved quite popular with Emerson, and positive diplomatic relations with that world's Foundation continue to this day.
Hollis minds the so-called power rangers little as she carries along; with how long she's worked at the arena, they blend in with all the other oddities of the facility at this point.
She makes it to the elevator and inserts her credentials, a requirement to access the lower levels, especially Sublevel 4, her destination.
The elevator is a glass design, something that looks right out of a fancy hotel or a cruise ship. It was Emerson's choice, of course; it allows him to take in the view of each level of his marvelous facility on his way up or down.
It descends swiftly and quietly, first past the dull maintenance corridors of Sublevel 1, then descending through the pristine, white corridors of Sublevel 2, lined with cryogenic cells. Sublevel 3, as always, inspires awe when it comes into view. Even after so long working at the arena, it's still something of a marvel. 150 meters tall, the floor consists of two perpendicular corridors lined with enormous metal doors, each cell larger than a hangar suited for an airliner. In the center of the floor, enormous lifts rest on the ground with cargo trams idle around them. Suitable for carrying space shuttles if they needed to, the trams are equipped to carry forth such massive combatants to the lifts. Overhead, a mass of catwalks provide access to observation chambers and other necessary rooms above the ground.
Finally, the elevator dips below the surface of Sublevel 3 and arrives at Sublevel 4, no less than twenty meters of reinforced steel separating the layers. The atmosphere changes on Sublevel 4; worklamps illuminate halls of gently-moving machinery, countless steel pipes, overhead wires, and cold metal floors. A mechanical whirring enshrouds everything. The elevator door slides open, and Hollis steps out.
The Thresher had been built as a multi-purpose device. Its main function is teleporting things into local reality, something it does quite well. It can select any area between a pair of coordinates and transport them to the designated reception area, in this case the arena, usually to be immediately frozen by the cryogenics inside it and hauled away into a cell.
As for teleporting things out of or within local reality, well that not so much. Its greatest drawback is that it can't precisely move any target in its own dimension; it can relocate a 10-kilometer sphere around itself or nothing at all.
A convenient side-effect of its spacial-warping abilities is that it can also distort local space. Though this was once a significant hamper on its functioning, now it's used to quickly and safely resize the arena in the event it isn't large enough to fit the anomalies chosen to fight within it.
Mohammed Scott turns a valve to vent built-up steam within one of the countless pipes running away from the device, a task he often does himself, for most of the regular maintenance team aren't cleared to access Sublevel 4 at all.
He sets down his wrench and wipes his brow on his long-sleeved shirt as Hollis approaches from behind.
"Mohammed, it's good to see you," she greets him.
He turns around, a tad startled by her sudden appearance, "Ah, Hollis, it's good to see you as well. Is everything alright? I don't get visitors often when I work down here."
"I was sort of getting worried about the dent Able left in that banner during the most recent fight, if you noticed it. Is everything alright with the protections?" Hollis asks.
"That is a bit odd and even a tad troubling. The banners are the first to go, though, being the innermost part under protection. I'm sure part of the protective systems just need maintenance. Probably the runes; it's always the runes. Still, we should have more than enough time to fix it. In fact, I'll get it scheduled right away," Mohammed answers.
"Thanks," Hollis responds, breathing a sigh of relief.
"Of course," Mohammed says, "have to keep this place running safely, after all."
Then
Ticking mechanisms, turning gears, and the constant jagged harmony of machinery all working at once surrounded Elliot as he kneeled. Dim incandescent bulbs atop metal stands replaced candles, and doors, lights, and even the bathrooms operated via bulky machinery. Some of it was arguably practical, some was purely ceremonial, all was considered to some extent sacred.
Kneeling around him was a sparse congregation of people, most of them much older than him. They wore ragged old robes and worn-out shoes, and many of their bodies subtly ticked along to the mechanisms adorning the inside of the temple regardless of whether or not they had any mechanical modifications that were externally visible.
At the front of the temple, a man stood before a lectern, the upper left half of his face being entirely replaced with moving mechanical parts. He spoke in a voice that was flat and monotone while still carrying the gravely sound his graying hair and wrinkled skin might suggest.
"Good evening. It is a pleasure to see all of you gathered here today. Though lately the world has been unkind to us, we are fortunate enough to have a new member joining us today," he said to a congregation in the single digits, "Frank, child, your devotion to the Broken God and courage in joining us today is well and truly a sight for sore eyes."
Elliot stood, answering to the false name he'd given, "Thank you, father. I have answered Mekhane's call, following our lord silently for years. It is an honor to finally be able to join you all in person."
"Indeed, such devotion is admirable. It is truly a shame how despite our faith, despite our love, despite our community, we must remain in hiding. For some of you, that means keeping your faith hidden, praying silently or where none can hear you. For more, it means keeping out of the public eye entirely, or hiding the most blessed parts of your form beneath heavy clothing during any outings. And yet here we remain, strong and devout in the face of such oppression as has been imposed upon us," the priest spoke, his voice swelling up as he went on, "Though those who wish us to remain in the shadows out of sight and out of mind may have us down, they cannot squander the truth of our god Mekhane. We are together in serving our lord, and our spirit cannot be broken."
In the face of the Foundation, laying low in separated groups, the Church of the Broken God remained, dire as the situation may be. A single sighting in public could be all it takes to lose what few holy artifacts they had left and possibly their lives as well.
When the sermon was over, the priest stepped down to speak with his fellow men of faith, and Elliot approached him when he was unoccupied in any other conversation.
"Father Piero," he greeted.
One of Father Piero's eyes lit up with joy; the other was replaced by a gear, "Frank. Thank you for joining us today. How long do you intend to stay? I understand if you wish to return home shortly, though I urge you to be careful if you do. As you know, many of us have taken to sleeping in the temple. It is not terribly comfortable, as you might imagine, though our connection to the lord makes up for that."
"I am not yet sure, father," Elliot responded after significant hesitation.
Father Piero quirked his remaining eyebrow just slightly at this hesitation, "It seems you have some nervousness left in you. For that I can blame you none, child. It can be overwhelming being so suddenly within a temple of the lord, especially under the unfortunate circumstances."
"Of course. If it were alright, I do think I'd like to stay the night here. It's a long trip home, and I want the extra time to take every precaution on my way out," Elliot responded.
"You're more than welcome to, child," Father Piero responded, "It is a blessing to have you here. Our lord must have heard our prayers, to bring forth such a pure-hearted soul to join us."
Later that night, not a single person stirred from their slumber, save for Elliot. They slept like clockwork, all settling in at the same time without needing a word to each other; Elliot had done his best to join them in this rhythm.
Most slept in pews; Elliot had chosen one of the pews at the front. It was closest to where Father Piero had spoken, behind which was the room wherein they kept their sacred artifacts.
Elliot crept out of this room in dead silence, moving agonizingly slowly to keep from making the slightest sound. The priests had slept near the artifacts and made for quite the hazard on his way in. Now he needed only slink past the remaining congregation. The ticking coming from under his coat didn't help.
He hoped the noise the little anomalous miracle device he held continually made as it operated without any apparent need for power would be masked by the constant working of many other machines around them, at least enough to not wake anyone.
It felt like an eternity in anticipation before Elliot made his way out the front door, at which point he made his way to his car. As he closed the door behind him, someone sleeping on one of the backmost pews began to stir, but Elliot didn't look back. He never looked back. He had what he needed.
Now
Able stands in the arena again, the familiar roar of the crowd bringing a smile to his face. The arena is sparsely decorated with fake coral, treasure chests full of plastic painted to look gold, and the occasional bubble machine. It resembles a giant fish tank more than anything.
Elliot speaks from above, commentating the match in absence of any guest commentator for the evening, "And for this sponsored match, reigning champion Able is challenged to defeat his next adversary… bare handed!"
The crowd explodes into excited cheers as the electrical whine of the elevator fills the arena. From below comes an enormous great white shark the size of a small house flopped ungracefully upon the lift. There's silence and a bit of nervous laughter from the crowd at the sight of the beached creature.
"Make no mistake, folks, when she's thawed in mere moments, she'll be no fish out of water. Scourge of the seas and skies, levitating leviathan of S-P-C infamy, everyone welcome—" Emerson pauses briefly to check the name that'd been given for the creature by their sponsor, "Terry!"
Right on cue, the cryogenics kept active by a small metal device implanted beneath its skin are shut off and the creature floats upward a few feet before regaining a shark-like posture as though it were in water.
Naturally not a terribly aggressive creature, its implant administers a shock to drive it to hostility. It stares at Able before charging him, mouth agape in preparation to give him a mighty chomp.
Able rushes forward, unafraid of such an uncomplicated foe. He ducks and rolls beneath a vicious bite, leaving the giant shark to chomp at the ground. The shark recovers quickly from its failed attack, but a flurry of furious punches from below sends it reeling, floating higher up to recuperate and prepare for another attack.
Hollis enters the commentator's booth as the match goes on, quiet as possible to avoid being picked up on the mic. Emerson mutes himself and turns to face her, keeping one eye on the battle in case he needs to commentate anything important.
"What is it, Hollis?" he asks, audibly impatient with his desire to spectate the fight with his full attention.
"I was going to wait until after the show, but this is big," Hollis begins, "We've got a new sponsorship offer coming in."
"You interrupted me for a sponsorship?" Emerson asks, before turning back to the mic and briefly unmuting it as he glimpses Able knocking the massive shark several feet up with an uppercut to the jaw, "Oh what a punch! Now that was a meaty blow! Terry's not looking so hot right now."
He turns back to Hollis, "Well since you're here, let's hear it. It better not be one-seven-three again, though; it's never an interesting fight, and at this rate we might run out of them."
"It's from the Church of the Broken God. Not any of the small sects hiding out on largely Foundation-controlled worlds, from the big ones with pooled resources. The Multiversal Union of Mekhane," Hollis says to him, "And the amount they're offering is huge."
"You shouldn't even need me to tell you to accept it at that point," Emerson remarks, "If they're sending the offer, it must be huge."
"The thing is, sir, we didn't receive it from any major figurehead of the church. We actually don't know who sent the request. With the amount listed, some of us are worried it might be fraudulent," Hollis explains.
Were he not so distracted at the moment, keeping one eye on Able jumping off a piece of fake coral to land on top of the shark, which begins attempting wildly to throw him off, Emerson might use the power he now takes for granted to personally inspect where the request came from, where he would find he strangely cannot tell despite his unique ability.
Instead, he asks, "Well who're they trying to make fight?"
"Apparently they're wanting to make that liquid metal thing that creates killer robots, thirty-one seventy-nine I think the Foundation calls it, fight an amalgamation of anomalous machinery stuck to eight eighty-two. Something about settling a dispute that's led to several schisms within the church," Hollis explains.
"Definitely them, then," Emerson responds as Able is thrown to the ground in his peripheral vision.
"Alright, I'll tell the sponsorship department to accept it, then," Hollis replies.
"Yep, okay, now just— just go," Emerson shoos her off again, distracted in the moment that Able does a backflip out of the way of a brutal chomp onto the lid of a giant treasure chest and uses it as a springboard to leap up and deliver a skull-cracking blow with his fist right between the shark's eyes, killing it. "D'argh you made me miss it! I'm gonna have to go over the replays now!"
After considerable delay, the mic comes back on and Emerson announces, "Now that was a tense match! Incredible how Able made quick work of it even without weapons, wouldn't you say? That's all for tonight, but tomorrow, we'll—"
Emerson's voice on the overhead speaker system is drowned out by the roar of the crowd. Even from the commentator's booth, he can hear the shouts, "Encore! Encore! Encore! Encore!"
Below, Able holds his hands above his head triumphantly on his way to the lift back down to his personal quarters to recuperate. He turns towards the commentator's booth and gives an unmistakable thumbs up, as worn out as he may be from multiple successful fights in a row giving him no chance to regenerate in a new body.
When the crowd has died down, Emerson comes back on over the speakers, "Well, you all know me. I can't resist. We'll have one more show for you all tonight! Be sure to preorder your tapes of the fight on your way out."
Able staggers slightly onto the lift back up to the arena. He was given some water, a small meal, and some time to rest in the half hour since his last battle. Now he is to fight again, and he couldn't be happier.
He composes himself to prepare for his next encounter as the platform raises him up to the arena's surface, maintenance crews having just finished removing the remains of the massive shark. There's been no time to clear away the previous environment of the arena to make room for a new one.
The audience waits with eager anticipation as the other lift makes its way up, and Emerson announces the new contestant. "This one's our oldest kaiju-class fighter, enormous and brutal, having made it through every foe it's faced in its twenty years here with us, everyone welcome to the floor, Leech Storm! Able's weapon restrictions from the previous round no longer apply; he'll surely need them for this beast."
The lift brings up a massive, jet-black creature, vaguely in the shape of a leech with countless tentacles of enormous size coming off of it. It's over 100 meters tall, and as it is unfrozen, it blinks open millions of red eyes covering every inch of its body in a sweeping motion across it. It lets out a roar that resembles a human shriek, revealing countless rows of sharp teeth.
Able readies a sword and stares up at the enormous beast before smiling at the challenge before him.
Enormous tentacles smash to the ground violently around him, forcing him to weave between them, hacking the thinner ones off when he can. Leeches that range in size from that of a typical leech to the length of a human forearm rain from pores all over the monster.
Before he can even approach the central mass of the enormous beast, a tentacle slams down onto Able when he's just threaded the needle between two others. The tentacle is ripped off with a furious slash from below, and an injured and bloody Able dashes away, staggering, in an attempt to recuperate.
Before he's able to regain any of his strength or even mentally process what's happening and form a plan, leeches are upon him, biting his ankles and legs and trying to work their way up his body.
He does a full spin with his sword to send them all flying away, but more are never far. He's visibly bleeding, and leeches begin drinking from his spilled blood, growing in size as they do.
Weakened as he may be, he's still barely able to jump over an enormous tentacle that swipes across the arena towards him. When it swipes back the other way, he isn't so prepared.
The force of it sends Able flying into the edge of the arena, where part of the construction visibly cracks all the way to the seating, causing spectators nearby to shriek and scatter.
"Now, don't be alarmed, folks!" Emerson stammers over the microphone, "Our state-of-the-art protections are still in place! You are in no danger!"
It's several minutes before everyone calms down, several audience members having left through the exit portals back to their home worlds.
Now heavily wounded, Able continues hacking through leaches and tentacles before a low tendril of the creature knocks him off balance.
In his moment of weakness, a long tendril wraps around his injured body and tosses him with force into the creature's maw, where countless sharp teeth rapidly tear him to shreds.
"Ooo, yikes! That was a brutal one, folks," Emerson commentates as the creature begins to destroy the decorations lining the arena, which it is allowed to do to give the crowd something to look at while they begin to file out, "Can't blame him for that one; Leech Storm's seen over a hundred battles, and it looks like it'll be seeing more. Able is off the schedule until he regenerates, but I'm sure you'll hear about it when he's back. Thank you all for joining us tonight, and we hope to see you all again soon!"
Behind Emerson is a picture framed on the wall of the booth showcasing him standing before the creature, frozen in place, the first of the truly massive anomalies to be captured for the arena, still alive all this time later. He feels a bit of pride every time he sees it reign victorious in battle, because he overcame it. It was his.
Then
Elliot drove his car down a familiar street. Two weeks ago, this was where he'd seen Chaos Insurgency members carrying away an anomalous bear. It felt like a different lifetime.
He hadn't known then where the Chaos Insurgency were going, why they wanted the bear, or how much of a risk it'd be to try and learn more. He knew now.
He knew there were only a couple back alleys along the route they took he could've been in when the Foundation made their rounds where he wouldn't have been caught and amnestisized. He knew they wanted to set the bear loose on a small Foundation outpost the next town over. And he knew their base of operations was in an abandoned quarry a couple miles out of town.
His car kicked up dust as he went down the gravel road towards the quarry. In the box in his passenger seat, the anomalous device ticked on and on and on, though it did little else.
He'd already planned his full cover story when he'd set out for the quarry; he'd prepared exactly what to say, gone over any obvious questions he might be asked, and readied his entire false sequence of events based on information he should have no way of knowing.
He parked in an old machine shed that once housed excavation equipment when not in use but now featured several jet-black vehicles kitted out for militaristic purposes, along with an assortment of personal ones.
Elliot got out and grabbed the box from his passenger seat then went to the door at the back wall and pressed the buzzer.
"Stay where you are! State your name and your business here," a slightly-garbled voice demanded through a small speaker that was over a decade old.
"My name is Carl Melrose, brother to Jackson Melrose. I'm trying to get away from the Foundation, so for that I'm, uh, looking to make a trade," he replied, sounding just nervous enough to be believable. He used the name of a real, recently-retired member to lend himself credibility. He knew Jackson didn't keep in touch anymore for his own safety, so there was little risk of his bluff being called.
There was brief chattering that came across as mere static through the low-quality speaker before a response, "What're you offering? And what are you looking for?"
"Jackson said you might have something that could help me out of this situation here. I have a little mechanical trinket with me. It's supposed to control magnetic fields or something. Found it in an old warehouse after those, uh, clock church guys fled it," he lied.
Though the device Emerson had stolen did possess the ability to influence magnets, the SCP Foundation had only studied it briefly before it'd been taken back decades ago by a Church of the Broken God that was much stronger than it was come modern day. In their studies, they'd deduced what it could do and theorized it could be used to make powerful weaponry that could rip a reinforced metal door right off its hinges then launch it at incredible speeds if focused and applied. When the Chaos Insurgency stole a stash of documents following this study, they assumed this potential for destruction must exist within the object, and thus it was quite sought after by them.
There was a longer period of deliberation here, and the chattering was louder now. After a moment, the door clicked. "Come in."
Four men greeted him when he entered. Save for one who was holding an assault rifle and standing guard of the entrance, none of them were dressed in any sort of Chaos Insurgency attire. They didn't have a uniform outside of the tactical gear they wore in combat. They wore t-shirts and jeans and were all around fairly normal-looking, despite the militant organization they belonged to.
"We've got plenty of things we can trade you for that. If you just want some cash and a ride to skip town, that can be arranged no problem. You're probably looking for less conventional means if you've come here, though," the man who'd spoken to Elliot through the speaker replied, "That stuff's down this way."
"I've frankly been thinking about skipping this world entirely," Emerson responded as he followed the man into a large warehouse, "The Foundation's only getting larger and larger these days."
"Yeah, ain't that the truth? If you're really banking on that option, we've got something for that. Can't get it to work worth a damn, though. Impossible to tell where you'll end up, which obviously doesn't make it the safest. We think that's why the Foundation just left it in low-security storage," the man explained.
"Can you show it to me?" Emerson asked, trying not to sound too eager.
"Yeah, yeah, it should be right…" the man reached up on a shelf and pulled off a strange handheld device, "here."
He handed the device to Elliot, and Elliot set his own artifact down to hold it and gaze upon it. It was in the vague shape of a rifle, though it wasn't a weapon at all. Out the front end of the object was a round metal rod. Looking through the glass lining the sides of it revealed this rod to have a doorknob on the end of it inside the device.
Also inside, held in place by thin metal rods, was a blue key. The energy flowing through the device was invisible to the eye, but could be felt just by holding it in the form of waves of heat moving from the back end of the device to the front. Folded out from one side of it was a screen with a small keypad not unlike that of a flipphone, for use in selecting a destination.
The Chaos Insurgency didn't know how to choose a destination, which to their credit the Foundation hadn't quite ironed out either; though they devised the coordinates system used, it was impossible for them to know where a given set of coordinates would take them, posing a risk to anyone using it and those around them. The Insurgency didn't know how it was made, either, or what it was made from. They didn't know what the Foundation's initiative was in building it or why they gave up on the device and moved on. Emerson knew, though.
With the keys to the whole of every universe in his hands, Elliot gave up the artifact he'd stolen from the church with no hesitation, save for that he manufactured to come off as more genuine. He thanked the men who'd traded with him, and they thanked him, believing themselves to have gotten the better end of the deal.
"Come back if you need anything else, now," they'd told him on his way out, "and send Jackson our regards if you see him."
Their words fell on deaf ears, Emerson fully enamored with how the world had opened up to him. He got in his car and drove the whole way home carefully, as though he were chauffeur for God himself.
When he finally arrived, he parked his car and approached his front door. Rather than entering it normally, however, he punched in coordinates into the device's keypad, knowing full well where they'd take him, something nobody else could know, and he jabbed the metal rod into the door, which pushed into it like the door were made of jelly. With a click of the device's trigger, the door opened away from him, and it led to a different world.
Now
Emerson relaxes in the commentator's booth. There isn't much happening down below aside from bulldozers pushing away the last of the fish tank decorations set up the previous day, but he enjoys having a constant view of what he's created.
In his lap is his tablet, on which he's adjusting schedules for the upcoming fights; once he submits the scheduling adjustments, all relevant crew members will have their pagers pinged at once to notify them. He won't have to do anything else.
As he bumps up the recent sponsor, a common tactic to make sponsorships happen quickly both to satisfy sponsors in their swift working and to give less time for them to back out, a screen built into the desk in front of him flicks on, displaying the visage of a certain sinister clown.
Elliot quirks an eyebrow, "Can I help you, Bobble?"
Bobble lets out an exaggerated sigh, "Well, you know, boss, it's just soooooo boring around here when there isn't a fight goin' on."
Elliot eyes the clown with mild suspicion.
The clown smiles real wide, "But I think things are about to get a whole lot more exciting!"
"What exactly do you mean by that?" Emerson asks as Bobble cackles slightly.
"Oh, just see for yourself!" Bobble points over his own shoulder, indicating to look through the window above the screen.
Through the left entrance, a small mob pours into the building. Some wear robes and strange garments. Some are themselves quite strange, bearing animal features if not being walking, talking animals outright. Enough of them have snake-related jewelry and tattoos or green and silver apparel to identify them unmistakably as Serpent's Hand.
The Serpent's Hand members hold with them picket signs and painted cardboard reading phrases like "End Emerson's Dogfighting Ring!" and "Stop the slaughter!" Many chant, and uncoordinated as the chanting may be, "Down with Emerson!" is clearly audible.
Emerson's mouth hangs open just slightly as he stares at the approaching mob. After so long being so powerful with such influence and such fame, it's a shock to him that so many are opposed to him.
It's not something he's unaware of, of course; as much as he takes his power for granted and arguably under-utilizes it these days, he still knows groups like the Serpent's Hand and Wilson's Wildlife Solutions that believe in the careful, ethical treatment of anomalies tend to disfavor him for reasons that are plainly obvious. Seeing it all in front of him, barging in his front door, however…
"Hey boss, I got an idea!" Bobble chimes in, giggling to himself as if he's trying to calm down enough to tell a joke he finds too funny not to laugh at. As he does, Tau-5 are already stepping in, forming a protective line between the protesters and the commentator's booth to ensure they can't get any closer to Emerson.
"I don't tend to like your ideas very much, clown," Emerson comments, looking down at the screen.
"Why don't you just go ahead and tell your little personal super soldiers to open fire? That'll get 'em out of here real quick! They'll think twice about coming back!" Bobble holds his arms in a raised, open position as if he's just performed a magic trick and is awaiting applause.
"This is why your duties are only surveillance and acting as a backup to run some of our important electrical systems. Tell Samsara to herd them out with weapons raised and not to fire unless the crowd gets violent on their own," Emerson says in a rather tired voice.
"Aw, you're no fun!" Bobble remarks, "I bet you didn't even plant anyone in there to start rioting. Oh well, I'll tell 'em. Your word goes after all, boss!"
Emerson waits to watch the crowd be removed from the premises, his tablet idle in his lap.
All four members of Tau-5 receive Bobble's passing on of Emerson's word at the same time through their auditory implants. After a brief exchange of glances, they raise their rather intimidating high-power weaponry, aimed at the crowd.
"Alright, pack it up," Irantu takes charge, "Move slowly and do not reach for any weapons. Continue quietly until you've passed through the exit. Do not return."
Onru, Nanku, and Munru keep pace with him, backing the protesters away. The crowd is small enough they can all clearly see the weapons aimed at them; it would take less than a second for the task force to slaughter every last one of them.
Emerson watches as the crowd is turned back and removed from the arena without incident. Most of them are people he's never seen before, never considered, and likely never will. One of them, however, is Vera Hadley. She stares daggers at him from the front of the group, though she continually backs away with the rest of them.
Emerson averts his gaze with a shudder and returns to scheduling. He's already forgotten about her.
In the maintenance and engineering staff room of Sublevel 1, Mohammed and Hollis chat quietly while eating lunch. It's one of the nicer rooms on that floor, and it has plenty of tables for all the maintenance crew, though only a couple others are moving about inside at the moment. Most have already had lunch or are finishing up their duties before coming to eat.
"The Thresher is still operating at full capacity after all these years," Mohammed says with a hint of pride in his voice, "Emerson likes to talk about how he designed it, but it really was a team effort, you know. He came up with how it should work, knew what supernatural elements were needed, but I was the one who made it work and made it stay in one piece. I'd say I did a pretty good job. Not a lot of people on the project with how secretive it was at the time."
"Probably wouldn't be holding up so well if you weren't maintaining it. Some days I swear there isn't anyone else working here who can get stuff to run," Hollis replies between bites of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, "I always wonder how close things really are to breaking."
Her pager alerts her to the security situation on the floor above.
"Goddamnit, I'm gonna have to file a report on that when I'm done eating," she remarks.
"I'm about to write a paper on the twenty-two-part protective measures we have after lunch. Trade me?" Mohammed offers jokingly.
"Yeah, I think I'm good. That part of what Emerson's got with the GOC?" Hollis asks.
"With one of them, yes," Mohammed gives his response.
"I'm sure they're a hell of a lot more responsible than we are. I swear, every day it feels like we're a step closer to going up in smoke. We're gonna give some giant murder monster an inch, and it's gonna take the whole damn place," Hollis spills her frustrations and concerns.
"I'll admit we're perhaps not dealing with anomalies in the safest way, such is spectator bloodsport, but surely it's not so bad. We're not doing anything plainly irresponsible. Emerson knows what he's doing," Mohammed remarks.
"Bobble the goddamn Clown has been on our payroll for years now," Hollis retorts, "He could've just hired someone to watch the cameras. Or gotten some Foundation-made A.I. to do it. He's an idiot who just wants to make anomalies jump through hoops for him."
Mohammed clasps his hands, "Yes, I suppose you've got me there. That was certainly a… strange decision. But still, I'm sure we can keep operating smoothly. We've yet to have a major incident."
Hollis finishes her sandwich and gets to her feet, "Maybe, but I can't shake the feeling that we're toeing a line we don't even have reason to cross. It feels like it's all gonna blow up any day now."
Then
Emerson stepped out through a cold metal door, the world-jumping device in hand. He was flanked by no fewer than twenty men, armed and wearing tactical gear and nondescript uniforms. A few of them in the middle of the pack carried boxes, which were unmarked and labeled only with a string of numbers. However, the importance of their contents might be nonetheless quite clear from the number of locks on each of them.
He led his men into a subterranean facility he himself owned. It looked not dissimilar to a parking garage with a fairly spacious floorplan in most areas and concrete walls and ceilings, though the floors were at least tiled.
Two of the armed men accompanied each of the men carrying boxes as they went to put them away in rather secure storage lockers. The others went to the guards standing around the room and relieved them of their duties, taking their places and watching over the area.
When he was content with the security of his latest acquired assets, he took one last moment to admire his work before turning to a staircase in the corner of the room and going a level up. There, he went down the hall to the very end where he input his credentials and entered his private office.
Emerson Enterprises wasn't the name he'd chosen for his organization, but it was given to him, and it'd stuck. A clear name was beneficial for business anyway, and he had enough security and diplomatic might that he wasn't afraid to get his name out there a little more.
He first booted up his computer and reviewed the workings of his business. The artifacts he'd acquired today were to go to the GOC in exchange for some funding, retaining a positive relationship, and a seemingly useless anomaly he'd need for his larger plans.
His tactics were manipulative and at times underhanded, but he'd built up quite a nice business and a good reputation smuggling and trading anomalies of all shapes and sizes. It might be expected, then, that he'd be unpopular with the larger shadow organizations of the main worlds he worked in, but rather on the contrary, he maintained a steady business relationship with the SCP Foundation and the Global Occult Coalition.
There were multiple facets to how he kept on the good side of these groups. For starters, he worked in secrecy; he never made too much noise, and he even aided in tracking persons of interest when necessary to boost his reputation. What was actually his own anomalous power granting him sight he played off as tips from business partners.
Most importantly for bargaining with both major powers, though, was his relation with the other. If he read in the infinite knowledge he had access to that the SCP Foundation was planning to knock him down a peg to keep him in check, he'd offer the GOC a very nice deal and make sure the Foundation found out about it. It worked just the same in the opposite direction. In doing so, he always made them reconsider for fear of poking the metaphorical bear of their competitor.
The business he offered them was quite appealing, too. He managed to always have just what they were looking for and for the right price. No expensive and dangerous raids or battles, just good business. He was more than happy to let them believe they always had the better end of the deal.
When he was done looking over his latest trades and expenses, he turned to his true passion: a massive lump of sketches on his desk. Really, they might've been closer to blueprints. They outlined a massive complex built to facilitate the storage of countless animate anomalies for the sake of forcing them to fight.
He'd planned nearly everything, the in-built power plant, the staff quarters, all the layers of the facility and how they'd connect, and the more supernatural parts of it. He'd planned the protective measures for the arena itself, the cryogenics enhanced via supernatural means to hold even the most powerful beings, and of course the Thresher.
The Thresher was not a perfect device in his own plans; it was among the more delicate systems he'd need an engineer to help him with. In theory, however, he knew all the pieces, and he knew roughly how to put them together. It was a device that, if built, would grant him an unfathomable amount of power. He could drag entire civilizations into inescapable void and have any artifact he desired for himself.
These possibilities had occurred to Emerson time and time again, but they didn't much appeal to him. By the time he could build it, he'd surely have accomplished his greatest dream already.
As wonderful as his conceptual arena was, it had to be built. Not only did he need funding, resources, builders, staff, but he needed a suitable interdimensional space to build them in. There were some he had his eye on, to be sure, but none were truly suitable as they were, especially due to inaccessibility. The world-jumping device was his only way into most of them, after all.
To truly have a shot at making his dreams a reality, he needed the big guns backing him. He needed the Foundation or the GOC to aid him in constructing it. Fortunately, the way things were looking, he could perhaps have them both.
It was an uncommon event for such massive entities to merge into one, though it is one Elliot had seen many times before in the countless worlds he's browsed. In his world, however, it was indeed likely to happen.
The Foundation's influence was felt in every inch of the supernatural world, and such a wide influence meant spreading itself very thin and incurring a lot of pushback. In no form was this more potent than the Chaos Insurgency, who'd conducted numerous successful raids over the course of multiple years on the Foundation using all manner of anomalous means, partially thanks to the advice of their informant, Carl Melrose.
With their raids becoming more and more public and more dangerous, the United States government was growing less trusting of the Foundation. It viewed them as attracting terrorists and letting them thrive, and the rather disorganized group of insurgents always seemed to be one step ahead. This led to funding cuts that were only getting harsher, and with their lack of faith came similar responses from other nations. The GOC was already chartering a plan to acquire the Foundation, taking its assets and running it as a glorified department of their own organization.
This was Elliot's opportunity.
The SCP Foundation's higher ups as it stood had their sights on one major project, one that was only getting further from them: Site-13. The proposed Alaskan site would've been enormous and their new largest base of operations, but it was only becoming clearer that it could never see the light of day as it was currently planned.
Elliot turned from his sketches to a draft of a proposition to the soon-to-be joint GOC and Foundation. He would provide the blueprints to a new Site-13, with all the grandeur of the original design, but located outside of their local reality. The site would surely satisfy the needs of both parties.
For the GOC, it would give them somewhere to put the world's greatest threats where escaping wouldn't compromise public safety, and it'd give them the Thresher with which they could secure any needed artifact with ease. For the SCP Foundation, it would give them something even more irresistible: pride. It'd be their Site-13, bigger and better and greater than they'd ever imagined. It was perfect.
The best part was, he needed only raw funding, resources, and manpower, which the GOC had no short supply of. The more spectacular requirements, the anomalies behind it all, he himself could acquire.
But these groups wanted a containment facility, not an arena. This was where Emerson's true greatest trick lay.
The arena itself was, in size and resources, rather small compared to the other parts of the facility, and it'd be made even smaller in his proposition. He wouldn't call it an arena; he'd call it a testing and termination chamber, somewhere with all the protections in the world to run tests on or destroy even the largest of anomalies. The commentator's booth was merely an observation chamber, and the grand stands were for setting up cameras for alternate viewing angles or for having more people present than the booth could fit.
Part of the deal would instate him as the director of the facility, which gave him enough authority to take care of the last part of his plan: the flip.
He had options for how to go about it precisely, though his plan A was to simply start hosting battles and gradually make it the main purpose of the facility until he'd entirely taken it over. All he'd need to do to make it into the arena of his dreams was move the entrances to the sides of the arena itself, an appropriate place for an audience to enter, and to extend the arena's size, which the Thresher would make trivial.
He finished drafting the proposition he'd made, and he slid it into a folder. He didn't know precisely when he'd have the chance to have it seen, but he knew it'd be soon, and he'd be ready.
Now
Hollis steps into the commentator's booth where Emerson is supervising a technician inspecting the audio systems in preparation for the day's sponsored fight. Below, maintenance crews are working tirelessly to get the arena in shape for it.
A smoldering frustration lies just behind her more-or-less professional demeanor.
"Hollis, is everything well today? Have you prepared security for the event?" Elliot greets her as she approaches, putting on an overly-friendly voice, aware that he hasn't been the kindest to her lately.
"Emerson, what are you doing setting up for an event with things this dangerous when our arena's the most unsound it's ever been?" she demands, her voice barely concealing the more aggressive tone she truly wishes to speak in.
"What do you mean? Our arena is as strong as ever. If you're worried about the forcefields and protective runes, don't be. They'll hold, I've been assured," Emerson attempts to dismiss her concerns before she's even voiced them.
Hollis lets out an exhausted sigh, "I know you saw the crack left in the wall yesterday. You had to acknowledge it mid-fight because it freaked everyone out, and rightfully so! I know I'm not our resident murder monster expert, but aren't both of these things we're about to make fight more dangerous than what left that crack in the wall? I mean they're both taken for an actual fucking god by some branches of the church."
"Hollis, Hollis, it's really fine," Emerson insists, "Scott has full confidence in them; let's not go mistrusting our mutual friend, shall we?"
"Did he actually tell you that?" Hollis challenges, raising an eyebrow.
"As a matter of fact, yes," Emerson says with a smile, "and he's already replaced some of the more worn systems protecting us. There is absolutely nothing to worry about, Hollis."
Hollis backs down slightly, "If that's the case, I guess it'll probably hold… But there are men down there still filling in the cracks in the wall as we speak. If you think we're really well-suited enough to handle it, then fine, but it's a lot of peoples' blood on your hands if you're wrong." After a pause she adds, "even if it doesn't include yours; I'm sure you've got some emergency exit planned for yourself."
Emerson is slightly taken aback, "Now, Hollis, it really… Just… It'll be okay. How about you go see to security's positions for the fight if you're that concerned?"
Hollis is already walking away as Emerson says this.
He watches her go for a moment before turning back to the technician inspecting the sound system, "Are you almost done here? We're on a tight schedule."
Hollis makes her way to one of the main lifts and takes it down to Sublevel 1, where she finds Mohammed Scott working on typing a paper on his laptop while eating his lunch, surrounded by the few maintenance employees not busy with preparations for the big show and a couple engineers chatting by the fridge.
She sits across from him, "Mohammed, are you well?"
"Yes, more or less I am," he responds, "are you? That isn't your normal tone of voice."
"Just frustrated with Emerson," Hollis responds honestly.
"Ah, what else is new?" Mohammed says, "He's just let his influence get to him is all. I'm sure he doesn't mean to be so dismissive of, well, whatever it is you went to him for."
"The safety of everyone here and potentially thousands of spectators?" Hollis prompts.
Mohammed nods his head, "I can see why you're so upset with him now. Rest assured all systems are still functioning within their margin of error, even if we did have a bit of a shock yesterday. Replacements are scheduled to begin soon regardless."
"But Emerson told me you'd already begun replacements," Hollis responds, incredulous that even Emerson would so blatantly lie to her.
"Hm, that's an odd claim to make," Mohammed responds, rather troubled, "I'm not sure what to make of that, I'll admit."
"He lied to me, Mohammed. He lied to my damn face," Hollis says bluntly, with a bit of disgust in her voice and fire in her eyes.
Mohammed takes a moment to respond, "I don't think it's quite fair to jump to conclusions like that so quickly. Perhaps he was merely mistaken, or… Well, I'm not sure. Still, replacements are scheduled very soon. It's just this last fight, then everything will be just fine."
Then
Elliot walked out of the office of the Secretary-General of the Global Occult Coalition, a smile on his face and a spring in his step. Negotiations had gone well, and he got just about everything he wanted out of it.
It hadn't taken as long as he'd expected; his plan seemed to fit perfectly with what the Secretary-General wanted. It would keep the newly-integrated SCP Foundation complacent while giving them access to the Thresher. It also meant his organization and assets were now part of theirs, tying up another loose end.
Though part of their agreement did mean sharing his designs for the device, this troubled him none; most of what powered it he obtained from entirely different worlds, and his lies on where he'd gotten them fit perfectly into the GOC's blindspots. With the trust their admittedly dubious business relationship had garnered, everything went remarkably smoothly.
Ten months later, and Emerson finally walked through the interdimensional portal into Joint Containment Site-13, finishing touches still being applied.
The portals were, at this point, in a security checkpoint leading to a large lobby, which Emerson promptly entered. All around him, GOC construction teams were polishing all the finest details and installing the brilliant statues and plaques that'd decorate the new site, and all around Global Occult Coalition men mingled with SCP researchers, his own men a pace further back, mostly working as guards.
The pocket dimension it was built in wasn't anything new, of course. Creating a new pocket dimension wasn't easy; it was far easier to capture the demonic old man living there and demolish the existing labyrinthine landscape to create a blank canvas for their construction.
The site used Emerson's own designs for cryogenics technology, utilizing a two-part system with a sprinkler-like device to flash-freeze anomalies and an attached or embedded device to maintain the cryogenics when outside of a specialized chamber. It wasn't just the cold keeping them in place, of course; he'd introduced many otherworldly anomalies that powered the whole system. With the GOC's engineers on it, it was perfected rapidly.
He greeted everyone by name as he passed through the lobby, from the seasoned veterans of his own forces to the construction crew the GOC provided. Among them were former SCP Foundation members Hollis, formerly of MTF Zeta-9 though now working in security, and Vera Hadley, a level 3 researcher.
When he finished his brief greetings, he made his way to one of the main lifts.
Emerson was thrilled to briefly tour the site as he had many times before through every stage of construction, taking a main lift past maintenance, cryogenics, Olympia-class cryogenics, and all the way down to Sublevel 4, taking in the view of his new kingdom as he went.
When he finally reached the floor dedicated to the Thresher device, he entered and walked all the way to its chamber. There, he was met with over a dozen technicians working on assembling it, overseen by an experienced project manager and Dr. Mohammed Scott.
"Dr. Scott," Emerson extended a hand, which the Thresher's head engineer took, "it's good to see you. Incredible work you've done here."
"Ah, if it isn't Elliot Emerson," Dr. Scott responded, "It's good to see you, too. Really, I can't much claim credit. It was a group effort, and we were all really just refining your concept for the device."
"Now, now, don't give me too much credit," Emerson replied, "I couldn't have done it myself."
"Well, for now, let's just admire what we created," Mohammed said, "together."
The near-complete Thresher was a marvelous machine, a towering obelisk of blinking lights and mechanical parts, currently still and not yet running. It was built into the back wall with long wires extending from it in all directions.
The tall-standing machine would soon become, to those who knew of it, a symbol of unity between the merging organizations, as would the site itself. However, it would be only briefly. Soon, it would become a symbol of division and betrayal.
Now
Excitement fills the arena, audible in the chattering among the crowd and in Elliot's own voice, "Ladies and gentlemen, we bring you today a sponsored battle for the ages!"
A lift ascends from the ground, bearing atop it a liquid-metal organism, kept still in place with cryogenics, an amorphous central mass with more solidified metal appendages all over it, long and thin.
"A being from the stars, considered by some to be the Seed of Mekhane if not Mekhane itself, give it up for the Seed! Endlessly adapting and producing constructs for its own purposes, it's one tough metal space octopus, but will it be able to stand toe to toe with our next competitor?" Emerson announces eagerly from the commentator's booth. Wild cheering follows.
A second lift rises up, bearing on it a vaguely-humanoid mass of metal components of all shapes and sizes, slightly slumped over in a standing position. It's the size of a small house and has countless intricacies in its metal being.
"The fruit of the church's labor, a being made from all manners of sacred metal artifacts and a beating metal heart of dubious origin, a divine machine that in some worlds is responsible for the Gulf of California, let's hear it for the Unbroken God!" Emerson calls out from the commentator's booth, the crowd cheering in response.
The arena is decorated with desert sand and a few dilapidated buildings, mostly made from rusted sheet metal, a small depot from an apocalyptic wasteland. Its world won't miss it.
The crowd is made up of a wildly diverse group, from ultra-wealthy anomaly smugglers to low-level operatives of all manner of shadow organizations. Only one in ten of them are from the Church of the Broken God.
Members of the church from numerous, vastly different worlds sit in the stands, some mingling or placing bets, some choosing to sit apart from the others. Some are near-entirely mechanical, some purely flesh and bone. Some wear hoods and robes, keeping to themselves, some have casual wear and mingle like it's any other sporting event.
More than in the stands, though, many members stand at the entrances, holding signs in protest. Tau-5 holds the line at one entrance, keeping protestors quiet and to the side where they don't block the door. At the other, more conventional security forces do the same with a much larger number of men.
Nearly all the security forces in the entire complex are topside for the event; they keep a careful eye on the crowd and prepare for an unlikely emergency, as though their weapons would be any use against the divine machines to do battle today.
The metal beings are released from their cryogenics, and they both gradually come to life. 3179 does so in a more organic way, spreading its mass and metal tendrils out in a manner akin to an animal stretching after a nap. The more mechanical combatant roars to life like any other awoken machine, its parts beginning to move faster and faster as it rises to motion.
The hungry machine immediately begins to devour the side of one of the buildings, shoveling metal into itself, which rapidly becomes a part of its body, allowing it to grow.
The Seed creates four metal constructs crudely resembling men with sledgehammers. The constructs approach the Unbroken God attempting to tear pieces from it with their hammers. Immediately upon contact, the hammers are latched onto and absorbed into its mass, the rest of the constructs' bodies soon following.
The Unbroken God turns away from feeding on the metal structure and lumbers forward toward the Seed, which scurries away on long metal tendrils, creating several autonomous drones that take flight and crash violently into the chasing behemoth, exploding on impact. The explosions cause minor damage to it, but ultimately it adds more mass than it detracts.
The Seed rapidly moves away from the Unbroken God, which cannot reach it. It then produces several three-legged automatons, which each produce and propel long explosive rods, like missile launchers on legs. These new automatons keep their distance, but the damage they inflict is shrugged off by the unstoppable machine before them.
The Unbroken God seems to recognize its inability to catch up to the faster metal being, and so it returns to the structures lining the arena, beginning to consume them and add to its mass in effort to spread enough so that there's no avoiding contact with it.
Catching onto this, the Seed begins to produce propeller-like appendages atop itself to escape.
While the proclaimed metal gods gradually enact their plans, security mostly distracted between the crowd and the battling metal titans, something happens in the commentator's booth.
The Way Emerson had installed as his emergency exit, a pinpoint speck that's only intended to be opened from his side of it, spreads wide silently behind him. Security pay no mind to it, and Emerson is fully transfixed on the fight below. A lone security camera turns to stare, but no notice is given of the event.
From the Way steps a woman who is forcibly unmemorable, who has made herself unknowable for her own safety and to make her one plan possible. She is Vera Hadley. Were Emerson to turn around and face her, he could perhaps recognize her until he looks away, maybe try to stop her, but she isn't keen to make herself known, not yet, and even Emerson's all-encompassing library cannot alert him to her presence, not that he uses it much these days.
It all happens in an instant. One moment, the protections are in place and holding strong. The next, a stray explosive from the Seed's tripod machines lands in the crowd, causing an immediate panic. The screams only get louder as the Seed realizes what's happened and flees into the stands, trampling everyone in its way under sharp metal appendages. The Unbroken God, now spreading into a less human form, a 100-meter-wide mess of metal parts and machinery of all shapes and sizes, begins to eat into the sides of the arena.
Spectators, protestors, and security forces alike all attempt to press into the two exits, save for Tau-5, who begin to make their way toward the commentator's booth. As the Seed attempts to leave as well, the crowd by the left exit is turned to red paste underfoot.
Due to an ancient emergency protocol from the arena's origins as a containment site, the portals all close to present escapes as the protections fail. Being unable to exit from this end, 3179 attempts to flee from the opposite side, carelessly mulching everyone in its way as it discovers the other exit closed as well.
Emerson turns around, panicking and preparing to take to his emergency exit, only to see Vera Hadley standing before it, the Way already open. She holds an ancient tome, from which she'd learned to undo many forms of magic with her own counters.
"Emerson. It's been a long time. I've been waiting for this moment, you know. I hope you're ready to get what's been coming to you," she says coldly before stepping back through the Way. It closes behind her. Permanently.
Tau-5 arrive in the next moment, distracting Emerson and causing his memory of Vera to disappear again.
"Sir, it's time to go," Irantu tells him, "We'll do our best to secure survivors."
"O-Of course, yes," Emerson stammers, stepping forward to find his exit gone, the feeling of having forgotten something important weighing heavily on his mind, "Wait-"
Screams overwhelm his senses along with an incredible amount of groaning metal and whining machinery.
"Something's not right-" he says.
The screams begin to die down, but they're quickly replaced with more.
"The emergency exit, my escape, it's gone-" Emerson stammers.
The screams cloud the arena like fog, the only thing audible over them being the continuous movements of metal and machinery.
Then
Screams filled the arena, not from terror but excitement. A few people screamed, at least. In the stands, leaning into the spectacle were senior researchers, the most impassioned of the GOC's termination teams, the rough-around-the-edges guards who'd worked for Emerson when he was independent, and a few of the regular members of the Joint Containment Site-13 team who were particularly eager to see at least one of their looming fears eliminated in glorious combat.
Not screaming were the people who tended to stick closer to the observation chamber turned commentator's booth, watching from the more proper-feeling position inside or sitting nearby. They were the more hardened and serious of both organizations' ranks, site staff who took things a bit more seriously than Emerson, and ones who felt outright betrayed by his use of the site's test chamber for such a crude spectacle.
Among them was also the much larger group who were simply neutral on the whole ordeal, or at least not so excited about it, those who sat silently contemplating how they felt about it or content to just sit and watch. All and all, those shooting side-eyed glares to Emerson were vastly outweighed by the in-favor and the complacent.
In the center of the arena, two anomalies loathed by many of the Foundation were unfrozen and came to life: the corrosive, sadistic old man who formerly resided in the dimension now home to the facility, SCP-106, and an unassuming mound of scrap metal in the vague shape of a teddy bear, SCP-1048-C.
Emerson had chosen them carefully for the arena's first ever fight. Both had killed many within the Foundation, and both were always on the minds of Foundation employees.
SCP-106 was infamous for the suffering it caused in its frequent containment breaches, and SCP-1048-C had lurked in unknown places around Site-24 for years after it killed several researchers immediately after it was created, causing unease among everyone there who knew it could've been around any corner. Some former Site-24 staff were even present among Emerson's own men now.
For these reasons, a so-called crosstest that could destroy one or both of them was a popular idea, despite concerns of safety or professionalism. It wasn't hard to get the idea to be fully realized, especially with his newfound authority as the director of the site.
Still, for now, he had to keep his commentary professional enough. "Beginning test now."
The fight wasn't truly the spectacle it could be; there was no environment set up for demolition or taping for anything beyond archival. Regardless, Emerson's smile was as wide as it'd ever been.
SCP-106 was, for a brief moment that many in the crowd reveled in, much like a deer in headlights. It hadn't had a moment to think with the cryogenics put on it since it'd been lured out into a freeze trap over a year ago, and it now found itself surrounded by a roaring crowd in an arena in its own dimension that it no longer had proper access to and reign over, unable to jump between it and the normal world it often infested or to manipulate it as it once had.
SCP-1048-C on the other hand was a simpler creature, and it charged quickly at SCP-106. The old man, used to being indestructible, was incredulous when the small, metal bear flung itself at him, and it stung. It had hurt, and the teddy bear had left an open gash in its chest where it'd struck. This had never happened before.
The old man attempted to retreat through the floor of the arena, but the floor remained resolutely in-tact. This, too, had never happened before.
SCP-1048-C was upon him again in an instant, slashing through him with its jagged metal body. Even as it did, however, it began to corrode, visible damage already occurring. The old man began attempting to reach to further damage and corrode it as much as possible, struggling to touch it at all.
In the observation booth, Emerson crossed his arms and watched the carnage below with a contented, gleeful smile. The fight was more than the spectacle of two anomalies clashing. It was more than at least one murderous creature being put to rest. It was more than learning just how much of SCP-106's strength came from its own pocket dimension. It was success. It was his dream finally becoming reality.
Beside him in the crowded booth, a young but experienced member of the security team, officer Hollis, watched with stars in her eyes as the anomalies fought. She'd been skeptical when she'd first heard the idea. It'd sounded like something out of the early days of the Foundation when it was more reckless and less strict. But considering the faith placed in the test chamber to be truly inescapable for the anomalies by countless higher-ups, she'd eventually caved. Now, she'd fully bought into it. After all, surely raising staff morale while simultaneously getting rid of some of the nastier SCPs was a good thing, right? She had no way of knowing how far Emerson would take things.
Below the arena, in a small subsection of Sublevel 2 where useful anomalies were stored, one Vera Hadley entered her credentials. She'd objected immediately to Emerson's choice of making the anomalies fight like dogs. She'd had her reservations right away at letting the destructive GOC overtake them, but letting an outsider who ran an illegal smuggling business come in and start making what they once kept locked up fight each other like a bored king constructing a coliseum, it was disgusting to her. It pushed her over a line she didn't ever expect to cross.
Most of security was topside to keep an eye on the match, of course, and most of the exits were up there as well. Those who remained below didn't question Dr. Hadley, a respected Foundation scientist. She entered the room uncontested.
It didn't take her long to find what she was looking for: a gun-shaped device made from a door knob and a blue key. She inserted it into the closed door behind her that led back to the hall she'd entered from and opened it into the Wanderer's Library.
Though she may not have known how to find new coordinates precisely, being on the team that'd built and tested it initially gave her some options.
She went through, on her way to find an antimeme strong enough to hide her from the joint shadow organization that would surely want to track her, as well as whatever Emerson had up his sleeve that let him rise to power in such dramatic fashion. She'd soon defect to the Serpent's Hand.
Topside, Emerson had no clue what had just happened below him; he was far too enthralled with the action to focus on anything else, witnessing SCP-106 be torn to shreds while SCP-1048-C quite literally melted, the anomalies destroying each other.
"SCP-106 and SCP-1048-C terminated," he announced over the mic when both stopped moving, trying to hide the excitement and exhilaration in his voice.
Gradually, the site would become more and more focused on SCP fighting as Emerson's influence grew, spurred on by handling communications and agreements with SCP Foundations, GOC's, and other organizations from other worlds that had no stakes in owning the site themselves. His power grew and grew, and surely before long he'd be too big to ever topple.
Act II
Now, with Emerson
Emerson bangs on the empty wall where the Way was meant to be, grunting with frustration as the screams slowly die down behind him while the mechanical noises only grow louder.
He groans and turns to the Tau-5 team behind him, "If we could reopen the portals somehow… could you get me through one of them?"
Onru shakes her head, "There's no override procedure; they're meant to be reopened from the outside by response teams and only if the structure is deemed salvageable. The GOC is no longer in control of the facility and thus will not send response teams, and the structure will not be salvageable."
"Emergency protocol calls to take shelter in the on-site bunker," Irantu states as the Unbroken God rips what's meant to be the most secure room in the facility out of the ground and devours it in the arena behind him, "However, an improvised solution would be best at this time."
"How're you going to get me out of here?" Emerson asks, exasperated.
"Right now, the most important thing is to reach the lower levels," Irantu replies, "this floor will be entirely gone within an hour at the most generous estimate. Now come on."
Elliot doesn't need to be told twice; he readily follows behind Irantu and Nanku, who take up the front while Onru and Munru guard the flank.
"Emerson," Nanku prompts.
"What is it?" Emerson asks as they make their way down to the main lift.
"Shouldn't emergency cryogenic devices have activated by now and contained the threat? Even if they are damaged, they should've at least gone off whether or not they'd work," she asks.
They reach the main lift and file in as Emerson contemplates this, "Well, yes they should've. That is rather odd, why-"
He's cut off as a familiar, smiling face appears on the small screen above the elevator buttons, a face responsible not only for keeping the cryogenics in the arena from firing but for shutting off the cryogenics everywhere else in the facility as well, as they would soon learn. Irantu has already pressed the button for Sublevel 4 and entered his credentials. The elevator does not move.
"What's wrong, buddy?" Bobble cackles, "I thought you just loved a good show! Why try to run from the most exciting show you'll ever see?"
With Hollis
Hollis chats with Mohammed idly in a maintenance corridor beneath the arena. The thundering sounds of mechanical battle make them raise their voices to be heard.
"It's been a pain setting up security for this shit. Had to give everyone training in deescalation and dealing with protestors ever since the incident with the Serpent's Hand yesterday. Who knows what a group less level-headed than Samsara would've done?" she calls casually to Mohammed.
"It's good to know Dr. Emerson had the foresight to put you up to that," Mohammed responds.
"What?" Hollis asks, having not heard him over the noise above.
"I said it's good to know Dr. Emerson had the foresight to start that training," he repeats himself.
"He didn't, I took it upon myself to-" Hollis stops as screams overwhelm them from above, getting cut off one by one as the mechanical sounds only grow louder.
"Good heavens-" Mohammed turns his gaze upward to the ceiling, where a worklamp is swinging slightly from the force of the commotion above, the whole room trembling, "Do you think we should-"
"We need to get lower down, now! We absolutely do not want to be caught in whatever mess is going on up there!" Hollis calls, grabbing Dr. Scott by the wrist and pulling him toward one of the main lifts, "Come on, we're the lucky ones with Sublevel 4 clearance! We can shelter others down there with us if we catch them at the lift."
The mechanical roaring above grows louder and louder and the ground shakes more and more as the Unbroken God gradually works its way deeper into the ground.
They reach the lift where several maintenance workers are already trying to get it to move.
"What's the hold up?" Hollis shouts as they approach.
"Damn thing ain't workin'!" a man calls back, "Doesn't seem to have much structural damage yet, so I don't know what's up with it!"
"Out of the way! Let me try my own credentials!" Dr. Scott calls, approaching the lift, where everyone steps aside, out of other options. He inputs his credentials, but it still doesn't budge. A faint laughing comes from the elevator's speakers.
"That damn clown," Hollis swears under her breath with a smoldering rage.
"Everyone to the service lift a little ways from here! Bobble doesn't have jurisdiction for those; he's hooked up to the main power systems and those run on auxiliary!" Mohammed beckons everyone, now taking the lead with Hollis and the others in tow.
The service lift is directly beneath the arena, where rows of metal support beams are lined with wires and now-nonfunctional machinery that once maintained all of the arena's functions, including forcefields. It only leads down to Sublevel 2, but anything is better than where they are now.
Dr. Scott and those in his company run towards it, but the ever-louder sound of working machinery is not mere noise. Soon, long metal rods, pistons and interlocking arms of steel crash through the ceiling, the Unbroken God above ripping up support beams and machinery components to acquire more metal to grow itself larger and larger.
As they run, the metal beams skewer several of the men, more getting caught in moving mechanisms as they try to jump over or crawl under them, being mangled in the equipment or stuck in it where they have no hope of survival or escape.
Mohammed and Hollis duck and weave through the mechanical mess, reaching the small metal platform as it begins to descend, a surviving technician and engineer already riding it down.
Their names were Pam and Jerry respectively, Mohammed being familiar with them and Hollis reading their name tags, though she's undoubtedly met them before.
"Mohammed, you studied this thing before we picked it out for our arena, right?" Hollis asks.
"Yes, I was part of the team that did that, though we weren't many because Emerson tends to be so knowledgeable himself," he replies.
"He's just a know-it-all," Hollis quips, anger at Emerson kindled by just the thought of him, "Now is this thing going to slow down any? How long do we have before we have to be off of the floor we're heading to?"
Mohammed stammers for a moment, opting not to respond to Hollis' disdain for their boss in such a situation, "The arena doesn't have nearly as much metal as the floor we just left, so… If we're lucky and it needs to slow down any to eat, we should have a while longer than it took to get through the first floor."
Hollis bites her lip slightly, "We might just have time, then. We'll head for the armory."
With Emerson
"Let's go," Irantu leads the way out of the compromised elevator and into the halls extending away from the arena toward the personnel quarters, speaking not a word to the still-taunting Bobble. Emerson and the rest of Tau-5 follow along.
The metal groaning and machine roaring get slightly quieter behind them as they leave the arena proper, the divine machine expanding to take up the entire stadium, stands and all. 3179 shrieks in the distance as it is cornered by one of the arena's vanished exits and consumed by the false god.
"Report weapon status," Irantu instructs the rest of his team, running his own diagnostics on the machine gun mounted to his right arm as he leads them at a quick pace through the upper level's corridors.
"Online," Munru responds, keeping the arm-mounted rocket launcher he possesses held at the ready, having been instructed to use it by Hollis when she prepared security for the event.
"Online," Nanku responds, her flamethrower readied on her left arm.
"Sounds like we're all good, then," Onru finishes their weapons check, her high-power rifle locked and loaded.
The comfort of such heavily armed guards around him somewhat offsets the sinking feeling Emerson gets from seeing his creation in such a state. When they pass the lobby, it's full of desperate people from the crowd looking for an exit where there is none. When they pass through the personnel quarters, they're all but deserted.
"I take it we're- going through the power plant- to Sublevel 1, right?" Emerson prompts, speaking between breaths.
"Affirmative," Irantu replies simply.
"What's our best bet on getting- out of here alive?" Emerson asks hopefully.
"The current plan is to reach Sublevel 4," Irantu explains as they reach the door to the inbuilt power plant, which he promptly bashes through to maintain pace, "from there, you will activate the Thresher. It will almost certainly doom any world the facility lands in with what will be unleashed upon it, so the next directive when we arrive is to find a means of reaching another world without the use of the Thresher."
Emerson struggles to process what Irantu said while hurrying through the power plant past numerous sealed reactor cores to a set of metal stairs leading down to the floor below, but when it finally gets across, he responds with a simple, "Alright."
The group stops when they reach Sublevel 1, anything past the first corridor entirely unable to be seen through the pieces of the Unbroken God smashing through it. Entering is completely impossible.
"We may need to reroute once more," Nanku points out as Irantu contemplates the situation.
"No time. Return to the top of the stairs and wait there," Munru responds.
The four others quickly oblige. A loud blast follows, and when Munru calls them back down he's covered in severe burns. A hole has been blasted through the floor to the level below.
Munru doesn't acknowledge his injuries, simply dropping into the hole and having his leg implants absorb the shock. Nanku and Onru follow suit.
"Am I- just supposed to jump?" Emerson asks.
"Negative. Brace yourself now," Irantu warns before grabbing Emerson and holding him on his shoulder, hopping down with him before setting him back on the ground.
"Oh, uh, right- thanks," Emerson stammers.
Sublevel 2 isn't a pretty sight; the cryogenics have entirely shut off, and all manner of creatures chosen for their ability to cause harm mill about, lashing out at each other in panic or self-defense, scrambling to orient themselves and find anywhere to go. Anything capable of busting through the metal doors of its cell or whose door malfunctioned or was damaged by the chaos outside is now loose, and anything not loose is violently attempting to escape, resulting in a mess of fighting anomalies and a noise that rivals the mechanical groaning above. The only guards in sight are dead on the ground if not smeared on the walls.
"Weapons hot, keep close to Emerson. Don't let anything near him," Irantu instructs the obvious.
An animate sculpture of a bird flies low through the corridor, metal wings outstretched and sharpened beak and talons ready to tear through anything it can. It soars down the corridor towards the group.
Emerson ducks and covers his head while Onru blows its head off with a single well-placed shot, stalling much of its momentum as well with the force of the bullet.
"Commendable aim," Irantu says as they carry on forward, stepping over the now still metal form on the ground.
Soon, they come upon a crossroad between two corridors, and in front of them a newly-revived Able speeds across perpendicular to where they stand, slashing through several humanoid creatures with the fur and features of a goat and wings of a bat, killing three at once.
"Able," Irantu greets him.
He looks up from where he's just stabbed through the heart of another goat demon, "Yes?"
"Requesting your assistance in-" Irantu is cut off.
Able stares right past the cyborg guards to Emerson in the center of them, "Elliot, it's good to see you. What's happening here? I've been quite enjoying it."
"We've, uh, experienced an emergency," Emerson tries to explain, "we're planning to reach Sublevel 4 to escape. Could you aid us in reaching it?"
Able gives Emerson an odd look, as though he'd just suggested substituting eggs with cement in a recipe, struggling to understand why a man of fighting and glory, who loves it so much to have built the arena, would want to leave at its most violent hour. After a moment he prompts, "This will take us through the area with the largest monsters, correct?"
"That is correct," Emerson replies, managing to put on a false confidence that'd long become a staple of his most dire moments.
Able smiles, a twisted, eager look in his eyes, "Count me in."
With Hollis
Hollis' group take a more tactful approach. Flipped tables and flatbed trolleys are used as cover to keep low and hide, though Hollis keeps her standard issue sidearm ready, using it to take out the occasional anomalous bat or finish off injured hostiles.
They make their way from the lift to the armory in this manner, which fortunately isn't far. Hollis' clearance gets them in.
Inside, Hollis returns her sidearm to her hip and selects an FN P90 from the wall, a weapon she's rather familiar with. She keeps watch over the entrance while allowing the rest of her group to arm themselves as well.
Dr. Scott is quick to make his decision, selecting a shotgun off the wall and slipping spare shells into his pockets. He comes to Hollis while the others are busy making their own weapon choices.
"Hollis, what's the plan?" he asks, loud enough she can hear but quiet enough that the calamity outside conceals his voice from the others.
"The plan?" she prompts further.
"I know you've got something cooking up," he responds.
"Alright, well, right now I'm thinking about finding our way to the Thresher and using it to lob this whole place into the middle of a supernova. Get rid of everything here before some other sorry world taps into it and finds our absolute clusterfuck waiting for them," she responds.
Mohammed folds his hands, "Well, I suppose I wasn't really much expecting to get out of here alive anyway. Still, maybe we could find… I don't know, some way to make it teleport us out?"
Hollis didn't miss the desperation in his voice, "Maybe, but I think we both know that isn't likely. We can tell the others your plan, though."
The others come up with their chosen weapons in hand. Pam wields an assault rifle, Jerry a revolver. It's abundantly clear that nobody in the room aside from Hollis is terribly confident with a firearm.
Hollis stands before the group, "Alright, here's the plan. We're going to work our way to Sublevel 4. There, we're going to rig the Thresher to teleport us out and bring the arena and all the shit loose in it to the center of a supernova so it can't be discovered and unleashed. Is all that clear?" There's a burning passion in her speech, as much of a half-truth as it may be.
There are no questions.
She turns to Dr. Scott, "Now then, Mohammed, what's our best route?"
With Emerson
Tau-5 and Able move forward, with Emerson following behind.
"What's our next move?" Able asks to Irantu.
"The clown Emerson put in charge of primary electrical systems is blocking the main lifts. We'll be taking a freight elevator to the next level down from here. Unfortunately, Sublevel 4 access was removed when construction finished to restrict access to the Thresher device. We'll need to find another way down from there," Irantu explains, "That may mean making a stop to manually shut down Bobble's control network if we can't circumvent the main lifts again."
Onru shoots down a security camera as they walk past it, though it does nothing to ease an uncomfortable feeling of being watched.
The corridor leading to the lift is filled with arm-sized leeches and hollowed-out shambling corpses of former staff marching alongside them, blood dripping from their mouths.
"Alright, get in position. Nanku, take the front and torch the leeches. Munru, Able, guard Emerson from the rear-" Irantu's voice cuts off as he watches Able dash forward, eagerly slashing through the shambling corpses and hacking leeches in half as they attempt to latch onto him.
"Able, requesting an immediate return to formation," Irantu states as Able reaches the freight elevator, leaving a dozen leeches still wriggling forward that are evidently not enough of a challenge for him to go back and kill them. He stands in the elevator, holding his sword in front of him and waiting for them to catch up.
"Come on, now, bigger things to fight down below," he says, urging them to hurry up.
Emerson stands back and allows Nanku to burn down the remaining leeches before guiding him through their smoldering remains, earning him an odd glance from Able.
The rest file onto the lift, and Irantu presses the button to send them down. Further up the freight elevator's shaft, massive pieces of machinery move overhead, gradually encroaching downward and sending pieces of debris tumbling down.
"Cover yourself, Emerson!" Irantu warns, punching a stray fist-sized piece of concrete out of the air right before it hits Emerson on the head. Emerson obliges with the warning, getting down and covering his head.
"Is this not embarrassing to you?" Able asks, perceiving Elliot as rather cowardly.
"He's only a mortal human," Munru remarks, "Taking measures to protect himself is optimal for survival and accomplishing our mission."
Able's eyes narrow slightly, and he prepares to make a remark before stopping to slash a small metal support beam in half before it lands on the group.
When the elevator reaches the bottom, everyone steps off right away, the debris only coming down harder.
In front of them is a massive hallway, extremely tall and wide to facilitate the transport of kaiju-class creatures for battle in the arena. They were never intended to roam the halls freely, however.
Before them, an enormous creature makes its way across the distant perpendicular intersection between the two long halls that comprise Sublevel 3. Its lower half is made up of five cephalopodic tentacles that sprawl out beneath it and allow it to ambulate across the ground. The upper half of the creature is reptilian, covered in massive, green scales. It has a slightly elongated five-eyed face and five stumpy arms that end in webbed hands with massive claws. It's just over 100 meters tall.
Two giant, yellow, reptilian eyes turn towards the group that's appeared on Sublevel 3, and the creature roars loudly.
"Looks like we've been spotted. Is everyone prepared to engage?" Irantu asks.
"More than," Able responds.
With Hollis
Hollis peeks around the corner, her back flattened against the wall and her P90 in her hands.
"The maintenance shaft should be just down this hall. We'll need to climb down it, but it'll be able to take us all the way down to Sublevel 4 if the identification systems are functioning properly," Dr. Scott explains.
"Any nasties down that way?" Pam asks Hollis.
"I see… a clawed foot with a snail shell. It's ugly-looking and is spitting out some corrosive shit, but we might be able to slip past it," Hollis responds, readying her P90.
"Whatever you do, do not engage. That thing can kill you deceptively fast, and it will absolutely hurt the entire time," Mohammed warns.
"Not inspiring confidence," Jerry replies at the back of the group.
Hollis turns to the group, "Everyone shut your mouths and follow me."
The corridor is filled with overturned storage shelves and tables as well as a few scattered crates. Keeping low and silent, Hollis crawls from one to the other, motioning for her group to follow one-by-one behind her.
Hollis gets halfway there before accidentally brushing her hand up against the side of a crate with the creature's corrosive goo on it. She hisses and swears under her breath at the pain as she hastily wipes it off, which alerts the anomaly to their presence.
With speed one would never imagine from such an awkward-looking creature, it flings itself toward Hollis, who dives forward to avoid it, sending it crashing into the tables and crates behind her.
"Run!" she yells as she gets up and books it for the maintenance shaft's entrance, which is now in view.
Mohammed, Pam, and Jerry follow behind with haste, though it's awkward to make their way through with the debris filling the hall.
Jerry, lagging behind, catches his leg on a fallen shelving unit and trips forward, falling over it and suffering several bruises and scrapes from the fall. Before he can even look up, the corrosive snail is upon him, landing on his face and melting it with its corrosive fluid in seconds before leaping forward after the others. His revolver drops uselessly out of his limp hand.
Pam is its next target, but she dives out of the way, resulting in it flying into Mohammed's left leg instead. He screams in terror and pain as he crumples forward, causing Hollis to turn around from where she's running. She fires at the anomalous creature with her weapon, unintentionally striking higher on Mohammed's leg a couple times as she fires.
The snail creature relents slightly as it's pelted with bullets, scurrying back a pace before ultimately returning to Jerry's corpse to feed. It doesn't appear to be visibly damaged beyond a few small cracks in its shell.
Hollis dashes back to Mohammed to carry him away. His lower leg is entirely gone, and he moans in pain. Pam aids her in carrying him, and they take him to the maintenance shaft to recuperate. His shotgun, dropped in the fall, is left behind in their haste to escape the corridor.
Inside the maintenance shaft is a catwalk wrapping around the shaft with two ladders stretching up and down the full height of the facility, additional catwalks placed around each floor and by things like switches and fuseboxes between floors.
A metal shutter is open over the entrance, which Hollis quickly shuts to not be so exposed inside. The mechanical roaring above is louder here, carrying down from the higher floors.
"Fuck, what are we going to do?" Pam asks, looking down at the man between them who can only groan in pain.
"Try to wipe some of that corrosive shit off the stump of his leg. Don't use your hands, obviously," Hollis instructs.
Pam follows her instructions, using a grease rag she keeps on her for her maintenance duties to scrub off as much as she can, figuring the grease can't be worse for him than whatever the snail left behind. She drops the rapidly-deteriorating rag down the shaft when she's finished.
While Pam cleans the wound the best she can, Hollis grabs a utility knife off her belt and cuts the lower half of her shirt off and into ribbons, which she wraps and ties around Mohammed's leg when she's finished.
Mohammed groans and huffs slightly, "I'm- fuck, I'm not sure I can go on, Hollis. Look at me."
Hearing this ignites a passion inside of her, "No. We're not giving up now. You're not dying here. Can you climb?"
"Hollis, we're not getting out of here alive anyway. I- Listen, the Thresher doesn't exactly have a manual, but- there should be a list of coordinates down there for-" Mohammed speaks to Hollis, pained and struggling with each word.
"Can you climb?" Hollis repeats more firmly.
"In this state… I'm sorry, but no. I wouldn't trust myself with- Just, no, Hollis, I can't," Mohammed responds regretfully.
"Pam, get on the ladder. The one on the right. Don't go down it, just get on it beneath the catwalk," Hollis instructs as she clips her P90 to her belt, Pam obliging.
Hollis pulls Mohammed to the other ladder and carries him down it to the same level as Pam, straining to keep hold of him while still remaining on the ladder, aided by him holding on tightly, "Hold the leg he's got left. I'll get his arms. We'll need to take it slow if we want to make it at all, but don't forget that we're on borrowed time here."
Pam obliges hesitantly, and they begin to work their way down the maintenance shaft, the facility shaking around them as they do.
It's a slow and tedious crawl down, especially with the distance between sublevels 2 and 3. They begin to tire quite heavily by the time they're over halfway down.
"Do you think we could stop for a moment, and-" Pam begins.
"Behind you!" Hollis shouts as a black fluid appears on the wall before a jet black hand coated in slimy substance emerges from it.
Pam screams and drops her half of Mohammed in her panic, prompting Hollis to hold on as tight as she can while he swings into the ladder below her and grabs hold of a rung.
Pam tries to scramble further down the ladder, but the hand grabs her wrist tight, and it starts to burn. The substance has thoroughly coated the wall behind her now, and from it the form of a sleek, black head and shoulders emerge alongside the hand.
It's coated very thickly with the stuff, reminiscent of the amniotic fluid covering a child who has just been birthed. The fluid coating it makes its features indistinguishable and shines under the dim lighting of the maintenance shaft.
Still holding Mohammed tightly with one hand so as not to leave him to his own dwindling strength to keep him on the ladder, Hollis grabs her pistol and fires at the emerging being. It hisses and retreats despite being visibly unharmed, dragging the still-screaming Pam with it.
"Fuck!" Hollis swears as she watches another of her group be taken.
She pulls Mohammed Scott up and wraps an arm tightly around him, clutching him tightly to her chest and holstering her pistol, using her now-free hand to grasp the ladder.
The hideous thing emerges just above Hollis, and she hurries down as fast as she can, the thing following behind, leaving a trail of corrosive damage and black fluid that drips down behind it as it descends, halfway emerged from the wall.
Hollis nears the next floor down and stops as the creature approaches.
"Don't hold on," she says to Mohammed as she shifts her grasp on him to hold him by just one arm.
"Wh-What?" Mohammed gasps out, staring up at her with fear in his eyes.
"I said don't hold on to me. Just trust me," Hollis tells him as she swings him back and forth, adding a bit more force each time.
After he's picked up enough speed to carry him over the gap, Hollis lets go of the injured man, swinging him through the opening and letting him skid lightly on the ground of Sublevel 3. He groans and picks himself up a little with his arms, pained and exhausted.
The slimy black creature is nearly upon Hollis as it descends, a couple drops of the fluid from it dripping off and landing in her hair, scorching small clumps of it off and burning her scalp.
With her hands now free, she grabs her P90, ripping the clip clean off to avoid wasting time unclipping it. She lifts it up and releases a full cartridge of bullets into it.
Be it relearned fear of pain or the brightness of the muzzle flash, it retreats as quickly as it can away from Hollis and her weapon. Hollis climbs the short rest of the way down quickly and hops off, meeting back up with Mohammed.
With Emerson
Able charges the enormous beast without another word, eager to throw himself into battle.
One giant tentacle lifts up and comes crashing down towards him, and he dives out of the way, hardly slowing down as he closes in, sword gripped tightly in hand.
"Munru, come with me. We'll keep our distance but provide heavy fire. Nanku, take up the front and use your flames to discourage it from stepping any closer. Onru, keep close to Emerson. Emerson, keep yourself safe. And before we go, any relevant information?" Irantu immediately begins forming a plan with his team.
"This thing regenerates, and fast," Emerson warns, "Uh- I guess your best bet would be to focus your fire on whatever you think is most vulnerable, get through it before it heals over."
"Understood," Irantu replies, moving in alongside Munru and Nanku without another word.
Onru keeps back next to Emerson, instructing him to remain behind her while she shoots at its eyes to disorient and briefly blind it.
Irantu with his machine gun and Munru with his rocket launcher fire at the creature's heart, but their firepower isn't enough to push through it faster than it heals over. An enormous tentacle is pushed near and threatens to swipe at the group before reeling back courtesy of a painful burn from Nanku.
Able meanwhile slashes at the nearest tentacle of the beast, growing increasingly frustrated as the slash marks repeatedly heal over. With all his fury, he lets out a flurry of swipes that bore halfway through before it heals around his sword. He releases it, allowing it to disappear before he claims another from a rift that opens at his hand.
"We're not getting much from this position," Irantu points out, "Its most vulnerable spot is likely the head, and our weapons don't reach it as easily. Able certainly isn't going to-"
He stops as Able begins to scale the creature, using dual swords to jab in between its scales. Its own regeneration causes its flesh to grow tight around the blades, making his hold on it much sturdier. With each lunge up, he releases the sword he's holding with that hand and summons a new one before jabbing it in, repeating the same with his other arm after to steadily make his way up.
"Irantu, the catwalks," Munru motions upward.
"Good call. Nanku, fall back a few paces. You only need to keep it from getting too close to Onru and Emerson now," Irantu instructs as he and Munru take off for the nearest staircase up.
The creature is reeling, smacking at itself with the arms closest to where Able is climbing it, but doing so blindly due to Onru frequently poking its eyes with bullets. When it finally manages to aim its swat properly, Able reacts, leaping up and landing on its arm, jabbing swords into the flesh of its arm to hold on tightly.
Irantu and Munru move up the many flights of metal stairs up to the catwalks above as quickly as they can, keeping their eyes on the action as they do.
The enormous kraken-like beast flails its arm frantically as it's dug into, unable to shake Able. It resolves to bite down on it in an attempt to snap him up in its jaws, but Able responds by jumping right onto its nose and running up its snout towards its forehead, leaving it to bite itself for no reason.
Irantu and Munru manage to get in position at the overhead catwalk as Able backflips over a swipe of one massive scaled hand that attempts to sweep him off the creature's cranium.
Emerson, meanwhile, hides behind Onru, watching the action from afar. All around him, there's the sound of furious banging, of flesh and bone and claw on steel. Most of the extremely heavy doors containing massive anomalies behind them are still shut, albeit denting outward. There are beings that some would call gods in this complex, and they want out.
Able gets out of the way as Irantu and Munru unleash heavy fire on the creature's head, the explosions and bullets making a substantial dent and getting past the hard scales but not being sustained enough to truly break through.
While both are reloading and have just unleashed their latest bit of hell on the furious kaiju, Able takes his chance, moving in and slashing deep with his swords through flesh and bone. He manages to mince up the creature's brain a decent bit in doing so, and it reels back, tilting its head up as its whole body tenses in agony.
Evidently, whatever part of its strange, bestial brain Able slashed through played a key role in its regenerative abilities, as it does not recover. It falls forward, and Able rides it all the way to the ground before leaping off and landing on his feet, dusting off his hands in satisfaction at his work.
Irantu and Munru take the fast route down, hopping the catwalk's railing and letting their built-in shock absorbers take the landing for them. Irantu calls the rest of the group over.
As Nanku and Onru approach, Able stares right past them at Elliot Emerson, who is following behind somewhat sheepishly. There's an almost suspicious look in his eyes. He doesn't look away until they regroup, at which point he turns around.
"Alright, now to find our way to Sublevel 4. Our mission is nearly complete," Irantu announces, "Is everyone prepared to keep moving?"
Able twitches slightly and doesn't respond.
"Able?" Irantu nudges him slightly, "Able?"
With Hollis
Hollis carries Mohammed on her shoulder, walking dutifully in the direction of where they'd just watched a creature the size of a building fall over dead. She didn't see who was responsible, but she's sure the lack of another giant creature behind it means it was the work of Tau-5.
"Mohammed, was that thing back there…" Hollis begins a question.
"Yes, I do think so," the injured doctor responds, "SCP-106."
"Didn't realize we were keeping that thing from coming back with those runes or whatever," Hollis responds.
Mohammed sighs, "I didn't either."
There's a silence, at least from them, as they continue to walk past enormous metal door after enormous metal door, nearly all of them alive with the sound of violent attempts at escape. From one door countless leeches pour out from a small gap wrenched in it and from cracks in the wall around it. Some even slither from higher up cracks into the ceiling.
"It's going to come back," Mohammed says, "once it realizes it's in control and immortal again."
"We'll worry about that if and when it happens," Hollis responds.
"I don't want to be here when it does," Mohammed says simply.
After a moment, he speaks again, now quieter, his vitality slowly failing him, "Hollis, we aren't going to make it. I'm not, at least."
"Don't," Hollis says stubbornly.
"No, listen to me. I was hoping, for a moment, that the floor would've given way, that something would've smashed through it and we could just walk right through. But this place is probably holding up the best thanks to how reinforced Emerson and I made it," Mohammed explains to his own pride and dismay, "Unless we get the main lifts working, there's no way down there. That maintenance shaft was our last bet, and right now the bottom of it is filling with rubble and one-oh-six's corrosive secretions. Look at me, Hollis. If you want to go challenge Bobble's authority and lock him out of the lifts, you'll have to go through the networking center on this floor. He'll be waiting for us to do that."
"What, do you want us to just lie down and die?" Hollis asks, "We've got to try."
"No, but- Hollis, I might be dead before we arrive there. If I'm not, whatever Bobble has prepared will kill me," Mohammed states.
"I'm not letting you die," Hollis responds, "Not unless there's no other choice."
"Hollis, Pam did the best she could to clean my wound, but my blood is dripping through the scraps of your shirt you bandaged it with, and worse, the fluid that melted it made it into my bloodstream," Mohammed claims, audibly weaker, "I can't move my right arm."
Hollis stops and puts Mohammed on the ground gently, getting on her knees to look him in the eyes, "I can't leave you behind. I won't leave you behind. Even if I did, I'd be fucked. I can't activate the Thresher on my own."
Dr. Scott pauses for a moment, "Find Emerson. He knows how to use the Thresher. Hell, he designed it. He'll be more precise than me anyway."
"Like he'd do that. If there's one thing I know about that man, it's that he'd try something dumb to get away, regardless of what that means for anyone else," Hollis states bluntly.
"No, Hollis, he… I know he's not quite the kind young man he used to be, but I've known him for a long time. He's a friend to me, and I know that despite his shortcomings, his mistakes, how much he, well, should've listened to you… I know he's a good person. He'd follow through," Mohammed has an almost pleading look in his eyes.
Hollis takes a second to collect herself, still not believing him, "Listen, I- He-" She's cut off with a shout as an arm-sized leech bites into her heel. She grabs her pistol and shoots clean through it, kicking off the remains of it with a disgusted grunt.
Then she sees the rest.
Hundreds of leeches are making their way across the floor towards them, and several surround them already. They swarm around Hollis and try to bite at her, put her off balance. She grunts and steps back away from them, but they then move to the vulnerable Mohammed.
She fires at them around where he lays against the wall, but they're too numerous to all gun down, especially as more keep coming. They squirm onto him, and one begins to force its way into his mouth.
Dr. Scott lets out a desperate, muffled scream and looks to Hollis with an agonized, pleading expression.
Hesitantly, she raises her weapon, pointed between his eyes.
"I'm sorry, Mohammed."
With Emerson
Able turns around, and a wicked fury is visible in his eyes. He begins to step towards Emerson. "You. You aren't a warrior. You aren't a fighter. You're a coward, a pitiful coward who just makes everyone else fight for him. You're a twisted king who sits upon his throne hiding away while his armies march onward without him," he says, something cruel and primal awakening in his eyes, "Let's see your crown topple off your cowering face."
The entirety of Tau-5 immediately take position between them.
"Able, stand down," Irantu warns.
"Don't protect someone who would never fight alongside you, only cower behind you," Able says with a hint of disgust, then looking past them to Emerson, who is taking a step back and looking around for any escape, "Pick up a weapon, Emerson."
Munru shoves Able back as he attempts to continue his approach, "Cease your hostilities immediately."
"If that's how it's going to be," Able raises his sword, "then have at you!"
He charges in, and Tau-5 spread out to not all be in his sword's reach at once. Irantu darts back to stand a distance away from Emerson, between the rest of the group and him so as to prevent Able from advancing upon him. Onru takes position far back from the rest of the group to fire on him from afar. Munru moves to the side to keep enough distance to use his rocket launcher without harming himself significantly in the process.
Nanku stands her ground, readying her flamethrower and firing at the approaching Able. Ignoring the burning pain that overtakes the front of his body as the flames collide with him, he charges onward before hacking through Nanku's chest with three quick swipes. She collapses to the ground.
A high-power bullet tears through Able's ear, barely missing the back of his head thanks to his swift movement. He turns and charges at Onru, moving in an unpredictable, serpentine motion to keep from being hit during the approach. "Coward!" he shouts as he dispatches Onru with a single, furious swipe.
He turns to see a rocket flying towards him courtesy of Munru. With a deranged smile, he charges forward as the rocket collides with the ground where he'd just stood, propelling him forward and thoroughly singeing his backside. The explosion causes his right forearm to be ripped off, and though he lands on his feet in front of Munru, he's visibly staggered. This doesn't stop him from raising his sword with his remaining arm and bringing it down upon him, though.
With a slight limp, he charges at Irantu, albeit at a slower pace than before.
"Stand down," Irantu demands as he opens fire.
Able exchanges his sword for an axe with a wide blade. As he makes his approach, he covers his chest and face with it.
Irantu looks over his shoulder to Emerson, "Run, sir, while you can!"
Able finally reaches Irantu, having suffered many shots across the region of his body not protected by the axe but nonetheless still standing. Using much of his remaining strength, he sweeps at Irantu's side with the axe held in one hand.
Weakened as he may be, it's still enough to knock the last of Tau-5 over onto his side. He brings the axe down a final time to decapitate Irantu.
Emerson is backing away, looking around frantically trying to find any escape, but the hall is enormous. There are no hiding places nearby, no escape routes.
Despite only limping forward, Able pursues Emerson, looking into his eyes, "Grab a weapon, Emerson. Grab a weapon, stand up to me, and consider yourself lucky I'm giving you the honor of dying in combat instead of dying from a stray bullet while cowering in a corner."
Emerson slips and falls back onto the ground, trying to scoot away from the ruthless swordsman. He begins fumbling in an inner coat pocket, reaching for a last resort option he's kept for some time for a moment such as this, desperate as it may be.
Able is upon him while he still fumbles to grasp it, finally getting it in his hand as Able raises his sword, not quick enough.
"Don't say I didn't give you a chance to die braver than-" Able is cut off as a gunshot rings out behind him.
His summoned sword vanishes from his hand, and he flops down onto Emerson's chest, dead from a shot to the back of the head.
A ways behind him, Hollis is standing in the center of the massive corridor, aiming down the scope of Onru's dropped rifle.
Blindingly bright
Emerson puts the small object back in his pocket and quickly moves to get up from under Able's corpse, greeting Hollis with elation. "Oh, Hollis, it's so good to see you."
"Don't fucking move," Hollis says, not lowering her weapon.
Emerson's smile wavers and quickly fades.
"You're coming with me. We're going to get the main lifts running so we can get to Sublevel 4, then you're going to turn on the Thresher and transport this whole facility into the fiery pits of a neutron star, so no sorry dimension-hopper or experimental portal network or whatever the fuck else winds up here and is faced with the full force of the hell your negligence unleashed," Hollis speaks in a commanding tone, a blaze of passion in her intense glare.
Emerson puts his hands up, "Hollis, I- This is unprecedented, I mean I never-"
"Shut the fuck up, Emerson," Hollis growls, "You can come with me and do as I say or I can kill you here and now."
Emerson hesitates before stepping forward with a sigh, "Alright, fine."
A tense, bitter silence overwhelms the space between them as they make their way to the networking center, broken only by the loud banging on the doors, the constant creaking of metal, and the ever-present working of machinery above that gradually works its way closer and closer.
The networking center, the largest of several communications facilities in the complex, is to the right and all the way down the hall. For a normal building, this wouldn't be more than a few feet. Here, it's about a kilometer to walk.
When they finally arrive at the networking center, everything feels remarkably small in comparison, even though the server racks go up ten feet and the room, though broken up by the massive, spaced rows of servers and computer terminals, is nearly the size of a gymnasium.
At the far end is an open doorway surrounded by large windows, through which a room with a large array of monitors is stationed, intended for use in communications with other worlds. The smiling face of Bobble takes up all the monitors, stretching across each one to form one big picture. His voice comes from all corners of the room.
"I was hoping you'd show up!" he laughs, "Be my guest, look around all you like, in fact, I encourage you to be real thorough, every nook and cranny. Not a lot of functional terminals left in here, with all the damage your latest hit show's causin', Elliot."
Emerson flinches slightly, turning to Hollis, "If we can find a terminal, I know how to lock him out. Just punching in a bit of code then confirming it in the room at the back."
"Yeah, real easy!" Bobble cackles, "Just don't wake the 'dog', he came down here for some peace and quiet." Whatever creature Bobble is referring to seems to stir, judging by the sounds of movement and metal scraping coming from a far corner of the room. "Oops? Did I do that? Guess I woke the poor doggie up. Oh well, I'm sure he'd love to play!"
"Come on," Hollis drags Emerson into the room by the collar, "Keep quiet and just point the way forward. If we see whatever that thing is, I'll keep it off us best I can."
Treading lightly between the server racks and avoiding where they can hear numerous steel legs stomping along between servers, they make it to the first terminal, only to find it nonfunctional. The next two yield similar results.
"Fuck," Hollis swears under her breath at a non-functioning terminal on the right wall of the room. The thing in the room with them stomps past just behind the server racks closest to them.
Emerson practically drags her to get them out of the way as the prowling thing rounds the corner. She catches a glimpse of something rounded and yellow.
They move to the other side of the room as quickly as they can, where they try another terminal. Yet again, it doesn't work.
"Two left," Emerson whispers. He then points to another corner of the room, not far from where they'd seen the creature.
They weave between servers to make their way there, but the metal stomping gets louder and louder. Hollis ducks into the space under one of the terminals they've checked, which has a decent-sized desk space with it, dragging Emerson in with her just as the thing begins to stomp down that way.
Eight yellow-painted metal legs thunder past with a solid, mostly-flat base above them.
Once it's gone the other way, they crawl out and hurry to the terminal Emerson pointed them towards. He presses the power button, and it lights up with green light. It also makes an audible power-on jingle.
On the other side of the room, the skittering of metal legs abruptly stops for a moment before changing direction.
"Hurry," Hollis hisses in Emerson's ear. Emerson does his best to oblige, entering his credentials then opening the permissions manager. He types in the instructions to remove Bobble's permissions and presses enter just as the thing rounds the corner and finally catches up to them.
Turning to look at it, it's a yellow Volkswagen beetle with eight arthropod legs and the hood bulged out into a shape resembling the cephalothorax of a spider.
The creature charges them rapidly, and they bolt away. Hollis fires at it with her pistol as they run, but that only seems to make it angrier due to the noise; the bullets do little to its hard metal body.
They move between server racks as they make for the back room to finally disconnect Bobble, hoping to lose it or make it slow down to get through. Instead, it bashes through the servers, knocking them over with its legs or just plain ramming them. This sends showers of sparks across the ground and forces Hollis to grab Emerson and shove him forward before ducking down and sliding to avoid the toppling servers.
"Come on!" Hollis drags the still-stumbling Emerson through the doors of the room.
The spider-like thing behind them scrambles over the servers on its way to follow them. With a bit too much inertia, it slams through the door, destroying part of the door frame as it does so. The two scatter in opposite directions, allowing it to ram into the wall of monitors and equipment at the back, where its legs collapse under it as it stops moving, its front section crumpled up from the collision.
"Ugh, shit…" Emerson gets up and dusts himself off, looking around at what's still in-tact.
Hollis moves carefully around the inert car to Emerson, who powers on one of the large consoles in the room. "Still works, we're in luck."
Meanwhile, the screens flick on once more, even the ones visibly damaged beyond repair, showing Bobble, still excited and giggling. "Gee, Emerson, that was pretty close. I honestly didn't expect you to come out on top there," he says.
"Shut it," Emerson replies as he works on signing in once more for the confirmation.
"Tell me, Emerson. Look around; are you proud of what you've created? Does it fill your heart with joy to see what you've done? Because I'd say it's the greatest spectacle I've ever seen!" Bobble laughs horribly as Emerson finally disconnects him. The way the clown speaks, he practically spits Emerson's name.
Bobble disappears from the screens, but his voice remains, no longer coming garbled through speakers but in an otherworldly whisper all around, "Well, good job, buddy! You sure did it. As for me? I think I'll stick around and enjoy the show a little longer." With a continued cackling, the voice fades away.
I open my eyes
The nearest main lift is just outside the server room. The walk there isn't far, but tensions haven't eased any. Hollis keeps a firm grip on the rifle she took from Onru, her P90 held to her hip by her belt.
Emerson enters his credentials into the lift's terminal, and both let out a sigh of relief when it works and sends them down to Sublevel 4.
The place isn't entirely in-tact; plenty of unattended toolboxes, tall work lamps, and other such things have fallen over and lie scattered across the ground. A few wires on the ceiling spark dangerously. Despite this, it's perhaps the level that has changed the least since before the incident.
"Walk. We're almost there," Hollis orders.
Emerson obliges, though not without hesitation.
As they walk down the corridor toward the Thresher's chamber, a sound is heard. It's a skittering sound, but it almost sounds exactly like rain.
"Do you hear that?" Emerson asks. He knows what it is, both from having selected it to be brought in and from the vast amount of knowledge he has access to in his mind, as much as he now takes it for granted.
"We'll be taking it out with us when we activate the Thresher. Ignore it," Hollis responds as they keep moving.
It's one long, dark corridor after another, stumbling slightly on their way, until finally they reach the room with the Thresher. The Thresher's room is something of a mess, documents spilled all over the floor with shelves and filing cabinets toppled over. Hollis is glad she didn't go with Dr. Scott's initial plan of trying to teach herself to use it with the documentation.
"Here it is. Dr. Scott told me you can use it, so fire it up," Hollis directs Emerson to the control panel.
"How's he doing in all this?" Emerson asks as he hesitantly approaches it. The sound of rain is a bit louder now.
"He's dead, Emerson. One of the leeches from that thing you were so proud to pose in front of those years ago got him. I had to put him down like a sick dog so he wouldn't suffer what it was going to do to him," Hollis spits her remark with a reignited fury.
"Oh… I'm sorry," Emerson replies, "He was a good man."
"Be sorry all you want, just activate the Thresher. We're not getting out of here alive, so let's die making things a bit better for someone else. For once," she grumbles the last part.
"Right, I- Yes, let's do that," Emerson says with a reserved sigh, inputting coordinates into the control panel and adjusting several switches and levers and dials to the proper values, setting it to transport the entire facility.
There's no dramatic final words, no knowing glance at each other, no fanfare as Emerson presses the button to fire the machine, just the loud winding up as it gets up to full power and the violent shaking of the entire facility.
The room floods with light from the device, and…
Nothing.
The crashing sounds and shaking get much more violent, as if the facility were resettling all at once, and the machine slowly winds back down. Self-evidently, they haven't been destroyed.
"What did you do?" Hollis pokes Emerson with the barrel of her gun, "WHAT DID YOU DO?"
The sound of skittering rain had been drowned out by the machine and its impact on the facility, but now it's suddenly deafening. Before either can do anything else, from the ceiling descends a massive millipede, which lands between them and attacks Hollis.
Hollis screams and steps back, the giant bug too close to be able to properly aim the bulky rifle she'd taken from Onru at it. She drops it and grabs her pistol instead, aiming it right at the creature's head from the side and firing off several shots.
The enormous millipede ceases to move, and she shoves it off of her with an 'eugh' and a shudder. She has some bite wounds on her neck and arm, but they aren't too deep, nothing to worry about now.
Hollis looks up to discover Emerson gone, his loud, frantic footsteps audible down the hall.
"You bastard!" she yells furiously, beginning to give chase, leaving Onru's gun behind in her haste to do so.
And see the world I once knew
Hollis pursues Emerson as he flees down the corridors of Sublevel 4 back to the main lift they'd taken prior. She's gained some distance on him by the time she reaches the lift. The elevator itself collapsed during the calamitous shaking when the Thresher device was used, a mound of twisted metal and shattered glass at the bottom of the elevator shaft just below the floor.
Emerson is climbing up a maintenance ladder in the elevator shaft as fast as he can go. Hollis begins to climb up after him.
"Get back here!" she shouts to him as he continues to climb, "We can still fix this. I don't know what world you've taken us to, but this planet doesn't deserve to die just so you can get out of here in one piece!"
Emerson doesn't respond, finally reaching the floor of Sublevel 3 with Hollis not far behind. He books it, desperately hoping the great steel doors have held.
Judging by the ground-shaking stomps and thunderous footfalls coming from just outside the nook where the lift is, they evidently haven't.
To avoid the insurmountable danger of traveling across the ground, Emerson begins to climb up the flights of metal stairs to the catwalks above in a big hurry. Hollis takes a moment to realize where he's going once she's reached Sublevel 3 as well, but she gives chase as soon as she does.
Emerson makes his way up the stairs, exhausted but with enough adrenaline in him to keep running. He runs along the catwalk in the direction of the massive opening where formerly bodies of gargantuan creatures fallen in combat were dumped into the void. Presently, it's become an exit.
He crosses the intersection at the center of Sublevel 3 atop the catwalk, Hollis in pursuit, when just behind him one of the enormous creatures below reaches one giant claw up and tears through it, as though it were swatting at a fly.
Hollis stops just short of the gap now between her and Emerson, who takes the opportunity to flee further. Wires that formerly held up part of the catwalk now dangle between severed pieces. She hesitates for a brief moment on what to do before taking a few steps back and bracing herself. With a running start, she leaps and grabs hold of one of the dangling wires, swinging across and barely landing on the other side.
"Emerson!" she screams with burning rage, taking a moment to recover from the intensive jump before continuing to run after him.
Emerson has found himself at a dead end. With the route to the right that would lead him toward the body dump having collapsed prior during the activation of the Thresher device, the only way to go is forward into an observation room above one of the chambers. There's nowhere to go from there except back down any of the catwalk's sets of metal stairs, and that isn't an option.
Emerson gazes out into the chamber. Well, chambers. The containment cell wall opposite the observation room has been torn down. The former occupants of the cells, the massive creature he called Leech Storm and an enormous demon set ablaze are in battle. The demon's door, farther away, is wrenched open, yet it fights the dark, leech-spewing creature, as if trying to keep it from leaving.
He stares quizzically at the scene as Hollis approaches, the demon fighting with a flaming sword and whip, the enormous black creature with tentacles and leeches.
"Emerson, stop running," Hollis holds her pistol up, aimed at Emerson, "There's nowhere left to go. We're going back to the Thresher, and you're going to do something good for once before you die, unless you'd rather die here and now after dooming whatever world we landed on."
Emerson turns to look at her, "I- I suppose you're right, I just-" He scans his surroundings, as if still looking for a way out, "I just don't want to die, Hollis."
"Sometimes, we have to compromise, Em-" Hollis is cut off by a thundering sound as the fire demon slams the leech creature into the wall directly beneath the observation deck.
The wall and metal supports built into it begin to crumble, and both scramble to find something to hold onto as the whole room slides to the ground on a tide of rubble.
The dust begins to settle, and Emerson, dazed and covered in cuts and bruises from the fall, looks around him. The ceiling has collapsed down into the room, the only way out of it now. He begins to crawl his way up through it, sluggish from the pain and mild injuries.
Hollis had grabbed hold of a piece of monitoring equipment built into the wall of the place and fared a bit better in the fall, suffering a couple nasty bruises in her arm from small bits of debris and a gash on her forehead but nothing else. She takes a moment to orient herself before following him up.
Changed beyond recognition
"Emerson?" Hollis clambers out through the ceiling, "We should be able to go out through the collapsed wall, we can-"
Emerson is walking away towards the battling creatures, though keeping to the side of the room closer to the doors so as not to draw their attention. The flame demon's sheer heat is incinerating most of the leeches before they can wriggle out and spread, and the monsters are fully focused on each other. At the sound of Hollis' words, Emerson breaks into a run.
Hollis starts to pursue him again, realizing his goal: the massive, wrenched-open door in the second chamber.
Despite being just two rooms, the distance is enormous, and Hollis has ample distance to catch up to him, doing so as he begins to crawl over the rubble that used to be the wall between the containment chambers. A leech is squirming its way towards the stumbling man, which Hollis dispatches with a shot from her pistol.
"Emerson, come on, we're fixing this," she says firmly.
Elliot doesn't listen, "No, we- we can't. Hollis, we can escape this, we-" He's struggling for breath and keeps going on before even taking the time to finish his sentence.
The faster Hollis moves ahead of him. She makes her way toward the door, the thundering of the titanic demon's footsteps overwhelming her senses each time it adjusts its position.
Beside the door is a small console, intended for operating the chamber's systems from the inside during maintenance or when unoccupied. Hollis uses it to activate the emergency override on the door, which creaks and groans loudly as it attempts to close.
Being designed to hold massive creatures, its enormous mechanisms were made with ample brute force behind them. Even having been forced violently open, it manages to force itself to start closing after a few moments with a loud crash as parts snap back into place and the door tears up part of the wall jamming it.
"No, Hollis, I- We-" Emerson stammers as he approaches, the massive door's lower half already high enough up to be unreachable. Hollis guards the console firmly.
"I'm sorry, Emerson, but your little escapade ends here. If we're lucky, we can still save whatever world you've taken us to from the worst of the things here," Hollis says, holding her P90 in her hands.
Emerson stands and stares not at her but through her with a distant look in his eyes. "Hollis, I… I can't…" he pauses, "Fine, just-" He reaches into his inner coat pocket, deciding it's finally time to use his last resort
.
"What is that?" Hollis asks, staring at the small pill bottle he removes from his coat.
"Painkillers," Emerson replies, exhausted and disoriented enough that his lie is undetectable under his distant expression, "May as well die feeling good. I've got one pill left. Just- let me take it, then I'll come with you."
Hollis lowers her weapon and lets the man pull the single pill out of it and swallow it down.
Inside the pill are just a few molecules of fluid from another world, the sap of a tree of life and magic, that invited all to thrive. And thrive is all Emerson wants to do, at any cost.
He hunches over after a moment, his entire body shuddering.
"Emerson?" Hollis asks, watching his entire body ripple as if snakes were wriggling beneath his skin, "What the fuck was in that pill, Emerson?"
And Emerson thrives. Twenty large tendrils tear out from Emerson's back, each one a sleek black color but covered in enormous red warts. He staggers back a bit, and the tentacles catch him and upright him.
"I can't let you kill me, Hollis-" Emerson stammers, "I can't die today!"
Hollis opens fire on Emerson as he moves toward her, carried along by the tentacles sprouting from his back. Two tendrils reach in front of him to stop most of the bullets, and the wounds he suffers from the remaining ones don't seem to faze him.
He grunts as he charges in, throwing an uneasy strike at Hollis with the tentacles that had been covering his approach. Hollis ducks beneath the strike and kicks at Emerson, only for a tendril to wrap around her ankle and lift her up, carrying her all the way over Emerson before slamming her into the ground behind him.
Hollis grunts loudly in pain, her nose breaking on impact, barely catching herself with her arms and stopping herself from slamming any harder into the ground. She rolls over and scoots back a pace before stumbling back to her feet.
Above them, the blazing demon makes a furious slash at the leech creature. It amputates several tentacles and cuts into its side, prompting the leech creature to screech loudly and with fury. It launches leeches into the air as it steps back, its tentacles already beginning to regrow.
Three of the leeches flop onto the ground near where Hollis and Emerson fight, but all are quickly smashed by the tentacles on Emerson's back. Emerson doesn't even look at them as he does so.
Hollis empties the full cartridge of her P90 into Emerson's abdomen after jumping over a low swipe from a tentacle intended to trip her. A tendril moves to block the last few bullets, but plenty of them hit their mark, leaving Emerson bleeding a black ooze from his gut.
He's undeterred by this, snarling at Hollis as she takes a few paces back. Hollis discards her P90, out of ammo for it, and takes up her pistol as Emerson charges again, the tentacles carrying him along beneath them as they run along on their own. He tosses his entire body at her.
Unable to line up a shot, Hollis ducks out of the way and steps further back, not wanting to get too close to the flailing tendrils. She spits on the ground, most of it being blood. "It didn't have to be this way, Emerson!" she yells.
Emerson responds with a hiss and a snarl, running at her furiously.
Behind Hollis, the leech monster swipes at the fire demon's legs, causing them to buckle and opening it up to a slash across its face that causes it to roar, the entire room heating up a few degrees as it does. The demon struggles back to its feet.
Emerson lands a few blows on Hollis with his tentacles as she discharges her pistol, grazing his cheek. She stumbles back, doubling over in pain from the strikes, but Emerson does not relent.
Just as the fire demon takes a step back to avoid the worst of a flurry of tentacle swipes from the leech monster, Emerson shoves Hollis hard with six tentacles, causing her to fall prone beneath the blazing titan's footfall.
A loud, thunderous stomp spells the end of Hollis' life.
By a man I'll never meet
Emerson huffs and stumbles over to the console, the tentacles coming from his back all that keep him upright, aiding him as he makes his way there. He inputs his credentials to open the door back up and stumbles over to it, clutching his bleeding abdomen as he waits for it to gradually open.
Behind him, the fight between the enormous beings rages on. He doesn't even turn to watch.
When the door finally slides open enough for his tendrils to carry him out, he slips out as soon as he can.
In the chamber he exits from, the demon attacks the leech creature with its whip, but the creature's tendrils wrap around it, using it as a tether to pull the demon to its knees, low enough to wrap its massive, sharp jaws around its throat.
The demon chokes out a roar as its throat is torn out by the creature, and in its demise, it explodes into an enormous fireball that annihilates the leech creature. Scorched leeches and smoldering ashes rain down from above.
Emerson only notices it as a sudden heat on his back. His tentacles barely feel it, but what little of his regular human anatomy is exposed to the blast suddenly burns heavily, if only for a moment. He doesn't much care.
Emerson stumbles forward, aided by his tentacles, before eventually giving up and going limp, allowing the wart-covered appendages to carry him along to the massive opening that once was a body dump.
The covering has long been wrenched open, likely courtesy of the vague, massive shape he can see lumbering off into the desert.
Seeing sunlight after so long, even under the circumstances, fills Emerson with a serene joy he hasn't experienced in so long that is quickly overwhelmed by pain and desperation as the novelty wears off. The sun is hanging low in a red-orange sky over the desert sands. There's no sign of humanity aside from a helicopter flying overhead and a distant utility tower.
Emerson lets his tentacles carry him down the corridor that seems to stretch on forever then out a small drop onto the sandy ground.
He trudges onward, his tentacles all that propel him while his legs drag uselessly behind, leaving lines in the sand. He coughs up a bit of the black ooze that is his blood.
His strength, even in his supernatural tendrils, wanes heavily, and after half a kilometer of distance, he collapses onto the desert sands and begins to crawl with arm, leg, and tentacle, trying to get further along, desperate to encounter anyone who could save him.
Smoke fills the sky above, blotting out the colors of the sunset and the first of the stars that should appear there. The grinding of machinery is overwhelmingly loud behind him as the massive machine meant to be a god continues tearing through the enormous structure that's just appeared in the desert. It won't be long before it starts moving away, only growing.
As his vision gets foggy, suddenly something black comes into view next to him. He looks up to see it's the base of the very entity that gave him his power so long ago, that led him to this very moment.
"Y-You-" he says weakly, "You… set me up- You did this…"
The being's eye stares into his, again projecting raw ideas into his mind. He can see as clearly as possible with his brain slowly shutting down that the entity had never influenced his decisions, had never nudged things in this direction, had never pulled any strings. He got to this point on his own, merely given the tools to his own downfall.
"Why..?"
The being responds with a clear vision of Emerson himself, younger and having just witnessed the first ever battle between anomalies when the arena first opened as a containment site. He is shown in his mind himself being questioned on why he was so eager to perform the so-called test, to which he responded, "What can I say? I just love a good show."
As Emerson processes this, the entity goes on. He sees what will happen, the Foundation sending a scouting party to figure out what's happened out here, then an army, the GOC lending support as well. And none of it will be enough. None of it will hold a candle to what's just been unleashed.
The entity leaves him to bleed with one more idea projected into his head, the knowledge that it's leaving, a sort of wordless farewell, because it doesn't want to miss the show.