Containment Breach

Nick sat in his cell, still feeling bitter after months of being in it. Falling back, he sprawled across the luxury mattress they'd put in here for him - it didn't make him feel better but it at least helped him sleep better.

After all he'd done for the Foundation, in the end, he was still treated like some crazy skip* who was gonna go on a murderous rampage if they let him out.

...Well, Nick pondered, it did happen month a month but even then it wasn't by choice.

He couldn't help but wonder - was he really as monstrous as they thought he was? Sure, he felt different but that was entirely physical. Mentally he was still the kid from California who dropped out of highschool to join the Navy SEALS. Still the same kid that accepted the offer from that man in black who seemed to wear shades wherever he went. Still the same kid who went around the world hunting and fighting anomalies.

Nick understood why he was in containment. He was an anomaly. A man with superhuman physical ability with a metal skeleton that was nigh-unbreakable and with a healing factor that made whatever damage could be done to him - which was very little - would heal within seconds. If left in the world, he'd have nothing stopping him from doing whatever he wished because of these abilities. But just because he understood it didn't mean he had to like it--didn't have to like being treated like an animal either.

It was all just...draining. Not physically - he hadn't felt physically drained ever since the change - but mentally, every day slowly chipped away at him and his mental health. Sure, the Foundation organized meetings with therapists but what could a shrink do for Nick when his life was pretty much four white walls and a comfy bed? Tell him it could be worse? Yeah, no. It did nothing.

Right about now is when the nicotine cravings came back in full force for Nick. He'd been a pretty big smoker during his time as an MTF Operative - a way to keep himself relaxed and calm when his job was hunting dangerous entities that could kill you out of nowhere.

But as an SCP, he wasn't allowed cigarettes nor a lighter out of some eschewed logic about how he could possibly use it to escape - what a load of shit, Nick couldn't help but grimly chuckle.

If only he could sleep. Which of course he couldn't right now - the alarms bustling through the Site he was kept in were blaring at full blast. Usually, a containment cell should block out outside sound but with his enhanced senses, Nick could hear the alarms like his ear was right next to a speaker. He could hear screams, shouts, gunfire--all with perfect clarity. It stopped him from sleeping and kept him awake, not that he could sleep even if there were no sounds. His new physiology gifted him with superhuman levels of energy and the need for much less sleep than normal - on average he slept for about three hours and stayed awake for a solid twenty-one hours a day. He'd only been awake for eighteen hours, so he had three more hours before he even felt slightly sleepy.

Nevertheless, Nick closed his eyes and tried to force himself to sleep. Yet no matter what he tried whether it be counting sheep or trying to clear his mind, none of it worked. His cells buzzed with energy and his muscles ached to be used.

Groaning in frustration, Nick flung himself up and off his bed in one graceful motion before pacing around his cell. 7m by 7m with a height of 2.5m and yet it felt like it wasn't big enough for Nick to even stretch his legs. The only time he was allowed out of his cell was when he got to go to the cafeteria for food or in the mornings when he could stretch his legs but lately even those small comforts were snatched from him.

Now, Nick growled. A deep rumbling of bass from his throat and chest, echoing through his cell and even through it's door. If someone were near him they'd feel their bones shaking from the vocal strength of the vibrations. Flexing and relaxing his hands, Nick felt the claws at the ends of his fingers aching to be released but he restrained himself.

It was getting close to a full moon. Whenever it got this close, the wall between himself and the beast within began to thin and weaken, making him more prone to aggression and lashing out.

But Nick wasn't just a beast. He was once a normal man, and so he had the pride of mankind. He would not be relegated to some simple animal. Not when he had the choice to choose.

He repeated that as a mantra, taking deep breathes as he did.

Once calmer and with the beast settled and restrained, Nick turned his eyes to his cell door where he could hear two rapid heartbeats and heaving lungs. Whispered cursing entered his ears, bickering as well, and one of the voices sounded familiar. When the door burst open seconds later, sliding to the side, two figures hurried in while one of them closed the door with the pad on the other side just in time as a blur smashed into it.

Whatever was hitting the door was obviously superhuman but this door had been made to keep Nick inside his cell - it was so thoroughly reinforced through anomalous and non-anomalous means that brute forcing through it was obscenely hard.

Turning his eyes to the slumped figures, Nick recognized one of them. James Kelly. Someone who was a new recruit alongside him when they both got assigned to MTF Nu-7 though after a year he began a guard for Site-17, citing that he wasn't cut out for tracking down anomalies in the field and more suited for keeping them inside cells. He hadn't seen him in a long time - Nick hadn't even known he was a guard at Site-17 where he was kept.

James was a slight man with a wiry frame and an average-ish height of 5'10". He had blond hair and hazel eyes, and seemed to have taken to growing a well-groomed goatee since the last time Nick had seen him.

The other person, a woman of Hispanic descent, was completely unfamiliar to Nick. She had black hair, caramel-toned skin and black eyes - she was pretty average-looking too, if not a little masculine with a hard-set jaw, squarish chin and athletic frame. The only reason Nick knew she was a 'she' is because of his sense of smell and some sort of instinctive knowledge that certain smells made people a 'he' or a 'she'.

Nick's old friend looked up, just having stopped panting from whatever exertion he'd been through prior to getting in here, a grim look across his face, "SCP-4139--fuck that," he shook his head before standing up straight, "Nick, something fucking bad is happening here, man. Multiple skips broke containment but while most of them are trying to escape, one of them is just focusing on killing as many people as possible."

He looked at his old friend and his brow scrunched up at the situation. He'd never dealt with a containment breach while he was an MTF Operative. He wasn't a part of Epsilon-11 or the Facility Guards but he had enough experience with anomalies to know how bad a breach would be. But in the end, Nick just sighed and walked back over to his bed where he sat down.

"And?" he simply said in a tired but bitter tone, "I'm not a part of the Foundation anymore. I'm a skip, Jim. Best thing I can do to help is stay inside my cell instead of adding to the containment breach."

"Jesus Christ, Nick," James look at Nick like he didn't recognize the man, "What the hell did they do to you here? Back in Nu-7 you were always the first into the fray and the last out. You would always try to look out for others and for civilians--and yet you're now okay with just letting some crazy skip go around killing people while you sit around on your ass?"

Anger ripped through Nick's chest at the provocation, an animalistic instinct urging him to rip James' jaw off for the confrontation the shorter man was gunning for. But the earlier mantra of not allowing himself to be an animal when he had a choice to be a man came to the forefront of his mind.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before replying to the guard.

"I'm not okay with it," he stated simply, gesturing to his ears, "I can hear it all. Every scream, every drop of blood spilled, every time that bitch's claws slash through body armor--I can hear it all!" he stood from his bed, his orange jumpsuit struggling to hold his bulging musculature, his posture and stance exuding a barely contained violence that caused James to flinch and the unknown women to reach for her sidearm. Nick calmed himself with a breath, his muscles returning to a more human-standard, his tired eyes having lost their anger as he continued, "But if I go out and help, I'll be more than likely punished. Severely. They treat me like a fucking animal, James, and the worst part? I'm not even sure if they're wrong for doing so. If I go out there and fight whatever is doing this, I don't know if I'll stop even after I put it down. All that'd happen is one skip out of containment being replaced by another."

He didn't sit back down, instead running a hand through his mop of black hair. Even now he could hear the skip patrolling the hallway outside of his cell, searching corpses for the relevant keycard to get in - it was only a matter of time until it found one. Any Level 2 personnel had the required keycard to get into his cell.

The unknown woman seemed to know this as well as she finally spoke up, "Look, pal, whether you wanna sit around in here or not - that skip is coming in here and she's gonna kill us two and then try to duke it out with you," she said and a rather joyful cackle from the hallway told Nick that the skip had found the keycard necessary to open the cell.

"I know," he assented with a frown, "She's found a way in," he sighed before stepping toward the door and then looking over toward the two guards, "Get behind me and to the back of the room. I've no idea if I can hold her off but I'll be enough to rebuff her. SCP-953, right? The Kumiho that eats people's livers?" he asked and got a somewhat surprised nod from both James and the female guard. Gritting his teeth, Nick looked back to the door as the two of them did as he told them to.

The door opened once more a few seconds later and the skip looked into the room with a tilted head, a morbid curiosity apparent in her gaze. The SCP was that of a beautiful woman of Asian descent, with black hair that cascaded down her shoulders, unblemished and light-coloured skin and oddly green irises with vertical pupils within them. The biggest oddity about her, however, was the fact her hands were furred paws with gleaming claws and her feet were the same. Fox ears adorned her head and nine red tails flowed behind her.

When she spotted Nick, recognition flared in her eyes before disgust took it's place an instant later.

"...What's a dog like you doing here?" she asked, her green eyes curling in disgust once more before they moved to look at the guards behind Nick and realization came replaced the disgust, a mocking smile spreading across her lips, "Ah, a dog guarding it's captors. How sweet of you~" she cooed sarcastically.

Nick didn't react to her mocking or her sarcasm, instead keeping a stoic expression on his face, "Leave. You don't need to kill these people. Turn back and I won't apprehend you," his voice came out like stone - heavy and solid, leaving no room for an argument.

"Nick--!" James tried to butt in yet he was quickly stopped by the female guard next to him.

"You'll apprehend me?" the fox-woman asked incredulously, her brows raised at the gall of the thing before her before she let out a bell-like giggle, her head thrown back as it quickly turned into a shrill cackle, "A dog says he'll apprehend me? Oh, how this world has fallen from how glorious it used to be," she wiped a non-existent tear from her eye before poking a claw against Nick's chest, "Back then, mutts knew their place in front of their superiors."

And just like that, she attacked. Her clawed paws slashed across Nick's chest horizontally, barely cutting the skin to her confusion - it felt like she was trying to carve through metal. But she had very little time to think about her difficulty in maiming the man because he quickly countered her.

The back of his fist crashed into her face like a sledgehammer, breaking her pretty little face and sending her backward out of the cell. For the first time in weeks, Nick stepped out of his cell and felt his muscles bulge back up, his canines flexing and extending while claws came from his fingertips. The claws were a matte dark grey and looked metallic, the edges and points sharpened to deadly edges.

SCP-953 hit the wall opposite Nick's cell and cratered it with her momentum, the bones in her face rapidly healing as a snarl showed her long fangs which heralded an animalistic hiss.

She blurred back toward her opponent, claws and fangs bared but what happened before happened again. Her attacks did nothing and the counter attack was too quick for her to dodge, too powerful for her to block. A crack echoed through the hallway as she was sent back into the wall where she'd flung herself from, deepening the crater. Five clean cuts ran up her mid-section diagonally, cutting through her fancy silk robe and flesh alike - these wounds healed just as quick.

"W-what...what are you?" she finally had enough sense to feel fearful, "You aren't one of those dogs, your different--!" she was stopped by Nick falling upon her like a wild animal, metallic claws glistening from both their metallic nature and the blood covering them as he slashed and tore at her.

She screamed in pain, hurling verbal abuse at him, but he didn't stop. Some part of him had taken over and that part loved this process - the blood, the liquid warmth bursting out of it's prey and covering it in it's glorious embrace. That same part was overjoyed at the fox-woman healing as well because what did that do other than prolong the joy of the hunt?

Yet Nick's rationale came back to him. The mantra of being a man when he had the choice rung through his head like a bell, beating the animalistic hunter back into the deep dark recesses of his mind. He came back to himself, panting and covered in blood. He wasn't exhausted, physically. The panting came from his body entering and then exiting some sort of hunter-killer mode - he'd experienced it a few times before. Usually around the time of the full moon.

He looked down at SCP-953 and saw her basically naked, covered in her own blood and wounds that healed much slower than before. Pieces of her flesh were strewn around the hallway, having been ripped off by Nick in his previous state. He looked down at her indifferent and she looked up at him in fear.

Then, knowing her attempt was pretty much done, she curled up into a fetal position, her tails wrapping around her body in a protective manner as she began to sob, mumbling something about failing 'to see him'. Who 'he' was, Nick had no clue but what he did know was that the breach had ended. For now, anyway. He walked away from the sobbing skip and sat down in the doorway to his cell - all he had to do was wait now.

All Nick wanted right now was a smoke. God knows he needed it.

. . .

[Interviewed: Security Agent James Kelly hence forth referred to as Agent Kelly]

[Interviewer: Senior Researcher {REDACTED}; Researcher in charge of SCP-4139's containment and experimentation]

[Foreword: Interview took place hours after Epsilon-11 fully secured Site-17 and took place because of Agent Kelly's personal decision to open containment for SCP-4139 to combat SCP-953 who had started the containment breach in the first place.]

< Begin Log >

Interviewer: *Steps into the room and sits opposite Agent Kelly who is currently smoking while a medical personnel treats a wound on his arm* Is he able to be interviewed?

*The medical personnel nods, gets up and leaves before [REDACTED] sits opposite Agent Kelly*

Interviewer: How are you doing, Agent Kelly?

Agent Kelly: *The agent looks agitated*...Not good, Doc.

Interviewer: Assuming you're fine enough to answer questions, let us get passed these pleasantries, shall we? *[REDACTED] clears his throat and brings out a notepad and pen before focusing back on Agent Kelly* Tell me, why did you open SCP-4139's containment cell?

Agent Kelly: Because if I hadn't, I would've died--is that so hard to understand? I get that you've gotta be suspicious of anyone who breaches protocol during a containment breach but what I and Amelia did saved our lives among many others all because we did open up Nick's--sorry, old habits...SCP-4139's cell.

*A terse silence comes up between the two of them, [REDACTED] jotting down notes while Agent Kelly nervously looks around the room, obviously uncomfortable with the silence*

Interviewer: ...I see. Did your past with the entity influence your decision in anyway?

Agent Kelly: ...

Interviewer: Please answer the question, Agent.

Agent Kelly: ...Yes, my past friendship with him--fuck, I mean it--! *Agent Kelly begins to get flustered, repeatedly trying to re-light his cigarette with his uninjured arm but failing*

*[REDACTED] reaches into his own pocket and procures a lighter before leaning forward and lighting Agent Kelly's cigarette*

Interviewer: Take your time, Agent. A containment breach rattles everyone's nerves.

*Agent Kelly takes a few moments and finishes his cigarette, putting it out on a nearby ash tray before he continues with a much more calm demeanor*

Agent Kelly: Thanks, doc. I needed that.

Interviewer: It's no problem. Now, as you were saying before?

Agent Kelly: Ah, yeah...well, I went through MTF boot camp with the entity and spent a further year in Nu-7 with it, so yeah, those past interactions pushed me toward it's containment cell after I remembered they were stored here and what their anomalous properties were. Though, uh, can I get it on record that I didn't try and release it so it could escape? Only so it could defeat the anomaly breaking containment?

Interviewer: It's been noted, Agent, don't worry. We never said you were trying to either let it escape or ferry it off to a GoI. Now, would you say these memories between you two seemingly pushed you toward SCP-4139's cell in an unusual manner? Did any other option appear to you or was it just 4139?

*Agent Kelly goes quiet and [REDACTED] waits for an answer which comes a few seconds latter*

Agent Kelly: Yeah, I thought about huddling in a janitorial closet with Amelia and a few others at first--which is what we did. And then that fox-bitch tracked us down via scent or something. After that I knew it wouldn't be so easy to escape the skip without something to stop it.

Interviewer: I see. I think that will be all, Agent. If we have need for anymore interviews, we'll be in touch.

< End Log >

Closing Statement: Agent James Kelly showed no signs of cognitohazardous effects that would effect his behaviour during the containment breach, having passed with a score of 16 in tests meant to determine a subjects inherent resistance to such effects. Neither has it been shown that SCP-4139 possesses such effects. It seems the agent truly did think releasing SCP-4139 was the best course of action - and he turned out to be right. The agent in question is nonetheless to be moved to another site to avoid such things happening again. One time is luck playing in our favour, a second time is simply testing fate.

Though, from seeing the results, I'm personally going to put in a request to see how SCP-4139 interacts with other sentient SCPs. If all goes well, maybe we can change his Object Class to [REDACTED].