I rested inside the holding cell. I was lying on the bed and just waking up from the first time I've ever slept ever since I became Kukulkan.
That was… peaceful. I thought if I slept I'd get nightmares from all I'd seen but I received nothing of the sort. It was a dreamless slumber.
How quaint.
There was a small smile on my lips. A calm and serene smile.
I never felt this at peace before. Every day I fought and— well not bled— exhausted myself mentally to save as many people as I could. I was constantly moving. Never stopping. Never resting. Always focused on the future and (sometimes) the present.
A part of me wanted to stay like this. That lazy part of me wants to stay in this box and just forget about the world, forget about the apocalypse, forget about being Kukulkan— a Goddess— and instead rest, be at peace, be who I was before. It wouldn't even be too different from how I was before I signed on with the Company.
Ah… how peculiar.
I'm reverting back to my old habits now that my environment has returned to something more familiar.
I scratched my neck. The clothing I wore as I slept was the same one I always wore. It doesn't get dirty. Dirt and other bacteria and microorganisms slide right off it like rain falling onto a slanted roof.
I didn't want to get out of bed. I wanted to stay here. I wanted to go back. Back before I signed on with the Company.
I felt a sense of homesickness erupting out of my body. That homesickness I was always trying to bury dug itself out of the grave I put it in and was now strangling me.
Ah… I wonder how everyone is doing right now?
I felt myself gasping for air, hitting the hands that homesickness had wrapped around my neck. Tightly. Not a single bit of air can escape.
I covered my eyes with my palm as I sat on the bed, my legs covered by the blanket.
If I went missing, how many people cried? How many people went searching for me? I couldn't help but ponder these questions.
"You shouldn't trust him."
I froze. A voice inside this room just said that.
"Things are not as they seem. Danger everywhere."
Dropping my hands, I faced the direction where that voice came from and found it originated from the closed blast door to my containment cell. There, right in front of the door, stood a blonde-haired girl with shimmering gray-green eyes.
Wait a minute, I… recognize that girl. Those shimmering gray-green eyes. SCP-239, the Star-eyed Child. Wait, or was that the Witch Child? I remember SCPs more by their numbers than the names given to them.
I opened my mouth to speak, but the child beat me to it.
"Please don't speak to me. You're being watched. They cannot know I am here."
A look of confusion descended upon my face. Of course, I'm being watched, I'm inside a containment cell after all. But why does it matter to SCP-239 whether they know I am here or not?
"I'm not powerful enough. You're not like anyone else. If you want to know the truth touch the—"
The child vanished and disappeared abruptly.
Touch what?
I looked around me, my braids whipping around as I tried and find the child.
Something is definitely off about this place. At least I now know where to start instead of wandering around blindly.
I got up. Cracking my neck but receiving nothing. My lips thinned at the lack of a satisfying crack.
I miss that crack.
There I started stretching a bit, bored but nonetheless content with my current arrangement.
It's strange, why was I so against this arrangement? I didn't know.
The door to my holding cell opened. Facing it, I saw Sarah flanked by multiple security guards standing right beside the doorway.
I immediately noticed something strange. My eyes narrowed.
Just like those other security guards, I saw how Sarah's body was extraordinarily clean. I couldn't see any of those microbes that lived on a person's face. I couldn't spot any clumps of dead skin cells flaking off and being carried away by the air currents.
"Kukulkan." Sarah's tone didn't possess that sharp edge reminisced of a blade. She didn't sound like a soldier, and from how relaxed her body was, she didn't behave like one either.
It was strange. Things are getting stranger and stranger.
"Did you by chance see any ghosts? The ghost had the appearance of a child with blonde hair and shimmering eyes. We're still trying to contain that Keter-class SCP."
I retained a poker face of false confusion as I recalled what SCP-239 said.
The peace that clouded my mind parted ways as my suspicion grew.
Things are really not as they seem.
"No. I didn't see anyone."
Sarah nodded. There, she turned around and started walking away.
"Wait, Captain Hughes, when are those whom I rescued be placed inside secure Foundation Sites?"
The woman suddenly stopped. My attention attached itself to how different Hughes and the rest of the security guards stopped compared to a normal human.
You see when a normal human stops in their movement, there's still a bit of inertia left so they sway a bit. This goes doubly so if the person is wearing heavy armor and carrying weapons like those security guards around Sarah. While most of the time those sways are unnoticeable, with my eyes, they are very noticeable.
Sarah didn't have that. None of the security guards were swayed a bit as they abruptly stopped. They weren't affected at all by inertia.
"There's no need."
"What?"
"Daybreak has already been solved. I had a chat with God and he said how he will deal with the corrupted sun since 'The Promised Time Hath Come'. Afterward, he will revert everything back to how it once was. With Daybreak solved, the Foundation can activate Procedure Lazarus-01 and have SCP-2000 recreate all. Normalcy can come back and everyone will return to their daily life. We no longer have any need of your help, Kukulkan."
A chill ran down my back.
Who are you?
"I… I see. So this is where I shall stay?"
"Yes. You are an anomaly. One that's currently rated as 'Euclid' pending further evaluation by the O5 Council. Nonetheless, humanity and the SCP Foundation thank you for your service. I shall petition to have you turned into a Thaumiel SCP."
With that, she left. The door to this holding cell steadily closed.
What the hell is happening?
That was no Sarah Hughes. She hates all anomalies given how much she's probably seen. There was no way she would so readily trust SCP-343.
"Wait!" I called out to Sarah, and the door paused in their closing sequence. "Can you at least tell me why is there a corridor filled with weapons aiming down at a closed blast door?"
"There is no— An SCP capable of resisting God is loose in that part of the facility. I'll be a part of that breaching team that'll later get in and contain the loose SCP."
The blast door completely shut, leaving me alone in this holding cell.
I felt unsettled by that exchange. What the hell happened to Sarah, the Commander of Tau-5?
Something is terribly, horribly wrong.
And now I know what.
"..."
So I gotta touch something huh? How much am I willing to bet it's going to be the blast door at the end of that heavily armed corridor where SCP-239 was?
I took several deep breaths as I thought about what I was about to do thoroughly.
I closed my eyes and projected a mental map of everything. Being Kukulkan has not only drastically increased my cognitive and mental capacity, but also improved my memories to the point of it being eidetic.
I thought about every one of my actions. If I break through here, there's a chance that I'll be declaring war upon the entire Foundation based on a mere assumption. Then again, my gut is telling me that not everything is as it seems.
Of course, there's a non-zero chance that I'm being manipulated by SCP-239. But I'm willing to take that risk.
I lined my ten fingers up with the gap of the blast door sealing my holding cell away from the rest of the facility. There, I started pushing my fingers into the area between the two metal doors.
Loud groans and creaks filled the room as metal warped. My fingers displaced the metal, creating minor ripples frozen in time upon the door's surface.
I curled my fingers inward. More metal groaned. More ripples. More deformation.
"Alert. Alert. SCP-39101 is attempting to break containment."
A loudspeaker blared inside my holding cell.
I ignored it.
Once my fingers had fully dug into the metal doors, I yanked it open with a single swift action.
The metal couldn't keep up and a large slit opened up. I stepped through that slit and found multiple security guards aiming their weapons at me.
"SCP-39101 RETURN TO YOUR CELL OR WE WILL BE FORCED TO FIRE."
"Step aside," I asked calmly.
The response to my request was a barrage of flashing lights coming from ignited gunpowder. Just like with Alice's pistol, I could see clearly how dozens of brass-colored bullets were traveling through the air, leaving behind a trail of smoke and fire as they slammed against my skin.
Most flattened themselves against my body. Those who were fired more towards the edge ricochetted away and into the warped blast door behind me.
I paid more attention to the guns inside each guard's hands. They varied greatly in design between each other but all fired bullets of the same caliber.
My eyes then moved to the area around me, namely the hallway I was in.
I looked towards the direction where my mental map indicated that corridor with the heavily armed machine gun nests and autocannons was.
I began hovering. Gravity lost its grasp on me as I flew above those security guards and towards the closed blast door.
I couldn't find it.
What the hell?
I placed my hand on the wall that was in front of me. This wall wasn't present on my mental map. The hallway of temporary containment cells should've continued onward even more…
Drawing my other fist back, I punched with enough force to shatter a house.
*Boom*
The bricks went flying, revealing a further stretch of another hallway and Sarah standing right there with a seriously advanced-looking gun aiming right at me.
Before the furthest flying brick could hit the floor, a bright blue glow surrounded the front of the gun that Sarah pointed at me.
Something came out of that gun.
It wasn't a bullet. It wasn't a ray of coherent energetic photon, though it was brimming with Cherenkov Radiation. It wasn't even ionized gas. Or more accurately, it was surrounded by a shell of plasma.
The thing at the core was… something I've never seen before. It was tiny, smaller than even an atom in size. Fundamental physics stopped working in its immediate vicinity. Space broke apart. Atoms got torn apart as they passed through.
Why do I know this stuff?
It moved at near the speed of light, far faster than any speed I've achieved. Far faster than any bullet I've ever encountered.
I couldn't dodge it.
It slammed into my collarbone. It dug into my skin. It pierced into my flesh. It stopped at my collarbone. It disrupted the bonds between molecules and atoms. It dissociated them from each other. It possessed a single magnetic pole.
My immense durability was no match in the face of something that attacked the atoms themselves.
This was a Magnetic Monopole. A defect within the very fabric of spacetime.
I felt physical pain for the first time. It felt like someone stabbing a needle into your body.
There, less than a millisecond later, the sound wave from the Monopole gun hit my ears.
*PSSSP*
It sounded like a soda can being cracked open.
"Ow!" I exclaimed as the wounded quickly regenerated in a swirl of crystals that became flesh.
Sarah looked disappointed at the lack of damage caused.
I didn't give her a second chance to fire the thing as I appeared right in front of her in less than a second. Before the cartridge inside the Monopole gun could get fully ejected and a new one took its place, I crushed the barrel inside my hands, destroying it.
"What the hell was that?"
"3-X-mini Particle Disruptor," Sarah replied coolly. "Magnetic Monopoles are destructive things, kinks in the universe itself. Rips apart even nuclear pasta and pretty much every SCP material tested."
"Why the hell does the Foundation even have that? And why the hell are you telling me this?"
Sarah then smiled even when she was easily within arm's length, "The Foundation sometimes gives experimental and anomalous weaponry to Tau-5. We are its experimental weapons unit after all. As for why I'm telling you this? It's to delay you."
I heard distant but very distinctive heavy footsteps. Hundreds of them. Hundreds of guards are converging upon my position.
I grit my teeth in annoyance and took off. This time, I flew right into a wall and kept on going.
I'm making a beeline straight to where my mental map pointed to where that armed blast door was. Walls, doors, rocks, and dirt be damned.
Concrete and rebar fell apart like soft snow and sticky candy. I went through all the warm rocks between physical site branches like they were air and kept on going and going.
Everything fell before me. Thus, I got to where I wanted in no time at all.
A single punch and I found myself being hit by an overwhelming barrage of light.
All of the machine guns and autocannons that were previously aimed down the corridor and at the closed blast door were instead fired upon me. Hundreds of…
These weren't normal bullets. I could see how light distorted around each bullet as though they were black holes. Physically, they appeared more like fractals, infinitely repeating fractals that reflect back into themselves in an eternally looping kaleidoscope as they traveled, and from the perspective I saw them from changed.
After being hit with a Monopole, I didn't want to be hit by anything considered 'experimental' by the Foundation again.
A glowing green personal shield covered every bit of my body and stopped those kaleidoscopic rounds right in their tracks.
I didn't wait and blitzed down towards that blast door.
Flying at supersonic speeds, I should have no problem reaching there in less than a second.
"..."
So why am I not even halfway there?
I bit on my lower lips as I flew even faster. The air around me started to burn as more and more spell bullets slammed into me from behind.
I'm not moving. Despite traveling close to speeds that can escape Earth's gravity well, I'm not moving at all.
It was as though space itself turned into molasses and was duplicating infinitely to halt my movement. It was as though this corridor turned into a spatial treadmill that was moving 'backward' against my forward motion to keep me in place.
I could see the blast door right in front of me. My hands could reach forward and I could see how I could almost touch it.
What the hell is happening?
No, serious, what the hell is happening?
"I'm disappointed in you, Kukulkan." A familiar voice boomed, piercing through all the noise from the gunfire. "Though your mind and thought patterns may be too alien for me to read, I still imagined you to be an ally of humanity. An ally of me."
I stopped and turned around. Yep, right there, in the middle of those guns stood SCP-343.
"Your ability to resist him is impressive. To completely nullify any infection… I need it. I need to know how you did it. Tell me. This is for all of humanity's sake; tell me."
The corridor stretched and compressed. The distance between me and SCP-343 closed while the distance between me and the sealed blast door lengthened.
I scrambled to try and get away.
I flew at speeds I never had before. I've climbed rapidly on the Mach scale and quickly reached sub-relativistic speeds.
At this point, minor nuclear fusion began to occur in front of me. The sheer speed that I was moving made it so from my perspective, the air molecules that were zooming about at 500 meters a second might as well be still, frozen in time almost. My body forced them to move, pushing them along like a snow shovel pushing piles of fallen snow.
Air molecules were forced into each other, and occasionally, they fused.
Then they stopped fusing. SCP-343 stopped nuclear fusion from occurring.
"You cannot run from me."
I was dragged closer and closer to SCP-343. I can't escape. I can't escape—
"Yes, you can. You have it in you to break all the rules."
A girl appeared next to me. A girl with a head of blonde and with eyes of shimmering gray-green. She wore a witch's outfit like a girl on Halloween.
I felt space return to normal. No, it was more accurate to say that space was forced to return to a state that resembled normalcy.
"You."
"Yes, me, uncle. Go, I'll catch up."
I didn't wait any further and moved, passing through the opened blast door with ease.
Turning around, I saw—
Holy shit.
My mouth gapped at what was there.
Holy shit!
Right there, where SCP-343 stood… was a human-sized head.
It was SCP-343's head partially merged with sun-corrupted flesh. Tendrils of loose, waxy, molten flesh coming out from where the neck of SCP-343's head should be were encroaching upon the walls, floor, and ceiling of the corridor.
Those people… I looked at the people who were manning those guns, those security guards were nothing more than lumps of semi-coherent flesh tentacles wearing the body armor of an SCP site security guard.
The blast door around me started closing.
I didn't pay attention to it.
The realization that SCP-343 was corrupted by the sun meant whatever was responsible for When Day Break was much stronger than anything I imagined.
Just what the fuck caused all this shit???