The question surprised May; it seemed the girl was expecting an agent, but someone from the Foundation. She had never heard about them before. Could they have been the ones who made her? Who enhanced her?
May decided to tread carefully. "The Foundation? Can you tell me more about them?"
The girl tilted her head, her expression curious. "You really aren't with them?" The girl said, sounding wary now, a hint of suspicion in her voice. "If you are with the GOC, I will warn you that I am under Foundation protection, so don't try anything."
May held up her hands in a placating gesture. "I promise, I'm not with the GOC or the Foundation. I'm with SHIELD, and I'm here to help."
May hadn't heard of either of those two organizations, but clearly, this girl did, and clearly, she was wary of this GOC while trusting this Foundation. Though May did notice that she didn't seem entirely honest when she said she was under protection.
It wasn't entirely a lie, but there were also some hints of uncertainty in her voice as she said it, like she hoped she was under their protection but wasn't sure.
"I have never heard about SHIELD before." The girl said, clearly still on guard.
"SHIELD is a global peacekeeping organization," May explained gently. "Our mission is to protect people from extraordinary threats. We're here to help those who can't help themselves and to ensure that no one is exploited for their abilities."
"You sound like them."
"Like who?" May asked.
"Like the Foundation and the GOC, but you aren't them? are you?"
May knew she had found so much more than she could ever have hoped for; not only had she indeed found an Enhanced child, or teen in this case, but it seemed she had found a source of vital information about two so far unknown organizations.
"No, we aren't them. But it sounds like you've had experiences with both. Can you tell me more about what happened with the Foundation and the GOC?"
The girl hesitated, but after a small pause, she began to explain. "The Foundation found me, at the convent. They took me from there, so keep me safe."
"The old nun interjected. "Our Lady of Mercy Convent, in Ireland, not this one."
May nodded and asked the teen. "And what did they do after they took you?"
"They did as they said. They kept me safe. I was given a room, given clothes that didn't itch, gave me all the things I needed or asked for, religious texts, and even access to a father from the church. They were good to me."
May furrowed her brow. "So, they didn't harm you? They just kept you safe? They didn't do any tests or experiments on you?" she asked, not willing to believe some organization would just simply help a clearly enhanced girl for no reason at all.
The girl nodded. "They did; in the beginning, they said they needed to know about my abilities so they could better contain me. They took some blood and other samples, and they didn't do much before they declared me safe."
May's skepticism eased slightly. "And the GOC?"
The girl's expression darkened. "The Global Occult Coalition—they're different. They see us as threats. The Foundation, they want to protect us, its in their name, SCP Foundation, Secure, contain, protect, that did that for me."
The girl explained, allowing May to learn more about this mysterious Foundation. "But the GOC, they want to kill, to destroy, the Foundation said, that they killed my mother, the GOC did."
May felt a pang of sympathy. "I'm so sorry to hear that. You've been through so much."
"I never knew her, she was killed just after I was born, by… by my dad, he worked for them, believed in them, until he stood with me in his hands, GOC politics mandates that I should have been killed, just for being different, but he couldn't, I've been told he went to work with the Foundation since."
May felt a surge of anger at the GOC's ruthlessness and a deep empathy for the girl's plight. "Your father did the right thing. He saw you as his daughter, not a threat."
She was getting a pretty good picture of the nature of these two organizations already, and well, she wasn't a big fan of the GOC.
"They have a story, the Foundation, about why the GOC is wrong to try to eliminate everything that isn't normal" The young woman continued.
"They called it SCP-1609, a chair, but not a normal one, it had a special ability. If someone near it felt tired, if they wanted to sit down, the chair would somehow know and appear behind them, so they could sit down."
May's curiosity piqued. "What happened to it?"
"The GOC found it and tried to destroy it. They thought it was dangerous just because it was different. But when they tried to shred it, the chair turned into a cloud of splinters and started attacking people. The Foundation found the pieces and contained them. They believe in understanding and protecting, not destroying."
May was silent for a moment, absorbing this information. "That's... quite a story. It sounds like the Foundation believes in finding a way to coexist with these anomalies, while the GOC sees them only as threats."
The girl nodded. "Exactly. The Foundation isn't perfect, but they try to protect us. The GOC just wants to eliminate anything they don't understand."
May quickly realized why this was a story the Foundation would tell others, if did indeed paint the GOC in a bad light, a perfectly harmless object, one that was helpful in nature, turned into a dangerous killing machine.
While she was sure both organizations and their modus operandi had their problems and merits, this one story did indeed say why trying to destroy something you don't understand is a bad idea.
Still, from what she had learned so far, it seemed these two organizations weren't small, which begged the question of why she hadn't known about them yet, were they like the Bulwark? Hidden due to their strong powers?
The more she learned, the more she wanted to learn. However, she had a feeling that this girl didn't want to say too much, likely worried that if she exposed too much about the Foundation, she would get punished.
"Well, I have never heard about the Foundation; how about you tell me more about them? Then I might be able to find them and tell them you are here." She asked gently, and just as she had hoped, the girl starting talking, and wow, the things she learned blew her mind.
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[SITE-009]
Alexander was currently reviewing the report on the latest major mission. It had been an overall success; it was expected that every instance of SCP-3199 would be killed and eggs secured, though it wasn't without costs.
While the number of losses in personnel wasn't too bad, having successfully ensured that Shield would face most of the dangerous situations.
There were still other costs to consider, the biggest one, no doubt, being the fact that they had to expose themselves so much to not just Shield but the world.
Thanks to the many undercover Foundation agents around the world, they were able to keep an eye on all the chatter that happened following the mission, and well, Shield hadn't been shy about sharing information about Bulwark with the UN, which meant that a lot of people were now aware.
Not that it was all bad. The fact that they now knew about them would give the Foundation a way to talk with them and to get some funding from them. Not everyone was happy about Shield since it was mostly controlled by the USA.
O5-2 was making progress in getting another of the permanent seats, which would give the Foundation two of five and allow them quite a bit of control over Shield as a whole.
Something that grew to be ever more necessary as more and more SCPs started to appear, and the risk of them entering Shield's hands increased.
So far, they had been able to steal much from Shield, but there were still plenty of objects Alex wanted, for one reason or another. Not to mention that while they had been careful, he was almost sure that Shield would have gotten at least one egg from SCP-3199 without them knowing about it.
This meant that they could quickly make a huge number of them, which could become a real problem. Therefore, more oversight and control over them would allow them to achieve their goals far more easily.
"Guess I will see if Natasha can confirm anything, she should still be trusted to some extent, though I do have to be careful. Fury would no doubt try to test her more as well." He mused while drumming his fingers against his armrest.
She was an important card for sure, but she wasn't without her faults, be those her own, or simply the fact that Fury might not trust her fully. Well, to be honest, Fury didn't trust anyone fully, but since Natasha had been undercover, he was sure to suspect her more than most.
For now, her skills had ensured that even if he distrusted her, he would still have to use her; he simply didn't have many cards at that level available to him. Though given that so many more now knew about the Bulwark, there was a chance her use and value would diminish in his eyes.
"How to fix that?" He questioned himself as she tried to figure out if he could do anything. Maybe he could feed her some information about Bulwark? After all, once that organization had been fully set up as a cover for the Foundation.
They would have some information they could afford to feed Fury without much problem, which might allow them to get him to trust Natasha more, though he would likely have to talk with O5-2 about it, and somehow argue for her importance.
Or maybe he should just give up on having her in Shield? Or at least give up on using her so much. Well, there were plenty of things he could get done without her help; after all, didn't he have one of Hydra's heads in containment? Surely that could be used.
"Maybe I should try to use them before I end them?" he mused, finding the idea amusing, though he wasn't sure if it were something he would be able to pull off. Though at least he would be able to get some information out of Whitehall, he must know a lot about Hydra, Shield, and Inhumans.
Shaking his head from those stay ideas he instead focused back on the task of hand, dealing with the many, many eggs of SCP-3199 in foundation containment. While the Foundation normally didn't attempt to kill or destroy SCPs, they had to cut down the number of 3199 by a lot.
They would likely keep a few eggs and many live instances for study, but that still left more than 90,000 eggs to be destroyed, and they weren't easy to destroy at all. The amount of liquid nitrogen needed was staggering, and they would have to produce a whole lot of it to slowly get rid of the eggs.
It was a long and expensive process, and it needed a bit of oversight, which the rest of the council had decided that he should be providing. He was almost looking forward to the rest of the council appearing, just so he could push things like this off to his own underlings.
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Driving away from the Convent, May couldn't help but dial up a number; first, she was just about to call director Fury before she instead made another call, first getting the number off of Coulson.
"Hello, Agent Romanoff, I'm agent Melinda May, and I really need to speak with you as soon as possible."
A/N
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