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Corpses. Flashlights left flickering, rolled to the floor. Piles of rubble, spilled equipment, unidentifiable shreds. More corpses. A distant roar from something you hope you won’t have to get any closer to.
You feel your way across a blacked-out corridor, clutching the least bloodied flashlight you could loot on short notice. The tiled floor, scarred and streaked with grime, trembles under your feet as yet another section of some distant chamber caves in. The containment breach must have been hours and hours ago, but the site is far from still yet, kept awake with the movement of creatures reveling in their temporary freedom. The Foundation would be back in control soon enough; they undoubtedly had more forces on the way, or even surrounding the site above ground already. You wonder what the furthest anything got to complete freedom this time was.
Your head pounds, lungs unsatisfied by the air that smells to varying degrees of blood, acid, dust- in short, bad. Passing out for a while on a solid surface hadn’t exactly helped, either. It cost you enough time to have lost your chance at escaping with the others, as well. If any other human prisoner is even still both alive and free by now. You step out aimlessly into a less ravaged area and rub your shoulder.
The outlook isn’t great, but- hey, you’re alive. You can’t quite remember what knocked you out, but by some damn miracle, your unconscious body hadn’t been found, or unintentionally trampled, by whatever people and monstrosities had rushed and fought through the halls. Perhaps if anything did see you, they took you for one of the corpses and carried on. Perhaps they were already satisfied. Perhaps as a glaring orange little D-class you just weren’t important enough for anyone to stop for. How convenient.
By some other miracle, you hear something you’re a little too happy to hear.
You don’t immediately notice it, the noise lost in your own breathing and the groans of the Foundation building, but it hits you soon enough. Crying. Constant, quiet crying, like someone trying and failing miserably at keeping it together, that sounds too human for something you know can’t be one. You swivel your head to try and make an estimate of where the hints of sound are coming from, with little success. Fixated on it with renewed energy regardless, you pick a direction and resume walking, as deliberately and silently as you can manage, which is admittedly not very in these conditions.
It isn’t a simple task. The noise vanishes at times, and you desperately backtrack; then it gets louder, then softer again. You aren’t keeping track of the shape of the halls, instead only following the sobs through turn after turn like a bloodhound latched on a scent. There’s nothing better to do, really. Whatever stems from this venture will at least be more interesting than being sniffed out by something purely hostile. Or being recaptured by the Foundation, which is essentially the same to you, and even more dull. Another rare roar rumbles across the site.
Something strikes you as odd about this room. It’s too… clean. There is clear evidence of violence, of something big enough to have crashed clean through a section of the wall and the wall beyond that, of hundreds of futile rounds that were shot at whatever that was. And yet, unlike every other fought-in room, no torn corpses slump on the floor. There are hardly any bloodstains, either, the cracked surfaces pristine save for a few dropped weapons and hissing radios. If it’s more or less disturbing than the usual fare, you can’t decide, but it probably means you’re finally headed in the right direction, from what you’ve gleaned about the creature.
The rammed-through walls serve as convenient shortcuts, bringing you, as you hoped, steadily closer to the cries echoing down the corridors. They take you to a door wrenched mostly off of its hinges, which you gingerly lean forward to peer through.
Here it is. The figure you’re looking for, sitting desolate on the floor without so much as the company of a corpse. SCP-096, you believe is its designation.
You’re unbelievably grateful it’s not facing the door, because it’s impossible not to look, your feet rooted to the floor. The ever-present possibility of it shifting, revealing its face to you before you can react, whether out of purposeful malice or just unfortunately returned curiosity, hovers at the back of your neck. Your can hear your pulse and something lurches inside your chest. Fascinated, equally so horrified, you study it from afar, with its taut skin as white as the bones that jut out too visibly from beneath, its ribs that heave and shake with its unending sobs. Its spine forms a prominent ridge down its hunched back, the end of it protruding enough for you to think of it as a small tail. Its folded posture makes it hard to judge its size, but even so it seems quite tall. Bullet holes litter every surface, tiles are dislodged from the floor, and yet 096 itself appears entirely unblemished. Did it take mere seconds for the wounds to seal over? Or hours, sat here weeping with metal riddling its skin? Had it even felt any pain?
You dare to enter the room and approach, haltingly, braced for anything to happen. The wretched thing on the floor seems too deep in its misery to either notice or respond to your presence, which you suppose you should also be grateful for. Eventually, as much as you’d love to stand and stare, you tear your eyes away enough to slide down the wall it’s leaning against, settling on the floor a few feet away.
Here you are. You’ve found an animate SCP and you aren’t dead. Congratulations.
Honestly, you’re not sure what to do. Of course, the quickest option would be to walk around to its front and look it in the face, but the deathwish can wait. There has to be something else, while this opportunity lasts.
Its whimpers steadily prod at your human urge to comfort; after a tedious battle with yourself, you scoot a little closer and very slowly reach out a hand. You let it hover over its trembling shoulder without touching it yet, swallowing the frightened lump in your throat. You hope, feebly, that it senses the act and can be prepared. A few seconds pass, and you let the hand fall in a pat, glancing away hastily as you do in case it turns at the contact.
The moment you make contact, you feel 096 flinch hard, as if it’s the one that could be hurt by you, making a louder whimper of fear and curling more tightly into itself. Nevermind. You retract the hand apologetically, and study the ground between your feet, hoping instead that your company alone can do something.
It’s always been intriguing to you since you learned of its existence. Such raging, unstoppable power contrasted by such a meek and fearful demeanor. It pits your morality and survival against sympathy; especially now, in actual proximity, the absent weight of its most recent victims still heavy in the air. Is it really different from any of the others that you wouldn’t approach? What does it understand? Does it regret? Could it ever appreciate an attempt to soothe it, even if it can’t be truly helped? You’d dearly like to believe it could.
As if the gangly, emaciated thing crying next to you is in any way at all feline, you fondly recall your past interactions with a handful of cats. Sometimes, the best way to get one to warm up to you is to simply sit still and not be insistent in reaching out yourself. You somehow consider that maybe it shares that one attribute. Maybe.
It moves.
You jerk your head away even further at the sound, fighting the reflex to turn. Its papery skin scuffs a few times against the floor, and its whines hitch with the repositioning. You swear it gets quieter, too, and you tense at the possibility of acknowledgement. You try to guess its posture; most likely, it’s looking at you now (or, perhaps it’s blind, but still trying to perceive you otherwise). It’s just what you hoped for, but much more than you really expected. Decidedly unable to trust your own eyes alone, you raise an arm- in the least sudden way you can manage- and place the hand against your brow like a makeshift visor. Just in case.
Nothing more happens, 096 simply continuing to sob reluctantly to itself. You wonder if it’s considering anything. You wonder if it forgives you for startling it.
Resolve crumbling, you turn your head and open your eyes a sliver, squeezing the sweating fingers of the hand over your eyes together harder than necessary. Yep, it’s… there. You’re not sure what else you expected out of this peek. You tilt your head up just enough to surmise that you were correct in thinking its face must be pointed towards you, and quickly drop your gaze back to its skeletal legs. For the sake of any sort of attempt at communication, you make a small wave with your free hand.
Nothing, of course. You turn away and rub your closed eyes. How soon would Foundation agents, or something else, find you two? You should-
It shifts again.
You swear you can hear its dense bones creak with the movement, as if even without much flesh it’s too tall and heavy for itself. Painfully curious (and admittedly afraid), you steal another look; one of its freakishly long hands is in the air between you, like… maybe it’s trying to copy your gesture? Or reach for you? Or be about to fold you in half? You find yourself transfixed by its fingers; so human in structure, as the rest of it is, though especially stretched out and slender. Not clawed, not even bloodstained. They look brittle, like they could be snapped with the mere suggestion of force, yet you understand it’s somehow the opposite.
You really want to reach back.
As it turns out, you don’t need to make up your mind on that on your own. The pale hand answers for you, extending further towards you- you really underestimated how long its arms are in full- you shut your eyes fast as spindly fingers clutch into your jumpsuit with more strength than they should have- the floor drags past under you and-
By some third miracle (God, shouldn’t your luck have run out already?) you are now firmly in SCP-096’s arms.
Stunned, you sit practically ragdolled in its grasp. It's a bit uncomfortable, awkward at best; but given the disproportionate length and boniness of its limbs, even if it had any hugging experience, you're not sure if that could be helped. Its body is colder than the average human should be, yet you’re remarkably warm, all things considered. For a short moment, you recall again how many people must have died in these very arms just hours prior, and wonder if you’re about to join them. Not that you would mind too much, but apparently not.
Even through your clothes, you can feel the prominent ridges of its ribs against your back, expanding and contracting in a shallow, irregular pattern with its ever-persistent but somewhat quieter whimpers. Its fingers dig into your flesh hard enough to border on painful, as if it doesn’t recognize its strength, and you squirm a little, trying to find a position that at least doesn’t entirely kill your legs. You, unfortunately, aren’t quite as used to sitting for hours on a bare, solid surface. Tentatively, figuring that the barrier to physical contact has been very much broken at this point, you rest your hands on its arms, tracing a thumb across its thick, smooth skin, and muse again idly on how its bizarre body works.
Some seconds later, you freeze, as it delicately rests its head atop yours.
You wonder if it can also hear your increasingly frantic heartbeat.
It’s impossible to tell how much time passes. Enough for some more bulbs in the surrounding room to give out, and for a few more roars to sound; you’d guess a good few hours. You feel unreasonably, deliriously safe in this creature’s embrace, like nothing else could possibly touch you (it is seemingly true that even other SCPs tend to avoid it). As much as you’d love for it to last that long all over again, and 096, muffling its residual huffs and sobs against your head, shows no inclination to move, your stomach sinks in tar as you realize signs of an end.
New sounds echo down the countless corridors, a renewed burst of activity accompanied by another distant, differently toned roar. Panic. Faint, indecipherable, but undeniably there, a voice makes a buzzing announcement towards whatever personnel must be gradually reclaiming the site. They’ll get here eventually, and chances are, more will die. Worse, the way you see it, the chances are even larger that they won’t let you visit your companion again.
You stretch the moment out as long as you can bear. At some point, even 096 winces ever so slightly at a noise a floor or two above, and you wonder if it understands the situation as you do. You hope- You decide it must.
Your choice is selfish, but if you’re never to see it again, what else can you do?
For the first time, you hope it doesn't have feelings.
You look up.