Chapter Text
Dyó stared down at you, watching your chest slowly rise and fall as you slept. You were such a pretty sight, laying there next to him like you were always meant to be there. He knew you weren’t truly asleep, not really, but you were beautifully vulnerable all the same. It would be easy to kill you right here – be done with you and your smart comments.
But the memory of your voice earlier was stuck in his head, preventing him from doing anything brash. The way you said his name, all soft like powdered sugar, so unknowing of the way it affected him. He would never get tired of hearing it. It almost made up for the way you dismissed him like a piece of junk. Like something to be tossed away once the foundation was done with him. Despite that, he couldn’t bring himself to blame you too much. You were just mistaken. You would come around eventually. … Hopefully.
Oh, what he would give to hold you again, to feel your warmth against him. He would do anything, he held himself back to avoid waking you. You needed your beauty to rest to argue with him at your full potential.
Dyó shifted in his spot, about to lay down next to you when he heard it. Footsteps in the hallway outside, low and fast, and the crackle of a radio. He sat up quickly, looking from you to the door that was just barely visible through the crack in the blanket.
Nine-Tailed-Fox. Those bastards found your location.
—
You awoke to someone shaking your shoulder, to Dyó saying your name, low and sharp.
“ ██████ ! Get up!” He hissed, shoving your arm with no remorse for how you might feel at that moment. “They’re here-”
“What..?” You groaned, reaching up to rub your eyes. Your palms dug into the sockets until you saw colors, reminding you briefly of the alarm that had started this whole mess.
He shoved you again, your body jerking to the side and rolling onto the bruising along your hip. “Get up, or I’m letting you get shot.”
That got your attention. You hauled yourself onto your elbows with a wince, your head pounding somewhere near the base of your skull and at the last end of your sanity. Oh how you wished to lay back down, to sleep until the ache that had settled in your bones withered away.
“What the hell are you talking about?” You groaned, squinting as a sliver of light hit you directly in your eye. These fluorescent bulbs were going to be the death of your retinas one day.
The mask didn't answer, crawling forward to peer through the gap in the blanket-door. The corrosive sludge dripping from his form had increased in intensity since you woke up, indicating a change in mood – something was wrong.
“Who's here? Dyó?”
It came instinctively, the way you said his name – like you had been saying it this whole time. If he felt any type of way about it, he didn’t give it away as he tilted his head in your direction.
“Who do you think?”
The rhetorical question was punctuated with the sound of boots on tile, a radio crackling to life behind the door that had kept you prisoner in this room.
As the realization dawned on you, a heavy feeling of both dread and relief settled over your shoulders. Dread of likely watching Dyó be shot – or possibly being shot yourself – and relief that things were finally coming to an end. You watched as Dyó pushed open the blanket and exited the blanket fort, following after him, despite the way your legs screamed and your vision blurred.
There was nowhere for you to go. The breach was over.
A sharp tapping on the other side of the door. Once, twice- ”Nine-Tailed Fox, step away from the door!”
You scrambled back as the steel door suddenly burst open. The NTF rushed in, guns trained on you and the SCP you had been holed up with against your will. Dyó put a large berth between the two of you, almost as if he were directing their focus onto him.
”Hands up!”
”SCP-035! Step away from the researcher!”
You raised your hands, fingers splayed and palms up as the red dots from their rifles scattered like fireworks across your chest. Your shoulders tensed, mentally preparing yourself for the loud pops of gunfire. Across the room, Dyó surprisingly did the same, watching the guards with an intensity you recognized as plotting. What, exactly, you couldn’t tell. His host body was beginning to disintegrate again, chunks of flesh and sludge falling off with a wet plap against the floor. You visibly cringed despite yourself, watching from the corner of your eye as a guard to your left did the same.
The NTF personnel swarmed the room, surrounding the two of you on all sides. Orders were barked, guns trained, trigger fingers ready for any hint of hostility.
But it never came. Dyó stood quietly without a fight, even as he was screamed at to get on the ground, to get away from you.
“Doctor ██████ ?” One of the guards asked, turning his attention to you rather than the anomaly his colleges were busy containing.
You nodded once.
The next few minutes were a blur of chaos. Dyó was taken away, back to his cell with a suspiciously low amount of violence, firing a few smart comments here and there when the guards got cocky.
“Αντίο, αγάπη μου!” He called from the doorway, a strange lit to his voice. Cheery, but not in the way you recognized. Less taunting and more…… you weren’t too sure, actually. His gaze lingered on you as he was pulled away from the room you had shared with him for the past few days.
You watched the scene with a dark feeling seeping into your stomach, like there was some ulterior motive at play – something you were failing to notice. Though, that could’ve also been a massive urge to cry/and or puke. Your eyes darted around the room, looking for anything to settle the anxiety – even as the film of haze over your eyes proved to make that rather difficult.
Worry for the SCP was the only emotion missing from the delightful stew of emotions brewing inside of you. You knew that he would likely be fine on his own, probably adding a few more deaths to his reservoir while being contained. It wasn’t his safety you were concerned about.
SCP-035 was a lot of things. Sadistic, manipulative, charming and theatrical. Nice only when it suited him and always clever.
But compliant? No. That was something he was not.
A younger guard – the one who had shared mutual disgust with you a few minutes earlier – stepped forward and took you by the upper arm, his grip firm. His fingers pressed into a bruise forming at the edge of your skin, but you didn’t care quite enough to tell him to let go.
“We're escorting you to the infirmary,” He said, steering you away and out the door regardless of how you might’ve protested. The hallway beyond was disheveled, littered with bits of blood and debris, the aftermath of the breach still glaringly obvious. You had to walk slowly to avoid the bits of glass and shrapnel littered around.
Despite everything, there was one question that came to the front of your mind – peeking out from under the desire for sleep and another dose of your meds to drown out the noise in the back of your brain. “... What time is it?” You muttered, voice rough. Your throat felt like it was on fire, your tongue sandpaper against your teeth.
The guard glanced your way through his visor with a look you could only recognize as confusion. “4:57am.” He answered anyway, guiding you through the hallways. Behind you, another guard took his place at the back.
The numbers rang in your head like a warning bell, extenuating the chaos you had been thrown into. It didn’t feel real – as if your reality had been detached from the rest of the world somehow. Five in the morning. Good god, it was too early for all of this.
You let out a quiet, shaky breath, your ribs creaking in your chest. “Right…”
You felt like a zombie, being dragged around on unsteady feet with heavy limbs. The guard had to give you an encouraging tug more than once to keep you moving and avoid you collapsing on the floor. You glanced around the hallways, searching for something you weren’t even sure of yet.
Passing through another section, higher now and into the medical levels, the destruction just got worse. More casualties, more shattered glass and pieces of what used to be tactical gear splattered with bits of flesh. You avoided looking at the sight the best you could, despite the impossibility of such a task.
Other groups of guards passed you, working diligently. The front line of defense, putting their lives on the line to contain these monsters. For… what, exactly? The money? The urge to protect society somehow?
God, if only you knew what you were all here for.
Ahead of you, the double doors of the infirmary were propped open with chairs, nurses and doctors frantically running in and out. Bright lights flooded your vision as you were pulled into the sterile environment, your headache kicking up at least seven notches.
Gentler hands replaced the guards, guiding you onto a stray bed, forcing you to lie down on the scratchy hospital sheets. Voices overlapped as your vision spun, asking you questions you weren’t listening to. They must’ve been informed that you were coming.
“Can you hear me?”
“Vitals elevated–”
“Did you have any direct exposure to the SCP?”
“Get a tox screen!”
You just wanted to rest.
As your bed was wheeled to an empty room, a nurse leaned over you – blessingly covering the fluorescent lights above. “Are you feeling anything abnormal?”
Abnormal… yes, yes in fact. The way he referred to you was quite abnormal indeed.
“He called me darling…” You muttered, head turned to the side so you were half speaking into the sheets.
The nurses' brows furrowed. “What?”
You didn’t answer. You stared off into space, vision blurry and chest tight in a way that made it hard to breathe. Dark shadows flickered at the edge of your vision, drawing in closer with every frantic blink.
“Doctor ██████ ,” The nurse said, a bit more firmly now, trying to pull your focus back to her. “I need you to stay with me. Can you tell me your symptoms?”
Others around you moved quickly – too quickly for you to keep up with. You weren’t even sure you could speak anymore. It felt like the walls were closing in on you, like the voices at the edge of your mind were getting louder, like your heart was going to explode in your chest and leave you bleeding out right there in the infirmary lobby.
It hurt to breathe, to think, to feel.
You twisted in place, trying to find some kind of relief from the plague invading your mind.
“Hold them still!”
“Push sedatives. I’m getting psych on standby.”
Hands holding your arms down as you squirmed against their grip, the prick of a needle piercing your skin. Something cold and unsettling flooded into your veins, snuffing out every last thought until it was all nothingness. It seeped into your bones and numbed everything you thought you felt.
You were cold.
Somewhere, a machine screamed. Voices came muffled and distant.
Your limbs went slack first, the tension bleeding out of them as if someone had cut invisible strings. Your head lolled to the side, vision going dark as your eyes slid shut. Your chest rose in shallow breaths, each one just a bit quieter than the last.
“... that’s not right.”
“Check the dosage.”
“I did–”
“Well, it clearly wasn’t correct!”
Firm fingers rubbed your sternum through your shirt, your heart straining beneath your ribs.
The last thing you felt as you lost consciousness was the painful drag of cold air in your lungs.