Chapter Text
Iris knew that once you get twenty or so minutes into a containment breach that means that one: it is not a false alarm and two: there are indeed escaped SCPs or people invading.
As Iris had found out in intimate, firefight-laden detail, the latter of those two was true.
Site-19’s last breach was years ago going by records and that was considerable and by the Insurgency too. If the current situation was like that one, Iris would be better off hiding in her cell than trying to play good Alpha-9 member and protecting or evacuating personnel.
Like I could get near anyone like this, Iris thought, wiping some of the blood from her cheek. Her bulletproof vest was similarly splattered with it.
Despite this, she stormed through the halls and clutched the service pistol in her hand tighter when she passed into heavy containment through stuck open checkpoint doors. Through heavy containment was the only way to get to a better equipped armoury than the light containment armoury with its MP5s. And yes, Iris had checked; all of them were taken already.
If they were all taken by Foundation personnel (Iris’s original theory), then the alarms should have stopped a while ago. Twenty-odd well maintained submachine guns just… gone.
That, or it wasn’t Foundation who took them.
Iris cocked the gun back and checked there was a bullet in the chamber before she headed forward. Basics: avoid eye contact with the pale lanky one, shoot at the plague doctor, if you hear footsteps and see nothing then just run. No point in fighting what you can’t see.
It wasn’t long before a crossroads halted any progress. The large metal tunnels split into three directions. The one in front merely lead further into the facility, a door at the end with a blinking red light on its keycard reader, deactivated. Iris looked to their left, signage labelled ‘Bio-Containment Zones A-C’ above the tunnel. That led them in the right direction. Closer to the armoury, at least.
Nothing changed about the area except the emergency lights becoming brighter as she descended down a flight of stairs. Nauseating, they spun around in circles to bathe every surface in red like they weren’t already glaringly obvious.
Thump, thump, thump went the sound of their steps on the grated floor—or perhaps that was their heart? Doors with signs ranging from ‘Bio-Research Laboratory-1’ to ‘STERILE AREA. NO UNAUTHORISED PERSONNEL’ passed them by and, if they were lucky, they would see some concrete and rebar in more unfinished areas.
But the elevator up was close. She had been down this area only once before, memorising it from a brief tour and a large multi-layer map of Site-19. Though when she turned the corner to the final stretch…
Iris hesitated.
Vibrant green and oh so out-of-place, vines crawled slowly but surely across the walls, swallowing the metal underneath the greenery and wallflowers that followed suit, piercing the dull grays with whites and blues and purples. It was beautiful…
One foot was already turned, urging them to run far, far away.
If whatever was causing the vines was anything biological (not surprising if it was, given it was bio-containment) then Iris would rather avoid it. No horrible mutations or anomalous diseases if they went around the other way! The blocked way.
Well, shit.
It seemed the former was true too.
Taking a deep breath, Iris readied her gun and took careful steps forward until the ground beneath sunk under the weight of her boots with each step, and the air hitting her nose turned less stagnant and smelled more of freshly cut grass. Her eyes drifted downwards, vision taken by thousands of blades of it.
Iris had a right mind to put on the gas mask strapped to her hip, yet as she did, every movement had her less alert. Every inhale, weaker, the type of heady-cold feeling of not being fully present. When whispering followed, like pleas to someone, she lowered her gun.
“…Hello?” Iris half-muttered more to themselves than whoever was talking. They rounded the corner with one hand on the edge of the wall, white-knuckle grip on their pistol.
In the middle of a patch of tall grass and daisies and shrubs of light pink flowers, there sat the hunched up form of a girl. She was on her knees and faced away with her head down, the only discernable features a few locks of blonde hair and the white gown she had on that pooled around her it was so long.
“Uh. Hello.” The moment Iris called out, the girl craned her neck to stare like a deer in headlights.
Ironically, ‘deer’ fit well.
She stared with mismatched irises that stuck out in the midst of red emergency lights casting over her, antlers standing tall whilst she hugged herself. Her gaze scanned erratically over Iris with the only goal seeming to be to see if they were a threat or not. Iris wasn’t sure whether she found that answer when they took a step forward, perhaps too pre-emptive. The girl flinched.
It was stupid on many levels, taking a step toward an unknown anomaly that seemed on edge already, but nothing about her suggested danger. She reminded Iris of herself during the first containment breach she experienced… just a scared girl.
Before anything, Iris pulled the gas mask down, lest that scare her further. “It’s fine.” They gave their best ‘I swear I’m here to help’ smile even if the blood all over them and the gun gave off the opposite. “I’m… I’m with the Foundation.” They added, unsure whether that was better or worse for the poor woman in front of them.
She stiffened at the proclamation, the flowers around her seeming to droop. “Oh… You’re a guard?”
Iris took a step closer. “Kind of.” She shook her head—operative would be the proper term, but who cared? It seemed the girl was the same as her, and she had a duty to keep her safe until the breach was over. “Look, it’s not safe out your cell. Come with me.” She reached a hand out, only to pull it back as the girl folded further into herself and inhaled a sharp, terrified inhale.
Red light bathed half their face. They looked back down to the blood on their front.
Do I look any better than them right now?
From the look on the girl’s face, it didn’t seem like it.
“…I’m Iris.” They said after a moment. “Iris Thompson. What’s your name?”
The girl looked up from the hair covering her features, only the blue of her one visible eye peeking through. “…Meri.” She swallowed. “Just Meri.”
“Alright, Meri.” They decided not to dwell on how pretty the name was. “I promise I’m only here to keep you away from the Insurgency.” Iris kneeled beside her and watched to see if she further folded in on herself.
“Yes… that’s what they said before… To ‘keep me safe.’”
The reassuring smile dropped. Yeah. The girl reminded them a lot of themselves.
“What’s your designation? The uh… the number.”
“One-six-six,” she said mechanically, a thousand other times it had been said oozing from every tired number.
“Oh! I’ve heard of you. So this is your area?”
Meri nodded.
Biological containment. Even on normal days, Iris didn’t see many researchers going down to it. Seemed more like a punishment than a promotion given the number of horrible ways one could die from an anomalous strain of influenza or sentient plant monsters. Meri though? Meri seemed normal… for now. Iris would reconsider that assumption if she ended up coughing flowers up and choking on them later.
“Wouldn’t it be safer in your cell than out here? Why did you leave?”
A change of scenery, Iris thought. Who would want to stay in their cell when they have the chance to leave? To see something new?
Meri opened her mouth and then closed it, fingers brushing through the grass. Not a lick of dirt was beneath it; just grass, like it sprouted from nothing at all. When her fingers stopped against a daisy, she spoke.
“…Fun?” She let out a soft, nervous chuckle. “But I heard something. I couldn’t bring myself to leave this little area… um… garden now, I suppose.”
“I guess I can’t really blame you. It’s a lot nicer than the rest of this place.” Iris smiled. “You uh, should be back there though. It’ll be easier for any guards that find you later. After all this.”
She nodded, eyes focused back on Iris. The way she was looking at them made their cheeks feel warmer than usual. The only way they could describe it was that her once alert gaze softened on seeing them.
Iris looked around, trying to ignore the butterflies in their stomach. It was harder than they thought, so they picked themselves off the floor and offered a hand. “Come on. I’ll take you back.”
Iris was never familiar with flowers past a few her parents talked about on days like their anniversary, or when her mother would help her pick ones out for father’s day and vice versa; Kondraki had also talked to her about flowers before. Despite this lack of knowledge, what bloomed almost immediately upon taking Meri’s hand were definitely carnations. Red, vibrant carnations that juxtaposed the flowers that had since decomposed back into the soil.
If her anomaly was just creating flora, why was she so dangerous she needed to be contained?
The same reason you’re here.
But like Meri didn’t intend to have them bloom, she flushed red and just as quickly they wilted back into the earth. Her lips parted and Iris could practically see the apology on the tip of her tongue before she opted to stare at the ground.
Only then did Iris realise something else too. It wasn’t obvious when Meri was on the floor, gown bundled up against her hunched up form, but after getting to her feet—er, hooves…
Oh. She’s… really tall.
Iris was closer to five foot than six foot, but Meri was easily clearing the six foot mark. Maybe taller? All she knew was the blush on her face had returned. Height difference, holding hands, whatever it was, Iris felt more out of her depth than ever.
With a gentle tug, ignoring the awkward atmosphere born from some sort of mutual realisation, they led her back down the halls.
“It should be down here,” Meri said.
Hooves on grass, the sound of soft thumping, turned to hooves on metal. They passed by cameras that sparked before a rose grew from the lens, keycard readers on doors gaining some extra floral embellishment as the lights turned red and just as quickly were brought down to base form.
“You can do that?”
“I… I can’t help it.” She muttered, eyes stuck to the floor like the cameras and keycard readers and even the walls with vines on them were judging her for it. Iris knew that all too well.
“It’s pretty,” she said.
“…What about you?”
“Me? Oh. Right.” Iris chuckled. “I can manipulate photographs I’ve taken. Like um… reach through them. Manipulate things in the photo, and it also happens in real life.”
“One-oh-five.”
It felt strange to hear someone pronounce it so precisely. Funny, really. “Am I popular?”
“I heard about a transfer. Passing conversations from the researchers. Scp-105, something about photographs.”
Iris stopped in front of the cell labelled SCP-166: sentient, sapient, biological hazard, authorised personnel only. No smoking, no artificial material. They turned to her, then nodded.
“I’m part of a task force,” they said. Telling her anything beyond that felt a little arbitrary.
Meri perked up. “Should I be referring to you as commander, then?”
Iris couldn’t help the small smirk on their face as they furrowed their brow. “No… no. Even if you were a member, I’m nowhere near the ‘commander.’ Not the main one, anyway. That’s more Light.”
Though, on a technicality, she was. Iris had a few good missions, was a member of the first major fuck-up of a task force, and despite everything did her job well. Light was the actual commander, the one doing everything technical; Iris, on the other hand, was the face of it all. Her and Cain.
“Light? Sophia?”
“You know her?”
“Y-yes. She comes to see me sometimes.”
Iris only let out an affirmative “oh” before walking into the cell. The first thing she noticed was the airlock, broken so that it didn’t fully close. The second thing? The interior.
Grass—actual, real grass—covered the floor and Iris had to sidestep to dodge the flowers blooming in the field that seemed to go on forever. It had to span a decent portion of Zone C. The ceilings were high enough for trees to grow (cherry and apple trees, from what they could see), panels displaying the sky overhead, a forest in the distance… One wouldn’t be blamed if they thought they had stepped into another world.
“Wow.”
Meri peeked forward, eyes flitting between Iris and her cell. “Is it that interesting?”
Yes, absolutely.
“It’s less gray than I expected.” Iris muttered, an antler almost poking her eye out when Meri stepped back and brought a hand to her mouth to chuckle. She didn’t say a word except beckon with her hand, Iris following.
The longer they walked, the more they realised: it didn’t take up a decent portion of Zone C, no… it was Zone C. A veritable paradise where, through the field and past the blackberry bushes and trees that curved over a river leading into dense forest, there was a rocky alcove covered by moss, and vines that acted as a door. Deep in those woodlands, it acted as Meri’s ‘house’ of sorts.
How could one anomaly get all this? Fields of flowers, a forest, a pond into a river, a fake sky; she could even feel the sun on her, some sort of placebo or actual technology beaming down on her that dappled in the tree leaves. The forest stretched past the cave too, and who knew what was beyond that except Meri.
“Come in!” She called out, brushing the vines aside.
Iris needed no further prompting. The shock of everything had left them speechless, only able to nod as they took in the abode. Meri, on the other hand, danced between placing cups on the table sat in one corner and straining off tea leaves. Everything was made of wood or stone or clay, candles acting as the only light sources. Iris could only akin it to the description of a druid’s home in fantasy, but instead of voicing that she simply sat down.
“You look surprised.” Meri said, pouring tea into the cups. “It is quite different. If the rest of the site is similar to what I saw, I understand.”
Iris stared into the cup, the pistol in her hand softening, melting, sprouting forget-me-nots the second her fingers relaxed and it hit the ground.
“…Can I stay here?”
“Oh! Of course!” Meri beamed. “I don’t get a lot of visitors except for Light… and she never visits here.” She took a sip of her tea, placing it down and watching the liquid swirl in the cup. “…The company would be nice.”
Iris learned a few things: Meri was an amazing host, had a repertoire of skills that centred mostly around being self-sufficient, and made a mean apple pie. She wasn’t even sure the breach had finished, but before she could go check, Meri was offering to take her bulletproof vest and wash it for her.
“It’s… fine. I can do it myself later. Besides, it’s blood. You don’t want to be touching that.”
Meri stared, picking the plates up and stacking them. “Do you think I haven’t cut myself on thicket before? I have. It was quite bad.”
They watched, silent, as Meri walked behind them and unclipped the vest’s straps. It slid down, then disappeared from sight as Meri took it outside. Only when they knew she was gone did Iris turn around, the light outside fading from sunset to night. At first she wondered how long she had even been in there, but curiosity overcame it: were there stars in Meri’s cell? A moon? Was it like the night sky in a desert, full of the cosmos?
Turned out… yes. Like someone took scissors and cut at parts of the sky. It was all fake, just a billion tiny pixels on screens projecting what someone wanted to see, Iris knew all that and yet couldn’t shake the feeling of amazement they got every time they got to see something so majestic. If she ever got the chance, she would probably buy a house in the middle of nowhere just to stare at the stars at night.
“Do you think the breach is over?” Meri chimed in, glancing between the ‘sky’ and Iris.
“I was going to go check.”
There was a pause, Iris still focused on the white dots, trying to make constellations with her eyes. She couldn’t hear the alarms in the distance anymore.
“You… have to go back if that’s the case, yes?”
She nodded.
“Could you visit again?”
Finally, she pulled her concentration from the stars. “That’s not my decision to make…”
It was Moose’s and Light’s at the end of the day, since they were director and co-director of Site-19 respectively. As much as Iris wished she could come back to the respite the cell provided, she knew the reality: “The risk of a planned escape, conspiring in general, relations, so on so forth are just too high.”
Always keeping things the same, huh.
But on the other hand, Meri knew Light too. A lot of people could vouch for Iris on top of her own word. If enough people did, perhaps Light would consider asking Moose.
Iris pursed her lips. “I could ask.”
“You could?”
“Why not? You’d have to ask too. It’s not impossible, I guess.”
Meri wrung her hands, keeping them together at her chest. “Then… I will. Ask, that is.”
“Alright. Sounds good.”
Meri nodded. “I’ll see you soon?”
“I’ll come by tomorrow for the vest.”
Meri perked up at that, but Iris saw as whatever she wanted to say died in her throat. “O-of course.”
The alarms had indeed ceased when Iris stepped out, guards already walking down the hall. Yet as she was escorted back and assured everything was under control, she couldn’t stop the thought, one that had bothered her since defending against the insurgent. The breach was just too short. Too localised. Too orderly for the Chaos Insurgency.
And another thought.
She… was cute.
Meri heard the voices outside, guards arriving to clear everything back up only a few minutes after Iris had left. She could only assume they had taken her back to her cell.
She fumbled with the protective gear in her hands, ignoring the fact it had been dry since she wanted it to be. She would get to see Iris tomorrow, that alone was enough to not say anything. And say nothing she did, returning to her place of solitude.
Laying on her bed, she listened as Foundation personnel entered her containment chamber. She listened as they secured the area, had mechanics come in to fix the airlock and door, and checked on her with a cursory glance followed by confirmation through their radio. She listened, but the only thing she thought of was…
Her eyes were like sapphires.