A young woman on her way home is walking down
a city street, and just like most nights, the downtown empties out after the working
day ends, leaving the streets empty of both cars and pedestrians. She hates when she has to close the shop and
walk to her bus stop alone, and she is excited that in just another week she will be starting
a new job that’s just around the corner from where she lives. She just has to get through these last few
nights of being the last one at the store and having to walk home alone. Her more immediate concern now though, is
that her music has stopped. The young woman takes her phone out to check
it. Dead. She must have forgotten to plug in the charger. She hates when she does that. Now she’d have to spend the bus ride staring
out the window at nothing. What was that? The woman looks up from her phone. Did she see someone? She turns around and sees something on the
other side of the street. It’s dark, and all she can make out is a
big shadowy figure. She doesn’t stare for long though and starts
to walk again, picking up her pace slightly. She can hear the sound of footsteps and glances
over her shoulder. The person across the street is moving too,
and they seem to be matching her pace, avoiding any street lights to remain in darkness. She starts to move a little quicker… and
so do they. The young woman grips the pepper spray in
her pocket. She doesn’t know what this person is doing
or what they want, but she’s going to be ready for them. She keeps walking and glances over her shoulder
again… they’re crossing the street towards her now. She ducks into an alley and as soon as she’s
around the corner and out of sight she starts to run. She sprints through the alley as fast as she
can. She looks behind her, frightened of what she
might see, but no one is there. Maybe she was wrong and they weren’t following
her, but she’s not about to stop running and find out. She emerges from the alley still running as
hard as she can. She reaches her bus stop and finally stops
to catch her breath. She checks her watch… the bus should be
pulling up right now, but it’s nowhere to be seen. She looks around, and what she does see, is
the shadowy figure coming out of the alley. And it’s coming straight towards her. She backs up into the bus stop and takes the
pepper spray out of her pocket, her finger ready on the trigger. The shadowy figure keeps moving towards her
when suddenly, the dark street is lit up. The woman looks behind her to see her savior…
it’s the bus. She turns back to see the shadowy figure retreating
to the alley, as if the light is pushing it away. The woman breathes a sigh of relief and finally
lets some of the tension in her body release as the bus comes to a stop in front of her. The door swings open and the woman steps inside. “I’ve never been so happy to get on the
bus” she says to the driver as she scans her transit card. The driver doesn’t respond though, in fact
he doesn’t react to her at all, he just keeps staring straight ahead. The woman doesn’t push it though, she’s
just happy to be on the bus, even if it is completely empty. She heads to the back of the bus and takes
a seat. As the bus pulls away, she can almost swear
she could see the shadowy figure standing in the alley, watching her. The bus rumbles along the empty city streets
as the woman looks out the window and takes deep breaths, trying to calm herself after
her harrowing ordeal. After a while she notices that the bus doesn’t
seem to be stopping as much as it normally does… or at all for that matter. Did they change the route? Or did she get on the wrong bus? They are approaching her stop though so it
doesn’t matter, and she reaches up to pull the cord. A bell chimes and the “stop requested”
light illuminates in the front of the bus, but the driver doesn’t show any sign of
stopping or even slowing down. She pulls the cord again, but still no reaction. As she sees her building go by she calls out
“hey this is my stop” but the driver doesn’t acknowledge her at all. She stands up and walks to the front. “Didn’t you hear me? This is my stop.” Still no reaction from the driver. “Hey I said - “ She reaches out and grabs
his shoulder spinning him towards her, only to find herself staring into the eyes of a
fresh corpse. The woman screams and jumps back as the driver
slumps forward towards her. She’s terrified by the dead body, as well
as the fact that the bus will crash, but when she looks at the steering wheel she sees that
it is continuing to move on its own. The woman is in a full blown panic now. She screams and pounds on the door but it
won’t open. The engine roars as the bus starts to pick
up speed. She doesn’t know what to do and runs to
the back where she tries the rear door, but it doesn’t budge either. The bus speeds up even more, whipping around
corners and tossing her from side to side. She’s thrown to the ground and hits her
head. Her eyelids feel like they weigh a hundred
pounds and she struggles to keep them open. She manages to stay awake though, and as she
looks up in a daze, staring at the ceiling of the bus, she can see a green gas emanating
from the vents. It’s the last thing she sees before her
eyes close for good. The bus finally comes to a stop in a deserted
area of the city. The vehicle raises slightly as one after another,
each wheel appears to unfold, revealing them to be ong, black, spindly legs. The bus stands up on these insectoid appendages
as its roof splits into two massive wings. The bus then leaps up into the sky, spreading
its wings, and flies off into the night. How could this young woman have known that
after escaping danger, that her rescuer would be something worse, much worse. Unfortunately for her, she had just willingly
stepped onto an instance of SCP-2086, a deadly and terrifying anomaly that hides in plain
sight as it stalks and hunts its human prey. SCP-2086 is the designation the SCP Foundation
has given to a species that appears to belong to the arthropod phylum, a group that also
includes arachnids and crustaceans. These strange creatures differ from most of
their lobster and spider brethren, in that they make use of an advanced form of camouflage
to move among modern society unseen. Adult SCP-2086 instances all resemble some
sort of public transportation vehicle, with the exact make, model, year, and branding
varying from instance to instance. SCP-2086 instances move about the streets
of our cities foraging for food, and at first glance they are virtually indistinguishable
from the standard transit vehicles they are mimicking. Close examination of them though, will reveal
that the steel, wood, plastic, and glass they are composed of aren’t those materials at
all, but a form of specialized chitin, which is the substance that makes up the hard exoskeleton
of many insects and other arthropods. And that’s not the only aspect of SCP-2086
that isn’t actually what it appears to be. The “wheels” on the bus may go round and
round, but they also are capable of unraveling into long, thin legs that create a very imposing
image when SCP-2086 is standing up at its full height. The roof too is able to unfurl into a set
of giant insectoid wings, and after leaping into the air with its powerful legs, the wings
will spread and the bus can take flight, which appears to be its preferred method of travel
when it is not in its camouflaged hunting mode. Its headlights too are an entirely biological
mechanism, consisting of two large bioluminescent optical organs similar to those possessed
by SCP-015-IT and SCP-745. Dissections of SCP-2086 specimens have shown
them to have an entire system of organs including a heart, brain, and stomach, which are found
beneath the flooring in the creature’s interior chamber. SCP-2086’s appendages are not just used
for locomotion though, and they have been observed as being able to use them for fine
object manipulation. This fact was learned when they were observed
building crude shelters from scrap materials at their nesting grounds. More on these nests and the terrifying events
that take place there later. When SCP-2086 is not at its nest, it engages
in its “foraging” behavior. Typically, an SCP-2086 instance will fly to
the start of a “route” and begin driving along city streets picking up human passengers
who willingly enter the creature’s inner chamber, thinking that it is a standard bus. Along with its exoskeleton closely resembling
a real vehicle, SCP-2086 has one more particularly gruesome trick to fool would-be passengers
into becoming its prey. A bus that drives itself would lead many to
think twice about stepping on board, so SCP-2086 makes use of a decoy driver, which is actually
a human corpse encased and preserved in a shellac-like substance. Smaller, fibrous appendages protrude from
the “front seat” and into the corpse, which hold it in place and are even capable
of manipulating the corpse, giving it the appearance of movement as it “drives the
bus.” Once SCP-2086 has gathered up what it considers
to be enough victims, a number that appears to vary from instance to instance, it will
release a noxious gas from its interior vents. The gas produces an effect in humans similar
to chloroform, and everyone on board will be rendered unconscious. The creature, now filled with its prey, does
not feed on the humans trapped inside it though, instead it will take them to its nesting grounds,
which is where the real horror begins. These nesting grounds are most often localized
in scrap and junk yards that have fallen into disuse or are completely abandoned, and it
is in these nests that the juvenile instances of SCP-2086 are found. While a full grown instance can weigh as much
as 17,000 kilograms, which is the approximate curb weight of a normal bus, extensive field
research and observation into SCP-2086 has led to the identification of the smaller,
juvenile instances which are much smaller than their adult counterparts, weighing under
200 kilograms. But they don’t stay this size for long. When an adult SCP-2086 arrives back at the
nest with its interior chamber filled with human prey, it will open its doors and allow
the juvenile members to enter inside of it so they can feed, and grow. Once inside, a juvenile will remove a passenger
from the bus and take them outside. The effects of the chloroform gas will often
begin to wear off at this time, but by this point, it is already too late. The juvenile instance will then proceed to
force the human into a hole located under their hood. This leads to a sort of digestive tract, that
connects to its inner chamber where the driver’s seat is located. Small, hair like appendages will then emerge
from the seat and protrude into the prey’s body, which hold them in place in the driver’s
seat and trap them there, while at the same time acting as feeding tubes, draining the
blood from the now doomed passenger. Once the person has been completely drained
of blood, the feeding tubes will begin secreting a saline solution as the internal compartment
fills with the shellac-like substance, and the effects of both combine to effectively
embalm and preserve the corpse, which will serve as its own decoy driver once it enters
adulthood. And this process happens quite quickly. A newborn SCP-2086 will reach adulthood in
just one week provided that it has had access to nutrients, at which point it will begin
searching for new sources of prey for its own offspring, of which it will likely have
plenty. 2086 instances become capable of reproduction
at eight days, and females are able to produce up to twenty offspring, but their lives are
quite short, with their entire life cycle usually lasting just twelve to fifteen days. Prior to feeding and beginning the process
of becoming a full size adult, juveniles will also leave the nest, and will covertly move
about the city removing bus stop signposts and relocating them, often creating a route
that leads back to its own nest. These are the routes that adult instances
will then typically follow as they hunt for more prey to bring back to their colony. SCP-2086 instances have been found in metropolitan
areas around the world, and news reports are closely monitored by the Foundation for missing
persons that had recently used public transport, with Foundation Field Agents being dispatched
to potential high-threat areas to investigate further. Any nests that are discovered have their locations
condemned, if they weren’t already, and demolished using chemical explosives. Previously, an effort was made to capture
and contain live instances of SCP-2086 and currently the Foundation has five such specimens
in its custody which are stored in a converted airplane hangar. Due to their short lifespans and high rate
of reproduction, the amount of live specimens contained at any given time can vary widely,
and will often depend on the number of available D-Class personnel who can serve as drivers. Terminated specimens are either destroyed,
or sent to a specialized cold storage container at a secure site for further biological research. SCP-2086 continues to be one of the most dangerous
anomalies for common, everyday users of public transportation, and the SCP Foundation has
classified it as Keter. While identified colonies are able to be destroyed
with minimal effort once discovered, there is no telling how many nesting grounds still
remain in the wild. So the next time you’re about to board a
bus, pay extra careful attention to it, or you may find that your bus is rerouting you
somewhere you never wanted to go. Now go watch the file on another case of automotive
terror, SCP-745 The Headlights. And don’t forget to subscribe to be the
first to learn about the next anomaly from the SCP Foundation’s classified archives.
