We were a team…despite our differences,
in spite of the terrible things they’d done, we were still a team. That’s not how the higher-ups saw it, though.. No, the guys upstairs with their perfectly
pressed shirts… for them, we were judged by our level of expendability and they knew
that our next mission... was a death sentence. One by one that… that thing, took out my
team, my friends. Snapping their necks so quickly and with such
ease that no sooner did I hear the scream... they were dead. We had been used…I’d been used. Delivered as prey to the predator, a plot
that was sanctioned by the bosses and approved with a blood-red stamp. Why did they do it? I’m still trying to figure that out. Maybe that’s something you can tell me after
you hear how these so-called scientific men left us in the cell, and in the hands, of
SCP-173. For me it had been the best of times before
it became the worst of times. The best, because I’d quickly risen through
the ranks at the facility…the worst because, well, I’ll get to that. I was never the best student. I’d finished high-school by the skin of
my teeth, and my job prospects looked bleak. But I was lucky I guess… Or at least I thought so at the time. You see I have an Uncle Siegfried who did
some work for the government. I never actually knew what he did, just that
it was secretive work. I used to imagine he was some sort of super
spy so you can imagine how excited I was when he found out I needed a job and he offered
to help me out. I couldn’t believe it, I always thought
he hated me. I’d overheard him telling my parents that
I was a no good deadbeat but now he’d had a change of heart and was willing to take
me under his wing. What would I get to do? Undercover intelligence gathering? International assassinations? “Just you wait,” he said. And that’s how I found myself walking into
a sprawling, futuristic-looking facility where they handed me a level one security clearance
card with big bold letters that read… Janitor. But I was happy, just the words “security
clearance” made me feel important and it beat flipping burgers. I pushed mops, turned off lights, fired-up
generators, clocked in and clocked out, but all that time they must have been watching
me, grooming me, waiting for the day they could throw me to the wolves. I should have known; I’ve always been an
expendable kind of guy. After a few years I was called to an office,
and there was a man in a plaid shirt and kind of tweed jacket professors wear. He asked me, “Do you have any idea about
what we actually do here?” And to be honest, I didn’t. I knew that there were many parts of the facility
I couldn’t enter. I imagined that down the maze of corridors
were weapons being built, or prisoners being interrogated, but I had no idea about the
anomalies. How could I? Before I was told anything I had to sign a
bunch of forms…there were so many I thought I’d get to find out who really killed JFK. And while they didn’t come out and say it,
what I inferred was that if I ever talk about what happens at the facility to someone outside
the facility, well let’s just say it’s not the kind of thing they’d spell out on
a piece of paper but it involves padded cells and rusty tools. I wasn’t scared though. I was a part of something big, something secret,
and I loved it. So I signed my life away with no hesitation. Soon after I was introduced to my first anomaly,
the “Safe” class of course. They took me to an observation room and from
that room I could see into another room with a sign on the wall that read, “SCP-067.” I just stood there, waiting for something
to happen, when in walked another guy in a white lab coat. “Welcome to your first anomaly,” he said. “Is it okay if I hook you up to this heart
monitor? We want to gauge your reaction to what you
see.” “All I can see,” I told him, “Is an
empty room with a table and what looks like a pen on top of some papers.” “Correct,” he said, half-smiling as if
I was some kind of idiot, “That’s SCP-067.” I thought about telling him that if I needed
years of training before I could see a pen then I probably should have taken that fast
food job. I could have been shift manager by now. They then brought a young chimpanzee into
the room, small enough to be harmless. One of the guys forced a pen into the scared
chimp’s hand and something strange happened… it started scribbling. Nonsense at first, but suddenly it was sketching
and drawing, faster and faster, I could catch glimpses of words and images. By the time they dragged it out it was flailing
around like it was possessed. “That pen has power” said the man in the
lab coat, “a power whose source or origin we don’t fully understand. That’s why we’re here. That’s why you are here.” One of the guys in the other room held the
chimp’s drawing up to the window. It was a perfect sketch of the Tower of London,
intricate and brilliant. Above the sketch was the title, “Tower of
London: Tudor Period, circa 1541, the year Margaret Pole, the Countess of Salisbury,
lost her head on the chopping block.” Underneath that the chimp had written, “Pity...she
was no traitor, take it from me, I was there.” They didn’t need to look at the heart rate
monitor to see that I was shocked. That was far from the only anomaly I’d come
into contact with, and I must have been doing something right because in time I went from
level 1, to 2, to level 3 security clearance, and that’s when they made me a “Containment
Specialist.” I won’t bore you with all the details, but
as you can guess, I dealt with the containment of anomalies. A lot of my time was spent looking through
small windows in cell doors, making sure that whatever was inside was still inside and still
in one piece. Other times I worked with field agents when
anomalies were brought in, a transition period that the arrested freaks didn’t much like. There was one certain anomaly though, that
I was tasked to oversee on many occasions. I liked to think of it as my pet, but in hindsight,
I was its pet. This was SCP-173, something that was in what
we call the Euclid class, a classification meaning that we don’t fully understand it,
but know is very dangerous. We know it’s intelligent, we know it’s
unpredictable... and we know it will kill. And for that reason, there’s people tasked
with containing it and keeping an eye on it at all times. At first glance, you wouldn’t guess just
how dangerous 173 is. You wouldn’t think it’s incredibly intelligent…
in fact you’d probably think the opposite. That’s because it’s more or less a walking
slab of concrete and rebar with stunted limbs and traces of spray paint that give the impression
of a dopey face. We have to enter its cell twice a week for
cleaning duties. It leaves a disgusting, foul smelling liquid
on the floor, a reddish brown substance that I can only describe as a mix of blood and
waste products. Where that stuff comes from has remained a
mystery since we first contained it in 1993. Going into the cell was always a three man
job because, and this is maybe the weirdest part about 173, it can’t move if human eyes
are watching it. That’s why you need at least two people
watching it at all times. If you were in the room watching 173 by yourself
and blinked you’d be dead before your eyes opened. We don’t know how it moves that fast but
in that fraction of a second of a second your neck is snapped so hard it’s almost like
being decapitated. I’ve seen the videos to prove it. All it took was a sneeze. He wasn’t even finished getting the rest
of the ACHOO out when there was a flash and his partner was left lying on the ground,
his head twisted around the wrong direction. So, you can understand why we now require
three men for any time we must enter 173’s cell. Then a few months ago I was told that a long
process would begin to train and reeducate some future Class Ds. Class Ds are mostly prisoners with life-long
sentences or those we’ve taken from death row and given a new lease on life. We were apparently understaffed, so why not
employ men whose lives had pretty much ended anyway? That was the rationale, or at least that’s
what they told me. I was to train them on their new job... mopping
up 173’s mess, so that me and the rest of the containment specialists could focus on
more important tasks. They hadn’t been through the training I
had, seen what I had seen, but after showing them the video of 173 nearly taking off a
man’s head they were more than willing to follow the rules. They understood not to blink, or turn away,
or sneeze, and that any lapse in focus could lead to a violent death. So I started to show them the ropes, how we
move as a team into the cell and always keep the others informed on what we’re doing. 173 was always sitting in the corner of the
cell, no expression on that crude face, but when we walked in its cell I got the feeling
it knew something had changed. I felt almost as if it was communicating with
me, but I couldn’t tell what it was trying to say. And then it happened. It was a Tuesday afternoon, three days from
the last time we’d cleaned. As usual, 173 had covered the floor with that
horrible liquid. We headed in to clean, my new team alert as
always, and some of them cleaned while others kept their eyes focused on the thing in the
corner. Things were going smoothly when we heard a
noise I knew very well. It was the sound of the cell door locking. Someone must have screwed up. “Hey guys, we’re locked in here,” I
shouted through the intercom. Nothing. “Guys, the damn door is locked.” Nothing. I lost it a bit. “Open the door, will you!” Nothing. My team looked at me, the ones not on eye
contact duty that is, as if I should know what to do…hoping that this had happened
before and that there was some kind of standard plan to deal with it. There wasn’t. We were always observed when in the room and
I knew that a technician couldn’t accidentally lock the door. It was impossible. There were protocols. Someone had done this on purpose. The four of us sat in the corner of the room
as far from 173 as possible, our eyes locked on it. It didn’t move an inch as usual, just stood,
staring at the wall as it always did. We stayed awake through the night, talking
a little, holding on to the slim hope that something had gone wrong. But as night turned to day again we all began
to lose hope. We weren’t sent here to clean. We were a test… totally expendable… lab
rats. But I wouldn’t go down without a fight. We couldn’t just stay up forever, that was
a death sentence. I suggested that two of us stand, one sit
and rest, and one get some sleep. We’d take shifts. A couple hours on, a couple hours off, maybe
if we could show that we wouldn’t give up they’d have time to realize what they were
doing was insane, call off the test, and come free us. We made it through a couple of shifts like
this and it seemed like we’d actually be able to make it another day or two when everything
went wrong. It was my turn to sit and rest when I heard
the worst possible noise… snoring. The con next to me was sleeping quietly so
it must be one of the standers. I glanced over for just a split second and
saw both of them, leaning against the cell wall, dozing. At the same time I saw the flash. Crack, snap, pop. One after another their necks were snapped. I’m not sure how it happened but I was standing
again, staring at 173 who was now in the corner, dead bodies with their heads twisted around
piled up in front of it. I couldn’t take it anymore, I couldn’t
stare at this thing forever, I felt myself giving up. I lowered my head to the ground and then finally
broke my gaze, ready to die. And then… nothing happened. I slowly raised my head back up and -
There it was, it’s hideous face inches away from mine. It was then that I understood what we’d
been containing, what we’d underestimated. I felt again like it was telling me something. It was telling me to close my eyes, to sleep. So I did. But as my eyes closed I didn’t see darkness,
I saw 173, or something like it. But not in the cell, I saw it outside, in
the world, standing over children sleeping in their beds, watching. I saw them hiding in the shadows, staring
out at passers by. Then I realized they weren’t watching, waiting
to pounce. No, they were hiding. My eyes popped open as the door opened and
in rushed six security personnel. They took me outside, jabbed my leg with a
syringe injecting me with something as the world faded away… Incident Report. Time and date redacted. Following the experimental forced interaction
with Euclid Class anomaly SCP-173, subject has ceased responding to external stimuli
and appears to have taken on the traits and behaviors of the anomaly. Subject now spends entire day sitting in corner
of cell staring at wall. Staff are advised to proceed with caution
when dealing with subject as the only behavior they engage in is an attempt to strangle anyone
who enters the cell. No treatments have shown any effectiveness
and subject will unfortunately require incarceration, likely forever. This report has been read and approved by
REDACTED, REDACTED, and Dr. Siegfried Schwarz.
