It’s a natural instinct in many species
to protect their young - and sometimes it's not just their own babies, but any young that
look like them. Regardless of your personal feelings on human’s
earliest stage, it is a scientific fact that human babies are designed to emphasize their
own adorable helplessness to make sure that other, older humans take care of them. A baby’s cry is an inherently distressing
sound, and when we hear it, some deep, primal part of us feels the urge to comfort and care
for the child until the sound stops. But of course, we’re talking about the world
of the SCP Foundation here - where there are bunnies that can eat anything, teddy bears
that might steal your organs to make duplicates of themselves, and chocolate fountains filled
with trillions of murderous insects. Nothing is what it seems here, and even the
most innocent and cute creatures may be hiding a deadly secret - SCP-734 being no exception. Today, we’re talking about The Baby. This anomaly proves that dangerous things
can come in small packages, but where others only saw misery and death, the SCP Foundation
saw a certain potential… Our story begins in the maternity ward of
a hospital in the USA, where every medical professional’s worst nightmare was unfolding:
An unknown but incredibly fast-acting flesh-eating pathogen seemed to be running rampant across
the hospital’s population. It began when patients who weren’t even
admitted for dermatological issues started complaining of severe itches and extreme skin
pain. Some nurses and doctors in the maternity ward
began to experience similar symptoms, as well as one of the infants, leading to a massive
quarantine effort. While the initial symptoms first appeared
to be limited to severe pain and discomfort on isolated parts of the skin, the condition
of the afflicted soon escalated. Their skin began to messily flake off as the
cells comprising it lost physical cohesion and died. It was a kind of strange, anomalous rot that
seemed to work inwards, first destroying the integrity of the outer layer of skin and then
causing further disintegration to deeper parts of the body. Once the skin had shed off, the pathogen would
turn its attention to what was lying beneath. Against all odds, the disease affected organs,
muscle tissue, the vascular system, and even bones. Nothing was spared. The victims’ bodies would completely break
down, and they would be dead within a few hours. By the time the pathogen had finished ravaging
its victims, what was left didn’t even look human anymore. Not only patients but doctors and nurses that
had been walking the wards mere hours before were now little more than piles of human tissue
sitting in what had previously been their hospital beds. Whatever this was, it seemed like the fastest
progressing infection in recorded history. Hospital staff and administrators were terrified
- this appeared to be an entirely new disease, with a mysterious form of transmission and,
worst of all, no cure. They were even more confused when several
black vans pulled up outside the hospital, and mysterious men in hazmat suits spilled
out and began setting up a quarantine zone around the entire building. Whoever these strange people were, they definitely
weren’t the CDC - little did the hospital personnel know that this was the group you
never want showing up and putting your location on lockdown - it was the SCP Foundation. The infected remains of the victims were taken
away for research purposes, and the Foundation operatives immediately began conducting debriefing
interviews with witnesses. They soon determined from a mix of eyewitness
accounts and hospital surveillance footage that everyone infected with the mysterious
pathogen had all been in a particular section of the maternity ward earlier in the day. And when the operatives investigated this
area, they found another strange detail. An infant had no registered mother present
in the hospital. The Foundation would later learn that this
was likely because the baby’s mother was the first victim of the deadly disease. After eliminating all other possible options,
it seemed that the only anomalous element that could have caused all of this was the
mysterious baby, though just how the mother even survived carrying the baby to term was
a mystery in and of itself. The baby was a caucasian male human infant
between seven and eight months of age. Nothing appeared outwardly anomalous about
the child, but they could confirm that every single victim of the anomalous pathogen had
come into physical contact with the child earlier that day. Everyone who had been at the hospital was
given amnestic treatment, and the Foundation constructed plausible cover stories for the
deaths that had occurred that day. Like so many others before it, the child was
secured and spirited away to the nearest applicable Foundation containment site. There it was reclassified as SCP-734, and
finally the real testing into what precisely this infant was capable of could begin. Physiologically, SCP-734 appeared mostly non-anomalous. The infant had above-average intelligence
and physical aptitude for a child his age but otherwise showed no mutations or abnormalities
that would suggest a divergence from typical human biology. Despite a vast array of tests performed by
the Foundation into essentially every aspect of 734’s biology, they couldn’t find anything
that hinted at the origin of the mysterious pathogen. But through some trial and extremely costly
error, the Foundation was able to learn more about how exactly the pathogen worked. The only vector for transmission seemed to
be direct contact with the baby itself, up to and including the fluids and residues it
leaves behind. Those affected cannot transmit the anomalous
“flaking” effect to others, meaning that the risk of an epidemic is relievingly minimal. But of course, accidents still happen, as
was discovered when one agent misplaced her sympathy for the baby and decided to remove
her mask while interacting with him. Her logic was that her masked face might have
caused the baby some kind of distress, and as long as she was only coming into contact
with him via her own gloved hands, everything would be fine. But some dust particles were floating in the
air at the time, and SCP-734 sneezed in her face. The agent began screaming in pain and recoiling
from the baby, but it was already too late. Her fate was sealed. She was taken to the infirmary and given sedatives
so that she could hopefully die in as little pain as possible. In roughly 72% of cases, amputation of the
affected areas has prevented the entire body from succumbing to the anomalous effects of
SCP-734, but this isn’t exactly feasible when the point of contact is the victim’s
head. Within hours, the agent’s flesh had flaked
off of her face, leaving her looking like a red, bloody skull. A few hours after that, she didn’t have
a head at all. Throughout the disintegration process of this
unfortunate agent, the Foundation took grisly photographs. These photographs are shown to anyone preparing
to work on the SCP-734 research project to teach them a hard lesson on the importance
of adhering to proper safety protocols. And these protocols about how to deal with
the Baby are incredibly tight, given that even incidental contact is often a death sentence. Anyone entering the Baby’s containment chamber
needs to wear contained-atmosphere hazmat suits. Anyone who makes physical contact with the
Baby, even when suited up, is immediately removed from the area and subject to several
hours of quarantine and observation. Even inanimate objects that have been inside
the containment chamber need to be thoroughly sterilized before being removed. Given that even anomalous children like SCP-734
have very delicate needs, a handler is always standing by in full hazmat gear to take care
of the baby. These handlers are rotated every hour to maintain
alertness and safety. These handlers feed and change SCP-734 regularly
and sometimes even provide toys that have been approved by the O5 Council. The Foundation has gone to great lengths to
keep SCP-734 alive and comfortable because they believe that SCP-734 could be an important
asset for them in the future. Or, more specifically, they see great strategic
value in SCP-734’s blood. As mentioned earlier, contact with any matter
from SCP-734 triggers its deadly anomalous effects, including bodily fluids like blood. But, unlike many toxic pathogens, in this
case there is no risk of the infection getting out of control since the infected do not become
vectors for transmission. Because of this, the blood of SCP-734 can
act as a powerful weapon for both terminating anomalies deemed unviable by the O5 Council
and assassinating dangerous people who belong to rival groups. Contact with the blood would completely destroy
the target’s body, with no other anomalous effects and no evidence of who exactly conducted
the hit. SCP-734 has been fitted with an arterial catheter
so that the Foundation can collect large quantities of blood from the anomalous infant every single
week for storage and research. But it isn’t just the blood that the Foundation
sees potential in. SCP-734 himself has scored incredibly well
on the Aeslinger Loyalty Index, the test the Foundation uses to judge the loyalty of potential
applicants to the Foundation cause. As SCP-734 matures, if these scores remain
consistent, he will likely be trained to become a Foundation field agent in the future. An agent capable of killing someone with a
touch would, needless to say, be an asset to certain covert missions that the Foundation
would probably prefer to keep off the books. Of course, the SCP Foundation recruiting certain
compliant anomalies to perform missions for them is far from unprecedented. The most infamous of these is SCP-076, also
known as Able, a supernatural, eternally-resurrecting swordsman and perhaps one of the finest warriors
who ever lived. The Foundation took note of this and channeled
his eternal thirst for battle into working with his very own Mobile Task Force. He could assist in missions by taking out
his bloodlust on enemy groups of interest and dangerous anomalies. However, this ended up working a little too
well and led to disaster. Able was so good at his job that he burned
through all his allotted missions at astonishing speed. Left with nothing more to do, Able got antsy,
which led to him turning his murderous desires on his fellow team members and then the Foundation
as a whole. It was an all-out massacre before his colleagues
were finally able to kill him and return him to containment. The failure of this initiative gave the very
idea of letting anomalies work for the Foundation in the field a bad name. But since then, things have changed, especially
with the establishment of MTF Alpha-9, aka Last Hope, a new mobile task force formed
entirely of anomalous individuals and their handlers. These consist of somewhat more stable anomalies,
such as Able’s counterpart, SCP-073, also known as Cain. Cain cannot be harmed, with any harm befalling
him simply being mirrored back on his attacker, and his vast array of knowledge makes him
an incredibly useful intelligence asset. Another of the several members of Last Hope
is Iris, also known as SCP-105. Much like Cain, Iris not only has anomalous
powers that make her immensely valuable for missions in the field, she’s also compliant
and capable of listening to reason, unlike Cain. Her abilities include being able to actively
surveil and even interact with photos of any location, especially when taken with her anomalous
camera. Someday, SCP-734 could count himself among
other anomalous Foundation agents like these, providing he continues to show promise and
doesn’t develop a dislike of the Foundation as he ages, since after all, he won’t be
a baby forever. So if ever you find yourself on the Foundation’s
bad side, you have a good reason to be paranoid. You’ll have no idea that one day, the man
who’s going to kill you will approach and shake your hand with a smile. It won’t be until later when you feel that
strange tingle on your palm and feel the skin starting to flake away that you’ll realize
you’ve been a dead man walking for hours. Now check out “SCP-823 - Carnival of Horrors”
and “SCP-096 - Look at a Picture of Shy Guy in Space? The Shy Guy Questions and Theories” for
more Classic Series SCPs from SCP Explained!
