The Owl in the Abyss - Chapter 27 (Patreon)

Bakuda had seemingly arrived in Brockton with only the tech and clothes on her back.

Her remaining funds were wads of cash folded securely into pockets of her long jacket, which neatly explained her reluctance to even take it off, when I pushed her into the upstairs bathroom to get cleaned up.

Judging by her smell, she’d gone for more than a week without any shower.

“Don’t exactly have the time for that when you’re on the run,” she grumbled as she stripped off her clothes, struggling with her shoes quite a bit, thanks to the tech she wore around her toes. Which turned out be an ingenious little activation switch for her bombs, nicely giving the impression that she could set off her tech with her voice or even her will alone.

I folded my arms as she seemed reluctant to remove her underwear in front of me. Her actual face was actually quite ordinary, leaning towards the attractive and exotic side of the spectrum. Her hips and legs were quite nice and toned, with a slight belly and barely there A-cup breasts that reminded me of my own before my trigger.

“Off it goes, I need it for your measurements,” I said impatiently, making hither gestures.

She grunted, her dark eyes shining with anger, before unclipping her bra and pushing down her panties.

I grabbed the underwear, giving her a once over look, “Okay, be right back.”

I misted and after an eight minute flight reappeared outside the doors of a women’s clothing shop on the Boardwalk. This one was pretty good and not the typical outrageously overpriced strips of cloth that were sold by the designer shops with brand labels all along the Walk.

My next issue was dealing with a slightly awestruck store clerk and a new demonstration of my growing rep.

"Oh, Escort! What… uh, brings you to the shop?” the clerk asked breathlessly. She was young and pretty herself, as most stores on the Walk just naturally gravitated towards employing the attractive.

“Just trying to help a new colleague. Need five sets of underwear in this size,” I held up the bunched panty and bra, and rattled off the sizes from the partially faded labels.

The clerk visibly winced at seeing the soiled garments. “Of course, any preference on label, price and type?”

“Four sets of daily wear, medium price range and one set of lingerie, black, I’ll splurge on this one, so it can be from Secrets. Then two shirts, one blouse, three sets of denim jeans. Oh, and a bin to dump the underwear.”

The clerk helpfully brought the bin to relieve me of Bakuda’s underwear before getting a selection of purchases for me to look at.

“Sorry to bother, Escort?”

I leaned on ‘15 and turned around to see a middle-aged woman with long dark blonde hair and green eyes, giving me an awkward half smile. Her eyes didn’t really know where to settle on me and her aura was a mixture of astonishment, along with quite a few indicators that she really liked what she was seeing.

“Yes, ma’am? How can I help?” I asked in my best friendly voice.

“My son and husband are both big cape fans and could I get an autograph?”

I nodded and whipped out two shiny cards and a collapsible pen from ‘15s pouch. “Anyone specific or just the signature?”

“Josh Wright, my son and Albert Wright, husband.”

‘To Josh Wright, from Escort’ I wrote in a flourish along with the stylized signature I had developed for this persona.

I handed over the cards and she held up her phone, “Selfie?” she asked with a hopeful look.

Her aura told me this was definitely for herself and that she batted for both teams. I hoped her husband knew at least.

I nodded and she stepped next to me holding up her phone. She made sure to hold it out far enough and angle it in a manner that it just captured everything from my hips and up, just barely managing to get my pussy in frame.

My ears picked up a disgusted scoff and I spotted another woman, again middle-aged, just chucking her potential purchase to the floor and marching out the door.

“Some people,” Mrs. Wright rolled her eyes.

The clerk returned and I was whisked away to consider the best clothes for Bakuda. I didn’t want to go overboard, just stuff she could comfortably wear in the meantime. I ended up paying with an expense credit card I had in Fortress’ name.

I gave Jodie the clerk an autograph and selfie after I had paid, before grabbing the shopping bag and walking out the front doors.

Here my presence naturally created a greater stir.

I could’ve just misted in the store and been on my way, but I had honestly missed this place. At this point, it had been years since I had any reason to truly visit. After Emma and with money always being tight since mom’s death, I had never done any fancy shopping or even just some window shopping. The latter was only really fun with friends or at least some acquaintances by your side.

Did I really have the rep and confidence for this yet?

There was only one way to find out as I ignored my twisting stomach and turned right to move towards the ocean.

My walk was accompanied by gasps, wide eyes, nervous laughter, the occasional wolf whistle from men, gaping mouths, disgusted sneers, girlfriends and wives glaring daggers at boyfriends and husbands, the inevitable gawkers with phones filming me.

I ignored it all, firmly pretending there was nothing wrong, strange or weird about it as I indulged in a very long overdue bit of window shopping. Bakuda could have a nice long bath for all I cared at that moment, plus she still had her tech and old clothes.

My pace was firmly kept casual and it wasn’t long until I had a small mixed crowd of men, women and teens following me.

My focus was just on what I was seeing through the shop windows and the iron on wood tap of ‘15 with every other step.

“Ellie, seriously?” I caught over the din.

A girl who looked in her middle school years broke the half circle the crowd had kept around me, coming closer with a glossy printout of one of my posters from Leet’s website. It neatly reminded me that I needed to have a serious talk with the villain the next time we met for some fun.

“Escort, can I get-” Ellie asked plaintively.

“Sure,” I smiled, allowing my hair to part slightly just so the side of my mouth was visible.

A quick signature later and she grinned, admiring the poster briefly, “Big fan, well, thank you…” She hurried away with a wave, returning to her friend in the throng.

That was the signal for others to pluck up their courage. I ended up signing another poster from a blushing teenage boy who’s eyes didn’t know where to settle on me, a college aged guy who only had a till slip, which I substituted for one of my cards, then a young girl. It didn’t take long until I had run out of cards.

I firmly stopped the impromptu signing at fifteen signatures before shooing off the remaining hopefuls and resuming my walk.

When I reached the end of the Boardwalk, with only a railing to separate me from the Atlantic ocean, I leaned with my forearms against it and looked out over the bay and breathed in the saltwater air, letting the sound of waves crashing against the stilts below wash over me.

“Fucking help me! Get out of the way! Arggh!”

The shout reached my ears and I wanted to growl in annoyance that the moment had been ruined, but the awareness of all the phones still recording stopped me.

I immediately misted and zoomed up in the air briefly before coming back down and materializing on the other side of the crowd to see what was going on. Giving a number of people, who just happened to see it, a rather large shock.

I myself was rather shocked at what I was seeing coming down the Boardwalk, chasing after a young guy.

It looked like an abomination from a horror movie that stood over ten feet tall. It was generally humanoid, but the grotesque nature of its elongated limbs and a huge mouth that had rows of shark teeth in it was something out of some nightmare. Even worse, it had no eyes at all, just two dark voids in empty eye sockets. At first my heart wanted to jump out of my chest as I thought I was looking at SCP-096 manifested in the middle of the crowded Boardwalk, but the ragged clothing and the huge machete it wielded put paid to that notion.

The guy himself had a wooden baseball bat and was occasionally fighting back by swinging at the creature.

Even as I watched the bat slammed against its leg and it screeched in pain, allowing the harried guy to make some distance between him and the creature.

“What’s the matter with you all?! Run!” he screamed at everyone around him.

The reaction of the crowd was immediately confusing as they all recoiled from the guy, but none of them even looked at the monster creature even as it roared in anger at the sky.

My True Sight opened reflexively and it told me one thing, confirmed by the fact that the creature walked straight through a line of intervening people without them even flinching.

Only he and I could see the SCP creature.

Then I saw a second fact, only he could interact or touch the creature.

If I tried to hit it with ‘15 or if I tried to punch it, it would just phase through.

The idea that an SCP could be so targeted on someone specifically in this manner was not an unknown concept to me, but they were rare even in Foundation Earth as far as I knew.

There was only one idea that hit me in the few seconds I had as the creature stopped its melodramatic shout to the heavens and resumed the curiously slow chase of its target.

I transferred my shopping bag to hook onto ‘15 and misted, zoomed forward in an instant, materialized only my hand, latched onto the victim’s shoulder and misted him with me.

My will carried us high into the sky.

He screamed in fright as his unprepared senses were bombarded with novel experiences.

Everyone, i.e. Henry, Shauna, Dad and Theo, who had gone for a ride with me this way, reported that it was very disconcerting, likening it to being disembodied, unable to do anything, yet their senses still somehow worked and were hyper tuned to eleven. The only way I knew he was screaming was through my True Sight.

I stopped our flight at three hundred feet altitude to keep the creature in sight.

It had stopped its implacable advance, its eerie screams faded as it lowered the machete.

Then it raised its head to stare unerringly at our position.

Fuck, I thought.

Skeletal wings burst from its back, spreading out as wide as a small plane. The wings flexed once before the SCP shot into the sky with a ghastly scream, machete raised and poised to strike.

It took all my will and reflexes to dodge in time, before I immediately ghosted forward at my current top speed of just under 200 mph.

I did realize another fact as the world began to streak by below me.

The SCP hadn’t swung at me for enabling its prey to get away. It was still fixated on the guy. My helping him didn’t matter at all to it.

A look behind me showed the creature was keeping pace.

It swung its machete menacingly through the air, as if rehearsing for what it was going to do to its victim.

Fuck, what was I going to do? I couldn’t keep this chase going forever and using any form of my beginner level ontokinesis on the fly was just asking for even worse things to happen.

I needed information… I needed to talk to this guy and figure out what he did to get an SCP like this on his ass.

Right now he was in pure fight or flight mode, his wits scrambled and little reasoning was going on.  

I spread out my mind web as far as I could, the SCP wasn’t close enough yet to try mastering the thing, but I held little hope I could influence it that way. My focus instead turned to the guy and it was even easier in this form to master him.

His fight or flight mentality faded away immediately and was quickly replaced with the eager devotion and arousal.

Next problem to solve, we had to be able to actually talk without the high speed wind stealing away our words.  

There was only one way and I turned towards the ocean, aiming for southern beaches of the Bay.

We were now speeding along the narrow strip of beach sand at a low altitude, so I at least could try to find a spot that didn’t have anyone to witness this.

Brockton’s beaches were hardly anything to write home about. The few open to the public that existed within city limits were barely maintained and only a few had lifeguards, the rest of the coastline was too rocky to really count.

I found a suitable spot two miles from the last public beach in the south. Here there were a lot of craggy rocks with only ten feet of beach before you hit a cliff face. On top of that cliff was a nice flat bit of land with a small forest of trees. It even looked like someone had begun developing the area, given the remnants of earthworks present, but it was long ago and nature had begun reclaiming it.

I willed us to a stop on the best bit of solid grassy earth I could find and materialized both of us.

“Your name,” I demanded immediately as the creature stopped in the air a mere fifteen feet from us, giving an eerie intimidating screech.

“Alex Ross, mistress,” he said immediately, his eyes wide open, drinking in my form and not caring one whit that he was about to become a shish kebab.

“Keep your bat up, eyes on the enemy and get ready to fight!”

“Yes, mistress,” he obeyed immediately, suddenly handling that baseball bat with greater dexterity and fluidity. He bounced on the balls of his feet, eager for the fight to come.

Alex had skin and face that suggested a Mediterranean ancestry, maybe Portuguese, dark eyes, short styled, curly hair and barely there goatee beard. He wasn’t in the best shape but seemed semi-active and in his mid to late thirties. He was wearing pretty high end sneakers on his feet and the loose white designer t-shirt and black denim jeans. So at least nothing that would impede his fighting ability.

The creature swooped in, trying to bisect Alex at stomach level.

I selectively misted both our legs and this made it much easier to dodge.

Alex even managed to slam his bat onto the SCP’s back as it passed us.

It screeched in pain and whirled around, its skeletal wings flexing and pushing against the air.

I had to be careful to moderate the strength of my left hand clamped onto his shoulder, “Your address?”

“Parker Avenue 23, Apartment 139!”

He managed to say the last number before we had to dodge again.

The creature spun in mid-air, using its wings to attempt to clothesline Alex’s head off.

I pulled us down with millimeters to spare and his bat scored another hit on the wing itself.

The SCP crashed onto the earth, plowing a rough trough as it spent its momentum.

My brain struggled with the notion that it could affect the world in this way, but somehow remain immune to anything I did. It was a complete non-entity according to my mind web, there was nothing to grab a hold of there. Whatever dimension it was hiding its actual body in was shielding it. Even if there was a mind, I doubted this thing even had a sexual thought, let alone anything between its legs hidden beneath those rags.

It slowly got up with a moaning screech, its right wing was completely busted, barely hanging on to a sliver of cracked bone. The SCP shook its back with annoyance and both wings fell off it, like an antler shedding its horns.

It pointed its machete at Alex in a clear challenge.

Its next movement was so quick that I barely had time to react.

The machete shot from its hand as if launched from an air cannon, seeking to spear Alex straight through the chest.

Somehow, he managed to deflect it with the baseball bat. Merely twisting and rolling his wrists after holding the bat much like a sword.

The machete spun off to the side, but before it could fall to the ground, it stopped itself in midair and returned to the right hand of the SCP.

What bullshit! If it can do that, surely it can simply use that thing to slice Alex to ribbons. Yet the SCP didn’t do what was most efficient, it simply charged us again.

Alex brought the bat up and deflected the machete, stopping it from cleaving his head in two, but followed that up with an impressive riposte that slammed into the SCP’s chest. The skin deformed but the bones beneath didn’t crack.

He next used the bat’s bounce off the SCP’s chest to economically spin it into another swing which slammed into the creature’s knee.

This was enough to actually force it off balance and roar in pain.

Alex didn’t let up and I wholeheartedly agreed with the notion, pushing us forward as he delivered another blow to the other knee.

That finally put the SCP on its back and I hovered us forward to bring its head into reach.

“For the mistress!” he screamed and slammed the bat down over and over.

His war cry had me gaping somewhat and feeling slightly honored.

Then between one swing and the next, the SCP vanished.

Alex’s final swing slammed into the ground, kicking up a tuft of dust.

“Ouch, ow, ow, ow,” he dropped the bat and flexed his hands to get rid of the pain from his overextended wrists.

I materialized both our legs so we could stand normally but my mind was racing to make sense of what had happened to the SCP.

If it had died, it would’ve left a body, logically speaking. It was possible that it had simply become invisible even to True Sight but that didn’t feel right. It was there one moment and there had been a brief flash, it had happened so quickly that my eyelids blinking had obscured the event. It almost reminded me of something, but it remained frustratingly out of reach on why that effect tickled something in my mind.

“Alex, do you have any idea where that thing came from?”

“Yes, mistress. It came from the game.” Alex’s sweaty face smiled as he picked up the bat and let it rest on his shoulder casually. Then he turned to me and bowed his head, keeping his eyes fixed on my feet.

“What game?”

“Professor Ghoul’s Terrifying Horror Challenge, mistress,” he answered sheepishly.

Could this perhaps be another Dr. Wondertainment product that had ended up in Brockton? No, those were mostly meant for children and not chasing you across a city with a monster like that only you could see.

“In what form did this game come?” 

“Oh, it’s a Nintendo game, you know? The old style cartridges that you put into the NES.”

Any deficiencies I might’ve had in gaming history had long since been rectified by being very often in the presence of Uber and Leet, not to mention having a ton of time to kill in the evenings. I had gotten sick and tired of hearing those two blabbering and arguing with each other, with me in the room and not a single idea what they were talking about.

“Okay, so you put the cartridge into the system, then it started manifesting that creature you were fighting?”

“Oh no, mistress. That was just level 18. The previous seventeen levels had all sorts of challenges. Just the previous level I had to kill four people that were trying to kill me. This bat was also given to me by the game.”

“These people were generated by the game?” I asked anxiously.

“Of course, mistress. I normally couldn’t hurt a fly, but this game has been… instructive on what I’m truly capable of, perhaps because of all the near-death experiences.”

His normal emotional range was being dragged by my mastery into remaining upbeat and pleasant. Anyone else would’ve been deep in the throes of trauma, PTSD, depression and anxiety at this point.

My eyes turned to the bat and now that I looked close I could see definite SCP bullshit going on in its properties.

That was when I felt it.

The sickening feeling of the void, reality being turned into a pretzel and reshaped before snapping back into a new form of ‘normal’.

It was happening all around me but stopped just short of my skin.

In the blink of an eye, the world around me and Alex had changed.

We were now in a featureless concrete room, with no windows or doors.

“Shit, a new level has started, mistress, and I’m somewhat in a bind,” he commented.

I nearly jumped out of my skin to see that he was being literal. In the few milliseconds I’d been distracted by the void event, his bat was gone and now he was on his knees and cuffed with his hands behind his back and leg irons around his ankles.

I immediately knew that I wasn’t properly included in this environment, because my feet were phased through the floor and still touching grassy earth.

With an annoying yet cheerful ping a large blackboard appeared on one of the walls and a piece of chalk levitated in front of it, then began writing in a florid hand as if someone invisible was standing there.

My eyes strained to focus on the unseen and yet it revealed nothing. In no dimension or spectrum I could perceive was there anything in front of that blackboard. I was seemingly just a witness to this game and only actually seeing it because of my own nature and abilities as an SCP.

‘Welcome to Level 19 of Professor Ghoul’s Terrifying Horror Challenge! Well done for making it this far and especially for finding the help of an ally! In your next challenge your task is very simple - don’t submit. If you can do that for 30 minutes you will have completed the level. Good luck!’

The chalkboard vanished even as my mind digested those ominous words.

If this entire thing didn’t stink of SCP ontokinesis I’d have been flying over to Leet to have words… very angry words.

A steel door appeared out of the concrete walls and in walked a tall man in a formal black suit and tie. His leather black shoes gleamed with a mirror shine in the impossible overhead lighting that came from nowhere. His face was utterly neutral and normal, the kind where you wouldn’t look twice if this guy walked past you on the street. It was his eyes that caught the attention though.

They burned with an eager hunger and desire, which looked upon Alex with anticipation.

I suppressed my first instinct to blast the guy with ‘15.

Just like everything else related to this SCP, I couldn’t interact or do anything to it.

The suit stepped in and the door vanished behind him. He held out his hand and now it was holding the square black plastic casing of a self-defense contact taser.

I could only watch helplessly as the man in black inexorably stepped forward and shoved the taser into Alex’s side.

“Aaaahh!”

His scream of pain echoed awfully in the room of concrete.

He twitched and his body contorted with spasms as he fell over pointlessly on his side, trying to get some distance from his opponent.

The SCP instance straightened himself and calmly tucked away the taser into his suit pocket.

“Do you submit?” he asked Alex idly.

The true nature of the level hit me and what Alex would have to endure to reach the end of it. The question of what happened if he failed a level was something I had to assume the worst about. Despite this being a game, the nature of all SCPs was not sunshine and daisies. If Alex failed here… death was not the worst that could happen.

“Do you submit?” he repeated the question. “Failure to answer my question a third time will indicate submission.”

Alex managed to regain some control of his own body again, spitting out some pooled saliva before resolutely shaking his head. “N- no.”

The SCP nodded, not disappointed at all. It held out its hand again and now there was a long cattle prod that sparked with the promise of future pain. With no further prompting he poked the prod onto Alex’s buttocks and I heard the electricity crackle.

“Aaahhh-ghhllll…uh, uh, argh!”

Watching this and hearing those screams was just awful in itself and it was even made worse by the fact that Alex was still in my mind web and my perception of his aura. My instincts from my human side and SCP combined to scream at me to do something to alleviate the pain in one of my thralls and rescue them. In addition to destroying the source of that pain.

Yet there was nothing I could do here.

Resolve filled me and I focused on Alex’s mind, pushing a hypnotic command. “Alex, don’t submit.”

“Urrgh, ye- yes, mistress.”

I misted and blasted my way out of the cell easily. It was no more substantial to me than mist and from outside it looked like a ghostly concrete cage that was surrounding Alex.

Next I had to land and materialize to take a location reading and save it on my phone before I turned north and flew back towards the city proper.

I had a certain Tinker to find.

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Bakuda had long since left the bathroom, having dressed in a bathrobe that one of the ABB lieutenants had given her. Lung’s car was gone and only a smattering of gangsters was left behind as a protection detail for her. None had thankfully been stupid enough to try anything with the Tinker. If they had, there wouldn’t be much of them left… or the house for that matter.

She was back in the downstairs study and fiddling with her wish list, when I reappeared in front of the desk.

“Finally! What took you… oof!”

She barely caught the bag of clothes, but it banged her on the nose, neatly interrupting her angry spiel.

“There’s an emergency, get dressed quickly and grab all your tech.”

My own angry and thunderous face did the job of getting through to her that I was not pulling her leg or that this was some sort of test.

She nodded, immediately dumping all the clothes onto the desk, then began to sort through and assemble an outfit.

“Throwing me into the front lines already?” she asked as threw off her robe and stepped into a panty.

“Not an inter-gang situation. An extra-universal anomaly.”

“Fuck,” she said with feeling as she fed her arms through the straps of her bra. “What is it?”

“It’s localized, currently only affecting one person. He’s trapped in a lethal simulation game of sorts that he has to play.”

“That’s rather mild, compared to the Tree,” she said, stepping into a pair of jeans.

“Yes, but this anomaly can potentially project itself anywhere in the city and all over the city.” That only I could see the game levels or characters, did not mean I could assume the game worlds wouldn’t begin to bleed into our dimension. The next level could do just that and if I got involved and found ways to disrupt it, it might even consider it as cheating and adjust accordingly. It could pull us and the rest of the city in as players.

I referenced Alex’s address in my phone’s map and got my bearings on where I would need to fly.

Bakuda pulled on her long jacket and gas mask, finally completing her ensemble. The only thing that detracted from it was the store tags and labels still hanging from the jeans and blouse, which she struggled to rip off.

I rapidly misted to her and easily tore the plastic tags.

“Where are we going?”

My hand clasped her shoulder. “To the victim’s house and origin point of the anomaly. This is going to feel a little weird.”

I misted both of us and zoomed through the ceiling, floors and roof of the house, turning towards the city center and pushing into my top speed.

Bakuda was understandably unnerved by the experience. The loss of control it represented, suddenly not feeling your body and just moving, feeling, and still taking in experience from every sense, despite not actually having the physical structure of those senses in the real world.

A few minutes later I brought us to a stop over downtown and the tall high rises in the area.

I materialized my head, right arm and ‘15 only, bringing it closer to see the screen of my phone.

Damn, went too far north.

We turned around to fly southerly and finally got a more precise bearing, turning east for a few seconds before returning south.

Finally, I spotted the thirty floor upmarket apartment building that looked similar enough to the commercial satellite photo overlay, which corresponded to Alex’s address.

My body misted completely and I dove for the ground floor with all the speed I could muster.

The cars and flickering blue and red lights of the BBPD were clustered around the entrance.

Police tape cordoned off the area, uniformed and plain clothed officers were taking statements from a crowd of witnesses.

The frontage of the building entrance was shattered with what looked like gunfire and forensics were busy photographing and doing the whole spiel of collecting evidence.

Whether this was linked to Alex was a pretty safe bet.

Inside the building it had a very luxurious lobby with gleaming marble flooring, carpets, red uniformed staff, private security and a reception desk behind which was a formally dressed receptionist. They were also being interviewed and statements were being recorded.

My cynicism reared its ugly head and I inwardly scoffed at the amount of effort and manpower time being devoted to a single incident in the very rich city center.

I shook that off and turned my attention immediately to the large board that showed the apartment layout of the building.

Thirteenth floor, seriously?

My will carried me upward through the ceiling, concrete and electrical conduits of the lowest floor before it became a blur as I sped up, just just fast enough so I could discern how many floors I was going through.

Once I was on the thirteenth, I began speeding through the hallways, stopping only momentarily to see the numbers on each door.

Alex’s apartment became obvious though when I saw two policemen standing guard outside a door down the hall from me.

I phased right through the nearest wall and pushed myself through two intervening apartments before my flight stopped right in what had to be Alex’s living room.

It was pretty much trashed by someone who had used their hands and everything they could use as a weapon.

The only thing still functioning amidst the household carnage was the flat screen TV with a classic NES attached to it.

Bingo.

The screen was showing in blood red stylized letters, Professor Ghoul’s Terrifying Horror Challenge and below that ‘Game in progress…’

I breathed an intangible sigh of relief, Alex was still alive, though I didn’t want to think about what the SCP was doing to him now. Logically, it shouldn’t be doing anything permanent, otherwise it would leave him in a state literally unable to continue playing. Unless… that was the entire point. I couldn’t expect this to be just the SCP version of Leet.

Bakuda and I materialized fully in the living room and the Tinker immediately shuddered, feeling her arms and legs, giving herself the reassurance that she was once again fully embodied.

“Fuck! That’s fucking creepy and… why… do I feel so… good? It’s like…”

“You just spent a whole day at the spa,” I finished for her.

“Yeah.”

“Let’s just say it's a perk of getting misted by me.” That was a discovery made only after I’d misted both Theo and Dad. Shauna had stupidly not reported it to me and Henry was not exactly a human being. He could certainly appreciate beauty and women, but he had no desire or capacity to engage with them.

It was something my power was clearly doing to prepare anyone I misted for very extensive fun times.

Now I turned my attention to the two detectives who I’d mastered the instant we appeared.

Both were staring at me with the usual wide eyes and stupefied expressions, but I recognized the cool blue gray eyes of the man on the left. It was Detective Gabriel Fisher, the cop who’d handled my assault and kidnapping case, something that felt like a lifetime ago.

The case was still dragging its way through the overworked court system, but I knew it had already landed Sophia fucking Hess back in juvie. My dear former friend Emma was bouncing in and out of psych care, whilst wearing an ankle bracelet to track and enforce her movement. Madison had turned on her ‘friends’ faster than she could blink once Detective Fisher had read out the charges.

“You master them?” Bakuda’s question thankfully snapped me away from that line of thought, as she walked closer and waved her hand in front of the other detective’s face. She had to jump back as the red haired detective slapped her hand away.

“Yes, and the policemen outside, but you don’t want to get between them and me. They won’t appreciate it and will even shoot you should it come down to it. My thralls are rather… fanatical about me if I don’t moderate what they do. Detective Fisher and partner, good to meet you both. Please wait outside and close the door behind you. If anyone else approaches, make a suitable excuse to keep them from coming in.”

Both men visibly slumped with disappointment, “Yes, mistress.”

Bakuda stared as both detectives left without a further word, their postures suddenly becoming strong and defiant as they rushed to obey my orders.

“That’s fucking awesome and frightening.”

“Yes, something to remember should you get any notions of climbing the ladder of the ABB beyond what you have genuinely earned. You’re a cape and that automatically puts you ahead of many rank and file, except for certain elder lieutenants. If you think you can ambush me to take my position at Lung’s side, if you even find out where I live in this city, I wish you luck. Just know that you will be mastered so thoroughly that I’ll effectively engineer a completely new personality out of the old you.”

“Fine, fine, I get it,” Bakuda held up her hands wearily. Her aura was stained with enough fear and other indicators that I judged she believed me.

“Good. Now, the anomaly is centered around the game cartridge inside,” I jerked a thumb at the NES lying hooked up to the TV.

Bakuda approached the old console, her aura radiating skepticism. “Seriously?”

“Yes,” I said shortly. The strength of the SCP anchored onto that little cartridge was utterly ridiculous. If I focused, I could see the reality bending energy pouring upward out of it like I was standing right next to the Niagara Falls in reverse. My True Sight could barely manage to even look at it.

“So the player of this game, this was his apartment. Where is he now?”

“Roughly eight miles south-south east, near the city outskirts.”

“So somehow this little thing is capable of projecting a virtual environment that far and that extensively. I don’t doubt that big things can come in small packages and cause great destruction. Some of my bomb ideas will erase entire city blocks with something that can fit in your hand, but if what you say is true then I really want to take apart this little thing and study it.”

“Perhaps, but first we have someone’s life to save,” I walked closer to the NES console, knelt next to it and pulled out my smartphone from ‘15 before leaning the pipe against the wall.

“You’re taking photos?” Bakuda asked weirdly.

“I document every anomaly I come across for my other corporate employer,” I explained, tapping the phone, the integrated camera flashed. I judged it safe enough and called Henry, also tapping in a situation code.

“Escort? Code in.” He demanded.

“Three, one, three, nine, whiskey, tango, foxtrot, I am a pig.”

“Confirmed. What’s the situation?”

“In the vicinity of newly designated Anomaly 11. Impending death of victim is forcing deviation from usual procedure-”

“Are you kidding me?” Bakuda interrupted.

I glared at her, keeping the phone against my ear, “No, we are about to fiddle and screw around with something that can alter the very fabric of reality around us. If this thing kills us or sucks us into another dimension from which there is no escape, we have to leave something behind that’ll help the others who follow to shut this thing down. Anyway, Director Henry, sending a pic to you. Do you recognize it?”

It took a few moments for the image to download on his end. “Sorry, Escort. Not ringing a bell. It’s not amongst those known to me.”

“Shit. Okay, beginning the first obvious test. Turning the console off during a game.”

I put my finger on the depressed ‘POWER’ button and nothing happened from simple contact with the console itself. Then I lifted up the hinged flap that protected the cartridge itself. The dark gray cartridge was visibly normal, with a professional looking sticker on it proclaiming the name of the game.

No reaction.

Throwing caution to the wind, I pushed the button in and let go.

The power LED next to the button winked out, but the flatscreen TV above didn’t change at all, still proclaiming the game was in progress.

“Obviously not that simple,” I sighed. “Trying the reset button.” Other than the button clicking, going in and out, this didn’t change anything either. “No change in Anomaly status.”

“Pulling it out at the wall socket?” suggested Bakuda.

“Try,” I nodded.

She traced the cables to behind an overturned, torn couch, finding a multiplug adapter after pushing it aside.

The Tinker pulled the console’s power plug out and we both glanced at the screen.

“Did that help?” Henry asked.

“No, game is still on.” Bakuda stared at the TV. A sense of disbelief and stupefaction as she clearly witnessed her first impossible anomaly, settled on her.

“Try the TV itself.” The sentient statue was not sounding optimistic.

“Bakuda! Snap out of it. Pull the TV plug.”

The Tinker shook her head like a dog shrugging off water, “Okay, yeah, TV plug.”

She pulled and was left with a handful of cable and plug, yet after five seconds the flatscreen was still displaying the game title screen.

“What the fuck?” she spat, surging to her feet and rushing to examine the back of the TV. Her hand reached in behind it and felt for anything strange. “Shit!” She now walked in front of the device and lifted it off the wall before leaning it face first against the couch to properly examine the rear.

Her hands caressed everywhere, trying to feel for an imperfection, alteration or modification. She poked her head to the other side, “It’s still on, what… bullshit is this?!”

I didn’t answer. “Next test, physical removal of the game cartridge.”

My fingers probed inside the open flap of the console. Thankfully I had seen both Uber and Leet do this many times with their NES, as it wasn’t entirely intuitive for a layman.

Push down slightly hard on the cartridge and it popped upward, still cradled in the housing. Grab with fingers and give a steady backward tug.

It popped as the console let go of the copper contacts and was released into my hand.

I looked at the fancy gray cartridge and didn’t dare open my True Sight. It was so small, so ordinary, yet commanded reality according to its programming.

“Any effect?” I asked Bakuda. She shook her head. “Henry, any other suggestions?”

“Escort, anything more you can try will be destructive testing.”

My eyes couldn’t help but look down at the innocuous cartridge. There were so many reasons not to try. If the creator of the game was vindictive enough, the SCP could be ‘programmed’ to pull in anyone attempting it into their own game. There were numerous nightmare scenarios that could happen. If I was the SCP Foundation, I’d write off Alex as an acceptable casualty, bring in the cartridge for containment, let cooler heads reason and think this through. 

I had no doubt Alex would survive that level and anything the SCP man in black could do to him. Then we could see what the next level would be and what could be done to help.

Yet we had no idea just how many levels there were.

That he had made it through seventeen meant that we had to assume at least 99 levels existed, but that was just a best case scenario.

Did the designer of this SCP even intend anyone playing to actually win this game? Was it all just a sick method of tormenting his victims? Dangling hope they could eventually win.

“Fuck it,” I threw the cartridge to the floor, grabbed ‘15 and slammed it down with all my strength.

It should’ve shattered into a dozen pieces, internal circuit boards and ROM chips flying… but the iron staff was stopped cold and the cartridge remained stubbornly in one piece. It even dissipated all the momentum and kinetic energy, tossing it aside casually.

“Did you try hard enough?” Bakuda asked with scorn.

I glared at her and to demonstrate just how hard I had hit the SCP, I slammed ‘15 down again and shattered an entire tile of flooring, driving up a small cloud of pulverized concrete.

“Right, so if brute force isn’t going to work, we need to approach this differently,” she said and began reaching into her jacket.

“We are not doing this in the middle of an apartment building,” I snapped and scooped up the SCP before walking to the front door and ripping it open.

The four men from the BBPD immediately whirled on the spot and looked at me with eagerness, awaiting my command.

“Thank you for your service. When this front door closes, you will forget you saw me and a woman wearing a gas mask. You spent the time discussing the particulars of the case and concluded that Alex Ross was fighting a parahuman Stranger. You’ll contact the Protectorate and forward the case to them. Understood?”

“Yes, mistress,” they chorused.

I backed into the apartment and shut the door in their faces, releasing their minds.

In the same moment, I pulled on Bakuda’s mind and walked up to her.

“Urgh-” 

The contest of dominance with the woman was over within seconds as I emotionally bulldozed her.

“You will never communicate in any way the particulars or broad details of my master ability to anyone.”

She nearly lost her balance as I released her, her mind whirling from the emotional whiplash. “What the fuck was that for?!”

“You’re a clever person, Bakuda. So why are you asking a stupid question? You saw me demonstrate my hypnosis on the police officers. You made the obvious conclusion that even a child could at that point. Don’t pretend you didn’t.”

She grudgingly nodded. “You have Lung mastered. You’re not just his cape concubine, you’re the fucking power behind the throne.”

I pulled her mind in again, “Another conclusion you will never communicate to anyone.”

“Fuck, bitch. Stop!” she cradled her head.

“No, I will not. There is too much at stake here that you barely have the comprehension of and you have the potential to cause literal catastrophe in this city and by extension the entire North American continent.” I could’ve said the entire universe really, but that would be well out of context for Bakuda. “So now you’re my problem to manage. Now come.”

I fumbled with my phone and brought it to my ear, “Henry, I’m going to keep my phone active. Trace my location when you reacquire a signal.”

“Will do, Escort. Good luck.”

I returned it to ‘15s pouch, putting the SCP game cartridge in as well, then I grabbed Bakuda by the shoulder and misted us both.

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When we materialized back in the open field I had left Alex in, Bakuda got another taste of SCP weirdness.

From her point of view, it looked like he was simply suspended in mid air, a foot off the ground, his arms and legs spread eagled. His clothes were in tatters, with only his pants really in any condition to protect his modesty. Almost everywhere on his body were thin bleeding cuts and his face was contorted in pain.

I saw the concrete room, the large thick planks shaped in an X that was some form of medieval interrogation device that I couldn’t remember the name of and the embodiment of the SCP standing in front of it.

The black suited man had a very thin knife and even as I watched, he applied the lightest of bleeding cuts to Alex’s stomach.

How much blood had Alex lost? The ground below him was stained black and red - his skin didn’t look pale and his aura was generally strong, if wracked with determination, pain and anger.

“Do you submit?” the SCP asked genially.

“Fuck… you! No!” Alex glared.

How long had it been since the level started? I could only curse myself for not having kept precise track.

“Bakuda,” I flicked a finger in front of the Tinker’s face, startling her out of her astonishment. Then handed her the game cartridge. “Get to work.”

She took the innocuous piece of electronics, “Fine. Thinking A2 combined with B4, that should make a plasma.”

Her hand reached into her jacket and she pulled out two matt black plastic modules that could interface with one another. Then a pretty standard digital timing device came from another pocket, which she attached to the combination.

It was pretty fascinating to watch as I perceived more than just highly advanced technology in those modules, there were clearly elements of bottled parahuman power in there.

“Just don’t blow us up in the process,” I groused.

“Of course not, I know my tech!” She walked near the tree line a dozen feet away and began putting her newly created plasma bomb in place. She fiddled with the thing, placing the SCP cartridge underneath it.

Then came sprinting back. “Ten seconds, should act like thermite, high temp but no explosion. Oh, and you shouldn’t look at it directly.”

“Thanks for the warning,” I said dryly and counted down in my head.

Ten seconds later I heard a thump, followed by a hissing. Then I clearly felt like I was briefly blasted by the heat of sunlight.

I turned around to see Bakuda running back and a number of trees in a three to four cubic meter area was just… gone.  

One tree had three quarters of its lower trunk missing and it cracked before falling over with a groan and a rustle of branches and leaves. Everything was scorched to hell and back, with the earth practically glassed in a circular depression.

Bakuda stopped at the edge of the depression and looked down. “Fuck! That’s impossible!”

She reached down, then held up the game cartridge that still looked factory fresh and immaculate.

Then I heard a victorious fanfare jingle and whirled around to see Alex was now down on the ground, held up by his hands and knees. His clothes restored to exactly the condition it was before, his body completely healed. Even the dried blood on the ground beneath him was gone.

The concrete room was gone, but in its place the black board hovered in mid air and began writing.

‘Congratulations on passing Level 19! As a reward for getting this far you have two minutes before Level 20 begins.’

Alex gathered himself and sat down, hugging his own legs and stared at the black board with blank frightened eyes.

“Ah ha, I know, D9 and Z14. Material transmutation!” declared Bakuda.

I let out a weary sigh and planted ‘15 into the ground next to me, and fished out my phone.

“Henry.”

“We’re on our way, Taylor.”

“Hurry.”

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SCP/s featured in this chapter:

"SCP-1315" by Dark Gaia, from the SCP Wiki. Source: https://scpwiki.com/scp-1315. Licensed under CC-BY-SA.

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A/N: Many are the SCPs that can't be defeated by conventional force and just laugh at your attempts to deal with them. Have a great weekend folks and stay awesome.