The MTF units advanced cautiously, their boots crunching against broken glass and debris with every step. Rifles low, eyes scanning every alley, rooftop, and flickering shadow for any signs of movement.
Torch's voice cut through the shared silence. "What are the chances that scream came from a civilian?"
"Inconclusive. Based on current AEMS readings, the probability leans high. It could possibly someone left behind during evacuation." Pale Ember responded swiftly without missing a heartbeat.
She coughed twice due to the throbbing pain from her broken bones and added more details. "That being said, we can't rule out an anomaly capable of mimicking human speech. Though it is unlikely, since our system hasn't flagged anything outside of the Roghul and the chemically reactive entity."
The memories of Roghul little surprise earlier flash like a film in the back of her mind. "But seeing the stunt those Roghul gave us, we can't let out guard down."
Not far from the back, Crick joined the exchange, voice calm. "You're not wrong, Ember. Odds are low, but still not zero. Especially with those mutts having bullshit adaptive ability, we can't be careless."
He stepped forward to match Torch's pace, walking right beside him. "But one thing I find really hard to believe? That Halimunan Team would leave anyone behind."
Torch gave a curt nod, not breaking stride. "Yeah, they wouldn't. Not with their records."
"If they were that sloppy," Crick added, "they would've been shut down years ago. No team maintains a 99,9% success rate by accident or mere luck. Especially when dealing with sensitive information and evacuation at the same time."
"Unless..." Pale Ember murmured, "We're dealing with another mutating Roghul variant."
Before anyone could answer, the scream came again. Closer now.
Up ahead, they rounded the collapsed frame of what used to be a bakery, its sign still flickering overhead: Cake & Pastry.
There, in the shadow of buckled walls and shattered glass—
They found him.
A young man, cornered. On his knees. Blood soaked his right arm, flesh torn open down to the bone. A Roghul clung to his forearm, jaws locked like a vise, tugging and twisting like it was gnawing a toy.
The sound was wet and disturbingly awful, things such as tendons snapping and bone cracking filled the cold night air.
And yet despite the terrible tradegy, he wasn't willing to giving up.
The young man fought back like a dying cornered animal, using only pure instinct to survive.
With his free hand, he grabbed a handful of gravel and small pieces of shattered tile from the ground, he swiftly cocked his right hand back and flinging them straight at the Roghul's eyes.
But unfortunately, there was no visible effect happening to the Roghul.
Not wasting time, he immediately shifted tactics—smashing his left fist into the creature's snout, over and over. Each hit desperate, clumsy, and furious. His face was pale, contorted with rage and fear, sweat and blood streaking down his brow.
But it only seemed to annoy the Roghul further—its bite sank in deeper, crushing down upon his flesh and bones.
The young man let out another scream in agony, and then he did the unexpected—he bit it back.
His teeth sank into the Roghul's shoulder—drawing black, viscous blood. It feels metallic and bitter on his tongue, his own gums bled as he screamed through clenched jaws, showing the burning defiance of desperate survival.
The Roghul snarled—sharp black claws fully extended, ready to slash.
*BANG!!*
A clean shot burst from the shadows, the back of the Roghul's head ruptured. Brain matter sprayed out across the wall and onto the pale young man's face.
Sam froze in place. His fist stopped moving mid swing, his mouth still latched to the Roghul's hide.
Then he let go as weakness began to creeping in on his whole being.
His body collapsed backward against the wall. Limbs shaking, breathing ragged, and yet the eyes still retain the wild and unfocused gaze.
He looked up on the approaching group, they were already there.
They have their weapons raised, and the masks they're wearing making the situation unreadable.
He raised his good hand, shaking voice cracked through the silence, barely rising over the buzzing in his ears.
"W-wait! Just wait a minute! Please—don't shoot!"
The words were clear, but unbeknownst to him—no one understood.
Crick frowned. "What did he just say?"
Seal tilted his head. "That... Sounded like English?"
Tapir muttered, "Foreigner?" While frantically flipping through his notebook.
Torch took a step forward. Pair of cold analytical eyes bore down on the young man. "Who are you?"
No reply, the only thing he got was just the young man's confused expression.
Torch tried again. "Name? Country?"
The young man blinked. "I—i don't understand you..."
Suddenly Tapir stepped up, glancing on his notebook and the confused young man. "Uh... Hello? What's your name?"
Like a spark of warm ember in the dark, something inside the young man eyes lit up—relief. "My name is...Samuel."
As soon as Tapir got the answer, he quickly write it down on his notebook, "Samuel... Okay, got it." He then continue. "So, uh, Samuel. I got a little question for you, could you tell me what year it is?"
The young man—Sam, blinked in surprise, the question threw him off guard. With the still bloodied mouth, he responded. "Two... Twenty-two? Am I right?"
Pale Ember's eyes narrowed. "What did you ask? What did he say?"
Tapir turned to her, "Um, I ask him his name and he said his name is Samuel." He continue, voice a little cracked—his palm started to sweat a bit. "Then I ask him what year it is, he answered 2022. Either he got concussion on his head or..." Tapir couldn't get the chance to finish his words as Pale Ember cutting him off.
"Ask him who the president is, that should be easy." Pale Ember gaze coldly at the young man's eyes, trying to see through him.
"Got it." Tapir turned back, nervous. "Do you know who's the current president?"
Sam, woozy and slurring, muttered: "Ummm... Obama...? Or... Trump...?"
Like before, Tapir wrote the information down again in his notebook. "Okay, he said Obama or Trump. Oh boy, I think he got injured in the head from the looks of it."
Crick inhaled sharply. "No, the chances of it is extremely low. If he really got some kind of concussion, let alone responding, he shouldn't even be conscious now."
He then pointed at the Roghul corpse, "And if that's the case, he won't be able to survive that."
He pointed his finger one by one for all to see and continue. "He doesn't speak a word of Indonesian. Got even the simplest questions wrong. And a foreigner at this time and place without id? Tell me about it."
Sam groaned. "Can someone—please—help... my arm..."
Tapir turned. "He's asking for help. Should we—?"
"No." Crick cut him off.
His voice had shifted—no longer casual, but hard and clinical. "Not yet. Someone scan him, now."
Moss stepped forward slowly. "I'll scan him. Keep me covered."
He raised his TapTech glove and do a double tapped to the man's exposed skin.
His glove lit up as usual, but then it stuttered uncontrollably.
[ERROR—SIGNATURE CORRUPTED]
[ANOMALY THREAD: UNDEFINED / UNINDEXED]
[THREAT LEVEL: UNKNOWN]
"Captain," Moss said slowly, stepping back, "The AEMS just want haywire, it's bad bad."
Crick had already raised his pistol the moment the scam flickered, pointing straight at the young man's head. "I fucking knew it."
Torch stepped in, expression like stone. His rifle leveled, followed by all MTFs units.
The young man flinched in horror as his eyes widened up. He tried to backed into the wall, legs failing to hold him up. Blood streaked from his arm and his mouth.
Torch's voice was low, final. "Contain him."
Sam didn't understand the words, but he understood everything else.
Their radiating Intent, position, tone.
"Crick," Torch said. "Sedate him, we'll decide what to do at HQ."
"Say less." Crick advanced without hesitation, the syringe in hand glint briefly under the scattered moonlight.
"Wait—! Please—! " Sam cried out, voice ragged, his body trembling.
"What did I do?!" He reached out forward—
*SMACK!*
Only for his hand to be slapped away by the plague doctor's cold, gloved palm.
The plague doctor then grabbed Sam by the throat with force.
"Ughack—!"
Without missing a beat, Crick swung his syringe with terrifying speed and precision.
But before the syringe could be injected—
Reality fractured.
Not visually, not physically—but it literally glitched out.
A shimmer, faint as dust like cracked glass under the water—akin to corrupted digital pixels coming into reality, tearing and breaking it apart.
A pulse rippled outward, caught off guard—everyone froze in place.
Their weapons lowered slightly as confusion sank in for each and every one of them.
Crick blinked, dumbfounded. "Why... why am I holding a syringe?"
Pale Ember looked around, trying to make sense what's happening.
"We're in the middle of tracking and killing that Roghul," She pointed at the dead Roghul lying on the ground.
Crick put his syringe back in his pouch. "Hm, something's off," he looks to each and every member before continuing. "Our AEMS down, all of them."
Seal scratched his head. "Yeah, what's up with that? I could swear someone was here, it felt like it."
Torch stayed silent, he stared at the wall in front of them, his eyes narrowed, trying to grasp something just out of reach inside the back of his head—like a dream already fading into nothingness.
"...Forget it," he said coldly. "Thinking like a headless chicken won't do us any good."
"Roghul's cleared. Let's move. We still have that chemical anomaly to track, we can't waste anymore time. We'll work on the AEMS along the way."
And just like that they moved on, forgetting the boy who never should've existed.
Meanwhile, not far from the squad's last known path—
A broken figure dragged himself into the alley's darkness.
Stumbling like a broken puppet, slamming into walls, and crawling over a broken concrete.
He should've been dead already—
Maybe he was, maybe this was an illusion made in hell.
Blood splattered behind every shaky step he took. His right arm dangled, shredded and limp, a trail of torn flesh swinging like a butchered limb.
Every heartbeat forced fresh and unrelenting agony, his legs buckled again, he hit the ground with a choked grasp.
But he pulled every ounce of will and energy to rose, and yet he stumbled again shortly after.
Again.
And again.
His teeth gritted so tightly it drew more blood. His face was a pale mask of death, soaked in grimed, blood, and sweat. The kind of unforgiving exhaustion that eats into the soul bled through his every motion.
And the worst feeling had to be from the glitch earlier.
A surge of cold static burst through his bones, forcing a scream from his chest—not loud, not sharp, just hoarse and broken. The edges of reality twisted. The world blinked. It felt like dying in a dozen different ways at once.
He clenched his head, his whole body spasming like a marionette with its string on fire.
But he kept moving, no matter how bleak it is.
He had to.
He couldn't let those soldiers find him. Whoever they were, wherever they belong to—they weren't here to help. He saw it in their eyes, he felt it in the way they raised their weapons, and heard it in their tone. They couldn't understand him, and he couldn't understand them—but none of it mattered.
Their scanner had reacted to him.
To him.
Which meant one thing, there's an extremely high chance he wasn't a person anymore, it won't be strange if the likelihood that he's classified as an anomaly by them is 99%
And in SCP world, no matter which one it is—anomalies don't get saved.
They get contained, experimented on, dissected. And if you're lucky, perhaps, forgotten.
He turned a sharp corner into a narrow alley, his vision flickering into a broken film reel. His legs finally gave out for good. He crashed into a pile of garbage, collapsing beside a dented Tash bin, forehead resting against a rusted metal pole.
It was at this moment a simple devastating words flash through his: it's mind over.
But Sam still not willing to give up, at least for one last moment, one thing still burned inside him: his story. If he was going to die in a world that didn't know him, he would leave something behind, something real, something of him.
He didn't know for sure whether this world is real or not, though he doubted it will be important for a dying man like him.
With a trembling hand, he pulled the note book from the inside of his coat. The cover was sticky with blood, but overall still whole.
He fumbled for his pen, his fingers were numb.
He pour all of his remaining energy to wrote—
'i'm afraid—i'm not gonna make it.'
'i don't know what did i do in my life to deserve this hell.'
'i wasn't the bravest person there is nor i was strong, i wasn't anything special, i'm just some guy.'
'i didn't ask to be thrown into this... goddamn nightmare world.'
Tears blurred his vision, hot and salty—full of everything he never got to say ever since he got into this world. They soaked the paper, smudging the ink a little.
In the edge of emotional breakdowns—he held on and kept writing.
He had to.
'my name is Samuel, and i came from earth. I had a mom who loved me, a cheeky little brother... and a little sister named gabby.'
'gabby, I'm sorry. Please forgive this brother for being so weak, I really hope I can see you all again for one last time—even if its just for a moment.'
'i thought I could survive with my knowledge about this world, but I was terribly wrong—fate... no, this world force me to run on my heels by sending hell on every step I took, again.. and again..'
'i just want to survive long enough until I can find a way back home, is that so much to ask?'
'gabby, mom, ryan, once again i'm sorry. I didn't forget the promise I made to take care of you all.'
'i just... couldn't keep it. not in my current state.'
'god, please... I just wanna go home.'
'i—'
His hand suddenly went limp, the pen slipped from his fingers, rolling away from him on the cold hard ground.
The notebook fell from his grip, its pages fluttered gently in the wind.
Sam collapsed against the trash bags, eyes half lidded. His body now no longer trembling. The blood from his right arm still kept on dripping, forming a small puddle of blood.
And for a long moment... nothing moved.
The wind passed through the alleyway, gentle and soft, as if carrying his soul away with it.
A young man, whose only sin was waking up in the wrong world lay lifeless in the alley of an alien world.