It's funny how someone with a position as low as mine could learn about practically everything that was happening at a Foundation Site. The walls of the cell I shared with my companions were extremely thin, and on the other side there was a break room. Whether one wanted to or not, we could hear small things here and there from the conversations that the staff had with each other. "There's been a containment breach at Site-19," they would say; "AO-ES-79562 is going to be relocated;" or "more testing will be done with SCP-ES-092." In a way, those people kept us up to date with everything that was going on at the facility.
However, they didn't treat us very well. Being who we were, nobody respected us much, but what they did was abuse. They would take us out of the cell during working hours and would bring us to the recreation area to have fun at our expense. We would mark a rhythm for them, and they would dance, laugh, even make fun of us. And I was outraged. That's not what we were there for.
The real purpose of our stay at the Foundation (somewhat unwanted, in many cases), was to interact with acoustic anomalies when required; something so ambiguous that it could mean a million different things depending on the moment, and greatly expanded the list of SCPs to which we could potentially be assigned.
Interesting work. Sometimes.
During our years of service, we did all kinds of tasks, ranging from the most absurd to the most dangerous. We would enter the cell of AO-ES-189624 and make a fuss for hours, while scientists were busy measuring the temperature of its various sections. The music that played during the initial containment of UL-ES-7385 came from us, as well as the music that is played in the chamber of AO-ES-523409 every Friday.
In a containment exercise, an SCP killed all my teammates after 3:05. The specialists confirmed that the anomaly had not affected the rest of us and replaced the fallen.
That night I could not sleep.
It was a hard life, sometimes cruel, sometimes pleasant, sometimes boring, always strange, never free. One day it gave you an exciting task, the next it made you stand for hours paralyzed in horror. Always throwing the cruellest ups and downs at you.
But we would survive. We had each other, we supported each other to keep going. At the end of each day, there was always laughter and jokes in our ward, sweetening the decent days and mitigating the bad ones. When there were problems, we were the best comfort we could wish for. We were in it together: making it to the next day was not always assured, and all we could do was pull together and try to keep going.
Extreme situations bring people together. We came together first as a team, then as a circle of friends and, in the end, almost as a family. We were alone, helpless in a changing and chaotic environment: the only help we could find in that Foundation that demanded our work and controlled our lives, was from the other members of the team.
It was a strange situation. We were surrounded by dozens of professionals, all kinds of wonderfully equipped facilities, some of the most sophisticated machines ever created by mankind… but we were isolated from all these things, as if we were separated by glass. We walked past them daily, as they led us to our next destination, but the worlds we inhabited were not the same. You couldn't ask the guards to help you in your work, those machines were not going to lighten your load. The first lesson we learned upon our arrival (and we learned it fast), was that our survival and well-being depended entirely on us.
And we continued with that routine, day after day after day after day. We proved that we were no trouble, that they could take us from one anomaly to another without needing to get rid of us. We learned. We figured out how to follow orders the right way, how to cope with stress and not let it get to us, how to do the most basic tasks with that almost mechanical efficiency they were looking for. We evolved, we got stronger. That underlying feeling that we wouldn't last long, that our adventures would come to an end one way or another… it was gone.
Now we had hope. We dared to think that we could achieve a future, that we could aspire to something better if we hold on long enough. We wouldn't stop being prisoners, but could they treat us better if we gained exceptional experience? Surely they would, wouldn't they? The Foundation wouldn't put competent staff at risk. We just had to hang in there and…
How stupid we were.
Reality hit us in the face with a message through the wall.
This was how we found out about our destiny before we were told.
It was a new experiment, they said. The plans for our unit, as they had already discussed with the secretariat, involved direct contact with SCP-ES-002.
Our days were over. We were going to die.
The next few hours were agonizing. We could only talk and talk as we watched helplessly as our time slowly ran out. Just when we were on the verge of hysteria, the guards arrived.
They said nothing. They took us effortlessly and led us down a series of corridors as we questioned them, pleaded with them, insulted them; but they seemed not to hear. And, with every corner we turned, with every tile we walked, the dreadful feeling of horror that overwhelmed us grew and swelled in our chests.
I heard crying, and some of it was my own.
Everything happened as quickly as it had begun. Now we were in front of some doors that announced our sentence in big white letters: SCP-ES-002.
In an inner chamber with the airlock behind which the object was held, the guards were replaced by several men in special suits. I was too shocked to pay attention. To tell the truth, I couldn't quite believe that I was going to die at that moment. Life around me was as unreal as a nightmare.
The men in the suits surrounded us and made us move toward the airlock in a single line. I was going to be the first. It was the end of me. I had heard about the effects 002 had. I breathed heavily and, without having assimilated that I was going to die, I went through the airlock.
In less than the blink of an eye, a vibration slammed into me and ripped through me, flooding every part of my body with wrenching pain. Before I could fall to the ground, the creature lunged at me again and attached itself to my body, like a parasite ready to slurp the blood of its victim. It pierced me again with its sound: everything was vibrating, and the pain was increasing…
It was eating me. At a voracious and inexpressibly fast pace, it was breaking my sound spectrum into pieces and integrating my vibrations into itself. And before I knew it… there was nothing left of me. I was just it. It had consumed all my sound.
Behind me, my companions were leaving the iPod chamber and heading for the same fate.
Just a minute ago, I was the first note of the song Still D.R.E, a 32 Hz frequency sound.