《Fragile》SCP-049 x Injured!Reader

《Chapter Seven》

I clasped my hands behind my back as I stared listlessly out the one-way window, lost in deep thought. I could hear them all behind me, some sleeping and some searching for clues with hopes of escaping this godforsaken facility. The Pestilence's scent in every one of them proliferated thickly in the small room and it took every ounce of willpower not to act upon my instinct to cure them. Some were more burdened with it than others, as is a phenomenon I've come to know well, but they were all infected nonetheless.

All except one.

Throughout my years of... imprisonment here, I've been given many humans of the crippled state, those with broken extremities or missing pieces or limbs that don't work. Every one of their outcomes were the same: heavily stricken with the Pestilence. I had hypothesized the Pestilence takes root easier in the physically inept, but that conjecture was shattered not long ago when that horrid man who calls himself a scientist threw her into the mix.

I've come across humans like her before in the past, ones who have not yet contracted the Great Dying. As time wears on, however, they're not so lucky. But there's something about this girl that makes me want to question every one of my scientific discoveries. She is completely untouched by the Pestilence, the purest of pure that I've ever laid my eyes on. She's like a white cloth that's been dragged through the mud but somehow came out without a speck of dirt.

She's an enigma, a paradox to all that I know.

Her knee is in the process of healing, as she explained to me while I examined it earlier, all the while avoiding my eyes. I had felt her heartbeat thrumming beneath her scars and noticed the muscles of her leg tense up on occasion. In fact, I can feel her gaze on my back right now, staring with intense curiosity. I wonder if she is as inquisitive of me as I am of her...

The sound of scraping stones reaches my ears which causes one word to ring through my mind: danger. Not for me, the statue won't hurt me, but for her... and the classmates she seems to care about. I turn around in a manner that startles her and makes her flinch. I begin barking orders and shove the door to the outside hallway open, ushering them all out as quickly as possible.

I grab her gently yet firmly and pull her alongside me as we exit the small room with haste. The safest place for her right now is close to me.

__________

You're so close to SCP-049 you can feel the vibrations of his deep, echoing voice as he speaks.

"Under no circumstances should you break eye contact with this entity," he instructed sternly, all the while leading you and your classmates away from the ominous reverberating of moving stone somewhere in the distance. Strangely, it seems almost louder now, despite the separation all of you seemed to have put between yourselves and it.

You stumbled as you half-ran half-limped, but SCP-049 kept his grip tight on you. You twisted and turned down so many hallways that looked exactly the same that you were beginning to worry you were just going in circles. But, eventually, the bird-masked man led you all to another area of the facility with long, winding metal catwalks. Steam burst through open pipes and shrouded the rooms in a sinister fog that truly added on to your already suffocating fear.

You were beginning to sweat. Your knee was aching and your lungs felt like they were on fire. Your classmates didn't seem to be faring any better, either. Just as you thought you'd collapse of exhaustion, SCP-049 rounded a sharp corner, throwing open a metal door that led to a room filled with computers and blinking gadgets. A red alarm attached to the ceiling was flashing red silently, having already screamed itself to death earlier when the breach started.

"There's a conference room through the farthest door on the left," SCP-049 said, pointing in said direction. "Hide underneath the central table in there and keep silent."

Your classmates wasted no time in barging into the conference room, but you were still held tightly in SCP-049's vice grip. You cast a frightened gaze up at him, begging with your eyes for him to let you go. He didn't acknowledge you. Not until the door was shut and you could no longer hear the scared murmuring of your friends. Dread swirled in your gut and you let out a pitiful, low whine of helplessness.

Is this finally it for me? Am I really going to die here?

"Come, (Y/n)." His voice reached your ears as he began to tug you back out the door of the large computer room. Back out to where that creature was.

You could say nothing as he dragged you alongside him once again. Every word, every protest died in your throat before it could reach your lips, the sinking feeling of disbelief clouding your senses. The corridors passed by in a blur, the throbbing of your knee morphing to a dull ache in the back of your mind.

"It is my best assumption that the entity chasing us is after you, specifically," SCP-049 hummed lowly, directly next to your ear. Maybe it was just your imagination, but you swore you could feel his warm breath against the side of your face. Goosebumps erupted on your skin. "You and I are going to lure it away from your classmates and then hide, alright?"

You bobbed your head up and down quickly, acknowledging his plan.

The two of you went down hallway after hallway, trying to lose whatever's after you as best as you could, until you were met with a dead-end. You heard SCP-049 swear underneath his breath when he tried to open it, only to realize it was locked. "ELECTRICAL CENTER" screamed in bold letters above the door, "LEVEL 4 ACESS REQUIRED" underneath it. You just about folded in on yourself, ready to accept your fate, when you suddenly remembered what you found in SCP-682's folder. You could hear the scraping quickly growing louder and louder, approaching your location rapidly... you had no time to delay. Without further hesitation, you shoved your hand into your skirt pocket, pulled out the orange keycard that you are so glad you decided to keep, and slapped it against the reader on the wall. A quiet beep followed and the door slid open seconds after.

The man at your side seemed shocked at the sudden manifestation of the orange keycard, but wasted no time in pulling you across the threshold and shutting the door behind you. The "electrical center" was just a narrow, rectangular room with a small computer hub with several switches on your immediate right and, just past that, the only other door, excluding the one you just unlocked, which was labeled "JANITOR'S CLOSET."

You wanted to examine the switches and buttons on the computer hub, but SCP-049 didn't think twice on pulling open the janitor's closet and shoving yourself and him in its small, cramped space.

He closed the door with an echoing "click" and everything went pitch black.