fragment:target-audience-10

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[[a class="style01-link" href="https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/target-audience/offset/9" target="_parent"]][[span class="style01-plaintext animation02" style="--content: 'Return to previous page';"]]Return to previous page[[/span]][[/a]]

----

[[=]]
[[span class="style04-plaintext animation04" style="--content: "Chapter 10";"]]Chapter 10[[/span]]
[[/=]]

By the time the escort arrived, Vera had cleared out the whole house, only leaving the furniture, kitchenware, and perishables. No matter what the recruiter had told us, we both knew that we were about to leave our life here behind us.

The escort itself consisted of three black SUVs and ten lightly armed men, which seemed more than a little excessive to me and certainly didn’t help to ease my worries.

After a lengthy car ride, a plane flight, and then another lengthy car ride, we finally arrived at a large facility that was apparently called ‘Site-17’. Once there, Vera and I were led to what looked like an interrogation room, where a Dr. Whittle questioned us for well over an hour.

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As it turned out, Vera was a so-called ‘instance of SCP-1471-A’ and was apparently the most developed one they had ever encountered. Naturally, this was of great interest to her, but when she asked to meet the others of her kind, Dr. Whittle conveniently changed the subject.

Overall, the whole thing was very civil, and we were given assurances that the Foundation fully intended to honor its end of the deal they had made with Vera—she would be given a high research position, accommodations would be made for her comfort, her name and preferred pronouns would be respected, and I would be allowed to work in the same facility as her.

Of course, they were probably only saying that to string us along until they could figure out a way to lock Vera away, and they all but confirmed my suspicion when they told us that we needed to be ‘processed’ before we could formally join the Foundation. When I asked how long it would take, I was given nothing but vague estimates.

But the biggest red flag of all were the ‘temporary quarters’ we were given, which looked like a cross between a tiny apartment and a prison cell. They even instructed us to remain there until told otherwise, and I could see guards patrolling along the hallway, making it abundantly clear that we were in fact prisoners.

And yet, for whatever reason, Vera remained convinced that things were going to end up working out in our favor. It astonished me that she couldn’t see all of the obvious red flags. Even when we learned that the full name of this organization was ‘the SCP Foundation’—with the letters standing for ‘Secure, Contain, Protect’—she accepted their bullshit explanation about the meaning behind those words. According to them, the Foundation was all about keeping anomalies safe, preventing them from falling into the wrong hands, and protecting humanity from dangerous anomalies.

However, the truth was abundantly clear to me—this was a prison, and we were being ‘contained’ here because Vera represented a threat to ‘normalcy’.

Vera had been wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong. This wasn’t a new beginning filled with possibilities—it was a dead end. One we had walked right into out of our own volition—she had done so because she had been so desperately yearning for more meaningful work, and I had followed her because I couldn’t bear losing her.

So here we were, stuck in a cell for three days, only getting out every once in a while whenever they wanted to interview us, be it together or separately.

And yet they kept up the pretense that this was just temporary and that they fully intended to honor their side of the deal. It made me wonder when exactly they were planning on finally dropping the act. After all, they couldn’t just keep stringing us along forever, could they?

When an armed guard came and escorted us to a laboratory that looked a bit like an infirmary, I feared that they were about to drop the act.

The man who met us there looked to be in his early thirties and he greeted us with a clinical courtesy. Apparently, he was a technician of sorts that specialized in the handling of anomalies like Vera.

“So what exactly is this?” I asked him.

“We’re just going to check up on Vera’s overall health,” the technician replied in an overly well-practiced manner as he stepped over to his computer.

“Ooh!~ And how are you gonna do that?” Vera asked with great interest.

“By hooking you up to a cyberspectral adapter in order to access your code,” he replied absentmindedly as he began to type various commands on the keyboard

I eyed the guard who was still in the room and watching us.

The technician somehow noticed how I was looking at him, even though his eyes remained fixed on the computer monitor. “Don’t mind him.”

“Why is he here?” I asked.

“Protocol,” was all the technician offered in response before gesturing towards the examination table next to him. “Dash fifty-eight— Doctor Lovelace, please lie down.”

“Sure!” Vera replied, completely ignoring his slip of the tongue as she disappeared and then reappeared lying down at the table. “What’s next?”

Why was she being so compliant?

“I’m going to need you to remain in a materialized state for as long as possible while I insert the adapter into your arm,” he explained. “Can you do that?”

“Of course! That’s easy peasy lemon squeezy!”

“Great,” he replied with a hint of annoyance.

I then watched on in horror as the technician took a large needle that was connected to his computer and stuck it into Vera’s arm. And as he started typing at his keyboard, my thoughts began to race.

Given that he would have access to Vera’s code—something I didn’t even know was possible until now—I considered the possibility that he might alter it somehow. After all, how do you contain an anomaly that can teleport and become intangible? By preventing her from using those abilities, or by brainwashing her. Maybe even both.

I looked at the guard and knew that he was here to make sure that I wouldn’t be able to stop them from turning Vera into a prisoner or a slave of the Foundation.

I turned back to Vera and the technician, and I realized that I was going to be forced to watch them take away the only person I had loved since I lost Haley. It was like a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from.

Then, to my surprise, I saw the technician furrow his brow in annoyance, which then began to give way to a look of concern. “Dash, uh Doctor Lovelace, are you fully materialized right now?”

“Yep.”

The technician’s expression grew more concerned. “Are you… uh… Are you sure?”

“Indubitably,” she replied. “Is something the matter?”

I was absolutely stunned with her tone of voice. It was the same exact one she always used whenever she caught me off-guard when we were playing chess.

She was toying with him.

“No, uh… It’s just some… technical difficulties,” the technician replied as he kept trying numerous different commands on his terminal, and removed and reinserted the adapter into Vera’s arm.

Finally, he said “I’m, uh… I’m going to have to get some help. You two stay here.”

The technician then hurriedly made his way to the guard, whispered something to him, and then left.

When I turned back to Vera, she signed “Said ‘don’t let them leave’.”

It did not surprise me that she managed to overhear them—her hearing had always been better than mine given those big ears of hers. What did surprise me was how much in control she seemed to be in this situation.

“Just now, you know beforehand thing go wrong?” I signed to her.

“Of course, silly,” she signed back. “I not let them change me.”

Having felt nothing but utter dread for the past few days, I finally felt some relief. I had been so worried about her blindly trusting these people, and now I saw how much I had been underestimating her.

“You worry too much,” she signed as if she could read my mind.

“Of course I do. Don’t want see them hurt you or cage you,” I signed back.

“Will not happen,” she signed. “Trust me.”

Suddenly, I heard footsteps and turned around to see the technician returning, carrying a big metal suitcase and accompanied by an older scientist who looked to be in his late 60s.

“Dr. Bertram, could you step away from the— from Dr. Lovelace, please?” The technician asked, though it hardly sounded like a request.

I did as I was told and then watched as the technician set the suitcase down on his desk, right next to Vera, and opened it. As it turned out, it wasn’t actually a suitcase, but a portable machine of some sort. It looked like something out of a science fiction movie with several large moving parts and a big obelisk at the center that had a bunch of weird engravings on it.

“Ooh! What is that?” Vera asked as she eyed the machine.

“This is an Obelisk Device—it’ll ensure that you’re fully materialized while also reducing any potential interference by stabilizing reality around us,” the technician replied as he began to set up the machine.

Vera then sat up and teleported it into her lap in order to get a better look at it. “Cool!”

“What are you—!” While he seemed to be initially alarmed, when the technician saw that she was just examining the machine, his expression shifted to one of annoyance. “Please don’t do that.”

“You know, I’ve always wanted to remain materialized for much longer than I’m able. Do you think this will help with that?” Vera asked in a manner that sounded genuinely innocent and inquisitive as she looked over the machine.

“No, it doesn’t work like that! It only works for a brief period of time, no longer than you’re normally able to remain materialized,” the technician explained with great annoyance as he grabbed the machine from her. “Now give me that!”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” Vera replied as she let go of the device.

The technician set it back on his desk and continued to set it up while cursing under his breath.

“Could you pick up the pace, please?” Asked the older scientist. “I’m kind of on the clock here.”

“Yeah, yeah…” Muttered the technician as he finally activated the Obelisk Device.

I watched in fascination as it began to glow from within as the moving parts swirled around the obelisk at the center of the machine.

“Oh! Now that feels //super// weird,” Vera commented with a slight shudder.

The technician then typed something into the computer terminal before turning to the older scientist and gesturing to it. “There. It’s all yours.”

The older scientist strode over, and the first thing he did was to inspect the cyberspectral adapter.

After looking it over quite thoroughly, he turned to Vera and asked “May I?”

“Sure!” She replied and presented her arm.

He then carefully inserted it into her arm before turning to the computer. He began to input various commands, but as time went on his eyes grew more intense and his brow became ever more furrowed.

Eventually, he stopped typing altogether and just stared at the screen for a moment before finally uttering “Oh dear.”

“More technical difficulties, I presume?” Vera asked in an almost playful manner.

“Yes, uh, it appears that your code is inaccessible to us,” the older scientist explained. “As a matter of fact, we cannot even connect to you.”

“Aw, that’s too bad,” Vera replied. “Guess I won’t get that medical check-up then, huh?”

The older scientist stared at her with an absolutely befuddled expression on his face. “What on Earth are you talking about?”

The technician then cleared his throat in an excessively loud manner in order to get his senior’s attention. Once he had it, he gave him this intense look that practically screamed ‘For the love of god, stop talking before you blow our cover!’

“Right, right! Of course!” He exclaimed as he turned back to Vera. “My apologies. It’s so difficult to keep track of everything at my age.” He then turned to the guard and said. “Please accompany these two back to their holding—”

“Quarters,” the technician interjected.

The older scientist looked slightly embarrassed by the correction. “Yes, yes. Of course.”

“Will do,” the guard replied with a nod before gesturing for us to follow him.

As he led us through the winding hallways, I realized how much more at ease I was compared to before. It was hard to believe how much control Vera seemed to have in this situation, and I couldn’t help but to feel a bit guilty for doubting her assessment of it.

Once we were back in our cell and finally had some modicum of privacy, I took the opportunity to question Vera further.

“I had no idea you had code inside of you,” I remarked.

“So do you, silly,” she cooed. “Except yours is written in cytosine, guanine, adenine, and thymine.”

“So is your code similar to mine, or is it more akin to computer code?” I asked.

“Oh, I have no idea. But given my origins, my guess is that it’s something in-between the two,” she replied with a shrug.

“And how did you know they wouldn’t be able to access it?”

“Well, I couldn’t possibly know for sure, of course. However, I used to be able to feel it, or an echo of it, in a way that might be similar to how you’re able to feel your heartbeat, but over the years it grew fainter and fainter until I stopped feeling it altogether,” she explained while simultaneously signing “Be careful what you ask. They hear us and see us.”

As curious as I was about her inner workings and the reason why she was so sure of herself, I realized then that it wouldn’t be safe for her to tell me any of it. Or for me to know at all, for that matter.

As such, I decided to conclude the matter by saying “Even after all these years, you still never cease to surprise and amaze me.”

She giggled and wrapped her arms around me. “I’m glad I can still keep things interesting for ya.”

“Are you kidding? You couldn’t bore me even if you tried,” I replied.

She let out another giggle and leaned in close. We looked into each other's eyes for what felt like an eternity, until she finally said “You know, they’re probably going to be super busy for a while now. Wanna play some chess while we wait?”

I huffed a laugh. After being consumed by fear and anxiety for the past few days, a game of chess sounded absolutely wonderful. “You’re on.”

We ended up playing a total of three games, with Vera beating me in two of them, and in that time no one came for or spoke to us. And so, to pass the time, we enjoyed a lively discussion about quantum foam while simultaneously cracking jokes in sign language.

It was well past ten o’clock when Dr. Whittle finally came for us, his hands in his pockets and his expression being a combination of resignation and fatigue.

He cleared his throat and then announced “After a thorough review, the Foundation has agreed to grant you employment, along with all benefits that have been promised to you.”

From the sound of it, Dr. Whittle had been practicing that line in his head for the past hour.

“Sweet!” Vera exclaimed, her tail wagging so fast that it probably would’ve knocked me over had she been materialized.

“Come with me and we’ll go sign all of the necessary forms,” Dr. Whittle said and gestured for us to follow.

As we walked through the winding corridors of the facility, I couldn’t help but notice that we weren’t accompanied by any guards this time. By the look Vera gave me, she also noticed this.

He then brought us to his office where he sat us down and gave each of us a large stack of papers.

“Before we continue, you’re going to have to sign these NDAs, forms, and waivers.”

I knew the Foundation was this big secretive organization, but having to go through and sign 30 documents in one go was quite an ask. While some of them were fairly standard for a research organization, others were quite strange and even downright creepy—especially the many, many consent forms.

When I finally got to the liability waiver, I just stopped and stared in horror. Half of the things on there were like things out of my worst nightmares, and the other half seemed as if they had been dreamed up by some demented madman.

Seeming to have noticed my apprehension, Dr. Whittle said “I know it looks bad, but it more or less only covers the worst case scenarios. You shouldn’t have to worry about them, especially since you’ll be a Class B employee.”

“Oh.”

I wasn’t entirely convinced, of course. But that did provide me with some comfort, at the very least.

“What class will I get?” Vera asked with great curiosity.

“Class C, so you’ll handle the more dangerous kind of work.”

“Cool!” She exclaimed excitedly as she signed her waiver.

I was completely taken aback by how utterly unperturbed she was by all of these dangers. However, I had to remind myself that her abilities gave her one hell of a leg up compared to her human peers. As such, even though I wasn’t happy about it, I decided to let it go.

Once we had signed all of the documents, Dr. Whittle filed them away and then led us out of the main building and into a large dormitory. In many regards, it reminded me of the various dormitories found on the Ivy League campuses—it was just more modern and geared towards older residents.

After bringing us up two floors, Dr. Whittle finally brought us to our quarters—which, I noted, did not look like any kind of cell or containment chamber.

“Here you are. Your quarters,” he said and gestured inside. “I suggest you get a good night’s rest. Orientation will start tomorrow at oh-eight-hundred hours.”

“Where will it be held?” I asked.

“Don’t worry, someone will come get you. Have a good night,” he said before taking his leave.

“Nighty night!” Vera said back.

We then entered our new quarters to get a better look at it. It was like a large, square-shaped studio apartment that was divided into four quarters—an enclosed bathroom, a sleeping area, a living room area, and a kitchen area complete with a kitchen island.

“Ooh, it’s so cozy!” Vera cooed as she twirled around in excitement. “Don’t you think so?”

I nodded in agreement.

While it wasn’t anywhere near as spacious as my house, it was quite a nice place, and I could definitely see us living here for the foreseeable future.

“You know what I could go for right about now?” She asked.

“What?”

“A glass of Forts de Latour.”

Les Forts de Latour—an exquisite and expensive wine that we had only had twice before. The first time was when Vera earned her doctorates, and the second was when I got promoted to full professor. It had become our go-to wine to celebrate big personal accomplishments, and when Vera accepted the job from the Foundation’s front company, she had asked me to buy a bottle so that we could celebrate if things ended up going our way.

And by the looks of it, things had absolutely gone our way.

“I would love a glass,” I replied. “If not half a bottle.”

She giggled. “A bottle of Forts de Latour coming up!”

Two wine glasses then appeared in her hand with a puff of black smoke, followed by a bottle in her other hand.

I took one of the glasses while she made both the shrink cap and the cork disappear in a puff of smoke. The precision by which she was able to remove them was simply astonishing to watch.

After filling up both of our glasses, she held hers to me and said “Here’s to our new life at the Foundation.”

[[=image https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/local--files/target-audience/Lovelace_scene_12 style="width:600px;"]]
[[=]]
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++ [[a class="style05-link" href="https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/target-audience/offset/11" target="_parent"]][[span class="style05-plaintext animation03" style="--content: '“To ';"]]“To [[/span]][[span class="style05-plaintext animation03" style="--content: 'our ';"]]our [[/span]][[span class="style05-plaintext animation03" style="--content: 'new ';"]]new [[/span]][[span class="style05-plaintext animation03" style="--content: 'life.”';"]]life.”[[/span]][[/a]]
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