Adam didn't want to stay in the monstrous chamber a second longer.
He had seen enough. He had learned too much.
He turned to leave, to escape the suffocating presence behind him. But as he approached the door, he saw something that made his heart drop—
The airtight door was already shut.
Not just shut, but sealed.
He didn't panic. Not immediately.
Sudden movements could draw attention.
Instead, he calmly walked over and reached for his access card—the one he'd stolen. He was only inches from the scanner when—
Swish!
A red, sinewy tendril shot out from the air, latching onto his wrist with unnatural speed.
**It coiled around his arms like a serpent, sticky, pulsing—**and filled with something that felt like bones.
In the live broadcast room, across the Marvel world and beyond, the audience held their breath. Their hearts clenched.
"Oh god, is it attacking?"
"Can Adam even escape now?"
He struggled, but the rope tightened further. His arms locked in place.
"Damn it!" Adam cursed, trying to twist his head to locate the origin of the red tendril.
But he couldn't.
The creature behind him had moved.
And then, it happened.
The meat mountain opened an eye.
A single, massive eye. Ten meters wide.
The iris: bright pink.
The pupils: four large, black voids staring in different directions.
For a moment, time stood still.
Even the battle-hardened Avengers watching from S.H.I.E.L.D. fell silent.
But Nick Fury's eyes lit up with recognition. "Wait," he said slowly. "Does this thing look familiar?"
Natasha frowned. "What? You've seen this monster before?"
"No," Fury murmured, eyes narrowed. "But... maybe I've seen something like it."
He suddenly snapped his fingers.
"Germ. This is a massive version of the thought-germ!"
Everyone looked back at the screen.
And then they saw it too.
This wasn't just a monster.
It was a thought, magnified, twisted, given flesh.
It was a cognitive organism—a living meme.
A massive, grotesque antimeme embryo.
And worse—
It was sentient.
The massive creature spoke.
Not with a voice. Not through sound.
But through a psychic pulse, a soundless scream that clawed into everyone's brains like a swarm of insects.
Do you have it?
Adam froze. "What?"
No Doctor. No Machine.
Without warning, another thicker red line snaked out, grabbed the access pass from his fingers, and lifted it toward the massive eye.
The audience watching were completely unnerved.
What was this creature doing?
Was it inspecting him?
Studying him?
Wheeler.
Adam blinked. "Uh… yeah. That's... that's a coincidence actually."
And then—
The red string yanked him upward!
Adam screamed, legs kicking in the air as he was hoisted like a marionette.
A flash of pink filled the screen.
The monster opened one of its pupils.
And Adam was dropped—straight into it.
Gasps echoed across the live stream. It was like watching a nightmare.
One second…
Two seconds…
Three…
No blood. No scream. No crunch.
Silence.
Then a voice returned—clearer now.
[I am Hughes.]
Everything shattered.
The world, the broadcast room, even S.H.I.E.L.D. fell into stunned disbelief.
"No… What did it just say?"
"Did it say… Hughes?"
"Oh my god, no way—this thing is Dr. Hughes?!"
Nick Fury's hands trembled slightly. "Hughes… is that?"
That wasn't just a theory anymore.
The creature was Hughes.
The once brilliant doctor, now a mass of cognition and biomass, sealed within a semi-living embryo.
[My human body died. But my mind remained inside the embryo. I'm barely alive like this.]
The audience was stunned.
The despair they felt turned into something else entirely:
Awe. Respect. Horror.
[I worked inside this form for over a year.]
[I made tools and computer peripherals that suited my limbs. Wrote with small instruments. I even made myself chairs. Built furniture. And... developed some hobbies.]
[I sleep in nutrient mud baths.]
Marvel's greatest minds couldn't comprehend it.
Dr. Banner stared at the screen in disbelief.
Tony Stark whispered, "This guy lost everything. But he kept building. He kept going."
[By the end of the first month, I confirmed that the countermeme I needed existed. But it was beyond human comprehension.]
[So I decided to artificially amplify an idea—starting with a human carrier. A "single-cell" concept, nurtured by machines.]
Adam looked up weakly. "You mean... the Unreality Amplifier?"
[Yes. But by year two, I realized... I couldn't build it. Theory and practice were too far apart.]
[So I abandoned all previous plans. I started over.]
Images formed in every viewer's mind.
A giant fleshy embryo, hunched over machines, developing technology from scratch.
Trial and error.
Blueprints crumpled.
Ideas failing.
Years ticking by.
But he never stopped.
[I reverse-engineered my own DNA.]
[I built support structures, reconstructed my mind, made my brain larger, denser, more complex.]
[I reshaped myself into a machine capable of thinking the impossible.]
At Stark Tower, Tony whispered, "You did all that… just to think better?"
Even the cynics were silenced.
[Once, in my mental space, I saw myself.]
[A human-shaped light, surrounded by others. Real. Imaginary. Past. Future.]
[I realized then—I'm the inventor. But not the one who will use the weapon.]
The embryo stared at Adam.
[The idea, the seed, never existed in me.]
[It had to be someone else's.]
Adam's lips trembled.
He whispered, "Me?"
The eye didn't blink.
[Yes.]
You.
It had always been you.
Why? he wondered.
Why a violinist?
Why a nobody?
Maybe the Foundation knew. Maybe that was what they saw in him.
From the embryo's side, a small device extended—a short, thick orange cylinder.
Adam recognized it instantly.
Grade Z Memory-Enhancing Injection.
A dangerous drug designed to break memory barriers.
To remember things you were never meant to remember.
It could kill him.
He accepted it without hesitation.
"But if I take it… I'll remember."
He could already feel it—a song at the edge of hearing. A warm light through shattered glass.
He saw Hughes.
Smiling.
Sad.
Proud.
[I will share my mind with you. You'll find your best idea. Only you can bring this to an end.]
Adam injected it.
The pain hit instantly—like fire in his veins.
Memories flooded his mind.
He saw her.
Wheeler.
"There's an antimeme. SCP-3125," she said. "It killed me. And the Foundation. And the world."
"Now, it's taking over reality. No one else is left. Except you."
Adam's eyes burned.
His ears roared with white noise.
He saw the lie. The cosmic lie.
The thing that had murdered the Foundation wasn't a beast.
It was an idea. A lie so massive, it swallowed all truth.
And it could only be stopped with a better idea.
The embryo leaned in.
[That's why I needed you.]
[You are my best idea.]
He saw it.
The meme-complex Hughes built.
A beautiful lattice of light and order.
A model of what the Foundation was meant to be. What it could have been.
Its noblest purpose: to protect humanity.
To lock the monsters away.
To swallow the fear—so others wouldn't have to.
"Adam," Wheeler said, kneeling beside him. "I can see it. It ends here."
Adam laughed weakly, tears streaming down.
"That's good," he whispered. "I haven't heard good news in a long time."
He collapsed, but she held his hand.
And then—
He saw it.
The truth.
SCP-3125.
A massive, living lie, twisting through every word and thought and dream of humankind.
A black void of memes, eating language, devouring belief.
But now—
He could see it.
And if he could see it—
He could fight it.
"End it," he said.
"Today."
To be continued…
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