The fluorescent lights buzzed quietly overhead, the only real sound in the cluttered chaos of Dr. Jack Bright's office.
A stack of half-finished paperwork slouched on his desk, papers scattered like leaves in a storm.
A half-empty cup of cold coffee sat precariously on top of a file marked "KETER RECLASSIFICATION – PENDING."
Empty candy wrappers littered the corners, and pinned to one corkboard was a fading cartoon drawing of Jack riding a velociraptor into battle, with "BEST ETHICS COMMITTEE MEMBER" scrawled underneath.
Bright, currently inhabiting the body of a fit young man in a wrinkled lab coat, lounged in his chair, feet propped up on the desk.
He tossed a rubber ball into the air with one hand and caught it lazily.
Every few seconds, the ball would glow faintly, reacting to the unstable aura that clung to the artifact around his neck, SCP-963.
He wasn't doing paperwork, naturally. He wasn't even pretending to.
Instead, he was trying to beat his personal record for catching the ball with only two fingers.
Thirty-four... Thirty-five...
The ball hit the ceiling, bounced off a sagging fluorescent panel, and smacked him right in the forehead.
Bright grunted and caught the ball reflexively, spinning it around in his palm. "Yeah. That's about right," he muttered.
His phone rang.
He stared at it for a second, suspicious. Nobody called his office unless it was bad news.
Usually they just sent an email marked "URGENT" that he deleted without reading.
The caller ID simply said: [UNLISTED - PRIORITY ONE]
Bright sighed. "Here we go."
He thumbed the answer button and leaned back until his chair creaked under the strain.
"Bright here. Currently busy winning the Nobel Prize for 'Most Creative Ways to Waste Foundation Resources.' Who's this?"
For a second, there was only silence on the other end.
Then a calm, measured voice spoke, one that Bright recognized immediately.
O5-1.
"Dr. Bright. New orders."
Bright immediately sat up, his grin evaporating.
Even he wasn't dumb enough to joke around when that voice called.
"A second portal has stabilized. This one... leads somewhere different. A world we have no prior data on. Chaotic. Violent. Highly organized in crime and anomaly trade."
Bright leaned forward, all pretense of laziness gone. His fingers drummed against the desk unconsciously.
"What's my role?"
"Lead exploratory force. Initial breach team. You will be selecting your own squad. Agent Kay is still in the first Gate, mission transfer will happen latter, we want you to collect information first."
Bright blinked. "Wait, you're letting me pick my team? You sure you're feeling okay?"
There was no humor on the other side. Only precise instruction.
"You have twenty-four hours to assemble your unit and cross the threshold. This is not a request."
Click. The line went dead.
Bright stared at the receiver for a long moment, then slowly set it down.
A grin tugged at his mouth again, but this time it was different. Sharper. More dangerous.
"Well, shit," he muttered. "Finally something interesting."
He grabbed the comms mic off his desk, tuned it to the general Foundation personnel line, and hit transmit.
"Attention all staff: if you're good with guns, weird with powers, and not afraid of getting stabbed, shot, blown up, and possibly eaten alive by existential horror, meet at Loading Bay Six in thirty minutes. Bright out."
He tossed the mic down with a clatter, grabbed his sidearm off the wall, and slung on his battered field jacket.
The old patches were still there, Samsara, Alpha-9, Site-17, but they were worn nearly to nothing.
As he strode toward the door, he gave a passing glance to the chaotic mess of his office.
"Don't wait up," he told it.
Then he was gone.
...
The briefing room was darker than usual, lit only by the faint blue glow of a holographic projector humming in the center of the table.
The air smelled faintly of gun oil and sterilized concrete, the kind of smell you only found in deep Foundation sites where bad things happened by design.
Dr. Bright leaned back in his chair, twirling a pen between his fingers, looking unusually focused for once.
At the head of the room stood Dr. Alto Clef, arms crossed over his chest, an old, battered guitar case slung over one shoulder like a rifle.
His eyes were hidden behind tinted glasses, but even so, the air around him was electric, like the hum of a storm about to break.
Cain sat quietly to one side, a towering figure in a sleek, armored bodysuit designed specifically for him.
The suit was matte black with intricate white veins tracing across its surface, some ancient symbol work worked into the joints.
The Foundation's best minds had labored to craft it: shielding his anomalous effect enough that plants wouldn't wither in his wake, while still leaving him mobile and lethal when needed.
The rest of the room was occupied by Mobile Task Force Tau-5, Samsara.
Four figures, identical in the uncanny way that only clones could be, sat side-by-side.
Each bore slight modifications, each outfitted with their own personal touches of weaponry and gear, but otherwise, they looked like mirror images.
Their eyes gleamed with faint mechanical light beneath heavy combat armor, armor that whispered with strange runes and shifting patterns when the room's light caught it.
Tau-5 weren't like normal soldiers.
They were immortal constructs, reanimated and reshaped from the flesh of a slain god.
No blood coursed through their veins.
No soul as mortals understood it anchored them.
They fought and died, and fought again.
Relentless.
Unstoppable.
Samsara.
Omar Alhazred (Leader, Codename: "S-1"): Sharp, disciplined. Kept a relic blade at his hip, forged from a fragment of the deity whose body he was grown from.
Nguyen (Engineer, Codename: "S-2"): Quiet, wiry, hands always twitching like he was assembling something in his mind.
Ibrahim (Heavy Gunner, Codename: "S-3"): Towering, almost humorless, his armor bristling with modified Foundation plasma tech.
Sokolov (Recon, Codename: "S-4"): The scout and marksman, always half a step from disappearing into shadow.
[Mobile task force Tau-5(Samsara) : Immortal cyborg clones created from the flesh of a dead god, Mobile Task Force Tau-5 utilizes esoteric and experimental Foundation weaponry to investigate and contain thaumaturgic and psionic threats.]
Bright let his gaze roam across the assembled faces. He gave a short, theatrical clap.
"Well, look at this lineup," he said brightly. "If we don't scare the piss out of whoever's on the other side, nothing will."
Clef ignored him, tapping a button on the projector. A swirling blue vortex appeared above the table, the second portal.
"The world beyond this," Clef said, voice low and even
"is not the kind of place you bring nice words and pretty flags. Think... city-states ruled by corporate cults. Human life? Cheap. Anomalies? Bought and sold. Crime, corruption, biological and technological horrors stitched together."
He clicked again.
A three-dimensional rendering of a ruined skyline appeared, jagged spires, rusted industry, neon signs blinking like dying eyes.
Bright whistled low. "Looks like Detroit."
"This isn't a joke," Clef snapped. "The last D-class we sent through lasted eight minutes. Gunned down by something that looked like a banker and a butcher had a nightmare baby."
Cain leaned forward slightly. His voice was deep, resonant, but gentle. "What is our goal?"
Clef turned to him. "Establish a foothold. Secure intelligence. Recover any anomalies of interest. Survive."
Bright grinned. "In that order?"
"Preferably," Clef muttered.
The room fell into a brief, heavy silence.
Then Bright stood, slipping his sidearm into a holster with a practiced, almost casual motion.
"Alright, weirdos," he said, his grin wolfish. "You heard the man. Gear up. Load for bear. We step through in one hour."
Cain rose as well, towering over most in the room.
He gave a small, solemn nod, the light from the portal casting strange reflections on his armored frame.
Samsara moved like one organism, chairs scraping back at once, helmets locking down with a mechanical hiss, weapons systems coming online with quiet, deadly whirs.
As Bright led the way toward the armory, he called over his shoulder, voice light but carrying an undeniable steel underneath.
"Let's go get the tools"
...
The armory thrummed with a deep, mechanical hum, a heartbeat of steel and electricity.
Rows upon rows of racks held the deadliest tools the Foundation could cobble together: railguns compact enough to sling over a shoulder, anti-thaumaturgy munitions sealed in cold iron casings, living weapons writhing slightly under containment fields.
This wasn't an ordinary armory.
This was Site-21's Black Vault, the gear reserved for missions so dangerous that survival was measured in seconds, not minutes.
Bright was the first through the reinforced door, whistling low under his breath.
"Ah, home sweet home."
He ran his hands along the nearest rack, fingers brushing against a sleek, black PDW labeled "Project: Mercury Lance", an experimental weapon designed to fire hyper-condensed projectiles fast enough to pierce most known forms of anomalous biological armor.
He snagged it without hesitation and slung it across his back.
Beside it, he plucked two collapsible blades, the edges humming with a faint anti-psionic vibration.
Behind him, Clef was far less whimsical.
He moved with the efficiency of a predator, selecting an old, battered shotgun: "Old Reliable", as he called it, modified with thaumaturgic runes carved into the barrel, capable of firing shells that disrupted magic at the molecular level.
He loaded it with shells one by one, each with a color-coded stripe: red for incendiary, green for null-magic, black for corrosive.
Cain approached a separate section, a reinforced crate with hazard stripes along the edges.
An automated scanner whirred and bleeped as it verified his identity and biochemical profile.
The crate hissed open.
Inside was the armor designed specifically for him: Project Edenfall.
Sleek, smooth black plating overlapped like dragon scales, reinforced with plant-neutralizing fields and biomechanical shock-absorbers.
Integrated into the gauntlets were kinetic pulse generators, a less-lethal option when Cain chose mercy over devastation.
He donned the armor in silence, the pieces locking into place around his massive frame with hydraulic clicks.
He took up his weapon next, a warhammer longer than most men were tall. A weapon forged from non-organic crystalized material: The Dead Star.
Its surface shimmered with faint traces of inert cosmic radiation, a nod to Cain's enduring strength.
Tau-5 was far more clinical.
Each clone approached their assigned lockers:
Omar ("S-1") armed himself with a modular plasma rifle fitted with anti-regeneration rounds and a monomolecular sword across his back. His HUD blinked active, tactical overlays already forming across his vision.
Nguyen ("S-2") wore a modified exosuit with swarming microdrone pods latched to the shoulders, controlled via direct neural uplink. His sidearm was an electromagnetic pulse pistol, deadly against anything cybernetic.
Ibrahim ("S-3"), the heavy, strapped on a massive rotary cannon, not a chaingun, but something far more sinister: a gravitational compression weapon capable of collapsing armor and bone under localized singularities.
Sokolov ("S-4"), the recon specialist, slipped into lighter, chameleon-cloth woven armor. He chose a suppressed sniper rifle firing self-guided rounds keyed to biological signatures.
They moved with the precision of machines, armor plates hissing closed, visors sealing with pneumatic sighs.
Each one bore a small relic embedded into their armor, scraps of the dead god's flesh used in their creation. Little charms against destruction.
Bright chuckled as he watched them finish.
"Y'know, if we don't look like death incarnate walking through that portal, we're doing it wrong."
He checked his Mercury Lance's magazine one last time, then snapped the charging handle back with a satisfying metallic clang.
Clef, checking the runes on his shotgun, didn't look up.
"Keep your jokes ready. You're going to need 'em."
A side door opened with a pneumatic hiss.
A few more agents slipped into the room, part of Bright's last-minute additions.
Agent Vera "Volt" Kaine, a compact woman with silver-white hair and a perpetual mischievous smirk. She wore an armored suit laced with conductive fibers, crackling faintly with stored static. Her ability: control and generate electricity at will, powerful enough to fry vehicles or short-circuit magical constructs.
Agent Elijah "Pyre" Mace, tall, with copper-toned skin and piercing green eyes. His hands glowed faintly even at rest, the skin of his forearms scorched with permanent burn-marks that never healed. Pyrokinesis, precise and violent, harnessed through a suit equipped with suppressant inhibitors and fire-retardant linings.
Both nodded respectfully to Bright and Clef before heading toward their assigned gear.
Bright winked at them. "Glad you two maniacs could make it. We're gonna be real popular where we're going."
The portal room beyond the armory rumbled faintly, the tell-tale sign that the second gate was fully stabilized and ready.
Cain strode toward the heavy blast doors without hesitation. Behind him, Samsara fell into formation, armor gleaming with strange symbols.
Bright cracked his knuckles, gave his team a once-over, and grinned.
"Alright, team. Lock and load. No hostages, no regrets."
The great blast doors ground open with a shriek of protesting metal, revealing the swirling blue-and-red maw of the portal beyond.
Winds howled, carrying strange scents, blood, iron, old death, and the sharp tang of ozone.
One by one, they stepped through the threshold.
Into the unknown.
Into the city of monsters and broken dreams.