AN-If you haven't visited the SCP Foundation wiki, I highly recommend it if you like creepypasta and similar stuff. Basically the site is a fictional archive of a bunch of supernatural/alien/paranormal/extradimensional objects and organics, some of which are sentient. One of the sentient ones is SCP-076-2, codename "Able." It is this SCP that Shepard and company run into on Halion. Hopefully it's not too confusing-it's about to get weird in here.


The shuttle touched down on a desolate patch of ground, gray and brown and dull, with a rusted metal door in the side of a cliff before them the only indication that there was any life on this planet. Shepard had gotten an anonymous e-mail saying only that there was a covert research facility here and that whatever they were keeping here had gone rogue and may be attempting to contact the Reapers. She'd tried to get more intel on the place, but couldn't find any records. Not just abbreviated or redacted records—nothing at all. In fact, there was little evidence that the planet, Halion, existed at all. That was enough to pique her interest, and she'd forwarded the coordinates to Joker and told Zaeed and Garrus to be ready to rock and roll at 09:00.

The door was constructed of five inch thick steel and hung on heavy rusted hinges that sent echoing squeals down the darkened entryway. There was barely any light at all apart from the dim glow of the few functioning terminals that had survived whatever happened here. The evidence of recent violence was everywhere—exposed sparking wires depended from the ceiling, blood decorated the wall in long sweeping streaks, dead and dismembered bodies in dark uniforms, and, most disturbing of all, three long jagged claw marks gouged into the wall.

"Are you seeing this?" Garrus asked, his voice falling flat on her ears. The acoustics were doing strange things to the sound, projecting their footsteps down the hallway and making them all wary. Ahead, there was water dripping from the ceiling through a broken vent and the drips were amplified twofold in the cramped space. As they drew nearer, though, she saw that the drops hissed upon hitting the floor and the puddle that had formed was sitting on top of a patch of corroded metal.

"I see it. Looks like acid."

"Looks like we can get by," came Zaeed's gravelly voice from behind her, as well as several feet ahead. The ventriloquism effect was really throwing her off. "We'll have to go slow, up against the wall there."

"All right. Garrus, you take point. Zaeed, behind me." They pressed their backs to the wall and inched past the dripping acid, and just before they were all the way through a low rumble started further on down the hall and rippled through the metal walls. It wasn't until the last of the lights went out that they realized the entrance door had slid shut. In the resounding silence that followed, Shepard tried to ignore the creeping sense of foreboding that had settled into her bones.

"That wasn't creepy at all," Garrus said, his mandibles drawn tightly against his face. After another beat of waiting for Shepard to issue an order, he said, "Come on, let's get moving."

There were several rooms that led off the corridor, all of which were either entirely without power or had functional computer screens displaying error messages. The darting lights of their torches lit on discarded datapads, a few crates of experimental weapons tech, and more bodies. There were more than a few in lab coats, but also the occasional dark military-style uniform stained darker and sticky with drying blood.

"Doesn't look like they were killed by gunshots," Zaeed commented, kicking a body over to see the cold gray eyes of the corpse, its face purple and blue with lividity. The smell was bad, but not putrid with decay yet, which meant that the attack had happened recently. So, dead at least a few hours, maybe upwards of a day.

"I think you're right," Shepard said. "See those punctures, and the slashes? This guy was torn up pretty bad."

"What the hell were they studying in here?" Garrus asked no one in particular. He and Shepard went back out into the hall, Zaeed following more closely than before.

They rounded a corner and found themselves in a vast space that was remarkable in that it was empty. The walls rose sheer and unmarked to the ceiling 25 feet above them where inactive turrets were mounted in the corners. Two of them had been ripped most of the way off and hung precariously from twisted bolts and wires. In the middle of the room was a rectangular box with a sliding door which, upon further inspection, was revealed to be an elevator.

"Does it work?" Shepard asked Garrus, who took the front off of a recessed panel and inspected the tangled mess of switches and fuses.

"I think the real question here is 'should we give a fuck if it works'," Zaeed growled. "Something about this . . . it doesn't feel right in here, Shepard." His strained undertones grated against her ears, and part of her agreed enthusiastically. Yes, it's all wrong in here, you shouldn't be in here.

"We'll just go down, take a quick look, see if there's anything useful. If it starts to go south, we'll bug out," she said, and hoped she sounded reassuring.

There was a click and a loud whirring of subterranean engines that vibrated beneath their feet, and the door opened, revealing a well-lit and deceptively inviting cab. It, too, was unmarked by the carnage that littered the entryway, and Shepard wondered what that meant. They crowded into the elevator and Garrus flipped the switch that would take them down. It lurched once, then started its descent.

"I hate elevators," he grumbled, and even his sub-vocals sounded worried. She knew it was her imagination, but the air seemed to be getting heavier as they dropped further into the heart of the planet. It was maybe a minute later that there was a loud grinding from above them followed by the resonant slam of metal on metal and Shepard's hand went to the butt of the pistol at her hip.

"What the fuck was that?"

"Sounded like a blast shield closing," Zaeed answered, his eyes wide and staring at the ceiling.

Yeah, this was looking more and more like a bad idea by the second.

There were three more blast shields between them and the bottom, and as soon as the car stopped they drew their weapons and aimed their torches at the thick darkness. The carnage on the ground level was nothing compared to this. The floor was awash in blood, and there were bodies and parts of bodies strewn everywhere. The smell was much worse down here, the stench of offal and terror and death heavy in the air. Off to the left was a door labeled "Dormitories", and to the right was another proclaiming it to be "Administration." Ahead of them was a security station with a pair of large-bore automatic fire turrets behind heavy protective shielding. The guns faced a hallway that stretched off into the darkness, and a pair of thick steel doors that had served as a barrier between the station and whatever lay beyond were twisted and wrecked, the same claw marks they'd seen upstairs marring the interior surfaces.

"Zaeed, Garrus, on my six," Shepard ordered, and her voice hardly shook at all. They made their way over what was left of the doors (how strong did something have to be to break through five inch thick steel? she wondered) and down the corridor. There were wire grates spaced every few feet, and she could hear the distinct hum of electric current. Just when she was wondering if they would ever reach the other end, the corridor abruptly ended and emptied out into a 15'x15' square room that was significantly warmer than the rest of the facility. In the center was a large cube that stood open on one side and appeared to be made of stone. Inside was what looked to be a coffin, also open, that hung suspended from chains attached to the corners of the cube. Shepard started to reach in to see what the chains were made of, but Garrus grabbed her wrist.

"Careful, Commander, I'm reading an interior temperature of almost 300 degrees," he said, eyeing the scrolling display on his visor. "Inert material, likely stone, strange carvings on the outer surfaces, and . . . locks. I think." Shepard went around the large open door to see what he was talking about and saw a circular mechanism surrounded by maybe twenty smaller ones, and she agreed that they did look like rudimentary combination locks. The carvings on the outside of the cube looked vaguely familiar, and they made her brain itch to look at them.

"What the fuck . . ." muttered Zaeed, who was peering into the coffin with curiosity and trepidation. "We should get out of here, Shepard. There's nothing here we can use."

While she normally would have argued that they needed to check out the Administration wing, the pervasive wrongness that permeated the atmosphere was making her jumpy and paranoid. She kept thinking she saw movement from the corner of her eye, and Garrus had gone very still and tense.

"Yeah. Yeah, let's get the hell out of here."

They rode the elevator back up without incident, the blast doors retracting automatically and clanking shut beneath them, and they beat a hasty exit past the dripping acid, which was now starting to eat a hole in the floor. As they were passing one of the bodies that lay bloody and broken next to the door, Shepard saw something that nearly stopped her heart. She dropped to one knee in a pool of blackened and congealed blood and pushed up the dead man's sleeve. There was a large, plain letter D tattooed on his bicep and Shepard had to forcibly calm herself to keep from hyperventilating as the memories came crashing back in waves large enough that she thought she'd drown in them. Garrus must have seen something in his visor, however, because suddenly he was there with a hand on her shoulder.

"What is it?"

"He's . . ." she croaked, her throat bone-dry. "He's a D-class. They're here. Oh, God they're here."

"Who's here, Shepard?" he asked, trying and failing to sound reassuring through the anxiety that had formed a cold, hard knot in his gut. Her pulse was racing, her muscles coiled tight; she was fucking terrified.

"He's escaped." She looked up at him, her eyes huge and shocky. She was shaking uncontrollably, and had to lock her knees when she stood to keep from collapsing. "Jesus Christ, they found him, and now he's escaped."

"Look, Shepard, we need to get out of here. We'll discuss this back on the ship." She nodded, a little too fast. They managed to pry the door open and stumble into the light, then made their way to the shuttle.

The last thing she saw before turning away was the hangar, set a little apart from the cliff face. The bay doors were open, and there was no shuttle to be seen.

He'd made it off-world.

God help them all.