Coraline - The Recruit
By HungarianMockingjay, AKA SingleStageToOrbit
All properties and characters copyright of their respective owners.
Coraline Jones thanked her Uber driver as she stepped out of the car. A light rain was falling, but Coraline was unbothered; rain often fell in this part of the country, particularly at this time of year, and typically much harder. She was grateful for the respite.
In her hand was another thing she was grateful for: a free, $150 gift card to Estella's, one of the nicest steakhouse restaurants in town. A few days previously, she had found it in her mailbox, along with a short note saying that she had won it in a sweepstakes, signed only with the initials S.C.P., a set of initials she had never heard of before. The card had been addressed to her however, so there wasn't a chance that it had been meant for someone else by mistake.
She hadn't remembered entering any sort of sweepstakes, but the gift card looked and felt real enough, and it didn't seem to be any sort of scam. Since college ended a few months ago, Coraline had been scraping by, and it had been a while since she'd eaten out. A free meal was a free meal, and Coraline was going to take full advantage of it.
Coraline found herself pulling a mask over her lower face; although the pandemic had ended a couple of years ago, she often still wore one, liking the anonymity of it. Coraline didn't like drawing attention to herself.
She entered the restaurant and immediately reconsidered her choice of outfit. She'd thrown on a cheap dress under her raincoat, thinking that would be enough, but everyone she saw in the restaurant was either in suits and ties, or in much fancier dresses. Coraline blushed under her mask; she was underdressed. The lighting worked to her advantage however, the lights were dim inside the place, and the only other lights were from small oil candles on each of the elegant tables, illuminating walls painted the color of wine. This was an easy place to be inconspicuous.
Estella's was a place of luxury. In a way, this was like the Other World she had traveled to and rescued her parents from many years ago as a young girl. A place of privilege and amusement, but revealed to be nothing more than a sinister trap constructed by the entity called the Other Mother, who was bent on consuming her soul.
Coraline began to panic at the memory. Her breathing became shallow and she felt sweat forming on her temples and under her arms. But this panic was quickly brought down by a young, handsome young man, whom Coraline guessed to be one of the wait staff, walking over to her. "Hello, Madame," he said, in an accent that sounded vaguely Slavic, but still warm and amicable. "Are you here by reservation tonight?"
Coraline's panic broke for a moment. "N..no. Um, but I do have a gift card that was sent to me here," Coraline said as she took the card out of her pocket. "I got this in the mail, and I was wondering if it was legit. Can you check it at the scanner?"
"Of course," said the man, taking the card to the scanner behind the front booth. "My name is Nicolai, by the way," said Nicolai as he scanned the card. "Ah, yes," said Nicolai, nodding. "Everything seems to be fine with this card."
Coraline exhaled. "Good. I got this card in the mail, and I wasn't sure if it was some kind of scam or not. I figured it would be better to check before I ordered and ate."
Nicolai raised his eyebrow, and seemed to ponder for a moment. "A wise move then. It is hard to trust things these days. But anyway, are you here alone, or do you need more seats at your table?"
"I'm here alone."
"I will show you to your seat then."
Nicolai led Coraline to a booth at the far end of the restaurant, meant for only one or two people. Like the other tables, it was lit by a candle, but the overhead light was sufficient for Coraline to read the text on the menu. After weeks of eating nothing but fast food, cheap salads and instant noodles, even the wedge salad on the low end of the price spectrum seemed like a delicacy here. Under her mask, Coraline felt herself beginning to salivate. She stared blankly at the menu for a few minutes, struggling to decide between the pasta Bolognese and the chateaubriand steak. Her stomach growled; the steak would be good and filling, but the pasta could provide her with leftovers for a few days, especially if there was a lot of it. Her expression lit up when she found that She could get the chateaubriand with a side of pasta, so she decided to order that.
Just as she looked up from her menu, Nicolai walked over. "So, have you decided on what you would like to order?" he asked.
Coraline removed her mask and smiled. "I think I know what I want. I would like the chateaubriand with pasta Bolognese on the side, with a Caesar salad," Coraline said confidently.
"Would you like anything to drink with that? I would personally recommend the Merlot."
"Hmmm… okay!"
"Of course, may I just see your ID?"
"Ah, yes," said Coraline, as she reached for pocketbook and took out her ID.
Nicolai studied the name on the card: Coraline Jones. His expression lit up. "Coraline!" he exclaimed. "Ah, here you are, for certain! I knew you'd come!"
Coraline looked puzzled. Why was this man so excited to see her in particular. She started to get a bad feeling in her gut.
Perhaps sensing this, Nicolai handed Coraline her ID back. "I am sorry. Forgive me. I am Nicolai Bobinski. You… you knew my late uncle, Sergei."
Coraline's eyebrows raised, before focusing more intensely on Nicolai. Absent the moustache, frail and gaunt appearance, and of course the blue tinted skin, the family resemblance was clear. She smiled slightly.
"I remember him. Mr. Bobo. He had that little rat circus. I never talked much with him. Mom told me to keep away from him, but he seemed like a nice guy."
"Hah hah, Well, he always was a bit eccentric. But he was a hero. More than you know."
Coraline paused for a moment.
"I am sure you wonder what I mean by this, and I would like to tell you. Of course, I would like to sit down with you, if that's okay," said Nicolai.
"Yes… you may. Of course," said Coraline, hesitantly.
Nicolai got up momentarily and passed Coraline's order off to another waiter, who nodded at him in understanding. He then got back in his seat, and placed a small device on the edge of the table, a tiny tripod with a rod extending upward. The device, when flicked on, emitted a low whooshing sound. White noise. "Portable sound screen," said Nicolai, as Coraline stared at the object, intrigued. "For privacy. Because, what I am about to tell you… it is sensitive."
Coraline cocked her head to the side. "I can see that. It was something about Mr. Bobo? Sorry, your uncle, Sergei."
"Indeed it is. And it also has to do directly with what you did over a decade ago in Dimension 25X4 EPSILON, which you might know as the Other World. The Beldam's World."
Coraline's eyes grew wide and she failed to contain a gasp. "You know about the Other World? About the Other Mother? The Beldam?!" Coraline asked in shock.
"Because my dear late uncle Sergei informed me of it, in documents unsealed after he died." Nicolai pulled a folder from a hidden pouch and laid it on the table in front of Coraline. The folder was thin, and contained only a few heavily redacted documents. But the face of a robust looking, mustachioed man in a military dress uniform was clear, with the flag of the old Union of Soviet Socialist Republics behind him, as well as some pieces of advanced looking technology in front of and around him—a younger Sergei Bobinski. At the top of the paper was a header reading "Secure. Contain. Protect," with a mysterious looking logo to its side, composed of three arrows converging in upon a circle. The document was marked "Not for Public Release."
"First things first, as my uncle would say," said Nicolai. "I am a member of an international organization tasked with working in the shadows to protect humanity from all manner of dangerous and unnatural anomalies. We are known as the Secure, Contain, Protect Foundation, or SCP Foundation, for short. My uncle Sergei was also a member of the SCP Foundation."
Coraline nodded, transfixed.
"The Foundation does its work by surveilling, securing, and containing various entities and objects that violate natural law and threaten life on this planet. In containing them, we protect humanity by neutralizing them as a threat, but we prefer not to kill or destroy these entities if we can help it. We are cold, but we are not cruel. And some of the things we have contained, the Keter-class objects in particular, are truly monstrous, and things the general public would be better off not knowing about. Everything from cursed old fairgrounds to a regenerating super lizard, and that's just what I'm authorized to tell you about."
"Well, the monster I faced in the Other World, under the Pink Palace Apartments, that was definitely a threat to humanity if there ever was one," said Coraline, a shiver going down her spine.
"Indeed, and I am getting to that," said Nicolai. "So, now to the matter of Sergei. Sergei had long dealt with various anomalies, but not as a member of the SCP Foundation. Instead, he had a proud record of service with Division 'P' of the GRU, in the former Soviet Union. This Division did much of the work of the SCP Foundation, except it was strictly loyal to the Soviet government. These dealings directly with the Kremlin meant that Sergei saw up close and personal the corruption and unsafe things the government was engaged in. It all came to a head in Chernobyl, in 1986," said Nicolai. "You know about that, yes?" he asked Coraline.
"It was a nuclear meltdown," said Coraline. "The area around it is still abandoned and radioactive. There was an HBO series about it a few years back."
"Well, it was that," said Nicolai. "But it could have turned into something much worse. Anomalous forces were at work in that reactor. I am not cleared to give you all the details, but it is one of the closest instances we have come to an XK Class Scenario."
"I'm assuming that's pretty bad?" said Coraline, looking at Nicolai, her expression downcast.
"An end-of-the-world scenario. Something we at the Foundation work tirelessly to prevent at all costs," said Nicolai. "However, my uncle, in his capacity as a Division 'P' Commander, helped contain the incident, albeit at a great cost to human and ecological life. The anomalous aspects of the incident were also quieted. But the damage was still done. Sergei Bobinski knew that government incompetence had played a major role in the Chernobyl Incident, and he read the writing on the wall; he knew it was a matter of time before the Soviet Union collapsed. He gathered whatever files and pieces of intelligence he could find, and came to defect to the United States, and the SCP Foundation, where they would be in much safer hands. And they were. The collapse of the Soviet Union brought about great turmoil, but without the work of the Foundation aided by my uncle's defection, it could have been so much worse. GRU Division 'P' had collapsed, and the Foundation was right there to clean up whatever anomalous messes needed to be cleaned up."
"You were right," said Coraline. "Your uncle was a hero. I wish I could have talked to him about this."
"He wouldn't have told you anything," said Nicolai, smiling. "We work in the shadows, remember? Anyway, the O5 Council—they're the executives that run the SCP Foundation, decided to reward my uncle with a quiet life in America. He was given a cover story to tell Customs and Immigration upon entering the US—some nonsense about him having been a circus gymnast, and the Foundation's embedded agents in Customs and Immigration approved of Sergei's immigration papers. Sergei had endured radiation poisoning as a result of his efforts containing the Chernobyl Disaster, and as a result, he was in no shape to continue as a field operative for the Foundation. Instead, they decided to give him a very comfortable assignment in the little town of Ashland, Oregon."
Coraline nodded, she was starting to realize where this was going.
"His assignment was to monitor the Pink Palace Apartments, where three children had gone missing at roughly fifty year intervals. With such a long timeframe between incidents, the SCP Foundation believed the site to be dormant, and decided to send Sergei there to monitor the site, as essentially a semi-retired agent. And for a long time, nothing happened. And then, in the fall of 2009, you and your mother and father showed up. And that triggered the anomalous properties of the Apartments. That entity called the Beldam awoke, and lured you down into her pocket dimension, a more perfect recreation of your own world, promising you a better life…"
"But it was all a horrible trick," said Coraline, her expression hardening. "That thing wanted to sew buttons over my eyes, eat my soul, and discard me like a piece of trash. She said she loved me and act like she was my mother… but she hated me. Hated all children. She saw them as nothing but a source of food." Tears began to well up in her eyes. "I don't know how I got out of there alive. She used the whole world and everyone in it against me." The very memory was painful to her, and Nicolai offered her a paper napkin to try her tears. "Thank you," said Coraline. "And then that monster was so desperate that she kidnaped my parents and trapped them in a snow globe, in order to get me to play her sick games."
"And it was at that moment that Sergei knew something was amiss, and so he alerted the Foundation. The transdimensional sensor suite came alive the moment you entered the Beldam's dimension the first time, but at first he thought it was experiencing a glitch, but when your parents disappeared, he knew to call for reinforcements."
"But I freed my parents on my own, as well as the children's souls she had trapped," said Coraline, a smile beginning to return to her face. "The Beldam went crazy, and her dimension began to fall apart. She said she'd die without me but I left her anyway. I never heard anything from that little door again. Of course, I still can't look at sewing needles and buttons the same way ever again, no thanks to her," said Coraline, laughing a little bit.
Nicolai laughed at her little joke as well. "The Foundation was quick to send an Mobile Task Force, that is, a team of elite agents trained to handle specific dangerous anomalies, to stop the Beldam and rescue you if need be. But by the time they had gotten there, you didn't need rescuing. You had already neutralized the anomaly. My uncle's sensor suite was silent. The Beldam was no longer a threat, and Sergei informed the Foundation as such. And he also told them about the role you had played in stopping the Beldam. You are a hero, you know that?"
Coraline blushed. "Thank you, Nicolai."
"And it was because of your heroism that the Foundation was interested in you. You had almost singlehandedly helped stop a Keter-class anomaly from potentially wreaking untold havoc. They made a note to reach out to you, once you were old enough. Uncle Sergei was going to be the one do it, but…" Nicolai's eyes were downcast. "He was so weak by this point. The radiation had destroyed his immune system. When the COVID Pandemic hit, he didn't stand a chance."
"I'm so sorry," said Coraline, reaching out to hold Nicolai's hand.
"Thank you," said Nicolai. "I am a low ranked operative, but I am proud to carry out this assignment. I want to do my uncle proud. I was the one that sent you the gift card to come here so that I could meet with you. And so, I am here to ask you, would you want to come work for us? We believe your skills and experience in dealing with supernatural threats would be invaluable to the Foundation."
Coraline hesitated. At first she had been suspicious of Nicolai, and this whole gift card she didn't ask for. Nicolai's story had seemed utterly fantastical, but then again, so was her experience with the Beldam, and that had been completely real. She had thought that only her parents and Wybie knew about what had happened. But then the Nicolai and the late Sergei also secretly knew about the whole ordeal gave Nicolai's story credence. Like it or not, she had to believe him.
"If you don't want to join the Foundation that is fine too," said Nicolai. "We will however have to administer a short term amnestic to erase any memories of what I told you concerning classified information though, but we will leave you alone after that. As I said, the Foundation is cold, but it isn't cruel."
"I do have one question," said Coraline. "How much would I be getting paid?"
Nicolai grinned, and reached into his pocket for a business card. Though flexible and small, the business card had the features of a small screen. An impressive starting salary figure of several tens of thousands of dollars appeared on the screen, and Coraline's eyes went wide.
Coraline's mouth opened, and Nicolai quickly responded with "And before you ask, you get full health, dental, and psychological therapy benefits included."
"I'm in," said Coraline, smiling herself. "When do I start?"
Right before Nicolai could answer, the waiter brought over Coraline's order; the chateaubriand and pasta Bolognese steamed appetizingly, as the waiter set the wine glass down to the left of Coraline.
"Mmmph... That looks so good…" said Coraline, before thanking the waiter.
"I won't keep you for much longer. I know you want to enjoy that food," said Nicolai. "But you can start next week. We'll meet at a designated location, and we'll take you to the training facility from there. There's one more thing I need to ask though."
"Yes?" asked Coraline, her attention drifting to the supreme feast in front of her.
"I'd also like to talk to Wyborne Lovat about this. He was also involved in the incident, and he helped contain the Beldam as well. Do you know where he is?"
"I do," said Coraline. "Hey, maybe we can meet with him together?"
"I don't see why not," said Nicolai. "We'll work out the details once you're finished. And Coraline?"
Nicolai held out his hand to shake. Coraline took it. "Welcome to our world."
NOTE: This was an absolute pleasure to write. Reviews and constructive critiques welcome. Happy Halloween 2021.