When she stepped into her cabin, she was unsurprised to see Garrus there, waiting for her. His face was schooled into an unreadable mask, which did not bode well.
"Well, that was enlightening," he said, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Garrus, can you honestly tell me that you would have believed me if I'd told you that there's a male version of me in a parallel universe who makes me borderline invincible?" She mirrored his stance with a defiant look in her eyes while inwardly she pleaded with him to understand that she hadn't told him because no one should have to live with the knowledge that not only were the monsters under the bed real, they really were out to get you.
Some of the wind went out of his sails and he nodded. "You have a point. But, Shepard . . . Jane, you trust me, right?"
"Of course I do. It's just that ever since I came back, I've had a hard time remembering my past. I think being dead for so long caused something of a system reboot and it took longer for my pre-Alliance years to come back to me."
"Until you saw the D-Class guy." She nodded, and sat on the couch. Garrus came to sit beside her and put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her in next to him. "What is a D-Class, anyway?"
"A death-row inmate looking for parole. The Foundation uses them in experiments and as exploration teams. If they live, they get to go free."
"Charming."
"Yeah." She turned to face him and raked her hair back out of her face. "I want to tell you everything, Garrus—about my childhood, what they did to me, and how I escaped—but it's such a long story, and all I want to do right now is go to sleep. I promise that I'll tell you, though, okay?"
He leaned in and touched his forehead to hers. "All right. I don't mind if you have secrets, you know, I just didn't realize . . ."
"How much you didn't know?"
"Mmmhmm." He stood up and held out a hand to help her up, which she took with a sigh of relief. They undressed (taking turns watching each other, the revealed lines of their bared skin still after all this time a luxury they couldn't get enough of) and climbed under the covers. He fell asleep first, but Jane stayed awake, replaying scenes of her internment, and the first time she met Able.
He's wearing his customary white lab coat, his scruffy beard and rimless glasses giving him an air of non-threatening professionalism. "This is Doctor Hardwick at Site 25 with SCP-4762-2," he says into the little handheld recorder he's produced from his pocket. "Our purpose today is to have the subject interact with SCP-076-2, or 'Able', and interview him, as most previous attempts to question SCP-076-2 have resulted in termination of the interviewer."
He hands the recorder to a young red-haired girl, maybe seventeen years old. "This is Jane Shepard, and I—"
"Please give your numerical designation," the doctor interrupts, punching data into the glowing omni-tool at his wrist.
"Fuck you, if you're going to send me in there to get ripped apart by that son of a bitch then I'm going in there as Jane." That gets his attention, and she can tell he's really looking at her now, not seeing the 'subject' as he normally did. She stares him down, daring him to press the issue—she knows she has the upper hand here, that they need her. He gives a vague wave; Do what you want. "All right, then. This is Jane Shepard, and I have been ordered to go into an interrogation room to ask Able some questions, because they had to clean the last guy out of there with a mop."
"That's not entirely true—" says the doctor's assistant, a nervous bird-like man named Gerald who seems to be entirely comprised of the worst kind of teenage awkwardness.
"It is also irrelevant," says Hardwick sternly. "Comm check."
Jane acknowledges she can hear him with a terse nod.
"Comm is up, interview may proceed."
"So open the door, Doctor. Let's get this over with." The thick deadbolts slide back with a thud she can feet in her feet, and as the door swings open she is suddenly terrified. She's dimly aware of John trying to reassure her, but she's heard the stories from the other prisoners she's been allowed to interact with, and the other personnel who have been in to see her. She's heard of the Omega-7 incident. "Hello, Able." Her heart is trip-hammering away as she sits down opposite him and puts the recorder on the table.
A voice in the darkness—her eyes haven't adjusted yet, and she can't pinpoint his location. The door shuts behind her and she's locked in with him. Soon, she can make him out; a thin man with shaggy black hair and storm cloud-gray eyes. He is covered in tattoos of seemingly random placement and theme—here a menacing inhuman face with bared fangs, there an unnamed sigil made of curved lines and angles. He is also unrestrained, which makes her uneasy, although it's not like there are any restraints that can hold him. When he speaks, it is in a deep voice tinged with an accent she cannot name. "Jane. Good to finally meet you. I have heard so much about you, and your invisible friend."
She has told her captors about John, though she's suspected for some time that they're just entertaining what they think is a delusion. Since there's no way for her to prove his existence, John has been mentioned in her file as a fanciful, unquantifiable story. "Someone been telling tales out of school?" she asks, her voice quavering. Her weakness makes her angry, and that anger helps steady her once again.
"You would be surprised at the things people like to talk about when there is a fist in their guts." He chuckles, and Jane sees that his eyes are less like storm clouds and more like the eyes of a drowning victim, dead and dull and staring. There is nothing behind them at all, and she's afraid that if she stares for too long, that emptiness will reach out and pull her into the horror that is his mind.
"I'm sure. Uh, they want me to ask you a few questions—"
"I do not want to answer them. I want to talk about you."
And I want to get the fuck out of here. "I don't think that's such a good idea."
Able slides his chair back and props his feet up on the table between them. He grins, a feral snarl of teeth. "Do they know that he is not just a figment of your imagination?
"I told them as much."
"Yes, but do they believe you?" he asked, and the scary part was that he genuinely seemed interested. She didn't want him to remember her after this, not at all.
"No. I don't see what this has to do with anything." Hardwick's voice in her ear-Stick to the questions, Jane.
"Is that the good Doctor Hardwick I hear? It would appear they have tired of losing researchers, and have sent you. What is your number?"
"How do you know I'm not just another researcher?"
"Please, do not play coy. No researcher would be quite so . . . entertaining." He smiles again, his mouth pulled into a joyless rictus.
"SCP-4762-2, The Shepard."
"And why do they call you that?"
"I'm not sure." He looks at her expectantly, and she can feel those dead eyes regarding her, boring into her. "In my psych profile, the doctor noted that I have the ability to gain people's trust and loyalty, regardless of species. I think the Administrator was just being cute."
"Cute, yes," Able mused. There was a long pause during which Jane had to bite down hard on the urge to sprint screaming from the room. "The natives are getting restless, I think. Go ahead and ask your questions."
"Okay. Uh, when were you born?"
"Before time. Next question."
"Where are you from?"
His leg started twitching in agitation. "From the Cradle." Jane eyes him for a moment, but he doesn't elaborate.
"What happened with your brother?"
Before she knows it, she is slammed against the wall, their chairs skittering across the floor. It is then that she sees the drain, rimmed in some dark substance, in the middle of the floor and wonders how many people he has killed, their blood flowing down that drain. Able's face is inches from her own and her mind is screaming senselessly and she knows that while he is shaped like a man, there is absolutely nothing human about him. He is a monster wrapped in skin and molded into a shape that doesn't fit him, and the madness is leaking all over her in a flood of twisting limbs and shark's teeth.
"Cain," he spits viciously, as though the name itself is poison, "is off-limits."
"Okay, okay, just let me go!" Instinctively she knows that nothing he does will be permanent, but she hates floating in the void, hates the timelessness of it, and she is suddenly gripped with the terror that if she dies now, Able will be there waiting for her.
"You are interesting, Jane the Shepard. It is not often that I am interested." He searches her face and looks as though he might continue, but instead he abruptly drops her to the floor and retrieves his chair, righting it. Jane gets to her feet and pounds on the door twice.
"We're done here," she says, her voice about an octave higher than usual.
Get the recorder and come out, says the doctor, and Jane thinks she has never wanted to do anything less in her life. She forces her legs to move forward, one step, two, until she can reach the table. She grabs the recorder and retreats quickly, her heart in her throat, and just before the door slams shut, she can hear Able's rumbling laugh.
