Site: 19 Interview Room 2. One hour later, after the first talks.
An hour had passed for the two of them. Tyler had asked for an ashtray, having a cigarette between his fingers on his left hand. "Thanks for letting me smoke. You keep my nervousness at ease, and I need that to speak about this, and things get ugly here. After finding Armstrong within the depths of that place, the higher-ups pulled all of us back; we did not explore for over two months. I don't fully know what he told them, but they were considering shutting down the entire thing. I heard such rumors as we waited." Bringing the cigarette to his mouth, he takes a puff out of it before flicking the ash into the tray. "Then one day two teams were pulled together: me and my crew, and another we were giving a single job. To go into the location where Armstrong wandered, they gave us weapons, tools, and guiding supplies such as ropes and tape. And the use of golf carts to get there quickly and get back in the event something goes wrong was strange." Taking another puff from the cigarette, the foundation man listened in silence.
"Normally, at any given time, about a dozen teams are moving about and studying the place. But during this, it was just used by two teams. We got onto the carts and went on our way towards the location where we found him. This job was really hard for Armstrong, and he left nothing for us to follow besides the direction we thought he came from. So, for the first hour, we drove there, and once we did arrive, we started to write down our first markers. We had these big spools of rope we could mount to the floor and then use as guides back to where we started. Once the first one was down, we started our walk; we were the furthest anyone has ever gone within that place." Taking another puff from the cigarette, the foundation man would speak up as he deposited the ash into the tray again. "I guess this was a big moment for you and your team to be that far out, but I am guessing things either knew or soon did not turn out so well?" Tyler nodded his head.
"It would be later in the entire exploration that we did find nothing noteworthy for some time, just the same set-up we had seen before. That was until we saw something for the first time out of place—something new—and that was a door on a wall. From what I recall, there has never been such a thing documented before. There have been pitfalls and even small openings. But never a door, we assume that this is where Armstrong came from into this area and then made his way toward us... I recall having a lump within my throat when seeing this before our eyes."
Putting the cigarette out into the tray, he let out a puff of smoke from his lips.
"Even still, it was a heavy moment despite what was soon to happen. I reach for the door first. My team and the others were covering guns at the ready in the event anything hostile was on the other side. I opened that door. And what was on the other side, still to this day, was just extraordinary. On the other hand, it was a concert wall. It seemed to go on for quite a distance, stepping on through the buzzing sound, came to a stop. In fact, stepping through the door seems to cut it off completely, even standing close to it." Pulling out another cigarette, he would light it.
"We documented everything, took pictures, samples, and a few other things we found close to the front. Then we made our way back to the golf carts and back to the doorway out of there with what we had found."
Taking a puff from the cigarette, Tyler would stand up and walk back and forth behind his chair.
"I assume that this is soon when this, as you called it, Bad Day will happen. An event that caused the closing of the project and, in a way, caused you to end up here?" Stopping himself from looking at the man, he would nod his head.
He stepped forward and sat back down, rubbing his hands together. "Sorry for the delay in working to collect myself. This is something I wish I could have forgotten. About a week later, after our finding, a set of teams were sent out for myself and my group. We were, as I say, put into a reserve force in the event something went wrong. Which I did not like at that time but ensured that what happened next was not done to us."
Tapping his cigarette into the trap, he would place it there on the side. "For one day, I can't fully recall the day we got this frantic call. I never heard someone more scared in their entire life. Someone was shouting into the radio; they said that they were attacked by something unknown. All but three of them were still standing and needed backup, and we were on our way."
The Foundation man looked at Tyler's behavior and could tell that whatever happened deeply troubled him.
"I like to ask a few questions, if that is alright." Tyler nodded his head. "Before all of this, whatever happened to Armstrong, did you have any further contact with him?" A look of surprise crosses his face. "Yes and no. After his meeting with one of the higher-ups, I only had one encounter with him, and he seemed quite happy. But at the same time, she worried about us and everything we were doing. He told me if anything happens to find him, he has been in a lot longer than any of us. In his own words, we should shut everything down. He warns us that very bad things could happen."
He gestured to Tyler to continue.
"We already had our suits on and gear ready; setting off, there was this feeling of fear and worry among us. There was no further radio contact with the group, but we had an idea of where to look. And what we saw as we came to a stop at the first rope point... still gives me nightmares." Picking up the cigarette, he would take a puff out of it.
"A huge smiling face on the wall is what greeted us... Blood was what was used to make it, and all of us were nearly overcome with fear. On the ground, staining the carpet, there was lots of it. We assume a tight formation and follow it for some time, as we did... Things just kept getting worse at the sight of it all. The first body we found was torn up; his left arm tore from the socket along the torso, bits of flesh were ripped off his face, and his mask was busted in. Moving on from the first, the next one was just mutilated... Missing both of his arms, his left leg was ripped off at the kneecap. The chest cavity was open, but a few of the organs within were missing, such as the lungs and heart. A part of the head was crushed inwards." His left hand was shaking as the spoke of this, taking a puff out of the cigarette to try and ease his nervousness.
"At this point, one of my team members upchucked within his helmet, and everyone was freaking out. We found no one left alive among the bodies that were left of them. Dozens of shell casings covered the floor. They did not go down without a fight, but whatever attacked them. Either we were immune to bullets or just what we had was not enough; there were no signs of the ones who attacked them. We got out of there fast."
"Once we got back, half the team was having panic attacks. The one who had a puck within his helmet kept on pucking when it was taken off. Things just went downhill from there. Within an hour, we were giving our report on what had happened, and that is when it was soon to come to an end. For myself, I was getting ready to send out my two weeks' notice, if even that. I was making plans to leave without pay or anything else, but just seeing that massacre, it was clear that this was over."
The Foundation is no stranger to such things, with some of their SCPs breaking out and causing a lot of death and destruction. The man who sat in front of Tyler has been through a few himself and has lost many colleagues and friends during those times. "I see, so things were, as you put it, nearing an end, but I get the feeling that the bloodbath you saw was not the only thing to happen. Was another event to happen that would cause further death and chaos, or was that the only event, and why did you leave?" Tyler nodded his head, taking another puff from the cigarette.
After the puff, he would put it out into the tray. "As many of us were wondering what to do and where to go if we were really going to leave the company, I was working at my desk giving my last report, and my notice that I was leaving was that whatever was in there was hostile and did not want us inside of it. That is when I noticed something on the side of the screen near one of the texts. It looked like a smiling face... I then overheard someone else seeing it from a desk beside me." Leaning back into his chair, he looks up at the ceiling. "And that is when shit hit the fan all the way. It was like a surge going off on the systems of the building; computers went dark, lights flickered, a few overloaded and exploded, a fire alarm went off, and lastly, a few doors locked themselves." Tyler would lower his head, looking down at the desk now.
"I'm in full panic mode; I'm no different than anyone else, but I know I need to get to my locker and arm myself. People were running and scattering. It was pure chaos given that no one knew what to do, radios and intercoms were out on top of other systems, and handheld radios still worked. Once I reached my locker that had my things, I was able to get in touch with a few others from my team. One thing I do recall is that the door that leads to the gateway into that place that knows hell, as I would call it, was locked. But there was a second door on the other side of the room it was in. I recall hearing things that were not human on the other side of it, followed by very human screams."
Tyler was almost slumped on the table, working to collect himself from the trauma that came about from this event. "I assume this is the bad day you spoke about. I can see why you would call it that. I am guessing that a lot of people lost their lives that day." Slowly looking up, he nodded his head. "Yes, a lot of people did die that day, and I say they were the lucky ones. I tried to link up with the ones I was able to speak with, but it was a mess. Many of the doors were locked. In a few locations, the lights had stopped working, and I could barely see what was within the darkness even with my flashlight. The noises and sounds were all mixing into each other; it was hard to make anything out as I moved from one place to the next. And that is when I stumbled into one of the break rooms. That is when I encountered one of them. It first looked like it was a human, but only on the outside." Pulling out another cigarette, Tyler quickly lit it.
"As I made my way into the room, a woman was standing in the middle of the room. I knew who her name was, Villetta. She was one of the nurses who worked in medicine. I remember yelling at her. I knew making a lot of noise was a bad idea, but at that time I thought she was in shock. Blood covers parts of her uniform... And that should have told me to run for my life. I got closure, and she had no response to me. She did not move, just looking at me and her eyes—those eyes that had no humanity behind them. Getting closure, I could make out parts of her skin that were sagging. Like it was not fully attached to the body moving past her, when I see it behind an overturned couch, on the floor that looked like ground bloody beef, it was a body without its skin. There was red muscle and a lot of blood all over the floor around it. I could make out the body shape, and it was female. The head of this mutilated body was in a frozen scream. That is when I put two to two together."
"I think I understand what happened to that thing that was standing in the room. Was she wearing Villetta skin? It had torn it away from her body, am I correct?" Taking a puff from his cigarette, he lightly nodded his head. "I did not say anything, not even scream. I just turned and looked at this thing, and I could never make out what it was planning on doing. I see it walking toward the door. I think I was running on fear and anger at that moment in time. I then opened fire on it. I had only a pistol, but .45 calibers can do a lot of damage. As bullet after bullet hit this thing, punching holes into the skin, a white fluid came out, not red blood. Two of the rounds hit this thing head-on, yet it still stands. I empty the entire magazine into it, but it seems more like I was annoying it, not hurting it... I could see underneath the skin as that white fluid came out of its body."
"Pale yellow, was the color under it. It never cries out in pain. There were no emotions to respond to or sounds from this thing. Its eyes behind the human ones were something that seemed more annoying that I damaged the skin on its body than the damage to its body. Loading in a new magazine as this thing moves towards me, I empty another clip into its body after the last round hits its body. That is, when it slumped and hit the ground hard, I still don't have a clear idea if I killed it or if it did something equal to passing out. I recall still putting the trigger in even though I was out of ammo at that moment. As I was going into a full panic attack at what had happened and been seen before me. And then he appeared as the one man who could get myself and a few others out of that hell."
Taking a puff out of the cigarette, he looked at the man, who had kept mostly quiet during this talk. "And that was Armstrong." It was due to that chance to encounter why he and a few others are alive.