[Third Person]
Leo leaned forward in his chair, eyes glued to the monitor, ignoring the clutter of empty energy drink cans and chip bags that formed a barricade on his desk. The screen's glow illuminated his concentrated face, casting dancing shadows on his bedroom walls at three in the morning. In his headphones, his friends' voices were a chaotic mix of panic and clipped orders.
"I'm down! 173 got me in the server hallway!" David's voice yelled, followed by a frustrated thud on his desk.
"Damn it, David. I told you not to go alone," Sara responded, her voice calmer but tense. "Leo, you're the last Insurgency. Can you make it to the intercom? The SCPs are sweeping the Heavy Containment Zone. If you can coordinate with them, we might win this."
Leo didn't reply. His fingers flew across the keyboard, his in-game avatar—a Chaos Insurgent in improvised armor—sprinting down a stained concrete corridor. A stamina indicator flickered in the corner of his screen. To the left, the armory door. Tempting, but too risky. To the right, the long hallway leading to the broadcast room. His objective.
"Leo, do you copy?" Sara insisted.
"Copy that," he grunted, making his character slide to a halt behind some crates. "Almost there. The door's clear. If I can transmit a message, maybe 079 will open the way to the surface for us."
"Good luck, man. You're our only hope," David said, now resigned to his spectator role.
On the screen, Leo opened the intercom room door and slipped inside, quickly closing it behind him. The small virtual room was an exact clone of the one he'd seen hundreds of times: a metal console, useless gauges, and the iconic gooseneck microphone. He approached the console, his index finger hovering over the 'V' key on his keyboard, the push-to-talk key for the in-game intercom.
"Alright, team, time for a motivational speech to our monster friends," he joked, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. He pressed the key.
But the instant his finger made contact with the plastic, the world ripped apart.
It wasn't a blackout. It was worse. It was a shift. The hum of his PC vanished, replaced by a much deeper, more resonant hum, one he could feel in his sternum. The pine scent of his air freshener was obliterated by a acrid stench of stale metal, stagnant ozone, and something else... an ancient, dusty fear. The weight of his headphones disappeared from his head. The soft recline of his gaming chair was replaced by nothingness; he was standing.
A blink of his eyes didn't return him to the familiarity of his room, but to the raw, brutal reality of the exact same room he had just seen on his monitor. The fluorescent lights in the grid ceiling flickered, casting a pale, sickly glow on the bare concrete walls. And in front of him, not as a 3D render, but as a solid, cold object, stood the intercom console.
Panic, pure and ice-cold, seized him. This was impossible.
[First Person]
My breath hitched in my throat, becoming a silent gasp. My hands, which a second earlier rested on my keyboard, now hung at my sides, heavy and useless. I slowly raised them to my face. I wasn't wearing my fingerless gaming gloves. They were covered by black, worn, knuckle-reinforced tactical gloves. My clothes weren't my comfortable hoodie and pajama pants. I wore a thick, coarse orange jumpsuit under a black tactical vest that pressed against my chest with an unfamiliar weight. On the shoulder, roughly stitched, I saw the emblem. Two arrows diverging from a central arrow. The Chaos Insurgency.
I touched my chest, my heart pounding like a trapped bird against my ribs. I could feel the improvised armor plates inside the vest. I slapped my thigh, and my fingers found the cold grip of a holstered pistol. This wasn't a dream. Dreams don't have this clarity, this texture. The rough fabric of the jumpsuit chafed against my skin, the stale air filled my lungs with each terrified breath. I could feel the cold of the concrete floor through the soles of my combat boots.
Where were David and Sara? Their voices on Discord? The silence was absolute, broken only by that low-level electrical hum and the pounding of my own blood in my ears. I took a step back, tripping over my own feet, and my back hit the concrete wall. The impact was real. Painful. The surface was cold and rough against my back.
"Okay, Leo, think," I whispered to myself, my own voice sounding strange, muffled. "What was the last thing that happened? I was playing. I was about to use the intercom."
My gaze fell back on the console. The gooseneck microphone seemed to watch me, a dark, lifeless eye. And then, I felt something else. A pressure in my mind, a compulsion that wasn't mine. It wasn't a thought; it was more like an instinct, a directive burned into my consciousness.
Mission: Transmit the message.
What message? My mind raced, searching for an answer, and the words emerged, not from my memory, but from that same external source. A complete speech, instantly memorized, as if it had always been there.
We must remember why we are fighting...
My panic began to give way to a strange, terrifying clarity. This was like those novels and manga I read. Isekai. Transported to another world. But my other world wasn't a fantasy realm with elves and magic; it was the nightmare universe of the SCP Foundation. A place where unspeakable monsters are real and humanity barely survives, locking them away in the dark. And I wasn't a hero. I was on the side of the insurgents. Cannon fodder. An NPC.
A hysterical, choked laugh escaped my lips. This had to be a hallucination. A psychotic episode brought on by too much caffeine and lack of sleep. Yes, that had to be it. And if I was crazy, I might as well play along. Play the part until I woke up in my bed or a padded room.
With a determination born of denial, I straightened up. If this was a hallucination, then I had a role to play. I had a mission. Transmit the message.
[Third Person]
The young man, whose name had been Leo just minutes before, moved with unnatural stiffness. Each step towards the intercom console was deliberate, an act of will against the primal instinct that screamed at him to curl up in a corner and cry. His hand, encased in the black tactical glove, rose. It trembled, not from the chill of the room, but from the whirlwind of disbelief and terror raging inside him.
He stopped in front of the control panel. It was a brutalist-looking device, made of dull gray painted steel, with toggle switches and needle gauges whose purpose was a mystery. But one button stood out from the rest. It was large, red, and protected by a clear plastic cover. Next to it, an engraved label read: "GENERAL TRANSMISSION."
With a hesitant motion, he lifted the protective cover. The plastic clicked open with a satisfying sound, a minuscule noise in the quiet of the room, but to him it resonated like thunder. His index finger hovered over the red button. He could feel the pulse in his fingertip. Inside his head, the words of the speech whirled and spun, waiting to be released. He didn't know why he had to say them, or who they were truly addressed to. He just knew he had to. It was the only logic in a world that had become utterly illogical.
He took a deep breath, the stale air filling his lungs, and pressed the button.
A sharp hiss filled the small room as the microphone activated. Simultaneously, throughout the vast, labyrinthine Facility [REDACTED], that same hiss erupted from hundreds of wall-mounted speakers, interrupting the dripping of water in the corridors, the hum of emergency lights, and the distant, terrifying sounds of a containment breach. Foundation guards paused, rifles raised. Class-D personnel in their cells looked up, a mix of fear and curiosity. Even some of the contained anomalies seemed to react—a shift in pattern, a pause in movement.
Then, the young man's voice resonated, amplified, distorted by the speakers, but charged with a strange, resonant conviction he himself didn't feel.
"We must remember why we are fighting," he began, his voice firm despite the terror gripping his throat. "From the day we turned rogue, the day the Foundation became our enemy, we were right. We created logic out of the illogical."
He paused, letting the words settle in the facility's charged silence. He could imagine the reactions—the confusion, the anger.
"When the world was against us, we held on. When the horrors of the Foundation were unleashed, we held on. Now, it will endure once more, but you must keep fighting."
His grip on the console's edge tightened, his knuckles white beneath the glove. He reached the last line, the most important one, the one that felt like some dark, sacrificial creed.
"Remember that we die in darkness so that humanity may live in light."
He released the button. The hiss cut off abruptly. The silence that fell afterward was deep, heavy, and foreboding. It lasted four beats of his racing heart.
Then, all hell broke loose.
A thunderous metallic crash came from the door. BANG! A battering ram. BANG! The door's metal buckled inward. On the third hit, the lock burst, and the door flew open with explosive violence, slamming into the inner wall.
Leo barely had time to turn. A dark, armored figure filled the doorway, followed by three others. They wore black helmets with opaque visors and assault rifles pointed directly at his chest. Multiple red laser dots danced across his torso like crimson insects. They were a Foundation Mobile Task Force (MTF). The elite.
There was no warning. No surrender order. Just the thunderous roar of gunfire in the confined space.
The first impact felt like the punch of a jackhammer. It stole his breath and threw him backward. The second and third followed in rapid succession, shredding his tactical vest and tearing through the flesh and bone beneath. The pain was a blinding white supernova that obliterated all thought, all panic, all disbelief. He hit the back wall and slid to the floor, leaving a scarlet trail on the concrete. His vision tunneled, the edges rapidly darkening. The last image he saw was the boot of one of the soldiers approaching before everything went black. Darkness. Silence. Nothing.
[Second Person]
And then, you open your eyes.
The electrical hum greets you like an unwelcome old friend. The smell of metal and ozone fills your nostrils. You are standing.
Confusion is a wall of fog in your mind, but a single, clear thought cuts through it: I'm alive. But you shouldn't be. You remember the impact, the unbearable pain, the darkness.
You look down. Your hands, gloved in black, are clean. You frantically pat your chest. The orange jumpsuit is intact. The tactical vest is perfectly in place, not a single hole. No blood. No pain. It's as if it never happened.
Your head snaps sharply toward the door. It's closed. Perfectly seated in its frame, no dents, no busted lock. It's identical to how it was when you first arrived here, what feels like eons and seconds ago at the same time.
It wasn't a hallucination. It wasn't a dream. The death was real. But it wasn't permanent.
You lean against the cold concrete wall, the same wall your lifeless body slumped against, and slide to the floor. The truth hits you with the force of a locomotive—a truth so absurd and terrifying that you can only laugh. It's a choked laugh, on the edge of hysteria.
You've respawned. You've reappeared. Like in a video game.
This hellish place, this nightmare come true, is governed by the rules of a game. And you've just discovered the most important one of all. Death isn't the end. It's a setback. It's a checkpoint.
And as that understanding settles, something else happens. A soft, almost ethereal light flickers at the edge of your vision, to the right. It's so subtle that at first you think it's a trick of the fluorescent lights. But it flickers again, insistent. You focus on it, and the light expands, solidifying into a translucent, spectral green screen that overlays your view of the real world. Crisp, clear text appears on the screen.
[SYSTEM ACTIVATED] Welcome, Insurgent. Status: Recruit (Soul Bound) Level: 1 Attributes:
Strength: 5 Agility: 6 Endurance: 4 Perception: 7 Intelligence: 8 Experience Points (XP): 50 (Bonus: First Transmission & First Death) Skills: [Locked] Equipment: [Basic] Pistol (M9), Tactical Vest (Damaged), Rations (x1) Warning: Soul is now bound to this loop. Death will result in a reset to the last safe checkpoint. Main Mission: Survive and Escape Facility. Secondary Mission: Discover cause of transmigration. Spend your XP to improve attributes or unlock skills. No one must know about this system. Your past life is a secret. Good luck.
[First Person]
I read the text once, twice, thrice. The words floated before me, unreal and yet, the most logical thing I had encountered since I got here. A System. A character menu. Like in an RPG. My hysterical laughter subsided, replaced by a deep, chilling tremor that had nothing to do with the room's temperature.
Soul Bound. Reset. Checkpoint.
I'm not just a player. I'm the main character. And I've just passed the tutorial in the most brutal way possible. Death is real, the pain is real, but it's not the end. It's a learning mechanic.
My gaze drifted from the floating menu to the closed door. Behind it, somewhere in this complex, was an MTF squad that wouldn't hesitate to riddle me with bullets again. There were monsters that could snap me in half or erase me from existence. The fear was still there, a cold knot in my stomach. But now, mixed with it, was something new. Something dark and dangerous.
Opportunity.
The first time, I panicked and followed a script I didn't understand. I spoke and I died. It was a rookie strategy. But now I had information. I knew what would happen. And I had this. The System. Fifty experience points.
I stood up, my movements no longer faltering. There was purpose in them. I closed my eyes and focused on the menu. "Spend your XP."
Mentally, I navigated the interface. Attributes. Skills. The skills tab was locked, probably needed a higher level. But I could improve my attributes. What did I need to survive what was coming? Not strength to fight them, not yet. Endurance to take more hits? Maybe. But the most important thing right now was not to be seen. Not to be targeted.
Agility. Perception.
I invested 20 points in Agility, imagining faster, quieter movements. Another 20 in Perception, hoping I could hear footsteps before they burst through the door. The remaining 10 I saved. You never know.
The screen flickered, confirming my choices.
Agility: 6 -> 8 Perception: 7 -> 9 XP Remaining: 10
I didn't instantly feel physically stronger, but something in my mind felt... sharper. The hum of the lights seemed to have a clearer tone. I could distinguish the faint drip of water somewhere far down the hall.
I looked at the intercom console once more. The mission was still there, ingrained in my mind. Transmit the message. But the System had given me a different main mission: Survive and Escape. The speech was just a means to an end I didn't yet understand.
This time, I wouldn't be a lamb waiting for sacrifice. This time, when they burst through that door, they wouldn't find me standing in the middle of the room.
This wasn't Leo the gamer's room. This was a survivor's arena. And if the universe wanted me to play this nightmare game, then I was going to play to win. With a grim new sense of purpose, I began to plan my second attempt.