The terminal crackled.
Not like a recording.
Like a throat trying to wake up.
A low, broken hum filled the room, almost mechanical, but under it a whisper. A breath.
Then the voice came.
"Cass…?"
Soft. Fragile. Human.
Not a file.
A voice.
Cassandra staggered back.
The sound wrapped around her like a memory that hadn't happened yet. She hadn't heard this voice in twenty years, but her bones recognized it.
"Cassandra, baby… If you're hearing this… something's gone wrong."
Grumman lowered his head.
He'd known.
The screen glitched. Lines flickered down the terminal in alien glyphs Cassandra almost understood half alphabet, half instinct.
The voice kept speaking.
"I didn't mean for you to carry it. I thought I burned it out of me before they found us. But the language… it imprints. It lives in the womb. It grows with the mind."
Cassandra's eyes burned. She didn't cry she remembered pain. A sharp ache from childhood nights she couldn't explain. Words she'd tried to say as a girl that made teachers afraid of her. Symbols she saw in her dreams.
"They'll try to classify you as a memetic vector. As a cognitive anomaly. They'll try to contain you. But you are not an SCP.
You are the key to one."
Grumman stepped forward, frowning. "That's not pre recorded. That's responsive. She's answering you."
Cassandra's breath hitched. "She's been dead for twenty years."
Grumman's voice dropped to a whisper. "Then who the hell is speaking?"
The coffin hissed.
Metal against metal.
A faint jet of cold air leaked from the seam.
Then a sound: three knocks.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Knuckle on steel.
Cassandra stumbled backward. "No. No no no- she's gone. I buried her. I saw her grave."
Grumman grabbed her arm. "Listen to me. That might not be your mother. It might not even be human."
"Cass…"
The voice from the speakers wavered now. Sharper. Echoing behind itself.
"Open the door. I can explain everything. I can finish the sentence for you."
"No," Grumman growled. "Absolutely not."
But Cassandra had already stepped forward.
Her hand hovered above the manual release switch.
"Do not open a coffin that opens for you," Grumman snapped.
"It didn't," she whispered.
"I'm choosing to."
And she pulled the lever.
The seal released with a hiss like an old lung exhaling.
The lid slid back.
Inside, there was no corpse.
Just a black stone tablet rough, cracked, about the size of a book. Symbols carved across it in patterns that made her eyes sting.
And underneath it-
A mirror.
Her reflection didn't move.
It was the girl again.
But now, up close, she wasn't a girl at all. Her skin was pale like old paper soaked in ink. Her eyes were endless. Not empty too full.
She opened her mouth, and sound poured into Cassandra's head.
A voice without language. A shape without form.
Like being remembered by something that never forgot.
Cassandra screamed.
The room spun. Her knees hit metal. Blood dripped from her nose. Grumman tried to hold her up but recoiled when her skin lit with pale glyphs, glowing under her neck, her hands, her ribs.
The mirror inside the coffin shattered.
But her reflection remained.
Suddenly, the room lights went black.
The terminals shut down.
A new message scrolled across the main screen:
"SCP-7329 HAS ACHIEVED PHRASE UNITY.""COGNITIVE LINK CONFIRMED: RAYNE, C.""BEGINNING FINAL VOCALIZATION CHAIN."
Grumman slammed the emergency comm switch.
"Site Command, this is Dr. Grumman! Echo Root breach confirmed. Subject Rayne has triggered cognitive convergence with SCP-7329. We need-"
The speaker cut out.
The only sound now was Cassandra breathing.
Hard.
Shaking.
Eyes open wide. No longer glowing.
Just knowing.
"Grumman," she whispered.
He stepped back.
"Grumman… I understand it now."
"Understand what?"
She looked up.
And said:
"The first word."
Outside, all across Site-71-
Terminals blinked.Lights flickered.Sensors failed.Guards collapsed from nosebleeds and seizures.And in the core containment chamber…
SCP-7329Opened its eyes.
And smiled.
SCP-7329 STATUS UPDATE
Designation: Active Vocal Cognition EventContainment Integrity: CompromisedSecondary Link Detected: Cassandra RayneNew Risk Class: ████ [REDACTED]Temporal Drift: Phase 3 Initiated
In the silence after it began, Cassandra whispered something only Grumman could hear.
"It's not trying to destroy the world, Doctor."
"It's trying to finish writing it."