SCP: Find Us Alive - 63: Before the Reset

Episode Date: November 7, 2025

Firepower is limited, the lights are out, and there is a Dash Two loose in the building.This episode was written and produced by Anna Maguire and features the voices of Logan Laidlaw (Harley), Jackson McMurray (Lancaster), Tasch Ritter (Klein), Tabitha Bardall (Love), Anna Maguire (Raddagher), and Ashley Quills (Cordell).Original music by Jackson McMurray.Sign up for our newsletter at hodgepodgeaudio.com for updates, info, art, and more.Join us on Patreon for exclusive behind-the-scenes content! Word of mouth is the best advertising, so be sure to share with your friends if you like the show! Patreon.com/hodgepodgeaudioTHIS EPISODE'S SPONSORS: Cosmic, agnes hehimejoshi, JaeJae, Church, Frank Izzy, Ed_G, Case 367, AkorraThis podcast and all content relating to the SCP Foundation are released under a Creative Commons Sharealike 3.0 license.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Greetings and hello, find us alive listeners. It is me, Anna, writer and director, and Halloween Monster. Early access dropped on Halloween, so this one is an unofficial Halloween episode. Also, it's my favorite holiday. Happy belated Halloween, my lovely listeners. Today we have an announcement and some new patrons to thank. The first script book is now available. You can pick up your own bound copy of episodes zero through 18 for $12 plus shipping, which is literally the lowest price my publisher would allow me to list it for. You can find them through a link on our website, hodgepodge.com. More scriptbooks will follow, so keep an eye on our newsletter for info about those.

We don't make any money through these. They're just so our fans can have something fun and physical, so if you want to support us, Patreon is the best way to do it. Speaking of which, here are those new patrons I mentioned. Cosmic. Agnes Heimajoshi. I think that's correct. Church. And Case 367.

Thanks to you all for helping you all for helping. us keep a roof over our heads. If you want to hear your name at the start of an episode or get other cool stuff like ad-free downloads, merch, and more, consider supporting us on patreon.com slash hodgepodge-oddio. You can also give a one-time donation at hodgepodgeodio.com. That's patreon.com slash hodgepodge audio. Thank you so much and enjoy the episode. I will confess. I was not aware that there were more than just dump truck highway and Lala. Unfortunately, there have been several more. None of them have been nearly as nice. It wasn't that we were rusty.

It's just that we were... Less than three hours before the reset. How were we supposed to know that it wouldn't... Sneak by us before we could even see it? Lancaster wanted to help find it. I'll just run faster than it can catch me. I'll be fine. But I wouldn't let him leave my office without firepower. Now that none of us can be turned into a dash three,

the twos may not bother with injury and may just go straight forward. One road flare and a lighter. Can someone please explain what's going on? So, dash twos. Dash twos, how do you kill them? Shouldn't you know this already? I haven't, like, memorized everything you've said in the recordings. This isn't the only anomaly I have to monitor, you know.

And as far as I've been listening, you've been keeping them as pets. Can you do the same with this one? They're only tame if we create them ourselves. Not entirely true. Dumb truck and highway are entirely made up of plants. But Lala came from an animal. Masterson argues that it was an accident, which means when animals become dash 2s, they keep a part of their personality. Like loyalty and affection.

Dash 3s keep their personalities too. But their motivations are different. Does anyone else keep animals? Research has lab mice? Uh, Harley needs an update about the two for Cordell. Don't we all? Give me a sec. You can't know?

Can you pass any of the other patrols? Tell them that they need to contact me. But I'm sure they're not trying to keep it or see. You clear or something? Tremmers. Lots of them. Coming from... Each direction I looked down the hall.

I couldn't see anything. Anything more than the aftermath? We were lucky the dash ones were so small. We weren't getting wild card effects any worse than... Leaving the office. Hi. Hello, Dr. Lancaster. Are you insane?

Not anymore. You said it was right around the corridor. And yeah, and if I see it, I'll just run back in here. The only dash two you could outrun is dump truck. That's not even true. I outran the lemon tree. You did not outrun that thing. He wasn't chasing you.

You were standing right there. He wasn't chasing you. Whatever. It's probably gone now anyway. We're not going out there alone. It's going to kill you. We're the closest ones. And then, more importantly, me.

Me. It's not going to kill me. I can't be dashed anymore. None of us can. Us becoming dash threes was the whole reason they were leaving us alive in the first place. Oh, because we're... Because it could make us threes. Now all we're doing is getting in the way of the self-replication.

Shit. Do you still want to leave the office? Oh, just. Stick my head out the door. Okay, but not for long. And if you see something... It was a good enough look at it. Landcaster and Harley call in, and they're both like...

It's dripping somehow. A wet creature. Which explains all the tiny dash ones. It's running around the site, bleeding all over the... New information gives us at least enough to arm patrols better. We're seeing a bit of a lull in the quakes out here. Noah says it's eased up like a lot in the last few hours. Put a pin in that.

We have a bigger problem. How long until your reset? Minutes. If we can't kill it before the cycle ends and the loop resets, we're going to eat into our firepower reserves for the next cycle. And we really need those if we're going to try a second detonation. What do you have? Like, for firepower. Road flares.

Flare guns. Lighters and flammable substances. Alcohol. Not that we needed to use fire for every single dash one. Why isn't dump trucks seem anything? Because it's dark. But he doesn't have eyes. He sees with his eyes.

Okay, stand back. Do you need help? No, I don't need help. There. See? I don't need help. Klein, I caught another dash one. Did you find the two? No, but I think we're getting close. Yeah.

It's okay if you still need help. No, it's not. It's not okay, Ingrid. We're getting out soon, and I'm not going to have a job. I can't go back to being a field. agent, I can barely turn on a lighter. I lost my job, my memory, I lost my girlfriend.

I hate it in here. I'm sick of being in here. But what am I going to do out there? Your girlfriend? Don't pretend like that's not why. I'm not the same as when we got together. I know that's why you started ignoring me. I didn't mean to.

It's okay, Ingrid. It's fine. I get it. I'll get over it. I... Shit! That sounded like Lala! Come on!

Klein told us to stay here. With highway. If it comes after us and highway isn't here, we're fucked! I've got a Molotov. Don't blow everything up! The fight was on. And it's a good thing too, because we only had... Ten feet!

Seven feet. Tall! Taller than Ingrid! Security converged on it from two different directions. It... was a blood bath. I mean, nobody got hurt or anything. The dash two was just...

Very blood-e. I can see it from here. It's distracted with the... With all that. Or if I can't see anything. What's going on in there? In a minute, Cordell! It looked, it was almost like it was just draped underneath

a billion pieces of yarn or wire. Cables, I think. Cords. Every strand dripping, that silver fluid. We couldn't even see. see what was under the strings. Maybe it was totally empty under there. Security is reporting back to me that Lala on Highway are. Ripping that thing apart.

We burned to the dash runs as fast as we could before. The reset was only seconds out. We didn't know what happened at the time. Maybe it was the first detonation. We have an idea now. Good boy, Highway! The reset. What is your time set to? Yeah, I'm checking. Same as yours. Klein? Just one second. Isn't it, isn't it supposed to...

Just clean up the rest of the dash ones. Is there anything left of the body? Good. If there are any particles, sweep them up and put them in the incinerator. Does the incinerator have power? I don't know. Run it if it does. Harley?

Yeah. You've been quiet for a couple minutes. Call me if you need anything. I'm going to help upstairs. Yeah. What's happening? The cycle. The loop didn't reset when it was supposed to.

Is the power still out? Yeah. Oh. I'm going to turn off my equipment for a while. 30 minutes, maybe an hour. I need to get upstairs to evaluate how we're going to ration our power. Understood. I'll update Noah and the team in Nevada.

I'll be in touch as soon as I can be. Roger. I'll be waiting. Research gets to work. While everyone else does inventory, The patrols keep going. The last thing we need is another dash two. Highway and Lala are tired. I don't know how that works.

It's not like they have animal bodies or something. Staying off the radio is giving me an almost physical pain. We're, I mean, we're lucky that nobody's panicking. I mean, it's, I mean, you know, lucky's not the right word. We're experienced. Research comes up with a hypothesis that maybe the detonation they did on the outside reset the cycle entirely, and now we're going to have to wait 32 more days for the loop to repeat. It might be wishful thinking.

So people don't think that it's the end of the world. It doesn't matter if the cycle will reset in another month. The trouble is we don't have a month. Food, drinkable water, power. I can't help engineering or containment with the calculations, so I help maintenance come up with a ration plan. Heat, air. We're not going to need rations. Research and medical estimate that we have roughly two weeks of oxygen left.

If we keep distributing power exactly the way we are now. Right now, we're using it for the oxygen recycler, the water recycler, and the climate control. Climate control will be cut first, water after that. We can boil the water, but the hot plates will pull a lot of power from our generators, so we'll have to choose between that and cooking hot food. With the climate control out, some of us might freeze before we run out of air. We start collecting all of the clothes and blankets we can find and putting them in a big pile for redistribution. Extra lab coats, de-class uniforms, bedding from the dorms.

There isn't much, and most of it is polyester, but it'll be better than nothing. Building fires would eat up way too much oxygen. I'm on the A-B floor, delivering a pile of dorm linens to the communal pile when Klein approaches me. Hey. There are a few more... rooms that need to be stripped. We need you back in the comm's office. I don't think that's the most responsible use of our limited backup power.

It's the only responsible use of our limited backup power. Getting out is now the only way we survive this. It's the only way we last more than a week and a half tops. Even if the loop does repeat in a month, we won't make it that far. Here's what's going to happen. Either we conserve our power. We conserve our power to keep the O2 and the heat on for as long as possible. Or we burn a little power to get back in contact with Cordell and we try a second detonation,

both sides this time. Will we have enough time to even plan it? We'll see. Do we have enough explosives for it to work? Let me worry about that. You get back to the office. Okay. But I'm leaving my walkie on...

Save your batteries. If we need you, we'll send highway through the fence. Okay. Good luck. Site 64, this is Site 107. Come in. Harley, are you okay? Don't worry about that.

We don't have time. How far is the team from setting up another detonation? A few hours. Tell them if there is anything they can do to shorten the time, they should do it. What happened? The loop didn't reset. We think the exterior detonation changed the cycle. How much food and water do you have?

It's not about food and water. Our life support. systems are running on backup power. We're diverting some of it to my office to keep us connected to you. How much time? Let's just go over the other updates. The volunteer efforts filled out about as much it's going to. A questionable use of our fellow's extremely limited PTO. Not just our fellows, though, and other fellows too. Plenty of them. And Saito 1?

I received a sternly worded email from the that, like, this better show results are else. I think a lot of my memories write on this and their memories I'd like to keep. I've got something writing on it as well. Sorry, I didn't mean to, like, imply that I'm... I know, Cordell, I'm just trying to make light of the situation. Yeah.

Good news is we have an FC4 for two detonations, if we need. That's good. It's open. We've scraped together all the fire. power we have left. And? It isn't much. Either it works, or we all die. Agonizingly.

Thumbs the brakes. Let's hope it works. Where's Highway? What do you care? He's on patrol with Haldi. He listens to her. Transfer with me. What?

I didn't want to get out because Klein said they would transfer us all to other places. especially you. I wanted us to stay inside so they couldn't separate us. Did you sabotage us? No. I thought about it.

But Klein said I was losing you already. Yeah. Maybe. But I can't. Wherever they put us, come with me, please. Or, um, maybe you don't... I thought you were losing injuring.

No. Never. When we get out, can we talk about it then? Yeah. It's getting crowded, love. Whatever, I can deal with it. What are you two doing down here? To know.

Just wanted to be your own people I like. Harley? It's open. Go away. Shouldn't you be upstairs? We have a couple hours. I needed a break. Yeah.

I bet people are freaking. out about how we're all going to die in a couple hours. We're not going to die in a couple hours. Could be right, though. Yeah. We might as well consider the option. I mean, what is there to consider? I don't know.

Is there anything else you want to do? There's a lot I want to do. That's why I'm, that's why I'm not just going to lay down and die. I want to move. I hate Nevada. Me too. I don't know where I'm supposed to be at this point.

Eh, you've been pretty terrific here with us. Client, if we get out, there won't be in us anymore. Not to mention the possibility that even if we do get out there might not be a planet for much longer either. I think we have it on good authority that our inclusion inside is what's causing the earthquakes out there. We don't know if us getting out is going to fix it. Then, I mean, wouldn't it also stop if we all died? Don't let the radio hear you say that. The radio's off for the time being.

We don't know. We don't know anything about that. We know that the outside has more explosives on the way. Ours are being moved to the skip now, and that we have one blast left to get us out of here. And if it doesn't work? If it doesn't work, we give Cordell as much helpful info as we have left until the backup power runs out.

And then we go back to the AB floor. And we wait to freeze or suffocate. Or both. Medical says between the CO2 poisoning and the, the cold, it won't even hurt, really. Most of us will just go to sleep. It could be with worse company. I'm going to write a letter.

I can get my guitar from my door. Maybe we can... Maybe I'll bring up a deck of cards or something. Sit with me? Yeah. Klein. Yeah? Are the explosives in position?

By now? Should be. Cordell? I'm here. Our explosives are placed. I'll check in periodically to check your status. You ready? Yeah, we're ready. Episode 63 was written and produced by Anna McGuire.

The voice of Harley is Logan Laidlaw. The voice of Klein is Tosh Ritter. The voice of Lancaster is Jackson McMurray. The voice of Agent Love is Tabby Bar Dahl. The voice of Radiger is Anna McGuire. The voice of Cordell is Ashley Quills. Original music by Jackson McMurray. If you like our show and want to support us, sign up for our newsletter at hodgepodgeaudio.com.

This podcast, along with all content relating to the SCP Foundation, is released under a Creative Commons share-a-like 3.0 license. Thank you for listening.