The SCP Experience - Only the Fearless One Will Save Us All (Part 2) | SCP-6666

Episode Date: November 8, 2024

SCP Foundation ESOTERIC class object, SCP-6666 This story was derived from https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-6666 and is released under Creative Commons Sharealike 3.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ Want to listen ad-free? Try it FREE for 7 days here: patreon.com/TheSCPExperience Author: Matt Doggett * * * DISCLAIMER: This episode contains explicit content. Parental guidance is advised for children under the age of 18. Listen at your own discretion. #thescpexperience #scp #scpfoundation #scpencounters #securecontainprotect #scpstories Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I said as I looked out the open door at the city, whipping by underneath the helicopter. Most of the buildings were obscured by darkness, but the light from the aircraft skimmed over some, allowing us to glimpse their structures. They were all made of stone, and the windows all lacked glass. But they were far from crude.

Some of the buildings stood six stories tall, while most were two or three feet. stories. The brickwork was excellent, and no two buildings looked exactly alike. Whoever made this city took pride in their work. According to the map and the data package, Falk sent us off with, the city was over 300 square miles. Surrounding the city was a dense forest with trees of a genus, thus far unknown to man. We were going to be inserted just three-quarters of a mile from the edge of the forest. Apparently, the research team had been inserted there so they could take samples of both the city and the forest, but there was another reason they were put down

at that particular spot, and as the helicopter slowed, we saw for ourselves. The city streets below, about as wide as the streets in your average downtown, were choked with mummified corpses. Thousands of them, identical to humans, as far as I could tell from the heliphone. It seemed the people had been fleeing the city, headed toward the woods when they died. The aircraft slowed to a hover over what looked like a park, our landing zone. We shoved the ropes out, which unfurled and struck the carpet of bodies in the park below. The six of us slid down the ropes, two at a time. Perkins and Cantu went first, followed by me and Lemus. Finally, Madrigal and Carrington came down.

Dressed in sealed suits as we were, breathing heavily filtered air, I couldn't smell the corpses. For that, I was thankful, although they were long past the point of putrescence. Their clothes were little more than dark, petrified datters, and their flesh looked like strips of jerky stretched over bony protrusions. I could see no obvious wounds on them, and I knew from the data package, that the working hypothesis was that the toxic fog from the tree had swept down and wiped out the entire civilization. There was no evidence that they had mastered flight, so they wouldn't have been able to get up to the tree without climbing the sides of the dizzyingly large cavern, which seemed unlikely. The only differences I could see between them and us were their huge

eye sockets, and their slightly larger and more bulbous skulls. Their eyeballs had long since dried up to nothing, but I figured their eyes were large because they lived in the dark. There was no natural source of light in the cavern. Maybe there had been, but if so, it was long gone now. With gigantic eyes, they would be well suited to live in the darkness. As for us, we all had night vision capabilities built into our helmets. Everything showed up in greens, blacks, and washed out whites as I looked around. Overhead, the helicopter I stepped her lifted off. I peered up toward the tree, seeing the gray-green mass of its branches high overhead.

It was disorienting, looking at the tree as if from the top. I smiled in my helmet, wanting to giggle and still not knowing why. We've got four hours and 53 minutes, Madrigal said over the shared comms channel. Let's move. Perkins took point as we hustled through the park, brittle bones crunching under our boots. We moved warily, rifles up, and trigger fingers pressed to the housing, ready for action. There were three city blocks between us and the forest. Somewhere in those blocks was where the research team had last made contact.

We didn't have time to go building by building, but we did have some technological help. As soon as we reached the edge of the park, me, Lemes and Carrington took up defensive positions, positions, while Perkins and Cantu swung their packs off and retrieved their automated drones. They powered the small objects on, two each, and then sent them on their way. They zoomed away, heading to search the buildings they'd been assigned, red lights blinking ghostly green in my night vision goggles. We stayed where we were at the corner of a two-story building, hoping the drones wouldn't malfunction like the other ones Falk had sent down earlier. Perkins and Kantu crouched, watching the screens projected into their heads-up displays

to see if the drones found any evidence of the team. Minutes ticked by with minimal talking. It seemed from their silence that the mass grave we were walking around in had put everyone on edge. Well, everyone but me. I still wasn't scared. Excited and giddy, yes, but not scared. I recalled what Falk had said to me right before I'd be. boarded the helicopter back at the base.

He'd pulled me aside while the others loaded up. I don't know what's going on with you, but I need you down there with them, Falk told me. I requested your squad for a reason. I met Falk's eyes, wondering why. Sure, we'd been friends, but we'd never been that close. I was a decent soldier, but there were plenty better. Even among my squad, there were better tacticians, better Marksman, I guess the bemused look I gave him said it all.

Don't ask me why, Falk said. But I've had some dreams about you since being here. You're supposed to be here. Just stay frosty. And that was it. I nodded and hustled to the helicopter, thinking Falk had lost it. He needed to get topside sooner than later, because his mental decay was getting the better of him. Now, as I blinked in complacency,

I could hardly form a coherent thought. I've got something, can't do, said. Cedricle said. We moved, stopping at a three-story building bordering the forest. I couldn't help but look into the tall trees, smiling as though the forest was grinning back at me. Realizing I was out of formation, I did as he said, and we made entry into the building.

We rushed to the second floor of the stone building and burst into a room where three people in suits, just like ours, stood near one corner. facing away from us, swaying slightly. We stopped a safe distance away, pointing our weapons at them just in case. We were supposed to be on the same channel as the research team, but these three made no indication that they heard us. Madrigal gestured at Cantu,

who moved toward the nearest figure and reached a hesitant handout. He grabbed the figure and spun it around to face us, then recoiled at what he saw in the helmet. At first, I wasn't sure what I was saying. seeing. The visor was broken, a jagged hole in the reinforced plastic. The first sign something was really wrong. The person in the suit had wounds on their face, but that wasn't all. The eyes were different colors, and the nose was disfigured. Then I realized what it was, finding it comical in a sick way. The person's face was made up of two different people. A single, barely bloody

wound went directly down the middle of their face. The left side below. along to a woman, the right side to a man, as though each person had been cut in half, and two of their halves had been mashed into each other. They stared at Cantu with hazy eyes. Then those eyes went wide, and the wound down the middle of the head opened like a mouth. Huge spiders shot out of the split-open head, flying through the hole in the visor and crashing into Cantu's helmet. The other two figures spun around, revealing that both visors were broken.

There was only darkness in one soon. A darkness so complete, it just seemed wrong. The other one contained a swirling mass of giant, writhing worms. Cantu screamed while the first figure rode him to the floor. As he went down, I remembered something about him suffering from arachnophobia. He was scared of spiders. My squadmates fired their rifles. I stood there, just watching.

A big, stupid grin crawling onto my face as the huge, banged spiders broke through Cantu's visor and crawled into his suit while he screamed. A moment later, Kanto's body exploded in his suit, a torrent of gore shooting from his broken visor to splatter the ceiling and much of the room. Bullets did nothing to the other two figures, who lurched forward in lightning quick blurs. The suit full of darkness took Madrigal to the floor. The darkness poured from the broken visor into Madrigal's helmet,

erasing the man, replacing him with utter blackness in a matter of moments. Somehow, his scream lingered, fading slowly as if he were falling down an immense pit. Finger-thick worms shot out of the other suit and attacked Perkins. They broke through his visor as though it was made of tissue paper and then snaked into his body through his mouth and nose, glistening pinkish bodies undulating sickeningly as they invaded him. Perkins dropped his gun and thrashed at his face with gloved hands, trying to scratch the worms out of him.

But moments after they went in, his eyeballs bulged and then disintegrated as the worms ate through them. Lima said, grabbing me and yanking me out of the room. As she pulled me into the hallway, I saw Carrington open fire on other figures in suits who had appeared in the other room. They came forward, unaffected by the gunshots. Just run! Lima shouted over the channel. But Carrington didn't run, and he was soon overtaken. Lemus pulled me down and out of the building.

I didn't put up a fight. My legs kept churning, and I smiled as if I knew this was all a dream. My dream. At first, we turned to go back the way we came, but we stopped when we saw the carpet of corpses getting to their feet. We turned left, but soon the corpses in that direction started to rise. I already knew somehow that we would be going into the forest,

that we were supposed to go that way. So we switched, and I pulled Lemus into the forest, down a path that was lined with bodies for a good 40 yards. These corpses didn't stir until we were past them, at which point they rose and stumbled after us. We soon left them behind, and we kept running. We ran until a familiar voice came over the comms channel, a voice from high above. It's something else here now, something new. From, exclusively on Paramount Plus, it's the series Stephen King calls scary as hell.

Everything here is impossible, but it's also real. Sci-Fi vision calls it the best show streaming right now. We're running out of time and we still don't know the rules. Don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch. Saving those children is how we all go home. From Binge All Episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. Still catching my breath, I knelt behind a fallen tree with strange, spiky branches. Lemus knelt next to me, looking through her viremen.

at the path we'd just been on, aiming a rifle. I was still locked in a struggle with myself, feeling like I was drugged or drunk and trying my best to sober up. I knew logically that we were in trouble, but I couldn't manage to feel fear. I couldn't feel much of anything besides an exciting sense of purpose. Slaughter?

Falk asked again. He sounded strange, like he was half asleep. I'm here, I said. My voice sounding oddly cheery, he asked. Do you know what to do? I actually laughed, although it wasn't the crazed giggle I had been fighting. I don't have a clue. Everyone's lost it up here, Fox said.

People are killing themselves and each other. The helicopters are all gone, and I don't know where they went. Saw one of them crash into the tree, but I can't locate the other ones. I think we're pretty much done. Done with what? We weren't supposed to come down here. I can see that now. Volk paused, and I could hear strange noises in the background,

banging and whimpering and sobbing. I thought it was just a weird dream at first. Maybe that's all it was. But I hoped I was wrong. That's why I requested your squad. I thought I was doing the right thing. Are you saying we won't have a ride out of here? Lemus asked, cutting off Fox's incoherent.

rambling. Falk paused, and for a moment I thought we'd lost our connection. Then his scream ripped over the channel. I couldn't help my reaction. I knew logically that I should be concerned about what was happening, but I wasn't. A laugh bubbled up my throat and escaped my mouth before I could stop it. You're fucking crazy! Lima shouted over the radio. Both of you! A flash of red light came from down the trail, catching her attention. My laugh died down as I looked that way, seeing as one of our squad mates walking down the trail, two bright red eyes visible in the otherwise pitch black helmet. Lemus gasped and lurched away, pulling me along. With each step we took, heading farther into the trees, I experienced an increase in my nihilistic joy, like I was

going towards something of no importance, which made it somehow vitally important. My thoughts were a confused jumble, but I didn't fight them. I just let them be thoughts, feeling strangely invincible because they couldn't touch me, not the real me, the observer who watched and witnessed everything. That part of me was where the laughter came from, that I knew with implacable certainty. I allowed myself to be pulled down the trail, feeling the burn of my leg muscles as they worked, just as they'd been designed. Then we were slowing, and I saw why. We'd come into a clearing where several more of the odd humanoid bodies lay near a brick structure built into the ground. It looked like the entrance to some sort of bunker.

In there, I said, knowing that we had to get into it. We don't know what's in there, Lima said. It looks like all these people were trying to reach it. Whatever is down there, it must be important. At the very least, it should be defensible. I sounded like the most reasonable person as I spoke, and I knew it was having an effect on Lemus. Falk?

She asked. You copy. At some point, Falk's scream had died down. We hadn't heard a peep from him since. He gave no answer to Lemus's inquiry. That red light splashed across us again, and we both turned to see the red-eyed thing coming toward us, wearing what looked like to be Madrigal's suit.

Without another word, Lemus let go of me and ran to the stone structure in the ground. I followed her, moving down the spiral staircase a couple of steps behind her. We left the forest floor behind and ventured far down into the earth, going around and around the spiral staircase, our night vision goggles allowing us to see. Finally, we came to a large wooden door that looked like it belonged on some medieval castle.

Symbols that looked like Sanskrit and Cyrillic combined, adorned the door. We had no idea what they meant, and we went headlong through the door. Inside, I stopped, only able to see Lemus next to me. I can't see anything, she said. My goggles are malfunctioning. Can you see me? I asked, knowing the answer already.

I could see her, but everything else was pure black, the absence of anything. Yes, but where did the door go? I turned around and wasn't surprised to see that the door was gone, along with the staircase. We stood in nothing, an endless expanse of nothing. A smile tugged at my lips, but Lemus was starting to hyperventilate. Where are we? She asked, voiced tightly. with burgeoning fear.

It's okay, I said calmly. We're okay. There's nothing here. Nothing. How the fuck are we going to get back? What? Lemus's fear-induced word vomit stopped as the surrounding darkness morphed. We were suddenly surrounded by a wall made of demented, deformed clowns.

They crawled all over each other, looking like melting and reforming wax as their bodies melded and separated. Some of them had sharp, bloody teeth, while others had mouthed. full of rot, maggots, and other insects writhing amid their snaggle teeth. Their fingers were overly long, their nails thick and black and sharp. Their eyes, some of them blood red, some black, and some pure white, were always fixed on Lemus, no matter where they were on the circular wall that surrounded us. Their heads twisted so their gazes could remain fixed on her, bones crunching and

grease paint-covered flesh distorting. I knew Lemus had a fear of clowns. The entire squad knew. Suddenly, everything that had happened since we'd come down here made some kind of sense. Next to me, Lemus had gone from hyperventilating to not breathing at all. All I could hear over the open channel was a squeak that came from somewhere deep in her throat. It's okay, I whispered. But my words were drowned out by Limus's composure snapping, a scream ripping out of her throat,

driven by furious emotion. A massive clown coalesced out of her. of the wall, scuttling up to Lemus on too many limbs, eyes turning into mouths with teeth that clacked together loudly. I raised my rifle and fired at the clown, even though I knew it would do no good. Nothing happened. The bullets went right through the thing. Then it was on top of Lemus, who was screaming even louder now. It broke through her visor with a headbut, then positioned its head over hers. From out of all three of its mouths came torrents of multi-colored vomit, splashing all over Lemus' face. Maggots and slugs and tiny cockroaches scurried over her

face, disappearing into her screaming mouth and upper nose. Once the three mouths were done vomiting, they laughed insanely. I wondered if that was what my laugh sounded like when I lost control. The vomit started sizzling on Lemus's skin, and only a moment later, her face collapsed, flesh and bone melting away. The clown looked out. at me with its mouth eyes, teeth clacking together for a moment. I looked back, disgusted, sorry for Lemus's death, but not afraid. The clowns disappeared as quickly as they'd appeared. I was left in utter darkness again.

Even so, I could feel something prodding at my mind, trying to find out what I was scared of. It found nothing, because my fear had been erased. The darkness around me changed again, and I was no longer alive. There was another being with me, although to say I could see it wouldn't be exactly right. I knew on some primitive level that this being wasn't something I could see in any literal way. But in order for my mind to make sense of it, as much sense as I was capable of anyway, some automatic process created an image that I used as a stand-in, lest I go insane trying to comprehend the thing there with me. It was a vast and beastly thing.

A creature made of nothing but staring eyeballs and mouths stretched in silent screams. Despite the fact that this amalgam of images wasn't exactly the thing's body, I still couldn't meet its gaze. I felt myself teetering on the edge of madness. I looked away, keeping it only in my peripheral vision. But when it spoke, there was nothing I could do but fall to my knees in pain. I slammed my hands to my ears and felt the blood pulling against my palms. Still, I felt no fear, only pain and a sense of wrongness,

as my mind struggled to comprehend something it had no chance of understanding. Although the creature spoke no language, surely it didn't speak at all, not in any way definable by human intellect, it somehow managed to use its immense power to impart its communication to me. It told me I had passed the test, and that it would put off eating my universe until the next test, when the fearless one would have to come again. It also explained that the giant in the tree that had spread the poison was trapped in our world and wanted the freedom of death.

He'd been made immortal as a punishment, but if he could prevent the fearless one from coming for the test, he could wipe out the universe and finally experience death. The beast told me in its way. of the forces at work to preserve my universe. Forces that had given Falk his dreams, which had brought me here, just where I needed to be. It seemed like a game to the beast,

like a chess match with some other incomprehensible cosmic being. It moved on, showing me other things, giving me other bits of knowledge. I glimpsed the humanoid that had made it down just before the position swept over the city about 200 years ago. The fearless one, the one before me. It wasn't in her species' nature to be fearless.

Fear can be a very useful tool. No, she wasn't born fearless, and she didn't achieve some kind of meditative state to overcome her fear. She was like me. She had a brain tumor that shut down the chemical processes responsible for fear in her brain, just like me. Of course, I had no idea I had a brain.

brain tumor before stepping into the presence of the vast creature I now stood before. It told me that. It learned of it while poking and prodding my mind. I thought it was a technicality, but I wasn't about to argue with a thing, not when my entire universe was at stake. As the creature disappeared and I found myself standing in an empty room, I found that I still had no fear of dying. I turned around and walked out of the room, trudging back up. up the stairs, thinking about the news I'd just gotten. A brain tumor. How long had these people been living down here, sacrificing themselves to keep that insanity-inducing beast from swallowing our universe? I had no idea. It hadn't shown me that, but I figured the foundation would get to the

bottom of it. About halfway up the stairs, Fox's voice came over the radio. Slaughter, his vitals are steady. Says he's alive. I don't get to the bottom. I don't get yet why he's not. I'm here, I said. You all feeling better up there? We're okay. Most of us anyway. What did you do? I'll tell you when I get back up there. There was only the sound of fog breathing for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was heavy with sorrow. Well, that's the thing, Slaughter. The foam is failing. The fog is flowing down there as we speak. And we don't have any birds to come get you. The smile came to my feeling. The smile came to my face after the second sentence. And as he finished, I started laughing, and I kept laughing

all the way to my grave. SCP 6666 is a colossal, botanical entity located in the Amazon rainforest, consisting of a wide trunk and many thousands of arching branches reaching away from the center mass like a tree, though it does not closely resemble any known species of similar biological structures. The entity is inverted, suspended by its considerable root system from the top of a massive lithospheric void in the crust of the earth. This space appears to have formed naturally between 450 and 560 million years ago. Despite the fact that SCP 6666 is biologically inert, sections of new growth are mobile and hostile. Roots that appear above ground will attempt to pull anything nearby them,

man, animal, machine, or otherwise, into the cavern below through the soil. This effect can be temporarily mitigated by ceasing movement entirely.