Chapter Text
Item #: SCP-353-01
Object Class: Safe
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-353-01 is to be kept in a holding cell, permitted simple comforts such as a small twin bed, a pillow, a blanket, and a spare change of clothes upon request. Any other items requested by the subject may be permitted within reason, any doubts may be shared with Dr. Smith or the Security Officer in charge of the subject’s containment.
The subject is to be fed twice a day in its cell unless directed otherwise. The only times it is allowed out of its cell are when it has been called for tests or interviews by Dr. Smith, and it must be escorted by an armed guard at all times. Subject is cooperative and non-hostile, but its nature is still unknown.
Description: SCP-353-01 appears to be a human male, in his early thirties, of slightly above average strength and moderate intelligence. Displays an incredible healing factor. Subject has a slight anti-memetic effect that actively blocks any person’s ability to remember its facial appearance. Guards and researchers claim they remember a vague outline, but any specifics are lost.
Willingly accompanied MTF Leader Redfield from the Dulvey containment site, under the impression it would be “cured” and could “return to a normal life”. Subject was the one of two surviving SCP found on site, see SCP-353-02 under the name of Mia Winters.
Subject goes by the name of Ethan Winters. Guards are advised to use the SCP designation to avoid any humane attachments.
More information to come.
———
“Are you comfortable, 353-01?” a man asks, staring at him from across the metal interrogation table. He has a clipboard and pen in front of him, and next to him sits an old tape recorder. In the corner looms the armed guard that hasn’t left Ethan’s side since he arrived at the facility, fully covered in dark tactical gear. All that’s visible of the man is a sliver of skin between his balaclava and eyewear. He even has a chin strap on—talk about overkill.
Ethan shifts uneasily in the rigid metal chair and clears his throat. “Uh—yeah, sure.” He tries to focus on the man that isn’t posturing with a rifle in the corner, but he can’t help the nervous darting of his eyes between the two.
“Good. Then we can get started.” The man reaches out a hand and presses a button on the recorder—jesus that thing is outdated. Do they have to use cassettes or is it just a personal choice? Looking at the man in front of him, easily pushing his seventies, Ethan assumes it’s a personal preference. “This is Dr. Smith, interviewing SCP-353-01. It is August 17, 2017. The subject was found in Dulvey, Louisiana by Mobile Task Force Alpha and followed them willingly back to the facility. State your name for the record.”
“Uh—Ethan Winters. I’m sorry,” he continues hesitantly, unsure if he was allowed to speak unprompted now that he was being recorded. He asks his question anyway, curiosity getting the best of him as usual, “but, what did those numbers mean? Why did you call me that?” He watches the man frown slightly, disapproving and stern.
“It’s your designation within the facility.”
“Oh—like a prison number?” Ethan winces at the comparison as he says it, and wipes his palms on the hospital gown they gave him.
Dr. Smith ignores him. “Tell me about what happened in Dulvey.”
He runs his hands through his hair and sighs, willing the tension to drain from him to no avail. He’s not sure if it ever will. “Well—where to start?” he asks rhetorically, still trying to reconcile all that happened to him in the week that’s passed.
He has a hard time wrapping his mind around the time frame—he was only there for a day and a half, and yet it feels like a lifetime. A part of Ethan feels like he's still there, like he might never leave the dilapidated house.
“What were you doing there?” the man pushes.
He sits up a little straighter in his chair and clears his throat. “W-well, I—my wife. She had gone missing, three years ago on a… work trip. Then, just a few days ago, I got an email from her with coordinates to come pick her up.”
The man—Dr. Smith—raises two graying, bushy eyebrows. “And you went?”
Ethan shrugged helplessly, aware several times over about what a bed decision it was. He wore the proof as a circle of puffy scar tissue around his wrist and ankle and in the dark circles under his eyes. “What was I supposed to do, ignore it? Brush it off as some prank and risk losing my one chance to make it up to her? No, of course I went. When I—”
“Make what up to her?” The doctor interrupted and noted something on his clipboard, heedless of the short breath Ethan huffs through his nose.
“The day before she went silent for good, we had an argument,” he says measured, swallowing his annoyance at being interrupted. “We… said some pretty nasty things and hung up still mad at each other, and the day after, she wouldn’t take any of my calls. The police reported her missing a few weeks later.”
Ethan closed his eyes at the memory. She had just sent him a video, as sweet and lovely as he always remembered her to be, telling him about how she couldn’t wait to get home and end her babysitting job. Something about it didn’t sit right with him, the same way her whole trip felt wrong—the way her whole job felt wrong. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he knew—he just knew she was lying about something.
It had been months of feeling out of the loop, months of picking up little clues here and there that something wasn’t right, finally catching up to him after a long shitty day at work that he just couldn’t take anymore. On their next call, he confronted her and called her a liar, and then she called him paranoid.
Things escalated from there, and he doesn’t even remember what they called each other after that, but he was burning with anger and shame when they hung up. The next day he called to apologize, and she didn’t pick up. She didn’t the day after either, or the day after that.
He didn’t want to keep pushing her if she needed space, but when a week passed, he got worried. He filed a report with the police, just hoping they could tell him she was okay.
When they got back to him with a missing persons report a few days later, his world was shattered.
Ethan breathes deeply in through his nose, and slowly out his mouth, closing his eyes. “But she’s okay now,” he reminds himself, forcing himself to relax.
When Chris Redfield and his team showed up back in Dulvey, they took Mia away for medical care. He hasn't seen her since. It’s only been a few days, but he’s been getting antsy. When he caved and finally asked his perpetually armed shadow, all the guard told him was that she was doing okay, and she was cooperating.
That’s better than nothing, he tells himself, but a part of him still wonders when they’re going to let him see her. He wonders if she has a guard following her around everywhere too.
“Right,” Dr. Smith says, monotone. “And what happened after your arrival?”
Ethan blinks his eyes open again, adjusting to the fluorescent lights in the room. He looks at the man in the chair—really looks at him. He had a crisp white lab coat, unbuttoned to reveal a simple light blue button up underneath. His skin was wrinkled around his forehead and mouth, frown lines if Ethan had to guess. His hands were bony, skin stretched tight around the joints. He looked like he could be someone’s grumpy, disappointed grandpa that made family dinners uncomfortable.
He seems completely unmoved—if anything he seemed irritated with Ethan for taking so long to answer, for getting emotional. He tries not to be offended—the guy was just doing his job. It wasn’t his fault Ethan had been sent through hell and crawled out on his stomach, beaten down and traumatized.
Ethan can already feel dread swirling in his gut at the thought of trying to put into words what exactly he endured at the hands of the Baker family.
Fear had carved itself into his bones in that house, anchored itself to the marrow when he was just trying to survive one harried step at a time. He’s positive that his fear, his paranoia had saved his life more than once.
Now though, it was a hindrance, pressing down on his chest until he could barely breathe, and making his hands twitch for a gun, or a knife, anything to defend himself with, as he stared into the unflinching eyes of Dr. Smith. He wasn’t being chased or hunted down; he was safe. There was an armed guard in the corner of the room, for fuck’s sake, far more prepared for any threat than Ethan had ever been in Dulvey.
Of course, his hindbrain didn’t get the memo, still screaming at him to find a place to hide, to bunker down until he was safe, missing the glaringly obvious fact that he already was.
“353-01?”
Ethan blinks. “Sorry, um—it’s just been a long week,” he tries to laugh, and ends up wheezing, sounding just south of breathless. He sucks in a deep breath, and clears his throat after a moment, ready to move on and pretend this moment never happened. The doctor write something on his clipboard. “…Right, well—when I showed up, I found Mia in the guest house. She was in some kind of cell, and when I got her out, she… wasn’t thinking right. She was confused, disoriented. Then she attacked me.” His throat tightens at the memory of the revving motor of a chainsaw, the smell of the gasoline, the blood, and the ever-present stench of mildew and mold. His nose twitches, like he can still smell it now.
“And you restrained her?” He prompts when Ethan doesn’t immediately continue.
He shakes his head, not quite seeing the man across the table. His eyes were far away, still stuck in a rotten house in the bayou. “No, I—I put an axe in her neck the first time, but she—she just walked it off. I didn’t even see a mark on her when she got me with the chainsaw.” Of course, that wasn’t the most miraculous, incredible, horrific thing he saw that night. He wouldn’t even put it in the top ten.
His eyes dart down to the pockmarked scar along his left wrist where they removed the staples a few days ago. He flexes his hand mostly to remind himself that he still could. It felt like Dulvey had operated on its own plane of existence, separate from the real world and its rules. It felt… strange, re-entering society now. Disorienting. (Although, considering this sterilized, white-walled facility as “society” is a bit of a stretch. He hasn’t even seen a window in the past week he’s been kept here.)
“Is that how you got the scar on your wrist?” The doctor asks, interrupting his thoughts. It was an obvious question with an obvious answer, but Ethan replies anyways with a humorless snort.
“Cut it clean off. Had to shove the damn thing in my waistband so I didn’t lose it when I tried to shoot her. I—I hit her a few times, but she just kept coming. She went down eventually, but… Shit I was down what—15, 20 bullets. Ever try to reload a gun one handed? Fucking pain in the ass,” he says and laughs but it sounds just as painful as it feels. He stares down at his hospital socks and refuses to look up.
“Did you see anyone else there?”
“Yeah.” He swallows. “The Bakers.”
“Tell me about them.”
He looks up finally to see a stone statue in place of a human. He didn’t look sad, or pitying, or even that interested. He looked almost… bored. Complete clinical disinterest, fulfilling what was merely an obligation of his job. Ethan was almost too shocked to be angry.
This was the single most terrible event Ethan has ever had to live through—a horrifically traumatizing day and a half that would haunt him for the rest of his life. And this man sits in front of him, probing for details like someone might ask about the weather. Did he not believe him, or something? Sure, it sounded fantastical, even to him, but—still!
“You—,” Ethan cut himself off, not even sure what to say. He shakes his head instead, biting his tongue. Don’t piss off the people willing to help you, Ethan. Assholes or not. He sighs heavily, letting his shoulders slump. He refuses to make eye contact. “There were four of them. Jack, Marguerite, Lucas, and Zoe. Eveline too, but she wasn’t—wasn’t a Baker. I don’t really know what she was, but she definitely wasn’t human.”
He remembers hallucinations of a little girl following him and laughing at him, remembers a room covered in mold and slime, a giant mutated face coming towards him, ready to devour him whole. The black, molded tears of an old woman and the voice of a murderous little girl. He shudders.
“Zoe, she was the one that helped Mia and I get out. She wasn’t affected by whatever Eveline did to her family, I don’t know how, or why, but she wasn’t. She led me through the house, gave me help when I needed it, helped me find and make a cure for Eveline’s infection. It made two—one was for her, and the other was for Mia.”
“None for you?”
Ethan turns his head to stare at him. “I wasn’t infected. Why would I need one?”
“Did you know how the infection was transmitted?”
Ethan shrugs, helpless and annoyed. “No, I—they kept saying that I needed to ‘accept her gift’. Maybe it was in the food—they tried to force feed me some shit when I first saw them. I wasn’t exactly stopping to ask them about it,” he said, harshly.
“Right, of course. Continue, please.” The doctor didn’t seem phased at his answer, but the guard in the back shifted his weight, an innocuous gesture that Ethan latches onto quickly. He can’t see the position of the safety on the rifle in his hands.
He continues, trying to stay calm. “…I had to use Zoe’s dose on Jack. He just—he wouldn’t stay dead. I killed him, fuck I don’t even know how many times. I watched him blow his own fucking brains out, and he just got right back up a few minutes later. Eventually, there was barely enough of him left to bring back, he was just some… giant fucking thing crawling around. The cure was the only thing that would keep him down.
“I came back with one syringe, and two people to cure. I… I had to choose Mia,” he said, almost defensively. Like he was justifying himself to the man that likely didn’t give two shits about his moral dilemma. He tried to rationalize his choice, tried to explain it in a way that didn’t leave him heavy with guilt. “She was the only reason I was there in the first place, it wasn’t—I couldn’t just—as soon as we got out I was going to send for help to get Zoe out, but then your team showed up, and—you guys have her right?”
“We still have teams on the ground patrolling the area. If she’s still out there, we’ll find her,” Dr. Smith says, as dispassionate as ever, but one of the most reassuring things Ethan’s heard since he arrived.
He slumps in his seat slightly, relief weighing him down. “Thank you.” He doesn’t think he could face her again, after what he did, what he had to do, but it puts him at ease to know someone is still looking for her and trying to help her.
“This cure you mentioned,” he says, steamrolling past Ethan’s moment of vulnerability. “How did you make it?”
“Oh, I—Zoe had me find these… I don’t know, they looked like little mummies kind of, something called the D-series. Eveline was the E-series. …Makes you wonder what happened to A, B, and C,” he muses out loud, uncomfortable with the thought of more things like Eveline running around.
“Tell me what you know about the D-series.”
“I—well, I don’t really know anything, to be honest. I just sort of picked up what she told me to and handed it off when she asked me to. She’s the one to ask, not me.” The doctor didn’t seem enthused by the answer, so Ethan adds, “You could always search the ship. Most of it was trashed, but there were still some notes in there, they might have what you’re looking for.”
He offers a curt nod. “We have teams searching the grounds,” he repeats, and it sounded like a brush-off.
Ethan grit his teeth, irritated by the response and on edge. He was just trying to help. Screw Ethan and his thoughts, or whatever. Maybe it was just something about this guy that was bothering him—probably the impassive face, maybe the monotone voice. Interrupting him when he spoke was definitely not helping either, that was for sure.
“You mentioned two other Bakers.”
“Right.” He ignored whatever it was that was unique to Dr. Smith that made him super fucking annoying, to continue. “Marguerite and Lucas. Marguerite was—I mean compared to Jack, she was easy to kill. Once she died, she stayed dead. Once I found that flamethrower—” he scoffed, fingers twitching at the memory of the weapon. “Forget about it.”
He remembers the swarms of mosquitoes, each one the size of his head, and the clusters of spiders the size of his fist. He was never much of a bug guy before, but in Dulvey, he would never forget the bone-deep satisfaction he got from lighting up the clouds of insects in a plume of fire.
Ethan could still remember the smell—the burning insects didn’t bother him as much as the smell of Marguerite’s skin catching fire, charring and sloughing off in chunks. He would never be able to forget that.
He shakes himself off quickly and forces himself to keep talking and stop thinking. “Fucking Lucas though—that guy was sick in the head. Seemed like even before everything started happening, he had something wrong with him.” Ethan thinks about the journal entry he found about Oliver. He pushes it away. No need to focus on the details right now. Or ever. “He set up all these bombs across the house, tried to take me out like some knock-off rated R Home Alone bullshit. He got away before I could deal with him.” Ethan grits his teeth remembering the few wires he tripped over, and the mini explosion that sent him reeling for a few minutes at least, each time.
A moment of uncharacteristic silence passes, the doctor examining him like a bug under a microscope. Before he even opens his mouth, Ethan is bracing himself. “You seem to have taken a lot of personal gratification in killing them. Do you consider yourself particularly bloodthirsty?”
He recoils at the words as if he was slapped. “What? I—you—it was just self-defense, I wouldn’t—I’m not some lunatic that gets off on killing people!” He feels righteous anger ignite in his gut, and he feels his palms start to sweat. How dare this fucking doctor even insinuate— “They were trying to kill me; I was just trying to get us out of there!”
“Of course,” Dr. Smith agrees easily, like he had never suggested otherwise. Ethan seethes. “We will have to submit you for a psychological evaluation. After such a traumatic experience, we just want to see where you are, mentally. You understand,” he says decisively. Ethan bristles and decides suddenly, fuck this guy and fuck this interview.
“You can’t just—”
“We can.” He interrupts again. “We can and we will. You will cooperate.”
Ethan falters at the words, and a chill suddenly creeps up his spine, snuffing his anger as it grows, waking the fear that lives deep in his bones. Something isn’t right. His eyes dart between the doctor and the guard, then to the recording cassette tape.
He realizes suddenly he never caught the name of the facility he was brought to. When Redfield and his team showed up and told him to follow, he did. He didn’t think to ask any questions, but now he sort of wishes he did. “Who did you say you worked for again?”
Dr. Smith stands. “That’s enough for today.” He clicks a button on the recorder, and it stops rolling.
Ethan stands too and doesn’t miss the way the guard’s grip on his rifle tightens. He feels dread coil around his throat. “Hey—you didn’t answer my question! Are you listening to me?”
Dr. Smith just smiles, a bland little thing, and it’s the first bit of emotion Ethan’s seen on the man’s face. It’s repulsive. “I will see you tomorrow for your physical, 353-01. I am looking forward to learning much more about you.”
It would be almost a pleasant parting phrase, if it were uttered by any other man, in any other situation. Ethan feels his heart hammering in his chest.
Before he could even open his mouth again, the doctor collected his tape and clipboard and left the room. The guard steps forward and barks at him to move. He’s shepherded through stark white hallways impossible to distinguish from each other, overly aware of the gun to his back. Eventually, he’s brought to the temporary holding cell he has been kept in the past few days.
Now, he’s starting to worry that it might not be so temporary.
He watches the guard latch the barred gate shut and walk away. He’s left alone in his cell, dread and fear coiling tight in his stomach.
What exactly did he get himself into?