One of Many

One of Many

A short tale by DjPika

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Brady was an optimistic soul; he writes, he paints, he draws, he spends time with his wife and son. That optimism was lost when the Foundation came to his door. The omnipotent organization offered him a paycheck no man could resist for such a small task: standing guard at a door for several hours a day until the next guard took over and to not ask questions. And so he enlisted in the Foundation, went to the listed facility, to the T-section hallway, and stood guard in front of a door that read in large blue lettering “Containment Control Room - L-4 Clearance”.

Brady never spoke a word, scientists and fellow soldiers going to and fro the plain colourless corridors of the facility’s enigmatic layout. He didn’t ask about the job at all. Not to the woman in the warm, red top hat and matching suit; not to the woman whose hand she held, wearing a tank top, cargo pants, and a sniper rifle strapped to her back; not to the little girl that tried to keep up with them as she tried to hold a conversation with the red-suited woman about “Silly Cup Production”; not to the blonde girl in the white beanie who carried a clipboard in one hand, and a book in the other; not even to the man in the trench coat that had a cat’s tail sticking below it and a cowl hood that covered the man’s cat ears who scurried to catch up with the group! Brady simply stood beside the door, gun in hand, the only words echoing in his mind: the instructions he was given; the only thoughts in his head: of his family; and the only things he could imagine: the fiery, orange sunsets and skies he’d paint once he got home and resumed his normal life. He thought of the puppy he promised to buy his son after the day’s shift was done.

The next shift’s guard was running about nine minutes late, when a man in a black suit turned to the door he guided, and without warning, produced a phillips-head screwdriver and plunged it into the keypad with a great force, enough to cause smoke and sparks to fly and the door to malfunction and force open! Brady turned to him, gun pointed and yelled the robotic phrase that he’d been dreading to say until this very moment, “Identify yourself; this is a restricted area for Level Four clearance holders onl-” before being shoved to the wall by the well-dressed man with superhuman force.

The man sneered, “I’m Nobody,” before shoving Brady to the floor, his ribs broken and immobilized from the ceaseless pain. He went into the room that not a single person had entered during the day, and left Brady injured in the now empty hallway. Brady waited for help for several minutes, yelling for assistance that would not come. He eventually heard footsteps from the corridor, though there were many and all were hurried, as a herd of scientists adorn in white, flowing lab coats scrambled through the limited space of the halls, a red glow and ear-bursting siren accompanying them. The cat-eared man lead the pack, followed by the blonde girl who was carrying the child half way through the other unknown scientists he’d never get to know, and at the very back was the soldier woman. She had the sniper in hand as she retreated, occasionally stopping to take a shot at whatever pursued them behind the corner. Collapsed over her shoulder, the woman in red, now comatose, though Brady couldn’t get a good look as they retreated too soon.

Adrenaline began to fill him more than his existing pain as he stood up and dashed down the halls after them, a roar coming from immediately behind him. He was ten, seven, four, two corners to turn before he could reach the exit as new sirens filled the air, a warning over the intercoms that the blast doors would shut soon and the omega warheads were now prepped to go off in one minute. He sprinted to the closing blast metal doors, his injury the least of his worries as another roar and screech came from behind. He turned as he made a mad dash for the opening he could barely pass through, the last thing he sees being a large set of teeth suddenly tearing into him as the doors closed and a distant explosion began to fill the rooms he had just ran through.

Sadly, he would never draw another sketch of squirrels in the trees or the orange sunset contrasting the everblue sky. Not one would glance at Brady’s name in the Foundation’s casualty list from the breach nor their newspaper’s obituary. His family didn’t even know he died, much less existed; only knowing a group called the “Foundation” had paid them for “a debt you know nothing of,” thanks to their amnestics and other memory-manipulating technologies. Brady is nothing but another forgotten loss by all. Secure. Contain. Protect.

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Author’s Note: Hallooooo! :3 It’s Angelika, aka Pika, here! I hoped you all enjoyed. I know I promised that a sequel to my In Full Bloom would be next, but I had written this up during math class for a small challenge, which is to use certain words that were randomly chosen to write a short story (I was the only one who did more than two to four sentences .///.’). Not going to lie, that’s actually a good way to come up with ideas for writing a tale, as I used it here and in In Full Bloom, though the words here were much simpler and more common that “conflagration” and whatnot. The words that I had to use in this challenge were: squirrel, blue, puppy, orange, paint, and Brady. Yeah, I named the protagonist after a requirement on my list rather than my brother of the same name… Sorry bruh! >^<

Anyways, make sure to check out other works by me! And look forward to that sequel; I’ve been writing the rough draft for it in class (and it is currently nine pages long and not even halfway through the plotline I had also written out for it! To give you a bit of perspective, this story was exactly two pages in its rough draft!) The sequel will be called Wilting Relations and will be the second in what I call The Rosebud Trilogy (named after the main character, Rose). Yes, all the stories in the trilogy will be named after plants, because that is, like, a theme in it :0 Also, make sure you join the official ROBLOX group “SCP Foundation - Book Club”, where I will upload my and other author’s tales in order to get the word out about them (because apparently the group is more focused on promoting sites than promoting the very thing this group is centred on, literature! >.< Cringe all you’d like to that fact). If you have a tale, share it with me! I’d love to give it a read and put it up on the group’s wall! Anyways, have a good one! :P