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“Are you sure you can handle duty with Fourteen Twenty Two?” Doctor Arthur said.
“Why wouldn’t I be able to?” asked John.
“Because, Fourteen Twenty Two is one of the Foundation’s mistakes. It’s what happens when containment goes wrong.” She replied, looking and sounding tired.
“How so?”
“Well, during containment, mistakes were made. The full nature of Fourteen Twenty Two wasn’t known yet, and it was… damaged. Before containment, it was sweet tempered, cheerfully resilient, and downright friendly, if somewhat dumb, credulous, and childish. Now... well, you’ll see. Here's the video orientation.” She popped a CD into the drive of the computer.
A window opened, playing grainy black and white security camera footage. In the footage, six security personnel were attempting to approach a very tall man with very dark skin and very light hair. He stood in an animalistic defensive posture. The video was soundless, but he appeared to be screaming. The security personnel were all wearing ear protection. As they approached the man, tentacles sprang up out of seemingly nowhere, restraining them. While John watched, one of them, a short woman with a pinched face, nearly broke free, but failed. Once the tentacles regained their grip on her, she was torn limb from limb. Doctor Arthur paused the video there.
“It’s vicious. Feral. It fears and hates us. It won’t believe anything we say, and it attacks at every opportunity. Mix that with its abilities, and you’ve got a potential Keter class artifact. The next bit is an example of why you should never even mention Doctor Arias within earshot of it.” Arthur un-paused the video, and the scene changed.
Now the footage was in full color, and showed an interview setting, still with no sound. There was soundproof Plexiglas separating the interviewer, a female doctor that John didn’t know, and the very tall man with very dark skin and very light hair. John could now see that its skin was a dark purple, and its hair a bright and dazzling white, as were its eyes. All three of them. When subtitles appeared at the bottom of the screen, it seemed to be a clip from the middle of the interview log, and for a moment, John was confused. Then, in the background, John saw a man that he recognized as Doctor Arias.
Instantly, the demeanor of SCP-1422 changed. Whereas before it had been slumped morosely in the provided chair, ignoring any questions typed on the communication tablets, it now whipped its head up, and practically flew to the Plexiglas, slamming its entire body against it. 1422 opened its mouth in a soundless roar, and the security feed shook, as if in an earthquake. In fact, everything on the screen shook. The interviewer’s ears were bleeding, and so were Doctor Arias’s. The interviewer ducked and covered her head, but Arias simply froze, a pained expression on his face. Pain mixed with… guilt?
1422 began manifesting its trans-dimensional limbs. Not just tentacles this time, but huge bird-like claws and giant fanged mouths. All of these attacked Doctor Arias. However, it seemed, not with the intention of actually hurting him.
Then John noticed that 1422 was shouting words at Arias, though they hadn’t been subbed in. But John fancied himself a capable lip-reader, and he was curious, oh so curious.
‘…perfection filled with perfect lies! We welcomed you! I loved you! And you destroyed us perfectly! You severed our connection perfectly, took me from my home and destroyed us! You were perfect! Perfect! Perfect! You perfect bastard!’
The thing spat out the word perfect like it was an insult. By this point, the Plexiglas was cracked, allowing Arias to hear every word. He flinched each time 1422 said “perfect,” so maybe it was some kind of insult.
The video ended there, and the Foundation logo danced on the screen.
“All this is making me curious as to what happened when we brought Fourteen Twenty Two in,” John said, turning to Doctor Arthur.
“That is so classified that not even my supervisor’s supervisor is cleared to know it.” she replied, with a sardonic chuckle.
“But the upside is, we took a creature with trans-dimensional properties, a powerfully mind affecting voice, and possibly unconscious reality warping powers, and taught it to hate us?” John asked, just to be clear.
“Yup,” Arthur replied.
“Wow. Go us.”