The Metal Coffin

"In order to defeat SCP-3125, you must first suffer from schizophrenia!" Zhang Jue suddenly snapped his fingers, unusually excited.

Yang Xue looked at him, and only after a few seconds was he sure he wasn't joking. Only Zhang Jue that could do this kind of brainstorm. She doesn't have anything to oblige his words. If she had to be serious, this could be really the solution. She could only sigh helplessly.

"Come on, I'm just saying." Zhang Jue hummed.

"But then again, what would it take to make yourself suffer from schizophrenia?"

They searched this room carefully again and found that there were no more useful clues other than these books. The time was 2:40 AM. They have been in this room for more than an hour. The wind outside also gradually decreased. It looks like the storm will stop in less than an hour.

It was no longer realistic to try to find the dark figure, it was enough time for it to run around the building. But they found such an important clue and there was no time left. The three of them discussed that since they had already searched so carefully, they might as well search all the remaining rooms to see if there would be any other discoveries.

Just as they were about to leave the room, Zhang Jue suddenly felt a chill at his back. He looked back and that only saw the dark figure right at the doorway of the room, hidden in the darkness of the corridor, watching them silently.

Loris was startled and let out a scream Yang Xue covered her mouth. Zhang Jue looked at it, and it looked at the three of them. Zhang Jue tilted his head. The figure also tilted its head. Zhang Jue waved his hand at it, and it lifted up and waved back. Zhang Jue took a step forward, and it took a step back. It did not seem to be hostile.

Zhang Jue said, "Can you understand me?"

The figure did not respond. It didn't look like it could communicate. The two confronted each other for two minutes. The black shadow retreated and disappeared into the darkness.

"Why don't you go after it?" Loris said, "Aren't we here to find it?"

"Didn't you see it deliberately keep its distance from us?" Zhang Jue said, "We've already met once, and it knows that I can't catch it at that distance. Especially now it's early in the morning."

Yang Xue frowned, "What exactly is it?"

"I don't know." Zhang Jue shook his head, "But it looks like it's conscious. I hope it's not an enemy."

...

The three searched all the remaining rooms again, but no more clues were found, and there was no sign of the dark figure. It looked like it had hidden somewhere else.

The sound of the wind had gradually ceased. It looked like the big storm was going to stop soon. Zhang Jue and others went back to the first floor. They returned to the room where the researchers were kept. Zhang Jue took out some water from the Pocket Dimension, and Loris opened their mouths and fed them in small sips.

In the middle of the desert, they would be able to hold out for a while without food. But without water, it would be difficult. After this torment, it was already five in the morning, the sky outside has begun to dawn.

Loris was leaning against the wall, probably thinking about her father. Zhang Jue found a chair and leaned on it to fake sleep. Yang Xue took the book on schizophrenia and studied it carefully. It had a lot of Yang Wensong's handwriting on it. She hoped she could find some more clues.

Zhang Jue opened his eyes and said to her, "Rest for a while. I know your father is powerful, but it seems that they should have failed now. SCP-3125 was not contained, and you don't need to keep your eyes on that book."

Yang Xue nodded her head. Knowing that what Zhang Jue said was the right thing to do. If Father had succeeded, then this was definitely not what this place had become.

"What should we do next?" Yang Xue asked.

Zhang Jue cupped his chin, thought for a moment, and said, "This site is too big, with the three of us there is no way we'll find a way back."

He pointed to the researchers lying on the ground, "There are so many people here, it doesn't matter if there's no food. If it goes on like this, they'll be dehydrated."

Is this the end? Yang Xue sighed.

Because Zhang Jue had said before that he couldn't call for help until he had contain SCP-3125 again, otherwise more people would get caught up in it. I don't know why he had changed his mind. But after tossing and turning for so long, Yang Xue was also tired. So she leaned her head.

They rested for a while, and by now the sky was already bright. The storm outside had also completely stopped. They came to the main building's door. They found that the door was mostly blocked by sand. Zhang Jue told them to stand back and used his sword to break the door.

The sand flowed into the hall before they had room to climb out through the upper part of the door. The sand was so strong at night that it blocked the three buildings. A very high sand dune still formed in the square outside.

The doors on the left and right sides had been completely blocked. If they hadn't chosen this building, it might have taken some effort to get out. Although the sandstorm had stopped, there was still a lot of sand in the air and the whole sky was yellow.

When traveling in this kind of weather, it was impossible to distinguish the direction. The three of them arrived above the sand dunes.

Zhang Jue was looking around when Yang Xue suddenly pointed at the stone tablet with the word Site-237 engraved on it and shouted, "Look, guys. What is that?"

Zhang Jue fixed his eyes and looked at it. He saw that behind the monument was someone, probably because of the cyclone, where the sandstorm had formed a whirlwind. Other places were buried by sand dunes, but there was only a pit there.

Inside the pit, there seemed to be a person huddled there, unknown whether its dead or not.

Who was that?

Too late to think, the three immediately ran over. The man crouched behind the stone monument, half of his body has been buried by the sand. Zhang Jue dragged him out of the sand. It was a white man with curly blond hair.

Seeing his face, Loris let out a shriek, "Kiddo! It's Kiddo, he's the one who lured us outside the toilet!"

Zhang Jue looked at her, "Are you sure?"

Loris nodded. What a way to get it. Zhang Jue gave small laugh and lifted Kiddo in his hands like a chicken, and the three of them returned to the main building. Zhang Jue dropped him on the floor, and Yang Xue immediately went up and rolled his eyelids and shone a flashlight into his pupils.

"He's not in the same condition as those people." Yang Xue frowned, "He seems to be just in a normal coma."

When Zhang Jue heard her say that, he immediately thought something.

"Ordinary coma, it's not easy to wake him up." Yang Xue was wondering how he was going to do it.

Only to see Zhang Jue lift Kiddo up, lean against the wall, and give him a slap on the back.

"Don't do that, he's very weak right now."

Yang Xue wanted to stop it, but it was too late. Zhang Jue's slap landed solidly on Kiddo's face. Yang Xue sighed and didn't say anything, it wasn't the first day she knew Zhang Jue anyway and Loris didn't step forward to stop it.

"Aheugh..."

After Zhang Jue's slap went down, Kiddo coughed twice and actually woke up.

...

After a night of sandstorm. Sand dunes of varying heights had formed in the square in front of the three buildings. In the shadow behind that monolith, Zhang Jue found Kiddo's body.

According to Loris, it was he who had disappeared in the first place, luring the researchers who remained in the main building to the toilet corridor, where they were all eventually dazed. He was still here when Yang Xue had just discovered them. Yet by the time Zhang Jue returned, he had disappeared. For a moment, Zhang Jue thought he would be hidden until the end. He hadn't expected to be discovered so quickly.

He was just plain unconscious. Zhang Jue didn't think about his words and slapped him in the face. Kiddo's face instantly moved, coughed twice and gradually turned awake.

"Water... I need water..."

Kiddo begged. Loris looked at Yang Xue, who in turn looked at Zhang Jue. Zhang Jue nodded before Loris handed the water bottle she was holding to Kiddo's mouth. Kiddo didn't care about the mud in his mouth and instinctively drank it, gulping it down very hard.

Zhang Jue stepped forward and snatched the water bottle off. It was very dangerous to take in so much water at once after dehydration.

"Okay, that's enough water for you. Time to tell us who you really are." Zhang Jue said.

"Who am I...?" Hearing Zhang Jue's words, Kidd froze, "I, I don't remember..."

Come on, another one with memory loss.

Zhang Jue snapped his fingers.

"Dr. Yang, prepare the memory enhancer!"

Yang Xue nodded, anticipating such a situation, and she skillfully drew a bottle of X Class memory enhancer and injected it into Kiddo's body. A few minutes later, Kiddo's memory slowly recovered.

"Loris? What's wrong with you in here?" He said weakly, "Where's Supervisor Gray and where are the others?"

"No! No! No!" interrupted Zhang Jue, shaking his finger, "You don't have the right to ask questions, we're the one who's asking. Loris said that two days ago, after we set out to explore the building on the right. You disappeared, so Kiddo-san, please answer me. What did you experience during that time?"

"I…" Kiddo covered his forehead and began to remember in pain. "I wanted to go to the bathroom, then suddenly I saw a black figure. I tried to chase it, but it ran very fast. I followed it in circles inside each room, but I could never catch him."

"Nuh-uh!" Zhang Jue suddenly interrupted him. "Describe the dark figure."

Kiddo struggled to remember. "I didn't get a good look either, except that he felt as if he had no feet, floating in the air and ran quickly."

His description was the same as the one Zhang Jue and the others had encountered, the same appearance. But I don't know if it was the same one.

Zhang Jue nodded and asked again, "After you encountered that dark figure, why didn't you ask for help from the others?"

"I asked for help." Kiddo said, "I reported the situation on the walkie-talkie, but no one paid attention to me."

"You're lying!" Loris retorted, "I stayed with the others, the walkie-talkie didn't even ring. We contacted you through the walkie-talkie, and we couldn't get through!"

"Loris, believe me, I didn't lie."

"All right, all right." Zhang Jue waved his hand in annoyance. "Continue on."

Kiddo coughed a few times and continued, "Then I followed it into a room where I saw a man with his back to me, as if he was looking out the window at something. Immediately afterwards I smelled a pungent odor and fainted."

"The room? Do you remember which one it was?"

"I remembered." Kidd nodded, "It was just around the corner on the second floor."

Based on Kiddo's memory, they came to the room in the far corner of the second floor. The room is not large, the original seems to be a file room, but now it has all been emptied. Only a pile of empty shelves left. Kiddo is still very weak, just a few steps has been taken all of his energy.

He pointed to the window and said, "At that time, that person was looking down from here."

Yang Xue suddenly asked, "Do you remember the man's back? Even a little detail."

Kidd took a few gasps of air and said, "I remember, he had black hair like you guys!"

Black hair? Zhang Jue and Yang Xue looked at each other. Their hearts thumped, but they very tacitly did not speak. Zhang Jue followed Kiddo's words and stood by the window to see what he could see there. But the visibility outside wasn't great at this point.

Zhang Jue squinted his eyes and looked out hard. "Huh? There seems to be something there?"

He got closer to the window and found that just outside, a corner of something had turned up under a blown-out patch of sand. Yang Xue also came over and looked at it for a few seconds before nodding her head.

"It seems to be a coffin!"

"You guys stay here, I'll go check it out!" Zhang Jue said to Yang Xue.

Seeing Zhang Jue's meaningful look, Yang Xue nodded her head. Knowing that he wanted her to stay and watch on Loris and Kiddo. Zhang Jue dashed out of the room in a flash, afraid that if he was any later, that coffin would be flooded with sand.

After Zhang Jue left. Kiddo coughed violently for a while, and Yang Xue gave him a few more sips of water before things got a little better. Yang Xue didn't see that a smile of unknown significance actually appeared at the corner of his mouth as he bent down to cough.

...

Zhang Jue came out of the main building and ran wildly all the way in the direction he had seen, and indeed he saw a coffin made of metal. A foot was exposed in the desert, glowing with the characteristic light of metal. If last night's sandstorm hadn't blown all the sand away to form dunes and depressions, it was something they might never have seen.

The metal coffin was heavy, and Zhang Jue, whose physical qualities were close to superhuman, dug for a long time before he could dig the coffin out from under the sand. The entire surface of the coffin was glowing with a cold light and hadn't suffered a bit of wear, so I didn't know what kind of material it was made of.

How is he going to open it?

This thing is tightly sealed, Zhang Jue turned it over a few times, and didn't see where the switch is. If it wasn't for some patterns on it, Zhang Jue would have thought it was just a big, useless lump of iron. Zhang Jue cupped his chin and puzzled over it for a while, but still had no way out. He summoned his long sword and prepared to use force.

"Wait a minute." Yang Xue's voice came.

They probably came down when they saw that Zhang Jue had no way to do anything about this thing.

"I have a way to open it!" Yang Xue said, " I've seen it on my father's manuscript, this thing is using fingerprint identification."

Yang Xue said, pressed at all four corners, and sure enough, a palm print appeared in the center of the metal pipe. Presumably, it needed someone's palm print.

"So that's how it is. Dr. Yang, we don't know whose palm print is needed either." Zhang Jue chortled and placed his palm casually on that palm print identifier, "It's better to rely on my sword."

However, as soon as his words left his mouth, the metal pipe made a bared sound and unexpectedly opened slowly to the sides.