Chapter 16 "No Time To Waste"

"What are you doing, Alpha One?!" shouted Grace once again, knowing that William had stopped his movement.

He was shocked to find that two of his mates before, D-1140 and D-1020, had become zombies. Despite the fact that their necks were already contorted to the side, they could still somewhat walk and had a sense like a normal person.

"Captain, we can't afford to stay here much longer. We need to advance, or they'll just keep coming." said one of the guards.

Grace walked towards William and started to grab him by the shoulder, "Get your head together, Alpha One. Remember what we're doing right now."

William's eyes focused once again, and he straightened his gun, "Yeah, sorry. Just shocked to see them again in a very much different situation."

Grace then looked towards the two D-Class that had been turned into zombies. She seemed to understand the situation. She then aimed her gun towards the legs of the two zombies and shot them, immobilizing them.

"Keep moving on, and we're not in a safe place yet."

Grace and the other two guards started to move again, and William followed them shortly. They walked past the two D-Class that had been immobilized and didn't even try to finish them off—leaving them as they continued to go to the bio area.

They continued to run towards many hallways, facing zombies left and right without stopping in order to get to the bio area as fast as they could. Grace ran out of bullets, so she grabbed a fire extinguisher on her path and smashed it as she ran through the horde of zombies. William threw his gun away as he also ran out of bullets and just dodged any incoming attacks.

More and more SCP-049-2 were coming, giving William and the others no time to take them out one by one. They could only make their way through by hitting them to the sides. Some of them even followed William and the others as they tried to run from them as fast as they could.

But there was the door to the bio area, and they had finally arrived in front of the room that could get a lavender for their plan. Grace quickened her pace to get there first and pulled out her security card to swipe it on the door lock. It blinked green. She slid the door open and allowed William and the two other guards to enter the room first before closing the door.

All of them were finally inside the room. She closed the door and held the door from being bashed down. William and the other guards spontaneously reacted by pushing one of the cabinets in the room to barricade the door.

Seeing that they have done it and made it to the bio area, which is safe. They rest for a moment, panting and breathing heavily from running all the way from the other side to here. They could at least catch their breath first before continuing on the job.

But then someone was coming out of the closet in that room, seemingly creeping up on them. William and the others didn't really notice it since they were really tired and didn't even pay attention to their surroundings.

Grace then noticed something was moving behind her, and she instinctively started to grab the fire extinguisher and was about to smash it to that person's face. Before she could land it, a voice could be heard.

"Jesus Christ, stop! Grace, it's me!"

Grace then stopped her hand and looked at that person, and it turned out it was just another researcher that was hiding in this room. The researcher held his hands high as Grace started to put down her fire extinguisher.

"Wilson? What are you doing here?" Grace is seemingly confused. It seems that both of them knew each other.

Wilson put his hands down and said, "Of course, I'm hiding from them. I should be the one to ask that." He then looks at William, who seemingly knew about him at first, "What is he doing here? Isn't he an SCP that should be in his own cell?"

"Don't worry about that, he is with us, Wilson, and he is going to help us to solve the problem with SCP-049." said Grace as she told him about the situation.

Wilson looked at him with a slight feeling of doubt, "Whose idea is that? And how exactly are we going to do that? We're outnumbered, and we don't have many resources to fight back."

"Dr. Erik gave me the permission to do it. He'll take responsibility regarding my action in this situation. I may need everyone's assistance in taking this matter." said William as he tried to reach out his hand to handshake Wilson.

But Wilson didn't shake his hand but instead looked at him seriously, "What do you know about handling SCP-049? There's nothing in here you could use to take him out with force."

"We don't need to use force because we have everything we need here." William pointed to the lavender crop plant in the room.

Wilson looked at the thing that William was trying to point at, and he was surprised that his answer was a lavender flower. He was confused as to how a lavender could be effective against SCP-049, and Wilson looked at him with full of doubt.

"A lavender? Are you joking?" said Wilson with his eyebrows raised.

William shrugged, "Did you really think I would be making a joke in times like this?"

With a full of incredulity in Wilson's mind, he gazed toward Grace and asked about it, "Grace, is he being for real right now? and you believed his words that lavender could work against SCP-049?"

Grace's eyes were still as sharp as before, and she answered, "I have high hopes for his solution. There must be a reason why Dr. Erik would entrust him to do this and by him putting in danger like this is pretty convincing that he trusted that this will work."

"This is nonsense and simply can not be proven that it will work!"

William then walked up to the lavender plot and then looked back at Wilson, "Do you have any better ideas than mine? I'm open to your opinion on how you would handle this situation."

Hearing this, Wilson was left speechless because, one thing for sure, he didn't know how to handle SCP-049 at all. If it were, then he wouldn't have been hiding for safety in the bio area all this time. Seeing that he was cornered and it was pretty much unanimous to what they would do in this situation, Grace and the other two guards started to move on their feet to help William.

"What should we do now, Alpha One?" Grace asked.

William was picking up the lavender flowers that he needed to use later and said, "We're going to make a water solution that's infused with lavender. I need you guys to find something that we could use to boil the water, and we need something to hold the lavender-infused water so that we could use it later."

"Got it. You two go find a container or anything similar for the water and bring it here quickly."

The two guards hurriedly walk around the room to find anything that could be useful for the water solution later. Grace tried to find any equipment to boil the water, and William started picking up the lavender buds to be boiled later.

William then looked at Wilson, who was just standing in the room, doing nothing, "Well, are you going to help us or not?"