Chapter 15 "Make Every Shot Count"

Grace pondered, hearing such a thing could be done, "We can actually do that?"

"Yes. Which I assume you don't, by the looks of it? How does the current procedure made by the Foundation when it comes to handling SCP-049?" William was a bit curious regarding that information.

Grace was a bit reluctant to say it because certain information could not be shared with other personnel that has a low clearance level, but this was not the time for such matters.

"The Foundation heavily relies on using sedation to control SCP-049. However, it is only used when we're about to move him out or for any other activities. We're allowed to use force when he's in a hostile state, and we use rubber bullets to neutralize or at least paralyze SCP-049's movement while not creating a substantial harm to him. After we managed to paralyze him, we could sedate him to relax his nerves and put him back in his containment cell."

Seeing that was the case, William seemed to have realized something about the current SCP Foundation. Some information that they have seems outdated, and the timeline of events in this world doesn't seem to add up with the information that he read in his world regarding the SCP Foundation.

With that in mind, he has a little bit of an advantage on how to take care of things in this world, especially in times like this on how to handle SCP-049.

William starts to reload his gun as he asks the question, "So how did that go?"

Grace was a bit ashamed that everything didn't go as planned. She said, "The situation was worse than we could have expected. We thought only a few of SCP-049-2 were present at the time of containment breach, but we didn't expect that it would evolve to something dangerous."

William finished his reload and asked, "What do you mean by that?"

"It was a mistake on our part." She said, "The Foundation gave SCP-049 one dead body from a D-Class personnel after they died from doing their job. Of course, this was to give the SCP-049 a subject to be experimented upon. But we didn't think that he had put something on the subject."

Grace gazes her attention toward one of the SCP-049-2 bodies that were lying on the ground, "One of the subjects or D-Class that underwent SCP-049's surgery had a delayed effect. We thought it was just a failed surgery made by him that had no result, but we were wrong. When the subject was brought into the mortuary for them to be cremated, it started to live by itself. On top of that, that subject could infect any other dead bodies that were lying around in the mortuary to be turned into SCP-049-2. Hence why the number of SCP-049-2 appearances kept piling up as they could infect any personnel with ease."

Hearing about this information, William was a bit shocked at how different the anomalous effects of SCP-049 were towards any other personnel. Certainly, handling SCP-049 itself was already a hard thing to do, let alone a horde of zombies that could infect anyone else.

She continued, "That's why until now, this site was in an emergency lockdown to minimize SCP-049-2 appearances as we tried to handle the main culprit of this whole situation."

Now that William knew about the whole situation of the problem, he holstered his gun, "Thank you for the information. Now that I have fully understood the status quo, I need your help on handling SCP-049. We don't need to use any force when it comes to handling him."

Grace was puzzled about what he meant about that and asked, "How are you supposed to do that? Especially when SCP-049 is hostile, and there's a lot of SCP-049-2 wandering around this place."

William showed a small grin on his face and immediately answered, "A scent of lavender."

Witnessing his answer, Grace and the other guards were confused about how it would work against SCP-049.

"The scent of lavender could work against SCP-049. It would loosen his nerve and make his hostility to be diminished. That's how we are going to fight SCP-049."

Looking at their reaction, they seem not to believe William's words when it comes to how he will handle SCP-049. In fact, it could be considered as nonsensical that the scent of lavender could solve the problem.

"I'm sorry, not to mean that your whole solution is weird. But how do you know that it's going to work?" Grace asked.

"Because I know about it. If I weren't, then why would I risk my own life to be in this situation, knowing that I'll be fine most of the time in my cell?" said William. He then continued, "Look, all we needed to do was to find anything that has a scent of lavender and spray it on SCP-049. After that, this situation can be handled easily."

One of the guards raised his hand and asked, "How exactly are we going to find anything that has a scent of lavender, especially on this site?"

Grace instinctively answered, "We have a biological area where we have our own hydroponic garden for our needs. One of which was a lavender flower that we often use to extract its oil."

"Then what are we waiting for? We should go there hastily and end this madness quickly." said William knowing that they finally had a place to find the lavender for them to use.

"The bio area is on the other wing of this site. It would take us a long way to go there, not counting how many SCP-049-2 were in that area. It better be work when we have to put ourselves in a more dangerous situation by just doing that." Grace prepared her Glock, seemingly ready to rush into the place.

"Trust me. It will." William also prepared his gun, "How many bullets do you guys have?"

"Not much. This is my last magazine." said Grace

"We've depleted most of our bullets on our way out here. We can only use our baton to fight for now." said one of the guards.

Seemingly that they were short on weapons for them to self-defense, William came up with a plan, "Alright, here's what we are going to do. Captain Grace and I are going to shoot those zombies on the foot to immobilize them, and both of you are going to finish it by bashing them in the head. We have to make count of our bullets, and this is all we have left, got it?"

All of them nodded and proceeded to go with that plan. William, Captain Grace, and the other two guards prepared their weapons before going to the right wing of Site-199. There was no going back, and this was their only chance to end this chaos immediately.

"Captain Grace, please lead our way." said William

Grace nodded and then started to point the direction with two of her fingers. With that, they started to run towards the bio area as their main objective.

Upon entering the first hallway on their way there, they encountered some of the zombies that were wandering around on the path. William and Grace instinctively shot their legs to immobilize them, and the two guards behind them knocked their heads out with their batons.

It continues as they run through every single hallway, making an opening for them to go through without even stopping while taking out the zombies due to their combined effort of immobilizing and finishing the zombies.

But then William stopped for a moment, seemingly a bit shocked by what he just saw with the zombies in front of him. Grace and the other guards also stopped for a moment, knowing that William had slowed down his movement.

"Alpha One, why are you stopping?!" shouted Grace while looking back at William.

He looked at two of the zombies that were present in the hallway, seemingly familiar with the looks of it.

It was D-1020 and D-1140.