Chapter 37

Michael quickly hopped off the counter, sloppy joe covering his back alongside the crossbow and the golden knife he had sheathed at his side. He also wore a small stone ring with archaic symbols on his pointer finger.

Another change was the small diamond shaped sign that was strapped to his upper arm. Cloth was wrapped around the whole thing, preventing anyone from seeing it. It was the same one that had stunned the apostle.

Michael brushed the food off himself and apologized for ruining the lunch before he disappeared with a flash of light.

The lunch ladies and scientists stared at the ruined food with distaste.

"Man, fuck that guy."

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Michael teleported to his room, took a long shower and sprawled out on his couch.

That shift had been lucrative, but extremely dangerous. If one of those bolts had hit the crown then they very well could have killed him.

But then again it's possible it wouldn't have even scratch it. For obvious reasons testing its durability seemed like a terrible idea.

The crossbow had filled in his weakness for ranged combat, and the ring made his skin more durable. He couldn't get the knife to do anything when he held it, but that was probably because his crown negated its effects on him.

But it was able to cut through a bulletproof vest, so replacing his current knife with it would still be a plus.

Getting all the new items was good and all, but the fact he had to kill another apostle for them left a bad taste in Michael's mouth. Why did Order go out of his way to have apostles visit the same dimension, and why did he make sure they had roughly equivalent combat power.

Maybe he was trying to do some sort of forged in fire thing where the strong became stronger through strife, but it almost seemed like he just wanted them to die. If he wanted to strong to grow stronger, and the weak to stay weak then leaving the matchups up to chance was the best way to go about it.

Making the matchups fair practically guaranteed that at least one apostle would die. Possibly both if it went poorly.

Using this logic he had something to gain from their deaths, or something to fear from them living.

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Hearthgrieve came in about half a day after Michael had returned from the shift. He looked tired.

"Good evening Michael. I'm going to need you to visit site 12, here's a simple description of the location. It would seem the upper brass have something they want you to do there."

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Several days later Michael was being escorted through site 12. The facility wasn't any different from the other ones he'd already been to.

At the moment he was being escorted by a scientist.

"There's a test we still need you to go through. I wouldn't worry too much about it though, it's rather simple."

Michael narrowed his eyes, "What kind of test is it exactly? If this is anything like the last one I won't let y'all off so easily."

"Oh relax would ya, this one's easy. We just want to have one of our associates take a look at you. This is the final hurdle you need to jump through before we can really begin to do some good."

Michael sighed, "Which SCP is it?"

"SCP-187"

"The one that can predict the future?"

"The very one."

With that he opened the doors to a sparsely decorated cell where a pale woman somewhere in her mid twenties sat.

Her eyes immediately widened upon seeing Michael, and he could see her visibly shaking as he got near her.

She quickly shuffled away to the far wall, tripping over her own feet in the process.

Under her breath he could hear her muttering curses and calling him a monster, which he thought was somewhat rude.

The guard quickly got between him and her.

"That's enough Michael, thank you for taking the time to come down here. Please step out of the room and somebody will be down to guide you."

Michael's eyes shifted from the girl and back to the guard.

He hesitated for a moment. He needed to know what she'd seen. He could ask Keith to read her mind, but this seemed like an opportunity he'd use to fuck him over.

He needed to hear what she'd seen from her own mouth.

"Move out of the way, I want to hear what this lovely lady here has to say."

The man hesitated, but after several moments stepped aside.

"Good choice, you almost just got a one way trip to the middle of Ohio."

Michael cautiously approached the girl.

"Hi there, can you tell me what you saw when you looked at me? Once you tell me I'll leave you alone."

A few moments passed, and she didn't look back towards him, but she eventually started talking with her head still buried in her arms.

She was kinda screwy.

"...I saw you wearing that mask at your side. Y-you were covered in blood. You were standing on so many bodies. Jesus, there were so many bodies. Just what are you?"

Michaels's eyes shot towards Keith. It was a good thing he'd asked her personally. He seriously doubted Keith would have told him this little tidbit.

"How accurate are her predictions?"

"We haven't had a single one turn out to be wrong yet."

"Well shit."

The guard hesitates for a moment before picking up a polaroid camera sat atop his desk.

"Well thanks for making the trip out here Michael, I just need to take a picture of you for the paperwork and then you can be on your way."

The guard aimed the camera, but before he could take the picture Michael teleported behind him with a flash of light. He quickly swiped the camera from the guard and took a picture of the man.

The picture came out a second later and showed the guard at home with his arm wrapped around someone that looked to be his wife.

Well this was a relief. This thing was probably SCP-978, the camera that showed someone's desires through its pictures.

Chuckling, Michael tossed the camera back to the guard.

"Sorry about that buddy, I just had to make sure that thing wasn't going to vaporize me or something."

"You don't have a lot of faith in the foundation do you?"

"Nope."

The scientist once again raised the camera and Michael struck a pose. The camera flashed, a couple seconds later began to print out a picture.

The scientist looked at the picture with traces of confusion on his face.

"Either your mind is concerningly scrambled or your crown is interfering with the camera."

He handed Michael the picture, which depicted thousands of different things happening all at once. The images layered atop each other to create an indescribable blob of color.

"Huh, weird."

Michael turned to walk out of the room, but stopped as he reached the door.

"It's safe to assume that this experiment is being recorded, and that the higher ups are going to watch it. So I guess I should make something clear. If her predictions are one hundred percent accurate then there's no point in making a move against me. It's likely this will happen off planet anyways, but the more shit you try to pull only increases the likelihood it will happen on this planet."

With that Michael teleported away with a flash of light.

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Several days later Michael was instructed to teleport to a foundation site located out in the middle of nowhere.

It had to do with disposing of an SCP that they claimed would easily destroy the world if it was left unattended. They didn't go into many specifics past that, but they did promise that it wouldn't hurt him during the process. So there was that.

They hadn't brought up the girl's prediction yet, so that was good. But it was very likely it would come back to bite him in the ass at some point. Hopefully they'd take his advice to heart.

Michael sighed and took a quick glance at a picture of the facility he needed to go to, and in the next moment he appeared out in front of their gate where a rather scrawny scientist was waiting to greet him.

"A pleasure to meet you Michael. If you'll follow me inside we can get this settled with."

"Whatever gets this over with quicker."

Michael followed the scientist deeper into the facility. He was led through winding halls until he arrived at a door marked with SCP-871. Another one that his notes had failed to mention.

The scientist swiped his card and the door slid open, revealing an extremely long table where roughly two hundred cakes sat.

Michael raised an eyebrow.

"Cake, really? This is the world ending SCP y'all are having me get rid of?"

"Appearances can be deceiving. These cakes duplicate if they aren't eaten every twenty four hours, and even if they are eaten they just come back the next day. We believe they can do this infinitely. I'm sure you can see how this would be a problem."

A grim picture of cake covering the earth filled Michael's mind.

"Yeah, I can see how that'd be an issue."

"Anyhow, I've been told you can infect living creatures. We've prepared some mice for you. I'm sure you can guess what we need you to do."

Michael cracked his knuckles and got to work.

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The week flew by before Michael knew it.

The only major change was that the foundation now had a strict rule of not touching him unless absolutely necessary since the shifts seemed to be becoming more regular.

It was a concerning issue, but what could he really do about it? Nothing at the moment at least.

Regardless, the next shift came a week and two days since he'd returned from the last one. Space unexpectedly opened up and swallowed Michael as he was walking down to the shooting range. Throwing him into a new world.

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In the next dimension space distorted out in an open field, tossing Michael unceremoniously onto the ground. But this time he didn't even have time to take in his surroundings.

Sunlight fell upon his skin like acid, melting away at his flesh. He could sense his soldiers in far worse states than him, and the mice transporting the cakes had died almost instantly.

He looked towards the sky and the sun stared down at him, but it felt different. Like somebody had breathed life into it, and he meant that literally.

The sun blazed high up in the sky unyielding, and off in the distance Michael could hear the cries of people approaching.

"Fresh blood for the sun! Come and bask in its glow, embrace its light!"