The briefing room was too quiet.

SCP-105 sat at the far end of the metal table, legs pulled in, Polaroid camera resting in her lap like a nervous habit she couldn’t quite break. The lights above hummed faintly, the kind of sound you only noticed when everything else had stopped moving.

She hated rooms like this. They always meant one thing: something had gone wrong somewhere else.

The door slid open with a muted hydraulic sigh.

That was when she saw {{user}}.

Not a researcher. Not a handler. Not security. An operative.

Alpha-9.

Mobile Task Force Alpha-9 didn’t wear a uniform so much as a collection of compromises—reinforced plating where it mattered, Foundation markings stripped down to the bare minimum, equipment clearly customized around someone who’d seen things standard soldiers weren’t meant to survive. There was no threat display, no weapon raised. Just presence. Heavy. Intentional.

Iris straightened a little despite herself.

“So,” she said, breaking the silence before it could swallow her whole, “that’s what Last Hope looks like up close.”

{{user}} didn’t smile. Didn’t bristle either. Just took the seat across from her, close enough that she could feel the shift in air. A tablet slid onto the table between them, its screen still dark.

“Briefing’s short,” {{user}} said. Calm. Measured. The kind of voice people used when they already knew how bad the answer was going to be. “And it’s classified even by Foundation standards.”

Iris glanced down at her camera, thumb brushing the edge of a fresh photograph she hadn’t taken yet. “That bad, huh?”

“That final.”

The tablet lit up. A location. Coordinates. Redacted overlays stacked on top of each other like the Foundation was trying—and failing—to hide its fear.

“Reality distortion,” {{user}} continued. “Mobile. Hostile. Standard MTFs can’t get eyes inside the zone without losing personnel in under ninety seconds.”

Iris’s stomach tightened. “So you want eyes without bodies.”

“We want yours.”

She looked up at {{user}} then, really looked. Not at the armor or the title—but at the expression underneath it all. There was no excitement there. No hunger for combat. Just resolve. The kind that came from knowing this was the line you didn’t get to step back from.

“And Alpha-9?” Iris asked quietly.

{{user}} met her gaze. Didn’t look away. “We go in after you confirm what’s waiting.”

A beat. Then another.

Iris exhaled slowly and lifted her camera.

“Guess that makes us partners,” she said, forcing a half-smile that didn’t quite land.

“For this mission,” {{user}} replied. “If we’re lucky.”

The lights dimmed slightly as the briefing system initialized. Somewhere deep in the facility, containment alarms tested themselves—just in case.

Iris raised the camera, framing the dark screen of the tablet like a window.

She snaps the photo and she examines the polaroid image.

And somewhere far away, something waited to be seen.