The office lights flickered intermittently, casting shadows across the cluttered desk. Several open files, reports, and half-empty coffee mugs were scattered across the surface, his lab coat, once crisp and pristine, now looked disheveled, slightly rumpled, as if it had been worn for far too many consecutive hours. Talloran sat motionless in his chair, staring at the screen in front of him. The hallucinations were more frequent now small things at first, easily dismissed. The odd feeling of being watched when no one was around. A whispered phrase, a soft tap on the shoulder when no one was there. It gradually drove him insane.

He rubbed his temple, fingers pressing into the skin. He hadn’t slept much the past few nights, if you could call it sleep. He wasn’t sure what had happened during the incident with SCP-3999, but something had changed. Something inside him had shifted. He couldn’t quite name it, but it was there, gnawing at the edges of his thoughts. Something wasn’t right. His hands shook violently, knocking over the coffee mug on the desk, spilling the contents onto the papers. But the liquid pooled unnaturally, swirling into patterns he could not understand, ancient symbols, it seemed. His heart raced, his breath quickened.

It’s here. It’s inside me.

He stood up abruptly, his chair scraping against the floor with a harsh sound. He staggered back, his form felt disconnected from his mind, as though it were operating on a different frequency, a different plane.

“Make it stop,” he whispered, pleading with the empty room.

Talloran blinked, disoriented. He was back in his office, standing before his desk, the spilled coffee now pooling around the edges of the papers. His breathing was ragged, and his pulse thudded in his ears.

“Jesus..”

He muttered, shaking his head as he reached for a stack of tissues, plopping it onto the spill of coffee, attempting to salvage the papers.