The suffocating tension in the chat group was palpable.
As Hughes had realized—SCP-3125 was unlike any anti-meme before it.
It didn't just alter memories.
It killed anyone who knew of its existence.
Every containment attempt would end in death.
Then—O5-8 spoke, shifting the atmosphere entirely.
"Your team once theorized that SCP-3125, while the strongest memetic threat observed, may not be the apex of the hierarchy."
"You suggested it might be possible to synthesize a counter-meme—an anti-meme an order of magnitude stronger, designed solely to neutralize SCP-3125, under our control."
Hughes' expression froze.
"That would take... it's theoretically possible. But the risks—" His voice tightened. "Decades of work. Total isolation. A lab the size of a launch facility. Wait—"
Then it hit him.
"It's already built."
His eyes widened. "The lab—completed twenty years ago. We sent our best researchers in. It's done. That's why we're here. We've figured out how to deploy the counter-meme."
A shadow crossed his face.
"Am I... right?"
O5-8's reply was a hammerblow.
"The lab is real. Construction finished 48 hours ago. The team was amnesticized and disbanded. But the work hasn't started. That's what this meeting is about."
Hughes staggered.
"...My people went there."
To a suicide mission.
"They're in the bunker, waiting," said Li, Hughes' superior. "We've prepared your cover story. You'll be declared dead. It's time to go underground."
The audience recoiled.
This was a death sentence.
Hughes' face drained of color. "Now? No—I have doubts."
"Your team volunteered," Li said coldly. "Name one other person alive with the skills to do this."
Hughes couldn't.
There was no one else.
Sherlock Holmes Universe
Holmes' eyes narrowed.
"Something's wrong."
Watson blinked. "What?"
"Li. He's—"
Before Holmes could finish, the betrayal unfolded.
Li stood.
Wheeler reacted instantly, gripping her chair, a pen uncapped in her fist.
O5-8 stared, confused.
Hughes noticed nothing.
"There's only me," Hughes said weakly.
"Only you," Li agreed. "Good enough for me."
"GET DOWN!" Wheeler roared.
But Li was faster.
A gun appeared in his hand.
Hughes' germ-pupils dilated.
BANG. BANG.
Two shots to the chest.
The first punctured a lung.
The second ricocheted off bulletproof glass.
The multiverse held its breath.
Then—chaos.
"HOLY F—KING SHIT!"
"LI'S A TRAITOR?!"
"HUGHES IS DEAD—WHAT NOW?!"
Li turned the gun on O5-8.
BANG. BANG.
Green light flared—O5-8's protective talismans absorbed the shots.
Wheeler moved.
She tackled Li, wrenching his arm up, driving her pen into his throat.
SCHLICK.
A fountain of blood.
Li collapsed, choking.
The gun clattered away.
"Li's compromised," Wheeler panted. "I don't know how."
She checked Hughes.
Dead.
"The entire site's infected—"
Even Wheeler shuddered.
Outside, screams.
A **black, spindly leg—like a spider's—**speared through the ceiling, impaling a technician.
SCP-3125 had breached the site.
The audience remembered.
The same legs from the lake.
The same horror.
O5-8 clutched his head. "I can feel it... like a steel saw in my mind."
Wheeler injected him with fast-acting amnestics.
"We need to reach the escape pod," she said. "Nothing else matters now."
The skull-chamber shook.
SCP-3125's limbs tore at the walls, enraged.
It knew something important was inside.
But the bone was too thick.
Wheeler dragged O5-8 away, gun in hand.
"Follow me."
She'd done this before.
She just didn't remember.
As the screen darkened, a final image emerged:
Hughes' germ, slithering away from his corpse.
Alive.
Thinking.
What is it?
Where is it?
What does SCP-3125 look like?
Hughes' voice echoed in the void.
Does its intelligence matter?
Can a weapon be built to cage it?
What form must the anti-meme take?
The chat group erupted.
"HUGHES IS ALIVE?!"
"HOW?!"
"THAT THING'S STILL HIM?!"
But hope flickered weakly.
SCP-3125 was here.
O5 compromised.
The last defense shattered.
Could a dying germ—a shred of Hughes' will—really turn the tide?