The sudden change in the broadcast sent shockwaves across the entire Marvel universe.
For a few seconds, the global live stream went silent. Nobody typed. Nobody spoke. It was as if the entire world was holding its breath.
Then—
The chat exploded into chaos.
> "What the hell?! Aren't they all from the Antimemetics Division? Why are they attacking each other?!"
> "It's SCP-3125! It must be—he's infected!"
> "No way! How do you fight something that doesn't even exist in your memory?!"
> "This is messed up. You can't even trust your teammates now!"
Sitting grimly in the darkened control room of S.H.I.E.L.D., Nick Fury didn't waste time commenting. Instead, his one eye was fixed on the screen, calculating. How could this be stopped? What could they even do against something like this?
Inside the broadcast, things were getting worse.
The agents at Site-41 were collapsing. The antimemetics task force was being eaten from the inside—by ideas.
Over at Kamar-Taj, the Ancient One's face had gone pale.
She saw it again—the fleeting image, the phantom of an abstract, unknowable being. It was devouring not people, but concepts, feeding on thought itself.
"Sacred starfish... Pentagon One... it's not a being," she whispered. "It's divinity itself. The supreme concept."
And then—the horror intensified.
On the screens, Site-41 was being torn apart. A storm of chaos surged through the corridors. The roof collapsed, the pharmacy obliterated, the armory buried. People screamed, some babbled in languages never meant for the human tongue.
It was like a plague of thoughts, twisting minds into madness.
Wheeler, the last known unaffected agent, stumbled through the blood-slick hallways, clutching a glowing red ray gun.
She tried to avoid confrontation. But when a frenzied agent lunged at her, she reacted.
With a single shot, she vaporized the man's torso.
Gasps rang out across the live stream.
> "That weapon... that's not ordinary..."
> "It's SCP gear... anomalous... probably antimemetic itself."
Wheeler stared at the body in disbelief. Her voice cracked.
"This is my first day..."
The viewers paused.
Her first day?
Or... had this "first day" been repeating over and over, erased by antimemetic collapse?
No one could be sure.
Wheeler, shaken, stood before a dark glass panel in the elevator and saw her own reflection. Then, she whispered:
"It ate everything I knew... but not me. So I can rebuild the plan. It's already here—I just have to remember it."
She scratched her left wrist.
Then she pulled out a small, bright orange security case with a giant black Z printed across it.
"No... no way!" shouted one of the senior agents watching.
Victor Hale, watching beside him, squinted. "That's... a Z-Class memory-strengthening agent," he said solemnly.
James, who stood near the back, looked stunned.
Victor explained further, "Z-class serum eliminates the brain's natural forgetfulness. Once injected, you'll remember everything. You'll become completely immune to antimemetic effects."
"But at a cost," James said slowly. "That's like... mental suicide."
Victor nodded. "Yes. The human brain isn't built to process everything. Memory protects us. Without it—"
"Your mind burns alive in awareness," said the Ancient One from Kamar-Taj.
They all turned back to the screen.
Wheeler had clearly already taken the injection. Her eyes were bloodshot, her breathing ragged.
But she could see everything now.
The elevator had changed. New buttons had appeared. She was already descending to Sublevel 30—a floor erased from memory, inaccessible to any normal staff.
Graffiti lined the walls, scrawled by those who had also stumbled into this madness before.
One figure lay in the corner, so completely erased from reality even flies couldn't smell it.
The viewers were frozen. Was this the cost of facing antimemetic threats?
Suddenly, a deep, low buzzing filled the room.
Wheeler clutched her ears in agony. Her vision blurred. Light stabbed her brain. Sound became data, and data became pain.
"This is it," Fury muttered. "Sensory collapse."
And still—Wheeler didn't stop.
She slammed her fist into the wall.
Blood smeared across the metal.
Pain grounded her.
From that pain, one memory screamed louder than all others.
A plan.
Not something she remembered. Something instinctive.
Something deeper than memory.
She whispered through clenched teeth: "I know how to beat you."
Then—a voice replied.
> "No, you don't."
Everyone froze.
Who had spoken?
Could it be—
SCP-3125?
No. That wasn't possible.
It had no voice. It wasn't a being. It was an idea.
And yet... the voice came again.
> "You know what I hate most about you, Wheeler? You're always wrong... and yet you survive."
> "You don't deserve to be the last one standing."
Wheeler stood upright. Despite the pain, she gritted her teeth and faced the void.
She pressed forward.
The elevator stopped.
The doors creaked open onto Sublevel 30.
Crushed walls. Flickering lights. The foundation of Site-41 was collapsing.
Still, she moved ahead.
She whispered: "SCP-3125 doesn't speak. This is a hallucination... a lie."
> "But I do speak," the voice hissed.
> "And I will consume every truth you believe."
The voice pressed on, hammering her mind.
> "You're alone. Everyone is dead. The war is over. You lost."
But Wheeler didn't stop.
She limped through the white corridor, the ray gun now her crutch.
She reached the airlock, blindly searching for the card slot.
Click.
A yellow light glowed.
The mechanical door began to open, flower-like.
Someone was calling the elevator behind her. Someone was coming.
She didn't look back.
She stepped into the airlock.
"Ideas can kill," she said.
The voice whispered mockingly: "How?"
"Use better ideas."
Everything fell silent.
Across the world, from Wakanda to Kamar-Taj, from SHIELD to the living rooms of average citizens watching the live feed—
No one said a word.
They watched her—a thin, bloodied woman, half-blind, half-broken—but standing tall.
She was the last survivor.
The last hope.
Nick Fury exhaled slowly.
"Now I believe they can win," he said.
At Kamar-Taj, the Ancient One blinked away tears. "Even against the divine... some humans still refuse to kneel."
And far beyond Earth, in the dimension of the Watchers, Uatu leaned back in stunned reverence.
It wasn't SCP-3125 that terrified him anymore.
It was Wheeler.
A woman who turned the very idea of resistance into a weapon.
An ordinary person who stood before the unknowable and said—
"I have a better idea."
And perhaps...
That was enough.
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END OF CHAPTER 117
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