In the middle of a dark room sat a simple chair, and on it was a young man with his hands cuffed behind his back.
The only source of light in the room was a white bulb, wired to the ceiling and flickering intermittently, positioned above the young man.
The depressive setting seemed designed to break down the mental defenses of the young man.
For a while, the young man endured the torture under the white light, until a large-bellied police officer, laughing with a few fellow officers, strode in.
Leo lowered his head in embarrassment when he saw the rotund officer holding one of the money bills the system had given him.
"Hey, young man. I've got two important questions for you. Answer correctly, and I'll treat you with a giant burger."
The officer's words caused all the nearby cops to squint and smile. Some of them were already ready to burst out laughing but held back to let the officer finish speaking.
"First question: When did your mom tell you that Santa Claus was blue, and pffft hahaha… no, no, wait for the second, I'm not done... And what kind of brain would think it's a good idea to put a blue Santa on the dollar instead of Benjamin Franklin? AHAHAHAHAHAH!!!"
All the cops in the room laughed as they watched the system's paper bills in Leo's hands, while Leo kept his head bowed in shame, waiting for this humiliation session to end.
This was the third group of friends the portly officer had brought in. Worse, each time he made uglier jokes and laughed louder.
For a moment, Leo felt a twinge of jealousy at the officer's popularity, but the next moment, he remembered that he was the one being mocked, and anger surged.
"That's not Santa Claus, you idiot. That's a papa smurf, a fiction character of an animated film I'm working on. Instead of mocking a young animator's props, why don't you go find the source of the terrorist attack?"
Leo's cold words caused the officers who were enjoying themselves to feel ashamed. The invisible terrorist had become like a bleeding wound to them, and Leo's words were like salt in that wound.
Some of the cops had already left the interrogation room to return to their posts.
Leo looked at the purple-faced officer and suddenly smiled like a child.
"Can I have my burger now? Oh, and please, make sure there's nothing healthy in it."
The rotund officer had interrogated Leo before but had learned nothing. Hana and Ms. Saem had also been questioned, but neither revealed anything unusual about Leo.
There was only one strange thing about Leo.
"Why did someone like you become Hana's caretaker?"
"Do me a favor and ask the mayor that question. Because, just like you, I'm curious about the answer too."
Thinking Leo was bluffing, the officer left the interrogation room to investigate the matter.
At that very moment, the SCP organization was under a red alert, and the entire foundation was in chaos because every passing second more people were being infected by the abnormali virus.
And strangely, everyone who caught the purple plague was a foundation employee. Even the families of the foundation staff were unaffected by the virus.
This made the council believe even more that the virus had some kind of intelligence and was specifically targeting the foundation.
One blood test after another, experimental drug treatments, X-ray therapies, and chemotherapies were being carried out, and by this point some foundation employees had even started dying because of these attempts.
While the council members themselves were receiving simpler treatments, they gathered together in a single room and began discussing emergency measures to be implemented before heading to the source of the outbreak.
At that moment, a video reached their table.
At first, the only one interested in watching the video was Ms. 03.
When she opened the video and saw Leo throwing an uppercut that seemed to scatter the clouds, she screamed in shock.
Mr. 02, who was younger than the other members, had secretly been watching Ms. 03 the whole time because the excessive sweating caused by the purple plague had made her lab coat stick tightly to her body. Although Ms. 03 wore ordinary clothes beneath her lab coat and nothing extraordinary was showing, her strikingly alluring figure and the white steam escaping her mouth made it very hard for Mr. 02 to keep his composure.
So when Ms. 03 screamed in surprise, Mr. 02 was the first to ask what was happening.
"I believe all of you need to watch this video."
After everyone watched the video following Ms. 03's call, Mr. 01 frowned and looked at her.
At that moment, Mr. 02 took over the conversation.
"I think we should try killing him from afar with a powerful tank shot. No no, what's wrong with me? Only some random villain in sci‑fi movies says stuff like that. And you know how it goes—either the main character or the monster isn't affected by the tank shot and ends up wiping out the villain's entire army. Forget what I said first. It looks like he wants to keep his human identity, so let's trick him into going to an island in the middle of the sea and finish him in one go with an atomic bomb."
For a moment, everyone except Ms. 03 and Mr. 01 felt like this plan was brilliant and were about to accept it, but then Mr. 04 used his knowledge of human psychology to deliver a speech that ended up saving Leo's life.
"You all know I'm an expert at reading expressions. I think it's too early to completely give up on Leo. He could be the source of an incredible amount of information that will help us understand the differences between humans and anomalies. Most importantly, according to what I saw in that video, Leo doesn't even know how strong he is. And did you see how he changed the target of his punch? The possibility of hurting people scared him. And in the end, didn't you see how confused he looked walking down the street? I think his potential danger is definitely higher than before, but nothing about who he is has fundamentally changed. He's still the same person we once decided to observe from afar."
Mr. 01 was against killing Leo without a truly solid reason, but listening to Mr. 04's speech made him very uncomfortable.
"That thing's name is SCP‑0004! Don't you dare treat it like one of us! Ahem! I mean, don't forget it's an anomaly. Even if it's human, it's a different kind of human, and as a loyal member of the SCP Foundation, none of you are allowed to get close to any SCP. Not a single one of them!"
Mr. 01 started speaking angrily, but when he suddenly locked eyes with Ms. 03 mid‑sentence, his speech lost its fluency. On top of that, this strange moment caught the attention of every council member.
...
Begging for a few power stones...