Containment Breach Report, SCP-2640, 3/03/1997

Interview Recording-

Interviewed: Tony Hargrove, Level 03 Tech Support Staff

Interviewer: █████████

Foreword: Staff debrief of 3/01/97 breach incident

<Begin Log, 3/03/1997>

█████████: Sir, I understand you're upset. If you could please just start again, at the beginning.

Tony: Okay… okay. Sorry. I was at the facility with the staff, everything was fine. We were expecting a little weather, but nothing like what hit us. One minute we're just sitting back, monitoring, and the next…

█████████: A tornado hit.

Tony: A BIG tornado. I'd never seen one in my life, and then all of a sudden we're all just in the middle of mother nature's fury. The building started to come apart, trees were snapping all around like toothpicks. To be honest, I didn't give a damn about 2640 at that particular moment. I hid under my desk, the rest of the crew, we just all tried to ride it out as best as we could.

█████████: And the aftermath?

Tony: Everyone was okay. We still had power, and the reactor was alright, but the XACTS sink on the northern boundary was down. So there wasn't really any time to regroup. I sent a maintenance team out to find out what was wrong, I figured the tornado damaged it.

█████████: You said earlier that it did.

Tony: Yeah. One of those big pine trees just fell right on it. Crushed it to bits. We had a backup sitting in storage so they came back to get it. With all the trees down, travel was slow. They came back and got it, and headed right back out. It was dusk, and still raining, so it was very dark.

█████████: Then what happened?

Tony: Trevor, my 01 tech, comes on the radio after a little bit. He says that the Dash-1s were really out, that they were really beautiful tonight. I told him I wasn't surprised. With the array down, they'd probably really be glowing. He said there were dozens of them.

And then he just went quiet. Time passed. He didn't check back in. I thought, maybe his radio just got wet. No big deal. So I sent Butler out with a spare and a camera to reestablish contact.

█████████: But he never made it.

Tony: …no. He didn't.

█████████: What then?

Tony: I had this feeling that something was wrong. That feeling in your gut, that tells you to hunker down and stay put? It was balling up in my gut, like a red-hot coal. But I ignored it. I pushed that down and I grabbed a flashlight and radio, headed out into the storm to find out what was going on.

I got out of the door and took three steps before I even looked up.

There were hundreds- maybe thousands- of them. Floating everywhere. Near the ground, in the sky. It was one of the most surreal things. I could barely process it. The rain was shimmering, light refracting in a thousand liquid prisms, dancing across this ravaged forest. Have you ever seen one of the Dash-1s?

█████████: No, I haven't.

Tony: No picture, no video could ever do them justice. I find it hard to find the words to adequately express… Pure orbs of beautiful, iridescent, shimmering light. They'd float, they'd dance, they'd chase, and then just fade away. We'd all sat around and guessed as to what they really were but no one knew. Trevor always said they were angels. Others said spirits. Doc Connors said they were the Rayleigh-scattered reflections of time-travelling observers. That last one always made me wonder what they were observing.

They lit up what should have been a pitch black night. I didn't need a flashlight.

I picked my way across the terrain, climbing over fallen trees, one after the other, and tried to get to the railroad tracks. I thought, it would be easier to travel on the tracks than to pick my way through this insane coniferous jungle.

I got maybe 300, 350 meters down the tracks when something in the culvert caught my eye. An odd reflection. I went over to look at it.

It was the spare XACTS sink.

There was blood on it.

…

█████████: Go on.

Tony: I was shellshocked. I couldn't understand, for a moment, why it would be here. The more I looked at, the more I saw. This thin, rain-washed blood was on the sink, on my hands, dripping away with the increased saturation. It was on the ground, staining the white gravel of the railroad bed, making thin red puddles in the clay.

I looked around at the Dash-1s. I watched them for a few moments. They were racing back and forth across the sky. Through the trees. Something was different about them, something was off. I couldn't make sense of it. I'd been watching them for years now, but they just looked… different.

I can't remember how I first saw it. Right behind the orbs, there was this spot where the rain just… wasn't. Like it was bending around some invisible mass, some great thing behind each orb. And once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it.

It was too much. I took a step back reflexively as this new information hit me like a impossible, heavy thing. I lost my footing. I slipped down into the ditch, which was rapidly filling with water.

I stayed there. The coal in my gut was white-hot now, and I couldn't ignore it. I clutched that damn sink with both hands and just froze there, trying to suppress the urge to vomit.

One of the orbs, it just cruised right by me. I could feel this enormous thing, this void there the rain ceased to be, as it swam by me, silently. I couldn't explain why, but I knew it was looking for me. I held my breath, stayed as still as I could. I told myself, don't move. Don't fucking move.

It hung in the air next to me, turning, searching… like a shark, circling in a cloud of blood. Then, just as silently, just as smoothly, it started gliding away, into the trees.

I waited for it to get 20 meters or so away before I let myself breathe again.

I think that's when I knew. That's when I knew that the dash-1's weren't what we thought they were. Not even close. That's when I knew that Trevor, and Butler… they didn't make it. They couldn't have made it.

They were hunting us. HAD been hunting us. And we never even knew.

The only thing that had been keeping them at bay while we were testing was this array. I had the sink in my hands. I knew then I had to get to the northern point and get that sink online.

I crawled like a god-damned soldier through that ditch, for hours. Any time one of those things floated within 50 meters of me, I froze, I held my breath, I practically willed my heart to stop pounding for fear that they would hear it. I just moved when I could.

The sun was rising before I finally got there.

…

The old sink was completely crushed. But the power cables and the Dryconn connectors were still there, and still intact. I put the XACTS into place, powered it up, and waited, praying. Praying for the array to do it's work.

I sat and watched the glowing orbs, as the rain stopped, skipping through the sky by the thousands, for miles and miles. If this didn't work…

█████████: But it did.

Tony: It did. I could see the things fading out of existence as the hum from the sink grew louder. The Rzewski field was shrinking again, back into containment, and without a sound, the orbs just… vanished. Like they were never there to start with.

<End Recording>

Closing Statement: The containment breach led to the fatalities of 4 foundation personnel and 6 civilians. The tornado has been used as a cover story for civilian fatalities, and the witnesses to the true nature of SCP-2460-1 have been administered B-class amnestics as per protocol.

Mr. Hargrove has requested reassignment and amnestic treatment- Reassignment and counseling treatment is approved. Amnestic treatment is pending approval by the Ethics committee. Footage recovered from Mr. Butler's camera was damaged. Foundation tech staff are currently trying to recover the data.