Imposters

They stopped giving me water years ago. Food long before that. They must have realized my time as an Overseer meant I never was in danger of dying. The air feels recycled, just dust drifting through stale oxygen. The top of the floor, once solid rock, has eroded into a layer of sand. My skin is leather. I can push my fingers into my empty eye sockets.

When they first put me here, there were others in the cells around me. Two and Five were nearby, and we spent months formulating escape plans before they disappeared. Once, we managed to break out by scraping away at the doors with stolen utensils. We made it almost 30 meters before being captured and thrown back in. That was the last time I saw another human being.

I'm not sure what happened to Five and Two. Maybe they were released. Maybe, like me, they're too weak to move around the cell anymore. Whatever the reason, I'm alone now. Even my captors have disappeared. Before there was the constant sound of movement, of work, just outside my cell. They would bring me food and water daily. A few times, Four (though he insisted I call him One, the bastard), came to talk. It was the usual trash, about how they had done what they did for the good of the planet, how it was the only way to bring humanity back to “the true light”. He would spend hours ranting about the dangers we faced, and the risks we took by using the anomalous to improve the world. I hated him. I still do, but now I'd be willing to talk to even him if it would make this nothingness go away.

What could have caused them to leave me like this? One day they were here, and the next they were gone. The vindictive part of me wants to believe they failed, that their “New Foundation” was nothing but wishful thinking. In truth, they probably just forgot about me, like we forgot so many other things. I've been exiled to this cell, the only thing to verify I ever existed a scrap of paper in a lost file cabinet, or a file on a broken computer. I doubt even the O5s remember me. The others would have been careful in covering their tracks. All history would have been cut out, all evidence that the Foundation was once something more than it is now erased. Four explained it all to me in one of his talks. The original meaning of SCP has been destroyed. Our mission has been destroyed. Once, we worked for the betterment of mankind. Now, they “protect” it. As if the world needs protecting.

That was always the problem. The betrayers didn't understand what we had started out to do. To them, compromise was an impossibility. We were at war, and we couldn't win if we kept showing mercy to the enemy. In hindsight, I should have seen it coming. The secret discussions, the protests, the talk of a better tomorrow… it should have been obvious. And yet it wasn't. When they came for us, wrenched me out of bed and into the meeting room, I couldn't believe it. And when I saw Two and Five and Six and Ten next to me, bleeding and bruised, my mind could not put together what was happening. I thought it was some sort of drill.

I didn't realize what was going on until they shot Ten. Four and Eight came out, and I knew that they had betrayed us. I still remember their words. “It's over,” said Four. “Humanity no longer has anything to fear.”

So I sit in my cell, hoping to be allowed to die. I run through thoughts I've had a millions times before. I try to remember what life was like before this. I'm surrounded by nothing. And then, for the first time in years, there's something. The sound of an opening door, and a voice.

“Hello, One. It's time to start again.”