Chapter 203: SCP Perry

Chapter 203: SCP Perry

The light of the sun was replaced by the glare of a fluorescent bulb in the top of the polished steel box that Perry suddenly found himself in. His ears popped from the sudden change in pressure, causing him to wince.

Then Perry saw Charles Frepon standing in front of him, and everything became clear. This was a kidnapping.

Buy time and send out an S.O.S.

Perry’s computer back at home was connected to his mind via artificially grown skin and Mind Taker ichor. He should be able to connect to it from anywhere.

“Before you say anything,” Perry said, holding up a hand to forestall his uncle, who was flanked by a chevron of iron-faced mages of varying species.

“I am impressed, and I am scared, but I just wanna let all of you know that this kind of situation has the unfortunate side-effect of bringing out the serial killer in me,” Perry said in his most even tone, tapping himself in the chest to emphasize his statement.

“So if you don’t want that Perry pulling out all your teeth before forcing you to cook pieces of yourself and feed them to your family, maybe reconsider this course of action?”

No response from the computer. DAMN. Hopefully the threats had some effect.

“You done?” Charles asked.

“Sure, go ahead,” Perry said, motioning for Charles to take his turn. He’d been a polite enough kidnapper to allow Perry to explain how this was going to end, after all.

“You’re on Manita.” Charles said.

Perry’s eyebrows rose.

“At the bottom of an ocean trench,” Charles continued.

Perry’s brows continued to climb skyward.

“in a time dilating facility.”

Perry had reached maximum agog.

“Designed to automatically counter any spell you may have access to.”

PPP.EXE

(4/6) remaining.

A black sludge dripped out of Perry’s palm, quickly rendered nonmagical and splattering on the solid steel flooring beneath him. From what he could perceive, there were multiple emitters housed on the outside of the facility that would emit frequencies that disrupted out certain common essence ingredients that acted as the power supply for the vast majority of spells: Vivant root, power stone, Lunt bone.

Saying it countered any spells showed a lack of understanding or deliberate obfuscation of its effects, but it was still a pain in the ass.

Dragor’s Kinesis should work then, Perry thought. It didn’t use standard spell-powering ingredients, and was pretty rare for people to use due to it’s inherent danger.

Dragor’s Kinesis.EXE

(2/3) remaining.

A sudden intrusive thought of slamming himself into the floor invaded his mind, and Perry canceled the spell before he could squish himself, staggering in place.

“Dragor’s kinesis is a very rare spell, but easily countered with Call of the Void.” Charles said with a mischievous smirk.

“I showed it to George,” Perry said with a sigh, scanning the surrounding mages and wondering which one had done the deed.

“He was very impressed.”

“Well, shit,” Perry muttered, frowning down at the nonmagical black tar pooling on the floor. hmm.

“If any of the security equipment breaks, disconnects or malfunctions, the entire facility is rigged to implode and bury you under miles of water, and tens of thousands of pounds of pressure. Quite literally crushing you into a meaty pulp.” Charles continued. “There is no way in or out. Only death.”

Well, if they’re trying to steal Abun’zaul, there has to be a way to ship that out, but it’s not like I could hitch a ride, so I guess his point stands.

“What’s with the security?” Perry asked, glancing back up at his uncle. “Am I a SCP or something?”

“I’m just trying to impress on you the importance of not acting rashly.”

Perry had to admit, he kind of was an SCP. The ‘facility’ they were in seemed to be crafted from solid steel with eye-searing fluorescent lights, not a single consideration was made to the comfort of the residents. He had a couple ideas for how to get out already, but none of them could be done with an audience.

His uncle stepped closer.

“You, nephew, have Abun’zaul as a symbiotic spirit.” Charles continued. “I am going to use our time together here to extract it and oust your grandmother as King of Manita.”

“I don’t think that’ll work out for you,” Perry said, flickering forward and aiming a bone-shattering kick at Charles’ face.

His uncle flew backwards like a ragdoll, but Perry instantly knew something was wrong.

The blue-eyed man slumped against the steel wall for a moment before he climbed to his feet, sporting a spiderweb of black cracks in his porcelain skin that seemed to ooze darkness. Perry’s uncle smoothed out a bit of cracking around his jaw with a thumb, the black lines disappearing in seconds.

“Also, neither I, nor any of my compatriots are actually here.” Charles said. “I’m still at the party with your replacement. I’ve made him just as much of an ass as you, by the way. It’ll take people a long time to notice the replacement.”

Perry’s eyes narrowed. Depending on what kind of doppleganger it was, that could work out to his advantage, but he should assume it was going to work on his behalf. Copies weren’t supposed to be that good. He was just used to the concept of ‘perfect copies’ with Abun’zaul.

How did he get magic like that under Gramma’s nose? Perry thought back to his grandmother’s dark expression as she stalked towards Tyrannus.

Was still stalking towards Tyrannus, presumably, if Perry was under a strong enough time dilation.

...Was Tyrannus doing something to keep her busy? Gramma wasn’t on the list of people Tyrannus couldn’t mess with, so the possibility was there.

Seemingly reading Perry’s expression, Charles held up his hands with a flourish.

“Basic concept of stage magic,” he said. “Distract the audience with brand-new babies and a creature straight out of myth and legend...” He manifested a bright red ball and a blue ball in his left hand, along with a yellow ball in his right.

Charles waggled the two balls in his left hand while tucking the yellow ball up his sleeve, surprisingly adroit.

“Palm the other.”

“I didn’t know you did magic tricks.” Perry said.

“George had a phase,” Charles said with a shrug, tucking the props away in his gilded manitian vest. “And I found it to be a good way of teaching him public speaking and certain political concepts.”

“Dad of the century,” Perry said, rolling his eyes.

“I should think so, if my children inherit the crown.”

“Point. But what if the only thing you earn them is the opportunity to see their dad get splinters up his ass?” Perry asked.

Charles’ eye twitched.

“I think this conversation has come full circle. Let’s get you to the extractor.”

Perry tried to resist, but unlike him, their magic wasn’t under the effect of noise-cancelling headphones, and super strength will only get you so far.

He didn’t take Charles’ word on anything, so he punched and kicked more than a few of the other mages present, only to find that they too were inhabiting the same porcelain filled with inky blackness.

Damn, I was hoping maybe some of them could be threatened with death, Perry thought as they swaddled him up in magical bands of force and carried him to the ‘extractor’.

Perry recognized what it was the moment he saw it and started wiggling much harder.

It was a beefed-up version of Pecholard’s Symbiotic Spirit ritual circle. The basic concept was that it melted the body away from the soul, while doing as little damage to the soul as possible. Preserving it in a state of almost-alive.

Interesting stuff, if horrific.

Perry immediately started struggling.

That made more sense. Equal pressure in every direction was much easier to plan for.

The whole process of Perry mapping the facility with math was complete in about five seconds.

“Whaddya doin?” one of the Distractable Duo asked, frowning at Perry standing up and shifting around the cell.

“Stretching my legs,” Perry said, scratching under the bandages. “Skin’s growing back tight.”

“Sit down, you’re not supposed to be moving around too much.”

“You just don’t wanna play dice with me,” Perry said.

“Yeah, because you don’t have anything to wager.” The other mage scoffed.

“I mean, neither do you guys,” Perry pointed out.

“Nuh-uh, when we’re done here, the Abyssal Marionettes will send our memories back to our originals. We’re betting for real stuff.”

Oh, that’s interesting. They probably shouldn’t have told me that.

When Perry escaped, the knowledge of it would instantly be transferred back to his uncle, which would allow him to plan to intercept Perry and reacquire him.

That meant Perry would have to get...Creative.

It took nearly three months of being experimented on before he was ready, but the result was worth it.

If Perry had fallen into a routine, the same could be said for the mages under Charles. They didn’t watch him as close as they did in the beginning. They had tired eyes, not expecting this particular attempt to extract Abun’zaul to go any differently than the previous thirty.

But they kept it up, because the alternative was death at the hands of a wrathful Marigold.

They didn’t notice him touching the walls on the way by, using his Spendthrift Perk to modify slices of the walls, calculated at precise angles to create the resonance effect he was looking for.

I crammed for this test, Perry thought as they began sealing him into the crystal again. Everybody was where they needed to be. Perry mentally checked off each face in attendance.

Everyone’s here, we can get started.

“Hey, Charles.” Perry said, getting his uncle’s attention.

“What is it?” The puppet with his uncle’s mind asked, scowling. If the Abyssal Marionettes needed sleep, he would have had massive circles under his eyes. The guy’s hair was messy and his fancy suit rumpled. He looked strung out.

The sheer amount of extra gear that had been wheeled in here to carefully poach Perry like an egg was staggering. They’d probably made huge strides in the art of Symbiotic Spirit capture as a consequence of experimenting on him.

“I wanted to talk to you about my kids.”

“If your grandmother makes the right choice and cedes the throne, I see no reason they can’t be spared.” Charles said, stepping closer as the crystal worked its way up his arms.

“Nah, I just wanted to ask you a hypothetical.” Perry said conversationally.

“I don’t have time for this,” Charles said, moving to turn away.

“No, this is important!” Perry said, gaining his uncle’s attention, causing the older man to turn back to him, his brow cocked.

“My hypothetical question is this: Do you think my kids will ever regret not needing to breathe?”

Multi-tool.

PPP.EXE

The tuning fork landed in Perry’s mouth just as emitters on the outside of the facility caught and canceled his spell as usual, but the slices of wall he’d modified caught the signal and bounced it back, changing the wavelength from interrupting to amplifying, striking the crystal spell Perry was being engulfed in.

If it had been completed, the spell wouldn’t have done anything, but it was still being cast, carefully summoned and guided by half a dozen mages. The resonance frequency caught this and boosted creation a hundred thousandfold for a fraction of an instant, wresting control away from the experienced mages and changing a slow growth into an explosion.

Perry and Charles were both trapped in crystal, staring at each other. An expression of blooming horror was frozen in amber on the puppet’s face.

Hahaha.

Now let’s see if he was bluffing, Perry thought.

An instant later, the security system detected that something wasn’t right, and true to his uncle’s word, the solid steel walls around them unzipped, allowing pitch-black water to rush in and crush them.

Credit to the strength of crystal, it wasn’t destroyed by the sudden crushing pressure, which was excellent. That meant the puppets of Charles et al. wouldn’t be instantly destroying, alerting them to his escape.

The problem was, it lacked the buoyancy he was hoping for, sinking straight to the bottom of the ocean.

Which way is up?

In the sudden, pervasive darkness at the bottom of a continental trench, locked in a perfectly sealed crystal, telling up from down was...somewhat difficult.

Light.EXE

(4/5) remaining.

Perry still couldn’t see anything.

He moved the light to his head and discovered he was buried in sand and rent steel. Still no way to tell which way was up.

Hmm..

Perry dismissed the tuning fork, giving himself a bit of room to move his mouth. He scraped up some saliva and allowed it to drip from his tongue...onto the roof of his mouth.

So I’m upside down, trapped in crystal, and buried in sand and debris from the facility. Great.

Perry did some mental math.

A human can withstand 15 PSI before it starts causing damage. The bottom of the Mariana trench is 15750 PSI.

Normal human tolerance multiplied by my Body stat equals 141 PSI. Even if the difference isn’t a simple multiplication, this illustrates how screwed I am.

Especially if Manita has deeper trenches.

Perry was on limited oxygen, so he launched the only plan he had:

Gretchen’s Idyllic Manifestation.EXE

For a brief moment, Perry pictured himself rising back up to the surface at the helm of a magnificent submarine.

He even designed a bit of it before one of the emitters lying in the sand next to him detected the spell and jostled his mental elbow, fouling it up and triggering the spell prematurely.

A mass of twisted black steel manifested above him and crashed down, burying him further.

...so those are still working. Great.

The only reason the emitters didn’t stop the Light spell was because it operated on such a simple concept, and didn’t require any kind of power.

Same with his tool-summoning Perk. It wasn’t magic, it was tech. Technically.

Perry was starting to get a little lightheaded.

Areosolize.

Perry manifested a tiny can of oxygen in his mouth and depressed the trigger with his tongue.

Unfortunately, because he was completely encased in crystal, Perry’s lungs couldn’t expand any further. A tiny bit of air escaped the cannister before the bottle refused to shoot more into the airtight container Perry was in.

This could be a problem.