Chapter 72 Elivise Is Actually SCP-008?

The moment Ethan entered Manhattan’s infected zone under the guise of a military investigation team, his Psychic Commander abilities told him that Blackwatch was closely monitoring his entire group.

Not long ago, he had received a request for assistance from Strategic Homeland Division Agent Catherine.

Originally, Catherine, Gwen, and Elivise had intended to travel directly to Fort Redstone Military Base.

Unfortunately, the infection erupted at precisely that moment.

The nationwide lockdown and martial law followed immediately afterward.

The three women became trapped inside the infected zone.

With Gwen’s and Elivise’s abilities, escaping shouldn’t have been difficult.

However, they soon discovered something unusual.

Blackwatch appeared to be conducting illicit activities inside the quarantined districts.

Catherine located a Strategic Homeland Division safe house within the infected zone and used its equipment to transmit a request for assistance to Fort Redstone.

Agents Skye and Natasha immediately volunteered to respond.

Accompanied by a Mobile Task Force team stationed at Fort Redstone, they infiltrated the infected zone and rendezvoused with Catherine, Gwen, and Elivise.

After regrouping, they discovered that conditions inside the infected zone had changed.

Large carpets of flesh-like fungal growth had begun spreading across buildings, gradually forming structures resembling enormous nests.

Those nests produced large numbers of mutated creatures.

The most common were zombie-like infected entities spawned directly from the organic structures.

After Blackwatch assumed control of the districts, it didn’t immediately sterilize the mutated areas.

Instead, it allowed the creatures to develop as though raising venomous insects inside a sealed jar.

Blackwatch established secret laboratories throughout the quarantined zone and conducted extensive experiments on the various mutated organisms.

Gwen eventually noticed an unusual area under Blackwatch’s control.

The location had originally been an ordinary waste-processing facility.

After the outbreak, Blackwatch quickly seized it. Convoys belonging to the organization entered and left the facility regularly.

Once the suspicious site was identified, Skye and Natasha reported it to S.H.I.E.L.D.

They also had the Division agents remaining at the safe house and the Mobile Task Force accompanying them upload the intelligence to the Foundation.

Natasha and Skye then joined S.H.I.E.L.D.’s arriving Anomaly Containment Unit and a Mobile Task Force team to investigate the facility.

After apparently engaging unidentified creatures, Catherine, Spider-Gwen, and Elivise abruptly lost contact with Natasha and Skye.

A request for Division reinforcements was subsequently transmitted to Fort Redstone.

However, Blackwatch had already sealed off the entire area.

Fort Redstone had no choice but to escalate the intelligence report.

Once Ethan received the message, he decided to investigate personally.

Anything capable of causing both Natasha and Skye to disappear couldn’t be a minor incident.

After Coulson’s request for cooperation was accepted, the Foundation temporarily received command authority over S.H.I.E.L.D.’s anomalous response teams in the affected region.

Provided Ethan’s orders were reasonable, S.H.I.E.L.D. would assist the Foundation.

Their common objective was to resolve the nationwide crisis as quickly as possible.

Ethan had personally approved Natasha’s and Skye’s investigation.

Now they had disappeared alongside Catherine’s group, S.H.I.E.L.D.’s agents, and the advance operators from a Mobile Task Force.

Nearly sixty elite personnel were unaccounted for.

Ethan couldn’t possibly ignore the situation.

After careful consideration, he decided to lead the investigation himself.

Given Natasha’s and Skye’s combat abilities—and the strength of sixty elite S.H.I.E.L.D. and Mobile Task Force personnel—Ethan didn’t believe they had been completely wiped out.

They had most likely encountered unusual circumstances that prevented them from communicating with the outside world.

Perhaps they had encountered an anomaly or some other extraordinary phenomenon.

Because Blackwatch controlled access to the area, and the United States hadn’t yet openly turned against the organization, Ethan temporarily refrained from mobilizing the Foundation against it.

Instead, he brought a small force disguised as military investigators.

The Foundation had naturally provided technical support during his global address.

The recording equipment had altered his appearance considerably.

The version of Ethan seen by the worldwide audience differed from how he looked in person.

Otherwise, conducting an infiltration mission after becoming globally recognizable would have been impossible.

Although Blackwatch was closely monitoring the military investigation team, it didn’t possess complete control over the infected zone.

The nests constantly produced mutated creatures and infected entities that attacked Blackwatch personnel, forcing its troops to conduct intensive patrols and combat operations twenty-four hours a day.

Yet because of Blackwatch’s hidden objectives, it couldn’t completely eradicate the nests.

That contradiction produced the scene unfolding before Ethan.

A Blackwatch drone was still monitoring his group from overhead when a nearby patrol received a message through its communications channel.

“Patrol 19, we have a situation.”

“What is it?”

“Possible infected approaching.”

As soon as the warning ended, two disheveled female office workers in business suits came running toward the patrol.

“Help! Please save us!”

The women screamed as they passed the soldiers before collapsing behind them.

At that moment, a densely packed horde of zombies surged into view.

“Hostiles identified! Weapons free!”

The Blackwatch patrol immediately formed a defensive formation and opened fire from behind cover.

Machine guns and assault rifles poured bullets into the horde while grenade launchers sent explosive rounds arcing into its midst.

Concentrated firepower suppressed the mass of flesh and bodies.

The zombies appeared to have been spawned by one of the nests.

They merely resembled humans.

Their skin was deathly pale, and their unprotected flesh was no match for modern weapons.

The Blackwatch soldiers quickly slaughtered them.

The small horde consisted of several hundred zombies, yet it failed to cause any meaningful disturbance against a patrol of barely more than a dozen soldiers.

“Hostiles eliminated.”

“Begin sterilizing all possible infection sources.”

The Blackwatch squad leader raised his weapon and pressed its muzzle against one of the office worker’s foreheads.

Tears filled the woman’s eyes.

She stared in disbelief at the cold gas mask and green-glowing night-vision lenses reflected in her pupils.

“What are you doing?”

“No! Mary!”

A gunshot rang out.

One of the office workers collapsed as a lifeless corpse.

The Mobile Task Force operators who witnessed everything could no longer tolerate it.

“What the fuck are these people doing?”

“Shit! Commander, they’re executing civilians! They didn’t even check whether they were infected!”

Six MTF operators disguised in Army uniforms immediately rushed forward.

The sergeant leading them shouted, “Cease fire! Soldiers, what the hell are you doing?”

“Who are you? United States Army?”

“Didn’t the military inform you that no one is permitted to interfere with Blackwatch operations inside the infected zone?”

The Blackwatch squad leader confronted them without the slightest courtesy.

“We’re members of a military investigation team!”

“A military investigation team?”

The Blackwatch commander sneered.

Without another thought, he pointed his weapon at the final surviving woman and prepared to pull the trigger.

A cloaked figure suddenly leaped from a nearby rooftop.

The squad leader was about to execute the survivor when a razor-sharp biological blade sliced his body in half.

“Oh, shit! It’s her!”

“The Witch!”

“Damn it, the Witch is here! Open fire!”

Seeing their squad leader cut in two, the remaining Blackwatch soldiers immediately forgot about the civilian.

They aimed at the red-and-white-haired woman and opened fire.

The blades forming her arms instantly reshaped themselves into a shield of hardened biological material.

The bullets failed to penetrate it.

The woman leaped forward and darted between the Blackwatch soldiers with the agility of a cat.

Her organic shield transformed into a pair of claws.

They effortlessly tore through flesh, body armor, and weapons alike.

“Die, Witch!”

One Blackwatch soldier pulled out an AT4 launcher, aimed at the woman as she slaughtered his comrades, and fired.

BOOM!

Smoke and dust swallowed the battlefield.

After a while, the cloud gradually dispersed.

A Blackwatch soldier lying on the ground weakly stretched out one hand.

The patrol’s final surviving member rushed over and helped his comrade stand.

The next instant, a red-and-black biological blade pierced his heart.

The dying soldier stared in disbelief as his supposed comrade transformed into the mature red-and-white-haired woman wearing the hooded cloak.

Nearby, the Mobile Task Force operators surrounded the remaining civilian and kept their weapons trained on the inhuman woman.

They couldn’t tolerate Blackwatch executing innocent people.

However, they had no idea whether the creature before them was a friend or an enemy.

Her combat power was terrifying.

If she attacked them—

And with the Foundation’s Supreme Commander standing nearby—

The operators couldn’t afford to lower their guard.

“Lower your weapons. She isn’t an enemy.”

Ethan’s familiar voice came from behind them.

The Mobile Task Force operators relaxed and lowered their guns.

The surviving office worker had already collapsed in terror after narrowly escaping death.

Ethan approached the cloaked woman and examined her from head to toe.

“You must be Miss Elivise.”

“Are you the Foundation’s reinforcements?”

Elivise looked unimpressed.

“You took long enough.”

“We aren’t too late.”

Ethan casually drew his Service Pistol.

Without even appearing to aim, he fired into the sky.

The Blackwatch drone approaching to investigate the disturbance immediately crashed to the ground.

“This isn’t the place for a conversation.”

“Take the survivor with us. We’ll talk somewhere else.”

Elivise had already identified the leader of the group.

Without another word, she began guiding Ethan and his personnel toward the Strategic Homeland Division safe house.

Despite his composed appearance, Ethan was anything but calm.

[Ding! An anomalous SCP-008 progenitor entity has been detected.]

[Commander, initiate containment measures immediately. This organism is extremely dangerous.]

[Ding! An abnormal condition involving SCP-008 has been detected. A new mission branch has been triggered.]

[Mission Objective: Investigate the changes that have occurred within the SCP-008 progenitor entity.]

Ethan had always assumed that the Twelve Round Table Council—or the Chaos Insurgency faction under its control—had hidden SCP-008’s progenitor strain somewhere.

Only now did he realize how completely wrong his previous deductions had been.

The progenitor entity of SCP-008, the Zombie Plague, was the seemingly delicate woman walking in front of him!

She was Miss Elivise, formerly one of Blackwatch’s leading researchers.

Her abilities and connection to Blackwatch reminded Ethan of a game he had played in his previous life:

Prototype.

But wasn’t the protagonist of Prototype Alex Mercer?

How had that role fallen to a woman named Elivise?

According to the files Ethan had reviewed, Alex’s and Elivise’s experiences were completely different.

Then he remembered something else.

Spider-Gwen also existed in this world.

Spider-Gwen and Peter Parker’s Spider-Man ordinarily belonged to entirely different parallel universes.

In a normal Marvel universe, the circumstances that created one generally excluded the other.

This world had combined them both.

Given its tangled parallel continuities, the appearance of the Blacklight virus was no longer particularly surprising.

After obtaining confirmation from the system, Ethan finally understood Elivise’s true nature.

She was the mutated progenitor entity of SCP-008, the Zombie Plague—

And a host who had fused with the Blacklight virus!

The thought that Elivise was a fusion of SCP-008 and Blacklight made one thing abundantly clear.

This containment mission wouldn’t be simple.