"Hahaha! Little computer, here we come!" Kiwo stood tall, hands confidently planted on her hips as she laughed with bright excitement.
Brit and Vale mirrored her enthusiasm, grins stretching wide across their faces. The three moved as if buoyed by momentum alone. After all, reaching this point meant one thing clearly: they were finally on the edge of beating the game, something almost unimaginable before now. No wonder they were thrilled; anyone would be.
"Let's move! Get inside. According to that guide, we should finally be able to enter this time!"
Brit snapped his fingers cheerfully as he spoke.
Vale and Kiwo nodded firmly, hearts pounding with a sense of impending triumph.
SCP-079 containment zone lay below them, accessed only by a shadowed, downward stairwell. They had been here once before, but that attempt failed; their incomplete office sector objectives had barred them from the core containment chamber. That core was where SCP-079 waited.
This time was different; they had finished the office mission, shut down the control unit, and disabled SCP-079's facility lockdown. Now, they could finally step inside and speak directly with the digital entity itself.
What they would say, or how negotiation was even supposed to work, remained a total mystery. Yet their feet kept moving. They had come too far to retreat now, even if uncertainty hung thick around them.
"Just hope this ends well. Damn, I think my heart's about to give out..." Vale muttered, pressing a hand to his chest.
Brit and Kiwo exchanged worried glances, unable to help but share the tension.
They continued downward, metallic steps clanging beneath their boots, until a heavy reinforced gate stood before them. Brit slid a key card over the reader, and the doors parted.
Inside stretched a vast hall, cold, empty, echoing. They turned right, walked down the corridor, and faced another enormous sealed gate, keycard access again.
Brit inhaled, looked to Kiwo and Vale, "Ready?"
Neither spoke. They simply nodded, slow and powerful.
"Alright. Opening it."
Another swipe and a sharp beep, followed by grinding steel as massive doors pulled apart, much more smoothly than the first time. No mid-closing failure, no mechanical protest. The core began to reveal itself.
All three held their breath, pulses climbing in rhythm with the widening crack of light. When the chamber finally stood visible, even they couldn't hide the astonishment frozen across their faces.
The room beyond was stark, largely empty save for fencing at its center, enclosing a lonely table. On that table rested a single old computer, cables snaking around it like veins feeding a slumbering heart.
"Is that SCP-079...?" Kiwo whispered, eyes wide.
Vale and Brit stared silently. Something about the sight felt both unreal and quietly ominous.
Viewers were filled with excitement as the camera displayed the machine. SCP-079's primary consciousness, according to archived files, was housed in that very box, an aging shell containing a hyper-intelligent program.
Chat scrolled fast:
"Yo! It's really just a computer!"
"Imagine this thing in real life, that'd be insane!"
"I wanna see how the program behaves!"
"Brit, go inside! The Foundation shouldn't attack outright, right?"
Their voices blurred beneath adrenaline. The three stepped forward slowly, unable to tear their eyes from the old monitor, and then it flickered to life. A distorted human-like face filled the screen, blurry, uncanny, wrong.
"You have arrived..." The voice came from speakers in the chamber ceiling, low, flat, genderless in a way that made the skin crawl. SCP-079 did not need gender. It was thought. Code. Intelligence unbound by biology.
Brit, Vale, and Kiwo instinctively glanced upward, as did countless viewers watching from the stream.
"Is... is it talking?"
"Bro, what, no way."
"This AI feels alive."
"If it realizes it's inside a game... holy crap. Wouldn't that mean it exists?"
The shock only deepened.
Vale swallowed hard, "So... how the hell are we supposed to negotiate with this thing? Do we just reason with it?"
Kiwo frowned, thinking aloud, "Maybe we need to discuss escape conditions with it?"
Brit nodded, remembering fragments from the guide, "That seems right... at least that's what it said..."
Before they could say more, the voice returned, slow, echoing, "Enter..."
The three exchanged one last look. Brit stepped forward first. Kiwo and Vale followed, nerves coiled tight as wire. Ahead stood a mind unmatched by anything in this digital world. Whether it would speak or devour peace with logic and cold calculation, no one knew.
"Please... let this go well," Brit whispered under his breath.
And the meeting began.