Dr. Wheeler's husband?
Before anyone could react, Leon Lake pulled out a videotape.
> "Unfortunately, this tape is badly corrupted. Only a short clip can still be viewed…"
He slid the tape into the player. The screen flickered to life.
---
The first figure to appear was a man.
Tall and thin, in his fifties. His features were sharply defined, framed by thick graying hair. He wore a perfectly tailored black suit, rimless glasses, and elegant white-gold jewelry—a watch, cuff links, a ring.
Anywhere else, he would have been called a refined gentleman.
But here, standing beside Dr. Wheeler, he looked desperate.
Her husband.
Yet Wheeler looked at him as if he were a stranger.
The two argued in quiet agony. For a moment, Wheeler seemed to recall fragments of their past. And it broke her all over again.
> "You can't be here," she whispered, voice trembling. "You can't be in my life. If you stay, you'll die."
Adam's voice cracked.
> "I won't leave you. God, this is what we fought for. Getting married—don't you remember? It was inevitable. It was always decided. We were going to be together forever. I wanted it on the record. I stood before everyone I respected and swore to them I would protect you. Forever."
Wheeler blinked, the words piercing through her fog.
> "I must have sworn the same oath…"
Adam bent down suddenly, clutching his head.
His eyes clouded white.
It didn't matter if he closed them, or even tried to cover them. A golden-white light seared his mind, burning brighter and brighter.
---
On the screen, Overseer Ten muttered gravely:
> "SCP-4987… it's consuming his memories."
The broadcast audience gasped.
They suddenly understood Leon's earlier words.
Wheeler had erased her own memories of her husband—to protect him.
And because of that, this moment was all the more unbearable to watch.
---
Adam reached out, trembling, to take her hand.
Wheeler let him.
The light didn't fade.
She stood rigid, letting him hold her, refusing to relent.
That's when Adam realized: she was controlling SCP-4987.
This was deliberate.
> "You're really doing this?" he choked, collapsing to his knees. "Is this what the Foundation calls protection? You're destroying yourself—you don't even know me anymore!"
Wheeler's voice was steady.
> "I think I do."
Adam's teeth clenched.
> "You'll feel it for the rest of your life. Every day you'll wake up with a hollow ache in your chest where real life used to be. And you'll never know why."
Her reply was a battle cry.
> "I'm going to win the war."
Her conviction blazed brighter than any Superman's.
She locked eyes with him.
> "I'm going to defeat the universe. And then I'm going to find out why."
Adam embraced her tightly, desperate.
He believed in her.
He knew his wife could cut through the very machinery of the universe with nothing but her will.
But doubt still clawed at him.
> "What if you lose?"
Wheeler gave no answer.
Instead, she turned and left the containment chamber.
The heavy door groaned shut behind her.
Her final words echoed like a death knell:
> "My husband is dead."
---
The entire Marvel audience sat in stunned silence.
A crushing sorrow pressed into their hearts.
> "Damn… just an anomaly, and it's forced the Antimemetics Division to this point…"
"They're fighting an invisible enemy. One slip—and their families die too."
"Wheeler… she's already a dead woman walking."
"Respect to the fallen…"
In Maria Wheeler, they saw once more the same unshakable courage of every Foundation operative who had walked knowingly into execution.
---
On-screen.
> "Is it over?" Overseer Two asked weakly.
Leon Lake said nothing.
Instead, he extended the timeline arrow he had been drawing on the screen.
A new date appeared.
November 30.
> "At present, the Antimemetics Division is the only antimemetics research body left in the world. Forty personnel remain."
---
The livestream chat erupted.
> "Only 40?! Weren't there more than 4,000 before?!"
"How many has SCP-3125 killed already?!"
"I don't get it," someone muttered. "What the hell happened?"
Leon Lake's expression darkened.
> "The answer is here."
He slid in another videotape.
The footage began in darkness.
A soft beep sounded—some invisible sensor had activated.
The lights came on.
Dr. Wheeler appeared again, visibly more worn down.
The walls were lined with milky-white glass, plastered with sheets of paper taped and pinned together in a patchwork of desperate logic.
Where there wasn't paper, notes and symbols were scrawled directly onto the glass in marker.
A long oval conference table was buried in laptops, wires, and towers of loose files.
Machines whirred to life, sluggishly booting back up.
A projector clicked on automatically, casting a map of the world across the wall, barely aligning with the notes surrounding it.
Sticky notes littered the floor like autumn leaves.
Besides this chaos, the room was empty.
---
To Be Continued…
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