The knock on FULCRUM's door came before the siren.
Three sharp raps, evenly spaced.
He was already half-awake, lying on his bunk staring at the faint glow of the wall panel, when the sound cut through the quiet.
For a heartbeat, his brain insisted it was the stairwell from the training kill house.
Three knocks.
Pause.
Three knocks.
He sat up, bare feet on cold floor.
The panel by the door blinked pale blue.
PRIORITY BRIEFING — LIMITED ROSTER
NU-7 TEAM 1
LOCATION: BRIEFING ROOM 2
He thumbed the panel.
"On my way," he said.
There was a slight pause.
Then OWL's voice came through, quieter than usual.
"Bring your rope harness," OWL said. "And KESTREL."
The line clicked off.
FULCRUM stared at the door for a second.
Rope.
Stairs.
He got dressed.
Briefing Room 2 was colder than it had any right to be.
TEAM 1 sat in partial gear—armor vests, helmets on the table, harnesses coiled at their feet. KESTREL had a climbing bag open beside her, carabiners and descenders neatly aligned. She tapped one with a gloved finger in a steady, unconscious rhythm.
PATCH and FUSE occupied chairs along the wall. DUSK lounged in a corner, mug in hand, hair damp from a rushed shower.
At the front, OWL stood with DOCSTRING at his shoulder. The main screen showed a grainy black-and-white photograph.
A concrete landing. A metal handrail. Beyond it, a flight of stairs disappearing down into darkness.
There was a number painted on the wall: 2.
No bottom in sight.
FULCRUM took his seat.
"This is an old problem," OWL said by way of greeting. "With a new complication."
He tapped the tablet in his hand.
The photograph shifted to a blueprint—a section of a campus building labeled ADMINISTRATION / HUMANITIES.
"One of our long-term containment sites is embedded in the basement of ███████ University," OWL said. "Some of you know the file. Most of you don't. SCP ZERO-EIGHT-SEVEN: 'The Stairwell.'"
The designation hit the room like a quiet drop in air pressure.
"SCP-087 is a non-Euclidean stairwell located behind a reinforced door in a campus building," DOCSTRING said. "Unlit beyond the first platform. Descends an indeterminate number of flights. Past attempts at full exploration resulted in loss of personnel. The entity designated ZERO-EIGHT-SEVEN-ONE manifests as a face in the dark. No pupils, no mouth, no nostrils. It is not friendly."
"Understatement," RATCHET muttered.
"The stairwell has been under lockdown for several years," DOCSTRING continued. "Access restricted to remote probes and limited D-class excursions."
"So why are we talking about it?" VANTAGE asked. "We're not D-class."
"Because someone broke the rules," OWL said flatly.
The next still appeared.
Security footage from a hallway. A university maintenance worker in overalls, ID badge visible, pulling a cart of cleaning supplies. He stopped at a blank section of wall with a heavy reinforced door set into it.
A Foundation guard stood beside the door, bored and stiff in ill-fitting uniform.
In the next frame, the guard was leaning in close, talking. The maintenance worker's body language changed—from neutral to curious.
Third frame: the guard's hand on the lock.
Fourth frame: the door open a crack.
Fifth frame: empty hallway.
"The guard has been detained and is facing internal charges," OWL said. "He claims he 'just wanted to show the guy something weird because the shifts are boring.' The maintenance worker is missing. Audio from the guard's radio suggests he entered SCP-087 and descended at least three flights before the entity engaged."
"Audio?" FULCRUM asked.
OWL tapped again.
The speakers hissed, then resolved into the harsh breathing of a man in motion.
"–okay, this is, uh... this is creepy, dude. Lights are out down here. You sure I'm allowed–"
A distant child's cry. "Please help."
"–you hear that? Hello? Hey, kid, you okay, where are you–"
Footsteps quickening. The count of stairs under his breath.
"Thirty-nine, forty, forty-one–"
Another sob, closer. "It hurts. My leg hurts. Please."
The breathing sped.
Then a sharp, choked scream, cut off midway.
Silence.
The audio ended.
"Visual feed corrupted at the same moment," DOCSTRING said. "We have no frame-by-frame of the engagement."
"Campus administration is aware?" HARROW asked.
"Of a 'maintenance accident,'" DUSK said. "They think he fell down an elevator shaft. We closed the floor for 'structural assessment.' No one else has approached the door since."
"Our immediate objective is not full exploration," OWL said. "E-11 has jurisdiction on deep-structure anomalies of this class. They are currently engaged with another containment event. Until they can relieve us, our job is simple."
He looked at FULCRUM.
"You will secure the immediate approach," OWL said. "Breach the outer hall, recover any material on or near the first few platforms, verify whether the missing worker's body is within reachable depth, and re-establish reliable barriers at the threshold. Under no circumstances do you descend beyond the limit of your rope."
"Copy," FULCRUM said.
"ALPHA-1 Overwatch online," PRIORESS said over the speaker. "This is not a hero run. You are not here to solve ZERO-EIGHT-SEVEN. You are here to stop civilians from wandering into it because one of ours got bored. You will treat the entity as present and hostile. You will not chase cries. You will not go out of line-of-sight of your anchor. If I see your vitals move past a certain point, I will order OWL to haul you out like a misbehaving pup. Understood?"
"Yes, ma'am," FULCRUM said.
On a lower, encrypted channel, her voice softened.
"Shadow channel," PRIORESS murmured. "Online?"
"Here," FOXHAMMER's voice answered, low and rough.
"Watch him," she said. "Stairwells and voices. We know how that goes."
"Yeah," FOXHAMMER said quietly. "We do."
"MedIntel," OWL prompted.
"PSI-7 MedIntel," PATCH said. "On-site bay will be set up in a campus maintenance room outside the sealed zone. Expect potential fall trauma, lacerations from contact with railings or rough concrete, and psych effects from exposure to anomalous audio—panic, disassociation, possible temporary auditory hallucinations. Anyone hears a child crying when there isn't one, you route them to me. Anyone sees a face where there shouldn't be one, you route them to DOCSTRING after I clear their spine and pupils."
"IMINT," OWL said.
"SCP-087 eats light and laughs at cameras," FUSE said. "I've got blueprints for the building and pre-existing schematics for the stairwell entry, but nothing from inside past the first two landings is reliable. I'll watch the approach, exterior, and your tether line. Past the door, you're in physics-optional territory."
"Love that for us," RATCHET muttered.
"Rope ops," OWL added, glancing at KESTREL.
"Vertical entry specialist, KESTREL," she said, sitting a little straighter. "We rig at the threshold, run primary and backup lines. We do not cut corners. We do not trust the railings. Fulcrum clips to me, I clip to the world."
Her eyes flicked to FULCRUM, then down to the harness at her boots.
"Good," OWL said. "You step off in forty. Gear up."
The campus building looked painfully normal.
Red brick, arched windows, pamphlets curling in brochure racks by the entrance. Students milled on the quad outside, held back from the doors by sawhorses and a line of security tape.
"University thinks it's a gas leak," DUSK said as they approached in plain transport. She had a campus security lanyard on; it looked wrong on her. "I told them the line ran under this building and might've compromised the foundation. They were very eager to let us take over."
"People get very helpful when you say 'foundation,'" RATCHET said.
"Different foundation," DUSK replied. "Less capital letters."
Inside, the air was cooler.
They moved down a side corridor, past faculty offices and bulletin boards layered with flyers. At the far end, a section of wall had been cordoned off with temporary partitions and hazard signs.
Behind the partitions, the reinforced door waited.
It was out of place among the painted cinderblock—a slab of steel with multiple deadbolts, a secure keypad, and a small observation panel that had been welded shut.
Someone had scratched faint tally marks into the paint near the frame.
FULCRUM paused before it, harness already on, rope coiled over one shoulder.
"Feels like a bad idea," HARROW said quietly.
"Most of our job does," FULCRUM replied.
He looked at KESTREL.
She nodded once.
"Anchor point here," she said, slapping gloved fingers against a steel support beam in the ceiling. "Secondary on that I-beam. We run twin lines. I'm your belay. You do not unclip without my say so, or DOCSTRING will make you regret it."
"I'll help," DOCSTRING said over the net.
They set to work.
Rope hissed through hardware as KESTREL rigged the system with practiced efficiency. Carabiners clicked. Knots tightened. FULCRUM checked his harness twice, then a third time.
"When's the last time you did a long descent?" KESTREL asked quietly as she tied in.
"Yesterday, in my head," he said.
She snorted.
"That's not the same," she said.
"I know," he said.
She met his eyes, just for a second.
"I've got you," she said.
"Copy," he said.
The door groaned as RATCHET worked the locks.
"Last chance to pretend we got lost on the way here," VANTAGE said.
"Not our style," FULCRUM replied.
The deadbolts clunked back.
The door swung inward.
Cold air rolled out.
Beyond, the stairwell yawned.
Concrete walls, bare. A flight of stairs descending into darkness. A landing visible, the painted number 1 on the wall.
Below that, nothing.
The light from their helmets seemed to hesitate at the threshold, as if the darkness were thicker than it should be.
"Ambient internal temperature five degrees Celsius," PATCH said. "That's wrong for a closed stairwell."
"Most of this is wrong," DOCSTRING said.
"Remember," PRIORESS said. "You are not here to map it. You are here to get whoever we can and seal it back up."
"Understood," FULCRUM said.
He clipped into KESTREL's line.
"Primary secure," KESTREL said, voice steady. "Backup secure. On my mark, Fulcrum steps onto the landing and then down. I control feed and brake. Any problems, I lock and haul."
"Copy," he said.
She took a breath.
"Mark," she said.
He stepped through the door.
The temperature drop was immediate.
His breath fogged as he crossed the threshold from the campus hallway into SCP-087's throat.
The first flight down was simple. Thirteen steps, concrete, metal rail. His boots rang softly.
At the first landing, he turned.
The painted number 1 sat on the wall, slightly faded.
Below, another flight, and another landing marked with a small, distant 2.
"Visual stable," he said. "No movement. No audio beyond my own steps."
"I've got your line," KESTREL said over the net. Her voice came from behind him and above, thin but steady. "Tension good. Descend one more platform."
He went down.
Flight two. Landing. Number 2.
The darkness below felt thicker.
His helmet light cut a cone into it, but the beam seemed to thin out faster than it should have, swallowed by gray.
"Any visual anomalies?" FUSE asked. "Shadows moving where they shouldn't?"
"Not yet," FULCRUM said.
He knelt, scanning the landing.
A smear of something dark stained the concrete near the inner corner.
He touched it with a gloved finger.
"Fluid," he said. "Dried. Composition unknown without analysis. Could be blood."
"Swab and bag," PATCH said.
He did.
"Rope length?" he asked.
"You're at twelve meters of pay so far," KESTREL said. "We planned for thirty for you. That's your hard limit. You do not argue with the rope."
"Copy," he said.
He rose.
From below, faint and far, a sound echoed up.
"Please."
A child's voice. Thin, distorted by the space.
"Please, help."
His throat tightened.
"Audio anomaly," he said calmly. "Distance uncertain. Tone resembles known SCP-087-1 lure patterns."
"Do not respond," DOCSTRING said immediately.
On the command channel, PRIORESS's voice flattened.
"Code check," she said.
"ONE," BASTION answered from the threshold.
"TWO," HARROW said.
"THREE," RATCHET added.
"FOUR," VANTAGE said.
"FIVE," FULCRUM finished.
He wrapped the rope once around his forearm, feeling the tension.
"Continuing descent," he said.
"Copy," KESTREL said. Her hands worked the belay device, paying out line in careful increments.
Flight three. Landing. Number 3.
On the corner of the step, something glinted.
He crouched.
A keycard lay half-on, half-off the edge. University logo. Photo of the maintenance worker from the briefing, ID still clipped.
"Found our maintenance man's badge," FULCRUM said. "No body."
"Bag it," DUSK said. "I can use that to backfill a missing-person story they'll actually believe."
He slid it into an evidence pouch.
From below, the voice came again.
"Please," it sobbed. "It's so dark. I can't see. I fell. I think my leg is broken."
FULCRUM kept his eyes on the concrete.
"Audio volume increasing," he said. "Source direction remains below. No secondary sounds—no breathing, no shuffling. Just the voice."
"Distance?" FUSE asked, as if sound behaved here.
"Functionally irrelevant," FULCRUM said.
On the shadow channel, FOXHAMMER exhaled slowly.
"He's compartmentalizing," FOXHAMMER murmured. "Treating the voice as data, not a plea."
"Is that how you did it?" PRIORESS asked quietly.
"Eventually," he said.
"Rope," KESTREL said softly in FULCRUM's ear. "You're at eighteen meters. You've got twelve left before I lock it."
"Copy," he said.
"Any sign of the worker's body?" PATCH asked.
"Negative," he said. "No visible remains on the first three landings. Blood trace, badge. That's it."
"Then we consider him lost below minimum safe depth," DOCSTRING said.
The voice below changed.
It shifted, just slightly.
"Fulcrum," it said.
He stopped.
The sound floated up, warped by the stairwell.
"Fulcrum, why did you leave me?"
It was not any voice he recognized.
That almost made it worse.
"Audio anomaly has adopted my callsign," he said evenly. "Phrase content is bait."
"Duly noted," DOCSTRING said crisply.
"Shadow channel," PRIORESS said, too quietly for the main net. "Status?"
"Not mine," FOXHAMMER said. "If it had grabbed my tone exactly, I'd be more concerned."
"It will if it keeps hearing you," she said.
"Then I'll shut up," he replied.
On the line, KESTREL's voice softened.
"Hey," she said quietly, just for FULCRUM. "Eyes on the wall. Hands on the rope. Hear it, don't follow it."
"Copy," he said.
He descended one more flight.
Landing. Number 4.
Here, the air felt thicker. His light barely pushed back the dark.
On the far corner of the landing, something pale lay against the wall.
He approached slowly.
A shoe.
Inside it, with obscene neatness, five toes.
"Found a partial," he said. "Foot. No attached body."
KESTREL swore under her breath.
"Depth?" OWL asked.
"Approximately twenty-four meters from threshold," FULCRUM said. "Approaching planned limit."
"You're done," PRIORESS said immediately.
"Negative," FULCRUM said. "Request authorization to descend one more flight to confirm absence of reachable survivors."
There was a brief, tense silence.
On the shadow channel, FOXHAMMER spoke quietly.
"Give him one more landing," he said. "Then haul him."
"MedIntel?" OWL asked.
"Vitals are elevated but within functional range," PATCH said. "He's not in panic territory yet. One more landing is acceptable if the rope holds."
"Rope will hold," KESTREL said, a hint of offense in her tone.
"E-11 liaison?" OWL added.
A different voice chimed in, clipped, distant—ECHO-LEAD.
"087-1 likes to play just below safe thresholds," ECHO-LEAD said. "One more flight, then you pull him and weld the door. Anything past that is our problem when we get there."
OWL exhaled.
"You have one more landing, FULCRUM," he said. "Then you come up. No negotiation."
"Copy," FULCRUM said.
He went down.
Flight five. Steps counted themselves in his head.
Ten.
Eleven.
Twelve.
Thirteen.
Landing.
Number 5.
He swung his light.
The beam caught the railing, the opposite wall, bare concrete.
No body. No new debris. Just the same endless downward curve.
"Visual clean," he said. "No sign of survivor within safe depth."
"Then you're done," PRIORESS said. "Up."
He turned.
The darkness below seemed to lean up toward him, curious.
"Please," the voice called, closer now. "Don't leave me alone."
He kept his eyes on the steps.
"Ascending," he said.
KESTREL took in slack, hands working the belay with a little more urgency.
On the fourth landing, the temperature dropped another degree.
His breath fogged harder.
Behind him, from somewhere just below the edge of his light, something shifted.
A soft, wet scrape, like flesh against concrete.
He did not look.
"Something's moving below my position," he said. "Estimated distance less than ten meters. I am not making visual contact."
"That's the correct answer," DOCSTRING said.
He climbed.
On the third landing, the voice changed again.
"Fulcrum," it said.
This time, it sounded almost like PATCH.
"You can't save everyone," it crooned.
He felt his jaw clench.
On the net, PATCH's breath hitched softly.
"That's not me," she said.
"I know," he said.
He forced his hand not to tighten on the rope.
Second landing. Number 2.
His light reached the threshold above.
"Line tension good," KESTREL said, some of the tightness easing out of her voice. "Almost there."
At the last stair, the voice tried one more time.
"Hey," it whispered.
This time, it sounded like him.
He stepped onto the top landing.
The moment he crossed the threshold back into the hallway, the sound cut off.
The air warmed.
The rope went slack as KESTREL locked it and unclipped.
"Welcome back," DUSK said, the forced casualness in her tone doing nothing to hide the relief.
FULCRUM exhaled.
He didn't realize how cold his hands had gotten until he started unclipping.
"Any afterimages?" DOCSTRING asked.
"Echoes," he said. "Manageable."
"We'll test that," she replied.
KESTREL stepped in front of him, fingers quick on the harness buckles.
"You good?" she asked quietly.
"Operational," he said.
She made a face.
"I meant..." she began.
"I know," he said. "I'm good enough."
Her gloved fingers brushed his wrist as she tugged a strap free.
"Did you want to look?" she asked.
"Yeah," he said. "That's why I didn't."
She huffed out a breath that might have been a laugh.
"Okay," she said. "I'll take that."
He stepped back from the doorway.
"Seal it," OWL said.
RATCHET and HARROW moved in with welding gear and concrete patch mix, working quickly. They re-engaged the deadbolts, welded plates over the frame, and started laying down a reinforced barrier.
As the first layer of concrete went on, there was a faint, distant knock from the other side.
Three sharp raps.
Pause.
Three more.
"Ignore it," PRIORESS said.
They did.
Outside, in the makeshift MedIntel bay, PATCH ran her tests.
Pupil lights, reflex checks, questions that sounded simple but weren't.
"You're not hearing anything right now," she said, watching FULCRUM's eyes. It wasn't quite a question.
"Just you," he said.
"Lucky you," DUSK muttered from her seat on an overturned crate.
"Later tonight," PATCH said, "if you hear knocking when there isn't any, that's normal for what you just did. If you hear a child crying, that's expected. If you start hearing me say things I didn't say, that's when you come back."
"No offense," FULCRUM said, "but if you start talking in my head, I'm going to complain no matter what you're saying."
She smiled, small and tired.
"Good," she said. "That means you're still you."
Her hand brushed his shoulder lightly as she stepped back.
"Vitals are stable," she told DOCSTRING. "No immediate psych red flags. Just the usual."
"The 'usual' is not a great phrase," DUSK said.
"Occupational hazard," DOCSTRING replied.
From the doorway, FUSE watched the exchange, arms folded.
"You done poking him?" FUSE asked.
"For now," PATCH said.
"Good," FUSE said. "Because I have about twelve hours of footage from campus cams, and I'm not watching it alone."
"You say that like it's a punishment," she said.
"It is," he replied. "For me. I might start seeing faces in stairwells."
"You already do," DUSK said. "They're called students."
FULCRUM slid off the exam table.
"You going to be all right?" PATCH asked him quietly.
"I'll let you know if I'm not," he said.
She nodded.
"That's all I can ask," she said.
Back at the Site, in the observation room, PRIORESS and FOXHAMMER watched the stairwell footage on repeat.
On the screen, FULCRUM descended, rope taut, light a narrow cone.
"He never looks down past his own radius," PRIORESS said.
"Learned that trick faster than I did," FOXHAMMER said.
"He asked for one more landing," she said.
"So did I," he replied.
"Difference being?" she asked.
"I didn't have anyone like KESTREL on my line," he said. "Or someone like PATCH on my MedIntel. Or someone like you in my Overwatch willing to pull me at five."
"You think that'll be enough to keep him from burning out?" she asked.
He watched FULCRUM turn away from the darkness at the bottom of the frame, climbing back toward the light.
"It'll buy him time," FOXHAMMER said. "What he does with it is on him. What we do with him is on us."
She nodded once.
"Recommendation stands," she said.
"Yeah," he said. "It does."
She let her hand rest over his for a moment, the gesture familiar now.
"Coffee?" she asked.
"Your coffee is a Euclid-class hazard," he said.
"Occupational hazard," she replied.
They left the room together.
Behind them, the paused frame on the main monitor showed FULCRUM halfway up the stairs, caught between levels, rope taut.
For now, he was still climbing.