The space was in chaos. The first thing that drew my attention was a massive, mysterious machine that dominated roughly half the rather spacious room (The floorspace was probably ten times that of the room Iris and I shared.). The construction was so bizarre, I couldn’t begin to imagine what this machine was even used for.
Iris explained to me later that this giant contraption was none other than SCP-914, also known as The Clockworks.
SCP-914 was a large clockwork device—that was the origin of the name, and it had nothing to do with actual timekeeping. It weighed in at several tons and covered an area of 18 square meters, made from a mountain of interconnected belts, pulleys, gears, springs, and other clockwork parts. It was incredibly complex (or maybe just haphazardly thrown together), consisting of over eight million moving parts, most of which were arranged and configured in a way incomprehensible to the human mind. To my eyes, it looked more like an extremely difficult puzzle than a functional machine.
The majority of this grotesque contraption was made of copper and tin, with wood and cloth bits mixed in. The construction materials themselves were unspectacular, but the structure looked like a deranged artist poured his soul into creating an engineering masterpiece. Simply looking at it made my eyes whirl.
The main body of the machine was connected via tubes to two clean, encapsulated booths. Between the two booths was a control box referred to as the “Selection Panel.”
Iris covered her mouth with both hands, groaning. Behind her, I stood in disbelief, feeling like I suddenly stepped into a near-future sci-fi film.
Seeing as the room didn’t stink, I wondered what got into Iris. Worried, I followed her line of sight only to be struck speechless. The giant contraption—The Clockworks—was surrounded by piles of junk strewn before it without any rhyme or reason. There were mountains of coins and screws, a toy model gun, and an oddly outdated smartphone. The majority of things were metallic, but there was also a handful of random golden stuffed animals.
It looked as if the warehouse to a factory that specialized in processing metal was hit by a massive earthquake, one that sent all of their wares tumbling to the ground. There was also liquid spilled on the messy floor. It was red. Blood! That was fresh blood, yet to dry.
Hidden behind the mountain of metal, I could only see a pair of feet. But whoever collapsed back there was the source of all that pooling blood. They didn’t even budge. I sure hoped it wasn’t a corpse!
I figured Iris had seen the body and was either so startled or filled with such involuntary disgust that it rendered her speechless. She was such a sweet girl; I bet she couldn’t handle blood or violence. That was what I thought, but my speculation was a bit off the mark.
“Dr. Selkie!” Iris cried the unfamiliar name as she darted toward the pair of feet laying out on the floor.
Did Iris know the person laying over there? It was impressive she recognized them by their feet alone. Barely keeping up with this sudden turn of events, I pushed aside irrelevant details like that and instinctively raced after Iris.
Big as the room was, the mysterious feet were fairly close. We reached them pretty quickly. Peeking over Iris’s shoulders, I looked over the person sprawled out on the floor.
The person laying in a pool of blood was a woman. It was hard to put an exact age to her, but I’d say she was still young. I couldn’t tell a foreigner’s age at a glance, so my best guess, no better than a rough estimate, was that she was probably older than Iris. In other words, this petite Caucasian woman was somewhere between her upper teens to early twenties.
There was a sense of maturity about her. Part of that could probably be attributed to the white lab coat, a uniform especially common among those who’ve earned the right to be called “doctor,” but her facial features looked young. Childish, colorful clothes peeked out from under her lab coat. The material bore a print of small fluffy animals such as cute kittens. She wore thick, winter socks and super warm, fluffy slippers over them. And then there was the blood dripping from her mouth.
“Dr. Selkie! Are you awake? What in the world happened…?!” Iris grabbed the researcher (apparently named Dr. Selkie) by the shoulders and shook her, desperately calling out the young woman’s name.
Even my untrained eyes could tell Dr. Selkie was in bad shape. Blood was streaming from her mouth. There weren’t any glaring external injuries, but even now, there was an impressive amount of blood oozing out across the floor. I had no idea what happened, but simply leaving her here didn’t look like a bright idea. If we left her as she was, it wouldn’t take long before the researcher died of blood loss.
Iris slapped her cheeks to try and get ahold of herself. “███! It could be dangerous in here, so please leave the room for now! This is beyond my knowhow, so I’m going to call the medical staff!”
She was right; this woman needed the medical staff, a crack team which essentially served as the research facility’s in-house doctors. Seeing as neither Iris nor I had any medical knowledge, our being here wouldn’t do her any good. I nodded my head in agreement and was just about to hurtle helter-skelter out of the room when…
“Not so fast,” came a feeble voice.
Turning to look in surprise, I saw Iris was holding Dr. Selkie up by the shoulders. The researcher’s eyes were just narrowly open. She croaked out an intimidating whisper. “Don’t call for anyone… I’m begging—no, ordering you, by my authority as a researcher. Shut that door immediately, sever outside communication, and forget about me… Ack! Hack!” Dr. Selkie coughed blood, staggering as she got up.
Iris blanched. “You shouldn’t be moving!”
The young researcher would hear none of it. “Shut up! If you won’t follow my orders, I’ll do it myself,” she declared, her high-pitched voice still holding a youthful timbre. She pulled something that resembled a remote control out of the breast pocket of her lab coat. The moment she pressed one of the buttons on it, the door we came through slammed shut as if by magic. The room must have been made soundproof, for silence suddenly filled the air.
“Hmph. I’ve suffered minor internal damage, but this is hardly fatal,” Dr. Selkie said as she examined herself, coughing multiple times as she rubbed her hands across her abdomen. “I guess I got off lucky. Though it actually might have been better if I died. What should I do…?” she groaned, tears brimming in her eyes as she grew visibly more depressed by the moment.
She finally turned to us as we looked upon her aghast and offered a faint smile. “…Do you two need an explanation?” she asked in a tired voice, to which we nodded several times.