Chapter 635

Thirteen of them formed a circle, with a woman lying face-up in the center, as if part of some ritual.

Not far away, a military truck sat silently, its rear loaded with a complex, intricately structured machine.

"An anti-meme bomb?" Adam guessed.

A cable extended from the machine to a control unit on the ground, and the woman's hand was resting on the controller.

The security pass on her person was different from the others, featuring a bright red-orange diagonal stripe.

He stepped forward, wanting to see more clearly, but a low growl suddenly echoed in his mind, and a golden-white bright spot suddenly appeared in his field of vision.

He squinted; the security pass read [Marion Wheeler - Site Director].

Adam stared at the name for a long time, an indescribable sense of confusion and loss welling up in his heart.

But why was it like this?

He couldn't say.

Perhaps it was because the deceased Director shared his surname, or perhaps there were other reasons.

Adam wanted to say something to her, yet the words turned into silence as they reached his lips.

He shook his head, took Marion's pass, and quickly searched the vault, but found nothing there except for some scaffolding and construction debris.

Having obtained Marion Wheeler's pass, Adam gained unlimited access to Site-41.

He not only grasped the entire story but also pieced together the final piece of the puzzle.

He left a note, following the same hopeless yet firm ritual as the others in the Anti-Memetics Division before him.

He took his written instructions to himself and left the "reverse containment unit" of SCP-3125.

He knew exactly where he had to go.

He passed through the woods, left Site-41, walked out of the boundary of the anti-meme crater, and returned to the world ruled by 3125.

"Just now, where did you go?"

A questioning voice pierced his eardrums like a cold arrow, forcing Adam to stop.

Adam turned his head, but his vision was flooded with infinite brightness; he squinted, only barely able to discern a figure standing ahead.

The trees on both sides swayed in the wind, their branches and leaves rubbing together to make a rustling sound; they towered into the clouds, as if they were spider scrapers in the forest.

A chill intertwined with panic instantly swept over Adam's heart, only to be replaced immediately by a sense of solace.

"Why can't I track you?" the unidentified man said, his voice sounding blurred.

"Your existence is so faint, it's as if you don't exist at all. It took me two whole days to lock onto you again. What the hell is wrong with you?"

Adam remained silent.

The man moved closer; he didn't walk, yet the distance between the two was closing.

His voice gradually became clearer, but he was shrouded in a dazzling light, making it impossible to look directly at him.

"You aren't one of them, and you aren't one of us."

"In the memetic world, you don't amount to a damn thing."

"Why do you still waste time on this? Why are you still obsessed with all of this?"

"Whatever the fuck you are, you should just kill yourself, because all of this is futile."

Adam knew this clearly.

The light gradually dissipated, the figure shifting from blurry to solid, finally revealing a real human form.

It was a man in his twenties, skin and bones, with disheveled hair, a messy beard, and his upper body bare.

There was a deep hole in his collarbone, clearly a fatal wound.

Blood gushed from the wound, soaking his clothes and forearms, congealing into black scabs, yet the flow was endless, forming even thicker crusts...

Adam tried to keep his face expressionless, but he knew it was useless.

He felt his mangled left hand begin to tremble uncontrollably, a part of his soul and body trying to ask:

"Why?"

"This is the truth of humanity," the man declared, spreading his hands toward the world.

"For thousands of years, we have been lying to ourselves, fantasizing that we could become better."

"But this is all we are; this has always been our essence. We were never anything else."

Adam wanted to retort, but as the words reached his lips, his lips merely twitched a few times before he regained his calm.

And in that instant, he pressed his left hand tightly against his chest, drew his gun with his right hand, and in a split second, aimed and pulled the trigger.

It was a brilliant shot; the bullet struck the man directly in the eye, penetrated the eye socket, and exited from the back of his skull.

The man looked surprised, twitching as he slowly knelt down, finally falling face-first onto the ground.

Watching the man's twitching body, Adam gasped for air, staring at the man's shattered skull, still gripping the pistol tightly until the body stopped resisting.

"He sure talked a lot..." Adam muttered with a hint of apology.

Suppressing the discomfort in his heart and taking a few more breaths, Adam took the Foundation terminal from his backpack and entered the coordinates.

Then he slowly backed away, maintaining eye contact with the man's corpse until he placed the terminal on the ground.

According to the instructions he found in the control room, he covered his eyes with his palm, facing the ground:

"Aelonizaenorae! Fire!"

As the words fell, the satellite in Earth's orbit received the key.

The satellite's control module was activated, the energy module was awakened, the weapon module unlocked, and the optical components began to focus.

Almost instantly, a laser descended from the sky; its speed was impossible for human senses to capture, striking the target directly.

In an instant, the air around the point of contact between the laser and the ground was heated to the limit, gas molecules were ionized, and a dazzling pillar of light suddenly expanded, illuminating everything around it.

Although the strike lasted only a short time, the energy released was enough to destroy everything in the target area.

The heat peaked the moment it hit the ground, instantly vaporizing the corpse and the surrounding matter, leaving only the scorched asphalt ground.

When the heat wave slowly receded and the dazzling light dissipated, the world returned to an orange-red hue. Adam walked forward slowly and spoke to the charred remains:

"I was going to say: 'This is a lie. This is you. You are the lie.'"

"But, eh..."

If this bastard could still come back to life, I would really be finished, completely done for.

Adam muttered to himself while slowly looking up at the sky; the world's light and temperature had not changed because of this.

The sky remained gloomy, and that evil sense of oppression originating from SCP-3125 still permeated the universe.

However, as he turned around, the surrounding woods suddenly stirred, and Adam realized that those mountain-sized spider-like creatures were silently dispersing, disappearing into the depths of the dense forest.