Gelbsucht_IE

Maria was dreaming when God came to her. Awareness fell upon her suddenly like startling awake and yet she still slept. “MARIA! MARIA!” God called with the sound of thunder and she turned in the dark. “THERE ARE THINGS YOU MUST KNOW – THINGS YET TO COME. SEE!” And she turned again and saw.
There was a faceless Giant with thirteen arms holding up the sky. As she watched, one arm stopped holding the sky and covered the Giant’s ears. Then there was a screeching like the rolling of bombs and a great Eagle swept down from the sky and tore into the Giant. Sharp talons began ripping the Giant limp from limp and the arms where scattered to the four corners of the world.
“THIS WILL HAPPEN SOON”, God stood at her side but she could not turn to see. “BUT THERE IS HOPE YET.” And she went on seeing and there came a flock of sheep in the pelts of wolves and they stole away a part of the Giant from the Eagle and she was one of the flock.
The image faded and she stood again in the dark.
“WHEN THE GIANT FALLS YOU MUST ARM YOURSELF AND TAKE COURAGE AND SEEK REFUGE IN MY HOUSE. HOPE, MY CHILD.”
These words showed her flashes of a containment breach alarm and an open locker offering something holy and a church she knew was save.
Then God left her and the vision faded and she went on dreaming.
 
Maria woke hours later to the sound of an alarm. Not the blaring claxon calling her team into action but the gentler tone that informed her that alpha-shift had moved out for a mission. Now it was beta-shift’s turn to take over readiness until they returned. She reacted with customary urgency, anyway. As squad commander, she had to set a good example after all. So it was that she already was halfway through pulling on the combat coveralls that formed the basis of her uniform, when she remembered the vision. The hand pulling up her zipper faltered. Had God really spoken to her? Her mind went racing through possible explanations. Could it have been just a dream? No! It was too real for that. A memetic effect then? But she was up-to-date on her inoculations and her last post-mission check-up last week had brought up nothing. A different dream-inducing anomaly? Perhaps…//
Thoughtfully she continued putting on her uniform, the combat boots, the heavy plate carrier with the Epsilion-11 patch on it, the utility belt with radio, gasmask, combat knife, bandages, hume-meter and the – for now empty- grenade pouch. Lastly, she grabbed the combat helmet and snapped it onto her belt. With a last stare at her bed – as though she might see some sign of divine visitation in its ruffled up blankets she left her quarters. Sprinting down the corridor it only took her ten seconds to the armory. She nodded at the two site security officers standing guard and unlocked the vault-like door with a swipe of her keycard. Inside she went over to her personal weapons-locker. Inside her Beretta pistol and her trusty ARX-160 with underslung grenade launcher and the multi-spectrum scope. First, she checked the pistol. Satisfied that it had not suddenly gone dirty after its last cleaning yesterday evening she clicked a 20 round magazine of 9mm ammo into place and holstered it at her hip. Then she took the rifle and began the same procedure. While her hands went through the well-drilled motions, her mind drifted to the strange vision again. If it was real: what did it mean? Why had she of all people been chosen for it? And if it wasn’t a genuine divine vision did that she mean she was compromised?
Finished with the rifle, Maria locked the weapons cage once more and left the armory. In the corridor, she almost collided with John Cartwright, the B-team leader of her squad. “Good morning, LT”, the broad-shouldered CQC-specialist bellowed and gave a sharp salute. Maria smiled. “Good morning John.” she replied and dismissed the former US-Marine. Technically, they did not have military ranks in the MTF but taking the Marine out of the man had proven impossible so she accepted his greetings as they were. If you were good enough for the Nine Tailed Fox, you were good enough to be allowed a few quirks. She shook her head and laughed to herself while hurrying down the corridor. By time she had reached the team’s ready room, opposite the helipad where a new helicopter had already replaced the one alpha shift had taken off in she had made her up her mind. She would talk the vision over with Father Peterson during her next confessional on Sunday. She never made it there.
 
Nothing happened that day. Alpha-shift returned after a few hours with two casualties – both wounded and expected to recover within weeks. After that Maria got a few more hours of good sleep before beta shift took over the watch from Alpha. She spent the entire day in anticipation. The vision had not repeated but it did not fade with time either. It filled her with same mind-clearing nervousness she felt before going into battle. That worried her. She tried concentrating on work instead, going over mission protocols and training plans in triplicate.
It did not help much. The second day was 2worswe. It was her off day and she had even less to do to take her mind off the vision. What did it mean? She spend the morning in prayer to the Lord, the Virgin and to holy Saint George, her chosen patron. She had a small shrine in her room depicted the soldier-saint slaying the dragon. Since her forced encounter with the anomalous, the story had become so much more real to her and she strove to slay the creatures of the devil with the same zeal the Saint had shown.
The afternoon was spent sending a thousand rounds down the MTF’s personal training range. That helped a little.
On the third day – it was Friday – something finally did happen. Beta-shift had just taken over the watch when a blaring claxons called the team into action. Maria was first into the helicopter, already talking to the MTF’s experimental AIC assistant through the heads-up display in her helmet, while clipping herself to the safety harness in the back of the helicopter. “What do we have, Kit?” “An alarm just came in from Reliquary Area-27.” Kitsune.aic answered, its stylized nine-tailed fox avatar frowning. “It only was a Case Orange but the connection to the Site was lost right after and they had a SCP transfer in progress. Overwatch Command decided to activate us.”
“Hm… do we have a termination order yet?” A code orange meant a D-Class had escaped. It was standard practice for the Nine-Tailed-Fox to be called in when site security was overwhelmed by a riot or escape attempt by the human test subject. If the situation deteriorated that far the MTF team usually went in with the order top terminate any D-Class they found outside their sells. They were expendable after all.
“Not yet, Commander.”
“Put in a request for one, please. Then send me the dossier for 27. We have to make an entrance plan.” She turned to watch the last of her operators, young Merlin Hunter, lovingly nicknamed their “tech-wizard” hauling his heavy equipment bag into the heli before jumping in himself. She shook her head. “That should have been stored already, tech-wiz.”
She decided to discipline him later and knocked on the divider behind her. “All men, aboard. Take off.”
As the screaming rotors pulled the helicopter heaven ward the vision came unbidden back to her mind. “WHEN THE GIANT FALLS YOU MUST ARM YOURSELF AND TAKE COURAGE AND SEEK REFUGE IN MY HOUSE. HOPE, MY CHILD.” God had said. Suddenly she was certain the Giant would fall today.
 
Throughout the flight this certainty hardenden in her mind. She busied herself with preparing her team for the coming operation. Reliquiary area 27 turned out to be sprawling underground complex specialised in containing anomalies with religious ties. It seemed a potent to her. The Site also housed two MTFs. One – Eta-77 – she knew in passig from the annual cross training exercises held by the Department of Mobile Task Forces the other was apperantly highly classified. Even her general Level-4 clearance only got her acsess to a heavily reedacted version of their dossier. Sola Fide – faith alone. They were prepotorted to be specialised in “the egagementr and termination of hostile pluripotent entities”. God-killers… huh But the again: Maria was used to troubling informatio being part of her job. She pushed doubts aside and carried on planning the mission. Apperantly Eta-77 had been mobilised to help with a [major contaiment breach|scp-wiki.com/fallout] and wasn’t schedluded to return to base for a few days yet. That explained why they hadnt helped site-sec. What Kheaphos 1 was up was classified above her clearance level. Bother. She signed and turned to Thomash Papickzycki, her second in command to discuss entrance plans into the Site. They passed into Canadian airspace. During thee final minutes of the fluight Maria spotted a convey moving through the night below them. Nothing identified them but she was somehow sure they were american. Wonder what they are doing this side of the border She though absent mindedly