I’m In Charge of SCP - Chapter 225: There Is An Imposter

Chapter 225: There Is An Imposter

Three days later, East Siberia, Site-188.

Zhang Jue dragged his suitcase, followed the receptionist sent by the site and came to the site. It was already late April, but East Siberia is located in the mountains. With the latitude is high, the temperature was very low. Zhang Jue was resistant to cold and heat, but to see the site staff has even put on short sleeves. He sighed, the people in this country is different from others.

Site-118 is located in the remote mountainous area with no oncoming traffic. The entire site only a few buildings. Compared to Site-14 and Site-237 that was in the desert, it’s a pretty small site. If not for some projects really need to be far away from the city, I believe the foundation will not build a site here.

The director of Site-188 is Maxim Andrey Zakurov, a middle-aged man with a rugged look. He is a tall man with a beard, the most standard template of the people who likes to fight. He led a group of staff members and gave a warm welcome to Zhang Jue’s arrival.

There aren’t many staff in Site-188, less than half of Site-14. After a few pleasantries, Maxim invited Zhang Jue to join him for a drink. Site-118 is isolated, and the staff here rarely get to meet other colleagues.

However, Zhang Jue has been with the Foundation for over a year and has made a name for himself. The Foundation Star title he had just received was the highest honor in the eyes of the Foundation staff. So, the staff at Site-188 all wanted to get a glimpse of him, to see if this living Foundation Star and that legendary wise Asian man was really that good.

At Site-14, Zhang Jue’s drinking capacity was one of the best, and several colleagues tried to get him drunk at the annual meeting, but he ended up drinking all over them. But this wasn’t Site-14, so Zhang Jue thought about it and didn’t dare to pretend with the big brother of the fighting nation.

“Site Director Maxim, it’s better to show me the relevant information about the stolen SCP first.”

“Heh, okay.” Speaking of business, Site Director Maxim sighed.

Site-118 didn’t house many SCP, and most of them were Safe, or Euclid level. There were only a few Keter level ones, so the defense force wasn’t high, and there was only one MTF squad stationed nearby. In addition to the security personnel at the site.

But the accident was a bit strange. Not only did the security personnel didn’t find the enemy, even the MTF squad didn’t find their trace, and it was not clear how the enemy stole the item.

Rather than being attacked, some of the site items were stolen. This was somewhat a bit different with the information provided by the Foundation earlier. Zhang Jue took the file and read it carefully.

Site Director Maxim, who was half a head taller than Zhang Jue, sat on the side and spoke to Zhang Jue intermittently. “Advisor Zhang, I’m not going to lie to you. The previous Site Director just stepped down not long ago. I’ve still been in the office for less than a year, and I didn’t expect to encounter something like this. My luck is really bad.”

Maxim slapped his thigh and cursed in Russian something Zhang Jue didn’t understand, probably cursing to the whole family of those thieves.

“I’m guessing these employees you can get them to fight in this site. But when it comes to investigating and obtaining evidence, none of them can do anything. Damn it! If I didn’t have no choice, I wouldn’t have begged the headquarters. But I didn’t expect it to be you. Advisor Zhang, my position as a Site Director depends on you…”

Maxim rambled on and on, but he seemed to be straightforward and did not treat Zhang Jue as an outsider. Although Zhang Jue had a lot of bad intentions, he liked to make friends with such a straightforward person.

He laughed, “Director Maxim, it’s not as serious as you say. It’s just an SCP object.”

Not to mention that he had just grabbed a dozen SCPs out of headquarters at the beginning of the year, and he hadn’t heard of anyone at Site-19 being responsible for this. Let’s just say that it was fortunate that Zhang Jue hadn’t said what was on his mind, or else the Head Researcher at Site-19 would have been so angry that he would have vomited blood if he had known about it.

If he hadn’t been so useful to the Foundation, then the Foundation would have euthanized him for what he had done. He wouldn’t need to continue further.

Maxim did not know Zhang Jue’s great achievements, he said, “Advisor Zhang, I heard that one of the Site Director in the Chinese region because of an accident happened in the site. Do you know about it?”

The Chinese Site Director who resigned because of the incident was probably no one other than Yang Wenbai based on Maxim description. Zhang Jue smiled, he was more than familiar with this matter. If not for him, Yang Wenbai would not have been able to resign.

But Zhang Jue did not continue to nag with Maxim, he put the information in his hand aside and said, “Site Director Maxim, this information does not mention the missing items. Can you tell me its number?”

Because of the need for confidentiality, the item numbers were blacked out in the printed out paper information.

Maxim whispered to Zhang Jue, “Its number is SCP-1139.”

“I see.” Zhang Jue nodded, this number did not surprise him.

…

SCP-1139 (Broken Tongue), Object Class Euclid.

The exterior appeared to be a rectangular gray metal block, about 20cm high, with a 5cm edge on the bottom side. It has a number of square protrusions distributed on its sides, and those who observe it will think it is a capitalization of a familiar language, but experiments have proven that it is only an illusion.

It can affect people within a certain radius in unknown ways. Those who are affected by it will start talking and writing in a new language, even though they think they are using their native language. Linguistic analysis showed that the new language was an old one, but all attempts at translation ended in failure.

…

Compared to the many SCP projects of various shapes and sizes, SCP-1139 is not very special. It is a very normal object, not much to write about it, and even its object class is only Euclid.

However, for the Foundation. It has a very high confidentiality authority, so much so that most of the Site-188 staff only know that the site lost a very important project, but do not know what it is.

The reason for this is probably because SCP-1139 is related to the Church of the Broken God. According to legend, it is a part of the body of the Broken God. To resurrect the Broken God, SCP-1139 is essential.

When he received this answer, Zhang Jue could also finally determine that the purpose of those Church of the Broken followers was really to resurrect the Broken God, Mekhane.

“What a joke.” Zhang Jue let out a chortle.

I never thought that the God he had first approached in this world would be it. Those followers of the Church of the Broken God didn’t know what kind of stimulation they had received. The Broken God had been silent for I don’t know how many centuries, or even how many eras. Yet they suddenly wanted to resurrect it. Did they really think that the Foundation was a just going to stay still about it.

Zhang Jue was not a madman, so he would not know exactly what those fanatics thought. His mission was to send them to God.

Seeing Zhang Jue staring at the document in silence, Maxim said, “Well, Advisor Zhang. Did you find anything? If there’s anything you need me to do, just ask, and I won’t spare those people underneath who dare to mess things up for you!”

Zhang Jue took the document back into his hands and turned it upside down, “There are indeed some suspicions. I may have to go to the scene to take a look.”

SCP-1139 has been lost for several days and it was no surprise. It must have fallen into the hands of the Church of the Broken God, and it is definitely impossible to recover it. Zhang Jue came to Site-188 and what he did was just to solve the problem.

Since the thing has been lost. At least to he knew how it was lost, otherwise in the future Maxim may not even sleep peacefully. Under Maxim’s leadership, Zhang Jue came to the original containment room of SCP-1139.

Although the secrecy level of this object is very high, the containment room has not been designed much in order to appear it is not so special. The door to the containment room could be opened with dual verification of password and fingerprint.

According to Zhang Jue’s deduction, the theft should have been carried out in the early morning hours. Apparently, the intruder was familiar with the layout of the site’s surveillance equipment and had cleverly avoided much of the surveillance. The only surveillance facing the containment room had also been broken.

Zhang Jue approached the officer in charge of security and the leader of the MTF squad again and asked them about their shift. After they had all left, Zhang Jue fell into deep thought. This time, Maxim did not speak fearing that it would only disturb him.

Five minutes passed, Zhang Jue gave a humphed and seemingly had an idea.

Maxim was busy asking, “Advisor Zhang, have you found anything now?”

“Just some preliminary ideas that still need to be verified.” Zhang Jue seemed to have thought of something interesting and suddenly smiled, “Site Director Maxim, let me ask you this. What kind of recreational activities did you do to this people, especially when you were a kid?”

“Our childhood recreational activities?” Maxim did not know why Zhang Jue would ask this question, but still thought seriously about it.

“Just catching birds from the trees, catching fish from the river, and if we met black bears and boars. We would ride on them for a while.” Riding on black bears and boars to play, really worthy of these people.

Zhang Jue stretched out his thumb, then asked, “You guys didn’t watch TV when you were little? For example, cartoons or something?”

“Cartoons?” Maxim froze for a long time before he remembered that it seemed to be a story interpreted with cartoon images, and he waved his hand dismissively, “For the most part, we don’t watch that stuff. It’s not that interesting.”

Yeah, if I could ride a wild boar when I was a kid, I wouldn’t watch cartoons either.

Zhang Jue laughed, “That’s good, Site Director Maxim. Then please gather all the employees of this site into the large conference room, I want to do an experiment.”

“What experiment?” Maxim asked.

“Site Director Maxim, I’m not going to hide it from you. I think that this SCP-1139 theft is most likely related to the employees within the site. To put it bluntly, I suspect that there is an imposter among us.” Zhang Jue smiled faintly with a mysterious expression, “And my experiment is to help you uncover this imposter!”

…

An hour later, Site-188 held the largest staff meeting since Maxim took charge. The reason for holding the meeting was actually clear in everyone’s mind, because a very important SCP was lost within the site.

In addition to individual key positions, the rest of the hundreds of employees all put down the work at hand, concentrated in the large conference room. The special person appointed from the Foundation’s headquarters, Advisor Zhang Jue, was sitting in the center of the podium. With a small clay pot in his hand and he didn’t know what it was for.

Next, Site Director Maxim began to speak. The moment he opened his mouth, it was a heavy bomb. “For the investigation related to the theft of this site SCP, we have come to a conclusion that there is actually an traitor in Site-188.” He said angrily, “The reason for this meeting today is to uncover him. To see who in the end, betrayed his colleagues, his friends, and his career!”

After Maxim finished speaking, the room was in an uproar. How could everyone not expect that Advisor Zhang who had arrived here just half a day had come to such a conclusion?

Does it mean that everyone around is not to be trusted? Colleagues who seemed to be very close might turn into enemies right away. Soon, a panic was spreading. The Site Director called everyone together here which means that everyone is a suspect.

In this situation. Once you’re a suspect, everyone will look on to you. After all, who hasn’t had a time to complain about the leader at work.

In the past, those words of the mouth will now become ironclad evidence of defection. People are in fear that the butcher’s knife will fall on their necks. If it’s just execution or memory erasure that’s fine. But the most frightening thing is to be demoted to D-level personnel, and it was a fate worse than death.

All of them whispered. Suddenly a researcher stood up and said, “Site Director! Talk about an evidence, who are you to suspect us?”

Another person also had the guts to say, “Yes, we are all good colleagues. No one here could be the enemy.”

With this, people kept getting up and questioning. The scene was a little out of control. At this moment, Zhang Jue who had been silent, suddenly coughed twice and stood up. With just two actions, everyone dared not speak and stared at him dumbly.

There are no false soldiers under the famous name. After all, the name Zhang Jue had become extraordinary in the hearts of the Foundation’s employees. If those bigwigs in the O5 council were exalted and mysterious. Then Zhang Jue was the unnamed God, if not omnipotent.

They dared to fight back against the Site Director’s words. But when Zhang Jue stood up, no one dared to speak up again. Zhang Jue looked around and smiled.

“You guys misunderstood it. Although we guessed that there was an imposter inside the site, it was not meant to be an indiscriminate strike.” He picked up the clay pot on the table, “This is an item I borrowed from headquarters. I won’t tell you the number, all you need to know is that it is a lie detector, and by passing its test, we can know who is a friend and who is an enemy.”