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A white-haired guard nervously paced around the door to Dr. Gears’ office, trembling and shaking their hands anxiously. They were worried to approach the doctor and tell him what his plans for the evening were out of fear that he might find it pathetic and stupid.
Agent Elliott Tragedy was not a pathetic person, and they were about to prove that. Right. Now.
They knocked on Dr. Gears’ door, trying to force a smile onto their face and speak in the most polite voice they could muster.
The scientist slowly opened the door from the other side, looking up and down as he tried to figure out who exactly it was that was in front of him.
A fully armored MTF guard of average height, with bangs covering their eyebrows, and one eye - their left one - covered in black ooze. (Probably an unfortunate encounter with 035) The guard was smiling awkwardly, holding a piece of paper.
“Hello, Dr. Gears? I was wondering if you wanted to join me in a play tonight..” they mumbled, “please say yes-”
The cold site director nodded. “Fine, I will go. Did you want me to be an actor? Unfortunately, I am not the best at acting.”
“Oh, trust me, you’ll do perfectly well! I know you will!” Tragedy said, their smile getting broader. “You’re going to love it! Dr. Iceberg already agreed to take part in the play, and so has Dr. Bright!”
This was clearly news to Gears, but it admittedly put him in a slightly better mood. Surely if Iceberg himself is taking part in this, it has to be good.
“Oh and by the way! The three of us decided on a plot already!”
That seemed like a pretty easy and straightforward task, so Gears agreed to do it.
“I’m so glad this site has a large auditorium,” Tragedy hummed as the two of them walked in the direction of where the play was taking place, “I think the others are already there, since like… I sort of invited half the site’s staff to this. And the play’s starting in.. a half hour.”
Gears internally cringed, but tried not to show it. Why wasn’t he warned earlier about this?
“All right, so what is this play called?”
“Stolen Night.”
“...Any particular reason for this name?”
“The main character doesn’t get any sleep!”
Gears silently wished he wasn’t the main character.
When they got to the auditorium, Gears noticed that Bright was sitting on a bench, drinking some… soda? And oh, of course Iceberg was nowhere to be found.
He then saw that Tragedy went backstage and came back wearing a different outfit, an oversized black T-Shirt that said “SCP: The Musical” in big white letters with the Foundation’s logo, as well as a random pair of jeans.
“Okay, guys. Time to start acting!” Tragedy bounced into the room excitedly. Gears noticed that they were speaking very casually - something he otherwise wouldn’t let go unnoticed, but let it slide, since he understood how excited and probably proud they were of their work.
The staff was already coming into the auditorium, so Bright took it as a signal to go backstage, waving at Gears to come with him.
Tragedy walked up onstage, speaking to the audience as the lights gradually got dimmer.
“Ladies, gentlemen and everyone in-between! You may be wondering, ‘what is this commotion all about?’ Well, here you go! A fun night at the theater!” They spoke loudly, so that everyone could hear them even without a microphone - something that wasn’t provided to them by the Foundation, unfortunately.
Cheers could be heard from the crowd as the curtain rose and the lighting became the faintest blue. The stage had been revealed to be set up as one of the corridors at the site they all worked at, a hallway many of them probably even walked in.
And then, just then, Gears felt something off about this.
The stage was so well-set up that he was losing touch with reality. The stage had become his reality. Even though it was only the size of less than half of the auditorium, it felt like he was walking down a long hallway, near the end of which was… a puddle of red.
And before he could realize exactly what was going on, Gears, intrigued and completely involved in the story, walked towards the puddle. Only when he was two feet in front of it did he notice that Iceberg was laying in the center of it.
His Iceberg.
“What… No… This is impossible..” he mumbled, a single tear running down his cheek. Forget the play! This was real, wasn’t it? He looked out into the distance, expecting to see an audience, but instead saw Foundation walls and blue lighting. And Iceberg, dead.
Crushed by his own grief and disgusted by the sheer amount of blood dripping from Iceberg’s head, Gears fainted and fell next to his lover, the flowers scattering across the floor of the stage.
The curtain dropped, and the lights went out, symbolizing night. Tragedy walked up to the front of the stage.
“For you see, dear audience, our Gears is a wonderful actor!” they stated cheerfully, “He’s so genuine, almost as if it was really happening to him! And Iceberg is so great at pretending to be dead! Why, even I am amazed! But worry not, this is not the end of the story! Have you noticed that Bright is missing from the audience? He’s with us here too!”
The curtain rose again, the lights came back up, to the faint shade of blue that they were at the start.
Gears woke up, stained in dark red liquid, which he was convinced was blood.
Next to him still lay his lovely Iceberg, but now another person was in his periphery. Bright, with a not-so-bright expression on his face. But it was clear that Bright was happier than Gears to see this happen. Almost as if he didn’t take it seriously.
“Hey… Don’t worry, we can fix this!”
Fix? And of course he already had a solution. Almost immediately. Since when was Bright so helpful?
Since when did Bright specifically mess around with anomalies like SCP-2003 just to help someone in a tight spot? And bring it up right when someone like Gears needed it?
It just didn’t sit right with him.
But here he was, getting out of the 2003 apparatus without his blood-stained lab coat, walking down the hall once again to find Iceberg, thankfully, alive.
He noticed the gun in his hand, however, and was able to stop him before he could shoot himself.
…
Pink and yellow light shone in his face as one of the Foundation’s walls melted away and he could see some blurry faces right before the curtain fell, and he, Iceberg and Bright were forced to walk in front of it.
Agent Tragedy walked up and shook each of their hands, grinning. Bright gave them a fist-bump, Iceberg smiled politely.
But Gears didn’t appreciate nor reciprocate the gesture. He just stood there.
At first Tragedy thought it was just him being emotionless as usual, but after the majority of the audience - as well as Bright - left, he pulled them aside and said in a stern voice,
“Was that really necessary? They were in on this, were they not? Is that why they did not react as much to the stage as I did? Were you pulling a prank on me?”
“W-What do you mean?!”
“Reality shifted and everything felt real. However, Dr. Bright didn’t seem to be taking it seriously at all.”
The MTF guard gulped. “I didn’t know that if someone wasn’t aware of my scripts that this would happen.”
And that was the story of how Agent Elliott Tragedy was the first to successfully traumatize Dr. Charles Gears.