"Dimitri, can you check the parameters?"

"Yes, sir."

Beyond the thick glass was a single man bound to a chair. According to Abramov, the subject was a Glassheart.

Julius regarded Abramov from the corner of his eye. Doubt began creeping in at the back of his mind.

Was Abramov truly Joachim? Or had Emil tricked him?

Julius had seen his share of Glasshearts betraying one another before, but never once had he witnessed a Glassheart personally conducting experiments on another of their own kind.

The next moment, Abramov pulled the lever. Julius's eyes turned to the control panel as the machine activated. He checked the parameters one by one, his gaze alternating between the readings and the man beyond the glass.

The bound subject began to tense. Abramov adjusted the output, careful not to let it spike beyond the designated range. On the surface, everything was proceeding within safe limits.

"Write it down, Dimitri."

"Yes, sir."

Julius nodded and turned back to the instruments. The electromagnetic waves inside the chamber began to spike at an alarming rate. The readings extended past the margins he had memorized by heart. His pen moved quickly across the clipboard, recording everything exactly as ordered.

The man bound to the chair began to convulse.

At first, it was only a tremor in the arms. Then his entire body jerked against the restraints. His muscles bulged unnaturally as if something inside him were trying to tear its way out.

——Kaaaah!

His spine arched, his head jerked back, and his jaw stretched wide in a silent scream no one could hear through the glass. On his skin, shapes started to form. Crystalline scales rose as if something were crawling through his flesh from the inside.

Julius froze for half a second too long.

The Glassheart's body twisted. Limbs bent at angles that should not have been possible. The contours of his face collapsed and reformed as the bone structure shifted before Julius's eyes. The alarms began flaring red across the panels.

"Professor—" Julius started.

It was too late.

The man's body swelled, skin stretching to its limit as the shapes inside him forced their way outward. In the next instant, the Glassheart burst apart in an explosion of flesh.

Splatter——

The chamber was painted in crimson, tissues, and bones. The shockwave slammed into the observation room, knocking several instruments off their mounts.

"...."

Julius stood rigid. His ears rang as smoke and residue drifted inside the sealed chamber. What had once been a man was now nothing more than grotesque remains across the walls.

"…Subject destabilized," Julius said at last. "Total collapse under electromagnetic overload."

Only then did he turn his eyes toward Abramov. There was a sinister gleam in his eyes.

"Tsk." Abramov, or rather, Joachim, clicked his tongue. "That was a healthy one, too."

The name of the project itself was disarmingly simple. SCP. Three letters written plainly on the folder's cover, as if the contents inside were no different from any other line of research within Zima-12.

Julius flipped through the documents he was tasked to segregate. Containment procedures. Exposure thresholds. Failed subjects listed in chronological order.

The language was clinical to the point of cruelty. Nowhere did the reports refer to them as people. They were labeled as assets, units, and failures. Each page only reinforced what he had just witnessed. The project was not designed to understand Glasshearts. It was designed to break them.

To force their limits outward and observe what remained.

From the scattered data, he began to piece together its intent. SCP was not a weapon in itself. It was a process. A system meant to provoke anomalies into violent expression, to extract whatever phenomena within their bodies through pressure and destruction.

What he had seen explode behind the glass was not considered a failure. It was considered usable data.

Julius slowly closed the file.

Quite frankly, the Julius Sebastian Schneider of 2160 inside him was disgusted by the very idea. Experimenting on Glasshearts felt pointless to him. If they were to be dealt with, then they should simply be killed. All of them. There was no need for elaborate procedures or justifications.

And yet, even as that thought settled in his mind, he understood that things were never that simple.

"Professor—"

"Don't let this data leak to the team, Dimitri."

"Pardon?"

Abramov did not turn around as he spoke. His eyes remained fixed on the sealed chamber, on the empty chair where the subject had been only moments ago.

"I can see the passion in your eyes. You're as interested in Glasshearts as I am, aren't you? Unfortunately, all we ever produce are failures. If this reaches the board in its current state, all they will see are reports of repeated failures. We cannot risk this project being shut down. Do you understand?"

"…Yes, sir."

"Good," Abramov said. "Only submit what I instruct you to submit. The rest stays here."

Julius nodded once more.

* * *

Joachim was not the only one studying SCP-related research. Within the confines of the restricted-access zone, a place Julius had only recently gained entry into, there were many others attempting to utilize Glasshearts in their own ways.

Some researchers focused on forced synchronization. They attempted to bind Glasshearts directly to human nervous systems, overriding will and identity in the process.

The goal was simple. To create soldiers who could wield Glassheart power without losing control. Most subjects either went mad or stopped responding entirely.

Others pursued artificial reproduction. They extracted shards and implanted them into synthetic bodies grown in sealed tanks. These artificial vessels were meant to function as disposable hosts. Very few survived long enough to display stable movement.

Those that did were immediately disassembled for further analysis.

There were also teams dedicated to resonance amplification. They exposed Glasshearts to constant waves of electromagnetic pressure, attempting to push their output beyond natural limits.

The result was always the same. Short bursts of overwhelming power followed by violent collapse. This was Joachim's recent project.

Meanwhile, one division worked on behavioral rewriting. They deprived Glasshearts of their memory through repeated neural shock, reducing them to empty shells that could be conditioned like animals. The success rate was low, but the few that remained responsive were treated as proof that total control was possible.

Julius passed by each sealed room silently. Every project followed a different direction, yet all of them shared the same conclusion.

None of this was meant to coexist with Glasshearts.

It was meant to weaponize them.

"Mikhailov, Professor Artyamov is looking for you."

"Ah, yes."

Julius followed the fellow professor out of the restricted access zone. The air felt lighter the moment they passed beyond the sealed doors. Waiting for him in the corridor was Yuliya's father, Professor Konstantin Lev Artyamov.

"I know you've been occupied with your other work, Mikhailov," Professor Artyamov said the moment Julius approached. "But don't forget your importance here. Come. I need your expertise."

Julius inclined his head and followed him without question.

They walked in silence through several intersecting hallways, passing rows of researchers and sealed laboratories. Unlike the SCP sector, this part of the facility felt orderly and restrained.

"We've been tasked by the government to make sense of this data. What do you think?"

"That's…"

"We've been tasked by the government to make sense of this data. What do you think?"

"That's…"

Julius's brows rose. It was the work of mecha-technology that Dream Industries had perfected down to its molecular structure. Somehow, the USSR had managed to get its hands on the complete data set.

The most likely explanation was that the exchange between Germany's prime minister and the Soviet Chairman of the Council of Ministers must have gone through successfully.

What the USSR had offered in return was another matter entirely. That was something he could only learn once he returned to Germany.

"You want me to tell you whether this data is authentic?" Julius asked.

"And whether it is usable," Artyamov replied.

Julius studied the structure. The energy flow was clean. The stabilizers were placed at exact points. Whoever had transferred this data had not done so carelessly. This was a complete handover.

And it was completely careless. Why did his father, Johannes, approve of this?

"It's real," Julius said at last. "And it's far beyond what the domestic models can currently support. You can replicate the frame, but the core systems will collapse without proper stabilizing control."

Artyamov's eyes narrowed. "So it cannot be reproduced as it is."

"It can," Julius replied. "But not without reengineering the internal constraints. If you follow this data blindly, your first test unit will tear itself apart."

"I see. You're quite knowledgeable about this. Have you ever been to Germany?"

"I'd be shot down if I ever were, sir."

Artyamov watched him for a moment longer than necessary. Then he turned back to the display as if the question had meant nothing at all.

"Hypothetically," the professor said, rotating the model with a slow gesture, "if one were familiar with German engineering philosophy, where would you begin adjusting this?"

Julius stepped a little closer. He pointed to the inner lattice of the core where the energy circulation curved too tightly.

"Here. The compression ratio is too aggressive for your current materials. Germany can support this strain because their stabilizers are built differently. If you replicate this as is, the feedback alone will destroy the unit before ignition completes."

Artyamov regarded his words, then nodded at once.

"And if we alter it as you suggest?" Artyamov asked.

"You lose a bit of peak output," Julius said. "But you gain consistency.

The professor began to adjust the simulation. The projected output dipped slightly, then stabilized. This time, the internal stress lines did not break.

"…Impressive."

Julius did not respond. His attention was already on the next layer of data, where the control algorithms were encoded.

Hidden among that code was the data set of SIBYL he had secretly implanted into the mechs back when he was still assisting with their reengineering.

So that if the day ever came, if everything ever reached that breaking point, Julius would hold absolute control over every mech through SIBYL.

One way or another, SIBYL would take over the world once again.

"...."

Only this time, Julius would be the one seated at the very top.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.