The hunt [1]

"Good that you came Emily, we got a huge mess on our hands here. At least one wounded person and countless bullets shot, not to mention the property damage." A short statured man said welcoming the woman in a brown coat that just came in through the huge open gate of the warehouse.

"Nice to see you too, can you give me more details?" Emily asked the man, she was a high ranking officer in their police department.

"We found some blood and a few fingerprints but we have no data about their owners whatsoever, almost like they never existed- wiped from existence.

We also found a broken smartphone over there near the metal container, our experts are trying to get to the data currently, with little results to show.

Lastly are the five guards that got knocked out, they were incapacitated without seeing anything and subsequently handcuffed with zip ties, we couldn't trace those either, the attackers seem to have targeted this site for a long time and planned for this 'raid' or whatever you may call what happened here"

The woman put her hand on her chin and closed her eyes. "Was something stolen then, perhaps some new tech, I heard this place is owned by a large tech firm."

"Officially no, the supervisor said that besides the property damage nothing happened to his wares but..."

"But?" Emily asked waiting for an answer.

"But the Supervisor seemed... how should I phrase this... terrified. His face was pale, he almost hyperventilated and his hands and head were covered in sweat. He also whispered a single word constantly 'Anderson'. Very suspicious."

Emily stayed silent before muttering "Let me call someone, stay here till I'm finished."

...

An hour later all police staff, except for Emily, left the crime site, now people in white coats and gray combat uniforms roamed around.

Emily came up to a man dressed in a white coat with golden blond hair and said "Sir, we assessed the situation and it is more grave than we could've ever predicted.

We 'interrogated' the supervisor more throughoutly, he didn't know much, only that a really important object would pass through here and that his life would forfeit if something happened to said object, we suspect the object to be new paratech created by Anderson Robotics that was subsequently stolen by the attackers last night."

"Well, my orders coming directly from the site director were to 'deal with the mess' and a single Anderson product could be easily be dealt with by the likes of Gamma-13. The mobile taskforce founded to locate and destroy Anderson Robotics and their products."

"Wait shouldn't that be secured information?"

"Ah who cares, I'm too valuable to be fired anyways, but back to my point, I'm not here for the Anderson product but for the attackers, at least that's the most intuitive answer I can think of. So why are they special and when can I begin the bloodbath." The blond haired man said the last sentence with a sadistic smile on his face.

Emily stuttered and continued as if not hearing anything about a secret Taskforce or her superiors' antics "We salvaged a smartphone that the attackers lost and we found... multiple files originating from our servers, SCP files, it seems like the group or individual that stole the Anderson tech also stole our most sensitive data. And while only twenty files were found on the phone's memory we suspect the hacker or hackers already extracted many more files directly from our servers without us even knowing about it, I mean why not do it again if we won't notice anyways?"

The man put on an even more crazed smile, he simply said "Interesting. Can't wait to meet those sneaky mice!"

"Mice Sir?" The poor field officers asked quivering.

"YES! MICE! HAHAHA"

The blond man pulled out a Glock from under his coat and shot the camera.

The screen shut off and Austin leaned back on his chair. "Hey! That guy with the annoying face just shot our camera! What's wrong with him?!"

"What? He did what?" Jack's voice reached Austin from the other end of the room, where Jack worked on disassembling the robot's corpse they plundered yesterday.

"He just pulled out a gun and destroyed that surveillance cam, you heard the other part of the conversation, right? Or do I need to recount what happened?"

"What an asshole. And yes I heard that weird guy, but you must give him this, he's more capable than the other SCP operatives and noticed a cam, a few blocks away, zooming in on them. He's got sharp eyes"

"Or he's a complete idiot, who knows? Anyways want to explain the situation to me now instead of forcing me into this chair, making me look at video footage, and ignoring all my attempts to converse with you the first thing in the morning?"

"Sure, I was a bit too focused on the android corpse till now." Jack said rolling over to Austin with his chair.

"So first off, where did that robot" Austin pointed at the android on Jack's worktable, not the dead one but the small metal ball "Come from?".

"He was stuck in a metal closet with the, now dead, prototype."

"That literally answers none of my questions Jack." Austin said baffled.

"Ok then let's start from the beginning, shall we? I searched for interesting things in the warehouse manager's office yesterday and found only unimportant, non-anomalous files in their office." Jack took a quick sip of coffee before going on.

"Then I stumbled upon their work phone, talented as I am, I hacked into it and found out that some sort of superior to them ordered them to keep a super secret 'object' in their warehouse till further notice.

I read through some more text files and found out that there's a hidden metal closet in the managers' office only accessible by saying the code phrase 2003 something something maria Stanley something 18.

The secret door opened and I found that thing in an inactive state" Jack pointed at the prototype "And that small ball in an active state rolling around the android's feet, after assuring myself that they didn't notice me I hacked the ball thingy, it worked but was as hard as hacking the SCP servers. Reason for that being that I only had my phone with me." Jack shrugged his shoulders innocently afterwards as if that wasn't a weird or big thing to do.

"I should also mention that I already knew that the little ball was an Amur Series Recon drone even then.

They are made by Anderson Robotics and have their own SCP file, they're basically moving security cams, that have paralyzing Neurotoxin needles inside of them. Though after hacking him he turned completely harmless and subservient to me, his new owner!" Jack pointed his finger proudly at his chest, the small ball jumped in the air as a sort of agreement to that statement. 'My only problem is my lack of knowledge on how to control the little drone but that can wait for later and nobody needs to know that, not until I'm able to give him orders that is.'

"Then, one thing lead to the other, I tried hacking the bigger robot, it failed and it attacked me. You know the rest. Ah yes! I called the little drone Kenny, just so you have a concrete name for him."

Austin planned to ask Jack what he learned by dissecting the prototype's corpse and what the so called Kenny can do specifically but his eyes were drawn to a certain tab on his computer screen where he sat until now, watching footage of hacked cameras across the city.

The tab showed the news, a reporter sitting stiffly on her chair staring into his eyes.

"He- *Cough* Hello, this is not a test." She began, her hands shaking as she spoke "I repeat this is not a test. As of now this city and all cities and towns near it will be completely closed off!" Silence enveloped the apartment.

"A deadly disease broke out in the region and the government will do everything in its power to suppress the deadly pathogen and save as many people as possible. All means of transportation were halted a few seconds ago and the army will soon arrive to enclose all affected cities in this state's vicinity."

"I repeat..."

Jack stood up and said "Seems like we can't escape anymore and are forced to face them head on then... hehe. I think this will be our very first real challenge."