SCP-016

SCP-016 Continuing through the SCP entries, SCP-016 starts with a mine worker cutting himself while working a deep coal seam. Coal dust gets into the wound, possibly exposing him to dormant spores. Within days, the infection spreads through the mining camp and into the team sent to investigate it. By the time the Foundation takes over, its response is to kill the infected, take the original patient into custody, and collapse the mine shaft. SCP-016 is a blood-borne pathogen, classified as Keter. Its ordinary infection cycle is already severe. Symptoms initially resemble a cold, then develop into a hemorrhagic illness that helps spread infected blood through coughing. Eventually, the host suffers catastrophic bleeding. If someone survives that stage, the organism can become dormant again. Even the incubation period is unpredictable, ranging from a day to two years depending on the availability of other human hosts. The experiments introduce another problem. Under life-threatening stress, SCP-016 can switch from reproduction to reconstructing its host. It rewrites DNA and rapidly changes the body in response to the danger. Most hosts don't survive the strain, and the results vary even when the researchers repeat the same conditions. Flooding one subject's room produces gills, then fins and a form of echolocation. A second subject develops stronger muscles and reinforced knuckles, trying unsuccessfully to punch through the door. A third grows an organ containing acetylene and oxygen. The Foundation kills him before finding out how that adaptation would have been used. There is also a test where a subject is told to concentrate on growing wings. Without stress, nothing happens. When another subject receives the same instruction while suspended over a mine shaft, the organism produces a silk-generating appendage instead. He uses it to secure the box to its cable. The countdown ends with a bomb detonating anyway. Those experiments leave some important uncertainty. The pathogen can respond to a threat, but a host cannot simply choose an ability. The adaptations also don't guarantee survival, especially when the researchers control what happens next. Transformed hosts remain infectious, so surviving the original disease creates another containment problem. The file keeps returning to that same difficulty: every apparent escape from one danger opens up another. Original entry: https://t.co/b82iZGTiJk Based on SCP-016 by DrClef, SCP Wiki. Original and this adaptation: CC BY-SA 3.0 — https://t.co/TI86YheAva