It was November 20th, 2019, and the helicopter circled far above in the freezing wind of the Antarctic. SCP Foundation Site Director Jason Monroe looked down at the isolated above-ground facilities of Provisional Site-344-1. Something about this place made him nervous. Edgy. And for good reason: Between 2003 and 2019, twenty-nine Mobile Task Force units and seventy-three members of D-Class personnel had gone missing here and never been found.
Monroe thought he was here for a routine investigation into negligence and mismanagement, but little did he know, he was in for so much more. This is the story of SCP - 5545, and one man's journey into his own worst nightmare. Literally. But this nightmare began a long time ago - 300 years, to be exact. And like most nightmares, it started as a dream.
That dream was one of expansion - national powers across Europe wanted to be the first to conquer the globe and expand into new territories, and sent countless exploratory missions off into the unknown to achieve this goal. Any history book will tell you that the first outsiders to lay eyes upon the continent of Antarctica did so in 1820 - the reality is that the first ones to get there actually landed in the late 1700s.
The hapless explorers ventured into mainland Antarctica and made base camps, before searching and digging for any useful resources nearby. They came upon a strange discovery: A hallway, hidden beneath the ice. Not a passage in the ice, but a true hallway - complete with light fixtures. The confused explorers ventured down into these impossible hallways, and for many of them, it would be the last thing they ever did.
No matter how long they walked, it seemed like the hallways just kept going. As they continued to walk for hours, they hoped they'd find something… anything. And eventually, they did. They passed from these hallways into somewhere different altogether, and most of them were never heard from again.
Those who did manage to escape often died or took their own lives soon after. Whatever it was they'd discovered down there, they didn't want to live with it on their minds. It's believed that over seventy colonial explorers disappeared or died this way and that most who found these endless hallways beneath the Antarctic ice never returned.
The multiple anomalous objects and phenomena that make up SCP-5545 came into the Foundation's hands several centuries later on September 18th, 2003, when during an expedition into the Antarctic, they too found the endless hallways. The Foundation built Provisional Site-344-1 around them, hoping to safely seal them off from any other unwitting Antarctic explorers or researchers.
But there was something else lurking beneath the ice in Antarctica. Something dangerous. The hallways were designated as SCP - 5545 - 1 and were thought to be the extent of the anomalous activity at the site, but soon SCP - 5545 - 2 was discovered, which resulted in the deaths of sixteen researchers.
So what exactly is 5545 - 2? It's an entity so volatile that even knowing about it is considered to be a containment breach, and - as a result - it's kept in Provisional Site-344-2. Unlike Site - 344 - 1, 344 - 2 isn't a physical space. It's conceptual, accessible only through the endless hallways, created with the express purpose of keeping 5545 - 1 and 5545 - 2 separate.
Why? Because whenever the two come into contact, the result is 5545 - 3: The network of endless hallways expanding. If they remained in contact, the hallways would continue to expand and the entire planet could be filled with endless hallways in just four to six hours. While the two are apart though, 5545 - 3 reverses, but it always would take just a few hours to throw the whole world into a chaos of infinite hallways.
SCP-5545 has been given the classification "Safe"… Wait, we're dealing with a mysterious and volatile anomaly that's claimed a huge number of lives and still somehow eludes true Foundation understanding, yet the official SCP Foundation classification is "Safe?" How could this be? Monroe was the Director of Site - 58, and was the definition of no-nonsense.
Prior to taking the Site Director position, he was a decorated member of Mobile Task Force Eta-10 and helped contain numerous Keter-Class anomalies. He'd been around the proverbial block when it came to anomalous activity, and something about SCP - 5545, and the management of Provisional Site 344, seemed awfully suspicious to him. And he had questions.
Like how such an unpredictable anomaly could be declared "safe"? And why had there been such a lapse of communication between the Foundation and Doctor Gabriel Reed, who'd been running the facility for the past two decades? And most of all, just what exactly was the mysterious SCP - 5545 - 2? Monroe started to believe that something terrible had happened at the site, and Reed was covering it all up. But to find out for sure, he'd need to go to Antarctica and investigate it himself.
Information around this supposedly "Safe" anomaly was highly classified - those without O5 clearance could face termination for snooping. But that didn't scare Jason Monroe. He'd dealt with Keters before, he could deal with this. Or so he thought. Monroe submitted a request and was granted unanimous approval by the O5 Council to travel to Provisional Site 344 and get to the bottom of this mystery.
He took a chopper to the base soon after, armed with a concealed firearm and a Hostile Meme Detector - or HMD - to test whether the base and its staff had somehow fallen under a hazardous memetic effect from SCP - 5545. He'd find the answers, or die trying. The moment Monroe arrived, he couldn't help but notice the strange way the staff behaved.
They seemed listless; almost depressive. When he showed his credentials to a researcher, they simply said "SCP-5545-2 is contained in Site-344-2." His request to see Dr. Reed that night was denied. Dr. Reed was busy, he was told. Wait until tomorrow. The next day, Monroe met with Dr. Reed, but the results of the meeting were underwhelming to say the least. Just like the rest of the staff on the site, he seemed exhausted, as though he hadn't slept in days.
His responses were quiet and evasive, and he refused to tell Monroe anything that wasn't in the official files already. Monroe ran the conversation through the HMD and found nothing out of the ordinary. What was going on here? Monroe was irritated, but not deterred. Nothing would stop him from finding out the truth. The next day, he flexed his O5 credentials and hacked into the base's security system.
This gave him access to cameras around Site - 344 -1, but more importantly, there was a single camera inside the mysterious Site - 344 - 2. Jackpot. But when he looked at it, the feed was an entirely black screen with the words "SCP-5545-2 is contained in Site-344-2." The footage of the staff in 344 - 1 was equally strange: The eighteen employees on site all sat at computer banks, with nothing but static playing on their screens. Monroe kept digging though, and was able to hack into the security footage of Dr. Reed's office.
As he watched, he discovered a fifteen minute period where Reed left the office each day. He could use this brief window to break in and collect more intel on SCP - 5545 - 2. Monroe was so wrapped up in the investigation that he almost forgot the more immediate danger around him, and nearly wandered into one of the endless hallways of 5545 - 1 by mistake.
He made a note to be more careful in future... His first attempt at breaking into Dr. Reed's office didn't produce many answers - one piece of evidence was a blurry picture of what looked like a Mobile Task Force entering a 5545 - 1 hallway in the dark. Another was a spreadsheet featuring all the personnel, living or dead, who'd worked at the site - but one name, and the details of whether this person was alive or dead, was completely redacted.
Anything particularly juicy was hidden behind O5 clearance. If Monroe wanted the answers, he'd need to break through. That night, he had a horrific recurring nightmare, one that had plagued him since he joined MTF Eta-10. He dreamed he was in a fancy dining room with a grand fireplace.
The room was full of statues of men and women. The men looked angry, and the women looked afraid. As he approached the fireplace, the ceiling extended infinitely up into the darkness. Suddenly, the zombie-like body of a teenage girl appears in the fireplace, hanging from a long thread. Her eyes look furious and full of rage, and Monroe somehow knows that he's the reason for her hate.
When he steps into the fireplace in this dream, she attacks him, the two intertwine, and they burn forever. The one difference was that in this new iteration of the dream, he blinked upon entering the fireplace, and suddenly, he was in a hallway. He awoke sure that something was terribly wrong here, but he couldn't give up now. The next day, Monroe broke into Dr. Reed's office and made a horrifying discovery.
He found files indicating that Dr. Reed was knowingly sending Mobile Task Forces and D-Class personnel into the infinite hallways of 5545 - 1 to their doom. He also found evidence that Reed and the researchers had been spying on him, somehow intercepting copies of the notes he had been taking. That's when Dr. Reed entered the office and interrupted him. Monroe panicked and drew his weapon, holding the doctor at gunpoint. He was breaking so many Foundation rules, but right now, he feared for his life.
The doctor seemed unbothered by Monroe's threats though. He told Monroe that everything was going to plan, and that he should go back to his room. Monroe was becoming increasingly paranoid - he felt that, at any moment, guards might burst in and execute him. Nothing about this place made sense. He worried he was going insane.
Perhaps the only way to find answers was to go even deeper: To risk it all, and venture through the endless hallways to find SCP - 5545 - 2 himself, and finally discover what this thing actually was. Monroe left his room and stepped into one of the endless hallways of 5545 - 1 that was located just across from his dorm. He found that it was a hallway like all the others on site - Plain concrete, worn with age, with simple light fixtures on the walls. He walked for hours, recording with a concealed device.
The lights suddenly went out, leaving him in complete darkness. When they flicked back on, he was in a very different environment: A grand, old carpeted hallway, the kind you'd see in an old mansion. He broke into a cold sweat. What was so familiar about this place?He kept walking, wracked with terror, until this new hallway finally led him to the place he'd been seeking: Site 344 - 2, the domain of 5545 - 2.
It was a large, poorly-lit room, filled with grimacing statues and a large fireplace at the far end. It was the exact same room from Monroe's dream - with one horrifying difference. Monroe noticed a single white thread hanging down from the infinite ceiling, and when he looked up to find its source, he screamed.
There were hundreds of bodies hanging and swinging from the ceiling above him - everyone who SCP - 5545 - 2 had ever killed, including MTF members, D-Class Personnel, and even the colonial explorers from hundreds of years before. And all of them were him. Every single one. They had his face. And there, hanging in the middle of the room at ground level, was the body of a teenage girl, the one from his dream. In that moment, he finally recognized her: She was the girl he killed. The first him.
Hundreds of years ago. Much like Monroe, you're probably wondering: What is going on here? Thanks to declassified communications between Dr. Reed and the O5 Council, we can tell you. Jason Monroe is a man who's been reincarnated hundreds of times over the last three hundred years, ever since he murdered a teenage girl… A girl named Emily… his daughter. This murder sparked the existence of SCP - 5545 as an eternally recurring punishment for his crimes.
Since figuring this out, the Foundation has kept tabs on Monroe's reincarnations - whether they're MTF members, D-Class personnel, or even Site Directors. They see to it that these reincarnations always find their way back to 5545 - 2 to take his punishment, and prevent the infinite hallway expansion that threatens to destroy the world. It's a plan everyone is in on - everyone except him.
But every time he enters that nightmare-haunting room, it all comes rushing back. In that moment though, he knew his crime, and he somehow knew how many times this punishment had unfolded for him. He now had two choices: Repent and accept the punishment again, or leave and activate 5545 - 3, potentially allowing the endless tunnels to expand across the world. Like his many predecessors, Monroe made the decent choice.
He accepted his punishment and allowed his own string to coil around him as the lights in the room went off, one by one, leaving only darkness. Jason Monroe - that version of him, at least - was never seen again. But The SCP Foundation is already eyeing up his next reincarnation, and preparing to let this twisted cycle play out all over again.