The Breaking Wheel

Chapter 93: Heart of Stone

Dr. Collingwood felt her spirits sink as she stared at her reflection in her phone. The whites of her eyes had turned black and her right iris and left pupil had turned a fiery orange-red color. Her teeth had become sharper than before.

A few tests had been conducted on her when she'd been rescued from the Chaos Insurgency. It turned out that her heart had been replaced with some kind of round anomalous stone. Other than changing her eyes, teeth, and giving her claws, it hadn't done anything. Several research papers had been found in that facility. There were also multiple of those same rocks, which had been dubbed "heart-stones".

As it turned out, they had been used in experimentation before. Implanting them into corpses reanimated them, but transformed them into beastlike creatures that varied hugely in appearance. Implanting them into a living person netted largely the same results seen in Dr. Collingwood. Change in the eyes and teeth, sometimes growing claws, heightened senses, but nothing more.

None of her SCP friends really minded the changes. Billy had even joked that she would fit in even better with them, now that she was (sort of) an SCP herself. And the 939 brothers were blind anyways.

She'd set dark lenses in the eyeholes of her mask to hide her eyes, and ground down her claws with a steel file to prevent them from poking through her gloves.

Lawrence sat down next to her and wrapped her in a hug. "You okay?"

She tilted her head back to look at him and smiled. "Yeah."

He slowly stroked her jaw, then quickly leaned down and pressed his lips to hers. She tilted her head up to meet him, her eyes fluttering closed, pushing her hands through his hair and gripping it tight. Her heart began to race.

When they separated, cheeks flushed and gasping for breath, Lawrence pulled her to his chest in an iron grip, falling backwards onto the bed. She giggled and turned to snuggle into him, a low, pleased growl rumbling in her throat.