Goodday everyone and welcome back to a new When Day Breaks, this time featuring SCP-173.
This is another custom-made story by myself and Dr Cimmerian so make sure
you go and show him some love too. A massive thanks to all the incredible patreons who
keep the channel going, a quick word from today’s sponsor and we will get started.
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"Look at me!" The statue attempted to will it into being
but they refused to listen. SCP-173's mind raced with thoughts of his own inferiority.
Why wouldn't you look at me? Why don't you want to see what I am?
And the thoughts shifted to something darker. The impulse returned. He moved directly in front of
the man in the orange jumpsuit. He reached his arms out and grasped the man by the sides of
the head. SCP-173 looked the man directly into his closed eyes. "Look at how beautiful I am!"
Another whirlwind moment passed. The scene in front of the statue was changed. The man was
still frozen in place, but now he was struggling to escape. His eyes were still closed. Still
avoiding him. Nothing else mattered in that moment. Nothing else could matter. The rage
filled him. Hatred took him. He twisted the man's neck. It bent at a strange angle. But now he was
alone again. He didn't feel better. If only they would look at him. See how beautiful he could be.
Maybe a light like his was just too blinding. Maybe he'd never
find another being in this small boxed in universe of his to appreciate what he was.
He suffered through decades of this. Men and women alike, none with the will to look upon him.
He'd lose moments from time to time. Sometimes long moments. But every time he found one of
these creatures, they refused to look at him. They closed their eyes to his beauty.
Then one day it all stopped. The air processors fell silent. The lights above him failed. He
experienced no more lost moments. No more frightened and unappreciative men or women.
Just his own loneliness.
Was this what freedom was like? Oh, but the waste he produced still continued unabated.
It filled the room slowly and methodically. At first a puddle. Then to his knees. When it
reached his chest, he felt a fear of his own. He began to think he was going to drown in his
own blood and excrement. But when it went over his head nothing happened.
But now he was blinded. Alone. Scared. His beauty covered in foul brown liquid.
Then the dam burst. The moment it happened was a such a relief. The pressure of the
room released explosively into the next chamber. His entire body shot out through
the hole in the wall. And then he was free. How long had he been confined to that chamber?
How many lost months? Years? He tried to focus himself.
He righted himself and began to explore this dark place.
The facility seemed emptied of people. Only the occasional dim emergency light lining the
hallways showed him the way. He forced his way through a door into another cell like his own.
No. A testing chamber. The decaying, skeletal remains of a researcher sat in the corner.
Next to him lay a small silver bell missing its ringer. He picked it up and studied the object.
A chime suddenly echoed around the room.
He turned to see a man in a suit enter the cell with a stunned look on his
face. He was looking at him. Finally, he was being appreciated. And just as quickly he
wasn’t. The man was now looking at the corpse with a look of sadness and guilt.
Regardless, he closed his eyes and the rage came back to the statue.
It promptly snapped the man’s neck and left the cell, leaving the corpses to rot.
The labyrinthine hallways and corridors gave way to offices and recreational areas.
Here he came across the remains of those who had once called this their home.
Bullets to the head, every one of them.
He could hear voices and he followed them. Though a shelf blocked his way, an old man
and a woman in rags stood over the huddled crying form of a young girl at the end of the corridor.
The old man turned to look at him. This was not admiration. This felt cold. It felt like
the gaze was piercing his very soul. The woman led the girl around a corner and out of sight.
The old man smiled at him and also backed his way around the corner and out of sight.
He found the office of the HMCL supervisor. The man's torso was missing, but his lower
half still sat in the chair at the desk. 173 shoved the remains aside and looked at the desk.
His own documentation was there, buried under various reports and warnings about the apocalypse
going on outside. It mentioned that whenever someone looked at 173 that he was unable to move.
Lies. It was them who froze. Eyes shut and mouths agape in panic. It was them
who refused to behold his beauty. He threw the document down. He moved back towards the door.
SCP-173 wandered the site looking for the exit and reading notices on the wall.
A flickering screen looped a message.
"… to all functioning sites. We are experiencing an XK class end of the world scenario. I repeat,
we are experiencing an XK class end of the world scenario.
Please be advised that exposure to sunlight is to be considered valid reason for termination.
If you suspect a colleague has been turned, say something. More instructions will follow."
This screen was covered in dried brown liquid. Blood, he assumed,
from the body slumped to the floor next to it. What did these people have against the light?
There on the floor, he noticed a lump of something strange.
It was snaking from around the corner and had the corpse by the leg.
It, like everything always was for him, was frozen in place. But he couldn't help but follow it.
The strange fleshy tentacle disappeared into a mass as large as the hallway itself just
around the corner. A thing. A thing with eyes. Hundreds of them. All looking at
him. And suddenly it wasn't frozen at all. But neither was he. This was a new feeling.
An experience unlike any other in his life. Someone or something finally saw him.
"You." The voice said with a sense of finality.
"Me." 173 thought to himself.
Was this it? The moment of recognition? Would he finally be appreciated for what he was?
The creature reached another tentacle out and caressed the side of SCP-173's face.
"I've been waiting for you. Come into the sun so I can see how beautiful you really are."
He moved forward with the creature, which slurped and lurched its way backwards down the hallway.
All of its eyes were looking directly into his very being. For the first time in his
long and fruitless life he was finally and truly seen. The creature wasn't recoiling in fear.
It wasn't closing its eyes out of disgust. It appreciated him for what he was. Beautiful.
Up the staircase he went. When 173 stumbled and nearly fell the monster caught him.
It cradled him. It carried him the rest of the way up.
He caught a brief sight of several teddy bears, made from all kinds of objects,
watching him from the shadows. They were scared. One made of paper and tape was
hugging another made of string. While another made from crisp packets appeared to cry into
the shoulder of one that looked perfectly normal. It waved at him as he passed by.
The creature led him gingerly onward. They passed through a final long corridor painted in blood and
gore. The sight of an obvious massacre didn't faze him. He knew now that these people were
fools. They'd been too afraid to admire him, and they were too foolish to admire this creature too.
They deserved what they got. The rage nearly bubbled up again in him.
The two of them saw the light together. Blinding. Beautiful. He felt the voice in his mind now.
"I want to share my beauty as well. But they resist so very much. I know your suffering."
173's mind went back to imagining the fate of those in the corridor they had just come through.
Something was wrong. The sunlight felt odd to him. It was... it was in his head
even more so than before. "What are you doing?" He thought at the entity.
"I'm taking away your suffering. There is nothing to fear anymore. I see you for what you are."
"Beautiful?" 173 thought as his mind began to cloud.
"Yes. Beautiful."
The feeling of peace enveloped 173 completely. He felt content. He felt love.
All those years of imprisonment and torture. All the experiments. All the bodies. All the
cross-testing. The heart-wrenching feelings of sadness and despair after his master left him.
None of it mattered anymore. Finally, something loved him for what he was.
Finally, something saw him as beautiful.
He gazed into the sun’s majesty and could feel billions of eyes watching him
without judgement but admiration. He let the sun’s rays shroud him in loving warmth.
Suddenly, he felt stiff. He felt his rebar begin to seize and his mind begin to leave him.
He could feel it being pulled towards the sun. This was how he ended. He didn't care.
The sunlight itself would appreciate his beauty. Now. And for all time.
The sunlight shined down on the remains of Site-19 for quite some time after that.
The statue remained there at the entrance, seemingly entranced by the sight of the sun.
It did not move. It did not think. It did not see.
Then, one day so very much later, a single shining steel tube flew directly over what
remained of SCP-173 and Site-19. The fruits of labour from another time and another world.
When the flash of nuclear radiation washed over 173, what was left of it didn't notice or care.
The concrete and rebar statue simple crumbled away to join the dust and sand.
The light was blinding.
And that concludes this 173 When Day Breaks tale, there will be more When Day Breaks in July as well
as a whole load of future When Day Breaks covering the Angel of Darkness Part 2, St Elmo’s Fire part
3 and some other standalone SCPs too so make sure you like and subscribe for more of that content.
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