As the ground rushed up to meet him, Luo Shu realized his mistake:
No anomaly is truly harmless.
Even "Safe"-class items could kill you in the right—or wrong—circumstances.
His first instinct was SCP-131's vertical climbing—but suspended mid-air, the ability wouldn't activate.
Next: SCP-173's teleportation.
But the crowd below—gaping at his plummeting form—locked him in their sightlines, blocking the ability.
20 meters to impact.
One last option: Chainmaker (Page 18)—transform into living metal chains.
But the description warned:
"Irreversible. Try it if you're tired of being human."
No thanks.
The Escape
Luo Shu triggered SCP-055's unobservability, vanishing from public perception.
Teleport: Success.
He reappeared on the building's fifth-floor terrace, then raced upstairs—still unobserved.
In the restaurant restroom, he dropped the effect and strolled out casually.
"Boss, back from the bathroom."
Combined with Persuasion, his lie overwrote the team's memories.
Only the security cameras retained the truth—until Luo Shu animated the system and ordered it to erase his fall.
The Reckoning
The blue hourglass ran out of sand, its power spent.
Luo Shu strode over and decked the middle-aged man.
"That's for yeeting me out a window."
He snatched the now-gray hourglass, flipping it uselessly.
"14-day cooldown," he mused. "Plenty of time to study it."
Jack kept his distance. "What the hell is that thing?"
"Safe-class. Calling it the 'Energy Hourglass'."
A deliberately mediocre name, chosen to test a theory:
Did the Anomaly Catalog influence this world's designations?
Or was "Stubborn 6" a fluke?