Michael and Hearthgrieve reappeared in his office with a flash of light, and Michael gestured to the chairs, “Take a seat.”

Hearthgrieve chuckled nervously, “You know this is my office right? I should be the one offering you a seat.”

“Just sit down.”

He took a seat.

“Alright, first I want to say that I’m not mad at you. You’re just doing your job, but I need to know if y’all were trying to kill me or not. So Keith, if you would.”

Michael held the mask up, and it looked down upon the scientist discerningly.

“My friend right here’s going to take a look into your mind to see what your intentions were exactly.”

After several moments Keith scoffed, “This one right here thinks it was simply a test of your physical strength. Surprisingly it's also to see if you’d snap and kill him. That’s some dedication to your job right there doctor.”

“I doubt Michael here would inflict violence upon me for simply testing him.”

“And yet you’re unsure of that now?”

Keith laughed as his acid dripped down onto Hearthgrieve’s desk, “Interesting.”

Michael sighed, “I’m going to assume what Keith here’s telling me is the truth, and that your people were simply trying to test me. A test I passed by the way.”

“I can let this one slide, because I still need access to your resources. Because I still believe the cause your foundation fights for is good. But if y’all ever try some shit like this again I will personally track down each member of the 05 council and beat the ever living shit out of them. Understand? Fucking splendid.”

Michael didn’t wait for a response before standing from his chair and walking to the door.

“C-Can you teleport me back to the mine. My car’s still parked ther-”

But before he could finish Michael disappeared with a flash of light.

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Several hours later the 05 council carefully reviewed the footage they’d recovered from Dr. Hearthgrieve’s office.

The contents of which left the speaker of the meeting with a smile on his face.

“This is great news! He didn’t kill Hearthgrieve, even with how much we provoked him. He’s manageable. I’d say he’s mentally stable enough for the bigger jobs. What do you all think?”

A cloaked man hesitantly spoke, “Are you absolutely sure this is enough proof that he won’t get emotional and do something stupid in the future? Also, do remember that he failed to dispose of the shy guy the first time around. There's risk in these disposals.”

“We believe that to be more of a fluke than anything, and there’ll never be enough proof for us to be absolutely positive he won’t try something stupid in the future. He constantly withholds information in his interviews. He doesn’t trust us, but it won’t matter. His agenda and ours aren’t too dissimilar. Besides you saw how he looked when he came out of that mine. His weakness wouldn’t be hard to exploit if it came down to it, and as I'm sure all of you know the worlds on kind of a ticking clock right now.”

“I just don’t know about this…”

“Listen guys, we desperately need someone to handle some of our more...sensitive cases. We already gave him fake barrels of SCP-3280 to get rid of and he actually disposed of them properly. We haven’t seen them since, the trackers we put in the water would have gone off by now it’d made its way back to the planet.”

A tall man slowly spoke up, “Even with all of this, it doesn’t mean we can trust him. He seems far too accustomed to death. Uncaring even. It concerns me.”

The speaker chuckled, “He’s a cold one, that is true, but he’s not cruel. He’s logical. Isn’t that what we all strive to be?”

“Maybe so, but I still think we should have SCP-187 take a look at him.”

“Hmm, an excellent idea.”

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Michael returned to his room after his conversation with Hearthrieve. These people could be unbearable sometimes.

It was clear why they hid his weakness to fire. He understood it, agreed with it even. But the problem was that all the information they’d given him was questionable now.

Just how much was left out? Ignorance can easily kill. It's the reason he hadn’t chucked the mask yet.

He was annoyed, but understood exactly why they did what they did. Which only annoyed him more.

He was gaining power at a rate that likely scared them. But at the same time he was still on their side, so it would be detrimental to stifle his growth.

They were a cautious bunch. A bothersome group that stood in their own way at times, but their information network was top notch and would help enable his crusade to rid the world of monsters. At least for a time. That would eventually change when it came down to monsters they wished to keep around. Ones they didn’t want to risk disposing of, but that was a problem for future Michael.

He sighed and began to walk towards the shooting range. It’d help take his mind off the fight with the fire giant and the bullshit that it entailed.

Just like that time passed and space once again consumed Michael and threw him through dimensions.

Only a week and two days had passed.

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When the shift ended, Michael found himself standing at a crossroads in the middle of what appeared to be a swamp.

Each path had an identical warning sign telling him not to go down it. Which wasn’t too helpful considering he couldn’t really go anywhere else but down one one of the roads. There was nothing beyond the road but swampland, which he doubted would be any safer.

Each sign depicted a short stubby woman holding hands with a child and a large x crossed over them. The signs seemed to be particularly old and made of a material he couldn’t recognize, although they did seem to be somewhat leathery.

Disregarding the foreboding signs, this place didn’t seem that terrible. At the very least he wasn’t immediately being thrust into danger like in other dimensional shifts.

Although not knowing what could be hunting him was concerning. Especially considering the person who directed his dimensional shifts.

“Hey Keith, do these signs mean anything to you.”

“Not in the slightest.”

“Thanks, very helpful.”

He couldn’t even ask the heart right now since it was still asleep. He could never get it to wake up, the thing could sleep through anything. Or it was just ignoring him. Which was honestly more likely.

In the end all Michael could do was shrug his shoulders and pick a road at random to walk down.

So he did.

The swamp was quiet, except the occasional buzzing of bugs flying about. None of which he recognized, but they steered clear of him and his men so he had little reason to care.

Several of his soldiers collected samples of water from the swamp. He couldn’t sense anything besides bugs living in it and thought it could be of interest to the foundation.

Suddenly high pitch squeals of joy rang out from within the swamp, “Company? Oh, we finally have company! Good day, great day!”

He hadn’t sensed her presence in the slightest. Despite her appearance there was no flesh in her body.

Her stature was that of an old woman, and she’d covered herself in a black cloak. Only her face was visible underneath the fabric, and it was quite frankly disgusting.

Leather-like material similar to what the sign had been made of covered her face in loose patches. Splintered bone peaked out from underneath. It wasn’t simply human bone either, it looked like a jumbled assortment of small animal bones shoved together in a poor attempt at sculpting a face. However the most revolting thing about the creature was its smell. It was rancid, something akin to rotting sewage.

A smile spread upon its face, “Come along with me now! It’s been so long since we had guests.”

Michael ignored her for the moment, “Keith, do you know what the hell that thing is?”

“I’m almost insulted that you think my area of expertise would include whatever the hell made this thing.”

“Something made it?”

“I mean obviously, something like that doesn’t just occur naturally.”

Michael turned his attention back to the creature.

“Where exactly do you want to take me?”

“Oh, to meet the mistress! Yes, she will be pleased to meet you. Nobody's visited lately, but now you’ve showed up! So let's go!”

She hobbled out from the muck of the swamp and onto the road, before attempting to guide Michael further down the path.

He hesitated. The signs he’d seen had probably been trying to depict this thing. Although they’d been far too simplistic to really show just how putrid the creature actually was.

She didn’t look back at Michael or his soldiers to see if they were following her. Which was strange. It was strangely confident that he’d just trail behind a creature that had actual warning signs about it.

Either she was crazy, which honestly seemed pretty likely, or something else was going on.

Michael ordered one of his soldiers to follow right behind her while he and the rest would stay back for the moment.

So they walked down the cobblestone road of the swamp. No matter how far they went he couldn’t sense any life beyond the insects. It was long past being a coincidence at this point.

After a short walk they soon arrived at a small cottage. It was made of rotting wood and he honestly had doubts anyone lived in it.

But the creature opened the door and walked in, not even looking back to see if the soldier was following.

Michael quickly shifted his perception to the soldier and stepped through the door into the den of a monster.

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AN: I started up a patreon. So if you want to read ahead or support my ability to buy coffee, now you can. Also like and rate, and all that jazz. As always, thanks for reading!
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Special thanks to WickedSmike.