She bounces a little on her toes when she hears the news.

"Congratulations!"

"Thank you!  And thank you for your help - I'm so excited to really be working on this, with you advising me - "

"I can't think of a project I'd rather be advising right now."

She takes the day to celebrate, and then she gets to work.  She requisitions documents.  The Special Containment Procedures briefing for SCP-682, its interview logs, the incident reports of its containment breaches, and the lengthy list of termination attempts and cross-tests.  She gets access to lots of these, but not everything - there's quite a few things she's still not allowed to know about, even after O5-1's great declassification, that they tried to kill 682 with.

One of the documents she does get her hands on, in full, is her own termination test record.

Item: SCP-053

Tissue Test Record: N/A, bypass authorized by O5 Command

Termination Test Record: SCP-053 introduced to SCP-682 testing foyer.  SCP-682 introduced to testing foyer.  SCP-682 appears initially hostile but quickly becomes still and closes its mouth.  Both items watch each other.  SCP-053 appears afraid, and stays close to the opposite wall of the testing foyer.  SCP-682 begins slowly approaching SCP-053, appearing non-hostile and curious.  SCP-053 approaches SCP-682.  SCP-682 makes physical contact; SCP-053 falls over but no longer appears afraid.  SCP-682 vocalizes, lays down, and becomes dormant.  SCP-053 lays down against SCP-682's forward carapace, retrieves a set of crayons it had hidden in its uniform, and begins to make drawings on SCP-682's snout.  SCP-682 remains apparently docile for the remainder of the test.

Staff entering at the end of the test phase are immediately attacked by SCP-682, resulting in two deaths and five injuries. SCP-682 contained and moved to separate containment unit. SCP-053 observed crying for several minutes after SCP-682 is removed.

She isn't sure why reading it causes a lump to rise in her throat.

Well.  She's got work to do about it.

Most of 682's documentation focuses on its physical capabilities, strength and reflexes and regeneration and shapeshifting.  Psychological assessment is sparse and, in Charlotte's opinion, positively backward.

"Is there a technical meaning to the term rage state that I haven't heard about?"

"Oh good Lord.  That was before even my time... I don't think the original 5031 documentation even talked about rage states.  Rage state is a term of art from when the Foundation considered all sentient or animate anomalies to be bad imitations of living things.  So for example there'd be a statue of a cat that would be animate sometimes, so it'd have an "animate state" and an "inanimate state."  Then they figured out it was friendly to people who were nice to it and didn't like people who were mean to it, so they said it had a "docile state" and a "rage state" that were triggered by the presence of different researchers.  And there were some objects that were like that, that could move and interact but only in simple sort of pre-programmed ways, and sometimes the term got used for them if there was something that would make them behave violently.  But for the most part it's just the Foundation's particularly dehumanizing gloss on people or beings lashing out or defending themselves."

"Charming."  She sucks her teeth.

She collects the information she can.  They won't tell her where they found the thing, or how it learned to speak English, but she can read through the first interview logs.  They ask why it killed "those farmers," it says they were "disgusting."  She starts a text document just listing all of 682's favorite epithets for humans.  "Foul bags of tissue", "sack of organs", "meat", "wet salt", et cetera.

...They could get it to talk at first.  It sits and answers questions, with a researcher and a D-class right there, and it only kills the D-class when they move in closer with the microphone.  But the common wisdom, borne out by later tests, is that 682 immediately kills any human being in the room with it.  Did something change?

Well, they tried to kill it a bunch.  It was hostile to humans before then, but - well, in a human being, "murderer willing to be interviewed about their murders" and "beyond reason, kills any other human they see" would be a pretty big jump.  And that's the whole point - they're not parsing 682's mindset and motivations in detail because it's just an animal to them.

And then there's the issue of the acid.  682 gets exposed to lots of stuff that sounds a lot scarier, to her, than hydrochloric acid, in some of these termination tests.  They put it in 536, change the laws of physics to turn it into - stuff she doesn't even understand, what the hell is neutron degenerate matter - and it comes out the other side hale and hearty.

I could swear, at one point, that thing looked like it was actually enjoying the experience.

She would not expect something that can be dissolved down to the bone by ordinary non-anomalous acid to survive an experience like that.

One day, after a particularly fruitless week of banging her head against the wall, she absently clicks open a file folder she hasn't paid much attention to yet: the archive of video footage of 682's escape attempts.  She opens one at random.

It roars and bellows almost constantly.  It rams through walls and seems to almost scramble around corners.  It sometimes keeps attacking humans after they stop moving, mashing them into unrecognizable smears - 

(She stops, turns her head away from the screen, shuts her eyes.  Rubs her face.)

She grits her teeth and keeps watching.

Someone manages to climb onto it for some reason - it looks like they might be holding a grenade.  It bellows louder, squirms to swat the soldier off its back, and claws at them once they're on the ground and screeches and screeches.  The grenade goes off and it startles and bolts away, straight into two more Nu-7 troopers who've been shooting it the whole time, and screeches again as it swats them into the wall.

Her first thought had been that it knew the soldier that climbed onto it was holding the grenade.  But it was startled by the grenade, it looks like.

She has never been all that bothered by bugs, but she has seen TV shows where characters are terrified of spiders and cockroaches.  When 682 says humans are disgusting, exactly what state of mind is it trying to convey?

Maybe not the hatred that a human has for another human.  She finds herself wondering whether it might be afraid.

She puts together a preliminary report, as much for her own reference as it is for submitting to anyone.  She notes down some questions to ask.  And then - it's time.

They evacuate a pathway from her suite to the exit, for her.  It feels strange.  She was moved to her current suite at once she was old enough to cook for herself and do her own laundry, and ever since then she's never left those five rooms.  Bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, living room, office.  It's a very nice suite, and she's grown very comfortable in it over the years, but - it feels like finally shaking off a cloak of dust and cobwebs, to be outside of it.

The pathway leads to the Site-19 airport, where there's a jet waiting for her.  It's big enough that she can sit in the back and her pilot will be out of range of the anomaly.  She's been given instructions and a phone; she gets on board the plane and sends a message to the pilot confirming that she's secure.

She spends the flight poring over her notes, fidgeting with her pen, worrying her lip.

Apart from wanting her first interview to go well, she's feeling things about talking to the giant doggy again, for the first time in twenty-two years.

They land.

She takes a hazardous-materials service elevator down into 682's testing foyer.

The room is vividly familiar.

A voice over the intercom:

"Allllll right Charlotte, can you hear me?"

"Yes I can.  Can you hear me?"

"Yes I can!  I'm Dr. Leonard Salt, I'll be your D-Class for today.  I'm told you've heard all about me, but just to recap, there's one of me here in the control chamber, I'll be letting the lizard in to talk to you and I'll be controlling the emergency acid hoses in case things go pear shaped, and there's another twenty of me outside the testing foyer with the very big guns in case things go really pear shaped.  If something does go wrong you are not allowed to worry about my safety, understand?  I've got plenty of spares, that's what I'm here for.  You just get yourself to safety."

"I understand."

"All righty.  Other than that young lady you're in charge, this is your project and we the Doctors Salt are at your beck and call.  I'm ready to let the lizard in on your signal."

"I'm ready.  Do it."

The blast doors sealing the testing foyer from the containment chamber open.  The tank is full of liquid, black and violently bubbling, and it drains away, slowly -

And its flesh starts coming back.  Off-grey and red and violet organs inflate into place inside its ribcage.  Muscles stretch over its bones and fatten and tone themselves.  Skin pebbles into being, and even with nothing to burn it away it ripples, slowly, changing from green-grey pebbly alligator-scales to thick shaggy black fur to bony plates.