Chapter 1: Chapter 0: A strange app

A young man sat on a stool inside a convenience store, holding a cheap smartphone. His eyes were stuck to the screen as he tapped on the glass, occasionally sliding his finger across it. One could see that he was playing some kind of management game—the kind where you build and upgrade buildings while generating passive income, which would snowball into more and more over time. Of course, this genre was also known for being littered with microtransactions to speed it up, buy certain special items, etcetera.

The man didn't seem to mind that, however, as he played the game and unlocked everything for free. Of course, this would take much, MUCH longer than just buying everything with real money.

The game had a cartoony art direction, and the theme was one of those "Past -> Present -> Future" advancement styles. You would start in a somewhat medieval time period and upgrade your architecture and technology, from basic boats to space-faring cruise ships, from gothic castles to metal fortresses on different planets.

This was obviously hyping the game up a bit too much, as it really wasn't nearly as interesting as what he described. In fact, he wasn't even a fan of the game; it was more the idea of it that he enjoyed. He liked to pretend that he was the one doing all of these things, that he had founded a megacorp and made a ridiculous amount of money, and, oh yeah, that he had helped humanity and whatever. He certainly wasn't greedy, no sir.

The man kept tapping to collect the gold and cash (the two main resources in the game), with an occasional diamond being found, which could be used to buy upgrades and other items. He was so caught up in his dream of ruling over humanity that he didn't notice the bell ringing to alert him of a customer opening the door.

A Caucasian woman with short, curly hair tapped on the counter with one of her hands, the other still holding an umbrella that was dripping water onto the floor.

"Excuse me," the woman hesitated as she got a look at the man's nametag, "Benjamin?"

The man quickly wiped the drool running down his mouth as he looked up, noticing the woman. He glanced down at his game again. He wiped his mind clean of his previous thoughts and paused the game, looking back up at the lady. She appeared irritated, most likely due to the sudden change in weather. He hoped he wouldn't get nagged at by the old bitch, but of course this was a pipe dream.

"How can I help you, ma'am?" Ben asked with a yawn.

"How unprofessional! Are you the only one here?!" The woman sprayed saliva as she continued chiding, "You should be paying attention when a customer walks in, not playing your little phone games."

Ben's eye twitched in annoyance as he listened with deaf ears to the rotten lady. He wasn't sure why she was so mad, but he suddenly got an idea.

"Miss, I'm so sorry for the inconvenience, I understand that it's embarrassing to come to a store like this so late into the night."

The woman temporarily ceased her tirade, confused by the man's sudden change in temperament.

"That's why I recommend SaniPad™ Ultra for your womanly needs."

The young man smiled with glistening teeth as he held a box in his hands like a spokesperson on a commercial.

You are reading story Secure. Contain. Prevail. (A Marvel/SCP Mashup) at novel35.com

The woman proceeded to ring up her items and briskly left the convenience store with a red face. She would definitely contact the manager and get this brat fired. She still bought a box, but that was irrelevant; she just happened to need to stock up, that was all.

Ben slicked his hair back.

"Another satisfied customer," he said to himself, though the confidence he exuded was slightly affected by a yawn at the end. Ben knew it was only a matter of time before he moved up the ranks; then he would be an assistant manager; then he would become a manager; and he would keep working his way up until he owned businesses across the entire world. He rubbed his hands together, smiling like a cartoon villain as he imagined the sight.

Wait, no, not a villain.

Damn. Why did all examples of rich cartoon characters have to be evil?

He sighed as he knew it was a long way away, but he was determined to win at life. Whether he did so fairly?

Well...

He unpaused his game and continued to play it for a while longer. The rain pitter-pattered against the roof and windows, this relaxing sound certainly didn't help his tiredness.

The sounds of his tapping combined with the rain to form an unlikely soundscape of serenity. However, after a while, he started to grow bored. He no longer tapped the screen and pretty much just stared at it with glazed eyes. He glanced at the time in the top-right corner of the screen. It currently reads 3:24 a.m.

He knew he still had around four and a half hours to fill his overnight shift. He sighed as he noticed the "play button" at the top of the game was no longer grayed out. This was one of the main ways you could get the currencies that you usually had to buy. You could earn a pittance if you watched the selected advertisements for other games.

He clicked the button, which opened a pop-up, preparing to ignore it as they were usually the same ads, and rarely did they ever change. However, the ad that appeared was strange; it wasn't any of the five games he'd seen advertised before, and it didn't look like any of those games either. Usually there would be a gameplay trailer, or at-least a screenshot.

But all this ad had was some type of logo.

Benjamin wasn't sure what the logo meant; it was kind of a cross between the nuclear warning sign and the warning sign for electrostatic sensitive devices, with the arrows of the ESD symbol being surrounded by the nuclear symbol. There was no game title, and the only text was a link that said "download now".

Ben felt like he had seen the logo before; it was vaguely familiar, yet without a name, he had nothing to go off of. He wasn't planning to download such a suspicious game anyway; it was probably a virus.

You can find story with these keywords: Secure. Contain. Prevail. (A Marvel/SCP Mashup), Read Secure. Contain. Prevail. (A Marvel/SCP Mashup), Secure. Contain. Prevail. (A Marvel/SCP Mashup) novel, Secure. Contain. Prevail. (A Marvel/SCP Mashup) book, Secure. Contain. Prevail. (A Marvel/SCP Mashup) story, Secure. Contain. Prevail. (A Marvel/SCP Mashup) full, Secure. Contain. Prevail. (A Marvel/SCP Mashup) Latest Chapter