SCP-376

Item #: SCP-376

Object Class: Keter

Special Containment Procedures: SCP-376 is to be contained in a standard humanoid containment cell measuring 5.0m x 7.2m at Site-77. SCP-376 is to be provided with a standard diet of salted fish and bird eggs, along with a toilet and water tank for personal use. Any instances of SCP-376 are to be moved via remote vehicle to an area clear of all human habitation, after which the instance is to be cremated or buried in urned composting ashes. No object or living being is to enter the containment area until proper containment procedures have been completed, nor the area opened until that time. Motion detectors will alert security personnel whenever an instance of SCP-376 makes an attempt to leave the containment area.

Security personnel are not permitted to approach SCP-376 without Level 4 authorization; if this fact ignites conflict between two individuals, the individual attempting to approach SCP-376 may be subdued by security personnel and remanded to medical attention. The personnel attempting a dialogue with SCP-376 must remain in view and contact at all times; failure to comply will result in termination and removal of cover identity codeword.

Individuals who come into contact with SCP-376 are advised to maintain eye contact with any source of light within two meters. Smiling at light sources may also aid in maintaining cover identity. If a target fails to maintain eye contact with a source of light, or exhibits panic, the cover identity is assumed compromised and terminated immediately.

Description: SCP-376 is a human female (hereafter referred to only as SCP-376-1) in the early stages of [REDACTED], and is capable of producing an extreme amount of heat. No bodily fluids are produced by SCP-376; instead, it creates an extremely intense flame that extends from its head. The force of this flame can be used to ignite nearby flammables, including organic matter and inorganic materials, but this effect has no other stimulatory properties. SCP-376 may only create one flame at a time.

SCP-376's body temperature is approximately 9,200°C; however, depending on the surroundings and lighting conditions, it may appear to have a blood temperature slightly lower than normal (approximately 6,900°C). According to interviews with D-Class personnel, SCP-376 exhibits strong social norms for proper behavior when it comes time for them to sleep or rest, but has been known to be violent towards those that do not follow these rules.

Though no known biological or chemical changes occur within the body of SCP-376 when it is exposed to a flame, they do exhibit short term memory loss in areas such as language comprehension. Subjects who had been in regular contact with SCP-376 before exposure show no signs of memory loss (see Document 376-1). While the memory loss does not seem to coincide with the events that occurred during their exposure to flames, the exact way that this anomalous effect develops is still unknown.

Addendum:

The following document appears to have been written by Dr. ████████, prior to the interview.

To the Foundation, I apologize for the deception you\'ve been forced to put up with for these past few months. I know it\'s not my place to tell this to you, but I must be truthful. You see, when I was a child, there was a fire in my home. A house fire. My parents died in the blaze; I was only four years old at the time. The cause of the fire has never been determined. My memories of that day are fragmented, and they\'re all jumbled together into one big mess of misery. As a child, I cried myself to sleep every night, waiting for the fire trucks to come and save me.

I had no idea what was happening to me. I didn\'t understand why, in the middle of a fire, all my parents cared about was getting me out of their way. They wouldn\'t go back inside to save anything, let alone themselves. I felt helpless and alone in my sorrow, and that\'s when I developed this… obsession with fire.

For the next nine years of my life, I begged my parents to let me crawl back into their burning house and die with them. They didn\'t understand what was wrong with me, and thought that I just wanted attention. Eventually, though, I got tired of being a burden on them and decided that if I couldn\'t have them then nobody could have me. So I ran away from home when I was twelve years old. There\'s not much to say about where I went from there, but I moved from city to city until finally ending up in Ridgewood. The town has always been pretty close-knit so it wasn\'t hard for me to get a job as an apprentice chef at the local restaurant.

I met your agent when he came into work one day and asked me if I would be willing to volunteer for a little experiment that he was working on. He said he needed someone who knew how to keep a secret and who had some experience with fire as well, so of course I agreed right away. It wasn\'t until after we began our interviews that things really took off. You see, Agent ████████ is actually an undercover Foundation agent who had been hired by my parents\' family to find me and bring me back home before something horrible happened to me or somebody else because of me.

Over time, we became very close friends and spent many hours discussing the fire that had so greatly affected both of us. Despite our differences (which are too many to list here), we found comfort in talking about our pasts and our hopes for the future. We also had a lot of fun – he brought me along on a couple of field missions and taught me how to use his gun before taking some time off for personal reasons.

At first we tried not letting our relationship interfere with our work; but as time went on we began spending more and more time together outside of work hours (and yes, it was completely platonic). Eventually it came time for him to leave town again (he told me that he would be gone for most of the summer), and that\'s when everything changed forever…

We were enjoying lunch at his favorite café when he told me that he had planned something special for his departure from town that day – something that would hopefully give him some closure after all these years of sadness and confusion over the fire in which his parents died. He said he\'d asked his boss if he could bring his girlfriend along on their mission, although she wasn\'t really his girlfriend at all as far as he knew – she was just someone he knew from school who seemed like a good person with whom to spend time away from home for an afternoon or two.

Agent ████████ explained that his boss agreed with him – what harm could there be in giving his "girlfriend" a little visit? He said she lived upstairs in an apartment building on █████████ Avenue, so they left immediately after finishing lunch and set out towards their destination – until they reached █████████ Avenue and saw smoke coming out of one of the apartments on the block we were on. After double-checking that there were no other buildings nearby burning (there weren\'t), Agent ████████ sent his girlfriend back into town for help while he stayed behind with me at the scene until help arrived.

We stayed at the scene until help arrived – which took over an hour – but before long a local news channel reported smoke coming out of one apartment on █████████ Avenue as well as another apartment located across town from mine on █████████ Avenue - only these apartments were undamaged by fire (at least at first glance)…

Agent ████████ attempted several times to call his boss back in town for further instructions but couldn\'t get through; after an hour or so the second apartment began catching fire as well… By now there were two separate fires spread out across two different blocks in two different towns many miles away from each other…

I told Agent ████████ that we should probably go back to our car and wait for another news report; but instead he insisted we wait right there – since only those two apartments had burned down by then anyway, he said it didn\'t matter where we were standing as long as we were standing right where we should be standing at that moment… That\'s when he told me what happened next:

Apparently they had built two identical houses next door to each other on █████████ Avenue fifteen years ago when they bought their house from its previous owners; they didn\'t even realize they had done so until after they placed their own house under contract with a realtor who appeared on their doorstep one morning asking about buying their house for himself (the agents had never even mentioned any houses to each other before). They told him about the mistake and about how they couldn\'t afford the price tag for either house, so he laughed them off and offered them $100 off each if they bought him both houses instead – which they did not do… because then Agent ████████ would have known about it… but then he admitted that he\'d made another mistake:

He said they\'d bought two identical houses next door to each other without realizing it; when they found this out they told their neighbor about it (who was unaware of these mistakes) who proceeded to burn down his own house in retaliation… While Agent ████████ watched in shock as this happened, his own house caught fire as well… Agents ████████ and W███████ put out both fires – which were easily put out once again - but because Agent ████████ had no idea what happened originally he didn\'t know how long it would take for them to be put out again this time around; so right before both fires became too much trouble for him to handle by himself, Agent W███████ went inside Agent ████████\'s house without hesitation (he\'d known him since they were children) while leaving