To feel her whole body, so alive, still alive, to know that she could be saved…when I gently sewed her broken intestines back together, or when I coaxed her heart to resume beating when it threatened to stop…that was love. It was, indeed, comparable to making love, if not in ecstasy, but in emotion. To gently close her body back up and watch as she breathed on her own was utter relief and bliss.
Love is…Heiß und naß. Love is warm and wet. It’s alive and throbbing, moving…flushed with blood and-SCP-542 in "What Love Is, Part One".
SCP-542, also known as Herr Chirurg, is an antagonist in the SCP Foundation series. He is a German surgeon who steals body parts to add to his own body, killing people to maintain himself. Despite his nature, he is quite cooperative and is even willing to help the Foundation.
Behavior and Procedure
SCP-542 is a German serial killer and surgeon that has replaced the majority of his body with pieces of his victims. SCP-542 possesses the ability to sense when a piece of his body begins rotting, including internal organs; though normally affable, this causes SCP-542 to enter a "hunting" phase where SCP-542 uses his ability to sense the health of nearby humans to ambush and eviscerate his prey to obtain their internal organs, muscles, or skin.
Biography
The true origin of the man who would be known as SCP-542 is mostly unknown. What is known was that he was an extremely skilled German doctor and surgeon born before World War I, and was possibly married to a woman named Isabelle. During the time of World War II, Herr Chirurg joined the Nazis to assist in their experiments on prisoners, though he didn't really care about their goals and took part in their works simply to gain resources for his own personal surgical experiments.
Since the end of the wars, Herr Chirurg managed to live to the present day by replacing his failing body part with healthy ones. In order to find these parts, Herr Chirurg went after several people who possessed body parts he deemed fitting for him. He would stalk these people before incapacitating them and surgically removing his desired parts. He did this to tenths of people across Germany, England and America, being responsible for the deaths of around 60 people because of blood loss among other causes. Occasionally he would enlist the help of people who were willing to assist him in replacing his failing parts, but it's unknown what happened to them afterwards.
On a ride on a bus in Germany, Herr Chirurg saw an American tourist who became suspicious of him due to wearing heavy clothing in the middle of summer. Taking interest in one of her legs, Herr Chirurg followed the tourist to the hotel she was staying and began stalking her for three days to learn her routine before planning to strike. Finally at night while she was away, Herr Chirurg broke inside her room through a opened window and disabled the lights to allow him to hide beneath the tourist's bed. When the tourist returned to her room, he grabbed her by the legs and assured her that everything would be fine, telling her that he just needed one of her legs and if she behaved calmly he may alert the ambulance.
Another tourist staying besides the room, who happened to be an SCP Foundation agent, heard the commotion and entered the room, seeing Herr Chirurg taking the tourist's leg apart. He shot at him which forced the surgeon to flee. Following the incident, the Foundation managed to track Herr Chirurg down and capture him, bringing him to a Foundation site and giving him a designation of SCP-542.
Against all odds, SCP-542 got surprisingly along well with the Foundation personnel, deeming them like-minded individuals, forming a special friendship with Dr. Rights. He was granted a room fitted with a queen-sized mattress, two work tables, a wardrobe filled with heavy coats, lab jackets and pants, some mirrors, sewing supplies, bookcase filled with anatomy and medical texts, a chess set, notebooks and writing utensils, and German-language crossword puzzles. He additionally requested for a deep sink, a nail file, nail clippers and full access to his surgery kit, but were all denied. The Foundation took interest in his research and skills, and decided to not only allow him to continue his work but also assist him in these experiments.
During his time in containment, SCP-542 followed Foundation requests for the most part, but when the Class-D personnel assigned to him got a bit too careless he took the opportunity to restrain them and perform his own experiments. Becoming more cautious about him, the personnel decided to revoke his sewing kit since he had used it to torture the D-Class. SCP-542 had also somehow acquired information about SCP-291, a building that disassembles people, and SCP-1025, and took interest in using them, which the Foundation understandably denied.
On 2008, Prof. Crow requested for SCP-542 to be transferred to Area-12 to assist him in the Olympia Project. The request was granted and SCP-542 was sent to use his surgical skills in grafting the available enhanced body parts to create a powerful body. He got along well with Crow, talking between each other about the project and the latter further explaining to the surgeon the function of SCP-291. SCP-542 was even interested in Crow since the professor had been turned into a dog, but assured him that he had no intention of dissecting him as he wasn't an expert in animal biology. Once the project was completed and Olympia successfully created, SCP-542 was returned to his previous site. Later, he also learned about SCP-827, a mass of regenerative cells that can create copies of body parts, and SCP-545, causing the O5 Council to try find and reprimand those who told him about those anomalies.
While residing in Site-17, a containment breach suddenly occurred as a result of an attack by the Proponents of Paranormal Rights, freeing SCP-542 among other anomalies. During the chaos, 542 disabled several cameras to hide himself before taking notice of Dr. Zurn. Following Zurn, 542 entered Dr. Rights' office where she was laying unconscious in the presence of SCP-347. Checking on Rights he turned to leave to get supplies but not before calling out to 347. This shocked the invisible woman, with 542 clarifying that he was able to discern her presence due to her heartbeat and asked to not touch Rights while he was away. He encountered Research Security Agent J. Willhein and incapacitated him, planning to use him to help Rights. 542 brought the agent to the office where he began to take him apart while 347 watched on in horror.
Once his work was done, both 542 and 347 decided to run away from the site and escape from the Foundation to live a better life. However, as they walked across land the duo faced some difficulty outside, and soon realized that they were better in Foundation custody. Since 347 was naked to be completely invisible, she was feeling cold, prompting 542 to give her his coat. They then agreed to return to the Foundation, but decided to go on a date before doing that. They arrived to the nearest town at dawn where they made a reservation in a Perkins restaurant. Despite their disturbing appearance the people present in the restaurant didn't mind, and the staff served the couple as if everything was normal. SCP-Retrieval Team 87-Sigma soon tracked the two individuals who requested to finish their food first and even invited the personnel to join the feast. The team paid the bill which was around $25.97, administered all witnesses minor-grade amnestics and returned both 542 and 347 to Site-17.
One day, Dr. Rights got involved in a brutal accident which split opened her entire torso. All present personnel deemed her lost and gave up trying to save her, except for SCP-542. Feeling a romantic connection between them, SCP-542 did everything he could to save Rights, putting her organs back in place before stitching her wounds. Thanks to his intervention, Rights managed to live, but only for three more years before she ultimately died.
Back to Area-12, SCP-542 became involved in a containment breach caused by SCP-7528. As SCP-7528 began killing every personnel by manifesting itself on various screens, 542 attempted to help with the situation, but seeing the anomaly appearing on the theater stage, he was forced to lock the way out, leaving the personnel inside the stage trapped with SCP-7528.
Appearance
SCP-542 appears as a grotesque humanoid creature composed of various body parts, described as a "Frankenstein's Monster". Originally he was a normal Caucasian man, but was unsatisfied with his common body and sought to enhance himself. The modifications he did to himself resulted in a hunched form, distended gut, warped ribcage, extremely long arms, patchwork skin which hasn't fully healed, and stretched skin on his face which gave him a skeletal appearance. When he was outside, 542 usually wore heavy clothing to hide his bizarre features, though he preferred to wear only a pair of slacks.
Personality
Still, once you get past his appearance and "mild" dementia, he's quite a likable character. A wealth of knowledge in fact. He's actually aided me in several little asides in regard to the project. He was quite interested in the whole thing. He see's me somewhat as a kindred spirit, and while he does find my physiology interesting, he told me that he's "skilled with the biology of humans…not hounds", and so won't be cutting me open to find out how I work.Prof. Crow about SCP-542 in "13th-23rd December 2008".
SCP-542 proved to be quite cordial though a bit extravagant, enjoying having long conversations on the matters of biology, politics and chess. He prided himself in his surgical skills and preferred to be around people who thought like him. His main purpose in life was to research the human body and augment himself using body parts he liked, deeming his original normal body dreadful. To achieve this goal he was willing to collaborate with organizations like the Nazi party and the SCP Foundation, not caring about their goals in the slightest and only helped them in exchange for their help in his experiments. Because of the constant necessity of fresh body parts, SCP-542 hunted down innocent people to harvest their parts, and when taking them apart he would assure them that everything was going to be fine and he may alert the ambulance, though most of the time his victims died, either intentionally or accidentally. After being contained by the Foundation, he had no problem with it as long as he was granted opportunity to conduct his experiments in peace with more resources, though he would occasionally attack unsuspecting personnel.
Powers and Abilities
SCP-542 is an extremely skilled and intelligent surgeon. His IQ score was around 150, and could speak other languages besides German, which included English, French, Polish and Italian. Thanks to his extraordinary surgical skills, SCP-542 was able to perform self-surgery on himself, replacing the vast majority of his body with other parts while somehow managing to not cause his body to reject them. As a result of his heavy modifications, SCP-542 was able to prolong his lifespan and acquire new properties such additional joints to his fingers, two hearts, replica of other organs and additional brain mass. His original DNA also appears to be lost as his body now contains a mixture of various DNAs. Unfortunately, his organs tend to fail sooner or later and it was usual for him to cough up blood, which forced him to rapidly search for a replacement and have blood transfusion once a week.
SCP-542 can somehow keep track of his own body structure, which he attributes to his good memory, and know exactly which part is failing at any time. He could also become aware of the health of other people's body parts near him and determine which suits him better, a process he himself can't explain. He was able to perform his surgeries thanks to his personal surgical kit containing scalpels, blades, syringes and other equipment from various time eras.
Gallery
Images
Videos
Trivia
- SCP-542 appears to have been influenced by real life and fictional individuals like Josef Mengele and Dr. Victor Frankenstein.
- Dr. Rights once wrote a fanfiction titled "One Bad Mother" about SCP-542 creating a child together with Dr. Kald and Dr. Mann, combining their DNAs to create the child before merging the two doctors together so the baby could be gestated inside of them.
External Links
- SCP-542 on the SCP Database Wiki
- SCP-542 on the SCP Foundation Wiki
- SCP-542 on the SCP Explained
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