Overall, this was a pretty good article and I like the ending. The piece is very well rounded, and although it doesn't blow me away, I still really liked it. I'd be perfectly happy with this winning the contest, so take your upvote. Good work.
Throughout the article, you use "effect" and "affect" a bit too much. It gets repetitive. Try to find ways to cut that down or use different words.
1. Personnel who understand RPC-009’s existence as an anomaly and not as the deceased Presley have also inevitably be affected by this effect as well.
Wording on this is weird.
RPC-009 is also capable of exerting a memetic effect on certain surrounding individuals; said effect causes said individuals to view the anomaly as a member of their community, a friend, or an otherwise related, mundane individual.
This is clunky because you're repeating grammatical information when you don't have to.
Said plan was on a far greater scale than any other attempt made by the agents of Site-220 previously,4 Whereas previous efforts involved simple dispatching of agents on-site to contain the anomaly and amnesticize witnesses, Heartbreak was a heavily funded and planned operation.
Run-on.
As the bullet ricochets through the vehicle it manages not to hit any individuals within it, instead bouncing directly into the anomaly's handcuffs, freeing it.
This seems really far fetched. I'm not knowledgeable on guns but I don't think bullets bounce around like that. They'd fly straight through the metal of the truck as soon as they hit any surface. Also I don't think it would make sense for the guy to have been pointing the gun at the handcuffs when the gun went off, because I think it's bad form to be pointing a gun at someone when they aren't an active threat. I'd ask Don about it on Discord to see what the best way to describe the scene would be. Maybe a muscle twitch or something.
Its memetic effect affected almost the entirety of the site, causing personnel to identify it as “Senior Researcher King”.
To be honest, this kinda took me out of the story. I think it comes across as a little too powerful for him to take the identity of a senior researcher everyone knows. Instead I think he should take the identity of a generic, new researcher that no one knows, but no one has any reason to suspect. I think this is the only time in the article that the character takes the form of a "member of their community" or "a friend" so I think you could remove that from the description if you end up changing it.
Edit: after reading the other entries, I don't think this one reached the same heights as the other entries for me. I'm going to downvote because of my issues above but if they are fixed I will no-vote. Overall I just feel this article doesn't deserve the victory over some of the others.
Edit 2: removed my downvote after edits were made.
