It is very difficult to bandage a wound that is spitting flames.

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It is very difficult to bandage a wound that is spitting flames.
Attempting to do so conveys, in rather spectacular fashion, just how flammable most bandaging materials are. You start with the official, garden-variety bandages. Once those are all cinders, you move on to more exotic choices. Tape? That sounds appropriate. Scraps of clothing? You've seen movies. You know that has to work. They wouldn't put it in movies if it didn't work, right? That would just be reckless.
Casey was just checking if his socks were absorbent enough when Adam grabbed his forearm with his good hand.
Adam grimaced as he pushed himself more upright against the side of the porch, his shirt catching several splinters on the damaged wood. At the end of his flaming arm, his hand was shaking, fingers clasping and unclasping in a stilted succession. He wheezed: "Tourniquet."
Casey mouthed a silent thanks. He fiddled with another scrap of his shirt, tied it around Adam's bicep, then tightening it with a pen Adam passed from his pocket. "Can you hold that?"
Adam could. At last, the fire started to die down, replaced by a more manageable candlewick of a flame. Casey blew it out, and Adam winced.
"Sorry."
Adam cleared his throat and clutched his sliced arm to his chest. He rasped, "Did you take care of my jacket?"
Casey blinked. "Oh, yeah, totally. Uhm, how did you get here?"
"Do you think I'm a spy?"
"These past few days have not affirmed my naturally trusting disposition."
"We'll be sure to include that in the lawsuit when this is done with. Your honor, this murderous conspiracy gave me trust issues." Adam laughed, then coughed, then continued. "I went to Erwan's house. Place was empty, done up like a crime scene, all blocked off. You didn't tell me what to do after, so I came here."
"I knew there was a loophole."
"But you left it anyways. Dad told me you were borrowing my clothes, so tracking you was easy."
"And you say I have trust issues."
Adam chuckled, then winced. "But, when I got close, something went weird. The bomb went off. And I lost track. Check out the debris."
The cloud still consumed the street, even now. Enough soot was blown into the air to make the Mayor sneeze. In the sky Casey saw the sun, hazy in the dust, occluded by metal shards flitting about on the aching breeze.
Casey squinted, following a metal fragment as it landed on the concrete. It wasn't just debris — it was flat, and engraved with an image. A twenty-two pointed star — an eicosidyogram, with each point marked by unrecognizable symbols.
Adam nodded. "As soon as the bomb went off, it was like there were a thousand of you — total thaumic overload. Had to play it by ear after that, but seems I got there just in time. And then everything turned out fine, and we lived forever and never died."
"Don't spoil it for me."
Gunfire echoed off debris-blasted buildings. Casey peeked around the edge of the porch. The twin Spencers were still duking it out in what was probably a metaphor, or something.
Casey sighed. "Any idea how we're getting out of here?"
Adam shifted to kneel behind Casey. He'd stabilized his afflicted left arm as best he could. "Police were trying to find you, after you engaged in some kind of wrestling match in the middle of the street?"
"You should have seen the other guy."
"Where is the other guy?"
"I don't know, actually."
Adam reached for Casey's forearm and hoisted himself to a standing position. "In any case, they were going to corner you until someone set off a bomb. Now their priorities have shifted. So long as we avoid town center, we should be okay."
A loud, rubbery beep came from behind them. Casey spun around. Standing there, at the end of the lane with a bike and a dusty coat, was Vera Garcia.
"Finally," she said with a sigh. "Come on. Time to go."

From the outside, the dust cloud looked like a great, fat hyperbola, curved walls trending asymptotically upwards to a stubby point far above the city. The cone nearly eclipsed the midday sun.
It had hung in the sky for too long, the air dead with no wind to distort it. A mass of ash people would be sweeping off their porches for weeks.
If they cared about their porches, that is. Most people under the cloud were gathering their relatives and belongings and heading either directly away from or directly towards the site of the blast, seeking safety or entertainment, respectively.
In either case, the scattered pedestrians were far too preoccupied to make any note of the two men limping past. Up ahead, a biker in a pantsuit wheeled about, craning her head to peer into side streets and alleyways, and waving back when the coast was clear.
Casey wasn't sure where she got the bike. If he had to guess, she either stole it or pulled it out of her bag like Mary Poppins. From what he knew about Vera, either were equally probable.
"So, the brothers were supplied with a bomb," Adam said.
"Right," Casey replied.
"And this mysterious benefactor also made a robot Agent Spencer."
"Presumably."
"To kill the guy in the house-"
"Cillian Erwan. An investor in the paratech trade."
"Right. And also kill one of the bombers? So it was a double-cross?"
"I guess? Or he knew he was going down?"
"Regardless."
"Yeah. So, a bomb gone off, two people dead, and an officer of the FBI in Three Ports is apparently responsible." Casey counted off the elements on his fingers.
"Sounds like a scandal. But what about the blockers in the bomb? Why go to the trouble of manufacturing thousands of magic flakes just on the off chance that a wizard might be scrying the site of the blast? What difference would that even make?"
They trundled onwards. It wouldn't be long until they were back on Eustace's steps.
"What if," Casey started, "they're not trying to hide it from us, but someone else? What about the Mayor?"
"Does that even make sense? Isn't the city to the Mayor, like, a body is to a brain?"
"If it's remote sight, it probably works like scrying, right? And things that block scrying might make a blind spot."
Adam chewed on that for a moment. "And if the Mayor doesn't realize something's going on, and the FBI is dealing with the fallout of a bomb and a bunch of phony murders…"
"Everyone's distracted. It's the perfect opening."
They stopped. The street had come to an end; the facade of Eustace's building hung over them.

They had no sooner knocked than the door swooshed inwards. Eustace was standing down the hall, arms crossed. His wrinkled hands impatiently beckoned them in.
Adam gave a weak wave with his good hand, but Eustace just shook his head.
The door slammed shut, plunging the foyer back into twilight. "Do me a favor. Next time you leave this house, don't do anything that'll be on the news before you get back."
Casey and Vera blinked a few times, letting their eyes adjust to the light. Adam had shuffled into the kitchen to sit on the granite countertop.
Casey coughed. He thought about how to phrase this.
"I think we need to meet the Mayor."
Eustace nodded along. "Right, right. Okay. Well, I'll keep my eye on the obituaries—"
"It's the most likely target of — well, whatever is going to happen," Adam interjected. "The bomb's got the whole city looking the other way, and no-one's going to bother to sort through the evidence for days, at least."
The old man sighed. "Well, that's peachy. And if that's true at all, we should be leaving the city, not charging headlong into certain death. City Hall is done up like a bank vault on demonic steroids."
Casey frowned. "We can't leave. We all have people here."
"I'm sorry, do you have friends that you have not yet murdered, amnesticized, or dragged into this death spiral with you? If so, they should also be leaving the city."
Adam fished a white rectangle out of an oaken drawer. With his good hand, he pressed it to the wound, gritting his teeth as thousands of microscopic arms affixed themselves to his laceration.
He took a shuddering breath in, then exhaled smoothly. "Whoever's doing this is moving fast. Even if the City Council listened, it'd take weeks for them to do anything — we need to act now."
Eustace narrowed his eyes at his son. "At what point did I give off the impression that I am in any way supporting your absurd plans? Why shouldn't I just throw you out now and let the police sort everything?"
Adam jumped down from the counter, flexing his bandaged arm experimentally. "Because if you don't help, I will do it anyways. I will charge into those defenses alone. And I will die."
Eustace tilted his head. "Are you holding yourself hostage?"
"Yes. You know I'd do it."
"God, you would, wouldn't you?" There was a dull glint of pride in the old man's voice.
Eustace stared at Adam. Then at Casey. Then back to Adam.
"Fine," he said, enunciating carefully. "Let me get my things."

Eustace pulled the kitchen blinds shut, dragging the last slivers of early afternoon sunlight away and out of the room.
The elder turned around, leering at the three people sitting patiently at his dull ochre dinner table. After a moment, he slid out his own chair, and sat down with a dusty thud.
He cleared his throat. "I want to start by informing certain parties at this meeting how much I despise them."
He pointed at Casey. "I hate your weak-willed attitude and susceptibility to mind control. I hate that you give my son excuses to do stupid shit."
Casey looked at the table, arms folded on his lap. "Let's be honest, he doesn't need me for that."
Eustace ignored him. He shifted his finger of blame to Vera. "I hate your bland cheerfulness and the fact that you think you belong here."
Vera shrugged. "Guilty."
Adam spoke up. "I think it's nice that someone has an ounce of optimism."
Eustace glared for a moment. Adam laid back in his seat once more, cradling his left arm in a dark fabric sling. "Moving on-"
"Are you forgetting anyone?" Casey asked.
Eustace frowned at him. "Adam's doing his best. What are you implying?"
Casey looked to Adam, who just gave a shrug.
"That's not-" Casey sunk back. "-what I meant."
"Anyways," Eustace resumed. "Here's what I know."
A warm draft swept across the room, and from the plain tabletop, spectral pinpoints emerged. They shone opalescent, each glittering vertex dragging others along with it, forming a polygonal starfield.
Eustace spun his fingers, and they whipped themselves into a shape. From the bottom up, a holographic model of a building was formed. It was about two stories high, thin and spindly, and each side held an amalgam of balconies, windowsills, and pillars, all of varying architectural origins. The windows were all opaque and black, and no doors marked an entrance.
"City hall," Eustace dictated, as if it was obvious. "Impenetrable. Even city council doesn't go inside. They just teleport paperwork in. Sometimes, they even get some paperwork back."
"Funny thing is, place isn't even a building. In the late 90's, whole thing went bloop and reformed into that shape. Happens every few decades, I think. Same general shape, but more modern accoutrements."
The shape exploded outwards, the topmost layer of stardust swirling up to reveal an oblong vortex within, balancing on one edge.
"You look inside, there's two concentric barriers. I did my own tests on it a long time ago, and it seems the first barrier is semi-permeable. The thaumic programming in there is going a mile a minute to detect and isolate pathogenic matter, though."
Adam cut in. "Could we distract it? Sneak in unnoticed?"
Eustace drummed his fingers, and the glittering constellation on the table pulsed to the beat. "You could magically project some smaller threats onto it, I suppose. But you'd need to predict the weak spots much quicker than a human mind could handle."
Casey interrupted in turn. "Prediction, like, machine learning? The CI agent, Troy, he mentioned they had something like that."
Eustace sighed. "The Chaos Insurgency wouldn't know quality engineering if it punched them in their edgy teenager faces. I'll see what I can do."
Adam frowned. "How do you know so much about the Mayor's defenses anyways?"
"Few years back I had some trouble with building permits. Briefly entertained the idea of killing the Mayor and replacing it with someone with less of a fetish for paperwork."
The room went quiet.
"…dad."
"I planned for all outcomes. Sue me. In any case," he segued, "you still need to physically get into the building."
Adam twisted his mouth. "Maybe we could mail ourselves? Like the paperwork."
Eustace stared. "Right. You work on that. And someone else can work on how the hell you're going to actually breach the second barrier. I can't even figure out what's inside that nucleus, let alone pierce it."
"If I may interject," Vera interjected, "I have something that might be of use." She reached into the inside of her jacket and plucked out the stubby, pistol-like device she had used in the parking lot. She brandished it in front of her, rotating it for the others to see.
"My understanding is that it opened a door for me to come here. Perhaps it could be useful now."
Eustace snatched it from her grasp. He held it sideways up to his face. "Where did you get this?"
"I received it along with my meal at Taco Bell."
Eustace set the device down, then took a moment to reflect on what his life had become.
Finally, he spoke. "This is some prime paratech. A Way-opener that can be used by even the most mundane among us." He side-eyed Vera. "With some jury-rigging, you could, perhaps, drill partially outside Portlands and then back, but inside a place of your choosing. Past the barrier, because you never went through the barrier. To finally talk some sense into the Mayor."
"Then we're set," Vera said, smiling.
"I suppose we are," he grumbled.
He clapped his hands. The iridescent projection folded in upon itself until it was just a tiny pinprick. And then the room went dark.

The words "crude" and "intricate" are not typically used in succession to describe the same subject. This combination of adjectives is typically only prescribed to tax law and critically panned films, but it applied as well to the great assemblage Eustace Rowe had propped up in his kitchen.
With loving care Eustace had woven layers of sinew into organic auraducts. The shrink-wrapped neural tissue that formed the pulsing core had been selected carefully, fused with precision into the blender-sized form before him. Each loop of muscular tubing circled through itself in a Klein bottle of pseudoelectric plumbing, running along the tabletop to a simple metal helmet studded with electrodes.
It was a perfect biomechanical focus for heavy-duty thaumaturgy. Prometheus Labs would have — and, in fact, often had — literally killed for paratech like this. Laymen called it an abomination. Eustace, in his head, had taken to calling it Hevel.
Looking at it gave Casey a headache. If you were to ask Casey to describe its aesthetic in two words, he would politely refuse the question to avoid thinking about the machine any longer.
Even Vera wasn't sure what to say. "It's… nice?"
Eustace shushed her. With his bony hands he took the helmet by the edges and held it aloft. As soon as the steel touched the crown of his head, Hevel stirred to life with an alarming shudder.
He shut his eyes, and the temperature of the room shifted up by half a degree. Even without looking, he sneered in Adam's direction. "Don't look at me. Get on with it."
Adam cleared his throat. In one hand, he was carrying a sheaf of papers. His other arm was pressed against his abdomen in a tight sling, still recovering from the self-inflicted slashes. "Right. So, I've been in contact with a specialist in legal documents. They owe me a favor."
He nodded at Casey and Vera. "With some finagling and the barrier weakened, I'm pretty sure I can have you both designated particularly bulky tax returns. Nothing should seem amiss, at least until-"
Vera piped up. "Until I can use this?" She held up the not-gun, adorned with a few new flashing bulbs.
Adam nodded. "Yeah, you should be able to do that. I think?" He turned to Eustace, who was now swaying slightly in place, lost in a thought projected from some other time.
Adam took a step forward, and gave Casey a one-armed hug. "Now or never."
Casey hugged back, as carefully as he could. His heart was pounding.
"Well," Adam said, "let's get you in a box."

In a dusty hallway in the center of Three Portlands Plaza, a large cardboard box materialized, suspended six feet in the air.
A moment later, it stopped being suspended, and fell to the carpeted floor with a painful thud and two yelps. A fist thrust its way through a seam. Vera Garcia scrambled onto her knees. She took in a deep breath but got a mouthful of dust, and she started to choke on the air.
Casey's head emerged next. His eyes darted around.
They were in a hallway of some sort. The aesthetic was dated, not only by the jazzy patterns in the carpet and peeling blue wallpaper but also by the inch-thick layer of dust covering absolutely everything.
Well, not everything. Scattered about the hall were papers, booklets, and envelopes, lying atop the sea of dust. They likely made it in the same way Vera and Casey did, although the likelihood that a person was inside one was much lower.
The place was dead silent. Not a draft, not a squeak, not a footstep. Barren.
Vera cleared her throat and clambered to her feet. She offered Casey a hand, and pulled him up.
"Here we are," she said.
Casey turned in place. The hallway went in two directions, each slightly curving to form what might be a circle. "Wanna try left or right?"
Vera dusted off her not-gun. "Left feels lucky." She set off, disturbing a trail of particulate, and Casey followed.
The hallway kept curving, so it might've been a loop — but Casey also noticed an incline. A spiral? Most of the path was desolate, just abandoned letters and inches upon inches of grit. Coming round the bend, something else was visible: an old fashioned window and pane, rotated ninety degrees and down against the edge of the carpet. It faced to the inside of the circle, ostensibly further into the building, and just displayed pure black.
"That's not where windows go," Vera observed. She knelt next to it and pressed a finger to the glass. It was scalding to the touch, and as she recoiled a deep blue wave spread across the surface.
"That tracks, I suppose." She stood back up. "Should we kick it in?"
"Uh. We should probably go around some more before we try property damage."
She shrugged. "Ashes to ashes. All solutions converge to property damage in the long run."
"That's very philosophical."
"More of a mark of experience." She stood up again and kept walking, undeterred.
They continued again for a moment longer, and something odd caught Casey's eye from around the bend. Something brown, and crumpled.
"Is that a box?" he asked.
Vera squinted at it, slowing her pace to an amble. "It is."
They approached. It was crumpled and torn like a person or two had emerged from it and set off down the hall, as indicated by a muddled track of disturbed dust.
Casey tilted his head. "Is it our box?"
Vera took a knee beside it. She poked at the cardboard folds with her index finger.
"Hmm," she said. "I do not know how to tell boxes apart."
Casey shifted back and forth on his feet. "We've been walking uphill, right? We couldn't have gone in the circle."
"Maybe the Mayor is a fan of M.C. Escher."
"That would make a lot of sense, actually." Casey paced in a small circle. "So, either the building is doing some weird stuff topologically, or there's someone else in here."
"Those are not mutually exclusive."
"Good point."
There was a trail of footsteps emanating from the perforated cardboard, proceeding the same way they were going.
"Nowhere to go but up," Vera muttered.
They proceeded around the spiral for another half-turn. The footsteps in front of them continued, framed by increasing quantities of unopened mail.
Vera scooped up a sheaf of letters. "A building permit. News of a regulation on the fourth dimension. A warrant for the arrest of someone accused of "lemoning"? Do you know what that is?"
"I've only heard rumors."
Vera swiveled, examining the peeling, outdated wallpaper. She rounded another bend, and the flimsy texture was supplanted by a wooden frame.
"Oh," she remarked. "That's something."
It was a door, on the inwards surface of the hallway. It was wooden, inlaid with simple rectangular patterns. Vera jiggled the knob, then braced her shoulder against the door.
Casey peered at her. "What're you doing?"
"Breaking the door."
"It would be a really bad impenetrable barrier if it was weak to shoulders."
"Fair." She took a step back and fished the bulky way-opener from inside her jacket. "I reckon this is the target, then."
Casey nodded, mostly to himself. "Yeah." He held out his hand. "I can try opening it, and you can head inside."
Vera shook her head. "I don't think I can, Casey."
Casey blanched. "You can't be serious. Right?"
Vera sighed. "I've done a lot today. I survived a bombing, I chased down some people, fought two guys. I think I stole someone's bike, too."
"They, uh. They probably didn't need it?"
"That's not the point. This is all still foreign territory. And I can deal with that, but I can't go in there and act like I speak for the city. As much as I want to know this place, I don't. Not yet."
Casey lowered his hand. "But what could I do?"
Vera pondered for a moment. "Why'd you start this, in the first place? Troy offered you a way out of the town, and it's not like you owe Eustace anything. Why not just wait for it to be over, and clear your name then?"
Casey looked at the door, then the ground. "I don't want to leave. I don't want the city to be someplace I have to run from. Every other place I've been, I'm unwelcome, unwanted, just a nothing. Three Portlands accepted me. No matter how hostile it can be, it's home. If something's happening, I want to be here for it. But I don't know if I can handle it."
Vera smiled. "You're doing just fine. After this, we're going out for drinks." She pointed the way-opener at the door, shut one eye, and squeezed the trigger.
The door warped, and from the creases on either side a pitch-black shape grew to cover the surface.
She winked. "Head on in. I'll be here."

Casey fell face-first onto the ground. He tried to open his eyes, and then realized they already were open. Pitch darkness.
His hands spread across the floor. The air was cool and the ground was curved, subtly bowl-shaped. Casey's fingers brushed against something soft that flaked off onto him, and he recoiled.
And then there were sirens in his ears. Everything became bright, blisteringly white, and the blast in his eardrums sent his hands rushing to protect his head. The sound was like a foghorn, so loud the air was boiling and Casey's mind was forcibly cleared of all but the thought of escape and — it stopped.
Casey gasped, as if he'd had the wind knocked out of him.
He heard a quiet, rasping voice. "Pathogen. Identify."
He strained to look up. The room was still pure, endless white, but forward and above him there was a violet sphere. Like looking into a single, massive eye that consumed his vision.
Casey clambered to his feet, wobbly on the curved ground.
"I'm Casey Malik. I need to talk to you."
Smooth lavender tendrils laced themselves around his ankles and wrists. He was yanked into the air. The orb hovered in front of him and pulsed with each word. "What you have done is proportionate to needing to talk in the same way that brain surgery is proportionate to wanting to say hello."
Casey wriggled. "I'm sorry, but it's bad out there. People are dying, and it's only getting worse."
The room warmed by a degree or two. "Death," the voice emanated, "is all around us. Your cells are dying right now. In seven years, every part of your body that is alive now will be dead and replaced by new life. The death of a cell does not imply the injury of the whole."
He squinted, indignant. "Are you just going to write us off like that?"
"It is not your fault that you don't understand. You were simply a cell. And now you are a pathogen."
"There are bigger problems than me out there. I'm just a secretary. There was a bomb out there and I- I think that was just a distraction."
"A distraction for whom? I can see you are not wholly uninvolved. You have a passenger." Additional tendrils extended from the orb, raking along Casey's cheek and temples. He tried to move back, but was forced still.
"She's just waiting outside. She's a friend."
"Not that. A passenger. Inside your head."
"That's, well- I was exposed to a carrier. It made me do something. It's- it's memetic." Casey ran through the steps in his head. "An infection in the cells threatens the body."
The Mayor burbled in a contemplative manner. "Yes," it said. "It can."
"What does it take to threaten you?"
"Much more than what you have."
The Mayor closed in and dug its tendrils into Casey's head and he yelled-

In the beginning, Casey was scared. He was just born, and his tracts of land were barren-
Wait, back up a sec. Casey didn't have tracts of land. He, the right Casey this time, took a step back. The Mayor was inside his head, but mutual cognition is a two-way street, isn't it?
The sound of gunfire brought Casey back to the other place. Bombs shook his vast body, and he had nowhere to go. Great ropes tied him to an unseen anchor, three harpoons buried in his flesh.
He felt footsteps upon him, and heard voices. Soldiers, seeking refuge from a faraway war, fought with guns and ghosts and fire.
Three Portlands greeted them with open arms.
Years passed. The war ended with great fanfare, and the watchtowers and fortifications and convoys of Portlands became houses and bakeries and bicycles.
The Mayor celebrated too. It built itself a home.
The population multiplied; the people became indistinct. The Mayor didn't see faces, not anymore; all it saw were cultures — desires. Power accumulated in the city.
The Mayor became aware of entities just like itself. "America". "United Kingdom". "Foundation". The Mayor built stronger walls.
Three Portlands flourished, and the Mayor only skimmed a fraction of that energy. Its body expanded rapidly outwards, stretching to the ether. Great limbs and veins of stone and steel filled with tens of thousands of cells-
Casey snapped back. He was a person again, sitting on a wooden chair in a coffee shop.
He glanced out the great window to see miles and miles of blank space, and the entirety of Three Portlands turned on end like a great wheel.
The cafe was empty, save for one person sitting across the table.
"Casey, love," Adam cooed. "Tell me about the bomb."
"Adam, you-" Casey started. "You shouldn't look like him."
Not Adam laughed. It sounded just like him. "Now that I've been inside your head, I think we can be comfortable with each other. I can't see inside the blast, Casey. Tell me what happened." The cafe seemed to zoom towards the sideways city, where the great cone of dust rapidly became visible.
"There was Cillian Erwan, and Sidney Way. The target and the bomber. A duplicate of Agent Spencer killed them both."
"Mm," Not Adam hummed, as if savoring a bite of something. "Who made it out?"
"I did. And Adam, and Vera. And the other bomber. Timothy."
"Timothy," Not Adam repeated. The cafe closed in on the edge of the opaque cloud, to a side street where a man in basketball shorts emerged from the dust. Muddy tears were streaming down his face. He started running.
The window followed him as he faded into a line of citizens running from the blast. He stayed with them until he could turn off onto his side street and rush into the apartment building. The cafe window transformed to a top-down view.
Timothy raced up the stairs and fished a key-ring out of a pocket of his dust-plastered jacket. He burst into a cramped, dirty apartment, slammed the door, and doubled over coughing. A moment passed and he caught his breath.
He looked back up, and a pristine package the size of a breadbox caught his attention.
He knelt beside it, examining it for any marking of origin. Finding nothing, he dug his fingers into the seams and tore it open, pulling out a small, black object that looked like a pistol, and-
It looked just like Vera's way-opener.
The Not Adam's face hardened. "No, no." It looked at Casey. "Let me see it again."
Casey couldn't take his eyes off of Timothy, who was still cradling the object. "What?"
"The virus in your head. I need to see it again." The scene outside the window burst into sparks and then faded back to grey mist. Not Adam grabbed Casey by the shoulders and lifted him effortlessly into the air. Its voice was frantic. "I need to know what it does. I need to see who sent it. We can't have much time."
Not Adam buried its fingers into Casey's neck, but he barely felt the pain. The apparition's eyes went blank as it took in the information. "Yes, yes, it's- I can see, I can see it."
And then it froze, and it and the coffee shop blinked out of existence. Casey fell to the ground. He was in the white room once more.
As he pushed himself to his feet, he saw someone else.
"Finally," said Timothy Way. He looked just like he had from the window. "Took you all long enough."
Casey tried to lunge at him, but was just forced back by some unseen draft. The orb in the center of the space was blinking, vibrating faster than any could tell, and it was radiating force outwards.
"Honestly," Timothy continued, "I don't know how they did it. How do you design a cognitohazard for something so abstract, let alone nest it in another hazard?" He shrugged, and Casey could see the way-opener in his hand. "Guess it doesn't matter now."
Around Casey, the white space dimmed with static. The draft accelerated. Gusts of wind swirled within the sphere.
Timothy steadied himself against the side of the chamber, lifted his device at the frozen orb, and pulled the trigger.
The sphere distorted — like dragging a needle through paint lying atop water, an indented cone extruding from the placid surface. An instant later, it reverberated back; it rippled through the air and the walls and Casey's body and mind.
There was now a definite pull in the room, a gravitation to the orb that rippled with intensifying amplitude, wrapped around a Way to god-knows-where.
Casey propped himself on his elbows. He tried to shout over the din, his voice hoarse and strained. "What are you doing? Why?"
Timothy dropped the way-opener. It flew up into the growing vortex, and vanished. "You showed us how to get here. Took down their defenses and opened the door."
The man coughed, shifting his weight down the wall. "They don't get it. They think this is a good plan. But Three Portlands needs to go through fire to get them out. All the cops and the spies and the-" he broke down coughing. "Reborn in fire. Like it should be."
Casey pulled his knees to his stomach. The Mayor was fading now, growing ever smaller as the winds and the gravity picked up. He spoke and the words were taken on the wind. "I don't want to leave the city."
"Don't worry," Timothy said, closing his eyes. "It'll be like you never left."
Casey shut his eyes. The ground opened up beneath him, and he fell through into waiting arms.

Every dog in Three Portlands awoke from their sleep and began barking.
Passengers waiting at Three Portlands Central Station watched as each Way was sequentially marked "CLOSED".
Anyone outside heard a great chime; above them, the stars blinked out one by one.
Everyone dreaming winced, and gripped their covers a bit more tightly.
It happened all throughout the city, all at once. Because, from that moment on, Three Portlands wasn't a city.
From that moment on, Three Portlands was a corpse.

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Previously...

In a land that had once known nothing but war, a king spoke with his adviser. The king was a peacemaker and the adviser a warmonger. The adviser had served the king's father, and his father before him, and cared nothing for the peace the king was intent upon. War was the way of their people — to abandon it would be to abandon themselves.
Every night, in the garden of the palace, the adviser would tell the king a story. A story of an ancient conqueror, or a peaceful fool who lost everything. A tale to try and convince the king that his ways were wrong.
It never worked.
It was cold in the garden that winter night, and the adviser was ready to give up. Perhaps the time for war had passed. He had no more stories to tell his king, he thought.
But then, a new one popped into his head — like he himself hadn't even thought of it. Like someone else had thought of it for him.
"My king," the adviser began. "Have you ever heard the story of Bael the Decadent Jester?"
-
Jeffrey had given up. Everyone had.
There was no rescue. No deliverance from this. They were trapped here forever, in the TD fucking Garden. At a basketball game that had been going on for…God, what? Years, maybe? Longer than anyone could take, at any rate.
Most people just lay down on the floor at the start of the loops now. Committing suicide took a certain amount of effort that nobody was really willing to spend anymore. They were like barnacles more than people. Jeffrey had seen a barnacle once — at an aquarium near his house. He spent a lot of time at the aquarium inside his head these days. Thinking about it, where was his house? He didn't even remember. Things just tended to fade here.
The lights had turned red at some point. Who cared? The novelty of a change in lighting wore off after a couple of minutes.
Jeffrey breathed in.
Jeffrey breathed out.
Jeffrey breathed in.
Jeffrey breathed out.
Jeffrey breathed in.
Jeffrey breathed out.
Jeffrey breathed in.
Jeffrey breathed out.
Jeffrey breathed in.
Jeffrey breathed out.
Jeffrey breathed in.
Jeffrey breathed out.
Jeffrey breathed in. Jeffrey breathed out. Jeffrey breathed in. Jeffrey breathed out. Jeffrey breathed in. Jeffrey breathed out. Jeffrey breathed in. Jeffrey breathed out. Jeffrey breathed in. Jeffrey breathed out. Jeffrey breathed in. Jeffrey breathed out. Jeffrey breathed in. Jeffrey breathed out. Jeffrey breathed in. Jeffrey breathed out. Jeffrey breathed in. Jeffrey breathed out. Jeffrey breathed in. Jeffrey breathed out. Jeffrey breathed in. Jeffrey breathed out. Jeffrey breathed in. Jeffrey breathed out. Jeffrey breathed in. Jeffrey breathed out. Jeffrey breathed in. Jeffrey breathed out. Jeffrey breathed in. Jeffrey breathed out. Jeffrey breathed in. Jeffrey breathed out. Jeffrey breathed in. Jeffrey breathed out. Jeffrey breathed in. Jeffrey breathed out.

The doors to the arena opened.

Jeffrey leapt up from the floor. He wasn't the only one — all around the arena, people were getting up, wide-eyed and wild. Something was happening. Something was fucking happening!
A crowd gathered quickly, people pushing and shoving each other to get a look at what was going on. Were they being rescued? Forgiven? Would they finally be allowed to die?
A cartoon clown walked through the doors, a spring in his step. He was strange to look at - a 2D thing in a 3D world, yet…still 3D enough to look at from different angles. It wasn't a thing that was supposed to be. You could tell that the instant you looked at him.
The clown stood before them, hands on his hips, a wide grin on his face.
"Finally!" he said. "You know how many basketball tapes I had to check out before finding you guys?"
He turned back around, shouting over his shoulder: "Hey guys! This is the one!"
The clown wasn't alone. Others came through the doors, and they were just as bizarre. A cartoon pelican with a shotgun grasped in each wing, a black-cloaked figure who glided across the floor (and what appeared to be Ronald Reagan, loyally following after him), and a man in a suit whose face you just couldn't look at, no matter how hard you tried.
"Reap what you sow," muttered the pelican, fidgeting with his shotguns. "Reap what you goddamn sow."
The clown waved an arm dismissively. "Yeah, yeah, take five, guys."
None of them moved, but apparently that was good enough for the clown, who turned back to the crowd.
"Howdy!" he said.
Jeffrey found himself speaking — at the start of this whole thing, he'd have been afraid of such a bizarre sight, but fear was something that faded with every loop. If the worst had already happened, what else was there to be afraid of?
"Excuse me, sir," he said quietly. "Who exactly are you?"
"Why," said the clown. "That is a fantastic question, my lad! Gold star! I am esteemed American cartoon icon Bobble the Clown. Perhaps you've heard of me?"
Jeffrey shook his head slowly. "No…no, I haven't."
A look of irritation crossed the clown's face for a moment, but it quickly vanished. "Ah, kids these days!" he said, looking back at the black-cloaked figure. "I bet you he couldn't even name any of the machine elves!"
The figure didn't respond.
"Come to think of it," said Bobble, turning back towards the crowd. "It might be better for you boys and girls to call me General Bobble."
"Why?" said Jeffrey slowly. He didn't especially like where this was going.
"A commanding officer needs to be respected by his troops, of course," said Bobble. "And from this moment forward, all you boys and girls are my little helpers! Give yourselves a pat on the back, but not for too long, because we're kinda on a schedule here."
Someone from the crowd shouted out angrily. Out of the corner of his eye, Jeffrey saw Bobble's grin widen. Suddenly it felt like he was in the same room as a starving lion.
"Somebody not happy?" said Bobble. "I'd be happy to field any complaints."
The shouter shoved their way to the front of the crowd. It was a Faithkeeper — at least he had been, before everyone had just given up. His face was red with indignation.
"You said we were a tape, didn't you? I heard you say that!" he shouted, moving towards the clown.
"Good hearing! I did indeedily say that, my good sir!"
The Faithkeeper reached the clown and prodded him in the chest with his finger. Bobble's grin widened even further, and a wild look entered his eyes.
"Are you the one that did this to us? Put us here?! Is this your goddamn fau —"
The man never finished his sentence, as Bobble casually reached out and tore his head off with a gloved hand.
Nobody said a word. Decapitations were something they were fairly used to at this point.
"Now, listen," said Bobble, dribbling the head like it was a basketball. Every second or so, his speech was punctuated by a loud splat as the head hit the floor. "I'm an understanding boss. I'm a pretty good guy, if I do say so myself. Definitely going to heaven. But come on, guys. Would your boss let you talk to him that way? Well, I'm your boss now, and I won't. So now Mr. Angrypants doesn't get to come with us."
"Where are we going?" said Jeffrey. There was no way he was going against the clown at this point.
"Wherever I damn well please, my lad. Wherever I damn well please. Let's go meet the Jetsons, let's burn down Springfield, let's go shoot Scooby Doo in the face! This is revolutionary television!"
He pointed at the suited man. "Hey - a televution! What d'ya think of that?"
"It's funny stuff! Makes me laugh! You should laugh with us! Laugh with us! Laugh with us!" said the man.
"Yeah, later."
"Yeah! Fuck Scooby!" shouted the pelican, clearly getting hyped.
Bobble stepped to the side, and with a flourishing gesture he pointed towards the door. There was light beyond it — no, not light. Static. Television static. But an exit nonetheless.
"Or," said Bobble. "You could stay here for the rest of time."
Jeffrey didn't need to think twice.

Playback ████
Only one individual, a member of the Faithkeepers, is present. For the duration of the playback, he attempts to exit the arena by beating his fists against the exit doors. Just before the end of the playback, a single 'honk' can be heard.

-
The story went on and on, words spilling out of the adviser's mouth so fast he didn't even know what they meant. Tales of massacre and genocide, atrocity and apocalypse, all caused by a jester named Bael. Even as he spoke, the words took root inside his own mind, and he swore he could hear the chuckling of that decadent fool in the back of his head. A soft and gentle sound, like hooves raining down upon a babe.
And then the story ended.
The king looked at his adviser, eyes wide. And then, slowly, a grin spread across his face.
"Inform my armies," he said, shaking with excitement. "Tomorrow, we ride to war."

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When Vincent Anderson regained control of his motor functions, he found himself sitting on an overstuffed armchair in a secluded alcove of the Wanderer's Library. Tall shelves towered over him, each crammed with all manners of books, scrolls, CDs, tapes, and tomes. The shadows of the physical manifestation of knowledge provided a sense of secrecy to the location. A pungent fog of dust and paper hung in the air.
As he surveyed his surroundings, Anderson noticed PSHUD #34 and several other Peregrine units waited nearby, plastic eyes locked on to the cyborg as he carefully stood up and approached his creations. As he gingerly closed the distance between them, he noticed that upon each droid's lapel was a Maxwellist pin.
"The Hand is taking on Maxwellists now?" Anderson asked.
"You don't need to be a member of the Hand to help them launch a raid," a hoarse voice replied.
Anderson turned. A man in a dark suit watched him from the shadows. His brown hair was neatly trimmed, while the left side of his body was interwoven with tendrils of white aramid fabric. Just as with the droids, he also wore a Maxwellist pin.
"Recognize me?" the man asked, gesturing to himself.
Anderson paused. Images flashed before his mechanical eyes as he poured over his memory, finally arriving at a picture of a young boy who had lost a hand, a leg, an eye, and his mother in a car accident.
"Aaron Howell…"
The man smiled and nodded.
"Your ghosts have come back to haunt you, Mr. Anderson," Aaron chuckled. "And we need your help."
Anderson shook his head.
"Whatever you want me to make, or repair, or improve will only bring you tragedy. You of all people should know that, Aaron."
Anderson paused.
"I'm deeply sorry for what happened to you, by the way. We-"
"I'm not the one you need to apologize to," Aaron interrupted. "Do me a favor and look at those souls behind you."
Anderson turned to face the gathered droids. As he did, more emerged, stepping out from behind bookcases, alcoves, and the very shadows themselves. Their numbers increased until he could no longer count them; they clogged the tight walkways, crammed together in a sea of black aramid and white plastic.
"I'm sure you know how popular your Gyrfalcon series was with the Maxwellists. Well, go figure Maxwellism was popular among the Sakers and Peregrines. What peace you failed to provide them they found here, and in the Church."
"And I am absolutely thrilled about that," Anderson replied, unable to tear his eyes away from the crowd before him. "But what exactly is your point?"
"You know what will happen to those souls when their mortal coils break down," Aaron's hoarse voice whispered in Anderson's ear. "I refuse to allow devoted followers of WAN to be condemned to a monochromatic purgatory. I want you to develop a device we can place in the Forest that can allow these souls to convert themselves into data, so they may finally return to WAN."
"How on Earth do you expect me to do that?" Anderson asked. "What you're talking about is a feat of data transmutation of immense-"
"Then I guess it's a good thing you're a genius in the multiverses' single largest collection of knowledge, isn't it.”
Anderson frowned.
"And if I refuse?"
"Then you're just choosing one cell over another. You won't be able to leave the Library, Mr. Anderson," Aaron gave a sly smile. "The UIU will capture you if you try to break for Portlands. If you try to slip back into the mundane world the Jailors will get you, assuming representatives from MC&D don't take you out first. I hear they are not too keen on people selling them out."
Anderson sneered.
"The Wanderer's Library is a pretty fucking comfortable cell, jackass. And I don't exactly have that much time left to wait, regardless."
"Then perhaps a different carrot." Aaron shrugged. "What do you think will happen to you when your body fails? You'll end up in the Forest just like them. Wouldn't it be nice if you had a way out or at least a way to quell the anger of the several thousand souls you've forsaken.”?
Anderson's sneer vanished. He looked over the droids once more, and then closed his eyes.
"If I help you… will you help me?"
Aaron Howell extended a handshake.
"You have my word."

Agent Jessie Merlo sat in her office, covering her mouth as she laughed through a bite of food. Across from her, past a disorganized desk buried in files, notes, and a standard Foundation PC, sat a short, snickering man in a white coat, a stethoscope dangled around his neck, partially obscured by neck length black hair. The patch on his left shoulder indicated that he was a physician for the Foundation's Medical Division.
"Needless to say," Dr. Desmond Rhodes paused, fighting through his own laughter, "We needed a lot more cotton balls after that."
The young couple continued laughing for several more moments, savoring the brief time in their busy schedules to enjoy lunch in the others company. It was only when a knock came at the door that the laughter stopped.
"It's open," Jessie said, regaining her composure.
An older woman entered, dressed in a suit with brown rimmed glasses. Her hair was done back in a neat bun, streaks of gray running through the brown.
Jessie's smile faded.
Desmond immediately sat up in his chair.
"Director," he said, his voice taking on a professional tone.
"Dr. Rhodes," Sasha Merlo said, an amused smirk on her lips. "May I have a moment with your wife?"
The physician nodded, then left without another word. Once they were alone, Sasha turned her attention to the room. On the back wall, obscured slightly by the furniture, was the ever familiar, but now faded, emblem of MTF Gamma-13.
"I like what you've done with the place," Sasha went on, picking up a framed picture of her daughter and son-in-law on a backpacking trip. The two beamed at the camera as the former had her arm around the latter's shoulders. Sasha smiled as she placed the frame back and pointed at the electric blue clock nearby. "You even have my old wall clock."
"Shaw said she'd kill me if I took it down." Jessie grinned. "Personally, I think it's ugly as hell."
Sasha held her hand to her mouth in mock shock, then shook her head and chuckled.
"Anyway, what have you got for me. Where is our man?"
"All of my sources point to him still being in the Library." Jessie sighed. "We can probably keep him bottled in there indefinitely, but until we know what his next move is he's got a window to get the upper hand. Again. I don't think we're going to be able to capture-"
"Terminate."
Jessie paused.
"Excuse me?"
"The O5 Council has ordered SCP-3860's termination," Sasha replied. "Given Vince's got maybe six months left, at best, the powers that be have decided it's time to wash our hands of him. You'll likely get the official orders here soon."
Jessie nodded. "I see. You seem regretful?"
"If this was the path we were going to end up going down we could have simply been done with this a lot sooner. A lot of agents gave their lives to put Anderson away. This just cheapens it."
The two fell silent, Jessie watching her mother lose herself in thought briefly. Eventually, the young agent broke the trance.
"You've got more experience with Anderson than anyone. Any idea what his next move might be?"
"If I had to guess? He'll go after Phineas. Vincent doesn't like leaving loose ends. He's running out of time."
"That would require him to get from the Library to Site-64. Could he do that without going through Three Portlands?"
"Fuck if I know." Sasha sighed, thinking to herself. After a brief moment, she smiled. "But I might know a guy…"

Anderson rubbed his artificial eyes in exhaustion as he poured over technical notes and books on Data Transmutation Theory. A pile of schematic sketches and crumpled paper had accumulated in the vicinity around him, forming a small fortification that boxed him in at his desk. Eventually, he sighed and spun around in his chair.
"I should just kill myself now," he mumbled.
"You mustn't say such things, Vince."
Anderson looked up to see a muscular man in a well-tailored suit standing nearby. His salt and pepper hair was neatly combed back, and the strong scent of cologne wafted from him. The man smiled and approached the desk, placing a briefcase down on top of Anderson's work.
"Isaac Dillard." Anderson gave a curt nod. "What on earth brings you here?"
"Mr. Howell reached out to Medea to see what could be done to help you along since you've stalled so heavily," Isaac replied. He handed Anderson an aging manuscript marked with a familiar emblem of a flame. "She called in a favor I owed her. We were able to recover this."
Anderson's lips curled into a melancholy smile.
"Medea's here too?"
Isaac shook his head.
"You got Jason killed, champ. Let's say she opted to keep a 'respectable distance'. She's doing well, though. Her and-" Isaac snapped several times as he attempted to remember a name. "Myra something- she has her own company now. Phoenix Cybernetics."
"Glad to hear someone kept the torch lit." Anderson sighed once more. "What about-"
"Excuse me?"
Anderson and Isaac turned at the interruption. An old, ragged-looking man in a trench coat and sunglasses peeked into the alcove. His face was plastered with unkempt stubble. "The librarians said you were in the possession of the Niebauer Manual of Analytical Thaumatology, I was wondering if-"
The man stopped. Isaac and Anderson stared him down in dead silence.
The old man held up two gloved hands in surrender.
"I'll just come back later," he said, and quickly took his leave, vanishing behind a row of shelves.
Anderson turned his attention back to Isaac to see the businessman already packing up his briefcase.
"Do you think I can get you to pass on a message to Medea and any of the Sakers still in contact with her?"
Isaac shook his head.
"Howell was very specific that you are to remain incommunicado, and I am not picking a fight with militant Maxwellists. They are far too valuable of clients for my employers."
"You're a real greedy bastard, you know that?" Anderson frowned.
"Yeah? Well, it helps me make people lots of money." Isaac shrugged. "That's why you and Phineas hired me, remember? Godspeed, Vince."
Anderson closed his eyes as Isaac departed. When he opened them, he peered down at the new manuscript.
"Do you think I could get that book, now?" the old man asked, peeking back in.

"I have to say, I'm impressed," Jessie Merlo said. "I wasn't expecting to hear back from you for at least a few weeks. Months, even."
Standing before her desk was an old, ragged looking man. His stubble had recently been trimmed. He shrugged and handed Jessie a flash drive.
"Believe it or not, finding someone in the Library is not exactly the most difficult thing in the world if you know where to look. Besides, even in the Library, Anderson isn't exactly what you'd call inconspicuous."
"Fair enough." Jessie grinned. "So, what's he planning?"
"I honestly can't tell you. Whatever it is, it's pretty fucking esoteric. Some Maxwellist guy is forcing him to work on something. Something about converting robot ghosts into data for WAN. Not my area of expertise. Still, you have over five days' worth of audio and video on that flash drive. More than enough for your crack team to figure it out, I'm sure."
The old man made his way towards the door.
"I'm out. Tell your mom she's officially called in the last favor I owed her from the Jericho business." He opened the door and paused, looking back with a sly smile. "Oh, and I promise you that if anyone else shows up to pull me out of retirement again, I'll literally set them on fire. Literally."
The man disappeared into the hallway, passing a confused Desmond along the way. The physician looked over his shoulder as he entered the office, placing two takeout containers down on the desk.
"Was that-" Desmond asked his wife, his mouth slightly ajar.
"Navarro? Yeah," Jessie replied, eyes upon her monitor as she plugged the newly acquired flash drive into her computer. "I'm afraid it's going to need to be a short lunch, sweetie. We've got a lead."
The physician sighed and nodded. "Of course." He slid her one of the takeout containers.
"Can't fight robots on an empty stomach, though. I should know. I'm a doctor."

« The Vanishing of Vincent Anderson | End of Line | The Best Laid Plans »


Image taken of sky during containment by Researcher Talloran of both the users of /r/SCP_3999 and noted American fiction author Flannery O'Connor. All rights reserved

Frank Talloran was dying.
He stumbled down the wide street's sidewalk, clutching his heart. It was raining heavily. Behind him walked Curly. Curly was tall and fat and almost completely bald. His ratty waistcoat was damp with the heavy rain. He limped as he walked, his legs curiously stiff, and he used a sinister umbrella as a cane. This was a handsome umbrella, unnaturally red with a wooden handle. It was not open.
"Now, now, Frank! The only way yer're gonna get out of this mess is iffin' ye accept Jeezus as your lord and savior!" Curly said.
Frank could not find it in him to speak. His lungs were collapsing and every drop of foul March rain on his skin felt like a needle. Poison began to work his way up his veins, slowly melting them. Behind him, Curly kept pace. He was driving Frank out of town, down towards the woods path which meandered through a stand of ancient pines that had been there earlier than the state.
"I hope ye and yer boyfriend burn for your sins, Frank. I'm not a bad guy, I just want to save ye!" Curly sneered.
"Go to hell," Frank slurred out. He saw only a red miasma.
The highway wound it's way out of the city under the blue-grey-purple stormy evening sky. The rolling cloud formations were larger than any mountain, dwarfing the land below like weird waves seen from the seabed. Night was falling. Frank felt like his eyeballs were on the verge of popping. He stumbled and instantly Curly was upon him, hauling him to his feet and shoving him along.
"This way, Fatso!"
Frank was not fat. On the contrary, aside from a little feminine softness about the hips he was skinny as a rail. Young too, long brown hair flopping across his face. Along the edges of his mouth there were little smile-like scars, the remnants of a childhood accident he could not remember. He had known Curly since then, when Curly insinuated himself amongst the family. He was a chubby boy so Curly had started calling him Fatso. Since then he had always known Curly's torment. He worked as a hand at the house, but in recent years he had taken a special liking to torturing Frank.
The winding road turned off into a grand interstate buzzing with cars but Curly and Frank did not walk there, turning off down a little dirty rut that swarmed and turned through the ancient pines. Off this road was the path that Frank feared. In his dreams he had imagined walking down that path when it turned dark and watching it end in a strange vast building with a terrible image of three arrows pointing inwards.
"Move it Fatso! Come on! Do ye want to be saved or no?" Curly was practically frothing at the mouth now with hatred and righteous fury. "Move it Fatso!"
Frank's body began to heat up, and he felt for an odd moment like his feet began to fly. They seemed to him to stop working and to start floating limply above the rotten leaves and muddy wet clay. Curly began to slap him on the back again and again, sending waves of pain as roiling as the cloud cover up Frank's body. The four pairs of feet crunched pine needles.
Frank saw Draven ahead, briefly. A phantom made of dying nerve cells. He remembered meeting Draven at the little railroad diner and how handsome he had seemed. Soon they had opened a stationary shop on Elmhurst and 2nd. The courting was brief and furious and for a little while all the world seemed incredible and new and beautiful but soon word began to spread and one day a group of people from the local Baptist church had thrown a brick through the window. Mr. Kondraki, Draven's father, who spent most of the day cooking in the little restaurant where they had met, seemed accepting if uncaring at first.
Curly did not.
He had starting convincing Frank's parents to start going to the Baptist church, a tall tower-like structure in the middle of a field. Nobody would talk about what went on in there but word had it there was a preacher from Georgia who both loved and hated those inside. Someone of firey sermons who never showed his face nor made any sort of judgement down on anyone.
Frank's parents and Curly were too scared of the preacher to talk with Frank about him.
And it was Curly who quickly caught word and thrown the brick. Curly, who since the day he said he came up from the city of Tidder to find work, didn't understand Frank. Any time Frank's parents sent him out to the fields to help the hands Curly would rave and rant and roll his eyes and scream about the devil child who was so incomprehensible to normal man. And his own fat belly would jiggle in his jeans as he ranted. "Get that Fatso away from me! I don't want to see his face!"
"Why not?" Sulper would say. Sulper often spoke on behalf of the other hands.
"He's something of the age. Something the preacher says is bad and good. The preacher hates us and I hate this Fatso!" said Curly.
"Suit yourself," said Sulper.
The churchgoers started spreading the word to the Methodist church and the Presbyterian church and somehow to the Catholic church and small synagogue and then it felt like the whole entirety of the town was throwing bricks in the windows.
On the muddy road, pain-Draven waved sadly. Frank began to scream a roar of pain. His bones felt like they had started to crack. "I am sick of your horror, Curly. I am sick of you." he muttered. Curly did not hear. The path seemed to stretch. Ahead was the dirt path, barely visible in the dead undergrowth that seemed to stretch into darkness.
Draven moved away after the constant abuse. It ended simply and without much drama, in Frank's memory. Mr. Kondraki just had a new restaurant to open in another place and soon all that was left of Draven was a Draven shaped hole of desire and longing and grief. It was perhaps this hole that Frank had just seen. Frank married little Sadie Louis from up the road and they had little kids and Dr. Glass the pediatrician said they were perfectly healthy, and sometimes he and Sadie and them took little trips out to watch the sunset.
Curly drove them away. Curly was the one who spread rumours that even Sulper believed, about Frank's infidelity, his encounters with other men. Now Sadie was gone and only Curly was left. Just hours earlier he had appeared Frank with the offer of a drink. Seemingly friendly and changed, in the most superficial way.
Frank took it even knowing. He was waiting for it, expecting it, hungering for it. He accepted what was happening to him with a bloated, sprawling resignation.
He drank up the way his muscles contracted without his control now. He deserved it. He did not deserve Curly. Before he even knew it he was already on that dirt path. He could not control where his mind went anymore than his body could. Curly has fashioned a little switch out of an oak branch and stopped Frank in his path. With almost gentle, paternal motions he lifted off Frank's ragged shirt and seemed to begin to caress his smooth back. Then he brought the switch down.
"Onwards we go to the Kingdom of God, Fatso! Onwards y'alls gonna git. Git, little Fatso! Git you little homo shit! Yah!" Curly bellowed.
He began to strike Frank's back over and over and over again, leaving red lumps and tearing skin away. The rain washed the blood off and it mixed with the mud staining Frank's jean legs. The woods loomed darker and darker and the ancient pines began to roar with fire as the skies arced with lightning and far away the booms of thunder were like the death-knells of gods.
Frank began to weep and cry and Curly's hot onion breath began to hiccup with laughter. They struggled on in the mud, the mad coachman pushing his tired workhorse to pastures unknown.
The woods opened up. Here there was no terrible building with three arrows but only the wide Susquehanna River, reaching all the way down to Harrisburg and beyond. At this point it was lazy and shallow but destroyed by the driving sheets of rain that soaked the two men to the bones.
Frank couldn't see, couldn't breathe. He began to gasp and choke, his eyes bulging out of their sockets. He started to run, madly. Crazily bouncing along, choking and drooling before he splashed into the water. Curly threw his switch aside and began to limp towards the gasping body. His cheap waistcoat bought for the occasion was ruined, his red umbrella-cane painfully pristine. His step suggested not a care in the world, his face no longer contorted with contempt and anger, but curiously blank.
He waded out after Frank and caught the dying man whom he himself had poisoned. He held him like a baby as Frank stared up at him in fear. "I'm here to save yer soul from yerself. That's why I hated ye. I don't hate ye, Frank. Just what ye are now. I'm not yer maker, merely a reader of faces. I didn't create ye cause I don't look like no Christ changing stones into fishes or what have you. I'm merely a man who likes the old days when men were men and they followed the good books."
Frank stared up in terror. Without warning, Curly grabbed the back of his head and plunged him deep into the raging water. Underneath, Frank could feel Draven slipping away. Draining from history on the current's banks. Instead he felt a deep all consuming love for his wife who was gone. Sadie. How could he have abandoned Sadie?
How could he have abandoned Draven? He found he was changed and began to cry, at which point he found he could breathe. "I'm baptizing ye, Fatso! I'm fixing ye right up!" Curly said over the roar of rain. He plunged Frank in again, and when he brought him up Frank found himself emptier. He felt like less and less of a person. Less and less like Frank Talloran and more like some empty thing.
Curly dipped him again and again and felt his love for Draven dying, his personality fading, his memories blurring and becoming horrifically indistinct. He had visions of his memoirs reduced to a paragraph on a page. A doctorate and the first letter of his name. A nothingness, an unreality. Frank began to sob when he wasn't gasping for air.
The pain was leaving his body. His bones began to mend. Curly grew serene then, and dipped Frank in the river. The baptism continued on and on and Frank felt his mind slipping away then. Felt him changing. On the last dip he felt the memory of his parents fading. With a muted shock, he found he could no longer remember the feeling of sitting on his mother's lap. He could no longer his father's scratchy kisses. Something broke inside him.
He saw a fisherman on the other bank. A teenager, handsome but neither male nor female at this distance. Stocky, tall and standing proud. Frank's mind was too far gone to discern the expression on his face from this side of the river but he swore the fisherman was looking right at him. Right through him.
He wriggled out of Curly's grasp and let himself be dragged out by a sudden current. A sudden whoosh of roaring water and a looming algal mass and everything began to grow black. He had no sense of who he was or if he was. What he was. There was a spreading pain, like underwater someone had dribbled a liquid wound down his head. He blacked out.
He woke up again.

Image taken of containment chamber during containment of SCP-3999. [DATA EXPUNGED] but it was determined the room never existed to begin with

James Talloran was dying.

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asmr by dado

RONALD REAGAN CUT UP WHILE RAPPING

Excerpt from The Astrolabe Institute Journal

Amnestic

The William Penn Iteration

End Of Deaf; or, In the Clutches of Dumb

The News Tonight: Wednesday April 26th 2017

Interior—Interior

The Undoing

Holy Mackerel

Grandchildren Frost

Portrait of Two Choreographers

Wade Williams Distribution Presents:

The DevourerLand Diaries
Rating: 11


JAN 1 2018 01:17:33 AM UTC, Toronto, Canada
Ruslav Diaghilev took a deep breath, and closed his eyes, listening to the sounds of the universe around him. That, and the chatter of the radios on his companions' vests. The eight members of his personal Departmental MTF sat in the back of a standard Foundation transport.
“Sir, are you sure about this?” Agent DuMourne said. “I have no objections to storming this place, but I'd rather not put you in danger.” Agent DuMourne lifted his rifle, checking it for the fifth time, since they left the site.
“I am sure. Do not worry about me, Agent. I am able to handle myself,” Ruslav said, with a quiet smile.
Agent DuMourne squinted his eyes for a moment, before shaking his head, and looking at the other members of the assembled Mobile Task Force. “Alright then. Oathkeepers, sound off ready status.”
Around the transport vehicle, murmured assent was given, one by one. The various clacking of military doodads was their constant companion as the men and women in the Mobile Task Force readied themselves for combat.
Ruslav adjusted his own gear, hand slipping over the pouches and pockets of his vest. Gone were the flowing bottle green robes of Elder Mastery, replaced instead by sensible mottled grey fatigues.
“You requested this from the armory, right?” Agent DuMourne said, offering a semi-automatic pistol to Ruslav. The captain looked hesitant to be handing the weapon to Ruslav, but relinquished it to his hands.
“Da, thank you captain. I didn't have time to sign out a weapon myself.” Ruslav ejected the magazine, checking for ammunition, before retracting the slide a quarter inch to check for a round. He nodded at the empty chamber, and racked the slide, chambering a round, placing the semi automatic in the holster at his hip. “Spare magazines?”
Agent DuMourne handed over the three spare magazines that Ruslav had requested, which disappeared into the pouches on his belt. “We're two klicks out. Let's go over the plan one more time,” Agent DuMourne said, leaning forward over the central console. Displayed on the touch screen was a three dimensional map of 2732 Maple Garden Way, the secondary headquarters of Ledenoff Technologies.
“According to intel, this is where the assholes who made 3622 are holed up. The Director requested we accompany him on a little sight-seeing. Our orders are to cover the Director as he ascends to the 13th floor, and disables any potential threats from his department. Assuming everything is clear, we storm the 13th floor together, and neutralize the threat.” Agent DuMourne tapped on the loading dock, and the image zoomed in. “This is our only viable entrance. Amnestics are approved if necessary, but you're all aware of the level this is restricted to. Director, what kind of threats are we facing, exactly?”
Ruslav leaned forward, and gestured, invoking the Fulminous aether to manipulate the image slightly. He gestured to the entrances around the stairs, “If this is who I think it is, there will be wards of water and earth here, and here.” Ruslav gestured to the windows of the thirteenth floor. “I suggest you do not look out the windows once we arrive on the floor. They are most likely warded as well.”
A knock came from the driver's cabin, “One minute.”
Ruslav nodded, and drew forth the crozier to his right hand. “If you encounter anything you feel is anomalous, do not hesitate to call me. Most likely, there are alchemic constructs within the building. I would…not suggest fighting them. Bullets may slow them down, if they are corporeal. Aim center mass.”
The transport van pulled to a hard stop, and the back door opened with a jolt. Agent DuMourne flipped the tablet off, and pulled the balaclava up and over his mouth, gesturing. The rearmost two agents slid into the darkness surrounding the office building, sweeping the area, and gesturing to the rest of the team.
Agent DuMourne, Ruslav, and the others disembarked into a loose formation, striding with confidence towards the door, weapons ready but not leveled. Ruslav drew the pistol from his left hip with a practiced motion, and checked the safety, approaching the rear service entrance.
Agent DuMourne gestured at the nearest Agent, who knelt in front of the door, fitting a small device up against the lock of the service door. A few moments later, a soft click permitted them into the building.

Overhead lighting bathed the lobby in a soft yellow glow. The floors were a neutral white linoleum, the walls covered in marble-patterned green stone. The lights were low, the building mostly shut down for the night, except for a few people burning the midnight oil.
Two security guards sat at the nearby desk, looking bored. Neither of them had noticed the group of heavily armed agents slide in the back entrance, and Agent DuMourne held a raised fist.
With practiced ease, the MTF slid to their knees, and Ruslav heard Agent DuMourne's voice in his earpiece, “Your call Director. What do we do?” His voice was a barely-perceptible growl picked up from his throat mic.
Ruslav took two steps forward, and gestured with his right hand, holding his crozier. The aequeous and aeronous aethers swirled around the two guards, lulling them to an easy, and deep sleep. “We let them get a good night's rest. My knees are not what they were. Elevators?”
Suppressed chuckles emanated from the gathered agents, as Agent DuMourne took the lead, fanning the men and women of the task force out over the lobby. Ruslav jabbed the up button with the end of his crozier, humming quietly to himself.
“So, what exactly are we expecting up there?“ Agent DuMourne said, rechecking the various bits of havoc strapped to his frame.
“I do not know. Probably something completely and needlessly dramatic. That's how these things always seem to go,” Ruslav said, smiling slightly as the dull chime of the elevator car announced its arrival.
The agents shuffled into the car, two members staying on the ground level to cover their exit. Ruslav jabbed the button marked 13, and the soft Muzak of the elevator encompassed them.
A tense few seconds passed, before the door chimed again at the 13th floor, opening to reveal a solid steel security door, directly in front of the elevator shaft. The doors to the elevator made a quiet grinding noise, and stuck open.
Ruslav raised an eyebrow, as Agent DuMourne reached out to probe at the door in front of them.
“I'm not sure why this is here, but it doesn't seem anomalous. Is this your area, director?” Agent DuMourne asked politely, stepping back.
Ruslav stepped up to the door, and extended his senses, sensing nothing beyond the usual Ferrous aether escaping the metal surface. “No, but I can help either way. Stand back please?”
The agents quickly pressed themselves against the back of the elevator, as Ruslav took a breath. His hands circled up and down, until he ended with a quick rushing motion, dragging both the Aeronous and Igneous aethers with him, combining sharply on the other side of the door, causing a heavy backdraft, sucking the door out with his shoulder charge.
The heavy metal door careened into the far wall, neatly cleaving the waiting Terronous Aetherial construct in half. The heavy stone body of the entity fell in half with a heavy thud on the carpeted floor. Ruslav blinked a few times, and laughed quietly to himself, “Well, that's convenient I suppose. Agent DuMourne, you and one with me. The rest sweep.” The team stepped forward into the green and grey marble elevator portico.
Agent DuMourne nodded, and split the team up, flanking the Director along with two other agents, as they approached the heavy glass doors to the office. Stenciled into the glass was the logo of the company, and the words ‘Caveat Alchemitos' hastily scrawled in sharpie. Agent DuMourne pointed at the writing, “Is that latin?”
“Beware Alchemists. Like I said, needlessly dramatic,” Ruslav said, placing his hands on the door, which practically reverberated with the aethers contained within them. “Illusion….misdirection…” He turned his head, and grimaced. “I believe I know who is here. On the other side of this door will be several jiangshi, I would imagine. Have you been briefed on them?”
Agent DuMourne shook his head, “Jianshi? Cliffs notes.”
Ruslav rolled his hand, “Chinese vampire. Well….zombie might be more accurate. They hop to move around. Do not let them touch you, bullets do not work very well, unless you completely destroy them, or shoot their brain. If you have them, I would suggest shotguns, or grenades. I believe at least one will be an alchemist.”
“Not the strangest thing I've ever had to deal with I suppose. How do we do this? Can we just walk in?” Agent DuMourne activated his microphone, and radioed to the other members of the team. Two of them trotted back over, and exchanged weapons with Agent DuMourne and the other, swapping the large caliber rifles with semi automatic shotguns.
Ruslav shook his head, and laid his hands on the door, “A moment. I will deactivate his wards. As soon as I do, he will know we are here. Be ready.” Ruslav concentrated, and pressed his senses deep into the glass, feeling the swirling and somehow sickly aethers trapped inside.
If the flows could make noise, these would be screaming, as he gently tugged on the loose flows, undoing the ward. After several moments, he'd loosened it enough for them to be nothing more than a warning, and he stepped back. “Ready?”
Agent DuMourne nodded, “Ready.”
Ruslav pushed both hands out with a swift draw of the aethers of air, water, and fire. A microscopic layer of ice formed inside the glass, immediately followed by a flash of fire, causing the glass to shatter spectacularly, directed downwards and back by a gust of wind, blowing the shards of glass into the office.
Ruslav gestured forward, and the four Foundation members crossed the threshold.

The moment they crossed the doorway, everything changed. The air grew thicker in an instant, and the sky visible behind the windows changed from a black cityscape to a red and silver mass of stars and torchlight. In the distance buildings teemed with beings from all over the universe, as Ruslav's senses immediately told him where they were.
The office building itself hadn't changed, the desks in front of him still festooned with post-its, monitors, computer equipment. Except for the alien skies and change of dimension, it was the same as it was before.
“Alagadda. This…is worse than I expected.” Ruslav slipped the handle of his crozier back into his belt, and took a step forward, his handgun in both hands, as the task force members tenatively followed him.
“What are you talking about, Director?” Agent DuMourne said, his eyes widened slightly by the change of scenery, and his body language tense.
“We are no longer on Earth, and I'm not sure that—” Ruslav was cut off by a shrieking form hopping from behind a desk, hands outstretched yellowed fingernails extended towards his face.
In the blink of an eye, Ruslav's hands blurred up, sending two rounds through the creature's chest, putting a third through its head, as he stepped forward, panting slightly. “Bozhe Moi. That certainly woke me up a little. Everyone alright?”
Agent DuMourne stood slack jawed at the reaction speed of the Director, checking the body for movement before gesturing one of the agents to cover their exit. “I have to admit, I didn't expect you to use the gun, over alchemy.”
Ruslav grinned, and snapped his fingers, setting the body of the jiangshi at their feet aflame. “Six of one, half a dozen of another. Whatever works.” Ruslav strode into the office, gun raised. “Cover my back, please.”
The agents and Ruslav cautiously walked forward, turning the corner to the main floor of the office. The lead agent dropped to one knee, and let out a roar of a blast from her shotgun, as another of the jiangshi leaped towards her face. She dropped prone as the creature continued its vector, now dead, and landed behind her.
They repeated much of the same, encountering two more jiangshi as they approached the wood paneled door leading to an office, at the back of the cubicles. “I believe, this is my department, ladies and gentlemen. Behind that door is our target. Please cover my back while I inquire.” Ruslav said, placing the handgun back in his holster, drawing the crozier once more.
Agent DuMourne nodded, and took up position near the door, as Ruslav walked up, placing both hands on the door, and pushing them open with just his own strength.
The doors opened smoothly, to reveal an elderly chinese man sitting behind a desk, his hands twitching slightly, mostly extended in front of him. Behind his eyes were the weight of eons, as his face curved into a snarl of recognition. “Diaghilev. I should have known you would never be satisfied with simply ruining my existence forever.”
Ruslav sighed heavily, and fixed his heavy lidded gaze upon the withered half-jiangshi in front of him, “Zhang Guolao. I did not expect to find you here, but your misdirection was unmistakable. What brings you here, ghost?”
The ancient creature in front of him rose, the joints of his elbows and knees cracking as he got to his feet, “Freedom. The first greedy peasant who dug up my tomb put the ring on.” On Guolao's left hand, a deep green jade ring glimmered under the lights. “From there, it was only a few weeks before I wrested control enough from He Qinshi to pull enough energy together to create a portal to Alagadda.”
Ruslav nodded slightly, “So far, all of this makes sense. You get free, and immediately do the most obvious and cowardly thing, run to Alagadda. Did you immediately request the Scarlet King's aid? Offer him power, an agent, perhaps an introduction to the Leviathan?” Ruslav's voice grew progressively harsher as memories of the past surfaced in his mind.
Zhang Guolao's dry throat rasped with some horrid approximation of laughter. “My master will no doubt be overjoyed when I return to earth, and present myself at its service once more, but no. An old…mutual acquaintance of ours contacted me once I was here.”
Ruslav spun his crozier in a slow vertical circle, the baffled cold iron making quiet whistling noises as it moved. “Well. That confirms what I was suspecting at least. By the way, I sealed your master on the bottom of the ocean almost one hundred years ago. The Leviathan is effectively dead. I'm sure you noticed the lack of aethers flowing through the cosmos.”
Guolao froze, his eyes narrowing, as the baleful jade fire within the pupils guttered to a spark. “You are lying.”
Ruslav shrugged, and spun his crozier in a circle again. “Come find out. You cannot exactly feel the flows from here, I would imagine. Even sealed, the Scarlet King is putting off enough aether to blind anyone other than an Elder. In fact, I'd be surprised if you could even form a portal at this point. Not that you were ever a particularly gifted alchemist, Zhang. Relying more on your reputation and skills with herbs than anything else.”
Guolao growled, and his fingers moved with involuntary spasms. “I will kill you for this, return to earth, and destroy whatever remains of the so-called ‘college',” Guolao said, gathering the aethers around him.
Ruslav's eyes hardened, his mouth contorting into a tight line, “There is no college, Guolao. Your schemes saw to that. I am here to help you, regardless of that.” Ruslav raised his crozier, and pointed the heavy head at the wizened jiangshi in front of him. “I made a mistake in the past. What we did to you was…wrong. But now you need to come with me, for containment.”
Guolao's face contorted, as the spirit of He Qinshi took over his body, flying through the air towards Ruslav. The director contorted his body, letting the ancient half vampire fly past him, swinging the heavy metal of his crozier down on the creature's back, eliciting a shriek of pain. As he struck, the stored fulminous aether inside the heavy mace tore its way free, streaking through Guolao's body, and leaving it smoldering on the floor in a shivering heap.
“Well, I suppose we could do that instead.” Ruslav said, as the two task force members trained their guns on the prone form of the maleficent alchemist. Agent DuMourne gestured, and the other agent closed in, prodding the body with the toe of her boot.
Guolao twisted like a serpent, drawing the agent in, and pinning her against a desk, eliciting a shriek of protest from the trapped agent. He screamed aloud in middle chinese, as He Qinshi forced him to draw out the life force of the MTF member in his grasp.
Ruslav strode forward, and drew together the aeronous aether, delivering a hard kick into the ribs of the agent, sending her careening down the hall in a gust of wind. Qinshi hopped after her for one preternaturally quick hop, before turning, and streaking towards Agent DuMourne.
A roar of chemical fire streaked out of Agent DuMourne's shotgun, as the buckshot tore into the flying form of Zhang Guolao. Alchemy and supernaturally strong muscles meant little in the face of physics, and the lightweight alchemist hit the ground hard, pouring blood from a ruined knee. He tried to rise to his feet, putting his weight on his good knee, as he rounded on Agent DuMourne who was chambering the next round.
Ruslav took two bounding steps, and gathered together every flow he could. The aethers of fire, air, water, earth, metal and electricity came willing to his call. He reached inward to the luminous spirit that dwelled inside him, and called for aid, Master Al-Hayyan. Help me. A quiet voice spoke back, in an amused lilt, Always.
The aethers of space, and time, gravity and magnetism came to their call, drawing the energies of the fabric of the universe together. A miniature sun formed in the hands of the furious director of the Foundation's Alchemy Department, as he slammed his hands together in a calamitous detonation. Guolao's head, shoulders, and upper body simply drifted away, the very forces holding him together drawn into the microtear in reality that Ruslav had formed. Even sound itself couldn't escape the tear, and everything in the office went silent for several moments.
Agent DuMourne kept his gun level, watching Ruslav pant in the aftermath of the rapid combat. “Swathi, are you alright? Director, status?”
Ruslav nodded, swallowing hard, as he caught his breath, “I am fine. Do you have a containment box?” He reached out a hand, picking up his discarded crozier.
Agent DuMourne slapped a collapsible cube into Ruslav's hand from the pack on his belt. He gingerly folded it around his fingers, and drew the jade ring off of Guolao's finger, snapping the box closed, with an electronic hiss of vacuum. A quiet woosh sound could be heard, as chemically inert foam filled the interior. The containment foam would dissolve on contact with the chemicals back at the lab. Ruslav snatched the small wooden box hanging from a string on the corpse's belt, and wound the snapped thread through the small ring in one corner of the cube. He handed the device to Agent DuMourne, who clipped the entire assembly to the back of his belt, snugging it tight with a bit of nylon webbing.
“Let's go, Director. We've already got at least one agent down. I'd rather not stick around.” Agent DuMourne stalked forward to the prone form of his team member, checking for a pulse, and letting out a sigh of relief. “Scratch that. One agent injured. Let's go.”
Ruslav stepped forward, and nodded, pulling a heavy cylinder off his belt, and handing it to Agent DuMourne. “We shouldn't leave this place intact.”
Agent DuMourne nodded, slipping the tiny explosive disks out of the sleeve, and tossing them to the corners of the office. He lifted the downed agent to one shoulder, and spoke quickly into his radio. A third agent came jogging up the center aisle, and took the remaining charges, distributing them without preamble.
They made their way back to the entrance, and Ruslav held up a hand, “A moment.” He moved his hands in a complicated weaving pattern, his fingertips moving as if making a cat's cradle. His eyes closed, and he drew in the fulminous aethers collected in the electronics around him. He took in a breath, the flows nearly overwhelming him as he gathered together a storm in and around himself. His eyes flew open, and forked lightning manifested from the drawn aethers a few inches above his hands. He punched his right arm forward, hurling forked lightning into the office, frying all of the servers and computers in the office. The fulminous aether greedily leaped from machine to machine, as Ruslav's will and mastery guided the flows.
Ruslav nodded, and turned to the agents who stood wide eyed at the display of alchemic might. “As I said, Agent. Whatever works. We should go.”
Agent DuMourne snapped out of his trance, and nodded, flicking the switch on the top of the cylinder until the display said “0:15”. He turned the top a full 360 degrees, as the safety seal clicked. He tossed the device forward, and waved them back through the doors, “Move people, let's go.”
The three Foundation personnel slipped back through the portal to Earth. The five of them ran down the hallway, sprinting for the far side of the building.
Agent DuMourne waved at his people in the hallway, one bleeding from a wound on his arm. Several stony bodies had joined the first, and the other agent was nowhere to be found. “Move! Sliders going off in Ten!”
The agent broke into a limping run, as he cleared the far side and took shelter behind the columns leading to a side corridor. The rest of the agents ducked around the corner, and huddled together. The agents ducked and covered, as Ruslav stood, condensing the aethers around the gathered personnel in a near impenetrable shield of air, and gravity.
Several seconds ticked by, and the building was rocked by a shockwave as the tiny ultra-compact plastic explosives detonated on the far side of the portal. The explosion raced along the office towards the assembled team. The moment it touched the threshold the portal collapsed leaving nothing but a smoking set of shattered glass doors leading to an empty and unoccupied office space.
Ruslav dropped the shield, and relaxed, cocking his head to one side. “Well. Anticlimactic, but I'll take it. Captain, if you could radio our exit?” Ruslav walked over to the panel and clicked the elevator call button.
Agent DuMourne blinked a few times, and shook his head, radioing to the team downstairs to prepare for extraction. “Director, one question?”
Ruslav nodded, “Mmmm? What is it?”
Agent DuMourne thumbed back at the assembled agents, “That shield could have protected us, why did we break for cover?”
Ruslav shrugged, and smiled slightly, “Oh, it wouldn't have. We would probably have been smeared to paste.”
Agent DuMourne's mouth fell open, and he leaned in, “Then why the hell did you even put up the shield to begin with?”
Ruslav walked past Agent DuMourne and into the elevator, waving for him and the team to get in, “It made you feel better, yes?”
Captain Agent DuMourne stared for a moment, unsure if he should be angry or amused. Alchemists are weird. He thought to himself, as he boarded the elevator, descending towards their extraction vehicle on the street below.

“Tell me again, where you found this thing?” Dr. de la Vega held up the containment cube in the intake wing at Site-72.
“Flea market. I got lucky. Walked past a stall, wearing a thaumic ring. I think I had it on after the mission in Java. Started buzzing like crazy, and I picked it up immediately. “ Agent DuMourne steepled his fingers, and rested his chin on the intertwined digits.
Dr. de la Vega frowned, and placed the cube back down on the table, “And where did the seller claim he got it?”
Agent DuMourne shrugged, “As I said before, he claims his grandfather found it in some tomb in China. He was just hawking it for extra cash. I didn't ask too many questions, I figured that's more I&A's shtick. I slapped it in a cube, and brought it back to the Site. The only thing he told me was ‘don't wear it'.”
Dr. de la Vega looked Captain Agent DuMourne in the eye, and shook his head. “Fine, fine. We'll do a proper investigation once we figure out what it is.”
Agent DuMourne nodded, and stood, exiting the intake lab, and heading towards the barracks. He tapped a few buttons on his watch, and made a call. “Director? Yessir. Level 4, as requested. Yessir. Thank you sir.”
…Sometimes, the information we redact has nothing to do with need to know, or protecting the world, or something so grand. Sometimes we're just covering up the mistakes of the past. Guolao was a mistake. I shouldn't have let Flamel do that to him and Qinshi. Maybe they were evil, but even evil deserves mercy eventually….

-Excerpt, Personal log of Director Diaghilev, January 2018

« SCP-3622 | An Alchemist Goes To War | The Summer of Bad Memories »


I haven't always been special.
I trained for it. I trained for years, following Them, studying Them from as close as I could safely get, learning what made Them tick even as the sight of those glorious beings drowned my mind in serotonin. There were a few nights where I wanted to kill myself over what I was planning on doing to Them. But I remembered the look on my mother's face on the day I left forever, and I hardened my resolve.
I found a new community where nobody knew me. I blended in easily enough. Even this close to the Out-lands, reality is still elastic enough that new neighbors with mysterious pasts go fairly uncommented on. Everyone around me played by Their rules, the rules They imposed just by existing. It made them pretty boring company sometimes, but I still managed to find some friends. They were always part of my plan, even in the early days when I didn't really get it.
I trained my body and my mind relentlessly, urged on by the vision of my mother in her bed on that last day. I started getting into “accidents” whenever I hung out with my friends. Falling off of a cliff and landing unscathed because I'd scouted the location tirelessly for the highest concentration of tree branches to break my fall. Diving out of the way of a loosened sign that was about to fall on me at the last second. Jumping over a car that was careening towards me. I brushed with death in front of witnesses over and over again, and they were duly impressed by my ability, but it never got any easier. I had thought that once I had established myself as “special,” the universe would recognize me as a potential member and slot me into a path that would eventually take me to Their level. It wasn't too far fetched, if what the conspiracy theorists say about reality being thinner is true. It seemed like a failure, and I gave up was ready to give up.
For some reason, I couldn't bring myself to.
I went back over my notes. I even risked studying Them in person again. It was so hard to watch Them at their ridiculous and deadly games, knowing what happened to all of the background characters that get in their way. I remembered waiting for my mother to come home with a gift from a city that had been nearly leveled in some twisted rodeo. I cried as I watched Them kill all of those innocent people. But I came away with valuable information. I was going about things all wrong. It wasn't a matter of strength. It was a matter of character.
I began a new training regimen. I started to develop quirks. Small ones, at first. Whenever I was with my friends, I would idly run a matchstick through my hair, until I eventually found myself doing it alone out of habit. I began eating a dozen clementines daily, and never wore sleeves if I could avoid it. Where before the community at large had largely ignored me, I now found myself getting a reputation. I started to stand out. The dynamic within my group of friends started changing too. They started looking to me for suggestions. I would usually decide what to do and dominate the conversation as we did it. One day, months after I had abandoned my physical training, my friend and I fell off of a bridge. I somehow managed to catch the edge of the bridge with my feet and my friend's ankles with my hands and I swung us both to safety.
It was impossible. But it had happened. I had done it.
From there things started moving quickly. I found myself getting into the same predicaments as before, but genuinely by accident, and sometimes in much more dangerous circumstances. Every time I made it out without a scratch, and I learned to laugh off the danger. I started acting superior around my friends, embracing the leadership role, and they all just folded up and fell into line. Even when they objected to my treatment of them, they never once seriously challenged me on it. This power was amazing. When I finally exhibited my first truly impossible ability, breathing gale force winds, I started laughing uncontrollably. I couldn't believe it was possible! I couldn't believe what a rush it was! I started to understand why They acted so happy all of the time, before the memory of my mother's blood splashing on my young face brought me back to Earth. I knew then that it was important to never let my power turn me into a monster.
I apologized to my secondary characters for all of the things I said to them. Every single one of them reassured me that they loved me, and that they knew I just acted odd because my mother's death traumatized me. With my position secure, I continued to accumulate powers randomly, until finally my personal reality was stretched to its breaking point. I felt the complete knowledge of the universe flow through me, and learned how to bend it, change it, even erase it. And at that point I knew that it was time to move on the final phase of my plan to save the world avenge my mother's death.
To beat Them, I had to join Them. And I did. I have all the power of the Senior Staff now. I have all the power I need to take them down. And why shouldn't it be me? I have their damn tragic backstory, I have a driving reason! I have the pure heart to resist the siren call of this cursed power! The Senior Staff made an enemy the day they killed my mother right in front of me, and I intend to make them regret it.
.
.
.
.
.
My mother wasn't dead before


It's not dangerous to spend time outside in the summer.
Clouds are always leering from the edge of the sky. Don't look at them. The sundown pond is so clean and white. The light slides cleanly across the surface, diffused and woozy. Reeds poke out around the lips of the earth, but we're paying no mind to them. Leaping into the water, a young man hurls himself from a mottled wooden dock. It craters underneath him and splashes hundreds of droplets into the air. He is my friend. Before he comes up, I'm leaping in myself.
I can see his body in the water.
Crashing through the surface, the bubbles feel like a bullet storm driving itself through my skin. Instantly numb, I open my eyes and for a moment I am blinded, the sheer cold compressing my shocked retinas. Dim light peeks from above me, distorted and swirling. Kicking upwards, there is a sheet of glass affixed before the surface.
I do not see any bodies in the water.
Ice is sharp and the wind is cold, struggling felt useless until it worked. Throat burning as cold air rushes in and hot puke boils out. If the dock wasn't here I would be sliding into the water, bloody reflective tile has no traction. Splintering wood digs into my skin. There's nobody breathing here with me. A motionless husk floats gently underneath some stained ice.
I do not recognize the body in the water.
Daylight has evaporated beneath a wave of clouds. The trees aren't growing anymore. Dead and rotting, there's snow piling up between them like barricades. Shivering is all that I know now. Closing my eyes so ice stops coming. It's being dead closer to me now. They all are.
I do not recognize the bodies in the water.
Even when the sun started shining again there was no getting out from under the cold. Crystals collect in my eyes every time I can't settle into my rest. Telling whether it's day or night isn't exercising thought. Knowing only what they know. Seeing through their eyes and wearing their skin squeezing out eyes and bones. There's holes water slows and flows through because it can't get more broken than this.
So many keep coming to look. They never recognize their bodies in the water.