The Present, Eventually:
Site Director Neil Ghost was one of the longest-serving members of the Foundation, a feat made possible by the relative safety of his job. It was rare that one of those few remaining SCPs originally classified as “Safe” ever proved otherwise, and as one of the caretakers of the relatively less deadly artifacts and anomalies, he enjoyed a certain amount of relaxation occasionally.
A mostly competent staff, a relatively safe job, and a retirement age quickly approaching: Ghost had it all. He breathed a sigh and leaned back into his chair, pulling down his glasses long enough to rub his eyes. He might have drifted off for a moment, except that he heard… something.
His eyes shot open and turned toward the door, narrowing. Almost without breathing, he reached for the front of his desk and retrieved a heavy brass candlestick he'd kept there ever since The Serpent's Hand had broken in and "borrowed" a few SCPs. He still had the note they'd left, polite and somewhat condescending, hidden away in a desk drawer, right next to the broken commendation plaque he'd cracked over one of their heads when they'd come back for more.
He felt comforted by the makeshift weapon's presence as he stood and slowly made his way to the door. Age had not lessened the instincts his time as an Agent had given him. He pressed an ear against the wood finish, listening again for the noise. He was almost certain he'd heard someone walking past his office, which shouldn't be possible. No one else at this site had his clearance, and as far as he knew, no one who did was supposed to be visiting anytime soon.
He clicked the door open, peering into the black hallway. He stepped out, bracing himself against the wall as he slowly sidled down the corridor, listening as he progressed. He was certain he heard it now, someone further down the hall, someone in one of the storage rooms.
He controlled his labored breathing as he crept closer, turning the cold brass in his hands, snaking a step at a time until he stood directly next to the door. It was a rustle of files, the paper kind that were just used for archival information now. With a hard twist, he turned himself into the door, tensed to leap at whoever he saw.
Instead, a small metal disk whirled by his head, causing him to turn sharply and stare as the wall behind him erupted with thumb tacks, nails, and burning thorns. He tried to turn back again, but instead felt a fist connect solidly with his jaw, sending him falling backwards onto the floor, the heavy candlestick spiraling out of reach.
He glanced up and saw a face he remembered: blond hair and blue eyes. Skin paler than he remembered, but ice had a tendency to do that to you.
“Hello, Imants. I heard you'd been… released.”
The younger man remained silent, but the knuckles of the hand clenching a couple of file folders whitened even further as he tightened his grip.
Ghost's fingers were anxiously searching through the needles and points covering the floor, digging into his fingers and back.
“You know, if you turn yourself in, we would be lenient. The situation has changed in recent years. We know you were young. Impressionable. The people who came to you for help were legends. Kondraki. Clef. It's no wonder you were star struck. Dragged along.”
“And why wasn't this brought up at my first hearing?” Imants replied, sneering with irritation.
“Like I said,” said Ghost, his fingers finally closing around the smooth, metal surface. “The situation has changed.”
He flung the disk hard, awkwardly pushing himself off the floor and desperately rushing Imants full on, burying a heavy shoulder into the ex-agent's midsection as papers flew from the cabinets around them, edges sharpening and glistening as they shot out of their folders, cutting at both men.
Imants was shoved back hard, slamming into the wall. Ghost fell to one knee suddenly, age catching up to him. He pushed himself up as quickly as he could, painfully straining as he put the last of his strength into a final, desperate uppercut when he felt the knee collide with his chest, knocking the wind out of him. Two more sharp blows to the back of the head, and darkness claimed him.

Several Years Earlier:
Dr. Glass had spent the past several years working with the Foundation, during which time he'd both seen and been subjected to more than his fair share of trauma. As a psychologist, he was supposed to analyze, interpret, and recommend treatment for dozens of cases a week, most of them repeat patients unable to deal with the stress of the job. When he'd finally been promoted upward, he expected a much less traumatic job. The Senior Staff he was now in charge of interviewing were supposed to be trained, hardened, and experienced. And while they were, he found his work all the more distressing.
He would write a paper about each of them if he could. Over seventy separate bundles of neuroses, each on a case study in either sheer madness or inexplicably intricate coping mechanisms. Over half of them went around armed constantly against threats seen and unseen. Still others regressed into childlike states of coloring their reports, and still more simply died inside eventually.
Then there were the special cases. A talking dog he had to interview, another man whose emotional nerves had been cauterized long, long ago, and a doctor who insisted on referring to himself as a chord rather than a name. And there was the butterfly man, who delighted in chaos, a woman who chased him with lamps, and a high-ranking agent who had threatened to kill him when he'd seen the Pondur he'd been given by an old patient.
But it was the man with all the faces that gave Glass the most trouble. At first, he'd simply thought the staff had been joking with him about Dr. Bright, a phantasm in the background who seemingly resisted all attempts at analysis by sending a different person to the interview each month. Then, he'd read the file on SCP-963 and found the truth even more disturbing.
At least he participated in the interviews somewhat, which was far more than could be said for the likes of Dr. Kondraki or Dr. Clef. They got a kick out of fucking with him; Jack Bright got a kick out of telling him the truth.
He was surprisingly talkative to someone with sufficient security clearance. Glass listened intently, hearing about Bright's early life— though he spoke little about his family— and the events leading up to his first death. He also told him about the deaths he had experienced first hand, the ones he had physically experienced. Most of them were gruesome, as so often death was in the Foundation, and Jack recounted each with the reverence of a soldier remembering fallen comrades. The cycle continued, and Glass became more and more in tune with the one overbearing wish Jack Bright had: release.
Glass remembered one point when Jack had been attempting to aggregate a body together with Professor Crow. The Frankensteining process had never worked, but he remembered the way Bright had looked at his hands, commented on them, admiring them for a moment or two. Weeks later, he'd asked him about his brother. Bright got quiet for a moment and tilted his head to the right, almost like he was listening for the answer.
"I did what was necessary," he said.
Dr. Glass continued to build the profiles, though after a while, he eventually stopped keeping anything but the most cursory notes on most of the staff. It was obvious that Dr. Gears would never change, though he still tried the occasional Rorschach test. Clef and Kondraki became a source of comedy at times, and he began to enjoy quiet coffees with Professor Crow in lieu of evaluation. But he kept keeping notes on Bright. For whatever reason, he was fascinated by the myriad of faces he'd seen over the years, the occasional animal, the regular shifts in gender.
He noted cycles, patterns. He attempted to make sense of Bright's personality, the ways it moved and shifted, the ways it stayed the same. It was almost a year before he asked Jack Bright about his brother again. He had to go back and check his notes twice before he was satisfied, but he was sure that the tilt of the head, the listening expression, was exactly the same.
"I did what was required," replied Jack.
It was a subtle shift, but one that Glass noted. Something that was necessary equated to a personal decision; something that was required pointed to one mandatory. Over the months, Glass continued asking different questions of Jack, different leads and answers. But he always returned, every so often, to his brother.
"I did what I was told."
"It's his own fault."
"I didn't choose for him to be that way."
"I did what I wanted."
Each time, the same motion, the same pattern; a shifting answer.
But the early files, the files from before he and 963 were linked, were consistent. And so was Jack Bright's loyalty to the Foundation. That, more so than anything, had led to the man's meteoric rise. It was a mere week after his promotion to Foundation Director that he stopped by Dr. Glass's office for the last time. He and Glass exchanged pleasantries and congratulations, shared a cup of coffee, and relaxed, talking about the time Kondraki had shot up a break room over a failure to brew proper coffee or the time a new recruit mistook Kain for an office pet and tried to rub his belly.
And for the last time, Dr. Glass looked at Jack, currently in the body of a green-eyed, red-haired child rapist, and asked him about his brother. This time, instead of looking off to the side, Jack looked right at Glass, his gaze intense and penetrating.
"I don't remember."

The Present:
"According to my reports, there was a massive information dump around four months ago. A complete backup was made of all Foundation reports. At first I thought it was the standard backup before base evacuation, but…"
"What's the problem, Mr. Halifax?"
"The entry code was wrong. I did that backup myself, and these are not my access codes. Someone went into the system, erased the record of my backup, and made one of their own. No one would have even noticed it if they hadn't been looking at the specific date stamp."
"You're saying that someone has a copy of the Foundation's archive, Halifax? Are you quite sure about that?"
"Very sure, Dr. Bright. There's no one but me that accesses those terminals."
"Can you tell me the user that accessed it?"
"No, sir. They covered their tracks well. The only thing I know is that their password was last used over a decade ago."
"Thank you, Mr. Halifax. See that the code is deactivated and put a trace on all public terminals to look for additional access attempts."
"Yes, Director Bright."
Jack Bright leaned back into her chair, fingering the outline of SCP-963-2 hidden underneath a loose-fitting shirt. Everything was beginning to fall into place. The sudden disappearance of Kondraki and Imants from incarceration; the damage to the Red Sea Object by the unseen gunshot; Clef's suicidal leap into a parallel world; and the string of attacks on Foundation archives. They were looking for something, whoever they were. And Bright knew she had to find out what it was before they laid their hands on it.
With a complete copy of the archive, though, the paper files should be unnecessary. Everything was contained within the archive; the only things that they might not have included were the older SCPs that were no longer…
The epiphany hit Dr. Bright like a ton of bricks. They weren't looking for something that was still active. They were looking for what was left of something.
Jack leaned back in the chair smiling. All remains were in Site-19 reliquaries, which meant that they were looking for something specific, too specific to just try a mad dash directly into the Foundation's heart shooting and looting. She traced the edges of the amulet under her shirt, slowly putting everything together. She had preparations to make.

Eleven Years Earlier:
Dr. Alto Clef carefully polished one of the several shotguns he kept around his office, running the oil soaked rag up and down the metal barrel before breaking the weapon down and carefully cleaning the ejecting mechanism. It was a ritual for him, one he executed weekly with an elegant precision, one he'd missed while paralyzed and was now eager to resume.
A knock on his door led to a shell being loaded into the weapon. The opening of the door lead to its cocking.
"Am I disturbing anything, Dr. Clef?" asked Glass.
"Yes," said Clef.
"We need to talk sometime soon."
"My psych evaluation was cleared weeks ago, Glass. Are you slipping?"
"It's not about that."
"Then what is it about?"
"Dr. Bright."
"Jack? He's a good guy. Now if you'll excuse me for a moment, Glass, I've got to go take care of a little problem the Foundation has been sitting on for a while now."
"You and Kondraki working together, huh?"
Clef smiled. "For now."
"Well, if you could look me up when you get back on site?"
"When I feel like it, Glass."
Clef pushed past the psychiatrist into the hall, carrying the gun with him. He knew he couldn't take it into the chamber with him, but he felt better having it with him, nonetheless.

The Present:
Four security guards lay unconscious between the entrance to deep storage at Site-11 and the bank of filing cabinets lined the far wall. Imants moved from drawer to drawer, carefully flipping through the files and examining termination dates. He knew that despite its lack of presence in the database, there still had to be some record of the object. The Foundation didn't believe in destroying anything, at least on the paperwork side of things. It was a destroyed SCP he was looking for.
He switched drawers and redoubled his efforts. His recent altercation with Neil Ghost was still playing on his mind. It wasn't too late to turn back. It was true, what Ghost had said. The second Kondraki approached him, he'd agreed, almost blindly. Kondraki was a legend in the Foundation, at least as well-known as Clef, if not more. Imants had been more than willing to do what he asked, especially if the future of the Foundation was at stake.
He breathed a sigh of relief as he saw the number, pulled out the file, and looked over the paperwork. The Foundation was not inclined to let anything just drift about uncollected, even something that was no longer of use to them.
Imants shoved the folder into his jacket and prepared to report to Kondraki. One way or the other, the job was going to get done.
Jack Bright had to die.

Eleven Years Earlier:
"What are you saying, Glass? You want me to kill him a few times?"
"No," said Glass, rubbing his eyes in frustration. "We have to remove him from a position where anyone can be harmed, then we have to find a way to release Jack from the medallion. It's doing something to him."
"Yeah," said Kondraki. "It's making him less appreciative of the fragility of life." Kondraki laughed. "So, you want me to kill 963?"
"Effectively… yes, I suppose. You're one of the Foundation's problem solvers. The O5 have ignored my requests for a conference, and I've got nowhere else to turn to. I need you to help me stop whatever it is his mind is doing."
"What do you mean, Glass? His mind? The fuck are you talking about?"
"Aggregate personalities."
"Aggregate Personalities? What do you mean, aggregate personalities?"
"Just what I said," said Glass, his forehead creased. "There seems to be a buildup, over time, of personalities… I don't know what to call them…chunks. They just stick around in there, somewhere."
"And we've been attaching him to murderers, rapists, and baboons?"
"Hence, my concern."
"God damn it Glass. He's just been made the director! Why didn't you come to me earlier?"
"Apologies, Kondraki. I'm here now, though, and we don't really have another choice. Clef and I are on board. Will you help us?"
A smile was the only answer he received. It was also the only one he needed.

The Present, A Few Weeks Later:
Quikngruvn Halifax cursed his parents for not the first time as he re-affixed his name-badge and proceeded through the opening door. Over the past few years, he'd worked himself up to the position of chief archivist in the Foundation, a post he was immensely proud of. The offer for transfers to other, safe sites had come in over the years, but he'd remained at Site-19, comfortable in the hustle and bustle of the Foundation's largest site.
He looked around his perfectly arranged office, paying careful attention to everything and adjusting the few trays the cleaning staff had bumped when cleaning the previous night. He reached for the stereo remote on the corner of his desk and pressed play. He stopped, looked at the remote and back at the stereo, pressed the button again, and frowned. He walked over to cabinet, prepared to reach behind it to reconnect a cord he was sure the janitors had disconnected when he felt the circle of cool steel pressed into the back of his neck.
"I want you to understand, Halifax, that while I have nothing against you, I am fully prepared to plaster the contents of your skull all over that wall. I'm afraid you disabled my old access code, so I'll be needing yours. Now."
Quikngruvn's body tensed when he heard the voice, realizing immediately who was right behind him, who had used the antiquated access code, and what was pressed against his neck. A reputation came with the presence of the legendary Dr. Kondraki, one which he was in no way eager to discover the validity of. He eased his hand up to his collar, unclipped the name badge, and held it over his shoulder.
"That's a good boy, now."
Quikngruvn saw as a hand reached over his shoulder, turning on the stereo and cranking up the volume.
"Sorry about the knee."
The sound of the shot and the harsh drumming of the music meshed well, and the solid slap of the cold, metal butt of the gun against his head brought a welcomed repose from excruciating reality.

Eleven Years Earlier:
"We have to separate him from 963, then present our evidence. We'll never even make it to a formal hearing otherwise."
"Why don't we just chuck him through a Hell gate? Don't we have a few of those?"
"Because, he's our friend. We should help him as best we can."
"Speak for yourself. I've never liked Bright."
"You've never liked anyone."
"Point being?"
"Nevertheless, the plan stands. We kill Bright's current body, contain 963, present our evidence, and then hope we don't get our wrists slapped."
"That's an awful plan."
"Then what do you suggest?"
"Poison him, then burn him. Then, we put 963 through 093 and pretend it never happened."
"Too complicated. It would never work."
"We could just use explosives. Explosives always work."
"963 is practically indestructible. An explosion big enough to take it out would be more than enough to burn off the atmosphere."
"No, just for killing him. Small explosion, then a series of them to bury the body in rubble. While they're sorting it out, we can convince them to do what we want with the medallion."
"You guys are forgetting one problem."
"And what's that, Glass?"
"He's the director, now. He's going to have guards. Good guards."
"Guards, Glass? Really? That's what you're worried about?"
"For God's sake, Glass, I'm a god damned legend. You think I can't handle a few trained monkeys?"
"It's not going to be that easy."
"Why not?"
"The guards are him too."
"Jack's a scientist, not an army."
"Why don't we just wait for a more opportune moment? Why are we rushing this, anyhow?"
"Have you seen some of the reports coming out of Site-19? For god's sake, there have been more decommissions in the last month than there have been in the entire life of the Foundation."
"I heard about a few of them. I'm not sure why 914 was disassembled, but he had a good argument for 447. Too much of a hazard on site."
"It doesn't matter. The Foundation has a mission to carry out. We're the wall between humanity and all the shit that would break their minds. We hold it back; we don't blow it up."
"I've blown up plenty of shit for them."
"Not stuff that didn't need it! He's changing the mission!"
"He's claiming that everything destroyed was a threat to the survival of the Foundation."
"107 was a threat?"
"107 was decommed?"
"47 Safe SCPs, 28 Euclid. Gone."
"Then we're agreed, yes? We have to do this. He has to be stopped, our evidence has to be presented."
"Agreed."
"Agreed."
"Yeah, fine."
"Good. We strike tomorrow."

The Present:
Dr. Kondraki had spent the last few years haunting the halls of various sites, taking on the roles of people who did or didn't exist, acting in a million tiny ways, most of them either obnoxious or harmless. The occasional missing sample, the carefully made blueprints for the various sites, reports on newly recovered artifacts—all passed along to the Global Occult Coalition. The little group was a useful tool, for now, and he hoped to keep using them into the foreseeable future. He'd always been good at killing things, and it was one of the few activities that they appreciated. He could see why Clef had worked with them.
He was pressed hard against the hallway's curved walls, 408 carefully guarding him, as he waited for the approaching guard to get a little closer. It should be a fairly simple process. Enter the security point, open the proper containment units with Halifax's code, and clear a path straight to their insurance. He couldn't imagine finding the location of a bunch of failed experiments would be so damn hard, but Bright had covered the tracks of his weakness fairly well, if inadvertently. It would, of course, be here at Site-19, where Bright could keep an eye on it. But Site-19 was very, very big. And there were many, many places to hide something.
Imants had done his job well, and now it was up to Kondraki. One last run into the belly of the beast. One last mission before everything would be over, finally. The Foundation had taken several steps away from where it had been when he'd been an agent. There were fewer and fewer containments, more and more Neutralizations. He was even aware of a few cities that had been razed after experiments were conducted there and found to have less than optimal results. The O5 were further and further removed, the Director given more and more power. He might have liked the position fifteen years ago, but time had mellowed his ambitions. Slightly.
The guard rounded the last bend, slowly approaching the coded door. He placed his thumb over the checkpoint, causing the door to beep once, cheerily, and open. Kondraki stepped out, bringing a well timed chop down on his foe's neck, causing him to stumble, but not fall. Kondraki cursed as he pulled the sawed off shotgun out from under his coat as the guard looked up at him.
"Konny?"
Kondraki's eye's widened. "Jack?"
The guard's hand flew to the alarm, slamming down on it as Kondraki's finger squeezed the trigger. The blast blew away much of the guard's face, though much too slowly to avoid the unfortunate consequences. The guard meant one thing: Jack had activated 963-2.
He stepped over the body, scanned Halifax's name badge, and started running.

Eleven Years Earlier:
In retrospect, Glass thought they should have gone with Clef's plan.
The charges were set in a fairly open area, with a remote detonator rigged to the wall. They waited as the first security crew passed, until they knew the Jack with 963 would be directly above the explosion and sprung the trap.
Clef spun around the forward corner, putting two shells each into the forward guards' backs as they turned to see the erupting flames around their charge. Kondraki emptied his sidearm into the rear guard from a safe, hidden corner as Imants dropped the remaining ceiling into the corridor with a well-timed grenade in the ventilation system.
The entire attack had been executed flawlessly.
"That was too easy," said Kondraki, eying the guard's bodies. "Jack's not a soldier, but he's also not an idiot."
Clef nodded. "He probably put 963 on one of the guards."
"Or he's not here at all." Everyone looked up at Glass, the young doctor nervously running his hand through his hair.
The four of them looked at each other as the alarms started blaring.

The Present:
A brilliant flash of light blinded Kondraki as he rounded the corner, making the floating images around him shudder as 408 lost members of its hive. He fired the pistol over his shoulder twice, stopping after he heard a grunt and fall. The storage chamber he needed would be nearby, and if he was lucky—
A second blast of light flew ahead of Kondraki, cutting through the illusion and scattering the burned husks of butterflies through the air. He slid around a second corner, bringing the pistol up under the guard's chin and scattering his thoughts and memories over the ceiling without stopping. He leaped through the air as a second guard attempted to bull rush him from behind, firing downward into the man's lower back as he twisted sharply to avoid another blast of light.
It would have been impressive if he'd left anyone alive to witness it.
He found the door and scanned Halifax's card, entering the lab and sealing the door behind him. He walked across the room, putting a bullet into the forehead of a stunned researcher, and pulled several green vials out of a row of test tubes, placing them in his pocket. He smiled, running through the rest of the plan in his head.
Then, he shrugged, muttered "Fuck it" under his breath, and reloaded his gun. If he was doing this, he was going to do it his way. He was going to have fun.

Eleven Years Earlier:
Glass had been captured first. He'd not been trained for any sort of combat, so when the hoard of trained shock troops poured into the hallway following the explosion, he'd held his hands in the air and waited for them to quit beating him into the ground. He heard about Clef's capture, how it'd taken them four hours to get through the traps he set in his outer office and another two to actually lay hands on the man. Imants had managed to hole up in the ventilation system for almost two days before they found him. Kondraki had actually come quietly, having been found in his office apparently doing paperwork.
Glass heard about the other trials through his guard. Clef had been sentenced quickly, Kondraki mere hours later. It was the next morning before Imants had been sentenced, as there was apparently a fair amount of dissent about the extent to which he'd been involved and how much he'd been influenced by his superiors. The sentence had been the same, nonetheless: indefinite stasis.
Glass sat in his cell, listening to the footsteps, trying not to think about the stories he'd heard from other people who'd experienced stasis. Cold dreams; frozen memories. They could never remember what they'd dreamed, only the cold.
It was the next morning when the guard approached his cell. Glass contemplated trying to hit the guard over the head and escape, but he knew that he wouldn't last more than two or three steps into the hall. He allowed them to cuff him, requested an opportunity to examine himself in the mirror, and after doing so, walked down the hallway, flanked by the guards.
A series of blurry and darkened screens greeted him in the courtroom; he steeled himself and listened to the charges.

The Present:
Kondraki could hear the footsteps charging him, herding him. It was the problem with fighting with someone who could effectively create a hive mind with the right kind of telepathy. And the Foundation had the right kind, especially since they'd cut up 182's and 116's respective brains and played around with them.
He took a short cut he knew he shouldn't, but Jack could go fuck himself if he thought that Kondraki would do what he wanted him to. He slid into one of the maintenance closets, a place he'd gotten used to hiding in over the years, and looked for one of the access pipes. He found one marked "Pest Control" and opened the access nozzles, filling them with two of the vials he'd stolen earlier. He looked around him and the butterflies flitting through the air and frowned, muttering quietly under his breath. "I'm sorry."
He turned back to the door, kicking it open and having 408 project an illusion of himself in front of the opening, smirking as a hail of gunfire issued from the left. He swung low out of the opening, bringing the pistol level and putting a bullet into the neck of both men firing, noting as they fell the dangling Foundation symbols strung around their necks. 'Jack,' he thought.
Kondraki started running. He'd have to get to the climate control quickly, the one for this sector, or the plan would be pointless. It wouldn't take much longer, not now. Another turn and then a quick shot straight to—
The bullet tore through his thigh, hollow tip causing more damage than he might otherwise have preferred. He fell hard against the right wall, having 408 project him falling to the left, and fired a shot backwards wildly. He pulled himself further, ripping a sleeve off his shirt and tying it around his leg tightly. He could barely feel his leg, and he knew that there weren't enough members of 408 left alive to cover the blood. If this was going to happen, it would have to be soon.
He struggled forward, smiling as the two symbol wearing guards pursuing him put several rounds into the illusory corpse. He took the time to turn and aim carefully, putting a shot into both of their heads before bringing himself into the climate control center.
The room wasn't that much different than any one of a dozen across Site-19, but this one had the controls he needed. He found the Infestation Control Station that had been in place since 439 had been forcibly Neutralized. He looked at the handful of butterflies around him one last time and pressed the command sequence, releasing the anti-parasitics into the air.
Glass erupted from the screen as two loud blasts sounded behind him, forcing him to roll out of the chair as blood loss made his vision swim. He struggled away from the station as a hoard of footsteps approached him.
The pesticide had a faint hint of mint to it, Kondraki noticed, smiling. 408 died in the air around him, the multiple projections fading with them. His leg ached and bled in spite of the tourniquet.
"You shouldn't have come alone, Konny."
Kondraki looked up at the handful of men, all wearing the same expression, all wearing the same medallion.
"What makes you think I came alone, Jack?"
"Bluffing, at this point?" Three men with crests around their necks approached Kondraki and kicked him in the stomach. Kondraki heard several Brights laugh as the dying butterflies tried to project an illusion around the dying, middle-aged doctor. He brought a hand out to brush his hair back off his forehead as he looked up at his foe.
"When have I ever lied to you, Jack?"

Elsewhere:
Imants turned the corner, running as stealthily as possible up the corridor, ignoring the green, acidic mist the sprayed from the ceiling. If the last round of reports from their informant had been correct, the package he was looking for was in the second room on the left, Corridor 23-B. With everyone going after Kondraki, he shouldn't have any problems finding the package.
As the door slid open, he slowly walked into the room, looking quickly to either side for unexpected surprises. He was pleased to find none.
Imants stepped forward, ignoring the new set of erupting sirens. He looked down at the red disk and collected it into a cloth, slipping it into his pocket. Two sets of plastic explosives later, he left the room, running as fast as possible. Kondraki's plan gave him two minutes, but he wanted to be further away.

The Present:
The mist was beginning to die down as dozens more Jack Brights surrounded Kondraki, watching him bleed. A bouncy, black-haired woman walked to the front of the crowd. She smiled, condescendingly, leaning over the injured man.
"You've gotten old and slow, Konny. No one would have caught you ten years ago."
He sneered. "No one did."
She smiled at him again. "I guess you're right. It's a shame really. The Foundation could have used you, Kondraki. Your talents. No one other than Clef had more confirmed decommissions than you. With our new programs, you might have had a place here again."
"I've not had a place here in a long time, Jack."
"No, I guess you haven't. Any last requests?"
"None. But I do have one question," said Kondraki, pushing himself up and leaning back against his legs.
"That's not a request," replied Jack.
"It's close enough. Humor me."
"Fine."
"Is this everyone?" asked Kondraki.
"What?"
"Is this everyone?" repeated Kondraki. "Did you really bring every copy of yourself to fight me?"
Bright's eyes narrowed. All of them.
"Because, Jack, if you did, that was a god damned stupid thing to do."
Kondraki reached into both pockets. He pulled his gun out of the first. Out of the second, he pulled a green vial. Forty faces blanched in recognition, for the first time noticing the scent of the pesticide as the stopper on the vial flew through the air, and the substance contained within it splashed on Kondraki's face. Dozens of eyes turning to see the butterflies on the ground sparking and twitching as they died.
"A body is a body, Jack. See you in hell, you son of a bitch. All of you."
Kondraki raised the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. As the bullet passed through his skull, he felt an instant of 447's reaction taking place. But then, reality was gone, and all that was left was an aftermath.

Eleven Years Earlier:
"None of you are listening!" screamed Glass, his face shuddering. "That's not Jack Bright! Not anymore! It didn't happen all at once! It was putting a pebble on the beach. And then another and another. Eventually, the whole thing is hidden, and you never noticed!"
"Dr. Glass, please calm yourself. You've obviously experienced some kind of psychotic break—"
"I've experience nothing of the sort! You don't get it!" he shouted, his voice cracking. "It's not his whole personality, not even a big part of it. It's inches of the football field. But soon, it'll be worse."
"Nevertheless, Doctor, you've committed a serious crime, have no evidence, and rallied enough of our less… controllable members together to convince us you planned nothing less serious than another break like the Chaos Insurgency, as Dr. Bright concluded. Given your family history, it seems a logical—"
"I've got all the proof I need sitting right there," screeched Glass, pointing at Bright's current body. "One question. That's all I ask. Just one."
The face on the other side of the screen seemed to frown for a moment before visibly shrugging. "Fine. Ask away."
Glass looked at Jack Bright, narrowing his eyes as if to stare right through the visibly disturbed looking doctor.
"Jack. What do you want more than anything else in the world?"
Bright looked surprised. He smirked, the concern draining from his face. "To serve the Foundation."
Glass's face cracked as he smiled in triumph. "That's not true, Jack."
The voice from beyond the screen sounded again. "Enough. The trial is over. We have the utmost faith in Dr. Bright, and this line of questioning will change nothing. Dr. Glass, you are to be suspended in cryogenic stasis for no fewer than thirty years."
Glass turned to the screen, eyes widening in shock. "What? Don't you see? It's not right! He doesn't want to serve!"
Two men approached the dais and took either of Glass's arms, proceeding to pull him away from the court room. Glass's voice echoed over the cacophony of voices and static, screaming in rage.
"IT'S NOT RIGHT! HE WANTS TO DIE, YOU IDIOTS! HE JUST WANTS TO DIE!"
He was still screaming when they put him in the chamber. Directly across from him, he saw Kondraki's cryogenic chamber. For a moment, it shimmered, a wing flapping momentarily out of place. Glass had only a moment to register his surprise before the ice took him.

The Present:
There was also a multitude of voices shouting now, though the shapely female form lay mostly still and silent, only occasionally coughing or hacking up blood. Murderers and thieves, rapists and pedophiles, and a handful of those who had just stumbled onto the wrong military base or into the wrong room. Most of them were angry, calling out with rage and anger at their denied immortality, while others were crying loudly in sadness. But somewhere, deep down at the bottom, there was one who was silent. Unspeakably and immeasurably relieved.
'It feels good to finally die,' thought Jack.
He watched from the bottom upward as the voices winked out, disappearing like vanishing stars. He heard them silenced, one by one, the din growing quieter and quieter as the others finally went away, finally vanished, blowing away like flakes of ash. He felt whole again for the first time in decades. It took an incredibly long time, though it seemed to happen all at once; then, Jack was alone.
It was dark, and cold, and wonderful. Dreadfully wonderful. Then he saw it, just barely out of the corner of his eyes, exploding with the intensity of its presence. A single dot of light, still shimmering.
'No,' thought Jack. 'God damn it. NO!'
He tried to speak and could not. The body he was occupying shuddered, racked out a final, desperate cough, and died.

Seven Weeks Later:
Interim Director Gears sat uncomfortably in the chair, but it didn't show. Kondraki's actions would leave Site-19 unusable for the foreseeable future, unless some antidote to 447-2's effect could be found. Since it didn't seem likely, Gears had been forced to relocate. On top of that, he was the chief surviving member of Site-19's command structure, leaving him with a very large mess to clean up. Anyone else would have broken under the stress of Gears' responsibilities. And Gears himself might be feeling a similar strain, but it didn't show.
He had shuffled through more paperwork in the last month than in his entire career. While he'd passed on some of it to Iceberg, he was still inundated daily with requests, notes on recovery, and personnel casualty reports. Today was no different.
He leafed through half a dozen SCP recoveries, making notes about the number of newly Neutralized objects that would have to be refiled. At the bottom of the stack, he found a file he thought he wouldn't see again anytime soon. It was a thick folder, full of notes on exploration and chromatically based locations. SCP-093. Status: Missing, Presumed Destroyed.
He looked over the several pages of examinations Bright had ordered on the object, noted how the prognosis for repair had looked quite promising, and quietly closed the folder, setting it aside and retrieving the logs from the last day of Site-19. It took him a few minutes to find the security access data, and less time to discover that one of the many alarms tripped that day was to 093's research lab. Furthermore, it was the only alarm set off in its sector. He slowly put the puzzle together, sighed, and looked at the next file: "Concerning the Locating and Elimination of the Rogue Agent Imants."
He read the report, signed at the bottom of the file to note he'd seen it, and then checked the box next to "Denied," citing a need for Foundation resources to be applied more scrupulously during such a difficult time. With luck, that would keep them from rediscovering the object before Imant's new employers could destroy it. He'd had a long day, and he was fairly glad when it was over, but it didn't show.
Gears placed the manila folder in his outbox, and a crease knitted his eyebrows briefly and was gone.
"Goodbye, Jack."
He turned off the lights and left the room.

The Future:
The stems of wheat waved slowly, methodically, in the wind. The corpse would have been long desiccated, save for the fact that there weren't enough bacteria left alive to do much to it. All over the middle and lower torso, bulges of tumorous growths protruded under the skin, sometimes breaking through. The expression spoke of one who had died in agony. Even now, the eyes were painfully cramped shut, the teeth broken from gnashing and grinding, though the face still flickered and changed occasionally. Every so often, it flitted into a mocking smile, the last vestige of a man who, in his final moments, had passed on his death to his enemy. A final, spiteful act of a spiteful man. But not one that was undeserved.
How long the body lay there, no one could know, but eventually, coasting over the horizon, there came a form. A strange half body, dragging itself with its arms, incomprehensibly large and impossibly terrible. It came, smelling blood, something it hadn't sensed in many, many years. The face, if it could be called that, was leering down at the slowly rotting corpse, smelling it, possibly savoring it, although its intentions would be impossible to tell. There was no way to know the mind of such a creature, so far was it removed from its original, human roots.
The mouth slowly lowered down to the ground, surrounding the body and swallowing it whole. For a brief instant, it ceased moving. But in the next moment, it howled—though if in anguish or joy it could not be said. The form bent and twisted as the souls of a dead world became overwritten, leaving only a single, mingled consciousness. It doubled over as the eternal torment of billions became the burden of one. It shuddered as the knowledge of countless minds were added to its own.
And just on the other side of the mirror, just out of sight, remained Jack Bright, trapped eternally between realities.
Waiting. Festering.
Plotting.


SCP-001 is an O5's tale
Good evening, Doctor.
No, no, don't stand up. And, yes, I am who you think I am. Let's not make any more of this than it is. You know my number, and I know enough about you to make a duplicate that even your mother wouldn't be able to tell apart from the real you. No, that's not a threat, just a fact.
Now, as to my business here, it seems you have stumbled upon something above your clearance. Well, no, stumbled is not the right word. Dug up? Perhaps. And you are getting to the point where further digging would end in some fairly lethal gunshot wounds. This would be a sad state of affairs, as you are otherwise quite a good researcher. Therefore, you are getting something very few people in the Foundation ever get… an explanation.
Yes, we were alerted when you first started digging into SCP-001. Every researcher who's been around for a while looks into it. Most are satisfied when they uncover the angel with the flaming sword, it's buried under enough levels. But then you started looking into The Factory, and that is when I knew you wouldn't stop. So, here it is, plain and simple.
The Factory is SCP-001.
But it will never be written up. It was a choice I made early on in the creation of the Foundation, and a choice I still stand by. You researchers are far too curious. I'm not sure which scares me worse. That we'll never understand the Factory… or that we one day will. Ah well, I'm sure you're eager to learn more.
The Factory was built in 1835. Back then it was known as The Anderson Factory, named after James Anderson, a rather well-to-do industrialist. It was built in, well, we'll just say America, and was the largest factory yet designed, a good mile across at its widest, three stories tall throughout, with a special seven story tower by the front gate that Anderson lived in. It was designed to be the ultimate factory, capable of taking care of everything, including the housing of workers. People could be born, work, live, and die, without ever leaving the confines of the Factory. And work they did, on everything from cattle raising and slaughtering, to textiles, to everything else under the sun.
Now, no one knows whether James Anderson was actually a Satan worshiper. It's just as likely that he followed some kind of Pagan gods. What is known is that he was VERY exact in the building of his factory, and in the placement of his machinery within it. Survivors claim the floor was engraved with arcane symbols, that were only visible when blood flowed across them… But then the survivors claimed a lot of things. What is known is that Anderson made his money on the blood and sweat, and sometimes body parts of the lower class. His journals indicate he thought of them as less than human, being put on this Earth only to serve his will.
Of course, at that time, no one knew about his predilections, and so people flocked to the Factory. A place to both work and live at the same time? Well, of course people wanted in! Never mind the harsh hours, working conditions, sadistic security force, and all the rest. Factory workers were forced to work 16 hour days, work only shutting down on Sundays, between sunrise and sunset. Workers were not given individual rooms, instead sharing rooms with eight other people, sleeping in shifts of three. Medical attention was unheard of. If you were injured in the course of your duties, which most people were, you were expected to just keep working. Anyone too injured to work was dragged off by the security, never to be heard from again.
For forty years, the Anderson Factory cranked out all sorts of things for people. Meat, clothes, weapons. Never mind that the beef might be mixed with human. Don't care that the weapons were forged in blood. No attention need be paid that the clothes were dyed with…well, you get the idea. Rumors leaked out, but the products were so good, why bother? Until someone got out.
I never met the brave soul who managed to escape, but she managed to meet with President Grant, and, in 1875, he enlisted my aid. At the time I was… well, it doesn't matter. We'll say I was military, kind of, and that my people were the same. A hundred and fifty good men and some few women, who were often given jobs that weren't supposed to be common knowledge. We'd been cleaning out some Confederate holdouts, and some of the worse things we found down South. So, we did some research, didn't like what we saw, and went in, loaded for bear.
I don't actually remember much about the night it all went down. Most of it blends together in my head. I get flashes, sometimes, of the people chained to the line, living next to dead, and damned hard to tell which was which. Children working underneath machines, the majority of the flesh scoured from their bones by the great wheels and cogs. And the other things…
No, I'm all right. I haven't thought about that night for a very long time. The security force wasn't much of a problem. But then Anderson's creations showed up. He'd been taking the injured workers and, well, experimenting on them. Men, if you could call them men, with multiple arms, sewn together, some of them combined with animals, horrible monstrosities out of mankind's worst nightmares. They kept coming, wave after wave of not quite living creatures. I lost a lot of good people that night. And then we found Anderson's breeding pits, girls as young as eight, chained to the walls, forced to be nothing more than-
I'm sorry. Even today, more than a century later, the memory makes me see red. When we finally found Anderson cowering in his office, we hung him from his tower window, with his own entrails. As he died, he laughed, saying it didn't matter, we could kill him, but his factory, The Factory, would go on. He was still laughing 24 hours later when we finally cut him down, had him drawn and quartered, and then burned the remains. The entire time he uttered blasphemies that I don't like to think about.
We spent a week cleaning that place out, freeing the workers, putting down the things we found in the basements and many lightless rooms. We pulled out things that were useful, stocked them in a house near the gate, tried to make sense of everything. A hundred and fifty of us went into that hell pit that night, and only ninety-three came out. By the end of that week, we were down to seventy-one.
But the things we found in there, my god. Well, you've been with the Foundation a while, they wouldn't seem as amazing to you, but we found toy guns that shot real bullets. A yo-yo that would flay the skin from anyone it touched, hammers that only worked on human flesh. A breed of skeletal horse that ran faster than anything we'd ever seen. Cloaks that seemed woven from the night itself, and let men access a shadowy dimension that… I get away from myself. We found tools, both wondrous and horrible. And we were faced with a choice.
I gathered my highest ranking, well, we'll call them officers, to me, and we tried to figure out what we would do. They all had opinions. The Chaplain, he had gone a little crazed. Thought all these objects must be miracles sent from god, holy relics to be worshipped. Marshall and his little toady Dawkins thought there was a fortune to be made here, making and selling these things to the highest bidder. The Injun we all called Bass, due to his deep speaking voice, he called these things an abomination, and declared that we should hunt down and destroy everything we could find. And Smith thought we should take this stuff back to the president. The only one without an opinion was the old man, but he never said much of anything anyways. We argued for hours, days, trying to work it out. Me, I thought we were sitting on a gold mine, all right. But that we could use these things, these objects, to hunt down some of the scary things we'd run into down South, the other monsters this world had to offer, and use this factory for good, as a place to contain these things, find a way to make them work for our fellow man, or at least protect our fellow man from having to deal with them.
I'm sure you can figure out what happened. The Chaplain snuck away in the night with his devotees, taking a couple of small items with him. Marshall we kicked out when we found him… abusing his authority. He promised he'd get revenge, and that little Dawkins shit led the rest of their group off with some of the juicier items. Bass and his people tried to light the whole damn thing on fire, then just left when it didn't work. And Smith left, to report back to the president. I did manage to get him to promise me he'd tell Grant the Factory had been destroyed. I had big plans for that place.
A'course, it was kinda hard to follow through on big plans when you only have 12 other people to work with. But it was a start.
And it worked, for a while. We had these amazing toys, and finding people to work with us was easy. Back then, going off the grid was as simple as leaving town. We knew what we wanted, we knew what we could be.
Leventhal set out getting us backing. A simple invention here, some well invested money there, it all worked out. White and Jones set out getting us… other backing. In our previous work we'd found out some interesting things about people. Some secrets that powerful men didn't want getting out. And, with our new position helping keep secrets, we got more people asking us to deal with their secrets. Blackmail is a dirty word, but it works. Bright, Argent and Lumineux got to work cataloging the items. Light and Bright's wife, the nurse, they made sure we kept ourselves healthy. Heh. No, it's just, remembering Light. She had such unusual ideas about hygiene, for the time. Brilliant woman. Czov, Fleischer and Carnoff dealt with training the troops. Tesla and Tamlin were in charge of figuring out how to take advantage of the items, without making it obvious.
We were amazing. The city we built around the Factory, which we took to calling Site Alpha, was self supporting. Agents, researchers, operatives of all sorts… not by those names, of course, but those positions. We expanded.
…
I'm sorry, I am an old man. I know I do not look it, but the body lies. The mind… doesn't always remember right. And sometimes I get lost in my memories. Things get confused. But, the long and simple of it is this: We used the Factory. It always seemed to have more empty rooms to store things in. Back then, that was the word for them, things. No Skips then, no. We thought we had the Factory tamed. That's one of the reasons I refuse to quit this job. If there's anything I can do here, it's remind people that we will NEVER tame these things. Contain them, yes, but as we saw with Able, tame them? Never.
After a decade or so, we were pretty organized. The 13 original of us were being called by numbers, not names. We knew how to make things work. And, if a thing or two vanished inside of the Factory, still? And the occasional D-class? What? Yes, we had D-class back then. Disposables. That's where the D comes from. Had to have someone to test things on, Tesla and Tamlin were both very firm about that. But, yes, sometimes we lost people who didn't matter. Adam… sorry, Dr. Bright, was fond of saying it was the Factory taking its toll. You can't get something for nothing.
1911 was when it all went wrong. Things… we called them faeries. An entire race of things, living beside us. They could look the same as you or I. The only obvious difference was an allergy to Iron. Yes, that's why we called them faeries. No, you haven't heard of them. Why? Because it's the one time the Foundation wiped out an entire race of things. Root and branch. And I'm the one who did it.
We'd been hunting them for some time. We'd run into them a time or two before, come out on top. So, when a certain royal asked us for help, of course we were eager to get them in our debt. We've always loved having people in our debt. We sent a team to help out, take care of what we thought was a hunting party. The next time we saw them, their heads were on poles, attached to the saddles of the creatures the Faeries rode, when they attacked the Factory.
It was horrible.
Three words, but they convey so much. I have never… I'm sorry, please, give me a moment. I've never told this part to anyone. You should consider yourself lucky. And, if you ever tell anyone any of what I am about to impart on you, I will not just kill you, but everyone who shares your DNA, in the worst ways possible. You'll think Procedure 110-Montauk is a walk in the park compared to what I do to you.
We lost. The things came, and they destroyed us. Rode over our emplacements, slaughtered our people, shrugged off our weapons like they were nothing. I watched my thirteen go down, left and right, just trying to hold the Factory. And I? I, their leader, their friend, their father figure? Godfather to the Bright's four young children. Confidant, sometimes lover, always the confessor? I ran. I ran like a scared little school boy, deep into the dark guts of the Factory. I was chased by the things, always just one step ahead. I could hear them behind me, feel their breath upon my neck, and …
I came to a door I'd never seen before. A bronze door, covered in Arabic script of some sort. I've never been one for languages, especially not the curvy bullshit the musselmen use. But I didn't care. They were coming for me, and I threw the door open and dived through it. Everything inside… was different. There was a feeling of peace, that nothing could hurt me here. The light was this dark red, but still felt right. My ears were filled with the steady thrumming of a gigantic heartbeat. And, in front of me, were the remains of Anderson. It spoke to me then, but I'll be damned if I could tell you exactly what it said. What it told me was more meaning, than exact. It offered me hope. It told me… it told me that each of the things we had used from the Factory, no matter what we did with them, fed it. Helped it grow. But, if the Faeries took the Factory, they would destroy it, and we couldn't have that. It offered me… a deal. It could remove this event. Make it have never happened. All I needed to give it was… us.
I didn't want to. I knew it was a bad idea. But then, I saw them again, my family, my friends, dead. Dead by the hands of those bastards… I agreed. It smiled. And I found myself once more upon the ramparts, watching the horde of Faeries crest the hill. My Foundation alive once more. In my hands was a weapon. I won't bore you with the details, but we slaughtered them. And, with these new weapons, continued to slaughter them, everywhere they lived, everywhere they bred. My fellow O5s questioned my decision, thinking we should save some, in case we might ever need them… I overruled them.
We moved away from the Factory. Shut it down. Moved our things out of there. We changed the name from things to Special Containment Protocols, focusing on containing them, not… anything else. The others were curious, but understood I had my reasons. I boarded up the Factory. Locked it shut. Buried it under a ton of rubble, saying it was too dangerous. I thought… thought I'd gotten away with it. Until I found a thing on my desk. One of the old toy guns that shot real bullets. And it had the Factory label on it.
… I've sent people in, from time to time, to see what it might be doing. Last time I sent people in to look, there was nothing there. We keep finding Factory items out there. I can't help but think of how many more we don't find. The people who use them, and keep it hidden. I think back to the body telling me how each item used gave energy to the Factory. I never asked it 'energy for what?' I don't think I want to know.
What do we give it? D-class, mostly. Where DID you think all those bodies went? There's a place. Bodies are left, and they vanish. Everyone thinks I'm a genius for figuring it out. Sometimes… sometimes I have to feed it other things. Researchers. Agents. They never know it's coming. It just reaches out and takes them.
But, in the end, we're doing more good by being here. Whatever the Factory wants, whatever it IS… We're doing good here. I have to believe that.
And now you know. Are you happy? I didn't think so. Why tell you? I'm getting old, Everett. Should I die, someone will have to keep feeding it. Maybe you'll be different. Maybe you'll figure out how to stand up to it.
… But I doubt it.


Dr. Bright stirred his coffee with a spoon, taking a long moment to savor the aroma. One unusual aspect of his bond with 963 is that certain sensations were different in each body he occupied. Colors were slightly different, smells triggered different emotions, and coffee… cheap instant coffee was unusually good in this body. Who knew that a chimpanzee's taste buds and instant coffee got along so well?
"Good morning, old chap." Dr. Kain's nails clacked on the tile floor as he trotted into the break room. "Got some good news and some bad news. First the good news: 682 escaped again last night."
"How the hell is that good news?"
"Well, after killing 792 guards on his way out, he stole a car and went on an alcoholic bender across two states."
Dr. Bright furrowed his brow. "You're pulling my leg. If that is the good news—"
Kain barked happily. "I'm not done yet! 682 wrapped the car around a tree at 150mph. The airbag did not deploy. The big bad lizard is dead."
"Of course!" Dr. Bright said. "Drunk driving! Why didn't we think of this sooner! Well, what is the bad news?"
"It was your car."

DRUNK DRIVING DESTROYS LIVES DON'T DO IT OKAY
BROUGHT TO YOU BY MADD(itcwys)
MONKEYS AGAINST DRUNK DRIVING (in their car which you stole)


I'm real sorry about all of this.
I knew we was in trouble soon as Barnes shot yer daughter.
Oh, hey, quit cryin', she'll be fine. He's a lousy shot.
Anyway, I'm real sorry about yer dog. I mean, it did bite my leg, but I guess it wouldn't've done that if I hadn't been beatin' you with that lamp. Hey, good news there. Lamp still works. Little duct tape, it'll be good as new.
Those ropes too tight? Sorry. I'd loosen 'em, but we don't want you gettin' loose an' tryin' to escape. There's been enough screw-ups tonight, don't you think?
Guy you should be pissed at is your neighbor. Fucker switched the house numbers. Must've known we was on to him.
You wanna know what this is about? Eh, what the hell. Ain't like you'll remember any of this tomorrow.
See, a few months ago, there were some murders. Yeah, you read about 'em. Skinned alive. That's a bunch of bullshit, right there. You ever skin somebody alive? They wriggle everywhere.
Oh, now look what you done. Never throw up when yer gagged. Here, lemme clear yer mouth. Now, you scream, we're gonna have to break another finger. Okay, there you go. That's good, right in the bucket. And now the gag goes back on, an' you still got eight good fingers. See how that works? An' just kiddin' about the finger. I'd've just shoved the gag back on. You've suffered enough, y'know?
So, where was I? Oh yeah, skinnin' people alive. Hard as hell. That bit was made up by the papers. Sounds a hell of a lot more exciting. Nah, he cut their throats first, then skinned 'em. Anyway, twenty years back, there was another case kinda like this, back east. There's a few folks who've talked about it, but they don't think there's a connection, on account the guy there was caught. But check this out: The fucker said he needed to eat the skin to live. How does he end up dyin'? Malnutrition, even though he gets three meals a day.
So, we look into it, an' the guy had a kid, who moved out here. Yeah, yer neighbor. So, we come in, do some checkin' up, an' once we did, it came pretty clear he did it. Unfortunately, looks like he got wind of us, an' skipped out, with a last little screw you in the bargain. So, we got guys tearin' up his place to figure out where he went. Oh, we'll find him, don't worry. He's sloppy. He'll screw up eventually.
Anyway, get comfy. We got someone comin' here who's gonna make you forget everythin' that happened. Tomorrow mornin', this'll seem like it was just a botched robbery. We'll even set you up t'look like a hero, saved yer family. How's that?
By the way, how's rent around here? Seems like a nice neighborhood.


Lemme tell you about reality benders.
First off, we like t'call 'em Bixbies. Why? One, in case somebody accidentally says somethin' in front of a civilian, it don't tip 'em off. Two, if yer talking to a reality bender, they might not know all they can do, an' you don't wanna give 'em any ideas.
These fuckers are dangerous. You see one, you don't engage unless you absolutely have to. If you do have to, be polite, try t'think happy thoughts, maybe you'll have a good day. Probably not. Whenever you can, let the experts deal with 'em.
We don't try containin' them, most of the time. Yeah, Foundation don't usually work that way, but we like t'have a world to live in. So on this point, we usually agree with the GOC. Better they're gone.
Okay, so, you're fightin' somebody who can do pretty much anything. How d'you stop 'em? Well, first off, they can't do anything they ain't thought of. Like, they can maybe all read minds. But if they ain't thought about doin' it, don't know they can, then they're not gonna try it. Remember, they're not smarter'n you. They may be able to do things different, might know things you don't, but they're not smarter.
Second, they gotta concentrate. We had one asshole, he decided he was gonna know about everybody watchin' him. Fucker killed twenty of us before we just had a bunch of us rush him. Couldn't get all of 'us, y'know?
Which kinds of Bixbies are worst? Depends how you mean. For my money, it's a kid Bixby. Almost always ends with a bullet. Sniper can usually take 'em out pretty easy. But actually killin' 'em? You show me a guy who just shot a three-year-old, I show you somebody with some damage upstairs. There are worse things you'll do for the Foundation, but not a lot.
Now, hardest to take down? Usually, somebody around late teens, early twenties. Much younger, they don't know enough to do as much harm. Older'n that, they don't got much flexibility in their thinkin' to try anything real out there. Late teens, early twenties, they're gonna experiment. They're gonna try anything that springs t'mind. They're not gonna be slow an' careful in figurin' out what they can do. We get one o' them, we pull out th' big guns.
Now, it don't always end with us killin' 'em. Sometimes, especially older ones, we can talk with 'em, a little. Convince 'em the world ain't worth it. Get 'em to move on somewhere else. A lot of 'em will even do it on their own. So far, ain't one of 'em ever come back. No one knows just why. Maybe this world really is that much of a shithole. Or maybe somethin's eatin' 'em, I don't know.
Anyway, now you see what I mean when I say a giant turtle ain't no big deal, even if it is spittin' fire at us.


Don't talk to me about no fuckin' urban legends. Jesus, in our line o' work, you'd think you'd know better.
Whadda I mean? I mean they ain't just fuckin' stories, dipshit. Oh, fine, some of 'em are. I mean, sure, no gangbanger's gonna shoot you just 'cause you flashed your headlights. But a lot of 'em ain't. Why don't nobody hear about 'em? Why don't they hear 'bout no fuckin' skips? We ain't the only ones dancin' in this here party, ya know?
No, I ain't fulla shit. Look, I'll tell you how I know they're real.
Okay, so this was a while back. I was out huntin' elves in Jersey. What? They was short, had pointy ears, an' squeaky voices. That's good enough for me. Were they really elves? Probably not. Sure as hell didn't bake no cookies. Do I give a shit what they're really called? No I do not. Anyways, don't interrupt.
So, I'm off duty, having finished up for the day. I go drinkin' at a dive in the bad side o' town. Reminds me of home, right? So, there's this broad. She's cute, so I buy her a drink. One thing leads to another, an' I go back t'her place. No, it ain't professional, but what the fuck do you care what I do in my fuckin' off-time? Jesus.
So, we have some drinks, make some small talk, an' I suddenly find myself crashin' harder'n Buddy Holly an' the Big Bopper. Yeah, you see where I'm goin' with this.
Thing is, the bit where you wake up in a bathtub, wit' ice? Yeah, that's bullshit. They're takin' yer fuckin' kidneys. The fuck do they care if you live? You're just some random fuck who can point 'em out in a line-up. Best if you don't ever turn up.
Yeah, I'm still alive. Thanks fer noticin'. Y'might also notice somethin' they didn't account for, proper-like. I'm a big fuckin' guy. Three hundred pounds, hair under seven foot. There's a whole fuckin' lot of me. An' it takes a lot to take me down, an' even more to keep me down. I wake up with this real bad pain in my side. I open my eyes, and there's this fuck with a scalpel openin' me up. I put a stop to that really fuckin' quick, believe me. I was a bit woozy, but I'm a trained Foundation agent. They was a bunch of amateurs. It went down about how you'd expect.
So don't talk to me about no fuckin' urban legends.
Anyway, keep yer eyes open. This fucker with the hook's gotta show up sometime.


Site-19
There was a package on her desk. Dr. Rights sat down curiously, slipping the letter opener out of its little holder, and sliding it through the tape on the seams of the cardboard. Some of the tape had peeled away slightly, and the ink from the stamps of “NOT A BOMB” and “MEMETIC HAZARD NOT DETECTED” had faded.
Inside was a letter, a picture frame, and a box of chocolates. A thin layer of dust had settled on the contents. She cocked her head to one side, confused by who or what this was from.
She opened the letter with a flick of a finger, and sat back in her chair, slipping her reading glasses on from the chain she kept around her neck. She hated the things, but it was a consequence of getting older. The letter was handwritten on expensive stationary, and was dated from a few years ago.
“Hello, Doctor Rights. If you're reading this, I'm probably dead, or just forgot to drop in. One of those. Either way, I wanted to say happy birthday,” she glanced over at her calendar, and gave a slight sigh of surprise. It was her birthday, not that she kept track any more. The frequent XK scenarios made keeping track of the date a bit challenging.
“I know you said that if I remembered your birthday, you'd kill me, but hey, I'm either dead, or going senile, so who cares. I hope you enjoy the chocolates, and have a decent day. Take it easy on the damn kids for once.” It wasn't signed, but she felt as if she should know who wrote it. The name was on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn't quite grasp who it was.
She lifted the picture frame from the box, and looked at it. It was a group photo of the foundation Researchers from Site 19, in the early days before all the staffing had been finished. There were only a few people present in the photograph.
The command level staff were present, and a few other lower level staff that Doctor Rights had befriended over the years, but there was a curious blank spot near the middle. One of the other doctors was hanging off of what seemed to be thin air, before it hit her: She couldn't see who was there.
She grabbed the letter again, and looked down near the bottom. Sure enough, there was a script that said, “Sincerely,” but was blank after that. She picked up the box of chocolates, and the sender was blank as well.
The realization hit her like a train. Her pulse started to pound in her temples, and her jaw clenched, as anger washed over her. The little reading glasses slipped off the bridge of her nose, jangling from their fine chain.
Who the hell did they think they were, erasing someone from her past without her authorization? A strict deletion memetic was nearly unthinkable to use on someone with her Level.
Dr. Rights shook with rage, standing up, and storming out of her office. Someone was going to catch hell for this.

Dimensional Site-4
In her office, O5-2 sat surrounded by a mountain of paperwork. Aides flowed in and out of the cramped office, passing through an oddly colored door which hurt to look at.
A tall man in a blue suit passed in to the office, shaking off the momentary disorientation. "Overseer, you called for me?"
O5-2 nodded her head, “Has the memetic been distributed?
The aide nodded, and said quietly, “Yes ma'am, all known records, and instances of the name Doctor-“ his voice went eerily silent, and his mouth blurred as he spoke the name, “have been deleted.”
O5-2 nodded once more, and looked back down at the report in front of her. "Good. Begin Directive Legends at once."
The aide turned sharply, and exited back through to Site-4.

« The Most Dangerous Game | HUB | When All You Have is a Hammer»


The rain beat a staccato passage on the bright red umbrella. It was not a particularly heavy rain, but had been a steady one throughout the day, and the clouds were still as dark as they had been that morning. Dr. Rights had no problems with rain, so long as she was dry, but couldn't help but feel the unavoidable irritation caused by the fact that it had decided to rain on one of her rare days off.
A car sped past, hitting a puddle of dirty rainwater. The spray splashed Rights dead-on. The doctor snarled and gave a one-fingered salute to the retreating vehicle. She was reminded for a moment of her old philosophy professor, Dr. Cabenwald, who had the habit of calling the gesture the “inverted avian” and the tendency to make said gesture at the back of the dean's head.
Rights smiled a bit as she stepped over a puddle and continued down the sidewalk.

It's dark. The kind of warm darkness interspersed with lovers' murmurings and the rustling of sheets.
The door is kicked open. Sharp light and harsh voices fill the room. He's dragged off the bed, pinned to the floor with his arms behind his back, stuttering incoherently. She's screaming profanities.
One man looks at her grimly. He's armed. He tells her to stay calm, make herself decent, and wait. Someone will explain. She spits and screams at him, still half-naked.

Rights had reached the top of the hill. To her left was a chain link fence and a steep expanse of grass and patches of small trees, all of which overlooked the far distant highway and sprawl of fast-food restaurants. To her right was a line of older, two story houses. Several had overgrown yards and “FOR SALE” signs in the front window. Some were brick, others covered in faded, chipping paint. Rights walked a bit further before crossing, stepping up the concrete steps to one of the houses.
The house was plain brick, though it could use a re-facing. The yard was neat and uncluttered, or at least it had been before it was flooded, and there were flowers planted on either side of the front walk. A creaking wooden swing hung on the porch. The ragged, muddy mat in front of the door was emblazoned with the phrase “Wipe Here, You Uncultured Savages”. Rights collapsed her umbrella and wiped the wet mud off her tennis shoes.

They're taking him away. She tries to fight them, but the man who spoke to her puts his gun in her face. “I'm sorry”, he says, in the way that meant that he was definitely not sorry.
Minutes pass. The shock passes, at least a small amount. She puts on a t-shirt and shorts and goes into the kitchen. The light is on.
Dr. Cabenwald is sitting at the little table in the kitchen. He has two cups of coffee with him; one in his hand and the other in the spot opposite him. He's a big man, with no hair on top and a thick salt-and pepper beard on the bottom. He looks tired, but is smiling anyway. He motions to the empty seat and the cup of coffee. She looks around the room. Another man in a police uniform is standing by the apartment door. He's reading a cheap paperback, but his eyes shift to look at her every few seconds.
”What the flying fuck is going on?” She voices it more like a statement, with a glare that embodies ‘hell hath no fury'.
Cabenwald smiles, and motions to the chair again.
“Take a seat. I don't know if I can explain it well enough, but I'd appreciate it if you'd hear me out.”

A reluctant moment passes before she sits down. She sips the coffee. Black. Very black.
“What happened to Mr. Matthews was nothing of his own fault. Had we known about him sooner, this whole incident could have been avoided.” He always talked about students like that: Mr. Matthews, Miss Rights. First name basis was given on graduation and not a moment before.
She sips more coffee. Cabenwald continues.
“Mr. Matthews was host to a non-standard bacterial infection of the brain and lymphoid system with underlying memetic hazard. We feared it had progressed to the end of the incubation period and so had to take immediate action to prevent outside infection. He'll be taken to a secure facility, screened, and treated. This particular infection is usually fatal, unless treatment is applied quickly.” He swallows a mouthful of coffee.” He should survive.”
She looks him in the eye, staring him down.
“So he had some disease? You'll have to do better than that, professor.”
“I have no reason to lie, Miss Rights, but I understand. The disease that Mr. Matthews was infected with was a disease completely unknown to ordinary science. Had it reached full maturity, he would have begun to experience vivid hallucinations, as well as the development of tumor-like growths which would eventually burst and spread the contagion. His mental state would deteriorate to the point of insanity, which would easily lead to mass murder before his own death.”
“To tell the truth, I am in the employ of a certain Foundation, shall we say. And this Foundation's purpose is to contain things like what infected Mr. Matthews and prevent them from reaching the world at large.”
“Give me proof.”
Cabenwald smiles.

Rights knocked on the door.
“Come in!” An elderly voice shouted from inside. She opened the door.
The man sat at his kitchen table, with a half-eaten ham sandwich and a half-completed game of solitaire on the checkered tablecloth in front of him. He was large in build and portly around the waist, with a completely bald head and a brilliantly white beard. He could have passed for Santa Claus.
“Thought you could use a visitor, Greg,” Rights said as she stepped into the kitchen.
Dr. Cabenwald's face lit up.
“A pleasure as always, Agatha. Got time for a round or two?” he collected the cards and began to shuffle.
“It's my day off.” She took the chair opposite him. “I've got a full twenty-four hours of time.”
“Where's the little one?”
“With daddy for the day. I wanted to bring her with me, but he went and said “It's your day off, I can take care of her!" Between you and me, I just think he wants to show her off to the guys at the office.”
“You better have pictures for me then.” Cabenwald dealt the first hand.
“I do, don't worry.” Rights smiled.

“Never trust in anyone unless they can give you proof. A+ for you, Miss Rights.” He digs in the pocket of his jacket and takes out a photograph. He hands it to her.
The photo is recent, and incredibly clear. A large green shape, like some sort of twisted dinosaur, can be seen tearing apart a man in an orange jumpsuit. Three men in black uniforms are firing guns at it, to no noticeable effect. It could not and should not be real, but it is, down to the individual blood flecks. No fake could be this detailed.
“SCP-682. One of our more dangerous charges.” He takes the photo back.
“Why are you telling me this?”
He finishes his coffee and folds his hands on the table.
“Because you're coming with us.
What?
“The chance for infection was low, but we can't be too careful in these sorts of situations.” Cabenwald stands up. “You're a loose end, and the Foundation likes to ties those up quickly. We always keep a few open slots on the personnel list, just in case.”

“I've been keeping a look after Edward,” Cabenwald said. “He's doing all right. Got any threes?”
“Go fish.”
“He never recovered mentally, but he's managed to hold down a janitorial job near here, and he has a few people who come in to check on him every now than then.”
“Think he remembers me? Sixes, please.”
“Damn it. No, I don't think he would. Got any kings?”
“Go fish.” Rights chuckled. “It always gets me how I came to the Foundation by sleeping with someone. Got any queens?”
Cabenwald grumbled and inverted the avian at his former protégé.


It's a beautiful summer's day.
I walk through my greenhouse, taking in the scent of flowers, admiring my wonderful plants; tall, slowly aging shrubberies, pretty little rosebushes; one or two exotic looking ones that must have been imported from outside the country somewhere, but that I got here for an amazing deal. And of course, my beloved hybrids. My friends thought I was absolutely mad to try it; grafting cuttings from so vastly different types. But with love and care, here they are.
I take a few minutes to tend to my lovelies; some food here, a little water there, a bit of pruning; Leaves tend to grow so fast, and I can't stand my plants looking so- dishevelled. I get water in my boots when one of them overflows a little; I give it a playful little smack, and it droops a bit. Maybe I hit it too hard. I notice that the restraints on one of the shrubs (Plants need to stand tall and proud, don't you think?) seem to be cutting into the bark; I loosen them, and sap trickles down, and I can almost hear it let out a sigh of relief. There are clear marks left in the wood, but now that the ties are looser, they should heal and fill back out. I move on.
I let out a gasp as I see that one of my beautiful rosebushes has started to wilt. It was one of the ones I took a cutting from to make a hybrid, and the stump of the branch looks like it's starting to mould. Not wanting it to spread to any others, I decide to take it out and give it a proper sending-off. As I bury it in the back field, I can almost hear it whimpering at me. So many of my lovely plants seem to end up out here, despite my care and attention. I have a good supplier, so my greenhouse is never lacking in beauties, but it still breaks my heart every time I come out here to the field.
When I go back to the greenhouse, I make a beeline for the back room where I keep my hybrids; they're very susceptible to infection, so I need to make sure that that rosebush didn't indirectly harm any of her fellows. I come to the door and breathe a sigh of relief; they all seem to be doing well.
It's almost an art form, what I do. I love to experiment with different combinations, and I can't help but have a little fun while I do it; the one closest to the door is half blueberry bush, half strawberry, split right down the middle; of course, it didn't survive the process. After it died, I let it dry outside in the sun, then wrapped it in plastic wrap to protect it from the moisture in the greenhouse, and now I mostly keep it there as decoration. The one next to it is the result of taking all the branches off an old spider-plant, and grafting the branches from a young apple tree in their place; it looks lovely, but it can barely support itself, even with the ties. There are a few others, but my prize is what I like to call 'The Chimera"; multiple graftings from several different sources; rosebushes, berry bushes, shrubs, all on the trunk of a small pine, which I stripped of all its branches. Miraculously, it's managed to survive for two weeks. Of course, due to its nature, I wouldn't give it much longer.
But I can't bring myself to feel bad; I can make plenty more hybrids. I'm in a spending mood, so I make a mental note to remind myself to call my supplier for few additions to my garden.
And of course, it truly is a beautiful day.


One learns very quickly that any quiet day at Site 19 is not a good day. Inevitably, something like a containment breach of something horrible and terrifying happens, or there's chowder in the cafeteria, or Bright dies. One also learns quickly that any attempts to break the silence usually ends horribly as well. So today, being a quiet day at Site 19, everyone was on edge.
It… did not help that Rights was not happy.
Rights stormed into the break room first thing in the morning, her hair and makeup a mess and her clothes not nearly as neat as they usually are. One poor staff member was at the coffee machine, getting his usual fix. Rights glared menacingly at the poor man until he turned around, the hair on his neck rising, like he were faced with the face in 087. Rights growled menacingly, “MOVE.” She then got her green tea with vast quantities of honey post haste and glared down the rest of the staff as she stalked away to frighten more lower leveled staff.
Once she was out of earshot, the man she terrified, a scrawny, pale young man, asked, “Jeez, what's HER problem?”
Dr. Gears, having sat by with his morning cup of water, said calmly, “It would seem that Dr. Rights is upset by something, most likely that it is her birthday and no one has yet to wish her to make it enjoyable, or perhaps that her baby was as she puts it a ‘fussbutt' this morning.”
“Well, why don't you go and wish her a happy birthday?”
“That course of action would not be wise. If I were to wish her a happy birthday, she would most likely injure me in some way or another. I propose that we stay out of her way.”
The scrawny man scoffed and replied, “Well, I don't know about you, but I'd rather not have to put up with that bitch today. I'm going to go wish her a happy fucking birthday.” With a huff and an overly dramatic turn, the scrawny man chased Rights. The group in the break room waited expectantly as they heard the conversation in the silent site.
“Hey! Dr. Rights!” the scrawny man called.
“WHAT DO YOU WANT.” Rights growled.
“I… I wanted to wish you a happy birthday!”
“… oh. Thank you. … where is my cake?”
“… cake?”
“You don't know? If you wish someone at Site 19 a happy birthday, you must give them cake. If you don't, bad things will happen.”
“I… did not know this.”
“Can you make cake happen now?”
“… no?”
“Okay. I'm going to go put bleach in your car's oil.” Rights walked away, whistling a tune as the scrawny man was left dumbfounded.
Later that day, with the eerie silence only broken by the occasional scream as well as a screech from Rights, most of the staff had decided that it would be better to hide in the break room than to be out in the halls where Rights could rip off their heads for looking at her wrong. Finally, Dr. Gears realized that this was absolute madness and it needed to stop. He rallied the few willing staff and found a most delicious looking cake with coconut frosting and decided to throw her a small party. A surprise party, even. He approached Rights carefully and said, “Dr. Rights, I need your assistance.”
Rights turned slowly to Gears and asked menacingly, “With what?”
“It is a private matter. I cannot discuss it.”
“… oh really?”
“Yes. I'd like you to come with me to the break room where we can discuss this matter in private.”
“I'd never think you so brave, Gears.”
“I'm afraid I do not quite understand what you're implying.”
“You know,” Rights imitated Gears' monotone as best she could, “I need your assistance in the break room, Dr. Rights. We will be alone and in private.” She laughed and said, “As if I don't know what you want.”
“If you know, then is coconut alright with you?”
“Coconut? Really? I didn't know you liked it like that!”
“I am not fond of coconut, actually. However, it is the only kind I could find.”
“Ah, that's okay. Come on, let's go ‘discuss this matter.'” With that, the two walked to the break room.
As they entered, Gears turned on the light switch. The room had been decorated with various streamers and a banner reading ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY RIGHTS' and the cake was on the center table. The group of willing staff jumped out from various hiding places and shouted, “SURPRISE!!”
Rights blinked, then stared at Gears. Someone had placed a party hat on his head while she was not looking. Rights' baffled look slowly turned into joy as she said, “You're a tricky bastard, Gears.”


Video Footage Taken From Incident Chimera

Footage begins, showing two pairs of feet. A voice can be heard, identified as Chadwick Wentworth, referred to here as X-1. Second subject, Peter Frans, referred to as X-2, is not heard from at this time.
X-1: No, no Pete, my face, Pete, my face! God damn it Pete, if you're going to be my minion, you gotta do what I tell you! My FACE Pete!
Camera angle tilts upwards, revealing subject X-1. Subjects face is covered in inexpertly applied white make up, with heavy mascara around the eyes, and black lipstick. Subject is thin to the point of emaciation, with long, greasy, dyed black, hair. Subject is dressed in black knee-high leather boots with a five-inch platform heel, black pants covered in chains, a black silk shirt, and a black cloak, with red undertones. X-1 looks at the camera, and smiles.
X-1: There, there, much better… now hit record… RECORD, Pete god damn it man, why did I even make you my minion? Hit the red but-
There is a jump in the film. Camera is now centered on Subject X-1.
X-1: -make sure it's fucking record- Shit! Ahem. Good evening, dear mortals, and welcome. For I am Azarael Astoroth, Archduke of the Seventh Layer, and soon, you shall all KNEEL before me! For, in my deals with the devil, I have gained life everlasting! And not only am I now a totally awesome and wicked vampire…
X-1 gestures around himself, in an attempt to indicate the fading twilight he stands in.
X-1: But I can stand in sunlight without fucking sparkling! That's right! I may have gone into the grave, but I came back, with a thirst for your blood! And I shall rule you all, all of you! Especially you, Mark Olsen! That's right, I bet you're all sad and shit now, oh no, big bad vampire gonna come for me, I'm gonna drink your fucking blood! In fact, I'm gonna go do that, right now! Come on Pete! No, ignore the old man, come with me!
Subjects begin moving, out of the shaded spot they were in, and down a wooded path. Subject X-2 is slower than subject X-1, despite X-1's continued exhortations for him to keep up. Subjects approach a modest ranch in what appears to be a well-to-do suburb on the edge of the woods. X-1 begins making what are best described as 'spooky' sounds, outside the rear window.
Subject X-3, identified as Mark Olsen, comes out the back door, holding a baseball bat. Subject is broad, and well muscled, dressed in only boxers and a varsity jacket. Subject appears enraged.
X-3: What the fuck dude, what the fuck? You gay little faggots wanna fuck with me some more, huh? You wanna go? Come on! I'll fucking kill you limp wristed pansies!

X-3 takes a swing at X-1. X-1 places his hand in the way. There is a crunch, as X-1's fingers break. X-1 laughs.
X-1: You cannot kill the undead, you punk!
X-3 stares in apparent shock, then drops his bat. X-1 bends his fingers back into place with a clicking sound.
X-3: Chad? Chad, you're dead man, you're dead! They fucking buried you man!
X-1: And now I am back. And you… you are going to pay!
X-1 throws himself at X-3. There is a tangle of limbs, with X-3 maintaining the upper hand until X-1 begins to bite him. X-3 begins screaming, as X-1 devours him alive, ripping off huge gobs of flesh with both hands and teeth. The camera view drops to the ground, and for roughly ten minutes, it tapes the forest, while the sound of crying and animalisitic growling can be heard.
The video cuts again.
We now see a very bloody X-1, standing at the back door of another house. He is trying wipe his face clean of the blood.
X-1: Stay focused on my face Pete! Ahem. AHAHAAHAH! Now you mortals see what happens if you mess with me!
X-1 shakes his finger at the camera. The finger drops off. He scowls and picks it back up. The tape cuts, and when it comes back, we see the finger has been put back on with electrical tape.
X-1: You see what can be done, with my great powers! I am a lord of the undead…and now, now I claim my bride!
X-1 turns to the door, and opens it. He sneaks down a long hallway and goes down approximately 13 stairs. At the bottom of the stairs is a small room, a couch, and a television. On the couch a pale, thin girl, dressed all in black. She is identified as Alison Hargreaves, X-4. She turns her head at the sound of X-1, and then falls off the couch.
X-1: Dame Lilian, I have returned for you my love!
X-4: Cha- Azrael! You came back!
X-1: I told you it would work my queen! And now, I shall make you mine! For ours is a love that shall span the ages and-
X-4: You're covered in blood.
X-1 moves closer to X-4. She scoots away from him.
X-1: I just had to take care of someone who had taken something of mine.
X-4: You killed someone? No, we weren't supposed to do… Who did you kill? It was Mark, wasn't it?
X-1: It does not matter my love, he can not make you eternal, he-
X-4 throws a lamp at X-1, striking him in the chest.
X-4: I LOVE HIM! You ASSHOLE! Undead and you still can't get it that…
X-1: I CAN MAKE YOU IMMORTAL, my love.
X-4 pauses, and lowers the statue she had picked up.
X-4: Then do it. But know that, for eternity, I will hate you.
X-1 approaches the girl, and turns her back to him. We see his mouth open, unhinging like a snake. Five sets of needle-like teeth emerge from his lips, and he sinks them into X-4. A loud slurping sound can be heard on the audio. X-4 screams and slumps against him. X-1 lowers her to the floor, and gazes down at her, before speaking softly.
X-1: I did love you. More than he did.
There is a loud pounding from off-screen.
X-1: Shit, someones at the door. Pete! You watch her, I'll get the door.
X-1 storms off-screen. The camera remains on X-4 for a moment, before it is set down. A hooded shape walks on-screen, Subject X-2. He speaks in a low mutter.
X-2: Face.
X-2 bends over X-4, his hood falling back. X-2 is in an extreme state of decomposition, the flesh rotting from his head, his skull showing through in places.
X-2: Face.
X-2 widens his jaw, revealing all his teeth are needle-like. He begins to chew the flesh from X-4's face, ripping gobbets of flesh from her throat with his clawed hands.
X-2: Face.
The low battery light flashes, and the tape ends.


He is taken aback when the waitress smiles at him. The steam coming off the coffee gives her face a wavering, ephemeral look. It's genuine. Not the smile you give a customer, but one of gentle knowing; a "had trouble sleeping didn't you" smile.
He wonders if it's a pretty smile right down to the bone, if the skin and muscle clouds true beauty, pale and gleaming. He wonders if that smile would be so friendly if she knew he was imagining her ribcage, laid bare for all the world to see, light trickling through to illuminate the vertebrae. Bundy could have felt like this, a monster walking through the world of men, unmotivated by money or desire for peace. Just wanting to imprint his own fractured reality over the world.
He's slipping and he knows it. He used to only think about the beauty underneath the skin once in a while. A passing fancy. It consumes him now, constantly trying to distinguish the bone from meat, mentally butchering those around him. Soon enough the butchery will stop being mental.
Sometimes he feels trapped. His skin too heavy, the muscle below restraining him. Breath is constrained by lungs. His organs are a weight that bends him forward, a hunch he could shake if only he were truly free.
It's odd, planning someone's death. It starts as a mental exercise, something he insists to himself is never going to happen, not ever. None of the meticulous ritual, the precise timing will ever be more than a fantasy. This is the lie he tells himself as he mentally runs down the checklist of when the waitress will end her shift. The map of her route he has pinned up in his bedroom says she'll be taking the subway, past that dark alley between the abandoned warehouses, in the district where no one reports screams to the cops.
The coffee cup is white, and, staring at the sparkle from the lights, he wonders if her skull will have the same gleam, or if he'll have to steam it; heat stripping the last particles of meat from between the teeth. Maybe a lacquer, to give it a glorious shine. Well, there'll be time enough to think of that later… He wrenches himself from that line of thought. No. Not yet. He doesn't want to walk away from the rest of the world yet.
There's nothing sexual about it. Indeed, the very act of sex disgusts him, too much sweat and fluids and the noise of meat striking meat.
The steam from the coffee fogs the window, and he can almost see it, phalanges glowing in the light of the street lamps, the eternal friendly grin of the passers-by. The world he should have been born in.
He sips his coffee and feels the patina form on his teeth. Still hiding beauty. For a while.