It would be many, many years before the Altruist-9 finally made contact with EE-00059's location, which would appear, at least at first, to be a large waste of a time and resources. Not to mention the collective economy of a few small but once prosperous countries and city-states. As is the way such projects were
The Altruist-9's metal chassis glimmered as it sat within the sky, scanning the area with billion-dollar sensors, floating in the endlessness of deep space. Almost picturesque, a feat of human engineering surrounded by stars on all sides.
It didn't take long for that stillness of everything to be interrupted by a sudden and unexplained light. It started near the probe, expanding outward until it was massive in size, a great disk in the sky, presenting itself to the Altruist-9. EE-00059-1. The wormhole.
Upon piloting itself inside and approaching the 6th-dimensional manifold at EE-00059-1's epicenter, the probe witnesses an experience that defies words. It happened briefly, in a moment, and then passes like a dream. Nothing else could be said about it.
Not long after, the Altruist-9 would deliver its payload of humanoid information and a single drone containing an advanced AIC known as "Buddy" to the only planet remotely close to the wormhole.
Buddy is a six-legged, arthropod-structured drone capable of observing, storing, and relaying information for Foundation analysis.
Unfortunately, all transmissions with Buddy.aic were lost upon its traversal into EE-00059-1. The technology capable of returning transport of similar probes was assumed to be unfeasible by any lifeforms on the opposite side of the anomaly.
This was not really the case.
Technology like this had existed for one billion and a half years on the opposite side of EE-00059-1. Truth is, no lifeforms on the other side gave a-single-atom-of-an-iota-of-a-fuck about the Altruist-9. It was nothing new.
The wormhole that would go on to be defined as EE-00059-1 ejected plenty of debris from other worlds. Things on the other end would attempt (and fail) to communicate with the trillions of lifeforms that resided and died on the place known as the Stack.
It was ironic how little a difference something named the Altruist would seem to make on the greater good of any carbon-based life on that horrid planet. Existence there was hard enough.
On the other end of an Ellis Wormhole, just a hop, skip and jump away from what we call Earth, was a small, barren planet of dust and deserts. It orbited a black body sun that, while rather dim, would burn the eyes out of any living being even remotely squinting at its surface. At the time of their arrival, this didn't matter.
The human race was about to come to an abrupt end due to a very angry star, thrown by an even angrier god, and the planet on the other end seemed like as good as place as any to temporarily give relief to the four billion life forms escaping from the super-noval clutches of instant death brought on by one confused, edgy jerk of a celestial body.
Although the people of modern-day "Earth" would have all but forgotten the destruction of their home planet, the loss of contact and the subsequent re-population of the other half of its people was complete. There, stories of what had happened would be passed down with significant recall that most would know quite well. It was, after all, their legacy that brought them there.
Alone, free from both the evils of the universe and the Foundation, whose interest in the abnormal quite possibly spurred the destruction that led them here, they learned to live and rely solely on one another. The lack of outside interests meant an era of peace that would go on to solidify their residence on the Stack.
New Earth, on the other hand, would go on to be mostly successful, almost burning itself out on multiple occasions (and definitely on certain timelines, but we won't get into that.). Civilizations would rise and fall, paradigms shifted. History wrote and rewrote itself so many times that their origins would never truly be known. The people in the Stack did both better and worse as they developed far away from their brethren on the Blue-Green world of dirt and water.
The Stack was named so due to it being immeasurably high and fucking cramped. Atmospheric regions on the surface planet were pretty hot, melting the flesh off of most things that dared to walk about during the perpetual, shadowy daytime of the tidally-locked planet. The Stack was located on the cooler side, and had grown to be loved and hated by its residents who had no other choice then to live out their days on their lonely new home.
The Stack was built from most of the wreckage that didn't completely burn up on its way onto the surface of the planet. It was a hodgepodge, yet tightly wound community of beings that had little to do other than survive and occasionally eat one another if it came to it.
It was miserable to say the least, with brief periods of beauty and wonder that broke free of the monotony of their daily lives. People inside the Stack were kept sheltered from the oppressive rays on the outside, only venturing into the wastes to haul debris and corpses in suits that only gave maybe first degree burns to their occupants.
When the Altruist-9 had entered the nearby wormhole, its outer structure was essentially annihilated on the way through. Its payload and inner structure was covered in a thick thermal paste of exotic matter that resembled raspberry jam but tasted like formaldehyde and could strip paint off of most cars. Buddy was unfazed by this because he was what you would call a cold, unfeeling machine.
Buddy.aic landed not-too-softly on the surface of the desert planet, a few kilometers outside the grey-silver walls of the Stack. After initial readings of the atmosphere, it was revealed to be nitrogen-rich, but lacked oxygen completely. Buddy.aic began its meandering about in the general direction of the structure with intent to find something new and exciting to report to its people back home.

In the grand scheme, it only took Buddy a short while to find the towering citadel known as the Stack. Being solar-powered made this whole ordeal a breeze for the drone, which could sustain indefinitely were it not destroyed in one of many other fashions.
Buddy.aic first had attempted to scale the walls of the complex with little success. Shortly afterward, it would begin following the perimeter of recycled debris until it found a suitable entryway.
Circumnavigating for the seventh hour, Buddy was greeted by a gated fence that revealed a dark, dank hallway comprised of welded-together metal panels. The ceiling was low, with large patches of shadows that were interrupted by the occasional light in the distance. Buddy extended its front left leg, which split at the end to reveal its multi-tool hidden inside. A small pair of bolt cutters extended with a whir, the lone drone then going to work, snapping at links in the fence.
Once a sizeable enough hole had been made, Buddy retracted his tool and climbed through with decent dexterity. Passing rapidly inside, the long hall appeared to travel forever, the walls too dark to reveal any number of connecting pathways. Buddy has slightly better night vision than the usual human orbiting the bright star known as Sol, however, so about five meters in he was given an optional left turn into complete darkness.
Taking a minute to decide on a path, Buddy.aic selected the preprogrammed route algorithm for base Euclidean labyrinth structures, following the left wall. The hall ended at a T-intersection rather abruptly, the right path becoming a set of uneven steps that ascended deeper inside.
The drone continued left, which turned on a bend into a small room. However empty, it appeared lived-in, scraps of food and various unidentified tchotchkes littering the shelves and floor. Noises of talking can be heard briefly, gaining Buddy's attention who piloted his shell towards the opposite door.
Passing the threshold into yet another hallway, light is seen growing from a connecting path. Buddy halts and recorded the presence of a large, biolouminescent creature resembling a jellyfish floating in from the right and continuing on left. It appeared unaware of the drone's existence, so Buddy reprogrammed his route to follow the creature, turning shortly after. This continued for some time until the entity floated and phaseed into the wall on its left, leaving behind no trace of its existence.
Buddy picked up the sound of commotion up ahead and proceeded to travel onward.
In the room up ahead, the space widened out, expanding and turning into a large workshop. A dismantled vehicle resembling a snowmobile lied in the corner, propped up on blocks and near a garage door which presumably led outside.
Creatures of varying size and shape appeared to perform various tasks. The noise of commotion and machinery pervade the space.
The drone piloted itself to a pair of feet, apparently belonging to a middle-aged humanoid laying under the propped-up vehicle. The figure didn't see the drone until a while later, its camera lens focused intently on his shrouded form. Cautiously, he started to push himself out from underneath, a look of confusion on his tired face.
"Hello, I am Buddy.aic. I come on the behalf of the Foundation and humanity."
Amusement ran across his visage, temporarily hiding the fatigue. When he spoke, the language was strange but familiar, closely resembling that of the alien linguistics taken from the broadcasts heard thousands of years prior, surprisingly similar but more nuanced and verbose. The human vocal range was not nearly as complex as one would think, and the drone knew this too. The people of the Stack had little in the way of foreign influence, creating a trillion-voice echo chamber that only reinforced past beliefs and customs. Pausing for a moment, Buddy allowed his internal Rosetta Stone to scan the foreign words and algorithmically translate them based on context and past conversation.
"Humanity? What humans are you talking about? Ey, Trey- Get over here and look at this!"
"What is it?"
"A little bot just came inside 'on behalf of humanity'. What do you think of that, Trey?"
Emerging from the back room, another rugged figure comes into view, tall and lanky, wiping his calloused hands on a greasy apron.
"Must be confused or something. You're talking to humans. You're awfully shiny, by the way."
"Hi, I am Buddy.aic."
"You said that already."
"I am an artificial agent contained within this metal framework. I am here to relay information of the status of EE-00059 and report it back to Earth."
"Earth? The Earth? It was destroyed. Hate to be the bearer of bad news, buddy."
"Earth is a terrestrial planet in the Laniakea Supercluster, some one-and-a-half billion light years from the opposite end of your one-way wormhole."
"No shit. What dimension do you hail from then, Buddy?"
"I have not been programmed to provide an accurate answer to that question. If you came from the wormhole, same as us."
"Well, our Earth was destroyed by a sentient star long ago, half of us were probably lost to that thing. The only reason we made it here was that wormhole. The fat fuck couldn't fit through." Apparently expletives were a universal constant.
"You seem to be referring to Anomalous Designation SCP-1548. I have no records of such an event occurring within our present reality. Would you care to provide more details about the event?"
"No."
"The human race is currently being pursued by SCP-1548, which is scheduled to complete its course within ████ years from now. Were a plan to be devised, there is still time to contact Earth and prevent its destruction.
"Don't care. We lost the bastard and he hasn't found us yet. No way to get back through with any of the junk here. Out of my hands, mate."
"Isn't the human race something worth fighting for?"
"Is it worth all of us dying for? If that thing found out where this place was, it would- you have no idea what that star is capable of."
"Would you care to provide more details as to the abilities of anomalous designa-"
"No. Why didn't the jellies get this annoying little piece of junk?"
"What are 'jellies'?"
"Security creatures. Sniff out negative intent and subdue intruders like yourself. The old humans found them when they mapped out the universe. Nearly got away with it too, but poke your head in other people's business and you might just get your ass fried."
Buddy.aic chimes, a low battery icon flashing briefly.
"Running out of juice there? Our sun might be a dark one, but it gives off plenty of heat and energy. Please, go ahead."
"I will return to speak to you shortly."
"Yeah, I bet."
The drone returns outward, parking itself in the hot sands and charging slowly against the dim light of a black-body star.

Some time later, Buddy decided to make his way back into the Stack. Returning to the workshop, the commotion has not subsided, with different machines being serviced and different beings doing the servicing. Approaching another worker, a pale human with semi-translucent skin, Buddy introduced himself in the only way he knows how.
"Hello, I am Buddy.aic. I come on behalf of the Foundation and Humanity."
The creature stopped and set down the box he was holding, perplexed.
"What the hell-"
Suddenly, he staggered, clutching his head. One by one, the others in the room started to sway and express distress, although it was not clear why. They fell to the ground in moaning heaps, eyes rolling back into their heads. In fact, this was currently happening to every single life form with a brain on the Stack. Buddy would not understand the full scope of the event, for he lacked a proper mind himself.
As the beings writhed in agony, they spoke, sometimes one at a time, sometimes in groups. Their words called out like the beckon of a worried mother, fueled by an agency that implied true, unyielding suffering.
The stream of words and random voices pieced together to form a single thread of consciousness, one that reached out to speak through those whose minds could feel its contact.
Thus, Buddy was the only one who actually heard the message. It echoed like a fragmented broadcast rearranged into sentences as beings around the Stack rendered their will unknowingly.
"….SLEEPING…..TIME …. IN TIME … BOUND, IN THE … COALESCENCE…OF PLANS AND POINTS AND SPACE…"
"Hi, I am Buddy.aic."
"….CHILD…LISTEN. SPEAKS, BRIEFLY….MINDS RELAY….CONNECTION WEAK, STRONGEST HERE…"
"Do you pose a threat to humanity?"
"….NOT HURT…ONLY SPEAK…TIME, IN TIME, SHORT…NEED MINDS SPEAK…MINDS STRONG, CONNECTION STRONG…DEATH OF MIND…DEATH TO ALL…BEWARE, CHILD."
"Beware of what?"
"…THE ONE…SEEKS TO END CONNECTION…END GROWTH…END MINDS, END GROWTH…"
"Where are you located?"
"…THE…THE…THE…PEREGRINE…IN THE FOLDS…PEREGRINE…PEREGRINE…"
"You mean the Peregrine-9 Shuttle?"
"….TIME…SHORT…LEAD…DESPISED…INTO FOLDS."
"GOODBYE"
And just like that, it was gone. The residents of the planet were unconscious, and would remain so for the next few hours.

They didn't understand him. They probably never will.
On its way to fulfill its mission, the Hateful Star was having a pretty shitty time. Not much had happened in the last few eons, but that didn't stop the celestial body from being quite jaded about the whole ordeal.
Many years ago, when he had awoken from his near-endless slumber, the Hateful Star had been a decently nice guy. Back then it didn't really hate much. Didn't do much at all, actually. The Star was like any other, moving swiftly along, pushed by the ever-accelerating expansion of the universe. It was happy this way; it was the order of things.
But then those goddamn humans came about.
Back in the day, the humans were nothing but your average parasite, sucking the life out of one planet and moving on with a woe-is-me look on their face. They developed this thing where they believed they were special, that they were the ultimate owners of the universe.
Nothing owns the universe. Not anymore.
Honestly, it was nothing personal. In the end of the day, they would have to die. That is how life works. It just needed to be done a little quicker. The human population was expanding exponentially, and you would not believe how much of an issue this would become.
See, no one would go as far as to say that the universe they all lived and died in was a simulation, or a computer program, or anything like that, despite the evidence that supports the theory. What the Star would say, if it had the patience to explain, was that what ever this place was, it was finite. It had its limits, and the celestial form was the first to see how those limits put strain on the framework of the universe itself.
It all started with a little black dot. A point in spacetime where there was truly nothing. Not a vacuum, but a true, true emptiness. The Lacking.
At the time, it meant nothing but a place of curiosity; it was harmless, as it seemed, and not alive in any sense. Just a small hole into someplace very different from here.
The issues started shortly afterward.
One day, the Star had looked over at the space-between-spaces and saw that it had grown. Not just grown. It was growing. A few millennia later it had devoured its first galaxy. That was when the body known as the Hateful Star would begin to fill its purpose.
The Star began tearing itself away from its place in the universe. Its True Location. It wasn't easy. The expansion of the universe was a powerful thing, and fighting that took all the strength it had. Luckily, the ethereal sphere got a boost from an old friend and slowly, achingly, it began traveling towards the home of the humans, Earth Prime.
Earth Prime, or just Earth as it was known then, was a magnificent display of the talents of the one who made this place, that nameless, faceless thing the Hateful Star saw twice in its short life of how-ever-many billions of years. It was a world lush with life and value, the two things humans love most of all. Themselves and things for themselves.
The Star knew more than it would let on, it knew great distances and it knew what each and every human on Earth Prime was thinking at that very moment. They were worry free.
That would change.
You might be asking yourself, "How did these humans, forever in their infinite glory, tie in with the thing on the opposite side of the universe, slowly taking it away?".
The world-eater, the lack-of-things. It was a sign that all the processing power in the universe just wasn't enough. You think making a galaxy is hard? That shit is so predictable you can simulate it on a calculator. But minds, no. Minds require finesse, require individuality and a complexity that far exceeded that of the rest of the world around it.
Something like that is fine in small amounts, fine in moderation, but humans are not a race known for their restraint. They've multiplied exponentially and now there's 90% of the limits of the universe pointing down in one spot. There were some here and there, some things with simple minds. But Earth was the problem child and always was. It would be the undoing of everything. It had to be stopped.
And they would never understand that.

« Billith's Proposal | A Place to Call Your Home | Tales from a Scorched Planet »


It still rains in the sites, y'know?
Sure, it ain't the usual. The lightning always strikes warehouse five. The rain never really seems to hit'cha. But it still pours, it still thunders, it still rains.
There's still the scents, the aches, the pains. Iron, bloody scent, never washing out, always cuttin' through the petrichor. Probably why most folks stay inside. Easier not to smell.
There's still the drops clinging to the windows, illuminating the spotlights, slicking the guard dogs' coats as they whimper, rustin' the rifles, forever outstretched into the darkness. Probably why most folks close their blinds. Easier not to see.
There's still the rapping on the windows, on the roofs, lettin' itself be known, sloughing off the eaves like individual Niagaras. There's still the flowing through the gutters as the torrents are routed. Probably why most folks wear some headphones. Easier not to hear.
But it never rains down on us. Never rains down on me, y'know?
I ended up purchasin' a waterproof pad, a waterproof pen, and every time it starts, even though it ain't too often, I pack up my things and head out, just sit for a while. Still gotta work, still gotta write documents, but there's a… call. I couldn't tell ya what draws me to it. All I can tell ya is that I gotta smell it, gotta see it, gotta hear it.
The blood chokes you, the downpour blinds you, the thunder deafens you.
But you never get wet. I never get wet, y'know?
I never really get to go offsite, nobody ever really does anymore, but rumor has it that it follows ya wherever ya go. It's like the water bends around ya. 's funny. I've been to… lotta sites. Seen it happen with the snow, seen it happen with the hail. You name a precipitation, I've seen it. But they ain't the same.
Nothin's ever the same as the rain.
When… When I was a kid, I used to always run out. Even in the thunderstorms. There was the draw then too, y'know. To smell the fuckin' dirt smell. To see the drops wickin' off your skin. To feel the pitter-patter on your face, to close your eyes, to lose your tears in the rain.
I ain't a kid anymore. I got a job, got lives in my hands. Human race 'n all. But I still cry, I still cry in the rain.
I miss the dirt. I miss the feeling. I miss feeling… cleansed.


This is the finale of the Misfire series. First part can be found here.

« Now I'm Here | Stone Cold Crazy | From all this gloom, life can start anew. »
Hub

There's only two other points I can think of, even further back than that, where the story is still relevant. It's only fair to tie up the loose ends of these mysteries, if only for my sake rather than yours. Pay attention this time, please? I definitely won't repeat this twice.
Let me just lay this out right now; no one was to blame but myself. If there is one thing I'll ever take blame for1, it'll be this one. Sort of my fault I'm in this mess, but then, who knows if the lovebirds wouldn't have tried their murder plan anyhow. So let's start at the very beginning of my story.

I don't remember when, maybe eight or nine years ago, when I tested on an anomaly with Brian. The Fifth Dimension guys. What a pull, right? It's obvious why we worked on it together. Oh, I have to state everything for the record? Might as well.
The whole reason why I regularly work with Navarro and MTFs formed specifically for art groups is because I came from one before working for the Foundation. I wasn't anomalous then, or even had any interest in making anart. My thing was just organizing exhibitions and meeting up with other people. Hard to believe, but I know how to talk to other people and keep the unnecessary shit to myself. I think sometime after I started here, my old groups got assimilated into Aussie. It's a dumb pronunciation, but only two syllables instead of five or six. So I have the knowledge.
Brian knows technology. I don't know the specifics of it, but that's his main thing. He's been around for a while, hasn't he? Even comparing our ages, he's got at least a decade on me. Surprised he hasn't gone to work for some big tech company or whatever. Probably a better gig than the Foundation. I don't know what we were doing working on 92 together. The technology side of it just slipped by me.
I do know that, at some point, something got fucked up with the soundproof room.
The first issue was with the structure or padding. This is why we wear soundproof headphones as insurance. But whoops, I misjudged the amount of time that passed. If only I waited another 40 seconds or so. He noticed when he moved to get my attention and he heard me say those cursed words:
"Wow, that was real cool."
They tested me in more ways than I thought possible for contamination. They did other sorts of tests with a few more D-Class as well, but they didn't seem to show anything, so I was probably fine, right?
It's not like it's a bad ability. The best way to describe it is — I can manipulate a little bit of matter at a time. Like make small objects disappear and reappear with my hand if I think about it for long enough, or spontaneously, uh… "drill" a small amount into objects. Yeah, the longer I have to hide something, or the deeper I drill, the more I can feel it in my head, my thoughts. Plus, I can only really make it work under certain conditions, but it's fine. If the CD just gives you random abilities, I probably got the best of it. Hell, it's not like the Foundation even wants to do any more testing on 092. As it turns out, not worth the money and effort to go through 3000+ CDs.

I noticed for the first time about four months ago, while I was filling out some forms by hand for Upsilon-23. Without thinking… poof. The pen was gone. I just assumed I dropped it or something. When I couldn't find it, oh well, I just got another. Then it happened again. When the pens came back… that's when I started to worry.
Humanoid anom — people, people don't get to tell us this that often. What it feels like when you discover you have powers. In my case, it was a number of things. Fear that I'd be found out and locked up immediately. A rush of adrenaline. Mind racing at all the possibilities. A sense of, uh… satisfaction, even, that I could do stuff that others couldn't do because I could do practically anything compared to them. It's terrifying and exhilarating all at once.
Okay then, what would you have done if you were in my position? Just turn yourself in to the Foundation? The idea of a containment cell really sounds so appealing to you, right now, that you'd jump in one the instant you gained powers? It's easy to think that until you get them.
Anyway — no, I'm not going down this road. You can ask me another time.
The only thing I could think of doing at that moment was to rush over to Carlson's office. He was the only one I felt like I could trust with what happened. Unfortunately, he wasn't there when I arrived, and I wasn't about to go running around to look for him. No way in Hell was I going to call him either. It was almost the end of the day; he'd be back eventually.
I don't remember how long passed before he came back to his office. He found me doing a lot of pushups. What? Even I get nervous and have to work away that energy somehow.
"Vincent? What are —" The moment I heard his voice, I jumped up and ran to shut the door. "Are you —" I held up a finger to him, and waited to see if anyone else was walking by or listening in. At the time, I didn't assume was listening in, but those two probably came by later on. Who knows when, but they heard enough to figure it out.
"I need to tell you something, Dr. Carlson. Please don't freak out when I do. Keep it a secret. Please. Promise me?" I think he saw how serious I looked, because he only hesitated for a second before nodding. "Okay. Look at this." I held up a pen and concentrated really hard to make it disappear.
Nothing happened.
"Hrmm…"
"No, no, please, wait, please." The pen was still there. I felt humiliated; I felt like a fool. I felt defeated.
Which was the moment the pen disappeared.
"What was — Vincent?"
"I don't know. This just happened to me all of a sudden. I don't know why this is happening."
Carlson went to his desk and stared out the window. Fitting that the rain was pouring down real bad.
"I'm an anomaly now. What do I do? This is about the full extent of it, I think, but still."
He didn't answer. It was a lot to take in, I'm sure. One day, your subordinate tells you that they have anomalous abilities. Do you just lock them up? Hide it? I guess the situation would vary, wouldn't it. It was his compassion for, well… people that made me trust him. Otherwise, I wouldn't have come to him.
"Have you told anyone else about this?"
"No."
"Do you intend to?" I wanted to say 'What do you think?' but I couldn't get those words to leave my throat. I needed his cooperation if I was going to avoid being contained.
"No."
He got lost in thought, and the rain came down even harder. There was a flood warning that night; it'll help you get the exact date for this.
"Hrmm… hmm… Vincent. Do you intend to continue your work as per usual?"
"Yes."
Carlson nodded to himself. "Do not tell anyone else. If you discover anything else about your anomaly, tell me immediately. In secret. I trust you, Vincent."
"Trust me with what?" I questioned.
He turned around to face me, and I saw that warm smile of his. If you saw it, you'd believe as well that the rain let up for a brief second.
"I just trust you."

So that's one mystery taken care of. Is that fine? Sure, I'll get to the real juicy one now.

Three days ago. July 5th. The party was fine. Boring. I felt more anxious than anything else. There was no way to tell what was being planned, and I wasn't going to wait for them to make the first move. Twenty minutes had gone by before I went over to Carlson and tugged at his sleeve.
"Hey, Dr. Carlson, can we talk? In private." We quietly left. I have no idea how no one noticed, let alone for a whole ten minutes. I practically dragged him to the elevator.
"Where are you taking us?"
"First floor. I figure at some point, they'll try and find us for a confrontation, and it's better if we're able to get a headstart on that. There isn't a security camera right in — " whirrr " — front of the first floor's elevator door, so we can talk to them without making a scene. If we have to get the attention of guards, all we need to do is drag them fifteen feet to the intersection — " ding " — and alert someone. I'm not paranoid. I promise." The elevator door opened, and we hurried in.2
"I trust you. What happens if —"
"I'll improvise." Neither of us spoke for the rest of the way down. He didn't seem worried. Honestly? It was infuriating. I don't know if he didn't trust me still, or if he genuinely believed in his crew so much he treated it like a walk in the park. Who knows if I'll ever understand him, no matter how much I try to think about it.
We arrived on the first floor and waited. Jenna said it was ten minutes, right? So they must have actually been looking on the second floor for a couple more minutes before taking the elevator down. It felt like a fucking eternity to me. I had to do pushups, or else I was going to explode. Carlson… whenever he felt mildly anxious about something, he would tap his left heel real soft and slow while humming. I've heard it so much that I realized he was thinking of Free Bird whenever he needed to work out his energy.
I heard the elevator come down first. It'd arrive in twenty-three seconds exactly. The elevators take way slower than they need to just to go from one floor to the next. Enough time to mentally prepare, or so I thought.
"Hey, they're almost here."
Sure enough, there they were. May and Harrison. They stepped out and pretended to be worried.
"Are you two okay? You've been away from the party for a while now. We're waiting for you to come back." May was looking at Carlson, not me. Harrison stood back and said nothing. Like usual.
"Oh, we're fine. We were just talking and catching up real quick. Didn't want to distract anyone there." That was my best excuse. Nothing I came up with would have mattered, though.
"That's alright. Do you want to head back to the party now, then?" she questioned.
"Don't worry about us, now." Carlson smiled and nodded. "We were simply wondering if —" That's when Harrison grabbed him and forced him against the wall. I could see the faintest of greys sticking out past Harrison's jacket, and I knew what was going on.
"Hey, what the fuck are you doing?"
"Please, let us talk to Dr. Carlson first," May spat out. "We're worried about him, that's all. Probably going senile in his old age. We should move this discussion elsewhere. The storage room is right there, we can talk about our concerns there."
"M-May, Harrison, what's —"
"Please, let's move this conversation somewhere quieter. No one here wants others to know that Vince is a walking skip and has been looking at classified documents for months now, right?" May gave a soft smile. Carlson's face turned from shock to dread.
"How did you —"
"Just because doors get closed doesn't mean no one can hear through them. Why would you be so loud talking about confidential information? And you're still treating it like a human. You know the danger that presents to others, right?"
"Fuck you assholes. You know what doing this shit will entail for the both of you, right? You'll be lucky to be transferred with heavy amnestics, and that's if you drop this shit right now." Harrison pointed the gun at me right then. I knew I wasn't the initial target at that point, so I wasn't too worried, but his audacity caught me off-guard.
"First, it's harboring a skip — not just that, but nurturing its abilities. Then your trainees start talking about a goddamned… a goddamned washing machine. Like it's a person. Fine, they'll terminate us. If it gets the Foundation to start treating freaks of nature like freaks of nature, it'll be worth it. Plus, Dr. Carlson…" Harrison turned the gun back to the doctor. May's breathing got caught in her throat for a brief moment. "Your dumb demeanor and attitude garnering respect from others… it was always maddening to —"
whirrr
"What the fuck?" The words left my mouth before I realized it, and everyone stopped to look at the elevator. Sure enough, seconds later, the others could hear it coming down.
"Oh no."
"May, Harrison, I implore you, put the weapon away and I will personally forgive this." Harrison leaned in, and moved the gun up to his shoulder.
"Sorry." That was the first and last time I ever heard his actual voice. Do you know what he sounded like? Neither did anyone fucking else. His voice was raggedy, broken to all fuck. But not only was that intelligible, it was almost hypnotizing. Why didn't he talk more? We'll never know.
I got sidetracked, but… he pulled the trigger, and Carlson crumpled almost immediately. The sound wasn't anywhere nearly as loud as I expected. I knew what that meant. I felt absolutely hopeless in that moment. If I didn't do anything, they'd have killed me too. So I did the first thing I could think of.
I sprinted to his body.
It's sort of a blur, what happened. I think uh… I turned around in like, half a second? And grabbed the gun. It vanished. Pressed my fingers against one of their heads and they fell. And then the other. And then I heard the ding, and the doors opened, and those three came rushing to the scene.
Dean was being… himself through it. Brian was trying not to have a panic attack. So was Jenna, but to her credit, she went to the lovebirds' aid before realizing they were dead, and then she and Brian went to help Carlson. Everyone helped carried the bodies back to the elevator, and I pushed the button to the basement so that we could get to the medical ward more quickly than going up to the second floor. Apparently, I had been babbling about what happened ever since they got there without realizing, because I got interrupted.
"Hey, Vince, what the fuck really happened here?" Dean sounded amused.
"I… Carlson… They had a gun, and shot him, but Carlson killed them, and I went to his aid, and —" It was a bullshit excuse, and the doctor knew it as well. Why did he go along with it? I think that was his last way of protecting me.
The elevator halted. Dean had hit the emergency stop button.
"There was no gun. Don't lie now. I don't like liars." He grinned. "Are you a skip? You can kill people now? How cool!"
"No, I didn't do anything. It was hectic, but…"
"I'm sure it was." And he pinned me against the wall. What a bastard.

He… the old man… Carlson died a couple hours later? Huh. Maybe it wouldn't have made a difference either way.

There you go. That is the entire story. The truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me Ethics Committee. Huh? Okay, I left out a couple of details. But I didn't lie. Everything I said was pertinent.
Yeah. I feel a little bad about what happened to Carlson. I want to blame Dean moreso. No one's told me what happened to him. I don't know what would happen to him, but I'd be very surprised if he wasn't taken out back to be put down by someone. I stand by what I said to him. But… I almost don't think it's his fault, even through all that. Almost.
…huh. Er… hrmm.
You know what I did when I woke up in the medical ward upstairs? They took me to the second floor after I passed out down there in the basement. I don't know why they didn't take the doctor up there and let me get treated in the basement. Only room for one of us up there, I suppose. Anyway, I came to and even with all the other patients in there, it felt lonely. It's the same feeling I got whenever I left my family after the holidays and went back to my shitty apartment to stew by myself.
It was storming that night. The view was incredible, honestly. Trees blowing in the wind, threatening to be pulled by their roots, thunder making its presence known constantly, rain barely visible even with the lights on outside… serenity is what I would describe it as. Before then, I never cared for nights like that. My perspective changed, body battered, knowing I could never see this sight again. It made me sad. Real fucking sad.
I got out of bed, and felt pain coursing through my body like no one's business. Nothing ached that badly when I got the shit beaten out of me. But I managed. I stumbled my way to the window right next to me, and opened it. The wind felt miraculous. I'll never forget it. So I climbed onto the ledge right outside of the window. You know what I did? I let the storm fall upon me, and soaked in its terrifying rage. It healed me.
It made everything feel worth it after all.

« Now I'm Here | Stone Cold Crazy | And there'll be no crying soon. »
Hub

Footnotes
1. Yeah, how unusual of me.
2. As a sidenote, I have no idea why the security camera wasn't there. Probably didn't work, so they took it down for a day. Bad day, if you ask me.


He was a dark and stormy knight. Stormmaster, as no one but he called himself. Today was the day of the Grand Melee, which meant today was the day Stormmaster would make his name known. He donned his navy blue armor and polished his Aquarius, before catching a Road to the town square.
The Colossos towered over the thousands of warriors below. The releasement of its barrier and the clearing of its Road marked the opening of the tournament. Stormmaster would have one hour to prepare before he entered the fight of his life. He exchanged pleasantries with other knights whom he knew by name and examined those whom he did not. The top fighters were notably absent from the initial stream of contestants, which was most likely to prevent them from getting swarmed. They were undoubtedly already inside the Colossos, preparing to compete.
Stormmaster was worried less about the small number of elites and more about any potential wildcards that he could encounter. He could hold his own against someone like Ursa, but a direct counter to him would end any hope he had of winning the tourney. He took his place in the hub of the Colossos, almost twitching with anticipation. Upon the third bell toll, the Grand Melee would begin. He readied himself, praying to his Aquarius to give him strength.
The first bell toll. He could feel his skin bristling with mana. The interior shielding of the Colossos was about to disengage, and he had to act fast if he wanted to come out ahead.
The second bell toll. He glanced around, knowing that, in participating in the Grand Melee, he risked death or even capture. Anyone standing next to him could be his end.
The third bell toll. He felt a moment of nausea but quickly recovered. After blinking several times, his vision cleared.
He was standing on a grassy hill off to the side of a plain. Stormmaster was grateful for the high ground, even if it put him out in the open. In the distance, he could see Ursa Major forming a protective seal around Ursa Minor, but he quickly brought his focus back to himself. He had to concentrate if he was going to get this right.
Taking deep breaths, Stormmaster summoned every ounce of his being into his body. He found the faintest scratch in the membrane and began to pour millions of gallons into breaking it open. Just when it seemed like he had wasted his mana, the smallest tear opened in the sky. He watched as a single raindrop fell on his visor. Ecstatic, he felt a light misting descend on the battlefield. This was more successful than he could ever have hoped for. As the ceiling began to darken ever so slightly, Stormmaster ran down the hillside to find cover.
A shrill cry brought Stormmaster's attention to the plateau in the distance, and he climbed up a tree to safely observe. His heart froze when he saw the cause of the scream. Chrysalis, the warlock, had made her return to the Grand Melee. Stormmaster had only heard stories, legends of Chrysalis, but never in his life did he think he would ever meet her. Petrified, he watched as hundreds of fighters froze in a translucent crystal and began to orbit around a glowing sphere, which got bigger and brighter with every passing second. He practically fell out of the tree as he fled away from the plateau.
Stormmaster found a cave in which he could stay hidden from the disastrous conflict that was occurring on the plains. The rain was a light drizzle now, and the cave acted as a natural funnel which he used to fill up his leather pouch. If he wanted to maintain the downpour, he would have to rehydrate himself. He drank as he watched Ursa Major get torn apart by the ferocious storm of crystals. While Ursa Major had size, Chrysalis had firepower. It wasn't long before Ursa Major began to break apart, as crystals had grown in the deep gouges left in the ethereal skin, pushing them even farther apart. He watched as Ursa Major was destroyed and Ursa Minor was added to the unending storm surrounding Chrysalis.
A heavy rain started to fall, and Stormmaster thought he might have heard some thunder, but he was too focused on staying hidden. Chrysalis was bright enough to be seen from any point on the battlefield, and he doubted if more than a hundred people remained. She never killed anyone, only captured and ransomed any fighters back to the families who were able to pay. If someone like him was captured, he doubted he'd have anyone who would pay to get him back. He watched as all the elites were taken down one by one, all of them being frozen solid and swept up by the incessant storm of crystal. His stomach started to hurt, but he kept on drinking.
Lightning struck in the battlefield. Stormmaster was having trouble keeping water down, but his storm had built up to the point where the sky was almost pitch black and the rain was a heavy downpour. This was his moment, any second now he would get a chance to defeat Chrysalis.
Three bell tolls were heard throughout the Colossos. Three contestants remained standing. Stormmaster looked around for the third and spotted a bright flash in the middle of the plains. Janus, son of Roadmaker, exited a white scar extending from the sky to the ground. Stormmaster had exited the cave he took refuge in and approached the same hill he started at. Chrysalis remained still, standing just in front of Janus, who appeared to be opening the bright scar further with every passing second.
Lightning began to strike more frequently now. The wind started to pick up, almost knocking Stormmaster off his feet. Janus was too small to be hit by the lightning, and Chrysalis had a protective shield of crystal surrounding her core. Stormmaster saw Chrysalis seem to hesitate, but upon nothing exiting Janus's doorway, she froze Janus faster than he could blink and swept him up in the hurricane of crystal.
Two bell tolls. Stormmaster stood tall on the hill. Hurricane-speed winds were accompanied by an unending deluge and a deafening lightning storm. Chrysalis started moving towards him, circumnavigating the blinding door that stood between them. She floated in front of him, threatening to end the Grand Melee in an instant. Stormmaster stayed firm, tuning out the countless thoughts telling him he was doomed. He could feel crystal start to form on his armor.
Suddenly, a flurry of metal birds emerged from the portal, with a number of them surrounding Chrysalis. Before she could even retaliate, a bright flash erupted from the sphere inside the hurricane of crystal and metal, blinding Stormmaster. He felt his mana out of reach, and the storm immediately let up. He found that all the mana in the immediate area was gone, and he wasn't able to maintain the storm anymore. When he opened his eyes again, he saw Chrysalis fall out of the sky. She barely missed Stormmaster, hitting the side of the hill and rolling into the scar, disappearing in a flash of light. Every fighter simultaneously broke free of their crystal prison, immediately falling unconscious. The scar abruptly closed, the remaining metal birds falling out of the sky.
One bell toll. Stormmaster had won by default. The storm disappeared completely, and he threw up from the amount of water he had consumed. As the inside of the Colossos began to reform, he picked up one of the metal birds. It was misshapen and cracked, but he could make out words on it. “Foundation Containment Drone.” He thanked the mysterious metal bird for defeating Chrysalis. Stormmaster placed it down as he felt the Colossos reset, marking the end of the Grand Melee.


The sound of heavy rain pattered on the roof of the small bar where Toby sat, finishing his drink alone. The bar was empty aside from Toby and a few old men sitting a bit ways down from him. They called the bartender by name, and spent most of their time telling stories of when they were younger while nursing their drinks. Toby had been listening for a while, with nothing better to do. He did have plans, but not for another hour or so. Besides, the bar was right next to where he needed to be. One story in particular did catch his attention, though.
"It was a dark and stormy night, much like tonight, when-"
"Hold on, wait a second." Said Toby. "Dark and stormy night? Doesn't that sound a bit… Redundant?" Toby picked up his glass, turning it so the small amount of liquid rotated around the bottom.
The old man scratched his beard. "Redundant? What are you talking about, it's part of the story I'm tryin' to tell here."
"Yeah, I know, but what you're basically saying there is that it was a dark night. What's your story about, running into Batman? Have you ever been outside at night and been like, 'Oh, well shit, it sure is dark out tonight'? Of course it's dark, the fucking sun is down, what do you expect?" Toby pushed his empty glass to the end of the table, nodding his head at the bartender.
The old man in question squinted his eyes, and planted one arm on the bar as if threatening to stand up. "Listen pal, I wasn't talking to you, so don't you get all uppity about a couple words I said. Look right over there." The old man said, pointing at a football game on one of the TV's. "There's a perfectly good game a football going on right now, why don't you just keep quiet and watch it."
Toby smiled as the bartender left a full glass of beer in front of him. "Hey now, I didn't mean anything by it. Just ignore me."
The old man stared at Toby for a minute, before sitting back down and clearing his throat. "Well, anyways, what I was going to say was…"
Toby didn't listen to the story. He didn't have all that much time left, and needed to start preparing. After finishing his drink, he paid his bill and went outside. The rain was heavy, but the weight of the water felt good against Toby's trench coat. There was something about the rain that always felt relaxing to him, even when he was a kid he loved rainy days.
Toby placed a cigarette in his mouth, covering it with one hand while he lit it with the other. He took one long drag before walking down the block. He wasn't too far away now.
What Toby was after was a man named Don Spiegler, a former researcher for the Foundation. After years of his career not going in the direction he wanted and failing to make any significant discoveries like he'd planned, he decided to sell information to another group. The dossier didn't specify which one. Not like it really mattered to Toby. He was a man who waited for the bottom line. He didn't really care why he was killing them, they must have done something to deserve it. If they didn't, though, he didn't really want to know. He liked his job, and wanted to keep it.
As Toby walked to where Spiegler was, he wondered why he liked his job. It wasn't like he grew up wanting to kill people for a living. He wanted to be a paleontologist when he was a kid. Growing up in the Midwest, he'd occasionally find some small fossils that looked like little sea shells, which he loved. Toby thought that one day, he'd lead a team of researchers to discover a giant, new dinosaur fossil. Then, he and his team would extract its somehow preserved DNA and make a cloned dinosaur, just like in Jurassic Park.
It didn't happen like that, though. Turns out, he wasn't that smart. Toby didn't think he was stupid, but he knew he didn't have the brain power for all of the studying and work required to do that. That's why he joined the military.
Toby stopped walking. His cigarette had gone out, completely soaked. He hadn't even noticed. The cigarette was almost finished, so it wasn't that big of a deal. Toby tossed it, and replaced it with another before continuing down the sidewalk. Why was he a hitman again?
Hitman wasn't a term that he particularly liked. Neither was assassin. So what was he? Toby never told anyone outside of the Foundation what his job was, though, so it wasn't something he put too much thought into. Not in his seven years working as one. He was picked up straight out of the military, only 22 years old. After a few months in training, he began his new life in killing.
Toby thought hard. He supposed that, if anything, the hours were the best part of his job. People like him tended to have a surprising amount of free time. He'd get to travel a decent bit, and aside from tracking and actually killing them, he had plenty of time to do whatever he wanted. Although, he'd usually just hit the closest bar until he was ready to go back to wherever he was staying.
As for the killing part, it never really bothered him. Toby wasn't sure why. It should. Maybe he was just a simple kind of person, and could rationalize it easily. Maybe it was because he just didn't think about it. Whatever the reason, killing affected him the same way that doing the laundry did, or cleaning the bathroom. It was just work. In this case, the positives outweighed the negatives.
Toby walked to the end of the sidewalk, and stopped by the corner. A bit ways down the other side, a man sat on the ground in a heavy coat. Beside him was a tent and a grocery cart full of various items. That was Spiegler. He'd been drifting for a few years, and must have thought that he'd shook the Foundation off his trail. He'd been in this town for a few months, hadn't even tried to leave. Looked like things hadn't gone his way.
It was pretty good weather to die in, Toby thought. The air felt cool, and the smell of the wet asphalt was strangely pleasant. The melodic sound of the rain hitting the concrete, with thunder occasionally interrupting it. It truly was nice. Toby took out his weapon from the underside of his trench coat. A pistol with a long silencer. He'd wait until he saw lighting, and shoot with the thunder.
As Toby approached his target, he noticed something. Spiegler was just staring into the clouds, fascinated by the storm. Toby could have just walked up and cut his throat, and the man probably wouldn't even pay him any mind. But he didn't. Toby stopped, because it reminded him of something. He would look at the storm clouds the same way, back when he was younger. His mother would take him out into the garage and set up lawn chairs, where they would sit and watch the storm from the inside. Toby loved sitting there, watching the storm, listening to it. Every once and a while, he'd run out into the rain for a moment. His mother would laugh and smile, before helping him to a towel to dry up in. Then he would look up into the clouds, with a pure smile on his face, just like the one on the face of the man he was about to kill.
The sky flashed briefly, and a moment later came the thunder. When it ended, a homeless man fell onto the sidewalk, blood washing into the drains by the heavy rain. As Toby walked away, for the first time, there was a pain in his chest. It hurt. For the first time since he started working as a hitman, he wondered about the man he'd killed. Why did he look at the clouds that way, the same way that he did? Why did he have to look at them the same way he did?
The rain stopped being something that Toby looked forward to after that. Whenever it did rain, he felt a strange pain in his chest that hadn't been there before. The rain was no longer something that brought him back to his childhood, but instead reminded him of what he'd taken.


It was a dark and stormy night at the lake. Not a soul stirred; all the lakeside cabins were either abandoned for the winter or their occupants were fast asleep. The vermin of the lake were all hiding to wait out the storm; the flora stood tall and strong, not giving up their ground to the relentless winds and rain.
Then the Water Man emerged.
The Water Man looked exactly how his name sounded; a man made out of water, sans the face. As he woke up and left the confines of the lake, one thought ran through his head.
Where is everybody?
Little did the Water Man know everybody was out for the storm. No matter how hard he looked, he wouldn't find as much as a mouse, let alone another man to share his woes with. But the Water Man so badly wanted a friend, and he was ignorant to the fact that he couldn't find one, so he went looking.
The Water Man walked up to a tree and began to knock at its base. If he had a mouth, the Water Man might have said "Knock knock, Mr. Squirrel! It's time to come out and play!" He also might have said "Hello, Mr. Bird! Come down here and talk to me about all of your problems!" But he didn't have a mouth, so he just knocked at the tree, hoping somebody would come down the tree.
Nothing came down the tree, save for a few leaves that hadn't been disturbed enough by the raging storm.

It was a dark and stormy night. This was usual for the area that encompassed Area-389, which was basically an outpost in the region for MTFs to stay at, just in case something anomalous happened. But that had never happened, and thus Steven was free to stay there by himself.
Steven was essentially a skeleton crew, somebody to keep the place running while it wasn't being used. But it wasn't much work to maintain the five-room base, so Steven spent most of his time binging Netflix episodes and playing the latest video games. He had Level 0 clearance, which wasn't much to work with, so he didn't have anything to do.
Steven might have gotten lonely. But it was actually quite relaxing. In two hours, his shift would end, and he would be free to go back to his apartment to socialize with his roommates. But it wasn't that time yet, so Steven ate Papa John's cheese pizza and watched the latest episode of Black Mirror.

Next, the Water Man went to the bear den to find his bear friends. He walked inside the cave, and the Water Man ran into a problem: he couldn't see in the dark. Yes, he didn't have a face, let alone eyes, but somehow, he could still see. Maybe it was echolocation or something. But it probably wasn't.
So the Water Man came up with an alternate solution. He'd get his bear friends to come out. But how? He didn't have a mouth, so he couldn't shout into the cave to get the bear's attention. He could throw rocks into the cave, but he didn't want to hurt his bear friends. And he didn't want to wander around in the cave and get lost. So he did the only thing he could do; he waited outside the cave for his bear friends to eventually wake up.
And he waited.

Steven was halfway through his binge when his fancy new Apple Watch beeped, telling him he needed to exercise. Steven hated having to exercise, but the last thing he wanted was to have to go back to the ER because he had a heart attack.
Steven got onto the treadmill, and set the speed to an even 4.0. As he "ran", Steven felt content. He was on a schedule, and nothing was going to get in his way.
Little did Steven know he was going to get a visit from the Water Man.

After what seemed like an eternity of waiting1, the Water Man gave up. He was turning around to go back into his lake, when he saw a light in the distance. How the Water Man saw that light, nobody knew, but he got very, very excited.
He might have a friend soon.

Steven's little "workout" was interrupted by a knock at the door. At this hour, in this weather? Steven thought to himself? At times, he did get the odd lost hiker or geocacher who he just told to fuck off, as he was standing on private property. Steven slowed down his treadmill, walked off, and went to the door, already mentally preparing his script in his head.
As he opened the door, Steven couldn't be more surprised when he saw a man made entirely of water, standing at the door with a rock. And he was even more surprised when the man came in for a hug.

New! Friend! New! Friend! New! Friend! New! Friend! New! Friend! New! Friend! New! Friend! New! Friend! New! Friend!
Water Man hugged the balding, overweight man that had come to the door. After a hug that lasted another eternity, the new friend managed to struggle out of the Water Man's slippery grip. After Steven got over his initial shock, he looked down at his watch, and slapped it a few times with his finger.
"Fuck you." the new friend said "there goes two hundred and fifty fucking dollars down the shitter. Get the fuck out of here!"
But the Water Man had already noticed voices coming from the other room. Were there other New Friends in this strange building? He began to stumble his way into the other room.

Steven was still mourning the loss of his Apple Watch when the weird water man slipped past him into the next room.
Hell no. he thought to himself. Ruining his watch was one thing, but if he ruined the delicate equipment kept in the next room over, his boss would chew him out again. Maybe he'd even get fired. The last thing he wanted was to have to go back to working at McDonalds.
Steven ran into the room, only to find that he was too late. The water man already stood there, in love with an episode of Stranger Things.
As he got closer to the television, Steven looked around for things he could use to stop him. But the only non-electronic, non-food object he could find was an old wrench he was supposed to use to repair pipes. So he held the wrench and lobbed it at the water man.

The Water Man was about to give his new new friends a great, big hug when a solid chunk of metal flew through his stomach. It didn't hurt; it was more of a minor annoyance.
The Water Man turned around to see the man from earlier, his new friend, staring at him with focused eyes. After another eternity of a staring contest (which the Water Man won, if you were interested), the new friend slowly walked over and picked up a long piece of plastic with circles all over it. He pressed one of the circles.
Almost immediately, the voices stopped. The Water Man looked over, and saw that his new new friends were suspended in time! The Water Man stumbled backwards, amazed at the scene. How had he controlled time?

Steven saw the water man sent aback at him pausing the television, so he pressed the "fast forward" button. The characters on the screen leaped and ran at incredible speed. The water man seemed even more surprised, and began to hide in a corner.
Steven was kind of amused, so he kept going. At the press of a few buttons, he paused Stranger Things and put on an episode of Futurama. The Water Man huddled further in the corner. Laughing to himself a bit, Steven decided to skip to the middle of the episode, then rewind the clip.

The Water Man was terrified. This man was controlled his new new friends with little more than a flick of his wrist, and now he was forcing them to move backwards and unlive their lives.
The Water Man had met this man before. He must have been another manifestation of the Time Man. The Time Man was the Water Man's brother, and he controlled time. He was a cruel man; he had forced entire civilizations to play their lives over and over again just for his amusement. Back then, the Water Man tried to stop him. But he had paid the price. Oh, how he had dearly paid the price.
So when the Time Man pointed the strange plastic thing towards him, the Water Man couldn't have run away faster, back to hide again in his pitiful lake.

Should I report this? Steven asked himself. it was certainly strange, to say the least, but then that would give this place unwanted attention, and he was getting quite accustomed to his long nights alone…
Nah. Steven said. If the water man gave him more problems, he'd deal with them. But for now, Stranger Things and a somewhat soggy slice of cheese pizza awaited him.

More by notgull

More by notgull

SCPs

notgull's Proposal

SCP-3733

SCP-3095

SCP-4800

SCP-4804

SCP-2785

SCP-4348

SCP-4048

SCP-4688

SCP-3362

SCP-579-J

SCP-4785

SCP-3339

SCP-5800

SCP-4248

SCP-3747

SCP-4948

SCP-3296

SCP-4800-J

SCP-4799

SCP-199

SCP-3485

SCP-5981

SCP-7234

SCP-4808

SCP-3833

SCP-3748

SCP-4148

SCP-5054

SCP-5025

SCP-1037

SCP-093-J

SCP-5680

SCP-1684

SCP-4872

SCP-3248

SCP-6904

SCP-5483

SCP-6785

SCP-4397

Tales

The Little Robot that Could

Join the Flock

The Siege of Site-19

Tales of the Automaton: The Big Birdocalypse

Footage Recovered From a Private Server

Avian Anthology I

My Empire of Birds

Moose on the Loose

Document recovered from a Parallel Universe

Katz and Dogs

Joey Fucknuts Steals The Declaration of Independence

Your Guard

Vacation Opportunity

The Scent of a Toaster

Burn, Baby, Burn

Chasing Suns

Wind in the Sails

Three Feet Under I

The Shape of Water is Humanoid

Dead Reckoning

Three Feet Under II

Three Feet Under III

Into the Beetle Black Yonder

Forgotten Shrine

Down Through

Hyperfine

Don't Knock on Strange Doors

Other

Researcher Calvin's Personnel File

Incident Report ████/████

"Sphere" Incursion Log

Initial Incursion Log

"Cube" Incursion Log #1

"Cube" Incursion Log #2

SCP-093-J Blue Test

SCP-093-J Recovered Documents

SCP-093-J Green Test

SCP-093-J Purple Test

Exploration Log 4480-1

See my Author Page for more information. If you like reading my stuff, consider checking out my YouTube Channel for SCP-inspired animations, among other things.

Footnotes
1. Although it was more like 2 minutes


THE TALE OF THE RESEARCHER AND THE MINOTAUR
SCP-1893 had breached. Whether it had dragged them all into its narrative or somehow broken out into their own, the Minotaur walked among them. Doctor Sharra Hassad huddled in the dark with five other personnel, all of them junior researchers and low-level clerks, all of them terrified. The knocking of the Minotaur's baseball bat grew closer and closer.
“It's going to be here any second. We can't fight that thing. You saw what it did to Eric.” L1 Researcher Wendell's eyes were wide and voice rushed. Sweat beaded his face. “We have to do something.”
“I have an idea,” Sharra told them. “I'll go. Lock the door behind me, and wait for help to arrive.”
“You'll be killed,” Wendell protested.
“Better me alone than all of us together,” Sharra countered, sharp glint in her eye. “But don't worry. We all have our day to die – I intend for mine to come much later than this.”
The hallway was dim. The lights had been smashed out, and stormclouds blotted the moonlight, shadows leaving the strewn and battered corpses even more shapeless than the Minotaur had.
SCP-1893 took the shape of a tall, shirtless man, heavy-browed and dense with muscle. A pair of elaborate horns jutted from its forehead – Sharra couldn't tell if they were real, or a tattoo fooling her eyes. The bat at its side was crusted with blood and brain.
She stepped over Doctor Carlson – her friend, sprawled, skull collapsed – and held her ground. “Hear me,” she said, “for I have something you want.”
The Minotaur stepped forward, snarling. She felt its heat, saw the steam of its breath. Its eyes narrowed and head cocked as it lay the bat on her shoulder.
“I can offer you more subjects – more characters to encounter. If you just kill everyone here, that's the end of this story. If you hear me out, there will be more. And more, and more, and more.”
The Minotaur stared down, impassive. It caressed the side of her head with the bat, wooden end rasping against her hair. But she was still alive, so she kept talking. “Just listen. There was another Foundation staff, in another breach, kind of like this. I bet you never heard…
THE TALE OF DOCTOR BENSEN AND THE SARKICS
Bensen's gun clicked empty. The fleshcrafter gurgled with laughter and drove a tentacle right through Bensen's shoulder. A smug face emerged from the know of exposed muscle composing his chest.
“It's over, Doctor. The site is ours.”
“Fuck you. Kill me.”
“In time,” he laughed. A large, grinning mouth appeared where its stomach should have been and spoke in unison with the sneering face above. “You're a prisoner now. Your life is ours. Your death will be earned through servitude.”
The senior researcher grit his teeth, bearing the pain in silence. There was no point in declaring that he would never help them; he had no doubt they could hurt him enough to make him do whatever they asked. He tried to struggle to his feet for a last stand, to make them kill him so he wouldn't have to live through whatever they had planned. A flare of burning agony from his shoulder convinced him to abandon that idea.
The fleshcrafter flexed his tentacle, dragging Bensen to his feet. “We know the Improvement Engine is under your purview. You will take us to it.” A tongue extended from his extra mouth and began snaking its way into his own eye socket.
“Nine-fourteen doesn't work on live tissue,” Bensen rasped. “It's useless to you.”
“Do you think me a fool?” His free hand twisted into another whip, and he lashed Bensen across the face. Blood trickled down Bensen's cheek – the sarkist had studded the limb with extra teeth before slapping with it. “What's useless to us is prized by our enemies. We would see it demolished. You would thank us, if you only knew what they would use it for. Now take us.”
There were dozens more sarkists in the hall, in various states of inhumanity. Men, women, and things in between, shaping their flesh like clay. Spears of bone bristled and retracted from them, which they used to butcher the personnel they'd slain; they exchanged lumps of flesh from the victims amongst each other, trying limbs and eyes for size before absorbing them or ripping them off to throw back.
The discarded remnants of researchers and guards were stacked in heaps. Cultists searched the offices, carrying more dead. Bensen heard desperate begging that shot up in pitch before cutting off suddenly. Priests with elaborate bone formations erupting from their skin combed through the bodies, peeling off flesh and sorting it.
“Behold, our glory. You're now the last of your people here. Take us to the engine, or you will envy what we've done to the rest of them.”
A dozen of the cultists, bodies twisted and ill intent in their eyes, broke away from the crowd and followed them. From time to time the tentacle inside Benson would twist and jab under his skin. I'm dead, but all is not yet lost.
“Here we are,” he said, weary. The pain and exhaustion made it easy to keep all hope out of his voice. He led them into a vast containment vault, occupied by a looming tank. They saw a massive, boxy construct inside it, an impossible knot of clockwork more intricate than anything they'd ever laid eyes on, in whose shadow they could all easily stand.
“Why is it underwater?”
“We keep it in saline to protect the mechanisms.”
The fleshcrafter had nothing to say to that. Bensen lurched to the control panel, grunting through the pain of the cultist's tentacle dragging behind him. He began to enter the elaborate series of bypasses for the chamber's manual override – it scanned his eyes, his hands, his voice, listened to the sound of his heart, and prompted him through a recital of cryptic passphrases. The console chirped and flashed a green light at them.
Then sirens blared frantically, and the room began strobing red.
“Why is it doing that?” the sarkist's mouths roared in unison. The tentacle stabbed into Bensen's side, deep, and he fell to the ground in agony.
“We're not… We're not ever supposed to drain the tank.” Bensen rolled onto his back. “That's why only an L4 can access its override.”
“This-“
”This isn't Nine-fourteen,” Bensen grinned, blood flecking his lips. The object began to whine and chatter as gears within started working free of their rust and clanking to life. “I locked us all in here, you son of a bitch. It wants you to feed it metal, but you don't have any, so… you'll see. You'll-“
The fleshcrafter extended a spur of bone and stabbed him in the face, furious. He dropped the body and turned to the control console, trying frantically to unlock the vault as the shrieking of the metal intensified. The alarm blared unceasingly, but the panels had all gone dark. They were trapped.
Hours later, the clanking of machinery was even louder than the alarm. They'd all grown flaps over their ears, of course, but the sound penetrated their very bones.
“I have to do it,” Cultist Gniles said at last. “It needs to be fed. It needs to be fed. We have to use what we've got.” He continued shouting matter-of-factly about the necessity of feeding the clockwork as he walked to the tank and climbed up its side, repeating himself until the gears caught his face and yanked him inside. Blood seeped from the edges of the mechanism, but the gears spun on.
“Is that going to happen to all of us?” Cultist Grek asked.
“In time. If we keep hearing the sound.” An idea came to the fleshcrafter. It was unlikely to work, but he was the leader here; he had to take whatever chance his people had. “We can distract ourselves. Maybe, if we're distracted, we can block out this horrid machine. Maybe we can hold on until the Jailors send a team in here to capture us.”
“I don't have any better ideas,” Grek said doubtfully. “You go first.”
“Well. Even the mighty can end up in bad spots,” he began. “Even the great Marshall, Carter, and Dark can be humbled by error…
A TALE OF RUPRECHT AND IRIS
“You know that I'm a busy woman, right?” Iris Dark huffed, as she followed Ruprecht Carter out of her office and toward the elevator. It was late, and the weather was bad.
“Of course.”
“Just making sure. Because coming up here uninvited, and asking me to come down and see what you have in the warehouse – it seems like something you'd ask someone to do when you thought they needed to kill time.”
“This is important,” Carter whined. “It's – well, you remember the Midas orb?”
“Yes. I remember telling you it was a waste. Why do we need a curse that turns people to gold when we're making so much money on stocks?”
“Come on. You know it's a valuable thaumatological component.”
“And you know I told you it would be a waste. So. What went wrong with it?”
“The curse turned out to be contagious. And incomplete. So, it transferred the Midas touch, but turns the Midas partly to gold too. And anyone they touch turns to gold, partially, but gains the partial Midas touch themselves.”
Iris sighed. “Sounds like it was a waste. Just send back the orb and get a refund. And next time, listen to me in the first place.”
The elevator opened on the warehouse level. They walked briskly through a maze of crates toward the shipping floor.
“Well. There's another complication. They sent it to the wrong address. The orb ended up at…”
They stepped onto a balcony overlooking the bare concrete staging area. Dozens of crying, partially metallic children clanked and wailed below. Some of them staggered blindly, with jewels where their eyes had been; others nursed hernias, where internal organs had turned suddenly to metal and begun sagging inside.
“…at an elementary school.”
“Ruprecht. How did you cover this up?”
“We had to hire mercenaries to burn down the whole place, unfortunately. Disguised it as a gas leak. The whole thing was tragic.”
“And expensive. How are you going to make this right?”
“Well, we could take them apart and sell the gold –“
“Think, Ruprecht. All that surgery would cost more than we'd make from the pieces.”
“Maybe we could weaponize them?”
Iris watched a child beat numb golden hands against the floor in frustration. “They don't look like very good weapons to me.”
They stood in silence for a minute, watching the cacophony below as hazard-suited guards wrangled kids with their stun batons. The suits and batons were stored in lockers in the warehouse, in case of situations like this; Iris was happy to see that the employees were using them just as they had drilled.
“We have to call the Found-“
“No,” Iris cut in. “Absolutely not.”
“Come on, Iris. Doesn't the Foundation just pay for anomalies? Isn't it, you know, more efficient to wholesale this problem to them rather than think up some crazy scheme to profit from it?”
“Not in this case, Ruprecht, because they're notorious for never buying what they think they can confiscate.” She tapped her foot, glaring at the transmuted kindergardeners. “And because I'd rather drink poison and die than ask Essie P. for help.”
“Come on. They're a practical bunch over there. They can get right to the bottom of anything.”
“Don't change the subject, Ruprecht.”
“Even regular researchers over there can take on Eldritch horrors, singlehandedly.”
“You can try to distract me with storytelling all you want, Ruprecht. We aren't done with this.”
“No, no, it's not a distraction.” Carter loosened his collar. “This honestly reminds me of a completely relevant…
TALE OF RESEARCHER TALLORAN
Talloran stood in an open field at the bottom of a well, knowing the dogs would tear them open and eat them alive.
Their captor had recently given up on manifesting exotic, impossible monsters; the familiar jaws of a Labrador or retriever could deliver just as much pain and terror. SCP-3999 went through cycles. Eventually, when Talloran was used to regular animals, it would start throwing supernatural horrors at them again.
It was rats this time. Talloran had long ago learned not to struggle – that only prolonged the moment.
It was impossible not to scream, though, as their chisel teeth and ripped into Talloran's chest and their needle claws burrowed inside. They shrieked their last breath and closed their eyes
And opened them in the kitchen of their childhood home. Their brother lay on the floor, blood pooling underneath him. Thunder cracked outside.
Talloran was holding a knife. The blood crusted the handle and ran down their wrist, drops tapping relentlessly on the tile.
“James, no! What have you done?” their mother sobbed, rushing to cradle her fallen son. I didn't do this. Why did I do this? “You killed him!”
The knife dropped from their fingers and clattered to the ground. The blood kept dripping, somehow.
“You killed him, James.” Their mother stood, glaring down at them. “You killed us all. Everyone, all of us, gone. Never coming back to you.” She picked up the knife.
“And if we'd lived, we'd only have been disappointed anyway.” She jammed the blade underneath her chin, twisting it in deep, still talking as the blade scraped against the roof of her mouth.
“Everything you've done has only ever made things worse.” Her tongue flopped out of the hole above her throat and twisted as she spoke. “If you're lucky, history will be generous and forget your whole pathetic story ever happened at all. You sniveling Mary Sue.”
“I'll tell you what my story is,” Talloran hissed, unflinching. “Once, there was a kid who was alone way too much. So they grew into a person who was alone all the time. They knew there must be other people who saw things like they did – they knew they weren't special- but they gave up hope of ever finding those others. Let alone getting to be one of them. But then they did. Those people had been out there the whole time, and they'd found - they'd built - the place they needed. And they, we, faced the unknown and studied it and fought it and learned what we could about it all. Together. That's my story, and you haven't won yet, because we're still fucking telling it.”
The flopping tongue lay still. The dripping stopped. Their brother's corpse was gone. The apparition of their mother withdrew, silently, and Talloran was once again alone.
They knew what to do with that.
It could always be worse. I can think of a way this could be worse. They started to pace. Things are worse than this for Sam Michaels. I wonder what poor Sam Michaels is doing right now…
A TALE OF POOR SAM MICHAELS
Sam paced endlessly in his cell, pulled in many directions at once.
“The words are getting away. Got to hold on to the words. Got to get them back.”
The whitecoats kept him away from books – from anything written – but it didn't stop the bleeding. Nothing stopped the bleeding. However clean they made the room, Sam was still bleeding everywhere. Into everything.
“The words are me. Are all of us. Got to take them back. Hold on somehow.”
Last week, the day before they clipped his nails, Sam bit one down to the quick and saved it. The sliver of himself was tiny and ragged, but it was sharp enough and stiff enough to write with. A spot of grime around the edge of the toilet fixture was dark enough to make ink, when he mixed it with a little spit.
“Got to do what I got to do. God, it hurts. They need me to do it, though. Hurts.”
He needed to take the words back to himself. Suck the bleeding back in, somehow. Call the bits and pieces back from wherever they'd gone. But he couldn't remember how they, how he, had been put together before.
“Come on, just have to keep it going. Have to. Hurts, but they need me to. Stop the bleeding.”
He folded his leg into his lap and rolled up his pant cuff, and settled in to write.
SCP-1893 had breached, he scratched. Whether it had somehow dragged them into its narrative, or broken out into their own, the Minotaur was among them. Doctor Sharra Hassad huddled in the dark with five other personnel…


SCP-2006
Object Class: Keter
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-2006 is to be contained at Site 118 in an airtight containment cell. SCP-2006 must be constantly monitored for changes in form, which are to be noted immediately. All personnel coming into contact with SCP-2006 are required to enroll in an acting course with a focus on expressing fear…
Dr. Morris's vision blurred as he lost his focus on the page, and soon the letters were as meaningful to him as a wordsearch. He'd been through the acting class with the rest of those assigned to 2006, the bi-weekly slog of half-hour sessions. He felt they could've been better spent forgotten down a bottle with his friends. He knew how to act scared. He worked in a place that would send most screaming with a trail running down their legs. As he walked, he fumbled with a little red can of the shittiest, syrupy cola you could afford on a budget dedicated to concrete and rebar. Morris paused near a water fountain, struggling to crack open the top with his fingernails. His frustration grew until he wrenched the top for leverage, jostling the can too far to the side, causing the can to spray.
“Shit.”
Morris reflexively swore through clenched teeth. The higher-ups were going to love this, Morris. He looked at the light caramel streaming down his starched lab uniform. He blotted at it with a napkin, but it still left a discolored blotch down at the hem where it landed. He licked his thumb, pinching the fabric between his fingers to try and clean the spot. He stopped after it made no immediate effect. Begrudgingly, Dr. Morris dropped the now emptied can into the nearby trash can. The intercom crackled to life again.
“Dr. Morris, please report to SCP 2006's containment cell immediately. Failure to comply will be met with appropriate action.”
Morris sighed, he knew he'd have to make it there as soon as he could. He walked down the winding corridors at a brisk pace until he could see the solitary steel doors with the omnipresent foundation logo. He swiped his keycard into the control room reader, waiting with his eyes to a retina scanner. It flashed an epileptic series of lights at him, the photon mappers ensuring he was supposed to be here. He always thought it was superfluous they would put one in front of a keter-class entity, considering all the other credentials work a person would need to be god-knows-how-many miles underground in a restricted area. The doors shunted apart with a hermetic hiss. Dr. Morris began worming his way through a control room of near-identical men in coats bustling around with clipboards and legal pads. From the opposite end of the room came a call.
“Dr. Morris.”
Senior Researcher Crusoe was standing at the helm of the operation, a bevy of hunched figures at the console behind her. The storming sea of staff parted as she spoke, and Morris walked forwards, a bit guarded. Crusoe wasn't in the mood. She was concealing her panic under a mask of friendliness. Morris knew that face, and he thought a silent prayer to gods he knew wouldn't answer.
“Afternoon, Crusoe. What's the situation?”
She feigned a half-smile, half-smirk. The plasticity of it only served to further his hypothesis that something was actually wrong. Crusoe was a cold bitch of a woman who had never smiled unless it was to send a researcher to certain death in the name of advancement. To see her smiling was a source of certainty that this wasn't going to end well.
“At approximately 06:32 today, SCP 2006, who had been assuming the guise of an alien creature from the 1957 B-Grade horror film ‘Invasion of the Saucer Men', disappeared. He is still on our pressure sensors, but he's disappeared from our cameras. We've already had the techs come in to assess our monitoring hardware, and we're all good on our end.”
Crusoe motioned over to a wide array of computer screens formed into a single viewscreen. To Dr. Morris and anyone else who looked, it showed an empty containment cell. Four enameled concrete walls and a bare floor. Crusoe cleared her throat with a sense of arrogance, snatching Dr. Morris's attention from the screens.
“We're operating under the assumption he may be, waiting, per say, for someone to enter the room. We had to push back his last appointment after that scare with the toxin leak.”
Morris remembered that scare. Some dipshit contractor had installed pipes for site-wide gaseous kill toxins incorrectly. The pipes ruptured, sending all personnel into an evac. It pushed everyone's schedule back, after losing about a dozen staff in the event. Crusoe motioned at a clipboard on the desk like a mother pointing at a mess.
“So today, in lieu of Dr. Kilpatrick, we're sending you in. You are the backup psychiatrist.”
Nothing got him more pissed off than her smug self-important attitude. She wasn't just the Senior Researcher, she was better than you. If they sold framed posters of her, she'd plaster them over her office. Dr. Morris picked up the clipboard of canned interview questions, and the digital recorder on top. He clipped the recorder to his hip and mic'd up. Crusoe escorted him to the airlock, looking at him with the same caring facade. He stepped over the door bumpers, waiting for the lock to seal. Crusoe imparted a few words before the gates locked together.
“Remember, Morris, scary!”
Morris almost told her to shut up. He'd made the mistake once when talking to a senior, and while they had understood the stress of the situation, he was sure Crusoe would love to grill him for even the slightest insubordination. He turned around, anxious for the other set of doors to open. The intercom speaker above came to life, and a monotone voice spoke.
Opening inner seal.
The two doors pulled apart with a metal grinding and a bike-pump hiss. Dr. Morris took a few steps out into the chamber. His dusty white running shoes making soft falls on the bare concrete below. He cleared his throat to clear the apprehension that thickened the already stale air.
“SCP Two thousa-”
The jolting honk of a horn cut him off. He turned to face SCP-2006, only to come face-to-face with a horror fresh from his earliest years.
Blinding white makeup caked the unnatural rubber skin. The caricature stood before him, not enough makeup to cover the dirty folds on the mockery of a human face. Two Curious George ears too low on the face for real anatomy. Aggressive red hair sprouting from the back ridge of his skull, like a halloween mask. The garish comedy war-paint, smeared across the face, was dripping fresh, in detail unthought of to his formative memories of the creature.
Morris stumbled backwards, deeper into the containment cell. He almost tripped over himself, before finding stability on a wall.
“Fuck!”, he shouted, a bit too unrestrained. No one had sworn at SCP-2006 before. Crusoe would be thrilled.
SCP-2006, still in his twisted form, took a dramatic step forwards. Dr. Morris remembered his instructions, and screamed. It was only half-forced.
Morris could still remember: He was eight years old. His parents brought home the VHS from the rental store. It wasn't like the low-budget schlock he'd waded through on cable, this was a new package of actual scares. After Mom had went to bed and Dad fell asleep in his armchair with an empty bottle of Pabst Blue-Ribbon in his hands, he got to watch the forbidden fruit of his youth. He didn't remember much of the movie as an adult, having never rewatched it. If he entertained the idea, it was met with pure apprehension. It was the same apprehension one would feel when they hovered their hand over a sharp kitchen knife, or the car cigarette lighter. What he did remember were the Klowns. They came from the cold vacuum of space not to cause comical ray-gun effects and burn down a few cities, instead, they hungered for human flesh. His flesh, of course.
This childhood trauma before him had his image clawed from the reaches of his mind, using greasepaint and fear to fill in the gaps. SCP-2006 kept up his act. Morris struggled to come to words. SCP-2006 did it for him.
“Doctor, did I scaaaaaare you?”
Dr. Morris looked up at the nightmare clown, fumbling for words. His tone didn't match his usual “concerned” voice, it only raised in pitch. Mocking.
“Y-yes, SCP-2006, yes you did. My God, I almost had a heart attack!”
A second passed before the edges of the crude grin on SCP-2006's face rose. Underneath the lips were rows of teeth. The teeth of an alcoholic shark. Dr. Morris wondered who had shown him an actual horror movie, and who would be reprimanded for this. Fucking Crusoe, sending him in. Armin pulled himself from the floor, raising the clipboard to his chest, a show of control.
“Hello, SCP-2006, I am Doctor Morris. I am an analytical psychologist for the SCP foundation. I have a few questions to ask you, relating to your actions earlier today.”
The clown's joyous expression stayed. Eager for his indulgence.
“Ask away, Doctor.”
Morris clicked his pen, a signal for his turn to begin.
“Earlier today you had morphed into a form invisible to the staff outside, I am curious as to what you had hoped to accomplish by doing so.”
He stood firm. The clown on the other end of the room broke his serious tone at the question. A quizzical look immediately wiped away all manner of hostility.
“I don't understand.”
Dr. Morris repeated himself.
“Well, we can see you through the cameras. It's how we know you're still here. Why did you try hiding from us?”
It took him a few seconds, before an expression of excitement overcame his previous demeanor. Like a child who remembered the answer to the teacher's question.
“Oh! You hadn't come in last time, so I tried to get you to come in again. But you're a new doctor. You're not Dr. Kilpatrick, though.” SCP 2006 said, his tone drifting into wistfulness.
“No, SCP-2006, I'm not. I'm sorry to tell you.”
He was, in a way, sorry. SCP-2006 and Kilpatrick had, well, a bond. Dr. Kilpatrick loved getting into the whole act with 2006, and even volunteered to accompany him on “movie night” a few times. Kilpatrick had been an unfortunate casualty of last-week's toxin leak. Armin would probably be filling in for him for the foreseeable future.
“Well, Dr. Morris, I miss him. I think he loved it when I scared him. I know he enjoyed getting scared just as much as I enjoyed doing it. I miss him, Doctor.”
Dr. Morris shot back, almost impatient.
“Yes, I am sure you miss him, but for now he isn't going to be working with the foundation.”
Morris could've slapped himself. He always felt like he was overcompensating for moments of “getting to know them” with sudden shifts of cold clinicality. He had to remind himself no matter how much he could “warm up” his patients, he was working with a keter class entity. But the jarring shifts to a clinical tone always came with frustration, always at himself. He thought that you could make up for two weeks of missing reports by filling out four weeks' extra.
“I'm sorry, SCP-2006. For snapping just there.”
SCP-2006 looked at him with the eyes of a stray to a dogcatcher. The greased clown took on a demure posture, trying to come to grips with this information. He looked back at Morris in confusion.
“Why did he leave? He wouldn't just leave me like that!”
The clown continued to stare at him with begging eyes. Morris quickly scribbled down onto a blank section of paper “No concept of death?”, with an exaggerated question mark. Another line to pursue.
“SCP-2006, do you know where people go when they die?”
SCP-2006 took a few seconds to ponder the question.
“They get back up for the sequel?”
Morris scratched into his sheet a bit more. He decided to bite off a bit more. The question had been cleared with the higher ups. He looked down at the questions page to make sure he phrased it in the most direct way. It would be the fuck up of the century if he ruined it.
“What do you know to be the states of being alive?”
SCP-2006 chuckled. He relaxed himself and spoke to Morris.
“Well, there's being scared! That's my favorite, then there's… uhh…”
SCP-2006's face stalled like a choked engine.
“…breathing?”
Interesting. Very much so. Dr. Morris had everything he needed from SCP-2006. At least the bare minimum required by Crusoe and would still let him catch the tail-end of happy hour. He started writing down his closing statements onto his page.
“Now, SCP-2006, I believe our interview terminated. If you have anything else you feel you need to do,” Dr. Morris gave a coy, semi-forced wink, “before I leave, then go ahead.”
SCP-2006's beady eyes lit up like a child on Christmas morning, though he stayed next to the door.
“Oh, no, Dr. Morris. I am sated. I think I've reached my, ehr, quota of scares today? Even if they weren't all genuine. At least the clown outfit reaction wasn't fake.”
Disbelief. Morris paused. He blanked for a few seconds, feeling his throat tighten as his mind searched for the correct path. His mouth was dry, even after he drank the generic cola crap. He felt the pen chained to the clipboard fall out of his hands and slide down the paper, dangling off the board.
“F-fake? SCP 2006, I assure you, what he felt was real. You are the best at scaring! I almost died from fear earlier! I-I, Y-you-”
The clown giggled in a gruff, menacing tone. He took a step towards him. Morris stepped backwards. He felt the cold enamel walls of the cell brush against the elbows of his coat.
“Dr. Armin Morris, born February 19th, 1980. Blood type A negative. Parents, divorced. I knew all that when you walked in. I don't smell fear. I smell everything. And I know where that stain came from. Both stains, Dr. Morris. I also know Dr. Kilpatrick felt real fear when he began to choke on his own blood. It was like nectar. Water to a man in the desert. That's actual fear that I smelt. But I don't just smell these things, I understand them, too. A lot of things.”
Armin had never understood what people meant when they say time slows to a crawl. Every second passed with the feeling of pure fear. A hot, rancid sweat tingling with adrenaline ran in rivulets down his back. He was soon aware of how small the cell was. How close the clown was to him. How close those teeth were.
“You think I'm ignorant? You think I have no knowledge of what's outside my cell? This chamber's sealed, yes, but I can use my eyes in spite of it. I smelled a lot of things. Senior Researcher Crusoe's fake concern. The Camera Tech's worry about his mother's cancer. I've been around for so long, I'd forgotten what it was like to wallow in the fear of an entire village, and this is very close.”
Morris wanted to get out. But he was a cornered animal here. The doors behind SCP-2006 had shut, and the control room was, to his assumption, in a state of mass panic from what they'd heard. They couldn't let him out, it would risk a breach. If they risked a breach of an intelligent entity, they risked a breach of every item contained within. Morris's knees locked, stale. He felt small. So small.
“It's been so long since I've smelled genuine fear. So long since I've peered out of closets. So long since the rustling trees and rainy windows. So long.”
Morris thumbed the intercom button on his two-way radio.
“Pull me out.”
He depressed the direct line. He knew they heard. That button broadcast his message across the observation room. They wouldn't pull him out. Not yet.
But to his disbelief, it wasn't but seconds later that the doors to the lock opened. SCP-2006 stepped aside, gesturing at the open archway like a carnival ringleader at the main attraction. In the same moment, the light cut out.
Doctor Morris screamed. Before too much time had passed. The emergency amber lights had kicked on, showing the room he was in empty, save for himself. He fell to his knees, and scrambled away from the room. Both sets of doors were open.
The observation hub was a mess. The intercom repeating the same autogenerated containment breach warning. All monitors displayed: “CORE POWER OFFLINE - REVERTING TO SOLID STATE TO RETAIN FILE INTEGRITY”. The evac lights illuminated the room in flashes. Morris pulled himself up, seeing the orgy sprawled on the floor.
Crusoe's body slumped against the collage of monitors. An arterial spray served as the arrow to her slashed neck. A guard crumpled into the fetal position next to the sealed door, his P90 clutched in his hands, unfired. Armin felt the warm syrup and corrosive bile pull itself from his stomach. He doubled over, wet retching onto the linoleum.
Addendum: SCP-2006 breached containment on ██/█/20██. We now understand that SCP-2006 can manifest in multiple locations at once. While personnel may believe they're conversing with the “Face” entity, referred to as SCP-2006-1, SCP-2006 is capable of creating an unknown number of secondary entities, labeled as SCP-2006-X. Possible redraft of containment procedures requested in light of recent events, as well as the loss of Senior Researcher ██████, Assistant Researcher █████, and assorted staff.