"You want to bring back Omega-7. What did you expect?"
Ten smiled uncertainly. "Not bring back," she said. "Resurrect. In a new form. Better."
The oracle's laughter vibrated in the air, personable yet inhuman.
This was not a good sign.

Technically, Ten and her allies had not acted incorrectly by starting the Alpha-9 project without explicit approval from the rest of the Council.
Technically.
Ten and Nine had come to see the oracles together. The oracles were each SCPs in the technical sense, but, like all Black Box SCPs, they had no Special Containment Procedures files. No one below the Council and their Staff even knew they existed. They had no numbers, only descriptors.
The oracle Ten intended to see was "The Steel Man."
Ten said little as they made the long trip in the quiet railway car. She gripped her tablet computer harder than usual. An alien moon shone above, and unfamiliar stars glittered in a black sky. They rode across the long salt flats of the in-between places, their destination away from reality and time.
Nine didn't object to her silence, and for this, Ten was grateful.
The black sky lightened, and the unearthly dawn came as they reached their destination. Ten and Nine disembarked and stood in front of the vast glass Archive that housed the oracles, a complex that hung from the sky like a spiderweb. Only the entryways touched the ground.
The oracles' white-robed guardians came out to meet them. They were ever-silent, with no mouths. Their left hands were golden chains, attached to gleaming lanterns. They led Ten through the halls of the frosted-glass structure to the steel man's chamber.
Through the translucent walls of the structure, Ten could see vague impressions of white-robed guardians moving like ghosts through the maze. In the adjacent waiting room, a blurred shadow that was her assistant, Salt, paced back and forth. A gallery of shadows lurked in the adjoining rooms — other oracles which Ten had deliberately denied herself clearance to see.
The chamber was an atrium on the edge of the complex, looking out over a lush valley too garish to ever have existed on Earth. Atop a low platform decorated with intricately carved ivory inlays crouched a monstrous, many-armed hulk, huddled underneath a white and gold robe that filled the room to its corners. He had many faces, and each one was a mask carved from ivory, jade, redwood and obsidian.
The only other thing in the room was a single chair carved from the bones of a primordial beast, which Ten took.
"Welcome," the steel man said. "Speak."

The oracle's laughter vibrated in the air.
Ten said more.
He laughed more.
"You're laughing at me quite a lot," Ten said. "Perhaps this is why no one comes to talk to you."
"I exist to serve," the steel man said. "As with the other oracles, I am yours to heed or disregard as you please."
"Then speak."
"Very well. You are the newest organ of the Overseer Council. There have been an uncommon number of additions to this Council in the last twenty years. Your friend, Nine, being one of them."
The steel man lowered his gaze. Ten followed his line of sight, through the glass floor.
Nine stood in the valley below, on a mountain slope close to the bottom of the glass building. She was alone, leaning on her walking stick. Perhaps she was just waiting.
Ten wasn't familiar with all the oracles here, which wasn't unusual for a Council member. Even when you could know everything, you knew there were some things you didn't want to know. She'd considered and dismissed the idea of visiting one of the more powerful and more alien oracles.
Nine had always thought different.
"She is more human than you are," the steel man said. "The most human of all of you."
"We're all human."
"In the technical sense." Another chuckle. "She is your strongest ally. You realize the ramifications, yes? You are the only member of the Council newer than her."
"I've been in the Foundation longer than she has."
"She is an exception. She was chosen to be an exception."
Nine was unique. She had discovered the existence of the anomalous without ever finding out about the Foundation, and been recruited into the Overseer Council without ever rising through the Foundation's ranks. The Council had needed a new Nine, and badly wanted an outside perspective.
"They have invested much in her," the steel man said. "They will not be eager to admit their experiment failed. But you? They can get another Archivist, just like when they executed your predecessor. Perhaps your assistant, Salt. Or that exceptional Director Maria Jones…"
Ten winced. "Then perhaps my foolishness will benefit another." She looked down at Nine. "Is she waiting for an oracle?"
"She is speaking to one."
"Where?"
"In the mountain." The steel man's highest face smiled. "The Oracle of Earth speaks to very few, and not for long. She seems to favor Nine. That is perhaps, not surprising."
Ten nodded.
"We digress," the steel man said. "You began this project on your own. With allies, yes, but very few. Why?"
"I didn't think it would come to a Council vote," Ten admitted.
"And that is why you are here now."
"Yes," Ten said. "I imagine this is why you're an oracle."
The steel man chuckled approvingly. "Tell me. What were you thinking, when you chose to do things this way?"
Ten hesitated. "I was thinking that it was better to ask for forgiveness than permission."
"Your immediate predecessor would have agreed," the steel man said. "Allow me to suggest that this is why he had the shortest tenure of any Council member within my memory."
Ten thought of SCP-003. "I am not even close to that foolish," she said.
"Indulge me," the steel man said. "Do you know the last time that the Council lost this many members within twenty years?"
"The Foundation Civil War," Ten said.
"Yes. The creation of the Chaos Insurgency by rogue Overseers. You are aware the precise details? Of their motives?"
"Of course. The man who was Seven—"
"Come now, come now," the steel man interrupted. "Yes, Seven provided their rhetoric. Seven crystallized their operations and provided the name. His rhetoric was, and is, very effective, as the large number of promising young recruits snapped up by the Insurgency proves. It is true that Seven was unhappy and wished for a loosening of protocol, but Seven did not start the Insurgency. In fact, Seven never planned to defect from the Foundation at all."
Ten was quiet.
"You do not need me, to learn these things," the steel man said. "All the records are open to you."
"I've been preoccupied," Ten said. "Contrary to popular belief, I'm still human."
"Ah yes," the steel man said. "I imagine you have been preoccupied indeed. I would envy you, were I human. As the Archivist, you possess knowledge even the other Council members do not share. Each time the world has ended. Each time it has been restored. One could even call you an oracle yourself. And yet, here you are."
His masks stared into the distance.
"I came here to hear your perspective," Ten said. "So, how would you characterize the beginning of the Insurgency?"
"Her number was Eleven. She was possessed of far too much knowledge for her own good, even for one of you."
"What happened?"
"She became consumed with a singular idea. She wished for the Foundation to increase its research into the anomalous." The masks looked meaningfully at Ten. "She was called 'The Warden'. She developed many of the Foundation's early containment procedures. She felt that we were handicapped by limiting ourselves to containment without understanding. It was her argument that this was not truly containment at all."
"I see where you're going," Ten said. "Those do resemble the principles behind the Resurrection Project."
"Eleven also wished for us to reclassify humanoids into a separate category. She lobbied for our soldiers and researchers to work with humanoid anomalies, as equals."
Ten hesitated. "Alpha-9 isn't nearly so radical."
"Perhaps it is closer than you wish to admit." The steel man spread his arms. "Eleven forced the issue at the Council, as you have done now. When the others would not be swayed, she and her allies defected from the Foundation."
"I would never consider starting a second Insurgency."
"Wouldn't you?" He let the words linger. "Of course you wouldn't. But they might not believe that." All the masks focused on Ten. "Pit the Foundation against the Global Occult Coalition. Who will win?"
Ten stared at the steel man. This wasn't the first time she'd heard the question, but never before so directly.
"Will you not answer?"
"Well, the Coalition has a far greater number of active paramilitary assets. They have direct diplomatic ties with UN member nations, giving them freedom of movement through those nations. They are, however, hampered by their role as a UN-affiliated peacekeeping and reaction force. They have far fewer paranormal assets, but they are more likely to make use of them. We have the defensive advantage, they have the offensive advantage.
Ten paused. "But the Coalition will not come into open conflict with us so long as we don't represent an existential threat," she went on. "They prize secrecy too much. This is all theoretical."
"It may be less theoretical very soon," the steel man said. "What about the ORIA?"
"ORIA?"
"Or, perhaps, the Horizon Initiative? The Insurgency, were it to receive a new swell of support? The Serpent's Hand? The Forgotten Sons? Even the UIU, with an influx of funding?"
"I don't see…" Ten trailed off.
"What if you provoke them to all move against the Foundation at the same time?" the steel man asked. "Who wins?"
"I don't know." Ten felt a sinking feeling in her gut. "We can't know."
"But you should be asking the question, nonetheless."
Ten looked down at Nine again. As if in response, Nine pivoted away from the mountain. She faced the valley and raised her walking stick like Moses parting the Red Sea.
The valley rumbled with thunder. The ground shook. In the distance, a vast plateau rose into the air.
Ten watched in astonishment.
The thunder grew louder, and then settled, along with the new forested mesa, in the center of the valley. Nine lowered her walking stick and stood over the valley, observing her apparent handiwork.
Ten smiled.
"There is another name you should consider, besides Eleven," the steel man said. "Kondraki."
Ten shook her head. "I know Eight will make the comparison, but that's foolish. Kondraki destroyed Site-19 with intent. That is why he had to go."
"Then why did the Council wait so long to order his assassination? What convinced them to finally act?"
"I'm not certain precisely what you mean to imply," Ten said.
"Of course you are certain." The steel man gave her a grin from his highest face.
Ten turned away. She was certain. She just hadn't wanted to make the parallel.
At the height of Kondraki's power within the Foundation, he had campaigned for weaponization of SCPs. He'd promoted the expansion of anomalous task forces like Omega-7 — and why wouldn't he, given his bond with SCP-408? He had begun to strike out on his own, without the rubber stamps of his higher-ups.
The Council had feared he would start another Insurgency. They had concluded that he was too dangerous to let live.
And then there were the other agents that Kondraki's death had silenced…
"What do you recommend I do?" Ten asked.
"What you should have done at the beginning. Go to the others. Ask for their support."
Ten nodded. "What else?"
"Expect this to go badly for you." For the first time in the conversation, all of the masks were grinning. "And be very grateful if it does not."


by qntm

Junior Researcher Kim's been working for the Foundation for all of four hours and he feels pulverised, as if an anvil were dropped on his head in that first introductory lecture. It's lunchtime, and he's found a corner so far back in the cafeteria that nobody bothers him, where he can chew and swallow non-anomalous food, drink apocalyptically strong coffee and digest the hard lessons of the morning.
On his Foundation-provided phone, he pages fretfully through the few SCP files for which he has clearance. Most of them have to be jokes. That's how they read. Like very bad, dark, frightening jokes.
Kim's one of eleven Junior Researchers in the new intake, and the other ten are sitting in a separate group at a separate table, chatting animatedly to one another. There are some instructors here and there, munching sandwiches. Other than them, the cafeteria - large enough to seat two hundred people or more - is deserted. To Kim, that seems odd. Site 41 is large, three skulking buildings with significant basement space, buried casually in the forests of central Colorado. Where is everybody?
A man in a grey suit walks into the cafeteria, makes eye contact with Kim and strides purposefully over. The man's suit is sharp enough to cut. He wears a tie pin and a platinum wristwatch as big as a brick. He looks badly misplaced. Site 41 is a working site. There's training, education, research, development, analysis, and even the containment of a very few Safe SCPs going on here. Executives shouldn't ever be here. So what is he? A lost exec, trying to find the helipad? Or a researcher or instructor, dressing for the job he wants, not the job he has?
"Hell of a first day," the man says, holding a hand out. "Alastair Grey. With an E."
"Kim," says Kim. "Paul Kim."
"Good to meet you. What accent is that, if you don't mind me asking?"
Kim blinks. "New York," he says. "I'm from New York. Are you the site director?"
"You seem on edge."
"Well, that figures, doesn't it?" Kim asks. "You must know how that intro goes. It's like an atom bomb to the ego. I just had almost everything I know overturned. It turns out I've spent my entire adult life being 'protected' from 'dangerous' knowledge, as if the whole outside world is a… a ballpit, for under-sevens. Stepping out of that has been… humiliating. To start with. And…" He blinks again. "Hey, what do you do here, exactly? You didn't answer my question."
"You didn't answer mine," Grey says.
"Of course I did," Kim says. "I'm from—"
And then he just stops, his train of thought running off the end of the track into air. It's on the tip of his tongue, the answer to Grey's question, but he can't get the words out. "That's weird," he says, shaking his head.
At this point, he also notices that Grey isn't wearing his badge. This could be an honest mistake, albeit an extremely serious one. But surely execs don't get to the executive level without being scrupulously correct in everything they do?
"Who are you?" Kim asks again.
"Your life story was fascinating."
"What?"
"You spoke four languages," Grey tells him. "One now, and soon zero. Too huge an intellect to specialise, your education was a fusion of biochemistry and comparative literature. You felt as if you'd die if you couldn't find more foreign thoughts to cram into your head. You've been all over the world, hungry, and every country you've ever been to was like landing on another planet. You toy with anthropology, but there's too much world for one human race to ever understand, let alone one human. There's too much human race. We should pare it down."
Kim nods. "Would you excuse me for just one second?" He gets up and hurries to another table, to the instructor whom he met earlier that day. When Kim gets close to her he feels a kind of staticky sensation building up. He tries to shake her shoulder, and succeeds in moving it a little, but it's like reaching through tar. "Hey! There's a problem. There's an intruder. I think it might be an SCP. Doc, look at me! Hello?" She doesn't react. He tries the gaggle of fellow newcomers as well, but they keep chattering and hypothesising, oblivious to him shouting and clapping in their ears. "Hey! People! Listen to me! No, no, no, no."
He looks back. Grey has stood up and started moving towards him, still with that confident smile. And there's definitely something wrong with him now because he's visible through the tables, like an augmented reality holoprojection jammed inside Kim's eyeball.
Kim realises with a stab of fear that he can even see Grey when he blinks. His eyelids close, but Grey is still there, an apparition in what for all of Kim's life has been totally personal, private darkness. The only way he can avoid seeing Grey is to turn away, and even then he feels a radioactive prickling in the back of his eyeballs.
Kim tries to phone one of the newbies. The phone in the newbie's pocket rings, and other than that, nothing happens. Nobody reacts.
"That doesn't make sense," Kim says.
"Do you remember your father?" Grey says.
"I never knew my father," Kim says, edging away. "Mom raised me."
Grey's white smile is a fixture. "These people loved your perspective. They were going to put you to work on anomalous antimemes. But they don't remember you exist. You don't exist."
Kim says, mainly to himself, "There aren't any dangerous SCPs on this site. It's a Safe site. So either you're not dangerous, or nobody knows you exist. And if nobody knows you exist, then that means you're either brand new, or… you're… What's an antimeme?"
"Hell of a first day," Grey says.
"Are you sentient?" Kim asks.
"You seem on edge," Grey says.
Kim bolts. He exits the cafeteria, turns a corner and runs ten or eleven paces down the corridor, to where there's an elevator. He stabs the "down" button and waits. The elevator door is highly polished, reflective. Kim catches sight of a face in the mirrored surface and nearly falls over with shock, because it's a face he has never seen before, and it's apparently his own. "Jesus! Oh, no no no," he babbles. "What the hell, what the hell—"
Grey comes around the corner, still only strolling, just as the elevator cracks open. Kim dives in and punches the lowest floor, basement level 8. It's instinctive, although he could rationalise the decision in retrospect. (He can't just get in his car and drive. It's better if Grey stays on site than if he's set loose in rational "reality". And to do that it's better if Kim retreats to the lowest, darkest corner of the site for which he has access. And then waits for Grey, and then locks all the doors behind them. And waits to die…) The elevator starts descending, and the apparation of Grey - visible through doors and floors - disappears upwards, shrinking with distance and perspective, but still smiling broadly down at Kim.
Kim paces in the elevator. I don't remember what my face looks like. It said it had eaten all my secondary languages, but I don't remember learning anything other than English. So— It's eating my memories. It's consuming information. And I can't contact anybody directly, which means I'm on my own.
I'm not trained for this.
He hammers his head once against the elevator wall, and stares at his shoes. But I don't know that. What if I've been trained, but I don't remember my training anymore? What if I've been working here for years and I only think this is my first day? What if I've met this thing before? What if everybody on the site has met it multiple times… and… nobody remembers? Is this what an antimeme is?
Kim remembers the near-empty cafeteria. And miles of totally unoccupied corridors and vacant office and lab space. Maybe it's not just eating my memories. Maybe it eats people whole, removes them completely from history. Maybe it's been haunting the site for years and that's why the site's so empty, because it's nearly finished exterminating us all?
I need to get help. I need to warn somebody. How? I can't talk to people, I can't phone them. I should— I should write an SCP.
But surely someone's already thought of that.
He pulls his phone out. He pulls out the listing. Nearly ten thousand SCP entries. A hundred of them are tagged "antimemetics" alone.
Kim clears his mind. Grey with an E. G-R-E-Y. 4-7-3-9.

SCP-4739
Object class: Keter
Special Containment Procedures: I'm disregarding the format, because time is a factor. If you're reading this, you've already been isolated from the Foundation at large. Attempts to signal for help are futile. You are now inside 4739's gullet, after ingestion and prior to digestion. You need to get to lab S041-B08-053 as soon as possible and continue the research until you find a way to stop or kill Grey, before it kills you. Don't read the rest until you're in the elevator.
Description:

At that moment the elevator doors open at basement level 8. Alastair Grey is waiting, still smiling disarmingly. He steps forward.
Desperate, Kim hurls his phone overarm at the creature's forehead. It's a solid chunk of metal and it's a dead hit. Grey reels backwards and cracks his skull against the wall. By the time he recovers, Kim is out of sight, haring away down the left corridor, just echoing, fading footsteps on concrete.
Two forty-five degree turns, and room 53 is in sight, the door at the farthest end. It looks like a submarine bulkhead. Kim spots the keypad from way out. Four digits. He tries 4739, and it works first time. The bulkhead mechanism takes agonising seconds to open up.
"Come on, come on, come on!"
"Do you remember your mother?" he hears Grey calling down the corridor.
"I never knew my parents, I was an orphan," Kim hisses under his breath. For a split second he wonders what Grey might really mean by that, but he doesn't have time to dwell on it.
The bulkhead opens. Kim slides in and pulls it closed behind him, locking the mechanism up again, as if that'll buy him even one second. The lab inside is sizeable, windowless of course, and stacked to the ceiling with a jumble of equipment which Kim hardly recognises. There are pieces of thick shattered glass underfoot. In the corner there's a computer terminal, locked. Kim unlocks it, and there's the same entry waiting for him:

Description: SCP-4739 is a powerful, slow-acting antimemetic kill agent taking the appearance of a male Caucasian business executive calling itself "Alastair Grey". SCP-4739 is attracted to dense clusters of organically-stored information - essentially, extremely knowledgeable, complicated, interesting people. SCP-4739 isolates its victim from the outside world by enveloping them in an antimemetic field which makes it impossible for the victim, or anything done by the victim, to be perceived or remembered. SCP-4739 then consumes the victim's memories and knowledge until they become vegetative and die. This process takes between 15 minutes and 2 hours and is described as being "like Alzheimer's disease in fast-forward".
SCP-4739 is not believed to be sentient, although it imitates the behaviour of a sentient being to the extent that it can appear sentient to the inattentive. Its victims are able to move and act freely, since it is impossible to escape once caught, or to signal for help. Communications such as written notes, graffiti and electronic mail do get sent, and persist in reality, but SCP-4739's effect spreads with each message, making it impossible for an external observer to perceive the message until such time as SCP-4739 catches them too.
The SCP entry which you are currently reading is created and maintained by victims of SCP-4739, because it is only visible to victims of SCP-4739. If you are reading this SCP entry, SCP-4739 has caught you. You are now isolated from the Foundation at large and constitute an effective Foundation of one. You have between 15 minutes and 2 hours to reach Site 41, basement level 8, laboratory 053, familiarise yourself with the existing research, and continue this research until you find a way to contain or decommission SCP-4739, or, more likely, die. If your field of expertise is not related to antimemetic containment, we sincerely apologise, and advise you to start learning. Fast.
SCP-4739 has consumed ||||| ||||| ||||| ||||| ||||| ||||| ||||| ||||| ||||| ||||| ||||| ||||| ||||| ||||| ||||| |||| Foundation researchers since we started counting on August 3, 2013. (If you are reading this entry for the first time, please add a mark.) We estimate at least 50% of victims never make it as far as this database entry, so the true victim count is more than twice this figure.

"But how do I kill it?" Kim screams. He scrolls and scrolls through the research, which is chaotic and haphazardly arranged, because nobody has found the spare seconds to sort it out. There are dozens of separate lines of research, contributed in patchwork by a succession of victims, all ending with variations on the same final line: "I'm going to try X. If you're reading this, X didn't work and I'm dead, which means approach X is a dead end, and you have to think of something else."
He reads. Nobody has succeeded in physically engaging with Grey. Nobody can stall it, evade it, slow it down, reason with it or redirect it to some other target. People have tried poisoning their memories with indigestible ideas, drip-feeding their memories to Grey to slow him down, replacing their memories faster than Grey can eat them, and force-feeding Grey too many memories at once to overfeed him and blow him up. They've tried committing suicide by Class-A amnestic overdose. None of it worked. More than a hundred people, most of them apparently possessing doctorates, have slid into the maw of this thing, fought briefly and, with a greater or lesser degree of dignity, died.
There are no remaining untried threads.
"I'm fucked!" Kim concludes. He glances up. Grey's not in the room yet, but Kim can see him strolling down the last stretch of corridor. He's a totally intangible being, physical obstructions are irrelevant to him. He can't be hurt.
Kim clutches the pocket where he used to keep his phone.
Wait a second.
He scrolls again. He finds the three or four sad, desperate wretches who died confronting Grey physically. Combat knife and Glock. Baseball bat (Kim looks up and checks the room; sure enough, the bat's there, rolled under a table). One man, an elderly botanist far out of his depth, said he was just going to try whatever he could find that was heaviest. That explains the shattered CRT television, and the light layer of thick glass on the floor near the bulkhead. There's even CCTV footage of the botanist's attempt. He accomplishes literally nothing. Grey is a holographic ghost, and the CRT drops right through him, imploding when it hits the floor at Grey's feet. The botanist spends the rest of the video's running time huddled in a corner, gradually losing his mind while Grey watches placidly.
The difference being, Kim realises with his eyes boggling, a phone is a solid brick full of information. And before me, nobody tried using information as a missile.
Kim searches for the experiments - several of them, scattered - where the victim tried to divert Grey to a different data source. The general idea seemed to be to overload Grey by pointing him at something containing too much information: the internet, or the terabit feed from a live particle accelerator experiment, or a stack of hard drives containing the first few quadrillion binary digits of pi. But nobody could figure out a way to distract Grey's attention; prominently-placed screens full of data, he would ignore; data beamed at him electromagnetically (radio, laser) had no effect. And nobody could figure out a way to tunnel the information in through the victim's mind as extra memories. It was written off as impossible, closed as a line of investigation.
The hard drives, Kim finds, are right there on the workbench next to the computer. It's a half-rack unit, a cuboidal block of metalwork as big and heavy as a bowling ball. One of the most ineffective conceivable melee weapons.
Kim snatches up the three longest pieces of ethernet cable he can find, and starts plaiting them into a chain.
Then he remembers who he is, and where he is, and what his responsibilities are. He goes to the computer, to the SCP entry, adds himself to the victim tally and writes up exactly what it is he's about to try. Because he might not be the last one, and the world needs to know that this didn't work.

*

Grey comes through the lab bulkhead to find most of the equipment in the room toppled onto the floor, to create room for the black and silver drive array that Paul Kim is whirling around his head, on a two-metre chain made of plaited network cable. It makes a low thrumming sound as it whirls. Grey is not intelligent enough to stop moving forwards, and catches the array directly in the side of his head, rack mount point first, like a morningstar.
Grey absorbs a few trillion digits of the impact, but it isn't enough. There's a green snap of light and a noise like a subway train short-circuiting, and Grey's a pile in the corner, his head caved in and the drive array partially demolished in pieces around him.
Kim decides that history can fill in whatever quip it likes best.

*

"It was chewing its way up the Antimemetics Division hierarchy," Wheeler tells him in the aftermath. "It was only a matter of time until it bit down on somebody dangerous. Congratulations on demonstrating a basic level of competence when it counted. Dozens of others couldn't."
Kim still feels rattled. But the shock is dissipating, faster than he'd expected.
Marion Wheeler, it turns out, is the Antimemetics Division chief. She is Kim's new boss.
"I want to say it was dumb luck," Kim says. "I want to say that I just threw my phone, it was instinct, it was muscle memory. It was my first day, and I got lucky as hell. …I want to say those things, but I'm sitting here, and turning those statements over, and none of them would be true, would they?"
Wheeler waits expectantly, and says nothing.
"You're not my new boss," Kim says. "You're just my boss. This isn't my first day at all. I've been working here for… well, it must be over a decade, right? I think I've been a professional antimemetics researcher since at least the mid-2000s. It's just that the first thing Grey ate was my memories of everything past the first day. And even then…"
"I see very little luck in what happened today," Wheeler says. "Instinct and muscle memory are just deep forms of training. Like I said, a basic level of competence. An ability to piece your own life and all of your past knowledge back together, faster than nearly anybody else. This is what we try to drill into you. And sometimes, thankfully, it takes."
"This isn't even the first time we've had this conversation," Kim continues. "There've been other incidents. With other SCPs with amnestic powers. You've sat there and watched me put myself back together before."
"And it hasn't gotten old yet," Wheeler admits, with something which might be approaching a smirk.
"How long does it usually take for me to recover?"
"A few months," Wheeler says. "But if you want the honest truth, people in this division are as competent on day one as they'll ever be. You come to the job firing on all cylinders, or not at all. The rest is just fine-tuning and chemistry."
"So what you're actually saying is you don't care about my mental state and you need me back at work now," Kim says.
Wheeler nods. "I need an updated SCP entry, just to begin with. I need you to nail down the model for Grey's predatory pattern and exactly how you defeated it. I want you to work out what it did with the bodies - incinerated, disintegrated, or just left them lying around the site in rotting perceptually cloaked heaps. And I need countermeasures for when it comes back."
"It's not dead? Wait," Kim says. "I think I know this one. It's coming back to me. 'Ideas don't die.'"

Next: Unforgettable, That's What You Are


He felt as if his lungs were going to crystallize, the ragged, frozen air scraping over the long-dried membranes like trying to breathe an aerosol brillo pad. He swung back, waving a moment before burying the pick into the sheer ice wall with a muffled oath of anger and victory. In the end, the climber knew it was his own fault. Refusing to take the easy, known route, wanting to explore the more remote parts of the range…which was all well and good until he'd run in to the sheer, glossy-smooth edge of a glacier.
He cursed, setting another pin and stretching up for another foothold in the sheer ice. The snow had closed in shortly after he'd started the climb, and now he was in a bubble of fog and pouring snow. He'd guessed the cliff face had been about two, maybe three hundred feet tall from the ground, but it felt like that distance had passed hours ago. Glaring up through frost-rimed goggles, he kept climbing, pushing up, and up…always higher, always more cliff face to go.
He'd tried to circle around, but found more of the same, a set of icy cliffs set in staggered sequence, with snow-choked valleys between, long since rendered impassable. Beyond them was a massive valley, with a set of peaks and rises the climber had never seen before, or even heard mentioned. He grinned, teeth gritted behind the ice-stiffed scarf, at how the others would be spitting blood, knowing that he'd been the first, for once. First to find, first to climb…hell, it was rather remote, maybe he could even get a peak named after him.
Lost in imagined vengeance, he swung his pick through open air and nearly lost his footing, having abruptly reached the top of the cliff. He stared out across a wide, perfectly flat plane, watching in a mute daze as his brain tried to process the sight, before releasing a ragged woop and scrambling up over the edge to stand on the cliff top. As if finally capitulating to his dogged ambition, the storm started to clear, and he was able to peer down the dizzying, sheer wall of the cliff he'd scaled. From here, it did look more like four hundred feet at least, as sheer and empty as a painted-over mirror. He spun back, hollering out his victory to the open air. The cries died slowly on his lips as the clouds lifted more, and his current position became more clear.
He stood at the top of a massive pillar, at least four hundred feet in height, ending in a sloping plateau less then fifty feet in width. The wind had long since torn the snow from this high peak, and left it a bare, ribbed mass of ice. He peered around more, confused, wondering what strange twist of nature to raise such a peak on the edge of a glacier. More puzzling, it didn't appear to be a one-time fluke. Three other, nearly identical shards of ice jutted up in a neat row, the sloped tops quickly dropping into another sheer, if not so glossy-smooth, set of cliff faces. The climber's eye followed the cliffs…the snowy roll of hills…the oddly humped-up masses of peaks and valleys in the base of this massive geologic dish. He stared, then looked again, following the lines…then suddenly shouted, instantly cramming his hands over his mouth, before starting a nearly suicidal decent down the cliff, ending in a forced march back to town that cost four toes, a finger, and partial use of one of his lungs.
He never climbed again, retiring from the sport without a word. He became a phantom, a cautionary tale of a man broken by the mountain. He spoke to few, and even fewer about what happened on that last climb. Only one man ever got more than monosyllables or a frozen stare from the broken climber. He was young, and fascinated by the tales of the old mountaineers, of the Sherpa's frightened whispers of gods dwelling in the high peaks. He plied the old, broken climber with drink, until finally he related the story of the frozen cliff. His eyes grew wide, speaking of the odd, massive caves he'd seen…the sudden, roaring crash as a massive rift opened on an isolated hill, growing wider and wider, swallowing a small mountain of snow. He gripped the young man, hissing his revulsion as he'd been forced to flee, forced to climb back down that vile cliff once more, never to return.
“Not a drop of ice, not a bit of it. Too soft, by half. Too yielding to the pick, boy…”
“It was a fingernail.”


The Utterly Bazaar was a roaring sea of merchants hawking, buyers haggling, and everyone in between fighting to make their voice heard over the rolling din of noise. Wooden stalls stood in the street to oppose the massive brick and mortar stores that flanked either side of the winding bazaar. The variance of the species within the throng was only outmatched by that of the goods around them, something the locals — if you could call a merchant who spent the night within his shop a local — were quite proud of.
Paddling through the peddlers was Finnegan, blissfully ignorant of the screaming around him thanks to a pair of faintly enchanted headphones. Instead he cycled through a playlist of an artist he had recently discovered, humming along as he went. It did quite a lot to quell the smashing in his chest from the pressure of the crowd, both physical and otherwise. But the small bundle of spending money he had recently earned weighed heavy in his pocket, and without Aldon to present a project he was left to his own capitalistic devices.
Finnegan squeezed himself between a pair of bickering Clowns, his backpack momentarily catching on the latch of cage carried by the merrier of the two. He quickly excused himself and slid further into the crowd, not noticing he had inadvertently freed the contained Fun-Lover. Because he was essentially deafened, Finnegan didn't hear the loud popping noise accompanied by an ecstatic "Wowwee!" So instead he entered Ed & Al's Alchemist Emporium, unaware of the chaos he had just unleashed.
After purchasing a pinch of magnesium and two vials of O-negative he slipped back out before the brothers running the store could try talking him into more. To escape the crowd he turned off into a side street nestled between the alchemists' supply store and an interdimensional pet shop, and save for the merchants distributed through the alley he was almost alone. The shops forced into the alley ways often were little more than a carpet with all the merchant's otherworldly possessions laid out before them, forcing Finnegan to hesitantly tiptoe across the minefield of tiny skulls and jugs of potions.
It was not until he was half-past the one actual stall in the alley that something caught his attention. Or more accurately, his arm. Finnegan looked down at the cloth wrapped around his sleeve, following it to the mass of cotton and wool covering the merchant in question. Finnegan squinted into the gap where the merchant's head should have been. Instead he just saw the inside of the woolen hood.
The headphones on his head were displaced by a limb he couldn't actually see, and a whispering voice spoke to him in urgent tones. "How would you like to make some easy money?"
Finnegan considered his options. He could accept a job proffered to him in a back alley by a bundle of rags. Or he could eat ketchup packets when he got home. Tilting his head back and forth, he examined the stall. Every single item on it had the word "ghost" in its name. In some cases that was simply its entire name.
Finnegan took a short breath. "What would I have to do?"
A watch emerged from the cloth. Or something akin to a watch. Instead of an analogue or digital clock face it had a small meter with a black needle. Said needle was warbling very far into the red territory.
"Don't mind that, just picking up interference from my… uh, wares. I need you to take that and this filter here to this address, and collect all the ectoplasm you can. Really easy job. I'd go, but I have, uh… allergies."
Finnegan examined the large air filter. A sticker on its side claimed it to be doubly effective against both allergens and the various forms of ectoplasm. He took another look at the twitching ectoplasm detector and then looked back at the merchant.
"Yeah, I could do that."

Hinges squealed and light pushed its way through the must of the cellar. Finnegan squinted into the darkness through the visor of an old respirator. At first all he could see was dust flutter through the weak beams of illumination, giving the long-abandoned place a constant flurry of filth. He made sure his cuffs of his jacket sleeves and pants cuffs were taped down, that his gloves were tight, and that his hood formed a seal with the mask. After making sure his signature beret was firmly in place he scooped up the modified air filter at his feet with both hands and crept into the crypt. The needle of the device on his wrist slowly crept to the right.
The cellar was a mess of shelves and crates. Rusted metal and cracked porcelain jutted from wood and plastic, tempting him with the possibility of finding something worth salvaging. But he moved on, to the staircase leading into the house of the Birch family. Stairs creaked and the railing groaned, but Finnegan pressed on.
Only a glance was spared toward the detector, where it petered an eighth away from the left end; the place only had trace amounts of ectoplasmic vapor in the air. Something between caution and paranoia kept the mask on. Getting possessed was not exactly on today's itinerary.
The Birch home proper was not quite as bad off as its cellar. Its surfaces only wore a thin layer of dust rather than an inch-thick coat, upon which Finnegan deposited the large white device he had been carrying. The glass container snuggled into the filter slowly filled with a glowing green fluid.
The house was small, arguably tiny. Two bedrooms and one bathroom, and joint kitchen/dining room. A quick look into the cabinets earned nothing but cobwebs. The drawers were similarly empty. The fridge contained nothing but an array of jam jars. Pomegranate, if their labels were to be believed. Most of them looked coagulated enough to qualify as a solid. Turning the handles on the sink resulted in glowing jelly ejecting itself from the faucet.
He lifted the latch on the glass cylinder attached to the filter, and went about ferrying the goo from the sink and into the glass. The ghostly moan that accompanied each deposit did little for his mood.
It all struck him as doubly odd. Nobody had died within the Birch home within the last twenty years, and yet the place was chock-full of ghostly energy. Despite this, nothing was actually happening, outside of the usual ectoplasmic buildup. He supposed it was because he hadn't breathed enough of the air to allow a possession, and there wasn't much of anything left in the house suitable for a poltergeist. But there had to be something going on here he hadn't spotted yet. Once the sink was clean he turned the filter's power dial to max and went about exploring the house.
He found a bathroom and gave the sink an experimental use. More goo globbed out and slowly slid down the drain. Finnegan sighed. The entire plumbing system was likely backed up with ghost goo. He gave the toilet seat a lift to inspect the interior and promptly let it fall.
There had been a face in the toilet.
Muffled yelling came from beneath the porcelain, which Finnegan immediately took to ignoring. Fingers wiggled nervously while he considered what to do. Ghosts — or whatever these things qualified as — or not, a scientific approach was probably his best bet.
He walked back out to the kitchen and peered into the vial of ectoplasm the filter had collected. A tiny face looked back up at him from the liquid's surface. It gave him a high-pitched "ooooooo" for his effort.
Finnegan gathered a fair amount of saliva in his mouth and spit onto the floor. A face arose from the wet spot on the tiles. When it tried yelling at him he stepped on it. When he lifted his foot the face was still there, only now its tinny wail was chorused by a face on the underside of Finnegan's shoe.
Curiosity pushed him over to the fridge, and he slowly opened the freezer. Frozen faces stared back at him, warped into tiny stalactites. He breathed on them heatedly, earning a chilly wail in return. The moan petered out with his breath. He shrugged and yanked out what icicles he could, tossing them into the cylinder.
After wiping up the spit he went about exploring the house in full. A whole lot of nothing turned up until he entered the master bedroom. Sitting on the floor next to the indent marks the bed had made in the carpet was a white panama hat. It didn't look anything special, other than the fact that it was in good condition.
But something about the hat gave him a weird feeling he couldn't quite place. Blurry memories of the anart mecha competition in Japan surfaced, and an indistinct image of the Wanderer's Library sat just outside his mind's eye.
He twirled the hat idly while his brain tried to unravel why it was thinking what it was being made to think. It didn't work particularly well. The more he pushed at the mental blockage the stronger it seemed to become, compacting in his mindscape. He found himself unable to draw his attention away from it. As the mass grew more dense, it began drawing in surrounding thoughts and memories.
Finnegan felt his mind slowly collapse in on itself as his brain tried very hard not to do the same.
Enough neurons were out of its event horizon for him to drop the hat, and the captured memories went supernova. His mind exploded in a blur of all the colors, sounds, and scents he could remember ever experiencing.
And then he passed out.
Luckily he didn't land on the panama hat on the floor.

« Involuntary Isolation | Hub | Killing Knowledge »


In this world, consequence cannot bear the harshness of catastrophe. Mistakes are given lighter punishments. Falling stars shoot through the night sky and occasionally grant wishes of observers below. It is a softer place.

The Foundation did not have to suffer from its judgement errors as harshly as in other worlds. Employees worked in relative peace; some even found the time to grant small mercies.
When the Foundation first asked Cain to reunite with his brother, he took three days to decide. On the third day, he agreed on the condition that the only person who could abort the mission would be himself. The Foundation took three more days before agreeing.
Cain settled by the coffin that held his brother in a white room. He didn't know if Abel could hear him in there; maybe Abel was sleeping. The thought made him smile a bit—at least Abel's habit of long naps hadn't changed. Regardless, he spoke his apologies in a language to which they were the sole survivors.
"Say, brother, good morning. Shouldn't you be tending to your sheep? They're all down the hills, scattered. Their children have fled our lands and fill the cliffs as mountain goats, the deserts and savannahs as camels, oryx and antelope. Good morning, good morning brother."
Three minutes later, Abel stepped out of his coffin, drew a blade, and tried to decapitate his brother. Cain did not move to dodge; any wounds delivered to him would simply reflect back to the attacker. Abel's head fell onto the floor, then caved in on itself as a pile of dust. The coffin swung shut.
Cain coughed, ran his hands over his own neck and winced. "Good to see you too."
Every two days, Abel would leave his coffin and try to kill his brother. Sometimes, Cain talked to the coffin. For two months, this futile attempt at discussion was all they had.
Eventually, Abel's anger simmered down enough to allow a question from his lips. "Why, Cain? Why are you here?"
"I came to ask for-"
Abel did not allow the conversation to continue. This went on for another month. He would ask the same questions again and again, finding himself unable to face any answers.
Abel had been a colicky newborn; the only thing that soothed him was his mother's lullabies. So Cain sang as Abel slept. He breathed a soft, haunting melody that dwelt on brighter days.
Later, the tattooed man stepped out of the coffin and into the white room. His bare feet made soft padding noises as he stepped towards his older brother, watching him with the patient gaze of a farmer waiting for his crops to fruit. "Why. Why did you do it. Why are you here, now, after killing me and leaving me." He extended arms, pressing them against Cain's clear skin. "Leaving me to these people, with their marks on me, all their marks! Tell me!!"
"I was young and jealous. I got older. Time carved its wisdom into me. I'm here now because… because I still love you. Please forgive me, Abel. Everyone we knew as children has left to God's garden." The older brother leaned forwards to pull his sibling into a tight hug.
"My beautiful baby brother, it's just us now," he choked out.
Abel drew a blade. Clutched the hilt, then let go. He leaned into the embrace, clinging tightly. "It's not fair. It's not fair. You are so untouched. I can't leave a single wound on you." He spoke, soft as moonlight. "And yet look at me. Look at all the things done to me. You used to be my hero, but this… you let this happen to me."
"I see it, Abel. I see what I've done. I take full responsibility. I'll earn my title back, if you'll have me. This, I promise with everything I have." Cain swaddled his brother in his arms, rocking him back and forth and stroking his hair.
Abel clutched Cain's shirt, his body trembling as he wept. His fingers began to soften and collapse into dust. His brother continued rocking him as he, too, crumbled. By the time their tears reached the floor, they could only wet the dust that remained.


Spider knew that she was in deep shit when the tall woman accompanying KTE-11971-Green Ember walked straight up to her and tried to buy her a drink.
It was supposed to just be a girls' night out. PHYSICS Division was about to carry out a readiness exercise, that would last at least a month. Tonight was the last chance to get some R&R before three months of grueling training. Spider had suggested the night out to Kitten and Fox, both as a means to blow off some steam and as a chance to get to know her taciturn coworkers.
If only Kitten hadn't gotten caught back at base doing some emergency preparations for the training exercise.
If only Fox hadn't had to deal with a last-minute emergency with one of her Team members.
If only Spider hadn't seen a goddamn Known Threat Entity doing shots in a bar like a college kid on spring break…
… following them had probably been a mistake, but the bulletins were clear: 11971-Green Ember was a Response Level Three target. Any agent catching sight of her "in the wild" was to maintain contact until STRIKE assets could be brought into play for capture and questioning (or elimination).
The problem was that Spider was a technician, not a spy. Her tradecraft sucked, and she knew it. There was, after all, only so much a two-week seminar could do. Identifying the overwatch team and diverting them with a Lotus Dream? That she could do. Keeping a watch on four women inside a crowded bar? Apparently not something she was particularly good at…
She'd had a feeling shit was going down when the group in the corner glanced over at her and started talking very seriously. When the tall, leggy brunette with the come-hither smile walked over, Spider knew she was screwed.
"Hey," the enemy said, grinning seductively. "Can I buy you a drink?"
"No, that's fine," Spider said, keeping her face half-turned away from the mahogany-haired woman. "I'm waiting for a friend."
"I can be your friend." The enemy slid into the barstool next to her and gave her a sultry, smouldering look. "I could be your very best friend in the world, hon."
"That's okay," Spider said. "I'm really not interested…"
The other three members of the party (including the KTE) got up from their booth and left the bar.
Spider flinched. Big mistake.
"Right," the enemy said curtly. She put a hand into her jacket pocket. "Now we've got a choice. Either we can quietly head out the back door to have a little chat, or I can cause some noise and we can disturb the nice people trying to have a quiet evening. Your choice."
"I'll go quietly," Spider said softly.
"Back door. Now."
Spider got up from the barstool and walked out the door, carefully keeping her hands away from her sides. The alleyway behind the pub was quiet and dark. Not a soul in sight. Plenty of dark places away from the street lights.
Not a bad place for an execution.
The tiny bell in her pocket jingled once.
Spider breathed a sigh of relief which immediately turned into a gasp of surprise as the stranger grabbed her and dragged her into the alley. "All right," the enemy growled, twisting Spider's collar as she pushed her up against the brick wall. "Who the hell are you and why are you following us?"
The silence that followed was interrupted by the click of an automatic pistol being taken off safety.
"I think that a better question might be, 'Who the hell are you and what the fuck do you think you're doing to our friend?'" Fox sneered.
Thank God, Spider thought. Backup's finally arrived.

Aw, shit, Adams thought. I should have known she'd have backup.
Her drink-addled mind was working overtime. Was this a coordinated hit? A chance meeting? Pure fluke of luck? Mugging gone wrong? "It's all right," Adams said, coolly sliding a hand towards the cell phone in her back pocket. "You can have my wallet and pho—"
Someone kicked her knees out from under her and pinned her face-down on the concrete. Adams tasted blood, dirt, and concrete dust. She struggled, but a pair of strong hands pinned her arms behind her back, putting her expertly into a joint-wrenching wrist lock that promised dire consequences for continued resistance.
"Frisk her, Kitten," a low voice growled. "Spider, what the hell's going on?"
"Three women just walked out of the pub," the Asian woman said. "The blonde is the one on the bulletin that just went around last week about the Foundation reactivating their special assault force…"
Oh shit, Adams thought.
"Shit. Katie Eleven Nine Seven One?" the low voice growled. The muzzle of the pistol pressed tightly into the back of Adams' head as another pair of hands frisked her roughly. "Where is it now?"
"Probably out front. Dark red sedan. Three others, including the Katie. They had perimeter support, but I've had them chasing Lotus Dreams for the past half hour."
"… all right," the rough voice said. "If we wait for STRIKE, they're gonna spook. We'll do the snatch-and-grab ourselves. Kitten takes one guard, I'll take the other. You go for the target."
"What about this one?" a third voice asked. This one was toneless and emotionless. A 'grey' sort of voice.
"I'd rather not kill her if I can help it. Hand me your taser," the rough voice said.
Something behind Adams' eyes went click.
She knew that it was suicide to move. Not with a gun pressed up against the back of her head and her arm pinned behind her back. But if what the enemy was saying was true: if the MTF backup was distracted and they were going to go after Iris, Blaire, and Chelsea…
If she moved fast enough, moved strong enough, maybe she could throw her attacker off and get clear of the muzzle of the gun before the other person fired. Not much of a chance. But it was the only chance she had.
She was tensing up to move when there was a bright flash of blue light and the sound of a simulated shutter snapping.

There was a flash of light and an electronic-sounding "click."
Spider turned. There was a darkened silhouette standing in the alleyway. Female. Blonde. She had a smart phone in her hand, and she'd just taken a snapshot of the scene and …
A single line from the bulletin regarding KTE-11971: "Subject has limited reality alteration abilities, and can reach through a photograph to move and manipulate objects pictured…"
"Oh crap," Spider whispered.
She went for the only weapon she had left: the ritual knife in her right boot. There was a loud shout behind her. She saw, out of the corner of her eye, a ghostly hand reach out of nowhere and struggle briefly with Fox for the pistol…
The woman on the ground moved, terrifyingly fast. She twisted her body around, somehow causing Fox to lose her grip. The heel of her hand clipped Fox's jaw, hard, sending her reeling into Kitten. Kitten shoved the stunned Fox away, ruthlessly clearing her sight line, raised the taser…
A shot rang out.
Kitten sprawled to the ground, clutching her side. A flattened bullet clattered to the floor. She gasped for breath, obviously winded by the bullet's impact.
The blonde stood a few feet away. Her trembling, bleeding hands held Fox's pistol. She quickly lowered it so it was pointing at Spider's head.
"FREEZE, MOTHERFUCKERS!" she shouted.

"FREEZE, MOTHERFUCKERS!" Iris screamed. Her heart was pounding. Her hands were bloodied. She wanted to throw up, but Beatrix had always told her that a loud, confident shout would do more than bullets to get an enemy to think twice about attacking.
The kneeling Asian woman froze. She was holding a knife in one hand: a curved hunting knife with a hilt that looked like bone or ivory. What was it that Lombardi always said about a guy with a knife? Was it twenty or thirty feet that they can get you in? Or was that while the gun is holstered?
The enemy looked into Iris's eyes. They stared at each other for a long moment.
The Asian woman put her knife on the ground and held her hands above her head. The only sounds were Adams' labored breathing, the groaning red-headed woman struggling to get to her feet, and the gasping of the tall woman with the freckles and light-brown hair.
Headlights. The sound of squealing tires. Iris saw a red-brown sedan drive up the curb and into the alleyway. "GET IN!" Chelsea shouted, as Blaire opened the passenger side door.
Adams got to her feet and ran for it, racing towards the back door, diving past Iris and (if the sounds were any indication) tumbling head-first into the car's back seat. Iris backed slowly away from the three strangers, keeping the gun trained on each of them in turn.
She climbed into the front passenger's seat and slammed the door shut.

"Shit!" Spider growled, as the KTE climbed into the car and started to drive away. She hesitated. Kitten and Fox were both down. If she pursued…
"GO!" Kitten gasped, clutching her side. "I'll watch Fox! Don't let them get away!"
Right! Spider scooped up her secespita and ran after the dark red sedan. She pulled the smart phone from her pocket and pulled up her grimoire. There might not be very much contagion between the skin cells on her jacket collar and the well-dressed brunette who had left them there, but if she worked quickly and kept the car in sight, she could still use the connection to…
She slammed into a tall, Chinese woman in a black coat with short black hair.
Spider let out a surprised squawk that turned into a cry of dismay as her smart phone fell out of her hand and clattered down a storm drain. "Shit!" She grabbed for the phone, but it was too far down to reach. She could see it there, right beyond her fingertips, LCD screen still glowing…
She looked up. Too late. The car was gone.
Spider searched angrily for the woman who had bumped into her, but that woman was nowhere to be seen. "Chow soola," she cursed.

"Holy shit!" Blaire gasped, as the car sped away. "You guys okay?"
"I'm fine, I'm fine," Adams protested, pushing Blaire's hands away. "Just a bit banged up. Iris?"
Iris took a deep, ragged breath and dropped the pistol into her lap. Adams was oddly pleased to see that the safety catch was on. Good girl, she thought.
"Who were those guys?" Chelsea asked. "Church? Insurgency?"
They called her a Katie, Adams realized. KTE. "Coalition," she said softly.
"Fuck." Chelsea's eyes were big, wide, and very, very scared.
"Iris?" Blaire said. "I need you to do me a favor."
"What?" Iris asked.
"I need you to take that gun, strip it down, and toss all the pieces out the window," Blaire said.
Good idea, Adams thought. "Global Occult Coalition puts tracking chips in all their weapons."
"Shit." Iris popped the retaining pin from the pistol and stripped the slide, leaving blood behind on the steel.
Adams frowned. She grabbed Iris's hand and held it up to the light. "You're bleeding."
"I'm fine," Iris said, gulping. "It's just… remember, when I said that reaching through that phone was like pushing through wet sand? I scraped my hand up doing it…"
"GOC sorcerers can track you by your blood," Adams said, taking the pistol. "We need to clean this. Blaire?"
"I got it," Blaire said. She pulled a lace-edged handkerchief from her purse and began carefully wiping down the weapon.
"How the hell did they find us in the first place?" Chelsea wondered. "Is there a mole? Were we breached?"
Just bad luck, if what those three were saying is true, Adams thought. Fucking shame. I liked those bars… She fumbled for her phone, realized that it had been taken from her by their attackers. Damn. Command is going to tear me a new asshole for this…
"Iris?" Blaire asked. "Are you okay, hon?"
Iris didn't respond. She was wrapping her brand-new scarf around her scraped knuckles to avoid getting blood all over her clothes and Chelsea's car.
"Hey," Adams said, putting her hand on the girl's shoulder. "You did good back there. Thanks."
Iris nodded. "Sure," she whispered.
The car continued down the freeway. "What do we do now?" Chelsea asked.
"We can't go back to the safehouse," Blaire said sternly, "and they know your car. Sorry, hon, but you're going to have to ditch it."
"Aww, shit. And I just finished paying for it, too…"

They left the car sitting by the side of the road in the bad part of town. Blaire disassembled the gun and tossed the pieces into the river while Adams hopped the fence into an all-night parking lot. A few minutes and some fiddling with some wires later, the four women piled into a white minivan and drove off into the night.
The minivan's previous owner had left some blankets in it. Iris wrapped herself in one and rested her head against the foggy window as the minivan drove through the desert towards Site-17. She drifted in and out of sleep, listening to the soothing sound of the minivan's engine and Blaire and Adams' whispered conversation.
"What about the stuff you bought at the mall?" Blaire asked softly.
"'I'll have someone pick up our stuff from the safe house later," Adams explained. "For now, let's get back on-Site. I've got some reports to make."
"O5's not going to like this," Blaire pointed out. "They're going to say you recklessly endangered an important asset."
"O5 will be right," Adams admitted. "But they're going to like even less that the Gocks know we've reactivated Omega-7. The one who was shadowing us talked about how we'd reactivated our 'special assault force.' Someone spilled the beans about Alpha-Niner."
"… well, shit. That's all we need."
They continued along the road in silence.
"Hey, Adams?"
"Yeah, Blaire?"
"… all in all, this was still a better night than 'Molotov II.'"
"You're never going to let me live that down, are you… ?"
Iris drifted to sleep with the dark desert speeding past the window and Adams's chuckling in her ears.

They drove the van through the gate and parked it in the underground parking lot. Security would handle the disposal of the vehicle. They were good at that.
The Site was silent at this hour. Most of the doctors and staff were asleep. Only the night shift security was up and about. They passed through the gates and the identity scanners and into the steel-walled elevator, which rapidly descended into the earth and opened up on a sterile white hallway with thin colored lines painted on the walls.
"… I'm hungry," Blaire said. "Anyone want to eat?"
"I could eat," Adams admitted.
"Yeah," Chelsea agreed.
Iris nodded mutely.
They headed into the site cafeteria: darkened and still at this late hour. Blaire rummaged through the refrigerators, managing to find some bread and sandwich fixings. Chelsea cleared off a table, and Adams poured some drinks from the soda fountain in the corner.
Iris sat down at the table. She stared at her bloodied hands for a long time.
Then, as Blaire set the turkey-and-swiss cheese sandwich down in front of her, Iris finally began to cry.
Warm, soft arms wrapped around her shoulders, hugging her close. "It's all right," Blaire's gentle voice said. "You did good, girl."

It was another four hours before the interviews and debriefings ended. She was interrogated about everything that happened from the moment that she and Adams had left the Site. Reliving the day was twice as exhausting as living it had been.
The site was switching to Day Shift when the security guard closed the door of her containment cell behind her. Iris collapsed onto her bed, not even bothering to take off her clothes.
She rolled over onto her back and stared up at what she knew was the distant ceiling of the overly-tall cell. She'd done well, she knew. Taken decisive action, using the camera of her phone to disarm the enemy from a distance. Her actions had probably saved Adams' life, and almost certainly given her the opportunity to escape.
Then why do I feel so sick?
Maybe it was just the hangover.
Or maybe it was because seeing that gun at Adam's head reminded her of the other time that she'd seen a gun pressed against the head of a friend…

"I can't do it any more," Iris had whimpered. "You read Dantensen's report. My powers are gone."
"I know that Dantensen would have said anything to get you girls released," Adrian had said. "But I also know that you can't run forever. They'll find you, Iris. And the next person they send won't be as kind-hearted as I am."
"I don't care! I'd rather die than go back to that place!"
"… I know," Adrian had said sympathetically. "But would you let me die?"
Adrian had tossed a photo onto the ground, drawn his pistol and put it to his head. "I'm going to count to three," he had said. "And then I'm going to pull the trigger. There's a photograph of the internal mechanisms of my pistol there. You know what to do. One."
"Adrian?"
"Two…"
"NO!"
"Three."
The pistol's hammer had landed with a loud click.
And Iris had fallen to her knees, the photograph in one hand and the pistol's firing pin in the other. She had dropped both onto the ground and begun to cry.
Warm, soft arms had wrapped themselves around her from behind. "It's all right," Beatrix had whispered. "You did good, girl."

Iris rolled over on her cot. She wouldn't get to sleep for many hours. And for the first time in many years, she would not be awake in time for breakfast.

"So that's how it went," Clef said. "Pity you ladies didn't get to have your slumber party."
"Fuck off, Sir." Adams was still nursing a bruised shoulder and a bloodied nose, not to mention a horrific hangover, twenty hours without sleep, and a wounded ego. She was in no mood for bullshit.
"You don't get to blow me off. Not this time, Adams," Clef said sternly. "For fuck's sake: you went out drinking with a Skip. What the hell were you thinking?"
"I had two backups, and a Mobile Task Force on perimeter watch."
"Not that it did you any good. That Gock sorceress had them tripping balls for hours. Best guess is that she got them just before heading into that third bar…"
"Nottingham's," Adams said.
"… probably used the two previous stops to scope out your backup so she could take them out. If she'd been in a less merciful mood, we could have had an entire dead Mobile Task Force on our hands, did you think about that?
"Furthermore," he said. "Half the Overseer Council wants to see Alpha-Niner crash and burn, and you gave them ammo to use against us before the thing had even gotten off the ground!" Clef's lip curled into a sneer. "So, was it worth it to play 'Sex and the City' with SCP-105?"
Adams' jaw worked as she gritted her teeth angrily. Her hands clenched the arms of her chair so tight it creaked. "Sir? Can I speak freely?"
"That has never been a problem with you," Clef said, deadpan. "But yes, go ahead."
"Last night, Iris tore up her hands saving my life," Adams said. "And then she shot a woman saving my life again. And she did that when all she needed to do to escape was just walk away. The reason she did that is because she and I are friends. Because we bonded over stupid things like shopping for clothes and going out for drinks. Not because an Overseer strong-armed her into rejoining a Mobile Task Force that she never wanted to be a part of in the first place."
"You're saying that last night was a step forward?" Clef said incredulously.
"I'm saying that the two most important things in any army are trust and teamwork. Without those, you don't have soldiers, you have conscripts or fanatics. A conscript will fight to stay alive. A fanatic will die for a cause. A soldier will kill to save the person standing next to them."
The clock ticked away the seconds. Clef shook his head. "That's how you want me to justify this to the Overseers?" he asked. "As a team-building exercise gone wrong?"
Adams steepled her fingers. "Sir, if it weren't for the fact that the Coalition somehow knew that we were planning to activate Alpha-Niner, last night would have been written off as harmless shenanigans. Was Brazil any different?"
Clef's smile took on a distinctly predatory air. "The difference between this and Brazil," he said, "Is that I had the full support of the Overseer Council, and I was the 'teacher's pet' of one of them. Who do you have, Adams?"
"Just you, sir," Adams said.
Clef's stare was cold. "Get out."
Adams complied.
Clef buried his face in his hands and let out a long, slow sigh. "I should never have let you bring me in on this."
"Having second thoughts?" a woman's voice said from nowhere in particular.
"Realizing just how deep a pile of shit you got me into," Clef said.
One of the ceiling tiles slid back, lowering a projector into place. The image of a middle-aged woman in a chartreuse bathrobe appeared on the wall of Clef's office. She was sipping a cup of cocoa. "I remind you, Doctor, that it was your idea to bring Adams in on this operation," O5-7 said. "If your protégé is performing below standards, you have no one to blame but yourself."
"It's not that she's performing below standards. It's that she's performing in all the wrong fucking ways!" Clef complained.
Seven smirked. "A sentiment I expressed to you after that nonsense with the giant steel fist. Do you remember what you said to me then?"
"'If you didn't want me to do things my way, you shouldn't have told me to do it in the first place,'" Clef quoted. "Damn you, ma'am. You're enjoying this."
"Damned right I'm enjoying this," Seven said. "Seeing you put up with a willful but talented subordinate is satisfying on a deeply personal level."
Clef leaned back in his chair and grunted noncommittally. "Is that all, ma'am?"
"No," Seven said. "It is not." She leaned back in her chair in a gesture that mirrored Clef's own. "It occurs to me that the significant factor in last night's escapades was that the force that attacked you was also disorganized and uninformed. We can't count on that being the case in the future. With the GOC confirming that we're reactivating Alpha-Niner, they're going to upgrade their readiness. Next time, it's not going to be a few lightly armed off-duty agents."
"If Alpha-Niner were at full force, I think we could take on a STRIKE team," Clef said. "But that's not going to be for a few weeks at soonest…"
"… whereas the Coalition can move to full readiness within forty-eight hours," Seven concluded, "leaving about a month-long gap where we're vulnerable — unless we take some drastic measures."
"You want me to go to Phase 2?"
"I am ordering you to go to Phase 2. Before the Council vote."
"It's too early," Clef protested. "We still haven't confirmed the new memory structures are holding. If she…"
"Do it, Clef. Seven out."
The projector retracted into the ceiling, and the tile fitted back into place.
Clef took a moment to curse his luck. He pulled his hat over his balding pate and grabbed his jacket. He stormed out of his office, past the pimply-faced office drone that Human Resources had assigned to him and Adams as their administrative assistant. "Peon!" Clef shouted. "Clear my schedule for the rest of the afternoon, and tell anyone who calls asking for me to fuck off!"
"… yes, sir," the kid whimpered. "W-… what should I tell them you're doing?"
Clef's smile turned positively gleeful. "Tell them I'm seeing a dog about a suit," he said.

Girls' Night Out
« Dressing Up | Getting Drunk | Raising Hell »

2030 Hours
Nottingham's Pub and Restaurant
… and as the GOC operative sprawled on the ground, desperately reaching for her fallen smart phone, Alison Chao turned up the collar of her coat and walked away, stepping smoothly into the Ways with practiced ease. Things were moving faster than expected. Maybe, she thought, it was time to let certain folks know the truth about some recent developments…


Excerpts from Interview Log E-46693-12
October 4, 2014 12:57 PM
Interviewer: Geoff C. Taggart, [DATA REDACTED]
Subject: Dr. Chelsea Elliott, researcher (plant specialist)

Taggart: Good afternoon, Dr. Elliott. Please close the door.
(Silence.)
Elliott: Um. Excuse me, but have we met?
Taggart: Please close the door. (Pause. Elliott closes the door.) Thank you. Do have a seat. I'm Geoff Taggart, from Reclassification.
Elliott: Reclass? I'm sorry, I don't —
Taggart: Doctor, you've been briefed on us.
Elliott: Well, yes, but no one here is anomalous. Erin, Thom, and I all cleared quarantine months ago.
Taggart: And you must know why we think that assessment was premature.
(Silence.)
You're not eating, Doctor. The usual post-quarantine surveillance showed us that. Those sunlamps you're buying, too — seasonal-affective disorder doesn't come on that fast. We're not sure how the poisoning incidents relate, though. I was hoping you could clear that up for us.
Elliott: What makes you think I'd —
Taggart: I'm authorized to waive the usual disciplinary actions for failure to report, provided you come clean now.
(Silence.)
Elliott: All right. (smiles ruefully) I suppose I don't exactly have a choice, at this stage.
Taggart: Thank you. I understand this all began with the events of Incident E-31181-A, in February of last year?
Elliott: Yes. I was consulting for [MTF] Theta-Four at the time. Three of us — Erin Moynahan, Thom Saint-Jacques, and I — had been detached to investigate a suspected new anomaly. Everything went fine until I tried to use my hand lens…

"Geiger, check… chem sweep, check… humes, check." Agent Erin Moynahan came to the end of her list and nodded across to her teammates. "I'm calling it stable. We're good to go in."
Chelsea Elliott grinned and bounced a little on the toes of her boots. "Great! Thom, you ready?"
The third member of their little team nodded back at her. "Après-vous."
Together, they struck out into the abandoned and echoing warehouse. Elliott's eyes darted over the floor as they walked, eager for detail. Weathered concrete was none of their specialty; nor was architecture, though they had noticed the huge skylight running the length of the peaked ceiling. The rare February sunshine took on a subtle cast as it poured through, some hint of color Elliott couldn't identify. She'd ask about it later.
Now, she homed straight in on the site they'd tagged from the door — a weary scruff of vegetation, struggling up out of the cracked concrete. It wasn't much, floristically speaking: a few goldenrod stems, some ragged tufts of Kentucky bluegrass, and a dried-up stick that had probably been a silver-maple sapling for two or three years before it kicked the bucket. None of it would've warranted a second glance, if it hadn't been for the weird sheen on the leaves.
She dropped to one knee beside the goldenrods, pulling on a pair of rubber gloves. Not only were they alive and vigorous in the winter chill, they were blue in ways Chelsea's understanding of Solidago biochemistry couldn't account for. When she reached out to examine one of the leaves, it tilted against the sunlight and shimmered in oily seafoam-green.
Chelsea grinned and bent closer. "Oh, this is weird." She pulled out her hand lens, plucking a leaf from the goldenrod and lifting it close to see —
Through the lens, nothing but a blaze of lethal light.

Elliott: I'm told I was conscious most of the way to Medical, but I don't actually remember much.

"Holy shit! What — Backup!" The crackle of a radio. "Get Nu-Thirty in here now! We have a new anomaly, and Elliott's down —"
She was on fire, the alien sun searing through her face, nothing left in her eyes but unnameable colors —
"— I've got her, just move —"
— the world was a rock tumbler, spinning, hurling her against a sky full of stone — it tasted like ice olives acid — a hook in her belly, pulling her inside-out —
"— it's moving! Jensen, get the — Jensen! Fuck! Someone get the —"
— a boulder on her chest and more falling on her, blow after blow, why did they — what did she do? —
"— get us out of here! — seizing again — think they're growing —"
— just make it stop —
"— Just go!"

Taggart: And when did you wake completely?
Elliott: They kept me in an induced coma for two weeks at Medical, dealing with the kidney failure. I didn't wake up until they stopped the sedation.
Taggart: And that was when you became aware of your condition?
Elliott: Yeah. E-31181 really did a number on me.

When she finally woke, they assured her that she would be fine. The light from that anomalous sun-thing had done some damage, but she would recover. They'd taken care of the sunburn while she was under. Her vision was mostly back, and if the colors were still dizzyingly strange, that would clear up too. The seizures hadn't done her any serious harm, and her kidneys were well on the way back to full function. Now, the skin, that might take a little longer to fade…
She lay in the hospital bed, staring at her hands — too-smooth skin the color of pin-cherry bark, mottled with salamander spots in rich teal and feathered all over with tiny bits of chaff like the scales on a sword fern's fiddlehead — and swallowed the laughter trying to claw its way out of her throat.
Before she could even sit up, she was asking for her hand lens back.

Taggart: So your first reaction was curiosity.
Elliott: My first reaction was "if I start laughing now, I'm never going to stop."
Taggart: Oh?
Elliott: It was either get curious or break down entirely.
Taggart: I see. We have the records from your actual quarantine period, of course… After you were released, how long did it take you to discover the anomaly?
Elliott: Just a few days.

Eight weeks.
Eight weeks of quarantine, made bearable only by curiosity, a huge e-book library, and a long string of notebooks. Eight weeks of trying to explore her own altered biology and coming up short, again and again, against the limits of the quarantine itself; eight weeks of frustration and never being able to compare notes with her doctors; eight weeks of explaining to herself, over and over again, why the restrictions were necessary. Eight weeks of watching and waiting, half-afraid she wouldn't recover at all, even if Thom and Erin were fine now. Eight weeks of terrible food, though at least she was never actually hungry, what with her leafy additions providing most of her calorie needs. When her skin finally started turning pink again and shedding its little leaflets, six and a half weeks in, she'd wanted to faint with relief.
She'd gone into quarantine in the dead of winter; she came out in early spring. After eight weeks of bare walls and fluorescent light, walking in shirtsleeves under the April sun made her absolutely giddy. There were a lot of loose ends to sort out at home, but she still took the first possible opportunity for a walk in the woods. She still had a lot of phone calls to make, but she could walk and talk at the same time.
Her cell phone rang as she slipped through the woodlot understory, dodging bare branches. "Hi, Blaire? — Yeah, hi! Good, I'm good! I'm home. — Yeah, all back to normal. They kept me a few extra days to make sure. How've you been?"
She stepped carefully around a patch of cutleaf toothwort. "Oh, good. How's Pip doing? Has she given you any trouble?" Blaire usually took in Chelsea's cat, Pip, when the botanist traveled in summer; it didn't usually last for two months straight, though.
At her friend's answer, Chelsea let out a relieved sigh. "Oh, good. Good. Can I come and pick her up when you get home today? I — Yeah. Thanks so much."
They chatted for a few minutes longer, Chelsea meanwhile moving through the burgeoning woods. The elms had gone to seed already, but she greeted the bloodroot and rue-anemone by name. Something inside her began to settle quietly back into place.
"Yeah, I missed you too." She grinned into the phone, knowing Blaire would hear it in her voice. "Lunch Thursday? — Sounds great. — See you soon!"
They hung up. She paused by a maple sapling, running careful fingers over the soft new leaves nosing out of their buds, before dialing the next number.
"Hey, Jorge, how've you been?" Mayapples on the hillside.
"Sophia! Hi! I owe you a danish." Sharp-lobed hepatica among the rocks.
"Kyle? Yeah, I'm back." A grove full of speckled trout-lilies.
By the time she'd finished her calls, she was brimming with the simple, heady joys of spring and freedom. There was more to do back at home, but she could spare a little longer, couldn't she?
There — a patch of lesser-celandine, bathed in sunlight. She stretched out on the soft, glossy leaves. Just half an hour, just to bask…

* * *

She stirred, blinking sleepily. How long had it been? The sun was still warm on her face, and she lifted a hand to shade her drowsy eyes; with the other, she felt beside her for her bag.
Under her searching fingers, the leaves went crunch.
She sat up, looked around, and stared. The ground around and under her, a meter or more out from where she'd lain, was coated in hoarfrost — a hair-thin coat of sparkling white crystals, impossibly failing to melt in the balmy air. The stuff even clung to her bare arms. It was only slightly cool to the touch, no different from the grass itself, and it crunched between her fingers like fine sand.
Her eyes narrowed. Not sand. A memory surfaced: baking Christmas cookies, rolling little balls of dough in cinnamon and…
"Sugar," she murmured.
The crystal shape was right, from what she could see through her hand lens. It dissolved almost instantly in a drop of water from the bottle in her purse, and the residue left her fingers faintly sticky. No scent… Hesitantly, she put a single grain on the tip of her tongue.
"…Definitely sugar."
She looked down at the leaves, all around, up at the sky. Her first real sunshine of the year, just after she'd stopped photosynthesizing, and suddenly there was sugar all over the place?
Despite the balmy April air, she shivered.

Taggart: That sounds conspicuous. I'd expect surveillance to have showed it if you were literally sugar-coating every chair you sat in.
Elliott: Well, it wasn't being deposited very fast — even in direct sunlight, it took a good twenty minutes to build up to anything noticeable. And it's light-dependent, of course, so I can stop most of it just by wearing long sleeves and turtlenecks. Still, I didn't want to bring even that into a lab. Contaminate every sample in the fridge, just by standing near it… (snorts) I might have had to turn myself in right then, if I hadn't figured out how to control it.
Taggart: And how do you do that?
Elliott: Oh, um… (Pause.)
I… (Pause.) You just… (Pause.)
… I actually have no idea how to describe it. The process. Technique. Thing. (gestures vaguely) I'd probably have to study meditation, just for the vocabulary. Or reread Dune. All I can really say is that I learned to keep it in.
Taggart: I see.
Elliott: Soon after that, I realized I didn't need to eat anymore. I'd dealt with that sort of thing during quarantine — you just don't get hungry, as long as you get enough light — and the experience was basically the same. No supernumerary scales this time, though. (Absently:) I still don't know what I'm using for chloroplasts.
Taggart: Was your fasting deliberate, then?
Elliott: (spreads her hands) Sometimes. Sometimes I'd just forget to eat. More often as summer came in. I took supplements in the beginning, to make up for what amounted to a diet of straight sugar.
Taggart: Why the past tense?
Elliott: Well… it's not just a diet of straight sugar.
Taggart: I see. (pause) Go on.
Elliott: (takes a breath) As it turns out, I can basically make any vascular-plant metabolite that I've had in my system. Skin contact, inhalation, ingestion, all fair game, and it doesn't take much. I'm on either a balanced vegetarian diet or a healthy photosynthate intake for a plant of about my mass, I'm not sure which.
Taggart: If I understand correctly —
Elliott: Yeah, if it comes from a plant, I can probably crank it out. Just get me a sample first.
Taggart: (pauses) Does that include aconite?
Elliott: That was how I learned I could do it in the first place.

"Oh, hey, the Aconitum's flowering."
"Sorry, what?"
"The monkshood." Chelsea nodded towards the five-foot-tall potted plant that stretched a proud spike of hooded violet flowers towards the peak of the greenhouse roof. The young man at her heels showed no sign of recognition. "Wolfsbane? Lovely plant, neat history and chemistry, not too hard to grow. Toxic as all get-out, though."
Her visitor — Niels — blinked. "And you keep it out here? No containment?"
"It's not really dangerous unless you eat it, and anyone who comes through here has enough sense not to do that." Chelsea smirked, ruffling one hand through the starburst leaves. "Well, that or get an awful lot of the sap on your skin. I got a few big drops on my hands once — gave me heart palpitations for an hour, but that was it."
"Only heart palpitations?" Niels boggled at her.
"It's not as bad as it sounds."
"Sounds unpleasant enough." He eyed the plant with mistrust. "What's it like if you actually do eat it?"
"Nausea at first, plus the heart palpitations." Chelsea straightened up cheerfully. "Burning in the abdomen. Then tingly numbness, weakness, and worse arrhythmias. Ends in paralysis and death, if you let it get that far."
"Sounds nasty."
"Eh, it's just self-defense." It was still making her stomach roil a little. Odd. Toxicology didn't usually bother her, not in the abstract. "Besides, anything's useful in the right context. This one's only in here because Nathan's group is using it in an antidote. We think it'll be half the key to CCR syndrome." Pseudaconitine was the active ingredient, she remembered — not a big molecule, but it had an intriguingly multi-ringed structure. She could almost picture how the plant would synthesize it…
Her stomach turned again, and she swallowed. I hope that's not the pasta. "Anyway, the colony I wanted you to see is over here."
They struck back out across the greenhouse, weaving between tables full of carefully-labeled experimental flats. They'd almost found their destination when Chelsea's stomach spasmed outright: she doubled up halfway and reflexively clapped a hand to her mouth.
"Whoa! Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I should —" Again. She swallowed back the acid, which only set off a fiery complaint in her belly. "Maybe not. I'm never letting Kyle choose lunch again." This almost feels like —
Nausea. Burning in the abdomen. She stopped dead, just in time to feel her heart skip a beat.
"Oh God." She turned back the way they'd come, one arm wrapped around her middle. "How is this even — augh!"
Niels was on the phone to Medical before her knees hit the floor.

Elliott: I'd given myself a sublethal dose, it turned out, but only just. Lucky for me, everyone assumed I'd actually handled [Researcher] Nathan [Fisk]'s Aconitum and somehow poisoned myself that way.
Taggart: If the only plant involved hadn't been so carefully monitored, we might have thought the same thing.
Elliott: It's a little insulting, really. I know full well how to handle these things safely.
Taggart: So you'd rather be insulted than contained.
Elliott: (pauses) Wouldn't you?
Taggart: Hmm. (pages through a dossier)
(Silence.)
I believe that will be all, then, Dr. Elliott. (begins putting papers back in briefcase) Unless there's any other information you'd like to volunteer? Any dimensions to your anomaly that we haven't covered?
Elliott: Not that I'm aware of. Yet. I suppose I'll keep you posted. (pauses) May I… well, I know it's not the usual practice, but perhaps as a final professional courtesy…
Taggart: Yes?
Elliott: May I see my proposed containment procedures?
Taggart: (pauses, surprised) You're not going into containment, Doctor.
Elliott: What?
Taggart: Your condition is classified 5/2108/E-46693. You technically aren't cleared to know about any of it, but this is something of an unusual case. Since you don't appear to be an immediate danger to yourself or others, my orders are to take your deposition and let you continue your work. You aren't a danger to yourself or others, are you?
Elliott: Well, no, not with the metabolites under control — but I, I don't understand.
Taggart: You're a valued Foundation researcher, Dr. Elliott —
Elliott: That's not —
Taggart: — and in this particular case, the Council has decided not to remove you from your position unless and until it becomes necessary. I'll add this interview to the information on review, and you'll be notified of their conclusion in due time. In the meantime, please, carry on.
Do remember that this entire phenomenon is classified, though. You're not to discuss it with anyone, and if you must refer to it at all, use its designation. E-46693.
Elliott: Standard opsec, yes — but —
Taggart: Try to eat more, too. Some of your colleagues are getting concerned, and that's a security risk. (closes briefcase, stands) I'll schedule another meeting with you once the Council has decided what to do with your case.
Elliott: Of course —
Taggart: Thank you for your time, Doctor. Enjoy the rest of your day.
END LOG

March 31st, 2015
1:04 PM
Chelsea Elliott finishes reading and looks up, numb with dread, at the man called Taggart. "Yes, I remember," she manages.
"Good." His calm smile doesn't so much as flicker. She'd forgotten just how disconcerting the man can be. "Is there anything you would like to add? Anything that's arisen in the meantime?"
She shakes her head. "It hasn't — hasn't much changed. I've been suppressing it, mostly."
"Hmm. Is that perfume you're wearing, then?"
Damn his nose. She closes her eyes. "Santalum spicatum and Rosa damascena, wood and flower volatiles respectively." Distantly she marvels at how level her voice still is. "My colleagues have quite enjoyed my new essential-oil hobby. No one — no one's had any reason to think I'm not distilling them at home. Besides, spending photosynthate this way leaves me hungry enough to eat."
The silence stretches out, pulling Chelsea's nerves with it. She shifts in her seat and sets the interview log down, too delicately, on the edge of her desk. (It's the wrong side of her desk again. This man must enjoy displacing her to her own visitor's chair.) Finally she can't hold her tongue any longer: "Have they decided, then?"
He gives a noncommittal hum, twirling the delicate stem of her string-of-pearls vine around his forefinger. "You could say that. Ultimately, though, it'll be your choice."
Her flash of irritable skepticism surprises her, but she manages to restrain the snort. "My choice?" she asks, forcing her tone to stay polite. "What are my options, exactly?"
The corner of his mouth ticks upward. "On the one hand, you may elect to go into containment. Your conditions will be humane, of course, but you'll be an SCP object, designated and treated accordingly."
A lead brick presses down on her lungs. She's seen fragments of the containment procedures they'd apply. Imprisoned for life, never again seeing the sun — she can't. She can't.
"Or?" She forces it out on a whisper.
Instead of replying immediately, he pushes a neatly-bound dossier across the desk towards her. She opens it and begins to read.
"Have a look. Command is prepared to retain you in your current position, on condition that you accept reassignment to this project."
This is…
This is insane. This is brilliant. She'd have given her right arm to be part of this, once upon a time.
This is no choice at all.
She looks up at him over the dossier and nods. "I'll do it."
His smile deepens, and he extends a steady hand for her to shake. "We were hoping you'd say that.
"Welcome to MTF Alpha-Nine."