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"Passing Sentence"
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2021

2 January
Site-43: Lambton County, Ontario, Canada

Their plane from Spain touched down at a Foundation airstrip one hundred and eighty-six minutes after takeoff, achieving a minor miracle in the process: racing the sun around the edges of the Earth, it arrived three hours before its own departure.
"Time travel," Sokolsky said. "Bet you wish you could do it for real."
"Not so much," Veiksaar responded. "I have no regrets."
It was a short helicopter ride from the airstrip to Camp Ipperwash, and an even shorter elevator ride from the Camp to the Site; if either of them had anything left to say to the other before the end of the line, it went unsaid.

Roger Pensak, Chief of Security and Containment, could hear the elevator humming now. He checked his sidearm, stretched his back, crossed his arms and waited for the door.
"Welcome home," he told them as the brushed steel panels slid open.
"Don't welcome her." Sokolsky jerked a thumb over his shoulder as he stepped into the hall. "She isn't home anymore. ETAs?"
"Ngo is already in her office. Wettle's car arrived a while back; he's still searching for his ID card in the cushions. Okorie will arrive within the hour, then Blank and Ibanez from opposite directions. Lillihammer is a ways out, obviously, and the janitors are still in Italy."
"They've earned the honeymoon," Sokolsky remarked. "Or whatever you call it when someone gets engaged."
Pensak raised an eyebrow. "Engaged?"
"Been monitoring Torosyan's bank records. She's a woman of simple tastes, so that was definitely an engagement ring."
Pensak raised the other eyebrow.
"What? I was searching for moles last year, you'll recall."
The security chief nodded. "Our hero, the organizational dermatologist. As for McInnis, we haven't heard anything; I've made a few calls, because I think there might be a problem at Site-79."
"Mmm." Sokolsky cracked his knuckles. "We'll see. Time for the endgame?"
"Long past." Pensak unfolded one arm, and snapped his fingers. Two uniformed S&C guards fell in beside Veiksaar as she finally emerged from the elevator. "Put her in a holding cell."
"Yeah, don't bother." Sokolsky yawned. "I want her to see this through. Least we can do for 5109's keeper-supreme."
Pensak shrugged. "Don't run," he advised her. "You're out of shape, and I'm not."
"Is that any way to talk to a woman," Sokolsky drawled as he led them down the corridor, "whose digs we're about to steal?" The sprawling caper he'd nearly accomplished had started out in Veiksaar's office, where the Site's most sophisticated privacy mechanisms were installed; it was only right that it end there, too. Right, and safe.
"She won't be needing it." Pensak slowed his pace and took the rear, as his guards flanked the former Chief of Identity and Technocryptography. "And the next room she gets all to herself will have even better security features."

Sokolsky flopped down in Veiksaar's chair. "Take any wall you like," he offered, gesturing expansively.
"Thanks," she muttered, sitting down on the carpet and pulling her legs up to her chest. "Do I get to clean my desk out, at least?"
"Don't see why." Pensak closed the door and leaned against it, looking down at her. His arms were folded again. "Not like you'll have a locker at Area-06."
Veiksaar winced, and they both knew why. Area-06 was where they sent misbehaving Foundation personnel who were too useful or too dangerous to amnesticize or execute. Among several dim luminaries of Site-43, one of her predecessors as I&T chief was there.
She obviously didn't want to talk, or probably even think, about that, so she changed the subject. "Since I'm going to be in prison for the rest of my life, would you mind terribly…"
"Only villains exposit," Sokolsky reminded her.
She blinked. "Yes, go on."
Pensak smirked.
Sokolsky put his legs up on the desk. "You want to know where I got all the password instances from."
She nodded. "Rather a lot, yes. You sent seven of them out into the field for starters, before you used the REISNO cannon — which was bullshit, by the way."
He kept mum.
"You sent out five more from Site-120, plus the one I stole, so here's my question: where did you get thirteen copies of 5109?"
"It'll make you a villain, if you answer her," Pensak reminded him.
Sokolsky grinned.
Then he answered her.

2008

8 September

Karen Elstrom couldn't see.
That part wasn't her fault. She'd been violently ill for almost two days, which also wasn't her fault; someone who worked in Administration and Oversight, someone who worked for her, had suffered a critical lapse of hand-washing at the outset of flu season, and a few bad doorknobs later here she was. Laid out by something completely non-anomalous, almost certainly the fucking flu, for which she had already been immunized. The odds of that were 7 to 3, and Elstrom wasn't so self-centred that she craved all distinction universally.
She walked straight into a janitor's cart, sending a mop clattering to the floor; this was her fault. It wasn't her fault that she couldn't see, but she was walking the halls of Site-43 whilst violently ill because of her own stupidity. She'd thought she was stocked up on anti-emetic meds, more than enough to see her through the yearly lockdown on September 8 — worst goddamn timing, Jesus Christ — only to find that she was, instead, stocked up on anti-memetics. She couldn't remember requisitioning those, which…
Yeah, don't think about that right now.
Elstrom knew the way to Health and Pathology off by heart, so it didn't matter that she couldn't see. Down the hall, towards the Inter-Sectional Subway System, then left down another hall, and she'd be there. The last stretch was a long walk, but at least she wouldn't have to deal with foot traffic; everyone in the Site was bunkered down in their dorms, except for the poor sods in PTF Sampi-5243.
As if on cue, she heard a distant explosion. Not so distant as she'd expected, but then, her senses weren't exactly perfect right now. She was almost at her destination, if her internal gyroscope could be trusted, just a few more steps. The Section signage loomed above her, but it didn't look quite right…
Her vision resolved just in time to make out the wording, clear as day: "ACROAMATIC ABATEMENT FACILITY AAF-D."
"Oh," she said. "Oh, fuck."
There was a sudden rush of air through the open airlock, and she ran in literally blind terror. Shit shit shit shit. She suddenly remembered that she had a phone in her dorm room, that she very obviously should have simply called for help, and cursed her influenzic brain. Stupid stupid stupid fuck! She slipped on the clean hall tiles, staggered to one side, struck her head on the glass of an office window — Archives and Revision? — and fell through the swinging doors. They swung shut behind her as she hit the carpet, hard.
Her head felt funny. It was, at least a little bit, her fault.

"Karen?"
She felt much better now. Her head didn't, as though it had been full of slush, and the slush had settled. She felt that if she sneezed, her brains might come out. They felt fuller than they were supposed—
"Karen, you still alive down there?"
She opened her eyes. She was staring at the fabric of a desk chair, which she had obviously knocked over. She could see the coffee stains. There were rather a lot of them. Or were they…
"You threw up on Harry's floor, Karen."
Coke stains. Right.
She turned over onto her back, avoiding the sight of what she could smell beside her. She gazed up blearily at the bald head which loomed above, arms outstretched. She gradually realized the arms were attached to a body, not just the head, and that was enough for her to trust them. She reached up.
Sokolsky pulled her to her feet. "You weren't wearing your tracker. Everybody's looking for you."
"Mm," she muttered. "Don't tell them." She closed her eyes.
"Don't tell them what?"
She heard the door swing open, felt him help her walk through it. She wanted to fall asleep in his arms, but not like that, and she realized her stomach wasn't upset anymore. "Where I was."
He chuckled. "Wouldn't dream of it."
The slush was moving around in her head again, and she groaned. "Ugh."
"Gonna make it? H&P is still a good ways off."
"Yeah." She burped. "Head's just full."
There was a moment of silence, punctuated only by their footsteps, and then:
"What precisely do you mean by that, Karen?"

2021

2 January

"Wait." Veiksaar let go of her knees, and her legs slid out in front of her. "You're saying…"
Sokolsky nodded. "A few weeks later, you put that big password replacement push through. Remember? And Elstrom had the perfect string of letters and numbers in her head."
Pensak shrugged. "Everybody knows Karen had it first. Why does that matter?"
Veiksaar stood up. "It's how she got it that's interesting. This story is true?"
Sokolsky nodded. "She told me everything. I promised to keep it secret if she did." He smiled. "I told McInnis, of course. They monitored her in H&P, but she didn't show any sign of anything anomalous. Thought her sense of… mental congestion, was just the flu passing through her system. By the time they released her, she was visibly fine."
"Jesus." Veiksaar thumped the plaster wall. "5109 came out of 5243."
"What?" Pensak stared at her, then stared at Sokolsky.
"The Breach that Keeps On Making Anomalies." Sokolsky put his hands behind his head. "Elstrom got too close to AAF-D, and she picked something up. Just like how Deering picked up his mirror monster. All that esoteric gunk flying around, it's a wonder we didn't end up with more local anomalies than we did."
Veiksaar laughed incredulously. "And when we found out about 5109… what month was it?"
"May of 2009."
"May of 2009. You had months to make the connection between Karen's drunken office crawl, and her picking up the password. So what? You camped out at AAF-D when the Breach happened again, in September?"
He nodded.
"And again in 2010?"
He nodded again.
She counted on her fingers. "2008, 2009, '10, '11, '12, '13, '14, '15, '16, fuck, '18, fuck, '20. Thirteen years, thirteen passwords. It makes a new version every time? How the fuck does that even work?"
"Couldn't tell you."
She narrowed her eyes. "Because you don't know?"
"Sure!" He yawned again. "We'll go with that."

Around half past two in the morning, four S&C guards herded Wettle and Okorie into Veiksaar's office; the extra security was practically a formality, since the Site was presently under lockdown. Neither Sokolsky nor Pensak wanted this final phase of the project to go awry. There was far too much at stake.
"Wait," Okorie said. She'd already said it three times. "Wettle was out today?"
"You all were." Sokolsky was fiddling with the drawers on Veiksaar's desk. "Where's the key to this one, Eileen?"
"Fuck you," she chirped. She was lying flat on the floor now, reading a technical manual.
"What are we arguing about?" Wettle asked. He was holding a cardboard box.
"Sokolsky sent us all today," Okorie snapped. "That means he had how many password copies?"
"Thirteen," Veiksaar called up.
"And why is Eileen on the floor?" Okorie nudged her with one shoe. "Why are you on the floor?"
"House arrest." Pensak was scrolling his duty tablet. "This office is basically her house."
"House arr—" Okorie began, but Sokolsky interrupted her. He pointed at the cardboard box. "Is that for me?"
Wettle dropped it roughly on the desk. "Yeah, it's mole shit or something."
Sokolsky raised an eyebrow. "Pardon?"
"Horndog eggs, or whatever they call it. Wisconsin euphemism for animal scat. Somebody sent you a box of poop. Lucky you."

Ibanez was sprightly and perky, bouncing in place on the balls of her feet. She gave every impression of having had a grand time in India; she hadn't said much, but she had playfully punched Blank in the stomach at least half a dozen times. He'd taken to holding her at arm's length, by the forehead.
Pensak had gone to check on the detainees: Xavia Morse from Site-91 and Sunita Misra from Site-36, each still holding on to the copy of the password they'd snagged before their plans were thwarted. The retrieval would take some doing.
Sokolsky slid a gum packet out of his labcoat pocket, popped one of the blisters, and pressed the pellet between his teeth. The taste was bitter.
"Share with the class?" Blank asked.
"Nope."
Ibanez extended a hand, and Blank instinctually flinched. "Give," she barked.
"Nope. Gum, Eileen?"
Veiksaar had her back against one of the bookshelves, and she banged her knuckles on the wood when she stretched sleepily. "Pass."
"Aw, come on." Sokolsky wiggled the pack at her. "Think of it as a last cigarette sort of deal."
"Wait, is that Nicorette?" Blank blinked.
Veiksaar sighed, and closed the book she was pretending to read. "Toss it over."
Sokolsky broke another blister instead, and flicked the tiny chiclet across the room. It landed neatly in Veiksaar's lap.
"Thanks," she muttered, and popped it into her mouth. "Eucch."
"Why does she get your horrible gum?" Blank complained. "I like horrible candy. I eat fruit pastilles."
Wettle guffawed. He was sitting on the Macintosh monitor Sokolsky had dumped on the floor. "I'm telling McInnis you said those are horrible."
"I could've brought you some back from 91, if I'd known," Okorie mused.
"You didn't answer my question," Blank grumbled.
"She gets the horrible gum," Sokolsky explained, "because she's a horrible person. Traitor gum."
Blank nodded. "I'll note that you, also, are eating the traitor gum."
Sokolsky blew a bubble, by way of response. This was something of a feat, as it wasn't really that kind of gum.

Lillian Lillihammer, who had been vibrating non-stop for nearly two minutes, finally screamed: "YOU HAD HOW MANY FUCKING PASSWORDS?!"

It was getting early now, and everyone was clearly exhausted. Even Ibanez no longer seemed so jazzed; when she stopped poking Blank and started maliciously kicking Wettle's heels every time he nodded off, Sokolsky decided it was time to begin.
"Looks like the Director won't be joining us."
Pensak sighed. "I called Site-64K, they're sending someone to check on 79. It's possible McInnis' mole was already active before he got there. He might already be dead."
That cast something of a pall over most of the faces in the room. Allan McInnis was nobody's best friend, but he was family to five of the people in this room. They'd been through hellworlds together, even if the curious nature of timeline travel meant they had only debriefing recordings to remember it by.
"I'm sure he's fine." Sokolsky waved the dire prediction aside as if Pensak were merely blowing smoke. "Ideally he'd be here for this, but Chief Torosyan is also absent, so it was never gonna be a full house."
"Remind me to congratulate them, when they get back," Blank chimed in.
"Why would you forget?" Okorie asked.
"I won't, but Willie will. I'll remember to remind him, when you remind m—"
Sokolsky cleared his throat, and Blank let the sentence dangle. "Ladies and gentlemen, you really did do it. Seven passwords snug back in my mental fortress, with the rest in the minds of our friends — or our non-friends safe in custody — and the good you did with them, the data we've gathered, the lives we've saved will live in unfamy."
"Infamy," Wettle corrected, as Veiksaar stood up.
"No, unfamy, because we're never going to be able to tell anyone about it. But still! A sting operation conducted at seven, nay, eight, nay, nine Sites simultaneously, and it went off with only the most amusing of hitches. It might not have been saving the world, but you certainly saved the day."
"The single, solitary day," Lillihammer snapped. She had been glowering at Sokolsky since he'd told her what he'd done.
"You'll appreciate the gall, Lillian, when you stop to think about it. And you'll have plenty of time, soon! There's just one more thing we need to do, to put a big red bow on the entire affair."
Pensak slugged Ibanez in the jaw.
She hit the floor softly; it wasn't a long fall for her. "That wasn't it," Sokolsky shouted as the security chief then shoved Veiksaar into the remaining task force members, and they scattered around and over her desk. Wettle fell over in a hail of books, while Blank banged his knee on Sokolsky's chair and began to swear.
Pensak pointed his service weapon at Sokolsky, and began to speak in measured tones. "Seven passwords, Daniil. Stand up, walk over here, and start whispering."
Sokolsky stood up, but stayed put otherwise. "You'll n—"
"Save it." Pensak laughed. "And don't try anything. The only person in this room who can take me on is presently sucking carpet." As if in response, Ibanez groaned.
Sokolsky crossed the room, heart racing. For the first time since Spain, he actually felt like smiling. "You're sure you want to do this, Roger?"
He tasted iron as the butt of the pistol struck his jaw.
"Yes, Daniil. I'm sure. Now spit it out, and keep your blood to yourself."
It took more than two minutes to transfer the passwords, and Sokolsky felt his mental burden growing lighter with each sequence of characters. When the final one was out, he allowed the relief he felt to fill his eyes; Pensak peered at them cautiously, and Sokolsky could tell that the man knew he'd won.
Pensak tapped a new password — almost certainly the password — into his tablet, resetting the room's security features. He was locking them in. "I'll be sure to tell someone you're in here," he explained, as he reached into the holster where his weapon had been and withdrew a small plastic breathing apparatus. "Tomorrow at the latest."
Pensak fixed the apparatus over his mouth, and tapped his tablet one last time. The nozzles set in the ceiling overhead began to hiss; Sokolsky couldn't see the gas, but he could definitely feel someth—

When they were all lying in a heap on the office floor, Pensak reactivated the ventilation system and waited the prescribed three minutes before taking off his mask.
Back in the hallway, the door securely shut and locked behind him, he activated the radio transmitter in his collar. "Yancy and Smit to the I&T chief's office. Do not enter; post yourselves outside the door. Nobody in, nobody out."
After a moment, an affirmative; after two moments, a second one. He strode through the empty corridors of what had been, until recently, Eileen Veiksaar's domain, trying and failing to muster any sentimental attachment to the place.
On to bigger and better things.
A productive visit to the Security and Containment outpost east of I&T, a quick jaunt through Janitorial and Maintenance, and a stroll past the airlock where three S&C agents had once died, and many years later (yet due to the nuances of time travel, on the exact same day) Karen Elstrom had unwittingly set the greatest heist in human history in motion.
Not Sokolsky's. Pensak's.
By the time he reached the elevator in Habitation and Sustenance, the one almost everyone thought of as the topside elevator, the nasty little bits of code that Misra had cooked up were working their way through 43NET. He checked his watch; by the time the elevator started moving — down — the invasion of Site-43 had started in earnest, if everyone else involved was as punctual as he.
By the time he crossed the Fourth Sublevel, the very existence of which was provisionally classified, he was already over any lingering attachment to McInnis' clean and tidy thirty-seven hectare dungeon. Retirement from the SCP Foundation was rarely either pleasant or lucrative, and through considerable dint of effort he had found himself a much, much better way to make an exit.
When he opened the door labelled SCP-001-B, took aim with his service weapon, and fired — "For those in thrall," he said, as he had been instructed — there was no time or reason left to do anything but leave.

Lost in the Translation

The Time After Time Password

Over/


Hey Mom,
This might seem like a suicide note but it really isn't, I promise you I'm still alive even though it doesn't seem like it. Remember the story you told me about myself? When I was a child, you'd place toys all around me and a little pillow in the centre of that toy-circle, and I'd spend entire days playing with them, and falling asleep in it. You made me a little world and I must have really liked it, because I never truly escaped. Thank you for staying at home and cooking for me. Whenever I feel unmotivated to continue studying you'll always come and chat me up and tell me how much you love me. Thanks for that too. I know you expected great things from me: you wanted me to become a lawyer and get rich, find a good wife and let you carry my baby. You probably expected me by your death bed, holding your hand and sending you off. But I'm sorry. I know it's not your fault, you just wanted the best for me, but I really can't handle it anymore. I always fear the disappointment you'll feel when you see me getting an F on my subjects and I know it's just not possible for me to live the grand lifestyle you have envisioned for me. Lately, I've been writing some stuff for a site and I've started to really feel alive again, just like when I was in that little toy-world as a child. I also finally found friends there! They all love the site as much as me and it's so fun to talk to them, they don't feel fake and pretentious like the sons of your gossip-friends. I haven't felt this real for so long, there's just this deep emptiness inside me all the time when I do anything apart from writing, doing anything that you expect me to do. This life of being loved and having a good future doesn't suit me. I finally found a way to live with my own passion and creations! This is a last goodbye note because I have a feeling that I won't see you ever again. Thanks for all that you have done for me and I'm sorry I was a disappointment and never achieved anything until the end.
Desmond

One (1) new message!

FORENSIC ANALYSIS RESULTS Case #G782

To: Dr Samuel
From: Dr Kylie
Subject: FORENSIC ANALYSIS RESULTS Case #G782

Introduction:
On the 5th of November 2021, the corpse of Desmond Shaw, a 17 year old male, was discovered at his place of residence. Dr Kylie and his team began the investigation, determining the cause of death being overdose on Hydrocodone. Small amounts of LSD was also found at the scene in a small plastic zip lock bag. No foul play suspected.


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"Lost in the Translation"
Around the Hispanosphere in one day.

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2021

1 January
Site-34: Undisclosed Location

Thirty years in IT, three decades of never getting a straight answer from a single, solitary user, had bifurcated Eileen Veiksaar's brain. She now took a forensic approach to every human interaction, dividing her thoughts along two different tracks: the way other people wanted her to go, and the way to the truth. There was, sometimes, a middle course; there was, very rarely, only one course at all. This last was what people called 'honesty'.
Veiksaar called it a fluke, on the rare occasion that she encountered it.
As her contact slouched across the foyer towards her, she was already compartmentalizing. What she could see: he was in early middle age, and looked like a tanned H.P. Lovecraft. What she could hear: an accent her unpracticed ear placed as Chilean, tentatively.
What he said: "I'm Dr. Von Braun."
So, this wasn't going to be one of those moments where the tracks dovetailed. She decided not to call him on it. "Eileen Veiksaar. Where, precisely, is Site-34?"
"Do you speak Spanish?"
She narrowed her eyes. "Why is that pertinent?"
"Because if you don't speak Spanish, I don't tell you." He chuckled. "This place brings us together. That's all you need to know." He turned and walked away, glancing over his shoulder to see if she was following.
She was. She usually found it interesting, if not always profitable, to see where the false roads led.

After a brief altercation with a sliding door which slid open and shut at irregular intervals of its own volition, Von Braun brought Veiksaar into a spacious café which was bustling even at this late hour. The midnight view from the one-way bay windows was glorious: Patagonia in wintertime, the snow-capped Andes speckled with a range of deciduous and evergreen flora. For the first time in her career, she knew for an absolute certainty where Site-34 was located. Argentina.
Or Chile.
"The whole Site's gone haywire," the putative Dr. Von Braun explained as he sat down at an occupied table. The man who was already sitting there, tired and harried-looking, nodded at them both in turn. "We're starting to suspect sabotage, which is why we called you in. If it'd happened earlier…" Von Braun looked frustrated. "We applied to use 5109 back in December, you know, but Sokolsky turned us down. Shows what he knows."
"Don't see how it would help you," Veiksaar remarked. She glanced back at the door, where a pair of agents were mustering up the nerve to dive through. "If you don't already know who's doing this, you'd just be adding another variable to the mix."
"'Mix' is right," the second man grimaced. "I run the bio labs, and let me tell you: it's no fun submitting vitals for an entire department, then seeing them vanish right off your screen." He extended a hand. "Castillo."
She shook it. "So, that's two problems then? Disappearing data, and disobedient doors?"
A labcoated doctor was gently squeezed into the doorframe as she uttered these words. A blonde man in a black leather jacket, who was sitting at the counter and scrolling through his phone, smirked at him.
Castillo grimaced. "Wish it were that simple. We've compiled a list of complaints, from every sector, and it's not at all clear what connection there could be."
Veiksaar frowned. "So what do you want me to do? Dig around in the code? You've got to have someone more qualified than that."
Castillo and Von Braun shared a knowing look.
She sighed. "The worst thing about being qualified," she said, "is always being a suspect."
"Tell me about it," Von Braun agreed. "Life would've gone much easier if I hadn't been born brilliant. But yes, you're right, the techs are all under suspicion. They've mostly been sent packing for the day, while we sort this out."
"While I sort this out," she corrected him.
"Quite. Normally we'd prefer to handle this internally, but as you were already on your way over… Dr. Sokolsky assures us that if anyone can find the mole, if there is a mole, it'll be you." Castillo folded his hands on the table. "However, there is a snag. We're restricting intra-Site travel right now because of COVID-19. You'll have special dispensation, of course, but we still don't want you wandering."
A cat leapt up onto a chair across the way, and began making strange gestures at a young man who was tapping away at a portable typewriter. It looked, for all the world, like the cat was talking.
The fact that the cat was wearing a fedora dawned on her very slowly, despite her best efforts to reject it.
She decided not to stare, and let Castillo's last remark sink in instead. "Wait. Intra-Site travel? Because of COVID?"
"That's right. We're assigning Von Braun to make sure you stay within authorized channels. No offence."
"He means you," Von Braun interjected. "I, personally, am meant to take offence at this."
"Could be worse," Castillo sneered. "Could be shipping you back to Antarctica."
"Back up," said Veiksaar. "I still don't get it. You're reducing traffic within the Site? For what possible reason?"
Castillo smiled. "34 covers a lot of ground. We've got more dedicated facilities under this umbrella than any other Site you've been to. Energy production, materials processing, manufacturing, admin, electronics, greenhouses and hospitals; you name it, we got it."
She rubbed the back of her neck. Her muscles were allergic to dissimulation. "And that's all hidden in the mountains of Argentina?"
Von Braun shot her a nervous grin. "Where you getting that?"
She pointed wordlessly out the window.
"Truth is stranger," Castillo remarked.

2 January

Before leaving the café, Veiksaar did three things.
First, she used her work tablet to scan the blonde man's phone. His clearance level was through the roof, and he had enough countermeasures on his phone to thwart the entire AIAD.
Second, she surreptitiously took a photo of the cat.
Third, she timed the sliding doors for three entire minutes.

Von Braun wanted her to see the greenhouses first. They passed through a completely dark room — "Security," he explained, by way of not explaining — and then into a balmy space with a one-way glass ceiling. The stars in the sky weren't nearly so clear as they had been in the café, she noticed.
"SCP-XXXX is," a robotic voice intoned, and a set of greenhouse sprinklers briefly spritzed in tandem. She could barely take in the vast variety of plantlife filling the domed structure, a veritable cornucopia of life and colour.
"Is or is not what," a voice muttered. Veiksaar stood up on the toes of her running shoes, and spied a man crouched down amidst the foliage.
"Navarro," Von Braun whispered.
She nodded, and cleared her throat. Navarro glanced up at her as the sprinklers fired again; he recoiled from the water, but smiled as he waved her over.
"What's all this?" she asked, encompassing the floracopia with one broad gesture.
"Nothing anomalous," Navarro assured her. "It's for the enclosures."
"Enclosures?"
"Anomalous mammals. South America has more garden-variety wildlife…" He actually waited for the pun to land, and she smiled obligingly, "…than anywhere else in the world, so just imagine how many creepier creepy-crawlies we've got under lock and key! It takes a whole lot of growing to keep their chambers stocked with greenery."
Another set of sprinklers deployed their payload, and the voice suddenly corrected itself: "Delete. SCP-ES-XXXX is not."
"That's great," Navarro muttered. "Thanks for sharing. Now… where did I put…"
He took three steps, and fell flat on his face. Veiksaar helped him back to his feet, while Von Braun picked the stepladder up off the floor.
"There," the cryptozoologist panted. "That's where I put it."
Veiksaar patted him on the shoulder, then unfolded the ladder and climbed up to examine the ceiling-mounted speaker. "Pain in the ass design," she muttered.
"If you think putting control panels below sprinklers is a good idea," Von Braun responded, "maybe you're not half the genius they think you are."
"Delete. SCP-ES-XXXX must not be allowed. Delete."
"Delete yourself," Navarro cursed.
She ignored all three voices in favour of working her tablet's USB connector into the speaker's port. The gentle patter of the sprinklers continued below her as she ran a few basic diagnostics, then hung one arm over the top of the ladder to peer down at the men. "Well, the speaker's working fine. It's receiving textual data on the appropriate frequency, then passing it through a text-to-spee—"
"There is no concrete evidence supporting the existence of SCP-ES-XXXX. It both is and is not contained in a standard humanoid containment cell at Site-34. It must not be allowed to exist, if its existence becomes possible."
She glared at the speaker, then climbed down gingerly. The sprinklers jolted to life again, then stopped; she glanced at her tablet, scrolled, and pressed a button. She watched, and waited. A few minutes passed in a silence whose discomfort was obviously variable.
"I heard a good joke the other day," Navarro began.
"I heard a good shut up," Von Braun replied.
Veiksaar saved her findings, then tucked the tablet into her labcoat. "All done. Where to next?"

The next stop was the Department of Memetics, where she was introduced to a thickly-bearded and deep-voiced man named Investigator Mondragón.
"Please turn that off," he said, by way of greeting. "Please turn that," and he pointed at the tablet in Veiksaar's hand, "off. Immediately."
She turned it off, then glanced at Von Braun. He shrugged. She shrugged back. "What's the deal?"
Mondragón led them into the offices, where a gaggle of goggled researchers were peering at printouts. There were a great many empty desks; a phone was ringing on one of them, and nobody was answering. She memorized the ringtone, because she was built that way.
"We've had to shut down all the active terminals," the memeticist explained, "and I don't want to take any chances with devices from outside."
Veiksaar shook her head. "I don't get it. Someone's attacking you?"
"Yes." Mondragón nodded. "We are. What's your inoculation level?"
"Clearance 4," she responded on autopilot. "Wait, why…"
"Turn around, Von Braun." Mondragón made a dismissive motion. "Unless you want to die."
"Depends on the day." Von Braun did turn around; in fact, he walked back out of the office. Mondragón shook his head, then pressed a button on his keyboard. He turned the monitor to face her.
She blinked. "Oh. How many—"
"All of them," he sighed. "Every terminal in the Department. The auto-server which sends these is in my office; luckily I saw it booting up, checked the action queue, and remote-killed all the local screens before anybody… yeah. Sent most of my people home until we can get it sorted out."
The screen was filled with a Berryman-Langford memetic kill agent.
"Some glitch," she breathed.
He nodded. "Always gives me parietal burning, personally."
"Amnestics help." She was barely aware of saying it. This particular image always had a hypnotic property, like a fractal car crash…
"Not for me, they don't." She glanced over; Mondragón was grimacing. "Amnestics are a no-sell. Here's some career-slash-life advice: don't get involved with memetics."
Bit late for that.
The telephone rang again, and one of the remaining memeticists flicked it off the hook.
"So, I take it you don't want to reboot your systems until I have a working theory?" Veiksaar asked.
Mondragón nodded. "And I take it you are still fact-finding. Hope you find some soon."
She stared at the deadly whorls on the terminal screen for just a moment more, then clicked her tongue. "Yeah, already an image begins to form."

Von Braun directed Veiksaar to the next hotspot, then left to use the washroom. "That place gives me migraines," he explained unhelpfully.
It was easy to see why. Her destination was a large containment chamber set up as an unholy marriage of polling station and art gallery, individual wall-mounted artworks shielded from each other with thick white curtains. A woman with braided black hair, piercing blue eyes and bulkier glasses than Veiksaar's (which were very bulky) was sitting on the floor, her back to a poster depicting—
Queso, a voice Veiksaar recognized as her own intoned in her own head. Queso, queso, queso.
"Queso?" she repeated.
The woman glanced up at her. "¿Qué?"
A harsh robotic voice bellowed over the intercom: "THIS INAPPROPRIATE ACTION HAS BEEN LOGGED." Veiksaar jumped; the woman on the floor merely rolled her eyes.
Veiksaar walked over, carefully ignoring the poster and glancing around warily for the P.A. speaker. "Queso," she said again. "I looked at that thing on the wall, and it made me think 'Queso'."
The woman stood up. "Yes. It's a cheese painting; makes you think about cheese." She extended a hand. "Amalia Mondragón, Director of Anart and Restoration. I've got a painting that makes you taste wine, too, if you need a palate cleanse."
Another Mondragón. Don't ask if they're related. Veiksaar smiled. "I'm assuming none of these are terribly dangerous, given the… containment apparatus."
"Only to your app—"
"THIS INAPPROPRIATE ACTION HAS BEEN LOGGED."
"Only to your appetite," Mondragón replied through gritted teeth. "They're all low-threat, just cataloguing them before final storage." She produced a tiny point-and-shoot from her labcoat pocket, snapped a shot of the cheese poster — which was actually a movie poster for something called Casa de mi Padre — and walked out of the makeshift booth.
Queso, Veiksaar thought, as she turned and followed Mondragón.
The other woman gestured at the ceiling, and Veiksaar finally noticed the speaker. It was flush with the panels and much smaller than the one in the greenhouse, since it featured no obvious controls. "Been yelling at me all day," Mondragón complained. "No clue what its problem is."
Veiksaar nodded. "Maybe I can catch one. Got a SCiPNET port I can borrow?"
Mondragón gestured at a small desk tucked between two of the white curtains. Her next sentence was obliterated by a scathing "THIS INAPPROPRIATE ACTION HAS BEEN LOGGED," and she very clearly had to struggle not to swear. "I think I took too long with the cheese poster," she lamented. "Going to need dinner early tonight."
A brief diagnostic confirmed what Veiksaar had already suspected: as before, the speakers were receiving a legitimate but unintended input. She was about to head for the washrooms to recollect Von Braun, when a new thought occurred to her.
"You wouldn't happen to have," she began.
"THIS INAPPROPRIATE ACTION HAS BEEN LOGGED."
She smirked. "He doesn't know the half of it. But no, okay, I'm looking for…"

Veiksaar was beginning to seriously question the sanity of whoever had designed this Site. There seemed to be endless long passages between each Department — and they weren't always called Departments, which was odd — with at least one unlit room somewhere along each route. (Von Braun only grunted when she asked him to explicate the security procedure requiring her to stumble around like an idiot over and over.) Part of her wondered what sort of credentials-verifying, intruder-deterring or threat-detecting machinery might be hidden behind the black; the rest of her wondered if her disorientation was the entire point. If so, it wasn't working to quell her concerns about the layout of Site-34. She was now picturing something like a giant ring of structures surrounding a single mountain peak at different elevations; at one point, in the damnable dark, she swore she felt her ears pop.
Maybe the darkrooms move. She'd seen stranger things.
The last hallway before the Archives and Library (not a Department, she noted) offered another breathtaking one-way vista; this one added 'climate control' to her mental list of the systems on offer at the Foundation's South American monolith.
There was a tropical rainforest in the twilight outside.
I started the day in Argentina, probably, and now I'm in Chile, definitely. How big is this place?
The archivist was a man named Mallea, and he was not having a good day. The archive was full of hazmat-suited agents, all of them engaged in treating, restraining, or restraining for treatment a crowd of frantic labcoated researchers. One had coated both of his hands in blue paint, which he was smearing all over his handler's faceplate. Another was pummelling her seatmate, apparently over possession of a thoroughly-trampled cheese sandwich, while two more suited agents pulled at them in vain. One was simply sitting in a corner, humming something with a bouncy beat, obviously oblivious.
"Cognitohazards," Mallea spat. "Cognitohazards at every single terminal."
Veiksaar thought about the memetic kill agents, and shuddered. "Could be worse. These all look pretty minor."
"Nothing's minor when it happens to your entire staff!" Mallea pulled at his hair, then paused, then with an obviously great expenditure of willpower… pulled at his hair again. "I'm not doing this on purpose, by the way," he muttered helplessly.
"Hope you're not planning on touching documents with those hands." Von Braun pointed. "Skin oils, you know. Corrosive."
Mallea released his grip as he focused on his colleague. "We use gloves, moron." He waved dismissively, much as the male Mondragón had done. "And the documents we're looking at right now, or should be, are electronic. We're in the middle of a database review. I literally do not have the time for this today! Literally literally. Zero time. Absolutely no time at all."
Veiksaar just barely dodged a glob of blue hurled in her direction. She glanced back at Von Braun, and was surprised to see that he'd dodged it as well. He reminded her enough of Wettle that she'd expected his face to be blue.
"We were doing the annual full-catalogue checkup," Mallea continued. "Going through every single file in the database, and flagging for updates or re-evaluation."
"Sounds like a lot of work." Veiksaar briefly considered. "Sounds like too much work."
Mallea had switched to pulling on the fingers of his left hand with the fingers of his right. "It is! That's why it's split between taskforces at every Site with dedicated archivists. Our assigned block is the first half of Series I." He grunted. "Which is actually quite unfair, since that includes the 001 list. We've got two dozen more files to look at than everyone else, and let me tell you: those 001s aren't short. Just sorting out the clearance has been… what?"
Veiksaar was smiling.
"What?"
Von Braun poked her in the back. "What?"
"Nothing. Look, if it makes you feel any better, I'm about ninety percent sure this is something I can fix. You're looking at a one-day disaster, tops."
Mallea rubbed at his eyes. They were red, and not with paint. "There'll just be another tomorrow."

Veiksaar couldn't keep the smile off any longer. Von Braun tried to extract an explanation from her, but she was flush with the satisfaction of knowing something nobody else knew — particularly because she knew it due to her diligence, and expertise — so she ignored him. After the 'fun' with the periodic darkrooms, and Von Braun's maddening recalcitrance, ignoring him was even more potent grin-fuel.
She'd come to so enjoy this unexpected excursion that she had, apparently, lost track of time; it was getting lighter outside as they checked in at the final department, where they met a man with slacked back hair and squared-off spectacles named
"Borja Dowell." He shook her hand. "Regional Ethics Committee."
That gave her pause, but she kept up the foolish poker face. "Why are you editing SCP files?"
He blinked. "What?"
She pointed over his shoulder, through the door, at the offices beyond. "You're editing SCP files in there. Aren't you?" The fluorescent lights dimmed, then brightened, then dimmed again.
Dowell took a glance behind him, then turned back to her in confusion. "…yes. We are. We've just finished ethics review for a few contentious cases, and we're preparing new versions of the documentation. How did you…?" He shook his head, shrugged, then swung back through the door. Veiksaar and Von Braun followed him.
She peered up at the ceiling-mounted lights, and waited. Dowell glanced at Von Braun reproachfully. "Did you tell her what our problem is already?"
"Nope. I didn't even know myself."
"It's definitely the lights," Veiksaar said, more to herself than to either of them. She accessed the only memory bank she'd never had a harsh word for, the one between her ears, and when the lights started flickering again she vocalized along with them: "Bup bup-a-dup bup-a-dup."
It synced up perfectly.
She beamed at Dowell. "Can you take me to your comms centre?"
Dowell frowned. "I haven't got the clearance, but I know someone who does."

A dignified older man, bearded and bespectacled, relieved Von Braun and Dowell at the door. He led Veiksaar down the final corridor; this time the trip was short, and there was no spot of darkness in between. "You've figured it out?" he asked her, his tone suggesting both mild interest and general affability. He certainly didn't sound too concerned.
"I think so." She nodded. "You're familiar with Sokolsky's sting?"
The man nodded back. "I've been briefed. 5109, the password."
"Right. Well, to make sure each of our agents can get their second copy within seconds, as soon as they need it, I developed a strong and unhackable carrier wave comms system. Site-34 was in the early running for a sting, so they fitted you with the system; I don't know why it wasn't uninstalled when Daniil ultimately rejected you, but it obviously wasn't. It's the only thing that makes sense."
"Hmm," the man hemmed.
"Whatever you normally use for internal communications — signals of all sorts, mind you, not just radio — has been switched over to my long-range comms. Your guess why is as good as mine, but I'd lay money I'm right about the problem at least." They stopped in front of a neatly-labelled door, and she tapped it for emphasis. "Five minutes in here, and I'll put an end to these glitches."
"What's causing them specifically, though?"
She held up her tablet for him to see. She'd taken careful notes. "Every piece of electronics at this Site runs on a specific command frequency. For some insane reason, several of them are operating on the same command frequency. Normally they'd be so far apart, the overlap wouldn't matter, but with the boost my system provides, perfectly sensible signals are causing perfectly nonsensical results in places they were never meant to reach. Your Anart director is snapping pics of memetic posters, and when she tries to upload them to her database, she actually uploads them to the archives. Your archivists are studying the 001 file, and every time they're meant to get Berryman-Langford'd, your poor memeticians get it instead. The phones in Memetics are messing with the lights in the archives, the botanics sprinklers are triggering the café doors, the Ethics Committee is dictating SCP files which are getting shouted over the botanics P.A., and some blonde dude in sunglasses is committing ethics violations on his phone which are setting off alerts in Anart."
The man rolled his eyes at this last point. "Yerko."
"Whatever. Point is, your lines are all crossed, and it's because you're running my long-distance comms without tidying up the frequencies." She paused. "Dunno where Castillo's medical data was going, though."
The man smiled. "I do. Department of Pataphysics. Dr. Merlin assures me we don't want to know what happened to it."
She nodded. "Well, I'll have you all cleaned up in a jiffy." She placed one hand on the doorknob.
"We could call the usual techs in, now that you've isolated the problem," the man offered.
She shook her head. "The fact-finding is done, but we've still got to dig out your mole. Someone switched the systems over, and I want to find out who." She pushed the door open, humming under her breath; it was the melody she'd heard in the archives.
This was working out far better than she'd even dared hope.
It's so nice to get the chores out of the way before you come home.

He was still waiting in the corridor when she finished; she was oddly touched by the gesture. "All done?" he asked.
"All done," she smiled.
"All done," Daniil Sokolsky agreed, poking his head around the other man's shoulders.
Veiksaar nearly leapt out of her skin. "Where the hell did you come from?!"
"Same place you did." He strolled over, hands in his labcoat pockets; his selacian grin was oddly absent. "Rode in the cockpit, got to look at all the dials and such."
"Bullshit."
He nodded. "Force of habit. So, what do you figure?"
"They were right to call me in. Or you were right to send me. Whatever happened." She stuffed her own hands into her own labcoat pockets. "There's been a security breach."
Sokolsky nodded. "Was it Von Braun?"
She didn't react. "What makes you say that?"
"Pff. You met the guy. You spent time with the guy. He's Wettle 2.0, right? Thinks of himself first, last and always. Probably tried to sell off some vital data, beamed it out of the Site with your fancy phone tech, never knowing the chaos it would cause. Makes sense to me."
She felt her eyes narrowing. She felt her ever-present undercurrent of doubting other people's intentions rising to a flood. She made a decision, and handed him her tablet. "Well, it doesn't make sense to me. Whoever made the switch was very tech-savvy. I'd sooner suspect the local technicians, which is what Von Braun told me to begin with. I can see the changes in the code, but I can't crack the user ID of whoever made them. Encrypted up the wazoo."
Sokolsky glanced at the tablet, nodding. "Level-5 clearance."
"Maybe that Yerko guy?" she hazarded.
"Not likely," the other man replied. "Not this."
"Still," Sokolsky continued, "good catch. Didn't think you'd find anything at all."
"We should take this to the Director, see if they know who…" She blinked. "What do you mean, you didn't think I'd find anything? You told Castillo that only I could expose the mole."
"And you did," he sighed.
A moment passed.
"Who did you call in there, Eileen?"
A second moment passed.
"Back at 120?" He nearly looked sorrowful, she thought; it was only a thought, because she'd never seen him sorrowful before. "When you told me one of the passwords hadn't gone through? I still felt it leave my mind. I know you've never had more than one copy in your head before, so you don't know what it's like… with your head that stuffed full of meme, every bit of relief is palpable." He still wouldn't smile, despite the obvious note of triumph in his voice. "You stole it, Eileen, and just a moment ago, in the privacy of that comms server, you sent it to someone else. Who?"
She didn't say anything.
Sokolsky nudged the other man. "Who, Richard?"
Richard produced his own tablet. "She directed the message to somewhere in the southern United States."
"Hmm. UIU, maybe?" Sokolsky shrugged. "Did they get the password?"
"No." Richard rolled his eyes. "You did."
"Oh." Sokolsky nodded theatrically. "I did, too, didn't I. Sokolsky on the intercept." He fingered his Level-5 clearance badge with a perfect absence of absent-mindedness.
Veiksaar had spent this entire performance deciding whether to deny having sent the call, or to indulge her morbid curiousity and find out how it had all gone so horribly wrong. Stupid, stupid, stupid! He'd even given her a chance to pin it on Von Braun, and she'd burned that bridge before attempting to cross it. She had only two options left to her; one was in her pocket, and one was in her head. She chose the latter, almost on a whim: "My comms are instantaneous over short distances, you know."
Sokolsky nodded. "I know."
"Then how did you intercept me? I bounced the message off a relay in Bogota, should've gone through lightning-quick."
Richard chuckled. "Bogota? That's, what, eight thousand kilometres away. Even your system can't do that instantaneously. Caught it with ease."
Her mouth was working long before any sound came out. "Eight thousand… Eight thousand. Kilometres." She took off her glasses, and pinched the bridge of her nose. "You think Bogota is eight thousand kilometres away from Chile? Who is this nutcase?"
"Richard Barnard," said Sokolsky. "Director of Area-08."
"Reach," he corrected. "I go by Reach."
Her head snapped up, fast and hard. "What?"
Reach extended a hand. "Pleased to meet you."
Absent a reason not to, she took the hand and shook it. "I know who you are," she told him. "You're not… he's… Area-08 is in Spain, or something."
Reach released her hand, smiling sympathetically. "Or something," he agreed.
She shook her head, silently begging for an explanation.
"Spain is eight thousand kilometres from Bogota," Sokolsky explained, very softly.
She carefully replaced her glasses, took a deep breath, and sighed heavily. "How," she asked them, slowly, deliberately, "am I in Spain now?"

They rode home in silence. She stared fixedly out the window — there were windows now, since nobody was trying to disorient her anymore — and Sokolsky stared fixedly at her, obviously daring her to break. The longer she didn't, the closer he seemed to come to cracking that old self-satisfied grin.
Amazingly, he broke first. "Was it the UIU?"
She didn't look at him. "Who cares who it was? That's not what matters."
He leaned back in his seat, and crossed his legs. "Motivations, then. What were yours?"
"Leverage." Still she didn't look at him. "You're dangerous, Daniil. You've seen how 5109 fucks people up, makes them overconfident, makes them take risks. We both watched the Site go to shit as everyone tried to use it for their own selfish reasons — hell, yours were more selfish than most — and I got so goddamn tired of seeing it. I thought I could set someone responsible against you, make sure they could… could check you, if it came to that." She sighed. "But no, no, of course you always fucking win."
He did smile, now, and this smile was a rare thing indeed on his hateful, mirthful face: a sad one. "This is a loss, Eileen, make no mistake. I'm going to miss you."
She laughed, matching his lack of mirth. "Amnestics help." She shifted in her seat, a sudden curiousity overwhelming her sense of impending doom. "Okay, but seriously now: where, in the fuck, is Site-34?"
He pursed his lips.
"Because I swear to god, I started in Argentina or Chile, but the sky in botanics looked wrong, and that rainforest… I've seen the news, and that rainforest could easily be Venezuela. Those were definitely the Andes, not the Pyrenees or the Sierra Nevada, and Spain doesn't have any rainforests."
He didn't interrupt.
"The techs at 34 are no dummies, and I'm pissed off at myself for thinking I was so much smarter than them. They wouldn't have set their systems up on the same frequency if there was a chance, any chance, they'd come into conflict. The signals should never have gotten crossed. It should have been impossible, no matter how goddamn big the place is."
Still he said nothing.
"You made them switch the comms, I get that much. You knew I'd figure it out. You knew I'd see the chance, and take it, knew I'd send the stolen password from 34 instead of 43. Knew I'd think it was safer, that I'd gotten away with murder far from home. You made me out myself."
Finally, a response: he inclined his head, just so.
"I'm assuming the more dangerous side-effects were put-ons? You wouldn't really cause those Berryman-Langfords to fly around like that."
He raised an eyebrow. "Oh, no? I thought I was the irresponsible one."
This time, she didn't answer. He inclined his head again, and it shone in the light from the window. "No, you're right of course. All the vital stuff was switched to non-conflicting systems ahead of time, and some of what you saw was put on for your benefit. The minor glitches were real; the techs wanted to see how their shielding would fare. Not very well, as it happens, so this was all very instructive."
She couldn't bring herself to feel angry with him, not after what she'd tried to do, but she was still baffled. "You didn't answer my question. How is every sector of that facility so goddamn far apart that only ultra-strong broadcasts can bridge the distance? They can't literally be in different countries, Daniil. Different continents, even."
"Of course not," he scoffed. "What a concept."
She suddenly remembered the lightless rooms, and the COVID restrictions. She'd never seen a full map of the Site, and she recalled the inconsistent terminology… and did it make any sense that each department would have a unique epidemiological situation?
Sokolsky clearly saw the look on her face. "Von Braun told you, did he not?" He glanced out the window; the flat forested landscape of lower Ontario came into view through the dissipating cloud layer. "Site-34 brings them all together."

Whack-a-Mole

The Time After Time Password

Passing Sentence


< Part One | Part Three >

The rain poured down, drenching anyone willing to step outside. Traffic lights reflected in the falling droplets danced across the front window, illuminating the face of a grim-looking fellow with a death grip on the steering wheel. He looked to both sides and kept on driving, hoping nobody had seen him.
He rounded a corner, slowly accelerating. He didn't want to draw any attention by speeding, but he couldn't just wait around for them to find him. He needed to get out of this place before it was too late.
A bullet quietly sailed through the night air, shattering the car windows in a flurry of red which was quickly washed away by the rain.
It was too late.

The morning sun cast long shadows over the crime scene, as yellow tape was put up around the area. Megan stood over the body, examining every detail of the scene. An older man in a dark suit slumped over the steering wheel of an expensive-looking car. A single bullet was lodged in his skull, and a drop of dried blood hung from the wound.
As for the victim's identity, that was more interesting. His name was just a box of black ink to her, but intelligence had given her a file detailing a sales representative for a club that officially didn't exist. Now that she'd cased the crime scene, it was time to examine some suspects. Top of this list, the super shady employer.
"Hello."
She tensed in shock and turned around to see whoever had spoken. They were wearing a dark suit and glasses, similar to the body she'd been examining. Megan gave it fifty-fifty odds this person was MCD of Foundation. They extended their arm in greeting, which Megan took hesitantly.
"I'm here on behalf of Marshal Carter and Dark Ltd to assist in your investigation. You may call me Mr Echis."
"Yeah, I don't think so. You're not with the FBI, and your company is a prime suspect."
"I assure you, we had no reason to kill our dearly departed friend here. And if we did, nobody would have noticed he was gone."
"Fine, if you really want to help with the case, get me a list of everyone this guy tried to sell something to in the past month."
"Oh, that may not be possible. We take our client's privacy very seriously, and I doubt you have a warrant from a judge that's not on our payroll."
"Thanks, you've been a great help so far. Would you mind continuing to help from somewhere other than here?"
"I'm sorry, but I'm here to protect this interests of Marshal Carter and Dark Ltd. Someone was able to kill one of our employees, and I'd like to know who."
"Do you have any idea who'd want to hurt him?"
"Several actually, the first of which I've already arranged a meeting with. Would you like to join me in the questioning? It's entirely possible that this fellow was one of our victim's clients, and I'd say there's a small chance he was the last person to see this man alive."
She was taken aback by the sudden attempt to be helpful, but a suspect was a suspect.

Megan and Echis sat down at a conference table, where they were assured by a secretary that Mister Hollis would be with them shortly. Apparently, being the head of a chip company was busy work. Megan wondered what the head of a chip company was buying from MCD, while Echis wondered if there was any garlic in the building.
A few minutes passed, and a tired-looking man in a dark blue suit walked into the room. His grey-white hair was half combed, as though he'd given up halfway through. He shuffled around the extra chairs and sat down across from Megan.
"Mr Hollis, we'd like to ask you a few questions about a recent meeting with a representative of Marshal Carter and Dark Ltd. Do you remember who was present at the meeting?"
"Oh yes, it wasn't a big meeting. Just me and Johannes, the sales rep. He was trying to get me to invest in some sort of potato growing machine that would allow us to make the potatoes here and cut out the farmers."
Echis nodded to Megan, confirming the story.
"So last night you met with a man named Johannes, is this him?"
She took out a photo of the crime scene, showing the CEO the body. He quickly looked away in horror.
"Oh dear. I suppose you think there were some hard feelings in that meeting, and I did this. Well, I was here all night organizing my office, you can check the security tapes if you want."
Megan nodded, and Hollis tossed a flash drive across the table.
"Sorry, when I said tapes I didn't mean it literally."
As she opened the laptop Hollis' assistant had provided, Mr Echis began to speak.
"In regards to your recent interaction with the dearly departed, I'd like to know your stance on the sale. The offer still stands, if you're willing to accept our terms."
"I'll tell you the same thing I told Johannes, I'm not interested in any of your products. Forgive me for being suspicious, but I'd rather not do business with people that don't have any public records. In fact, I'm starting to doubt that Johannes and Echis are real names."
"I admit my name is unusual, but lots of people are named Johannes. It's very common."
Megan closed the laptop and handed back the drive.
"Alright, it looks like your story checks out. We'll contact you if we have any further questions."
She stood up and headed for the exit, with Mr Echis following close behind.

"He was lying."
They were standing outside the office building, as the afternoon sun shone down on the crowded sidewalk. Echis didn't seem to mind being in direct light, which was oddly surprising to Megan.
"Remember how rainy it was last night? I didn't see any rain in that video, someone must have changed it out for today's. The question is, what do they not want us to see?"
"I'd guess evidence of murder, but he clearly didn't have any interest in what we were selling and I don't see any other reason as to why he'd want our man dead."
"Hmm. Do you think you could use your corporate powers to get inside and root around? See if you can find the real security footage."
"Fist of all, I don't have 'corporate powers', I have normal powers. Second, they made it clear we won't be doing business again anytime soon."
"Alright, new idea. I'll check the traffic cameras around here, see if anything suspicious comes up."
Echis nodded in approval and followed Megan back to her car. Soon they'd find their killer, and Echis would be able to deal out proper punishment for the destruction of MCD's property.
High above, standing on the roof of the office tower, an orange and black guardian stood vigilant over the city. He could see that something was amiss with this place, and had come to find answers of his own.

Megan sat down at her desk and opened the file with the previous night's traffic cameras. There were multiple shots with the chip company in view, each telling the same story. The salesman parked his car outside the building and walked in, then half an hour later he left. They followed him through the cameras until the windows were destroyed by a gunshot, and the car came to a stop on the side of the road. Another dead end.
She flipped through the pictures she'd taken of the crime scene, searching for answers that weren't there.
"Excuse me officer, but it appears someone has stolen our crime scene."
Megan had no idea how long Echis had been standing behind her, but she chose to move past it and look where he was pointing. On her computer screen was the security feed from the crime scene where she'd left it, but now the car was missing. She rewound the video and sure enough, a few hours after she and Echis had left the car reversed out of its spot on the sidewalk and drove away. She navigated through the city cameras to follow it, as it drove around the city for a few minutes and then entered an underground parking lot. She couldn't see inside, but there was no way it had left in the many hours it had been there. Hopefully whoever stole it was still in the area.
"If someone's trying to steal evidence then they're likely associated with the shooter. We need to find them as soon as possible."
She ran out to her car with Echis close behind, and they drove off to where their evidence had been stashed.
Slowly driving down into the garage, Megan scanned each parked car for any resemblance to their missing vehicle. Two floors down, she finally found it. She stopped just behind it, and slowly crept up with her hand on her gun.
"Step out of the vehicle with your hands up!"
There was no response.
She walked closer and looked through the shot-out window. The car was empty. Cursing her luck, she went back to her car, where Echis was waiting.
"No sign of whoever stole it, so we're back to square one."
Suddenly, the car's engine started and it quickly backed out of the spot, driving past them so fast it almost missed the turn to leave the garage. The screeching of tires brought Megan back to her senses, and she quickly hopped into her own car to give chase.
"I'd hardly call this square one, it seems we have an invisible driver."
The two cars sped through the garage, the mystery driver swerving back and forth as if they had never driven before, but they managed to avoid crashing. Megan was more cautious and ended up slipping behind as the invisible driver recklessly drifted across the concrete floor. Up the sloping garage they went, the red and blue lights flashing in behind as the law closed in. Then the lights were overpowered by the day, as the already damaged car smashed through the flimsy gate and into the main road, weaving through traffic with little regard for the law. The blaring police siren made it easier for Megan to follow, plowing her way through the afternoon rush and after her flighty suspect.
She followed them off the main roads into a more shady part of the city, where the invisible driver tried to lose them in the twisting maze of side streets and back alleys. But Megan knew the area. She'd spent her first months in the UIU in this part of the city chasing low-level thugs with superpowers, and she knew the perfect shortcut to cut them off. She sped up and quickly hit the brakes, planting her car right in the path of whoever she'd been chasing. With no other choice, they swerved to the side and scraped against the bricks of a nearby apartment before coming to a full stop.
"ASSHOLE!"
Whoever was driving that car was rather rude. But that was the least of their problems, as Megan took out her gun and handcuffs to make sure they couldn't escape so easily this time. Even if they were invisible.
"I know you're here, so turn off whatever cloaking device you've got and come out with your hands up!"
"Cloaking device? What is this, Star Trek? I'm not fucking invisible jackass, I'm right in front of you."
She looked around, trying to discern where the voice was coming from.
"Jesus, are you blind? You just chased me for five minutes and now you can't find me? Look at the god damn car in front of you!"
She kept looking, but could only see the car. Then it dawned on her what she had really found.
"…. Are you the car?"
"No, I'm Jiminy-Fucking-Cricket. OF COURSE I'M THE CAR, WHO ELSE WOULD I BE!"
Echis looked over from his place in Megan's vehicle in surprise.
"Well that's certainly interesting, a sapient car. Forget square one, this is more like triangle one."
Megan swallowed her confusion and tried to figure out what this meant in relation to the case.
"Were you at all associated with whoever killed your driver last night?"
"No, why the hell would I be working with the dick that shot my window? I figured you pigs were working with them, so as soon as the body was gone and nobody was looking I drove off to hide!"
"Wait, Echis. What if we've been looking at this wrong? What if your man wasn't the target at all?"
Echis pondered for a moment, before giving a grim nod of agreement. Megan wondered how an MCD sales man had come to drive a living car and why someone wanted it dead.
"Alright, it looks like you losers are having a fun little revelation moment, so I'm just going to back out of here before anyone else tries to kill me, okay? Great, I'll see you never. Bye."
The car began to back up but was quickly halted by an orange blur from above, a loud crash, and suddenly a caped crusader was standing on the roof of the car, leaving a small dent where he'd landed. His face was covered by a spotted mask, and two antennae sprouted from his forehead. The car's one working headlight blinked in frustration.
"OWWWW!"
Colorado Potato Beetle Man stood atop the car's roof, striking a heroic pose. Megan drew her weapon, recognizing the man she'd once arrested. Echis' eyes widened, but whether it was from surprise or hunger was unclear.
"Don't worry everyone, I won't let this car escape."
"Come on, I'm not trying to escape you, I'm trying to escape the bastard that shot me! Someone's out to get me, and the longer I stay here talking to you the more likely it is I get another bullet in me. So get off my roof before I throw you off myself."
Before the hero could respond Megan shouted over the two anomalies.
"Car, you're not going anywhere until you tell us why someone is trying to kill you. Beetle Man, get off the car."
The car's headlight blinked twice, and it slowed its engine.
"Alright, fine. I wasn't always alive like this, I only woke up a few days ago. I don't remember much about how it happened, but I was in a parking lot outside some factory. There was a bright light through the windows, like the sun itself was inside the factory. Then I was alive. I could feel things. I tried to drive away, but someone saw me. They started shooting, but they couldn't keep up. Then I found that guy in the suit, he thought I looked expensive and said he'd keep me hidden. I guess the dumbass wasn't very good at it because someone still tried to shoot me. Luckily they just knocked out my windows."
"And they killed the driver."
"Oh right, I forgot about him."
Megan turned to Echis, checking to see what they thought of the story.
"Although we have no records of our victim coming across a talking car, it's not unreasonable to suggest he may have accepted such a deal for such an expensive-looking vehicle. My question is, how is this related to the doctored security tapes?"
"Car, do you know where that factory was?"
"No, why would I know that, it's not like it's literally the first thing I can remember. 381 on Cornwallis street, do you want directions? I've got a fucking GPS attached to my brain, or whatever magic talking cars have."
Colorado Potato Beetle Man withdrew his phone from his spandex costume, typing the address into Google maps. It was hard to tell with the mask, but Megan could have sworn his face fell.
"I know this place. It's a chip factory, they've got a lot of potatoes going in and out. Not exactly a hub for criminal activity, but it's hard to tell with supervillains."
Echis nodded, putting the pieces together. They looked over at Megan, as she thought about what this meant. A chip factory, and a man who could do whatever a Colorado potato beetle could. The obvious solution was staring her right in the face.
"Alright Beetle Man, you want to be a hero? Meet us at that factory tonight, we'll see if the shooter comes back."
"Excellent plan, we'll catch those evildoers in the act, just like with Lint Man!"
He jumped up and quickly scaled the wall, disappearing into the mid-afternoon. Megan hoped she was making the right decision trusting him. And trusting Echis. And the weird talking car.
"Alright car, let's get you somewhere safe. Don't want to draw out the shooter before we're ready."
"Okay, but one thing first. Who the fuck is Lint Man?"

Dark was the night as plumes of smoke flowed out from the factory, shrouding the less dark knight lurking above. He adjusted the antennae on his mask, checking to see if he could hear anything from the factory below. It was eerily silent, save for the hum of the machines churning out bags of potato chips. He could sense their presence, the crates filled with potatoes. The perfect vegetable, you could boil them, or mash them, or even stick them in a stew. But he was happy to just eat them raw.
Being so close to all those potatoes was almost intoxicating, the feeling of the greatest food just waiting for him to fly down and devour the entire pile.
But he needed to focus. People were counting on him, and what was the point of having power if he wasn't going to use it to help people? Just below him was someone that wanted that talking car dead, and he needed to make sure they didn't get away. He looked over the edge of the roof, seeing two heavily armed guards by the only entrance. What kind of chip factory needed this much security?
Across the road, Megan was waiting in the shadows for the rest of the team to be in place. The car was a few blocks away, and Echis was with it. She assumed they could keep the car out of danger, although she wasn't quite sure what kind of anomalous effects Echis was capable of. She could see lights coming from the factory, not as bright as the car had described, but she had no idea how the car could see in the first place.
The caped hero looked down the street and saw the car's headlights approaching. Just about time to find the killer. Just below him, the guards noticed the approaching vehicle as well. One of them readied his weapon while the other was more cautious.
Echis stepped out of the car they'd been pretending to drive and stiffly walked over to the factory entrance.
"Good evening gentlemen, I'm here to see Mister Hollis. Is he here?"
"No, why the hell would the head of the company be working in a factory? You sure you're a business guy and not just some jokester that found a suit in the bargain bin?"
"I assure you, I'm not joking. I know he's here, and I know you're going to tell him there's a talking car parked outside."
"Right, we'll be sure to tell him that. Now fuck off."
Before Echis could do that, the factory door slid open and another armed guard motioned for them to enter. The two outside watched in surprise as the door slid shut again, and the man on the roof saw his chance. Diving down from above, his cape flowing behind him, the orange guardian landed on the guards and slammed their heads together, knocking them out cold. He tossed their guns aside and gave the signal for Megan to join him. She snuck across the parking lot and they stood by the door, preparing to enter.
Inside the factory, Echis was escorted along the floor by another heavily armed guard. Large, hot machines littered the area, filling the air with the sounds of industry and the smell of potatoes. Echis hoped the heat wouldn't wreck their suit.
They arrived at a bland steel door, which the guard unlocked with a card. Inside, Mister Hollis was sat down at a desk, patiently waiting for his guest.
"I was hoping you wouldn't come here, but it appears you brought the car. Please, sit down so we can discuss business."
Echis sat down in the chair across from Hollis, and the guard shut the door. It was just the three of them now.
"I imagine you're upset about what happened to that sales rep you sent us, and we're willing to pay top dollar to recompense your company assuming you haven't spoken to the authorities yet."
"I'm afraid that won't be possible. We'd much prefer you identify whoever is to blame for this death, and we'll determine an appropriate response from there."
"Then it seems we're at an impasse. Stephan?"
The guard moved closer to Echis, seemingly in an attempt to intimidate them.
"I'm going to make this offer one more time, and you're going to accept it. Our company is willing to pay ten thousand dollars for the death of your employee, in return, you cancel any investigations into the cause of death."
"And what of the car?"
"That will be dealt with privately."
An alarm blared on Hollis' desk, and he took out a radio.
"What's going on out there?"
The voice that came back was cracked and distorted, but the message was still clear.
"Someone broke in and they're stealing the potatoes!"
"Potatoes? What about the pills?"
Gunfire was heard, and the sound of a fist connecting with a face. The radio went dead.
Predicting the next move, Echis dove to the floor before the guard could shoot them. They charged and tackled the thug, wrestling the gun out of his hands. Hollis stood behind his desk, fumbling for the letter opener.
The steel door was knocked open, and Colorado Potato Beetle Man ran through brandishing the battered fire extinguisher he'd used to bust the lock.
Hollis' hands were shaking as he was backed into a corner, with nowhere to go but a locked window and a door guarded by a superhero and a lawyer.
"You've nowhere to go, villain! Surrender now or face the power of the Colorado Potato Beetle Man!"
Hollis was about to put his hands in the air when the window shattered. Glass fell to the floor in a quickly forming pool of blood as Hollis' limp body collapsed, a gaping hole in his cranium painting the concrete red.
"Sniper!"
Colorado Potato Beetle Man grabbed Echis and dragged them to the ground, keeping out of view of the window. Megan shouted from outside the room where she'd been restraining the guards.
"Who's hurt?"
"The business guy! He was shot through the window, someone didn't want him surrendering!"
They inched out of the office and into the main factory floor, where the machines had all stopped and several bruised guards were zip-tied to the support pillars. The screech of tires came from outside and the front gate was smashed in as the car sped into the factory. Its front end was dented and smashed, and the fender was missing, but it seemed like it was still alive.
"God damn it, why was I outside in that parking lot so long! I thought you wanted to draw out the shooter, not give me to them!"
"Wait, did someone shoot at you?"
"No shit Sherlock, I've been circling around for five minutes dodging bullets from that psycho!"
"We didn't hear any gunshots, they must have had a silencer. "
A flurry of bullets soared through the air, splattering against the side of the car and flattening its tires.
"OH FUCK! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHH"
Megan pushed the hero and Echis behind a pillar and watched a dangerous-looking fellow marching into the warehouse. He had two belts full of bullets, but she couldn't see a gun anywhere. His face was covered with a sinister mask, and a red glow emanated from his goggles.
The car was still screaming in pain, but the man took a bullet off his belt and held it up menacingly.
"Quiet."
The car gave a slight whimper.
"Who else is here?"
"I don't know, some cop and a lawyer."
"And?"
"Uhh, there was a guy in a bug costume. I forget his name, but that's all! I swear!"
"Good."
The man slowly scanned the room, and Megan ducked behind the pillar to avoid being seen. Colorado Potato Beetle Man motioned for them to all stay quiet, and he tossed a spare potato across the room. The man heard the sound and threw the bullet he was holding like a dart. The instant it left his hand the casing fell to the floor and it accelerated as if he'd been using a real gun. The potato exploded on impact, and the man looked around to see where it had come from.
The orange hero slowly crept around the pillar, as the bullet-throwing assassin examined the factory floor. Megan was trying to stay as quiet as she could, but she couldn't stay hidden forever. She motioned to Echis and the two followed the hero.
A bullet flew through the air, narrowly missing her head. She ducked and rolled behind one of the machines. Echis crouched down behind a crate of potatoes. and called out for the villain.
"What do you want from us? We didn't do anything to you!"
"Silence."
The villain walked backwards to the door, keeping both eyes locked on where Megan and Echis were hidden. He withdrew a lighter from his jacket and flicked it on.
"I'm here to ensure nobody knows of this place."
He threw another bullet at the factory's fuel tank, pouring a thick slimy fluid on the floor.
"Goodbye."
He threw the lighter at the tank, accelerating it as he had with the bullets. A body covered in orange spandex leaped out from behind a box of potatoes and into the lighter's path. It hit him in the chest, knocking Colorado Potato Beetle Man down but extinguishing the flame. Another bullet was thrown, embedding itself in the hero's shoulder. He let out a scream of pain but managed to stand back up.
"Who the hell are you?"
"I'm the Colorado Potato Beetle Man, and I'm going to take you down."
He threw another potato with his good arm, this time hitting the bad guy in the head. It didn't hurt but gave enough of a distraction for Megan to get close to the villain and take out her taser. He went down, the black mask clattering to the floor.
"Okay, maybe she took you down but I helped! Now does anyone here know first aid?"
Echis raised their hand.
"I don't know first aid, but I know zeroth aid."
They offered the hero a piece of cloth with an odd scrawl on it.
"Hold that onto the wound for half an hour and it should be fine, assuming you're not immune to basic enchanting."
"Are Colorado potato beetles immune?"
"I… don't know. Probably not."
"Then thanks for the healing."
"Hey FUCKERS! HOW ABOUT YOU HEAL THE TALKING CAR? I WAS SHOT WAY MORE THAN BUG MAN!"
Echis pretended not to hear any of that. Megan ran back to her car outside and returned with some duct tape, patching up the holes in the car door as best she could.
"Alright, I'm going to call in a team to clean up this mess. Everyone here was exposed to anomalous activity and will need to forget the past twenty four hours."
Colorado Potato Beetle Man gingerly stepped away from the greasy puddle, keeping the enchanted bandage close to his arm. Edging closer to one of the potato crates, he popped the lid off for another snack.
"Hey, you think the cleanup crew is going to want this?"
Megan looked over and saw an unmarked crate filled with tiny pills of different colours, forming a medical rainbow in the box. This must have been what Hollis and the assassin didn't want them to find.
"We'll send these off to the lab to take a look, see what's inside. In the meantime, I'd like you two to wait here for questioning since you're technically civilians."
She turned around and saw Echis waiting calmly, clearly aware that he was above everyone in the UIU. Colorado Potato Beetle Man, however, was nowhere to be seen.
"I hate when he does that."

Somewhere else, a certain distance away in a dark office, a phone rang. A graying man in a loose-fitting suit picked it up and answered in an unsettlingly friendly voice.
"Hello?"
"Sir, there's been an accident at facility three. Cops showed up and they found the pills."
"That's unfortunate. Shut down the facility and make sure we're untraceable. I assume Hollis has already been punished for his failure?"
"Yes Sir, but Gunman was arrested for it. I know it's standard practice to tie up loose ends, but he does have superpowers."
"So? Gunman was a hired hand, nothing more. I can always make another hitman if need be. Follow procedures and ensure this doesn't happen again."
He put the phone down and stood by the window. The lights of the city cast a dim glow on his gleeful face, as he gazed upon the world which would soon be his.

< Part One | Part Three >


They rubbed that weird, phallic object with the flat tip across his chest like it was going to do something. The doctor and his mom stared at that blueish, purply screen like it meant something. Like it wasn't all hieroglyphs and runes. And his mom had her furrowed brow and hand against her mouth like she knew something.
For something called an "ultrasound," the process was eerily quiet. Just cold instruments in a cold room against cold skin, waiting for some message from a clean, inscrutable machine. Here, laying on a steel bed in a claustrophobic room, thirty feet above the tarmac estuaries feeding a river of cars into parking lot oceans, Tim felt like it all missed some semblance of living that he couldn't put his finger on.
"Mm," the doctor let out some some low hum, like something clicked. Tim raised his eyebrows at him, inviting him to share the news. "It's hard to draw conclusions from this ultrasound. We may need to do an x-ray."
"Do we?" Mrs. Wilson's stare was unchanged. Only some subtle distance closed between her nose and her brow. The doctor tried eye contact, but failed to keep her gaze. "Well, what does it look like?"
The doctor sighed. "I'd rather not worry you unnecessarily —"
"With all due respect, doctor, if you'd rather I not worry, then you could start by telling me what's wrong with my son."
He seemed to weigh his options. Tim turned his head back to the window. All of this in here. All of that out there. Laying on the bed for this long, he felt nearly weightless. Like he could just swim to the window and drift out.
"It looks like a growth in the left chamber of his heart." That got Tim's attention. His head snapped back around, and his arms pushed his torso off of the mattress.
"A tumor?" the boy asked.
His mom was quick to put her hand over his left shoulder, and press her forearm down gently across his chest, easing him back into a supine position.
"More than likely," the doctor replied.
"Cardiac myxoma," his mom supplied.
The doctor nodded. "Left atrial cardiac myxoma," he specified. "Sounds like you're familiar?"
Mrs. Wilson nodded. "My mother had it, and her father died of undiagnosed heart complications. I don't think an x-ray will be necessary."
"Tumor in my heart," Tim repeated under his breath. His mom just kept nodding to herself, like it all made sense. Tim huffed, and a bewildered smirk came across his face. "Well, doctor, that's a little scary, isn't it?"
"I understand if you and your mother need some time to process —"
"No, no don't leave until you've given me some idea what to expect."
"Right. Well, from what I could see, it is difficult to tell from just an ultrasound, but the growth looked to be nearest to the aortic valve. Constricting this opening would lead to strained blood flow. Have you always had some difficulty with exertion?"
"We really started to notice it in middle school," his mom answered for him.
The doctor just nodded. "Right. Then we can assume the growth isn't new, which is typical for familial myxomas. They show symptoms much earlier in life. That is good, because that means it can't be imminently life-threatening or else you would know by now. What you can expect, however, is shortness of breath, difficulty with exertion. In your case, it sounds like you fainted from swimming?"
"I was floating, actually."
"Were you stressed? Scared?"
"Excited," Tim smiled.
"That can have a similar effect. Anything that increases your heartrate can make you feel woozy or unstable. Fainting is not uncommon. Other symptoms may include chest pain, cold extremities, breathing difficulty when sleeping…"
"Will it get worse?"
The doctor took a deep breath through the nose. "Well, generally as one ages and the body naturally deteriorates, the effects of something like this could worsen. Your chances of heart failure or embolism will —"
"Embolism?"
"Blood clot," Mrs. Wilson explained.
"— will increase with age."
"Treatments?" Tim asked.
Mrs. Wilson shook her head.
"The only way to remove a tumor is surgery," the doctor filled in.
Silence. Tim put a hand over his chest. Da-dum, da-dum. A smile crept across his lips. "I can't wait to see the face on Mr. Blau."
"Dear —"
"He's gonna eat it so hard in front of the rest of the teens, and I'm gonna get to watch them run laps from a cozy little seat and laugh."
"Tim, now's not the time!"
Tim rolled his eyes and shook his head. "Mom, cool it, I'm fine."
"You're not fine. Dr. Mauvais, I would like some time alone with my son."
"Of course." He stood from his chair, and made his way to the door. "I will be in the hall." The clandestine white door squeaked behind him, and then ker-chunked into place, flush with the wall, colorless and thus lifeless, like this whole damn building.
"Dear." Tim met her eyes. "You need to take this seriously."
"I am taking this seriously. He says it's benign."
"That doesn't mean it can't grow, that just means it won't spread."
"Mom…"
"Tim. I love you, but you're worrying me. You just heard of a tumor in your heart, and in seconds you're here joking about P.E.!"
"It's true! He's going to look like such a fool, all my thirteen minute miles are going to become A's —"
"You're not hearing me."
"I am hearing you, it's just…" Tim struggled to put his thoughts into words. He wasn't old enough yet to give articulation to the bottomless meaninglessness that pervaded through this whole interaction. He hadn't the power to enlighten Edna to the poetry that the beauty of life made him faint — that his heart made him dizzy with the wonders of a passing seal. He didn't yet have a name for his philosophy of life, he didn't yet know why a sooner death didn't worry him. All he knew is that his mother's concerns were annoying, and he wanted nothing more than for her to stop worrying so much. Stop sweating the small stuff. He felt like there was some semblance of life she was missing here.
He sighed, and his hands wiggled in the air, looking for some gesture to realize his exasperation. Instead, he gave in. "Okay. What do you want me to seriously consider."
She took his hand in her left, and then covered it with her right, gently rubbing between the knuckles. "You're going to need to have a surgery."
"Mom…"
"Don't Mom me."
"We don't have the money."
"We have insurance, dear."
"Not for this we don't!"
The room fell back into silence. Tim didn't know much about finances, and he wouldn't for almost a decade more, but he knew his parents weren't wealthy, and he knew that a heart surgery would be devastating.
His mom's long pause let Tim confirm his accuracy. He knew she'd hate it, but he couldn't help from smiling again. "Look, it's benign, I'm young. I'll get that surgery. When I have a job, and I can afford it. Right then and there I'll get it. Alright?"
She swallowed. "Dad and I, we'll save up money —"
"Please, don't," he chuckled. "Mom, hear me out, please?"
"I really don't see how this is at all in question."
"It's not! Mom," Tim sat himself up, even as Mrs. Wilson's expression twitched in protest, "just let me get through college first. Alright? I know you and Dad don't like talking about it, about saving up for me, but that's where all the money should go. And then I'll have a job out of college, and then we can all pitch in. But for you and Dad to try to cobble together the funds for both at once? That's crazy!"
Mrs. Wilson opened her mouth, but held her tongue.
"Just through college first," Tim guided.
She pursed her lips. "We'll have to talk to Dad about it. But no strenuous activities, and you're under the knife the moment symptoms get worse."
Tim's grin showed teeth. "Love you too, Mom."
Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum.