TO: Oklahoma City, OK
FROM: Washington D.C
John
Please come to Washington as soon as it can be arranged. Something has come up, and we're in need of people with your skills to assist. This is a matter of grave importance, and I expect you to keep a tight lip about it until we can arrange to meet. We shall be providing for expenses.
President Roosevelt

TO: Washington D.C
FROM: Oklahoma City, OK
I cannot express the confusion and shock I experienced upon receiving your most recent telegram. I've only just begun to acquaint myself with my new post, and I am now expected to put these matters aside and report to you? If this is related to the business with the you-know-what, I cannot say that I would be prepared to help. You were impressed, yes, but it was an extremely woeful experience for me.
I am sorry Theodore.
John J. Pershing
Assistant Chief of Staff, Southwest Army Division

TO: Oklahoma City, OK
FROM: Washington D.C
We've learned from our mistakes, John. This is a situation which requires a great level of experience, and your ability to cooperate and work with native peoples would be invaluable, if we are disregarding experience in other matters. With all due respect John, what we need is a fighting general! There are too many limp-wrist men in command, and if I told them what I must tell you they'd ask me to relieve them of command on the spot.
President Roosevelt

TO: Washington D.C
FROM: Oklahoma City, OK
My ability to work with native peoples? I do not wish to be given a foreign post in Panama or the Pacific. If you are going to be positioning troops there, other commanders would be more able to the task then I. I'm sure that bigger stick diplomacy has left many capable units in the Panamanian area.
John J. Pershing
Assistant Chief of Staff, Southwest Army Division

TO: Oklahoma City
FROM: Washington D.C
It isn't a matter of managing military positions in the area, but moving them through. There's a bigger stick over there, and it isn't going to stay where it is forever. I must again repeat my request that you come to Washington and see me. The matter has reached a point where we cannot turn back, and it is a time where the real men show their true colors.
John, please. We are in dire straits here.
President Roosevelt

John, I couldn't tell you what we were dealing with before. I can now. There's something in the sea, or under it. Something absolutely massive. It's a thing no body of men before us has ever had to struggle against. We cannot decline the call to help stop it, and preparations need to be made for the day we will do battle.
The canal is one of those. An engineering feat, made in cooperation between us, several prominent European organizations, and some of our own. The French were the first to attempt it, and they failed. We have to carry the torch, John. Nobody is coming to save us, so we must defend ourselves. We owe the American people no less than everything we can do.

In Attendance: The President, Assistant Chief of Staff John Pershing-Southwest Army Division, Agent Harmond, Agent Brent
Summary: The President, with assistance from Agents Hammond and Brent, briefed Pershing on the purpose of the Panama Canal acquisition. Documents relating to 1900-01-069 are provided, in order to better instruct Pershing on its scope. Notes were made of arming the Panamanians, and routes for sea vessels to reach The Item.
The President suggested the creation of a task force to jointly observe The Item with the ASCI. The proposal was denied, on the grounds of lack of need for additional observers.
The President proposed aerial reconnaissance of The Item. Proposal was debated, then accepted.
Following this, Pershing and agents discussed ways to move ASCI and U.S Army personnel to the object through the canal. These notations are currently in the process of archival.
Briefing adjourned after approx. 5 hours and 22 minutes.

This documentation is to be used as supplementary, for personnel, and not a replacement for the full containment doctrine.

Item: 1900-01-069
Classification Type: Aquatic/Organic
Discovery Date: Classified
Threat Level: Known Extreme Threat
ASCI Protocols for Containment: All available resources are to be put into the construction of faster and less expensive methods of reaching Item 1900-01-069. Currently, military bases on the edge of South America, as well as positions in the islands created by it are sufficient to keep watch. The Russian Army is to be monitored for any signs of withdrawing from the area, in order to facilitate the obtainment of it. We do not know at this time what the Russians are aware of in regards to Item 1900-01-069.
Research Summary
A large underwater mass, supporting several islands and resting against the continents. At least 10,000 leagues under the surface, it appears to have a sort of hard, rock-like but smoother appearance. Other then its massive size, we have no knowledge of its intellect or what purpose it serves.
[INFORMATION REVOKED]
…believed to be located near the archipelago known as the █████ █████████ Islands, which have historically been uninhabited, though claimed by ███████ in 17██…
[INFORMATION REVOKED]
… Navy will occasionally patrol the █████ █████████ Islands, and will attack on-sight.
Supplementary Information
A possible sound emitted by The Item was detected on ██/██/19██ by the Aren Expeditionary Force during an investigation of paranormal activity around the █████ █████████ archipelago. These reports have not been substantiated…

… Congratulations on the promotion to O-1. Higher then Washington himself, if I heard correctly. We're pleased to have you serving with us over the years, and hope that after all this is finally over, we can move towards a brighter day. Your early contributions to the Arc project have not been forgotten…

Addendum [0-210:] Several organisms have been found in the waters aro[REDACTED]gence testing has been inconclusive. The emergence events appear to be linked to the sounds produced by SCP-169, however no confirmed link has been found as of ██/██/19██. Personnel are to report any unusual aquatic life to their direct supervisor.

It's not as much about the outside. It's who you have inside that counts.

… our research has repeatedly indicated that the ASCI Project "Arc" is not a reliable source to follow up on for future investigations. The ARC-169 Expeditionary force led by Pershing in 19██ was indeed impressive, but the results are not conclusive. No reproduction of the events experienced by the Expeditionary Force has occurred to date, and no organisms have "emerged" from SCP-169 during our time researching it. We recommend the archival of all relevant data to allow our researchers a greater focus on current affairs. As useful as some of the information picked up from the ASCI turned out to be, not everything is gold.
Researcher Adrian Irons

Dialog transcribed on ██/██/19██
"I told'ya, we're not gonna make a deal like that. Two hundred thousand or nuthin'."
"Look… we can't do that. We still have to pay for the crew, repairs, and fuel. Breaking the bank with the base purchase wont work. Best I can do is a hundred fifty."
"A hundr'n fifty? Do I look like a fool? This ship is worth at least tw'hundred thousand, and that ain'even countin' the crew yer gettin'. Two hundred fifty."
"Can you do a hundred seventy-five?"
(sound of spitting) "No. But y'know what I can do?"
(Sound of the captain leaving.)
"Wait! Alright. You win. Two hundred fifty thousand."
"I knew y'would come around eventually."
Agent Boyd would be reprimanded for her excessive expense in acquiring SCPS Ketos Megas, and assigned to additional work with SCP-169. The captain was issued Class-C amnestics, and the excessive funds were recovered without incident.

Transcript of Incident 169-21: Incident occurred on ██/██/19██.
<01:09> SCPS Jonah reports in as scheduled, during regular patrol activities. No note of any unusual activity is reported at this time.
<01:29> Radio reports from SCPS Jonah indicate that its equipment is picking up signals similar to those found in Addendum [0-20].
<01:45> Contact with SCPS Jonah lost.
<03:08> SCPS Jonah returns to port, showing signs of hull damage.
<03:12> Mobile Task Force Gamma-6 boards SCPS Jonah
<03:45> Mobile Task Force Gamma-6  exits the SCPS Jonah, carrying several unknown cadavers.
<03:50> Headcount shows that several members of the ships crew have been injured, with one missing.
<04:09> Crew members report that as the ship passed the █████ █████████ archipelago, several organisms emerged from under the water and assaulted the ship. During this time, several security tapes show the creatures emerging from or nearby SCP-169.
<04:33> Cadavers transported to Research Area █████ ███.
<05:00> SCPS Guardian leaves port to investigate area.
<06:03> SCPS Guardian returns to port, reporting no unusual activity.
Over the next several weeks, multiple members of Area personnel reported seeing creatures near SCP-169's mass. Analysis of the cadavers showed they resembled no species found on earth. One instance appeared to have surgical scars running down its back. The significance of this event is currently under research.

« Rising Tide | HUB | Antediluvian »


On her fifth birthday, Sigurrós Stefánsdóttir looked down at the cake that her foster mother had baked for her and wished that her real parents had never died.
She blinked her eyes and found herself in a strange house, with a man and woman whom she had never met before in her life. The man was shouting at the woman, who wept and hugged herself tightly. There was a bruise high on her cheek, and she was rocking back and forth like a child as the man heaped abuses upon abuses on her, ranting and raving angrily.
On her sixth birthday, Sigurrós Stefánsdóttir whimpered and covered her ears as she heard her mother scream and wished that she had never made the wish that she had made last year.
She blinked her eyes again, and found herself back at the foster home. It was her fifth birthday again, and her foster mother was waiting for her to blow out the candles.
She did so. This time, she decided to wish for a pony instead.

On her (second) sixth birthday, Sigurrós Stefánsdóttir hugged her favorite stuffed pony and wished that she had ten thousand friends.
She blinked, and suddenly realized just how many people "ten thousand" really was. She wondered how she was going to find a cake big enough to feed them all.
Then she did have a cake big enough to feed all of her friends, but there were angry people outside her house trying to break down the walls and get a piece of her cake, because it was the only cake in the world and everyone else was hungry.
She blinked again, and she found herself back in her foster home, looking down at the small, normal cake, and surrounded by her usual six so-called friends who really weren't.
She blew out the candles a second time, and this time, decided to wish for a fairy princess dress-up set.

On her seventh birthday, Sigurrós Stefánsdóttir wore her favorite princess tiara and blew out the candles. (Her favorite stuffed pony sat on top of her dresser, in a place of honor, but she'd outgrown carrying a stuffed animal everywhere she went.)
She didn't know what to wish for this time, so she didn't.
It was then that she saw the old man sitting at the foot of the table, where no one should have been. He had thinning, grey hair, and he smiled as he got to his feet, leaning heavily on his cane.
"Come with me," he said. "I think you're ready for your first lesson now."
She took his hand, and he took her away from the foster home and into a different world.

On her eighth birthday, Sigurrós Stefánsdóttir learned about the Ways.
"They're the Places Between Places," Teacher explained. "They are how you get from the Places That Are to the Places That Could Have Been."
When he said that, Sigurrós Stefánsdóttir realized exactly what he meant. She brushed her hand over the manhole in the middle of the Los Angeles intersection, and climbed through into a place filled with books and learning.
"Happy Birthday," the Teacher said. "Now it's time to get you your Library card."

On her ninth birthday, Sigurrós Stefánsdóttir met The Fox.
Everyone always spoke of The Fox in all capitals. She wasn't sure how or why this was, or even how one could even convey capitals in normal speech, but they did.
The Fox was a tall, beautiful woman with eyes like daggers and teeth like knives. She smiled at Sigurrós Stefánsdóttir and licked her lips with a cruel, carnal hunger.
Sigurrós Stefánsdóttir wasn't afraid, though. No one could harm her while they were in the Library. The Docents wouldn't let them.
That wasn't true everywhere, though. Later, Sigurrós Stefánsdóttir heard that The Fox had been shot by some people while she was trying to skin and eat people who, for some reason, liked to dress up as animals. Some people were very sad when they heard this had happened. "You see," Miss Midnight explained patiently, "even though she wasn't a very nice person, she was the Last Fox. It's always sad when something disappears from this world."

On her tenth birthday, Sigurrós Stefánsdóttir learned about mistakes.
She had been looking up at the sky and wondered what it would look like if it were pink instead of blue. And then it was.
In a panic, she tried to change it back to blue, but she could never get the color quite right. It was either too dark or too light, or it was too green or too purple, or too bright or too dark. She was in tears by the time The Teacher set things right again.
She expected to get scolded for nearly messing up the sky forever, but the Teacher was sympathetic. "We all do things like that sometimes," he explained. "The important thing is to learn how to set things right again."
Some men in black suits came a few days later, and they talked to The Teacher at length. The Teacher seemed upset by those visits, and he muttered to himself a lot. But in the end, it seemed that things worked out.

On her eleventh birthday, Sigurrós Stefánsdóttir met the Ukelele Man.
He came to the Library with a briefcase and some papers, and although everyone else in the Library didn't seem to like him, they left him alone. He sat down with her in one of the side rooms, and he asked many questions, and did many strange things, like asking her to pick up a pencil that he had knocked off the table himself, or asking her, very suddenly, how many friends she had.
Sigurrós Stefánsdóttir followed her Teacher's advice, and told the truth every time. She also picked up the pencil herself, because the Teacher had taught her that one should always try to be as ordinary as possible, whenever possible, because that caused less trouble for other people.
The Ukelele Man seemed pleased by this. He had a talk with the Teacher afterwards, and told her that she was a "Phase Two, Transitioning into Three with little chance of a Four." Whatever that meant. He also claimed that she had been designated "Response Level 1," and he patted her head and told her Happy Birthday.
The Teacher seemed very relieved once the Ukelele Man had left, and he gave her a hug and then they had cake with all her friends.

On her twelfth birthday, Sigurrós Stefánsdóttir kissed a boy.

On her thirteenth birthday, Sigurrós Stefánsdóttir decided to try being a boy and kissing a girl.

On his fourteenth birthday, Stefán Sigurrósson decided that he preferred being a girl, all things considered.

On her fifteenth birthday, Sigurrós Stefánsdóttir started to wonder if this "sex" thing people talked about was really worth it.

Shortly after her sixteenth birthday, Sigurrós Stefánsdóttir and the very nice boy she'd kissed four years ago finally figured out the whole "sex" thing.

By her seventeenth birthday, Sigurrós Stefánsdóttir had grown bored of this "sex" thing and decided to try all of the other deadly sins in order to see if they were really as fun as people seemed to think. She started with Pride.

Just before her eighteenth birthday, Sigurrós Stefánsdóttir had tried absolutely every single sin known to humanity (and a few that had not yet been discovered) and had grown bored of them all. She decided to try the virtues next, starting with Charity.

By the time she was nineteen, even virtue had grown boring for her, especially since it turned out to be a lot harder than expected. She could have waved her hand and done it easily, but her Teacher's lessons had driven home to her that something like that often caused more problems for the people who weren't like her than it was worth. So she decided to give up both virtue and vice and decided to try wisdom instead.

At around twenty years of age, Sigurrós Stefánsdóttir had learned everything that was possible to know, and started on the things that were Impossible.

She figured out the Impossible shortly before she turned twenty one. She toasted the beginnings of her research into the Things That Were Not with her first drink as a legal adult.

She was still wrestling with the Things That Were Not when she turned twenty two, and twenty three, and twenty five, and fifty, and seventy, and nine hundred, and twenty thousand, and four billion, and finally when time itself had ceased to hold meaning for her and a year was about as significant to her as the blink of an eye.
It was only as the last proton in the universe decayed, and nothing existed any more but an endless expanse of nothingness, that Sigurrós Stefánsdóttir finally reached the end of her searching and felt at peace.

It was both the next instant and an endless number of eternities later that Sigurrós Stefánsdóttir got bored. What was the point of knowing everything and nothing if there was nothing to do with it any more?
She searched around the infinite nothingness until she found a place that was a little less nothing than everything else. Here, she decided, she would start creating new everythings and new nothings to experience and learn about.
She clapped her nonexistent hands, and brought reality back into existence. Time, which had long since stood still like a stopped clock, began once more. Symmetry was broken, dividing what had been Pure Balance into What Is and What Is Not for a second-third-millionth-infinitive time.
She closed her metaphorical eyes and opened them after a trillion aeons, plus one year, to find herself being pulled from warmth and darkness into a world of cold light.

And that was how Sigurrós Stefánsdóttir spent her first birthday.


The door swung open, casting light into the dark room. In the entryway stood an old man. His face was creased with age, blushed red, and wet with tears. His head was bare, whiskers coated his chin, and his stomach sagged. He was a pitiful wreck.
The room was cluttered with a thousand rarities. Life-sized portraits hung on the walls, depicting admirals, generals, kings and the old man himself. An exquisite king-sized bed, sheets of silk and frame of mahogany, was in the rear end of the room. On the nightstand beside it stood a rare Chinese vase. And in the centre of the room a rope dangled down, heavy and thick, from the rafters. It intertwined at the end, forming a sturdy noose. Below it sat a small plastic milkcrate.
The old man sighed heavily. He stepped up, and stood on the crate. Damnit, damnit, damnit all to hell, he thought. He had no retreat, no recourse, no second option. He had no other choice. He would not endure public disgrace, nor would he further the agenda of terrorists. He started reciting a final prayer, though he knew his sins were unforgivable.
'Holy Father… Your spirit is eternally forgiving… I repent,' he began, slipping the noose around his neck. He positioned so that his neck would snap instantly. He did not want to die painfully from asphyxiation. He had heard of criminals lingering for hours, dying slowly. He shuddered at the thought.
He began choking up again, fresh tears rolling down his face. It had been perhaps three and a half decades ago, when he had been a young man. It had been a cool night, softened by the glow of street lamps and the moon. He had parted with his friends for the evening when he had spied her from afar.
She had been beautiful. Her lips had pouted, her dark locks had tumbled down her shoulders. Her nose had curved regally, her legs were smooth and slender. And he desired her so. But what had he done to that beauty? What had he done!
He had taken her aside, and had offered her a drink. Her acerbic tongue had fascinated him. But he had learned she had had another, one whom she had loved beyond measure, one with whom he could not compete. But just to be with her had been blissful. They had agreed to meet again.
And they did. He had felt himself falling deeper and deeper, head over heels. She had aroused, fascinated, provoked conflicting emotions which rose within him, and had surged outward. He had raged that he could not have her. And he had decided he would do anything, anything at all, to have that beauty.
A little something in her wine (only the finest for her, after all), and she did love him. He had taken her back to his apartment and had her love, if but for a single, brief moment. But he had panicked. He would have been thrown behind bars, his future prospects ruined, his name infamous. What did he do? He had taken her while she was still unconscious, stuffed her in a bag, padlocked the zip, and dumped her in the ocean. She had sunk deep. He could not have borne to cut her. She wouldn't have suffered, anyway - she had still been unconscious.
He had thought nobody would know. And nobody did. He had attended a prestigious American university. He had attained degrees in both law and politics. He had been voted in as a small-town mayor. And he had ascended, becoming a prominent politician. He had married and had children. His wife could not compare to her, of course, but he loved her, for she was quick of wit and intellect. He doted on her in his decades-long grief. Many wanted him as the President of Peru. They cheered, chanted his name, and waved at him in the streets.
But some had dug deep. They had came to his house in the dead at night, driving fearsome black vans. They had worn terrible ski-masks, and had threatened him at gunpoint. They had told him they knew, and had taunted him. 'You raped and killed that poor girl, you sick fuck,' one had said, waving a Glock in his face. 'I should kill you now, but we need you. Do as we say and nothing will happen.
'In a few days a courier will come to your office. He will ask you about your children, and you will reply 'they are happily playing under the sun.' He will give you a letter. Do not open it. It will say what we want you to do. Open it when you're alone, then burn it.'
'Who are you?' he had asked, quivering and shaking.
'You don't need to know my name. But, we call ourselves the Hijos del Sol, the Children of the Sun,' the terrorist had said, smiling a devilish grin, 'and you're gonna see a whole lot more of us.'
He kicked out the plastic crate.
Snap.


“We've got the results back.”
“And?”
“Three positively compromised, five more with a confidence of 50% or greater.”
“Good. Shuffle them around.”
“Yes, sir.”

Clearance Level GK-5
Eyes Only
Special Intelligence Protocol
Project Codename: Green King
In response to the nature of Entity HL-49, codename "Green King", Intelligence Protocol ███-██ is now is effect. As prescribed by Protocol ███-██, all personnel and resources allocated to Project Green King are to be evenly divided into two separate operations. Overwatch has agreed to supply false information regarding Foundation actions to one of the above operations. Any personnel of clearance below GK-5 are not to be informed of this protocol change. Which operation is receiving false information should be changed on an irregular basis.
If it is positively determined that an agent assigned to Project Codename: Green King has been compromised by the enemy, he or she may or may not be moved from one Green King operation to the other. This is to be done without regard to which operation is currently receiving false information.

Watch and remember. Remember for me.
I really need to get more sleep. I keep dozing off when I'm supposed to be working. Sooner or later, Dr. Alloway is gonna notice, and I'm really not interested in finding out what happens to people who start falling asleep on the job at the Foundation.
Come on, David. You're an intelligence officer working for the most secretive organization on the planet. Show some professionalism.
All right, snap out of it. What's next? Anomalous energy readings in the Sonora desert. Doesn't really seem like the kind of thing we'd usually be concerned about, but Doctor blackbox here seems to think it has something to do with the King.
The King. Why do we call him that, anyway? Always makes me think of Elvis.
Alright. So. According to this, the energy release was picked up by at least four Foundation detectors, so it was probably picked up by some civilians too. I'll file a request for a misinformation campaign. Let's call it nuclear testing. No, that might have some political repercussions. Freak lightning storm? I don't know enough about meteorology to know if that would happen. No, we'll call it a meteor strike. Big enough to cause a nice boom, small enough to be destroyed by the impact. Have a team go out and make a decent sized crater, maybe get someone from NASA to sign off on it, and that'll probably be enough to fool most people. I'll forward it to Sarah, though; she's pretty good at picking out loose ends.
Now, on to the real business at hand. Where's our King? Well, let's try sending the energy data back to Doctor blackbox with a few security holds remo…
Good. Now stop. Forget.
…
I really need to get more sleep. I keep dozing off when I'm supposed to be working. Sooner or later, Dr. Alloway is gonna notice, and I'm really not interested in finding out what happens to people who start falling asleep at the Foundation.

I'm not getting paid enough for this. They keep me locked in this windowless bunker an undisclosed distance underground and make me sort files all day, and they wonder why my productivity's dropping? The Foundation would fall apart without the archivists. Let's hope that promotion request comes through.
Let's see what we have here…
Spending report for site 37 for last month. Classified. Forward to accounting.
Experiment report out of site 46. Classified. Defer to someone with higher clearance so they can file it with the relevant SCP.
Surveillance data from sector 367. Even if that wasn't classified, I don't know where that is. Archive under site 367 intel.
Project Codename: Green King. Classified. Divert to higher cleara…
Destroy it.
Marked for destruction. Goody. Now I have to go all the way down to the shredder…
Burn it.
I mean the incinerator.

You will watch for me.
I should be grateful. You know how many people in the Foundation would kill for a boring job like this? I should just be glad that I'm not getting shot, eaten, or god knows what else.
Still, I'm guarding a fucking hallway. There's not even anything here, as far as I know. It just connects one part of the site to the other. I mean, I understand the need for security—I've seen more containment breaches than I really like to think about—but it does make Overwatch look a little paranoid.
The ID scanner does most of my work for me, anyway. All I really have to do is stop anyone who doesn't fit their ID.
…
Yeah, go ahead.
…
Whoa, slow down there, buddy. You gotta scan your card on the…
He is mine. Let him through.
Yeah, go ahead.

No matter how many times I do this, it doesn't get any easier. I understand why we have to do this, but knowing why and actually pulling the trigger are two different things. This isn't gonna be easy from a tactical standpoint, either. According to the briefing, this is supposed to be the most powerful thing any of us have ever gone up against. I already don't like reality benders, not after that bullshit seminar they put us through when we started training.
Alright, here we go. Focus.
…
It's not locked. Not a good sign.
…
There's nothing in here. Are we sure this is the right place?
…
Seriously. No furniture, no decorations, not even any fucking lights.
…
Shit. I can feel it now. I can feel her mind. I really hope they're doing a good job distracting her at the site.
…
It's getting stronger. The walls are bending and the room is bigger on the inside.
…
I can destroy hear her now. She's in mdefendy head.
…
There she is. She hasn't seen us. This is our chance.
…
No.
…
This is my chance.
…
Oh god. She knows we're here.
…
Stop.
…
…
…
Die.


Six little mice scampered 'cross the floor

"Eddy, are you seriously reading the news right now?"
I look up from my copy of TIME to glare at Justin. "Come on, man. This Hartle thing's cool, the scenery here hasn't changed for two hours, and we're still not anywhere near the screamer."
"The kid, you mean," Dean said.
"I mean the screamer. Could still be a decoy, you know." I turn the page. It's ridiculous, but I have to hold the magazine way too close to my face to make out the text, even with my headlamp on. Stupid Can and its stupid darkness and its stupid stairs! "I wish they'd let me bring my iPod."
"But we gotta keep our ears out!" Emmy pipes up. I don't even have to look up to know she's smiling like an idiot.
"For what?" I snap. I'm just getting to the good part of the article, too, but all this talking is ruining my focus. Stupid language centers. "The screamer's a broken record, the mask isn't known to make any sound, and the only other noises in this stupid place are us."
"… We're not noises, Eddy."
"It's an expression, Em."
"No it isn't."
"Oh my god, are you two seriously arguing about this?" Justin asked, taking a hand off his rifle to massage the bridge of his nose.
"No," I said.
"Yes," Emmy said at the same time.
"Stop it, all of you," Agent Johnson snapped.
"Yessir," we all said with varying levels of non-enthusiasm.

One got his little tail slammed in a door

We got to the next landing, but as I turned the corner, I felt a jerk as my safety line caught. "Dammit, line's stuck again. What's the point of these things?"
Emmy turned, mouth already open to start lecturing me, but then her eyes got real big and she started screaming. I jumped probably a foot in the air, and jerked my head to follow her gaze over my shoulder.
Cold terror froze me in place as I looked into the non-eyes of that damn mask. It wasn't even looking at me; it was looking at my copy of TIME.

There was no escape from the big bad cat

I finally managed to get my muscles moving, but it didn't matter. My line was caught, and it was too close.
The last thing I feel is searing heat cutting through cartilage and bone.

Five little mice left to make him fat

Five little mice scampered 'cross the deck

I pushed past Emily and opened fire on the mask. Every part of my mind was screaming (like Emily; Emily was screaming) that I should run, hide, huddle with my head between my knees because it was my last chance to kiss my ass goodbye. But I couldn't. I had a team to protect. How could I face Edward's wife (Justin's wife, Dean's wife, Sam's wife, Emily's wife…) if I just ran away from something like this and left them all to die (are brains supposed to steam like that?) without doing anything? "Cut your lines and keep going!"

One had his little head torn off his neck

I didn't hear the answer over the sound of my gun, and I don't even know if the mask is taking damage (it's covered in splashes of molten lead now; will that slow it down?), but I hold my ground as it charges forward.

There was no escape from the big bad cat

As my head rolls down the steps, I'm at least able to see that my team has gotten away (for now; maybe they'll make it, so I've got to have faith in them), so at least I can hold onto that hope until my consciousness fades.

Four little mice left to make him fat

Four little mice scampered 'cross the bowl

Dean had gotten Emmy's hand, so I just focused on running. We had to get away. Floor after floor after floor after floor after floor blurred by. I was at the front of the group, but I could hear their footsteps behind me. I didn't dare look back to check for the thing that had gotten Eddy, but I prayed that Agent Johnson got the thing and was going to be okay.

One ran ahead and he fell in a hole

"SAMMY!"
My brain registered Justin shouting my name before I actually realised I was falling. I hadn't even seen the hole in the staircase. At first, I'd thought that I'd just hit the flight beneath us, because I tend to assume that Euclidean geometry works until proven otherwise.
"SAMMY!"

There was no escape from the big bad cat

It was proven otherwise. The light at the top vanished a while ago. There's no way anyone's gonna be able to reach me before I bite it.
I wonder if I'll hit something or starve first? If Eddy were still alive, we could've bet on it… .

Three little mice left to make him fat

Three little mice scampered 'cross the shed

"SAMMY!" I lunged for the loose end of his line. I came up two inches too short. Woulda fallen in after him, if it weren't for Dean grabbing the back of my flak jacket. I waited for the thud. I waited to hear him shout something as he hit the flight below.
It never happened.

One couldn't take that his friend was so dead

I grabbed the railing and started around the edge of the hole — both the rail and the floor seemed to be holding up. "Come on! He can't seriously be dead. No way."
I shoulda known then that I was kidding myself. I wouldn'ta said that if I wasn't already thinking he was. It was painful slowing my pace to make sure there wasn't another hole ahead, but I got to the spot where he shoulda been.
"He's seriously not here!"
"Come on, we've got a mission to do," Dean said when he noticed I'd stopped moving. How could he even be serious? "We have to keep going."
"Fuck the mission! Sammy just — he's gonna show up here eventually, right? Maybe time's just wrong."
"That's unlikely…" Emmy said.
"We need to keep going," Dean growled.
"I'm staying here and waiting for Sammy, dammit! If you seriously think the mission is so much more important, then go ahead. We'll catch up."
"… Fine." Dean clapped me on the shoulder. "But if you see that mask, run, okay?"
"Yeah." I nodded.
Emmy kept glancing back at me until they were out of sight.

There was no escape from the big bad cat

I think they left about an hour ago. Sammy's still not here.
… Run if I see the mask, huh?
I would, but I seriously can't feel my legs anymore.

Two little mice left to make him fat

Two little mice scampered 'cross the desk

We've been going for hours. I think we're getting closer, though. There's a stitch in my side, though, and my feet are starting to ache even with my orthopedic insoles. "Hey, Dean, can we stop for a bit?"
He frowns. "We're almost there."

One was exhausted and she had to rest

"I know. I just need to rest."
He stops as he reaches the next landing. "Alright."
I sigh with relief and sit down on the steps. "Do you think we're going to get out of here alive?"
"We gotta try." He leaned back against the wall and kept his light focused on the flight of stairs behind me. "That's all we can do."
"Yeah… ."
Silence that even I could tell was awkward fell. I thought about A'isha. I'm sure she'll be able to support herself financially without me, but —

There was no escape from the big bad cat

The last thing I hear is Dean's startled swearing.

One little mouse left to make him fat

One little mouse scampered 'cross the map

A white blur shot out of the darkness.
"SHIT!" I had no idea it could move so fast! Something that was probably a piece of Emmy's skull landed on my vest, but I was barely paying attention to that. I'd already started running, and there was no way I was looking down or looking back.
I ran. I kept running. I could hear myself getting closer to the kid, and that was the only thing that was keeping me going. I had to reach her. Even if I die right afterward, I at least gotta tell her that she's not forgotten, and help's coming. They're gonna send in the big guns if none of us make it back on time.

He found the cheese and fell into the trap

My boots splashed in something as I finally reached the bottom. The whole floor was covered in some sort of liquid an inch deep. The darkness was a lot worse than on the stairs, so I could barely see a few feet in front of me.
"Help! Please!"
I ran towards the voice, and there she was: A little girl with short black hair and a white dress. I knew there had to be a kid down here. I fell to my knees in relief and hugged her. "It's okay. Help's coming. It's going to be okay."
"Thank you, Mister. I was so hungry… ."

There was no escape from the big bad cat

She suddenly tears a chunk out of my neck with teeth that are far too sharp to be human. I should have thought it was suspicious that she was standing and didn't seem injured.
"There will be plenty of time for regrets in my stomach," she whispers as my brain suffocates.

So here come more mice to make him fat


EXCERPT FROM TRANSCRIPT: "All Things Considered", WOSU 89.7, 28 Jan 2013 16:05
ALISHA CLARK, HOST: While the President works to stem unrest in the Middle East, NASA is talking with people from an entirely different world. Since Project Gateway went public last November, all eyes have been on the conversation going on through the Hartle Anomaly. This afternoon, NPR's Stephen Fleischer took a closer look.
STEPHEN FLEISCHER, BYLINE: The mood in this antechamber to NASA's Gateway Contact Center is surprisingly ordinary, considering the literally out-of-this-world activities going on inside. Analytical equipment lies ready on the long countertops, but most of the lab's contingent is gathered around one of the laptops against the back wall. Dr. Andrea Tang types a few more words into the bare-bones terminal program, nodding and chuckling at the reply.
TANG: Syrti says they're ready any time. David, are we done compiling?
FLEISCHER: One of her assistants holds up a small metal tube.
TANG: Great. Send that through decon, and let's suit up.
FLEISCHER: Tang is the head of the Gateway Contact Center's Direct Hartle Exchange Team, the scientist in charge of sending packages back and forth through the Hartle Anomaly. She and her team stay in constant contact with their counterparts on the other side through a specialized telegraph line, but they've also exchanged thousands of packages since the project went public last November.
TANG: When the anomaly first opened, all our communication was on paper, and we passed it through by hand. The terminal's faster for a lot of things, now that they've learned English and we speak Stola, but there's still great value in sending physical items.
FLEISCHER: Full-sized books won't fit through the anomaly, but Tang's team has sent and received hundreds of thousands of rolled-up pages. They've traded photographs, maps, biological specimens, art objects, and many stranger things. Richard Goldstein, sociologist with Tang's team.
GOLDSTEIN: Once, we opened a message tube and found something that looked just like a taquito. Fresh and hot, full of this spiced vegetable hash. (LAUGHTER) It looked delicious. I'd like to have tried it.
FLEISCHER: The researchers on Hartle are enormously interested in Earth's culture, and vice versa. The teams have traded books on everything from theoretical math to pop culture.
TANG: We have so, so much we can learn from each other. With what Hartle's physicists have taught us about space travel, my colleagues at Johnson say we'll make Mars by 2020. In return, we've taught them about vaccines, and they're already halting a pandemic in its tracks. And if you've checked the Top 40 charts lately, you know what the cultural exchanges are doing for us both.
(SOUNDBITE: "EISH MEKA EISH (LOVE FOR TODAY)", RIHANNA COVER)
FLEISCHER: Not everyone is as excited as the exchange team, though. At a press conference Thursday, Indiana Senator Adam Wright urged caution.
WRIGHT: I'm just saying, maybe we should be a little more careful. Maybe we should find out what they're really going to want from us, in the end, before we just give them everything. If we teach them about germs, are they going to cure cancer, or are they going to build bioweapons?
FLEISCHER: Others are less concerned with what the Hartleites will do deliberately and more worried about the Anomaly itself. Dr. Turner Velasquez, professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, urges caution.
VELASQUEZ: According to absolutely everything we know about physics, the Hartle Anomaly should be impossible. A wormhole that size, unless it's at the bottom of a black hole, should require a truly enormous energy input to keep it open, and it should be releasing all kinds of exotic radiation. We have no idea how the Hartleites created the Anomaly, or how they're maintaining it, without either of those things happening. For all we know, it could be quietly destabilizing local space-time, or even hastening the heat-death of our universe. Whatever else we do, we need to make it our very top priority to learn how we can close the wormhole permanently.
FLEISCHER: While Tang doesn't dismiss those concerns, she argues that her team is taking plenty of precautions.
TANG: Our physicists are studying the Anomaly constantly and intensively. We run every exchange by the NSA officials working here with us. We have strict decontamination protocols in place. We've never sent anything that even looks like a weapons design. Besides, it's awfully hard to really hurt one another through such a tiny aperture.
FLEISCHER: Back in the lab, the team scrubs up and climbs into bunny suits to enter the clean room surrounding the anomaly itself. It looks like nothing so much as a hole in the air, barely an inch wide, with cables running through it and disappearing. Glimpses of green walls are just visible on the other side. Tang picks up the sterilized message tube and carefully pokes one end through.
TANG: [SPEAKING STOLA]
FLEISCHER: She lets go, and the tube is pulled through the hole. A moment later, another one is pushed back towards her. The exchange is finished.
Before leaving the lab, though, Tang kneels to look straight through the Anomaly. On the other side, her counterpart does the same. From what's visible above his own sterile suit, he's a very ordinary-looking man.
TANG [THROUGH TRANSLATOR, SPEAKING STOLA]: Hello, Syrti. How's Reh doing?
FLEISCHER: Astronomer Syrti Koll, lead scientist for the Earth Exchange Study Group.
KOLL: Much better. He'll be back at school tomorrow.
TANG [THROUGH TRANSLATOR, SPEAKING STOLA]: I sent a little something extra through for him. We all know how he loves comics.
FLEISCHER: When they've finished their brief conversation, Tang raises her forefinger to the anomaly, and right through the hole between worlds, the two scientists touch hands.
From the Gateway Contact Center in Terre Haute, I'm Stephen Fleischer. This is NPR.


"Portal's stabilized. You're good to go. Say hi to 507 if you see him." The operator of the portal chuckled at his joke.
Trevor Bailey stepped through the portal to F-601432-Gamma; he emerged in the equivalent Site 87 on the other side, run by the Manna, Siskel, Parker, and Cooper Charitable Trust. The MSCPCT had decided that it was going to use anomalous artifacts for the good of the people, but it couldn't do it alone; while Foundation policy was to secure, contain and protect in this universe, the MSCPCT was "Save, Provide and Create for a better world."
In this universe, citrus was inedible (Vitamin C was a toxin if ingested) and instead used as a cheap biofuel; however, citrus had largely gone extinct in the 70's, and was now heavily regulated by the Brazilian government, who refused to export to the USA. The MSCPCT would give some petroleum in exchange for a large shipment of Florida orange juice.
All Trevor could think about was how nobody in this universe ever caught scurvy.

Tom Bailey stepped into the shadows of the evening sun, onto a prairie, in a brand new world. The difference here was quite obvious: all flora around him was shades of red as opposed to green. Also, there appeared to be elephants in the distance, co-existing with what seemed to be American Bison. Birds as big as jet liners circled overhead harmlessly; they ate only the mega-insectiods that flew with them. It was raining, and a balmy 70 degrees. He'd be camping here for the next 24 hours, taking soil and plant samples, and even collecting fauna, if he could. "Excellent."
Tom loved worlds like this. It always made him feel like a kid again, going into worlds that seemed almost imaginary. Maybe that's what this universe, and several others were: imaginary. Just pictures drawn by a kid on a rainy day, and put up on a fridge. The universe, in a crayon drawing.

Tristan Bailey looked outside at the New York skyline. It wasn't his New York, of course; the Twin Towers were still standing, but the Chrysler Building was gone from sight. Two of Earth's moons were visible beyond the WTC; the third would be rising in about an hour, and the fourth wouldn't be seen until morning.
He always felt uneasy on urban assignments; he was meant only to observe, and observing he was, at an anart exhibition in the MoMA. Or rather, about half a mile above the MoMA; the centerpiece of this gallery was Temptation, a giant piece of lodestone suspended above New York. It came complete with a ledge to (bungee) jump off of.
"And now, to begin our journey through the world of Larts Dimpossible, the Curator of the Museum of Modern Art, Alfons Hitler!" Tristan almost spat out his drink at that, and suddenly remembered that there had only been one World War in this universe.
This night was going to be interesting.

As far as Trevor was concerned, A-2190-Omega could go fuck itself.
A-2190-Omega had swapped time zones, and in addition to that, the Earth spun the wrong direction. He had to wake up at 1:00 AM to go to a meeting at 1:00 PM in this universe's Site 87. The coffee was unbearably sweet, the energy drinks were bitter, and they had destroyed their ozone layer, so natural light was a no-no.
Trevor envied his brothers; the most he got to see was the inside of other universe's SCP sites, while Tom got to go exploring, and Tristan? Tristan could do what he wanted for the sake of research. He had even taken over Trevor's duties as a diplomat once.
"Mr. Bailey, if you are going to sleep, then please go to the dormitory in your native universe." The room let out a cackle. Trevor sighed; why was it that in every universe, people with blue skin were absolute dickheads?

"Anything eventful, Doctor Bailey?"
"It's fascinating! In this universe, the English language developed a word that rhymes with both purple and orange! I've written it down…"
"We'll run it by memetics before sending it to linguistics. Anything else?"
"Well, the First President of the United States was hermaphroditic. So there's that."

Bailout: So, that's how Booth would've killed Lincoln.
Herstri0nix: bullshit.
sirsolmanhandyman: why would Booth even want to kill Lincoln? Booth was an abolitionist.
snickeringsnicket: that's the biggest load of bullshit i've heard since the time westmarkhero suggested a world without Batman comics would've exploded due to Bill Finger becoming a nuclear scientist or something
MarvelRoxDCSux: DC RIPPED OFF BILL FINGER!
MarvelRoxDCSux has been booted from #historitdidnthappen by Herstri0nix (freaking 10-year-old)
snickeringsnicket: still, i did like the bit where you talked about people being surprised about the ending to the movie lincoln in your scenario

Tristan rolled his eyes and sighed. For the sake of "research", he'd joined a historical speculation chatroom in this universe, and he was severely regretting it. Still, it was educational, if painful; the First Moon Landing occurred in 1962, for one, but they didn't go public until 1970.

Bailout: Fine, that was a bit speculative, but how about this: The Hindenburg caught fire.
Herstri0nix: I'm listening…

Tom took off his breathing apparatus as he joined his brothers in Tristan's quarters. "I was just in a universe where the air was pure ethanol, but doesn't ignite." He grinned. "I got someone in chemistry making a liquor out of it as we speak. Assuming the lab animals don't die, we'll have trans-universal hooch by the weekend."
Tristan let out a snort. "I was in the universe you found last month, F-90241-Phi; as it turns out, Isaac Newton figured out a way to convert lead into platinum. It involves a Hell of a lot of radiation, and as a result, cancer is the number one cause of death in the world."
Trevor sighed. "I got sucked into negotiations with the Republic of Australia-Hungary."
Tom blinked. "Don't you mean Austria?"
"No. Australia. As in kangaroos, Steve Irwin, G'day mate… they wanted to trade a plant that grew fucking Vegemite for the introduction of the hazelnut to their ecosystem." He sighed. "Sometimes, I don't know if we have the best job in the world, or the worst."
"Think of it this way, Trev." Tristan said. "Within the next few months, you'll get to have a nice, cozy office at Site 19 instead of working in the backwoods town of Backwoods."
Trevor snorted. "I hope you enjoy having my old position, bro. You'll be stuck here with Tom Bombadill." He smirked at Tom, who threw a small, metal canteen at his head in response.

The mountaintop was the only piece of land he could see for miles. And he was on top of it.
It was warm, and pleasant. The sun overhead was red, but not a red giant, it was just the way the atmosphere was coloring it. Perfectly breathable oxygen, just dyed a different shade. Tom looked around the air on the mountaintop, taking pictures of the aether around him. He didn't care if this was just a Floater world; he always found the floaters to be 12 times more fascinating than any Hub or Branch world.
Circling around the mountaintop were large creatures, resembling saw-toothed fish. They were big enough that you could fly a zeppelin into their mouths and not come out the other end for a week. He took as many pictures of those as he could and let out a contented sigh once he ran out of space on his camera.
"Dr. Bailey? Come back through. We're going to close the portal in 10 minutes."
"Just a little longer, if you don't mind."

"I'm sorry, but negotiations cannot continue between our universes, as your universe is about four times normal Earth gravity over here. Either you come here, or no dice."
"Then I guess it's no dice." The other side cut off connection, and Trevor sighed with relief. Of course, he could have just used an exoskeleton, but that made signing papers so much more difficult than it needed to be.

Tristan rubbed his hair and looked through the stable window into the other universe. "Wait… so, in this reality, Earth is a gas giant?"
Tom nodded, looking through the portal. "Solid core, though. Pressure's not too high, and gravity's normal; you can walk on the surface without getting crushed, theoretically."
"How big is this core?"
"About a Kilometer across."
"Talk about a short horizon."
"Yeah."
"Any life?"
"No, there isn't. Just a Floater, I'm afraid."
"…you want to explore it anyway, don't you?"
"Does a cat eat mice?"

"Hello, my name is Trevor Bailey. I am speaking to you through a telepathic communicator developed by the SCP Foundation…"
Trevor looked around the entry to the other Site 87, where several green-skinned humans looked at him in confusion. "The what CP Foundation?"
"Esss Cee-"
The head of the person closest to Trevor suddenly exploded. He jumped back through the portal, and closed it behind him, spattered in blood.
"What the hell kind of a universe is it when people don't evolve the ability to comprehend the letter "S"?!"

"Wait… animals evolved alongside humans. How does that work?"
"Honestly, if you're not an evolutionary biologist, or at the very least a geneticist, it's very hard to explain." The talking coyote was not the most bizarre thing that Tristan Bailey had ever seen; it wasn't even in the top ten. The fact that it walked on its hind legs maybe put it in the top 50, the opposable thumbs in the top 30. It was the labcoat it was wearing that pushed it into the top 20. "Suffice to say, there may have been some inter-species breeding at some point."
Tristan closed his eyes and grimaced. "Ew." The coyote simply snorted and muttered something about racism.

"Gravity appears to be non-existent in this universe," Tom said into a tape recorder. "However, the very fact that I am recording this indicates that other forces, such as magnetism and the strong and weak forces, do exist."
"Although," Tom said, looking down at the world below him (if the word "below" even applied here), "It is troubling to wonder how this planet continues to orbit the sun without any gravity, let alone how the sun formed without gravity."

Trevor sighed and drummed his fingers against the desk, watching the two-headed being sitting across from him. "You seem troubled," They said through the translator. "Is everything amicable with the current situation?"
"I'd just like to take a break, is all."
"A break may be taken once our business is concluded." Trevor groaned a bit, and looked to the side. There was actually a window in this office, for once, and it looked out onto a desert. The sky was blue, but a much darker shade than it was back home- the kind of blue you would see in a boy's bedroom. Also, there were three smaller suns outside. Rubbing his eyes, Tristan managed to tear himself away from the sight.
"Back to business, then. Scrap silicon in exchange for access to your lithium mines…"

The three Baileys stepped out of the presentation hall, laughing to themselves. "Dad was a real jackass, wasn't he?"
Tom and Trev's pockets started shaking simultaneously. With a puzzled look, they took out their quintuple-encrypted smartphones, undid the codes, and frowned.
"E-mail. From the top…" Tom opened his, and his jaw dropped. "Dr. Thomas Bailey, you are to report to Antarctic Site 1483 for reassignment, effective… tomorrow! What?!"
"I got the same thing! Except I'm being re-assigned to 19!" Trevor stared at his phone, his eyes wide. Tom almost looked like he was going to cry.
"Antarctic… that's the Keter-class sites. Jesus…"
Tristan smiled weakly. "Guess this means we won't be able to do the "three of me from different universes" gag anymore, eh?"

Tom stepped onto the plane to Antarctica, wondering what he had done to deserve this. Reassignment to the coldest place on Earth. He'd probably be stuck with Edison, cleaning a Keter's cage or something.
With a despondent look on his face, he finally worked up the courage to read the dossier he had gotten regarding SCP-1483. He frowned at the first line of the description; how could an entire continent be an SCP?
As he read the file, a smile started to grow. It looked like the explorer would have a brand new land to visit, now.

|Hub|


Site-40
A young boy walked lazily around Site 40, watching brooding soldiers and overworked scientists make their daily rounds. He was a janitor, with access only to what he needed to fix, and the general workings of the Foundation. There was nothing to hide from him; all sensitive materials were either secured within locked rooms or on endlessly secured computers. Usually.
He eventually wandered to the cafeteria, moderately filled, with very little noise. The janitor got a small snack and began to exit, but quickly stopped himself as he saw a woman walk through. Very few new people joined the staff, and those who did almost always seemed slightly unsure of themselves. She was different. She seemed like she could stop a bullet with her gaze.
She passed through quickly, with a slightly rushed gait. Silently, the janitor followed her. He knew that it wasn't in his best interests, but he had both a curiosity and an understanding that most people didn't even see in him in the first place.
He watched her dodge through many corridors, eventually stopping at a door he had memorized over many months.
He had been at the site for months, and he could recognize nearly all the staff, but, every couple of weeks, he saw a group of people, small in number, make their way into an unmarked room, and after many hours, file out once again. The members of this group, from what he had gathered from the members of his staff's site, had no noticeable connection. Physiologists, physicists, tacticians, every field under the sun. These shadowy people were very secretive, even by the Foundation's standards, usually not even conversing with other researchers out of purely technical matters. He tried to keep a watch out for them, but if he even saw the edge of their glare, he inched out as fast as possible.
Today, he waited in the cafeteria for the woman to pass through again. He didn't know if she would, but he was on break and had a few minutes to wait and watch. Soon, she arrived. As she walked through, along with three researchers in the site's staff, he heard a researcher a couple of tables away attempt to joke with some half-asleep coworkers about something work-related.
"…explosion with four forty seven. It affects spacetime so everything seems green! Huh, whadda ya think?"
"You're drunk?" The young woman was as visibly bored as she could be without being openly rude.
"No, you're just jealous! Amazing Green, I'm gonna call it. Patent it. Market it. They're gonna call me the Green King before I'm—"
The eccentric researcher's last word echoed as he raised his voice to emphasize. The four professors suddenly stopped in their tracks, and glanced over their shoulders, a mix of anger and suspicion on their faces. They listened for half a minute more, and after realizing what the researcher was talking about, left to their own lives.

An unknown distance away, a woman stood, feeling the world around her. She was angry - as she commonly was. She hated anger. She hated hate. She hated herself. She wanted peace. Tranquility. Freedom. She was trapped, needing to control her actions so she wouldn't be chased by…them. She hated them, only because they were relentless. They hunted her. She knew that they feared her, knew she was capable of changing the world. They weren't the only ones, but they were the most persistent. The constant thorn in her side.
She lost the feeling. When someone thought of her who knew what she could do, they always thought of her in the same way. She eventually found a way to track those thoughts, track those who knew about her. She could erase their memories, or otherwise dispose of them, as long as it was under the radar.
Then, one day, they disappeared. Every person who knew her slowly faded off her inner radar. She didn't know what they did, and she couldn't figure it out. She spent months looking for any sign of where they had gone. Finally, she hit on an isolated location in Alberta. She couldn't be certain, but it was a building with foot traffic going in and out and she couldn't hear any thoughts at all. Someone was hiding something, and she had a guess who.
She stopped reminiscing, and focused on finding someone to throw the Foundation on a wild goose chase. Her mind stumbled upon a person with a dynamic love of bizarreness and creativity that some would describe as "insanity". She saw it as a useful trait under the circumstances. She quickly decided to turn him into her own personal distraction, letting her mind rest as her new pawn wreaked havoc.

Site-40
As the janitor finished mopping up the last hallway of his graveyard shift, he felt the ground shake as an ungodly metallic screech echoed down from the center of the site.
He heard many women and men yell to each other as emergency klaxons started to wail. He quickly retreated to a side hallway as a squadron of soldiers rushed towards the commotion. The boy decided to attempt to find out the cause of the commotion. He had heard of containment breaches, but there were very few SCP-related rooms in the inner structure.
He wandered into a nearby office, attempting to find a reason behind the alarm, and futilely started checking the locked computers until he heard many loud cracks coming from outside the office. He quickly hid under a desk, hearing bullets ricochet and men and women scream.
The clanking grew closer and closer. He quickly made his way into the darkest corner of the room, wide eyes watching the door to the hallway. He suddenly felt the air rush by him as a heavy-built man flew through the wall and into a bookshelf, hanging onto threads of consciousness.
Through the newly-made hole in the wall, he heard a drunken voice half-singing, half-screeching a small poem, with a sadistic snicker.
"Oh Mother, Mother, she hates you so,
She hates you and wished you would go,
And let her be,
Or wipe you from histor-eeeee~"
That tune stuck in the boy's mind, shoveled in next to the screams of pain and maelstrom of whizzing bullets.
He jumped at a sound behind him. He turned to see the solider attempting to get to his feet, despite bleeding from head to toe. The janitor, despite his fears, helped the guard to his feet, and saw him stumble back to the hole, kneeling on one damaged leg, using his assault rifle to attempt to fell the singing madman. The singing stopped for a second, and in the silence that followed, he heard a low growl before hundreds of small objects flew through the wall, scraping him in many places, leaving large gashes on his torso as he finally, realizing inevitably the end of his own bleeding life, wandered to the hole in the wall.
He saw many bloody corpses laid about, many with scratches just like his own. In the middle of the carnage, a skinny, blond haired man whistled the accursed tune that the janitor had heard. There were small pieces of debris - splinters of wood, concrete blocks the size of a mans' fist, and twisted metal, slowly orbiting around the man in a fluid, deliberate fashion. The same debris had just punctured hundreds of holes in the room he was in.
The janitor, blood dripping from his hair, watched as the woman from before held a stone tomahawk, its head pointing at the interloper. She muttered a single word, and a blinding flash enveloped the hallway.
The boy fell limp as the woman heard the tomahawk make a firm "thump" in the intruder's skull.

FROM: MARTIN KRAKE, DIRECTOR, SITE 40
TO: Prof. G. Quaero, Foundation Research

An attack has occurred on my site. Structural damage was moderate, and loss of personnel was severe. When I attempted to inspect the damage, I was stopped by several officers claiming themselves to be of "GK" clearance. They have informed me that they have taken over operations of the assaulted area. I have been told I will be returned control after they finish their investigation.
Please advise.

FROM: OVERWATCH COMMAND
TO: DIRECTOR KRAKE, SITE 40
MESSAGE SENT 2-17-20██ INTERCEPTED.
AUTHORITY OF INDIVIDUALS IN POSSESSION OF GK-LEVEL AUTHORIZATION IS TO BE CONSIDERED VALID AT LEVEL 5 RANK.
NO FURTHER COMMUNICATION RELATING TO GK-LEVEL AUTHORIZATION, PERSONNEL, OR ACTIVITIES IS TO BE MADE TO ANY SOURCE.
NO FURTHER INQUIRIES ARE TO BE MADE.
O5-4


I walk. The Elder had always spoken so greatly of this day to me. He said that on the day on which a boy sets out, alone, to the top of the island, he begins his journey into manhood. I can feel the warm grass crushing underneath my feet, stinging and burning if I step out from under the cool of the tall shade-trees. I have been walking for so long now, without food or water or rest, seeking the sharp peak and the cool spring that will show to me my fortune, my destiny. As I traipse along the path that all men of my village must walk but once in their lives, I wonder what sort of man I will be.

The sun is so bright in this place, and yet the wind blows so harshly. I cannot remember the absence of pain in my legs and my feet, but it does not matter to me or to this place. All that has ever been done seems lost in this vast desert of noise and sand. I dreamed in my youth of the beasts and wonders dangerous and miraculous that I would meet upon my great journey, challenging me at every turn and pass. But no. Here there is only the sand and wind. All that is life is extinguished in this place, removed from all history and experience. Here is the place of silence, of reflection and trial. I travel through its wastes of sand and heat, striving to remain. To exist.

I can almost see the peak now, but the gales worsen still. The desert lies behind my path, its sand and empty things kicked about by Angineo, the angry God of the Wind. I walk through this dead scrub-land, the occasional rain splattering my face with mud and leaving me thirstier still. I can hear the beasts when the night comes, hungry and angry at the sky, slinking out of their dens only for long enough to hunt easy prey. I have fear of the long shadows in the night, and what they might make of me. But I am so close now, so close to my destination and my destiny. I carry on, through the fear and the pain and the thirst, eyes held ever skyward to the pinnacle of the earth. Even in the barrenest of wastes it still stands in the distance, tall and proud. Waiting to laugh in the face of the conqueror. Waiting for me.

So close to the peak now, but it can not be reached by me or by any other. Not the mightiest of men of my village would dare face Angineo in his fury, battering the side of the pinnacle of the entire land with his might. I have waited here in my cave for many nights, a tiny divot in the mountainside, waiting without a fire for the storm to cease. But still, it has not stopped. I ache and I thirst, so close to the spring that its scent beckons me, so close that I can nearly hear the song of its water, calling me towards the rest of my life. Towards greatness.

I will press on. This is what the gods want. They test me, sending the eldest and most powerful of their number out against me, battering me with wind and rain in this tiny cave where I rest, alone and hungry. I will not forfeit before the gods of the land and of the people. I will press on.

I have become a man. I have conquered the land and the desert and the mountains and the gods themselves. Now I stand here, before the spring of life for my people, drinking and praying and relishing in the ecstasy of my accomplishment, of my securing of my life and my destiny. Though the water does not taste as sweet as I had thought it might, still it brings strength to me. Everything around this place smells odd, stained with sulfur and the heat of many voices. Perhaps it is a message from the gods, some great showing of their favor for me. I drink, covered in rain and mud and sand and pain. I drink the sweet victory of my journey. I drink to the gods. I drink to the people. I drink to myself.

There is something wrong here, at the pinnacle of the world. The winds do not cease and the rain does not relent in its striking of the earth. I fear that I have angered the gods, brought their wrath down upon me and upon the very land itself. I pray now, in my little cave, for my life and the lives of the people of my village. I pray that the God of Wind does not reach his wrath out unto them. But yet the storm does not end, the howling of the god's breathe does not waver in the vast reaches of the sky, scattered before me in this highest of places. I sit in this cave, huddled away from the wind and the coldness of the rain, and I pray.

I kneel now at the top of the world, shouting as though mad at the gods and at the state of existence. The storm rages, battering my ears with sound and my eyes with light. I remember back to the days in my village, to when I had hope for this time of change in my life. I did not know then what I know now. I did not know that it was my destiny to be the last to pass into manhood before the end of time, when the Gods of Wind and of Lightning and of Death would bring destruction to the world. I shout from the top of the world, begging that they wait in their bringing of the end. Wait until I have lived my life of glory. Begging that my destiny be changed by the pity of the gods.

I hear it, the greatest of thunder-cracks as the gods answer my pleas, their divine wrath echoing in the sky above me. The wind howls past, sending the rain smashing into my face and my eyes. But still I see it. The answer of the gods. It bursts through the clouds and the sky itself, a great mass of grey and brown and blood, coated in plates of rocky flesh and with a thousand limbs, crashing towards the earth covered in fire and rage. As it falls and pulls itself towards the great ocean that holds the world, it stretches across the sky, beyond all imagination of size. It is the greatest god of all, and all others pale before it. Old Angineo did not call out this storm. No. The God of Wind is dead, vanquished by this greatest god of all. The God of the End. Of the Sky and of Fury. It crushes into the water, the shock of it rippling the surface of what is real. With its landing comes the echo of thunder, long dead in the savage beauty of this infinite god, its great form stretching from the bottom of the dark depths of the sea and into the heavens themselves. It falls still, bringing with it the destroyed remnants of the homes of the gods, flickering and shimmering as they fall to this earth. The sea stretches and swells as it takes in the great beastly God, blocking out the entirety of the world before it. I watch, terrified by its divinity and hopelessness, as a great mass of boiling, frothing water bears down upon the world. All will be consumed by its mighty waves, trees ripped asunder and beaches swallowed by the unremitting waves, a signal of the great thing. I think of how my world shall end, at the hands of a god unimaginable in scope and power, sweeping the entirety of creation clean in a single terrible motion. A god my world did not even know.

I stand now at the peak of the world, alone and hungry and hurt and afraid. The ocean has not swallowed me, has left me alone in this empty place, upon a ledge of rock above the spring at the top of the world. All around me there is the water, sandy and filled with mud, clouded over by the washed-away land. The Great God from the sky is not here. It has cast itself into the very depths of the earth, taking with it my home and my people. I stand here now at the end of the ruined world and wonder if I could ever be forgiven for my horrible destiny. I wonder if there is anyone still in the sacked place of the gods and the dead left to forgive me.

« Parting | HUB | Eden »


I remember the warmth. That is the first thing I recall. The light was there as well, the soft orange glow of a dying star. But the warmth… It cannot be easily described. It is nothing like the cold of this place.
There were others there, like me. We are large creatures, and so we do not live in a place crowded with rocks, as this system is. Our home is not filled with stone but with soft warmth, and with the quiet light of a star that has found its place. I was told that the star was young when we first arrived there, and there is an ancient one who claims to remember when it would still speak. I do not believe his ramblings.
We spend a great deal of time as children incapable of rational thought. None remember this period of their lives, though the caretakers tell us that it is amusing. We chase after debris with a joy that is lost to the old, cavorting through space with an innocence that some have spent an eternity trying to recreate.
But, of course, you are not here to learn this. You are here because you wonder what our purpose is, what I am here to do?
There is a seed within each of us. As we mature, it evolves. Eventually, it multiplies. The process is… complex, and I fear it is beyond your understanding. I will say that we may exercise some control over this evolution, and that many of our race take great pride in the complexity and beauty of their creations.
We carry this seed with us throughout our lifetimes, thousands of tiny lives held in an embryonic limbo. Some choose to never allow this seed to grow, unwilling to leave the glory of the skies for something so mundane as gardening. But others of us, we know what must be done.
And so we leave. We leave the warmth and joy and peace of that glad star and depart into the cold void. None who leave ever return. No songs are sung of their success, no warnings returned from their deaths. None are heard from again.
We search through debris and rocks and vast stretches of black nothingness, looking for somewhere that a small seed might take root and grow. It is a long, impossible task, and my telling of it would take many of your lifetimes.
Suffice it to say that after a great deal of searching, I happened upon a small planet that looked rather promising. And so I took the plunge.
That is not an experience I wish to repeat. The fires of the air scalded me terribly before I came to rest in the oceans, and my recovery was long and unpleasant. But I had dedicated myself to this task, and I could not turn from it.
That seed within us… ruptures, that is the word. It ruptures on our landing. After that rupture, the seed is released. It grows within us, colonizing our bodies. As its numbers swell, some may find their way out to the world on which we have landed. I know that a few small creatures from within me have made their way to the waters of this planet, though the majority remain within.
Eventually, I will expire. That great impact shortens our lifespan, and the growth of a civilization within us does nothing to alleviate this. Eventually, those creatures within me will find an exit.
Everything will change.

« Antediluvian | HUB | Interlude - Drift »


Nota Bene: It would behoove you to read Shepherds, Second Watch, and People Look East before reading this tale.

Mechanoid Moloch! Moloch the mighty maw! Gnawing Moloch! Sawing Moloch! Moloch the grinding end!
The words rang around in Mary-Ann's head, even now, some three hours after she had heard them first. She brushed them away, but they oozed back through the cracks in her mental concrete.
Maladaptive Moloch, eater of babies!
It had just been an insane man on the side of the street. You had those in New York.
She looked up at the sun.
“This weather's just crazy. We were snowed in the day before yesterday, and now it's practically warm enough for shorts.”
“Well you see, God hates homosexuals,” Salah said. “And so He is clearly manipulating the weather to rain judgment down upon us.”
Mary-Ann elbowed him, laughing.
“You. You are a funny person.”
“So I've been told. Personally, that's a load of garbage. I am a thoroughly unfunny individual. Did I ever tell you about the time I was sold a dead parrot? I went right into that pet shop and continued to be unfunny the entire time I complained.” There was the tiniest smile at the corner of his mouth. The rest was in his eyes.
“How do you keep a straight face when you say stuff like that?”
“Years of practice.” There was the smile.
They turned right, heading down an alley to cut across to the next street. Dumpster, fire escapes, trash, a puddle, graffiti. The bustle beyond seemed deafened by the plain brick and concrete: a little slice of quiet, broken by two pairs of shoes.
The graffiti on the wall, a big bubblegum-pink “G”, began to squirm and they passed it. It flowed down the bricks, and about ten feet in front of the pair it bulged out from the wall and launched itself into the alleyway like a wet spitwad. It sat there for a moment before snapping into the form of a young man wearing an overcoat the same color as the paint. His hair was likewise the same shade. A cigarette dangled from his lip, unlit.
“Hey hey hey, what's all this? You're walkin' into BackdoorSoHo without payin' customs? Low blow there, low blow. Man's gotta make a living and art ain't fillin' the belly, y'know what I mean?”
Salah dug in his pocket and removed a small silver coin and tossed it to the man. He turned it over in his fingers, squinted, bit it, and threw it back.
“We cool yet?”
“No.” Salah put the coin back in his pocket.
“Good. Management's been up our asses, makin' us check everyone who comes in. Pack a' those bastards snuck in last month and fucked around. Doesn't help that we're up to our ears with the Snakes and Mac-Daddies boppin' around, much less you Choir Boys.” He shrugged. “Why the fuck am I still talkin'? Get in there.”
He dropped into a pink puddle on the concrete and slid back onto the wall. In the distance, there was a slight shimmering in the air, a little momentary mirage. Mary-Ann and Salah passed through the rest of the alley and stepped out into the Backdoor.
The cobblestone street was an explosion of color and light and sound. Narrow brick federal houses and cast-iron faced lofts lined the way, railed balconies jutting out into the air. Every flat surface (and most non-flat surfaces) looked to have something painted on it. The world was a mural, some parts animated, some parts layered on top of other works. Statues of metal and plastic and wood and stone stood and walked and danced: people, animals, objects, shapes and forms without any prior meaning than their own existence. The air was heavy with music: brass jazz and basswood blues and murmuring vinyl dub.
Mary-Ann tried to absorb as much of the sensory assault. She had only been to the Backdoor once before, and from what she saw now, no two visits were the same. The art and atmosphere would be completely changed by next week, let alone several months later.
The street was too narrow for cars, and so was filled with pedestrians, and one man riding a panda: Squads of muralists in paint-stained jeans and t-shirts, contortionist actors in peacock feather tights, dreadlocked musicians smelling of ganja and listening to the songs flow through the holes in their heads, clothing and hair and decoration in a blindingly bizarre array of flamboyant colors and patterns. A barrel-chested firebreather, his beard licked with flame, spat green deer and purple tigers from his mouth, and the fiery cats went about hunting down their prey before wisping out of existence.
They continued in this way down the street before reaching a narrow brick building, unpainted, with a little green door. The wooden sign above the door proclaimed “De Luca Brothers, Artisans”.
The bell tinkled as they stepped through the door. It felt like walking between worlds: there was none of the noise or color of outside. Just a quiet little shop, with clean wooden shelves and golden light falling through the windows. Behind the counter sat a wrinkled old man, painting an icon with the still-steady hands of a master.
He looked up at them.
“Ah! Here for, the next batch, yes? I have them ready, four of them!” He ducked down behind the desk for a moment, coming back up with a small cardboard box.
Salah reached in and removed a palm-sized wooden pendant, three nodes smoothed and shaped to fit comfortably in the hand, with intricate engravings: bands of miniscule text wrapping around it in one continuous sentence.
“I'm going to look around for a bit.”
“Okay.”
Mary-Ann wandered through the small aisles, looking over the hand-carved crucifixes and beaded rosaries and icons of the saints. To the untrained eye glancing at the shelves, they would have noticed nothing out of the ordinary. Closer inspection though, revealed a few oddities: Jesus was very clearly not white and significantly more torn up, the Virgin was not particularly beautiful, and Anthony and Francis were accompanied by Kerrin of the Cog and Opun the Steel-Speaker. Mary-Ann knew a whole lot of people who would be very happy to burn that out of the records. The Breaking and the Brass Gospel was a touchy subject with the canonists.
Near the back, she came to a stop in front of one on the larger paintings. A deep green of forest was interspersed with rays of gold that pierced the leaves. An old tree by a stream, twisted from age, a mossy boulder by its gnarled roots, upon which sat a girl on the cusp of womanhood, leaning back against the trunk of the tree. She was in armor, dirty and dulled with dried blood and ash. One hand rested on the pommel of a rusting greatsword, its point buried in the soil. The other hand was curled up in her lap, useless, the skin blackened and cracked. Her face was scarred and burned, ashen grey and fleshy red, one cheek just a few strips of shriveled flesh exposing half a skull grin. What remained unharmed showed the traces of a young face, one that had had all delicacy rubbed out from it. One eye was gone: the other was green, reflecting the forest. Her hair, what hair there was left, was a dirty brown-blond, rough-shorn and short. She did not seem out of place in the forest: her expression was peaceful, at rest.
The notecard next to the painting proclaimed, in small, delicate cursive, “Il Trionfo della Vergine Joan”
“She looks a bit like you,” Salah said from behind her.
“I guess. If you squint a bit. You're just trying to shoehorn some symbolism in here, aren't you?”
“Please, what is there to shoehorn? It fits your foot quite nicely.”
The bell tinkled. Mary-Ann paid it no mind, and continued to inspect the painting. She did have a rainy day fund, and she had to admit that she liked it. A certain wall in her apartment was obnoxiously blank, and this would definitely fill it…
“Massive Moloch, swimmer in the concrete ocean!”
Mary-Ann spun around, her eyes confirming what the voice had said. It was the same man. A dirty, disheveled man, with dirt in his stringy grey beard, grime in the creases of his face, tobacco-stained teeth, plastic bags taped to his patched coat. Underneath the coat, a stained t-shirt bearing a red panda with x-ed out eyes, hung by an umbilical cord.
A tail, and with the content of the ramblings taken into consideration…
“This guy's ahwecky.” Mary said. “Might be ex.”
Salah nodded. The beggar wobbled forward towards them, clearly intoxicated.
“Munching Moloch! Crunching Moloch! Moloch in the bones and Jones!”
Mary-Ann weighed the possibilities. He might be insane, or he might only be temporarily insane, or he might just be acting. All three were just as likely.
“Are you going to try talking to him?” Salah said.
“Yeah. I'll drop him if he tries anything. Keep an eye out for friends.”
“Right.”
Mary-Ann looked the man in the eye. One of his was lazy.
“Hey man. No need to turn this into trouble, right?”
“Moloch the Mean! Moloch the Monkey!”
“How about we find you some place to stay for the night, get a good meal. Food sound good to you?”
“Mother Moloch! Master Moloch!”
“Come on, man, let's go outside.”
“Master Moloch, Master Moloch, am I cool yet?”
An arm lashed out. Glint. Knife. Thrust. Crazy-eyes.
Mary-Ann knocked his knife hand to the side. Three punches: stomach, chest, nose. The man stumbled back, blood pouring from his nose. Once again to the face. He dropped to the floor.
She picked him up by the collar.
“Can you understand what I'm saying at all? Who are you, and what are you doing here?
The man coughed. Blood poured from his nose, thin and black. Inklike.
“Moloch the magnanimous. Moloch the hungry.”
His body went black and splashed to the floor. His clothes collapsed around the puddle that sank through the tiles.
Mary-Ann stood up, holding a ratty, filthy t-shirt in one hand.
—
Mary-Ann sat on her bench, holding two slices of pizza on a paper plate. Plain cheese. The sun had gone down, but with the city lights, that didn't matter much at all.
Next to her on the bench were two cardboard boxes, one flatter than the other. She had decided to buy the painting. People walked past the little pizzeria, cars drove past, and she watched.
Footsteps, and then Salah was next to her. She offered him the plate, and he took a slice.
They watched people for a time, quiet. It was a moment where there was more to be said between friends with simple silence than with words. The noise was out there, the world was out there. The bench was peace.
A thought bubbled up in her mind, strong yet gentle. She didn't chase it away. It had been returning ever more often of late. The hollowness was still inside her, but she had endured, like she had promised, slowly creeping from the bunker she had constructed around herself. This thought didn't want her to be slow: it wanted her to run out the door, arms wide open to the world. Letting it hurt her. Letting it hurt her because the pain was worth the end.
She knew the world. She'd seen what people could do. She knew it was ugly and dirty and polluted and foul and dark, and the lights were few and far between.
It wasn't good to face it alone. Alone, the light was too weak to face the darkness.
"Hey, Salah, how long have we been working together?"
"I think…let's see…ten months, I believe."
"Feels like a lot longer."
"It does."
A bicyclist rode past.
"You know, I've been doing a lot of thinking. Since the party. And there's something I've been meaning to ask you."
Mary-Ann's hand reached out a bit, coming to rest on top of Salah's. What was it on his face? Surprise? Confusion?
She threw open the door. The world waited, teeth bared, and she didn't care.
“Salah, will you marry me?”

« People Look East | Hub | The Place Where Two Rivers Meet »


Saint Helene's Hospital didn't appear on any maps. You couldn't Google it or look it up in the Yellow Pages. The only way to find it was to know that it was there.
Extracting himself and his packages from the Smart Car was an exercise in contortionism. The man called "Bullfrog" had driven golf carts with more leg room. On the other hand, it was better than a big-ass SUV that guzzled gas like a fish and handles like a drunk hippo. The day I can buy a car without worrying if it has enough room to carry the entire team plus tactical gear is the day I'll know I'm well and truly retired…
Willow trees lined the red-brick path that led from the parking lot up to the hospital grounds proper, shading it from the midday sun. The dappled sunlight on the red brick reminded Bullfrog of a leopard's hide. Can a leopard change his spots? Why would he want to?
A young boy's delighted laugh broke through the silence, accompanied by the sound of leaf-springs hitting concrete and the boy himself: hale and happy, with bright white teeth that struck a strong contrast to his dark, coffee-black skin. "Monsieur Grenouille!" he shouted.
"Bonjour, Alain," Bullfrog said cheerfully, then continued in French: "It's good to see you again!" He picked up the young boy and embraced him in a fond, strong hug.
"Alain! Alain! Where has that troublemaker gone t— OH! Mister Grenouille! I didn't know you'd arrived!" The harried young woman in the nun's habit adjusted a wayward lock of hair behind her ear. "I'm sorry, sir. It's these new legs. Since the moment he got them, he's been running all over the place. We can't keep track of him any more."
Alain's legs had been amputated below the knee. When Bullfrog first met him, they had been replaced by twisted, crudely attached tendrils of scrap metal and steel. These carbon-fiber running blades suited him much better. "It's all right, sister. Alain is just making up for lost time, is all."
"They're the same kind that Oscar Pistorius uses!" Alain said excitedly. "Some day I'll run with him in the Olympics!"
"Is that so? A good goal to strive for. Run along now, Sister Amelié and I need to talk." Bullfrog put the boy back down and watched him dash back up the path, happily. He was joined by a one-armed girl and a boy who wore sunglasses and carried a red-and-white cane. "He seems happy," Bull observed.
"The amnestics are doing their work. Sometimes he has nightmares, but most days he's like this: excited, happy… ordinary. We'll be ready to place him with an adoption agency soon, then our work here will be done."
"You've done well," Bullfrog reassured her. "But… those legs. They must be expensive. Especially for a growing boy."
"They're hand-me-downs," Sister Amelié admitted, "adjusted to fit him. UNICEF's black fund helped with the rest." She sighed and shook her head. "But you're not here to talk about Alain's legs, are you?"
"No," Bullfrog admitted. "Is Doctor Lai around?"
"I'll take you to see him."

"Brigitte's case is unique," the older man explained. "She was, by far, the most heavily altered of that madman's test subjects who still maintains her own will. Thankfully, we got to her before the brain alterations were completed. Unfortunately, it means that her treatment will take longer. We can't just remove the foreign matter and replace it with Zero-Generation technology. Replacing her jaw alone will have to wait until she reaches her adult size, not to mention the need for lifelong hormone therapy… still, we were ready to begin removing some of the more extreme alterations, when this problem came up."
"Had she ever been violent before?" Bullfrog asked.
"It's inaccurate to claim she's being violent now," Dr. Lai admitted. "She hasn't tried to actively hurt anyone. She's just… uncooperative. The changes to her nervous system make her impossible to anesthetize. When we try to restrain her physically, she resists until the risk of injury to herself is so great we have to stop. Finally, we asked her if there was anything we could give her in exchange for her cooperation. She said she wanted to talk to you. We agreed not to remove any more of her alterations until you had the chance."
"Yeah. Sorry about the wait, doctor. There was this thing with the U.S. military that kinda blew up. Paperwork and hearings for months…"
"The 'Project Pandora' incident?"
"You know I can't confirm nor deny that, doc."
"Well, you're here now. Do you want me to go in with you?"
"Nah. I'll handle this one myself."
"I'll be waiting inside, then. Call me if you need me."

It was a very nice garden, with high walls covered in climbing roses. Four wedge-shaped plots radiated from the center, each one dominated by a different flower: pansies, marigolds, tansies and violets. Willow trees provided shade, their supple boughs swaying in the afternoon breeze.
Brigitte sat at the edge of the fountain, wearing a yellow sundress and holding a pure white flower. She stared at the blossom in rapt wonder before handing it to Bullfrog as he sat down next to her. "pretty colors," she said, in a voice that buzzed and crackled like an old AM radio.
Colors? Oh. Right. She can see in ultraviolet. Bullfrog took the flower from her, suppressing a shudder as his fingers brushed against the crudely formed steel talons that had replaced her arm below the elbow. "It's very pretty, yes," he agreed, admiring the pure white petals.
"pretty colors," Brigitte repeated. Her one normal eye sparkled happily. It looked grotesque compared to the horror of wires and steel that was the left side of her face. Her upper lip (all that was left of what had once been her mouth) moved in what was probably meant to be a smile.
Bullfrog cleared his throat and looked away. "Mister Petomaine and Miss Chaton were sad they couldn't come. But they sent gifts." The broad-brimmed white hat he took from the hatbox was a bit too big for her, but she would (he hoped) grow into it. And the look of delight as she picked up and hugged the doll was impossible to fake. For a moment, she looked like an ordinary girl, delighting in new gifts given to her by people who cared very much.
Then the blinking device that had replaced her jaw clicked and whirred and turned over. Oh well, Bullfrog thought. It was nice while it lasted… "Doctor Lai says that you've been refusing your treatments," he said. "He says you've been…" He paused and reconsidered saying a bad girl. Who was he to make a moral decision in this instance? "… stubborn," he concluded. "Is something wrong?"
Brigitte hugged the doll a little tighter and bowed her head, hiding her eyes under the brim of her new hat. "doctor lai says that the surgery will make brigitte normal again," she said. "is that true?"
He did, did he? A cruel lie to tell to a child… and a transparent one, too. "No," Bullfrog admitted. "It can't make you normal. But it can make you… ordinary. Just like Alain or Claire or Denis. Maybe they don't have legs, or an arm, or eyes, but they can still live a good, long, fulfilling life."
He was surprised when Brigitte shook her head violently, causing her hat to slip off her head. "brigitte does not want to be ordinary. bad things happen to ordinary people and they don't stop it."
Oh. Bullfrog quickly re-evaluated the situation. "Bad things happen to special people too," he pointed out. "It's better to be ordinary."
"chaton is not ordinary. chaton does not let bad things happen."
Ah. Bullfrog grimaced as his mind returned to a place of rust, blood, and gunpowder smoke. Team Sparkplug had only been assigned to do the infiltration and assessment, but after what they had found in that abandoned bunker, all three of them had begged to participate in the takedown. It was just blind luck that Kitten had been the one to see the clockwork-and-flesh monstrosities come out of the walls. Little (then-nameless) Brigitte had recieved a front-row seat to a Grade A Psycho-Killer Kitten Rampage. I'd always felt the bit with the crowbar was over the top.
"brigitte is special. brigitte can do things other people cannot. brigitte does not want to be ordinary." the little girl insisted. "brigitte wants to help."
Would they let it happen? Brigitte was borderline: her deviations might be too far from baseline to fall under the GOC's "Special Assets Directive." She might end up back on the "harmless misfits" list - Tier 1 response, monitor but do not engage. Could the GOC use someone who could read a CD-ROM from the pattern of lights on its underside?
This isn't my decision to make.
Bullfrog picked up the white hat and put it back on the little girl's head. "I'll see what I can do," was all he said.

"Yook? Would you mind explaining this?"
"It looks like a standard request for access to Downstream Technology. Personnel enhancements, specifically," the smiling man said.
"… it's a request for personnel enhancements… for an eight-year-old girl," D.C. Al Fine sighed. "The U.N. just issued a statement condemning the use of child soldiers in warfare, and one of your Team leaders is requesting augmentation for a little girl? How do you think that makes us look?"
"Mmmmm. From what I can see, this is a request for a twelve-year course of treatment. Most of the alterations are cosmetic in nature - replacing Gen Zero artificial limbs with Gen Plus Two, that sort of thing. Most of the ones that aren't are "leave in place" orders for existing augments. She can opt out at any time, and nothing that could be construed as combat-oriented is scheduled until after she turns eighteen. This all looks above-board to me."
"The Security Council will crucify us. The Americans are still bitter over losing that entire SEAL team. They're not going to look favorably upon the "U.N.'s personal stooges" building up paratech while they're still forbidden to do so by international treaty."
"You know," the smiling man said, off-handedly. "You've been doing a lot of complaining, but I haven't heard you say 'No.'"
"I just wanted you and your team to know just how irritating this is," D.C. explained. She signed her name on the dotted line and threw the page into Assistant Director "Ukelele's" face. "Go on. Build your goddamn super-cyborg. See if I care."
"Yes, ma'am," Ukelele said, grinning. He put his own signature (an alto clef symbol) in the appropriate space, then tossed the form into his outbox. Shine, little girl, shine.
Then he went back to doing his quarterly budget request. Even when it came to saving the world, it was best to dot every i and cross every t.