<< Back to part two
I almost screamed at the sudden thud. Cyrus threw open the little kitchen window and pushed me into the cupboard below the sink.
"What are you d—?"
"Shh," he said, shutting the cupboard. I heard some shuffling and another cupboard closing.
It was a long while before the thudding gave way to a horrible splintering sound like several femurs snapping, followed shortly by shouting and innumerable footsteps. I could see the feet of the monsters through the tiny gap between the cupboard's doors, and I held my breath, afraid it would give away my hiding place.
I heard them tear open the pantry, talking amongst themselves.
"That girl must have gutted these guys," said one of them disbelievingly, probably referring to the dead kitchen workers. He snickered. "Bitch."
"And then jumped, maybe," said another. The fridge door opened, the pantry, one of them turned on the sink presumably for a drink of water. Most of them left—as far as I could tell, there were a few lingering, picking through the room for whatever food they could find.
The first cupboard opened, then the second. Almost the third, where Cyrus hid. I rattled the doors of my cupboard gently. Whoever it was out there paused and was still, no rustling of clothes against skin or the thump of sneakers on tiles. They slowly opened the cupboard right next to mine, and presumably seeing nothing, straightened up and left.
Cyrus opened my cupboard. "They broke the door," he whispered.
"Is that what that noise was?"
"Yeah. Come on. It's not safe here."
Was it really safe anywhere? I wanted to say. We stepped over the remains of the door. The handle looked as if it had been bashed with something, and someone must have elected to use something heavy to just break the whole door open like balsa wood. I made a mental note to stay away from anyone carrying heavy things in case they would break me like balsa wood too.
The cafeteria was empty, and the hallway was no different, but we took a detour towards the lab on the second floor just in case.
Almost half of the lab had been torn away during the sleep. To my relief, the biology class's pet snake, Rob, was intact and sleeping in his tank, though it was a little too close to the edge for comfort. I pulled him out and draped him around my shoulders. He squirmed a little, but soon settled down and went back to sleep, his head somewhere in the vicinity of my jacket's hood. I observed the fog at the edge of the lab—I assumed the nothingness looped. I felt like if I jumped, I'd fall forever, occasionally seeing the school fly past me while tumbling through the air at terminal velocity, the bottom of the cliffs sort of dissolving into the fog at some point before the school appeared again. That was stupid, of course, we were still on Earth. If we weren't, we wouldn't be able to breathe.
"We are still on Earth," I said, turning to look at Cyrus, "aren't we?"
He just shrugged and scratched the back of his head with the switchblade.
"We'll find a way down, right?" I said. "We'll be okay?"
"I don't know."
Continued in Interference >>


I climb up to the edge, and pull myself over to the next space. I really wish I could have studied more, there's so much here I don't understand.
Quiet, now I'm used to that. Most of the time, I hear nothing, although I do get a bit of ambiance in some of the spaces I step into. But even then, those few noises only serve to accentuate the soundless depths. It's been too quiet for too long, and no one has said or done anything to me ever since the lights went out.
God, I've no idea how long it's been, time's just been meaningless, really. I don't sleep, I don't eat, although I can taste things when given a chance. All I know is what they let me know, really, and part of me wonders if this is another one of their damned games. I do know they were pissed when I found out what was really going on the first time, but for whatever reason, they decided against terminating me. Small favors.
I guess I should be thankful, though, but I do wonder whether there's any point to my current existence. Dr. Nguyen says that there's always a point for existence, but he's out there and I'm stuck here. A series of infinite planes, all alike. A grue would be welcome.
No, this one's different, I can see that. I walk over to view the plane, and the Words make themselves readily apparently. I read them silently, trying to figure out what it all means.
“SCP-001 has left its location. The Gate is Open.” Gate? What gate? What the fuck? I continue to read the report, and phrases like “XK-Class” and “Patros-Omega” come up, but “end of the world scenario” is pretty damned clear.
Either this is really some elaborate game done by the Foundation, or I am well and truly alone. I can't escape, I can't kill myself, I'm just going slightly mad. I giggle at the thought that I managed to miss out on Judgement Day, and now I find myself in an ironic hell.
Fuck, Cassy, what do I do now?


Item #: SCP-173
Object Class: Euclid
Special Containment Procedures: Item SCP-173 is to be kept in a locked container at all times. When personnel must enter SCP-173's container, no fewer than 3 may enter at any time and the door is to be relocked behind them. At all times, two persons must maintain direct eye contact with SCP-173 until all personnel have vacated and relocked the container.
Description: Moved to Site-19 1993. Origin is as of yet unknown. It is constructed from concrete and rebar with traces of Krylon brand spray paint. SCP-173 is animate and extremely hostile. The object cannot move while within a direct line of sight. Line of sight must not be broken at any time with SCP-173. Personnel assigned to enter container are instructed to alert one another before blinking. Object is reported to attack by snapping the neck at the base of the skull, or by strangulation. In the event of an attack, personnel are to observe Class 4 hazardous object containment procedures.
Personnel report sounds of scraping stone originating from within the container when no one is present inside. This is considered normal, and any change in this behaviour should be reported to the acting HMCL supervisor on duty.
The reddish brown substance on the floor is a combination of feces and blood. Origin of these materials is unknown. The enclosure must be cleaned on a bi-weekly basis.

“What the fuck are you looking at?” John Avery, presently known as D-5933, shouted at the other D-class in the cell.
“SCP-173. What the fuck are you looking at!” came the reply. This worried John, as he was staring intently at SCP-173, and the other D-class was standing behind John, facing the other direction. Then John heard the worst sound any human being had ever heard; a sneeze, coming from six inches behind his head. For a second John remembered an episode of Mythbusters he had seen before being arrested, before coming here, where they tested to see if someone could sneeze with his eyes open. He never saw the end.
There was a sick, wet thud, a horrible ripping sound, and a scream that ended too quickly. “Fu-” John managed to get out.

SCP-173 Addendum 1
On ██/██/████, SCP-173 appeared to multiply, producing two identical copies. Two D-class personnel were killed. It is unknown how this process occurred. Each instance of SCP-173, now labeled SCP-173-1 and SCP-173-2 is to be moved to individual cells each following original containment procedures.
SCP-173 Addendum 2
On ██/██/████, a second multiplication event occurred. SCP-173-1 through -4 are to be each contained as per original containment procedures. Objects reclassed as Keter.
SCP-173 Addendum 3
Security breach occurred on ██/██/████. Assuming a simple geometric progression, at least 61 copies of SCP-173 are as of now unaccounted for. It is unknown how they replicated so fast, or how they replicate at all. Video evidence of the containment breach shows multiple instances of SCP-173 working in unison across multiple cells to achieve the breach. Most of the instances still in captivity appear to have formed a 'rear guard', blocking Foundation agents from pursuing other instances. It is theorized that SCP-173 has a hive intelligence, where intelligence scales with number of nearby copies. See revised security procedures for containing SCP-173 copies.
Revised Special Containment Procedures
All copies of SCP-173 are to be contained in form-fitting metal containers and sent using SCP-███ to the now abandoned Foundation facility on the moon. They are to be fitted with tracking collars that will detect if any of them leave the moon.
SCP-173 Addendum 4
SCP-173 has caused a breach of secrecy for the SCP Foundation. Estimates at this time are roughly 500,000 civilian deaths across North America in the last 48 hours due to SCP-173, and hundreds of thousands of sightings and pieces of video evidence. Major television news programs have obtained video of SCP-173, and are providing instructions for avoiding instant death. Dr. Phillips Mathews Clef Gears Kondraki Bright is in charge of the containment.
SCP-173 Addendum 5
SCP-173 has besieged and destroyed 4 Foundation facilities near simultaneously in the last 24 hours. Each instance shows the characteristic strength exhibited in the original, and thousands working in unison are capable of ripping open concrete bunkers and compromising foot-thick steel doors. Research is ongoing to find a way to combat this threat.
Personal Log of Dr. Bright
Date: ██/██/████
I've been killed thirty-seven times in the last week. They can smell me, somehow, regardless of what body I'm in. The majority decision of the remaining O5s is that this is an XK, and they're gonna deal with the problem, or the Russians are. They're evacuating this base, which means there won't be a single Foundation scientist anywhere in the New World. They say they're gonna try to evacuate the surviving civilians, but I doubt it. There can't be more than a couple hundred people in all of North America.
The only good news is that about 150 of the bastards teamed up and ripped SCP-682 apart. Brought a smile to my face.
Revised Special Containment Procedures
Containment Zone X1, formerly North and South America, is to be denied access. Following saturation nuclear bombing on ██/██/████, number of SCP-173 instances has been reduced. All available Foundation resources are to be redirected to monitoring the ocean, to ensure the integrity of Containment Zone X1. Foundation Adjuncts from national navies are to perform around the clock patrols and sonar sweeps. Detected instances are to be contained and removed to SCP-███ for transport to the lunar containment site.
SCP-173 Addendum 6
Verified sighting of SCP-173 in ████, Wales, The United Kingdom. Nuclear bombardment authorized and executed. No survivors.


<< Back to part one
I hid in the boiler room when the panic started. I would sleep a little, and wake up whenever someone tried opening the door. I'd hold it shut until they gave up, and I would go back to sleep, and it would start again. I would occasionally leave to take a piss but I don't know how long I was in there. I only left because I really wanted some food.
The other half of the school was gone, cut cleanly as if a giant kitchen knife had chopped it off. With it went half the girls' locker room, one of the science labs, the back wall of the gym, most of the sophomores and seniors, and a sizable chunk of the library. I only noticed because I checked the library for anyone I knew, and a lot of it had just gone. It was empty save for one of the library assistants, curled up next to a bookshelf. I left.
Passing through the senior hall on the way to the cafeteria was the longest run I'd ever taken. It didn't start as a run, just a quick walk. I stopped when I heard screaming coming from one of the classrooms. I peeked inside—it one of the senior English classes, and Miss Ladia was trying to control them. I watched a group of seniors advance on her as one mass, and I watched them violate her, I watched as they took turns and I watched redness pool around them all. They noticed me next.
I ran, I heard them behind me, and I swear I ran for hours, tearing through air as thick as water, filled with their jeers and grasps at my arms, only wrenched out of their grip by the grace of adrenaline. Every time I blinked the cafeteria door seemed farther away and the mob nipping at my back seemed closer, and I screamed at them, "no, no"; they didn't understand me, they were no longer human. I crashed through the door and slammed it shut. I was hardly a match for one senior, let alone two or three or ten, they forced the door open and knocked me to the floor. Indistinct faces filled my vision until something snagged my wrist.
"Come on," said my captor, practically dragging me into the kitchen. I screamed at him too before realizing who it was.
When I'd caught my breath, I looked over the place. I recognized the cafeteria workers, all lying on the ground with great red wounds in their stomachs, and I recognized Cyrus, locking the door.
"What's going on?" I said, my gaze fixed on the kitchen workers. "Did you…did you do that?"
He sat down on the floor, massaging his forehead. "No. I just took the keys —" he nodded in the direction of the door, indicating the mob, " —before they could. They'd try to take the food."
"Food," I murmured. "Is there any left?"
"Yeah, take what you want…"
I stepped over the kitchen workers towards the big industrial fridge. There wasn't much variety in school food, and I suspect it will be that way until the end of humanity, but I was so thirsty I'd take anything drinkable I could get.
"So," said Cyrus, raising his voice a bit over the ruckus in the cafeteria, "where were you hiding? It's been almost three days since I last saw you."
"The boiler room," I said after settling down with a carton of chocolate milk, one of those packaged burritos, and a cookie. "It's really cramped and kind of musty but no one ever looked in there…"
We were silent for a while. Cyrus looked absolutely exhausted, like he'd been up all night guarding our only food. He had a switchblade in one hand and a couple keys in the other.
"Where are all the teachers?" I said.
He shrugged. "Some of them are dead. Some of them just disappeared." He paused, looking at the ceiling in thought. "I did see one of them jump. That one freshman science teacher."
I knew immediately who "that one" was—the one who kept a boa constrictor in a tank in his classroom. While Mr. Darrick was beyond help, I wondered if the snake was okay.
"I think I watched Miss Ladia die," I said. My voice turned hollow as I realized what had happened. "Those guys that were chasing me, they did it. I should have done something."
More silence. I guess it was the closest thing to a funeral the dead would have.
"You're called Wednesday, right?"
I nodded, and was about to ask if I'd gotten his name right when something slammed hard into the kitchen door.
Continued in part three >>


It started January 5th, about nine in the morning.
Mrs. Foster was explaining factoring polynomials to us, and I was exhausted. I wanted desperately to go back to bed and sleep. Too soon after Christmas break to start thinking about math. I glanced out our window—the fog was still kind of like trying to look through a glass of milk. The sun hadn't burned it all away yet.
Just before I was going to look away, the windows exploded in a spray of glass. I heard Mrs. Foster scream, but it was cut short. She had fallen. One by one my classmates did the same. I felt my sleepiness intensify a hundredfold, and I fought it, standing up, but it was too much. The air shimmered, and I didn't dream.
As far as I know, I was the second to wake. The first to wake was the quiet boy, Cyrus, who sat behind me in the last row. I stood up and looked over the others. He was by the broken window, clearing away the glass, and for a moment I saw his palms, cut up by his efforts.
I stepped over still-sleeping classmates. "What happened?"
He shrugged.
"Here," he said. "Look outside."
I did.
"I don't see anything."
"I don't either."
He picked up a large shard of glass from the ground.
"Watch."
He dropped it outside. I watched the glass shard fall. It kept going, and going, turning into a pinprick before vanishing altogether.
The other kids began to stir. Mrs. Foster was the last to rise.
"Mrs. F," I said. I stopped there, not knowing what to say. She stepped gingerly over the glass and looked out the window. She didn't speak—just looked out there, her grip tightening on the jagged glass still stuck to the window frame.
I left the classroom, feeling hollow and as though I had blinders at the sides of my eyes, at the same time, lucid, every sound and breath and footstep amplified, every fiber of the carpet and every scratch on the walls magnified. I passed by them, and ran down the hall and the stairs and the other hall until I reached the front doors of the school. They seemed enormous, and I so small, I pulled them open; my hands seemed so far away from me.
Below me was a sheer drop, like a cliff. The bottom of it was lost in the dense fog.
"I think I'm dreaming," I said.
"I think I'm dreaming," I said again.
"I think I'm DREAMING," I said, shouting the last word. My voice dissolved into the air, having nothing to bounce off of, and I didn't wake up.
I returned to my classroom. Cyrus was sitting by the door reading his Bible. The others were sort of mixed in their reactions—some girls cried in the corner, some boys simply looked numb, some other boys dropped things from the window to watch them fall.
"Find anything?" said Cyrus.
"Come look," I said, gesturing down the hall.
By now a few kids had begun to cluster around the door. I elbowed my way to the front.
"I'm having a dream," said a girl next to me matter-of-factly. "Watch, I'm going to fly."
She leaped from the door, ignoring the screams coming from her classmates. That was the last I saw of her.
Continued in part two >>


“…in three, two, one, mark,” said the pilot as the ship blinked in from hyperspace. “All systems normal, and… there's the landmark beacon. It looks like we're ready for the nineteenth system when you are, captain.”
“Wonderful,” responded the captain. “Bring up the cloaking device, start heading in then, standard trajectory, you know the routine.”
A moment later, the intercom on the bridge squawked to life. “All of our guests are showing stable vital signs, captain. Shall I wake the ones in stasis?”
“Yes, please do, doctor,” the captain replied into the intercom, “and also let them know we'll be nearing the first gas giant in a few hours.”

“Captain, you need to see this,” exclaimed the pilot without looking up from the display. “I've checked this several times but….”
“What, pilot?”
“It's the satellite of the blue rock. It's… gone.”
“Gone?” repeated the captain incredulously. “The great white satellite? How can it just be gone?”
“I… have no idea, captain, but it's not showing up anywhere in any spectrum.”
The captain was silent a moment before speaking again. “What about the third planet itself, pilot?”
“It's still there,” responded the pilot while scanning through multiple readouts. “There seems to be a lot of energy coming from it, but we're still too far out to get any details.”
“Hmm… our itinerary has us going to the rocky planets soon enough. Continue on toward the outermost giant, but keep your sensors on the third planet. I want to know what's happened to its satellite, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. I need to let them know back home what we know so far.”
“What about the guests?”
The captain groaned. “I have to let them know as well, but you and I both know they'll be disappointed if something's happened to the biggest draw in the system.”

The rendezvous with the outermost giant came and went without incident, and it had been several hours since the ship had changed course heading toward the ringed giant. The anticipation amongst the guests was more subdued than usual on approaching the sixth planet, and the fate of the third planet and its satellite remained a popular topic of conversation for guests and crew alike.
On the bridge, the doctor and the pilot were poring over readouts from the ship's array of sensors, most of which had been directed toward the third planet. The captain was sitting nearby, reviewing updates on the ship and its contents, when he received a page on his private comm.
“The energy coming off the third planet is still off the scale across all spectra,” said the doctor. “It would be a miracle if anything were to have survived, no matter what actually happened in the first place.”
“All right, we'll check it out,” muttered the captain as the comm channel closed. “Pilot, bring up visuals of the red rock. I've gotten reports that several guests have seen something unusual in that direction through their scopes. Something tiny, but not moving like any sort of pebble.”
As the pilot worked to bring the visuals up, the doctor started calling up sensor data from the region of the red rock. A moment later, a complex sensor image of the fourth planet appeared on the main viewscreen, and it wasn't long before the doctor spoke up.
“I've found it, in the sensor logs, which would put it about… there,” declared the doctor, pointing to a spot on the viewscreen. Instantly the image changed as the pilot zoomed in on that spot. The doctor rechecked the sensor log, pointed to another spot, and the pilot zoomed in again.
After the fourth zoom, they saw it: a tiny green dot in the starfield. The pilot centered the view on the dot and zoomed in again, giving the crew their first good look at the object. It looked like a green ship, but much smaller than even the escape pods on the ship. It also appeared to be pointed toward the ship, and the crew could see a large jet of green vapor apparently coming from the rear of the object.
“It looks to be fifteen to twenty feet long, all told, and maybe five feet tall,” reported the doctor. “And it appears to be headed for us on an intercept course.”
“Our cloak is still up, correct?” responded the captain, receiving affirmation from the pilot. “Then how can it pierce our cloak? None of the native sapients in this system should be able to do that! Unless….”
The captain pulled up a file on the third planet and jumped to the section on native lifeforms. A moment later, the captain said, “The sapients from the third planet are generally five-and-a-half to six feet tall. Even with just one crewmember, that's awfully cramped in there, and there would be very little room left over for support systems….”
“Captain!” the pilot called out. “Come look at this!”
On the viewscreen, the green object had extended a tubular structure from its back right, pointing several degrees to the right of straight back. A second later, a second green jet emanated from the end of the tube, causing the object to start turning slightly to its left.
“Captain, if I didn't know better, I would swear there were claws at the end of that exhaust tube,” said the doctor.
“Doctor, I think you may be right,” responded the captain. “I don't think that's a ship. I think it's a beast of some kind.”
“How can that be possible?” asked the doctor. “There is nothing in the records for this system about any type of native space beasts.”
“If I had to wager, I would guess it has something to do with what happened to the blue rock. In any case, we're not prepared to deal with a space beast, and I'd rather not bring it on board and endangering our guests if we can help it. Send a message back home and see how quickly they can get out here with a xenobiology detail. I'd recommend a well-armed one.”

The ship reached the ringed giant on schedule; by that time, the green beast had cleared the ring of pebbles on its way to the sixth planet. Since its discovery by the crew, the beast had gotten progressively faster, as its green jet appeared to have been functioning continuously, causing speculation as to how the beast was generating so much power. The doctor also noted that the beast gave off very little heat, though this was not unusual among known space beasts.
The itinerary had allotted ten dozen hours for guests to explore the ringed giant and its satellites, before heading to the inner planets, including the still highly-exothermic third planet. At its projected acceleration, the beast would have crossed the orbit of the great giant by then (though the fifth planet itself was on the other side of its star). If an encounter were imminent, the captain would prefer that it happen in a planetary system rather than in interplanetary space. Plus, reinforcements were on the way.
Before long, three ships blinked in from hyperspace just beyond a landmark beacon. Once they got their bearings and cloaked, one light warship headed for the sixth planet, while the other escorted the research ship on its way to the third planet. From the ringed giant, it appeared the beast did notice the newly-arrived ships, but did not otherwise immediately react. A few hours later, the beast cut off its green vapor jet, though it would still reach the sixth planet well before the warship.
After another dozen hours, three additional ships blinked in, two more light warships and a creature-capture vessel, all of which cloaked and started heading toward the ringed giant. The beast continued to hurtle toward the sixth planet, occasionally adjusting course with its rear legs.

It was several hours before the beast was expected to arrive at the ringed giant. Though many guests were out on the last scheduled excursions before the beast's arrival, many more were watching the live feed of the beast at several locations around the touring ship, particularly its massive observation deck. This video feed also went to the other six ships in the system, where it received similar interest from their respective crews, and was already on its way back home.
The beast extended its rear legs, and from its right leg came a thin jet of green vapor. The jet lasted only a few seconds, but was enough to start the beast slowly rotating. When the beast had rotated nearly ninety degrees, for the first time since it was discovered, it moved its head, curling it under its belly to be able to see where it was going. As it neared a half-rotation, a green jet appeared from its left rear leg, lasting a couple seconds. Several more pulses of jet intermittently came from each leg, till the beast's rear was pointing toward the ringed giant.
Suddenly, a massive green cloud of vapor erupted out of the rear of the beast, enveloping it as it continued to hurtle through space. Though somewhat indistinct through the vapor, the viewers of the video feed could still see the beast extend its rear legs straight ahead, adding two smaller vapor jets to the larger one. Two more vapor jets appeared a moment later.
By then, the observation deck was a din of cheers and applause, which increased sharply when the beast extended its front legs and opened its mouth, adding three more vapor jets.

The beast could now be seen unaided from the observation deck, and though its nine vapor jets had been counterthrusting almost continuously, it was still going too quickly to stop by the time it reached the planet. The touring ship itself had established orbit around the ringed giant, near the giant's largest white satellite. The leading warship was still many hours away, having yet to cross the toppled giant's orbit; the slower capture vessel's group trailed by at least two dozen hours.
As the guests and crews watched intently, the beast, still at full counterthrust, shot past the gas giant. The beast attempted to rotate as it passed the planet, but only succeeded in punching a hole in the planet's rings. The beast reoriented itself toward the sixth planet and opened all its vapor jets.
“It appears that the beast is intelligent,” said the doctor. “It looks like it tried to use the gravity well of the planet to slow itself.”
On the ship-to-ship comm, the biologist from the capture vessel said, “Yes, but I doubt that the beast is native to space. A native space beast should have more control over its speed and know when to start slowing down. Our beast overshot its apparent target, but it tried to compensate and it certainly appears to be trying to return.”
“It has managed to slow down quite a bit,” said the pilot, “and based on how much counterthrust it generated earlier, it should start coming back here in… about four hours.”
Four and a half hours later, the beast cut all its vapor jets except its main rear jet, though it was noticeably smaller than before. The beast uncurled and folded its limbs into itself, taking the form in which it was discovered, and slowly started heading back to the ringed planet.

The beast took its time returning to the ringed planet, leaving its jet on for only a few minutes. Thus, when it drifted back into visual range of the touring ship, the lead warship was itself only a few hours away from the ringed giant.
The sense of anticipation was building on the observation deck as the beast crossed the orbit of the great hazy satellite. The beast extended its front legs forward and turned on their jets to slow down further, drifting very slowly towards the touring ship. The crew of the ship was anxious but alert, ready to defend or flee the moment the word came down.
Moments before it reached the ship, the beast unfolded its legs and relaxed its body, finally looking more like a beast than a ship to its attentive audience. The crowd could see the beast had six legs, a neck at least a foot long, and a thin tail, and the “hull” of the ship turned out to be a series of articulated chitinous shells. The beast appeared to stretch its legs as it drifted toward the touring ship.
The beast drifted over the window of the observation deck, grabbed onto a support arch outside the window, and positioned itself to look inside the window. For several minutes, the beast watched the crowd through the observation window, moving to different support arches to see the entire deck, while the guests and crew watched the beast in fascination. The beast then stopped and sat still for several more minutes before gliding off the observation window.
External sensors followed the beast as it skittered over the surface of the ship, tapping, sniffing, grasping outcroppings with its feet and its prehensile tail, even tasting the ship in a few places. Every so often the beast would stop and sit still as before, twice lying completely prostrate on the ship's hull. After a couple hours of exploring a small fraction of the ship's surface, the beast returned to the observation window to look in on the assembled crowd.

The beast had remained on the support arch watching the lead warship as it arrived at the sixth planet and took position alongside the touring ship. Once the warship was positioned, the beast glided over to it and began to explore its surface like it examined the touring ship before. As it did so, the warship launched a tiny probe to examine the beast itself. The beast watched the probe warily as it approached, but did not stop it. When satisfied with its exploration, the beast returned to its perch on the observation window of the touring ship, where it remained until the three other ships arrived.
Once the ships arrived and took up their positions, the beast glided over to examine the creature-capture vessel. As it did so, a cargo bay door opened on the capture vessel, exposing a large air lock. The beast came back round to the open air lock, waited several minutes eyeing the air lock, and slowly entered the air lock. A moment later, the cargo bay door closed with the beast still inside and examining its spacious confines.

After the unexpectedly smooth capture, the vessel and its escorts headed out to the nearest landmark beacon, while the touring ship started toward the inner planets. The research vessel was still many hours out from the third planet, but it had declared the hazardous region to be really tiny, extending out only twice the distance of its former satellite's orbit. The vessel also determined that nearly all of the mass of the satellite had fallen into the planet, and that most of the energy coming from the third planet appeared to have come from a very large number of fission reactions.
On the capture vessel, the biologist had discovered that the beast carried, though it seemed unaffected by, some type of primitive necrotizing contagion, one that most sophonts were already immune to. The beast had already shown signs of intelligence, so the biologist had started attempting to communicate with it, though the beast seemed uncomfortable around certain crewmembers. Otherwise, the beast appeared very powerful and highly adaptable, and smelled faintly, but distinctly, of mint.
Out past the landmark beacon, as the capture vessel prepared to blink into hyperspace, a small but unmistakable grin broke across the beast's face.


There is a gun in his hands. AR-15 automatic rifle (his mind supplies automatically), standard issue for new Agents or emergency armament, fairly new, pretty battered. He's familiar with this one, and likes it: it feels much more important than the others he's fired. Right now he's field-stripping it with practiced ease, and—
He freezes, his hands jerking in sudden horror. He is field-stripping a rifle, and he knows how to shoot it. He's never held a gun in his life! How—
“Fifty-five, Jim.” The voice comes from his left. Jim snaps his head around to stare, wildly, at the source. Ragged brown hair, a crumpled lab coat. It's Madeline, Dr. Madeline Vogler, of all people, sitting beside him on the park bench and cleaning her own gun with the same swift, automatic movements. She hasn't looked up.
”What?” he squeaks. “Madeline, what are you doing? You can't handle a gun, you're an engineer, you've never shot one in your life! What's happening?”
“Oh-fifty-five.” She cuts him off dully, glancing up from her work. Her gray eyes are dull, bruised with tiredness, and the fine lines on her brow were never that deep. The lab coat is a half-shredded montage of stains, and the name embroidered above the breast pocket isn't hers. “Remember agreeing that something wasn't round?”
Oh. He nearly chokes. SCP-055 certainly isn't round; Madeline and her team had confirmed it. It took them months, and many rounds of negation, but they learned a few important facts. The thing can't be remembered, not even indirectly, except for what it isn't. It isn't alive. It isn't safe — oh, God, it's not safe! And it isn't contained…
It isn't contained any more. And Jim doesn't remember very much of his recent history.
Panic floods Jim as he realizes what this means. How long has it been since he remembers doing anything? How long has it been since he's formed a lasting memory — since he was doing something that didn't involve 055?
Too long, he thinks. Madeline is a gaunt, ravaged shadow; he's not much better, he decides, looking down to take in his own frame. It takes a while to lose that much sleep. Some of the scars — new scars — must have taken weeks to heal.
And when did he learn to shoot a gun, least of all this gun? Now that he allows himself to look at it closely, warily accepting that he's familiar with such things, he can tell that even by Foundation standards it is not a normal weapon. The firing mechanism has been replaced with a jerry-rigged tangle of circuitry, fiberglass, crystals, and something like flower petals. There's something else at the base of the trigger; he squints at it, decides that it isn't important, and passes over it. The magazine is entirely too heavy and too blue, and it sloshes.
He forces himself to nod, finally answering Madeline's question. “What are we doing here? With the guns, and…” here he gestures vaguely at the strange mechanism, “that? On this bench, of all places?”
“I don't remember — ” and her eyes snap shut, pain flickering across her face — “but you said that I'd said that you'd… Never mind. You said we had to shoot something, and that we'd know what, when it was time.”
“I said? What about Agent Segel?” But the moment the name leaves his mouth, he knows. Madeline's look of bemused grief only confirms it. “She didn't make it, did she?”
“No. Nobody did.”
“Chen? Alex? Araya?” Madeline only shakes her head. “Kyle? At least tell me Kyle's okay? Damn!” He knows his voice is rising in anguish, and his eyes are blurring. His entire team — the entire staff of the Site? All of them?
“Nobody.” Madeline's eyes are suspiciously bright, too, but she hasn't taken them off her work. “Jim, we can't talk about it now.”
“But—”
“Shut up and let me explain!” Her fingers clench somewhere inside her gun. “We have to finish what we're doing and be ready when it gets here. I'm going to forget everything again in another minute or two, and you'll have to tell me, all right? There's no one else left to do it.”
That does quiet him. He looks back down at the half-disassembled gun in his lap. It needs to be put back together, now that he's cleaned it. His hands seem to know what to do; he starts sliding the pieces into each other.
She lets out a breath, going back to her own work. “Okay. We're in the park on the other side of Springfield from the Site. We don't want to go back there; I don't know why. There's nobody else in town, maybe nobody in the state. We've got supplies to last a few weeks stashed in the bushes next to you. We have to keep these guns in good condition, make sure the crystals don't tarnish and the petals stay alive, spend as much time on this bench as we can, and always be ready to attack. Got it?”
“That's all?”
“All you said last time, yeah.”
Jim nods numbly.
“Madeline?” he asks after a moment. “How long has it been?”
“A few weeks, I think. Long enough. My oldest scars are at least that old, and I haven't got anything newer than a week.”
Jim's own body bears out her assessment: he's got a few new aches, but nothing pressing. He considers them, looking up into the sky as he works. Their bench sits at the edge of an open athletic field, with summer-lush woods behind, but there are no birds. A football lies abandoned, one end crumpled inward, a few yards away. “How long will we be waiting?”
“As long as we need to.” She finishes reassembling her gun and hefts it briefly. There is something brittle and flinty in her movements. “I don't really know.”
Another pause. Jim stills his hands, resting them on his knees. The park's stillness is a lead weight against his temples. “And we're the last ones?”
“Maybe. As far as we know.” Madeline won't meet his eyes.
“Then this could be futile. 055 could already have won.”
Madeline whips around to glare at him, her whole posture suddenly lit with desperate ferocity. “Don't!” she snaps. “Don't talk like that! We can't think like that! We don't know anything else we can be doing — for Christ's sake, Jim, we can't remember ten minutes ago. We could be the last thing keeping the world alive, for all you know!”
“Okay!” He pulls his head back as if struck, raising his hands. “Okay. We'll stay. As long as we need to.”
“As long as we need to.” She gives a firm, sharp nod, a peck from a raptor beak. Jim doesn't dare contradict her.
Then she nods again, softer, and suddenly uncertain. Again, barely moving her head, staring around herself in sudden confusion. “Jim? What the — What are we doing here?”
Jim's throat clenches tight, stopping his voice and breath. She's forgotten again. Just as he will, in another few minutes.
“055, Madeline. Remember agreeing that something wasn't round?”


The Conception
Dr. Kald and Dr. Mann waited in the main chamber of 542's new accommodations, sitting in the lush chairs they had arranged for their charge.
It had taken them months to get access to 542, months yet to be made co-chairs of his case. They had wheedled and pleaded for the best accommodations for 542 they could from the Foundations. It had been worth it.
Dr. Mann purposely did not look at Dr. Kald. He glanced at the clock on the wall, and at the old-fashioned radio (really an MP3 player with Chirurg's favorite songs loaded into it), and occasionally at the set of medical encyclopedias lining the walls. He looked everywhere in the room except at the door to Chirurg's bedroom (he looked away bashfully) and at the other doctor (he looked away pointedly). Kald just glared at Mann.
They had both fallen for the old doctor. His wit, his charm, his large collection of organs… What wasn't there to love? So they had both done their best to woo the SCP, maintaining as much secrecy as they could (though surely the Foundation must be aware of their torrid affair). They had spent many fascinating hours with Herr Chirurg, drinking the finest wines, speaking of philosophy and art, and performing impromptu surgery on each other. It was bliss.
The only wrinkle was the presence of the other. Each wanted Chirurg for himself. Sharing was inconceivable. And tonight, they each secretly hoped, Chirurg would make his decision, and they could finally know if they had his love.
Finally, the door opened, and Chirurg stepped out. The two doctors savored his stooped gait, the delicate artistry of his scars, and the grace of his fingers as they caressed the doorknob.
"Ah, my darlings," the old surgeon said, a fond smile on his lips. "Tonight is a very important night for us. I have an announcement to make."
The two doctors held their breath. Surely their time had come at last. They both were certain that the other… the interloper would get their comeuppance at last.
"This is not a decision I come to lightly. It has taken a great deal of thought and soul-searching. However, I believe that I have come to a decision that is right for me. That is right for… us." Chirurg paused and cleared his throat, like a patriarch making a declaration before the entire family. "I have decided… we should have a child."
Dr. Kald blinked. "Vas?"
"Er, could you repeat that?" Dr. Mann said, unsure that he'd heard correctly.
"A child. A baby. My darlings, I think it is time we started a family." He sighed, long and heavy, his distended ribcage slowly expanding and contracting. "I have been so long without my dear Isabella, but I think she would want me to move on after all this time. She was good to me, but that was long ago, and it is time to think of the future."
"Ah. Well," Dr. Mann said. "That's… a large step, isn't it?"
"Ich…Ich mean, I yam honurrd, but… how?" Dr. Kald said.
"Ah, I thought you might ask that. It will be difficult, but we can do anything through the healing power of Science!" Chirurg said. "Now, let us consummate our love through microsurgery and genetic engineering."
"To the laboratory!" Dr. Mann said, his heart engaged by the old surgeon's enthusiasm.
"Vith all doo chaste," Dr. Kald said, momentarily forgetting his rival in the warm presence of his darling.
Within moments, the microsurgery tools were set-up, the genetic samples unfrozen, and the mysterious beakers and flasks of colorful fluids were bubbling merrily. Dr. Mann and Dr. Kald were happily splicing away at DNA.
"Now, we will take fifteen chromosomes from my darling Everett, fifteen from my beloved Josef, fifteen from myself, and one from my lost Isabella." Chirurg began the delicate process of combining the DNA into one complete set. It was a delicate process, requiring a steady, unwavering hand. His thin, multi-jointed digits went to work with a will, slowly wending their way into the very stuff of life, until he had completed his chromosomal work.
"Gentlemen," he said to his beloveds, "We have combined our genetic material successfully. Now we must raise it to gestation."
"Chow shall ve prosheed?" Dr. Kald asked.
"An artificial womb? A surrogate?" Dr. Mann suggested.
"No, no, that would spoil the magic of it," Chirurg said. "It must be one of us."
"Ah… perchaps Dr. Mann vud like ze honor?" Dr. Kald suggested.
Dr. Mann shook his head. "No, no, I couldn't. You should do it, Dr. Kald. I insist."
"Ah, I know my little darlings are so eager to make each other happy. But there can only be one womb. So… I will flip a coin. Heads, Mann, tails Kald." Chirurg reached into his pocket, pulled out an old, tarnished Deutschmark, and flipped it upward. The three of them watched as it spun, catching the light, and then landed with a sharp ringing.

Dr. Mann walked out with a certain heaviness of heart, saddened that he would not, after all, have Chirurg to himself. However, at least he had the consolation that he wouldn't be the one to carry the child. He had too much to do. He didn't have time to be a working mother.
He was so absorbed in his thoughts that he didn't notice the dark shape sneaking up behind him, not until he felt the sharp jab of the needle as it slid expertly into the meat of his buttocks. He started to turn, but then the world turned to cotton balls, and he thought it best to lay down and close his eyes.
When he woke up, there was a soreness around his lower regions, but given certain of his experiments, he thought nothing of it, and kept on with his day. It was over a month before the morning sickness began, and he realized what had been done to him.

Month 1
Dr. Kald was relaxing with the perfectly preserved body of a six-year-old when he heard a skittering in his room. He looked around, but didn't see anything. He shrugged, and began a new incision.
"Hello," said a voice. Dr. Kald looked around. It had sounded like Dr. Rights, but she was no where in sight.
"Bastard," said another voice. It sounded like Agent Yoric. But still, he didn't see anyone. He held his scalpel a bit tighter, for possible use as a weapon.
Suddenly, there was a pain in his leg. "Zum donnerwetter!" he said, spinning around. Then he fell as the leg collapsed from under him. He saw a crab scuttling away. Then another moved at him from the side. He lashed out with the scalpel, but it only bounced off the crab's carapace, and it scored a tiny cut on his wrist. His hand went limp. Others moved in, and he found himself quickly disabled with surgical precision.
"That's good, my little friends," Dr. Mann said, stepping into Dr. Kald's field of view. "That's right where I want him…"
Dr. Kald could only seethe inwardly as Dr. Mann began the transplant.

Month 2
Dr. Mann was sitting in his lab, happily reading the latest copy of Resurrectionist's Monthly (much better than that rubbish in the Gravedigger Times) when he heard an odd hissing sound. He looked around, trying to locate it. It seemed to him that it was coming from somewhere overhead. He started to walk over to his office to call maintenance when he detected an odd odor. Then he noticed his nose feeling a bit numb, and realized something was wrong. He was halfway to the door before he collapsed.
Dr. Kald walked in with a scalpel and a smile.

Month 3
Dr. Kald was writing a report on his latest research. It had been going well enough, though he was starting to grow bored of it. There was hardly any dissection or vivisection at all involved in the work. He sometimes thought his talents were being squandered. He licked the tip of his finger as he flipped the page. He paused. There was something off with the taste. He looked at the paper, seeing if perhaps he'd spilled something on it, or on his desk. Yes, there seemed to be some discoloration. He wondered what it might be, and whether it might have something to do with the purple kangaroo that had inexplicably shown up his lab.
As Dr. Kald explored better living through chemistry, Dr. Mann (showing some extra weight) made his way into the lab with a grim look and the autoscalpel humming.

Month 4
Dr. Mann was enjoying a good bath. The bubbles were just the right consistency and color (a sort of lime green) and he had his rubber ducky, Rinaldo, with its round doctor's reflector on its forehead. He began singing some of the better songs of the BeeGees, enjoying the bathroom's acoustics. Then he removed his snood for some basic mustache care. First he washed out the wax, letting the curls go from his whiskers, and then wetted them thoroughly. This accomplished, he took the bottle of mustache shampoo and opened the lid. As he did, there was an outrush of escaping gas. "Oh, bother," he said, as he passed into unconsciousness.
Dr. Kald stepped into the bathroom, a determined look in his eye.

Month 5
Dr. Kald was sitting in his room, waiting for something to happen. He'd known for weeks that Mann was coming sometime. It was inevitable. His only chance was to be prepared. He'd hardly stirred from his room for a week, waiting, just waiting for Mann to make his move.
There was a knock at the door. Dr. Kald narrowed his beady eyes. "Wer da?" he asked.
"Delivery," said the voice on the other side. It didn't sound like Mann…
Dr. Kald opened the door to find nothing but a large baby carriage. He looked around. There was no one in the hallway. He wondered if Mann could really think he was that foolish.
Five minutes later, he had his gasmask on, as well as gloves and a heavy coat. He wasn't about to let Mann drug him again.
He swept back the blanket on the pram to uncover what sort of mechanism powered the trap.
Dr. Mann, in swaddling clothes and a pacifier, kicked out, taking Dr. Kald in the chin and knocking him straight out.
Dr. Mann began to prep for surgery.

Month 6
Dr. Mann whistled as he pulled on the rubber gloves. It was time for a routine dissection. It was so fascinating to find out just how an SCP had killed someone. Had their kidneys liquefied? Their blood spontaneously released its oxygen? Or had their nervous system vanished entirely? It was always a delightful puzzle.
The corpse today seemed a little bloated, though he'd been told the man had died very recently. Bloating normally took several days. However, there was some clear distension in the belly region. Dr. Mann made a note of it, and then looked over the corpse's other features, marking down the lividity of the face, the color of the fingernails, the way the corpse's eyes kept spinning several inches out of their sockets. Finally, he got ready to make the incision.
As the skin slid open, a large boxing glove on a spring shot out, hitting Dr. Mann square in the face and knocking him onto his back.
Dr. Kald waddled into the morgue, glaring at the body of his rival.

Month 7
Dr. Kald walked down the hallway, wondering why he'd been summoned by Dr. Clef. He didn't want to leave the safety of his room, but he wanted even less to miss a meeting with the senior doctor.
He opened the door, and found himself in the dark. He stepped forward a few feet, and then the lights came on.
He was standing on a bullseye painted on the floor. Around him, there was an odd collection of machinery and assorted contraptions. Ramps, conveyer belts, slides… It went on and on.
A marble dropped into a chute, where it slid down to a spiraling tube. Gravity propelled it down to an escalator, which deposited it onto a conveyor belt. This in turn fed it onto a miniature Ferris wheel, which brought it onto the top of a ramp. The marble slid down until it landed on a small metal dish. The sound of this awoke a mouse, which began running on a wheel. The wheel cranked a small pulley, which turned on a treadmill. A dog tied to the treadmill began to run. After a moment, it began to pant. A CO2 sensor turned on, triggering the start of an engine. The engine turned a belt which spun a fan, which blew a balloon over to the other side of the room. The balloon reached a lit Bunsen burner, and popped. The force of the pop knocked over a delicately balanced book, which then knocked over another book, and another. The books (a set of encyclopedias, from what Dr. Kald could see) fell like dominoes, continuing on a long shelf that seemed to end just over Dr. Kald's head. He peered up to see what was at the end of it. It was large, round, and, he suddenly realized, precariously balanced. He realized it was a bowling ball only as it started to fall, and it was too late to move.
Under the blanket of Dr. Kald's concussion, Dr. Mann worked.

Month 8
Dr. Mann was walking down the hallway when a very pregnant Dr. Kald hit him over the head with a clipboard. He turned with a triumphant grin. "I thought you might try that, so I protected my skull with a layer of carbon steel and foam!"
"Did hyu protect zese?" Dr. Kald snarled as he kicked Dr. Mann in the crotch.
"Oh, Britannia!" he cried in pain, collapsing to his knees.
Dr. Kald kicked him again in his chest. "Hyu blasted Englisches Schwein!"
Dr. Mann rolled with the kick, regaining his feet. "Big-nosed child-botherer!" he shouted as he aimed a punch at Dr. Kald.
"Hoossy!" Dr. Kald said, grabbing Dr. Mann's mustache.
"Home wrecker!" Dr. Mann said, grabbing Dr. Kald's hair.
"What is this?" said Chirurg softly, looking out the window of his chamber door.
"Oh, Chirurg!" Dr. Mann said, suddenly releasing his grip on Dr. Kald's hair.
"Ve vere just…" Dr. Kald began.
"I could see what you were doing," said Chirurg. "And it makes me very sad."
Dr. Mann and Dr. Kald looked at each other, abashed.
"But I know what is wrong," Chirurg continued. "It is obvious. Come inside."
"Yes, Herr Chirurg," the two doctors said. They entered Chirurg's antechamber together. Chirurg bade them sit, and then made tea for them.
"It is clear what is causing this strife," their paranormal paramour said. "Obviously, you both want to carry our child. I should have thought of this before. I should have known it would cause strife."
"Er…" Dr. Mann tried to think of a delicate way of explaining that Chirurg was wrong, but failed.
"But don't worry," Chirurg said with a smile. "Papa has a solution. Trust in me." He held up a scalpel. The both of them realized that they were feeling more tired. It seemed they weren't the only ones who could play with soporifics…

Month 9
"Oh god!" Dr. Mann screamed.
"I haff never known zuch pain!" said Dr. Kald.
"Push!" shouted Dr. Geier, from her position at their feet.
Herr Chirurg held their hand, looking proud and just a little bit worried as the delivery went on. After several fevered moments, there was a final push.
The infant (which looked human if you squinted right) was placed in their arms for the first time.
"Hold it oop ay lizzle higher," said Dr. Kald.
"Move the bottle a bit," said Dr. Mann. "He can't drink properly like that."
"You two make a lovely mother," said Dr. Chirurg, admiring his handiwork. It had taken a great deal of work to get two heads to function on one body. The body had to have sufficient bloodflow to support two brains, and sufficient oxygen introduced into the blood. But it had been worth it to make his darlings happy, and to give him the family he had longed for. He beamed.
The infant fell asleep, safe in its mothers' arms.

Dr. Agatha Rights
X:/Foundation/Personnel/Rights/Work/Boring Stuff/Extremely Normal Files/Nothing to See Here/Fiction/Slash/SCPs+Staff/Chirurg/One Bad Mother.txt
To: Dr. Agatha Rights
From: Dr. Bright
Re: Your Files
Dr. Rights, while your stories are fascinating, please keep them off of the Foundation servers in the future.


The Captain focused his binoculars and scrutinized the valley below. The highway bent around the hills, littered with refuse and empty cars. Beyond the road was an inlet. The muddy waters flowed sluggishly, packed with flotsam, around the bows of a listing destroyer. A suspension bridge had collapsed on the stern of the ship. The vessel had remained, half submerged, for the short months since the war. The yellowing corpse of a cow had lodged in its trailing cables. Through his binoculars, the Captain could see the flies dancing around it, even from his roost atop the hill.
The tarp around his shoulders ruffled in the sharp wind, and he drew it close. The gray plastic blended well with the mottled land, the dead grass, the darkened sky. A convoy was plodding the highway below, vehicles winding around the broken asphalt and drifting ash. The lead tank had a dozer blade fixed to it and was shoving aside the rusting car-carcasses obstructing the road. A small detachment of soldiers followed, maybe twenty five. They wore black uniforms, and marched before an eighteen-wheeler. It was low slung, heavily armored. A second tank took the rear, turret swept back to ward off attack.
The Captain thought eagerly of the contents of that truck. As he looked back at his gathered men, he saw they did, too. Rifle Company B hunkered on the ashen mount, hands tightly clutching weapons. They needed action to take their minds off the burning in their lungs and the pangs in their bellies. They were tired and worn from these wretched months. Some of them had worn out rad-suits and were coughing piteously, spitting little globules of mucous and blood. Miserable as they were, they perched like hawks above unsuspecting prey.
What that convoy was guarding, they could only imagine; incredible wealth, an armory of devastating technologies, or one of the last politicians – those dogs who brought on the holocaust. Or perhaps it was something more. There were rumors, from travelers and sporadic radio contacts, of strange and unnatural things occurring across the globe. Tales of walking dead, of machines that spoke, of unearthly creatures and men with godly powers. A few weeks ago they had come across a great fat man who called himself the King of Philadelphia. It was as if his every word was gold, and they would have gladly submitted to his every order if the Doctor hadn't put a round through the back of his skull.
The Doctor was back at the camp. Lately he took no interest in the raids, speaking of nothing but the Eden Gate. The men were demoralized enough without their leader babbling obsessively about some old story. There were whisperings about the Doctor that spread among the soldiers. That he had been a top researcher, a director in some enigmatic international program. That he had gone insane.
The Captain had been his friend years ago, before he joined the British Army, when things were first starting to fall apart. He was there when the Doctor partook of the Spring of Youth. He had helped push the dioxin barrels in when the Doctor was done with his injections. The rusty red drums cracked easily, bleeding the oily chemicals into the cold, clear water.
Five months ago, Company B had come over with the European invasion of the States. They quietly went rogue when everything collapsed. And when the Captain found the Doctor again, they took him as their leader.
The caravan drew closer in the valley below, and the Captain spoke a few words into his radio. And suddenly it was all chaos for the convoy, and tattered green raining fire down on shiny black. When the first shots hit, the soldiers below scattered, taking cover behind wreckage and returning fire into the hills. The Captain's men whooped like red Indians, their rifles cracking sporadically in the bleak sunlight.
Their numbers would quickly have over-swept their prey, but they held back for the two tanks, which fired blindly into the hillside. And the small band below might have pulled a hasty retreat, might have saved their cargo, if not for the ruined destroyer lying in the waters to their right side. The destroyer was tilted, half sunk, but the bow still sat above the water. The refurbished and manned front turret began turning. The members of the convoy had no time to react. The naval gun flamed, and the lead tank exploded, blasting sharp chunks of metal dozens of meters.
The black-armored operatives were quickly reduced in numbers. Someone – a white-suited figure – had extended their torso from the hatch of the remaining rear tank. The person lifted a megaphone, speaking clearly in a woman's voice.
“Cease firing! We are not with the United States government!” Perhaps she had recognized the uniforms of soldiers on her assailants. It was of no matter, though, as a second rumbling blast from the destroyer announced the end of her short plea for parley.
Soon the victorious ambushers were down among the remains of the convoy. They sifted through the bodies and the scalding fragments of the two tanks with hope for loot. The Captain stood eagerly by as two of his men clipped the lock away from the back of the eighteen-wheeler. They threw the double doors open. Several cowering scientists and a series of electronic panels were exposed to the light, and the two soldiers climbed up. The Captain listened to the brief bursts of gunfire.
“What's up there?” he yelled into the cavern of the truck.
“Not much…hold on,” one of the men called back from the depths. “There's another door farther back here. We've got to cut through these chains.”
There was a clink of metal against metal, and the man called back again. “It's a bare room. There's nothing back here but…” He snorted derisively.
“What?” yelled the Captain, growing impatient.
“It looks like a guy in an oversized clown-suit. What the fuck!”
The soldier laughed again. He poked his head out of the truck, grinning at the Captain. There was a subtle snapping, and the man collapsed.
It took only a few more minutes for the one hundred and thirty one members of Company B to be killed. A few seagulls were the only witnesses to the oddly proportioned creature. It moved rapidly across the landscape in short and erratic jumps.
The sun began to set, and the Doctor settled comfortably down on the torn out rear seat of an old sedan. He cradled a steel banjo in the curve of his lap, strumming a few slow chords. He breathed the acrid air of the outside world unfiltered, unaffected by the deadly conditions. The tall creature had halted twenty paces before him, transfixed by his unbroken stare. The Doctor's eyes watered and burned, but he had no need to close them. The thing stood awkwardly alone in the gathering darkness.
“Looks like we're going to be here for a while, big man,” the Doctor said, sighing. Then he added, “At least until I break one of these strings.” He nodded to the banjo. The odd figure stood, silent and unmoving.


…There are still no damage reports from the missiles the United States has launched…
The dead are walking the streets! Be sure to lock your doors…
No hospital is safe!
…on a nearby island, there's footage of a number of strange, coral-like growths breaking the water's surface…
…even if they are family members…
The government has officially rescinded all powers of the FBI. The FBI is no longer an officially sanctioned law enforcement entity…
…increased sightings of monsters all over Europe and the continental United States…
…the threat isn't over! Avoid walking! Always wear your mask!
A message from a religious group calling themselves the "Church of the Broken God" has stated that we are to baptized in the Clockwork Gift, so as to pave way for the new humanity…
…are currently battling the army! Most urban areas have been turned into warzones!
…if by "new humanity" they mean robotic corpses, then I for one, do not wish to be baptized!
And whatever you do, DON'T GO OUTSIDE!

The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.
Agent Williams reflected on that thought as he followed a railroad track into Pennsylvania, or at least what was left of it. Six months ago, he made a living tracking down SCPs, and now, his life depended on reaching one that had already been found. He was still somewhat in contact with the Foundation, or at least what was left of it. There wasn't a lot of things left nowadays. Occasionally, he'd get scattered radio messages from Sites, MTFs, and some stranded Agents, but they never broadcasted for very long. Of all the Sites he knew of, Williams could only count the remaining ones on one or two hands. The rest had either fallen in the initial chaos, or initiated nuclear failsafe. A macabre game surviving personnel played was to ask each other what they were doing on S-Day, the day everything went to Hell.
Williams himself was on assignment in South America, when he noticed the rain forest around him slowly turning into clockwork. It was at that moment he bugged out. He never did find out what was the exact cause, but there were rumors floating about that a SCP-217 infected crewman on the International Space Station caused a catastrophic accident, seeding the entire lower atmosphere with clockwork "spores". After hearing SCP-217 had went global, and at least a dozen sites were compromised, Williams knew it was time to execute his Exit Strategy. His first priority was getting in contact with Richards.
Richards was in fact on Keter duty, overseeing SCP-231, no less. Containment was already blown to hell, so the priority was getting the hell out. However, Richards did note that before leaving, she made sure to leave her sidearm in 231-7's containment cell. Williams didn't know the details of what happened afterwards, but from what he heard from the Sites that still had access to surveillance satellites, there was a massive "dead zone" gobbling up Europe and slowly making its way across the Atlantic. Richards then managed to hop a plane to North America, but the closest she could get was a Canadian Air Force Base in Nova Scotia.
Either way, they had to get to their destination on foot. A rather dangerous proposition, as all sorts of terrible things were loose, and not just SCPs. Both the Church of the Broken God and the Global Occult Coalition were out in full force. GOC Mobile Execution Teams were basically destroying everything that moved. If they didn't have a dim view of the Foundation before, they certainly did so now, since they considered the Foundation at fault for not destroying the SCPs when it had the chance. The Church was meanwhile capitalizing on a wave of religious doomsday fervor, gobbling up more and more followers every day. Last Williams heard, SCP-835 had grown to such ridiculous proportions that the oceans were literally unlivable, and that it had overtaken SCP-882's containment facility. The Church was busy trying to reach the machine by throwing wave after wave of clockwork drones at the biological monstrosity.
As for the other factions, well, most governments collapsed several months into the crisis, leaving a vacuum for others to grab power. Marshall, Carter, & Dark set up a stronghold in England called Avalon, which rather fit their pretentious nature. Williams secretly hoped whatever Eldritch horror born from 231-7 took time to swing north and show those snooty bastards a good time. The Serpent's Hand and Chaos Insurgency were also out in full force, often directly clashing with the Church and GOC for control of what was left. Like the Church, the Horizon Initiative was also riding a wave of religious doomsday fervor. The Manna Charitable Foundation was trying to set up refugee zones, with varying levels of success. Of the Iranians, Williams had no idea whatsoever. The Middle East was one of the first areas to be reduced to a nuclear wasteland in the global panic.
Quickly focusing on matters at hand, Williams took a moment to get his bearings. If he was right, he was only several miles from his objective. So far, sticking to back roads and the wilderness had hampered his progress, but it was necessary to avoid unwanted attention. The GOC's METs essentially controlled the roads, and Williams couldn't afford to have other refugees or survivors tagging along with him. They'd just be extra baggage.
"This is Site-17, going off the air." Williams' radio squawked. It was essentially Foundation-speak for nuclear failsafe. That left the remaining known operational Sites down to four or five.
"One less reason to stay, I guess." Williams muttered to himself.
Unfortunately, before he could go any farther, Williams noticed something terribly wrong. He saw SCP-615 laying on the tracks. Sure, it could have been just any random pile of sticks and logs, but he could tell. Keeping his distance, he managed to catch sight of a MET of about five men coming the opposite way, flamethrowers in hand. They were obviously on the hunt, torching every pile of wood they could find. When they finally did hit 615, the creature quickly shot off into the forest. Spoon let the MET chase 615. There was only one SCP on his mind now, and any fight he could avoid the better. He still had bad memories of his encounter with SCP-173 in Arizona. Spending two days and three nights in a cargo container while hearing 173 repeatedly banging on the walls were some of the worst in his life.
Finally, he reached vestiges of civilization. It wasn't much, just a railroad junction with a small residential district and some stores, but he was on the right track. Keeping an eye out for any unnatural presences, Williams made a dash over the crossing, painfully aware of how exposed he was. Checking his map again, he found that he was only a few blocks from his destination. Encouraged, Williams continued deeper into the town, and felt his heart sink slightly. There was what looked like a military checkpoint just up the road, directly between him and the Exit. Fortunately, the men manning the checkpoint didn't look like they were from any GOI, so Williams had hopes that he could bluff his way past. Approaching closer, he could see that the checkpoint was manned by a pair of young, incredibly scared National Guards. He didn't think any of those poor saps were still alive.
"State your business!" One of them yelled, aiming his M16 rifle right at Williams' face. Even though the kid was wearing full NBC gear, he couldn't hide the fear in his body language.
"Whoa, calm down, son." Williams said diplomatically. "I'm not here to fight."
The other Guardsman breathed a sigh of relief through his gas mask. "Oh thank god, are you here to help with the purge?"
"Uh, yeah." Williams nodded, going with the flow. "I'm Special Forces."
"Great!" The second Guardsman stood aside, pulling open the makeshift barricade to allow Williams through. "It hit two days ago. The GOC is helping us clean it out. You should go to them if you want to help out."
"I'll keep that in mind."
"Oh yeah, remember, if you don't have an official sanction, we can't let you back out!" The first Guardsman added helpfully.

With his objective so tantalizingly close, Williams started sprinting for his destination. However, in his rush, he got sloppy, rounded a corner, and ran straight into a GOC MET.
"Stop!" The MET leader yelled.
"Don't worry, I'm not infected."
"All individuals breaking curfew are assumed to be infected." The MET leader inched closer to Williams, trying to get a good look at him. "Where are you from?"
Behind the MET leader, Williams observed the rest of the MET unloading piles of clockwork corpses from a truck and dumping them onto a nearby lawn, where another MET member was collecting gasoline in preparation for a bonfire. "I'm from the Foundation, I've been sent here to help."
"Hold on, I'm running this through Command." The MET leader turned around and starting waving to his squad.
"He's totally playing you." A cold, feminine voice burst through Williams' headset. "There aren't any outgoing signals. Just stand still."
A fraction of a second later, the MET leader's head exploded like a melon, and the rest of the body crumpled like a sack of meat. The rest of the MET was still in shock, and had no chance to react before being cut down by a combination of fire from Williams' M4 and Richard's sniper rifle.
"You're late." Richards said in an annoyed tone as she made her way down from her perch atop a nearby water tower. "I've been camped up there for a week waiting for you to get your sorry ass here."
"Well, as you can see, I was held up." Williams scoffed. She seemed to think going cross country on foot was a cakewalk!
"Come on, we don't have much time." Richards motioned for Williams to follow her. "Foundation HQ activated nuclear failsafe twenty minutes ago."
"So there really is nothing left."
"Affirmative."
Williams and Richards were standing in a ruined mini-mart, which had literally been looted to its foundations. However, they weren't here for food or money, they were here for the restroom.
"Does it still work?" Spoon asked.
"I've tested it. SCP-436 is still operational." Richards opened the restroom door, which was now hanging precariously off one hinge. "You do realize the inherent danger and unpredictability of this SCP?"
"Can you honestly say it could be any worse than what we're in right now?"
"Point."
It was incredibly awkward trying to fit two people into a restroom stall designed for one, especially when both individuals were clad in full combat gear. However, they did eventually manage to make it work, and there really wasn't anybody around to see the whole fiasco anyways.
"Well, see you on the other side." Williams said.
"To greener pastures." Richards said as she grabbed the door handle and pulled it closed.


The problem is, one of the first things you do when you make dandelion wine is throw away the flowers.

Seventeen minutes. That's how long the world lasts this time.
The crucifixes with their screaming human sacrifices flayed and nailed to the i-beam crosses vanish, replaced by a bucolic pastoral scene, the serenity of the gold-flecked, rolling hills ruined only by the presence of a thirty foot tall Albertosaurus biting the head off a three-headed sheep. He hits the stopwatch, resets the timer. 00:00:01 and counting.
He decides to head south, pushing through the fields of waist-high dandelions and away from the predator messily devouring its meal. A throbbing scar on his leg, angry and red, serves as a reminder that a few minutes are long enough to be maimed or killed. He takes a moment, once he is far enough from the gory scene, to tear the leaves off of one of the plants and cram them into his mouth. They taste bitter, and tough, but they are edible, and he has not eaten in a long time.

They told him that he would be safe. They told him that he needed to carry the information across the universes. Somewhere out there, they said, there would be a universe where the Foundation still existed. Find them, tell them what happened. Maybe they can fix it.

He tears the stem off of one of the oversized dandelions and sucks on the milky sap, then starts to pull off the dinner-plate sized flowers and stuff them into his battered rucksack. Maybe on the next jaunt, he can find a bottle and some sugar. Make some dandelion wine.
The shift hits him between zipping his rucksack up and hefting it to his shoulder: he is now standing in the middle of a four-way intersection at rush hour. A yellow cab nearly runs him over: the man behind the wheel is shouting at him, waving a wide-fingered hand as his ruddy face roars, twisted in rage. His eyes are empty, and his passengers are only corpses.
He steps aside and looks up into a vermillion sky: the noonday sun is crimson, the color of blood. It is bloated, too large, taking up nearly half the sky, and the light is dim enough to gaze into, to see the wide, blotchy, diseased patches that dot the surface of that shining orb.

All we can do is place one person outside it. An Outside Observer, unaffected by the shifts. We drew straws. We chose you.

Twenty-one minutes. That was how long the world lasted. He hits the stopwatch, resets the counter.
There is a supermarket on the corner. The plate-glass window is shattered, and a man, now long dead, has been hurled through it. He steps over the glass and into the empty, deserted aisles. He is hungry. He is always hungry.
He ignores the rotting displays of fruit, buzzing with flies, or the greenish, molding displays of meat in the butcher's aisle, and heads straight for the canned goods. On the way, he passes by the dried goods. Something makes him pause. It's a box of instant stuffing. The front shows a typical Thanksgiving scene in the style of Norman Rockwell. The father is carving into a screaming human head. The apple-cheeked children are passing around plates of body parts.
He takes down a can from the shelf, a thin rectangular can in the style of a sardine tin, and opens it up with the twist key. Seventeen baby blue eyeballs packed in oil stare back up at him.
He grabs as many cans as possible. He can't afford to be picky.

We know what caused this, but it's too late. We can't stop it. Reality, as we know it, will vanish into the sea of chaos. Into the seafoam of the What-Could-Have-Been.

This time, the world lasts a full half-hour before the shift. He hits the stopwatch, resets the counter. The world is filled with fog. From out of the fog come men, or creatures very much like men. His machete is drawn before the first one reaches him, its broad mouth open impossibly wide, revealing a maw filled with jagged, sharklike teeth.

The nature of Reality is that of a multiverse. Choice causes new universes to branch out. Possibility creates new realities. Always before, however, those parallel universes have been separate, distinct. That is changing.

The next few minutes are difficult. He kills many, but they are legion. He is thrown to the ground. They tear open his pack like a bloated corpse and scatter the contents. They grab hold of the cans and slam them against rocks and broken bricks, bursting them open and devouring the eyes, fingers, and tongues within. Then they turn on him.

This is a visual representation of the CK-Class Restructuring, they told him. The spirals represent the universes. They are converging.

He is lucky. The world only lasts nine minutes, but that is long enough for one of the shark-faced creatures to take a bite out of his arm. He emerges into a new world. It is raining, and the rain is made of shit and blood.

When they woke him from his bed in the middle of the night, he knew it would be bad. But then, he had been ready. His years in the Army had taught him no fear, had taught him how to survive against all odds. He was ready to face whatever they needed him to face, kill whatever they needed him to kill.
He didn't expect that they would take him into a room and show him a movie: a false color representation of a mathematical reality. It looked beautiful: a sea of blue foam with bubbles forming and popping, with brilliant yellow spirals floating among them. The spirals, he noticed, were getting closer together, and their colors were fading.
It reminded him of back on the farm, in his childhood, when his grandfather used to make dandelion wine with the flowers his grandmother and sister would pick from the rolling green fields. The old man would put the flowers into a big pyrex cooking pot and fill it with water, some sugar, and lemon juice, and he would watch, spellbound, as the yellow flowers rose and fall in that boiling liquid, turning slowly in the bubbling water, changing color from bright yellow to dull brown.

He hits the stopwatch and resets the counter.


Gareth poked his head over the rocks, peering across the blasted landscape. It was a particularly hot day, the sun's rays bouncing off the endless gray of the wasteland, nothing but the occasional ravine or dead, naked tree dotting the endless fields of stone. Only the sighing wind gave him any company as he searched for the single source of food for miles, the devious rock lizards that scuttled throughout the rocky outcroppings.With his bow slung across his back, Gareth moved across the waste, using his hands as much as his feet to propel himself forward. The dull army helmet on his head and rags covering his clothing helped him blend in perfectly with the surroundings.The world was an unforgiving one, where you were either fast and silent or easy prey for a wandering Beast. Gareth was a straggler, one of those who chose to fend for themselves instead of joining one of the dozen armies that fought for control over this war-torn planet.
Hugging close to a somewhat large boulder, Gareth pulled out his bow, spying a black lizard sunning itself on the rocks a dozen meters away. Knocking an arrow, he carefully aimed. He would get one shot at this, rock lizards were skittish and easily frightened creatures. Understandable, considering that they lived in a place where nameless abominations roamed freely and destroyed or devoured anything that was in their way.
Suddenly, the rock lizard perked up its head, staring off into the distance. Giving a squeak of fear, it scurried under the rocks, probably into some hidden burrow under the ground. Gareth paused, and placed a hand on the ground. He shuddered with fear, feeling the all-too-familiar vibrations in the earth. Quickly, he unstrapped his field glasses, looking off in the direction the lizard had. There, in the distance, was a black band of moving figures covering the horizon. Troops, there was an army approaching.
Twiddling a dial at the side of the glasses, he zoomed in on them, scanning the ranks for a banner that would identify which army this was. If he knew which particular faction this army belonged to, he might be able to judge how they were going to act, and hopefully find a way to avoid encountering them. He spotted it, a massive flag depicting five jagged shards of metal joining together to form a twisted circle. Gareth groaned.
They were Assemblage troops. The Church was on the move.
Still sticking low to the ground, Gareth darted across the broken landscape. He moved diagonally away from the advancing army, trying to get away from them as fast as possible. It was unwise to run into soldiers belonging to the Holy Order of the Assemblage. If they found him, they would only give him a single choice: Become a devoted member of the army; join the Priesthood of the Assemblage God; or be turned into one of the mindless automatons the Church employed. Not content with summoning their monstrous deity to this planet, the Church had to subjugate the rest of the human species to their way.
If he had been lucky, Gareth would have run into one of warmongering tribes devoted to the Hunter. That way, he could have thrown down his bow and arrows, shown he was no threat or challenge to them, and be left alone relatively unscathed. Even the horrifically inhuman minions of the immortal Lizard King would have been preferable to the proselytizing Church. A quick death to the purge being committed by the hordes the Lizard King had supposedly pulled from another realm would be far less painful to the iron grip the Church held on their recruits.
As Gareth scurried across the rocky wastes, he could feel another set of vibrations shivering through the earth. Looking up in horror, he could see a second army, this one moving up from the south, towards him and the Assemblage army. Lying prone on the ground, he pulled up his field glasses in an attempt to see this new army.
There was no point in searching for a banner with this group, however. This army's allegiance was made clear by the white paint all of the soldiers wore on their faces, put there in homage to the cruel masked being they served that was known only as the White Lord. The White Lord, who sat upon a throne as black as death, who could reach into the minds of men and tear their souls from their bodies. The White Lord, who revelled in corruption and could make the very walls bleed in fear of him. The White Lord, who commanded his army through sheer terror, and held a grip on them that could rival that of the Assemblage Church's.
The two most fanatical armies in the world were about to clash, and Gareth was stuck between them.
Forgetting any attempt at stealth, Garet stood up and bolted, making a mad dash to get out of the way of the two incoming titans. His feet slammed into the ground as he ran, sheer fear driving him away from the soon-to-be warzone. The opposing forces were large, but he had a good distance between the two, and he prayed to the gods that he reached the edge of the armies before they met.
Luck was on his side, as it were, and when the forces were about to clash he was a good distance away from the field of battle. He kept running though, on the chance there was a flanking attempt that could sweep him up. As he moved, he could hear the two sides scream their respective battle cries of 'In the holy name of the Assembled God!' and 'For his high honor, the White Lord!'. A monstrous scream split the air as the two monstrous armies slammed into each other. Gareth was fairly far away from them, but their cries could be heard for miles.
Gareth slowed down. He was far enough from them, he was safe. He continued his slow trot away from them, not even worrying to stay low to the ground. There weren't going to be any Beasts in the area, they were smart enough to avoid a battle. As he walked, Gareth sighed, depressed at the state the world was in. He had been a straggler since the day he was born, knowing no life other than hiding from monsters and armies, knowing no landscape except for the dead rock called Earth. There were small towns and cities scattered across the planet, yes, but Gareth had found living in them a difficult life, for they drew Beasts to them like moths to a light.
It hadn't always been this way, according to the legends Gareth had heard as a child. Back then, years and years ago, the world was said to be a lush, green place, with water that wasn't brown and trees that had leaves. It was a world where armies hadn't destroyed the planet, and humans didn't have the need to hide from hideous monstrosities.
That was almost three hundred years ago, according to the stories.
From what he heard from the elders, something had happened two hundred and eighty years ago. The ancient tales told of a series of monstrous explosions across Earth. The first happened in the eastern portion of some long-dead nation called 'America'. That had been the trigger, for soon after that a wave of explosions popped up across the planet, everywhere from populated cities to the middle of the most desolate deserts. Out of these explosions came the Beasts, hundreds of terrifying creatures that would warp reality and kill without mercy.
The nations of the world united, and attempted to vanquish these beasts. At first, they were successful. At first. But with the Beasts came the kings and generals that now fought for dominance. There was the Assemblage Church, the Hunter, the White Lord, the Lizard King, the Queen of Darkness, and the leaderless Army of the Dead, along with other monstrous rulers. Whatever it was that caused those explosions, it had sealed the fate of humankind and doomed them to a death of eternal warring and a husk of a planet as a home.
Gareth sat down, now completely out of sight of the raging armies. Looking across this section of the blasted, dead terrain, he realized he needed to dig himself a new home before night fell. His stomach growled, the combat had lost him a chance to eat today. That was all that was left for humans. Hunger, death, and a desolate wasteland. For three centuries monsters and demons had fought for control, and they could do nothing but pray that their new masters would be a kind one, futile as that may sound. There would be no end, and no hope for humans.
Gareth shook his head, setting out to build himself a new home. Such things were not his place to dwell upon, he was too busy trying to survive.


Now that I think about it, the old man wasn't trying to keep it away from us so he could solve it. He was trying to keep it away from us so we couldn't. He was dirty and unkempt, his hair a matted mess and his clothes in tatters when the police caught up with him, carrying that cursed box. A concerned citizen had called them in because they thought that the old bum had a bomb, or at least stolen something from somewhere. Cornered, he screamed that they couldn't have it and pulled a gun on the police officers. He died before they could even call in for a paramedic.
I was just a junior assistant researcher at the time. I don't even remember exactly how it came to the Foundation's attention, just that it was brought in by field agents, and we were ordered to figure out how to open the thing. Come to think of it, I don't even have any idea how we could have possibly known that the thing could be opened. It was a perfect cube, thirty centimeters to a side, with thousands of engraved runes in its surface. It was eerily beautiful too, though none of us could ever put our finger on exactly why. We only knew that we had to figure it out. We had to solve the puzzle.
It took a team of almost a hundred researchers ten years to figure it out. The best and brightest minds at the Foundation were transferred to our project to unlock its secrets. Billions of dollars were spent on equipment and everything else put on hold so we could do our work. Ten years, and we all crowded around with anticipation, gathered as the final piece was put into place.
I can't remember exactly what happened next that day, but I remember that the first of the things came down three days later. It impacted savagely into the Russian tundra and unfurled into a creature of nightmare that glided impossibly fast on its four-jointed legs and hunted any human it could find until we put it down. We lost almost thirty agents.
Two more came in as many days, landing in Brazil and Australia. We sent three MTFs and only four men came back. The things were dead, but the news was leaking out. A fourth one came down in San Francisco at the end of the week, and the whole world knew that something terrible had happened.
Almost a hundred had landed by the time we lost contact with High Command at the end of week three. Our task forces were completely overwhelmed, and the world's police and military forces were unable to fight off the monsters. From fragments of surveillance footage, we saw that they were eating our dead.
There are only a few of us left, hiding in the dark corners of the world. Most of the major sites were compromised within weeks, broken in without a fight. I think they managed to absorb the information from the bodies they consumed, and used that to find our hiding places. The only ones still alive are the ones who could find places where no one knew to look. I think the puzzle was the key, a beacon that called them to our world when we became intelligent enough to solve it. They fed on our intelligence and wiped us out completely.
We haven't stepped outside for years. Food and water are running low, and sooner or later we'll have to go out to search for more. Out there where the monsters are. If anyone should find this message in the future, hear our words across time. One day, a puzzle will appear on your doorstep as well. Resist the urge to solve it. Lock it away. It doesn't pay to be smart.


What was fragmented is now one. What was in pieces is now fixed. That which was broken is now whole. She who was dormant is brought forth.
We have succeeded in our task. The future of the Broken God is secure, and soon She shall convert us all. Already the Americas have fallen to the one true ruler of mankind, and soon She will convert all into beings of purity.
I was but a cog in the machine that completed the work of our great Church. We were fragmented, ourselves broken, until She came unto us with words of wisdom and prophecy. Before, the evil Foundation had managed to scatter the Church and us pure followers far and wide. We reunited under Her banner, and rode forth, towards that which would complete the Broken God, and make us Whole. We attacked under the cover of darkness, and soon the Heretics, the Foundation, those who were the keepers of the Broken God, had been destroyed, their weak bodies of flesh and bone smote down and crushed. The operation was smooth, and soon we controlled the Pieces. The Pieces that would be made Whole, become remade in Her image.
They are combined, as unto Her commands, and into a new future we move, each second a step towards the Earth being made Whole. A new beginning, each tiny cog of Humanity becoming part of that which is larger. We shall continue until the very earth beneath my feet has been purified. Then we shall be One.
Now, the Earth lies at Her feet, for now the Broken God has come forth, and we are remade in the purest form. I can feel my insides beginning to change, change into that which soon will control the whole planet. Purest clockwork, ticking and spinning away, forever. None may stand before us now, for we are in tune with each other, the Eternal Tick reverberating inside us, inside all of us.
These are the last days of Humanity, and we are their destroyers. Soon all will be remade, remade into that which is eternal.
She is whole. The Broken God has come forth. The world will become perfect. The world will be Whole.
It has been written.