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⚠ Content warning: This article contains nazism and the f-slur.

⚠ content warning

… you will be glad to know, however, that Queen Maven is repulsed by salt, and unable to cross its barrier.
Do be warned, however: Queen Maven is still a child of the Unseelie Queen, and there is a reason we have waited until now to initiate capture. The Fourteen Hundred and Twenty-Third Child will not go quietly, nor will her degenerate followers bear their liberation with patience. Your window for error is minuscule; a single fallen domino will spell disaster for Germany.
May your heart remain pure, Acolyte Salz.

Acolyte Salz looked up from the memo, and out to the violet insectoid that squirmed in its chains, lying in an abandoned courtyard in Outer Lichtenberg. Salz would be the first to admit that no, it did not go quietly, but screaming with every chain locked into its carapace.
That rare smile, typically reserved for when he went by Bastian Schaus, slowly crept onto Salz's face as his men tightened the locks. "Fast work." Salz's clap was, as usual, enough to send some of his greener recruits a meter into the air. He really should have worked on making it softer. "One minute and thirteen seconds is on the faster end of a binding. And on a Queenling?" Of course, Salz's smile soon curled into a hungry grin.
Initiate Kruger finished tightening one of the bonds, before turning to Salz. The salute was a cute gesture, if annoyingly on the nose. "Couldn't have done it without you, boss!" Was Salz's grin too wide, or had the excursion winded the strapping young lad? After everything, he was still shaking.
"Spare me, initiate." That didn't calm Kruger down, not that Salz expected it to. He was trying rather hard not to be the two meter goliath that took center stage; difficult, he knew, but it meant nobody messed with him.
The Queenling continued screaming while Salz's men carried it into the transport vehicle; they always did, and always after the most vital minute had passed. The Ghosts that Talked could scream all they wanted, but the 4th Reich loved her soundproofing.
Salz looked back to the memo, comparing it with the time on his phone. The team had arrived five minutes earlier than expected, completed the summons, capture, and bondage two minutes earlier than expected, and if the Outer Lichtenberg traffic situation was any indication, they'd arrive back at the base with five more minutes to spare yet. That left his crew just enough time to stop for a celebratory coffee, and the rest of the day would pass-
"Hey!"
Evidently, someone wasn't happy, though why anyone would bother to stay around an abandoned courtyard was anyone's guess. Sighing, Salz turned to-
Acolyte Salz stood face to face with some dirty… boy? He wasn't particularly sure. Well, they looked human, sure, but the age was a bit of a stickler, especially at one and a half meters and clad in a paint-stained shirt. Nice haircut, although that didn't quite make up for the rest of him.
The boy(?), rather than doing what most (intelligent) children did and taking their leave, took the opportunity to press on further. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?!" Normally the language would've settled the age question, but this was a Bavarian going by the accent. There wasn't much to expect in the way of proper speech.
"Boss?" Specialist Johannes was calling out from transport near the courtyard entrance; either this boy was a stealth expert, or a resident of the abandoned building, because Johannes never missed. "You alright back there? Looks like-"
Salz put a hand up, and Johannes shut up. Bending down to eye level, Salz could see a fierce determination, a will to power, shining behind the boy's fierce gaze. This was not a civilian, no… but then, who? The table had been shaken, and Salz needed to know how the dominoes would fare.
"Boy," Salz's hand moved to the collar of his overcoat, pulling it back just enough to display the symbol tattooed on the side of his neck. "Are you pure of heart?"
For a second, Salz swore he could spot a look of recognition in the boy(?)'s eyes…
… before shifting back to the same fury from before. "… fuck you, asshole, I'm 27 years old! And that's not the point, you stole my fucking muse!"
What a shame, the Fourth Reich could use this woman(?)'s drive. Acolyte Salz stood back to looming over the interloper, but if they were scared, they didn't show it. If only courage was a substitute for literally every advantage Salz had.
"Miss, I think you should-"
"That's Mr. Fats Burg, The Mason, to you pal!" Ironic: the skinny Fats was condescending his superior. "You and your gang are trafficking SWJC Lichtenberg's very own muse, and we do not take janitors in the ass, you hear me?!" Salz almost felt the finger jab to his chest. "You do not fuck with SWJC Lichtenberg, you hear?! We cannot be fucked, we'll fuck anyone that tries fucking-"
Fats winced as Salz grabbed his forearm and squeezed. "I think you should leave, before I do something rash." Salz's words were punctuated by 13 seconds of a stare that had broken larger and more relevant men than Fats.
By the time Salz let go of Fats' arm, it'd already begun the process of desiccation. If Fats knew well enough, he'd take it as a sign that-
Salz blocked a sucker punch from Fats, countering with an uppercut to the sternum. Adjusting for force, mass, and Fats' puny muscles, that left him several meters back, sprawled prone and 100 milliliters short of a full glass of water. Math was fun.
Fats weakly attempted to stand back up as Salz trudged towards the degenerate artist, but that ended when Salz stomped back down on his shoulder blades, leaving him crumpled without so much as a whimper. A sharp kick to the ribs was enough to turn Fats over, splayed like a beached starfish on sand. Indeed, if Fats hadn't just coughed up a cloud of dried blood, Salz might have taken him for dead.
It was funny: kneeling down to face Fats, Salz could still see the fire in his eyes. This man truly believed he could face an acolyte of the Fourth Reich. A shame that the will to power lacked the force behind it.
If Fats said something, it was drowned out by three successive punches to the face, followed by another kick to the ribs and, finally, a stomp to the head.
Dusting himself off, Acolyte Salz stared at the desiccated corpse (or soon to be desiccated corpse. The outcome was the same.), before walking back to the transport. More important business was afoot.

Scratching at the rash on his neck, Bastian Schaus looked at the antique clock on the office walls. 11:51, 9 minutes until his meeting.
Perfect.
There was always something quiet about Tuesday mornings at the museum. The patrons were elderly or freeloaders, neither of whom were looking to bother the curator while he was taking a break. Few might have drunken enough to cause a disturbance. All in all, that let Bastian focus on the work that actually mattered.
Bastian put on the water heater, and idly scratched at the rash on his neck. He'd have a minute to brew, leaving enough time for the tea to cool… perhaps too much. Well, he wasn't in any hurry; perhaps he'd ask them what they wanted. For now, he had his peppermint.
They arrived 12:00, right on time.
One of them was immediately recognizable. Niklas Hopp, the short (relative to people besides Bastian) painter whose still life hung in the main gallery. The other… the other was new. Tall, nervous, a fair bit more tan than his compatriot; if Bastian had to guess, this was a foreigner.
Bastian put on his friendliest smile, and resisted the urge scratch his rash. "Good to see you again."
"Good day." The foreigner's accent was harsh and stilted. "Thank you for bringing me here. Apologies, my German is not good." British, most likely.
Niklas chuckled. "Apologies. My friend is a transplant, you know how these things can go, yes?"
"Right." Right. "So, what's all this about?" Why did his rash have to be acting up now? He was a curator, damn it, not some low-brow laborer. "I trust you've brought your friend here for a reason, no?" Just needed to get through this one meeting, and he could scratch all he wanted.
"Well, my friend here, let's call him The Poet," artists loved their pseudonyms, Bastian supposed. "He's got a new piece. We were wondering if your establishment might be interested in hosting it."
"… hrm. Well, our establishment does not collect poetry," the rash on Bastian's neck was slowly becoming more irritating than the irritated skin it sat upon. "However, I suppose I could find a publication that may be willing to take…" the foreigner's poorly translated garbage, most likely. "… this."
"Oh, no, this isn't quite a poem." Niklas loved squandering his attention on degenerate art, didn't he? "Well, it's a poem, right, but it's on a mural. And well, the words are arranged like a nature path, a branching path that splits and merges as it goes. The text is variable in form, and garnished, is that the right word? It'd be garnished or decorated with scenes of nature. Basically a living nature poem."
Bastian nodded, and errantly scratched at his god DAMN IT.
Much to his dismay, Niklas and the foreigner's eyes went wide. Was it that bad?
"Apologies, gentlemen." Bastian's chuckle didn't sound at all convincing, most especially not to himself. "It's been bothering me for-"
Bastian was interrupted by the foreigner's cough. "We have to go now…1 sorry, one moment." As if in unison, the two stood up and walked out of the office. Bastian smiled, counted to ten, and took a sip of the dried herbs that were once mixed into his tea.

"What do you mean, they took them back?!"
"Look, Mr. Schaus." Alona Fleischer may have been a Jew, but she was a shrewd Jew. How the hell could she let this happen? "Our policy dictates-"
Bastian nearly crushed subway car's plastic grip with his free hand. "Forget the policy, how in the hell have we let these de-these layabouts push our establishment around like this? We own these pieces, they sold them to us, they're ours and not theirs!"
Every eye on Bastian from his fellow passengers was a cruel spotlight, a condemnation for daring to give a damn about his work. What did they know about the art world?
"Mr. Schaus, there's no need to raise your voice, but keep in mind a fair few of our collection was on permanent loan. Don't worry about it, you've been as diligent as you needed to be, if anyone's going to have anyone else's head it's probably gonna be the shareholders on the directors."
"Are you missing the part where half our attractions are gone, all at once, Mrs. Fleischer?" A few grains of salt pattered down onto the floor as Bastian's grip tightened. "Have you spent too long in the books? Our revenue is in tourism, because we are supposed to be interesting. If at any point we're not interesting, we lose the tourists. Do you know what happens when we stop getting tourists, Mrs. Fleischer? We stop. Getting. Money!"
Mrs. Fleischer remained silent.
"Look. Do whatever you can to change their minds. Whatever made half the artists in Lichtenberg pull out must be something we can fix. Is that clear?"
"… right." And Fleischer hung up.
Damn it. Just a day after he offended Niklas and the foreigner, too? What a miserable line of work, dealing with the capricious whims of art. Bastian reached for the thermos in his bag, only to find it empty of anything except decaffeinated coffee ground. Typical.
At least the trains ran on time, thought Bastian as departed. Sure, they were full of dullards that judged him like he wasn't improving the neighborhood, but he'd change that soon enough. Mr. Rass had Queen Maven, and with it the promise of oncoming change. If ever there was something to smile about, it was that.
Against all odds, Bastian found himself smiling again, right up until he came to the doors of the museum and, inexplicably, couldn't open them. Strange, they should've been open, no?
Looking back up, Bastian spotted a sign next to the door.

fuck you you talentless hack give me back my fucking muse
by SWJC Lichtenberg ♡

Bastian smiled, tried counting to ten, and punched a hole through the door on seven.

"Fels."
Acolyte Fels was, as usual, sitting motionless in meditation room, surrounded by a foul-smelling miasma of incense and burnt herbs that fogged the wall-to-wall mirrors of the room. His Snitch and Witness, those wretched surveillance unterdaemons he dragged everywhere, were perched in the far corner as lookout, although neither dared to interrupt Fels for anything short of an emergency. Salz couldn't help but resent them for that.
"Fels, this is urgent."
Still, Acolyte Fels remained motionless. Was this his idea of self-perfection? Sitting in a cloud of burnt plants and dust? All he perfected was burning out his sense of smell. Salz clapped, and again, Fels remained still. Whatever. Maybe his Snitch would have something to say. Trudging over to the corner of the room, Salz-
"Is now really the time, Salz?"
That got him talking. "Really? Am I interrupting something urgent? Something like, say, half the artists in Berlin turning against me in a moment?" Fels hadn't moved from his spot by the time Salz turned around to face him. "We might as well conduct our business outside Outer Lichtenberg if we care this little about information security, no? I'm sure the degenerates at the SCP Foundation would love that."
Fels opened his eyes, still pink from the smoke. "No need to be angry, Salz. You're drying the vapors."
"Am I? You…" Sighing, Salz counted to ten fifteen twenty. "… someone snitched."
Salz hadn't felt the stillness of the room until the awkward silence between the two men, broken only by the faint rustle of leaves that came with a tilt of Fels's head. The two had to have been staring at one another for at least a minute before Fels spoke. "You'd do well to join me. It takes away from the stress of city living."
"I don't like looking at myself in mirrors. And that's not the point."
"Indeed. You want my Snitch, I figure."
"Yes, I do in fact need your Snitch." Why did it always take so long to get to the point?
"Yet," another faint rustle of leaves as Fels stood up. "you recognize that someone snitched. Do you know the snitch?" Acolyte Fels wasn't particularly tall at 165 cm; still, every acolyte had something to make up for height, and Fels was no exception with his… leaves. "If you already know who the snitch is, you don't need a Snitch. How do you know that someone snitched, then?"
Snitch wasn't a word anymore, Salz decided. "Look, I don't know how else half the artists in Berlin suddenly have it out for me. The courtyard was empty, and your Witness was with me to verify or disprove that, but the conclusion is clear: either I missed someone, or one of our own is a snitch. Need I remind you of Blitz?"
"Hey, folks, let's settle down." Why Rass hadn't throttled the Snitches until their voices didn't sound like squeaking rubber was a mystery known only to Rass. "We're all on the same team, right? Race war now, gas the k-"
Fels's Witness gurgled a rough approximation of a cough.
"Right, dogwhistles. Uh… nobody wants to be a mi-"
"For one second, can you stop acting like a two-bit comic relief?" Salz could feel the humidity of the room lowering with every second he listened to this big-mouth'd gremlin.
"Shit! Right, sorry Mr. Salz. Uh…" for some godforsaken reason, Fels's Snitch had to slap the Witness out of… it was hard to judge Witness behavior when their mouths were uniformly sewn shut, but the likelihood that it was any more important than, you know, a snitch was hard to believe. "… three weeks back?"
"Yes, thank you!"
All at once, the Snitch shut its mouth, and the Witness stood straight, eyes flashing with the distant memory of a mission that, by any manner of speaking, should have been successful. But, such was the necessity of a Witness.
Finally, the Snitch snapped out of its trance. "… Fats is the snitch."
…
"No, wrong answer."
One, two, three…
"Listen, okay, the Witness saw the dude, his name's Fats Burg, and he had the snitch aura, alright?"
Salz's fingernails were cutting into the skin of his palm, creating wounds which quickly salted over. "Fats Burg is not an actual name. It is a poorly constructed pun on the concept of 'fatbergs', an English problem caused by nearsightedness and other such degeneracy, and not a fucking name!"
"Mr. Salz, I can't change true names! The dude was clearly called-"
A sharp cough from Fels silenced the Snitch. "Acolyte Salz, if you will."
…six, seven, eight… "Right." …nine, ten… "I'll take my leave." Salz left the meditation room, closed his eyes, and didn't move until he'd counted to twenty-six.

For the next few weeks, the distinct sound of pebbles striking Bastian Schaus's office windows resulted in six spilled drinks, seventeen desiccated cups of tea, nine desiccated coffees, two cracked mugs, a bent thermos, a mug-shaped dent in the far wall, and a citation for disturbing the peace, delivered to Bastian by an officer with such a perfect neck for wringing. All in all, Bastian had counted to ten seventy-six times, with a floor of two and a ceiling of eighty-six.

Bastian Schaus was eating a dry turkey sandwich at the cafe across the street when he was approached by a bald man with a camera around his neck.
"Hey." Odd way for a stranger to- "you pure of heart?" Ohhhh.
"Pure as the colors of our flag."
"Oh thank fuck." The bald man immediately plopped down on the seat across the table. "You know how long I've been looking? I know what like, three people look like here, and most people look at me like I'm Diogenes."
"Idiotic provocateur?"
The bald man actually smiled at that. "You're the first person I've met that hates the wretched hobo."
Bastian smiled back.

***

For the first time in a month and a half, things really were going Bastian's way.
He'd met a new face in an environment that could stand to be a little more considerate to his feelings, one in the know of all things! Someone to vent his frustrations with, to discuss the philosophy of his work, to just… to just talk. Even if it wasn't significant in the scheme of things (and in Bastian's experience, it rarely was), it was a sign that the universe was blowing in his direction. Or something. He didn't quite care about the metaphors.
Franz, that was his name, was certainly a colorful fellow, although a fair few of the colors were green; but he'd ripen in time. Was it too early to judge the man? Bastian swore their conversation had left a clear enough impression.
Bastian switched on the water heater, and pulled the canister of apple cider2 tea out of his pack; a gift from Franz, and one he'd been waiting to try since he came back from lunch.
Opening the canister, Bastian took in the sweet aroma for a few seconds, before gingerly placing a bag into the mug of hot water. Looks like he'd have about-
Oh. A note.
In the can.
The sealed can.
The hairs on the back of Bastian's neck stood alert as his trembling fingers fished the crumpled paper out of the canister, spreading it flat against the counter.

fuck you asshole give us back our muse
Franz ♡

Bastian blinked.

"You know," the dumbest grin wormed its way onto Franz's face for a few seconds. "I still can't find the HQ."
"Is that so?"
"Hey, at least regular Lichtenberg's got a consistent floorplan."
"True. I just remember that the Way's a block to the right coming out of work, and two blocks back is my other work."

The water heater beeped an irritating alert at the sudden disappearance of water.

"I have to admit, it is kitschy. The charming sort of kitschy." Mrs. Fleischer put a hand to her chin, flicking a lighter that wasn't there. "But kitschy."
Bastian Schaus looked back to the trashy mural staining the front of his work, silently playing an impromptu game of Where's Walter for the inevitable comment about a "muse" (partially out of the vain hope that someone at least left a signature) and finding naught but obscenities intricately woven with caricatures of Bastian in unflattering situations. Still, making sense of the work was the least he could do for what was now inevitably the star attraction of the museum for the next three months.
Someone tossed a pebble at his head. He'd scream if pebbles were still relevant.
"You know, I'm actually somewhat impressed. This took, what, a single day?"

***

Acolyte Salz stayed silent.
"Gotta admit," Acolyte Dunst puffed a cloud of lemon-scented vapor between her words. "Surprised they found us. Warded this place to shit. Wouldn't know unless you know. Think we got a snitch?"
Salz was too busy following the the curvature of the mural that festered on the HQ front. How much paint did it take? How much would it have cost, if the degenerate layabouts that vomited it onto the building edifice had actually paid for their materials? Did they genuinely believe they were being clever?
"Rass won't like this. Might even visit. Think this means war?" Another puff of vapor, this one coalescing in the shape of an ax. "Don't think this is the end. Look out for antifa goons."

***

"… why?"
"Probably some prankster you threw out your office." Mrs. Fleischer punctuated her comment with a sigh. "We already hit local news. You think now's a good time to-"

***

"-nip this in the bud?"
"… whatever. Have some initiates clean this up."

***

The Acolyte known as Bastian Schaus didn't know what to expect next.
All he knew was that they were getting bolder.

Bastian Schaus jiggled the door to his office, deftly avoiding the bucket of warm piss, the resulting mess of which was quickly dehydrated and swept into the trash (which Bastian checked for wild animals, as typical3). Next, he swept aside the blue thumbtacks that littered the floor (odd, these days they were typically green).
Checking his water heater, Bastian concluded that that too was filled with warm piss, a conclusion to which he nodded, gingerly picked up the heater, and threw it hard enough to break the photo-realistic pane of wood some degenerate vandal had installed to hide the fact that his window had been broken for a month. Bastian hoped it landed on a degenerate.
An examination of the office clocks revealed that they'd been shifted seven hours and 13 minutes into the past; the joke was on the prankster, however, because whoever did this had reset the clocks to actually run forwards in time again. They were also stupid enough to leave the joy buzzer on the dials exposed, so Bastian supposed he'd be using his phone for now.
With that over with, Bastian looked to his freshly painted desk and glue-soaked office chair. Idiots, the lot of them; with some concentrations, the paint and glue dried quickly enough. Sitting down-
The whoopee cushion on his seat whined a sad and lonely pbfft as Bastian unknowingly allowed himself to be Owned.
And so Bastian Schaus sat in his throne of shame, in his ruined kingdom, waiting for an appointment that would almost certainly turn into a test of his patience.
Might as well have been that the man that came in was a Black with a Jewish star around his neck.
"We're stooping to this, are we?"
"Hey, I ain't workin' with nazis."
"You realize I'm going to kill you the moment we're done talking, do you not?"
"Assuming makes an ass out of you and me." The artist grinned, and how lovely a grin it would be once Bastian knocked his teeth in.
"Yet you assume I am a National Socialist."
"Your words, not mine." In lieu of sitting like a normal person, the artist reclined in the guest chair, resting his feet on the desk. "So, the muse. You release that, plus apologize to Fats, and we're Cool. How's that sound?"
"Did you forget the part where I'm going to kill you the moment we're done talking?"
"No you're not."
"I'll take that as a yes." Bastian reached for a drawer near the bottom of his desk, only to find it glued shut. Such was life, he'd use his hands. "Even if I wanted to bow to your ridiculous demands, you must realize that I am no longer responsible for the foul beast you took for a muse. You must also realize that most of your pranks have grown tiresome. Annoying, yes, but tiresome."
"Yeah, well," taking their feet off the desk, the artist leaned in close enough for Bastian to see the pores he'd be sucking this degenerate's life out of. "Here's the thing: this's been a game to us. Child's play."
A shame the artist had moved his legs; they had been in the perfect position to break. "It does feel like a childish game."
"Yeah, but… well, truth be told, we're kind of tired. And, learning that you're a nazi-"
"Who says I'm a National Socialist?"
"The only people that call nazis that are other nazis." Such a smug, self-satisfied grin. His head would look perfect mounted in Bastian's den. "Still, we're gonna give you an ultimatum: one, an apology."
"No."
"Two, our muse back."
"Absolutely not."
"And three, since you've been very rude to me, a freshly baked chocolate baumkuchen."
"Fuck you."
The artist attempted to drop the grin, but the smug satisfaction that sat behind his dull eyes and inside his empty head left just a little bit of a grin. "Well, that leaves the other hand: we're gonna run your organization into the ground."
"You already have."
"The other one, Mister Schaus. If our demands aren't met within fourteen days, then the Berlin art scene will declare war on your little Bismark cosplayer club. Performance artists, sculptors, animators, every man, woman, or whatever, whether they want to be Cool Yet? or not, will be laser focused on fucking you from foundation to chimney. Do you want that, 'Mister Salt'?"
… that was it?
For the first time in quite a while, Bastian smiled. "Then this is a declaration of war."
The first punch, a right hook to the side of the head, was enough to splatter the effigy that once resembled an artist onto the floor, coating the carpet in a thin wax.
If SWJC Lichtenberg wanted to screw the hornet's nest, Bastian had no problems with that. But any organization that sent wax fakes to fight its battles lacked the will to power required for war. In a single swoop, SWJC would go from an annoying motif to a footnote in the history of the Fourth Reich.
What a silly, ill-thought threat. What better pretense for the Reich's authority was there than the cleansing of degenerates in self-defense? How easy it would be to prove themselves a trusted authority in the management of Outer Lichtenberg, the saviors of that decaying, crime-infested hellhole. To crush these degenerates like the insects they were. Oh, yes, Bastian couldn't wait to have the full force of the Fourth Reich falling on these fools.

One week later, Bastian Schaus was enjoying a bratwurst in a small restaurant in Lichtenberg proper during his lunch break.
A message to Rass, a few favors cashed in to Acolyte Zink, and a frank discussion with Acolyte Dunst on the state of their defenses had already been had, and now it was time to relax. His men would summon the appropriate reichdaemons in time, Dunst's dealers would have eyes to Outer Lichtenberg and Lichtenberg proper, and rest assured that when it came time for Acolyte Salz to defend himself, he would do so proudly and violently. Oh so violently.
The waitress to this place, the oddly familiar one he couldn't quite place a name to, came by right as he finished his drink. "You looking for more tea?"
Bastian smiled. "No thank you, just the check. And give my complements to the chef."
Giggling, the waitress took her leave, and left Bastian confident that no matter what those degenerate artists had done to his office, he'd get through the rest of the year just fine.
He might have to take tomorrow off, if he was to assist in preparations. It wasn't like he was needed at his rapidly sinking workplace. Bastian had saved those vacation days for something, so he might as well use them now.
The waitress came back soon enough, grinning from ear to ear. Something interesting in the kitchen?
"Good news!" The waitress's grin only seemed to wax as she slammed Bastian's receipt onto the table. "The chef's very pleased to hear that. In fact, he's coming out to give you seconds!"
Bastian smiled, and looked down at his tab.

BRATWURST LUNCH

AN APOLOGY; OVERDUE

PEPPERMINT TEA

MY FUCKING MUSE; OVERDUE

SALES TAX

ONE FRESHLY-BAKED CHOCOLATE BAUMKUCHEN; OVERDUE

THIS FAG BASHES BACK

Bastian Schaus looked up just in time to get punched in the face by a muscular man in chef's garb.
He wasn't sure if he blacked out because of the cold clock, the subsequent glassing by another accomplice he had mistaken for a fellow patron, the further beating he sustained from every goddamn degenerate in the "restaurant", or the sheer anger he felt when he finally recognized the frustratingly intact face of Fats Burg on his "waitress".

/

Black and White and Red All Over

Last Minute Resistance

Footnotes
1. English. Took a moment to parse.
2. Non-alcoholic.
3. Today was a slow day, which meant the single squirrel skittering around inside wasn't even rabid.


Hey everybody. Find this place okay? Good. Pull up a seat, grab a sandwich, I've got some cold ones in the esky there.
Hmm? Nah, go for it. Drink if you want, I personally have a full flask with me most days. The higher ups don't care. I mean, they do, and they'll have you shot if you show up for work sozzled, but just for the orientation? No one gives a shit. And you're gonna need it, trust me.
So without further ado – welcome to the Containment Psychiatry Orientation. You're all here because you're going to be moving on from handing pills out to cubicle jockeys and giving rum-soaked MTF agents a shoulder to cry on, to the wild world of providing psychiatric care to sapient humanoid SCP objects. To weird people in prison fatigues. Treating skips is very a different experience to treating our staff, and much more difficult.
First up, the good news: You get paid substantially more as a Containment Psychiatrist than you do as a staff shrink. A LOT more. Not yacht-and-mansion money, but none of your kids will ever need to pay for college. You'll also be working with substantially fewer clients – usually one or two, maybe three at the most. You'll have to put in more work per client but you'll still be on reduced hours compared to what you used to be doing. This position also comes as a package deal with a substantial life insurance policy.
Which brings me to some of the downsides. As a Containment Psychiatrist, you won't be dealing with staff burnout from a comfortable office anymore. You'll be a containment specialist, on the front lines with our guards and MTF agents. This job has a similar mortality rate to them, even though you'll only ever be interacting with skips while they're contained. Or just before they breach.
Let me ask you guys something – why do you think you were offered this job?
Ha! Called it! Oh, there's one in every group. “Best of the Best”, yeah right. You're gonna sit there, having done the shit you've done, look me in the eyes, and tell me you're one of the best of the best? Living up to every stereotype about arrogant psychiatrists now aren't you?
Hmm? Oh yeah. We know. Don't feel bad, you're not alone. Shit, it's why you got offered this job. Everyone in this room has done something that makes the Ethics Committee gnash its teeth in fury. Some of you fucked your clients, some of you sold drugs on the side, some of you are just plain shitty psyches.
You got picked for this job because you're terrible psychiatrists, and that's the plain truth. Because you're unethical, and in this job, that's a big plus.
Let me ask you another question – what do you think the point of this job is? What's the point of giving these skips mental health care?
Ha. Another funny guy. No, your job is NOT to help them. I cannot stress that emphatically enough. In fact, if you ever find yourself possessed of a sincere desire to actually help any of your clients, report it to your supervisor. You'll be given a leave of absence to get your head together and re-assigned to other clients.
You are a containment specialist. Your job is to contain SCP objects. Just like our guards or MTF agents. Your job exists as part of the Foundation because someone realised that quiet, docile skips are easier to contain than skips on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
I realise most of you won't know much about actual conprocs, so here's the thing. Officially, sapient, humanoid SCP objects cannot be rated anything lower than “Euclid”, because there's no telling what they'll do once you get them in containment. I think that's bullshit. In my opinion, a sapient humanoid SCP object should never be rated anything lower than “Keter”.
Why? Think about it. Think about what we do to these people. They don't get visitations, vacations or parole. Most of them don't talk to anyone besides their guards and you. For years and years, if not decades. What do you think that does to a person? How do you think that affects their mental state?
Rhetorical question. I've been doing this job for ten years now, I'll tell you what it does. It means a) they spend every hour of every day planning their escape and b) they hate you.
Stick someone in a little concrete box with nothing to do all day, and their every waking moment will be spent collecting information to plot a way out. Memorising shit like when their guards change, the layout of the Site they're kept at, and the schedules of other SCP objects that might help them. These guys are constantly on the lookout for even the slightest slip up that might give them the opportunity to make a break for it.
If they were normal prisoners, we could stop them with good guards and strong gates. But these aren't normal prisoners. All it takes is for one of them to have one trick they haven't pulled out yet and there could be a dozen dangerous weirdoes wandering the halls.
And they are dangerous. They will kill you if they find you. They hate us for what we do to them, and a lot of them would gleefully kill any Foundation personnel they got their paws on.
Our job, as Containment Psychiatrists, is to short-circuit that hatred. When you go into a session with one of your clients, your job is not to help them. Its to manipulate them, to make them docile, to sucker them with some good old-fashioned Stockholm Syndrome. Our good and noble profession harkens back to the cowboy era of psychiatry in the mid-twentieth century, when the priority was on keeping patients quiet so you didn't have to deal with them. Straightjackets, drugs in the food and watercannons. That's what we're about.
Your client is going to spend their every unoccupied moment looking for a way out? Put in a request to the Site Director. Give them an Xbox. Give them a DVD player. Fuck, give them a Playboy. Give them shit to do in their cell – that WON'T help them get out – so they sit in there nice and quiet and fuck around instead of trying some sort of heroic jailbreak.
Any “help” your client receives from this is purely coincidental. A means to an end. You're going to sit in these sessions with your clients and they're going to tell you horror stories. They're going to tell you about how they've been standing on concrete for so long they've got chronic foot pain. They're going to cry into their arms while they tell you they can't remember what their family's faces looked like, or that they haven't spoken to a non-staff person in decades.
And you're going to coo at them and pat their hand and use active listening to make them feel better about it. You'll prescribe them some anti-depressants, or recommend they get some potted plants for their cell, or some other bullshit.
But you'll never actually help them. Because the only way to do that would be for them to breach containment and escape to the outside world. And you wouldn't be sitting here if you were kind enough to want to help them with that.
Ethics Committee? Ha! Good one!
Oh shit, you're actually serious?
Alright, here's the thing about the Ethics Committee – what we are for skips, they are for the Foundation, kind of. The real purpose of the Ethics Committee is not to stop us being unethical. It's to manage staff morale.
The Foundation keeps innocent people locked up. We feed live babies to howling monsters. We send D-class to their deaths daily. It starts to wear on you. The Ethics Committee looks for ways for you to do these things that don't make you want to run screaming for the hills or curl up sobbing into the foetal position. Because if you did that, the skips you're containing might get out.
Like, here's an example of a completely “ethical” containment. Somewhere in the Foundation, there's this vampire right? Like an actual, honest-to-god vampire. Eternal youth, severe sunlight allergy, the works. She isn't human – you couldn't become a vamp – but apart from that she's the real deal. She shrugs off everything that isn't a stake through the heart and can tear through steel with her bare hands. So you know how we keep her contained?
A bunch of researchers found out that if you spill some rice in front of her, she's compelled to count them, each and every grain. She has to drop whatever she's doing to count them and can't do anything else until she's finished. So we built a special cell. Every 90 seconds, a cup and a half of rice is dumped into it, with a special second cup of rice on standby if she somehow makes it through the lot before the next lot gets dumped in. She's trapped; all she does all day is count rice. 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We don't give her the time to do anything else. We don't even stop when we shove a litre of blood in there once a fortnight to keep her alive. She hasn't managed to breach containment once in the last 30 years.
When you walked by her cell, you could hear her wailing from the other end of the hall. The Ethics Committee got wind of this, and leaped into action - they had the walls of her cell soundproofed.
Remember, the Foundation does not allow any sapient humanoid SCP object to be classified as “Safe”. We can't just push them into a storage locker, slap a padlock on it, and leave them there.
But we would if we could.
Yes, you can have another beer.


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X

NAME OF TALE: Aflame with the Fires of Delusion

The water seems to scorch him as it falls. His eyes are frozen to the screen; the words are burning off the page. He can't remember hot or cold any more—just that there had once been some jagged, sharp kind of sensation. Something more real and worldly.
There is a window opposite his desk. Mostly, he ignores it. Every now and again he'll be struck with some sense of being, of physical need, a headache. So he'll get up, grab a glass of water, or open a tin from one of the care packages They send him. Then it's straight back down to continue from where he's left off. The barest of distractions.
But occasionally—very occasionally—he glances out of the window. Towards that realm that he's left behind. His burnt-out retinas see only—only a kind of fire, dancing in red and purple, swallowing the ground and the people and the buildings.
He only has a single snapshot here, from this window. One angle, one view: a tarmac street, concrete tower-blocks, a few frail lights in the windows. This has become, to him, the extent of the tangible. All his needs are taken care of by Them and nobody ever knocks on the door. There is just rain—rain, memory, and the lights.
You don't need to look outside, someone thinks. And that someone is right. Is it him? He doesn't know. No self, that's the key. You can't let the self get in the way of the Work. No true bodhisattva would allow such a thing.
He looks away. He doesn't see the three figures, but he knows they are there. Text and images fly across the screen—whispering, dancing, engorging. He knows that they are coming for him. Be prepared, Bat. Obliterate your fear.

"Was there really", comes Shu's dark mutter, "no other assignment we could have taken?"
Monsoon nights are not pleasant in the south of China. Shu grew in the north, which is hardly free from the seasonal downpour, but years of missions abroad have made her forget what it could be like. The past week in Guangdong hasn't reminded her of her youth so much as it has engendered a savage bitterness against what she calls the "swamp-pot of the South".
The lobby's electric light alternates between surrender and defeat, pitifully illuminating the grey, dulled surfaces that surround them. There is no care for beauty, for humanity, in these towers: only a cold, utopian efficiency. The quintessential high-rise, framed and forgotten in concrete.
"I think it's interesting. There's nothing like this back home." Meyers, removing his coat, stares out at the sheets of pouring water. He is fascinated, and as green as could be. Shu inwardly groans.
"Quiet, both of you." The voice of their captain rings back, and they both tense up in silence; one out of fear, the other out of respect. You listen when Kuang Qiu speaks. They begin to fall back on procedure; their weapons out, their raincoats packed away.
This has not been, as Shu has intimated, a pleasant assignment. They've been sent out by the Foundation's Guangzhou Branch for an investigative mission. Not a dangerous mission: just a hidden youth, yǐnbì qīngnián, who's been frequenting some strange parts of the internet. They'll interrogate him, maybe bring him in, and definitely apply amnestics. The usual spiel.
But the 5 hour ride, the 30 minute walk in the freezing cold, all to wind up in some block of interminable hirked Shu. She hadn't relocated to be put on babysitting duty for an American rookie. And why the hell was Qiu here? An agent of their standing deserved better.
If Shu was fully aware, and not full of sores, she might be thinking more carefully about this. But she doesn't. She is there to follow orders, not question them. And so the three agents creep through the building, through its damp corridors and flickering lights, watched from above by an unseen eye.

His hands make tiny, minute movements. They've been trained that way—to interact with mouse and keyboard over thousands and thousands of lonely hours until they're clumsy with anything else. Orders and commands come through on the screen and he responds with more movements, more twitches.
He sometimes thinks, in those seconds after looking outside, that he is like a puppet master—gently tugging and pulling at the strings to make the world move to the divine will. A man of power, of wealth, of influence.
But if that is true, why is he here?
He remembers the monks at the old temples. Their great spires and walls of whitewashed stone—Hohhot's pride. The old man had smiled and spoken encouraging words in Mongolian. But Father had never taught him the language. So the old man had tried Chinese instead, and asked where Father was, but he hadn't known. The old man tried to help search for Father but they'd found Mother instead. She hadn't even glanced at the monk.
The old man had raised a hand in farewell.
What a fool that puffed up old fraud had been! The rest of them, too, with their Lamrim paths and Tantric idols. Mother had told him as much.
He'd moved away from there a long time ago, purged his accent of his roots; they were just more ties to desire—to the world. He is beyond that. He is going to be free. They do not know the true Buddha, the joy and horror of Siddhartha's visage. Moribund scholars in blank and crabbed halls!
The monk's smile had been slightly crooked, and kind.
The cameras all show different angles of the same scene: three figures creeping through the halls. They look ridiculous: dark shades with guns, moving, pointing, gradually shifting through the building. Their faces distort in the electric lights. The material marching in to invade his kingdom. Fools. They are all fools.
Bat looks around—window, screen, fridge. He feels agitated, without truly knowing why. He tries to stay calm, tries to keep his connection open. If only he were more like the others, that privileged few who cast their whole song into heaven. He has given what little of his mind he can, but he wants now to do more, give more. Then, maybe, he will stare upon the form of the true Buddha as He leans His golden head, displaying the truth of Dana, and pulls Bat's being into nothing.
Let them come. Let them all come. Not one will touch me.

"You know who we're here to take?"
Shu's voice rings in her captain's ears, a kind of pleasant irritant. Qiu duly sighs and stops, leaning against the wall. She could do with a rest; this building had continued to prove just how unpleasant it was with its lack of a lift. The stairs feel as if they could go on forever
"Did you actually read your briefing this time?"
Shu grins, slumping back against the wall. "Of course, Qiu. You know me."
Qiu did know her. The two of them had roughed it together on numerous missions: the Bengal Cataclysm, the Children's blood-rite, the Day of the Risen Xia. They know each other quite well—their ticks, habits, preferences. As much as Shu likes to mess around, she gets the job done.
She feels rather more apprehensive about the other one. Qiu thinks that she must seem rather cold to Meyers, the young, starry-eyed American rookie. So full of vim and vigour and the wonder of the paranormal. Normally, she would be nervous or dismissive of someone so green, but his record thus far has been excellent—some truly inspired actions when under fire. The exact kind of agent they wanted.
This didn't stop her from occasionally being a little tough on the rookie, though.
He pipes up now, in his chipper little voice: "I still don't understand what this group is, though. The briefing really wasn't very informative."
Qiu nods. "Everything's still being set up. It's all in a state of flux. The new AI's not even online yet. HQ's a panicky mess. They wanted bodies, competent ones, who have experienced this kind of shit before."
"Psychedelic nightmares?" Shu's light voice has an edge to it. Both of them remember some of the missions they'd been sent on in the past.
"Right. Well, sort of. We're calling the team Karma, because there's a Buddhist flavour to all this…" She waves her free hand in front of her, gesturing up and down, "stuff. There's… something going on in this part of the world. Websites, groups, reports of anomalous actors who spout gibberish when questioned."
The rain started to rattle the windows. Qiu looked up. They'd have to be moving on soon.
"They were a cult, essentially. A cult who believed in some bizarre stuff, some new-age mix of Buddhism and Scientology. Nothing to worry about, except they managed to drum up some links with the anomalous communities here and work havoc, for a time. But they were suppressed, the Chinese government and the Foundation working in tandem. Happened years ago. One of a hundred of these tiny groups."
Throughout her commentary, Qiu's voice is quiet. She has spent a lifetime cultivating it—a calm, quiet authority. Dependable, that is the word. A good actor in a crisis, capable of seeing things as they really are in the heat of the moment. The chiefs she's worked under have always nodded at her with an air of satisfaction; here, at least, is someone they can really rely on.
And so that's all she became. Someone to rely on.
"But the cult didn't die." she continues, "Not quite. It survived, in little underground cells, online discussion groups, that kind of thing. And it… changed."
"Changed how?" asks Meyer's dreamy voice.
"Just… changed." She continues to speak, looking up the stairwell, "And they're becoming a worry. More people getting suckered in, transformed into yǐnbì qīngnián, hidden youth, starving themselves on a diet of third-rate theologies. And so here we are. To fix it. Like we always do."
The three are silent for a moment. The rain batters the windows. The lights hum. The scene seems, for a moment, to freeze.
Shu breaks the silence. "They don't sound like a huge priority, though. A few underground cells? There are bigger threats to worry about. Why the new taskforce?"
"Because it's going to get big, if we don't nip it in the bud." Qiu sighs, and motions upwards. "It's places like this, you see, that they end up. This is where their delusions take them. It's a racket. A disease. You take people, real people, living their lives, and con them into delusional fantasies. Light and sound, fury and noise. The empty fire. But it's better warmth than nothing for those out in the cold."
They fall silent again. Then John murmurs, "We'd better be getting on."
The other two nod. They push through the doors, and up the stairs.
The eye sees them. Its smile is fraught.

The surge pulses upwards, thrusting its way to heaven. That feeling, that certainty, that knowledge of enlightenment, courses like healing light through his body. They will come to take him away, he knows. He can feel it. That mind of minds, that belief, that intangible wisdom given form, a manifestation of unreality made reality, an enlightened form coming closer, closer, closer.
It moves through blue veins, through frail thoughts, until it becomes its own negation. They'll see. They'll understand the gift he's given. The others, the chosen—maybe they will let him become one with them. To talk to him! To talk to it! Siddhartha himself!
Blessings come to those who take, Bat.
There are no flickers of doubt in his mind. No sheets of rain, no monks, no Mother, nothing. There is nothing. There is n—
"Khulan Bat-Erdene?"
He hadn't seen them. His attention had wandered! A fraught and fractious eye. They would be displeased. He feels Them, crowing, crowding, cornering him in his head.
What have you done, Bat?
"My name is Kuang Qiu. I am here to ask you a few questions."
They cannot know. Will not know. He will not—they cannot take his gift away.
He turns and sees them, the three figures in the black jackets. The first one is stern, focused, hair wound in a tight bun. The second stands looser, hands in her pockets, a single eyebrow raised. The third, a scrawny European, gives him a weak smile. A false smile.
"Th—this is my property. I am not available today. I am sorry."
Whose is that tinny voice? The first woman's face softens. Pity! Pity for him, the swooping Bat, the gift-giving servant of Siddhartha!
"We know what you are, Bat—can I call you Bat? I know what the Federation has promised you. We've met others like you. They're charlatans. They don't give what they promise. It's all a lie. But we can help. We can get you out of—well, of all this."
Bat grips the chair. His voice had sounds hoarse. Unused. The room is filthy—how hadn't he noticed that? The woman's voice is kind. Caring. He can't remember the last time someone spoke to him like that.
"We can help. You just need to let go. Come outside. Have you been in this rain much? It's a nightmare, but there's something cooling about it. Refreshing. Cleansing, even."
A flicker of humour. A hint of more than he saw. There is a person there, he can tell; full of complexity and life. Warmth, maybe. Like—
Like Mother.
He springs back, and moves his fingers in a complicated motion, chanting the old hymns. The others sing and dance, giving him their strength. The gift is yours to give. You wanted more choice, we know, but all who see the light will be changed by it.
Incandescent flames spring from his hands, moving into four-fold symbols, figures, words. The crackling sound ebbs and flows, gaining and losing form. The agents raise their guns, but they are too late, always too late. To defy Siddhartha's will!
The fire surges into the form of a dragon and flies to the woman's throat. She collapses. The other woman roars, the scrawny one takes a shot and Bat slumps back against his chair.
He lets out a wet and bloody laugh. Such a deep shade of red. Such a hail for Nirvana.
Bat doesn't move again.

The walls are cobalt. Everything is cobalt. So cobalt that it seems to fold in on itself, making shapes where there are none. It is a square room—at least, Qiu thought it is a square room. The blue envelopes everything—it is almost calming.
She rises, groans, and sees the spider. A white spindle of silk, descending from the ceiling before her. A thing of black and grey, bristling with brown hair, the size of a small car. Its eyes are trained on her. Its mouth moves. She can almost smell its breath.
She lets out the smallest of sobs. It is nothing, she tells herself. A delusion. A fakery. "Just charlatans", comes her desperate mumble, "just empty fire."
The spider begins to laugh, a hissing, whiskery sound. "Would you like to take some tea, my dear?" it whispers. And then it begins to climb into its web, revealing the door that stands behind.
And beyond that, only stars.

Sky Sermon
CHAPTER I
Oh, I Feel It! I Feel the Cosmos!


“Hey.”
A voice made its way through all the nothing and into Joey's ears. Joey noticed it first, and then got to work remembering who he was and what ears were.
“Hey. Ugly.”
A jabbing sensation in Joey's side. Not painful, but insistent. The voice was male, and rough, like its owner smoked nine packs per day and gargled a cup of razor blades every morning. Joey thought there was something familiar about it.
“Are you dead? You look really dead. Like two months dead, probably. If you're dead, I'm gonna take all your stuff. Admittedly I have no idea what I'm going to do with a big damn airplane, but hey, I'm an enterprising guy.”
Joey realized that his eyes were closed, he was face down in the dirt, and his body was very, very heavy. Joey remembered his name, then his friends. He remembered the beautiful trees, and found that he could hear their song right now, if he squinted his mind a little. He remembered the things that had happened to him, and the him that had happened to other things.
He remembered fangs made of wind, and the pain they had given him.
“If you're alive and you don't want me to take all your stuff, moo like a cow. If you're alive and I can have your stuff because you're just a generous kind of guy, burble like a wise old catfish. If you're dead, just keep on being yourself.”
Joey said, “Mmph.”
“Uh. Yeah, that was more 'indignant moose', which you'll remember wasn't on the list of options. That's ok, go ahead, give it another shot. Remember, catfish don't have lungs, so… really put your nose into it.”
Joey engaged his arms and pushed himself up off the ground. His joints and tendons popped and creaked. He flipped himself onto his back gracelessly, then sat up, and opened his eyes.
The first thing he saw was the sun, comfortable in its blue sky cushion. It performed as Joey thought it would and immediately blinded him. Some clouds came by at the same moment in an extremely suspicious act of kindness and dimmed the glare so Joey's eyes could adjust.
The trees were all around, just like they had been. So was the grass, mostly green, except for a black and burned part a short distance away.
There was also a guy.
The guy was skinny, and taller than Joey. He wore a metal helmet, and a long floppy coat made out of the same stuff as Joey's jacket, sleeves rolled up. He had a big gun in his hands, but it wasn't pointed at Joey. His skin and face weren't pink and nice, like one of the outside people. His skin was dark, greenish, and messed-up, with murky eyes and a nose that was just an empty hole.
Just like Joey's.
The guy said, “Wonderful. And here I was thinking this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Oh well, at least you're alive. That's… just keeny peach. Can you speak English too, or just Caveman?”
Joey blinked, and said, “Are we cousins?”
The guy blinked too. “I doubt it. Never seen you at any of the reunions. Although with a face like that, yeah, maybe we're a couple of long-losts, who knows. Aside from the general ugliness, you look like you went for a swim in a wood chipper. And then fell asleep in a blast furnace. And then went twelve rounds with some kind of friendly customer, maybe half grizzly bear, half chainsaw? Are you alright? You got a name?”
Joey didn't understand most of what the guy was saying, so he defaulted to his standard approach.
“I'm Joey. Do you want to be friends?”
The guy blinked again, and whistled. “Wow. You're fluent in Caveman. That's impressive, being a dead language and all. Okay. You seem like a guy who appreciates brevity. Short sentences. An, uh… economy of thought. That'll save time, I guess. Is this your airplane, Joey?”
Joey turns around, looks at his airplane, looks back at the guy, and beams with pride. “Yep. I made it all by myself.”
“I'm sorry? You made it? Yourself?”
Joey nodded, always happy to discuss his craftsmanship. “Yep. It took a whole year. It's got four engines! That's way more than just one, so it goes really fast. My friends said they could help me build it, but I wanted to see if I could do it myself. And I did. It's the best thing I've ever done. Her name is Mirror Bird, because uh… shiny. And because bird. Birds are pretty.”
The guy lets his gun fall to his side, and reaches up into his helmet to scratch his head. “Okay. Okay, this is uh… a lot to unpack. First off, how did you make an airplane by yourself?”
Joey smiled. “Mostly by punching.”
The guy took off his helmet and rubbed one of his temples with his eyes closed. “Right. Right, okay.”
He fell silent for a moment, making a face that Joey associated with very deep thought. Joey took this opportunity to look at the things that interested him, which was more or less everything he could see. He couldn't tell if the sun was rising or setting. Did that ever change? Was it always in the same direction? Joey couldn't remember a time when the sun had done anything differently, but he supposed that anyone would probably get bored walking the same way to and from work every day.
The guy put his helmet back on, wearing a determined expression. His gun was gone. Joey didn't see where it went; it was just missing.
“Okay. Okay, alright, Joeyboy. So you flew here? Where did you come from?”
“I came from home. I flew northeast for almost eleven hours.”
The confused guy furrowed his brow and frowned, looking down and putting his hands on his hips. “Flew… fucking math. Okay. Normal plane speed is probably… and southwest… so what, New Mexico? Arizona?”
“I don't know what those are.”
The guy sighed. “Is it hot where you're from? Lots of sand, no grass?”
Joey nodded. “Yes. And no trees. Probably because there isn't a lot of wood to make them out of.”
The guy nodded also. “Right. Okay, what the fuck is in… Oh. Oh god.” His eyes, filmy and yellow, widened in their sunken sockets. “Did uh… Joey, does your home have a wall around it? A tall white one? With guys outside it that told you and your friends to stay inside?”
Joey nodded again. “Yep! How did you know that?”
“It's complicated. Shit. Shit shit shit. Goddamn bastard banana balls and fuck.”
He took off his helmet and began to rub his head some more, pacing back and forth. He seemed worried suddenly, and Joey didn't understand why, but wanted to help, if he could.
Joey frowned. “Is something wrong?”
The man in the coat stopped pacing and walked closer to Joey, looking him straight in the eye.
“Look Joey, do you want to go home? Soon? Probably, I don't know, within the next few hours?”
Joey frowned harder. “Yes. But I can't. There are things I need to do and I haven't even figured out what they are yet.”
“Okay. On your feet then.” The man held out his hand for some reason, and Joey took it, not wanting to be rude. The man tried to pull him up, but Joey stayed sitting on the ground.
“Oh my God, how much do you weigh?”
“Almost a thousand pounds. How much do you weigh?”
“How is that even. What kind of. What. Just stand up, alright?”
Joey stood up.
“Okay. My name is Gary. We can be friends. Friends trust one another, right, Joey? So listen. You know those guys that were outside the wall, where you're from? They're following you. They're right on your ass. They've probably been tracking your plane, and they've probably got satellite eyeballs on us right now. In space. Space eyeballs, Joey. They're on their way here, and if they catch you, they're going to bring you home, and they'll never let you leave again. And they'll probably scoop your brains out or something for good measure.”
“How come? My brains wouldn't work very good if they got scooped. That's, uh… inlogical.”
“That's just what they do. You were never supposed to leave, but you did, so they're going to do everything they can to put you back.”
“I don't think so. Those guys were nice. They gave us cars and stuff.”
Gary sighed again. “Look. If they did, they only did that to keep you happy and distracted so you wouldn't think of leaving. But it looks like it didn't work on you. We're friends, Joey. Friends trust each other. So trust me when I say that those guys are bad news, and we need to get moving. Now.”
Joey frowned. This didn't make a lot of sense to him. He needed time to think about this.
“I need time to think about this.”
“There isn't any time to think about this. They would be hours behind you at the absolute most. The Foundation doesn't fuck around. How long have you been landed here, buddy?”
Joey thought about that.
“Uh. Well. The sun was getting dark when I landed. And then I looked at the trees for a while. And then the giant invisible monster showed up. It tried to eat me, so I had to fight it. It hurt me really bad, and I think I almost died, but then I exploded, and then I punched it in the face so hard that it exploded, and then I fell asleep.”
Gary was silent for a short moment, and then was not very silent at all.
“What is that, a fucking riddle? Do you or do you not remember how long you've been here, Nostradamus?”
Joey frowned again. “My name's Joey, remember?”
Gary screamed. The he took some deep breaths, and said to himself, “Does the plane work, Joey?”
Joey thought about this. It probably did. He would have to do some system checks, but it didn't look damaged from the fight.
Oh. But there was one thing.
“I think so, but it needs gas.”
Gary rolled his eyes exasperatedly. “Well, we're in the middle of the woods in fucking Ontario, so I don't think we're gonna find an airport anytime soon. We'll have to ditch it.”
Joey frowned. “No.”
The tall guy squinted, and leaned toward Joey a little. “No? Are you listening? Your plane will not take off without fuel. There is no way to get fuel. So your plane will not take off. We'll have to leave it behind, unless you can fit it in your fucking pocket somehow.”
Joey shook his head, adamant. “No. It took me a whole year to build the Mirror Bird. It's what the Boss wanted. It's the only thing I've ever done. And it's how I'll find the way for my friends. I won't leave it. It is a very good airplane and I love it very much. I'll gas it up myself.”
Gary blinked a few more times. “And uh, how exactly do you propose to do that? Is the cargo hold just full of extra fuel?”
Another head shake. Joey couldn't remember a time in his life where he had had to say “no” this many times. Gary seemed like he was a “no” sort of person.
“No. It's full of cigars, flamethrower axes, and my motorcycle. But I can gas the Bird. C'mon, I'll show you.”
Gary huffed a sigh. “Well, at least you're a guy that understands what the finer things in life are, if nothing else. Alright, I'll play along, but you better make this quick. We don't have a lot of time.”
Joey and Gary entered the cargo hold. It was a wide metal space that took up most of the belly of the bomber. Joey's black motorbike was lashed to some securing brackets by the far wall. The left wall held racks of flamethrower axes that Joey had built himself, along with crates of pressurized fuel canisters for them. Along the right wall were boxes of cigars, cigarettes, and a few drums of Chef's oil soup, a bowl of which Joey happily ate every few days.
In a corner of the hold toward the nose of the plane was a clumsily-welded metal chair, which Joey sat in. He reached to one side and pulled up what looked like a high-pressure hose, one end of which was attached to a connection in the floor. The other end in Joey's hand did not look like that of a normal hose. Instead of threads and a fastener, it had a gleaming metal needle, not unlike that of a syringe.
Gary looked at this with a blank face. “Joey, what the fuck is this?”
Joey didn't say anything. He simply rolled up the sleeve of his badly scorched leather jacket and jabbed the needle directly into his arm.
There was the sound of pressure being released. The hose stiffened slightly, and fluid could be heard splashing into a tank somewhere below their feet. A slight smell of petroleum entered the air.
Joey said, “Gas. Shouldn't take long. Where are we going?”
Gary had a few thoughts, in this moment. Unfortunately, these thoughts all simultaneously collided at an intersection somewhere in his old brain, and the smoldering wreck wasn't anything that he could properly articulate. So he gave up. His brain didn't have a fire department.
“Uh. I don't know yet. Away from here, until we can come up with a better plan. Joey, those guys aren't going to stop until they put you back home.”
Joey cocked his head. “Why? I'm not very important.”
“You uh, are, to them. They're going to follow you and follow you and when they catch up to you, they're going to capture you and bring you back. They'll put you right back behind that wall, where you started.”
Joey thought about this. It seemed very strange. The guys in the white coats and black cushions must have gotten upset when he left. But why? Joey wasn't a prisoner. He wasn't hurting anyone. Joey had never wanted to hurt anyone in his life, except that wind monster. But Joey wasn't sure that had even really been an “anyone” to begin with, and he had tried to reason with it.
Wait. Reason. Yes. Of course, it was so simple. The outside guys were smart. Really smart. Way smarter than Joey. You could tell because they wore glasses, had real noses, and had lots of pens in their pockets. Nobody would have that many pens unless they knew how to use every single one of them and really liked them, which only smart people do. So if they were super-smart people…
“Why don't we just talk to them?”
Gary looked at Joey like he was an idiot. Joey, knowing full well exactly how much of an idiot he was, understood this, and empathized.
“Ha. Hahaha. Oh, alright. You wanna talk to them? You don't, uh… you don't get it, do you, Joey? Do you? Do you get it? Do you get any of it, Joey? Riddle me this, Kasparov, do you even know where you came from? Do you know how old you are? Do you know what you are? Do you have any fucking clue what the situation is out here, how fucking dangerous it is? And do you know that you're being fucking taken advantage of by a piece of shit that's only pretending to care about you? Do you get it, Joey? Do you understand?”
Gary's eyes were wide, and he had come very close. Joey met his gaze confidently, utterly secure in his answer. He had never been more sure of anything in his life.
“Nope.”
Gary threw his hands up and walked away for a bit, going in a circle. “Well that's just fucking grand, Galileo. That's just the best damn story ever told, and in one word. How fucking true.” He went to stand at the edge of the hold, looking out at the trees with his back to Joey.
Joey could hear a sound. It was a sneaky sound. One of those ones that starts quiet, but gets louder. He didn't recognize it. It sounded kind of like a bee, but if a bee were very, very big and very upset about something.
There was the much closer sound of a lighter being flicked. Gary turned his head slightly, his body framed by the sun before him. The end of his cigar glowed nearly as bright.
“Well. We're friends now, aren't we? I guess we'll do it your way. You say you wanna talk to them? Get the Foundation to see the light that they've been blind to for hundreds of years? Okay. Now's your chance. They're already fucking here.”

« Joey Fucknuts Believes In Himself
Joey Makes a New Friend

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Joey Fucknuts Builds a Flying Machine •

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Joey Fucknuts Believes In Himself •

Joey Fucknuts Takes to the Skies •

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CadaverCommander's Mobile Assault Necropolis •


« There is the sun and it is nuclear and it is nothing more. There is the sun and it is nuclear and it is nothing more. There is… »
"They're still keeping this up?"
Across the dirt road running past the Temple of His Radiance amass the swarm of what Sunspeaker Yaling Yu can only assume to be "protesters." Signs lay across beaten up vans, wires snaking from them to power the masses of loudspeakers that blast the same relaxed voice. That same damn message.
Yaling bares her teeth. "Apparently so."
Since yesterday these non-believers kept it up. 37 hours and counting. She's not sure how they even found this temple in the first place — this is miles from the nearest town, deep into the forests, and that's as run down of a place as you can get in the Chinese countryside. Nobody should be able to get here, let alone foreigners.
Firestarter Zhi Hu sighs from his position next her, tugging up his jade-encrusted cloak to cover his head and turning to return to the temple. "It is what it is. Let's go back. Tending to the Radiant Eye is more important than focusing on nuisances."
"Fine." She doesn't turn.
Something is wrong with the non-believers. Nobody is holding their signs any more, the ones decrying the Children of the Torch. The only talk is quiet mutterings. Each of them are wearing something under their clothing. Armor?
"Sunspeaker?"
She doesn't turn. She snaps her fingers again, again. Like flint against stone sparks light up in her palm, resting and building with each successive snap, snap…
"Sunspeaker."
The fire is already building, and with enough snaps it'll take just one flick to careen it at the—
"Sunspeaker." He grabs her shoulder.
"Right, yes, inside."
The sparks go out, she turns around. They trod down the path to the temple entrance, reaching the vast wooden doors, turning the handles.
The loudspeakers shut off. Silence hits.
"Wait," says Zhi.
Pause. For a moment they stand there, waiting for any new sounds to enter. None do. No jeers, no new broadcasts. Nothing. Tentatively, Zhi steps from the handles, tugging his hood back down.
He spots glinting steel.
BANG.
The bullet lances Zhi's head before he can raise an arcane barrier. Scarlet whips from the wound. His body collapses against the doors. A smoke trail points to the canopies behind the non-believers. Broadcasts reengage. Yaling spins and SNAPS two orbs of flaming radiance over her fists, charging forward and winding her arm to launch solar fury—
A wall of gunmetal faces her. The non-believers are armed.

SCP-1428-2 crumbles. Explosive charges blow out the centuries-old support pillars, ceiling crashing down onto the three-armed statues in plumes of black, dead dust. Guards panic and trip the emergency signal. Patrols through the ruins and enveloping woods are initiated but in the first moments of investigation they meet volleys of slugs and rifle rounds. It comes from all sides — it can't be avoided.
When Foundation personnel pull in the next morning there is nothing left to recover. Temple gone. Security shot dead. Among the oldest Children of the Torch relics; destroyed.

« There is the sun and— »
Propaganda cuts off to the firing of assault rifles. Bullets pulverize the walls of the temple's opening hall. Lead thunders against the avian statue Yaling Yu hides behind. Its wings snap off. She scrambles out under a hail of wooden shrapnel. Walls of flame shoot up in a barricade that evaporates the bullets the non-believers fire and she ducks into the nearest hallway. Wax leaps from her fingertips. It flashes. The hallway entrance clogs with burning feathers.
Sprinting past rows of sun imagery and tripedal crows, the skeletal bird head on her belt chirps. She raises it to her head.
"They're breaking through." Defender Jiang has to shout over gunfire to be heard through the speaker.
"Have they touched the Radiant Eye yet—"
"No but they've bust into the antechamber. Fire-breathing and sun rites can only hold them off for so—"
Rumbling. Lanterns shake overhead. They can't get the Eye, that divine weapon. They can't.
"Tell me that they won't be able to reach it, tell—"
"—and it is nothing more— can't keep talking, they've broken in—"
The head clicks silent. Yaling desperately presses the keys on its side, praying to the Radiant Father that all will be well, but nothing comes through. She reaches to hook it back on her belt but the walls explode. A concrete-plated van slams through, gunner leaning out to face her.
The propaganda blares. Her eyes blast solar coronas.

Miles away in a sterile containment chamber SCP-1428-1 goes limp. Its wings fall, its head slumps, the last sparks drip from its eyes and fades on the floor. With a whirr the chamber doors widen. Agents garbed in lead and wielding Gieger counters amass around the bird. There is a pulse, enough to suggest continued life, but the neural scans find the brain deep into a coma. No more radiation flows from its wings.
In an old steel box SCP-2814 quietly loses its flames. Further off SCP-2995 dims. The sun falls across the sky.

Molten van fragments tumble through the antechamber, pulverizing the non-believers in its path. Yaling runs past the carnage and into the Radiant Eye's chamber. On its pedestal the Eye, glass and jade lens ringed on its sides by three golden arms, remains intact. Jiang lies at the pedestal's base, helmet and head blown in half. More bodies of the Eye's defenders surround him.
As she gapes a non-believer plunges a makeshift bayonet at Yaling's neck. She spins and more sun rays exit her corneas but the non-believer has a shield on his armor, redirecting the energy into the ceiling. The bayonet misses. She kicks his legs out. He fires his pistol. Misses.
Breathing in, her right hand ignites into a flaming avian claw. Thrusting downwards she rips the bayonet from his grip, tears it in half, stabs it into the ground where he was before he rolled away and drops to avoid another pistol shot. With a split-second spell Yaling apportates behind him. Her right hand's talons meet skin, piercing through his neck.
Heat floods arteries and spinal tissue. His neck pops.
Two more vans break through the walls. This is too much for her to hold off — she needs to resort to extreme measures. Yaling floods more heat into the dead attacker, sliding his spinal cord from the melting flesh and raising it high. She breaths and the spine sublimates and ionizes and its a javelin of light that soars from her grip and lands dead-center on the Eye. Ancient mechanisms click. The light is absorbed. Yaling barely has time to jump out of the way as the Eye blasts a laser that shoots past her and into the vans. A second is all it takes for them to be incinerated.
The mechanisms click again, Eye deactivating. Just as she thinks that those had to be the last of them the propaganda reignites, smoldering antechamber filled with another row of non-believers. Guns trained solely on Yaling inhale round after round of ammunition. The ring of flames she casts keeps her safe but she isn't all-powerful. Fatigue already creeps its way into her psyche.
She stands in the ring, praying that the rest of the temple's defenders can arrive.
She waits.
Realization hits.

Temples across China empty. Foundation agents watch as Children of the Torch adherents stop their rituals, drop their sun- and bird-modeled trinkets, exit the premises of their sacred grounds to return to the rural towns they live in. Undercover Agent Yan Guan, sticking to their disguise, pursues the nearest Firestarter, asking.
"How can you abandon your duties like this?"
"I have no duties." A shrug.
"Do you not want to reawaken our Father?"
"Nobody needs awakening."
"So what of the Radiant Father?"
The same question is posed by dozens of other undercover agents to dozens of other adherents. The answers are all variants on the same:
"The sun is the sun. It is nothing more."

The IED blows a hole through the ceiling. As the columns holding the ceiling come down Yaling breathes in the ring of flames, flowing through her body and into her very nerves. A second IED is thrown. Yaling glows. Three wings of solar radiance flare from her shoulders and in a streak of plasma she launches skywards.
The non-believers, the IED, and the whole temple complex drop beneath her. The forests widen to the horizon, stretching past the lowering sun. She jets eastwards. The other temples have to be warned. If it's too late for warning, then they need aid. If it's too late for aid…
Pitch-black daggers of light stab through her retinas. She shrieks, losing concentration and nearly slamming into a wheat field before swerving back up. The daggers fade from sight but something is stabbing just as hard into her head, into her mind.
There is no Radiant Father.
Falling again, she regains composure inches above the roof of a farm. There is a Radiant Father, a Father of life who left the sun as his sleeping form. How could she think—
You are worshiping an imaginary concept.
Dodge a telephone pole. Launch higher into the air, keep farther from the ground—
What proof do you have? You have not seen his "Radiance." What you see is regular sunlight.
Crashing into the clouds, clutching her head, gulping in the chilling air—
Flight like this is impossible as well. You would have died several times over at this altitude, and that's ignoring the speeds you are moving at.
Earth spins around her. The knives are all-encompassing and somewhere behind them is a broken face, a face in a jar in a laboratory flashing in her vision. It's impossible to ignore.
Please understand, all of this is an elaborate lie.
Yaling screams.
There is the sun and it is nuclear and it is nothing more.
"It is nothing more—"
She hits a radio mast. She is skewered against it.

Thousands of miles in solar orbit, a satellite spies movement, a shifting under the sun's surface. The photosphere ripples, coronas drifting out, unseen shapes pressing against the layers of superheated gas. As soon as it comes it ends. There is nothing more.

RUBIE agent Aldric Lémieux stands atop the collapsed Eye chamber, taking in the scent of the blood and cinders as he stretches his arms. Rubble shifts to his right, a still surviving defender of the temple pushing out in a burst of flame. Sighing, he squeezes the trigger of his fire extinguisher/rifle hybrid, then pops a hole clean through the head. It was a shame, really. They could've been so close to seeing past the Irrationality of their beliefs, past it and into the tranquil seas of Rationality—
A hand tugs on his leg. The defender is still alive, hole between his eyes seeping magma across a scorched face.
"W— why," he rasps out. "Why do you do… this?"
"Because you are wrong."
Crunch. He pulls back the heel of his shoe, dusting the cerebrospinal fluid and viscera off on a wooden plank. Shame.
Just ahead a cluster of agents heaves the great Eye out from piles of wood, kicking off the viscera and corpses weighing it down. It is intact, just as was hoped. If it is true that it can harness the power of the sun in all its might then it will be the perfect weapon in the fight for logic. Once scientific study can be completed, of course. The sheep that were the pious won't know what will have hit them.
He whispers a brief oath to Gödel and Sagan. Smoke from temples miles away stains the sky. The last lights of the setting sun glare across the horizon.
The dawn of reason is at hand.

« The Deniers | ACT I: GENESIS | SCP-4519 »


September 3rd,
Perhaps not one of my finest days. The piping issue spread from the southern zone to over half of the site's area, so we had to put whatever we were doing on hold for maintenance to come to the rescue…again. To make things even better, the leaks made it to a couple of storage units, apparently messing up some of the containment procedures of the anomalous objects there. That means that someone special is going to have to go there soon to clean up and report back the damage caused and that special someone is probably going to me, as usual. Greg decided to come to cheer me up by passing by to offer me my weekly session of "loud vocalization" about how careless and irresponsible I am. This episode was about how it was my fault that the piping system broke down, even though I just happened to be in the area of the incident. Boy, do I like working here.
Oh, also one of the Tactical Response Squads came back recently from a Serpent's Hand raid with more than a handful of items. Tomorrow I'll be assigned to reviewing and cataloging some of them, so that might be interesting at least. Somehow, they always seem to give me the funniest ones to study. Not complaining, though.

September 5th,
Oh, God, I really fucked up this time! Maybe Greg was right all along about me being irresponsible, but I can't stop now.
This morning, some guys left me a few sealed boxes of artifacts and objects recovered from that Serpent's Hand raid, telling me to look through them and report if I find anything peculiar or that can be useful to the Foundation. I grabbed my coat, looked for an empty examination room, requested a few D-Class personnel and started working. The whole day passed and nothing too incredible showed up: some liquid that keeps a spherical form, a creepy plastic figurine that doesn't cast shadows, a pair of shoes affected by inverse gravity. Seriously, why would they even keep this kind of junk?
It got really late and the only item left unopened was this small wooden crate. Now, I know I could've left it there and continued the experiment the following day, but I was really tired and pissed that nothing interesting showed up so I said "screw it" and went in the examination room by myself. I opened the crate and discovered this old-looking book inside. I picked it up, flipped through the pages only to find…nothing. The damn book was empty. Right as I was about to put it down and call it a day, I spotted some text with the corner of my eye on the first page. "Our story begins on July 17th, in the magical city of Southampton, as a hero is gifted to those lands."
Right after I read that first sentence, another just showed up on the page. After reading that one, another one followed it. And even crazier is that the sentences were about me! About my life! But it was like someone transformed into a story. It wasn't a cold, boring biography, it was a tale of a hero on his mighty quest to discover his purpose and change the world! I kept reading and reading until I reached the point in my life when I discovered the book. The text then told me it's time for me to continue my journey and stopped generating sentences. I wasn't shocked, just amazed of how interesting my life seemed when put into that perspective. I was so captivated, I didn't even realize almost 2 hours had passed. I was way too tired to write a report on this inoffensive SCP, so I grabbed my stuff and headed home, still with a smile on my face.
That's when the weird stuff started happening.
As I was driving home, I suddenly started hearing a faint voice in my head. I turned down the radio, thinking the sound might've come from there, but it kept going, becoming more audible with each sentence. "Tired, Lawrence, you're just really tired. That's all." I kept telling myself. I then started to clearly make out the words. They weren't gibberish, it was a calm voice talking in my head, describing the actions I was doing. "Lawrence suddenly started feeling uneasy, as if the whole world crumbled inside him. The sweat on his forehead and tight grab of the steering wheel were giving away the fact that something was on his mind.". I started freaking out.
I pulled over to gather my thoughts for a moment, to focus on what was going on, but the voice kept going, almost covering my thoughts. It then came to me that the voice's way of speaking was familiar to me and I immediately knew why. It had the same narration style as the text from my "story". But that was not all there was. I needed to go back to the site and ask for help.
I got back in the car and started heading back to where it all started. On the way there, the voice continued to describe my thoughts, feelings, actions, as well as the kinds of places I was passing through. At one point, though, the voice said something like "During his hasty drive to his workplace, our hero stopped paying attention to the surrounding traffic, causing him to get struck by a monstrous truck whose breaks had stopped working.". A chill suddenly climbed my spine. Almost without even thinking, I smashed the break with my foot right as I was about to pass an intersection. The driver behind me must've gotten pretty angry, but I barely heard his honk. I was too focused on the giant truck passing at full speed by me from the street coming from the right. I watched it go on for a few more seconds, only to witness a crash into a huge statue, followed by an explosion. A few meters forward and I would've been hit full-on. I think the voice saved my life (or maybe put it in danger in the first place?).
Fast forward 10 minutes and I made it to the site. I told the guards I had forgotten something in the lab to let me in and I started wandering the halls, trying to focus on what I had to do. I wasn't sure who to report this to, since I wasn't very familiar with the night shift. Luckily, I remembered about a lady I knew, Lucy, a researcher assistant. The shift difference never allowed us to really get to know each other, but on the rare occasions we had met, she'd always been very nice to me. I asked around for her lab and I managed to make it there in one piece. Right when I was about to enter it, the voice caught my attention with "He carelessly entered the laboratory, ready to ask Lucille for help, not knowing that she, like a vulture, had been waiting patiently for him to make a mistake, so she could fly in and take the researcher position she had dreamed of.". I didn't know what to do. Another researcher passed by the lab and probably noticed me having an existential crisis, because he asked me if I was ok. I had to make a choice.
I could've told him what had happened and seek help. This would've been the sensible thing to do, considering the fact that I had no idea what was going on. But through the entire wave of thoughts going through my head, I was able to focus on one. This voice inside my head. This voice had information. I didn't know how it worked or whether I should trust it, but this thing may had saved my life and warned about me losing my job. It knew much more than I did and probably much more than anyone else did. I am not proud to admit it, but I started feel paranoid about the fact that letting the Foundation know I have access to possibly unlimited information might lead to them locking me up, or even my termination. So I let myself guided by this fear and told the researcher I was just sleep deprived. I called myself an uber home, because I didn't feel like driving in that condition. And here I am. I'll try to get some sleep, but I don't expect it will be easy with Sir Talk-a-lot chatting in my mind. This next day is going to be very, very interesting.

September 6th,
Today was very, very interesting.
I tried going on with my day as if nothing was wrong. That proved to be a little harder than I'd anticipated. Apparently, a voice talking continuously in your head can really affect your ability to focus. Talking with others was the fun part. It was like trying to hold a conversation with someone while listening to a podcast in your headphones. It did generate plenty of awkward moments when you just nod and smile, hoping it wasn't a question, but worst case scenario my coworkers think I was a little hungover.
I was right about this voice having all sorts of information. I managed to find out a lot of… unexpected facts about people throughout the site. This workplace really is a snake enclosure. I have to be careful who I can trust from now on.
But that was just the tip of the iceberg. I was passing by one of the locked empty containment cells and I thought I heard chatter inside it. I couldn't make out any words, but the voice gave me some insight. Apparently, the Foundation is bringing in this new classified creature to the site tomorrow. I don't know how this is going to affect us yet, but I don't like the way the voice described it as "a devilish beast" and the fact that my team wasn't informed about it makes it even more concerning.

September 7th,
I think I'm slowly starting to get used to this. Yeah, I still need sleeping pills to get a good night's rest and yeah, I am making efforts to focus on certain thoughts or to talk to other people, but it went from a big pain in the ass to a regular pain in the ass.
I didn't learn anything interesting today, unfortunately. Just the regular gossip about other's people thoughts and personal secrets. I try to forget some of the things I find out about these people. The voice can get into some really nasty stuff (why do you have to be such a creep, Dimitri?).

September 8th,
A man can only fuck up so many times, right? I wish that was true…
Today there was a slip-up. Remember that creature I talked about a couple of days ago? The one that was supposed to be secretly transferred to our site? Well, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that it's not a secret anymore. The bad news is that the thing breached containment when it arrived.
I was just sitting at my desk, filing some reports or whatever, when the alarm went off in the site. I was hoping my little mind friend would tell me what was going on, but I guess he decided to keep the readers on their toes. I left my quarters and headed towards an emergency room to wait for the Tactical Response Team to do their thing. I got there and the door was sealed shut by a security officer. People were talking about what SCP could've breached and rumour quickly spread about a classified entity. I, of course, acted surprised.
Now, here's a fun fact about our emergency rooms. Once sealed, it is almost physically impossible to open them without someone from a command center opening the door. That is extraordinarily useful when dealing with most SCP creatures, because they wouldn't be able to knock it down. A less fun fact about is that this system isn't really efficient in instances where the SCP can just phase through the walls, which was, as you probably guessed, exactly what happened after a few minutes.
The thing looked like a small cloud of smoke and it definitely wasn't passing by to say hi. It headed for the first person in its way and somehow entered his body, possessing him. It got control of his entire body, and, like most things we study do when they escape, started trying to kill people. Of course, we heavily outnumbered him, so we simply immobilised him. The smoke then started passing from person to person every few seconds, confusing the hell out of us, since we didn't know who to target. This fiasco continued until someone got killed for real. A guy, Charlie apparently smashed the possessed lady's head on the ground in self defence. The SCP then exited her body, looking almost twice as big as before. Things didn't get better from there, as the gas continued to possess random people through the room.
It was a bloody mess, literally. Screaming, running around, fighting. I was terrified and it looked like there was virtually nothing we can do to stop it. That's when my little pal came into play. "Lawrence and his companions were courageously making their stand against the shapeless monster. Little did they know, the beast had none, but one rather wet weakness.".
It took me a second, but once it came to me, I didn't stop to think twice before shouting my lungs out for someone to turn on the fire emergency sprinklers in the room. I shouted once, I shouted twice, I kept shouting until I saw Lucy(must've pulled an all-nighter, or in her case, an all dayer), reaching for the manual switch. As soon as the water started raining from the ceiling, the thing rushed out of whoever it was possessing and stormed through a wall like a bullet. After a few seconds, everyone went dead silent. Some of them then started looking at me, confused. Not knowing what to do, I tried to get everyone to calm down and settle. It somehow worked.
We waited about an hour trapped in there, wet, creeped out and awkward after all that had happened. One guy came to me at some point and asked how had I known that water would work on the thing? I then realized it, too. How could I logically explain them how I got that information without breaking my cover? I couldn't. I babbled something about having been just a lucky hunch out of fear and he left me alone.
Someone eventually let us out of there. They had us checked for scars and bruises, hospitalized the really beat up people and then let the rest of us go home for the day. Now I don't know what to do next. It is no mystery that I raised suspicion and I can't allow mistakes like these to happen again. If they find out I have been hiding an anomalous item from them, things are going to get even messier than today. In the meantime, I'll come up to some other excuse if they decide to question me tomo-

Incident Report 4569-1
Incident Date: 08/09/20██
Researchers Involved: Dr. Lawrence Preda
Classification: Class C
Incident Description: Multiple reports have been received from personnel regarding Dr. Preda's unusual behavior and knowledge of classified information about a certain SCP entity. Further investigation has proven that he had been not only purposely hiding information about an anomalous item from the Foundation, but also utilizing the object for his own personal gain. These actions are not in conformity with several Foundation rules and thus, Dr. Preda was detained, interrogated and had his journal studied. The Ethics Committee's first given sentence was the administration of amnestics and placement into civilian society at Level C, but these have proven to be ineffective at the removal of SCP-4569-A from his mind, as have all other methods attempted by The Foundation. EC had no other choice but request the termination of Dr. Preda and increased security for SCP-4569, in order to prevent similar events from occurring.