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NAME OF TALE Chiaroscuro
Images: The first image is a modified version of this CC0 photograph.
The second image is a modified version of this CC-BY 3.0 photo.

It felt like the fog would never end.
It spread across the continent, dull and ordinary. It was part of a pace of life that people assumed would go on forever, even as they picked up the pieces of their shattered world. In a village in Sweden, people took in the drying clothes, feeling a pleasant kind of winter chill as they trudged back to their homes. Thin lights spread out from coastal villages, blurring and blending with the grey beyond.
It spread over the ocean, with bells pealing through the air, muffled and distant. Little ships plied their way across the seas, fearing the cold below. It was a life spent dwelling in these shades of grey, hoping that something solid would appear on the horizon.
South, across the forests and repopulating towns, was a city. It was a broken city, in a kind of stasis where it could not be put back together. But it still had streetlights, gaunt townhouses, bonfires in empty streets. There was order, of a kind, as the soldiery of four nations gathered to squabble over its remains.
In this moment, at this time and place, its citizens looked to the sky for their salvation. The Soviets were blasting propaganda across the three zones, and they'd tried a putsch in the West only a few weeks before. The buildings were half-collapsed in their own rubble. It was a city surviving on string and wire.
Stalin was starving half the city in order to put pressure on the West. And the Americans were too stubborn to concede, so they were running the blockade in planes, tiny planes, rickety engines that could travel hundreds of miles through the air but not touch down in a little winter mist. In their apartment blocks and houses, in the wreckages of houses and mausoleums, the Berliners listened to the whine of the engines as they circled, over and over, looking for a way through.

In another part of the city, in a little pool of light, a man was sitting on a bench. He wore a long, dark coat but possessed few other describable features. The impression you'd be left with was with someone grim and unshaven, even though you wouldn't be able to say why. A lamp shone down upon him. No-one noticed him as they walked by.
Trying to see was pointless, but he could still hear through the mist. There were two people near him that he was interested in. He was listening to one right now: an American serviceman, off duty, laughing with his friends and chatting up a girl. He tried to chat up a lot of girls. Today, though, he was more interested in having fun, in camraderie, in the business of friendship. He was wonderfully vacuous.
The other was, by and large, an irrelevance. He was following the man in the long coat, and doing this badly. This one was nervous and twitchy, making every effort to appear surreptitious and, in doing so, entirely failing. He had so many complexities that it felt like he had none, so much noise that you couldn't hear anything else.
This one would be easy to dispatch. The man in the long coat had a trap that he would spring directly. First, though, he needed a little time to listen. The conversation of the American was full of baseball, the Big Apple, Minnesota in the spring. It was useful, useful stuff. The man in the long coat wanted to know everything about him, listening while he scribbled and scribbled in his little notebook. The spine was beginning to break.

Hours later, the irrelevance entered a sparsely-lit room.
The apartment was not unadorned - that would have been too obvious. Instead, it was pleasant and idiosyncratic. A picture of a smiling couple. A rare Uzbek rug, bought in Belgrade, now fading slightly. Some tasteful novels piled neatly by a window.
Hans sniffed and flicked his hair. He ran a gloved finger along the top of the wardrobe. Not especially dusty. Someone had been here recently.
He was careful. No fingerprints. He opened the doors and drawers quietly, naturally. He prided himself on his precision. He liked the process of something, the careful orders and patterns that accomplished a task. He needed that kind of stability - after the things he'd seen, it helped him to focus.
He was twenty-seven now. His story was unremarkable. He'd been an Ostfront conscript, and like all Ostfont conscripts had seen things he didn't want to. He would claim that he'd never participated, he'd never done anything like that himself. He'd just been there.
Hans could, with difficulty, preserve a narrative in his head about his life. He had suffered, he had endured, he had witnessed. Yes, that was it, he was a witness; not one of them. And now, having spent some time seeing the depths to which men could sink, he would Fight for Right, for a new democratic Germany, for an end to the inhuman doctrine of communism and some measure of, well, something.
He paused. A creak on the stair - he froze - the sound of a couple laughing. He relaxed. The man in the long coat had gone on a train to Potsdam just this morning. He was fine. He wiped his sweaty head on a glove, and opened another drawer.
There! His black notebook! Hans grinned widely, picking it up. The fool had left it behind! He'd be able, finally, to confirm his suspicions. The man was always near that group of Americans, always writing notes in his little diary. He opened it greedily. There must be evidence here, something of significance -
The book was filled with pictures of Hans.
Detailed, careful sketches. Pictures of Hans in his Wehrmacht uniform. Pictures of Hans in the suit he wore on his wedding day, bending over in the garden before he was called up, standing sombre at his wife's funeral. Pictures of Hans in the dirty coat that he followed the man in.
Pictures of Hans in the snow, with something indistinct behind him.
Hans dropped the notebook. He stuttered. He reached the door and ran.

Nobody saw him leave.
The man who wasn't there stared from behind his binoculars. A quick visit to Hans' house while the man shopped for groceries had provided him with suitable photographs to copy. It had been necessary to him to string the German along, to disturb his sense of place.
He felt little guilt. Was it breaking the rules? Well, it couldn't have been, or he wouldn't have been able to do it. No direct interference in events. It was his personal notebook, left as a trap for someone who'd been tailing him personally. Hopefully that was the last obstacle on this occasion.
Nobody snapped the binoculars shut and leant back. Everything was coming together perfectly. He admired the dust as it floated through the sunbeams. He contemplated the thin light that filtered through the mist.
The American boy was 24, maybe 25. He wandered the city like a smiling vacuity, perfectly pleasant, perfectly nothing. He flirted and smiled and smoked, a dumb bull trying to seduce a china shop. He had a certain Yankee charm, but ultimately he was just another one in a crowd.
He had known for a long time that Europe was over. The nexus of power were altering, and a change was necessary. He was quite at peace with that. It was inevitable. He didn't want to think about what he'd be afterwards, of course, but that paled in comparison to what had to be done. The image of a man in a grey suit, sauntering down a neoclassical facade on Main Street - it had a certain sense, a weight to it.
Nobody wasn't much given to contemplation. He never had been. The guns of Flanders had beaten that out of him. The one thing that gave him pleasure was the task at hand, never stopping, never ceasing. The eternal clicking engine that pushed him on. He had a job to do. What else was there?

Bars, now, bars were useful. It's an old truism that it's easier to be seen in a deserted place than a crowded one. Nobody enjoyed them very much - especially since the boy also liked to frequent them.
He still wasn't entirely certain, of course. Nobody didn't want a dullard. He needed someone intelligent, just not… introspective. He needed observational skills, tact, a capacity for slyness and intrigue. Just not anyone who could be made to doubt. There was a new kind of peace in the air, one full of death and machinery, and the last thing that would be needed was someone who saw the world in shades of grey.
It was a dark, crowded room. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, curling around the walls. It was clearer than the outside, though; walking in made it feel like the weather was turning. The electricity flickered and was unstable, so lanterns had been hung from the ceiling. GIs chatted up German girls in shaded corners, while young couples danced across the floor, free and happy to be alive. It was the kind of place enlarged by its cramped nature, where each corner and cavity was like another blackened room.
People needed those places. They needed a hundred escapes, a thousand paths through the maze, anything to keep them away from the cold and the rubble and the butt of a gun. The world was broken and there were no more stories left. So they got drunk with black market whisky in wooden buildings, listening to the roar of the aircraft go by.
And the Americans served the same purpose. Glamour! Power! The conquering army with cigarettes and flash, a future returning to save them. Never mind what they did in the dark, never mind the looks some men would give them - for some among the disaffected youth, their skin seemed to glow with the luminescence of a simple, comprehensible future.
Nobody sat at his table, looking at the GI. The boy hadn't noticed him, but he'd seen… something. More than the others had. That was exactly what was required. The lantern jaw swung into a smile, white teeth flashing. The bloom of youth.
And so Nobody didn't see the man in white until he was already sitting down.

To his credit, he made no move. He sat, rigid, as the man smirked and pulled out a cigarette case.
"Got a match?"
Nobody nodded, and took out a little box. He lit them both up, and sat back, still tense. The man in white considered him for a long while, letting the smoke coil around his face.
"New coat?"
"Old one. Spain."
The man in white chuckled. "Spain? Really? I guessed Japan. You could have done your work so much better there."
"It was the warm-up. Have you seen what happened to Guernica?"
The man nodded. "And now you're here. A little late for the harvest, don't you think?"
Nobody sighed, and took a deep draw. A woman was downing a pint while the servicemen cheered her on. She finished, and tilted her head back, laughing. "There are more important things than a single life."
Another smirk. "You mean you still don't regret it? No, I suppose not. You're just a Nobody, after all. You don't deserve another name. Even the ones who see you in the cracks think that you're a conduit for something else, a vessel of a greater purpose. They don't know how pathetic your kind is."
"Would you let them all die?" Nobody stared at the whisky glass. "I give them a free choice. They want to come to me."
"They don't know what it means." The man put on a little sneering smile. Nobody noticed that he hadn't aged; the same rubbery cheeks, the same self-satisfied plumpness that he'd been wearing for years. "But neither do you. It's only when you've finished your task that you'll realise. When you're neither nobody nor somebody. Stuck in the middle. Will you thank him, or me?"
Nobody glanced up. The American had gone. "Not much good at small talk, are you?"
"Neither are you. Now listen closely. I've been following you for days, with those little amateur theatrics you've been playing. The spy is clearly not your mark, so it must be the American. Well, you may have had your fun torturing poor Hans, but the soldier is not yours. You're not going to turn him into your successor. He is under my protection, and if you try to take him, I will stop you, and I will kill you."
The man got up. "Be seeing you, old friend. Try not to break anything else."
And then he was gone, and it was hours later, and Nobody was all alone as the bar closed up. The barman was aware a lantern was still on, aware a figure was beneath it, but it somehow didn't feature as something to think about. So Nobody sat, in the same place, holding his glass. The smoke was clearing fast, and things were coming into focus.
He - or the American - had to be in Moscow in a week. He couldn't afford this. It was a distraction, a crucial one, at exactly the wrong moment. There was so much to do, and he was so tired. The man in white didn't understand what it was to be old. The smirking bore was the same as he had been in the trenches - louche, slick-tongued, feckless. To be Nobody, to take on that identity, was a necessity - what you'd become afterwards scarcely mattered.
He examined the whisky glass. The light refracted from it in so many patterns, playing around each other. The red-and-white of the tablecloth scattered through a thousand shades, a bitter fugue that danced in strange lanterns.
A snarl twisted around his face as he threw it to the floor. He paid his bill and left.

Hans' own rooms were shabby and cobwebbed. A collection of romance novels spilled across the floor. They were almost an addiction for him. A picture of a woman, faded and old, stood on his dresser.
He was twenty-seven now. His story was unremarkable. He'd been an Ostfront conscript, and like all Ostfont conscripts had seen things he didn't want to - but no, that wasn't right, was it? He hadn't been conscripted. He'd joined up. It was for food, of course, for bread and something to keep himself alive, but that didn't make it right.
And the things he'd seen, in Byelorussia, in the forest…
Hans shook his head. He hadn't shot them. It hadn't been his finger on the trigger. And he would never forget the sight of their faces, their faces in the snow. He'd never forget. He clung to that like a lifeboat, or an anchor.
He sat down, and glanced out of the window. A plane could be seen in the distance, little blinking lights through the fog. The lifeline was so tenuous. So many went hungry. So many went over the line, into the East, where they'd give food for free. He didn't hate them, that was the funny thing, even though he'd been taught to. Even though he should, he knew, somewhere deep inside.
There was a knock at the door. Hans jumped, desperate and flailing. He grabbed the first thing to hand - the picture frame - and held it aloft. "Go away," he said. "Not today. I've paid my rent."
"I'm not here about the rent, Hans. I believe you were looking for me."
Hans blood ran cold. He dropped the picture, and backed up on his bed, staring at the door. "No. No, I'm - I'm sorry, I - "
The doorhandle turned. Hans winced. He'd forgotten to lock it. The door opened, and the man in the long coat stood there, head tilted, examining his quarry.
"The pictures were a cheap trick. I'm sorry. Is that what you want to hear? I'm not a Russian spy, or a Nazi, or anyone else. I needed to scare you and now I need your help. No-one else has seen me in months, or I wouldn't be asking."
Hans relaxed, slightly. "What?"
"I'm not a spy, Hans. Honest." He extended a hand and attempted a smile. "My name is Nobody, and I can help."
"Who are you? What are you?"
"I'm here to make sure - well, to make sure everything runs as it should. I can't tell you more than that. What I can tell you is that, in 1943, your battalion slaughtered an entire village, and you are the only one who didn't participate. You, in a moment of choice between life and death, chose life. I chose life too, and I'm here to help, Hans."
Hans stared at him. "How did - "
"Because I'm the man with all the answers." Nobody's face lit up with a grin, or a grimace. "I have a purpose greater than what you, or your American handlers, or the Russians can understand. The entire world is spinning on a knife-edge, and it must not be allowed to slip. You want a new purpose, one free of Soviets and soldiers and occupations. You want to be the good guy. So come with me."
Hans stared some more, his mouth open. Then he shook his head, slowly. "I don't understand, I don't - "
Nobody cursed inwardly. "Then I'll explain."
And he did. He carried on as he started, full of lies, tricks and omissions of the truth. He'd appropriated the story Hans had told his superiors and used it to play on his guilt and pride. He added in rousing moments, little speeches that cast the world in black and white, a little flattery for Hans' beliefs and need for atonement. This kind of thing used to sicken him, but he'd long stopped caring.
When he'd finished, Hans believed him entirely. There was a cosmic purpose, a torch and duty that needed to be carried on, and he, Hans, was the special one. He needed to help Nobody- he had to help Nobody. He would facilitate the transference of that name onto the next generation, and would keep freedom alive forever.
"But why me?", Hans asked. "Why do I - "
"Because you saw me when no others could. You're special, Hans. You can see where nobody else can. You cast a light in the dark."
It was a stupid line, but in the end Hans was a stupid person. He'd only been able to see Nobody because he was a twitchy paranoid wreck, and while there were enough of those wherever he went, Hans just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Nobody had chosen him because he needed someone, or else he'd be breaking the rules.
He waited, patiently, as Hans tapped out a code to his American handler, as he ran to two telegraph offices and back, as he shone a light from the window. Stupid, amateur stuff, but it got results. "He's gone out of town," the spy said breathlessly. "He's gone to a church, up in the woods west of Potsdam. Something about a pilgrimage."
That was something Nobody did not expect. Why? Why go to a church in the middle of nowhere? It was something internal, something complex. He started to think, very hard and fast.
Eventually, he smiled at Hans, warm and encouraging. "Then come on. There's not a moment to lose."

He may have been functionally invisible, but his car wasn't. It was sleek, and stylish - the kind of car that was waved into places others weren't. It sped upon the Berlin night, shifting and twisting down country roads.
The woods were pine, and suffocated the sky. A thin moon wound its way through, a thin slash on the road ahead. The fog had gone now. Cold stars occasionally glittered above.
"I still don't understand why we're doing this."
"Because the man in white doesn't expect it. He thinks he's thrown me off, like he did in our last encounter. That I'll play it safe, and regroup, and come at the problem from a new angle. What he doesn't expect is for me to recruit you, track the boy down tonight, use you to kidnap him and then, in the comfort of a locked room, persuade him. It would never occur to him."
Hans stared ahead for a while. "And you can't - "
"No, because I can't interfere with the real world. Not really, anyway. Things to do with me - like being watched - or things that only affect me, sure. Self-defence, for instance. Little and unobstrusive things. But I can't kidnap someone, or assassinate someone, or drive three hundred miles with so specific a purpose. That's where you come in. Do you like the car?"
Hans shrugged. "I never noticed cars."
They continued in silence. The trees shot past. No-one else was on the road tonight. Nobody thought about music, and constructed an engine in his head. An engine of time and evolution. Development unfolding over the course of decades. An elegy of perfect poise, of counterpoint, of -
"It's the Church of St. Helena."
Nobody blinked. "What?"
Hans didn't seem to notice his question. "The church, the one he's going to. St. Helena. She was King Constantine's mother. Recovered a piece of the True Cross."
Nobody turned and looked at his companion. He'd never really noticed his features. Thinning hair, slicked down with sweat. A too-round face, with a little cherry of a chin. Cheeks that were once merry and now stuck out, frail and gaunt.
"I went there, once." The spy was in a daze. "My friends and I were on a - a school trip, I think. In the early 30s, just as it was all starting up. We had a good time, I guess. But I got lost and ended up in the woods. They looked for me for hours."
Hans was blinking hard. He licked his lips and adjusted his glasses.
"And I walked through the woods, and it was so quiet. But it was a complex kind of quiet, you know? Not nothing there, more like - more like everything, working so well they didn't need to make a noise. I climbed the hill, cold, alone, and there was a little church there. A little metal cross on the top."
The car was climbing a hill, too, but Nobody didn't think it could be the same one. The wood was thinning here, and metal slats lined the edges of the road. This wasn't a romantic place.
"I went into the church, and there was a light there. An ancient pastor. He was holding a service, and nobody was there. He didn't seem to notice. So I went and sat as he went through the motions. He saw me then, but continued on. We reached communion, and I knelt before the altar, and he - he was weeping. I don't know why. The service finished and he went through a door to the back, and then - "
Hans stopped, and slowed the car down. "Never mind. We're here."

The church was wooden. It looked like it hadn't been used in years, but a flickering light was coming from inside. Hans felt nervous. It was so different, now, with so many years on it, on him. He'd been lost then, and there wasn't any snow.
Nobody gestured for him to enter first. Hans did. A row of candles illuminated the apse, and there was a man there, praying. He was wearing a military uniform. He didn't look up. He was kneeling at the altar, his hair cut close.
Hans crept forward, taking out his revolver. He held it by the barrel. One short, swift strike would save a hell of a lot of trouble. The pews seemed to crowd in on him preaching to his waist and legs, but Hans was too focused on the task at hand to let it bother him.
But maybe he didn't have to think like that. Maybe he could be a hero. Maybe he could be redeemed after all. Maybe he didn't need to lie about -
The man at the altar slid sideways, collapsing to the floor. Hans ran to him, and saw the wide, staring eyes, the gunshot wound in the chest. He looked around, and the man in white rose from behind a pew, holding a hunting rifle.
Hans froze. He raised his hands slowly. The man in white's grin was sad, almost wistful.
"You know, Hans, it really disappoints me when people fall for his lines. The old hero routine, was it? In the time I've known him, he's manipulated hundreds of people into doing things like this. Not as bad as his predecessor, in many ways, but the bottom line still dominates his thoughts."
Hans licked his lips. He couldn't see Nobody, but this was a cramped and shadowy church. Any number of hiding spots. Could he distract the man? Reason with him? He just needed a moment, any moment, to grab the revolver's handle and fire.
"He doesn't see what you and I see, Hans. I heard you were the only man in your unit who didn't murder civilians. You can see life, Hans. You see places like this and don't just see wood and fire, but a place where men's lives are played out, where identity is forged and made. I didn't want to kill the boy, but I had no choice. Nobody doesn't stop, you see. Sooner or later, he'd have got him."
"Sounds like a nice excuse." Just shake, him somehow, shake him -
"Oh? And what's yours?" It came out as a hiss, and the man tightened his grip on the rifle. "What's yours? Did you never kill? Have you not known war? I do what has to be done. Death is better than being nobo-"
Hans hurled the revolver at the man's face and ran, bolting for the side door. He remembered the pastor, walking slowly, almost reverently towards the door, his old head bowed. But Hans leapt, grabbing the doorhandle -
The shot rang out across the night. Hans slumped towards the floor, limp and useless. His head was all over the stone.
The man sighed, and closed Hans' eyes. He hated this. He wanted it over. That was the important thing. It was like - like an anchor, keeping him secure. Nobody wanted it to continue, and he wanted it over. They weren't the same at all.
He gently walked forward and picked up the revolver. Strange. Only one bullet in it, and that wasn't loaded.
He was still looking at it when the wooden beam smashed across his head.

Darkness. No, not quite - moonlight. The sound of a shovel on dirt.
The man in white groaned and tried to sit up. His hands and feet were fastened tight. He looked around, woozily, and saw nothing but trees. He swore quietly.
The shovelling sound continued. It was almost soothing. Who had hit him? Where had - no, no, he didn't want to answer that now. He stared at the moon. So many craters.
The sound stopped. A figure walked over and stared at him. It smiled.
"It's funny, isn't it, what you can justify as self-defence."
The man in white spat. "Fuck you."
Nobody laughed, a rasping, choking sneer. "It all went so perfectly, you know. You thought you'd laid a trap. You have so much to learn. You're worse than Hans was."
"I… stopped you…"
"Once I heard that he'd travelled mile upon mile in a country he didn't know, all to find a decaying church in the middle of the woods - what kind of person is that? Not one suitable for my purposes. I'll find another. There are always more. I knew you'd try something stupid, but I didn't expect a disaster as perfect as this one."
Nobody pulled out his cigarette case. Only a few left - he'd have to get more before Moscow. They just weren't the same in Russia. He watched as the man in white tried to sit up and failed.
"I killed Hans. You lost your little helper."
"So? I'll find another. You know what he was, right? What he did? He murdered a dozen villagers with his unit in Byelorussia. Convinced his handlers, and himself, that he was a bystander. Had some kind of mental break during denazification. The guilt got to him. I won't be shedding any tears. Finding your peace over the bodies of the dead is a hellish way to live."
The man in white moaned, and glanced over. There was a grave there, deep and thick. It was starting to snow.
Nobody lit a cigarette. "That's the thing. You people, you're all the same. You all spin your little narratives, rewriting your lives so you can sleep at night. You've tried to stop me so many times, swanning around with the self-righteousness of a two-bit morality. You try to make yourself into a real person. But you're not. You're nothing. A collection of nerves and dust who thinks himself so much bigger than the rest of us. You know nothing about what it is to serve."
He started to drag the man in white towards the grave. "This won't keep you down for long, of course, even after I shoot you in the kneecaps. I know it's not that easy. But I hope this time in the dirt with Hans will keep you off my case for a while. It'll be a long time before you can track me down again, old friend."
The man thrashed and swore. His suit was filthy. "You're murdering them! You take it all away! You'll see. Nobody will move on, and you'll be what's left, and you won't even have a name - "
"I don't care. I'll have kept it all in order. All running. Do you know what things would be like if it wasn't for Nobody?"
He threw the man into the grave. Below him, Hans was already starting to smell. "You know the little rat told me a story on the way here? He visited that very church once, years ago. There was a pastor in there. It was a story of such specificity, the kind of thing you recite years later and imagine to be profound. He seemed to gain meaning from it. It marked him out as a person. And then he murdered twelve people in cold blood. You think I want to cling to an - an identity? I gave that up in the trenches. What matters is the task at hand, not the hand itself."
Two gunshots, then screams. Then the sound grew more and more distant, and only the shovel remained. At some point, a man in a long coat could be seen walking through a forest. Then day, then night, then the roar of planes. Then the weather turned again.
It felt like the fog would never end.

The Man Who Wasn't There

The Man In The White Suit

Hub
Hello, My Name Isn't
→ Chiaroscuro ←
Nobody, Nobody, Nobody, and Nobody's Encounters with The Man in the White Suit
SCP-5353 -- Does Anyone Remember Fritz Obermeyer?
Everyday Is Somebody's Birthday
SCP-5877 -- Nobodies
Ghosts in the Machine
Files intercepted from Anderson Systems personnel
SCP-5375 -- Nobody and the Name Machine
Epilogue
Nobody in Their Right Mind


Tommy looked up at Iris, his eyes watering and his hands shaking.
"Iris, there's something under my bed!"
He grabbed Iris by the arm and led her to his bed stopping a few feet away from it, waiting expectantly. Iris sighed but still knelt down and checked.
A large lizard laid there, nestled inbetwixt a pile of books. She looked at it, then sighed again.
"Well, you don't have a monster, Tommy. You've got a lizard."
Tommy shrieked in delight.
"A lizard! I've always wanted one! Can we keep it? Please? Pleeeease Iris?"
Iris hesitated but a small smile crept across her face.
"Sure. Yeah, why not."
Tommy looked up at Iris, pure joy on his face.
"Yay!"
Iris looked around the room as he knelt down on the floor and began talking to it.
Iris frowned.
"Wait, this isn't-"
She wheeled around to see Tommy, but he wasn't there.
"What the hell? Tommy? Where did you go?"
She checked outside and could see Tommy looking at the sky, his head tilted up to the clouds, and the lizard resting on his shoulder.
"How the fuck did he even get out there?! I only turned my back for a moment…"
Only for a moment. The thought rang in her head, a cacophony of clustered memories. It made her head hurt.
Iris ran outside. There were strong winds, and dark thunderclouds covered the sky.
"Tommy?"
He looked at her and spoke.
"Iris Thompson." Her name was spoken with such resolution. It scared her. "You killed me."
His voice was much deeper, and it sounded like multiple voices overlapping one another.
"What..?" She was confused. What was Tommy saying? She would never harm him…
Tommy continued talking.
"You will pay for your sins." He let out an eerie chuckle. "I will find you. I will kill you. And I will leave you behind, just like you did to me."
Tommy began to grow taller, his flesh becoming darker until it was as black as night, and his eyes, once a bright blue, were now a sunken yellow.
Tommy grabbed the lizard on his shoulder and swallowed it whole.
He licked his lips. A disgusting squelching sound emanating from his throat.
A thick, slime-like material began to cascade down his body, and bits and pieces of it dripped down into the grass as Tommy began to move towards her. A withered trail began to form.
"What-no! Tommy what's happening to you?!"
Iris couldn't move, her voice died in her throat and she could only watch in horror as the creature, no longer Tommy, moved towards her and extended its hand. She trembled as its mouth opened impossibly wide-
BOOM
Iris awoke with a start, the deafening sound nearly making her fall out of bed. Her heart pounded in her chest as time seemed to slow. She tried to regulate her breathing. As she shakily sat up, she steadied herself on the soft mattress, and crossed the room to the window. Iris could see several townsmen, all yelling and pointing at something in the woods. The harsh pops of gunfire could be heard, all shots heading distinctly into the woods.
Iris didn't wait any longer; she grabbed her camera, swapping her nightdress for her normal clothes, and ran outside.
She crossed the road, looking at the woods all the while. Iris's eyes found the distinct form of Alexander Elkoan, the man who had agreed to talk to her about the inky-black creature. No one ever wanted to discuss it. It's as if they were trying to sequester the memory into a dark crevice, to never crawl out. But Iris knew that they could never really forget, as it came back every night to haunt them all over again.
As she watched him retreat into his house, she thought about the info he had told her. Elkoan insisted that they've been trying to kill it for years, but it seemed to be invincible. And still, they kept trying. Iris wondered why they even bothered anymore. Surely it was easier to move on? To just let the creature roam as it pleased?
No. That was a delusional thought. Somehow she knew, wherever they went, it'd surely follow.
Somewhere deep in the recesses of Iris's brain, she felt another twinge of remembrance.
It must be because she's looked at the photo of it for so long.
She pushed the feeling aside and continued walking, although she began to pick up the pace. There were several more loud booms, and she broke out into a jog.
Finally, she got to Elkoan's house, her knocking loud and impatient. Within seconds, the door opened.
Elkoan was a tall man, with black hair and slightly dark skin reminiscent of a Native American. He leaned against the door and stared down at Iris.
"What do you need, little miss Thompson?" Elkoan spoke, his voice at a silk-smooth, tenor register. In one hand was a rifle, in the other was a small dingy cloth. He wiped the barrel as Iris spoke. It seemed he came inside to reload and do the usual gun maintenance.
"Is it coming out now? The Old Man that is." Iris was apprehensive about being here at all. She despised thinking about the dark presence that laid just beyond the forest.
"Most likely soon. Now, if you'll excuse me, I do have to get going." Elkoan gently brushed past Iris, moving her out of his way, and walking out onto the muddied street.
"Hey!" Iris followed him, her tone and stance indignant. "We had a deal! You promised you would tell me all you knew about the Old Man."
"And have I not?" Elkoan quickened his pace, making it harder for Iris to keep up with him.
Iris thought about it for a moment. While it never seemed like Elkoan was lying, she felt like she was missing something important.
"Well, kind of, but-"
"Then I think it is best for you to leave. I believe that the sheriff is currently lining the ground with dynamite. It'd be very unfortunate for you to get caught in the blast radius." He stopped moving and turned to stare at Iris.
He took out a cigarette and began to smoke, staring at the forest.
"It's almost time." Elkoan's pulse quickened, his heart throbbing with warm blood. The hunt, the chase, it was a sick beauty to behold. And Elkoan reveled in it. Iris backed up reluctantly.
He grinned, a bit manically, as the sheriff ran to the edge of the forest and began to shout at some deputies, who ran into the forest.
There was a moment of heavy silence, the only sound being that of quiet breaths from the townsfolk, all watching, all waiting.
Iris could hear someone frantically shouting in the forest along with quick, panicked footsteps. One lone deputy ran to the edge of the forest and turned suddenly, a gun in his hand. The deputy shot into the forest until he ran out of bullets.
The deputy turned and shouted, "Blow it up! Blow it up right the hell now!"
Iris could see an ink-black hand reach out to rest on the deputy's shoulder, and that's when the explosives went off.

Iris could barely remember anything after that. The booms in quick succession, guns firing, the sheriff being decapitated by the monster, people being ripped into bite-sized pieces.
The sounds left her ears ringing.
She saw a little girl lying on the ground, her chest barely rising up and down, indicating that she was still alive, still in this hellish life. Iris ran towards the girl, but she was just too far away. The Old Man moved towards a deputy, giving Iris just enough time to reach the little girl. Iris picked her up but stopped in her tracks when she heard that damned laughter.
Heh. Hee hee.
Her blood ran ice-cold.
The Old Man emerged from behind a house, its yellow eyes locking on her. It laughed again, its face stuck in a grotesque smile.
"Oh fuck. Oh fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck-" Iris ran with the little girl in her arms, but where could she go?
She spotted a saloon and ran inside hiding beneath the bar counter, in a big cabinet where the drinks were supposed to be. Iris fit the little girl in the cabinet next to her, closed the doors quietly, and then Iris hid in the other cabinet.
Iris tried to breathe softly so the Old Man couldn't hear her, but surely he must be able to hear her heart hammering against her ribcage.
The saloon door opened with a slow creak.
Hah hah. Hee, heh.
Iris could hear the slow footsteps of the creature, and she held her breath. She gripped her camera tightly, her breath shaky and shallow.
The smell of rot hung in the air as the Old Man stopped in front of the cabinet Iris was hiding in.
Hah heh. Heee heh heh.
Suddenly, Iris heard a small squeak, and one small word from the little girl.
"Mommy?"
She could hear the sounds of the cabinet being wrenched open, dark laughter, and the screams of the little girl.
Iris burst out of the cabinet and saw a horrible sight.
The Old Man held the little girl in his arms, almost mother-like if it weren't for his mouth hungrily gnawing on her soft fingers, the bones crunching as he was slowly making his way up to her elbow.
Iris took a picture with her camera, the shutter noise echoing across the empty saloon, alerting the Old Man.
He took a viciously voracious bite out of the girl's abdomen, bloodied flesh stretching between the shivering body and his yellowed, rotting teeth. He turned as Iris reached through the photograph and hurled a chair at the Old Man.
It bounced off of its head as it dropped the little girl and moved towards Iris.
Iris flung more chairs at it to no effect. It grew closer and closer, and Iris screamed, panicking.
A gunshot rang out and the Old Man fell to its side, clutching its head with a strangled whine. A large hole could be seen in the side of its cranium, leaking out that familiar black sludge. Iris turned to see Elkoan holding his rifle, furiously reloading.
"Run like hell!" He shouted, as he aimed the gun once more and shot.
Iris took the half-eaten child and ran out of the saloon. She was cold in Iris's arms, and the smell of rot emanated from her wounds. The little girl had long stopped shivering, but Iris couldn't find it in herself to let her go.
She couldn't abandon her.
Like she did to Tommy.
She could hear more gunshots, and Elkoan screaming "Come get it, you little shit!"
Iris turned as Elkoan ran out of the saloon. She took another picture of the Old Man emerging from the saloon and threw a few buckets at him to try and slow him down.
Iris spotted a piece of spare dynamite laying on the ground. Iris grimaced. She had a plan, but she couldn't force herself to be happy despite finding a way out.
"Elkoan! Distract him!"
He nodded and fired his gun while Iris took a photo of the dynamite. The Old Man stumbled towards the middle of the road, his balding head riddled with bullet holes.
Hee heh heh.
Why the hell is it laughing!? It's tittering pissing her off as she pushed her hand through the photo and firmly grasped the dynamite. She nearly dropped the girl, and her stomach turned.
The Old Man burst forward faster than Elkoan expected and grabbed him by the throat. It tore off his hand and ate it while Iris stood there, frozen.
Elkoan screamed, in pain or terror. Most likely both.
"Do it! Do it now-"
The monster put one hand on Elkoan's throat and ripped it out. Blood gushed out of the unsightly gap, flowing down his body and onto the ground. Elkoan stopped moving as it pooled just beneath his feet which were just inches off the ground.
It chewed noisily on the soft flesh of his esophagus as it's gaze slowly turned to Iris.
She looked around frantically and saw a fallen deputy. She picked up his gun, aimed at the dynamite, and shot at the fuse.
This was her last chance.
A fire ignited, running down the fuse in seemingly slow motion, as Iris tightened her grip on the dynamite and threw it at the Old Man.
A blinding light filled Iris' vision, her hearing was reduced to ringing and then all was replaced by darkness.
She faintly registered a soft thud as she dropped the little girl.

Iris stared blankly at the floor of the train station. She was unimaginably tired. Unfortunately, she had no choice but to keep going.
The train stopped with an ear-piercing screech, driving Iris to hold her head in pain. She stumbled onto the train and began to search for her seat. The surviving deputies had said that the monster is nowhere to be found. They all thought it was dead.
But Iris knew it was still there, hovering over the horizon.
Waiting for her to come back.
Laughing.
It was a warm summer evening, but she shivered.

Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone

Aces And Eights

Knowledge is a deadly friend if no one sets the rules; the fate of all mankind I see is in the hands of fools.


Sophia.
Take stock of your office. Note the clock on the wall to your right. Raise your shaking hands over your keyboard and start typing.
You don't have time to indulge these moments of dissociation. That's a problem that the meds will solve later; right now you need to focus on the Thing beneath Yellowstone.
You've suddenly come into very sensitive, very fatal information. You don't expect your memory will survive the month un-amnesticized. So, you need to do what you do best: make a list.

Dr. Sophia Light
Leader of Mobile Task Force Alpha-9 ("Last Hope"). Will coordinate initial sub-team roster and spearhead the Yellowstone operation. Sub-team will act independently of Alpha-9-Actual and be disbanded if they complete their mission.
You do not envy her.

+ LIGHT

- Two hours ago...

Fear is an appropriate reaction to the discovery of a dead Overseer, Sophia decided.
Ten was slumped face-down against the kitchen counter, ebony-black hair pouring unbraided over her shoulders and arms. In her right hand was clutched a bottle of 1950 Bordeaux liberated from Sophia's pantry, contrasted with the crumpled slip of paper in her limp left hand. There were no signs of violence or intrusion into her home. But, inexplicably, she was staring at the unmoving body of an Overseer.
Murder? Suicide? A trap? Sophia reached into her pants pocket, taking hold of the pepper-spray on her keychain, and slowly shut the door behind her with a soft click. She strode over to a panel on the wall and flipped a switch.
Lights ignited throughout the kitchen, and Ten's fist slammed down on the granite countertop. Her grip on the bottle was so strained Sophia worried the glass would shatter. Agonously, Ten raised her head, brushed aside a few intrusive strands of hair, and smiled at somewhere above Sophia's chin.
"Hello, Light. I was wondering when you'd be home."
Sophia nodded, shoving the pepper-spray back in her pocket. "You're not dead, then?"
"Of course I'm not dead; only thing that can kill an Overseer is another Overseer." Ten turned her attention to the wine in her hand, passing a hand over the neck indecisively.
Sophia scrutinized her from the kitchen's wall: tall, hunched over, dressed in a bizarre outfit of jeans and the top of a formal suit. It was all too much of a mess to be intentional. Ten might genuinely be in crisis, which would be even more terrifying than death.
"And sorry about the wine," Ten was saying. "We're not allowed to drink our own stores for fear of poison."
"You're not a factotum, are you?"
Ten's lip curled up, in an expression of equal disgust and anger. "What reason could I possibly have to send my body-double to break into your home and drink your wine?"
"What reason could you have to do it yourself?"
Ten's lip lowered, and she glanced down at the paper in her left hand. Her fingers fidgeted over it, tracing a crease along its edge.
Setting aside the bottle, Ten rose from behind the counter. Her expression seemed more sincere, suddenly, like she'd remembered something secret.
"Sophia. We haven't met before, properly — only through my factotum. In a roundabout way, you know who I am, but I've never talked with you before."
Ten extended a hand forward, suspended in the air for Sophia to accept. Her anxious face seemed softer in the new light.
"Hello, Director. I am O5-10, the creator of the Alpha-9 project. I hear you were almost killed last week, for acting under my orders, and I am very, very sorry."
Without taking her eyes off Ten, Sophia scanned the room for signs of reality-warping or hallucinations. None of the usual symptoms, unfortunately. So, she took Ten's hand in hers, and shook it. A little static pop stabbed her palm on contact.
"Hello, O5-10. I'm Sophia Light, leader of Alpha-9. What business brings you by this late?"
Ten sighed, releasing her grasp on Sophia's hand. "Classified business, Sophia. Bloody, confusing, end-of-the-world, classified business."
"But you wouldn't be here if I weren't cleared to know some of it."
Ten shrugged. "Semantically, you can't be debriefed on an anomaly which doesn't exist."
"Semantically, if you can discuss it, you can be debriefed."
"I'll concede." Ten's lip curled upwards again. "How much do you know about SCP-2000?"
"It's an empty slot; has been forever. I take it that's our non-existent anomaly?"
"Indeed." The toe of Ten's shoe tapped against Sophia's tile floor. "See, we had a big facility out in Yellowstone that we used to save the world — very high-concept, very anomalous — but it was lost in an accident. SCP-076 destroyed its primary component nine years ago."
Sophia raised an eyebrow at the reference to Able ben Adam. "Before or after he slaughtered the rest of Omega-7?"
"Immediately afterwards. The point is: SCP-2000 left our reality and took a few things with it. A few stray concepts, a couple questions which now have no answers, some far-flung stretches of history which probably never happened."
"And yet you've decided to debrief me on it."
Ten smiled grimly. "Indeed. Spreading out from Yellowstone, we're seeing a plethora of anomalous activity which suggests causal and ontological breakdown. It's happening slowly, for now, but without our last-resort, the Council doesn't have the means to put it down for good."
"And I do?"
Ten paused, look at her confusedly. There was a certain tremor in her eyes, Sophia realized — uncertainty.
Ten picked her words carefully. "Sophia. You're the leader of Alpha-9, the reborn Omega-7. Your job is to combat the anomalous."
"Not with anyone I have on the team, currently. Do you have anyone you'd recommend?"
Ten did not reply for a long while. Then, she broke out in a deep, toothy smile. She shoved the paper in her hand into her pocket and brushed past Sophia on the way to the door, actively covering her mouth with a hand to stifle a deep chuckle.
Sophia looked on in annoyance. "Are you quite done?"
Ten nodded, taking a moment to breathe in, and out, and relax.
"I am done. I have no list, Sophia; I trust you can handle that part yourself. Frankly, I wouldn't know where to start."
With that, Ten grabbed the knob of the door and pulled it open to the brisk night air.
"Ten."
The smile fell from Ten's lips. In its place came deep resignation, and sadness. "Yes, Sophia?"
"You seem troubled by something, other than the end of the world. Whatever it is, you'll get through it."
Ten stared out in the midnight dark. Her face was an olive mask, wiped clean of emotion. Then, she exhaled a cloud of frost into the night air and turned to face her.
"History does not agree with you, Light. The world's always been fucked up. And the people in power have just as many problems as you, which is why it's never going to get fixed."
Sophia nodded, stepping towards her counter to reshelve the half-empty 1950 Bordeaux. "Take care, then."
"You as well. My factotum will speak with you when you're done."
Her front door shut with a click, and Sophia Light was alone.

Field Agent Carlotta Deneb
Ex-UIU, semi-proficient in small arms. She's a problem-solver — thinks out of the box 24/7. New to Foundation employ but has extensive training with ontokinetic phenomena.
Get her opinion by any means necessary.

+ DENEB

- Later that week...

Carlotta had been dodging Sophia's calls.
More accurately, Carlotta had found a way to prevent Sophia from contacting her. Messages would be delivered to invalid numbers and emails would be sent to incorrect addresses (meaning poor Carlotta Denesh in Accounting had received a distressing check-in from RAISA). Her address in the Foundation's employee database seemed to update daily, meaning snail mail was similarly unreliable.
"… Unfortunately, that number is not in service. Please call again."
Damn it. Sophia shoved her phone into her front pocket. Her heels clicked against the tile of Site-81's colossal server room as she caught up with her guide.
"… But next-door's where you'd find our paper records, if you ever need them, Miss Light." Lurk twisted his head around to flash her a smile. "By the way, I do appreciate you moving me to Lambda-2. Site-19 gets up to an awful lot, and it starts to wear on you."
Lurk was a man who wore an Oxford shirt and slacks to a back-of-house IT job. Although he walked with a professionalism befitting someone in Light's position, his snow-white hair had a habit of standing directly upright. If you were getting to know him, you'd assume an electric current had run through his head just minutes prior.
Sophia nodded along and smiled at him, barely understanding his Scottish accent. She jerked her head at a server labeled "Da – De" and interjected, "This her block?"
"Yes, ma'am! Should be, anyways. So, you think she hacked in? Ha, that'd be a first."
Sophia frowned, and glanced down at her wrist before answering. 11:30. Already running late.
"That remains to be seen. Can you open it up, Lurk?"
Her guide's voice dropped a pitch. "It's Dietrich, ma'am. And yes, I can open her."
Sophia nodded and stepped back, watching as Lurk's fingers scraped at the sides of the rack. They pressed down on the sides of the metal grate, delicately removing the outer shell and revealing a large, black-tinted screen.
Dietrich rapped his knuckles against the glass. "Hey Alex! You there?"
Hidden fans behind the display whirred as the device turned on. In a spark of light, the smiling image of a woman with electric-blue hair smiled up at its caretaker. Beneath her, a chatbox opened.

Alexandra, λ-2 [Support]

Wednesday, Oct 24, 11:31

«Hello, Dee! Is that Sophia?»

"Aha! She's working!" Dietrich called over his shoulder, before turning back to MTF Lambda-2's resident technical expert. "Yeah, that's Sophia with me. Say, Alex, we were looking for info on a 'Carlotta Deneb'? Apparently she's new here, been having some trouble with her contact details."
The fans in the display kicked on again, louder this time. Dietrich frowned, pushing his body forward to feel around the back of the display; usually fan-usage meant overheating, which Alexandra wasn't supposed to do.
"Say, Alex, you're using those fans an awful —"

Alexandra, λ-2 [Support]

Wednesday, Oct 24, 11:31

«Keep talking. Move your shoulders to block my screen.»

«Don't trust Sophia.»

"— awful lot. You having some issues with response time?"

Alexandra, λ-2 [Support]

Wednesday, Oct 24, 11:31

«Dee, please don't be mad at me.»

«But I'm the one obstructing Light.»

Dietrich blinked slowly, then tilted his torso further into the machine. "No, it's not an issue. Have you got a diagnosis for me?"

Alexandra, λ-2 [Support]

Wednesday, Oct 24, 11:32

«I looked over the email Light sent to Carlotta. She wants her on the team for something big.»

«Carlotta's worked here for a month, and her only prior experience is with the UIU. She's not cut out for whatever Sophia's after.»

«And it looks like she'd be slated as "on-call" even after the sub-team disbands.»

Dietrich bit his lip hard. "Well, Alex, not to disagree with your assessment, but there's probably something else going on, don't you think?"

Alexandra, λ-2 [Support]

Wednesday, Oct 24, 11:32

— alexandra shrugs

«Probably something O5-related. Who knows?»

«Point is, if she wants out, I think she should have that choice.»

Dietrich stared at the burning light of the display, pouring over each of its pixels for an answer. He'd looked over Carlotta's file before Sophia had arrived, and she couldn't be essential to whatever project the director was putting together. A solid resume, but nothing incredible.
Just an ordinary woman trying to transition into a new job.

Alexandra, λ-2 [Support]

Wednesday, Oct 24, 11:33

«Please, Dee. Don't put her through this.»

So slowly that it would only be perceptible to the technological eye, Dietrich nodded. She's right, he thought as he pulled himself out of the rack. Just use some of your patented IT bullshitting. "Oh, there's an outage due to some maintenance going on." Heh.
Semi-conscious of how silly his position must have seemed to Sophia this entire time, he stood up, dusted off his pant-legs with immense care, and looked up to find himself totally alone in the server room.
"Wha…" the words died on his lips as he looked about for the missing Director, but they came up empty. Sophia Light was gone.
Two clicking heels on the other end of the aisle puncturing the silence, and Light rounded the corner holding a large manilla folder. She raised an eyebrow at Dietrich's newly-wrinkled shirt, then hefted the load.
"I visited Paper Records next-door while you were working," she commented. "Found Carlotta Deneb's address and email, among other details. Thanks for the help, but I think I'm done here."
She turned back the way she came, leaving Dietrich M. Lurk in the Site-81 server room with dusty slacks and a sense of unfulfilled justice.
"Well… shit," he muttered. The whir of Alex's fans signaled that she felt much the same.

POI-2408-351 ("Lucretia Popescu")
Ex-Black Lodge, contained at Site-57 after capture in Project Sitra Achra. Sarkicist body-shaper; demonstrates enhanced strength, some increased healing; primary benefit is offensive corporeal augmentation.
Can't figure out what her deal is. Has worked with the Foundation in the past but just seems… not there.

+ POPESCU

- That afternoon...

There were complications with the approach.
Sophia felt it coming as her transport crossed the Ukrainian border. It was an understanding, at first, a knowledge of things to come — but it soon became a hard rush of mental ocean on essential shore, flooding the transport's cab.
Her hand jerked into the bag sitting in her lap, scratching the insides for the container of pills. She came up empty, and the tide was rising higher, up to her shoulders. Sophia took a breath and dived, fingers jammed into the fabric until she felt the plastic cap.
She was raising the container to her lips as she fell through the floor and into the dark of something else's mind. She submerged, drowning, amidst noospheric currents of the soul.
And then she found an island.

Beneath Moscow, 2 years prior.
The stench of fresh meat and viscera struck Lucretia's unconsciousness. Her eyes shot open as she scrabbled among the bodies, grabbing hold of arms and legs and pulling herself up. The odor of the ones around her filled her nose and she gagged; impromptu mass graves were only ever tolerable as a spectator.
Air. Her hands grabbed at cool subterranean air; she was almost out. If only she could leverage herself with the —
Someone on the other side interlocked their fingers with Lucretia's. She suppressed a scream; instinctually, she twisted her wrists hard to snap their ligaments in two, but they resisted. They were pulling her up to the light, to more battle. A metallic scent assaulted her nostrils, and the world around her began to blur into a thousand fractals.
"Hey, Lucretia."
The voice. The voice of a friend.
Lucretia exhaled deeply as Michail pulled her out of the corpses and up onto her feet. She fell back, exhausted, cradling her knees to her chest. The smell was bearable above the surface.
But this could hardly be called the surface, she rationalized. They were thousands of meters below Russia's capital, surrounded by vast stone structures and walls. She and Michail were in the center of the Colosseum, where the Black Lodge spectated its bloodsport. Looking around at the blurry darkness, she noted that the building was beginning to feel familiar — both watching from its stands, and fighting in its center.
"You were a real monster out there," Michail said, meaning it to be a compliment. Lucretia squinted at him while she waited for her vision to return. It seemed like he was kneeling nearby, fiddling with something.
"I wouldn't know," she muttered. "I tend to black out after the first hit. The flesh-craft takes over after that."
She saw Michail's blurry head dip down and up at that. "That's good."
She raised an eyebrow. "It is?"
"Yeah." He stood up and pivoted towards her. "Means you're adapting well. Most of the bodies beneath us took too long to get in that head-space."
It was her turn to nod, but she didn't have anything to reply with. She just squeezed her legs closer and wished Michail would leave.
"Check this out."
"Hmm?" she mumbled, looking up at the thing he was holding out for her. Some kind of ornamented necklace… a fashion statement? "What've you got strung on there?"
Michail grinned ear to ear. "Teeth."
A muscle in Lucretia's cheek twitched involuntarily. "Teeth? Isn't that a little on-brand for this place?"
He shrugged, then looped the thing around his neck. "The people here like teeth; means you got in close after the kill. It's a sign of strength, especially if you can hold onto it for a while."
"And if they ask you how you got them?"
Michail's smile fell. "I'll tell them a lie. Looters get almost as bad as defectors, you know."
Lucretia uncurled herself, laying back on the heap and staring up at the stone ceiling far above.
"I know."

Sophia felt herself recede from the memory. She was no longer Lucretia Popescu, trapped beneath Moscow. She was somewhere more ambigious.
She knew how this song-and-dance went. She'd bounce between personas for hours at a time until something in the real world woke her up.
Fuck that, she thought to no one.
Sophia Light had labored for years to be at her current position, assassinations and anomalous dissociation be damned. She was the pilot of her own mind and no one else. Time to steer it towards something useful.
Carefully, she began to swim against the current.

Overwatch Command, just a few days ago.
Sophia fell into the new memory like a meteorite through the stratosphere, crashing and burning until she landed within the mind of O5-10's factotum, Salt.
"So, the assassination didn't come to anything?" Salt was asking.
The woman across the table shook her head, and Sophia drowsily noted that Ten seemed quite beautiful when sober. Her hair was done up in her signature braid, cascading down her back in an intricate pattern of spirals and straight edges. Sophia could feel the same braid running down her spine, and she found sympathy for Salt. Modeling yourself after someone else down to the stray hair must be close to hell.
But Ten was shaking her head at Salt's question. "No one has tried to assassinate me, that I know of. Functionally, the vote changes nothing that we've talked about; Alpha-9 is still a-go."
Salt nodded, causing a lock of ebony-black hair to slip out of place. She tucked it back behind her ear before continuing. "And what about Bright?"
Ten sighed. "We can't have him replacing Sophia this late in the game. If this operation runs smoothly, we'll open talks about moving her."
Sophia felt the mental world slow to a crawl. Suddenly every detail stood out sharply to her: The cozy room in which the two conversed was laden in occult paraphernalia; Ten had that same tremor of uncertainty in her eyes if you looked close enough; Salt was holding a map of Yellowstone National Park.
Salt opened her mouth to reply. "Are you sure? Bright's the more secure pick, given his condition."
There was no response. Ten stared down at her hands in her lap, eyes hidden by falling locks of ebony-black.
Salt gingerly flicked her own lock out from under her ear before leaning forward. "Ten? What's wrong?"
Ten shook her head firmly, turning her eyes away from Salt and towards a diagram of the Kabbalah on the wall. Her mouth hung open hesitantly.
"Ten?"
The Overseer refused to break eye-contact with the diagram. "Light was a mistake. If we replace her now," she started, "… the others will see it as a sign."
"A sign of?"
"Of… weakness." Ten's voice broke and she squeezed her eyes shut. "Of the second-youngest Overseer outing herself as the weakest link."
Her eyeliner was beginning to leak down her cheeks. Salt reached up and smudged it as best she could to match.
"Shit." Ten stood up, grabbing onto the edge of the chair for support. Slowly, she walked to the door on the far side of the room, and Salt stayed still in her chair.

Moscow, one year ago.
And then she ceased to be Ten's factotum and found herself in a cubic room hewn directly from stone. She was muscular, toned, imposing, and she was staring at a necklace of teeth.
Her host body was absorbed by the memento, but Sophia turned her thoughts to the sounds outside the room. There was gunfire, and inhuman screaming, and multiple successive detonations against the same material. Over the din she heard a man yelling Foundation codewords into a comm.
Lucretia Popescu inhaled and clutched the necklace in her fist, then tossed it on the ground. Jerkingly, she walked towards the door and the gunfire, towards a way out.

Sophia Light was herself again, a few hundred meters beyond the Ukrainian border.
She asked the driver to turn around. She could have one of her subordinates interview Popescu today.

???

+ One new message!

- Close message archive

| TO: ten.fpcs|thgils#ten.fpcs|thgils
| FROM: ten.dsfpcs|rerutnevdadipertni#ten.dsfpcs|rerutnevdadipertni
| SUBJECT: Declaration of Intent to Join a Merry Band of Heroes, Odd and Old, on our Quest to the Utopic Land of Yellowstone

Salutations (and eventually Farewell), Dr. Light!
My name is Dr. Irving Gat, accomplished containment specialist-and-enthusiast from Site-⌘. I expect that my reputation proceeds me, but if it does not, I declare the Overseer Council to be utter scoundrels for keeping you from the truth.
My accomplishments are many, but these are the most pertinent to your interests:

Filtering information from a surreal context to identify latent anomalies around Site-⌘.
Securing over fifty (verified) infovorous anomalies within my own skull — they always find something new to snack on!
Containing 43 or 516 surreal anomalies, depending on your definition of "anomaly".
Protecting reality, in a very general sense of both those words.

Keeping all of this in mind (which may be difficult, it tends to leak), I would like you to consider sanctioning my entry into Yellowstone as a member of MTF Alpha-9.
Thank you (and Farewell!),
Dr. Irving Gat

| TO: ten.dsfpcs|rerutnevdadipertni#ten.dsfpcs|rerutnevdadipertni
| FROM: ten.fpcs|thgils#ten.fpcs|thgils
| SUBJECT: Re:Declaration of Intent to Join a Merry Band of Heroes, Odd and Old, on our Quest to the Utopic Land of Yellowstone

Dr. Gat,
Unfortunately, MTF Alpha-9 is not accepting applications; we select members via recommendation and internal consideration only. Additionally, I'm entirely unfamiliar with Site-⌘ and its operations.
Please do not contact us again, and contact your site's RAISA liaison to discuss how you came into this information.
Thank you,
Dr. Light

| TO: ten.dsfpcs|rerutnevdadipertni#ten.dsfpcs|rerutnevdadipertni
| FROM: ten.fpcs|thgils#ten.fpcs|thgils
| SUBJECT: Re:Declaration of Intent to Join a Merry Band of Heroes, Odd and Old, on our Quest to the Utopic Land of Yellowstone

Dr. Gat,
Apologies for the last email. After a little poking around I managed to find someone who's heard of the Surrealistics Department, and they mentioned you by name.
Welcome to Alpha-9.
Thank you,
Dr. Light

| TO: ten.fpcs|thgils#ten.fpcs|thgils
| FROM: ten.dsfpcs|rerutnevdadipertni#ten.dsfpcs|rerutnevdadipertni
| SUBJECT:

:)

Allison Eckhart
Allison Eckhart is an infectious info-vector which supplants previous identities with Allison Eckhart. Don't think about her without the proper Allison-Eckhart protection.
Potential as an infohazardous cluster-bomb when things go south. Too unstable. Need to rethink my priorities.

+ ECKHART

- Twenty-four Eckharts later...

Sophia stepped into the decontamination chamber at Bio Site-Allison Eckhart. Several traces of semantic contaminant still clung to her full-body Allison-Eckhart suit, and she was feeling the effects. Every breath felt like Allison was compressing her lungs; every step felt like someone else was pumping her legs up and down; every thought came with the addendum, What would Allison do?
"Everything okay, Director Light?"
The tech who was removing her suit looked up at her quizzically. He was young, well-built, hiding his intelligence beneath a mop of curly brown hair. Sophia traced him with her eyes, taking in the alienness of the human face, again and again until she was sure. He's not Allison, and neither am I.
"I'm fine, yes." She nodded to him belatedly, stepping out of the suit fully. "I just had my mind changed about a few things."
Mentally, she crossed another candidate off the list.

Et cetera

SCP-4494 - Physical embodiment of fighting crime, potential as a combat asset. Can be manipulated via several legalistic anomalies I have access to.
SCP-5601 - Demonic parrot. Telepathy, divination (?); need someone with a bird's-eye view if communication breaks down in the field.
SCP-184 - Last-resort containment asset. Don't have access to it for some reason.
SCP-2719 - Can make Yellowstone "go inside", maybe. Allison and 184 didn't pan out, but this might work in a worst-case scenario.

The more I check for candidates, the more it looks like the Foundation is uniquely terrible at making allies. Cages were never really an incentive for good behavior, I guess.
I'd have better luck getting the Council to work together than I have with this.

+ ...

- ...

O5-10 was alone in her bedroom, and she was nearing death. Not the drunken, mistaken death she had endured in Sophia Light's kitchen just hours before, but real, tangible death.
Her chest heaved as she fell out her bed, fumbling on the soundproof carpet to stand upright. Her balance betrayed her and she landed hard on her side, sparking dull pain. It couldn't rival the burning in her chest, the searing of a hundred 668s piercing straight to her heart as she ripped herself from the floor.
Her hand grabbed the cold metal knob of her bathroom door. Her palm glided over the smooth marble counter, jerking a faucet open so pouring water could mask her descent. Steam filled the cramped room and everything came to a head.
She vomited in the toilet.
Ten, veritable demigoddess, one-in-thirteen rulers of the world, was having a panic attack and kneeling in front of her toilet. She limply shoved her hand in her pocket and pulled out a slip of paper, but it fell from her grip. The note had been passed to her discreetly many years ago, before she was on the Council, by someone who had worked for someone who owed a favor to the last O5-10.
She fell unconscious before she could pick it up.

…

You're being promoted. I'm sorry.
I did everything I could. I called in allies and made concessions. I offered my head on a platter to the others, but they wouldn't have anyone else but you. You're the new O5-10 now, and I'm going out the only way an Overseer can: at the hands of one of my colleagues.
If you're fortunate enough to know who your replacement will be, find a way to save them. It may just be the most good thing you ever do on the Council.

SCP-4051 ("Rainer Miller")
Contained at Site-17 after he fucked up and hit the Foundation's radar for vigilante-work. Can make/manifest small objects of his choosing. File's redacted to all hell; good luck getting more info on him from official sources.
Unofficial sources say he travels in high circles whenever an O5 needs something done quick. I'm sure Ten wouldn't mind his inclusion.

+ 4051

- Why even bother...

Sophia had once heard the phrase "footprints in a blizzard" used to describe futility. It was intuitive and evocative imagery, and it was partially the reason she had chartered a helicopter to Site-17. Traveling on land had too much baggage.
No, instead she had chosen to fly in a blizzard, where the metal rotors could rearrange the snowfall in a thousand meaningful ways.
Her phone buzzed in her hand, but she let it sit unanswered for as long as she could tolerate. She wanted to watch the land pass beneath her, and sometimes catch sight of a peculiar natural landmark sticking out from the white shroud, and watch it disappear over the horizon.
On the fifth buzz she placed it against her ear.
"Hello, Vaux."
"What, you're not answering your phone now?" Her assistant was being playful, Sophia noted. He knew something was wrong.
"I'm just a little distracted."
"Ah, I see. Is it one of those distractions?"
"No." Her voice was flat and icy. "Not since Ukraine."
The air was silent for a moment, and Sophia was overcome by guilt. She was being cruel to him.
"I'm… happy to hear that, Sophia. Your prescription came through, by the way."
She bit her lip and forced herself to smile. "Thank you, Vaux, I appreciate it. Say, uh, I've been thinking about something, and I want your opinion on it."
"Fire away! That's half the reason you're paying me, anyways."
Sophia's smile felt genuine for half a second. "How about I stop the in-person interviews after this? I have people I trust who can perform them just fine. I can come back to Eighty-One to handle the… administrative functions, for a while."
Vaux's reply was near-immediate. "I think that'd be for the best. Looking forward to seeing you again."
"I as well."
She took the phone from her ear, ready to end the call, but she heard Vaux's voice still speaking on the other side. The phone soon returned to its previous position.
" — careful at Seventeen. I hear they've had a lot of turmoil with their senior staff after Moose left, and they've got a bit of a… reputation, I guess you would call it."
"Noted," she replied. "Thank you. We'll talk soon."
The helicopter was quiet, and she let her phone fall to her lap. She didn't feel like watching the landscape anymore.

No one greeted Sophia as she stepped onto Site-17's tarmac. There were a few lab-coated employees who ducked inside buildings at the sight of her arrival, but only those in the motor pool tolerated her proximity. The personnel who arrived to service the helicopter kept a strange distance from her, and if she walked in their direction they would flinch and turn the other way.
Moose should still be running this place, Sophia thought sadly. It was so much more lively when she was here.
A greeter would have only been a formality, anyways. Sophia had a room number and enough time to trial-and-error her way through the facility, walking through sterile hallways and down inscrutable stairwells until she found her mark. She could ask for assistance from the site's employees, of course — but again, that strange distance, that subtle fear. Sophia thought it best to walk on her own.
Eventually, she located the room; not in a containment wing, to her initial confusion, but in the medical ward. On the placard of the wooden door were embossed the words "Temporary Asset Care". Sophia pushed down the questions rising to her mind's surface, and twisted the door's handle.
Her eyes drifted from the large medical cot in the center of the room, to the young man comatose within it, and then to the terrified woman standing beside him.
"Oh god." The woman's eyes widened with horror before she turned her head away. She grabbed a collection of papers resting on the table next to the cot and made for the door. "I came in here for an intake form! Heading out now."
Sophia let the door shut behind her with a click. The woman stopped in her tracks, pressing the papers against her white lab coat, trying to control her rapid breaths.
"It's alright," Sophia murmured. "I was just looking for 4051's room. Is this it?"
The woman across from her blink slowly. "Yes, this is Rainer's room. He's…" She trailed off, taking a moment to look over Sophia's face. "Sorry, have we met before?"
Sophia shrugged. "I doubt it. I'm from out-of-site, but I take it you work at Seventeen?"
Her shoulders visibly dropped at the news, her hands falling to her sides. "Oh, yes, I'm in anomalous pediatrics. As in, pediatrics for contained anomalies, not anomalies within the field of — sorry, my name's Jules, Level 2. Pleasure to meet you!"
Sophia, Level 4, nodded and broke a smile. "Sophia. Is there some rule against being down here?"
"Well, not officially, no." Jules shifted her weight from foot to foot, probably wondering if she should attempt to escape again. "But you know how Management is. Well, I guess you wouldn't know; Management tends to reassign people who start looking into Rainer's… situation"
Sophia raised an eyebrow at that. "Do they give any particular reason?"
Jules shrugged. "I haven't been reassigned, so if they do, I wouldn't know."
"The lack of transparency doesn't seem ideal."
"Well, when you've got a hammer." Jules began fidgeting with the papers again, obviously wanting to leave but bound by social convention to stay. The silence lingered.
Sophia stepped away from the door and turned her eyes towards the man in the cot. "Why's he here, instead of in containment?"
Jules exhaled sharply behind her. Seconds passed and Sophia wondered if she had quietly left the room while her back was turned.
"He's… a bit of a problem-anomaly," Jules said. "Have you read his file?"
"I have."
"Ah." She rubbed her neck awkwardly. "RAISA chose to feature my involvement with him rather heavily. I was his therapist for about a year. He… pulls small objects out of portals. But, he can also pull out the inverse of a thing, thereby destroying the original, which poses some complications to containment."
"And yet he's considered a Temporary Asset."
"Management transports him off-site sometimes, so it's easier to just keep him here. They put him on a sedative regimen until they need to use him, then put him back under. I don't know what they use him for, because they never let me know, but —"
"Jules."
"Yes?"
A thousand more thoughts than Sophia could process were swimming through her head. She was shaking, trembling, asking herself simple questions without answers over and over until it became the white noise of her soul. The hum of the medical equipment was a roar in her ears, blinding and striking her from all sides at once. She gritted her teeth, straightened her back, forced her balled fingers down to her sides. Slowly, she asked one of her questions.
"Do you think what's happening here is okay?"
Jules hesitated before answering. "No."
Sophia Light bit into the inside of her lip, refusing to turn away from the cot until she got her answers. "Do you think there's a better way for things to be done?"
"I… yes? Are you alright, Sophia?"
She pivoted on her heel to face Jules, eyes begging to hear the final word. "And if you were in Management, you'd do something about this, right?"
"That's not really —"
Sophia shook her head. She strode forward and grabbed the door's handle, wrenching it open. She took a step through before turning back to meet Jules' confused, and concerned, gaze.
"I'm doing just fine. Thank you for humoring me."
She flashed the pediatrician a smile before shutting the door and walking back to the tarmac.

The helicopter flew low over the tundra, leaving Site-17 behind the horizon. Although the northern blizzard had shown no sign of abating upon their initial descent, the afternoon light now filtered unhindered onto the pastoral landscape beneath Sophia's transport.
Her phone buzzed in her front pocket. Absentmindedly, she pulled it out, flipped it open, and answered the only person who would be calling her right now.
"Hello, Vaux." The words spilled near-effortlessly out of her lips. "I'm heading back from Seventeen."
"Ah, good to hear!" Her assistant paused, probably scribbling that information down on a pad of paper. "What'd you learn about the kid?"
Sophia shrugged to herself, glancing out the side-window to watch the landscape pass by. "I think he'd be good for the team. Seventeen kept him in a coma for an extended period, so we might have to acclimate him to walking and talking, but otherwise he's a suitable candidate."
"That's… good to hear, Sophia. You're sounding a lot better now, you know."
Sophia laughed. "Yeah, I guess I am. I had this realization about myself, too."
Vaux paused again. A statement like that was not spoken lightly.
"Oh?" he asked.
"Yeah. I think I want to be an Overseer."

On the other end of the line, Vaux released a long, deep sigh, trying to parse which word in Sophia's statement had been an unfortunate mispronunciation. But no matter which angle he attacked it from, Overseer Light started to make more and more sense. When she wanted, Sophia could be all sorts of cunning, manipulative, and terrifying, and as far as Vaux had determined, those were the only significant criteria.
Well… shit, he thought to no one.

O5-10
Second-youngest member of the Overseer Council, currently engaging in a political incident over the creation of Alpha-9. We've been forced into a sort of allyship for this reason.
I'm meeting with her factotum today to discuss the final roster. Let's see what I can learn about Ten's job security.

+ TEN

- And this the woman that in her study sits.

"Please, close the door behind you, Light."
Salt — or who Sophia assumed to be Salt — had elected to wear a three-piece suit for the meeting. The suit was integral to the whole setting, Sophia realized, since Salt was reclining in a padded chair, one leg crossed over the other. Without the additional professionalism, the intimidating facade would come crumbling down with the myriad arcana lining the office's walls.
Light shut the door, as directed, and took a seat across the table in a matching padded chair. She felt far too casual; she made a mental note to go shopping at some point in the near future.
"I checked over the roster you sent me." Salt gestured towards several papers on the table between them; Sophia's search had been extensive, but she'd narrowed the team down to ten-or-so primary candidates. The files in front of her displayed an ensemble of humans, androids, and a lone parrot. "They're all strong choices for the task at hand."
Sophia studied Salt directly, ensuring her eyes smiled but her lips stayed deathly straight. "Thank you. I take pride in my work, especially given the ongoing situation."
Salt nodded, then jammed her elbow into the arm of her chair. She rested her cheek on her balled fist, appearing… bored, perhaps?
"I was worried you'd buckle under the pressure, Light. You've found yourself with an awful lot of power and responsibility over a short period of time."
Sophia recognized what Salt left unsaid. "Managing an MTF is the same as directing a site, just with fewer people. I can handle this and more."
Nothing visible rose to the surface, but Sophia felt something about Salt's position harden. Slowly, she un-jammed her elbow and rested her hand on the chair's arm, just like Sophia.
"You understand, of course," Salt began, "that the unlikely success of Alpha-9 may grant you a certain level of… autonomy, in your career path."
Sophia's smile moved to her lips. "I do. And strangely, I think things are beginning to look up for once in a long while."
Salt's mouth twitched upwards before she stood, towering over Sophia from across the table. Sophia rose too, uninterested in being diminutized.
"I would like to have a long talk with you about your career, if such a thing comes to pass." The factotum spoke low, as though she were relaying something great and terrible.
"Then let's hope this operation is a success," Sophia replied.
Haltingly, Salt extended her hand over the table. It was gloved in white fabric, tailor-made to her digit length and size, and crafted to disappear beneath her sleeve's grey fabric. She flexed her fingers briefly, then met Sophia's gaze.
"I hope you save the world, Director Light," said Salt.
Sophia grabbed her hand and shook. "So do I, Overseer."

Resurrection – New Faces
<< New Faces: Overture | Recruitment Drive | Welcome to Yellowstone >>


FIRST: When Situations Degenerate
"Gwen! I'm going into hiding," Iris shouted as she slammed open the door of her dorm room. Her roommate, Gwenhwyfar Thistlebranch—eleventh in line to the Sidhe throne, heiress to the Thistlebranch Publishing fortune, and Deer Student Body President-In-Exile—shrieked, and yanked her sheets up to her chin.
"There was a sock on the door! You can't just barge in," Gwen shouted back. She was clearly not alone under the blanket.
"I can if it's an emergency. Hey, Morty."
"The spawn of hellfire greets you, mortal," Mordecai Diabolus—prospective Antichrist, Deer Student Body President-For-Life, and Gwen's it's-complicated—growled from somewhere around Gwen's waist. His voice sounded like a thousand tormented souls screaming in harmony, like a church roof collapsing on a crowded mass, like a politician denying war-crimes and genocides. He cleared his throat, and tried again. "Uh, sorry, hey, Iris. I'd come out from under here, but I'm, um."
Iris sighed. "Do not want to know. Put whatever kinky shit you got going on under there on hold, because, as I said, I am going into hiding."
"Why are you going into hiding?" Gwen was also under the blanket now, fiddling with whatever handcuffs or ropes or shackles were hidden beneath. "Did you do something embarassing at the afterparty? Did you do someone embarassing at the afterparty?"
"Nope, I'm not joking, this is serious." Iris grabbed a duffel bag from under her bed and started throwing clothes into it. "I think someone just tried to kidnap me. And I had to do some very illegal rollerblade stunts to escape. So probably I'm also low-key on the run from the law? It's a whole thing."
"Wait, ok, who tried to kidnap you?" Morty had been freed, and was now sitting up, the sheets barely maintaining his modesty. He was still wearing a collar. "Because—and I mean this in the nicest way possible—you're a nobody."
"I know!" That was probably enough clothing—half a dozen black t-shirts, a few pairs of black jeans, a pile of black socks and black underwear. She moved on to the bookshelf. "I was taking the shortcut behind Sizzle Pie, and bam, there's a limo parked right across the Way, and some smug British dude pops out, all 'Oooooh, Ms. Black, I've been expecting you,' and he's got these freaky bodyguard goons…" She held up a couple grimoires for inspection. "You think I'll need either of these?"
"Uhhh. Probably not the Clavicula, you never do that ceremonial crap, and if you really need it you can find the Mathers translation online." Gwen had gotten a t-shirt on, and was sitting up next to Morty, unbuckling his collar. "But Modern Thaumatology is a classic, and it's got that DRM that gives you boils if you try to scan it. Bring that one. Did you get a name?"
"Yeah. 'Chrysophilus Marshall, but my friends call me Skitter'. Had a friend, too, French guy in a bright pink Rolls Royce." She pitched a few more books into the duffle. Her reagent kit and her portable lab were too fragile, they'd have to go into the backpack, but her staff split nicely into three segments, which she slid in under the clothes. "What about my getting-laid underwear? Think I'll need those in hiding?"
"Was… Was the French guy wearing, like, a bucket hat and a track suit?" Morty looked even paler than usual, an accomplishment for a man whose normal skin tone was comparable to a drowned corpse.
Iris froze midway through refolding her sexiest bra-and-panty set. "Yes. How did you know?"
"I think I know them. More by reputation than personally. Their families are in business with my father."
"What, like…" Iris gestured vaguely downwards.
"No. Well, maybe. But I'm talking about the human one. He's… An import-export specialist."
"Smuggler."
"Yes, thank you Gwen, love it when you spill my family's deadly secrets everywhere. Didn't you sign the NDA at Thanksgiving? Whatever, doesn't matter. The Frenchman is Alphonse Cartier. Related to the Carters. As in Marshall, Carter and Dark." Iris and Gwen stared at him blankly. "Oh, right, no, you wouldn't know, would you. Iris is poor-" Gwen elbowed him sharply. "Uh, working-class? Low socio-economic status? Not filthy fucking rich? And Gwen, you're the wrong kind of nobility and the wrong kind of wealthy, you've got, like, morals and shit."
"You gonna get to the point any time soon?" Might as well bring the sexy underwear. Just in case she met some hot UIU agent played by a young Gillian Anderson and had to seduce her to escape from custody.
"Marshall, Carter and Dark are… A gentleman's club, I guess. Uh, not like a strip club. Like a place where a bunch of old dudes go to smoke cigars and drink whisky and bitch about their wives. Or they were, back in the day, but now they're also an auction house, and a brokerage, and a middleman for all kinds of freaky shit. Lots of money, lots of power, lots of connections."
"Well, fuck." Weed stash, check. (It was in a hollowed-out copy of Atlas Shrugged, last year's Yuletide gag gift from Gwen.) Hormones, check. (Estrogen, progesterone, spironolactone. She'd been getting them from the Maxwellist Free Clinic on Turing Street since high school.) "What do they want with me? Skitter, the Marshall guy, said he had a 'business proposition' for me, but I assumed that was just him trying to get me into the car."
"Yeah, probably. Oh, here's your laptop charger, I had to borrow it, mine kind of exploded." Gwen tossed it over. "So do you know where you're gonna go? If you want to stay at my parents' house I could call up the Royal Guard, get them to keep an eye out."
"Gwen, I appreciate the offer, but I'm not sure what a bunch of corgi-riding pixies armed with ceremonial halberds—"
"Glaives! Not halberds!"
"Armed with ceremonial glaives are going to do against people who can presumably hire the private military contractor of their choice." Iris stuffed one final trashy paperback into her duffel bag and zipped it closed. "And Morty, before you offer, I would rather not hide out anywhere tartarean, abyssal, infernal, or otherwise hellish."
"Actually I was going to say—"
"New Jersey counts as 'otherwise hellish'."
"Even Atlantic City?"
"Especially Atlantic City. Nah, I think I'm going to ask Alliott for help."
"Alliott Chao?" Gwen looked puzzled. "The fashion designer? Captain of the worst derby team in the city?"
"Wait, hold on, I know an Alliott Chao, but she's…" Morty paused, trying and failing to find a euphemism. "OK, she's an arms dealer. And a fashion designer, but I think that's a cover, unless it's the other way around."
"Yep, same woman." One final check around the room turned up the charger for her headphones and her American passport, which was generally less useful than the British one but she should probably bring just in case. "She has layers."
"Like an—"
"Morty, I swear to Lugh, if you quote Shrek in bed I'll cuff you to the headboard and…" Gwen trailed off, glancing awkwardly at Iris. "Sorry, sorry, TMI."
"And on that note, I'm gonna head out. Let me know if you hear anything useful." Iris paused, halfway out the door. "Hey, so, is the whole presidency deal a sex thing for you guys? Whoever's winning gets to top? 'Oh, Mr. President, I've been a bad little seditionist and I need to be punished'?"
Gwen turned beet-red, but Mordecai just grinned. "Don't be ridiculous, Iris. I only get subbier when I'm president."

Kemonomimi Zaibatsu's ThreePorts location was a gorgeous boutique near Prometheus Plaza, stocked with all the latest in transhumanist cyberfashion. It was thoroughly above-board, the local geeks loved it, and Alliot Chao wouldn't be caught dead within spitting distance. Normally, when she was in Portlands, Alliot preferred to hang out at Kallisti, the club she probably owned when you considered the name and her religious affiliation; but today was a Friday, so there was only one place she could be.
"COMMANDMENT THREE! A Discordian is Required during his early Illumination to Go Off Alone & Partake Joyously of a Hot Dog on a Friday!"
The best hot dog cart in Three Portlands was owned by a middle-aged Icelandic man named Harry (short for Haraldr).
"This Devotive Ceremony to Remonstrate against the popular Paganisms of the Day!"
He'd been selling hot dogs for nigh on twenty years now, and had been mobbed by steadily-growing crowds of Discordians each Friday for 17 of them.
"Of Judaism, no meat of Pork! Of Hinduism, no meat of Beef!"
Technically speaking, Harry's hot dogs were 100% lamb; they were certified both kosher and halal, and were popular with Portlandsers of many faiths.
"Of Catholic Christendom, no meat on Friday! Of Buddhism, no meat of any animal!"
He also had tofu dogs. Every Friday, he tried explaining these things to whichever lunatic was giving the speech, but they never listened.
"And of Discordianism! No eating of hot dog buns!"
They got him there, though. He would not give anyone a hot dog un-bunned. Gluten-free, organic, free-range, whatever kind of bun you needed, he would give it to you. But not a naked hot dog. That was just obscene.
"COMMANDMENT FOUR! A Discordian shall Partake of No Hot Dog Buns, for Such was the Solace of Our Goddess when She was Confronted with The Original Snub!"
Alliott was his favorite of the Friday preachers. She could really hit those capital letters. The kid from Deer, the one with the pope hat, they always forgot a couple.
"AND COMMANDMENT FIVE! A Discordian is Prohibited of Believing what he reads."
And the tips! Gods, did Alliott tip well. It wasn't always easy to spend—cryptocurrencies that hadn't launched yet, gold Krugerrands, an IOU from the Dean of ICSUT—but there was always a lot of it. Harry was pretty sure his kids' college educations had been solely funded by that woman's tips.
"IT IS SO WRITTEN! SO BE IT. HAIL DISCORDIA! PROSECUTORS WILL BE TRANSGRESSICUTED."
A final cheer of "Hail Eris!" from the crowd, and everyone fell silent as they tucked into their hot dogs. After selling a few more to stragglers, Harry started his little electric motor and headed off; there was a frat party at ICSUT tonight, and he wanted to set up on the lawn before things got rowdy.
"Hey, Alliott?" Iris had parked her bike up against a tree, her duffle still on the back. It could handle itself. "Got a minute?"
"Hey! Iris!" Alliott's mouth was half-full of hot dog; she had another in each hand. "You get one? I think Harry just left, but he gave me an extra today."
"Oh, uh, thanks, sure." Iris took a bite of the offered sausage. It was a really good goddamn hot dog. "That is a really good goddamn hot dog."
"Harry deserves a goddamn Michelin star, I swear." Her hot dog stopped halfway to her mouth. "Hey! I recognize that shirt! Nice job, Stella is hot as fuck."
Iris stared at the offered fist-bump. "Uh." Comprehension dawned, slowly but surely. "Oh! Uh. No. Stole this from a ceiling fan this morning. And she's not my type. Got that ‘super-subby-but-bad-at-subbing' energy. Lots of keysmashing and colon-threes and selfies in cheap-looking collars."
"Hmm. You're probably right." Alliott finished her fifth dog, and tossed the little paper boat in a trash can. "So… Why did you come to Hot Dog Friday? Something happen at the afterparty I need to know about?"
"Oh! Right. No. This isn't a derby thing." Iris glanced around nervously, and decided that the mob of Discordians was probably, on average, too stoned to care. "I need somewhere to hide out for… A while? Someone tried to kidnap me."
Alliott went from chill Discordian guru to stone-faced criminal ass-kicker in no time flat. It was equal parts terrifying and arousing. Well, if Iris was being honest with herself, it was more like three parts arousing to one part terrifying. "Who?"
"Uh. Morty, uh, Mordecai Diabolus, Spawn of the Dark One, Deer Student Body President-For-Life—"
"Ok, if another Deerie tried to kidnap you, shouldn't you go to the campus cops? Like, if you don't want to do that, I'll help you out, but Deer Community Safety scares me shitless, I can't believe they'd have a problem with some third-rate antichrist."
"No, no, you didn't let me finish. Morty, who is my roommate's… Boyfriend? Definitely more than a fuck buddy, but they're keeping their relationship secret because it would be a political scandal in like, three or four ways, so I probably shouldn't've told you, and it's definitely a domme-sub type of thing but I don't know if that's just how they like to have sex or if they—"
"Iris. Stay with me. Deep breaths."
"Sorry. Stressful day." She focused on her breathing for a few seconds, and continued. "Morty said it was probably Marshall, Carter and Dark."
"Oh. Yeah." Alliott didn't look suprised, or particularly worried. That, in itself, was pretty surprising and worrying. "That… Makes a lot of sense, actually."
"What the fuck."
"I'll tell you back at my place. C'mon, grab your bike, I've got a shortcut."

Meanwhile, one universe up and three hours north-east, two young men stood before an old oak door. This one had no runic bindings, no channels for sacrificial blood, no locks wrought from meteoric iron by the wise men of ages long ago; but to these young men, what lay behind this door was more frightening than whatever might be lurking beyond that other door, six stories below their feet.
"I can't believe you let her get away," the first one said. He was tall and thin, and wore a green-and-gold plaid suit; his tie was printed with a picture of an anatomically-improbably cartoon woman, her eyes rolling back and mouth hanging open in sexual ecstasy.
The second was short and fat; his tracksuit was pink camouflage, and his bucket hat proclaimed him to be the World's Best Grandma. With a hint of a French accent, he said, "I am not the one who had her at my mercy and fucked it all up."
"She turned her arm into a flaming sword! How was I supposed to react to that?" The short one ran a hand through his over-gelled hair, and glared at his companion. "I thought she was supposed to be a normal college student, not some sort of roller-skating ninja."
"Did you do any research? Deer is a wizard college. It's like ICSUT, but for people who know what postmodernism is."
"Whatever. Let's get this over with, yeah?"
"Oui."
They stepped forwards, and each turned one of the polished brass doorknobs. The doors creaked open, revealing a well-appointed office; the men's eyes met, but before they could nod at each other dramatically, an old man's voice echoed from within.
"We don't have all day. Get in here, already."
The young men scurried in, and sat in a pair of hideously expensive metal chairs, created specifically for this office by a bald Finnish designer with three PhDs and a wife twenty years his junior. (The chairs were incredibly uncomfortable; that was a feature, not a flaw.) The chairs were positioned in front of two massive desks, which had been made some centuries ago in an Istanbul workshop run by blind eunuchs; each was monogrammed, the left with an "M" and the right with a "C". Behind the desks, of course, sat Marshall and Carter, the former fat and red, the latter pale and thin.
Once the visitors had seated themselves, Carter spoke, with venom in his voice. "I want to know exactly what went wrong with your retrieval of the Black girl. Do not omit anything." When nobody responded, he said, "Chrysophilus. You first."
Skitter Marshall adjusted his tasteless anime tie nervously. "Well, uh, we sent you an email with—"
He was interrupted by the elder Marshall. "Yes, we read the email, boy! And now we are asking you to repeat what was in the email! What about that is so hard to comprehend?"
"Right! Right. Well, she - uh, Iris Black - came out of the Way right where our informant said she would…"

"… And then the Cartier boy crashed his hideous machine into a lorry, and they lost her." Amos Marshall wiped sweat from his brow from a handkerchief. "Your granddaughter is quite something, Percival. I'm almost disappointed the lads will have to, ah, disassemble her."
Percival Dark raised an eyebrow. "Indeed it is." A thin smile crawled onto his lips, where it perched without changing the rest of his face. "I am sure I will enjoy being her, when the time comes."
"Quite right, old boy, quite right." Rupert Carter glanced nervously at Marshall. They'd drawn lots, before they entered. He didn't want to ask the question. "Ah. It'll be a nice change, after however many millenia. Um."
"Bertie, I know you want to ask me something. Spit it out."
"Well. You see." Carter stared at his own feet, feeling an emotion he hadn't felt since he got called up to the headmaster's office for fixing rugby games in primary school. "I'm just not sure… How they're going to…" He sighed. "We had to cut your balls out, Percy, it's in the ritual. They can't just use the ovaries instead."
Percival Dark's smile dripped with venom. "You know I cannot lie to you, so trust me when I say she fulfills the requirements. And, if I may make a suggestion? Please get with the times." He paused just long enough for Carter to open his mouth. "That will be all."
"But—"
The room grew dark. "I said that will be all."
"Right! Yes. We'll keep you updated." Marshall and Carter hurried out; and as they did, Dark's smile finally reached its eyes.
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