Those Twisted Pines Hub » Circumstances

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June 14, 2016
Anderson Robotics World Headquarters, Three Portlands
Robots are extremely gullible.
This is a problem endemic to automatons of all constructions, one Thorne had first observed in the city's police golems. Machines simply lacked the imagination to be skeptical. You could program heuristic algorithms or inscribe fractal emets to allow your machine to react to unpredictable circumstances, but it would never stop being a machine — and the defining characteristic of a machine is that it follows orders.
PSHUD #578 had been ordered to escort the two agents through the facility, and so that was what it was going to do. It didn't try to make small talk, it didn't think to ask questions, and it didn't spend time idly wondering whether gas golems actually existed. Such things were beyond the scope of its current task.
For their part, Renee and Thorne were thankful for the Peregrine unit's lack of curiosity, as it made keeping up their bluff that much easier. While both made a show of poking their gas detectors into corners and pretending to check oxygen monitors, it was only a token performance — one which local theatre critics would have panned — but it was sufficient for fooling their escort.
The UIU's analysts had long suspected that Anderson's supposed headquarters was largely deserted, and believed, like Merlo, that the bulk of his operations actually took place outside of Three Portlands. As they proceeded through vacant rooms full of storage bins, filing cabinets, and server racks, it became clear that this was indeed the case. If there was any work being conducted within the building, it wasn't happening on the ground floor. Thorne could see a few dozen faint aura signatures clustered throughout the upper floors, and guessed that these belonged to members of the research team or the administrative staff.
After agonizing minutes of this fruitless charade, they came to the end of a narrow hallway that terminated in a pair of black double doors. A plaque on the wall nearby simply said "Logistics". #578 pushed through the doors without hesitation, leaving the two agents hurrying to keep up.
The Logistics room was cavernous, two to three stories tall with a floor the size of a football field. It was also impossible. There was no way it could fit within the floor plan of the building. Its very existence was a defiance of regular spatial topology, and, even worse, municipal building codes. Far more interesting, however, were the dozens — possibly even hundreds — of transport containers and storage crates that filled the room in lengthy rows stacked from floor to ceiling.
The label affixed prominently to the side of the nearest crate read:

Contents
Gyrfalcon Micro Servomotors — Wrist Joints

Source
Southwest Manufacturing Campus (Phoenix, AZ)

Received On
06/03/16

Destination
Pacific Workshop 4 (Vancouver, WA)

Deliver By
06/17/16

That certainly looked promising.
Thorne glanced around the room to check that it was deserted, then nodded to Renee. The catgirl didn't say anything, but flicked an ear in confirmation of the signal. It was go time.
"I think I've got something here." She waved the gas detector around experimentally, then took a few steps down one of the aisles. "Hey Tinman, you've got monoxide sensors, right? Come here and tell me if you can get a reading."
The Peregrine unit turned to face Renee. "Your request is compatible with my current orders. I shall attempt to assist." It trailed after her down the aisle.
Momentarily forgotten in the wake of Renee's distraction, Thorne ducked behind the closest shipping container. Taking a deep breath to steel themself, they grasped the slide of their bolo tie, whispered a few words of Celtic, and vanished.
For Thorne, the whole world went dark. That was the fatal flaw of most invisibility cloaks. If the world couldn't see you, then you couldn't see it. A true one-way cloak was theoretically possible, but was well beyond Thorne's capabilities. Their expertise lay in enchantments, and a glamour charm that diverted all incoming light was simple, even if it needed a clever mage to find its uses.
Thamatology's Observer Effect hadn't been named on a whim. As a thaumaturge, Thorne possessed the innate ability to see the underlying flow of Elan Vital Energy through the world, a type of vision that didn't involve sight. Usually, this was a barely noticeable underglow beneath their normal vision. But with the glamour suppressing their optic senses, they could easily see the ghostly outlines of the room and its contents, a monochromatic mirage created by interactions with the background aspect radiation.
The invisibility charm bought them some time, but they still needed a way to keep the Peregrine unit from noticing their absence and raising an alarm. Another glamour would have been the obvious answer, but a lifelike holograph capable of moving and reacting in-real time to unknown and unseen stimuli was something only a handful of wizards could do, and even they would need time to plan and execute a ritual working.
That was why, in the truest spirit of the American federal government, Thorne had outsourced the problem to an external contractor. Very external.
Still clutching their tie slide, Thorne gently rubbed the chunk of polished obsidian set at its center. They felt the daemonic presence contained within stir.
Despite what they had told Professor Holcomb, they hadn't performed the binding in the Wanderer's Library. While the Library provided the resources they needed to contact a suitable Outsider and work out the terms of a familiar contract, the binding itself had required a great deal of preparation and far more EVE than they would have been able to source on the spot. Luckily, Nemo had been more than willing to assist with the latter, and hadn't asked too many questions about why they were summoning a daemon. It was just one of those things you came to expect if you dated a wizard.
Is it time? The words were foreign, pressed upon their thoughts like runes etched in ice — formed with force and violence, in lines stark and clear, but as impermanent as the medium into which they were cut.
Thorne had known what to expect, but still flinched as the daemon brushed against their mind. It was an Outsider, a conceptual intelligence summoned from beyond time and space, and bound by power and bargain. Its mind was comprehensible — it would have been impossible to call and contract with it otherwise — but it was still fundamentally alien. Prolonged direct mental contact would be like having sex with a cactus. But this mental link was necessary for their plan, and it would only last a very short time.
Yes, it's time, Thorne thought back.
The daemon began to move more vigorously, uncoiling from within its obsidian house like a tongue of smoke. Its aura, tinged with blue like that of all Observers, took shape in front of them, condensing into a humanoid form. The form had been defined by Thorne during the binding ritual, and although they couldn't see it through the glamour, they knew that the familiar's appearance would be identical to their own.
Alright, the charm I gave to Kit is linked to this one by Contagion and Similarity, so it should extend the binding radius around her. Just stay close to her and follow her lead. I'll meet-up with you in the lobby when I'm done here.
Understood. The familiar hesitated, its alien presence grating against their mind, then added, Good luck, Robin Thorne. This is by far the most unusual plan a wizard has ever asked me to participate in.
Thorne watched as their doppelganger wandered off to join Renee and the Peregrine droid, an evocation already half-formed upon their lips in case the android detected some minute error in the familiar's appearance. But with no alarm forthcoming, they allowed the conjured power to subside and turned to the task at hand.
In theory, this would be the easy part. Thorne would use the same basic cantrip they had used to navigate the Library to create contagion links to the shipping crates, then simply wait for them to be moved to Anderson's Earthside facilities. Of course, they hadn't expected there to be so many shipping containers, but that was just a slight complication.
To an observer, the air near the container would have appeared to briefly shimmer as the edges of the glamour contoured around Thorne's outstretched hand. There was a brief glint of Aspect Radiation, invisible to anyone but an Observer, and then the mirage vanished as Thorne removed their hand.
One down. Too many left to go.
They repeated this process more times than they could count, working for a straight fifteen minutes while Renee continued to lead PSHUD #578 on a snipe hunt through the facility. They tried to pick crates that would be going to different destinations, but without being able to see the labels they were left only a little better than random guessing. Once, they felt the familiar's mind brush against theirs, leaving them awash in a flood of its own alien perceptions, which were as beautiful as they were bizarre, and agonizing to behold. But its interest wasn't malicious, and when it realized the pain it was causing, its attentions became far more subdued.
Thorne decided to call it quits once Renee and the familiar were close to returning to the lobby. They turned towards the exit, wondering if the sight of the door opening by itself would trigger an alarm, when a blinding flash of Aspect Radiation burst forth from the center of the room.
Thorne froze, watching the telltale ontic bleed flowing into the widening vortex of an open Way directly between them and the exit. The hole in the universe grew until it was almost three meters in diameter. It lasted for only a moment before closing again to reveal the brightest aura Thorne had seen in almost a decade. They had never had a chance to see it this close before, but the sheer radiance of the aura made it easy to guess who it was. Only a handful of wizards put off that much raw occult power.
Shit.
They stopped breathing. The other Observer had come through the Way facing away from Thorne, but all he had to do was turn around and they would be spotted immediately.
"Peregrines, with me." The voice had the tinny quality of a speech synthesizer, but with a much deeper, brassier sound. There was no mistaking who it belonged to. He marched towards the door, trailed by two sets of robotic footsteps, completely oblivious to the wizard standing thirty feet behind him.
Anderson's here! Thorne tried to think loudly. Get Kit and get out!
They felt an acknowledging thought from the familiar, and then an impression of directions, accompanied by the smell of ozone and the sound of breaking ice. Renee Kit Morin and I passed a staircase not far from your location. It may provide a means of escape.
Thorne didn't bother to offer a coherent reply, trusting that it would sense their gratitude. All concerns about alarms abandoned, they slipped through the door Anderson hadn't taken, heading deeper into the building. An instinctive sense of guidance that was not their own led them to the stairwell, and from there their own controlled panic led the ascent. Anderson was below, blocking the only entrance on the ground floor, but they could access the fire escape from the building's roof. All they had to do was get to the roof unnoticed.
They could feel the familiar's attention on them as they climbed. It was concerned, yes, but only in a detached way, more driven by curiosity about what they would do, rather than any worry about their safety. It was barely touching their mind, careful not to do any damage, but even that light touch was enough that Thorne couldn't separate its thoughts from theirs.
The behatted half-cat is lying to the machine, using words of intelligence to satisfy its ignorance. Multiphasic amorphous construct. Aetheric gas chromatography. Federal extraterritorial jurisdiction. Meaningless language used without meaning.
Thorne passed the third floor landing. The building was supposed to be nine stories tall. Did that include the roof? They couldn't remember.
The lies do not matter. They are too late to leave. The metal-faced mage enters the room. The smiling visage of his comedy mask cannot hide the anger in his aura.
"Excuse me!" Another lie. He does not seek to be excused. "Excuse me. What, uh, what is the meaning of this?"
"Mister Anderson." She smiles. More lies. "I'm Special Agent Morin and—"
They stumbled past the fifth floor, tripping on some unseen obstacle. They couldn't afford to drop the invisibility glamour, not yet. The stairs were only visible as faint rungs of light on an unseen ladder, lit only by the reflected glow of their own aura.
"I, um, know who you are." The truth, for once, although it's still masked in a lie. The random pauses in his speech are neither random nor natural, an affectation meant to garner sympathy for the frightful cyborg. "What do you, uh, think you're doing? Where's your warrant?"
"As I explained to your secretary, we are attempting to locate a gas golem that escaped in this district." The lie is blatant, and all the more believable for it. "We had reason to believe it might be in your building. Given the potential threat to life, a warrant isn't called for. I'm sure you'd agree that delaying in order to obtain one would have been an inexcusable danger to your employees."
They counted seven, and wondered why. It didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was to keep climbing. To keep counting.
"Oh, uh, of course, Miss Morin." The improper honorific is a deliberate insult. "But, uh, seeing how you haven't found it, I hope you won't, uh, mind me asking what's your evidence? I don't think either of us want you wasting your time on, um, a wild goose chase."
"We don't know that it's not still in the building. We weren't able to search above the ground floor before you arrived."
They saw the shadow of a door above them.
"Well let's, uh, do that now." The techno-sorcerer holds his arms out and turns theatrically, looking up through the ceiling with occult sight that has outlasted his organic eyes. "I understand your mage wouldn't know which auras are supposed to be here, but, um, I know everyone in this building personally. It shouldn't be hard to spot—" He stops. "Well, um, I do believe I owe you agents an, uh, apology. Looks like your fugitive cloud is on the roof."
HE SEES YOU.
The thought was too loud. Thorne wrenched away from the familiar, and they felt it recoil from their mind. Their pain, echoing back down the mental link, hurt it as much as it hurt them. It would not make such a mistake again.
The pain was at least a useful reminder of their own identity. They were Robin Thorne, wizard and UIU agent. They had come to the Anderson Robotics headquarters to do an illegal search as a favor to someone who wasn't quite a friend. Now they were on the roof of the building, trying to find a way back down. Vincent Anderson was probably on his way to kill them. And it was raining.
They couldn't use the fire escape now. Anderson or one of his robots would intercept them well before they got to the bottom.
From ninety feet down, the bell rang on a trolley departing the Plaza's streetcar station.
Thorne looked at their hands and saw nothing, because the invisibility glamour was still active. But they could feel, on each wrist, the bracelets that they always wore, which were enchanted with a warding charm for deflecting projectiles.
They had a very bad idea.
It was possible. Their mother had done it plenty of times. But Florence was an evocation specialist, and she had been in an entirely different weight-class when it came to occult power. Thorne was a lightweight by comparison, and they had already used some energy on the glamour and marking the crates. But they already had the working right there, stored in the charms, waiting to be activated. They just needed to take the next step.
Robin Thorne took two steps forwards and dropped off the side of the building.
They immediately regretted their decision, but it was too late to change their mind. They closed their eyes, for all the difference it made, and willed as much power as they could into their ward charms.
It was basic Newtonian physics. The wards were designed to deflect an incoming projectile by transferring its velocity along a perpendicular vector. And when the incoming projectile was something small, like a bullet, that was what they did. But the process exerted an equal and opposite force on Thorne, which was usually small enough to be insignificant.
When the incoming projectile was the ground, however, matters changed somewhat.
For a terrifying few seconds, Thorne plummeted down towards splattery death. Then their wards intercepted the ground, and they suddenly shot forwards away from the building, accelerating laterally under the deflected force of gravity. They were still falling, since the force was deflected at an acute angle, but the vertical velocity was no longer fatal. Hopefully.
"There it goes!" He rushes outside, followed by her and it. "Agent Thorne, do you see it?"
"I do," it says.
"Let's, uh, end this here." He points at Robin Thorne's aura streaking over the Plaza, sparks crackling along the length of an ivory fingertip.
"Are you crazy?" The cat grabs his arm, interrupting his casting. "What if it's an explosive gas?"
"I've got it," it says. "You two stay here."
The fake Robin Thorne turns and sprints after the real Robin Thorne before they get too far away for it to manifest.
The horizontal velocity, on the other hand, was a problem. That was where the trolley came in.
Most of the city's streetcars moved at a pace barely above a bicycle, but the line connecting Prometheus Plaza and Cambium Circle was an exception. It was an express line, or the closest thing to it, and it had a top speed just over forty miles per hour.
When Thorne landed on the roof of the trolley in a baseball slide, they were falling forwards at a speed just shy of fifty miles per hour.
Their suit didn't tear. It was UIU issue, woven from parafibers that could stop a bullet and go through a washing machine. It was also, unfortunately, very low friction. Thorne slipped across the rain-slicked roof of the trolley and off the other edge, only barely managing to grab onto the signpost at the front to keep themself from falling onto the tracks below.
Still invisible, Thorne dangled from one hand directly in front of the ticket golem, which stared forwards impassively. Finally dispelling the glamour, they waved at it with their free hand.
"Do you have room for one more?"

June 14, 2016
Intersection of Tim Street & Lighthouse Avenue, Three Portlands
The ticket golem threw them off the trolley. Not for fare dodging — although, as an FBI agent, Thorne was one of the very few people in the city required to pay for a transit pass — but for turnstile jumping. They had to admit that it had a point.
So they waited for Renee and the familiar a few blocks from Prometheus Plaza, just at the edge of the binding charm's radius so that it wouldn't demanifest in sight of Anderson's headquarters. The familiar got there first, and Thorne finally got to experience the oddity of seeing their doppelganger walking towards them.
Was the mission successful, Robin Thorne? They were getting used to the feeling of the Outsider's thoughts in their head, or maybe it was getting better at adapting its thoughts to a human mind, because that time the only ill effect was a lingering taste of lemon on their tongue.
I think so, they thought back. I won't know for certain for a while, but I'd say we accomplished the objectives.
I am glad. It tried to smile, but it didn't quite have it right, and anyways, even if it had been executed well, it was very weird to see their own face smiling at them. Working with you has been interesting, Robin Thorne. I would be amenable to an extension of our contract, if you so wish.
I think that could be very rewarding for both of us. They rubbed their thumb against the obsidian of their bolo tie before speaking aloud. "But we will have to negotiate that later. For now, I dismiss you."
The familiar dipped its head in acknowledgement, and then their doppelganger faded from view, dissipating into nothing as the power behind the illusion retreated back into its housing within the black volcanic glass.
Renee caught up a few minutes later.
"What took you so long?" Thorne asked.
"Stalling Electric Jesus to give you time to meet yourself." She smirked at her own joke. "Gave him a hard time about getting his permits in order for that hyperspace he has in there."
"Do you think we could use that to wrangle up a warrant?"
She shook her head. "Nah. Building code issues are strictly municipal jurisdiction, and you know we can't explain the grounds for the initial search. Probably better to just leave things to your Foundation friend."
"I know she'll appreciate that." Thorne yawned. Now that the adrenaline was fading, thaumic exhaustion from all the spellcasting was starting to set in. "Thanks for the help with this, Kit. I wouldn't have been able to do it without you."
"It was fun." She gave a relieved chuckle. "We should do it again sometime."
"Sure," they said. "You can be the one to jump off the roof then."
"Let's do it again in a single-story building," she said.
Thorne laughed. "That's the first good idea either of us have had all day."

June 17, 2016
Moses Howard Federal Building, Three Portlands
Thorne waited a few days to give the shipping crates time to disperse. Then they commandeered an empty conference room inside the Federal Building, pinned the largest map they could find against the blackboard using five refrigerator magnets arranged in a lopsided pentagon, and chalked what was supposed to be a circle around it. Professor Holcomb would have lectured them about the sloppy ritual geometry, but it was mostly a formality for a working this trivial.
They uncapped the leaky ballpoint pen they had stolen from Landen's desk and licked it. Focusing on the taste of ink on their tongue, they closed their eyes and reached out for the contagion links, feeling for the tiny pieces of their power they had left within the crates.
"Seek. Find. Reveal."
As they spoke, they flicked the pen at the map, letting their words guide the stream of ink that spilled forth. When they opened their eyes again, the chalk circle around the map had vanished. The map itself was now marked with a number of ink dots, each one indicating the location of a shipping crate. Written next to each dot, in Thorne's own handwriting, was a set of coordinates. Most of the dots were clustered around the Pacific Northwest, but they stretched up and down both coasts of North America, and there were even a few in England.
Someone cleared his throat behind them. They turned to see Kenneth Spencer standing in the doorway.
He tipped his head towards the map. "What are you working on?"
"Personal project." They unstuck the magnets from the board and started folding up the map. "Hope you don't mind me using the office for it."
"I guess that depends on what it is." He walked over and grabbed the loose edge of the map so that Thorne could fold it more easily. "I hear you and Renee had an incident with a gas golem over in Prometheus Plaza."
Thorne kept their gaze fixed on the map. "Yeah. Pretty minor thing, we dealt with it before anybody got hurt, and the person responsible learned their lesson. Nothing worth filing paperwork for."
"Great excuse to poke around Anderson's headquarters though. Anything worth making paperwork there?" He took the closed half of the map from Thorne and continued the accordion fold by himself.
"Nothing that concerns us." They watched as he finished the last fold.
"That's a shame. Would have been nice to find some hard evidence on him. Something nice and simple, like a signed confession note, or a map of his evil plans." He held up the folded map and stared at them. "Robin?"
Thorne stared back blankly. "Kenneth?"
"We can't use this as evidence, you know that."
"I know someone who can. And if she finds proof of a crime, well, we don't need to know the source of the tip."
Spencer narrowed his eyes. "What would your mom think about you helping the Foundation?"
That was enough to get them to look away. They chewed their lip for a moment, then said, "I think my mom would understand that Anderson needs to be stopped. And I think she would help a friend, even if they had joined the Foundation."
Speaking in a gentler tone, he said, "Sasha Merlo is not your friend."
They nodded, just barely. "No, but my mother trusted her."
He frowned. "You aren't your mom."
"I know." They closed their eyes, inhaled, then opened them again on the next breath and met his gaze. They held out a hand for the map.
He hesitated, a look of worry on his face, then handed them the map. "Just… be careful, Robin. You're playing a very dangerous game. I don't want to see you destroy your career for the Foundation."
They smirked. "Don't worry. Anderson is Merlo's white whale, not mine."

September 20, 2016
Portland, Oregon
It was a different coffee shop in a different part of the city, but the players and the scene were the same.
"Any luck?" Thorne asked. It had been several months since they had delivered the map to Merlo via a dead drop, but only now had she finally called another meeting to discuss her progress.
Merlo shook her head, her expression grim. "Plenty, but not the right kind. We've been hitting his baseline facilities as fast and as hard as we can, but nothing seems to make a dent."
"We've noticed increases in activity at his Three Ports headquarters, and he just announced another expansion in the city." They slid an envelope across the table, which contained relevant clippings from a few Three Portlands newspapers. "It looks like he's centralizing his operations there. He's probably been planning this for a while — he has to know that he can't hide from you guys forever — and your raids have just moved up his timetable."
She pulled out one of the newspaper clippings, glanced at it briefly, then replaced it and stuffed the whole envelope into her jacket pocket. "That explains how they've been able to evacuate so quickly. Most of these places are already half-empty by the time we get there, and they wipe everything and run at the first sign of trouble. We've got a bunch of broken robots, a few pointless office memos rescued from garbage cans, and almost no tangible evidence."
Thorne sighed. "Dammit. I was hoping you'd be able to get something that we could use as probable cause."
"So was I. But there wasn't even enough to get the higher-ups to let us put Gamma-13 on a more proactive footing, much less convince a Domestic Security Court to authorize a warrant. We're still stuck raiding known targets, when we should be pursuing new leads, finding ways to put more pressure on the bastard." She looked down and clenched her fists. "I really thought I had him this time. We were so close. But it turns out he wasn't two steps ahead of me, he had already finished the race. I finally know where he is and I can't touch him."
"You'll get him." They tried to offer a reassuring smile. "There's only so long he can dance on the cutting edge before he slips."
She sighed. "It all just feels so Sisyphean. How many more times am I going to watch the boulder roll back down the hill before I leave it there?"
"That's garbage!" The harshness of their tone startled Merlo into looking up. Once they had eye contact, Thorne continued in a more moderate tone. "Sisyphus was punished by Zeus for his hubris by giving him a task that he couldn't outwit. His failure to accomplish it, and his refusal to stop trying, was entirely the fault of his own character flaws. But Anderson isn't any smarter than you are, and it's not hubris to try and stop him. If anything, you're more like Ulysses."
Merlo raised an eyebrow. "Do they teach you how to make allusions to mythology at ICSUT?"
Thorne frowned in annoyance. "Yes, actually, it's called comparative mythography, but that's not the point. Do you want the motivational speech or not?"
She thought about it for a bit, then nodded. "Sure, what the hell."
Thorne cleared their throat, then started speaking in a more formal tone. "Ulysses was the cleverest of the heroes of the Trojan War, a great king of men, and favored by Athena. But despite all his skill and fortune, he was fated to not return home for twenty years. His journey was doomed, not by his own mistakes — although he made a few — or even by the actions of those around him, but by the random whims of hostile destiny. And despite all that, he managed to return home and defeat his enemies." They looked meaningfully at Merlo, then dropped back into their usual conversational voice. "Ulysses earned his happy ending, and you can too. You don't even have to contend with an angry ocean god, just one stuttering wizard in a theatre mask."
"It's not really a stutter," Merlo pointed out, but the objection was lighthearted and some of the fire had returned to her eyes.
Thorne laughed. "You know what I mean. It's an annoying verbal tic, and it's just further proof that he's mortal. A badass wizard cyborg with an army of robots at his command, sure, but he'll still die if you shoot him enough times."
"I could do that right now if you guys weren't in the way." Her tone was reasonable, but there was a faint trace of bitterness there as well.
They lifted their hands in half-serious surrender. "I can't change Presidential policy. But I'll keep feeding you what intel I can. And if we ever get him indicted, I'll make sure you get a crack at him. Assuming you don't get him first."
She nodded, then shook her head again. "This is exactly why I left the Unit in the first place. It's ridiculous, being forced to use a water pistol to fight a serial arsonist. The law shouldn't protect him."
Thorne shrugged. "Maybe. But it is what it is, and if we ignored it for our own ends, we'd be no better than him. You can't serve the greater good by committing necessary evils."
"Are they evil if they're necessary? Or just distasteful?"
There was a long stretch of silence as they both thought about that. Neither of them had an answer.
Finally, Merlo roused herself from thought and stood up to leave. "Thank you, Agent Thorne. I'll be in touch."
Thorne watched her start to walk away, then stood up and called after her. "Merlo!"
The Foundation agent stopped and looked back.
"Good luck."
She smiled wryly. "I'll need more than that where I'm going." Remembering the last time a Thorne had wished her luck, her expression darkened. She started to say something, stopped as she considered the wisdom of it, then decided to say it anyways. "I didn't know your mother for very long, but I know she would have been proud of you. I hope you know that."
Thorne nodded, but remained silent.
When it became clear that they weren't going to say anything else, Agent Sasha Merlo turned and left the coffee shop, venturing out into the soft rains of the Pacific Northwest to resume the neverending pursuit of her archnemesis.
Special Agent Robin Thorne stood alone in an empty coffee shop, and wondered.
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Description: SCP-XXXX is

Jeremy blinked heavily, a barely restrained yawn pushing against his chest as the monotonous words on his laptop slowly deteriorated into incomprehensible babble. Shifting forward in his seat, he reached back to push a knuckle into the base of his spine, straightening his posture with a painfully satisfying pop. Next to him, a middle-aged man, stout and dressed in a generic suit and lab coat of drab white, shot him a cursory glance. A small, sudden twinge of embarrassed, irrational anger sparked briefly; he's running on fumes here, with exactly zero minutes of sleep in the tank and about a liter of coffee that he poured into himself for that bit of an extra boost.
What right did anyone here have to judge him? To look upon him with slight? None, he thought. They didn't know anything about him except for his name (Jeremy Smith) and his position (Senior Researcher). Of course, there were exceptions, such as Researcher Day who sat three seats to his left, who occasionally helped him with certain assignments. And of course, the all-mighty, all-seeing O5 council, the omnipotent beings they were.
He blinked once more. A sluggish, leaden blink that brought with it a dull throb that took its place at the back of his skull. With a shaking hand, he dipped his spoon into the bowl of soup next to his laptop and lifted it to his mouth. He didn't know what it tasted like, or what it even was, only that it was warm. It was as if his mind had gone numb enough to be rendered incapable of even grasping the concept of taste.
Looking up from the table, he managed to find himself staring at the coffee machine, which was situated at the back of the room, tucked away along with the microwave and refrigerator. He was in one of the older breakrooms, a moderately sized room that offered only the slightest of reprieves from the constant reports, papers, busywork, and experiments that he and the other staff had to work through. As an added bonus, the Junior Researchers almost never went here; they would rather take their breaks at the cafeteria, or one of the newer, shinier breakrooms with their sleek designs and vending machines.
Not that that was an issue at the moment. No, they were all probably still in bed, resting with their blankets tucked to their chins within their Foundation-issued dormitories. It was four in the morning after all, and it was only due to sheer incompetence that he was still awake. Incompetency, of course, from his brain, for not giving him the rest that he wanted. It wasn't exactly an enthralling experience, laying on his bed with his eyes closed and waiting for sleep to come. For about six hours he waited, but he just couldn't do it. There were a few times when he started to drift off, but those moments were quickly rectified by the inexplicable bursts of pain that flared in his head, stealing him away from even a minute of sleep.
Eventually he figured that if he couldn't bring himself to sleep, then he might as well try to get a good start with a recent SCP that had appeared. One new enough that it didn't even have a designation, yet.
"You doing alright there, buddy?" The person next to him from before gave him a small tap on the shoulder. Jeremy recoiled from the touch, instinctively flinching at the sudden physical contact. "Woah, sorry to startle. It's just that you've had four mugs of coffee in the past ten minutes, and I see that you're considering another. And Foundation coffee at that. Sure, it's free, but I'd say that's still too costly."
Someone behind him snickered at that. "Fine. I'm fine. Just… can't sleep. Want to, but can't."
"Hm. Need to catch up on some stuff?" he asked, "Or just plain old insomnia? Oh, I'm Ben, by the way. Site Technician. Pulled out of bed to fix a ventilation issue for the D-Class lodgings. Took like twenty minutes to fix, and now I'm too awake to bother with going back to sleep."
"Jeremy Smith. Insomnia, I guess. Just laid there for six hours, couldn't get a single wink of sleep. Got some weird headache that flares every time I'm about to nod off."
Ben frowned. "Huh. Should probably get that checked out. Why don't you give the infirmary a visit? They're always open."
Jeremy looked down at his bowl of half-eaten lukewarm soup glumly in silent contemplation. It wasn't as if he were getting anywhere with the SCP report anyway, his addled brain failing to produce the words necessary to properly describe the anomaly. Most likely, he would have to completely revise anything he typed up anyway, lest he should submit a report riddled with typos and inaccuracies. Murmuring a few words of assent, he folded his laptop and secured it safely in his briefcase, placing it between several mind-numbingly lengthy articles and papers before dumping his foam bowl and plastic utensils into the trash.
They'll probably just give me aspirin, or some sort of sleeping pill, he thought as he gave a small wave of goodbye to technician. He found that a slight sense of unease had settled on him though, a creeping absence of weight that made him feel somewhat light-headed. Or, or maybe it's something more serious. Signs of a hemorrhage. A brain tumor.
"Oh, shut up," he muttered under his breath. He closed the door to the break room behind him and began walking down the hall, expansive and with a vague emptiness that would have been odd, were it not for the fact that it could barely even be considered morning. As he could recall, the infirmary would be on the opposite side of the site, just adjacent to the Euclid containment chambers. He groaned internally at that; perfect that he worked at a site small enough to not warrant monorails, but large enough that traversing the area would be time consuming.
That had been the worst part of his transfer here. Even ten years later, he missed the small confinement of Site-39, where he had easily memorized the entire layout, where the on-site security force had been small enough that the anomalies there were relatively harmless, where he knew the names of all of the personnel. Perhaps it was nostalgia talking, the sense of good old days and familiar comfort blinding him with their grey lens, but…
He stopped walking.
Where was he?
He looked around and realized that he had been walking in a straight line for the past several minutes, deeply entranced in his thoughts. In that time, he had not encountered a single branching path, doorway, person, or window of any kind. Indeed, he had been walking through an infinite hallway, barren of literally anything of note. He resumed walking forward, though with an air of caution as he began to consider the possibility of some sort of containment breach. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his cellphone; unsurprisingly, there was no signal.
"Well, shit," Jeremy muttered to himself. He only hoped that he was caught in some sort of projected hallucination rather than having wandered unwittingly into an alternate reality or dimension. Better to be making a fool of himself than to be caught in a self-perpetrating cycle of mind-numbing infinity. For a moment, he considered trying to walk back from where he came from, only to dismiss the idea; that was how you got disoriented, wasn't it? At least, in these situations.
He continued walking, occasionally tossing glances behind him for no other reason than a sense of justified paranoia. All the while, the hallway remained exactly the same. Two white walls, about three meters apart and perfectly smooth, free from imperfections in both colour and texture, a black vinyl composite flooring, tiled with thin lines in a checkerboard pattern that was nonetheless uniform in appearance, a flat white ceiling with repeating lines of white LED lights. The details of it practically burned themselves into his mind, especially as there was quite literally nothing else to look at.
At least I'll be able to write up a decent description after this, when I get out… He paused to kick his legs, knee joints popping loudly from within the slight veil of silence that had settled, previously interrupted only by his own breaths and the metronomic click-clacks of his footsteps on the unnaturally clean floor. Though that's assuming this is an undocumented anomaly.
Looking forward, all he could see was the endless stretch of the hallway extending, a daunting sight that taunted him with its blandly consistent appearance and apparent infinite length. The unflattering curse of middle-age, the decrepit and corrupt thing it was, clung to him like a foul odour; already, complaints of fatigue had begun to rise from his body.
Again, the possibility of turning back arose in his mind. It wasn't too late, was it? At most, he would lose… what, twenty minutes of progress? Has it been twenty minutes? Has it been an hour? No, that couldn't be. At most, thirty minutes, at the very most surely. Better to try it now and get it over with. He would be fine, perfectly fine.
He checked his phone again. There was no signal, and the time had not changed. Because of course it hadn't.
He turned around and began to walk again, though only reluctantly. There was no shift in perspective, no shifting details, no change in atmosphere, just the quickly tiring sight of an endless hallway that provided with it a small pith of doubt as to whether or not he turned around at all. The briefcase he was carrying around felt cumbersome, serving as nothing more than three and a half kilograms or so of extra baggage, as if his legs weren't hauling enough weigh as it is.
Not for the first time in his career, he considered the possibility of leaving the Foundation. It was a generally straight forward procedure; he would be administered amnestics and given the tried and true faux backstory of working in government facilities. Some retiree's got to get away without having their memory reshaped; that was one benefit of having a low security clearance, at least. But someone like him, who's been with the Foundation for well over a decade and with access to some of the more classified files? There was no chance that he would escape with his memories fully intact.
That didn't bother him so much though. No, he was sure he'd survive without the various horrors of the Foundation plaguing his mind for the rest of his life. He was compensated well for his work, enough so that he nearly had enough in savings to retire from working altogether, though he wasn't there quite yet. That was the main driving force behind his continued career here.
Encounters like this, however, always made him second-guess himself. The stitch building up at the side of his stomach, the slight burning spreading through his knees and calves, the possibility that all of this was for nothing, it all gnawed at him with their intoned whisperings of doubt and anxiety.
He had to sit down. He had to sit down.
He sat, cross-legged and with his briefcase on his lap, the cool surface of the floor seeping through his clothes to provide some measure of relief. Without thinking too much about it, he opened his briefcase and found with mild surprise that the multitude of papers he had been keeping in there were all completely blank, empty sheets of pure white that matched perfectly with the wall he was propped up against. Perfectly empty, perfectly immaculate. Hands shaking, he placed the papers aside and pulled out his laptop. He opened it and tried to turn it on.
It was dead.
He brought out his phone and tried to turn it on.
It was dead.
"Okay. Sure. Fuck me, right?" He groaned, running his fingers through his hair. For a few moments, he sat there in quite contemplation before standing up again, worn joints creaking as he straightened himself up. He continued walking again, sans briefcase and laptop, which were left by the wall where he sat. He didn't feel any lighter.
He shoved his hands into his pockets and dug around. There was his wallet, which contained various denominations of bills, some identification, and his clearance card. His phone, of course, which was dead. A black pen, nearly out of ink. A balled up napkin. In his breast pocket, a photograph with an aerial view of the anomaly he had been working on. A red pen, barely used.
He looked down. One after another, they went. Plop plop plop. Should he be walking faster? With heavier footfalls maybe? Or quieter? He didn't like how his footsteps sounded. They were obnoxiously loud, at least within the dead silence surrounding him. What if his footsteps were to be broadcasted into a library? They would be annoyed too, he thought.
Quieter then. With his heel absorbing each footfall before smoothly passing the load over to the rest of his foot. It worked, kind of. Better anyway. Maybe all of the non-existent folk in the library listening to his every move would be less annoyed now. Not that he cared.
Step after step after step after step. It was an endless loop. Well no, not endless. He slapped his own wrist. Not endless, not at all. There had to be an end, there had to be a way out. If not, someone would come. He would be pulled away. Someone would notice his absence and a low-level search would be conducted, before they find that he was missing entirely. Then, they would start to search harder and then, he would be rescued. Or maybe an entity occupying this anomaly would appear, some bizarre humanoid speaking in cryptics would introduce themselves and he would find the chance to perform an on-site interview.
Or, or, he was going crazy. Mad with hallucinations about an endless hallway, and he would be submitted to the psychiatric ward and undergo a study and therapy. They would fix whatever the hell was wrong with his brain and he would go back to his work. Everything would be fine, there was a solution no matter where you looked. Perfect.
Had it been hours now? The gradual buildup of dull aching in his legs began to tip-toe the breaking point, ravenous in their incessant shouting. There was no doubt that enough time had passed where he had traveled further backwards and forwards, though in this 2D-esque plane of existence, did that really matter?
Or, had he? It was entirely possible that he hadn't traveled very far at all, of course. He recognized that the dull task of walking in a straight line in this bare-bones hallway would stretch time into taffy.
It was decided that he would start counting.
Not out loud of course, that would get tiresome. No, he would count in his mind, one by one and keep going until he reached infinity. Or until he got out. He would count as fast as he could, and if he happened to lose his thoughts, then he'd just pick up where he thought he was. It was a great way to keep time, at least he thought so. Each step was about three counts. Sometimes it was four, sometimes it was two. That didn't matter though. Three was good, three was enough. If nothing else, an average.
At six hundred and eighty-two, he noticed that his throat had begun to dry.

- - -

At two thousand, four hundred and ninety-seven, he was walking in contemplative silence.
At two thousand, four hundred and ninety-nine, he fell. In the blink of an eye, he was on the floor and grabbing his right leg with both of his hands, mouth open in a sudden silent scream. He quickly lifted up the pant leg to reveal a bundle of skin and muscle and hair and color. Giant, agonizing pain crawled and shivered all over, nixed flesh caught alight in a violent seizure. Muscles were visibly clenching and unclenching, knotting his skin and nerves.
"Damn it," he whispered through clenched teeth, hands working quickly to massage the cramped muscles. He coughed a few times and drew a large, gasping breath that did nothing except dry his mouth further. Squeezing his eyes shut, he did his best to ignore the overlay of static that had become all-too present.
The pain subsided somewhat, though he kept his grasp firmly on his legs, massaging it as his mind raced to recall what number he had left on. Was it two thousand five hundred and eighty? That sounded right. And even if it wasn't, who's to correct him on it? He was all alone. All alone and with no one to care.

- - -

At nine thousand, one hundred and one, he did his business against the wall opposite to the one he was walking next to. The coffee wanted out.

- - -

At thirty-one thousand, nine hundred and eleven, the sense of collapse in his lungs began to heighten, a shortness of breath combined with the electric shocks running through his esophagus through the sensation of falling. Maybe he was going the wrong way. Maybe he should have never turned back in the first place. But was it too late? Now was it too late? At thirty-two thousand and thirty-six? He could turn around again, but what if the exit was just there? Just beyond his reach, only a few thousand steps forward.
And again, the possibility that this was the wrong way. It tore at him, the two options. He hated that feeling, the feeling that his life depended on a coinflip, with the chance that neither option would lead to salvation. What else could he do though? What else could his mind, the very same that had written up countless reports and containment procedures, focus on besides counting? Counting and nurturing that growing resentment festering in his gut, directed towards the Foundation and all of its anomalies? There was a brief moment of understanding, kinship even, with the GOC, though that moment quickly left him.
God, he was just so damn thirsty. He hadn't had a single drink of water, only subsisting on half a bowl of soup and several cups of coffee, which had already left his system. Already, a persistent itch had formed in his throat, refusing to leave him be no matter how many times he cleared his throat.
I'll die here, won't I?

- - -

At forty thousand, five hundred and eleven, his eyelids regained their weight. The complete and utter boredom that had overtaken him, boredom only alleviated somewhat by the agitation in his lungs as well as the constant worries of a slow and painful death, was dragging behind him, a ball and chain.
At forty-three thousand, six hundred, he sat down with his back against the wall and closed his eyes. Despite everything, sleep came easily. There was no pain.

- - -

When he woke up, he found himself in an endless hallway that looked identical to the one he was in just before his nap.
Which way had he been walking in? To his left, or to his right? He couldn't quite recall.
What number was he at? Well, he'll just round to a nice and even fifty thousand. It won't make much of a difference anyhow.
He began walking again. He brought a hand up to his neck and began scratching with ragged fingernails, uneven and with a thin layer of grime underneath. His nails dug around his Adam's apple with a serene sort of urgency, something that desperately needed to be done but without much care or worry as there would be no consequence either way. It would just be such a relief, such a relief, if… if only, the dryness went away.

- - -

At ninety-seven thousand, one hundred and twenty-two, Jeremy sat down in the middle of the hallway and started to cry. Precious, precious water. Gone without a purpose.
He hadn't shed a single tear in years.
The counting was involuntary at this point, a monotone voice that droned on and on as unimportant background noise.
At ninety-nine thousand, eight hundred and sixty-two, he got up and began walking again. His legs felt terribly weak, and he had suffered three more cramps since the first one. He held an irrational belief that at any moment, he would simply disintegrate into ash, grey ash that would scatter everywhere and dirty this perfectly clean hallway. The walls would be dotted with his mess.
He stopped to check his phone. It was dead.
He threw it at the wall and watched numbly as it bounced off with a dull thud and landed at his feet.
He picked it up and began walking again.

- - -

At one hundred and forty-four thousand, seventy-two, he sat down and took another nap. When he woke up, it took another count of two hundred before he could stand up again. He made it for about one hundred more counts before he had to stop again. Why did these numbers have to be so long? It made for a ratio of two steps per count. He hated it. It felt like was making less progress. Like everything was becoming slower.
When he looked up, he saw that there were vast, sprawling shapes making up a hexagonal grid, dotted with that familiar static and ugly splotches of bruised purple.
The lights were blinding him. The lights were burning him.
At one hundred and eighty-eight thousand, five hundred and fifty-four, the counting stopped.
Thank god for small miracles, he thought. He would have said it aloud, if he were able.
He couldn't stand. He couldn't walk.
The itchiness in his throat had vanished. It was hollow, it was dust, it was breaking.
He laid down and closed his eyes.


I went through my checklist three times before hitting the button meant to send me across the cosmos. Everything seemed perfect.
The SCPF Athens was the pinnacle of Foundation engineering: a ceramic steel composite frame with built-in magnetic field generators to protect the occupants from errant debris and cosmic rays. A prototype cold-fusion power plant capable of generating 2,000 megawatts of power. Three sub-light engines that could produce up to 1G of accelerative force until you turned them off or the universe dies.
Then came the crown jewel of human achievement: The Elastic Jump Drive. A mixture of magic and technology that could, with a modest investment of power, weave a temporary way through spacetime and allow travel to anywhere in the observable universe.
After a period of time that depended on how much power you supplied the drive, it would pull you back to your original jump point. It allowed nothing to travel with you that you didn't bring in the first place and it left nothing behind.
Take nothing but pictures.
Leave nothing but footprints.
Kill nothing but time.
We'd done this test a dozen times already. With insects. Dogs. Finally a chimpanzee. They'd acted a bit odd when they came back but who wouldn't?
This was our first time sending a human across the void. And I alone would tell them what wonders I saw there.
I pressed the button and the control boards lit up like a Christmas tree. A power spike. A big one.
You know, I've had some time to think about what brought me to this place in my life. The long nights. The short relationships. That year with Diana.
I was always so busy. Paperwork. Funding requests. Grants. Crossing the t's, dotting the i's. This was supposed to make up for all of that. My crowning achievement for a life unlived.
Back to the power spike. My eyes, my hands, even my beating heart jumped a thousand-thousand lightyears in an instant. But I remained.

And now I can't feel.

No sensory input. No pain. Nothing but the void. Still, the ship carrying my skin should come back.
It must come back.
I don't have the luxury of looking out into the universe while I wait. I sing to myself, but I hear nothing. I try to remember how she smelled and it's almost beyond my reach.
I've been waiting quite a while. And now I'm thinking about the thing I've been dreading. The power spike. What if my body didn't survive the trip?

 I'll stay here.

 Alone.


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More by this author

The following article is a part of the And Every Time We Meet Again storyline. Whilst you can read it on its own, it's highly recommended you read the previous installments to get this article in its fullest.

2nd of April, 1978
Somewhere in the caverns underneath Stargard, Poland

"Daniel?" Natalie Asheworth asked, moving slightly closer towards Daniel. She made her grasp on his hand a little harder, correcting her long, blond hair with her other hand, and smiled.
"Yes?" He answered, snapping out of his trance. He always had a tendency for that, but she didn't fault him — the beauty of this cave system was something truly to behold. She didn't need to be as vulnerable as him to admit that the self-initializing rituals were beautiful.
"What do you want to do when it's all over?"
"Huh?"
"You know — our and Nowak's ritual goes well, we summon what we summon, and we can live together peacefully forever. No more running away from the Foundation, no more wars — just peace. Forever." She paused, scratching her head. "What do we do then?"
He loudly exhaled, putting aside the texts in Fae he was supposed to use for the ritual he was holding. "I don't— actually, you know what?"
She raised her eyebrow.
"I want to find a place, somewhere at the edge of the universe, where no one can reach us. I want to build a home there, together, and live there until we grow old. And maybe even have a dog." He smiled.
She smiled back. "Yeah, I like that plan."
She came closer, encompassing him with her arms. For a second, her green eyes met his gray ones, and she could see happiness in them. "I love you, you know?"
"I know, Nat." He embraced her too, forgetting about everything else — in that very moment, nothing else, aside from her, mattered. It was only he and her, forever. "I love you too."
For a brief moment in time, they understood each other like nobody else on the planet ever had. He felt like they were a unity — their thoughts and dreams combined, forming into one emotion, one feeling. He looked her deeply in the eyes, and she replied with the same gesture — and, in that very moment, they knew everything the other did, seeing everything the other one was in the eyes of the other.
"Now, let's make that plan a reality."

* * *

10th of September, 1985
Overwatch Command, 75 kilometers north of Kraków, Poland

"W-Why? Why?" Daniel Asheworth sobbed, looking O5-9 directly in her eyes. They were no longer emerald green, instead replaced by a sickening red. He could no longer feel love and warmth of the person she had been ages ago, prior to the possession — all that was replaced by fury and hunger of the Beast, festering within the soul of the woman he'd once loved, forming an unholy amalgamation of both. "Why do all of this? Why even bring me here, if you know how to undo those chains? To make me suffer?"
She grinned widely, continuing to chant the spell that would break the final Seal from within the Kodex Tenebra laying before her. Her eyes, carefully following the instructions written in the tome laying between herbs, chalk, dead blue spiders, and other magical apparatus before her, were excited like they had never been, filling with more and more Red by each second the final ritual was closer to completion. The crimson tendrils filled with runes previously encompassing only the Overseer now extended towards Asheworth, grabbing him and linking the two in the ritual.
The thaumaturge fell down on his knees, giving in to the magic — sobbing, even if he could resist, he was too broken to even realize he was able to withstand her. With each second, Daniel was pulled in closer and closer, until he was so close to the host of the Beast she could grab his face with her hand. Now with Asheworth encompassed in the thaumaturgic circle on the ground, the woman looked down on him, and answered. "Because you're the final ingredient I needed. And you fell for everything I did, taking the line and sinker."
Jessie Rivera was too shocked to even react. Paralyzed with a mix of fear and confusion, she stood near the entry of the room, too afraid to confront Nine. She knew it was wrong and that she should save her closest friend, but, at some fundamental level of her soul, she couldn't even move her fingers.
"Do you… not recognize me, Nat?" He asked, returning the stare. "Do you… not remember everything we've had together, all the moments we spent with each other?"
All she replied with was laughter, starting to cough with blood halfway through. "Oh, I do — I simply do not care," she said, wiping it from her chin. "I'm no longer your little thaumaturge whore — I'm someone that's so, so much more."
He didn't answer.
Seconds later, which felt like literal decades, he could subconsciously feel the ritual was over, but one didn't need to be an expert thaumaturge to know that — the overwhelming smile of Nine was a good enough indicator on its own. Five circles forming a larger circle around them burst out with a red liquid, which quickly transformed into an even larger circle around them all. It glowed with a bright, red light, and, with an almost silent hiss, the fabric of reality near the Overseer was cut by some invisible force as if it was a diety's knife, forming a circular portal near her. Even if Asheworth didn't see it, he knew where it lead — wherever Father held the Beast at bay with five Seals locking the dimension for countless eons was no longer a prison.
Nine inhaled deeply, feeling newly found power run through her veins. She reached towards the dimension with her mind, awakening the forever-dormant deities within. The Beast felt her call, and, within the blink of an eye, the two connected, filling the Overseer with potential beyond what she imagined. She was now full, no longer a mere host of a part of the Beast's soul, instead allowing for the full scope of its destruction to enter her being.
"It's over," she said, with eyes as red as the monster that festered within her and a smile as wide as the divide between her and Asheworth. "You've lost."
And, for a brief second before the bonding of the two finished, Asheworth felt something, deep within him. He didn't know if it was reflex, his training kicking in, or the last cry out for help by the part of Father's soul that was within him — all he knew is that he suddenly realized there was still a chance.
"What are you—" Nine tried to say as he rushed head onto her, grabbing the woman by her waist and throwing her, alongside himself, wherever the portal led.
And then, for the second time this evening, reality stopped existing as the portal closed behind them.

* * *

He opened his eyes to reveal nothing — nonexistence was the only thing he could see or hear, no matter in which direction he looked. He felt, subconsciously, that the only thing within the entirety of this universe were the two deities, confused at the situation as much as he, ready to strike, but oddly unable to react. They filled the null skies above with Red and Blue, mixing together to form all of reality. He wasn't sure, but if he had to guess, the human element was alien to this reality, somehow blocking the two from doing anything.
He suddenly felt a pain in his chest, similar to a cardiac arrest, falling on the nonexistent ground beneath the nonexistent him. It felt like the part of Father that was inside him yearned to meet the rest of its being, pulled towards the everpresent god like metal towards a magnet. He let it go, and, for a brief second, felt he was no longer a host of the entity.
"Daniel?" His ears were suddenly filled with a gentle voice rippling through spacetime around him like a skimming stone across water. He turned around in the void of the imaginary world, only to notice, nay, feel, a short woman with blonde hair, gazing at him with her emerald eyes.
"This is where it ends," he shouted, drawing forth a weapon of pure magic, ready to strike Nine at any moment. He could feel fury and rage boiling within him, giving power to his moves as he approached the woman with each step across nonexistence.
"Nine is gone, Daniel. It's me," she answered calmly, coming closer to him.
"W-What?" He said with a weak tone, stopping his walk.
"You had to give up Father's soul to exist here. She did the same with the Beast, no matter if she wanted it or not."
"N-No!" He shouted as tears went down his face for the second time this evening, backing away from her. "You're dead. The only thing you are now is Nine, you…. you!" He lost his words.
"She's now gone too. But, frankly, so are you," she looked around herself in a curious manner. "The only thing here is us, Daniel. Two hosts devoid of their parasites."
He stood there for seconds of pure eternity, looking at her, trying to understand everything that just transpired. He wasn't sure if time worked differently here, but if he had to say, he'd argue there was no way that moment felt so long.
"What… what was the promise?" He asked quietly, staring at the ground beneath them. "If you're Nat, what did we promise ourselves?"
"What?"
"The day before you…" He paused, not having the mental strength to finish the sentence. "What did we promise ourselves we'd do after it was all over?"
She smiled with a sadness palpable within the gesture. "To build a home, somewhere at the edge of the world, and live there until we get old." Tears started going down her cheeks.
Asheworth didn't reply, instead practically running towards her. He hugged her, sobbing. "Never leave me again."
They sat down, together, silently gazing at the end of the world before them. It didn't feel like there was anything after this reality, as if they were standing at the edge of the universe. She gently grabbed his hand, coming closer.
"So, what have you been up to these past… what, ten years?"
"Twelve. I… not much, I don't think," he sighed. "Got employed by the Foundation, found Nowak again, came back to the Library, and… ended up here."
She chuckled. "Slow down, slow down. Let's start with something simpler: did you get a dog like we planned?" She smiled.
He looked down. "I… yeah, yeah I did. His name was Sparky, and…"
And as they continued looking into the stars, filling the night above them with lights of eternity and their struggles, they told themselves everything.

* * *

Millenia after millennia passed as the couple sat underneath the sky at the universe's end. They talked, danced, loved, and smiled as one century passed after another, once again filling their lives with true purpose they haven't felt in more than a decade. Two parts of one feeling, lost for so long, now once again reunited. She thought what he thought and he thought what she thought. They were again together, forever united.
"Daniel?" She one day asked, standing with him at the border between existence and irrelevance.
"Yeah?" He replied, turning towards her as he extended a hand.
"It's time," she said, rejecting the offer and staring into the ground beneath them.
"What… What do you mean?"
She came a little closer, revealing her forearm from underneath her shirt. It was fading, like dust dissolving at wind, removing molecules from her by each decade he looked at her. She looked at him, sadness in her eyes, with a faint smile visiting her face. "I'm fading, honey. It's time for you to go."
He grabbed her arm, panic in his eyes. "What do you mean?!"
She looked into his soul. "I'm nothing more than a memory at this point. I'm nothing, only existing here as a circumstantial paradox brought to life by us both."
"No, no no no no. You're real, I know you are, you—"
She shushed him. "We both know that's a lie." Tears started going down his face again. "But that doesn't mean it's the end, Daniel."
He looked at her in confusion, sadness filling his very being.
"There's an entire world out there. An entire world you can fix. Just… promise me you'll change things, alright? Remember what you promised her. Promise that to me, too." She gently touched his cheek. "I swear we'll meet again."
"I… I promise," he cried out, as he hugged the fading memory of the person that had once been Natalie Asheworth. He could feel her turning to dust in before his eyes. "Please, don't leave me. Swear you'll meet me again. Please. Please. Please."
"I promise," she smiled as last pieces of her turned to dust, leaving nothing in his arms. "And every time we meet again, just… remember one thing, please: I love you."
And, before his eyes, she turned to nothingness, as if she had never been there.

* * *

He sat on the nonexistent ground where, just seconds ago, both of them sat, sobbing into his arms. He didn't think he'd ever recover, not after everything he'd gone through, so he cried. He cried like the five-year-old boy he hadn't been for over twenty-two, letting everything he had within him out of his system. And, after a while, the sorrow stopped coming. He didn't know if it should stop coming, but it did, eventually turning him into nothing more than a husk, devoid of emotions, staring into the void around him. He could once again feel the two deities above him, observing each of his movements, trying to take control, but unable to. He knew it was time to go.
And so he stood up, filling the fabric of spacetime with a ripple once more. Like an endless wanderer he was, he took the first step across nonexistence, eventually followed up by another one, until he could feel his legs moving on their own accord. He walked and he walked, until he lost count of the time he'd spent that way as moments turned into hours, hours into days, and days into months.
Eventually though, he knew he was there. He knew it was here that he and Nine entered into this prison, realizing there was a way out. He inhaled, reaching out into the space between realities, finding that way, like an underground tunnel, opening it for himself. He didn't know what would happen if he'd leave this realm — there probably was a non-zero chance he'd cause another end of the world by doing so, but, if he was honest, he was too tired and empty to neither realize this nor care.
He looked around himself, one final time observing the end of the world. Gazing at the skies, he noticed the two entities, furious he's leaving, furious he's not going to make either win, furious he's stopping this never-ending cycle of creation and destruction. And, before he turned his sight to something else, for a brief second, he could swear the sky above the two beings blinked happily, smiling at him with its emerald eyes.
He smiled back, shedding one final tear, and, for one final time, he let go.

* * *

When he opened his eyes, the only thing he saw was night. An endless night above him, filled with countless stars blinking at the Earth beneath them, illuminating it with a million stories left untold. He smiled, knowing he found his way back.
He stood up from the cold ground, scratching his back, and realized Overwatch Command was back, albeit snapped into two parts. Around it, countless corpses laid, filling the night with an absence of being. Around them, numerous Fae and Children of the Night walked, trying to find at least one person still alive.
Looking beyond it, he noticed Cornwell and Rivera standing somewhere in the distance, taking care of someone that looked like Tier'ney. He didn't come closer, instead beholding the valley of death he stood in as the skies got darker with each moment he didn't move. And, eventually, one of them noticed him. Rivera, shock in her eyes, looked at Asheworth, showing the rest he's there.
"Are you fine?!" She shouted, running towards him. "W-What happened?!"
"Everything."

* * *

They sat underneath the night sky contrasting with the once-again existing building of Overwatch Command in silence. He looked at the ground, staring absentmindedly, playing with a stick, solely to kill time, not wanting to talk about anything. He knew he had to open up at some point, but it didn't feel right. Not now, at least.
The tranquility was suddenly interrupted by Rivera's phone calling, filling the night with the sounds of the notification. She sighed, picking it up, and smiled apologetically. She gave a couple of answers Asheworth didn't listen to, but noticed with each of them she turned visibly happier.
"The Council is back on," she said, turning her head towards him. "They know about everything."
"That's… good," he answered quietly, avoiding eye contact. "How's Cornwell?"
"He's fine. Nothing more than dimension-travel-induced sickness. Seems you somehow avoided it, heh. Should be back to work in two days max."
He didn't answer.
"You'll have to tell me what happened eventually, you know?"
"I… I know."
She inhaled sharply. "Alright. At least you're fine and everything's over. That's all that matters."
Staring into her phone for a couple more moments that felt like hours, she blinked twice, gently rubbing her eyes. The night sky was dark, and the contrast of the device's bright screen was quite trying, if she was honest.
"So," she began, standing up from the ground. She extended a hand towards Asheworth, who looked back at her. "What the hell do we do now? I mean, there's so much to do. I can't even imagine what a mess 120 must be, let alone Esterberg, and there's still like a million other things that need to be brought back to normal, and—"
She was cut off by Daniel accepting her hand. He looked her deep in the eyes, and answered.
"We try to fix things."

25th of September, 1985
Site-120's Park, 5 kilometers south-west of Częstochowa, Poland

REST IN PEACE // ROT IN HELL
Natalia Lilia Asheworth // Damian Tomasz Nowak
1949 - 1985 // 1937-1985

The late afternoon was cold. Probably the coldest this year had been this far.
Daniel Asheworth sighed, inhaling the cold Autumn air around himself. Realizing he lost count of how long he'd been sitting near the two graves buried in the park near Site-120, he suddenly felt a bone-deep cold in his hands. He put on his gloves — altered to fit the temperature of the season — and continued sitting in silence, looking at the two names and contemplating the last couple months of his life.
"Daniel?"
He snapped out of the trance, woken up by the approaching Jessie Rivera. She smiled slightly, taking a seat next to him on the bench. She followed where his eyes looked, inevitably meeting the names written in Polish on the tombstone. She grimaced almost unnoticeably.
"I'll never understand why you chose to bury them here. Or why you buried him at all," she said, looking at Nowak's memorial.
"He was a piece of shit. But nobody deserves what happened to him. Even he deserves to finally rest. Or, at least, rest as much as he'll be able to down there," he added, smirking slightly as if he knew something Rivera didn't.
She raised her brow, but didn't ask; some things were better left unsaid. She looked at the names again. "Two memories so different bringing them together feels wrong."
"If I chose to bury my past, then I shouldn't choose which parts of it to bury," he sighed. "I… I can't believe it's over, you know."
She moved a little closer to him.
"I know."
They sat together in silence as the clouds above started to leak, bringing almost unnoticeable rain upon them. The atmosphere got colder, and both slightly shivered. Just as Asheworth was about to say something, Rivera's phone suddenly rang, which she answered with an apologetic smile,
"The Esterberg Restoration Council delegation is almost here." She stood up. "Come on."
He came along, putting his umbrella up as a response to the rain increasing in speed. "Will Overwatch attend? I'm farily certain Four wanted to oversee it personally."
"Eh, don't know." She shrugged. "Even if repairing broken bonds with a city will be difficult and probably would need him, I sincerely doubt O5 will care. Oh, but before I forget," she smiled. "The 5890-1 elimination method you proposed is working. O4 said they eliminated like one hundred instances today alone. It's going well."
"And the man in the red suit? Did O4 find him?"
"Gone with Nine. No one calling him for duty bound him to the mortal realm anymore, I'm guessing"
He didn't continue the conversation, instead smiling slightly at the horizon. The sun was almost setting in the distance, slowly but surely making its way towards sky's end. He turned to Rivera, looking directly in the eyes, and, for a brief moment in time, they understood each other like nobody else on the planet ever had.
And then, she smiled back.

25th of September, 1985
Hell itself, somewhere underneath Częstochowa, Poland

At first, it was like emerging from water after almost drowning, frantically grasping your regained existence like breath.
The man woke up as if he'd just experienced the worst nightmare he'd ever dreamt — one of the "terrifying but can't remember why" ones. His breathing was irregular, unaccustomed to breathing after such a long time spent… dead? No, he didn't die, he remembered that much — it was as if he lost what it meant to be himself, laying half-dead and half-alive in a threshold between the two states, never meant to reach either destination.
He opened his eyes, blinking twice, only to realize he neither had eyes nor the need to blink. He screamed upon noticing he no longer has a body — or, at least, that he no longer has a human body; all there was to what had once been a tall and muscular man wielding magic was now a skeleton, wearing a hooded robe. A hooded robe tainted by ten bullet wounds.
His ears — which weren't ears — suddenly exploded with the sounds of everpresent warfare and death. His entire vision was filled by countless skeletons, fighting to their second death with demons among a plethora of tanks, battalions, legions, and armed men. He tried to grasp the thoughts he considered just seconds ago — Thaumaturgy? Was he… a mage? How did he know this? — but they immediately swayed away, like a dream separating itself from a waking up person, making him forget what he was even thinking about. He felt like an empty husk of a man, devoid of thoughts, devoid of a personality, devoid of a… soul, yes, that was the best way to put it. He felt as if he just began from the start again; as if he was given a second chance by something — or someone — living above the hell he found himself in.
His thought process was suddenly interrupted by a fat skeleton, wearing an outfit the man would say was from World War II, coming towards him. Smoking a cigarette, the entity revealed a crude golden tooth in its skull, accompanied by a golden coin flickering in its eye socket.
"WHAT THE HELL'S YOUR NAME, RECRUIT?"
"R-Recruit?"
"YOU HEARD ME DAMNED RIGHT, BONEHEAD; A RECRUIT. THAT'S WHAT YOU ARE, AREN'T YOU?!" The other grinned, giving the man a hand. He took it, standing up, and ducked as a firing sound, coming from the skeleton firing a crude pistol at some demon in the distance, met his ears.
"I… I don't know. I feel like… I lost who I am, I—"
Before he could finish, he was cut off by a loud shriek in the distance. The skeleton dropped its smoke, swearing profusely, and screamed a couple of orders the man couldn't hear into the distance. It then turned back again to the man, who was confused like he'd never been in his short new life, and it grinned widely.
"WELL, THAT DOESN'T MATTER. YOU'LL BE USEFUL ANYWAY, YOU LITTLE WASTE." The figure laughed maniacally, lighting another cigarette. "WELCOME TO THE BONE BATALLION, MAGGOT."

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GASLIGHT, GATEKEEP, GIRLBOSS

SCP-5572

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And Every Time We Meet Again

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“Why would you be wearing knife-point stiletto heels to a cabin in the woods?”
“Why would you be wearing a bodycon panel ruched dress?”
“When did trees get so sexual assault-y, anyway?”
The questions flipped back and forth around the living room, as did kernels of popcorn and the remote, idly held, volume turned up, down, channel flipped to cheers and boos. Finally, the threesome decided to watch a questionable slasher film.
Cooper was laying upside down on the sofa, managing to light the joint in his mouth and tap the ash into his hat, which had fallen off at some point. He listened to the girls point out all the flaws in the film, and critique how they would change things. Lazily, he watched the screen and concentrated on not burning his dried-out, bleach-blonde hair.
Marie dramatically slouched against her girlfriend with a huffed-out sigh. “I'm bored. This is boring. I hate this.” She stated, thematically drastic.
Rose rolled her eyes but minutes ago her own eyes had been fluttering closed as the film slowed to a crawling pace. “I bet they all die in the end. That's how all these things end. Well, that's how everything ends.”
Marie pushed herself up, pushing her long hair away from her face. “What if it's not how everything ends? What if I tell you in this very house, there's a ghost?”
There was a stillness in the air only interrupted by Cooper trying to correct himself into an upright position, keep hold of the joint, and still not burn himself. It was not successful, and he managed to stamp out the dropped roach, leaving another hole in the carpet.
“Shit.” He drawled, rubbing his eyes. “A ghost, Marie? What are we, 12?” He offered, with dismissive disdain.
“No, for real! Like, I was once in the kitchen, and I was looking for this pizza that we had ordered a couple of nights before, and I swear to god it was on the counter and then it just wasn't!” Marie sounded suitably traumatised.
Cooper snorted. “So, someone cleaned up and that means you have a ghost?” He grabbed his hat and tapped the ash out and into the nearby bin before putting it back on his head. The hat, that is. Not the bin.
Marie shook her head. “Of course not! No one cleans up around here. Everything else was like it was the day before, only the pizza was missing. I had to have a sandwich instead. It was horrific.”
Rose tutted, stretching herself out. “Have you seen anything strange? Heard anything weird?” She asked, as she uncurled herself from the armchair in a way befitting the cat ear headband she was wearing, which was befitting of her t-shirt which stated, ‘This is My Halloween Costume', which was befitting of her attitude towards the holiday.
Marie adjusted her cape. She was a superhero, she supposed. She had just grabbed the last costume at Tesco when the friends had decided at the last minute that Halloween was a fitting time to meet up, relax, and shoot the shit.
Time to celebrate the temporary freedom from their first year at university, studying psychology, art history and queer musicology, respectively.
“It's a student house. It would be easier to list the normal things I've seen and heard. Everything is weird, nothing is clean, no one is here yet there's always noise and mess and smells as if everyone is here all the time! It's a fucking strange place, and now we have a pizza-loving ghost on top of everything else. I never thought I'd be jealous of you guys still living at home, but I am.”
Cooper snorted again. Marie rather thought he should be dressed as a pig, rather than as the Mad Hatter with a tie-dye, hemp leaf t-shirt on under his oversized jacket. “Yeah, home is where the fun is.” He said, dismissively.
“You can do whatever you want here! Smoke your lungs dry, try to dodge food poisoning in the kitchen and the bathroom, and see surprise nudity in your own living room. Can't do that shit at home.”
Rose nodded in agreement. “Not so jealous of the junk food ghost but sure, gotta agree with Coops here, you got it made. Next year, I'm branching out into a student house of my own, and I can't wait!”
Marie just shrugged. She didn't want to admit to her friends that she kinda-maybe missed the organised cleanliness of home, having her own bathroom, and not coming downstairs to piles of strangers sleeping on every surface.
“Okay but listen. You know Fern, she of great parapsychology studying fame? I told her all about the ghost – “seemed to Rose and Cooper like ‘all about the ghost' implied the Great Pizza Disappearance of '21, but okay “— and she gave me directions on how to draw my own Ouija board because fuck me sideways if you think I'm giving my money to Hasbro. Humour me, right? It's at least a Halloween-y thing to do, even if you don't believe my bullshit.”
Cooper held his hands up in defence. “Look dude, I'm never going to say no to something involving a planchette. Who can say no to such a fancy word?” He asked, cocking an eyebrow and reaching behind his ear to produce a replacement joint.
Rose sighed. Her girlfriend knew she wasn't going to disagree with the amusement such a mind-bending experience could give her. She'd probably even write a paper about it. ‘How Not to Ouija, and Other Halloween Psychology Experiments for Idiots.'
Marie clapped her hands, delighted.
“Well, in that case – should we try the Ouija board?”
“Yes, and also yes.”
Marie ran up to her room, Cooper lit his spliff, Rose looked up her ex on Insta and then noped out. Marie was much better – much more exciting and excited, reflecting against her own cynicism and realism against the flow of life.
A free spirit, a kite to her anchor, a flag to her stick-in-the-mud, a butterfly outside to her trapped indoor cat pouncing at the glass. Maybe that metaphor didn't work, but Rose didn't know, she wasn't studying English for a good reason.
Marie soon came down with an uneven piece of cardboard that still had Amazon Prime tape on the back, but only in French and German. Cooper swiped an arm across the coffee table, and Marie stood in amazement that they had a coffee table because she had legit thought that it was a pile of books with glasses, grinders, ashtrays and red-fonted letters from the TV Licencing bastards balanced on top.
“We don't have a planchette,” Marie announced with a dramatic sigh. “Fern said we don't have to use a proper one, but still, maybe the ghost will be offended.”
Cooper raised an eyebrow again. “And what? It'll start stealing pizza and your giant cookie desserts? What a shitheel!” He stated, with his own dramatic tone.
Marie glared at him, then grabbed a glass ashtray. Rose looked at her expectantly.
“Don't smash it over his head. He can't help that he's a moron.” She advised her.
Marie tutted. “We're using it as a planchette! I would never smash an ashtray over Coop's head – where would we put our fags out?” She asked, sensibly.
The three crowded around the makeshift board. It looked like Marie had forgotten the alphabet midway through and had to correct a few of the letters with green Sharpie over the black, but it was fairly coherent considering she had been a determined drunk at the time of its design.
“Okay, so we all have to put just one finger on it. We have to ask the ghost – nicely! – to appear, and we have to make sure to dismiss the ghost before we remove our fingers.”
Cooper gave a lopsided grin. “It's just polite to tell someone you're going to remove your fingers. Right, Rose?” He teased his childhood friend, who elbowed him. “You twat.” She accused, making him grin more. “Well, you'd know all about that.”
Marie glared at the two. “Would you shut up? I'm trying to get serious here. Ghosts are like, old-school. They like manners and shit, they have routines for this sort of thing! So just put your finger on the thing, and we'll start, and don't take your finger off until I say. For real, Fern said there could be serious consequences otherwise.”
Rose and Cooper obediently put their index fingers on the planchette ashtray, and Marie closed her eyes because she had seen that they did that in all the movies. Maybe they needed candles? But all they had were trick-relighting candles in their odds-and-sods kitchen drawer, not the dramatic ivory pillars that she thought maybe a ghost would want.
“Uh, hello? Is there anyone there?”
Cooper snort-giggled, took another draw on his joint, and resisted the urge to say ‘Here, miss!'
Marie was starting to feel like a dumbshit.
“I'm Marie, and we mean you no harm! We just want to know more about you and maybe help you, if you want help?”
There was a ripple in the thinning veil between here and there, and Jac stumbled over his own two ghost feet as he was pulled, forced, through the portal to stand, invisible, above the coffee table.
The air was electric, and a shiver went through Marie's back. "Do you feel that?" She whispered to the others.
Jac supposed he was summoned, but there was no Ghost Education post-death, so he could only guess at this. He had expected his haunting to be grander, but he looked around the room to find abandoned textbooks, darts stuck in a defenceless wall, half-hearted graffiti and ominous, unknowable stains on the carpet.
He was stuck in student digs, forever, and somehow that was sadder than dying.
Marie tried again.
“If you're here, all you have to do is move the… planchette. I'm sorry it's not a real planchette. You were kind of a surprise, we didn't have much time, Halloween is almost over, and Fern says – “
Rose was starting to quietly dislike Fern's strong belief in ghosts, her degree, and her general existence.
“— that ghosts appear with more ease on this night. So, I hope you're there, because I'm starting to feel pretty stupid talking to the air. Were you the one who stole the pizza?”
Jac grinned. The girl looked as stupid as she felt, and he was tempted to do nothing, but hey. Turns out death was pretty lonely, and the chance to interact with his living peers was far too tempting. They were living a different life than him — well, these days, living was very different from his own existence — but they were around his age, and around his generation.
Jac spun in the air, then twirled down toward the Ouija board to experimentally move it with his invisi-fingers.
Cooper's mouth was agape as the planchette moved its way over to ‘yes' with no pause. Rose looked on with more of a bland understanding of unconscious finger twitches and a bias to believe in spoopy things when the atmosphere was created. But Marie looked suitably proud as she opened her eyes to see the reply.
“Awesome! I mean, thank you for replying! So – who am I speaking to, please?” Marie felt very stiff and unnatural, stealing lines from old films, because somehow that's how you spoke to ghosts.
J-A-C was spelt out with ease, and Cooper waited for the ‘K', wondered if it was missing or if it was never there at all, then decided to stub out his joint for now. He needed to keep what few wits he had about him.
“Jac, nice to meet you. As I said, I'm Marie, this is Rose, and that is Cooper. We just wanna know some things, like… how did you die? If it's not rude to ask, I mean.”
They always asked that in the films, and it was a 50/50 split that either the ghost calmly replied, or totally flipped the fuck out and destroyed the room around them. It was a good bet to make.
Rose started to question her understanding of unconscious bias just a little when the ghost spelt out quite a clear, if ominous, answer.
“Didn't ‘Mind the Gap'.” Cooper put the sentence together, then grinned. “I knew they always warned you that for a reason!”
Marie gasped. “You died on the Underground? Could you tell us more?”
Jac absently did a twirl in the air as he ruminated on his death. It had been on the District and Circle line, and he had been fart-arsing about with his friends. Whistling through the tunnel, he knew South Kensington station was coming up, and Joe had started to wrestle in the crowded space.
Jac smirked and decided to slip out and then slip onto the next train that would come screeching along in just two minutes. Then he could sneak up on Joe on the escalator at their destination platform and scare the shit out of him.
As the doors pinged open, Jac looked back. ‘Mind the Gap' echoed as always, but his concentration didn't. He tripped through the said gap, stumbled, and fell on the concentrate platform.
He didn't shed a drop of blood, but his brain rocketed back and forth and scrambled all the insides. He died how he lived – trying to spook his friends. He regretted nothing.
Apart from what he was being asked now.
“I didn't die to spell shit out, dude.”
It came out to the three friends as a whisper on the wind – barely audible, yet they all heard it.
Jac grumbled to himself, using his fingers to rip open the veil to the second world.
“Next time, I'm gonna take their dessert as well.”

ghosts, humans, freaks, unite, and reform the universe


RE:RE:FWD: Keeping Your Children Safe this Christmas North of 40 Degrees
From: Dr. Amelia Buck <ten.pics|kcuba#ten.pics|kcuba>
To: Dr. Anne Worcester <ten.pics|2retsecrowa#ten.pics|2retsecrowa>
I have no idea what I'm looking at. To think amnestics were a thing all those years, only for this to happen. Here's another I found.

SCP Foundation Warns About Anomalies in Halloween Candy?
By Dr. Taylor Kaldahl
October 29, 2022
Is YOUR CHILD at risk of a taste-based cognitohazard? Are Halloween parties the perfect place for a containment breach? And are teens doing anomalous seasonal TikTok challenges? It's a complicated question.
Every year, police warn about drugs in Halloween candy. But this year, we have a new problem for parents to protect their children from. If you've been keeping up with the news you'll know that newly-publicized "anomalies" can hide anywhere. And that means children's candy as well.
We did our OWN research and found a since-retracted document from the Global Occult Coalition published in 2003 suggesting taste-based cognitohazards are a real threat? Clearly parents shouldn't take this risk. So how do you detect if little Timmy is about to swallow an eldritch monstrosity? Well that's where Today's sponsor, SkipSensor comes in! SkipSensor comes with over 100 hume monitoring processors and 10 different scanning modes! Simply swipe it over your kids candy, and it will be easy to keep harmful effects away from your precious family.
Next up, keeping safe at Halloween parties. Leaked foundation documents have PROVEN your teen COULD be attacked by a monstrous invincible being while out for festivities. Keep your teen safe with the all new "SCPinger Instant Help Radio! For just $42.99 your teen can walk home safely with the Foundation just a button click away!
Finally, it's the Skip Game challenge. A recent trend on SnapChat has encouraged teens with mild anomalous effects to STEAL things from teachers with their so-called "superpowers". Your teen may be participating in this dangerous activity, so sign up for Full-Time Phone Memetic Monitoring by ANOMATRUTHS. At an affordable $30 a month you can make sure your child isn't participating in these dangerous behaviors!
All of us parents would appreciate if the next challenge is the "Working Hard is An Anomalous Power" challenge.
COMMENTS:
#1: MOMOF2KIDS2022 Said: ISNT THAT THE TRUTH. DONT WANT MY KID EATING ANYTHING BUT NATURAL CANDY.
#3: MSCPGA2024 Said: And who put the Anomalies in candy? Probably the deep state, the Foundation isn't really running things we all know. #ClefAnon
#2: MSCPGA2024 Said:
My daughter's boyfriend must be an anomaly because he disappeared.

Anne, this is madness. Between this and latest "096ing" challenge on TikTok, who knows where we're headed?