by DarkStuff

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More by DarkStuff~!

Independent SCPs

SCP
Title

SCP-445-EX
The Word of the Day is Hope

SCP-2728
On the Barcelona Skyline

SCP-2729
What is it Good For?

SCP-3018
France & the Tale of the Well-Intentioned Understudies

SCP-3465
Better Safe Than Sorry

SCP-3466
Only Birdbrains Live the American Dream

SCP-4006
#MassaTruthetts

SCP-4455
In Short…

SCP-4465
No Man is an Island

SCP-4466
Why the Long Face?

SCP-4467
Oh, I Get It Now

Co-Authored SCPs

SCP
Title
Co-Author

SCP-1549
In Absence of a Perfect Medium
Billith

SCP-2983
Choco-Wonder Explosion Marshmallow Bites!™ by Dr. Wondertainment
Uncle Nicolini

SCP-3379
D-11424 & the Arctic Meat Hole of Infinite Wonders
Weryllium

SCP-3482
Nature Versus Naturalization
Roget

SCP-3633
I'm Right Behind Me
Captain Kirby

SCP-3713
All the World's a Stage
Varaxous

SCP-4029
Too Many Legs to be Going Nowhere
MaliceAforethought

Vend-a-Friend

Chapter
Title

Act I

Chapter 1
We Just Make Toys

Chapter 2
To Think I've Spent My Whole Life Waiting

Chapter 3
I Don't Get It, I Functioned Before

Chapter 4
You Can't Win Them All

Chapter 5
Be Strange or Be Forgotten

Act II

Chapter 6
Sometimes the Best Intentions are in Need of Redemption

Chapter 7
Life's a Show

Chapter 8
...And I'm the Star!

Chapter 9
Back in Habit

Chapter 10
Pepper's Lament

Chapter 11
Souls & Somas

Chapter 12
Deceptive Cadence

Act III

Chapter 13
And I Think To Myself...

Chapter 14
Everything Will Be Okay

Chapter 15
Holding an Umbrella but the Sun's Still Shining

Ascension

Chapter
Title

Chapter 1
Sometimes I Wish This Moment Could Last Forever

Chapter 2
Waiting on the Good Times

Chapter 3
Forever Young

Chapter 4
We Didn't Do This For Nothing

Chapter 5
URA-1902 aka The Missing Link

Chapter 6
The Consequences of a Deep, Dark Disassociation

Chapter 7
The Call to Action (for a Modern Audience)

Chapter 8
The Elusive Mx. LaFerrier

Chapter 9
It Feels Like I Only Go Backwards

Chapter 10
Along for the Ride

Chapter 11
A Hole in the Tapestry

Chapter 12
XXXXX

Chapter 13
Industrial

Chapter 14
Dancing with Rachael

Chapter 15
Ascension

Epilogue
A World Unto Yourself

Collaboration Contest Entries w/ Ellie

Make America Normaler

Off the Hook

Misc. Tales

Cornelius the Collector

Curtain Call

The Really Really Real Adventures in Capitalism

I've Been Through the Desert on a Horse with No Name

On the Radar for the miniseries The Ursus Maritimus Incident

Group of Interest / Canon Hubs

Hub
Notes

Dr. Wondertainment Hub
Made w/ taylor_itkin does not match any existing user name

What a Wonderful World Hub
Made w/ help from Uncle Nicolini, a canon sprouted from Vend-a-Friend!

Wilson's Wildlife Solutions Hub
My pride and joy, my very own Group of Interest

The body of Dr. Robert Maximus Dorer — a chubby, short, white skinned man who wore contacts when he didn't wear glasses — laid, eviscerated, in a stairwell. To anyone observing, it would be clear that something blew a large hole in his lower back. Due to a portion of his spine missing (though an autopsy would reveal much of it was sent into his intestines), his body was folded in a strange way, so that even if you were to look at him from above you could tell something was wrong — if the blood below him or his pale, flaccid expression hadn't tipped you off. Drool and blood mixed to the left of his head, though most of it had dried by this point. Yes, he had been dead for some hours, that much was obvious.
At least, Dorer thought that blood would have pooled and dried that fast, to his limited knowledge of dead bodies, so even if it wouldn't have been so, it was. Though, in truth, he didn't know how long he had been dead, either. Being dead does a number to one's sense of time.
In any case, that was the scene, and that's the way it would have looked like. Unpleasant, no doubt. But, if one looked closely, one could see a further unpleasantness… in his face, in his cheeks, there seemed to be a twitching. Life? Could there be maggots in his skin, flies hatching? Had it actually been days, and now bugs were going to eat at him? Was it a leftover reflex? No, no, something was happening.
In fact, Dorer had just groaned.
"You're not dead, you idiot," echoed through his head, in a familiar voice. He hadn't thought anything of it at first. But after a few repetitions, he was forced to consider that dead people don't usually hear things. "Get up."
Get up? What a ridiculous thought. How could he possibly get up? His spine was broken in two, and he had most certainly lost too much blood to be doing much of anything. Though, the voice hadn't been wrong before. Just a moment earlier, it had informed him — quite loudly and angrily, much to his dismay — that dead people don't feel pain. That was quite the relief, because until then, he had been very much in pain. Pain in his back, in his jaw, in his head… everywhere, really. Realizing that dead people didn't feel pain was the best thing that had happened to him since he ordered a downright delectable hot pastrami sandwich from a deli in Rome. It certainly made being dead easier.
But of course, he wasn't actually thinking any of this. That would have been stupid to believe. He was dead, and had every non-intention of remaining as such.
Rachael stepped back, in a metaphorical sense. She didn't have a form, as she had given up a bit of her individuality to step directly into Dorer's inner consciousness. How else could she have gotten him to shut up? The only problem with this approach was that as soon as Dorer realized he shouldn't be feeling anything at all, he practically shut down. Hey, almost like being dead really is. What she could tell from her background in neuroscience, he was effectively in a deep, dreamless sleep. Maybe her work was done here. He wasn't wrecking the entire stairwell anymore, anyways.
With the reassurance that being literally inside someone's head, especially someone who was dead, was impossible, Rachael stood up from sitting and staring at Dorer's body, as she had of course been doing all along. He was very pathetic looking, just laying there. Dead, and all. Except, she mused, he wasn't really dead. She wondered how long he could be dead until he realized he wasn't.
In any case, in some sick kind of way, it made her feel a little better about herself. She turned, and stepped down another couple stairs. She only had to go until she reached a door, which would be a door sure to lead to the first floor. It would take quite a bit, considering how far they had climbed, but there she could find the exit, and leave. And. Leave.
…
Rachael stood for a second, a single flight down from where Dorer was. Leave? Was she just about to give up? And besides, how did she know that Howard hadn't somehow blocked off the exit already? But then again, give up on what? What was there to do? What had been gained?
No, this entire operation was a mistake. Getting out, and coming back more prepared, was the best thing to do, was it not?
Yes, it was. No one from the Foundation knew that she had come here. They would be confused, of course, that she and Dorer were nowhere to be found, but they don't know where to look. They're also quite sparing about using their anomalies. Unless she and Dorer were massively important, any "locators" weren't likely to be used. Not in the first couple days of their absence.
Yes. She had convinced herself. She needed to leave and come back, with more of a plan. That would be the best course of action.
She descended another flight of steps, and then stopped. Why had she stopped?
What was still keeping her here?
She closed her eyes, and lied to herself. Nothing was keeping her here.
Rachael began to walk down the stairs in earnest. No more stopping. She needed to get out of here. Anything keeping her could wait until she came back. One of the first things on her agenda was to create a plan. Some kind of plan of action. She knew that the beings here — Vernon and Howard — knew more about… about, those things, than anyone else she had ever encountered. She needed more information. She'd need to figure out a way how to get it.
She thought about this as she made her way down… down, down, and down. Was there a weakness to them? Well, if Howard truly was omnipotent here, she would have been stopped by now. Or, he was waiting to strike. She struck that possibility from her mind. She had escaped. If something suddenly told her the opposite, she'd work off of that, but it was safe to assume she was out of the woodwork now. Is that?
Rachael wiped off a spot of blood that had dripped onto her shoulder from above. She shivered, and then ignored it.
Moving on. She hadn't tried knocking him out, or otherwise harming him. That might yield results. Of course, Vernon was easier to talk to. He opened up very easily, but in a similar vein of thought, that might have meant that he spilled all he knew. No reason not to try, though. Was he as controlling here as Howard was? Did his "job" take up that much time? Were the walls always this bloody?
What?
No, no one bled that much. This was ridiculous. You'd think that the further you got away from a dead body, the less you'd see it. Oh, god. And smell it.
Passing around the corner, Rachael was greeted with the sight of a dead body.
She started, and then closed her eyes. Several deep breaths.
He was far more broken now than he was before. She consoled herself with the idea that he couldn't have been feeling pain, or else he would have retaken the stairwell. What was this about? How long can someone believe they're dead before they realize that that's ridiculous?
Well, whatever that length may be, it could be significantly shorter if you helped it along.
…
"Fuck it," Rachael said aloud to no one in particular. "I'm not going to be the idiot that has to go around a second and third time to take a hint."
She walked down the steps, knelt in front of Dorer's rapidly decaying body, and spoke.
"Hey, asshole. You're alive."
The sentiment fell on dead ears.
"I don't have all the time in the world. I know you're in there, and I know you can be communicated with. You don't have much more of a wall than you did before — it's just that now you're playing dead, not stupid. I convinced you that dead guys don't feel pain. Well, you must think dead guys don't think, either. Thing is, that's impossible for you to do, seeing as you're not dead. You're trying really fucking hard, but you can hear me. Just from proximity if nothing else. You're not dead. How could you be dead and still be thinking? That would be ridiculous."
Rachael thought she might have seen his right eye twitch.
"Yes, you got it. Did you feel yourself move? Focus on that. Do dead men move? Ask yourself that, think really hard about it, then think about thinking, and notice how dumb you're being."
But despite the talk, complete and utter lifelessness met her once more.
"You fucking dipshit. Okay, what do you want from me?" She tried to read the glossed over, greyed out eyes. She tried to fabricate a sense of body language in the stiff, uncooperative joints of Dorer's corpse. Something in his posture, though lacking a good portion of his back, must detail some desire from him.
But Dorer's silence was unyielding.
Rachael stood up. Was that all she could do? She felt like she had barely tried. Must she try to jumpstart his brain? It wouldn't work, if he didn't know what was happening. Worth a shot, though.
Dorer's body jolted, once, and then fell back. Rachael, attempting patience, waited what she thought might have been a minute. Could she control time here? It might be worth testing, but not now.
She closed her eyes, and tried to wish Dorer back to life, but that didn't work either. She tried her very hardest to believe he was alive, but that wasn't helping. She already believed he was alive, and that hadn't done anything to him.
She sat on the stairs. Defeated.
Defeated?
That was a horrible word. She hated it. She had never been defeated ever before in her life. She wasn't about to start right now.
"Dorer, you know how I know you're alive?" No response. "Because I didn't kill you. If I didn't kill you, what could you have possibly died from?" … "Dorer, you'd be even more of an idiot than you already are if you seriously believed I would kill you. What motivation could I possibly have? Well, don't answer that. It's…" Rachael frowned at her own tactic. "Dorer, the truth is that I wouldn't have killed you because I need you. You have powers, just like me. Electricity powers, I think. I don't know why, but…" Rachael fought against her own impulse to shut up. "Maybe you were right. Same initials, same power? I just learned about a bit of name magic, up top, after I… left you behind. You were tired, you see. 'Cause you're not particularly in shape. It's a lot of stairs. I kept you here, because you're my hostage, but I didn't kill you. How else could you explain that you're thinking right now? I might have put you in some pain, but… I couldn't kill you. You're part of the reason I'm here. I didn't bring you along because I needed a slave. I…" Rachael wondered why these words came so easily. "I brought you along because I needed someone here with me." She almost puked at herself. "So of course I couldn't have killed you. You'd have to be a moron to think so. So, I know it's your natural state, Dorer, but, stop being a moron, and get the fuck up. I can't leave without you." That statement was more literal than it might appear.
Rachael sat, supposedly alone, with her thoughts. Her face had softened. Her posture slumped. Her eyelids half closed. She looked at her feet. She was the idiot. She was letting Dorer hold her back. What kind of Rachael was this? Not the one she had grown up with.
Had she ever grown up.
Someone coughed. Rachael startled.
"Then, then why am I so beaten?"
Rachael didn't miss a beat. "Because you fell down the stairs, you clumsy oaf."
"And threw out my back?"
"Of course, but not too badly. How much pain are you in right now?"
"…None at all. I should be, though."
"Don't think about that."
Dorer's blood slowly pulled back into his body.
"Do you think you're here enough to shut up and listen?"
"It's my number one talent, hehe — aa, hoff." Dorer's giggling was interrupted by a large hunk of phlegm and blood coming up through his throat.
"I'm certain you notice that you're healing."
"I am? You must be doing that."
"I said shut up. What is with you people and not shutting up? Ed was like that. Don't ask who. Some asshole. But if you're going to be my partner, you're going to have to understand some things about this place. 'Cause if you don't, you're going to start fucking it up. Capeesh? Don't answer that. Everything about this place is what you believe. Don't ask what that means, I can see it in your face. It means that if I really believed there was a door on the next level down, it would be there. If I believed it led to the exit, then it would. Thing is, there's a consent type deal going on here. Call it a battle of wills, but when I came into this stairwell all there was was pain at first, because you're whole world was pain, and the feeling of pain was so strong it overpowered my ability to continue down the stairs. I was forced to stop and deal with you."
"So you did kill me."
"Now that you know for certain that you're alive, I can admit that to you. Yes, I did."
"You bitch."
"I can still hurt you, you know." That shut him up. "So what I'm doing is, I'm getting out of here. I was afraid of saying this out loud, because I wasn't sure what that would do to my chances. No room to doubt yourself in here. I'm figuring that if I keep going down, there will be a door that leads to the ground floor, where we were, and we can follow that out of here."
Dorer nodded, and breathed heavily out of his nose. "Why can't you dream up an exit right here right now?"
"How would I know if it's truly an exit? I need to get back to where we came in, or else I won't know for sure if we've left."
Dorer blinked, and thought. "How do you know this?"
"Oh come on. It's gotten me this far. Just trust me. In fact, you have to trust me, or else you'll be interfering with how it works. I experimented with how it worked with just one person, I don't want to figure out a new set of rules for two people, alright?"
"A-alright." Dorer groaned, and moved himself into a more upright position. His back looked fuller, his proportions in place, the blood almost all gone. He tried to push himself up to his feet, and moaned in pain. "I don't know if I can stand up."
"You can."
"Easy for you to say."
"Were you listening to me at all?"
Dorer frowned. With two deep breaths, he attempted a second time. This time he righted himself, though it looked to take considerable effort. He blinked several times, and turned to try and look at his back. When that proved futile, he simply rubbed under his shirt with his hands. "It's… all back." Rachael hoped to god he didn't notice the pun he just made. But then he started to smile. "Heheheh, all back. Well! Now I just look like a crybaby. Getting up first try after saying I couldn't? Man, I feel stupid."
"You know, for being such a passive force in your own life, you're quite actively a pain in my ass."
"It's just about all I can do when you control me absolutely and completely. Well, not anymore. I can believe anything up, can't I?"
"Don't test me. You want out of here as much as I do."
"Quite the assumption you're making. I was just getting to like the place. Why are we leaving, anyways?"
"If you want to stay so badly, maybe I'll reconsider."
"Oh please don't I was kidding, we should really get going." Dorer began a lively trot down the stairs, quite opposite to his previous demeanor. "Quick recovery," Rachael muttered under her breath, and started down the stairs again, this time hopefully for the last time. Too many times had she started down the stairs only to go nowhere. This time felt promising, though.
"Don't go too fast."
"When I find the imaginary door, I'll wait there for you. I believe I'll get there faster if I go faster, so I'm going to go faster. Capeesh? Heheheh."
Rachael felt like a babysitter. A very bad one, at that. Babysitters aren't typically supposed to kill their babies and then revive them after a shared torturous dream. Yeah maybe babysitter wasn't a perfect comparison.
Sure enough, after only several flights, a door had appeared to them. Dorer was there before Rachael, and he had it open, motioning her through with a "ladies first". Rachael went through, and found herself in the same inky black area they had been in before. "Perfect," she thought.
"Alright, we head left."
"You don't need to tell me twice."
Rachael began with a modest walk… but as anticipation grew, so too did her pace. She leaned forward as she went, and Dorer tried his best to keep up. As their speed grew, their flashlights became shakier, and the door became closer. Closer, and closer. It must have been right up ahead.
And sure enough, they came upon the lobby. To their right, the revolving doors.
Without stopping to communicate, Rachael had practically leapt for the exit. Dorer saw her disappear behind them, and then followed soon after. His heartrate had spiked, and he felt around for something sharp that he believed must have been in his pocket. This was his last chance to really materialize it, before they headed out. "Deep breath," he thought, and took one.
Game time.
Dorer pushed through the door, and…
Was caught off guard…
By an extending plane of black.
He waved his flashlight around, and saw nothing. "Rachael?" Turning around did, thankfully, reveal the revolving doors again. "Rachael!" Should he simply retreat back inside?
"There's nothing here. Did you believe we were trapped? Dorer, did you fuck this up?"
Rachael's voice seemed to be coming from everywhere at once.
"W-what? No! I thought we were getting out of here! Rachael, what's going on!?"
"You tell — Dorer. Is that a knife in your left hand?"
"I…" His palm felt sweaty. "Yes, it is."
"What was your plan?"
"He was going to kill you," rang an unplaceable voice.
"Wh-who's there?" But Dorer's voice was meek and muffled compared to the two directionless voices of Rachael and the other.
"Really, Dorer? That was your plan?"
"What? How was I supposed to know you weren't going to kill me? You only revived me to move on!"
"I saved you from an eternal state of pain."
"Yeah, one that you put me in."
"That's fair. Doesn't make me less angry with you."
"Ladies, gentlemen," came in the third voice again, "he couldn't have killed you even if he tried, just as you couldn't leave. Even if you tried."
"Why not!?" Rachael's voice bellowed like a god from Mount Olympus. Dorer tried to make sense of where these voices originated, but found himself only staring out into cold abyss.
"Don't you understand? All you are here is consciousness — everything here is molded by your thoughts, your beliefs, your ideas. Once you stepped through those doors, there was no coming back, because this place doesn't exist. It is only what you — and the others here — think it is, and that includes yourself. You have no bodies to go back to. You're stuck like this, like I am. Like Vernon is."
"Bullshit."
Dorer, feeling unwanted and unneeded, decided to retreat back into the building. Was that true? There were easy ways to test that, he imagined. In the back of his mind, he knew he was avoiding some unknown but inevitable wrath that Rachael would inflict upon him. This retreat wasn't to test the boundaries of this place, this was fear. He hated how easy it was to scare him. His bravest moment had gotten him killed. No good habits were being reinforced, he mused.
However, the voices never seemed to get any farther away.
"You've left before, Howard," accused Rachael.
"Aheheh," Howard's chuckle sounded nervous to Dorer, who had made his way to the computer which he had seen when he first came in, "you're right. But that's why I had to stew. You see, this is my house, or, it's my house as much as it is anything. It's unwieldy to have you two running around in my house. But I was also worried that… that doesn't matter. I'm trying to say, I can offer you a way out of here."
"…I'm listening."
The computer was on its desktop. Rolling hills, a blue bar at the bottom, the one pinned program being Mozilla. But he didn't care about that. If Dorer knew one thing about computers, it's that he knew absolutely nothing about computers. He clicked the windows button, and searched for the File Explorer.
"You have to learn. You have to know, to truly know, that the whole world is a dream."
Inside File Explorer, he searched for… something, anything, that he would expect to be in a computer. He typed out "Inner Console". The machine began to search, and, because he thought it would take a bit, it began to take a bit.
"A dream?"
"Yes, a dream. You have to accept that everything is fictional, that nothing is real. The only things you can prove are that you exist, and it's a reasonable assumption that other people exist, but not as anything more than thoughts. The walls, floors, and ceilings of every building are there because people agree that they are there. Your body looks the way it does because you think it does. You then present that to people around you, and they think the same."
What came back was gibberish. Just as he had expected, he understood not a lick of it. What he had searched had come up, but when he opened it, he could… make out words, but not what they were, or their meaning. He had no idea what would go here, but a few symbols (a printer, a floppy disk, and a computer mouse) were visible. That sold it. They were telling the truth.
"Is that how the world is?"
"It can't be any other way. Otherwise, why would this work? It would be impossible."
Dorer tried to think up other things he didn't know. Well, he reasoned, in a world where the anomalous exists, how can he be sure of anything? In a place like this, how could he be sure of anything? He tried to fill his mind with nonsense. What if, what if, what if… what if the hills on the desktop were real? What if he could walk into them?
"Then how come more people don't know?"
"It's… it's this place."
Dorer's hand twitched, and he slowly moved it towards the computer screen. Already, a soft breeze met his face, and the smell of grass and hot summer came to his nose.
"This place is the only place from which you can see it clearly. Only from outside the dream can you see it for what it is. Call it a place of waking up. Call it a factory. A factory that takes ordinary people like you and me and makes them into gods."
"You, you made this place. How?"
Dorer's hand pressed past the boundary of the screen.
"It was my company. I tried to erase it, to get rid of any evidence I had ever existed. But it didn't work like that. It existed in the minds of others. It was like a baby getting a car. I had the means to drive anywhere I wanted, sure, but I didn't have a single clue how to do it. In my efforts, I crashed. I bit off more than I could chew. Every day I face the consequences."
But in an instant, he doubted that it was possible, and the screen shattered in his hand, leaving him bleeding and stinging.
"How did you ascend without the aid of a place like this?"
But Dorer knew that he had healed from worse.
"That…"
The glass pushed itself out of his hand, and the wounds healed instantaneously.
"That is something I can not tell you."
"Oh, really. So, you can't die in here, can you?"
"Well, now that you understand the world, I mean truly understand it… I don't think you can die anywhere."
"Gods, huh?"
"Gods."
"Omnipotent?"
"Omnipotence. Come with me, and I can show you."
"Where can I meet you?"
Suddenly, Rachael and Dorer were seated at a table, opposite from a man with no discernible features. Despite the inability to collapse his face into something fully interpretable, a modest smile appeared loud and clear.
"Right h—"
But before he could finish his sentence, he fell face first into the table. After a second, a startled Dorer finally accepted that Howard had gone unconscious.
"What the fuck is going on, Rachael?"
"This," she stood up in the incomprehensibly unremarkable room as she motioned to the featureless man, "is Howard, the CEO of Scott Industrial. Well, Howard and some other people with the same initials as him."
"Same… initials?"
Rachael Maria Davidson and Robert Maximus Dorer stared at each other, as each connected two dots in their minds.
"W-what did you just do to me?" Howard groaned as he rose his head from the table.
Rachael's sneer returned. "You're no more omnipotent than we are, now. Your first mistake was to explain it all, and then deny me information. You're not the boss here, you're—"
At that moment, Rachael's head literally exploded, which pulled another pitiful yip out of Dorer.
"Really!? I'm not?" Howard's breathing was heavy, his eyes wide, his expression tired. "What's your criteria for that, huh? Huh?"
Howard turned to Dorer as Rachael's body fell to its knees and then fell on its side.
"Do you have anything similar to say?"
Dorer frantically shook his head, before he noticed movement behind Howard.
Howard, noticing Dorer's drifting eyes, didn't turn around fast enough to dodge a slab of concrete impaling itself into his abdomen.
Rachael's form apparated soon after, a fury in her eyes and a tension in her entire body. "Guess you can still feel pain, huh? Did you forget that we can't die? For a 'god', you're not too smart, are you? Now—"
But before she could finish, the ambiguous room collapsed into a stairwell, and Rachael immediately began to fall down it. Howard scrambled up the stairs, up and away from Rachael, and coincidentally towards Dorer, who had found himself above the action. Dorer pressed himself against the wall, making way for Howard's escape.
"Space is relative here, bitch." Screamed a Rachael that was suddenly on the next flight up, and came barreling down towards Howard. She ended up driving him into Dorer, and pinning them all against the wall.
Howard pushed Rachael off of him and towards the stairs, but just as Rachael looked like she would fall down them, the stairwell began to tilt. "Can't push me down if the wall's the floor!"
Howard lost his balance and fell over, along with Dorer. "Stop, stop!"
Howard's pleas coincided with Rachael's eyes bulging and her head expanding. An expression of excruciating pain crossed her face, but soon her skull was back to its normal size. "Can't use the same trick twice, asshole. Tell me what you know!"
"I-I can't! Don't you understand?" Howard moved to his feet. "If everyone knew it was a dream, it would be hell! Don't you see that? I can't give this away! It'll spread like the common cold, or the flu, or a plague. I'm the only one who truly knows, and no one else can ever know. Not you, not anyone. What would a world be when everyone can manipulate everything as they pleased!? Isn't that what your organization fights against?"
"I am not part of SCP, dickbag. I signed my letter of resignation the moment I signed up. Now, you're going to tell me what you know, now."
"You can't make me."
Rachael seemed to punch him in the jaw without moving, and as his head jerked backwards, a slurry of faces painted the wall behind him. Each one of the flattened, splattered faces began to tear up, as Howard's body slumped against the wall.
"Do you want to test that?"
Howard cried.
"R-Rachael, why, why are you doing this?"
Rachael's glare shot daggers. Dorer quickly shut up.
"Well," Howard sobbed out, "you can't kill me. But you can torture me. Unless I leave, which I could. But I won't. It would only delay the inevitable."
Rachael smiled. "Glad to know you're seeing things my way."
"But," Howard said, "a consciousness can still die. It just has to be willing."
Rachael's eyebrows raised, quickly followed by her eyes widening.
"No, no—"
"I just have to believe that I can do it."
"STOP THIS, HOWARD."
Rachael rushed towards him, but the distance between them expanded faster than she ran. Before she could manipulate it in her favor, Howard had pushed his hand into his own head, screamed from every mouth he had, and begun to fold into himself.
"Goodbye, everybody," thirty different voices pushed over their own cries before every piece of Howard was swallowed into a single point of light.
Rachael and Dorer sat still, awestruck. Dorer was awestruck at the exchange between Rachael and Howard, but Rachael was awestruck at how quickly everything she had ever strived for came within reach and then removed itself from the world for good. She fell to her knees (disturbingly similar to how her headless body had done moments prior), and simply breathed.
Dorer still wanted more information, but he felt that now wasn't a good time to ask.
Rachael whispered something. Dorer decided to let it pass. Far off in the distance, that dot of light still existed. "Well, uh," Dorer started, but then he stopped short. He seated himself next to Rachael, and let her sort out her own shit. He figured there was nothing he could say that would make this — whatever "this" was supposed to be — better.
He wrapped his hands around one another.
He pursed his lips.
He sighed.
"Okay, so, what now?"
Rachael stood up.
"Oh, okay, so, we're going, where are we going Rachael?"
"A hole."
"What?"
Rachael strode with confidence towards the small dot of light, which was getting slowly dimmer and dimmer.
"Hey, hey! Don't touch that, we don't know what it does—"
"I know exactly what it does. Do you know where we are? We're in a hole. A hole left behind, because all three of us had agreed on what a stairwell looked like and how it behaved. But one of us — actually, a good many of us — just ripped themselves from the world around them. This stairwell is weak. Did you wonder what this place would look like if there was no one to assign values to it? Consciousness to agree what it was supposed to be?"
Cracks in the walls(?) showed dark blues and greens that suggested some larger picture that Dorer couldn't make out. "Rachael, this is crazy, don't, don't touch it!"
"Time to find out."
Rachael arrived at the small dot, and realized that it was actually a very large dot, a very large brain shaped dot, that shined so brightly that it was its own sun. She reached her hand in, and both her and Dorer were absorbed by a light that was frighteningly familiar to Rachael.
When Dorer's eyes adjusted, or some stranger equivalent development, he saw that they were in the middle of a large white abyss, quite the contrast to the black one he had seen only recently. Except this one, this one was far from endless. Somewhere it stopped being a white abyss, and beyond it there was a black tinted world. A scene…
Below them, a large cigar poked out of a stubbled mouth. In front, they saw a hand of cards — an eight of spades and an eight of diamonds. Smoke filled a parlor, and a table as wide as a valley contained varying stacks of chips. Several other colossal men sat at the table, each with as straight an expression as they could muster. Nothing, not even the smoke, moved a single inch. Everything was as solid as a sculpture, as impregnable as the night sky.
But even more confusing to Dorer was that each person's head glowed, just as brightly as that white plane that they were in now, and out from their heads something did move — long, grasping arms, extending into the ceiling and beyond. Despite the roof, Dorer could see that the arms continued up into the sky, almost infinitely, like tendrils sprouting from the earth — hundreds, thousands, millions of them, off in the distance beyond the walls.
Dorer didn't have words.
Rachael collapsed.

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Save Our Souls — Part 1
For the rest of my work, check out LiterallyMechanical's Author Page
A few of my favorites:

SCP-4170 — The Dark
SCP-4163 — The Tetris Prodigy
SCP-3163 — The Almanack

My new tale series (in progress):

Save Our Souls - Part 1

The official term was "Class-L Saturation Amnestic," but everybody called the oily blue liquid "Lethe Juice." It clung to the inside of the vial when the medical tech shook it, just a hair too viscous for Ruth's comfort. The streaks it left as it settled to the bottom always reminded her of a dark wine, swirled in a glass, a portent of the nasty amnestic hangover to come.
"How are you feeling, Doctor Lowenthal?"
Ruth shrugged with one shoulder, taking care not to jostle the needle in her right arm. "Itchy," she said. "I'm definitely feeling it."
The first few cc's smarted like hell when they hit the bloodstream. They had to pump the stuff in pretty hard, and her veins never appreciate it.
The technician nodded, casting a critical eye over the monitors. "Your heart rate's a bit high," he declared. "Try to relax."
Ruth rolled her eyes. "Kid," she said, "you try relaxing while you shoot up half a bottle of maple syrup." The IV pump whirred and whined as it worked the syringe, pushing a steady stream of Juice into her blood. The burn deepened as it spread up her arm, and she clenched her fist.
The tech blinked at her, nonplussed. "Just, uh, take a few deep breaths. We're almost done."
He really was a kid. Trendy haircut, trendy beard, trendy glasses. Twenty-five years old, at the most, and still parroting the employee handbook with the reverence of a new convert doling out scripture. Working for the Foundation got to your head right away, and swelled it up like a balloon in a vacuum chamber — right before it popped. By day two, half the entry-level employees walked with the swagger of a tenured professor lording over a fresh crop of grad students. They didn't even have to do any nasty business with memetic indoctrination agents, anymore. Something about seeing your face on a badge above the circle and trefoil arrows was all it took.
"I've been doing saturation wipes since you were in middle school," said Ruth, suppressing a smile, "and this is nothing. You should've seen the old Lethe Juice. It was like cold honey mixed with acid. Back in the day, they used to strap us down first, so we wouldn't tear out the needle. The techs used to wear earplugs, because of the screaming. They'd give us a second round of amnestics so we'd forget the first, but it didn't always take."
"That— really?" The tech stared at her with a wide-eyed mix of fascination and horror. At Site-33, home of (literally) indescribable monsters and mayhem, there was no such thing as a tall tale too implausible. Rumors and whispers abounded about the Long-Term Memetic Blackout Facility behind the Site, and the unknowable cognitohazards contained within. Researchers who went in and out of the Facility — the Shed, in casual conversation — were regarded with equal parts reverence and fear. It took a specific kind of crazy to be willing to spend a month on the inside, and Ruth was happy to ham it up for the new hires.
The job had a pretty high attrition rate. Not because it was particularly lethal, as far as job opportunities in the Foundation go, but because the mandatory saturation wipe was just too unsettling. They'd shoot you up with a Class-L amnestic, send you to live in the Shed for a few weeks, and any new memories formed with Lethe Juice in your system would be zapped away in one fell swoop as soon as you were done. No muss, no fuss, no horrible memetic contagions escaping the most heavily-redacted informational dark zone the Foundation had to offer. You just had to walk blindly into a cognitohazard quarantine, live there for a few weeks, and then have the whole experience erased from your brain. Very few people were willing to take a shift in the Shed more than once.
This would be Ruth's twenty-sixth stint inside.
"I was the first person to test it," she said, taking care to keep her expression solemn as she met the credulous med tech's gaze. It took considerable effort not to laugh. "I don't remember, of course, but they say that I screamed so loudly that I ruptured my own eardrum. This was before we had Class-A short-term amnestics, so they had to use electroshock to erase that memory. They wouldn't let me try again for another six months."
The tech's jaw literally dropped. Ruth turned her head away, using the motion to cover the grin that cracked through her faux-grave expression. "It was a different time," she said, with a theatrical sigh. "Anyway, how are we doing on the infusion? I can feel it in my neck, it'll hit the brain in a couple of—"

Ruth woke up.
"—Minutsh," she said, her voice slurring to a halt as her tongue recoiled from a piece of chewy plastic between her teeth. Her vision slowly un-blurred, the shape of a recovery bay resolving itself as she got her bearings. Sensation followed, her nerves dulled and sluggish. Cotton sheets and a hospital gown. Cold, euphoric fluid dripping through a needle in her forearm. A medical lamp overhead. Nausea, somewhere far way. Everything else was all fentanyl and bright lights, a synesthetic combination of foggy rapture and shivering pain. Ruth tried to raise a hand to her head and fumbled, tugging half-heartedly against the four-point restraints holding her down.
"Blech," she croaked, spitting out the rubbery device. "Ow." Her muscles twanged hard enough to push through the painkillers for an instant, distant, full-body spike of hurt and wrong. The ache was persistent and insistent and existent and… what else rhymed? Eat your heart out, Lord Byron. Two could play at the poetry game, fucked out of their minds on poppies. The Fentanyl-sodden thought made Ruth giggle despite her discomfort, though it came out as more of a half-hiccup, half-sob.
"How are you feeling, Ruth?" The voice was familiar, tinged with concern behind the usual glossy, professional sheen. The fuzzy shape overhead resolved itself into a small woman in a white doctor's coat, jotting down a note on a medical chart.
Oh, right. Hospital bed. Tied down. Hurting. She'd forgotten about that, for a second. The giggles choked off into a whimper.
"Owww." Ruth drew out the word, pulling at her wrist restraint until the room's third occupant, a terrified-looking tech — the same guy from a few seconds ago, she realized, with a better haircut — undid the cuff and plucked the discarded mouthguard from where it dangled off her chin. Ruth had stood beside this bed as often as she'd woken up in it, and she knew the muscle spasms that wracked people when they turned on the Lethe Juice were an unpleasant sight to behold.
It couldn't be avoided. People came out of a stay in the Blackout Facility dazed and more-or-less sleepwalking, but protocol said that to wait until they started to snap out of it on their own before activating the saturation amnestic. If there had been any brain damage or memetic contamination, it was best to know right away. That meant no anticonvulsants or muscle relaxants, either. Just good ol' fashioned leather cuffs, a shot of painkillers, and a chunk of plastic to stop you from biting your tongue off.
It was not fun.
"Hm, 'ow.'" Mina nodded, scribbling a few words on the chart. "Noted. On a scale of one to ten, can you rate the intensity of your pain? As well as the location."
"Ow."
Mina made a "yes, please continue" gesture with her pen.
Ruth groaned, groping blindly for the bedside remote. The motors hummed as she used it to lever herself into a sitting position. "I feel like I've been kicked by a horse, in… everywhere." She focused on breathing for a few minutes, waiting until she drifted back into what passed for lucidity before continuing. Mina waited patiently. "Five out of ten, four from the Russian judge."
"Good." Mina made a note on her clipboard. "Your EEG is within acceptable parameters, so we'll get you out of here in the morning for debrief."
"Beautiful," said Ruth, stretching her neck. She knew her muscles would be tight, even if she couldn't really feel it now. "Anything terrible happen? Catastrophic containment breach? Did the Shed explode?"
Mina shrugged, and gave her a level look. "You tell me, Doctor."
Ruth snorted out a laugh. "Right. We'll do this tomorrow," she said, rubbing at her temples and yawning. The opiates were making her sleepy, now that the adrenaline from the L-spasm had faded. "How long was I in there?"
"A bit longer than we expected." Mina stood back and let the med tech step forward to prod at Ruth's arm, checking to see if her IV had shifted. A needle dislodged by the spasm could get messy. "Forty-eight days. You returned to the antechamber at eight fifty-three this morning."
"Oof. I missed the Academy Awards."
"You didn't miss much." Mina flipped through her papers as she talked, focused on the task at hand. "Ramone won something, I think? I hear the host was rather uninspired."
"Lovely. You got the good stuff?"
Mina nodded absently, reaching back to pull the wheeled bedside table — and its deliciously laden tray — into Ruth's line of sight. "Of course. Two lime Jell-O cups and a bottle of Powerade, special order."
"Mountain Berry Blast, right?"
"Mountain Berry Blast. Get some sleep, Ruth"

Debrief was quick, in and out in three minutes. No matter how long a researcher stayed in the Shed, the end result was almost always the same: they came back alive, asleep on their feet, and hopefully with nothing contagious hitching a ride in their mind. The Lethe Juice was good at dealing with that. There was never much to talk about, unless something had gone very obviously wrong — any coherent information that left the Shed would be treated as a highly contagious cognitohazard, but it had been a couple dozen years since Site-33 had dealt with that sort of breach.
Until yesterday.
Ruth willed her hands to be steady. It took some pretty dedicated concentration.
"Alright," said Ben. The deputy Site director had walked into the debrief room ten minutes late, yawning into a cup of coffee, and had barely glanced in Ruth's direction before flicking on the video recorder. "To the best of your knowledge, do you retain any memories, data, physical or metaphysical objects, or unusual changes to your person, imaginary or otherwise, from your forty-eight day interval in the Long-Term Memetic Blackout Facility?" He rattled off the rote question quickly, bored and perhaps a bit impatient. It was impossible to guess exactly when somebody would stumble out of the Shed, so these meetings were always scheduled last-minute. Judging by the time, Ruth was cutting into his lunch break.
"Nope," said Ruth. Her fingers twitched, the movement imperceptible, and she just barely stopped herself before she could reach up to massage her painfully tense neck. The unique ache left behind by the L-spasm had faded, as usual, but a sleepless night and a stressful morning stiffened her shoulders and joints anyway. It wasn't quite banished by Tylenol, and she'd long since metabolized the last dregs of hospital painkillers.
"Should you become aware of any such information, please report to me immediately for emergency memetic decontamination. You are currently scheduled for your next shift in the Blackout Facility in, ah, four months, beginning the twenty-ninth of June, year two-thousand twenty-four, with an estimated duration of twenty-five days. Do you accept this proposal?"
"Sounds good to me." Her fake smile was starting to twinge.
"You may freely withdraw consent at any time up until seven days before your Class-L Saturation Amnestic infusion, with no administrative consequences. Do you have any questions or concerns to report at this time?"
"I'm all good here."
"Excellent," Ben mumbled, pushing back his chair and turning to leave. "That's all. You have the rest of the week off. Go home and take it easy."
Ruth stood, stretching. "Cool. Time to catch up on a month's worth of TV. See you Monday."
Ruth was out the front door of Site-33 and in her beaten-up Subaru twenty minutes later, but it wasn't until she was a dozen miles down the road, stopped in a gas station parking lot, before she let herself relax. She left the engine running.
Most of the long-time employees of Site-33 were used to the mind-warping effects of repeated amnestic exposure, but none were as familiar with that peculiar sort of cognitive meddling as Senior Researcher Ruth Lowenthal. She'd been there at the founding of the Site, though at that point she was a freshly-minted junior researcher, right out of a PhD. Even so, she was one of original the architects of the Long-Term Memetic Blackout Facility. She didn't know why she'd built it, of course — nobody did — but she distinctly remembered drawing up protocols and schematics, in the early days of saturation amnestic research. Ruth had learned a lot in the past few decades. She'd forgotten a lot, too. Slightly more than twenty percent of her life was lost in the Shed.
There was one lesson, however, that she'd never lose, the most important lesson any memetic researcher could learn. It was drilled into every new employee on day one, even if it took years to really sink in. Don't trust memories, don't trust notes, don't trust audio or video or the promises of a friend. The only thing a good scientist at Site-33 could count on, the one thing that not even the most bitter amnestics could touch, was instinct. Intuition.
The nine tiny pricks and cuts that marred the skin between the smallest toes on her left foot had just barely started to heal. If she had to guess, she'd say that they couldn't have been more than two or three days old. They'd been cut delicately, almost invisibly, with a very sharp blade. The marks formed six dots and three straight lines, millimeters long, arranged just like so:

• • •
— — —
• • •

S.O.S, in Morse code.
Ruth knew — deeply knew — that the marks must be kept hidden. And not just because she'd get shut into quarantine for months while her own team scrubbed the entire Site for memetic contamination if anybody found out.
Ruth's practiced intuition told her that the message graven into her skin was self-inflicted. The slight hesitation mark near the first dash, as though she'd needed to work up the nerve to pierce the skin, leant that feeling even more weight. There was a deeper knowledge there too, a gut feeling. Ruth knew that while she she had been the one to hold the blade, somebody else had composed the message. Somebody in the Shed was crying out for rescue. Somebody that mattered enough for Ruth to risk unleashing whatever cognitohazards might be stored in there. Normally, she'd have followed protocol on this one. But that instinct told her not to.
Perhaps it was stupid to stay quiet. No, not perhaps — it was definitely stupid. She had anyway.
Ruth strained her mind, pushing in vain against the blacked-out swath of memory that swallowed the past few weeks. She remembered nothing, as always. No sights or sounds or smells or sensation. But there was that feeling, a simple, warm, profound emotion. She'd felt it before, so many times, for so many years. It was there each time she woke from a stint in the Shed, lingering for just a few days before fading into the routine of everyday life. She'd never mentioned it out loud.
There was somebody, somewhere in the depths of Lethe, that Ruth loved. Somebody she loved enough to risk her sanity, and the sanity of everybody in Site-33 — if not the world. Somebody she loved with every synapse of her soul.
Somebody who needed her help.
Somebody she wouldn't help.
Hopefully the feeling would fade sooner rather than later, especially with a few hours of Netflix to distract her. Then she'd decide whether or not report the breach, once she'd figured out if her limbic system was playing tricks on her intuition. She'd just have to pretend she hadn't noticed yet.
Ruth took a deep, shuddering breath as she shifted the car into drive and pulled back onto the road. It did nothing to calm her nerves.
It was time to go home.

To be continued.


There was no chance of her missing him, despite how he was dressed.
When she was sent out on this assignment, she almost, almost, considered stopping by with Uncle Jack to see if she could get odds on whether this was a Foundation mission or a Family mission. She was betting on Family mission, because of how they kept cropping up.
A message from an Uncle here, a letter from an Aunt there, and somehow, she was working missions, for both sides of the splintered tree. When she questioned it, she had been informed, rather gruffly, that the Hand Sinister served where it could, to help keep things civil.
Still. She hadn't (quite) expected to be working with this one when she got the mission. It just had the feel of a Family job. Go to a college campus during a ‘free speech' rally. Free speech, yeah right. It was just an excuse for rich white boys to say racist words, and cosplay as Nazis to satisfy their fetishes.
She plopped down on the bench beside him, her eyes still on the crowd. The man beside her didn't react, his white trilby tugged down over his eyes, giving every impression of a shitlord at rest, from the crisp, white polo shirt, to the white pants ironed so perfectly the creases looked like they could draw blood. The only thing out of place, was the shoes, and there-
“Really? Blue suede shoes?” She couldn't help but ask, snorting a little bit.
“Hmm?” He doesn't look up, but she knows she has his full attention. “I'm sorry, do we know each other?” There is a smirk on his face, knowing, and obnoxious. So, he wants to play it by the book, huh? Fine, she can do that.
“I've heard security is your business. “ She said with a sigh.
“I wouldn't say that.” He said. “I find that containing problems works better in the long run.” His head lifted, that smug grin echoed in the twinkle of his eyes.
“Well…” She drawled it out, seeking the proper response. “Protecting your sources keeps them alive.”
He sneered a little at that, and shook his head. “It's the foundation of a good relationship.”
“Agent Yoric.” She said with a nod.
“Shhhhhh!” His head whips back and forth, seeing if anyone heard her. “Do you know how many people are paying attention to us?”
It's a test. She knows it's a test. Even with the rally getting louder, she doesn't have to look away from him to answer. She'd already seen what he had prepared. “Sure. You have two bodyguards, one pretending to have a smoke by the tree over there-“ Pointing with her eyes, not being so rude as to actually draw attention to them. “And the other laying down on the grass behind us. There's a man on the roof of the library who is pretending to film, but I recognize a Foundation issued recorder when I see one. And a student leaning out the window keeps looking our way, but I think it's more because you look like a giant prat.” Yoric opened his mouth to say something smug, point out the one she missed, but she doesn't let him. “And two benches down, there's a Foundation researcher trying desperately not to look like he knows what's going on.”
Yoric's eyes narrow at her, not sparing a glance for the now flushing researcher. “Hmm. I thought I had him rather well disguised. How'd you spot him?”
“Well, two things, really. One, his badge is hanging out his pocket.” The tomato red researcher hurriedly tucked his badge back away. “And two, I've had lunch with him a couple of times at the site cafeteria. Hi Conwell.” Dr. Conwell muttered a hello, wilting as Yoric turns to glare daggers. The embarrassed researcher slunks away, his part in this clearly over.
“So, why here?” She asked, a gesture encompassing the marchers, the protesters, and, in general, everything.
“You should be able to tell me that.” He said, with a merry, give-them-hell grin. “After all, you are the dreadest of the dread, the most dangerous woman alive, the very Hand Sinister of the Foundation itself. Aren't you supposed to have some kind of super power about this kind of thing?”
One hand slipped inside the pocket of her jacket, the hole cut inside allowing her access to the handle of her gun. There was something reassuring about the smooth white handle, the way it stayed warm, the way she could almost feel a heartbeat within it. “Knowledgeable, but not all knowing. Is this Hand business?”
His eyes flicked to her hand, then back to her face, a brief movement. You'd have to be very observant to notice it, or to notice the slight paling of his face as well. He held up a hand, his smile etched on his features. “A little bit. We're all doing our own part to help teach you. I suppose you've been running errands for the Brothers?”
She snorted, as she leaned back, allowing herself to relax a little. Her hand slipped from her pocket, and she saw her counterpart relax as well. “I don't think you have the security clearance for that.”
“Oh no?” He slipped a small white card from his pocket, one with a symbol well known to those in the know. “This says I'm a Level 5.”
She glanced at the card, then rolled her eyes. “It also says your name is Sophia Light. I'd suggest you get that back to her before she notices it's missing, but I'm sure you already have something clever set up to keep her from noticing.”
“Yes… Clever…” He shrugged.

“Ma'am… That's just the joker from a deck of playing cards with your name written on it…”
Light leveled her best glare at the guard. “Are you saying it is NOT my ID card?”
The guard weighed his options, then straightened up and saluted. “No ma'am, go on in.”
“I'm going to kill that twerp one of these days.” She muttered under her breath as she stalked past. “I've got a new strain of campylobacter I've been working on, make him shit himself to dea-“ The door to her office slammed shut, and the guard let out a breath of relief.

“Anyways.” He continued. "Tell me what you've been doing. And then I'll cover the spots everyone else has missed.”
“Right.” She snorted. Then sighed. It might do her some good to go over it all.
“Well, there's the wetwork, of course. That mostly seems to come from M- Ah. Cowboy?“

“Either of them will do.” He confided in her gruffly, as he tucked a large cigar in the corner of his mouth. “In general. If it's an official function of some sort, you call me Six. If you need to refer to me out in the real world to an agent, use Cowboy. Family function? Feel free to use Mikell.”
She nodded, tucking the information away for later use. “Thank you Sir.” His eyes raised to hers as he lit his cigar, and she corrected herself. “Sorry, Mikell.” He nodded, and continued, still feeling a little ill at ease. There was something about him that made her want to conform to military rules, standing at parade rest to report, while he lounged behind his desk.
“So.” He leaned forward, puffing like a dragon. “How'd it go, Agent?”
“It… went sir.” She drew herself up, hands clasped behind her back. Her left hand unconsciously opened and closed, seeking the comfort of her guns, but even if she was allowed to keep them on her, she felt reaching for them would go a little too far.
“Come on girl, that's no report. Tell me what happened!” He said.
“Of course sir. As requested, I infiltrated the little gathering you informed me about. They seemed to think I was the perfect sacrifice. You were right, they had found a variation of the Semenich Manuscript.” She refrained from smiling, although part of her wanted to. What she had seen at this little ceremony left her no doubt the kind of things these people did. “When the portal opened and it saw the remains of its new followers, it withdrew peacefully.” She hadn't gotten a good look at exactly WHAT was coming through, but she got the impression of tongues. Lots of tongues. And, of all things, a fedora, which it tipped to her as it left.
“Good, good.” He rubbed his hands together, and winked at her. “One of the duties of your new position is heading off problems BEFORE they become a problem. As long as you left a mess, people in the know will understand, and hold off on what they may be planning. You did a good job, for what it's worth.”
Yes, she thought. A good job, but what was it worth?

“Well, he IS the big boss, technically speaking.” Yoric, in a movement that spoke of great boredom, pulled a deck of cards from his pockets, and began rifling them, mixing them up. “I'm sure you get a lot of orders from him. Official orders, anyways.” He makes a face as he one hand cuts the deck. “When they started me out doing shadow work, I reported directly to Adam. He's a humorless git. Have you met the old man, yet?”
She hesitated before speaking. “I have, once.”
Yoric almost missed a shuffle, but quickly recovered. “Really? I'd have thought he wouldn't want anything to do with you. He was quite adamant about quitting.”
“It was an accident.”

He had not looked like one of the founders of the most powerful institution in the world. He had just looked like a tired old man. She had almost bumped into him at the bookstore, but she was pretty sure he had planned it that way.
“Ah, the Hand.” He had said, as if that explained all. He looked her up and down, and then nodded. “They're going to have you kill me, eventually.” He remarked, as if he was commenting on the weather.
“I know.” She replied. And they had gone their separate ways, one more relaxed by the encounter than the other.

“What about Grandpa Jack?” Yoric cut the deck one handed, then shifted it to his left hand and repeated the process. She looked away from him to scan the crowd, her gaze falling on a skinny guy wearing a pair of realistic looking fox ears. She snorted, and shook her head.
“We've, ah… We've had some talks.” She said, running a hand through her short cropped hair.
Her cousin gave her a sympathetic look. “How much alcohol was involved?”

It was a LOT of alcohol. She honestly couldn't remember the last time she had seen this much booze in one place. She had honestly not expected her uncle to have a liquor cellar under his office, but, on second thought realized it fit his image. A long room, lined with shelves, and on every shelf, neatly labeled was a different kind of booze. Nearer the front of the room, it was modern stuff, Crown Royal, Apple Pucker, some trendy new whiskey in what looked like a gas can. The further in one went, the older the bottle got, some labels yellowing and peeling, the stuff at the far end of the room unlabeled.
Jack stood between a quartet of comfy looking chair, gesticulating at the blackboard as he tried to explain the family roots. He had scoffed at her request for a nice red wine, and instead offered her a glass of mead from a bottle etched with the family name. “If you're going to drink, drink!” He had said, matching actions to words, and pouring himself a glass of something bright blue that smelled strongly of apples. He used a stone cup, because “It thinks metal is a snack.” Between them sat a casserole, with a small positive note from a 'Jeff Bright.'
“All right, so, here is where it gets funky.” He said, pointing at the bottom of the tree. As if the loops of the tree weren't bad enough. “Mikell's daughter, David's sister, gave birth to Alice, right? BUT her husband at the time later became a man we know as…” And he draws a line back up to a name connected to his own mother. “That's right, Dr. Prometheus. Well. The original one, anyways. “ He takes a sip from his cup, making a pleased noise deep in his throat. “Right, any questions on that?”
“David's sister…” She frowns. “What's her name.”
Jack, in the body of an 18 year old serial killer, has the grace to look embarrassed. “No one knows.” He holds up her hand to forestall questions. “Prometheus did something, when he became Prometheus, that wiped her name not just from our records, but from our memories as well. We think he might have made a deal with Nobody.” Jack nods respectfully to an empty corner. There's probably no one there, but just in case Nobody is there, it doesn't hurt to be polite.
Serra nodded, and that was all it took for Jack to continue. “All right, so Alice gets assigned to explore Site 67, and makes a deal for her life with an entity within, offering up her first born child, who ends up being…” and he drew a line from the bottom all the way back up to the top. “Joseph Tamlin, Joey T, Joshua bin Joseph, the incarnation of time, and the founder of our family line, over 2000 years ago.”
She stared into the bottom of her glass, then held it out to her uncle. “I think I need something stronger.”

“I find it helps if you take a handful of aspirin before you start.” Yoric said, actual sympathy in his voice. He cut the deck three times in rapid succession, then held up the top card, a joker. “Huh. I thought I got rid of those.” He shrugs. "At least any missions for your dad would be simple, right?”
“Honestly, that was just rough, emotionally.”

They had spent the day together drawing. TJ babbled, stuff about what he was drawing, random words strung together, and, occasionally, when his eyes took on that knowing glint, stuff about her mother. It was never much, and it was spread out, but with the things the others had told her, it built a picture she did not like.
The worst part had been the end of the day. Her father has asked to watch a movie with her, and she, not being up on current films, chose what looked like a beautiful animated romp.
The end of Coco had them both crying, and making promises to never forget the other. It had been more emotion than she had been used to dealing with, but her dad finally calmed down and went to sleep. She had a drawing in her wallet that said ‘Best Daughter Ever' and by god, she would slaughter anyone who tried to take it from her.

She found her eyes drawn back to the furry with a frown. There was something familiar about that one. Something she couldn't put her eyes on. She snatched Yorics deck of cards from him, and began riffling it herself. Standard agent double speak dripped from her lips. “Mister Jones. I do believe we are in unfriendly circumstances.” She shuffled, and dealt him a hand from the bottom of the deck, each card sideways and pointing.
Yoric stiffened, and then, in some odd way, relaxed. His body seemed at ease, but she could see the bare brief tension in his limps, ready to jump. “Why, Mrs. Smith, you may be right. I honestly hadn't noticed.” He licked his lips, scanning the crowd to see what she had seen. “Someone from the other side of the tracks?”
“Yeh, and not the family side either.” She paused. “Or at least no one David told me about.”
“Ah, the other family historian. How's Mister Cupcake?”

“Get DOWN Cupcake!” Serra pressed the large, scaly/furry head away from her. Her cousins seeing eye… pet was a little too enthusiastic for her tastes, and far too friendly. Twin tongues licked out of the things snout, slobbering over Serras hands.
“Mister Cupcake! Hey girl, you want a treat?” David held up a bone that looked like it might have been from an elephant… though, knowing him, it was probably some kind of cryptid. Slender thigh, anyone? His beast turned with a happy growling noise, and David hefted the leg as far as he could throw it. The great big thing went happily charging after it, thankfully leaving Serra alone. “Sorry about that. She really likes you.”
“The feeling is sometimes mutual.” Serra stared after the monster, and shook her head as she heard the loud crunching sounds of it enjoying its repast. “Anyways, you were saying?”
David turned back to the projector display with a sly grin. “All right, so, this is the tree you've seen, the official tree, so to speak.” The light showed a tree almost identical to the one she had seen in Jack's basement. “And this!” His hands rifling through a stack by the corners, plucking out one that had the right assortment of raised dots on it, and dropping it smoothly on top of the other one. It stops being a tree, and becomes much bushier. “Is what we have when we add the Bright Bastards to the mix.
Serra stepped closer, studying the view. “Huh. There's… There's a LOT of Bastards, aren't there? Wait.” She pauses, looking closer, and tracing. "Wondertainment?" She says, increduously.
"Ah, yeh. From a branch that split off before the Brights as we know it. Don't tell Jack, it might blow his mind." David replied with a grin. “And of course, Bastards breed more Bastards, and sometimes mingle back into the main family line-“ He gestures at a couple of odd little snarls, and tangles in the family hedgerow. “Which just confuses everyone. Any questions?”
Serra braced herself as she saw Mister Cupcake approaching at a gallop. “Lots. But, just one important one.”
David intercepted his wild animal, and sat her down in front of him, rubbing her happily behind her neck frills. “Hit me with it.”
“What was my mothers name?”

“He's very… informative. Gets a person talking without making them realize what they're saying.” Serra had taken back the hand she dealt, and was now laying out a solitaire, trying to figure out what about this boy bothered her so much.
“He does my job, for the other side.” Yoric mentioned, as he slipped on a pair of black shades. If they can't see your eyes, they don't know you're staring at him. His head made incremental twitches from side to side, scanning.
She glanced up, frowning. “You reach out to family?”
“Naw, naw.” He slashed his hand out in negation. “I mean the shadow work. Stuff people aren't supposed to see. Doing one thing, that actual means something else. I often run into him at similar bribe drop off, and the like.” He shrugged. “Mrs. Smith, I think you're mistaken here.”
Her eyes scan the crowd again, focusing on a purple haired girl, whose scale make up looks a little too good. She glance points at the suspect, and arches an eyebrow. "Her?"
Yoric turns to look, than laughs. "Naw, that's River, she's family."
"Ahh… not our side, I'd think?" Serra said.
"No, no, she's an artist."
"Ahhhhh." Knowingly. "Is she cool?"
"Not yet. I think you got a false positive, Mrs. Smith."
“Mr. Jones, I'm sure I know what I'm doing.” And then she slipped back into normal talk. “Reminds of the grand dame.”
“Old Echidna herself? You worked with her?” Yoric shivered, and snatched back his deck of cards. “Brr, she's a scary one.”
“Reminds me of Mikell, actually.”

“So you see, it's all a matter of respect. We respect you, and send you little gifts that make your world more interesting. You respect us and don't murder my babies.” Evelyn paused, and something moved under her voluminous robes. “Well. Unless I need you to.”
Serra sighed and crossed her arms. “I'm sorry. There's a lot of things I'll overlook. That wasn't one of them.”
“Oh, of course darling, of course! Besides, the Jack of Hearts had run his course! I have several designs for a new one, you know, less goat, more horse, maybe. Girls love horses, don't they?” She paused as her head scarf shifted, and her hands both full, and a third arm stretches from somewhere inside her out fit to readjust it.
“Why make them at all?” Serra asked, trying to avoid staring at the various lumps that shifted under the other womans clothes.
“Well, to be perfectly honest, it's all Wondertainments fault.” She set down the beakers in her hands, and turned to a nearby machine, shifting levers up and down with the ease of long practice. “Lovely woman, all of them have been, but when she started making those Little Misters? My poor little Theus was distraught! After all, he was first on the scene with the unusual items selling, and here was Wondertainment, showing him up with those… collectibles.” Her lips pursed in distaste. “Awful little things. The genetic sequencing is atrocious. Do you know, she used the junk DNA of one of them to include the lyrics to a Rick Astley song? I bet she laughed herself to the bank over that one.” She shrugged her shoulders, then shrugged a separate set of shoulders. “What else could I do but build my love a better version, his own Stacked Deck.”
The agent shifted from foot to foot, not necessarily nervous, but prepared to run, if need be. “What is it with you and card themes, anyway?”
“Honestly, it's just an easy way to keep track of what I'm doing. I separate them by suit, of course, Hearts have a prey animal base, Clubs have a predator, Diamonds are insect of some kind, yes, I know, spiders aren't insects, but I'm allowed to classify them as I like, and of course, my dear spades, are fishes and the like.” She flicked a hand as if it didn't matter. “You know, slimy things.”
Serra slipped her hands into her coat pocket, thinking that over. “And each number, or face, has a different goal?”
“Of course!” Clapping three hands together in glee. “You know, I presume, my little Jacks are breeders, Brights by any other name, am I right?” She chortled and nudged her grand daughter in a friendly fashion. “You should probably get started on that by the way, I hate to see my DNA go to waste…”
“And the other numbers?” Serra tried to hurry on, wanting to avoid that question.
“Well, the Queens are the caregivers, healer types. Many different ways to heal, of course. Nines are military men, and women, of course, equal opportunity, good little soldiers, fighting for what is right, and the two's, my dear little Deuces-“

Serra snapped out of her flashback, eyes a glow. “Deuces are shit stirrers!”
Cards flew everywhere, as Yoric was startled in the middle of attempting to get the cards to flutter between his hands. “Say what?”
“The Fox.” Not looking his way, but marking his location. She stands, and begins moving towards her new target. “It's a Deuce, one of Grandmas kids. I can bag it, but I need you to cause a distraction.”
“Heh. Distractions are what I'm best at. I'll be super subtle.” He gestures at his bodyguards, who, with a roll of their eyes, spread out to keep an eye on him. Despite being dressed to stand out, he seemed to blend into the crowd as he approached, just another face.
She moved slowly into position, trying to track Yorics movements, what he was doing. She could see both sides begin to agitate. Whispered words, shouts and chants growing more toward the violence, until both sides were literally yelling at each other… until a white clad arm popped out from behind the head counter protestor and SLAMMED into the face of a man with a swastika armband.
After that, it was chaos.

“Subtle?” Serra asked, several hours later, as they both sat in the back of a skip retrieval van. The foxy boy was bound in another van, heading for assimilation.
Yoric shrugged. "That was subtle, for this family. You can tell, because I didn't shoot anyone in the head.” He said pointedly. His formerly pristine white suit was covered in blood, only some of it his own.
“Heh. But I did figure out why you wanted to meet me there.” She said, leaning her head back against the wall of the van.
“Yeh?” Arching an eyebrow at her. “Why's that?”
“You just wanted an excuse to punch a skinhead.”
"Heh." The back of his head thumped against the wall of the van, and he smiled. "Yeh."
She blinked, looking back at him. "Wait, really?"
"Yah man, fuck Nazis."