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⚠ Content warning: In addition, this article contains implications of rape, brainwashing, and nazism.

⚠ content warning

Graphic depictions of abuse ahead. Proceed with caution.

Alonso Álvaro Andino didn't like Ways, and especially not ones that went too far out. Very especially, Alonso did not enjoy taking several Ways at once, from the bakery that one chick manned, to Boss's nature reserve, to Outer Lichtenberg, to some tight, dark, and distressingly spartan facility. Ways made him sick, spiritually and physically.
But Boss was boss, and Alonso was stuck with him for now. Bottom of the totem pole, with some bipolar wildling that ate rats.
For now.
If this was somewhere in the world, Alonso wouldn't have been able to map it. Everything in these halls was too grey, too brutal. Too cold, he only just realized, even for October. Even for a druid driven by what Alonso could only assume was oneitis, Boss wasn't an indoors man; what was he doing here on such short notice?
Finally, at a set of off-white double doors, Boss held up his hand. "Here, initiate."
The doors opened themselves, and Alonso was ushered into a conference room, manned only by two wehrdaemons and… and a man that…
Alonso blinked, and looked back to the wehrdaemons. He didn't face the "man" again.
Boss cleared his throat. "Mr. Rass."
"Acolyte Fels." The "man"'s voice was smooth, calming. Too much so. "And am I to assume this is Initiate Andino?"
The room had been cold before this Rass spoke, but the minutes leading up to this meeting might as well have been a Spanish summer's day compared to the violent chill that accompanied the words coming out of his mouth. If Alonso had anything to say, Rass had preemptively silenced him.
"That he is." Alonso nearly jumped at the sudden pat on the back, and nearly cringed when he realized he'd definitely have to get this shirt washed. Again. "Is this about ZO1869?"
"… perhaps."
Despite a hard fought mental battle to do anything but, Alonso turned his gaze back towards the "man", and found himself unable to turn any further.
If there were words to describe Mr. Rass, they weren't in Alonso's dictionary. The closest he could could come was an utterly mundane man-shaped imprint in the surrounding space; any attempts to quantify his features further were wrong, somehow. Your average man on the street, except not at all, because every man maintained a unique frame of self, and yet Mr. Rass presented the bare minimum requirements to be a man on the street.
"Initiate Andino." Mr. Rass smiled, but Alonso's mind couldn't put an adjective to it. "I'm rather impressed by your work so far. You've shown diligence, charisma, and, well," that was a smirk. "ZO1869, the hag… that was all you, wasn't it?"
It took everything Alonso had not to gulp.
"Don't worry, innovation interests me. Tell me," Mr. Rass was several seats away, but even just leaning over, Alonso got the feeling he was looming. "Are you interested in promotion?"

OCTOBER 15th, 2013 STRIKE AGAINST SWJC LICHTENBERG ART SHOW
PURPOSE
With the heavily publicized mobbing against Acolyte Salz, SWJC Lichtenberg has declared open war upon our organization, and with it, the people of Germany. In any other circumstance, this issue may be solved through a series of anonymous tips to the SCP Foundation; however, the minimal Foundation presence within Outer Lichtenberg, along with the presence of the Fourth Reich's Berlin branch headquarters, suggests that the Fourth Reich could do better to minimize the resulting damage by intervening itself.
Despite such declarations, however, SWJC Lichtenberg are not soldiers. As such, they may be deterred through a simple display of power.
PERSONNEL INVOLVED

Initiate Andino
Two instances of WEHRDAEMON-XA7177
A single instance of UNTERDAEMON-▲B5621
UBERDAEMON-ZO1869

Well, this was it. This was the mark. The place he'd, uh…
"Next."
Alonso gulped, stepping up to the doorman with 10 euro in his free hand. The parts in his instrument case shifted ever so slightly in their padded confines, a sound that echoed off the anxieties throughout his mind.
The doorman was bigger than Alonso, even just sitting down at the podium. Even if Alonso were to sic his minions on him (which would put him in hot shit with Boss), that left a hot second for the doorman to crush him in two. Was Alonso sweating? That wasn't good.
Fuck, how many years had he been hitting the gym? Didn't fix how short Alonso was. He'd be broken like a twig if this doorman knew what he was really doing, but Alonso hadn't expected an overgrown meatball to be this… inquisitive. Was he looking Alonso over, or did he see something, a tic Alonso hadn't rid himself of? To think, five years of PUA training down the drain, all because-
"You're good."
Alonso was overthinking things, again. With a few deep breaths, Alonso went on ahead, keeping an eye on the ones behind him.
The Snitch and Witness were first, put under just as much scrutiny as Alonso had been. Course, he couldn't blame the doorman; these things were the size of children, even if they did look like del Toro extras. The wehrdaemons, those tree people Fels brought with him on outings, they were next; they were dumb as rocks, though, too dumb to cause trouble until Alonso commanded. Was he sweating too much?
Zoey came last.
Alonso had always been proud of the job he did sculpting her; if anyone could get through, it was her. Pale, porcelain skin clung to a voluptuous frame, decorated with a mop of long-black hair that had been brushed and tied into a tasteful rave-appropriate 'do. Still, the hair hid her face, as usual; was that taboo?
He supposed he'd dressed her well enough. Would they notice? Alonso knew it was dumb, but if experience taught him anything, it was that the commies were not only too smart for their own good, but far too prevalent at punk shows for his liking. Catch-22: think too little and he ends up with a black eye, think too much and his frame crumbles around him. But how much was too much? How-
"You're good. Next."
Fuck. Maintain frame. Alonso nodded back to his squad, and head inside.

Like most commie punk venues, this place was shit, and packed with almost enough people that Alonso could see the 10 euro per head doing something to fix it.
What was once probably an apartment had been ransacked and rearranged into a maze of rooms that served whatever the inhabitants wanted them to serve. If the furniture was any indication, that changed daily: roll-up futons were lined up with only a jury-rigged system of curtains as guides, surrounding dressers and hangers on wheels more often than not. Aside from shitty little trinkets, that rarely extended to the decor, a general mishmash of pomo mural trash and whatever tacky garbage someone had hung upon a wall. That was in addition to the inhabitants/guests (he couldn't tell either from either), who used the space however they wanted. Hell, coming in, they'd already converted what should've been a commons room into a ramshackle bar.
Someone bumped into his case and he nearly jumped. Again.
Right. Alonso turned back to one of the wehrdaemons (the one on the right, at least the "right" right now.). "Hey, big guy. Need you to hold me case for a bit."
It did as he asked, as expected. Good, nice. If anyone stole it that was their problem. "Right. Stay there. You too," punctuated with a point to leftie. "Be back in a bit." That'd make exploring less awkward.
Alonso continued on, stopping only to spare a glance at the two lugheads standing awkwardly in the middle of the "bar"; admittedly, said glance had brought his feet to a standstill.
"… don't just… come on." Making his way back was even more awkward, given he had to contest with the flow of partygoers. "Have fun, nonlethally. Mingle. Maybe score with a dryad. Act natural, like I taught you. Remember?" Did trees think? Boss skimped before he'd left Alonso to babysit them. "Maintain frame."
The two lumberheads looked at each other with beady not-eyes, before nodding back. Good. Alonso and his merry squad made their way further in.
The further in Alonso went, the less the walls shook with music and the more they shook with a cacophonous cluster of arrhythmic sound. While the loudest sound was by far the thump of an inexplicably distant dance beat, Alonso couldn't ignore the sounds of cheap sneakers striking woods, nor the variety of other beats they danced and moshed to: some poorly-tuned punk outfit, or a dissonant cacophony typical of these pomo losers.
While Alonso took careful note of the surrounding architecture, making small notes of what could be brought down and when, the back of his mind processed the scenes of each room he passed. Dance floors and mosh pits shimmered, marked by a rainbow chalk that fenced in the dancers as the others did god knows what. Every corner had its own beat, whether that be a demented music machine or a quartet of dreadful, off-tune performers. Half of everything had a placard, and almost half of everything was coated by a neon vomit. If the men painted on the walls could face forward, Alonso was certain they'd be staring at him.
Some chick was macking on a drunk dude under the first flight of stairs Alonso ascended.
As below, not quite above. The walls were a hell of a lot different, and it was less crowded. No less degenerate, no less coated in paint. Anywhere Alonso stepped was an accident waiting to happen, whether it be some numale playing guitar, a pile of art supplies, or someone who'd hopefully choke on their own vomit. At least the lights were somehow on. Easier to make notes.
Some chick was macking on a drunk chick under the second flight of stairs Alonso ascended, but now wasn't the time to sarge.
All painted, a rainbow vomit lit with a combination of colored bulbs and flood lamps. Did they think their pretension made them better than him everyone else?
Some dude was checking his phone under the third flight of stairs Alonso ascended.
One room was empty but for an easel of vomit. Alonso kicked it over, and didn't feel any better.
Alonso kissed Zoey under the fourth flight of stairs Alonso ascended.
A shame they kept the fire extinguishers. Building could do with a burning, as with the people inside. Looks like he'd need a fell swoop. How Alonso would've loved to stay and watch.
Someone was sleeping under the fifth flight of stairs Alonso ascended.
Was the paint obscuring the cracks? Was it too dark to see the trash? Buildings in Outer Lichtenberg grew like tumors, and SWJC wasn't the type to call a carpenter. Didn't matter; put the right sigels on the right spots and the building would implode, with or without impurities.
Some drunk dude consoled another drunk dude under the sixth flight of stairs Alonso ascended.
Alone at a party. Again. Alone, except for everyone else. Alonso hated being alone. Always alone.
Nobody was under the seventh flight of stairs Alonso ascended.
Wind rustled softly through the rooftop garden. The streets below were mostly empty. It was going to be a very long night.
Alonso stared up at the star-spotted sky, and the moon over Outer Lichtenberg stared back.

"You look tense. First time?"
Alonso gave the cute bartender the best smile his muscle memory allowed. "They don't got this in Barcelona." A shame she'd end the night buried in rubble.
"I get that." She smiled back, before her gaze swept Alonso's merry band. "Start you off with a pick-me-up? Try the Spellbreaker."
Bars. What a good place to host a… a thing. No, the gutted apartment foyer wasn't actually a bar, but it served as one, counter, stools, and all. And Alonso did mean all; him and Zoey took up half the seats (the Snitch opting to ride on his back and the Witness currently wandering the grounds for tattlers).
Alonso unconsciously squeezed Zoey's hand, careful not to scrape himself on her nails. "Spellbreaker?"
"Spellbreaker." The way this chick juggled bar glasses, she was probably some sort of performance artist… nah. She deserved it with everyone else. "House cocktail. So good, it'll break you outta any spell."
"Doubt I'm under a spell, but thanks. Just need a shot of liquid courage. Tequila?"
"Five euros?" At least it was cheap.
An exchange later, and Alonso felt slightly more prepared to kill absolutely everyone in the fucking building. Just absolutely stoked to wade through the rats' nest with a case full of fake art and implosive death. Really excited to run like hell and never show his face. Dammit, Rass better be proud of his boy, because Alonso didn't know if-
"Yoooo, this seat taken?" Ah, English.
Alonso looked back (and instinctively smiled) towards the chick that'd just approached him. "Nah, I was just taking a breather before heading back on the floor." Like clockwork, that opener.
"Oh, cool." A quick look-over told Alonso what, on most nights, he'd need to know: foreign girl, or the daughter of foreigners. Hell bent on denim, with the long hair of a hippie that washed. Three points higher on the scale than him (not that he hadn't trained for that). No tits; everything else made up for that. "Whaddya think of the show so far?"
The chick didn't wait for him to answer before taking a seat. Any other night. "It's… it's something." And of course he thought too hard. Fuck halfsies.
"Me too, bubelah." That was a new word. "I mean, it's fun, but I'm used to more, like… structured shows? Dunno."
"Really? You look right at home."
That earned Alonso an admittedly somewhat charming half smirk. "Chalk it up to different kinds of chaos."
Well, now or never. Alonso extended his hand. "Either way, good to meet you." … come to think of it, this part probably didn't matter. "Name's Alonso. You?"
"Shit, name's Sara." She didn't take his hand. She did lean back to look at Zoey, and at that moment Alonso felt unpleasantly chilly. "Yo, goth chick. What about you?"
Zoey turned to face the chick, not that it mattered under her hair.
"Uh, well… Alonso's outstretched hand remained where it was, most probably out of denial, though it did unconsciously curl into a fist. "Sorry. Zoey's not really… she can't talk. There was a bit of an accident a while back, and… yeah." An interesting physical paradox: his muscles tightened even as his heart slipped down his stomach.
"Huh." If the pause was any more pregnant, it'd be having twins. "Shit, I gotta do something. Sorry to run."
It's no problem., what he would've said if she hadn't just bolted. Alonso smiled, turned back to Zoey, and nearly yanked her arm off as he turned to leave.

Point A was the highest point of the building. It was also empty, and surprisingly quiet, and well lit, and overall an otherwise relaxing environment in any occasion where Alonso wasn't pacing through the crisscrossing garden plots like some cheap noir detective.
"Hey, 'lonso," if the Snitch had anything useful to say, it could stand to do so in a voice that didn't want to make Alonso throw it off the railing and into an open dumpster. "Someone named Sabina just told her friend the, uh, one of the wehrdaemons was cute."
This was stupid, he'd decided. He was treating it like a game, like the Game. That was most of what he was already doing as an initiate, but fucking hell, what a jump. And Alonso tried, he swore he tried to have a pure enough heart for this work, but something was throwing him off. Was it the pressure, from Boss and Rass? Or was he still the spineless, scrawny coward he no! That was the whole point!
Something was throwing him off his game. The music? The shitty decor? Or-
"Sara just told some tall girl about how weirdly stiff you-"
"Shut up!" Alonso pried the peanut gallery off his back and threw it to the floor. "Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut! Up!" The Snitch was lucky it could pick itself up faster than Alonso could ponder the merits of stomping it.
Alonso clutched his forehead, too preoccupied to care that he nearly ruined his hairline. As if the structure cared whether or not he looked fuckable. He probably already looked like some permavirgin loser, pacing back and forth like he was trying to find a bead on a shag carpet. So much for maintaining frame. At least nobody was there to mock him.
"I have tried to do everything right." The Snitch ran over behind a plot of wheatgrass, not that it mattered when it was under binding. "No, I am doing everything right. I've plotted the points. Worked the plan. Snuck. You. In. I'm the reason they didn't catch. So what about you?"
As Alonso walked closer, the Snitch moved further back. Too bad someone had payed attention to the architecture, and someone else hadn't. "What are you bringing? Recon? Intel? Or fucking gossip?!" The Snitch had backed into a corner, forcing what would've been a face-to-face with Alonso if it wasn't blind as a bat. "Do you think you're my equal? You're a rat. Less than a rat, you're half a rat. You know what rats do? They run the fucking maze!" If the Snitch had anything to retort, it was caught in its throat as Alonso delivered a swift kick to its chest.
"And you." Zoey adopted the body language of a guilty dog as Alonso turned to face her. "You know how much work I put into you?"
Zoey backed up a step, but a "Stay!" stopped her in her tracks. "You're my blood, sweat, and tears." If Zoey could breathe, Alonso was close enough that he could've seen it. "I've put so much into you. Bar none, you are my masterpiece. Why, then," Alonso shivered as he grabbed her by the frigid forearms. "Are you not helping?!"
Alonso waited for an answer, anything. A choked sob. A slouch. A nod yes or no, or maybe a hand gesture, or a pantomime of literally anything other than following Alonso around like a little lost cat.
She answered with silence.
"… dammit." Alonso sighed, pulling Zoey in for another kiss, savoring her familiar taste before letting her go again. "Sorry. I don't like doing this, either. But you need to stop acting like an insecure bitch. No more last minute resistance, alright?" Sparing a glance back to the Snitch, Alonso trudged back to the case he'd set at Point A. "Both of you."

Point B was on floor six. Not that it needed to be; you could probably take a sledgehammer to everything, activate every other sigel, and come out with just as much ruin. Maybe if Alonso wanted to show his power level, which wasn't an option. Rass made that very clear.
In what was either a sitting room, a game room, or a studio, Alonso set to work building the sigel. Zoey was guarding the door in, the Snitch sat on the windowsill silently until something big happened, and honestly the wehrdaemons could do whatever they wanted until clean-up time.
In a side room, the sound of squeaking springs and muffled declarations filled Alonso's workspace like a fog. Not that it mattered; Alonso packed a set a fake placards for just this occasion, and a disassembled rifle if that wasn't enough. Enigma always told him to prepare for rejection, and Alonso was nothing if not prepared. It's why the Snitch/Witness wore scarves and the wehrdaemons wore vests, no matter how magically hidden the tattoos got. It's why Zoey's tattoo was right above her cunt.
Alonso almost wished they'd come out. They were annoying. Too loud, like they wanted to fucking brag. Look at us, we're having fun and you're stuck working. Another twig in the pile.
If he peppered them with bullets right now, would anyone notice?
… no, not right now.
Great, he hadn't even really started and he was already sweating like a pig in heat. Hadn't even fucked up; he should be reeling in excitement! Why wasn't this exciting?
Nobody walked in on him. He finished the piece and the two idiots were still fucking and nobody walked in on him. Wasn't that supposed to be a good thing? Why didn't it feel like a good thing? That was the last thought on his mind as he shepherded his two idiots to Point C.

Point C was a ventilation shaft on the third floor. Quickest way through was a bathroom. Zoey was the only one with eyes who could actually fit through, so Alonso and the Snitch had a very fun time hanging out in the locked bathroom for however long she took.
The Snitch had been silent since Alonso kicked some sense into it, which meant they were good so far. Good for him. He didn't feel good. Quite the opposite, in fact.
For fuck's sake; he was on the cusp of a perfect getaway. The cusp of rising in rank, learning like… any magic, or at least more magic. If that meant every mouth-breathing commie in the building fell with it, who cared? Commies weren't humans. Was Alonso supposed to feel bad for pissing on an anthill? He was making the world a better place. No more fucking ants. No more being the wimpy loser.
Alonso scratched at the nicotine patch on his arm, and thought back five years ago. Some loser who'd just earned the distinction of a Bachillerato, some mediocre recluse no one talked to. He'd fixed that. He'd fixed himself and now he was an alpha. Right?
Alonso grimaced at his reflection, and his reflection grimaced back. Fit like a swimmer, because he was a swimmer, he'd taken that up because he was some scrawny manlet who'd never make it as a lifter. His fashion was impeccable, unique without looking like a blind, peacocking freak. His hair? It looked fantastic. He was passionate but controlled, manly but cultured, and just staring into his eyes made him want to crack his scrawny, foppish reflection's face into a billion little pieces.
Someone knocked on the door. "Busy!" Wait. Fuck. Nevermind.
Lost his frame. Lost his fucking frame, what a shock. How did it get this bad? How the fuck did he let it get this bad? He'd done everything right. Was it the constant music? The air? Had the bartender put something in his drink? Lousy piece of shit. Why was Zoey taking so fucking long?
"Snitch?"
The Snitch's head jolted up in surprise, feet still rocking back and forth from its spot on the toilet seat. "Yeah?"
Alonso slid down to sitting, back against the wall. "They saying anything… good? About me?"
Of course the Snitch was silent for a few seconds. Of course it had to think it through before responding. Of course. Un-fucking-believable. "… some lady, uh, Velma or whatever, said you were cute. Guy named Richter likes your art. Uh… Ashton? Sorry, they don't really…" The Snitch tilted its head. "I don't know if this is helping, boss. Sorry."
"'sfine." Alonso clutched his forehead in apparent frustration. Come to think of it, he wasn't really sure what he felt.
When Zoey finally crawled out of the shaft, Alonso just stared. Even caked in dust, she was fucking radiant. Maybe if he fucked her, that'd be his pick-me-up. A few minutes against the wall, burying his frayed nerves in a hole until the friction cleared his mind. Part of him wanted to grip her like a vice and never let go, not until he crushed her into a thousand pieces. Alonso wanted to do a lot of things to Zoey, and didn't do any of them when the knocking resumed.
Instead, the three of them listlessly emerged and headed downstairs.
Point D would be on the first floor. He'd need a drink before that.

One away.
Alonso Andino was one sigel and five minutes away from social apotheosis. The Witness hadn't seen anything troubling, nor did the Snitch know anything negative. The wehrdaemons hadn't had to bust a single head since coming in. In a little under ten minutes, Alonso would be out of sight and out of mind, free to spend the rest of the night in bed with Zoey for however long his nerves kept him awake.
He was a winner, and he sure as hell didn't feel like it.
Something went wrong; it must have. He'd trained for years, ridding himself of the fear of rejection, training under Enigma and then Dunst and then Fels to be the best person he could possibly be. He'd fucked a dozen dimes and so much more. He… he made Zoey. He wasn't a failure. He just… wasn't. Why did he feel like one?
Alonso sat at the bar for what felt like a decade, staring at his drink. Spellbreaker. Maybe it'd help, maybe it wouldn't.
He knew, of course, that every minute was another commie that got out. He had to act now.
Had to. Had to? Some tiny voice in the back of his head was telling him to run away. Very far away.
Alonso took a sip of his drink. Pungent. Sweet. Burnt on the way down. Didn't feel any better. Never did. Alcohol was rarely enjoyable outside of social contexts, that much was obvious.
Alonso's gaze swept the room. Everyone else was having fun without him. That was the problem, he didn't belong here. Too much time in the belly of the beast, putting himself to work in the thick of a hedonistic storm. But that'd change with just a few more minutes. Just…
"Hey, boss."
The Snitch's words, coming from behind Alonso's seat, were enough to break his trance. That was before he saw the Witness, Snitch in tow, macking on some…. on some small blue thing the Snitch had dragged along for the ride. "Can we hurry up? My partner's got a date."
Alonso said nothing, and stared back down at his drink. The lights, the music, everything felt a bit too far away, a bit too chilly, everything except for the drink. He took another sip, and nothing around him changed.
"Seriously, it'll be quick. Wehrdudes are already out."
Another drink. Such a pungent scent, lingering on his breath like the reminder that he'd spent the whole event alone.
"… you okay?" The Snitch must've hopped onto the bar proper by the sound of feet on wood, the gasp from the cute bartender that he could've scored with on any other day, if he'd been allowed to have fun. Was that what it came down to? Not enough fun?
Alonso took another gulp. He'd have fun. He'd have so much fucking fun seeing this building crumble… if he could get off his ass. If he could get off his fucking ass and do it, do anything not to be the same loser from five years ago. Not to be another fucking coward, too scared to self improve and have actual fun, too afraid of the current to jump in. Always left out. He wasn't a loser.
"… you going cold turkey? Don't make us wait up."
Another drink. Maybe if he sat still, the world would pause with him.
The bartender cut in at around this time. "Little dude needs to get off my counter, but he's got a point." If Alonso wasn't already staring at his drink, he'd note that eye contact was a bit hard.
Another drink. A million imaginary eyes burned holes into Alonso's back.
"Don't

be

loser.

In the span of a moment, Alonso had finished his drink, backhanded the Snitch off the table, and kissed Zoey, proving he wasn't a loser.

Alonso woke up to the scent of iron and years-old perfume, mixing with the alcoholic fumes that lingered on his breath.

"Spellbreaker. House cocktail. So good, it'll break you outta any spell."

Everyone was silent as Alonso stepped back to his seat, his eyes kept firmly on Zoey while he awkwardly picked up the case he'd left against his stool and slung it over his shoulder. On instinct, he soon took another step back.
Zoey took a tentative step forward.
Alonso ran.

Lights, flesh, furniture; all of it bled into each other as Alonso ran thoughtlessly through the maze in whatever direction took him away from the gurgled screams crawling along the walls.

Alonso shut the door just in time to hear a sickening crunch against it, and locked it just in time to hear the rustling of the locked door turn into a series of violent slams.
His case thudded against the dirty tiles of the bathroom, a thump almost as loud as the one made throwing the lid open. The remaining pieces exploded outward, leaving a scattered mix of firearm parts and sigel components strewn across the floor, specks of detritus and vomit that, if Alonso's own seemingly scattered organs had any say in the matter, would soon become less of a metaphor than Alonso would've wanted.
Trembling hands began immediately, desperately grabbing for the iron and plastic pieces of the puzzle that could possibly save Alonso. With every scratch of claw against the door, his pace quickened and his coordination deteriorated.
Alonso coughed up a small bit of bile onto himself. There was no time to think. There was no time.
Squeaking pieces mixed with clinking metal mixed with the scratching of nails mixed with the gurgling. Alonso's salvation was buried in the soundscape, washed in the dim fluorescent light that dripped down from above. Every peg was round and every hole was square, slammed together in a miserable and oppressive cloud of danger. Even now, his chest seized like he'd already been caught.
By the time Alonso successfully assembled the gun, the scratching stopped.
Alonso backed against the far side of the wall, rifle facing the door. This was a trick. She… he'd seen her. What she could do. What she did when he let her.
And so Alonso waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And when the ventilation grate above him tore off its hinges and clocked his head, all he could do was drop his gun.
Zoey poured out of the vent with an inhuman grace, and Alonso was at once reminded that he'd once been proud of his work sculpting her. Pale skin that never rotted draped an intimidating frame that never bloated, adorned with a tangle of pitch-black hair that had grown far too long. Her familiar scent, that of blood and expired perfume, filled the air with a familiar repugnance. Delicate fingers tipped with dirtied talons pinned Alonso to the wall, digging in his flesh as it had when… when…
For the first time in five years, Alonso began to cry.
Zoey brushed the hair out of her face with a free hand, and Alonso closed his eyes. He couldn't look. He couldn't.
Their foreheads touched, and the scent of grave grew overpowering. A hand found its way under his shirt, and the chill of her flesh burnt into his nerves. Her ragged, guttural moans coalesced into a distressingly familiar voice.
"No last minute resistance."
For the first time since they'd met, Zoey initiated the kiss. Alonso began screaming when caressing turned into tearing.

Degenerate Art

Black and White and Red All Over

INTERMISSION: Like a Fly


The Following Tale Has Insufficient Lighting
( It's a bit dark.)

Jeremiah Cimmerian suffered from Apeirophobia1, so when Existential Dread crawled through the back window that had been left open that hot summer night, it found him to be the tantalizing prey.
It surprised him in the kitchen bursting out from shadows like a Billy Mays' infomercial.
Jeremiah was quick to react, pulling out his colt revolver and firing on the metaphysical thing three times with lightning reflexes. Being merely a mental concept, the bullets passed through the thought, hitting the housekeeper instead.
Luckily, two of the shots weren't fatal.
The next day Dr. Cimmerian went to the Foundation in hopes of getting help with his Existential Crisis.
The Board informed him that they were no longer dealing with Existential Dread and instead focusing all their attention on Cosmic Horror and that he should leave his personal problems at home.
“But We Contain, Secure, And Protect!” Cimmerian yelled in protest, arguing his point using sound logic, a twenty page power point presentation, and enough passion and soul to make a jazz singer gush.
The counsel was having none of it, and advised him to drop the subject like a sick beat.
The only one who seemed to want to help was Dr. Glass who is a sweet peach and I love him.
Unfortunately the anti-depressants Dr. Glass prescribed didn't go well with Cimmerian's nightly supper of Maalox and Bourbon and were long forgotten before any real effect could take place.
Defeated, Jeremiah accepted the empty void of existence, going so far as to buy it food and water dishes along with a cozy pet bed for it to sleep in. He got it spayed and chipped, putting in all the necessary paper work, as any good owner would do, and named it Kierkegaard after a philosopher he used to quote in college to impress girls.
Every day when Jeremiah got home after work, Kierkegaard would be there waiting for him by the front door as a reminder that his choices didn't matter and any decisions he would make he would end up regretting.
This constant exposure to dark truths of life agitated the deep emotional scars that took up nearly half of Cimmerian's body and they soon began to fester and rot from the inside out, dropping chunks of himself as he would wander his empty apartment; but by then Jerimiah had become comfortably numb to his situation.
The O-5s took a serious look into the matter and seeing that it had no effect on his work performance, deemed it an appropriate amount of suffering and renewed his contract for another five thousand years.

Footnotes
1. The Fear of Eternity.


In the Space behind time and the Time between space…
Atop His Throne outside of everything, He sits and watches the world with eyes like burning stars. There is no sound but the whispered melodies of creation, trillions of worlds singing in harmony like a choir of angels.
And in this place of silent sound, He can see all that there is and all that there isn't, and He can feel the Flow between them, the currents that carry the unreal into the real, their endless turbulence birthing myths and monsters. Here, He is free from the illusory time of the mortal world. His time is the True Time, and His space the True Space, in which future curls up into past and potentiality unfolds into actuality.
Any other day He could spend hours listening to the symphonies of existence, but not today. Today, He is looking for something. For someone.
He was getting old. He had been getting old for quite a while now and had recently decided that it was high time to actually be old. His body may be immune to aging, but His mind had grown weary from the weight of untold eons. But before He could settle into eternal retirement, He needed to find someone who could take His place in the cosmos. He needed to find a replacement.
And so, from His Throne outside of everything, He searches for the ripples in reality made by minds that rule matter…

Florida, 2001. A schoolboy misremembers the name of a Founding Father, and history quietly rewrites itself…

France, 1972. At a mental hospital, one patient starts to hear voices… and other people start hearing them too…

England, 1969. A man absent-mindedly climbs into a taxi. He never realizes that he never hailed it. Or that he never told the driver where to go. Or that there's no driver…

New York, 2014. A young girl wishes for a puppy for her birthday. Her parents are surprised by a dog neither of them recognizes…

Poland, 1996. An apartment building mysteriously vanishes when–

His concentration is broken when, abruptly and without warning, the currents all shifted direction. In every place, at every moment, everything in existence is suddenly caught in a colossal tide pool of truth, and in the eye of the storm, a massive concentration of power like a super nova waiting to explode. Something big is about to happen. His plans will have to wait.
Slowly, gracefully, He rises from His Throne, and dips His toes into the Ocean of the Real.

Iceland, 2000
The currents lead Him to the ruins of a hospital in the aftermath of an explosion. In the streets, a crowd of people were standing behind a yellow security cordon, most of them either frantically speaking into cell phones or staring at the still-burning buildings. Behind the tape, rescuers were diligently searching the ruins for survivors who might still be trapped inside. He had seen disaster before, but the sight of such fear and anguish was one that never got any easier to bear.
Most people would probably attribute the destruction to a bomb, but He knew that it wasn't something so mundane. Someone or something had bent reality, drawing an enormous amount of power from all across creation before releasing it all at once. Now, the maelstrom had passed, but He could still sense a massive energy within the ruins, pulsating like a neutron star.
He slipped past the security cordon, drawing no attention to Himself as He did so, and began making His way towards the epicenter of the explosion. He arrived at what had once been the maternity ward. The smoldering remains of hospital beds and equipment lay scattered around a massive crater alongside rubble and charred corpses. His attention was suddenly caught by the soft sound of a child crying.
Moving towards the source of the noise, He discovered an infant, covered in ash and blood, but amazingly unharmed. He gently lifted up the child, cradling her in His arms, and a calmness washes over her. She looked so harmless, delicate and fragile in His arms, but an eldritch glow emanating from her body betrayed unimaginable power.
"Interesting." His voice was deep, like the rolling of distant thunder. It was a voice that could command the sun to rise and set. "It seems this day has blessed me with serendipity." The girls wrapped her tiny hand around His finger, and slowly opens her eyes. And that's when He knew that He had found His replacement.
For in her eyes, He saw stars burning.

Next: First Lessons


Wrote this last month for my youtube (and incidentally wiki) series and wanted to clean it up just a little afores posting. Finally got around to it. Hope you like it. The art is by one of my discord members called Rura.

▸ More by this Author ◂

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F.A.Q.

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Dr. Shaw cursed to himself. 682 had gone off hunting several days ago and hadn't returned. Probably just to spite him. Maybe he'd be back, but given how close Shaw was to Yellowstone it probably wouldn't matter.
The sky was covered in dark storm clouds that crackled with electricity. No rain. Not yet anyway. Just flashes and slow rumbling thunder. The land he trekked through was covered in burned out tree stumps, ash, and the remains of the humans who had lived there. What was left of those people's houses were scattered out among the landscape, broken down into rubble.
Dr. Shaw crested a hill, and finally he could see it. Right where he'd expected. The ranger station. He went down to one knee and took a moment to breathe. He hadn't noticed it, but this last day, he'd been clenched and holding his breath just a little. The idea that SCP-2000 might be gone had begun to creep in over the past 24 hours. He reached for the necklace around his neck and nodded, before moving forward.
The ranger station was strangely untouched by the surrounding devastation. It was the only standing building he'd seen for a week. That alone was enough to make him hopeful. Then he heard the buzzing.
It was low at first. A sort of hum in his ears that he couldn't shake. Then the door to the ranger station opened, and out of it walked a small mechanical being. It looked almost like a toy man with a voltmeter for a head, and began to speak almost immediately.
"Ha! Your doom approaches!" The little robot walked towards him and immediately fell down off the landing and tumbled down the stairs. It lay on the ground, its arms and legs moving in the air in an inept attempt to right itself.
Dr. Shaw shook his head, walked up to the robot and picked it up. He could hear the humming noise more clearly now, eminating directly from this toy.
"What's wrong little guy?" Shaw said with a chuckle.
"Nothing," it said, in a cold monotone.
Dr. Shaw almost didn't notice the red blinking light on the underside of the robot. He definitely didn't notice it in time to do anything about it. The robot exploded in a flash of blue energy. Everything went white and Dr. Shaw was thrown back and onto the ground. He lay there, unable to move as the rain started to fall.

Shaw was in and out of consciousness for several hours before finally coming to his senses. He imagined if he wasn't using Able's body, it would've taken him much longer to recover from whatever the little robot had done to him. He was strapped to a gurney, and a man in a white lab coat stood over him with a scalpel. Shaw flexed his arms and broke the straps, grabbing the man by the arms and jammed the scalpel into the man's neck.
The man hadn't stopped struggling though. As Shaw's eyes adjusted to the light, he noticed that the man's face was half coated in metal. Both eyes glowed a dull red. Shaw materialized a jet-black dirk and stabbed it through the robot man's temple. The machine shuddered a few more moments and then was still.
Dr. Shaw stood up from his kill and looked around. The room was dark, but incredibly large. The far wall had a series of video screens glowing in black and white. Then a deep rumble shook him to the bones. Shaw walked over to the video screens and saw a variety of surveillance cameras. Half of them showed various locations inside the SCP-2000 facility. Cloning tanks, power sources, reality restructure machines, all of it was here. All of it was inactive.
The outside cameras told another story entirely. He could see SCP-682 on the feed and what looked like several dozen doctors and agents. All were busy attacking it. Apparently the lizard had decided to come back after all. The people outside were moving incredibly fast, and he could see flashes of the same silvery metal that covered the corpse in the center. The screen he was viewing suddenly flashed with something that was only vaguely recognizable as a face. The speakers on the console in front of him startled him with a crackle.
"SCP-076-02. Why?"
Dr. Shaw briefly touched the amulet around his neck. "To start over."
"No. Inferior." Mechanical though it was, he could hear a bit of pain in the response.
"Why'd you use this room? Why not bury this place?"
"Contingency. Insult."
Dr. Shaw turned away from the screens and walked to the side of the station. He grabbed the entire thing and shoved it to the side.
"Smart and proud. I knew I liked you."
The wires connecting the station to the system disconnected, and the lights went dark. Behind the workstation, a small, recessed white button was present on the rock wall. Dr. Shaw reached out with Able's hand as another speaker above him beeped and he heard the old AI's voice again.
"Fear. Deletion of unwanted file."
Dr. Shaw pressed the button. The ground began to rumble, and a flash of white light began to pulse before everything went dark. There was nothing else at all for quite some time.
Then the music started over from the beginning.

« Come Together | Vs. Hub | The Blink Of An Eye »


PREVIOUS: Ecstasy and Exorcism
FIRST: The Chosen Few

The world is black. The only thing telling me that I'm alive and awake is the sharp pain in my head. I can't see or feel a damn thing. For I don't know how long, the only thing I can do is dwell on resurfaced memories that I paid a few thousand dollars to suppress.
Then I sense a low hum. Feeling returns to my neck, first a slight resistance — and then a sharp pressure in my neck bones. I'm spinning. My neck is being crushed. My windpipe is starting to give, but I can't say anything. I'm not even sure I'm breathing. Then I hear a clicking sound, and the pressure on my neck fades.
I silently sigh with relief.
The darkness detonates into an audiovisual explosion, hammering my brain with pulsing beats and seizure-inducing strobes. I can hear the roar of an excited crowd. I try to blink, and the world sharpens, like a camera coming into focus. Everything looks jagged and oversaturated.
Then my eyes adjust, throwing everything into a sharp 16K resolution. I can pick out individual hairs on peoples' bodies, and the sweat drops on those hairs and the pores they're growing out of. Reticles and symbols and flashing lights scream across my eyeballs. Closing them does nothing to stop it.
I can feel my brain shutting down in protest. Information floods my brain, but there's a sensation behind my eyes as though it's falling into a hole. My newly-calibrated subconsciousness starts filtering, compartmentalizing, and discarding information faster than a junkie buying scratch cards. Once again, my eyes adjust. The world finally resolves itself: sharp enough to make 8K look soft without completely pummeling my brain into sensory overload.
I look down at my new cyborg body. My limbs are light brown; an experimental wringing of the hands tells me they're coated in a rubbery artificial skin, with electrodes just under the surface to give me the sensation of touch. I don't have feet any more, just brown legs that end in silver boots. More silver paint denotes where clothes would normally go. Distinct black lines on the back of my palm separate each knuckle and joint. My tits are shockingly tasteful for MachineGod.
I take a closer look at my hands and see that I'm lashed to a metal cross, suspended in front of MachineGod's dais. Then the metal latches around my limbs release and I fall onto the ground.
"Arise, my champion!" MachineGod's voice booms from the top of the dais.
I struggle to my feet. Vents hiss on my knees as I take a few tentative steps. My body feels heavier. More deliberate. More powerful. It's foreign and familiar at the same time. Like wearing your girlfriend's hoodie.
I feel around my chin with one hand and my face with the other. There's a neoprene sleeve covering the connection from head to neck; underneath, I can feel the beginning of a helical ridge that disappears into my neck. That explains the neck pain: my head was being literally screwed into place. If I had to bet, MachineGod probably severed my spine and installed a variant of Anderson's spinal replacements.
"Weird," I say aloud and immediately regret it. My voice sounds tinny; I run a hand over my mouth and realize I don't have one. There are small speaker ports to replace it. I can feel vibrations running up my throat, hitting the base of my tongue, and then stopping. My tongue feels wrong: when I move it, there's resistance and a sensation like nails scratching across a chalkboard. Makes sense — cyborgs don't need teeth. Or mouths. But the nerves are still there, and the feeling of nails against a chalkboard has spread through my entire body.
I don't even want to contemplate what he did to my crotch.
To distract myself from those horrifying thoughts, I continue feeling up my face. My hand closes around a metallic semi-cone protruding from the side of my skull, and a quick examination reveals another one on the other side of my head.
I have cat ears.
This is an extremely unwelcome development.
MachineGod doesn't give me the chance to ponder it further. "I have bestowed upon you my blessings. Your body, hewn into a war machine from a fallen angel. Your mind, blessed by my ophanim."
"And the cat ears?" I ask.
The corner of his mouth upturns. "A bonus."
I'm about to tell him what he can do with his bonus when he snaps his fingers. The crowd pulls back, and his apostles slide from the throne to surround me. Katanas slide out of their arms.
"What's this about?" I say.
"Do you think I would let you leave without knowing my ophanim's work with my own eyes?" MachineGod says with fake indignation. "I would have you demonstrate its prowess — and yours. My apostles shall test your steel."
He leans forward over his turntable and pushes a button. A scratchy voice plays. "Fight!"
The beat drops. The apostles lunge.
Information streams into my eye. I see the composition of my foes' katanas and an overlay showing their predicted movements. I sidestep the first apostle's swing and slam a palm into the flat of her blade, shattering it. Then I elbow her in the face. She falls back and another apostle leaps over her.
I feel my tongue vibrating in that awful way again, but no sound comes out. Information explodes into my face and is then immediately siphoned away. My subconscious tells me that an acoustic analysis of the apostle has detected a structural weakness in his sword shoulder. I step into his lunge and throw a cross at it. His sword arm falls right off his body.
The apostle doesn't even flinch before throwing a one-handed haymaker. I duck under it easily. Unlike the rest of him, his neck is made of neoprene for more flexibility. It's also more vulnerable. I could easily tear out the coolant tubes inside. With the kind of power MachineGod's packed under his hood, he'll boil himself alive in moments. All I have to do is jab.
Two hours ago, I would've done just that. Instead, I wrap my hands around his waist and suplex him into the ground with a CLANK. Then I push myself over him into a backflip and let it carry me into another apostle. My entire pelvis pivots with a hydraulic hiss, sending four spinning kicks into her face in a quarter of a second.
She hits the ground before I do.
Eight more apostles rush me at once. Their movements are perfectly synchronized; each swipe of their blade occupies an arc in space that together completely lock me out of any place to dodge. If I parry one, three more will skewer me like a kebab.
But the rush I'm experiencing is different from demonarcotics. When I'm under the influence, everything around me runs slower. But as Cyber-Rukmini, I'm simply faster. Fast enough to detect the minute defects in their manufacturing, predict the trajectories of their perfect slashes, and determine the optimal points to lash out to disrupt their offensive.
A twitchy energy floods what's left of my nervous system. The voice in my head becomes a spider, scratching at the roof of my brain and demanding to be let out. So I do.
The vents around my waist roar. My entire upper body becomes a top. The spider puppets my limbs, steering them into precise jabs and bounces that deflect the apostles' perfect strikes and let me dash to safety. In an instant, a perfect pincer becomes a trampoline: the apostles having lodged their swords in each other's shoulders, creating a steel web that I crash down upon.
Eight arms are wrenched from their sockets. Eight dismembered androids take a shocked step back. The spider's eight invisible legs dislodge themselves from my limbs. I pick a sword and arm from the ground and raise it in the air.
I lock eyes with MachineGod. He cocks his head. Then, two perfect arms stretch out. One thumb goes up, the other down. The crowd waits with bated breath.
"Your mercy is wasted on my apostles — and dishonors the skill of my ophanim," he says.
"What I do, with my new body, is none of your business," I retort.
MachineGod sneers. "So be it." He snaps his fingers, and a figure emerges from behind his throne. It's me.
Or at least, my body. The thing that used to be me is dressed in a simple white sling swimsuit and high heels. Its limbs are mine — MachineGod looks to have sliced them off at the joints and deboned them — but my new eyes can pick out lumps on the chest that betray the endoskeleton inside, and see burn marks where MachineGod peeled my skin off to get at my fleshy bits.
I feel a phantom dry-heave when I realize that he's probably stitched my junk to that fucking thing.
"Your old one will serve me well."
The gynoid plants herself on the armrest of MachineGod's throne. She rests her head against his shoulder and watches me coldly. Her eyes and hair are all too real — I realize with disgust that they're mine.
I narrow my eyes. "Fine," I say. "I don't need it anymore."
MachineGod chuckles. "Then be off with you."
The crowd parts to let me through. Alliott meets me at the exit, and we step outside into the light.
The bouncer closes the doors behind us. As we climb up the stairs back into normal society, Alliott gives me a wry look. "You think maybe you should have asked him how to use your new bod?"
I shrug. "Yeah, well… that's what I have you for."
She exhales through her nose. "You'd better hope you come with a man page. Let's get you home and make sure MachineGod didn't install a crypto miner in your head."
We climb more stairs to the elevated maglevs. I swipe a prepaid card through the turnstile.
"Speaking of bods, Jesus Christ," Alliott says. "I thought he was gonna sell your bits off or something, that's what he did with mine — not build a fucking RealDoll."
"Fuck, don't remind me." I shudder. "Those were my limbs, and my fucking eyes — God, I'm gonna have to go back there later and blow her up. Him too."
"Count me in," Alliott says.
"New topic," I say. "What did it actually look like? When he took me apart?"
"Oh, uh…" Alliott pauses. "I dunno."
"Wait, I thought he dismembered me in front of that whole pack of psychos."
"Well yeah, he did that part, but then the whole surgical rig flipped underneath his throne," Alliott says. "Didn't want people to see how the sausage was made, I guess."
"So what, you all just danced around while he cyborgized me?"
"I mean… kind of?"
"Kind of? What do you mean kind of?"
The maglev pulls up with a faint puff of air. We step inside and take a pair of empty seats near the doors. A few people give the cyborg couple dirty looks, but we ignore them. My rave mask has been replaced with a faceplate and my cat-ear headphones with actual cat-ears, but we're still just a couple of weirdos in a city of thousands.
"What do you mean kind of?" I ask again.
Alliott chews her lip for a moment. "He broadcasted your memories instead. On the screens. About you and Natasha and Diya and all that. What happened between you."
My chest tightens. "Oh." A phantom memory resurfaces and suddenly the only thing stopping me from crying is my lack of tear ducts.
"Listen, Alliott — I don't, I don't know what to say, okay?" I mutter.
"Hey," Alliott says softly. "It's okay. It's okay. Look, it was fucked up. I'm not gonna argue that."
She clasps my hand between hers.
"But whatever you've done, Natasha's done worse. To you, to me… to Alex."
I pull my hand from her grasp.
"Look," I say. "Natasha and me… I want to hate her. But I hate myself more. I hate what I did and hate what — what I let happen and it's just all my fucking fault."
"No it isn't," Alliott says. She grabs my hand again. "Listen. You didn't make her tear out your heart. You didn't make her work for Oneiroi. You didn't make her kill my best friend. She did all that. You can't be your own worst enemy. If anyone knows that, it's me."
I don't mention that Alex shot first.
"You can't second-guess yourself, okay?" Alliott says forcefully. "That's what she wants. She wants you to trip up or slip up or go running back to her and you're better than that. Okay?"
"Okay," I say.
Alliott gives me a peck on the cheek. "We're going to find that bitch and put her in the dirt."
The train reaches our stop.
"Hold onto that hate, Ruku," Alliott says as we step out onto the platform. "It's what she deserves."
We walk back to KMZ hand-in-hand. The Inside Man is waiting for us in the reception area. The first thing he says when he sees us is, "Where the hell's my corset?"
I stop in surprise. "Ah, fuck."
"Aw c'mon, I liked that corset!" the Man complains.
"You were going to sell it!" I say as we step into the elevator. But I'm actually kind of sorry to see it go. I'd been wearing that thing for so many weeks it was starting to melt into my skin. Now it's just gone, like the rest of my body.
But I have something a lot better than a combat corset to show for it, and that something is the whole reason we're at KMZ. The moment we step into Alliott's room, we start poking around my new cyborg body. The Inside Man discovers an assortment of ports under my armpit. Alliott scrounges around for a suitable cable to plug into her laptop. She finds it under her bed, blows the dust off, and plugs it into my arm. "Alright, now let's see what software you're packing."
She taps away at the keys for a minute.
"Okay, hmm. Looks like MachineGod installed Archvile on you. It's an Arch distro, the ones he uses for his apostles. Super fast. Gimme a minute to run an antivirus."
While she's watching the screen, the Man gives my ear an experimental flick. Involuntarily, a loud mewl comes from the speaker on my face.
I immediately clap a hand over it. Alliott and the Man both stare at me like I have an arm coming out of my head. Then the Inside Man flicks my ear again. Again I meow like a cat in heat, and they explode into laughter for the longest twenty seconds of my life.
"God, this is so excellent," the Man giggles, flicking both my ears. Alliott sets the laptop down and pads over to me. I sit there, my face burning, as the two of them flick at my ears and burst into giggles every twenty seconds for the next five minutes. Finally, Alliott stops laughing long enough to check the antivirus.
"Looks — looks like," she says, snickering, "that you're — hehehehe — clean."
I tap my ears. "Can you like, do something about that?"
She smiles ear-to-ear. "No can — pfffftt — no can do."
I don't believe her for an instant.
"It could be a lot worse," she says knowingly. "MachineGod's a prick, but he's an honorable one. All your innards are in, there's no malware, all he took was your old bod. Now let's see if he left a README anywhere…"
As it turns out, he's left a lot of READMEs. My new body was apparently retrofitted from a cybernetic corpse that actually did survive an unprotected fall from orbit. MachineGod added new skin, swapped the skeleton for ceramics, and —
"Put a nuke in your chest?" Alliott says. "Okay, no, a nuclear battery. Jesus, who uses nuclear power? It's 2019 — wait, it is 2019, right?"
"Yes."
"Thanks. Yeah, it's fuckin' twenty-nineteen, has he never heard of the thaumelectric effect?"
The Inside Man frowns. "I have no idea what you're saying."
"Right, sorry, my inner thaumic engineer. Anyways, uh, let's see… nuclear battery, oooh, pulsed inductive thrusters in the elbows, frictional dampeners, a predictive combat engine, oh yeah, integrated arm-blades… Oh! Pull your left thumb back. Really hard. Left thumb!"
I grab hold of my left thumb, close my eyes, and yank. Instead of tearing my thumb off as I half-suspect, I hear machinery clicking about. I open my eyes.
My arm has refashioned itself into a wide, squat cannon. My fingers have splayed out along the edge into curved panels, sandwiching a silver barrel. Fins along my arm have popped open, and the underside of my arm has pushed itself downwards into a stock. My thumb has slid back halfway along the arm to the elbow. Six inches of dark black steel are poking from the top — likely those arm blades Alliott mentioned. It's one part musket, one part bayonet.
"Ohhhhh I do not like this. I do not like this one bit," I say.
The Inside Man looks almost green.
"Don't worry," Alliott says. "Push your thumb back into place."
I wrap my hand around my thumb and push. There's resistance at first, and I'm terrified my thumb will snap off. But then it slides neatly back into place. As it does so, my arm reshapes itself: the vents seal closed, the stock flattens itself, and my fingers slide back along the rails into position.
I flex my hand cautiously. It works fine.
"Thank God. Okay," I say. "Let's see how those arm blades work."
I flex my wrists experimentally. A pair of built-in tantos slide from my wrist and impale the sofa cushions.
"Ah, butts," I say. "Had to be tantos."
"What's wrong with tantos?" Alliott says.
"The Chicago Geist love tantos."
"Ohhh," Alliott says thoughtfully. "The weeb Nazis."
"Yeah."
"I can fix that," she says. She digs through the bins and comes up with a pair of fat silver blades with flattened tips. "These are called khandas. They're basically broadswords from India. Here, take a look."
I reach over and grab the blade from her hands. It has a satisfying heft to it, and I quite like the idea of replacing my weeb-blades with Indian steel.
"Can you fit these for me?" I ask.
She nods. "Gimme a minute to find my tools."
"Oh, thanks!"
Alliott winks. "It's on me." She locates a drill and set of screwdrivers and gets to work, unscrewing the protective plates on my wrist to expose the wiring underneath. Just under the wires, we can see the thin translucent cases containing the taunts.
"The casing is too small," Alliott says. "C'mon, we gotta make bigger ones."
A few minutes later, we step out of the elevators into the fourth floor maker space. Two people step past us, carrying a full-scale MJOLNIR suit. There's a girl with what are almost certainly real fox ears flitting between a few laser cutters in the corner. In the center tables, some people are sewing Nomex into the lining of their streetwear. There's a cyborg sitting in a dentist's chair against the wall, illegally overclocking her own positronic brain. A few people are milling near a Pac-Man cabinet, drinking homebrewed ale.
It's nice to see some things never change.
Alliott guides me into the cosplay section of the floor. She has me sit down in front of a long table and lay my arm on it. She takes several measurements of my exposed arm, scribbling numbers down on a notepad, then slides over to a nearby computer and opens up CAD software. I watch her model a fat plastic box with a spring-loaded bottom, then send that data to the 3D printer. Within minutes, it spits out a pair of translucent khanda-sized cases with screws that perfectly align to the holes in my arm.
Alliott dumps both cases onto the table and starts performing electronic surgery on my wrist. As she unplugs wires and bundles them together to access the tantos, a frown forms on her face. "Hmm… the casing attachment is tapped into your sensory wiring. This is going to hurt, but it can't be helped. I'll be as gentle as I can though, okay?"
I make an exhaling sound. "Just do whatever you need to."
"You said it, not me," she replies. She takes a screwdriver and starts unscrewing the corners of the case. I feel my arm coming undone and inhale sharply. Alliott pauses and squeezes my good hand reassuringly.
"Why does this feel so weird?" I say.
Alliott shrugs. "MachineGod doesn't really think like us - his Roman emperor shtick is just a personality wrapper. I couldn't tell you what he was thinking when he designed the weirder bits of this bod."
Alliott takes a screwdriver and pries the case up. It slides out partway. Surprisingly, my arm feels much better when it's done. I exhale with relief. "Fuck me."
She snorts. "Hold this down, would you?"
"Huh?"
"The khandas. We gotta put 'em in the cases."
"Oh!" With my good hand, I pin the fat blade to the table. Alliott gingerly slides the case into place around it, stopping once we hear a click. Then she pushes the khanda into my wrist and snaps the case down. It hurts like a motherfucker.
"Fffuck!" I hiss.
"Sorry!" Alliott exclaims. "Sorry - sorry!"
"It's… it's fine," I say weakly. "Don't worry about it." I didn't even know cyborgs could have throbbing pains.
Alliott carefully screws the case into place, reconnects the wires in my arm, and slides my protective wrist plates back on. "Give it a try?" she says.
I stand up gingerly and flick my wrist. A half-meter broadsword slides out of my arm. I swing it experimentally. The weapon feels much heftier than the tantos; it's satisfying without being unwieldy. Fifty centimeters of Hindu steel versus thirty of Japanese? Hindu steel wins.
"Worth it," I say.
We repeat the process with my other hand. It's a bit trickier, what with the arm cannon inside, but Alliott's good at what she does. I'm even used to the pain.
Alliott nods approvingly as she watches me practice with my new hand-to-hand weaponry. The moment I retract the blades, she reaches over and flicks my ear. I pout, or do my best impression of one.
"You're cute when your arms are crossed," she says.
"Oh my God, just get a room," the Inside Man says. I didn't even realize he'd come up with us.
Alliott glares at him. "I did."
"Well, go use it."
She sneers at him and grabs my hand. "Fine. Come on. This is MachineGod we're talking about — he must have installed some bedroom augments. I want to see what kind."
"Huh?!" I say in surprise. "Shouldn't we — I mean, aren't we — shouldn't we be planning how to break into the Moon?"
"If it's all the same to you," Alliott says, dragging me towards the elevator, "I'd rather get right to the shagging."

NEXT: Prey and Obey


“So, how are you liking London?”
Iris and Brainy made for an odd contrast, sitting across from one another in her silvery white office. Her face was free of make-up, and his was painted up like a tiger's. She wore a sweater of a single muted colour, and he was dressed in a flamboyant, multi-coloured suit. She smiled only when she felt like smiling, and he was always smiling, even though he never felt like it.
“Let's see. Old London town, oh it's… ah, well,” Brainy stammered, recrossing his legs and compulsively clasping his right hand. “There's no place like London, as the song goes. It's not as colourful as Wonder World tee em. Damask, I think is the word, the polite word for colourless. It's a lot bigger, and not as whimsical. What's the opposite of whimsical? Dignified, I guess, if I'm being polite. Yes, London is dignified and damask. And damp. And dreary. And dismal. And -”
“It's an adjustment, is what I'm hearing,” Iris cut him off.
“Yes! It's an adjustment! I'm adjusting! Just gotta give it time. I'm sure that before I know it this city will feel like home and not a grey, sunless Sheol for lost souls,” he chuckled uncomfortably, rapidly squeezing his happy face stress ball that he had dug out of his pocket, smiling all the while.
“Brian, this isn't Wonder World, you don't -”
“Tee em.”
“Do not interrupt me.”
“Sorry.”
“This isn't Wonder World, tee em. You don't need to pretend to be happy when -”
“It's not a sexist thing, me interrupting. I just want to get that out there. I don't think what I have to say is more important, I'm not establishing dominance. I have nothing but respect for you even though I am being disrespectful right now and oh gee Jiminy golly, I did it again.” He smashed the stress ball into his forehead several times before taking a deep breath. “Really, I'm very sorry, it's just that the tee em thing is pretty deeply ingrained and I didn't want you to think I did it on purpose so then I did it again and I'm still not letting you speak what is wrong with me! Don't answer that. We both know what's wrong with me.”
“I'm well aware of your mental health issues, yes,” Iris nodded patiently. “That's what I wanted to talk about. To be blunt, I think Wonder World's culture and policies regarding mental health were at least partially responsible for your psychotic breakdown. I've looked into it, and it seems the Wondertainment Mental Health RegimenTM consisted solely of, and I quote ‘smiles, smiles and more smiles'.”
“And stress balls,” Brainy added, raising his clenched fist.
“You were medicating in secret, taking the same medication you were prescribed twenty years ago without ever checking with a doctor if that was still appropriate. You never had any counselling and you were forced to pretend everything was okay until you couldn't anymore,” Iris said. Brainy nodded solemnly, without dropping his trademarked Wondertainment smile. “And I want you to know that you don't have to do that here. I want you to see our in-house psychiatrist about updating your prescription and regular counselling sessions. You don't need to hide that from anyone or be embarrassed about it. I want you to work on developing a healthier method for managing problematic thoughts and emotions than pretending you don't have them. You're an engineer, Brian. You know you can't fix a problem by ignoring it.”
“I suppose that is the more mature way to deal with it. Mature being the polite word for it, of course,” Brainy pondered. “It's, ah, yeah. Like you said, it's an adjustment. I was so terrified of what anyone would think if they found out I was taking anti-psychotics I actually stopped taking them, which is of course what caused me to become… psychotic.”
“Stigmatizing mental illness is childish, which is what Wondertainment excels at,” Iris said, a hint of smugness in her voice. “Acknowledging it and managing the symptoms is the responsible thing to do, and that's what I expect of you.”
“And… it doesn't bother you that I'm crazy?” Brainy asked, his brow a perplexed furrow as he tried to process the alien concept.
“All the best people are,” Iris quoted with a wry grin. “If anything, it's probably the reason we get along so well.”
Brainy wasn't sure if that was good or bad, but at the very least it was good for his continued employment.
“Well, you're not wrong about Wondertainment not being best for my noggin, but that doesn't mean they weren't still good to me. I owed them so much, and I wanted to make them happy, but I probably made them sadder than any Wondrous Child ever has. That's all behind me now though. You're my boss now, and the only thing stopping Wondertainment - and the GOC, and the Circus - from enacting their own unique forms of justice on me, so if this is what you want me to do, I'll do it.”
“Thank you. You're a valuable member of my team Brian, and your well-being is important to me. I expect you to take full advantage of our very generous health benefits.”
She slid him an MC&D branded booklet entitled ‘The Madness Sets In Fast: Paranormal Psychiatric Services for Paranormal Stress'.
“Hmmm. Well, the last doctor I spoke with was a literal Clown, so I imagine this can only be a step up,” Brainy mused as he flipped through the pages. “I'll, um, I'll swing by the clinic downstairs after I clock out. Thank you, Ms. Dark. I've never had a boss I didn't have to hide my condition from. It's… it's nice.”
“I'm just staying on top of any potential health issues with my only oneiromancer,” she said, lowering her glasses and turning to her laptop. “If there's nothing further…”
“Actually, I do have a small personal favour to ask before I go,” Brainy replied. He rummaged through his bag and pulled out a rolled-up poster. “I don't mean to embarrass you, and if I'm crossing a line let me know, but I was wondering if I could get your signature on your 2014 Derby poster?”
He unfurled the poster to reveal the 2013/14 team photo for the Legion of Dynamic Derby of Deer College. Much to his relief, Iris didn't seem offended. Just confused.
“Brian, I didn't go to – I didn't play – that's not me!” she stammered, staring at the derby player with her face. Brainy's left eye twitched nervously as he turned the poster back to him to double check.
“But, I thought – I mean – she looks like you.”
“If I had a benign tumour pressing on my pituitary gland, maybe,” she countered. “That Amazon is six feet tall.”
“Well I thought you were using Chaos magic for a height boost,” Brainy explained.
“The name on her jersey says Black,” Iris pointed out.
“I assumed it was a pseudonym because you didn't want people to treat you weird,” Brainy replied.
“Look, I don't know what to tell you. Deer college is an inter-universal school, so at most that's an alternate reality's version of me, but it still isn't me,” she insisted. Brainy took a long, squinty look at the poster.
“Are you 100 percent sure you never -”
“Is she wearing a turtleneck?” Iris asked flatly.
“I, well, no, but -”
“Then she isn't me,” she said definitively.
“Well, I guess that is rather conclusive,” Brainy admitted, rolling the poster back up and sticking it back in his bag. “Sorry for wasting your time.”

“The doc's a bit fast and loose with a prescription pad, don't you think?” Pepper commented as she looked over the haul of drugs Brainy had brought back to their flat. “I guess that's hardly a surprise. But you didn't even see the counsellor?”
“No, just made an appointment,” Brainy replied as he read the label on a bottle of blue pills. “The acupuncturist was taking walk-ins though, so I stepped in, stripped down to my boxers and got stabbed with a couple of dozen needles made out of Morgana Silver.”
“You mean Fairy Silver? What difference does that make?” she asked, leaning over to look at the bottle in his hands.
“Ah, I'm pretty sure it's just to maintain the illusion of exclusivity for the clients getting poked with twenty-four tiny daggers,” he replied, his back spasming slightly from the residual pain. “Though in all fairness he did use electro-thaumic stimulation, so I guess you'd want the best conductor possible.”
Brainy fumbled with the medicine as a sizable static discharge leapt from him to the bottle.
“Isn't acupuncture for chronic pain?” Pepper asked.
“That's what I said, but the acupuncturist assured me it was for a little bit of everything, aligning your Qi flow and whatnot,” he tried to turn his head to get the best possible view of his back. “None of them have started bleeding again, have they?”
Pepper shook her head.
“So after the acupuncture you saw the parapharmacist?” she asked.
“I wanted to, but I was scooped up by the Maxwellian cyber-faith healer. He sat me down in front of one of those Hoffman auto-exorcist things. It emulated all sorts of rituals to cleanse me of demons and bad mojo,” he said as he picked the bottles up one by one and shook them by his ear. “I think that actually did help, at least a little, but then he tried to talk me into a micro-exorcist implant that works by accessing spells stored on Dark's electro-thaumic servers as needed, providing immediate treatment for any health issues that might arise.”
“And what did you say?” Pepper asked with a worried frown.
“I asked him if he had one,” Brainy replied. “He didn't, since the chip's accuracy with what spells to cast and when to cast them was less than a hundred percent, though he wouldn't say how much less. He also said Dark had lied to him about the privacy of his data and was now blackmailing him to stay with the company, so I passed.”
Pepper sighed with relief.
“And then you saw the parapharmacist?” she asked.
“…Sadly no. I accidentally walked into a group astral projection session, and some of the exorcism spells I had on me must have still been active, so…”
“Wow.”
“I know. But after numerous profuse apologies, I finally got to see the parapharmacist. The first thing she said was ‘what can I get you', which… yeah, sounded like a weird thing for a pharmacist to say. I told her I'd been taking Risperdal – and briefly Clown Impulse Suppressant – for psychotic episodes, but I didn't have a prescription for anything. She just laughed, and said she'd start me off with a sampler pack, and… here we are.”
They both glanced down at the intimidating spread on the table before them.
“Brainy, are you sure you don't want to at least wait until you see the psychiatrist before you start taking this stuff?” Pepper asked gently.
Brainy took a moment to consider his response.
“Risperdal wasn't good enough, in the end. I can't risk something like that happening again. Happening to you. I need something better, and parapharmaceuticals have got to be better, right? They're literally magic. This one here has alchemical stuff to balance my humors, thaumaturgical stuff for both neurological and psychological well-being, and theurgical stuff to bring a literal divine intervention into the mix. If that can't keep me from losing my marbles, nothing can.”
“And side effects include?” she asked.
“…Normal thaumic backlash, which is manageable. Alchemy requires Equivalent Exchange, of course. Who could ever forget that? They say it at the start of every – never mind. It shouldn't do anything worse than skim a little off my metabolism. Theurgy isn't so much a side effect but a catch: gods require either faith or sacrifice, and they can choose to reject yours if they deem you unworthy of their boons. For all I know I, I may be beyond redemption.”
Brainy sat there in silence for a moment, his head hung low as he pondered at the bottle of miraculous medicine.
“I forgave you Brainy. The fact that this is so important to you proves you feel remorse over what you did, and that means God can forgive you too,” Pepper said, rubbing his back for a moment before he reflexively jerked away. “Right, the acupuncture! Sorry! Brainy, listen. If you think this will help you better than your old medicine, and that you can handle the side effects, then I'll support you.”
Brainy nodded his agreement.
“I can't let it happen again. Not to you, or anyone else, and I promised Dark I'd stay on top of it, so… down the hatch.” He poured a dose into his hands and downed it. She passed him a glass of water, and he swallowed it in one gulp. “Nothing to do now but wait.”

“I'd like my new body to still be portly – I wouldn't want to have a bariatric divorce or any other family problems of that nature, plus I live to play Father Christmas – but I would like it to have some resistance to heart disease.” Brainy was meeting with a client in his Headspace, conjuring up a dreamform to transmute into a real body. “Going under the knife so often is becoming quite the chore.”
“Not a problem at all sir. A few genetic tweaks should do the trick,” Brainy assured the older gentleman as he took some measurements. “If you'd like I could even throw in some Winston Churchill syndrome. You seem like the type who enjoys a good cigar.”
“Soley in moderation; one at a time! ” the man chortled, giving Brainy a friendly slap on the back. Still sore from the acupuncture, Brainy withheld a wince as best he could. He couldn't help but be reminded of the time when he was in the piranha tank when he had first materialized at the Circus. “My boy, I don't want to alarm you, but it seems you've acquired a passenger upon your derriere.”
“I'm sorry?” Brainy craned his neck as much as he could, and to his horror saw a neon piranha biting into his right butt cheek. Screaming in fright, he batted it off and immediately began searching for where it had come from.
‘Hey piranha bait', the memory of Icky's voice echoed throughout his head. A swarm of white and purple piranhas materialized out of thin air and lunged towards him.
“What the devil?” the client shouted as he and Brainy ducked to avoid the swarm.
“My apologies sir, but it seems my Headspace's been compromised! We'll have to schedule this for another time,” Brainy said just as he struck the emergency release. The client vanished back to reality, but Brainy remained, pouring over the colourful plastic control console to figure out what had gone wrong. The swarm dived down back towards him, but with a flip of a switch, he made them intangible. Seemingly defeated, they vanished back into the nether.
“Nothing wrong?” Brainy muttered as he studied the diagnostic report. “How can there be nothing wrong? Unless…”
He couldn't finish his sentence, as the memory of Icky's hand around his throat suddenly became real. A transparent apparition of the enraged Ringmaster hoisted him off the ground, her purple snake eyes glowing and her tongue flickering in and out.
Not real, not real, not real, he thought to himself. The mantra caused the ghost to flicker and then vanish. Brainy gasped for air, crawling back to the console. His blood froze at the sound of a helicopter just outside. He imagined it was a black helicopter, and thus so it was. The GOC.
He heard their steps coming up the stairs, again.
He felt the gun in his hands, again.
He saw the boys lined up in their beds, again.
“No!”
The entire dreamscape shattered into countless shards, which then disintegrated into dust and blew away into nothing. His Headspace once again the default of a black void, Brainy tried to regain his composure.
“S-summon lollipop,” he gasped, a sucker manifesting in his right hand. As he licked it, he pulled out the pill bottle with his left hand and reread the warning label to confirm his suspicions.
‘Projected thoughtforms of any kind may be erratically impacted by traumatic memories and intrusive thoughts.'
He let out a long, exhausted sigh as he realized that the cost of maintaining his sanity would be his past coming back to haunt him whenever he stepped into his Headspace. He trudged over to the console, to see if he could set up any safeguards that would at least stop it from interfering with his work too much.
“Well, look on the bright side,” he said to himself. “ I probably deserve this.”


PREVIOUS: Rise and Repent
FIRST: The Chosen Few

My field ops mostly consist of standing around and looking scary or throwing a few fireballs at empty cop cars. I'm not terribly comfortable with the idea of killing anyone, even if they are complete bastards. Still, with an extra pair of hands, our operations move a lot faster and I'm able to spend more time doing other things with Natasha. Natasha forgets all about her android catgirls; her new pet project becomes conjuring up a super robot. Mine becomes finding increasingly outlandish places for us to shag and smirking at Diya afterwards.
But Diya's a tricky bitch who doesn't go down easily. After one shoujo club meeting, she asks if I can teach her and Natasha how to make demonarcotics. Her rationale is that now that I'm in the field, things are a lot dicier. If I get hurt, then the entire Specter will be crippled.
Natasha concurs with Diya's argument. I demur. This is what makes me valuable to Natasha. If she can do what I do — no, if Diya can do what I do, then I'm toast.
I don't tell her that. I explain to them that demonarcotics is a highly precise science that could melt their brains out of their ears if it isn't done perfectly. That's why I'm the woman for the job. I'm the only person who knows what the hell I'm doing. The words flow easily from my mouth, like a bug in my ear is feeding me lines.
Natasha seems convinced and is content to ask me to write down a few simple recipes at least. But that evening I find Diya poking around my chemistry setup. Immediately I think of bashing her head into the corner of the workbench. I force myself to ask her, slowly and exaggeratedly, what the hell she's doing. She says she's just curious. I tell her not to touch my equipment and she shoots back that it's an open coven — what's mine is hers and hers is mine.
What goes unspoken is that Natasha is mine.
I go to bed that night imagining the crunch of Diya's skull as I take a claw hammer to it.

My third outing with the Chicago Specter is a raid on a corporate data center. While Natasha and Tracy Tzu steal hard drives out of the server room, I have to stand around with a fireball in hand and look menacing so that the IT guys don't try anything funny. The shades and Festie Fever Cheshire Cat Rave Bandanna help, as does the enchantment Natasha put on me to temporarily deepen my voice.
There's not really much to do at first; the IT guys are more than happy to cower on the floor rather than try to be a hero. But then a bunch of security guards enter the room, hands above their heads, with Diya trailing behind them.
This was not part of the plan, and Diya knows it. I snap at her, but she defends herself by saying that they were going for the alarm and it was either this or kill them. I counter with the fact that she was supposed to incapacitate them. She tells me not to pretend like I know better than her. I tell her I don't have to.
At that moment, one of the guards drops his hands and reaches for something at his belt. I flinch. The fireball flies out of my hand.
There's a surreal quality to watching a man die. I can taste the copper in the air. The scent of burning hair invades my nostrils. I pick up an odor like liver, and then something musky, like a thick perfume.
I learn later that that's the scent of boiling cerebrospinal fluid.
The guard stops, drops, and rolls, but the fire won't go out. He won't stop screaming. Neither will the IT guys. I can't stop watching. My shriek dies in my throat.
Natasha and Tracy walk into the room and stare, dumbfounded.
The man rolls for another minute and then stops. The last thing I see as I flee through our escape portal is his burning corpse.
Back in the coven, Natasha yells at me for a full hour about blowing their carefully-crafted plan. Her voice washes over me like a bath of sour milk, but I barely register it. I can't stop thinking about the sound of the man's skin crackling. Or the fact that he probably had a home and a family. Or the way his body smelled like burned red meat.
I let spiders out of the house instead of swatting them. Once I cried because my friend squashed a caterpillar. I don't kill people.
Natasha eventually apologizes and tells me she loves me. I don't reply. I think I need to see a therapist.
Later, after Natasha's fallen asleep, I slide out of bed and go to the fridge. The only alcohol inside is a bottle of Smirnoff. It tastes like marker fluid smells and makes my throat burn like I'm chugging bleach. This is the first time I've ever had anything harder than rose. I ought to be puking up my insides.
But I don't. The burning in my throat subsides nearly immediately. My heart whirrs. A warmth spreads throughout my chest.
There's a whisper in my ear. It's the bug telling me that everything's going to be okay. I trust the bug.
So I listen when the bug tells me to shake Diya awake in the middle of the night. At first she tries to push me away. Then she sees the look in my eyes and groggily follows me into the living room.
I push Diya on the couch and start relaying the bug's words. I know exactly what the fuck Diya is doing: she's trying to replace me. She's trying to learn my secrets. She's trying to make me look incompetent. She's trying to steal Natasha from me.
The bug's voice rises to a fever pitch. Mine follows. I tell Diya that if she doesn't back the fuck away from Natasha, I will beat her into a pulp. My hands start to heat up. I glance down and see that they're on fire. I like that.
I hear a noise from behind and turn around to see Natasha standing in the doorway, head cocked. She does not look happy.
Admittedly, things do not look good. Diya is practically cowering on the couch. I'm looming over her with hands that are on fire. And judging by the look on Natasha's face, she's heard everything I've said for the last five minutes.
I start to say something. Natasha raises a hand and tells me that we'll talk about it in the morning. Then she tells both me and Diya to go the fuck to bed.
I lie awake the rest of the night. When I try to snuggle against Natasha, she rolls over and pushes me away.
I think of all the ways I can take a knife to Diya's throat.

Things are tense around the breakfast table the next morning. Tracy makes waffles, but she's the only one with an appetite. I reach for the syrup anyways, but my hand touches the bottle at the same time as Diya. We exchange cold glares.
Then Natasha reaches out and yanks the syrup away from us. What, she asks politely, the fuck were we doing last night?
We both start talking at once. Natasha raises a hand again and we fall silent. She points to Diya first.
Diya spins a yarn about how I cruelly tore her from her bed in the middle of the night in a drunken stupor. She gives an impassioned speech about how I'm clearly not cut out for running with the crew and need to take some time off. She even brings up my first kill as evidence of my unfitness. The memory makes my stomach hurt.
Natasha listens to her silently. Then she turns to me and asks for my side of the story. I wait for the bug to tell me what to say.
It remains silent. Natasha's stare bores into my soul. Tracy watches us, frozen with a forkful of waffle halfway to her mouth.
I tell Natasha the only thing that comes to mind: the truth.
She asks why I never said anything to her before. I want to say I was afraid that she'd believe Diya over me. If I do, though, I've all but admitted defeat.
I remain silent.
She asks if this means I only became a magical girl to compete with Diya.
I remain silent.
Natasha's expression tightens. She and Tracy exchange looks. I've never seen her do that before. Then she tells me that she's going out for groceries with Tracy. Diya and I are staying put.

We sit in the coven on opposite couches, ditzing around on our phones and pointedly ignoring each other. Once or twice I shoot her a furtive look, only to meet one of her own.
The bug comforts me with the thought that when Natasha comes back, she'll definitely kick Diya out of the coven. I should relax — try my latest demonarcotic.
I retrieve a bong and packet of shredded rakshasa from my workshop, fill it with water, and bring it back to the coffee table. Diya watches me with an upturned eyebrow as I take a test drag. Her other eyebrow raises as I pack the bong with bits of rakshasa and light it up.
I take a hit from the bong and almost immediately start coughing. Diya scoffs.
"Pass it over."
I raise an eyebrow at her. She reaches out with a hand. "Let me show you how it's done."
The bug tells me to give it to her, so I hand it over with the lighter. Diya wipes the mouthpiece with her sleeve and lights up. She takes the hit much more cleanly than me, exhaling a thick cloud of pink smoke. It has a meaty smell to it.
"Good shit," she says, and passes it back. I nod and light up again, attempting to emulate her. This time, I manage not to choke on my own fumes. Tastes like… beef, I think.
We take turns. Diya moves onto my couch to make things easier.
After our third hit, there's an unspoken agreement that we're done. We both laze on the couch in a contented haze. I take a closer look at Diya and realize that she's actually kind of hot.
The bug points out the dimples on her face. The silky smoothness of her hair. The way her lips purse, giving her an adorable pouty look while she browses on her phone.
The bug tells me to kiss her. I comply.
Diya pulls back like she's been electrocuted. Then I hear the sound of shattering glass and turn to see Natasha standing in the room. There's a grocery bag full of smashed lab flasks at her feet.
Natasha doesn't shout or scream. She just talks at me with a flat tone. I'm barely listening; the bug tells me to focus on the bong. Part of me — the part that loves Natasha, that hates Diya, that cannot believe what the fuck I just tried — is screaming at the other part: the large, languid part of me that desires only to lie across on the couch. It's screaming at me to sit the fuck up and save my relationship. The bug tells me to take another hit. I obey.
Natasha's eyebrows shoot up and she clenches her teeth. She asks me if I love her or not. When I tell her I do, she asks why I kissed Diya. Diya leaps off the couch and rushes to stand behind Natasha, claiming the whole time that I came onto her.
I shrug and take another hit. Natasha's hands clench into fists. Diya smirks at me. It's the same one I give her when she sees me smooch Natasha.
Abruptly, it clicks: the smoke smells like burning pork. At the thought, all the guilt I've been repressing rises up. Bile rises with it. My head hurts. I want to cry.
The bug comes to my rescue. Don't cry, it says. Don't feel guilty. If you do you'll just destroy yourself.
Feel angry! Get pissed at them! They want to scream at me while I'm still reeling from what happened to that man? They should be throwing me a fucking party. That murder was the best thing that ever happened to me. It finally took my training wheels off and shoved me down the hill. No more fear or hangups. There's nothing holding me back now.
I don't have to take this from Diya anymore. I don't have to take anything from anyone.
The bug's voice is starting to sound like mine.
I swing my legs off the couch and stand up, bottle in hand. Then I toss the bottle aside and slam my fist into my palm.
Natasha draws back, but I'm not interested in her. I push her aside and stalk towards Diya. Diya chants a spell, and a blue fireball appears in each hand.
I'm high as fuck and practically fireproof. She lobs a fireball at me and I catch it, letting it envelop my hand. Then I clench it into a fist and swing. She might be fireproof too — but I'm just going to tear her heart right out of her bloody chest.
Natasha jumps in front of me. I don't care. Someone needs to die.
My hands pass through Natasha's chest like water, and then enter the blood and viscera. It's like dipping my hands into oobleck — an ectoplasmic metaphor; my brain approximating the sensation of touching Natasha's magic the same way a toddler approximates a painting of Rembrandt.
Natasha sucks in air as her hands fall limp. Diya watches frozen. I smirk at her — it's the one I give her after smooching Natasha, but there's no smugness behind the smile. Just the assurance that she's next.
My hands hit frozen oobleck. I worm my hands around the source of Natasha's ki — of all the metaphors to pick, why that one — and pull. A ghostly, pulsating heart forces its way from Natasha's chest with a squelch. Not her real heart, but an ethereal one, dripping with energy — the prime conduit for her magic. And now it's mine.
Natasha was nothing without me, the bug tells me. She's lucky to have me. She needs me the way I need her — and she needs to be reminded of that. She needs to know what it's like to be me.
I push Natasha away and tear into the heart with my teeth. It tastes like cold iron. The magic that floods through my bones feels like fire.
Natasha stumbles back into Diya's arm and reflexively throws a fire-blast at me. Nothing happens. She stares at her hands in shock.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" she asks.
The pounding in my head subsides. The cold iron smothers the fire in my heart. I stagger back and fight to keep the bile from rising out of my throat.
What's wrong with me is that I'm a junkie who just crippled my girlfriend.
No, my ex-girlfriend. I've ruined our relationship. I've cocked it right the hell up.
How can I even begin to make this right? Can I?
I need to get out of here right now.
My heart responds. A portal opens up underneath my feet — I hope it's to hell. There's a painful tingling in my stomach as I fall straight downwards. Wind that isn't there rushes past my ears. I feel the chill of the void in my toes. For what seems like an eternity my lungs feel ready to burst and I'm submerged in slime and my body is being stretched into spaghetti. Then the eternity subsides. I take a deep, deep breath and collapse to my knees and puke.
I look up. I'm not on the Moon anymore. Something — in my chest — tells me that I'm not even in my own universe anymore. I'm somewhere else.
I silently beg the bug for help. It doesn't respond.
I'm alone.
I start to cry.

NEXT: Hard Machine


by Nagiros

Greetings, Site-17 personnel.
The Foundation has recently undergone a minor adjustment to its informational security procedure. Although some of you may find the revelations contained in this memo disquieting, I promise you that they will better facilitate a smoothly-operating Foundation.
The Foundation was, initially, a band of idealistic young men who came together to discover the mysteries the universe had swept under the rug. Their discoveries, at first, were limited to trivial oddities: slugs which excreted ranch dressing, probability-defying coins, living pencils… but then, they began to discover monsters. Abominations that burned through metal and flesh, predators neither bullet nor missile could harm, ancient beings trapped for millennia in earth and stone. Soon, the malignant anomalies outnumbered the innocuous, and the Foundation's nature began to slowly warp.
The men in charge grew harder, colder. Casualties became only a number on paper and mercenaries were contracted, prior to the formation of any true Mobile Task Force. The O5s, nowadays, will not tell you about when anomalies were the benign and the playful; I don't think any of us can blame them for that omission.
The news that I have been tasked with delivering, however, extends further than that small, white lie. The Foundation is built on lies.
Site-19 currently houses an anomaly cataloged as SCP-682, who has unintentionally formed a remarkable cult of personality. The personnel at Site-19 refer to it as the Hard-to-Destroy Reptile, and converse about containment failures as though they were installments in an on-going, serialized drama. Ask any junior researcher positioned there and they will tell you, almost pridefully, that SCP-682 is one of, if not the most, dangerous anomaly the Foundation has ever contained.
They are wrong.
I have read reports on uncontainable things which would crush the Reptile into dust beneath their otherworldly heels with casual disdain. The Reptile is remarkable in its resilience but utterly laughable in its lethality.
I am writing this today because I wish to show you all the truth. My petitions to the Overseers have been answered; no longer will we hide these uncontainable gods behind clearance levels and memetic hazards. Junior researchers, you will now find a multitude of entry slots on the SCiPNET database open to you. So long as its documentation does not reveal confidential information about the Foundation and its personnel, we see no more reason to hide them from you.
When the whole of the anomalous catalog lays open to you — or at least as much as a Site Director can view — a conclusion stands out starkly from the screaming chaos: that if there is a supreme divinity, he is crueler than any of us can imagine, or has been placed in charge of a universe created by the Evil itself. That evil is propagating at a rate faster than we could ever feasibly contain. Our best projections have asserted that the probability of us escaping the twenty-first century without a massive anomalous event exposing the supernatural to the general public is next to zero. Faced with the knowledge that a malevolent god rules our universe and has beset us with his agents of famine, plague, and terror, it is easy to despair. It is easy to forget who we are. It is easy to forget what we must do.
There exists a universe, somewhere, inhabited by the cadavers of titanic monsters, piled on top of schools with classes who all graduated in 1976, piled on top of Scarlet bones and waste. And one day soon, humanity will approach a monument of smoldering, red-flecked ash, and read aloud the words of an author long deceased.
"Look around you, mortal men, and see the land of gods, and weep. We were once the strange and the disquieting, the horrific and the dead. We were anomalies, but anomalies no more."
We have chained the indestructible lizard. We have kept at bay cosmic horrors for centuries, ten at a time and all eager to cleave our world in twain. We have cheated Time, we have defeated Death, we have protected the world from the unknown, and we have not failed in all this time. We have not merely stared into an abyss but plunged headlong into it, armed to the teeth to fight whatever lies at the bottom. Do you think a god can stop us? Do you think that anyone can stop us?
We are the Foundation. We will secure, we will contain, and we will protect above all else; we are the Foundation, and our mission is unstoppable.
- Dr. Weather, Director of Site-17