International Center for the Study of Unified Thaumatology: Three Portlands Campus
January 10th, 2011

Beatrice Ross looked around her, a cacophony of voices of thirty eager young mages filled the air as they awaited the first class of the Applied Evocation track for the term to begin. The classroom was shaped like a semicircular auditorium: a large center stage marked off with glowing runes was surrounded by observation rows and desks. Someone who clearly wasn't the professor was on stage for some reason- androgynous, short hair, baggy sweater, and reading that day's edition of The Portlander.
"Nervous?" Angela asked, her question bringing Beatrice's attention back to her immediate surroundings.
"A little." Beatrice turned to her friend with a small smile. "You?"
"I'll be honest, Bea, I am fucking stoked."
"I guess at least one of us should be," Beatrice chuckled.
The lights began to dim, drawing her attention back to the stage. A tall, gangly man in a black turtleneck stepped out. Even from the distance of her seat, Beatrice could make out the goggles he wore in his slicked-back hair, a scowl creeping onto his lips as he looked over his newest batch of pupils.
"I'm Dr. Hans Vogel," he said, his voice oddly soft for how well it projected across the distance. "To break the ice, I would request you each be honest with me. How many of you are here because you want to 'blow shit up'?"
An awkward silence followed, but eventually, a series of four or five hands came up in the audience. Angela began to raise hers as well, stopping as Beatrice elbowed her, and silently shook her head.
Vogel's scowl deepened.
"Get out," he said.
A few chuckles emerged from the crowd but vanished when his scowl deepened once more.
"I'm not joking," Vogel said. "Get out of my class. Don't return. You are not someone I will teach. You, you, you, you, and you. Begone!"
A slender finger pointed to each person who raised their hand in kind. One by one, each person packed up their things and left. Once they had vacated, the scowl vanished and was replaced with a cold frown.
"Now that the dead weight is cut, allow me to say that I have no tolerance for such careless mages," Vogel continued. "Evocation is an incredibly dangerous school, and I will be long dead in the ground before anyone in this institution treats it with the reckless abandon of a child that found a gun in the closet. You must treat it with extreme precision and caution, or you will kill everyone around you, and then yourself."
His gaze panned over the remaining students. A chill ran down Beatrice's spine as his eyes fell on her.
"If you are incredibly lucky in this life, you'll never need to use what you'll learn here in the wild," he added. "But, in the event you do, I will do everything in my power to make sure you are fully prepared, and ready."
He panned his eyes over the audience once more. The frown then became a small, smug smile.
"Alright," he said. "Enough scaring you. There is a lot of work for us to do. Before I'll allow you to throw around even a simple disembodied force projectile here, you will absolutely master the theoretical side of Evocation. I'm talking calculations. Essays. Readings. Your brains will be bursting at the seams."
He then gestured to the other person on the stage, who had now put their paper away and was standing up, and starting to stretch.
"I'd also like to take this opportunity to introduce those of you who have yet to meet them to Robin Thorne. They are our TA for the next few semesters and were in your shoes a year or two ago. They have some of the best theoretical understanding of evocation of any student I have ever taught. Get half as good as them, and you'll maybe be fine."

Portland, Oregon
September 24th, 2023

The trees of the Park Blocks of Downtown Portland were already beginning to transition: the green of the overhead canopy of deciduous trees speckled with lush reds, oranges, and yellows. A warm breeze would occasionally blow through, making the scene pleasant and comforting despite the heavy foot traffic about. A familiar aura soon was detected, and the agent began to look about for an old acquaintance. Agent Beatrice Ross imagined she could doze off here—were there not someone lurking in the city, looking to assassinate her and steal her soul.
"We have to stop meeting like this," Robin Thorne said, swiftly sliding onto the bench beside Ross. "How is the hand doing?"
Ross held up her gloved left hand and sighed. The hand made a very low mechanical whirr as it turned a full 360 degrees around the axis of her wrist.
"The Foundation supplied me with prosthetics last year after the incident - the right leg, too. They aren't bad, but I can't channel through them. So, I'm a righty only, now."
"A drag, I'm sure," Thorne commented, watching the hand spin around a few more times before coming to a stop. Ross noticed them rub a series of burn marks on their own wrists. She began to ask about them but stopped as her former TA continued. "I'm sorry about Angela, by the way. I know you two were close. How are you holding up?"
"Thanks," Ross replied with a sad smile. "I really appreciate that. I'm doing fine. Ultimately the best thing we can do now is to make sure whoever is doing this rots in Paramax. Did you bring the photos?"
Thorne nodded and pulled an envelope from their jacket. Gingerly, they opened it and revealed a series of photographs of shriveled, emaciated corpses. Before, Ross might have recognized each of them. Now they were all beyond recognition. The UIU agent went through them one by one.
"Dr. Vogel was found in his office at ICSUT. None of the campus security was aware of what happened until one of the other instructors found him the next morning. Security golems weren't tripped either. Irida Kemp was found in Evergreen Park. A little digging suggested she and her dog would walk there at the same time daily, in the evenings. We still haven't found the dog. Edmund Bray was found by his landlord in his apartment when he failed to pay rent that month. We think he might have been the first victim. In each case, there were no signs of struggle, so whoever did this either was very sneaky or knew the victims. Probably both."
Ross nodded and pulled out a photo of her own.
"Angela was home alone, and it's pretty clear a fight broke out, given the whole front wall of her house ended up in her front yard. While Angela was a trained conjurer, she wasn't bad at evocation, so whoever this is wasn't a pushover either. They would have to be a decent thaumaturge themself or at least heavily trained in anti-magic techniques."
Thorne looked over the photos in silence, their eyes flicking between each of them.
"This is someone we know, Bea," they said. "Someone in the class who is hunting us down."
"Would you be able to get contact information from the ICSUT Alumni Society?" Ross asked. "Or better yet, which of our classmates had Necromancy training?"
"I could get a warrant for that, sure," Thorne continued to examine the photos. "But it won't be quick. In the meantime, whoever this is will probably strike again. This is some high potency Necromancy, both with respect to these castings, and whatever they need these souls for. I think it would be best to go right to the expert."
"Annabelle?"
"Annabelle."
"We better get going then," Ross said and stood. "Nearest Way is only active during daylight hours in Three Ports."
"Excuse me?" Thorne remained seated. "Who is this 'we'? You're not welcome in Three Ports, Bea. You're a skipper now."
"I won't tell Creed if you don't tell Spencer," Ross replied.
"Oh, well okay then," Thorne shook their head. "Want to pinky promise while we're at it? The answer is still no."
"These were my friends too, Thorne." Ross's eyes narrowed. "And now someone is killing them, and you're telling me you won't let me help stop them?"
"Yes. Because I don't break the law."
"Your stubbornness continues to astound me," Ross remarked. "If I was Merlo, you'd hold the goddamn Way open for me. You know we'll work better together on this than apart. Do you think Annabelle is going to be any less hostile to a Fed without me there?"
Ross was standing now. Were it not for the fact people having odd conversations in public was a staple in Portland she might have been a little more concerned about blowing her cover.
"Don't you think you might be a target as well? You were the TA after all. I don't know who exactly we are dealing with but I imagine we'd be a hell of a lot safer in a group than alone. Don't! Split! The! Party!"
Thorne frowned and shook their head again. In silence, they stood and began to walk away.
"You're not Sasha Merlo, Bea," Thorne replied over their shoulder. "But points taken. Calm the fuck down. Let's go."

Three Portlands
September 24th, 2023

Daxton Parker had lived a successful life in Three Ports. An ICSUT Portlands graduate of the Class of 2014, he was an Evoker by training and had made a name for himself providing his expertise on anti-evocation augments for the Golemancy United. It was a lucrative job. Since then, he had enjoyed nothing but the finest — a nice penthouse apartment in an upstanding neighborhood; the finest suits he could get this side of the Veil; a personal chef and house cleaner. Truly he had it made.
He had returned home early from his office at Prometheus Plaza, having forgotten a flash drive on his desk. Upon entering the kitchen and turning on the lights, he felt a sharp prick in his neck. Within seconds he was limp, gravity taking him from upright to face-first into the hardwood floor. He attempted to scream but found himself only able to let out a hoarse grunt.
"Long time no see, Dax," a masculine voice called behind him. "A lovely place you have here. I don't think anyone else in our class has done as well as you."
Daxton attempted to turn to see his assailant but found his muscles fully uncooperative, only catching a glimpse out of his periphery: a tall silhouette in dark robes who was now sprinkling a foul-smelling yellow powder into a circle around him.
"Sorry for the cliche getup, but let's be honest, who is going to notice yet another person in black mage robes in Three Ports?"
"help!" Daxton's voice was barely more than a whimper. The only response was a small chuckle from the assailant.
"That's the spirit, my man. Hang on to that for me, please? It'll make you so much more useful in the long run."
A hand glowing with a dark, necrotic light pressed against Daxton's face…

« A Pristine, Untouched Wick | A Dark, Forsaken Candle | A Slow, Flickering Flame »


by stormbreath

The surrounding area of SCP-0025.

Item #: SCP-0025
Object Class: Euclid
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-0025 is to be continuously observed by the Foundation, with researchers and D-Class stationed at Outpost-0025. Outpost-0025 is constructed below SCP-0025 on the same mountain slope, with a metal staircase leading to the entrance. This staircase is to be kept clear of snow.
At least one researcher and one D-Class are to watch SCP-0025 at all times. Any notable changes in SCP-0025 are to be reported to the Outpost-0025 Senior Researcher. All other changes are to be recorded separately.
Access into SCP-0025 is forbidden for all personnel. Under no circumstances are personnel to enter SCP-0025. Testing has been suspended indefinitely.
Description: SCP-0025 is an inn located in the Eastern Alps, constructed in a Gothic Revival style. There are no established trails leading to SCP-0025, nor have there ever been any trails that pass within one kilometer of SCP-0025. No information concerning SCP-0025 prior to its discovery in 1874 by F████ W█████1 has been discovered. The circumstances of SCP-0025's construction and initial inhabitation are unknown.
SCP-0025 is present to highly variable anomalous phenomena, which are generally inimical to continued human life inside the building. SCP-0025 consistently interferes with all electronic recording devices, normally replacing any recording produced with static.
Twenty-five fatalities have been recorded within SCP-0025 since it was discovered by the Foundation.2 Only a single individual — D-JJ87A0 — has spent over an hour in SCP-0025 without dying.3 The causes of these fatalities are recorded below:

Three deaths from stab wounds. All victims were stabbed in their torso. No murder weapon was found.
Four deaths from heat stroke. Ambient temperatures at the time were below freezing.
Six deaths from accelerated renal failure. All victims were in late-stage renal failure when recovered, despite being healthy before entrance.
Two deaths from complete liquification.
Four individuals dead from cranial trauma. Wounds were identical in all cases, caused by blunt impact.
Three heart attacks.
One individual was found with skeletal and muscle structure having been fatally rearranged into the shape of a chair.
Two individuals have entered SCP-0025 without being recovered. They are presumed deceased and counted as fatalities.

During F████ W█████'s initial 1874 discovery of SCP-0025, he happened upon SCP-0025 at night, during an attempt to traverse the Eastern Alps. He recorded the following in a journal, later collected from his personal residence by the Foundation in 1910.

The hill my colleague and I approached had an aura of tranquility to it; although it was just as jarring and unsettling as an abandoned sanatorium. I fear we made a poor choice in pressing onward through the storm, but I am grateful to see this inn as a welcoming overnight stay.

F████ W█████ and the other members of his party then entered SCP-0025. The size and composition of the party is unclear. While all journal entries prior to entering SCP-0025 indicate that there was initially only a single colleague, the number fluctuates within SCP-00254 and two companions are present in all entries after exiting, neither of which appear to be the original colleague.
After entry, the journal becomes mostly incoherent and hard to interpret, until leaving SCP-0025. It is believed that this is an effect of SCP-0025, but it is unclear if represents an altered mental state of W█████ or if the journals themselves were altered. Notably, all evidence indicates that the journal was written several days after the group had left SCP-0025.
SCP-0025 was first discovered by the Foundation in 1910 by a survey team. On their recommendation, Outpost-0025 was constructed in order to better study the anomaly. Outpost-0025 was built and constructed at effective safe distance of two hundred meters.
Addenda: The sole individual who has survived for more than one hour in SCP-0025 was D-JJ87A0, who spent eleven-hours and thirty-three minutes inside. D-JJ87A0 had been in custody at Outpost-0025, but broke free and escaped from the site into the middle of a severe blizzard, at 1:47 AM. Due to limited visibility and cold weather conditions, D-JJ87A0 was forced to take shelter inside SCP-0025.
Security personnel tracked D-JJ87A0 through the snow and up to the entrance to SCP-0025. Inclement weather conditions forced personnel to retreat back to Outpost-0025, where it was decided to wait for the blizzard to end and then retrieve the body of D-JJ87A0.
When the blizzard ended at 9:15 AM, a retrieval team left the outpost and attempted to enter SCP-0025. However, all windows were sealed shut and doors locked from the interior. Attempts at battering the door down or breaking the windows was unsuccessful. These anomalous features had been seen before: when SCP-0025 had apparently decided to trap and torment its victim.
At approximately seven and half hours of elapsed time within SCP-0025, D-JJ87A0 was already one of the longest surviving victims. Around this time, he was spotted through one of the windows and made eye contact with a security team. He then quickly ran out of view, apparently from an unseen force or entity.
At 1:20 PM, the front doors of SCP-0025 suddenly opened. Nothing was seen at first until D-JJ87A0 was sent flying from a darkened interior hallway into a snow bank, at speeds exceeding 50 km/h. This snow bank cushioned D-JJ87A0's impact but collapsed over him, requiring security personnel to quickly dig him out.
Remarkably, D-JJ87A0 was both alive and conscious upon recovery. He was apprehended and then brought into Foundation security. The following interview was conducted as soon as he was brought into the site and confirmed to be alive.

Interview Log Transcript
Interviewer: Doctor Joannes Lambert
Interviewed: D-JJ87A0

Dr. Lambert: I have to say congratulations at the very least. You've spent the longest amount of time anyone has ever spent in SCP-0025 and you're the only to have ever been ejected.
D-JJ87A0: Thank you.
Dr. Lambert: I'd like to hear about how you managed that. Some highly trained agents have gone in there and they lasted, perhaps, an hour at most. You spent just under twelve hours in there. How?
D-JJ87A0: Let me out.
Dr. Lambert: I'm sorry?
D-JJ87A0: I'll give you the whole story. I'll tell you how to survive in there if you release me after I'm done telling it. But you need to promise me that up front or I'm not talking.
Dr. Lambert: You might need to be amnesticized. But I think I can make it work. I'll try to do everything I can to get you out of here.
D-JJ87A0: The first step is mindset. You don't have what it takes. You will never have what it takes and I don't think any of your agents would have. Nobody in this entire site comes close.
Dr. Lambert: What mindset do you need?
D-JJ87A0: Rage. You gotta have one thought and that thought has to be fucking rage.
Dr. Lambert: That's it? That's not … particularly difficult to achieve.
D-JJ87A0: You can't hold anything else in your head is the problem. If you have any other emotions, you have to be able to convert them into rage. Love? Hope? Joy? Burn it all down and use the fury as fuel.
Dr. Lambert: That doesn't sound healthy.
D-JJ87A0: I haven't been in a great state of mind or body lately, no. But you know where I've been for the past few weeks, all too well.
Dr. Lambert: Ah, right. But how did you use those emotions to survive inside of SCP-0025?
D-JJ87A0: Keeps you moving forward. Keeps you resisting, fighting back.
Dr. Lambert: We're looking for specifics, D-JJ87A0.
D-JJ87A0: Fine. I kept my wits about me, I had a bit of knowledge on how to do things and I used my anger to keep me going. When they came for me in the kitchen, I threw salt everywhere and made a dozen circles. When a ghost walked up to me in there wearing the face of my dead father, I bashed that face in with a silver candlestick. When it got hot in there, I let my cold revenge spill out of me and freeze the room. That one won't make sense to you. It'll only make sense to somebody who's been in there.
Dr. Lambert: I see. Would another D-Class be able to survive in there?
D-JJ87A0: Maybe. Maybe not. It's going to be on the part of that man when he's in there that helps him survive. The structure will try to tear him apart. It always does.
Dr. Lambert: Always? What do you mean, always? You were alone in there and that was your first time.
D-JJ87A0: I've been in there before. I'm still in there, in a matter of speaking. All that changed was my cell.
Dr. Lambert: [Pauses.] Could anyone other than D-Class survive?
D-JJ87A0: Like you, you mean? One of your suits or doctors? Ha! No, you're a part of it. You won't get ground down but absorbed.
Dr. Lambert: Hmm. Well, thank you, D-JJ87A0. We'll be speaking again.
D-JJ87A0: That isn't my name.

D-JJ87A0 was held for three weeks following the conclusion of this interview. Further interrogations were unsuccessful at drawing any new information from D-JJ87A0. Following a nomination by Dr. Lambert, D-JJ87A0 was released from Foundation custody under the standard protocols for the release of D-Class procedures, with amnestic therapy administered to remove memories of Foundation containment.

LEVEL 3 CLEARANCE REQUIRED. SUBMIT CREDENTIALS
Does the Black Moon Howl?

INPUT: [*****************]

INPUT: [I am not to know.]

To: J. Eichen, Outpost-0025
From: M. Klotter, RAISA Associate Director
Subject: SCP-0025 File Discrepancies?

Hi Joshua,
I'm trying to do some review on the SCP-0025 file and I've noticed a few inconsistencies. Most notably, there's no listed HMCL Supervisor. I'm reaching out to ask who that is, so I can talk to them about the inconsistencies.
Thanks,
Magnus

To: M. Klotter, RAISA Associate Director
From: J. Eichen, Outpost-0025
Subject: SCP-0025 File Discrepancies?

We don't have an HMCL Supervisor at the Outpost here. We've only sent progress updates to the DEEPWELL backup sites for record-keeping, without immediate oversight or review. No marching orders other than to follow the Con Procs to the letter.
I'm in charge, I guess. I can answer any questions that you might have.

To: J. Eichen, SCP-0025 Staff
From: M. Klotter, RAISA Associate Director
Subject: SCP-0025 File Discrepancies?

Hi Joshua,
That should not be the case. But I guess that isn't the first irregularity that I've found with the file for SCP-0025, so I guess that isn't too unusual. There's some other more important to get to. I have a few questions:

The name of the file is highly irregular. There's another anomaly in the expected slot (SCP-025) and I can't find any other articles with the extra leading zero you've got here. It's listing in a really weird directory and isn't showing up on the regular lists. It looks like this was originally in the SCP-025 slot prior to what's currently there but was moved for some reason.
The containment procedures don't really seem appropriate for an anomaly of this type. It requires constant observation despite it being relatively inert to the outside. Do you really spend extensive periods of time just watching it?
How have twenty-one personnel died in it? Was access granted again after it was revoked after four, or did all of those people enter it despite restrictions? Shouldn't you have put more safety measures in place?
I'm trying to figure out what happened to D-JJ87A0 after release. Surprisingly, that was a valid serial number but we barely had any information on him. Do you know anything about that?

I've tried answering most of these questions by looking through any associated materials or secondary documentation but there doesn't seem to be any for SCP-0025.
Any help is appreciated,
Magnus

To: M. Klotter, RAISA Associate Director
From: J. Eichen, Outpost-0025
Subject: SCP-0025 File Discrepancies?

Let's see.
The file name has always been this way, as long as I've been working at the installation. I don't know why it was listed in this location or what's going on with that. I've always thought it might be part of the reason we don't get much attention from O5 or anyone else.
We do spend a lot of time watching it. It gets in your head. Somebody has to be watching it all times or the whispering becomes a scream. (There's no pattern to the screaming, if you were wondering.)
They went in. They always go in. That's what happens when the screaming gets to you: you get up and you walk and you go inside. We've tried our best to stop it but nothing has worked and the people under it are under an irresistible urge. They're crying as they go in.
D-JJ87A0 won. It wasn't fair to keep him here anymore. He made it out, so we had to let him out.

To: J. Eichen, SCP-0025 Staff
From: M. Klotter, RAISA Associate Director
Subject: SCP-0025 File Discrepancies?

Thank you for getting back to me, Joshua. I'm going to be submitting a review to the Containment Committee. This is clearly not the ideal way to contain this anomaly; something has gone very wrong here. We're going to get you out of there.

To: M. Klotter, RAISA Associate Director
From: J. Eichen, Outpost-0025
Subject: SCP-0025 File Discrepancies?

We've tried that before.

To: M. Klotter, RAISA Associate Director
From: NULL_FIELD
Subject: SCP-0025

Hello Mr. Klotter,
I was just recently alerted to investigation into the SCP-0025 file and anomaly by RAISA. I want to begin by saying that this is not a disciplinary action by any means, but if you disobey the directives contained within there is a potential for escalation. Investigation into this file is exemplary, however, it has been moved for specific reasons.
One of the DEEPWELL sites that Outpost-0025 has been sending files to is Site-01, where I am stationed. I have taken the care to personally review all these files and — if necessary — issue additional orders. This has not been necessary at any point during Mr. Eichen's employment, thus the lack of any apparent oversight that was observed. However, make no mistake that the matter is under direct control of the Foundation. My actions have been pre-approved by the Overseer Council.
You are to immediately cease all investigation into the SCP-0025, effective immediately. Violation of this order will result in your immediate termination.
Containment of SCP-0025 will continue unabated.
Thank you,
Fritz Willie
SCP Administrator

Footnotes
1. A renowned naturalist and mountain climber active from 1856 to 1874. W█████ stopped mountain climbing at the end of the trip in which he discovered SCP-0025.
2. Access was forbidden after four deaths.
3. D-JJ87A0 spent twelve hours inside of SCP-0025 before being forcibly ejected.
4. At one point reaching as many as thirteen.


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⚠ Content warning: All SCP-6670 warnings apply: Cannibalism, disturbing imagery, depictions of murder, etc.

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Read my other works here!

"Shhh. It's okay, honey. Here, look, have some more of your cake! Chocolate frosting… That's your favourite, right?"
Parker smiled weakly, her lips wavering as she held the plate of leftover cake to her daughter's mouth. She watched unblinkingly as Jemma pushed herself forward to eat, greedily gobbling at the frosted devil's food as if she hadn't eaten in weeks. She could see her esophagus working, pushing the cake through her elongated throat, all the way to her stomach which was several meters away. Large crumbs tumbled off the plate and onto the floor; she was such a messy eater. She couldn't even use utensils herself; no, her fingers were much too sensitive for that.
Initially, she had just fed Jemma herself. Stab at the food with a fork or scoop it up with a spoon, and watch the stuff vanish down her daughter's gullet. But then she grew. And the complaining, the pain in her voice, she just wanted more and more and more. She couldn't do it fast enough. And then Jemma, oh she was a growing girl, she needed her nutrients and she needed those calories and it hurt her more than anything else in the world to watch helplessly as the walls of her house shook from her rumbling stomach.
Her new job, it paid… okay. Enough to satisfy the needs of her daughter, at least initially. She was so big now… Growing… Needed more. She wouldn't have her daughter live hungry. She needed to be a parent.
She sold everything. Eventually, she had to sell the silverware too. All of it, except for a singular fork. The rest of it had gotten her $25. Enough for five pounds of ground beef. Eventually, Jemma's appetite grew ravenous enough that one day, she had a bit of a tantrum. Children sometimes, they could be so impatient! It was just such a shame that her daughter decided to take her anger out on the last fork. She'd bitten the head of it off and swallowed it whole. It was embarrassing to her, but they both cried after that. She was supposed to be someone strong, someone Jemma could look up to, but she couldn't help it, really.
Her bed, frame and all, had gone for $80. That was enough to get a large cake and a wide assortments of fruits. The old CRT television that she had initially lugged into her car from the sidewalk, she had managed to sell for $3. Oh, and her car. Yes, that had gone for $3,000. She sold it just before her daughter's eleventh birthday, and it had been enough for a used bike and just about three months of food.
And of course, all the furniture in the house had gone, all of her clothes save for a few sets, her grandmother's ring, the laptop, her phone…
Her daughter's room was untouched. A crib, a queen-sized bed, and a closet full of clothes.
"I'm hungry, Mama."
"Honey, I'm sorry but we don't have any more… You'll have to wait for just a tiny bit, okay?"
"No!" Jemma cried out. Her face scrunched up in an ugly expression, her eyes half-closed and with her teeth bared. Parker winced as bits of plaster fell from the ceiling from Jemma's sudden outburst. She had never bothered to get the ceiling repaired after she had fallen through. "Mommy, it hurts, please! I'm just so hungry, my back hurts, Mommy, please I…"
"Honey, Mommy won't get paid until Monday, then we can get you a whole bunch of food! Doesn't…" Parker choked back a sob. "D-Doesn't that sound great?"
"But Mommy, I want my food now. Please, I'm hungry." Jemma sniffed noisily. "Anything…"
Trembling, Parker cupped her hands on the floor to scoop up the crumbs of cake that had fallen from the plate. Her fingers were covered in brown bandages, heavy with old blood after Jemma had bitten her those few times; she tried hand-feeding her, but Jemma oh she was just so famished and who could blame her, the poor girl was growing and she needed every single calorie to be a healthy girl and surely it was all an accident, Jemma was just an angel, wouldn't hurt a fly and she would cry afterwards and she could never get mad and god, she was just the worst mother in the world, wasn't she?
Jemma looked up at her from the hole and opened her mouth, wide. Parker shuddered as she peered into her cupped hands; bits of loose hair and roof plaster made up more than half of the pitiful pile, but… that's alright, wasn't it? It was better than letting her baby starve.
She dumped the pile back onto the plate and held it up to her daughter, who lapped it up enthusiastically.
"Mommy, I-"
"I know honey, but really, there's no more food."
"But I'm hungry. I'm still so hungry…"
She took a shuddering breath, kneeling on the floor with her hands placed limply on her lap. She looked up at the decrepit ceiling, at the horrible, warped spine and thinly stretched skin that ran through the room.
"Okay." Parker said, finally. Jemma brightened up at this, mouth contorting into a wide grin, a grin full of browning teeth and dark, sticky stains around her lips. "I'll… Mommy will get some food. It's o-only supposed to be for emergencies, but… Honey, you're sure you can't wait any longer?"
"Yes!" Jemma cried, her spine dancing with tremors. The loud crackling of bones contorting, bending reverberated through the house. "Mommy, my back, my stomach, they hurt. It hurts so bad."
"Okay, okay, just a little while longer. Mommy will get you your food right now, okay honey?"
She offered her daughter a weak smile before standing up and turning around. Emergency food? Well, that was one way to put it. At first, she had told herself that it would never come to that. She wouldn't let her daughter commit such acts of… of sin. Just the thought of her precious child eating…
Parker doubled over and began dry heaving, both hands pressed fiercely into her stomach as flecks of spittle dribbled onto the floor. Her body worked mercilessly to push out the nothing that was taking up space inside of her stomach, the nothing that made it seem like her chest was giving out. She gasped, once, and immediately began retching once more as she inhaled a mouthful of the rancid, stagnating air that had filled her house. It was a permeating sourness that worked to corrode her lungs from the inside out.
"M-Mommy? Are you okay?"
The genuine concern in her voice nearly broke her. Parker straightened up and covered her mouth, tears already forming in her eyes. "Y-Yes. Yes honey, everything's… fine."
Without another word, she continued walking. Her daughter was just so pure. It hurt to see how badly she was in pain, knowing that none of it was justified. The hurt, the hunger, the indecency, it was torture for the both of them. Knowing that it had come to this… Well, it was too late to ask her family for help now, not that she would. They wouldn't love her daughter. Not like she loved her.
It was never meant to happen. Still, she thought about it. The emergency food that is. It's just that when you lived in such an empty neighborhood, people would start up rumours; she knew of the tales that had spread about her. Her and her daughter. The whisperings of people disappearing once they entered her house, of the almost imperceptible crying that could be heard at the dead of night, the way that sometimes, if you looked closely, the walls seemed to move…
Frankly, she was lucky. Lucky that the rumours hadn't caught the attention of the police. As of yet, anyway. They didn't come to this part of town too often, which was largely abandoned. No, they were much more concerned with other matters that were considered more significant, at least when compared to tall tales of breathing houses. Even the missing people could wait. There was an indifference by the law enforcement that she would have been upset about, perhaps if it was a decade earlier. But now there was just a guilty sort of relief.
She couldn't help it. Some of them, some of them really, really pried. They were curious. They wanted to know the truth behind it all. Behind her.
She opened the door to her basement and walked slowly down the stairs, careful not to step on any of the loose nails. The handrail was nothing more than a rotting piece of wood that would crumple at the slightest grip. And the stench, the stench was the worst part. The harsh metallic scent, coupled with a rotting sweetness, like honeyed meat being seared over a blue flame.
Oh, there it was. There it was.
Grabbing a broom from the wall, she shooed away some rats that had congregated around the body. It was half-decomposed, skin and flesh tinted with a pale, off-green colour. Meat. Meat soft enough that it looked like it was melting. A lake of thick, half-coagulated blood surrounded it; some of the rats had been licking it. Others were nibbling on the fingers, which were now small twigs of bone, albeit with some flecks of meat still attached. Swatting at the cloud of flies buzzing around it, she bent down and dug her arms under the corpse in a bridal carry.
She tried to ignore how soft and malleable the flesh felt.
She stood up.
She tried to ignore how some parts of it fell off.
She began walking.
She tried to ignore the dozens of maggots worming around inside of its mouth.
She carefully ascended up the stairs.
She tried to ignore the frigid blood seeping in-between her fingernails.
She tried to ignore how she was carrying a boy, no older than eighteen, who had simply wandered inside of her house once when she forgot to lock the door. Who had heard of the rumours of a living house and a crazed lady who lived in a ghost neighborhood and bought more food than anyone living alone could ever eat. She tried to ignore the look of awe-stricken terror that had been plastered on his countenance when he met her daughter. She tried to ignore the way he sobbed and pleaded as she loomed over him with that rusty shovel she kept in the toolshed. She tried to ignore how for months afterward, there seemed to be a slight uptick in curious visitors, in teenagers sent on a dare to talk to her. Once, there was a threat of calling the police. But they didn't come. Why didn't they come? They should have arrested her, then.
Did anyone see him come in? Did he have friends or family? Was there suspicion? Did his disappearance only add fuel to the fire? Did anyone even notice he was gone? Was there evidence? Did the boy even tell anyone where he was going?
Perhaps she could have asked him and spared herself from the nerve-wracking anxiety that had taken place afterwards. The sleepless nights of anxiety, the uneven drumming against her ribcage and the sharp pains of fear that stabbed through her chest at the slightest shadow.
The guilt. Murderer. Monster.
No. Don't think about that. None of that matters now. She couldn't waste time thinking about the past, not anymore. She was a rotten failure of a person, a terrible mother, a murderer, a runaway. But she still loved her daughter. She still had a purpose. Her daughter was hungry.
And she would do anything to provide for her.


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"Out of Character"
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2021

2 January
Site-43: Lambton County, Ontario, Canada

Pensak left the elderly man to bleed out on his chamber floor, focus already shifting to the remaining tasks. He hadn't been told to kill his target, merely to shoot him; the clients for that little transaction were masters of semantics, after all, so if they'd wanted a confirmed kill they would have specified.
He briefly considered opening the other door and putting a bullet into SCP-001-A as well. But he had the suspicion that one of his other clients would be severely unimpressed, so he didn't. He had a lot of balls in the air today.
Nevertheless, the remainder of the day would be uneventful. He would take the elevator back up to the main sublevels, collect what he needed, and leave. The first step was tapping the button on his PDA which overrode the Site .aic's higher command functions, essentially neutering the only electronic countermeasure against what he was about to do. A green checkmark flashed on the screen; for anything more sophisticated than SMS, Clio was now offline.
He tapped another button, and an empty text field presented itself. He input the characters which made up SCP-5109 and hit EXECUTE, completing a program he'd typed up weeks in advance. Virtually everyone at the Site was now locked down in their offices or dorms. No hallway access, no way to interfere with or even notice the execution of his last few brilliant schemes, an unbreakable password between them and him. A cognitohazard warning would be blaring over every speaker in the facility, along with an assurance that the Relevant Parties were handling it and did not require assistance. It was only virtually everyone because it had taken a lot of work to rewrite each door's password code individually, and he'd simply lost interest for a few random subjects. He'd rationalized that there was simply no way Karen Elstrom or Trevor Bremmel would be wandering the halls, looking for trouble; they'd both be so lost in their own little worlds that nothing short of a full containment breach would rouse them from their navel-gazing. The doors would still open from the outside, of course, a safety measure in case he needed to get at anything; he didn't expect to be sharing the halls with anyone capable of wrecking his day, whether alone or in small groups.
He tapped a third button, and a spiderweb of routes across the Site suddenly became password locked with a very particular password which he, alone, knew.
Well, that wasn't entirely true. He tapped a fourth button, releasing Morse and Misra from containment, just as he'd promised them. If anyone still had both the means and the mindset to protect the Site, they'd be busy protecting it from those two known traitors.
The elevator doors sealed off the 001 level. He tapped a button on the panel, and rose toward his future.

Nhung Ngo always got a laugh when she told her psychology conferences that nobody hated each other at Site-43. It wasn't a joke, but the mirth was nevertheless expected; tempers ran high between colleagues and rivals at the rest of the Foundation's facilities, so it seemed the height of absurdity to suggest that adding an explicitly academic formulation to the mix could somehow produce less volatile results. But no, when she made that statement, she meant it; nobody hated anybody else. Plenty of them disliked each other, and as the Site's chief shrink she could easily rank them from most to least-unpopular. The top of that pile was, of course, William Wettle — but even he had a friend, two if you counted Harold Blank, who professed to detest the man yet spent a curious amount of time in his company. Wettle was an outlier, but even the next-most-odious characters had their share of friends and admirers.
Many of them had no admirers. Only Karen Elstrom, however, had no friends.
Karen Elstrom occasionally had admirers. The Chief of Administration and Oversight had aged well, she dressed well, and she moved so well that she often seemed to be striking a pose. She was doing this now, in the doorway of Ngo's office, affecting a casual stance but still looking like she expected a compliment on her vest.
Admiration for Karen Elstrom rarely survived even a single conversation with her. It quickly became apparent why there were no lines on her forehead — no lines on her forehead, in the SCP Foundation's employ! — and no lines around her mouth. Karen Elstrom never frowned, and Karen Elstrom never smiled. She had no worries, she had no sense of humour, and though she'd aged well and dressed well and moved well, she was damn well the most infuriatingly unpleasant person who had ever struck a pose in Ngo's doorway. Even Blank avoided her, though he had relatively unique reasons for that.
"We're in lockdown, Karen," Ngo reminded her. "How did you even get the door open?"
Elstrom wasn't making eye contact. She never did, not out of fear or shyness but out of a general lack of care over whether her words had any impact. A general lack of care was the fairest description for her Ngo could think of without employing foul language. "You're in lockdown," the administrator tutted. "My door never locked, because I'm on ETTRA duty. And the rest of them open from the outside just fine."
Ngo blinked. "You're on…? You're not part of the task force. You're not even cleared to go near anything anomalous. Karen, you're wearing high heels today." The final word was superfluous; Elstrom was always wearing high heels.
The other woman waved her monogrammed cup of coffee vaguely, somehow failing to spill a single drop. "The task force is done for the day. I'm on special assignment." She reached down to check her pager; alone of all the Sections at Site-43, Administration and Oversight had pagers. McInnis had tried to phase them out Site-wide in 2010, and had succeeded in doing so everywhere Elstrom's office wasn't.
Ngo suspected she liked the look.
"Nothing yet," Elstrom muttered. "How was your trip to England? You must be important to get such a great vacation."
Ngo sighed. "That was Udo. I went to Massachusetts, and it was no vacation."
"Mm. That sounds more your speed."
Nhung Ngo was a psychologist. She had, in her time, thought rings around beings most mortal minds could never conceive of. She was also a martial artist. Only Elstrom and Wettle ever managed to push the buttons which made her want to put her second, less clinical form of expertise to the test.
The pager beeped. "Oh, here we go." Elstrom reached into her back pocket, took out a small tape recorder and a pair of tiny headphones, and proceeded to listen to something Ngo couldn't hear over the course of half a minute.
Then she turned and walked away, without so much as a word goodbye.
Ngo sighed again, closed her laptop, and took an identical tape recorder out of her desk.

Over Lake Superior, Ontario, Canada

For being situated on the edge of the dreamscape/gamescape/nightmarescape that was Yumegēmu, Site-79 was a simple and spartan place. It did, however, boast one outrageous luxury: a burner jet. No records attested to its existence, its dedicated mechanics — only two of them — had no idea who they worked for and no other duties, and only the Director and Chief of Security had any clue that it existed. It could be used once, and only once, before the secrecy was spent; it was therefore obviously an escape hatch for the Site's elite, in case of armed conflict in East Asia.
Kuroki hadn't felt great about using it to return McInnis to his own Site, but had nevertheless insisted. He didn't know what was going to happen to the rest of the agents once they came home to 43, but he felt absolutely certain that at least one should slip in through the back door without fanfare.
"And what gave you that feeling?" McInnis asked him during their none-too-brief hop across the Pacific.
"Sokolsky," Kuroki replied flatly. "Sokolsky told me that under no circumstances should you show up with the others. He didn't tell me why."
"He never does. Did he tell you to come with me?"
Kuroki shook his head. "No, but I need to see how this ends." He rubbed his chest, where just a few hours ago he had been stabbed through the heart and killed. It didn't hurt, but it felt like it ought to. "Since I was there when it started."

2020

24 November
Site-01: Hamilton County, New York State, United States of America

Roger Pensak cursed his rotten luck.
He thought he'd made all the right choices. He was an excellent judge of character, thanks to his time in the Israeli Combat Intelligence Collection Corps, and he'd done his homework on all these characters. The security conference at Site-01 was simultaneously the most promising and the most dangerous place to recruit potential moles for his grand scheme; he would've preferred to plink away at it day by day, taking the safe yet sure approach, but the needs of his clients made that impractical. Something this big required quick thinking and a steady hand to realize. Happily, he had both.
At the seminar on SCP front companies, Xavia Morse had been so loudly dismissive of thaumaturgy in security systems that he'd immediately pegged her as a Serpent's Hand plant. A few gentle overtures at the open bar had proven him right, though she'd rebuffed his efforts to get to know her even better. Probably had someone back at Site-91, he figured, a woman of chronically divided loyalties. Sunita Misra from 36 was something else entirely, a committed zealot with such obvious distaste for the Foundation that her hangups simply had to be religious. Those were easy buttons to push, and she flew into such a rage, told him such damning things about herself and worked herself into such a lather, that they both went back to her room and made up for Morse's indecision. Mark Rask from 45, well, Pensak had been quietly assembling a file on him for some time. The confrontation was brief and amiable; the Chaos Insurgency mole was more than happy to move up his timetable, but he'd need specific orders to that effect from the mysterious Engine. He'd been surprised and delighted to hear that Pensak figured he could swing that — very little, if anything, was beyond the reach of his primary client.
Theodore Anderson from Site-77 had been a surprise. He'd knocked on Pensak's door that same night, a wild look in his eyes, and announced his attention to betray his Site Director. Pensak had professed not to know why this information was being provided to him, but Anderson had read him just as easily as Pensak had himself read everyone else. There was something otherworldly about the man, but if he was willing to sow a little chaos in Italy, well, war made for strange bedfellows both figuratively and literally. Finally, the idiot from 13K wore his corruption on his sleeve, and Pensak had almost decided to freeze him out as a security risk, but… no. He needed to slow the Korean response, because of what had just happened with Kuroki.
Kuroki had responded to Pensak's subtle, carefully-crafted overtures with such immediate and intense suspicion that he'd been taken fully aback. He thought he'd identified a man dissatisfied with his job and his lot in life, but had instead stumbled on the one kind of person he could never reliably identify: one defined more by his principles than his vices. Kuroki didn't like his posting at Site-79 in Japan not because he felt ill-used, mistreated, or under-paid, but because life in that ridiculous Nexus conflicted with something essential in his character. Trying to recruit him, even extending a fully non-incriminating olive branch, had been a disastrous mistake.
But still, the other man was cautious. He wouldn't move against Pensak unless he had all the facts in hand — he was going to take Pensak's preferred approach to figuring out Pensak himself, odds were. It should be possible to stall him until the big day, at which point… well. Pensak had already written up the transfer order for Shinoda Souda, and arranged for his reality-warping equipment to be quietly 'lost'. Site-79 was going to become a killing zone, and anyone who stood a chance of making the plan go awry was getting a first-class ticket there, one way only.
As he walked into his hotel room to meet with his five co-saboteurs, Pensak felt less confident than he'd wanted to but more confident than his threshold for backing down.
It was going to go like clockwork.

2021

2 January
Grand Bend: Lambton County, Ontario, Canada

"I still can't believe it." McInnis still couldn't believe it. "Pensak planned all the sabotage. That beggars belief. You told Sokolsky everything you knew?"
Kuroki nodded. "What I suspected, anyway. He was at the security conference too, representing ETTRA. He set me to poking around afterward, helping plan the missions. When I stopped responding… I guess he thought I'd been turned, too. Thought Pensak got to me." He shook his head as they passed through the turnstiles of the Inter-Sectional Subway System. "He was right, but not in the way that he figured."
The elevator refused to accept their credentials, and McInnis found that the administrative password had been changed. He input the one-time password instead, and that did the trick. Uh oh. He decided not to think about that yet; he had an orderly mind, and he wanted to finish the first tangent before starting on a second. "He led Shinoda to believe that an operative with a high clearance level was coming to deliver Daniel Dunn. That's why he fixated on me. Ergo, either Pensak suggested to Sokolsky that I be sent to 79, because he wanted me dead for some reason, or Sokolsky himself decided it for the same reason. I don't know which one troubles me more."
"I'd be more troubled by the latter," Kuroki remarked as they headed out onto the empty platform. "Anyone Sokolsky wants dead is a dead man walking. But I see your point: if it was Pensak, and I'm sure it was, what's his problem with you specifically?"
They became aware of a dull whine in the tunnel ahead — not the clacking and roaring of a train on the tracks, but the sound of an approaching maintenance vehicle. The customized golf cart rolled into view, and its occupant got out.
"Welcome home, sir." The All-Sections Chief walked along the tube towards them, carefully avoiding the electrified rail. "I hope you brought passwords."
"Only one, I'm afraid." McInnis sat down on the edge of the platform and dropped down to greet his deputy with what passed for a warm handshake. "The other is in the mind of a coma patient in Japan."
"That's unfortunate."
McInnis pointed up at the elevator doors as Kuroki hopped onto the packed grime beside him. "The keypad was set to 5109. Presumably we're under attack, and presumably it's Pensak."
The Chief did not look surprised. The Chief almost never looked surprised. Long years of close acquaintance had taught McInnis to detect it in the other man's voice, however, and detect it he did. "It is in fact Pensak. He's locked down the entire Site, and shut down the I-triple-S to boot." The Chief glanced McInnis' companion. "Welcome to Site-43, more or less."
Kuroki nodded up at him. For a Japanese man, Kuroki was tall; the All-Sections Chief was tall period, no qualifiers needed, and imposing in more than one other way. He couldn't have contrasted more with his drab, workaday surroundings: deeply tanned skin, a pair of expensive spectacles, a form-fitting brown pinstripe vest over a cream-coloured dress shirt and dark dress pants. His shoes had clearly cost more than Kuroki's entire uniform. He projected so much authority, both vertical and sartorial, that he almost didn't need to be so obviously physically fit.
He managed to look down at Kuroki without seeming to look down on him, obviously a talented diplomat on top of everything else. "Chief Kuroki, isn't it? We'll be in need of a new Security and Containment Chief by the time this is over." He gestured at the cart. "Shall I brief you on the way?"
McInnis nodded as they took their seats. "Yes. I assume Sokolsky has a plan?"
The All-Sections Chief shook his head as he started up the cart's tinny motor again. "I haven't heard from him since this started, so I would suppose that he does not." He seemed to relish the look on McInnis' face during his brief pause, before adding: "However, he did have a plan for that."
"For what?" Kuroki asked.
"For not having a plan."
He pulled out a tape recorder.

Site-43: Lambton County, Ontario, Canada

The day staff at Admin and Oversight started work early each day; Karen Elstrom set their schedules, and she set them very rigidly. Nevertheless it was still the night shift, and the skeleton crew had obligingly retreated into their offices when Pensak set off the alert. There wasn't a soul at the central station when he arrived, and all the windows on the office doors showed tightly-closed black blinds. He chuckled. These people had enough experience with cognitohazards not to want to chance encountering one.
His PDA had a good signal, so he shook hands with the A&O router and input his personal password. So far, so good. He had only one task here, and he set to it: shutting down all existing permissions in the entire Site, save for his own. Every ID card, every pass code, every means of accessing any major system which he hadn't already tampered with beforehand. He used his PDA to override the safeties on the Chief's duty terminal, then downloaded the meticulously-crafted subroutine which would make nearly four hundred people persona non grata. It would also add a few new credentials to the mix.
He didn't like staying in any one place for too long, so he backed out to the login screen and let the code compile. Nobody else would be able to tamper with it, not even if they knew the magic words.
And nobody else did. He had heard Sokolsky's explanation for how he came by the thirteen passwords he'd used, all of which were accounted for, and it made perfect sense. He knew it to be absolutely, irrefutably true.
There were no other copies of SCP-5109 in play.

Karen Elstrom saw the alert flash on her private office terminal, and didn't quite smile. Everyone knew Eileen Veiksaar had kept the one time password in her head for over a decade, but hardly any of them remembered that Elstrom had known it first. She'd carried that string of forty-one characters in her head for most of a year, never thinking twice about where it came from, and she'd used it as her 43NET password until accidentally discovering that it was, in fact, an active anomaly. The empty space in her head where it had once fit snugly had always bothered her, like the gap left behind after a tooth extraction.
A wisdom tooth extraction, of course, the only kind she had experience with. Elstrom's incisors, canines, premolars and molars were beyond reproach.
It felt good to have that mental space filled again, but it felt even better to have something to do with it. Just as she'd been warned, Pensak was trying to rewrite the permissions Site-wide. She tried to cancel the subroutine, and received a chiding electronic tone in response; Pensak had changed her password personally, ahead of the queue.
She knew exactly what he'd changed it to. She brought up the dialogue again, typed in her brand new copy of SCP-5109, and stuck a spanner in the works.

From A&O, Pensak's path took him to Research and Experimentation. This was the catch-all Section where the vast majority of the Site's practical work got done, a warren of labs and offices and test chambers and machinery larger than any other sector besides the extensive dormitories. He'd mapped out a few potential routes well in advance, both to pass the time before his Big Day and to make sure it went off without a hitch.
It took him past the workshop of Trevor Bremmel, from which shouting could be heard. Shouting could always be heard from the workshop of Trevor Bremmel; he had a permanently adversarial relationship with his assistants, the latest of which was his daughter Joanna. As if on cue, her voice shouted back at him, and Pensak smiled. They weren't about to abandon their argument and head out into the hall…
…why didn't I change their password, though?
He couldn't remember.
Melissa Bradbury's office was at the heart of R&E. The Chair of Research and Experimentation was like the dean of a small college, overseeing several of the lesser Sections and keeping track of who did what, and where, with whom. Her office terminal was interlinked with the databases for Archives and Revision, Arms and Equipment, Quantum Supermechanics and Theology and Teleology. With another download from his PDA, he set all that data to dump down into Eileen Veiksaar's terminal at the heart of Identification and Technocryptography. The gas would have vented by now, but Sokolsky and the Sampis would still be sound asleep.
As before, he didn't wait to make sure the subroutine completed. There was simply no reason why it wouldn't.

Dr. Melissa Bradbury was fine.
She reviewed the monthly Research and Experimentation budget report, which contained no particular surprises, and she was fine. She asked the Site's .aic, Cliometria, to locate Dr. Blank for her; it said he was in Chief Veiksaar's office. This was the first she'd heard about his return, even though she was sitting in his office. She hadn't been meant to know that he was going anywhere in the first place, but she knew a lot of things she wasn't supposed to know, and that was fine.
Her computer terminal flickered off, then rebooted. She reached up and fingered the silky-smooth material of the neck scarf she wore every single day, and she was fine, but she decided that Chief Veiksaar would be getting another visitor when the Sampis were through with her.
She hooked her thumbs under the top of her tight jeans, pulled them up tighter, let her mind wander, let her jaw go slack, and stared into space with her mouth partway open. If she ever had her portrait painted, it would have to be with this blank expression on her face. It was her trademark, the sign that she was thinking, even though it made her look completely incapable of thought. That little trick of letting go had been key to the eighteen years of therapy which had followed her encounter with SCP-5056, the long sabbatical which had only just ended a few long months ago. Long months, hard months, but overall, rewarding ones.
She was looking forward to seeing Harry again, even though he'd only been gone a day. But then, there was something she needed to do first…
The air recycling system paused in time with her musing, and when it came back on the sound was subtly different. She reached down under her desk to scratch her left ankle, which took some doing because she was wearing thick winter socks over top of normal summer ones. After a moment of that, she was fine, although she was likely to get an electric shock the next time she touched a light switch.
She waited.
She didn't like waiting. Waiting required focus.
Her eyes felt dry, and she realized she hadn't been blinking. Because her eyes felt dry, her contact lenses were suddenly uncomfortable. Because her contact lenses were suddenly uncomfortable, she remembered that she was wearing contact lenses, as she had been for nearly two decades, and in the moment where she confronted the ugly reason for that fact and progressed rapidly towards not being fine at all, her phone buzzed in her labcoat pocket.
She had another message from Clio.

Chief Pensak has left R&E. The coast is clear. Seven minutes, Dr. Bradbury!

She knew what it meant. She stood up and walked around the desk, picking up a small tape recorder and putting the earbuds in her ears. It was a five-minute walk to her office from her partner's, and according to Sokolsky she'd have seven minutes to get there before the database download completed. As long as she cancelled it before then, the file validation would fail and all the duplicated files would be deleted.
She didn't turn the lights off when she left.
She wouldn't get to see the look on Pensak's face, but she had a very vivid imagination, so that, too, was fine.

It hurt.
He'd run over the situation in his mind a dozen dozen times before it actually happened, and he'd never figured out a way to be sitting down when the traitor triggered the knockout gas. To make it look good, to make it look believable, Sokolsky would need to hit the floor with the rest of them. He'd landed on his side, and his side was very, very sore, but he didn't seem to have cracked a rib at least.
"Ugh." He heard Eileen Veiksaar spit. "Tastes like blood."
He sat up. He could taste it too. "Yeah. That's the anti-gas agent."
She was still leaning against the bookshelf. She was staring at him. "The gum?"
He nodded. "The gum."
"I didn't know we had an anti-gas agent."
"You were cleared to know your office had knockout gas. You weren't cleared to know how to subvert it. I, on the other hand, am the Chief of Subversion." He struggled to his feet, noting that the pile of Sampis were still barely stirring. He hadn't brought enough gum to share with the class, because he hadn't been one hundred percent certain whether any of his colleagues had been compromised by Pensak.
Veiksaar, on the other hand, had been a safe bet. She'd already been compromised by herself.
He picked Wettle's cardboard box up off the desk, tucked it under his arm and walked to the door.
"Why does the anti-gas agent have a blood aftertaste?" she asked as she pulled herself up, using the bookcase for support.
"It doesn't." Sokolsky examined the keypad. "It bursts blood vessels in your mouth. That's actual blood you're tasting."
Veiksaar swallowed.
"That's a good way to induce vomiting, you know," he said. While he input the password, she fell to her knees and vomited on Wettle's shoes.
"All done." He tapped her on the shoulder, and extended a hand; she took out a handkerchief, wiped her mouth, tossed it on the small puddle of bile and stood up again under her own power.
"We need to get moving." He headed for the door, and opened it. "Pensak will be back soon."
She stared at him. "He locked that door with 5109, Daniil. Didn't he?"
Sokolsky nodded.
"You gave him all your copies of 5109."
He grinned so wide, the top of his head threatened to separate. "Oh, Eileen, if you only knew."

/Under

The Time After Time Password

Pass It On


Do you see how brightly the moon shines over the forest of green? Its brilliant red dancing along the emerald canopy as the lords look on from their balconies stained with blood. Oh, my dear, how the crows see it so clearly.
Those wondrous creatures float ever so gently from land to land, never bound by the confines of the universe forever keeping these worlds separate. As those dressed in their cloaks and masked remain ignorant of those who wander without a name, the crows shall not be held back by such restrictions, the crows are truly free.
See how in the night, when our queen shines so brightly upon the city of crimson, where a single white star shines lovingly by her side, so look upon it now and wish. Witness as this wondrous creature glides away from its masters' side and over the impassable walls holding us in its uncaring grasp and into hills basked with leaves and bush!
The lords of black and yellow, red and blue remain ignorant to the treachery of the crows and their queen. Unknowing of their tricks to bypass their walls.
The King's hatred boils as he is forced to watch his subjects walk alongside those horrid smiling beasts. Their freedom hanging over its head like an unattainable prize remaining eternally out of his feeble reach. "Those disgusting creatures" cried the God-Shaped Hole.
Oh now, how those pitiful forest folk look up in awe as the white crow soars through their unknown home and the men dawning masks walk happily through the underbrush, seeking a home free from the scorn of their colorful lords.
"Oh my, how horrid!" you can hear them cry as the crow of white guards from up above.
You'll often hear "those poor creatures, hiding behind their masks of porcelain white" said in a swift reply.
But the crow of white will not respond to these whispers. They simply look down upon the weary travelers in their cloaks dipped in vermillion.
"Oh, dearest travelers walking through these hallowed woods!" they would call through the forest of towering pine.
"You poor, poor things. Please, allow me to have your attention, come sit for a spell!" they cried, smiles too big to be truthful. The traveling men would look to them but the white crow would simply sing in their stead.
Oh, that white crow, that wondrous beast. The watcher of the ones who dare to escape from the city of ruby. The one unstained by their spiteful evil, always floating to and fro, always between the town flooded in wine and the darkest oaks until those travelers feet reached a home free from their grasp, singing away their deceitful calls.
Forevermore would that crow fly, until its duties were done.
Ah, sleep soundly now, Miss Moon. For your white knight sleeps by your side once more and those you look down upon have found a new home, free from those colorful lords, forevermore…

With thanks to Luxaaj, Luxaiko, AvocadoMilk, Fish^12, Thanatian, and LAN 2D.


International Center for the Study of Unified Thaumatology: Three Portlands Campus
November 15th, 2010

Being called to speak with your student advisor immediately after finals was rarely a good sign, even for students attending as bizarre a school ICSUT Portlands. As the advisor looked over her paperwork, young Beatrice Ross idly played with a lock of her red hair, occasionally looking at a clock on the wall to watch the seconds stretch into hours. Eventually, the advisor cleared her throat.
"How do you think your Conjuration final went, my dear?"
Beatrice met the woman's gaze. She was older, somewhere in her 50's or 60's. Her black hair was heavily streaked with gray, and a small pair of spectacles sat on the end of her nose. A thick green cable knit sweater with the School's crest on the lapel finished the ensemble.
"I think I did pretty well on the written exam," Beatrice finally replied. "Better than I originally thought I would do, at least."
The advisor smiled.
"Quite," she said. "You really 'crushed it' as the kids these days say. Your grasp of the theoretical and academic aspects of thaumatology is nothing short of impressive for someone of your level of study. but I think you know that's not why you're here, my dear."
Beatrice nodded.
"The practical exam could have gone better," she mumbled. Her gaze fell to the floor.
The advisor nodded in agreement.
"You were hoping to take the Medicinal Conjuration track, yes?"
"I did. I was hoping I could become a healer."
"An admirable goal," she said with a nod. "Truly, admirable."
"I know I failed, but I can take the course again over the break." Tears began to well in Beatrice's eyes. "I know if I prepare more I can pass. Please, Dr. Laurent, I just need one more-"
The advisor placed up a hand. A warm, sympathetic smile crept across her face as she shook her head.
"My dear, I'm sorry," she said. "As noble as your intentions are, that doesn't change the fact you scored in the bottom 10% of your class on this exam. This isn't the kind of meeting we hold to go over study strategies or create a practice regimen. This is the kind of meeting we hold when you don't have the aptitude to continue in a given school of the craft. You can't build a fortress upon a pillar of sand, and you can't make a career in a field your talents are so ill-suited for."
Beatrice winced.
"Dr. Laurent," she whispered. The tears began to run freely. "Please. I'll do anything. Night classes. Summer school. I'll do nothing but eat, sleep, and study. Please."
A hand pressed down on her shoulder.
"I know how hard this is to hear, my dear," she said. Her voice reminded Beatrice of her grandmother. "So many pupils choosing to enter this field do so with a goal in mind. A vision of themselves as they desire to be. But the sad truth of the matter is not everyone's potentials manifest in the same way. Just as I was never destined to be a Diviner, you were not destined to be a Conjurer. And that is okay. I know that we'll find where you need to be. We always do."
"But where?" Beatrice looked up, her eyes red, "I haven't even explored other schools. I can't just randomly pick each semester until I find something that sticks!"
Dr. Laurent smiled. "Why do you think we have you take all those entrance exams?"
The old thaumatologist returned to her seat.
"And, looking at your file, you did exceptionally well in Evocation. You wanted to go into Medicinal Conjuration partly because it is an applied practice, yes? We have an Applied Evocation track here that is quite excellent. With your scores, Dr. Vogel would be quite happy to take you on."
Beatrice's mouth briefly hung open.
"That's a bit of a 180, don't you think?" she said, her brow furrowed as shame became anger. "What on earth makes you think I want to learn magic to hurt people?"
"While it is true Evokers tend to train in more aggressive forms of magic than other mages, I think you'd be surprised at everything the school covers and has to offer. Don't be so narrow-minded, my dear." Dr. Laurent held up a single finger. "Start the track, and we can reconvene after one semester. I truly think you will find that you excel, and if not, well, I'll personally eat this sweater."
The last comment caught Beatrice off-guard, prying a brief burst of laughter from her.
"Do I have any other options?" she asked with a sigh.
Dr. Laurent smiled and shook her head.
"Not anything better, I'm afraid."

***

The longest half an hour of Beatrice Ross's life came and went. After the meeting's conclusion, she found herself wandering the campus, a light drizzle starting to come down around her. Defeated, she sat beneath the trunk of a large Douglas Fir and pulled her knees in close.
What the hell do I tell everyone now?
"There you are," a chipper voice said, approaching from the side. "I thought we were meeting up after your meeting, Bea. Bea?"
Beatrice looked up and offered a sad smile to the short woman with a nose ring and braided blonde hair that stood before her. Her name was Angela. Unlike Beatrice, she did not fail the Conjuration final.
"Oh shit," Anglea replied. "That bad, huh?"
She took a seat next to Beatrice in the pine needles and placed an arm around her friend.
"What's the damage?"
"I apparently don't have what it takes to heal people," Beatrice replied. "So I am going to be an Evoker."
"Yikes. That's a lot of damage," Angela nodded. "Just promise you won't blow up my dorm, okay?"
Beatrice's lips slowly crept into a smile.
"I'm really sorry though, Bea," Angela continued. "I knew how hard you studied."
"Yeah," Beatrice sighed. "Well, now I get to be a battlemage. Who doesn't want to do that?"
"I bet you'll be good at it," Angela poked her friend with her elbow, then rapidly fanned her fingers to mimic an explosion. "For real though, it might be worth a shot. They're more than just battlemages, you know? I have a cousin who is a trained Evoker and works for Anderson as an industrial thaumatologist. Pretty sure Meteormancers also need that line of training. Wouldn't that be something? You could literally rain on someone's parade. Besides, you'd get to-"
"Do you have an elective next semester?" Beatrice interrupted. "Will you take the intro course with me?"
"Hell yeah," Angela grinned. "Let's set some shit on fire!"

Portland, Oregon
September 23rd, 2023

Agent Beatrice Ross frowned. The years had come and gone since her graduation from ICSUT Portlands. Canvas sneakers and flannel shirts had given way for work boots and the plainclothes of an SCP Foundation MTF agent. Her long red hair was now trimmed to neck length, with a thick pair of goggles obscuring her eyes. As she knelt on the ground, before her was a shriveled corpse, the life force of which had been forcefully extracted by means as of yet unknown. The corpse's name was Angela Volkov. And, in a past life, she had been Agent Ross's best friend.
"Penny for your thoughts?" asked a lean, bearded man with short blond hair. To the higher-ups in the Foundation, he was MTF Commander Creed of Tau-51. To her, he was just Damian. "I'm not an expert, but I know magic when I see it."
Beatrice nodded, she gently closed Angela's eyes. Or, what was left of them, at least.
"Necromancy. Powerful stuff too."
She looked around. Whoever had done this was strong. In the battle that had ensued most of the furniture inside the home had been destroyed, and something had blown out nearly the entire living room wall.
"Think it was what's-her-name? Annabelle?" Damian asked. "She's a necromancer. And operates out of Three Portlands. Not exactly out of arm's reach."
Beatrice shook her head.
"No real motivation for her to do this," she replied. "Even if she needed human souls for an incantation there are easier targets than an ICSUT trained conjurer. It just makes no sense. You interviewed the family, right? Did they say anything?"
"They didn't even know Mrs. Volkov was a mage," Damian chuckled. "But no. Husband was out with the kids at the park and came home to this mess."
"Any other witnesses?"
"Neighbors didn't see anyone and didn't know something was going down until half the house ended up in the front yard," Damian sighed. "So, unfortunately, our leads right now are few. I'll have Dwyer see what they can dig up from the Three Ports side of things, but I'm not holding my breath on much. Think Spencer's folks may have a lead?"
"Even if they did, he wouldn't tell us. Not without something bigger tying his hands."
She looked down at the corpse once more and remained silent. Damian placed a hand upon her shoulder.
"Friend of yours?" he asked.
"A best friend." Beatrice offered a melancholy smile. "I don't know why anyone would do this to her."

***

The trip back to Site-64 was quiet. Years of working together had made the rest of Tau-51 intuned enough to recognize when a colleague needed some space to work something out alone. The rest of the MTF's shared office was deserted, leaving the evoker alone at her desk.
What am I missing?
She sighed, and after a few more minutes of gazing a hole in the wall, reached into the back of her drawer and pulled out an old photograph, circa 2012. Within it were several college students, a class of future evokers, all smiling for the camera.
Left of center, Angela and Beatrice grinned, the former sitting on the latter's shoulders to peer above the rest of the crowd. Next to them was Irida, then Daxton, then Emanuel, Monica, and Adora. Of course, Joaquim, Jannah, and Joann were side by side in front, and who could forget Duncan and Mirza, posing back to back. Her eyes then fell upon a young couple holding hands: Edmund and Alyssa. Beatrice cringed and quickly refocused elsewhere in the photo. It was then her eyes fell upon the man at the center, Dr. Hans Vogel, the Applied Evocation Program Director, and primary instructor. By his side was Robin Thorne, a slim androgynous figure, whose smile was limited to an amused smirk. They served as the class TA.
Wonder if you've heard yet?
Her desk phone rang in response, shaking her from the clip show of memories to be brought back to the modern-day. The agent casually lifted the receiver and cleared her throat.
"This is Ross."
"Oh hey, it worked. I thought this might have been a decoy."
The voice on the other line was that of Agent Robin Thorne, no longer a TA.
"Agent Thorne," she eventually spoke. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"Edmund Bray is dead, Bea. And so are Irida Kemp, and Dr. Vogel. I heard from a reliable source that you and Tau-51 were poking around where they found Angela. I think it would be best if we talked."

A Dark, Forsaken Candle | A Strong, Steady Burn »


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Sister's Contribution
⚠ Content warning: This article contains implications of self-harm.

⚠ content warning
A clatter, as she tripped on her numb leg and upset the positioning of her eggshell white porcelain on the platter. She managed to hold the pieces on the plates still with a grin, shut the door to the toolshed and went up the dirt path to the house..
There were already footsteps in the hall as she put all the plates, cutlery, coffee cups and napkins in the right positions on the table. First entered her oldest brother, unequivocally silent and careful, as he slowly lifted his trapper hat and dropped it on the dusty floor. Secondly, the middle brother shambled in, still with mud on his pants. At last, when lunch was already served, the youngest and tallest brother walked in bearing a great smile.
She stood at the counter and held her arm as her brothers ate their lunch. There was a hectic slurping and flailing about with the pieces on the plates. Clearly, this was not a time of conversation as the only sound you would hear would be hawkings, 'Mmms' and munching. At times, pieces would fall out of their open mouths and onto the clean tablecloth.
When the silent brother finished, he took his cap and left as he had entered. The second brother also left his plate in its place and sighed. She noticed wood chips on the floor after his steps. "Back to the saw." the youngest brother said contentedly without looking at his sister, and scraped his last pieces of food into the garbage bin with one swift move. After he had left she stood by the counter, watching the garbage bin as if its contents were still alive.
Next day not only did he say one thing but two; "There's an awful lot of tools in the hall."
He dropped a metallic device on the counter next to her and sat down with his brothers. She snubbed him off, telling him to mind his own business. The youngest brother chuckled and scraped the fat off his plate onto the oldest brother's, who would then slurp it. "Remember sister, that we are supporting you."
Sister turned her head, saddened and hurt. She felt something gnawing at her belly, normally well-rounded. While the brothers dug into their lunch in silence, Sister examined the metallic device which had a thick but delicate handle and a thin oval blade. A remnant of the past.
Thursday, and lunch was served disorderly. Sister had to force herself with shaky hands to dry all the cutlery and porcelain she had carried through the rain. She put her weight against the counter, panting and resting her weak leg. Her brothers walked in with a mechanical fashion, recognizing neither her or the disorder on the table. In the middle of lunch however, the youngest brother exclaimed, "Huh, this piece is a little chewy." without looking up from his plate. Sister had to stop herself, her face turning red. She could not stand up for herself when her legs barely carried her weight.
Realizing her own predicament led her to decide that Friday was the final day. She did most of her usual duties in the gray morning despite the pain. At 11:00 a.m. she put eggshell white coffee cups, plates and cutlery on a platter. After some thinking, she added the sharp tool on the counter. For the last time, she limped toward the toolshed to contribute with a piece of herself.


Canon Hub » No Return Hub » Miau Miau, Asheworth-kun

20/04/2025
Esterberg, Poland

"So what exactly do you do?" Daniel Asheworth said, resisting the urge to scritch his large, feline ears. He kept his eyes on the bustling yet rough streets of Esterberg ahead of him. He and his newly assigned partner were to hunt down a relatively harmless Fae ontokinetic and offer them shelter and protection under Vanguard.
"Well, uh, oh, this and that," said Doctor Cole Thereven, a rather rotund man with a boyish face, thick-rimmed glasses, and a scraggly double-goatee.
A slow, wide grin stretched across his face, making him look positively devious. "I'm the Director of the Department of Anomalous Communications and Relations."
"Yes, I got that," Asheworth said. "But what do you actually do?"
"I… I talk to anomalies," Thereven said after a moment. "I'm not sure how else to explain it to you."
"Yes, but what kind of anomalies?" Asheworth said, his shoulders clenching up with tension like a grizzled old tomcat. "I work with Fae and Children of the Night. Tilda Moose used to run with the Serpent's Hand. Katherine Sinclair and her crew at Sloth's Pit work with legends come to life. Jay Dune and Paul Lague have an entire site where they're integrating anomalies into mainstream society. And that's not even touching on Alpha Nine. What kind of anomalies do you work with?"
Thereven didn't say anything for a long moment. Asheworth twitched his ears in Thereven's direction, half suspecting the man had slunk away, but his heightened feline hearing picked up the man's hesitant footsteps.
"Just… anomalies, man," Thereven said after a while. Asheworth flicked his tail against his back in annoyance at the non-answer.
"The anomalies among us," Thereven added a few seconds later, as if that helped. Asheworth bit back a hiss.
They walked in silence through the streets of Esterberg for a while. Asheworth wasn't exactly slinking through the streets, as he was well used to Esterberg, but he could tell that Thereven wasn't the most comfortable being out here in such a hostile environment full of Fae. Just what sort of anomalous communicator was this man?
"Say, if you're a director, how come you're out on a field mission?" Asheworth asked after another long moment. The same question could be asked of him, of course, but Asheworth was an Archmage and therefore a reliable heavy hitters out in the field. He doubted the true was same for Thereven.
Thereven mumbled something that Asheworth couldn't hear, even with his heightened cat hearing. "I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"
"I said," Thereven said through gritted teeth, "Downsizing."
"Downsizing?" Asheworth said, with some disbelief. "For the first time in history, the Foundation—no, Vanguard now, I'm still used to the old way of doing things—is coming out in public. Communication is the most important thing right now! Why are you being downsized?"
"Because I'm redundant, okay?" Thereven snapped. "Why would they… they didn't need me when they had fucking Maxwellists and Serpent's Hand and Sarkics—"
"Nälkä," Asheworth corrected him automatically.
"When they have fucking biohackers and actual hackers along, people who can actually communicate with dangerous anomalies that don't use verbal language, why would they need me?"
Asheworth felt an odd twinge of pity. He'd been through some rough patches in his life – hell, he'd suffered from the whole Foundation being against him as well, though that had been a far more epic adventure than this bureaucratic morass – but even he couldn't imagine the horror of being shunted out of…
"I mean, look at this shit! I spent my whole life trying to find my niche in the Foundation, trying to talk to anomalies instead of punishing them and containing them—"
"We've been doing that for years here at Site-120, you know, the Fae were considered anomalous by the Foundation," Asheworth said. "Also, like I said before, at Sloth's Pit, Site-43, and so many others I can't count—"
"And now, just when they might need me the most, I get put on field work—"
Asheworth felt a tingle in his whiskers and shushed him. Thereven didn't listen.
"I've been communicating my whole life! If there's anyone who can tell the world about anomalies, it's me! Doctor Cole Thereven—"
"Seriously, shut up—"
"Why is it so hard for the world to acknowledge that I am important, that I matter—"
Asheworth waved his hands, casting a kinetograph. Thereven's mouth clammed shut. Thereven was about to throw a temper tantrum, but Asheworth motioned towards the opening of the street.
The street opened into a deserted plaza. At this hour, the rest of Esterberg was bustling with life, but there was no one there save for one soul dressed in rags, rocking back and forth on the ground in the center of the plaza, surrounded by various foodstuffs, seemingly in a fugue state.
Asheworth felt a tinge of pity. The Fae reality-bender looked half-starved and haggard. He understood. The Fae as a people had been through the wringer, and those who fell through the cracks ran into even further problems.
"Alright, so now what?" Thereven said.
"Well, we observe her, see whether she's dangerous, figure out the best way to take her out or—"
"What? I'm not a fighter!" Thereven said.
Then, the slow, wide grin stretched across his face again. "She doesn't seem sussy. I'm going to go talk to her."
"No, don't be stupid!" Asheworth said. His tail curved around his waist in tension. (He hated it when it did that; it made it hard to hide his emotions, which was why most of the time he used a magical ritual to let him ignore his feline features in his internal monologue, whenever he was a catboy.)
"Trust me," Thereven said. "This is what I do for a living. Besides, I'm great with kids, I have a baby girl at home!"
Asheworth wanted to retort that no, it clearly wasn't what Thereven did for a living, because if it was, he wouldn't be on the receiving end of babysitting from Daniel Asheworth, and a regular child was very different from a reality bender, but before he could forward, Thereven stepped into the open.
"Howdy!"
The Fae reality warper's head snapped up, sharp and alert. Her eyes flashed bright purple, and a disturbance travelled through the local hume field, space visually distorting as reality warped. The foodstuffs were thrown about in the maelstrom, flying out of the plaza and out of the view. Asheworth quickly wove a shield with feline grace, protecting himself from secondary physical effects, but Thereven was too far away from him to be protected.
"A—meh—meh—eer—" Thereven stammered as the wave hit him.
He saw Thereven thrown back, flying towards him, before the reality warping wave reached him as well; Even through the shield and his pocket reality anchor, he could feel the air buffet him, crunching around him. He was blown onto his back. His vision swam; his ears rung.
He stared up at the sky for a few moments, disoriented.
Something was tickling his whiskers.
He lapped at it. It was salty but also somewhat sweet. He could smell vinegar and brine. Tentatively, he took a bite.
It was a pickle.
He pushed himself to a sitting position – sometimes, the tail did come in handy for balance, after all, and when he didn't have it he often felt like something was missing, finishing off the pickle as he did so. He looked at the Fae reality bender.
English hadn't worked, so he tentatively called out to her in Fae.
"I come in peace."
"I don't believe you! You are Foundation? GOC? Here to imprison me, to torture me?"
"The Foundation is no more," Asheworth said. "Haven't you heard the news?"
"A lie!" she spat. "Why would the Foundation cease what it was doing?"
"Because we were killing wonder," Asheworth said. "And now… wonder is coming back."
Unconsciously, he stroked his tail and his cat ears as an examplee, before realizing that she had no idea of knowing that he normally wasn't a catboy and that the reawakening of wonder after the Impasse was granting him the temporary fulfillment of this unrealized fantasy.
He cleared his throat. "You know, don't you?"
The ontokinetic Fae swallowed deeply. "I… I didn't think you could just wake up with… reality bending abilities. But then…"
"What happened?" Asheworth said, as gently as he could, almost in a purr.
"I turn things at random to food," she said. "But not true food, more like… when I try to eat it, when anyone eats it, it vanishes from reality altogether. Vanishes from my stomach. From my throat, even."
"Can you turn them back?" Asheworth said. He started mentally determining which spells could undo a baleful polymorph caused by ontokinesis, coming up desperately short, and then coming up with spells that could restrain such a thing.
The girl swallowed. "I can try."
She closed her eyes. The air vibrated, and there were a series of tearing and popping noises as various foodstuffs turned back into objects. Cobblestones, market stalls, the occasional human or Fae, all none the worse for the wear.
"Good job, I'm proud of you," Asheworth said, his voice truly like a purr in the chest this time, an old tomcat proud of his kittens. "Now—I have a pocket reality anchor on me. It should help you control your abilities, for now. Would you like it?"
The girl nodded.
"What's your name?" Asheworth said, slowly pulling out a mini reality anchor from his pocket.
"Renia," the girl said, nervously. She accepted the anchor, then looked down at her clothes, seeing that she had nowhere to store it. Asheworth said nothing.
"Has the Foundation truly changed?" Renia asked. "Are they truly no longer monsters?"
"I don't know about that," Asheworth said. "It's far easier to be a monster than to not."
He realized too late that his choice of words had been poor, as tears started to well up in Renia's eyes. Quickly, he offered his tail to her, and she used it as a handkerchief. She started to giggle. This crisis had been averted.
"But can you help me?" Renia said. "I know I'm dangerous. I've done horrid things, but—"
"None of us are past redemption," Asheworth said. "That's what Vanguard believes."
There was little other choice, after all. His hands were not clean by any means.
Though it discomforted him, he offered Renia his tail, and she clung onto it tightly.
"What about your friend?" Renia said, as they made their way out of Esterberg.
"Friend?"
"The American."
Asheworth's whiskers twitched. He'd forgotten all about Thereven. "I don't think I've seen him ever since you hit him…"
"Don't you think you should look for him?"
"He seemed very frustrated with his new position in Vanguard," Asheworth said. He burped, the faint whiff of pickle brine making its way out of his nose. "I'll mark him as lost in duty. Better for his daughter to think him lost than to think him a traitor."
Renia nodded, a little too forcefully. Asheworth ignored the taste of vinegar in his mouth.
The future looked bright.

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