What is the easiest way to hide the identity of SCP-001?
This would have been a perplexing question for the Administrator who had conceived General Notice 001-Alpha. How do you hide the most important anomaly the Foundation ever has, and ever will, come across? How do you hide the creator of the two thousand anomalies to follow? How do you hide the ultimate weapon? How do you hide the universe itself? How do you hide something worse? Like the identity of the Administrator, the circumstances surrounding how they came to their final decision is shrouded in mystery and known by a select few.
Regardless of whether the process was arduous or came in an epiphany, the outcome is evident for all to see and functioned precisely as planned. Several completely different files are present in the entry, preceded by a foreword stating that none, one, several or all of these files were the true SCP-001. The tactic worked as intended, with a myriad of conflicting explanations erupting and battling to prove that they were correct, but never having enough evidence to disprove the others. The simplest conclusions were the most common; that there was no true 001, that it was simply a ploy utilised by the O5 Council to instil a sense of purpose into the staff of the Foundation, hiding the truth that these anomalies had no source or explanation; or, that all the files were the true 001, that by some twist of fate they had devised a method of co-existing somehow.
Through all of this, a reoccurring theme emerged – very, very few thought outside of the box. Very few were able to realise the truth.

Transcript of audio logs recovered from [DATA EXPUNGED]

<Begin Log, ██:██, ██/██/████>
Frank ██████: Alright this is Frank ██████ aboard the… uhh… what're we calling this thing David?
David ██████ (Distant): S-C-P-S [DATA EXPUNGED].
Frank ██████: SCPS [DATA EXPUNGED]? Alright. This is… wait, really? They named it [DATA EXPUNGED] and we're going to… Ah whatever. This is Frank ██████ aboard the SCPS [DATA EXPUNGED], current time is [DATA REDACTED] and we're about an hour from launch. The Overseers have been getting these ships made for quite a while now, and it seems they've decided to send us out to take a looksee at those bits of the universe we can't see yet.
I'm uhh, just a record keeper for this trip so I figured it'd be handy to start my keeping prior to departure. Y'know, in case something happens.
Anyway, might as well start with system reports. Reactor is fully functioning, weapons look good…

<Begin Log, ██:██, ██/██/████>
Frank ██████: Frank again. We're about to launch, and seeing as nobody's ever done this before I figured some like, uhh fitting words would be a good idea.
<Frank pauses for three seconds.>
I got nothing. Ah shoot, I should've thought of this before…
<Frank pauses for seven seconds.>
Oh! ‘Now we travel t-'
<A loud whining sound is heard, promptly followed by several objects colliding about the room. Frank produces heavily distorted vocalisations until the whining noise subsides.>
Frank ██████, (Muffled): Fucking asshats could've given us a warning before we left at least. Fucking ruined my speech. Fucking fuck…
<End Log, ██:██>

<Begin Log, 04:18, 18/00/00>
Frank ██████: First and foremost: Since we don't really know what the actual date is on Earth, we've adjusted all the clocks and dates and such so that we're counting up from when we launched. It's currently been… eighteen days, four hours aaaand… nineteen minutes, since we launched. We're still traveling at max throttle so there's not much to see outside other than darkness, since we're going faster than the speed of light. Much faster.
But erm, yeah. We recently passed… Hey David, whats the name of that place we just went past? Messy-something? Yeah but like, the closest one. Pardon?
David ██████ (Distant): Messier Eighty-three!
Frank ██████: Oh, right! We've just gone past Messier Eighty-Three, which is about fifteen million light-years from Earth. Talk about being far from home, heh heh.
David ██████ (Distant): You know the oh-fives probably won't appreciate your stupid jokes!
Frank ██████: This is just notekeeping, not the finished logs! Sheesh, David can be a real hard-ass sometimes. Though considering he spends most of his time fixing machines, it's kind of understandable.
I'll make another log once something more significant happens.
<End Log, ██:██>

<Begin Log, 23:18, 24/02/00>
Frank ██████: Frank here. It's been something like two months. Not much has happened, other than that we've now passed GN-Z11 so we're officially beyond the view of Earth's telescopes. Oh, and of course we've been taking photos as we went past.
There's not much out here, but we can see a few small galaxies spread out here and there. The higher-up researchers keep using the word ‘gigaparsec' so that should give a fair idea of the distance between these things. They've also been mumbling about something seeming off about them, but other than that I can't find out much.
There's been quite a few cases of homesickness from the crew on board, but nothing that won't subside over time.
Any whom, everything's holding together quite nicely, excluding the automatic cafeteria. Oy David, you're gonna fix the cafeteria, right?
David ██████ (Distant): No, because there's nothing wrong with it!
Frank ██████: But the paste tastes like shit!
David ██████ (Distant): It's fucking nutrient paste, IT'S SUPPOSED TO TASTE LIKE SHIT!

<Begin Log, 14:37, 20/03/00>
Frank ██████: Well, we've erm… we've found out what the researchers were uneased about. We're close enough to get a proper look at the nearest galaxy and, uhh…
Well, it's a copy of the Milky Way. Not a perfect copy mind you, there's a few stars absent but the major identifying bodies are there.
We're uh, planning on taking a look to see if Earth is there, and if it is, look for inhabitants. Ample to say though, this might end up getting classified as an anomaly – maybe not as a full-on SCP, but at least as an E-dash. The chances of a replica galaxy forming are… well, slim to say the least.
<End Log>

<Begin Log, 06:48, 02/04/00>
Frank ██████: This place is definitely an anomaly.
First it was suspicion because of how similar it was to our home, but like… far out, this is a whole new level of unnatural. On our way to the analogue of Earth we passed by a few of the “missing” stars and found out they were actually there, just messed up beyond belief.
How messed up? Try Epsilon Boötis… prime? Alpha? Whatever, the big one? It's made of ice cream. We took a sample – tastes like avocados and cigarette smoke, apparently. The smaller one is a ball of liquid chlorophyll, somehow managing to keep itself together.
Antares is just solid iodine. No fire, no iron, nothing. Just a colossal, cold ball of iodine. Proxima Centauri is made of charcoal too.
Then of course, we actually got to ‘Earth' – Most of us have taken to calling it ‘Sub-Prime'. It's just a giant ball of fuck-ups and errors. You can see it's Earth, all the continents are there and shaped right, but they're made of the wrong stuff. Australia's a solid block of gold, the oceans glow blue, the whole American continent is made of maple syrup…
We're collecting as much information as we can, then we're shoving off to the next galaxy. This is just… too freaky.
In other news, it's come to light that Marie ████ is pregnant. Nobody's asking many questions about it, especially ‘coz we aren't entirely sure it's her husband's child. Sooo… yeah.
<End Log>

<Begin Log, 07:48, 02/05/00>
Frank ██████: What the actual, flying, fuck.
We've arrived at the next closest galaxy, and it's the same thing. Another screwed-up copy of the Milky Way. Screwed up in different ways, mind you, but still basically the same thing as before.
Mercury is made of ice, Jupiter is made of edible jelly. Earth looks like a Sarkic utopia – all of it's flesh, bone and blood. We've decided it's probably not best to approach, in case it doesn't like machinery. But nonetheless…
We're hoping it's just these two, but we're doubtful. What the hell is happening out here?
<End Log>

<Begin Log, 12:01, 17/05/00>
Frank ██████: Note to self. Bring more puzzles and toys on next trip. I've run out.
<Frank pauses for four seconds.>
Bagh, I'd better put something worthwhile here. Ahh… Crew are ok. We're coming to terms with the fact the third galaxy we're going to arrive at looks like a repeat of the first two. There's nothing major about it, it's just freaky to think this same anomaly repeats itself as far as we can see.
Oh, there was an incident last week. Johnathan was fixing some strange mechanical fault lower down when somethin' came loose and broke his arm. It's been fixed now though, and the doctors said he'd be fine in a few weeks. He swears it shouldn't have happened, so there's some investigations happening.
Nothing further I can think of. You remember anything I ‘aint?
<It is assumed that Frank ██████ was speaking to David ██████, who responded with an inaudible or nonverbal response.>
Alright. Ending log.
<End Log>

<Begin Log, 01:59, 07/06/00>
Frank ██████: Another copy of the Milky Way. Not big surprise.
Is this all that there is out here? Just endless copies of home, each more messed up than the previous?
<Frank pauses for three seconds.>
Earth was made of some sort of glass this time. Mars was made of dry ice. Uranus was horrifically magnetic – we almost got severely screwed over.
Nothing to do but keep going.
<End Log>

<Begin Log, 00:00, 30/08/00>
Frank ██████: Two more. There's no way these places aren't part of the same anomaly somehow.
Speaking of anomalies, there's shittons of them out here. There's a whole galaxy we can't approach, always seeming distant, another that the computers won't pick up at all but we can rather clearly see.
There's even been a few times when space itself has been talking to us. I'm not insane, we picked it up and narrowed it to certain pockets of space. There's other times when we suddenly don't have enough power an we'll drift for quite a distance before everything kicks back up again like nothing happened.
Is the universe flat? Are we falling off the edge or something?
<Frank pauses for four seconds.>
Before I forget, Marie's been quarantined for some reason. We aren't able to get much from security, but it seems she's accidentally smuggled some disease onto the ship. Hope the baby is alright.
<End Log>

<Begin Log, 05:14, 10/10/00>
Frank ██████: The most recent Earth, err… Sub-Prime-Ten I think, it's got signs of human civilization. Specifically, ours.
There's like… Las Vegas is there, made entirely of stacked poker chips and playing cards. New York is this one, huge piece of obsidian that looks like it's rather conveniently eroded to be identical to the New York back home.
There's no humans, mind you. No signs of life at all, and considering the oceans are pure hydrogen cyanide it's probably best that nothing evolved to survive that.
Why aren't we being copied if our homes are too?
<End Log>

<Begin Log, 16:05, 18/11/00>
Frank ██████: Tokyo is made of seaweed and is located at the north pole.
America is made of a solid block of gunpowder, with Chicago being made of a giant, carved mango.
The sun is encompassed in a shell of chitin, and is colonised by vast hordes of stone that shift and move whenever we stop looking at them.
Mars is made of camel leather and a single raging immortal walks its surface.
Uranus is nothing but a silent lattice of turning gears.
There is nothing out here but chaos and anarchy. We're doing a loop to head back home.
Security around Marie has been beefed up. Twenty guards all armed to the teeth with assault rifles and grenades? What sort of disease has she contracted?
<End Log>

<Begin Log, 23:17, 23/12/00>
David ██████: -ck fuck fuck fuck fuck…
This is David. Frank is dead, along with most of the crew. Marie gave birth to some fucked-up eldritch horror that's been running around and killing everyone it can. I…fuck, I don't think security can handle it. Of all the fucking times for something like this… fuck!
Whatever this place is, keep away. It's a cesspool of anomalies, there's nothing out here but shit replicas of our galaxy, and it just keeps going and going and going.
Whatever this place is made of, it sure as hell isn't reality. It just keeps expanding, growing more and more fl-
<David pauses for two seconds.>
Of course. Why wouldn't it with [DATA EXPUNGED] outside. Did the Overseers already know what we would find? Or did they just want it confirmed?
<End Log>

<Begin Log, 02:02, 14/03/01>
David ██████: Cafeteria is busted, only spits out rat poison. We're not going to make it, but the ship will.
I don't think we went far enough for the ship to get warped too badly. We haven't seen any other anomalies on board, other than the cafeteria fault.
< David pauses for four seconds. >
At least tell my family I loved them.
<End Log>

<Begin Log, 00:00, 00/00/00>
< The audio in the log is assumed to be automated as it is entirely comprised of fragments of audio used in previous logs. Changes in audio are denoted by line breaks. >
Frank ██████: This is Frank ██████ aboard the SCPS [DATA EXPUNGED],
we've adjusted all the clocks and dates and such so that we're counting up from
now,
Since we don't really know what the actual date is on Earth,
First and foremost:
the crew on board is fully functioning,
we're going faster than
max throttle
Much faster.
everything's holding together quite nicely,
There's been quite a few cases of homesickness from the crew on board,
We're doing a loop to head back home.
There's not much out here,
Just endless copies of home, each more messed up than the previous?
There's no humans, mind you.
You remember anything I ‘aint?
Oh, right!
Oh, there was an incident last week.
It's been fixed now though
Crew are ok.
nothing that wont subside over time.
Any whom, everything's
ok.
everything's
Alright
I'm not insane,
right?
David ██████: Of course.
David ██████ (Distant): there's nothing wrong
Frank ██████: Anyway,
we're
coming to
Messier Eighty-Three,
Talk about being far from home, heh heh.
Sooo… yeah.
<End Log>

The information collected and the names listed would never see the light of day. It would have been sent directly to the highest echelons of the Foundation, who listened, considered and acted. It wouldn't have taken a genius to connect the implications between the facts and the records, so every bit of it was expunged or redacted so that the Administrator's efforts would not be in vain. It would have been as though the expedition never happened, as though it was simply an anomaly that appeared unexpectedly. The information would never be seen by a human eye again until it was once more unveiled by fate, buried simply to hide the truth.
What is the easiest way to hide the identity of SCP-001, the architect of the universe and its infinite hordes of flaws?
Don't classify it as SCP-001.


This thing on? Who am I contacting?
Don't answer that. I can see your response before it comes out your mouth, so save your breath. That's entry-level telepathy for ya - you're welcome.
Anyway, how's it going, little lady?
Going over your thoughts here. Lots of thoughts, too. Coherent ones, mostly. You're not too dumb, are ya? That's where we're different, I guess.
That's your name? Penny? Well, it's catchy, I'll give it that. You might want to go with a nickname though. …let's say "Crusher." It's aggressive, it's go-gettin', it keeps people from taking advantage of you.
Alright. If this is freakin' you out, and you think you're gonna spend the next week in a mental ward trying to forget this, I'll shut up and leave your head, no questions asked. But if you're curious, I can keep going.
Don't answer that.
…I'll take that as a yes.
First off, my name's… let's say "Jeff". I'm your creepy uncle. If we're being specific, I'm the whole Universe's creepy uncle. Don't read into it that much. Fifth rule of telepathy - there's no language, no context. It's all in the perception. No matter how specific I can make it, you're going to see it in terms you're comfortable with.
Alright, Crusher. I'm talking to you because I know your life's going in the shitter. Those are some nasty memories I'm seeing.
Don't look at my memories. Not for my sake, yours. Let's just say people like me live our lives on about 500% the emotional intensity of your own. Price of omnipotence, I guess. But I've lived for a long, long time, and I like to think I know a thing or two about how to avoid making the mistakes I've made.
If any of this is unsolicited, interrupt me and I'll understand.
First thing's first - for the record, we can both agree that your boyfriend is human garbage. There's nothing you did wrong there, despite what he might have told you. To think, he calls you the manipulator to avoid any responsibility for his actions. I know a hypocrite when I see it.
I was sealed away by the biggest hypocrite of all. Called himself a hero before he even saved anyone. He didn't save any lives, all he did was kill things that were too big for him to understand. And the yelling. Good God, he could yell. His goons had no principles, all they did was do as he told because he could scream the loudest. You know how many wives he had? 307. He knew the names of about five of them, and he wasn't even in love. He bought them with his fight money. Ancient customs or no, it's still pretty fucked up.
Kinda like how he expects you to stay with him out of pity.
All his talk of morals and justice, and they still killed my wife and turned her body into my prison furniture. I was in the middle of my dinner, and I barely even had time to notice before they started drilling the hooks in my back.
Of course that doesn't make sense. Hypocrites never make sense.
What's your boy's name? Who cares. I'm calling him Dip the Wonder-Shit. Well, here's what you do with him: don't underestimate him, like I did with the other guy. Hypocrites can do some scary stuff when they're cornered - give him any leg room, and before you know it, you'll be buried alive in a salt flat while paranoid scientists kill chickens on your roof for some reason.
Don't let that happen. Give him no quarter. Destroy him.
I mean, not literally. You guys have more complicated laws than we did. But call him on his shit, shove him out of your life, block his accounts, and leave him crying on the pavement as people look on in horror, because they don't understand - they can't understand - that you're doing this to survive. People in your neighborhood just aren't used to seeing a short, 23-year-old half-Indian girl take things into her own hands - something you can change.
I know it might be hard. You've got a good heart, which is rare these days. I admire that. But you'll still have a good heart if you get rid of this guy - if I were in your position, Dip would have been wiped out of existence from the moment of his birth. You've shown an inhuman amount of patience, and you can let it go now.
And by all means, if you have to literally destroy him in self-defense, let me know how it goes! It's been a while since I've seen a good war.
…
You're a good woman, Crusher. It's nice to have someone listen to an old fool like me for a change.
On that note, I should probably warn you. Six of my chains are broken. The seventh and last chain is probably going to snap sometime next week. Generally, when one of my chains breaks, people die. But unless you have any plans to travel to Eastern Europe in the next week that I haven't noticed, you should be fine. Just stay where you are.
Though I will say, some airhead lunatics (same guys that keep killing chickens over my head, no less) are going to think this means I'm going to come out of my hole and devour worlds or something.
Don't believe any of that. I'm old. I just wanna sleep, and watch smart young people like you learn how to become the gods they've always dreamed of being.
I gotta go. Give him hell, Crusher. I'll be watching over you.
…and if you meet some guy called Keshpeth, please kill the ever-loving fuck out of him.


The city burns tonight. Written for the On Mount Golgotha canon.

His throat rumbled with song as he laid a bleeding finger on the strings of the lyre, surveying the crowd's state since the echos of his last notes. The scene was chaotic; buildings were burning, corpses were starting to decay, and the crowd lay before him on the ground and attempted to tend to each other's wounds.
It was ecstasy.
He studied the score on the ground before looking back up. He plucked the first string and the rest followed suit. Conflicting harmonies rang through the air as he continued to play, humming along with the frail semblance of a tempo he had constructed. The audience suddenly resumed their dance as they moved against their will. Servants and philosophers alike begged for mercy, to be released and to go free. He heard their requests as the notes gradually lost their tune and meaning. For a brief second, the thought of stopping flashed in his head. He didn't care.
As the city continued to burn around them, a spirit entered him. His fingers came to a halt and the music came to life. The ground had started to shift and turn. Chords dragged themselves out from under the dirt, keys formed husks out of urine, and melodies buzzed through the air as they observed possible prey. Everyone had stopped dancing to watch it unfold, staring agape at the wonders before them. Minutes hung in the air. Flames popped and crackled. The man observed the stillness around them, as if waiting for permission to move. His eyes moved to the score still on the ground, looking back up at him. It was waiting for its conductor to resume. After a moment's hesitation, he put his lyre down on the ground and snapped his fingers as he complied with its wishes.
The music descended onto the crowd. Servants were scorched, their flesh turned to a crisp. Philosophers were sliced open, entrails spilling into the ashes. Children jabbed their nails into dirt as they were forcibly dragged into the cracks of the ground. The pit was complete anarchy, and all involved were singing beautiful, heavenly notes. The lyre had started to play itself, and the music it produced was that which he had so desired to play as everything burned. Regrettably, he thought to himself, none would remain to capture in detail this wondrous scene. Everything would be burned and whittled away, and the only remains would be ash.
Nero understood this, and knew he had no more to accomplish with the performance. He picked up the score. Blood trickled onto it, and satisfaction filled him. He flipped the score over and found just enough empty space. Foreign ideas and thoughts rustled in his head, and inspiration burrowed itself in him. There was still more for him to do.
The symphony continued to play as he began diligently composing.


Nikolai rubbed his hands together for what felt like the millionth time. Even after months here, he still was not accustomed to Stalingrad - the battle or the weather. I miss Vladivostok…
Still, only one was better than both. For the first time in days (weeks? Time was subjective under constant gunfire), he was alone. He and a few other men had become separated from their unit; they had encountered a few Germans here, and the two men with him were killed and resting beneath a few centimetres of snow (Nikolai thought better of burying them). He could hear faint reports of gunshots and shouting in the distance, but in the area he was in was quiet.
His thoughts were interrupted by a creaking noise in the bombed-out building behind him. He instinctively turned around and raised his Mosin-Nagant, darting his eyes and listening closely. After getting within a few feet of the building, he saw an arm stretched out from in front of a knocked-down doorway.
He stepped inside, and immediately felt cold - but it wasn't the weather. He felt cold in the way he hadn't felt since he had first heard the Germans had invaded his country.
Something isn't right here. This room feels…wrong.
As he stepped in front of the doorway and saw the soldier lying on the ground, his unease turned into horror.
It was a German soldier, dead but somehow breathing. His skin had peeled off of most of his face; Nikolai could see bare bone sticking out. His uniform was mostly in tatters; beneath it, his chest and stomach were almost entirely raw flesh. The sense of unreality only intensified when he raised his hand.
"Stop!" Nikolai said in Russian. The man pointed at the door, his finger dangling from his hand as he did so.
"L…lauf. Monster…l-l-lauf…"
Nikolai did not know German, but his eyes widened all the same.
"Get out," the man said in thickly accented Russian. "The man…he is not gone."
"What man?"
"The pain…." he retracted his hand to hold onto his stomach, which only had the effect of making him whimper in agony.
"What are you talking about? Were you in a fire?"
"No…" The man's eyes widened, and he gave Nikolai a look that scared him more than every German gun he had ever faced down.
"The pain. Where…is…the pain?"
"What?"
"The…the…" Both his and Nikolai's thoughts were interrupted by the creature they saw in front of them.
It was flesh and skin, but it was not man. It stared at Nikolai and inclined its head.
The man on the floor saw him, and smiled.
The creature looked down at him. His faced contorted ever so slightly into a small frown. Then, it faced Nikolai once more.
And it smiled.
Nikolai ran. He ran faster than he thought he could, through the courtyard and into another building.
He looked around. The walls were the same as the previous building he was in. But the corpse was gone, and when he turned around, the door that he had come through was replaced by a corridor.
A long, narrow, corridor, with a wooden door at the end.
Nikolai walked down, more scared than he could remember being. He attempted to calm himself.
Focus, Nikolai. Remember what mother taught you - "when you are scared, remember what you know for sure."
He knew for sure that whatever that creature was, it was not a German. And somehow, he knew that wherever this corridor led to, neither it nor the other side of the door were in Stalingrad.
As he stopped in front of the door, he noticed a note on the front of the door, written in Russian:
"Don't overthink it. It's easier that way."
He looked behind him. There was nothing behind him after a few metres; just a solid concrete wall where the corridor had previously been.
His hand moved towards the door. He was too afraid to notice that he had not moved his hand on his own accord.
He opened the door and saw…Lenin.
Well, not quite Lenin. After his mind had taken a moment to register the shock, he recognized his location: Lenin's mausoleum. His mother had taken him here on a trip to Moscow in 1927, when he was just six. He saw people lined up to pay their respects, but could not see his mother or a younger version of himself.
He tapped an elderly man on the soldier. "What is-"
"You can't talk," he curtly replied.
"I…"
"No. Stop." He put his hand on Nikolai's lips, and put it down again. Nikolai tried to speak, but even as he felt his vocal cords, he did not make a noise.
"The talking. It distracts me. When you are here, your mind talks for you."
He looked down, and found his legs moving. Strangely, he felt neither shock nor urgency at this. It's going to be alright, he felt, rather than heard, someone say. Walk up to Lenin.
He did, and as he did so the crowd wordlessly parted to make way for him. Soon he was standing directly above the embalmed leader, staring down at its lifeless body.
He felt a tug on his hand. A little Oriental girl stood next to him, smiling that same non-smile the creature had.
"We talked about this part for a little while," the girl said tonelessly. "He wanted to grab you, take you into the corpse to bring you down further."
Bring me down? He thought.
She blinked. "I don't know why he insists on taking his time. Maybe it feels better that way."
I do not know what is going on here? Where is Stalingrad? Where are Hitler's soldiers?
She touched his hand - and as he did, a searing agony burned through him. He wanted to recoil in pain, but his body was frozen in place.
"One at a time." A man walked up to her and put her on his shoulders, so she was now directly staring at him.
"You won't have to worry about Stalingrad anymore," she said, speaking to him as if she were fifty years older than him. "He likes these places, you know. Warsaw, Leningrad…it reminds him of where it all began."
His hand was as the German's had been - his skin peeled off in loose fragments, each one bringing him new pain as it flipped back and forth like a Soviet flag.
He blinked, and Lenin's mausoleum was gone. Now he was in Berlin, which he recognized even though he had never been there. He stood on a platform on a roof, overlooking a large gathering of people with Nazi flags surrounding him on either side. Next to him, he was somehow unsurprised to find, was Adolf Hitler.
"Here," he said, speaking through a microphone and pointing at Nikolai, "you see the Slav. You seem him in pain as he bears the wounds of his mind." The crowd cheered before Hitler raised his hands for silence. "Pain is eternal. Pain unites the Jews and the Slavs and the Aryans. Pain, as it strikes through us and silences us in its relentless embrace."
Again, the crowd roared. This time, Hitler stepped towards him, and spoke to him while still speaking through the microphone.
"I have seen you, Nikolai," he said. "I have seen Vladivostok, and Moscow, and Stalingrad. I have seen your mind as I have brought it here."
Why? He heard himself think.
"Because it calls for you." The crowd repeated the last four words Hitler had said in unison.
"When I was there, in that fire, I knew pain. Then I fell down, and I met it. And now, you must meet it."
As he finished speaking, the body of Hitler slowly changed. His mustache fell off, then his hair, then his uniform - until finally, the same creature he saw earlier stared back at him with a smile.
"Pain." It said that one word, and said it many times, as the crowd repeated it.
Nikolai did not remember when the scene faded, and when the words "pain" were replaced by thoughts in his head. He did not remember when the thoughts become feelings, then sensations of agony that spread beyond what his mind could comprehend. He could not remember when the year became a day, or a week, or a century.
When at last it stopped and he found his body atop the corpses in Stalingrad, he screamed. For the pain he felt was not only in what remained of his body, but in its absence.
He screamed at what he did not feel, for all he knew how to feel was pain.


FOUNDATION TERMINAL ONLINE. PLEASE ENTER LOGIN INFORMATION AND PASSWORD.

pcs.noitadnuof|doowgnillocyzzi#pcs.noitadnuof|doowgnillocyzzi | alonebeneathaweepingwillow

HELLO DR. COLLINGWOOD.
YOU HAVE (1) NEW MESSAGE FROM: O5 COMMAND
THIS MESSAGE IS FOR SENIOR RESEARCHER ISABELLE COLLINGWOOD'S EYES ONLY. UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS WILL RESULT IN MANDATORY AMNESTIC TREATMENT, DEMOTION, AND POSSIBLE TERMINATION. DO YOU WISH TO CONTINUE?

Yes

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From: O5 COMMAND
Subject: 5/999 Clearance
Hello Doctor Collingwood, and congratulations on your new appointment as SCP-999's head researcher, one of the cushiest and most enviable assignments in the entire Foundation. SCP-999 is one of the few anomalies in our custody who will not only never attempt to harm you but will actively try to save your life if you're ever in any danger. Though your initial reaction when receiving this assignment was no doubt elation, you may have thought it was odd that such a seemingly low risk position was assigned by the O5 council directly. If you had already heard rumours of this prior to your assignment, you probably thought it was mere nepotism; the O5s protecting their friends and loved ones by giving them the safest job possible.
Unless you are so narcissistic to think that someone on the O5 council must be your secret admirer, you've likely realized that this is not the case.
To understand why this is our concern, you need to know about 999's origins. You may have noticed that its file makes no mention of where it was discovered. This is a deliberate omission. If you're not familiar with the mythology of the Scarlet King I suggest you read up on him. There's plenty of unclassified information on him in the Foundation database. All that's relevant for now is that he is (to the best of our knowledge) the most powerful malevolent entity in the Multiverse. A good number of our SCPs are either abominations born by the rape of his own daughters, or are the creations of mortals he empowered, either directly or indirectly.
You've been with us since you were a research assistant, Dr. Collingwood. In that time I assume you've heard many rumours about some of the horrific things we do here at the Foundation that you've never personally witnessed. Perhaps rumours about an innocent young girl who was the victim of a satanic ritual and what we were forced to do to her to prevent an XK-Class End of the World Scenario? Maybe you've even heard someone whisper the words '110-Montauk'? I regret to inform you that these rumours are true. Or at least, they were.
A thaumaturgical cult calling itself the Children of the Scarlet King enacted a ritual wherein seven young girls became effigies for each of the Scarlet King's seven brides, allowing them to bear his horrid offspring. How they obtained the knowledge to perform this ritual is unclear since all we ever recovered were handwritten notebooks. Superficial resemblances to some Sarkic practices (thaumaturgy, human sacrifice, body mutilation, and forming a pact with a cosmic entity) has led some to speculate that the Children of the Scarlet King may have some ties to modern Sarkic cults. It's an interesting idea, but no concrete evidence has ever been found to link the two. Investigation into the matter is ongoing.
As for the ritual itself, each birth caused more destruction than the last. The writings of the cult's priest predicted nothing less than the Apocalypse if the Seventh Bride gave birth, which could only be prevented if Procedure 110-Montauk was performed without fail each and every day. To our seemingly great fortune, the notebook contained detailed instructions on how 110-Montauk was to be carried out.
Needless to say, we found this suspiciously convenient.
Why would they devise a countermeasure to prevent the very apocalypse they were trying to invoke? We needed more information regarding these entities. Fortunately our archaeologists have unearthed numerous tablets, scrolls and artifacts of the ancient Daevas. They were a sadistic and warmongering people who were granted unholy power and knowledge by the Scarlet King as a reward for the death and suffering they caused. One of the Daevite tablets in our possession, found covered in dust and blood, was a theogony for the Scarlet King and his Brides. It was quite informative.
The information that we found most relevant to our situation was that the Seventh Bride was not like her sisters. She was never completely broken by her King's subjugation. Instead of monsters, she gave birth to great heroes in the hopes that they would destroy her sisters' children and overthrow their father. Thus far, all have failed, but by a vote of 7 in favour, 6 against (admittedly more out of concern for Procedure 110-Montauk's lack of viability as a long term containment strategy than out of empathy for the girl), the O5 council decided to believe that the Seventh Bride still remained unbroken and that her child would be an asset to us. At the risk of causing an XK-Class End of the World Scenario, SCP-231-7 was relieved from Procedure 110-Montauk following the deaths of SCP-231-1 through -6, and was allowed to give birth.
SCP-999 was the result.
Go ahead and read that again. Be sure you understand it in all its preposterous ridiculousness; The Tickle Monster is the child of the Scarlet King.
We've been running a counterintelligence campaign ever since, which is why everyone and their mother thinks we've still got a prepubescent girl strapped to a rape rack in a bunker somewhere. Let them think that. Far better for everyone that the Children of the Scarlet King believe that they're playing us for fools than for them to know that there is a threat to their King.
The girl herself is fine, by the way. She was cured of the trauma from her ordeal by SCP-999, at which point it was decided she could be returned to her family so long as they were all given class F amnestics, implanted with new identities, and relocated to a town at least 1000 km away from the Children of the Scarlet King's nearest known activity. On the insistence of the Ethics Committee, the family was also given a seven figure payout as compensation for our repeated…misdeeds against their daughter, as were the families of the other SCP-231s. I suppose it was technically malpractice on our part. In case we have any moles for the Children of the Scarlet King in the Foundation, as far as anyone else knows 231-7's family were killed in front of her as part of 110-Montauk.
I'm sure you're skeptical. Are we insane? How could our sweet little tickle monster ever hope to dethrone a Lovecraftian Horror of unparalleled might? Well, SCP-999 is less than a decade old. It's still just a child, and nowhere near its full strength. Even so, its power is incredible. Even brief interaction with SCP-999 can permanently cure severe depression and PTSD, and more recent experiments have resulted in the complete reformation of D-class personnel who were previously unrepentant sociopaths. This effect is not chemical, but psychic, and one day it may grow powerful enough that not even the Scarlet King himself will be immune.
The experiment with SCP-682 was most remarkable. Based on multiple Daevite texts, including descriptions from SCP-140 itself, we are reasonably certain that 682 is the offspring of the Fourth Scarlet Bride. If this is true, then SCP-999 is already strong enough to temporarily quell the malevolence of its own eldritch siblings. One day 999 could very well be strong enough to permanently reform its family members just as it reforms human beings. It will not overthrow the Scarlet King by force, but with light and love and laughter that can brighten the blackest of hearts.
999 is not in reality a safe class SCP. It is Thaumiel. It is the best and really the only weapon we have against some of the most powerful hostile entities known to exist.
By all means doctor, enjoy the relative safety of your new position, but do keep in mind that SCP-999 is not a mere pet that we fancy. It is one of our most valuable assets and must be safeguarded at all costs. Its safety and well-being are paramount, and you are not at liberty to share this information to anyone without level 5/999 security clearance. As per protocol, unauthorized disclosure of level 5 classified information will result in your termination. This e-mail will automatically delete as soon as you leave the terminal, so feel free to reread it as many times as necessary to remember all of the pertinent information.
Take good care of our little tickle monster. The fate of the Multiverse may well depend on it.
- Your secret admirer (if anyone asks), O5-█

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Log off

LOGGING OFF. GOODBYE.


It was time. His children were ready to come into the world. They would have to be born by C-section, however; he had no natural opening from which to birth them. He took his cellphone into the bathroom with him and pre-dialed 911, then set it aside without pressing the call button. Then, he got his straight razor, cleaned it, brought it up to the chain of lumps that trailed across his throat like the most precious necklace in the world, and carefully began to cut.
The white one came out easily; she was small, but healthy, and was still growing even as he gently placed her and her shining spiral shell onto the clean towel. She was a beautiful baby, with ten fingers and ten toes. But the red one was stillborn, just a shrivelled twist of grey tissue; tears that had nothing to do with the pain of labour trailed down the father's cheeks. The orange one, too, was nothing but dust in their shell; he waited until he could get his Adam's apple to stop trembling before he kept cutting. Yellow, green, cyan, blue, violet… all of them had died before they even had the chance to be born. In his desperate haste to get the last, black shell out, his hand slipped, and blood started gushing out of his throat. His vision was blurring as the shell slipped into his hand, but he could still see clearly enough the plump, healthy baby boy within. The razor clattered onto the countertop as he scrambled for his phone with the hand not cradling his precious son. He sank slowly to the floor. He was so tired… but he had to press that button. He couldn't rest until he knew his babies would be taken care of.
"911, what is your emergency?" the voice on the other end asked.
"My children…" he rasped. "You need to save my children."
"Sir, are you alright?"
"No… ." His arm started getting too weak to hold the phone up. "Make sure they go to a loving home, will you… ?" His arm fell to the side, the phone with it. He could vaguely hear the dispatcher's increasingly concerned questions, but they seemed so far away. Maybe it would be okay to close his eyes for a bit. He was sure things would be taken care of.
The last thing he heard was the angelic voice of his daughter as she crawled out of her shell and called out for him.
"Daddy?"


« An Impenitent Thief | Hub | Pattern Breaker »

I can feel it calling to me. It is always calling to me.
Those old pages, dust-dry and crumbling. Lines of staff like furrows, seeded with notes, waiting to grow. They cry out in thirst, desperate for me to quench and renew them with a rain of my blood.
No! Not with my blood. With the blood of others. I have never looked on the score itself - have never beheld its harsh beauty. I cannot, I must not. Others will be the instruments of its fruition. I must hold myself apart. I will be the shepherd, leading my lambs … to where all lambs eventually go.
I should not think of these things. It is getting harder to control myself; people will notice. I turn on some music to distract me. Bartok: Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta - I let the sounds soak into me, restoring, cleansing.
I have always loved music. As a child, I would listen on my own for hours, playing and replaying my parents' records. The crystalline clockwork of Bach, the looming towers of Mahler, the furious crimson of Prokofiev - I was entranced by them. Even as I grew, those feelings never left me. Music has been the spindle around which my life has turned - I have returned to it in my work, in my home, in my family.
And then I learned of a piece of music that renders all others irrelevant. Unheard, unperformed, it has had more influence than any chanson or symphony. I have followed its trail through history, seen its power: Gesualdo, composer and murderer - Salieri, who cut his own throat in an institution - Scriabin, Berg, dead of "blood poisoning" - Purcell, Tchaikovksy, Schumann, Mozart - so much madness, so many deaths unexplained. What had they learned? Where did that knowledge lead them?
My mind is wandering again, down too dangerous a path. The Bartok is not enough - I need to empty my thoughts. Fortunately I have access to many interesting volumes, and I have been reading widely. There are certain techniques of meditation that are rumoured to have connection with my muse, and which I have found useful in maintaining my outward composure, especially in recent months. Importantly, the preparations are easy - and easily hidden. I lock my door, arrange the materials, close my eyes, and commence.
Darkness.
Silence.
Vertigo, then weightlessness.
Intense heat. The smell of violets. A polychromic sheen across the blackness, like a bubble on an oil slick. Poignancy. My skin prickles.
Sensations chase each other across my consciousness. A taste of metal and salt. A sharp pain in my chest. The overwhelming need to sleep. A swelling at my throat.
This time is different. I sense the people in this building. I know them utterly. I do not share their thoughts, but I experience their emotions. Anger. Devotion. Boredom. Wry amusement. Shame. Fear of failure, of death, of being forgotten. Hopes of improvement, of revenge, of forgiveness.
Something is wrong. Feelings collide and commingle, as the effect grows wider, encompassing many buildings, a city, many cities. Frustrated excitement with guilty grief with wild joy. Each could be savoured, but this is like eating every dish at a banquet at the same time. It is like drowning. It is too much.
The seething maelstrom grows and roils, subsuming me. It is everything anyone has ever felt, will ever feel. I will be obliterated.
And then, like a deep bell striking, everything else disappears, and I have knowledge.
It is not pictures or words - it is neither and both. It is like the visions painted by music. I have always known these things. I will learn them soon.

A hill. The clouds form a blank sheet above. Two bearded men in roughspun robes approach. They carry some object, wrapped in goatskin, with great care. It is precious to them. They have walked far, from the side of a high mountain, through flood-ravaged lands. They follow a figure without substance, both present and absent: their guide to this hill at the centre of the world.
At the base of the hill, near the gaping mouth of a cave, the guide is no longer with them. They unwrap their burden. Old bones, a skull. The man who these bones belonged to, he knew this place too. Here he crushed the serpent's head. Here he was damned.
The two men bury the bones carefully in the cave. Afterwards, they sing a song to the dead. They know that this place is sacred, but they cannot know who will sing songs of worship here, or who the worshippers will sing to. Gods of love, gods of fury, gods of avarice, gods of sacrifice and gods to be sacrificed. This place, where one man was driven away, will bring people of many faiths together in a song extending over history.

The light in the small room is red. The man does not notice that the fire has burned so low. He has forgotten his masked patron. He is intent on the vellum before him. Intent on the music which burns inside him. Noon has become sunset has become morning has become dusk. The man pours himself into his writing. He is buried in it; he will be buried with it.
This man is only one thread in a tapestry, one voice in a greater chorus, one ripple in a stream. There are other people, in other rooms. Lit by embers, candlelight, bright fluourescence, or left in shadow. Many people, unknown to one another, yet each following the same guidance. Each working towards the same goal. Towards an idea whose time has come.

A city. Proud towers reach toward a xanthous heaven, in which stars shine darkly. Four rivers flow out from its walls, black and red and white and yellow, singing their way to a sea of pitch. I know of this place, although I have never dared travel there. Alagadda.
But this is not the Alagadda of occult lore. No wild orchestra plays, no frantic revellers fill its twisting streets and sumptuous halls. Nor are its bricks shattered, decked in crow-feathers and the dust of dried blood. This Alagadda does not wear a mask. It is at peace. It is whole.
It is the city as it was, before the corruption of its king and people. It is the city as it will be, when the Ambassador abdicates, when history ends, when the last note is played. It is the city as it never has been, a mere allegory for the one guiding its fate. For the city's namesake.

A hill again, under skies of darkness. Three figures, raised high above a crowd of humanity.
On the right, a slave to base desire. A predator: hungry, lustful. Uncaring of consequence. Spiteful in its damnation. Its music is frenzy.
On the left, another slave, looking for freedom through plans and designs. Analysing the predicament and trying to reason a way out. A thinker: denying the base motives of its companion, of its own past self. Its music is calculation.
These two bicker and spit, their melodies clashing in raucous counterpoint, as the crowd below looks on.
The figure in the centre is above the other two - apart from them. Beyond them. Their petty squabbles are nothing. The outcome matters not. At the appointed time, the melodies of raw power and cold reason will no longer hold any meaning. They will be absorbed into an infinite song - into the coming perfection.
The central figure is the centre - it is everything and eternity. It is not a being - it is existence. It is called a saint, but it is not holy, it is holiness - it is the stuff of which gods are made. No-one can find it, but all are guided by it. No-one can know it, but all will feel it. It has always been, it has returned, it will return again. It is outside time. At the appointed time, time itself will cease to be.
And all will come together in perfect harmony.

The echoes of the bell die away as understanding fills me. I open my eyes.
I have a new purpose: I am not just a shepherd, not just a music-lover. I am a thief.
It is time to snatch a prize from those to whom it never belonged. I must take great risks, I must work in darkness, but I will find the way.
For I have a guide.


♪Take a little walk to the edge of town♪
♪Go across the tracks♪

Ogden lay in bed at the MTF Alpha-1 headquarters. Recently his dreams took him back to his old neighborhood. He'd stroll down the sidewalk where his house used to be, past the pizzeria he once frequented as a youth, to the empty back lot where he and his friends played baseball. His dream-self turned the corner of the path and saw a man standing ten feet away. The stranger had a trench coat, a fedora, and a face all too familiar to him. Ogden stood still as the figure took three steps towards him and, through the nature of dream logic, covered the distance between them.
"The O5s are all dead. The Administrator won't budge. Where do you go from here?" The Dream Man asked.
"Well," He paused, absorbing the information. "The first thought that went in my head was 'suicide', but to be honest I'm actually curious to see how long I'd last. You still going through with your Plan?"
"Yes."
"Damn. You've talked to her already, I assume. I bet it didn't go well."
"She'll probably try and stop us, but then again, everything is trying to stop us. True, things did not turn out as I predicted, but at least I still have contingencies in storage. She, on the other hand, seems to be improvising."
Ogden let out a slight snicker. "Have the others been called?"
"The old Hand is being rallied again. Everyone is still separated, so don't expect any help. If you guys don't make it out, you don't come at all."
The soldier nodded. "I hope our little retirement package works. After what happened to your old coat, I don't want to get suspicious about my own clothes while getting out."
"Don't worry. Your attire is far more refined than mine, I've made sure of it. I'll see you soon, I hope." And with a tip of his hat, he vanished.
Ogden rose out of his bed, one of many in the barracks. Manfredi, Johnson, and Baines were asleep as well. The rest were elsewhere in the complex, probably aimless after they lost contact with the O5. One would think that a beast like Alpha-1 would thrash in chaos with the head that is the O5 chopped off, but the cut was so swift that they simply dropped.
Stretching his arm under the bed, Ogden fished out a box that had been collecting dust for years. Inside was a black battledress, one that he had never worn before. A secret gift from the First Administrator after he stepped down. Once he wears it, he's a full-blown traitor — to Alpha-1, the Foundation, and the human race. But there was no time for any remorse. Ogden put it on as fast as he could.

♪Where the viaduct looms♪
♪like a bird of doom♪
♪As it shifts and cracks♪

The soldier paced out of the room briskly, making sure that his comrades didn't wake up. To an observer, he looked like a commando in his new getup. But in the empty halls of the complex, there was nobody to look at him. Ogden headed for the security office, fully aware of what he must do. An underlying current of dread flowed through his veins as he sneaked his way through the building, but with a few trained breaths those feelings were buried.
Arquette was the only one in the security office, still and virtually inactive as he sat on the chair. His eyes flicked from one monitor to another, locking onto any sign of movement that passed through the camera's field of vision. Every now and again, he'd look at the news screen to his right to watch the developing apocalypse grow worse. His mind was still processing it all, and it conflicted with his conscious overwatch. Only the sound of the sliding door broke his intense concentration.
Before Arquette could even see who it was, he felt something wrap around him. Suddenly he was lifted upwards fast. His head struck against the concrete ceiling, and the concussion sent his brain reeling. Recovering from the blow, his staggered eyes looked down to see Ogden standing in front of the door with a tentacle emerging from his right sleeve.
"Sorry, pal. I've got a job to do."

♪Where secrets lie in the border fires♪
♪in the humming wires♪
♪Hey man, you know you're never coming back♪

Arquette couldn't even speak. His windpipe was being crushed. The tentacle gripped tighter and tighter, evoking a python that constricted its prey. He felt the air get squeezed out of his lungs, hear his ribs crack, and feel blood rushing towards his brain. Pain flooded his nerves before the numbness began to take over. Then, a loud snap.
Ogden slowly dropped Arquette's body on the floor. He didn't even bother to check whether his comrade was knocked out or dead, he just sat on the empty chair and began to type on the panel. He clicked on his own earpiece, switching it to a different frequency.
"Eli. Bailey. Cliff. Judith. It's Ogden. We're moving out." And without question, the other four dropped everything and complied.
Ogden eyed the screens, watching for the other four. Bailey and Cliff were donning their outfits while heading to the aircraft hangar. Meanwhile, Judith was at the armory, stuffing dozens of weapons into her own jacket. The extradimensional space within the jacket had more than enough room to empty out the entire armory. Eli was in the communications room, having dealt with the other agents quickly. Ganymede may have left them mute to the other sites, but they certainly weren't deaf, nor were they entirely bereft of alternative means of communication. Eli didn't want them to take the chance, however. Several limbs emerged from his sleeves to smash and tear the equipment.

♪Past the square, past the bridge,♪
♪past the mills, past the stacks♪

Bailey and Cliff fought their way through the hangar. Bailey climbed to the control room while Cliff scrambled across the airstrip to secure their jet. The extra arms proved advantageous in disabling the resistant ones among the crew. The rest just backed down.
The onset of the apocalypse had sown thoughts of futility in the minds of the crew. The activation of the Ganymede protocol only served to cultivate them. And now, the actions of their rogue coworkers finally caused them to germinate into outright apathy. Cliff and Bailey could see it in their faces as they ran past.
"This is Bailey. The airstrip is secured and the jet is fueled."
"Roger that," Ogden replied. "Judith and Eli are heading your way right now."
A few extra arms emerged from Ogden's uniform and reached for the buttons and switches on the panel. They typed and pressed with surprising rapidity. Without warning, doors across the entire compound began to shut. The bathrooms, the barracks, the cafeteria, any space occupied by his comrades were all locked down. Several monitors switched from camera feed to computer interface.
"Alright. Let me just shut down the rest of the compound." It wasn't meant to be a permanent shutdown. The system's security protocols could probably undo it in half an hour, provided no external forces would disrupt it.
At the airstrip, the hangar door slid open. Cliff was already moving the jet onto the runway. The rest of the crew just stood nearby and watched.
Ogden was about to finish the sequence, but he heard the door slide open and a handgun cock.
"Hands off the console, Ogden."
The extra hands ceased moving and slowly retracted into the man's jacket. He slowly stood up from the chair and turned to see his foe. It was his comrade Kaylin, pointing a 9mm right at his temple. She had a cold expression on her face, a mask that held back the broiling anger within her like a floodgate.
"Kaylin, why haven't you shot me yet?"
She growled. "Because I want to know why."
Ogden gave out a sigh. "Why? I've got places to go, my team and I." He gave a long look at the 9mm. "And you're in my way."
"And the freakshow jacket?"
"A gift from my boss."
For a few seconds the two stood completely still. Whatever amount of friendship and camaraderie the two had built and shared over years of blood, sweat, and tears had been thrown aside. Now, they eyed each other like two Western gunslingers, waiting for the other to make a move. An air of apprehension could still be felt, but as the seconds ticked by it slowly began to fade.
"Ogden," Bailey's voice crackled through his earpiece. "Where the fuck are you? Everyone else is on the jet already."
Ogden did not answer back. He didn't even flinch from his stare-down with Kaylin. Time was of the essence, and sooner or later the stillness would be broken.
"Ogden, do you copy?"
Kaylin's twitching trigger finger shattered the moment. In a swift leap, Ogden dodged to the right to avoid the incoming shot. Simultaneously he opened his jacket, unleashing a flurry of armored hands that reached out to his former partner. Kaylin was about to fire another round, but the arms grabbed hold of her hands and pinned her to the wall. An insectoid arm, like an elongated mantis forelimb, stabbed into her wrist, forcing her to drop the gun.
Several of the limbs moved away from Kaylin and back to the panel. With them, Ogden finished typing the shutdown sequence. With one final click, the entire compound went dark. He tapped into his earpiece. "Alright I'm coming."
Ogden faced his pinned friend. "I'm really sorry."
One of the arms socked Kaylin square on the face, knocking her stone cold. The arms dropped her on the floor and retreated back into his jacket. Ogden left the surveillance room and never looked back.
The jet zoomed out of Alpha-1 HQ. Cliff was in the cockpit, and after the initial takeoff the other four quickly got off their seats and flocked to the windows. They looked out see the chaos that the televisions could only catch a fraction of. They flew above a small town ravaged by lava erupting from beneath the ground. If they flew down any closer, the fountains of molten rock that spewed into the sky would damage their jet.
"A merciful demise, compared to the suffering elsewhere." a somber voice spoke from behind.

♪On a gathering storm comes a tall handsome man♪
♪With a dusty black coat with a Red Right Hand♪

The four turned around, and there stood the First Administrator, in the flesh.
"I'm sorry that you had to go through such lengths to come to me. But thank you for-"
"We get it, sir," Eli interjected. "We're here now, what's the plan?"
The Administrator sighed heavily, then stepped forward. "We fly northeast, and fast. I need to consolidate our resources, because we have a lot of work to do."

« Interlude: New Toys | Canon Hub | To Be Continued »


Part I: The Word and The Cool Kids | Part II | Part III

Adrian Baudin had a recurring dream. He'd dream that he was lying awake on his cot, in the basement beneath the house in which he'd spent two months, ever since the day of the Greenwich Exhibition.
The basement, normally filled with the sound of chatter (and drilling, Adrian was convinced; power tools at least), was instead mute, and the wooden floorboards of the house that sat anomalously silent above Adrian's head were streaming with flames.
Adrian always found himself unable to move from the cot, unable to take his eyes off the ceiling as it glowed with embers. Eventually, the roof would fall, and the flames would engulf his body. Every part of him that was recognizable would be burned away, and beneath them would be a new human, reborn and ready to emerge in a world that did not remember his face.
And it was always at this time that Adrian awoke.
Today, he woke up in his cot, as usual. Usual, but not always—sometimes, he'd wake up on a porcelain floor in the bathroom, or perhaps on dead grass outside. His hosts told him this was a normal consequence of the field that permeated the house. He tried to no avail to think nothing of it. Elsewhere in the basement, other men rose from their cots, which were set up in haphazard rows on the concrete floors. Without any fanfare, the day had begun.
Across an aisle, he spotted a familiar face hunched over his knees on the edge of a cot, staring between his legs, willing them to cooperate.
Adrian walked over. "Geoff."
"Adrian," Geoffrey mumbled through a grayed mustache. "Let's go for a walk."

There wasn't much space for walking outside. The house looked run down, white paint worn by endless raindrops into a streaky mess. There seemed to be all too much wood propping the place up, and all too many worm-ridden holes in every plank.
The exterior of the house was enveloped by only another confinement. A dome of eggshell blue came down on all sides, leaving a scarce few meters' radius of unkempt lawn. If one stared into the barrier, it might seem like fog that had been pressed against some transparent wall, embossed with the shape of hexagons in a grid. If one stared for longer, the eyes would lose focus, trying to grasp the other side of a wall that wasn't there.
Once, Adrian had walked through this barrier. When he returned, he found one of them waiting to let him back in. From the outside, the house just looked like an empty field. When he entered again, the wall became solid, unyielding. He had not left since.
And so it was often that the misplaced artist and his friend would wait outside. They would talk about what they had been doing. What to do next.
Geoff wasn't happy in the old house. The hosts made him uneasy. That they might consider themselves artists, and call what they do art. He scarcely thought art should put you on the radar of the Foundation. Or the Coalition.
Adrian was less sure. He didn't think a single one of the Cool Kids really thought they were artists. He saw it in their eyes, reflected in every drop of water they drank: they were soldiers. The moniker was purely practical, of course. They knew it would draw in the people they wanted. They knew it tied them to ideas they liked. "Hey," they might say. "We fought back then when the Word was something worth fighting for. We can still fight. Fight with us."
But, it was all conjecture. Sometimes Adrian wondered if conjecture was all he had left anymore. Is it worth asking a question if no-one thinks to answer? Is it worth painting if your canvas ends up in a research vault somewhere?
Adrian related this, in so many words, to Geoff, who was quick to correct him. They had each other. That would have to be enough.

Sometimes Adrian stared at a canvas, paintbrush in hand.
He had borrowed them from the communal supply stash. Most of the paint in the building was used for reinforcing sigils, or protective circles. But they had some surplus from which Adrian could leech. And he tried to paint when he could. Today, he'd managed to sneak some space in the vacant dining room.
He thought about what could be projected onto the canvas. Who made his suffering? Who kept him from leaving this place?
Was it the Cool Kids? The Coalition? Was it the government? Or the Foundation?
His brush moved, and he focused as he'd done before, in that apartment. When the world clicked, and it all made sense. He did with his brush what he once did with his mind, what he now does with his eyes. Sorting the threads in his mind into neat boxes, tracing the lines to their origin. Following the circle.
He was interrupted by one of the youngest of his hosts. Adrian paid the required attention to him, turning his head away from the smattering of blue pigments to focus on the messy-haired man to his side.
He had a toothy glare. "We know what you're feeling."
Adrian avoided his gaze. "What is it I feel?"
"You're wondering if you could get out. You know what it's like to be pushed down. You scream, but nobody hears. You paint, but nobody looks."
Adrian nodded. "Like you?"
"Sometimes." The boy shrugged, taking an unwanted seat. "Sometimes it feels like everyone's listening. Sometimes it's like there's someone looking over our shoulder."
"Seems comforting. You should take that to church." Adrian stared at the table. It didn't budge.
"Not really. They don't understand us. Don't get it. We've tried outreach, but it's hard." The boy shifted in his seat. Adrian didn't look.
"Is that what Greenwich was? Outreach? You did reach out to some people. People coming to arrest us." Adrian twirled a thin paintbrush between his fingers.
The boy exhaled. Sounded like he was shaking his head. "No, no. Not for them. They can knock all they want, but they won't get in. It's the person who can get in… she's who we really want."
"What? Who?"
"Maybe if you looked us in the eyes, you could find out."
Adrian stared at the table, adamant. The boy left, eventually, without another word.
Adrian tried to resume, but the paint just wouldn't work. He shelved the canvas for another time.

On another day, outside the house.
"Did I ever tell you about my… when I was young?" Geoff was eating an apple, and perched on a patch of grass, one somewhat less craggy than the rest of the yard.
"I don't think so." Adrian was staring forwards, into the foggy barrier. "You usually ask the questions."
"Well, before I, uh… before I left, my parents had a farm. Big, wide, open. Lots of trees. Suppose it was an orchard, actually. There were lots of apples." He took another bite.
Adrian turned, and peered past the fruit obscuring his face. "You don't look much like a farmer, Geoff. More of a… Hemingway type." He nodded to himself, satisfied with the comparison.
If Geoffrey considered this, he didn't pause. "I like to think of it as, I was growing bowls of fruit twenty years before you started painting them."
"You grew bowls?"
"Ech, quiet. But, what I've been wondering, is: how long are we going to sit here, in this house… before they start trying to grow things on the lawn?"
Adrian tilted his head. "I don't think they need to grow food. There's a van. Some kind of exploit pocket on it, and they can drive undetected. Get groceries."
"If they're so good at hiding, I'm surprised we have to hide in the first place. Why weren't they so subtle back in… in Greenwich?"
"Well," Adrian turned his head. Several of his hosts were sitting close to the barrier, cross-legged in a semicircle, eyes closed. "They thought they had to be seen. Had to do it in public."
"I'm still trying to… scrub the whole bloody thing from my public eyes. I swear, I remember six different ways it happened and none of them make sense. I saw you die, at least… at least once." Geoffrey winced, and shook his head, but the memories stayed firmly inside it.
"It's alright. I don't think it… I don't think any of it went like they wanted it to." The artist pressed his friend's shoulder gently. "Can I ask a question?"
"Shoot."
"Why'd you run away? From the farm."
"My thought was, growing food for other people to eat isn't a real way to live."
"Mmm. Fair sight better than this, though."
They were silent. Adrian thought about mentioning something strange he'd noticed about the van. Sometimes he saw it out in the driveway, painted in its purple coat, a mural on the left side with a bird of prey, skull clutched in one claw and olive wreath in the other (who painted that, Adrian wondered. Surely not one of his hosts). Sometimes the van wasn't there, out on a supply trip. But, on other days, the van was nowhere to be found, but not a single person was missing from the house. As if it had driven away on its own.
He decided not to mention it.

Sometimes, Adrian's sight didn't want to cooperate with him. Ever since that project, the one the Foundation kept locked up…
Sometimes everything just swirled together, lost in a sea of everything that came before. People got lost in the clouds of what shaped them, objects became obscured by the minds of their architects.
Everything just blended together, like an oil painting in the rain. And Adrian could lose himself in the flood.

Adrian didn't talk to his hosts very often. Most of the time, if you didn't talk to them, they'd ignore you just the same, and buzz about, performing rituals and spells and making sigils with acrylic paint on the floor and ceiling (and drilling away with power tools. Adrian knew it. He saw the hole in their faces).
Whenever he saw them, he squinted instinctively. A single man seemed to be every man at once, not indistinguishable, but all of them together. The whole was not more than the sum of its parts; the whole was its parts.
One of them was different. Today, this man approached him. Pulled him aside. And Adrian looked up at his angular face, thin, like skin stretched over bones.
"Look at me," the hawkish man said. "Tell me what you see."
When Adrian looked at him, he looked into his eyes.
The irises were grey, like so many pools of silt. Like the eye of a storm over a city. Not a city. Every city.
For a moment the angles of the man's face became right, and Adrian saw cars streaming through a grid. The grid grew tight, like a coarse strainer.
The bad blood dripped to the floor, and as the rivers ran they became stone. The scars ran deep. Years, centuries. They went back forever. And stretched on into the horizon, until they connected back again, and made a circle around the world.
The itch must be scratched. The cursed must be freed. Hate begets hate. Can't you see that it's endless? They won't let you go.
No, no, Adrian thought. There must be an end to it all. There has to be. It cannot go on like this forever.
  Right?
  Right you are!
He snapped out of it, his eyes released from the hawk-man's gripping gaze.
Adrian squinted at the hawk-man. The hawk-man stared back, wrinkles around his eyes not matching the rest of his face. There was an uncomfortable stillness.
Adrian broke the silence. "I saw you."
"Yeah? Yeah? What did you see?"
"I don't think it'll… look, I don't really know what you're going for with all this. I'm just here because… the Coalition is out there."
The man nodded as if he was being sympathetic, but Adrian saw that he was not. "You should see something. Follow."
The hawk-man strode through the basement. Adrian followed, struggling to keep up with his uncomfortably rapid pace. He came to a concrete wall, and leaned against it. Adrian stopped behind him. He knocked on the wall, with both gnarled hands, rhythmically.
"Uhm. Is that an… exploit?" Adrian couldn't parse him.
He didn't turn around. "You know where this house came from? We built it. All of us. With our own two hands. And the energy coming through is just… oh, it's just enormous."
"Right?" Adrian tilted his head.
"Right. And it all flows through here, and… it's not without consequences, but we're safe." He kept knocking. The wall started to change, a craggy outline beginning to form, just wider than Adrian was tall.
At last, the portion of wall was gone. Phased out of existence. And behind was a tunnel through concrete and dirt.
A hole.
"Get in here." Hawk-man stepped inside, walking into the darkness. Adrian followed, minding his step as the ground became uneven.
They continued through for ten meters or so. The walls were rough, and the ground around them felt… dense.
At the end of the tunnel was a large, sloped shape, concealed by dirt. The man stood next to it, brushing away the silt and sediment. "Tell me what you saw."
Adrian shifted his weight on the uncertain ground. "I… I don't think this goes well for you. All of this. All of you. Greenwich, the Foundation… it's all going to happen over again. You won't like where this leads."
He nodded. This nod felt authentic; Adrian could almost grasp it in his hand. "Take a look at this."
Adrian peered at the shape, dirt brushed off, so he could just make out a glint of metal… and the shape of a painted beak. It was the van.
"We need you, Adrian. We just need to make you something good, something real good."
The artist sighed. "Okay, I… okay."
The hawkish man nodded again, satisfied. His arms hung limply at his sides as he stared into the end of the tunnel, where the automobile was embedded in the dirt.
Adrian turned around, and started to walk out. He didn't look back, but he felt the draft emerging from the van whispering along his shoulders.
What would happen, if they were right, and there was no end at all?
What happened at Greenwich?
No, no. It can't be true. Can't it?
  Right?
  Right you are!
And Adrian retreated to sleep.

A few kilometers away, in another van, this one white, a man in overalls sat with a woman in pants. The man could not see the house's protective bubble, not without special equipment. But she could.
He was sipping water. "And you're sure about this? If I tell the higher ups what you told me, and the anartists get out under our noses… there'll be hell to pay. For us both."
She sat up in the padded seat. Her legs were crossed. A polite formality. Her voice felt strong, like it echoed against itself. Like it had been hollowed out and filled with steel. "We are positive. And with only a few days preparation, the egg can be cracked. And the hive will burn."
He took another drink. This seemed reasonable to him. "You know, if this works out… the Coalition always needs people like you. Ma'am."
She smiled. The ripples in the water became still. "Thank you. But this is all we need."
And she really meant it.

Part I: The Word and The Cool Kids | Part II | Part III


And so it was that the Old Ones could no longer abide the horrors begat by Meknah-Re, He That Breaks Men's Souls Upon the Forge, and together they tore him limb from limb and cast his ichorous appendages far and wide, that they might never find each other again. His heart was discarded in the dunes of Shar-Harad to be devoured by the drifting sands. His tongue was cut out and weighted before it was thrown into the impossible depths of Lake Schwartherz. His entrails were left to freeze upon the plateau of Leng. His brain was burned and its ashes scattered amidst the scorched remains of Sarnath. His eyes were hurled into the cosmos where they linger still today, known by the heathen Dogons as the Invisible Twins of Sirius, that still glare enviously at us today. His manhood was cut from his flesh and mounted erect before the ruin of Lost Antigo, a warning to any that might dare to approach that damned place. It is said that there are still those who follow the God That Has Been Broken, and would gather up those cursed hunks of divine flesh and put them back together if they could. Should that day ever transpire, a terrible doom indeed will fall upon the world of man.
-Abdul al-Hazred, Necronomicon, Volume 6 ("On Dead Gods")
The motor-coach rumbled and shook as it clattered along a seldom-used dirt road cutting through the forests of central Massachusetts. I sat in the back row, alone (for none of my fellow passengers had remained aboard after the previous stop in Ixbridge), bundled in my coat against the chill autumn air. Ancient trees unmolested by the avarice of man passed by the window as I breathed a sigh and clutched dearly to my valise, looking down at my watch. A quarter of six, half an hour before sunset, and fifteen minutes to go before the bus would make its stop at the desolate, isolated hamlet of Ayrshire. I reached into my pocket and retrieved the telegram that had set me on this itinerary into the hinterlands of civilisation, reading again the short message I had received from Overwatch three days prior;

3RD OCT 1927
NO CONTACT FROM PROF EDDINGS SINCE 14TH AUG STOP
LAST KNOWN WHEREABOUTS GRAINGERS INN AYRSHIRE MASS STOP
MAY BE IN DANGER DUE TO NATURE OF RESEARCH STOP
LOCATE EDDINGS OR HIS REMAINS AND REPORT ASAP STOP
WE SECURE WE CONTAIN WE PROTECT

It had been some time since Bernard Eddings and I had crossed paths, and my heart had sunk when the Western Union man delivered his missive that grey Monday morning. Eddings was a Harvard man, as was I, though our shared time at that illustrious institution was short; I had only just arrived, a doe-eyed freshman who had been wooed to the college's renowned football team, when he was already well engaged in his postgraduate studies of regional folklore. We struck up an odd friendship of sorts when I sought out a tutor to aid me with my flagging marks in maths, and when several years later, after the war, he had found employment with the association I to this day still know only as 'the Foundation', he sought me out to offer me a position as well.
"Have you gone mad, Bernie?" I recall asking him when he first proffered the proposition. "I'm no scientist. I can't imagine what use I'd be to a bunch of eggheads and doctors in white coats unless you're in dire need of a test subject."
"There's more to the Foundation than just bleach-bare laboratories and musty old tomes, Reg," he replied to me. "You've heard of the G-Men that Hoover has been recruiting? We're looking for G-Men of our own. We need young men with a sharp mind, a keen eye, and the ability to go out into the field and get things done, clean, quick, and quiet. Men like you."
"So I am to be a secret agent?" I asked him. "I am sure you could find more qualified men than myself."
"You sell yourself short. You were in the war, weren't you?"
"Mostly in Belgium, yes."
"And I understand you were part of the military police unit that dealt with the depredations Dr. West unleashed against our own boys in Flanders."
I shuddered at the memory of the horrors I had seen in West's chthonic laboratory, the twisted mockeries of science to which the doctor's insane genius had given life. "Yes," I meekly responded.
"Then you've already seen the kind of things our Foundation has to deal with. The world is full of incomprehensible monstrosities lurking on the edges of logic itself, and we need men with the constitution to face them down and keep their senses. The fact that you made it out of West's den of nightmares alive and sane proves that you're the kind of man we need. Please tell me you'll come with me to Site 19 next week and talk to Jack about the position."
I hesitantly agreed, and it was scarcely two weeks later when the personnel director, that queerly-mannered man with a strange medallion around his neck and a look in his eyes that belied his youthful countenance, shook my hand and welcomed me as a Field Agent Candidate, and in the six years since then I have traveled from the majestic spires of New York City to the desolation of the Rub' al Khali and everywhere in between in the Foundation's service. Now I found myself scarcely two hundred miles from my own hometown, yet somehow farther away from any civilised place I recognized, in search of the man to whom I owed so much.
When I last spoke to Professor Eddings this past June, he was embarking on a sabbatical of sorts, in pursuit of that labour which has been his passion for as long as I have known him. Since his boyhood in Arkham, the Professor has been fascinated by the weird and unique folklore and religious practices that arise from time to time in the backwoods of Massachusetts. His thesis on the history of Dagon-worship among the islanders of Dukes County remains the authoritative work on the subject and earned him the academic moniker by which his fellow researchers (and I) respectfully title him, and his annotations on the Arkham copy of the Arab's tome have proven invaluable in our dealings with a certain pair of Sumerians. I had bade the Professor good-bye as he embarked alone on a tour of the more isolated communities of our state, in search of new and unknown cults and factions to be studied and catalogued, and had followed with great interest his despatches from Innsmouth, Newcastle, and Hadley's Fork. His ultimate post to Site 19 had come from Ayrshire, a place I had had difficulty even locating on the surveyors' maps, saying that he intended to stay a week or two and study a peculiar Pentecostalist church he had heard rumours of. That, of course, was nearly two months past, and no letter nor telegram nor telephone call from the Professor had been received.
Ayrshire, as I learned while poring over the books at Arkham Library yesterday morn, lay some hundred miles or so to the west, nestled on the northeast shore of Chatham Lake and surrounded on all sides by the ancient and virgin woods. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the town had been called home by a population of as many as three thousand, and boasted a mill and a rail line to Boston. The war, so the newspapers said, had dealt a hard blow to the town's economy in the past decade; with so many of the town's young men having journeyed across the ocean never to return, the mill had closed, the trains ran westward less and less often, and of its former population perhaps three or four hundred remained. Seeking transport to the village was as difficult as finding it on the map - the rail line had been covered by a mudslide during the recent rains and was not expected to be cleared before the first snowfall, no paved roads lead there, and I could find no map nor guide thorough enough to allow me to motor into the woods on my own. It was only after enquiring with half the bus companies in the state that I found a small coach line that operated a single daily trip passing through Ayrshire on its way to Amherst, and now I found myself approaching that destination.
"Next stop - Ayrshire!" the driver shouted, waking me from my reverie as the coach rounded a bend and came into sight of an old dilapidated house. The streets of Ayrshire were at least paved, but they were in dire need of maintenance, no motor cars or lorries were to be seen, and the ride to the city centre felt no less turbulent than the previous several hours had been. The bus rolled past row after row of houses and shops and churches that looked as if they had not known habitation in years; it seemed we passed fifteen abandoned ramshackles for every house that stood in a state of repair, and I wondered if the Professor's rumours and the Census reports had been false and we had in fact driven into a ghost town. In the distance, near the lakeshore, hulked the ruins of the old mill, silent and still, towering ominously over the dwellings that once had housed its workers. Though the sun's amber gloaming already grew dim behind the treeline, the electric lamps that lined the kerbs remained dark, and the only lights I espied in the curtained windows flickered and gyred as if cast by a candle rather than from a bulb. The bus slowed to a stop at the edge of the town common, a small overgrown park at the corner of First and Washington, and the door rolled open as I rose, valise in hand, and strode to the front.
"Thank you, my good man," I said to the driver, and handed him a dollar for his trouble.
"You're very welcome," the driver said, "but are you sure you wouldn't rather stay on and head for Amherst? I've heard queer things of this town, and the older I get, the queerer the tales grow. This is no place for tourists to go a-gawkin'."
"I am not here for pleasure, I assure you," I responded. "I am seeking out an old acquaintance of mine. Perhaps you recall an older fellow who stopped here about two months ago?"
"Ayuh," the driver said. "He didn't want to share his business and I didn't care to pry. If he ever left here, he must have hitched a ride on a flying carpet, because I certainly didn't pick him up."
"Then perhaps I shall enquire at the local rug-maker's. Do you perchance know the way to Grainger's Inn?"
"Five blocks west down Washington. I'd make haste if I were you - I've heard tell it's not wise for visitors to be seen on the streets of Ayrshire after dark."
I nodded and smiled as I turned away and stepped off the coach. The air smelled rich, yet stagnant, full of memories and regret, as I disembarked onto the sidewalk. The motor-coach pulled away, seeming to double its speed as it made for the edge of town, and a quiet I have not heard since my visit to the ruins of Ib fell over the deserted streets. I fancied that a pair of eyes watched me suspiciously from the second storey window of a collapsing edifice on the other side of the green, but I saw nor heard a single soul other than myself, nor even the cry of a bird or the chirrup of a cricket, as I turned and made my way east through the empty roads of Ayrshire.
It was two blocks from the stop, as I stood in the middle of a deserted street, the coach surely having put a mile or more between myself and any hope of evacuation for the next twenty-four hours, that the sun dipped below the horizon in the west.
It was from somewhere behind me that the first scream echoed out.


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It was cold this far down, below any semblance of natural light, past where the churning of machinery boomed. Up above, birds chirped about the trees and and bees buzzed over the flowers and sun beamed down on all of them. Down here there was no such fortune. It was cold, dark, and empty.
Lilibeth's flashlight shown through the dark and swayed ever so slightly with the elevator as it descended further and further into a sea of inky blackness. It had taken months of preparation, but the old researcher had enough rope strengthened and affixed to her lift to bring her miles below the surface. And bring her miles below the surface it did.
The rope hit its end only half a meter above what appeared to be a black tile floor. Lilibeth paused for a moment, listening to the dull hum coming from somewhere beyond where her flashlight touched the otherwise perpetual darkness.
Lilibeth turned on a small floodlight attached to the side of her elevator. God only knows why it was in her basement, but it proved invaluable. If she lost her way, she'd be able to backtrack towards the light. Thankfully she had run its power source through a generator. It could last for days, maybe weeks.
“Off into the dark, I suppose,” Lilibeth whispered to herself. The tile floor echoed into the distance, much louder than Lilibeth had expected. Her pulse quickening, she took off, watching every step she took. There was no way to know if a bottomless pit was mere meters in front of her at any given time.

She wasn't sure how long she had been standing there, looking at the door affixed to the rock wall in front of her. She wasn't sure when she had stumbled into the cave she was currently in. And yet, there she was, staring at the entirely un-extraordinary door, wondering just how long she had been walking . It felt like an hour. Maybe two. The strange noises from before were gone. It was quiet here, and properly normally quiet. With a push, Lilibeth opened the door.
On the other side was a hallway built of marble and stone. A dozen meters out, the corridor gave way to some sort of balcony or walkway, overlooking shelf after shelf after shelf: Books.
This was a library.
Lilibeth took careful and bewildered steps out to the railing, where shelves went so far down and so far up that she couldn't even see the roof amidst all the walkways and floors and ladders. But there were people too, reading in armchairs or walking or browsing through the books in the narrow aisles. Some wore casual attire, while some were dressed in suites or ornate jewelry. A few were wearing dark brown robes. One of those robed individuals was on the same walkway as her, walking towards a flight of stairs at the far end. She gave the person a tap on the shoulder.
“Um, excuse me, do you know where I can fin-”
The man had no mouth. Lilibeth nearly screamed then and there, but managed to suppress her surprise. Why didn't he have a mouth?! Where did his mouth go?!
“You wouldn't- uh- happen to know, w- where I can find someone n- named Carina,” she stammered. The docent cocked his head to one side. Despite its rather ghoulish appearance it didn't seem to be hostile, or even agitated.
“Carina, um, I was told she's a librarian who works here.”
The docent thought for a moment, then nodded. Its arm stretched out towards Lilibeth, displaying its malformed fingers, index and middle finger curling in a motion indicating he wanted her to follow him.

“Are you here for the meeting?” asked a woman as Lilibeth was escorted into a small cozy room. An array of chairs were placed around the center of what looked like a conference room. The only other person here now was that woman, seated behind a desk with with several books stacked atop it. It would have been comforting if she had any eyes, but she did not.
“I was told to find a librarian named Carina,” Lilibeth replied. The woman smiled.
“Yes, that would be me. So you are here for the meeting.”
“What is this place?”
“Why, this is The Library. Is this your first time here?”
“Yeah, I uh… I guess I don't get around much these days.”
“That's quite alright. Perseus is around here somewhere. If you'd like to wait for him he shouldn't be long.”
“I'm sorry, this is just a lot to process.”
Lilibeth sat down, looking out the open door at the people milling about. Sat against a row of shelves, a couple held hands as they read, while another individual ran his hands along the books as he walked with a pace that suggested he had nowhere to be. It was strangely peaceful. Perhaps Lilibeth was just overwhelmed from seeing other people again; she had spent so long alone.
“What's a library doing in a place like this?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Has there been a library this far underground this whole time? All these years?”
Carina paused.
“Is that how you found it? Through a door underground?”
“Yeah.”
“There are many Ways to The Library. It doesn't have a location, it is a location.”
That thought sunk into Lilibeth. She wasn't in SCP-2508 anymore. This was some entirely separate place, separated by who knows how much space (if such concepts could even be applied to them). Her lips curled into a faint smile at the thought.
“So, which one are you?” Came another voice from behind Lilibeth. As she turned, she could see it belonged to a young girl in a labcoat who had just entered the room. She looked no older than 12, and sported a comically oversized top hat.
“I'm sorry?” Lilibeth remarked. The large hatted girl gave her a smirk.
“Your name I mean.”
“I'm Lilibeth.”
“Last name?”
“Orion.”
“That's the one,” she extended a hand, “I'm Norma, Site-43 Chemistry department. Welcome to our little club.”