by Kothardarastrix

Workin' on a mystery.

When James returned to his apartment that evening, the CD in his pocket seemed to weigh ten pounds. His roommates were playing Magic: the Gathering, as usual, but their game had once again been derailed by a different kind of imaginary battle.
“I'm just saying, I think 058 could take it,” Mark said.
“No way,” Carl pondered, examining the cards in his hand. “682's too big.”
"Yeah, but 058's faster.”
“So? It's too small.”
“What are you talking about? Thing's like the size of a minivan.”
“What? It's a cow heart. They're like this big.” He demonstrated with his hands, unwittingly exposing his cards to his opponent.
“Yeah, but cow hearts don't have tentacles and shit either.” Mark noticed James, furtively extracting a bag of chips from the minifridge.
“Hey, you work on 058.”
“Yeah?” James said, frozen awkwardly in front of the half-open fridge.
"How big is it? On a scale of normal cow heart to minivan."
"Minivan, definitely."
"Ha! Told you."
"Well, so what?" Carl protested.
"So it's got size and speed. 682 can regenerate as much as it wants, 058's got it beat. Tell him, James."
James, who was already halfway to his room, just shrugged and avoided eye contact.
“Hey, you alright?” Mark called after him. James didn't answer, just closed his bedroom door. He appreciated Mark's concern, but those two were insufferable sometimes. If they were working on SCP-058 they wouldn't discuss it so casually. Once he had his laptop out, James put on his headphones so he wouldn't have to hear another debate about whether or not 058 was capable of seeing SCP-096's face.
He'd been wrestling internally all day, unsure if he should really listen to the CD he'd stolen or just put it back without Johnston noticing. On the one hand, he enjoyed the simple act of rebellion and was genuinely curious about its disturbing content. Morbidly curious, perhaps, but curious nonetheless. 058's vocalizations were just coherent enough to make you think there was some kind of hidden meaning that you'd missed. It was like a riddle, kind of. But on the other hand, it was actually pretty scary. Hearing that old man's voice go on and on, perfectly calm, without even pausing for breath was subtly unnerving in ways James couldn't really describe. Then, on top of that, there was his fear that whatever had happened to Dr. Scott might also happen to him.
He sat there at his desk, laptop open and CD in his hands. Was he really going to chicken out and not even listen to this thing he'd stolen? Admittedly, whether or not he listened didn't change the fact that he was sticking it to Dr. Johnston. And that had been the whole point of this, really, hadn't it? Sure, the actual content of the disc was interesting, but it wasn't like he had to hurry. His interest in 058's recordings was purely personal. There was no paper to be written, no report to be filed. He could do it whenever he wanted. At the very least, he could wait until there was a clear victor in the battle between his morbid curiosity and the vague sense of dread oozing from the CD. Besides, it was probably better anyway to wait a few more days to see if something bad really had happened to Dr. Scott before following in his footsteps. Having come to this lack-of-a-decision, he stashed the CD in his desk drawer, to be thought about some other time.

Conrad made excellent time; it wasn't even dark yet when he first spotted the lights of Sin City on the horizon. Though Area-14 was as isolated as possible, that also meant that the roads had been essentially deserted. Once he'd gotten out of the mountains, he'd popped Epicus Doomicus Metallicus into the CD player and exceeded the speed limit by as much as his car could manage. It looked as though he'd reach Vegas in time for a late dinner, after which he could check into the hotel room he'd already reserved for the night. There was a plane flying direct to Pittsburgh the following morning, and he'd already reserved a seat. If everything went according to plan, he'd be at the Atherton by this time tomorrow.
Las Vegas was a popular vacation destination for the personnel of ABCA-14. On the rare occasion that someone was allowed to leave, it was simply the most convenient place to blow off steam - and if you worked at the ABCA, you had a lot of steam to blow off. That said, Conrad himself had only been there once, shortly after being transferred to that godforsaken base in the mountains. Some younger colleagues - Jose and Bart had been their names - had talked him into coming along for a weekend of debauchery over the holidays. They'd enjoyed themselves, but he'd found the jangling slot machines and overcrowded casinos to be an assault on the senses as well as the wallet. Sometimes he wondered if there was a correlation, because unlike Jose and Bart he was still alive. Bart had gotten his neck broken for coming at SCP-326 with a needle; Jose, on the other hand, had caught some of SCP-1801's nastier components in a screw-up at the Medical Facility. Bart was the luckier one.
But none of that mattered right now. This wasn't a vacation, regardless of what Dr. Glass said. It was a mission.
Conrad stopped at the first decent restaurant he saw for dinner, and had already forgotten its name by the time he arrived, leftovers in hand, at his hotel. He made his way up to his room with as little human contact as possible, then settled in for what was unlikely to be a restful night. He would at least make an attempt to get some sleep, though, since his flight was an early one.
It was perfectly normal, on the edge of sleep, for a person's mind to wander back over the events of the day, the things that'd been bothering them at work, and such. Conrad was no different, but the events of the day and the things that'd been bothering him at work were the things normal people had nightmares about. Conrad was lucky enough tonight to be worn out from the combined effects of his morning outburst and the monotonous drive through the desert, so he didn't have much trouble falling asleep for once.
Of course, once he finally was asleep, no amount of exhaustion could protect him.

Conrad was with his wife. They were dining at her favorite establishment, a restaurant and microbrewery back in her rural hometown. It wasn't a fancy eatery, but the food was good. The speakers were quietly playing some soft rock. Steve Miller, perhaps.
“Outsourcing the upside of our swim-lane,” she said, in SCP-058's voice.
“Oh no," Conrad sighed, closing his eyes. Lucid dreaming was reflexive for anyone who'd come out of memetics division training with their brain still between their ears, but Conrad had always had difficulty waking himself up.
“Downsizing our synergistic paradigm,” Allison continued.
"Just a second," he said, staring intently at her. If he couldn't wake up, maybe at least he could turn Allison's voice back to normal. He concentrated, trying to remember how she'd sounded the last time he'd spoken to her.
“Give me innovative pain points,” she replied. Her voice still wasn't quite right, and she was still spitting that God-awful corporate buzzword-salad, but at least she didn't sound like 058. She smiled at him, but he couldn't bring himself to do the same. Lucidity was a double-edged sword; though he knew the nightmares weren't real, he couldn't fool himself into thinking the good parts were either.
A waiter approached. He had the face of Ronald Reagan.
“What did I see atop the scarlet mountain travesties?” he asked, as his right ear was peeled away.
Conrad glared at the waiter, daring him to be mutilated any further. "We're still deciding," he said.
"Now there you go again," the waiter sighed. He wandered off, leaving a trail of blood and a piece of nose on the floor nearby.
"Stick to our core at a lovely little hotel..." Allison began
"Shh," he replied, holding out a hand to stop her. "Just let me look at you." Unlike her voice, he had no trouble remembering her face. He saw it every day, in the picture on his desk, the last one taken of her before their whole reality fell apart and exposed the weird world that had been there all along. It was nice to see her again, even if it was only her facsimile in a dream. As the restaurant dissolved into the static of a degraded Betamax tape, he focused on her face: her long, black hair; her nose, which she was self-conscious about but he thought was her best feature; and finally her deep blue eyes, the last thing that remained of the dream as it faded away.

Conrad woke up with a headache, half an hour before his alarm. It was not going to be a good day, but his foul mood was mitigated somewhat by the hope that he might catch some Z's on the plane. This thought, along with the mounting anticipation of whatever waited for him in Pennsylvania, was what motivated him through his morning routine, the checkout process, the trip to the airport, and all the various annoyances that inevitably awaited him there. The flight boarded on schedule, and he was happy to settle into his second-class back-row window seat for a nap.
Unfortunately, sleep eluded him. It turned out that the mingled excitement and trepidation regarding the Atherton Hotel was too intense for him to relax. Conrad briefly allowed himself to fantasize about the outcome of this trip: perhaps he'd finally solve the mystery of SCP-1981's true purpose and nature, or determine where 058 had come from, or both. Maybe, if he were really lucky, he'd even discover some reliable way of understanding or communicating with one or both anomalies. Any of these outcomes would be the first major breakthrough on the corresponding object in decades, and his first major discovery about any object. Perhaps the information he gained would be so useful that the Foundation would hold back on demoting or terminating him after they found out about this insane off-the-books investigation.
Conrad frowned. He hadn't yet given much consideration to how he'd explain himself when this was over. Usually, when someone tracked down an anomaly on their own time, they just claimed they'd randomly stumbled across it on vacation. Conrad doubted that excuse would work for him, however. As soon as the Foundation found out about the hotel, they'd search for it online, and it wouldn't take long after that to make the drooling path connection. Though what he was doing wasn't technically forbidden, it was still completely against procedure and incredibly stupid besides.
It then occurred to him that he was, perhaps falsely, assuming he'd survive whatever happened at the hotel. Conrad had been too busy booking flights, planning drives, and scheduling car rentals to seriously ponder what he actually expected to encounter in State College. This whole trip was precipitated on the assumption that the anomaly at the hotel was somehow connected to SCPs-058 and -1981, but beyond that he knew very little. The near-gibberish in which the cognitohazardous review was written suggested that "Kaylee M", if she even existed, probably wasn't human. A human leaving hazardous online reviews, perhaps to draw more customers to their hotel chain, would've done a much better job of making them look normal. However, the fact that it wasn't completely nonsensical was, in some ways, more worrisome. 058's vocalizations were complete gibberish because (Conrad believed) it wasn't trying to communicate; it had never shown any interest in anything but destruction, so the things it said were probably just intended to distract or frighten humans so they'd be easier to kill. That hotel review, on the other hand, was a deliberate attempt to imitate human communication by something that clearly didn't understand it very well. The thought of a being as completely divorced from sane reality as 058 trying to pass itself off as human made Conrad's skin crawl. He didn't know why such an entity would advertise for some random hotel in Pennsylvania, but doubted that it wanted him to have a nice stay. Perhaps it was just vague memories of Stephen King's 1408, but Conrad was seriously concerned the hotel might try to eat him.
Then there was the question of SCP-1981. What could a killer heart monster and an alien hotel room possibly have in common with a future-predicting video of a mutilated president? Not much, he suspected. SCP-1981 had also predicted 9/11 and various other events that certainly weren't connected to SCP-058, so it was entirely possible that the cut-up Ronald Reagan's mention of the drooling path was just another one of these predictions. The prospect that such a phrase might one day become relevant to American politics was certainly frightening, but like most of 1981's messages it didn't really amount to much meaningful or actionable information. If Conrad wanted to know more about this drooling path business, he'd have to find something at the hotel.
This train of thought led Conrad back to something that'd been bothering him since he first embarked on this mad crusade: he'd never finished reading the review. He was too afraid that there might be a stronger hazard further on, one that he wouldn't be able to resist as easily as the first. If a second hazard snagged him, he might march right into the jaws of the alien hotel room (or whatever it was) without even leaving a helpful note for the people who would eventually come looking for him. It was also possible that the review wouldn't prove more hazardous than he could handle, and the information contained within might be the one thing that helped him survive whatever was waiting in room 710. After some consideration, though, he decided that this latter possibility was unlikely. The review was a lure, created by an entity that was at least smart enough to attempt imitation of human speech. He doubted that such an entity would've provided any helpful information to its potential customers, prey, or whatever else it intended the people snared by its trap to be. He was much more likely to gain an advantage by showing up unaffected by the cognitohazard, hopefully to the hotel entity's surprise.
Either way, he should probably buy a gun before he checked in.

"Huh?" Martha asked, wheeling her cart to a stop. She looked at the door across the hall, the one to Room 106. Then she looked back at the one in front of her.
Room 710.
She stared at the number for a few more moments, a puzzled expression on her face, before shaking her head and getting back to work. The weird numbering must have just been a typo or something; it was probably supposed to be Room 107. Whatever its number was supposed to be, it needed cleaning.
When she opened the door, she heard faint music coming from within. It wasn't unheard of for guests to leave the TV on, but it was annoying. Just one more mess for her to clean up, as if the shit stains in the toilet, wet towels in the floor, used condoms under the bed, and full trash can beside the desk weren't enough. That was a worst-case scenario, of course, but people who did one inconsiderate thing tended to do others.
As she stepped inside, Martha was disappointed to find that Room "710" was no exception. The people who'd stayed there last night had evidently left in quite a hurry. The covers for one bed had been slung haphazardly in the floor, all the lights had been left on, and some knucklehead had forgotten his toothbrush. She decided to deal with the TV first. However, as she crossed to the center of the room, Martha didn't see the remote anywhere. It was probably bundled up in the covers, slung off to the side in the difficult-to-reach gap between the bed and the wall. Sighing, she turned around to switch it off the old-fashioned way.
The TV was on some kind of music channel, playing what sounded like elevator music. She couldn't discern any more information about it, because instead of displaying the song title or artist like a normal music channel this one just had a picture of a sailboat on a lake taking up the whole screen. The music wasn't half bad, though, so she decided to let it play, at least until she found the remote. Maybe it'd help to ease her annoyance at the disrespectful tenant of this room while she cleaned up his leavings.
The remote was not bundled up in the bedclothes, nor was it under the bed. As Martha eventually discovered, the previous tenant had somehow managed to knock it behind the nightstand. Then he'd been too lazy to reach behind there and fish it out. Now she'd have to do it. Martha swore quietly but profusely as she crouched down in the narrow space between the bed and nightstand, feeling behind it for the remote. She had just managed to get a grip on it when she heard the voice. It wasn't familiar to her, but Dr. Conrad Scott would've recognized it in the beat of a giant bovine heart.
"Let me tell you a story."

"What?" asked George, manager of the Atherton Hotel.
"She quit," Jess repeated.
"Why?"
Jess, the woman who'd been at the desk when Martha left, shrugged. "Not sure. Something about Room 710, I think."
George's brow furrowed. "710? What did she say?"
"I don't know, something about the TV. She didn't stick around." Jess bit her lip for a second, debating, before she continued. "She looked scared."
George put a hand to his forehead. "Great. Wonderful. I step out for thirty minutes and my employees start going nuts." With a sigh, he looked back up at Jess. "Well, thanks for letting me know."
"No problem, boss." She started to leave, but stopped at the door.
"Uh, George?"
"Yes?"
"What is the deal with 710?"
"The number's a typo, it was supposed to be-"
"No, not that."
"What, then?"
"I…I don't know, exactly. It just seems like the people who stay there are always in a hurry to leave. Nobody ever stays more than one night."
"Hmm," George said, rubbing his forehead again. "I don't know, maybe the beds are uncomfortable."
"Then why is it always booked? I work the desk a lot, and that room's never vacant. Yesterday some guy called and requested it specifically."
"I don't know," George said, somewhat irritably. "I guess people are just leaving really good reviews or something."
"But-"
"Don't you have a desk to be working?" he snapped, surprising Jess.
Jess scowled. "Sorry," she said, then returned to her post.
George leaned forward, placing both elbows on his desk and both hands on his face. He wished people would stop asking about Room 710. He didn't know what was wrong with it, and he didn't care, as long as it kept bringing in more money than the rest of the hotel combined. So what if the number didn't make any sense? Who cared if it was the only room that broke the otherwise symmetrical layout of the floor plan? And what difference did it make if, when he'd first been promoted to manager, he could've sworn it didn't exist?

Goin' wherever it leads.


Van Turner looked at his watch. Before him, 13 monitors were blank, each serving to reflect his visage back. Within each, he saw himself frown. He wondered if there was a place in which at least one of those reflections smiled.
One by one, the monitors flickered to life. On each, a Roman Numeral appeared. I through XIII. The Director adjusted his tie and took a sip of water before clearing his throat.
"You may begin when ready, Director." A woman's voice sounded from Monitor III.
"Thank you," Van Turner replied. "I appreciate each of you taking this time to hear me out, and realize you are quite busy. By now you should have received my updated proposal…"

The anomalous items storage warehouses at larger facilities, like Site-19 or Site-77, were massive. Huge rooms reminiscent of the final scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark filled floor to ceiling with the most mundane anomalies the rank and file field agents managed to stumble upon across centuries of investigations.
It was now up to the Department of Photography to go through and update the photos for all of them.
Or, at least that was supposed to be the task at hand. The gunman who chased Photographer Joseph Goldman through a particularly poorly lit, winding, and notably abandoned section of that cavernous space seemed to have other plans.
Turning a corner, the portly man threw down a series of boxes behind him, panting as he continued his sprint. The sound of a carnival filled the space as the lid of one of the boxes fell off and spilled its contents.
"Where the hell is an exit?" Joseph said to himself, peering over his shoulder as the gunman stepped over the boxes and gingerly brushed some confetti from his lapel. "Security! SECURITY!!!"

"I've heard some far-fetched suggestions in my time," Monitor IX spoke, "but few of them recommended slashing almost 75% of the personnel from an entire Foundation Department. Director Van Turner, you are aware of how institutional the Department of Photography is to an organization wholly dependent on accurate documentation, yes?"
"The notion did not escape me," Van Turner chuckled. "But times change, friends. There are fewer horses in the world today than there were in 1901. As the world evolved then to accommodate the automobile, so to must we evolve to the changing realities of our database. By and far the vast majority of entries in our database do not contain photos of the anomalies contained therein. I'd argue over half of those that do would not be hindered by the removal of those images."
"To what end, Director?" Monitor II asked.
Van Turner smiled.
"Security, of course. Need I remind you of Incident 423-26? Or perhaps 4560-12? Time and time again use of photography in our documentation has served as a vector of a containment breach. To be blunt, lives are lost. With my proposed restructuring of the Department of Photography, we'd seek to bring that number down to zero…"

"You've got to be kidding me…"
Joseph stared at the dead-end before him. Three tall shelving units, all covered with boxes and cases surrounded him, cutting his less than direct route to a less hostile part of the facility short. He looked over his shoulder once more. The gunman was rounding the corner, raising a silenced pistol as he took aim at a sitting duck.
Joseph turned and raised his camera's viewfinder to his eye.

"With whatever respect is due, Director, your proposal would seem to be of dubious benefit at best, and self-sabotage at worst," Monitor X sighed. "In our line of work, accurate photographic documentation is crucial. Handicapping the individuals tasked with that burden would serve our larger mission poorly. To the Foundation, a picture is often worth well more than 1000 words."
"I'm sorry that you see it that way," Van Turner replied.
"I think we have debated this enough," Monitor III chimed in. "It's time we put it to a vote…"

The remains of Joseph Goldman bled out on the concrete floor, several bullets having passed through his torso and embedded in the boxes behind him. His camera's lens had shattered in the fall, a mosaic of shattered glass spreading out from the point of impact. The gunman quietly removed the camera's SD card and replaced it with one of his own before gently putting the camera back where it had landed.
With a satisfied nod, the gunman reached into a pack on his back and placed a small standard issue Foundation anomalous item storage box on the ground near Joseph's body, carefully ensuring it was tipped over in an inconspicuous manner such that the contents were allowed to spill out and appear scattered. The contents in question was a set of thirteen quartz carvings of knights on horseback.
The gunman then stepped back and took out a small flashlight, ensuring it was angled just so that the light would bounce off one of the carvings, and onto Joseph's hand. There was a soft click and a low buzz, and then the sound of sand running through a sieve. The remains of Joseph Goldman had been turned into solid quartz. Even the pool of blood that had slowly deepened around the portly corpse metamorphosed into so much sand.
With yet another satisfied nod, the gunman took out a phone and typed in a message.

Mission accomplished.

One by one the Monitor I to XIII turned off. Once more, Van Turner was left in the company of the image of himself thirteen times over, each one wearing his same disappointed smile.
"Five against eight," he sighed. "More than the last time. We'll whittle them down. Just have to keep trying."
The Director felt a little buzz in his pocket and silently pulled out his phone.

Mission accomplished.

Van Turner's smile turned to a smirk.
"Just have to keep trying."

HUB: Glittering Horizon


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This is a story from a future. Not the future, just a future.
- Tom Scott

Image Credits:
https://stocksnap.io/photo/tall-skyscraper-4Q1B85IO2H
The Department of Sciences logo is by EstrellaYoshte
The O5 Command Logo is by djkaktus

Inspirations:

Djkaktus's Proposal,
Blade Runner
Akira
Kallins Proposal (A bit)

23rd of July 2022
3:19 PM
Universe ξ-.024
Helipad - Site-102

Site-102

O5-8 stepped onto a damp concrete platform built above Site-102. A thick fog had covered the surrounding city, but she could still see the vibrant reds of the sky and the chaos of the streets below. Site-102 was the tallest building for miles in either direction, towering above the city below. As O5-8 looked into the streets she saw the chaos of the streets - A brawl in a wet market, a panicked child running through the crowded streets, a family preparing to leave the city. The ship she had left from closed its doors, and smoke and steam bellowed from its underside as it flew away.
O5-8 descended a rusted set of metal stairs onto a lower platform. Pipes and air-conditioning were haphazardly thrown around the top of the building, blowing warm air straight onto her face. As she covered her head with her jacket, she noticed a torn poster on the side of a concrete block:

Seen something unnatural?
Report it to the SCP Foundation as quickly as possible. Help keep your community safe.

The ongoing 'Extrauniversal Mass Interaction Event' has affected us all. We all need to do our part to keep our community, and humanity as a whole, safe. Any sighting of the anomalous should be reported as quickly as possible, to repair the objects entrance point.

Contact:
1832-39444-3332 (Phone - Site-102)
noitadnuof.TENPiCS|dnammoc201#noitadnuof.TENPiCS|dnammoc201

She wasn't sure why the poster was there, given that the only people going through the helipad on Site-102 were already keenly aware of the issue, but still felt a turn in her stomach. Just 2 years ago, she had been the director at this site, but the world had changed. In the rush of chaos after the destruction of the O5 council and the sharp increase in anomalous events, she had been promoted to O5-8. She used to be named Katherine Saw, but nobody seemed to remember that. She continued to a door, found a stairwell behind it, and quickly descended three stories.

23rd of July 2022
3:21 PM
Universe ξ-.024
Level 394 - Site-102

Level 394 of Site-102 was one of the only locations where the anomalous was permitted to exist. The floor itself was substantially prettier than its surrounds, with polished wood flooring and a sleek, modern aesthetic. It was mostly just one board room and a few surrounding offices, but it was filled with cabinets holding numerous useful trinkets. One cabinet, O5-8 noticed, held several photos, all marked with significant sums of money, which she recognised as one of the anomalous items she had worked with. She briefly considered this, then moved into the board room.
Inside sat twelve individuals, all strange in their appearance. At the head of the table sat O5-1, who always held a small, ornate metal tube on his person. Next to him was what looked like a man-made of clay, being human-like, but gaunt and incomplete. Her eyes ran over the rest of the room, seeing familiar faces - the man with the red amulet seemed particularly happy to see her.
"Eight!" He spoke. "You're here!"
"Yes, three, I'm here." She replied. She found her seat next to O5-7 and O5-9 and sat down. "Sorry I was late. Had to deal with something on the way - threads over old Melbourne started tearing significantly."
"Ahh yes … I heard." Said O5-11, a small presence in the room, but notable for the cat on her head. "Well, now we can get started."
"Indeed," O5-1 said "You have all been called today to decide on something drastically important. Our workers in this very site have uncovered a way to end, or at least mitigate the so-called 'Extrauniversal Mass Interaction Event' -" Several people opened their mouths, but were silenced by a wave of his hand "-but, there are caveats. The Department of Science determined the cause of the - uh, extra universal interactions. Apparently, its a subsection of hume physics - notably that of 'Hume Entropy'. It was known for a long time that humes converged towards their averages - a sort of entropy - but what we were unaware of was the so-called 'barriers' around each universe. These barriers, require a certain amount of 'reality' to run correctly, but they also don't keep 'reality' completely contained. For this reason, every universe eventually runs out of reality to keep them running. This allows the anomalous - interaction from another world to leak in. This drains more humes from the system, thus creating an exponential rate of leakage."
O5-8 processed this information. Knowing that every universe was doomed to destruction wasn't a pleasant thought. "So if it's inevitable, how do we stop it?"
O5-1 smiled a bit, before speaking. "Well, I'm glad you asked. We'll have to make sacrifices, for one thing. We believe it may be possible to siphon humes from different universes - but it's a long shot. For one, doing it would, to put it lightly, not be good for the unlucky universe we do it to. We would have to siphon almost one hundred per cent of its reality to achieve 4 billion years of existence, we predict, and that would cause what we are experiencing now - but worse - to hit the other universe. The ethics committee is split on whether its a good idea because even if we found a universe that's currently empty - which we so far haven't - it could still theoretically develop life in the future. But secondly, siphoning humes, as we would have to do, is a logistical nightmare. Preliminary estimates are 30 years to build something that could do it. In that time, assuming no action, humanity would be long gone, by almost 20 years. With what we're doing right now, we could last 15 years - still not enough to build it, but if we destroy every anomaly with lower hume than baseline, roughly 75,000 at a current estimate, we could hold out long enough to activate such a device. Its a challenge, and it goes against most of our principles, but - as they say, desperate times call for desperate measures."
Silence filled the room, before the rise of hushed whispering. Finally, O5-3 spoke.
"You can't be serious. We don't kill anomalies, especially when most of the anomalies you plan to kill are harmless and easy to contain. I'm all for stopping this disaster, but this isn't how it works. We're not killing 75,000 anomalies and possibly billions of others just to save a few. If we can find a way to stop this from happening without doing that then - I'm all ears."
"What happens if this is the only way? What then? Everything we know dies because people decided that to wait for a 'better deal'?" O5-8 said.
"This won't be the only way. It happens all the time - the foundation does something hideous "for the greater good" and then a few years later they find out they could have achieved the same with something way simpler. In good cases, we feel the guilt from the atrocities we committed, In bad cases, we have to keep committing them because the damage has already been done. Call me pragmatic, but I'm going to hold out until we get a better option." He replied. For thirty minutes the meeting continued in this vein. Each member of command had something to say about the dilemma involved, but soon each person had run out of arguments to make.
"So, are we done?" O5-1 said.
"Yes, I think we are."
"Well, then let's vote."

Department of Sciences

Project Proposal: Extra-Universal Hume Control Applications in the mitigation of Mass anomalous activity.
Outline
The use of a HSURRD Device has been shown effective in mitigating the ongoing Extra-universal Mass Interaction Event (EUMIE) [1][2]. The activation of such a device would constitute the aversion of a ZK-Class "Reality Failure" Scenario, though would cause a ZK-Class event elsewhere. The structural components of the construction would be as follows …
…Associated Papers:
[1] An Explanatory Model for current Increases in Anomalous Activity - Aleel et al., 2021, Site 102 Acedemic Output, cited 11 times.
[2] Outline of 'Hume Siphoning Universal Realistic Reset Device" (HSURRD) - Gears et al., 2021, Site 19 Academic Output, cited 2 times.

Office of the O5 Council

OVERSEERER COMMAND DELIBERATION
Office of the O5 Council

Related project
Extra-Universal Hume Control Applications in the mitigation of Mass anomalous activity.

APPROVE
DENY
ABSTAIN

05-1

O5-2

O5-3

O5-4

O5-5

O5-6

O5-7

O5-8

O5-9

O5-10

O5-11

O5-12

O5-13

STATUS:
APPROVED - 7 for, 6 Against, 0 abstaining.

25th of July 2022
1:13 AM
Universe ξ-.024
New Canberra

At 1:13 AM Eliri Wu woke up from her home in the Old Town of New Canberra, picked up her keys and a briefcase, and left the house. A security camera on an electricity pole sees her enter her car on Hammond Street, and turn onto Lament Street. In the car, her phone rings, which is flagged by a foundation communications tracer as suspicious.
3 seconds after the call begins a male voice says the words "Are you ready? 1:40 Today."
1 second later, Eliri Responds. "Yes," she said, "I'm on my way".
A security agent sees the ping, noting that the voice is not within foundation records. He presses a key on his control panel. His computer sends a request to Eliri's phone, which is designed to uncover the phone address and GPS tracking data of the caller, but instead causes a domain to automatically message her with an empty folder named '0n2us.exe'. Due to the communications tracer's poor understanding of content clues, this is not flagged. The staff member notes that the call is coming from outside Foundation territory, and assumes that Elira is on the way to the airport.
"I'm going to stop by the wet market, is that ok?' she said, turning onto Fylorn St, which leads directly to Site-102. After driving for three minutes, she reached the Amenel Wet market, adjacent to Site-102. She stops by several stores, purchasing 5kg of Lamb. After purchasing several more trinkets, A security camera at 1:41 PM sees Eliri walk to the sidewalk adjacent to the Site-102. Eliri pulls something out of her pocket, and then, three seconds later, her briefcase explodes.
Her briefcase apparently held 2 kg of a stabilised anomalous material. When an electric current was sent through this material, an exothermic reaction larger than should be possible occurred. At that moment, a ball of fire expands to 15 metres, destroying a streetfood stand and a portion of the overhead highway. Then, a pressure wave fired from were her briefcase was, blasting cars off the streets, destroying half of the wet market, and crushing the windows of Site-102's lobby. In the next seconds, several hundred calls are made to emergency services, creating a massive strain on the system.
1 hour later, a message was sent to O5-8, who had witnessed the bombing from her apartment.

SCiPNET Database
Warning: Contents from unknown email. No malware Detected
From: moc.ytpme|s934hgf#moc.ytpme|s934hgf
To: noitadnuof.TENPiCS|eciffo85O#noitadnuof.TENPiCS|eciffo85O (Protected Account)

Greetings Ms Saw,
Yes, I know your name. I know a lot about you, you're an interesting woman. I also know that you recently approved a project of mass neutralisation surrounding 'low-hume entities'. Your methods have caused mass panic in only two days. While I'm sure you have a 'good reason' for this obvious atrocity, I find that the only way to approve this is by pure malice. For this reason, I am responsible for the bombing you have recently witnesses. It will happen again if you do not follow these demands carefully:
Appeal your decision to the overseer council. Vote against the decision, get another council member to vote with you. Then, veto any attempt to investigate the blast. You may tell other members of the council our arrangement.
Yours Truly, X
Should intermittent vengeance arm again his red right hand to plague us?

O5-8 closed the email, sending another to the full council.

SCiPNET Database
From: noitadnuof.TENPiCS|eciffo85O#noitadnuof.TENPiCS|eciffo85O (Protected Account)
To: Overseer Command (Group)

There's been a bombing. The Insurgency is responsible. There will be more to come. Get ready.
O5-8
Secure, Contain, Protect


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The rickety boards shook underneath his weight. They didn't do that last time he was here. Maybe he'd gotten fat, his ego inflated a little too much. Or maybe it was the thought of what he'd come to do that weighed him down.
The wooden door of his old home felt the same as always. The savory smell of cinnamon seeped between the cracks. A familiar, albeit muffled, laugh filled the room just beyond the door along with a few other voices.
He knew its owner and wondered if he drifted from their memory too.
The man wasn't sure what he was expecting to find once he knocked. There were few who remembered his name now, even fewer who recognized him as he passed by.
A mechanical hand rapped on the door, splintering the wood.
"Shit," He muttered to himself.
The laughter inside died down into concerned whispers, questioning who was at their door. For a moment, the man looked at his hand, sleek and metallic, and wondered that himself. A moment passed before he could contemplate any further, and he was face to face with an occupant.
The woman was tall and slender. Her minute frame betraying the unrelenting strength she could unleash at a moment's notice. The man's mechanical eye shifted in and out of focus, disbelief washing over him.
"Savannah," He said.
She looked him over, examining him from head to toe. He tried to straighten himself up, adjusted his tie and his suit collar. She cracked a smile.
"You're lookin' slim, Elijah," She pointed at his mechanical parts, "all things considered."
Elijah looked over her shoulder. He could make out a few faces inside, some were even looking his way. He saw a tuft of golden hair cross the room and smiled.
"How's pop?"
Savannah's smile dropped, "Better 'en he was before you left. Been gettin' worse though. I keep tellin' 'im that Willie's gonna do 'im in one of these days, but you know how he gets."
"He's still a-brewin'?"
Savannah nodded, then pointed toward the Never N'Not, "Ol' Joe had the lads help 'im set up a new still after the accident."
"The old man loves him some shine," Elijah said, stuffing his hands in his pockets, "Maybe we'll get drinks after my business is done."
"You came home just for biddness?" She asked, folding her arms.
"Yeah and," Elijah cleared his throat. The machinery in his gut whizzed and buzzed, "I came for pop."
Savannah was about to speak again when another, more gruff voice cut her off from inside the shack. Elijah's stomach leaped into overdrive.
"Sava! Who in the hell is bangin' on the Got damn door so hard? I already told Joe it was them gaterfolk what done Jethro in, not me!"
Savannah called into the shack, "Lijah's home, pop!"
There was a long belch, then silence. Finally, the voice spoke again, "Bring 'im in."
The inside of Pop's home smelled like apple pie and cinnamon, just like it always had. Ma must've been baking for Market Day, it was almost that time of the month again. Elijah took a deep breath. He smiled wider than he had in a long time. But when he looked around, Elijah came to realize something.
Pop's house grew since Elijah was last here. A lot.
Normally his little shack was much larger on the inside than one could ever guess from looking at it from the outside. The kitchen was big enough to fit a whole alligator in it with enough room beside that to fit a dinner table or two. The living room was even bigger than that.
"You renovated," Elijah commented, pointing at the chandelier that hung from the ceiling which looked sorely out of place.
Savannah shrugged, "Pop's goin' through a phase, Lijha. Don't make nothin' of it."
"I-"
He was cut off by the rather large man gliding across the floor in on a mechanized set of legs. His gut spilled over the hard edge where the machine parts started. A cold, red LED eye focused and scanned Elijah where he stood. The man circled him, huffing and puffing with a scowl on his face. When he'd finished his examination, he stood in front of Elijah and gave a curt nod.
"Son." He said.
"Pop." Elijah said, nodding back.
The two men stood in silence for a moment, eyes trained on one another. Then Pop flung his arms open and flashed Elijah a grin.
"Come here, boy!"
Before Elijah could politely decline, Pop scuttled forward and embraced him. His father was stronger than he remembered, stronger than he ought to be too. Elijah grimaced but smiled through it. He gave his father a tentative pat on the back.
Pop held Elijah by his shoulders and looked him up and down again, "You're lookin' slim, boy? You eatin' enough out there?"
Elijah spoke through his teeth, "I eat fine, Pop."
"Ah well," The man set his son down and took a step back, "Ma's got some pie cookin', and James's makin' gator stew. We'll put some meat on them bones right there, boy."
"Pop," Savannah spoke, dusting Elijah off, "Lijha says he's just here for biddness."
Pop said, raising an eyebrow, "You ain't come back to see your old man? Or the littlin?"
Elijah looked around, confused for a moment, before spotting them. Three sets of eyes stared at him from behind one of the sofas in the living room.
Elijah smiled and knelt down.
"Come here and give your uncle a hug," He said, arms outstretched.
Almost at once, a pudgy child emerged from her hiding spot and made a break for Elijah. She slammed into his leg, almost knocking him off balance. Two beady eyes stared up at him, and the girl grinned.
"Uncle Lija! Looky!" Candy said, pointing to the wide gap in her smile, "I losted a tooth!"
Elijah rose to his feet and dusted himself off, "That's real nice, Aaliyah. Didja put it underneath your pillow so the Crooked Woman can fix her smile?"
Aaliyah nodded fervently. Elijah worried it would have flung off of her if her head wasn't attached.
"You wanna see my room?" She asked, grabbing his hand turning.
"Not today, kiddo. Maybe next time?"
"Oh," Aaliyah said, her smile dipping, "Okay."
She sulked away, disappearing behind a corner.
He almost wished he hadn't come home.
"Pop," Savannah spoke, dusting Elijah off, "Lijha says 'e's just here for biddness."
"Biddness?"
Elijah shook his head, "I've got a contract, Pop."
"Oh…" Pop's smile deflated as he let out a sigh. He looked at Elijah, his face now a stone wall of cold, emotionless determination. He spoke quietly, "Upstairs boy. Don't need the littlin's hearin' none of this."
Pop led the way, scuttling up three flights of stairs faster than Elijah thought the man had any right to move. They walked in silence, Savannah looking over her shoulder to make sure they weren't followed.
At the top of the stairs was a wooden door, splintered to the point where it was only held together by willpower and stubbornness. There were several horizontal lines at different heights on the right side of the frame, and the letter "E" bolted to the center of the door.
Elijha sighed.
Pop creaked open the door. A blast of nostalgia and dust erupted from the room and filled their noses. Savannah and Elijah coughed, but Pop did not. He entered the room and pulled on a chain, revealing a tangled mess of cobwebs and rusted furniture. Elijah picked up an old, rusted sword and shook a family of spiders off it.
"Did we really have to come up here to talk, Pop?"
Pop grunted, "You got that look on ya face. Figured whatever it was musta been important."
Elijah cleared his throat, "It is, Pop."
"Well," Savannah said, jabbing him in the arm, "Go on then."
"Spit it out, boy."
Elijah looked at both of them. He glanced at the door, the gears in his head turning and spinning quicker and quicker. Suddenly his heart sunk into the metal chamber in his gut and evaporated. Elijah straightened himself, and let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.
"I've been hired to kill Mark Ivonavich."
The air was stale, flavored only by dust and cobwebs and rat droppings. Three people stood still as statues staring at one another. The mechanical parts of Elijah's body buzzed and hummed. Rats scurried across the floor, taking shelter behind the old, decrepit furniture. Spiders hung from their webs and on the walls, watching. Waiting. Wondering.
Pop wheezed and staggered back. He clutched at his heart, nearly toppling over nothing. All ten of the man's mechanical legs shook.
"Christ boy," He stammered.
Savannah let out a short breath and folded her arms. Elijah tried to look into her eyes, but she refused to let him.
"Who?" She asked, her eyes gazing at the floor.
Elijah frowned, "Our-"
"I know who the fuck Mark is, Lijah. Who hired you to kill 'im?"
Elijah reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a note. Savannah snatched it out of his hands and read it. When she finished, she crumpled it up and threw it at Pop's feet. The man squatted down and scooped up the note in his hands.
Savannah sniffled, her face now a scowl.
"Ten thousand dollars?" Pop said in disbelief, "Mr. Darke's askin' you to kill your own kin over ten thousand dollars?"
Elijah stiffened himself, "That's one reason."
"Ain't no reason good enough to kill your own blood, Lijha." He said, wiping a tear from his eye.
"Joe already gave the okay," Elijah said, walking toward the door, "Mark's been starting shit with the townsfolk. Said that he's out there in the swamp with the Gatormen."


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

9th of September, 1984
Somewhere in the caverns underneath Nowa Oleszna, Poland

"—worth, Asheworth!"
A buzzing sound that filled his head grew more defined, as did her voice that only now entered his ears. Daniel Asheworth rubbed his eyes to adjust to the blinding white light descending upon him and stood up from the rocky ground he had been laying on. Judging by his back being overwhelmed by numbness, he guessed that he must have been laying there for a long time.
"What… what happened?" he asked in confusion as he looked around the place he had woken up in. He appeared to be standing in a room no different from the one he had just been sitting in. The cave was rather small, by his estimate, extending merely ten meters in both directions, with the ceiling standing approximately four meters tall.
"Don't you dare tell me you don't remember any—" Jessie Rivera replied harshly, getting up from the ground where Daniel had sat just moments ago. Her purple eyes drilled into him as she attempted to discern whether memory loss was a real possibility here. Her mind strained to recall her training as a psychologist as she explored all the possibilities of Daniel's question.
"Oh, no, no, that's… that's— alright, let me reword that: how did we get from the crypt to here?" Asheworth answered, backing out a few steps and nearly tripping on the bits of the crypt floor that protruded clearly from the ground. "That's pretty much the last thing I remember."
A feeling of overwhelming relief filled Rivera's soul. She looked at him with a small, almost unnoticeable spark of happiness lurking in her eyes. "Thank God…" she whispered to herself. "Well, the crypt floor collapsed due to an earthquake of some sort and you fell unconscious."
"Well," Daniel replied, extending his arm into the left pocket of his jacket and digging around for something. "It looks like we're not getting out of here anytime soon." He took out a broken device from his clothing, spilling elements of the screen onto the ground below.
"What? Why?"
"Well, uh, how to say it… my… my phone broke…"
"Shit."
"Don't you have yours on you though?"
"Right, right…" Rivera said as she began to search her bag for the potentially broken phone. Tossing aside sandwiches and project notes for half a minute, she found what she had been looking for. "Got it. Give me a second— nope, of course not," she laughed nervously. "Of-fucking-course not. Tell me, Asheworth, who at Ontokinetics designs phones that can be used in literal non-dimensions but not in fucking caves?"
"Blaming it on someone really won't help us, Jes. Especially considering that we're stuck."
"Yeah, I, I know… but it looks like the flashlight's working. Thankfully," Jessie said, illuminating the previously unseen spaces of the dark cavern with a blinding light.
"Can you look around?" the second doctor replied, protecting his still sensitive eyes with one outstretched hand. His other dug in his pocket searching for his gloves, only finding one of the two. He noted in his memory to make sure for the next pair to have runes engraved onto them with utmost precision. Magic, or as they made him call it, "thaumaturgy" wasn't quite as effective when the circle of symbols was broken.
"Yeah, uh, sure," she said, redirecting the beacon of light towards the walls of the cavern; instead, she found that the cavern was rocks all the way down with no exit in sight. "Nope, no exit. Fuck." Rivera muttered before collapsing onto the stone floor.
They both sat silently in the darkness for a moment, until her voice filled the cavern again. "We're gonna die here, aren't we?"
"You still have supplies in that backpack of yours, right? Mine got lost in the crypt it seems… I mean, if you have some food and water, and the Foundation will go searching for us, then we might just make it alive! R-right?" Ashworth said, but he knew, deep down, that the chance of his coworkers noticing their disappearance quickly was very slim. Foundation personnel, especially those from the Department of Ontokinetics, had a history of disappearing for weeks or even months on a regular basis. Hell, even Asheworth, one of the most careful bastards within the entire Site wasn't a stranger to the idea of time-space fuckery. Still, his calculative mind tried to find every single way out; he was not ready to give up hope just yet.
"Daniel, I hate to break it to you, but you know that the chance that Micheals, let alone Cornwell, will actually check on us is, like, equal to zero, right? After Białystok they're not gonna report us disappearing for one day," she said, looking at Asheworth, anger filling her eyes. She could never stand his positivity. "I don't even mention the Regional Director, let alone anyone else from 120—"
"Hey, but there's some rubble from the crypt's floor here. And it looks like it actually has those weird symbols like I suspected. Y-you know, the ones like those from 5936?
"Daniel, not to be an asshole, but I really don't fucking care. There's no exit from here, do you understand? We're trapped!" she shouted at him, not being able to hold the emotions together any longer.
"I suppose you're right…"
Silence filled their prison with the only sounds being those of Asheworth's pen hitting the paper of his notebook and Rivera's footsteps. After ten minutes of looking around, she gave up and sat down near her work partner.
"Well, if we're not going to leave this place, who was it?" she asked right as her body touched the ground.
"What?"
"Who did you lose? As in, you know, to see 5936?"
"Uh… why-why are you even asking?"
"Out of sheer curiosity. You're one mysterious man, you know that, Asheworth?"
"It's not like it will get out, I guess, plus if you're asking then, well," he sighed, finally deciding to spit it out. "Sparky was, he, well— wait, wait, wait, wait, I can feel wind!"
"Yeah, and what of it? Also, don't just stop here," she added, disappointed that she was most likely going to die with a man she knew almost nothing about.
"Well, it has to be coming from somewhere, right?"
"That's not how it— I mean you are technically right, but—"
"Oh, no problem for finding us a way out of this grave of ours, asshole," he said, mocking her. "I think it's coming from there," Daniel said, pointing at one of the walls of the place. "Help me out here."
"Fair enough."
Though the work was not easy, after three hours of sweating, swearing, and generally being angry at whoever gave them life, the duo successfully managed to move all boulders out of the way. Though the effort was worth the reward, their hands did not like it; they were covered with blisters and bruises. As the doctors looked through the tunnel they had uncovered, a strong breeze passed through their hair, finally giving them a feeling of freshness the cave had so deeply lacked.
"Could you, uh, shine there with that flashlight of yours?"
As the light filled the dead-dark corridor, they could clearly see a tunnel built with a material unlike anything they had ever seen before; the bricks lit up as though they were yellow, blue, orange, grey, and colorless all at the same time. It felt like they didn't belong here; like they were out of this world.
When the first beam of light touched the ceiling, three round objects, each approximately forty centimeters in diameter, exited the surface, only to stop levitating around three meters from the ceiling; after doing so, they filled the room with light equal to that of a day sky, effectively rendering the flashlight, which Rivera quickly turned off, useless. As the brightness illuminated the room, the place started to feel like it was… alive, with the floor vibrating in a pattern that resembled an arrow telling the duo to continue marching forward.
"Uh… this… this certainly looks promisi—" Just as she was about to finish the last word, her knees suddenly refused to continue supporting her stance. She fell, breaking the flashlight in the process.
"Jessie? Are you-are you alright?"
"Y-yeah, don't worry about me, I'm-I'm fine, really," she said, getting up from the cold floor of the corridor, only to fall to her knees again, scraping them even more.
"You're clearly not fine. Come on, let me help—" he attempted to reply, only to be cut off by Rivera trying to prop herself up with her hand. Just as the hand touched the bottom of the corridor, her jumper's sleeve tucked back, revealing a grey-like skin bruise, affecting the higher part of her wrist.
"Oh, no. No, no, fuck, no! This should not affect humans! This, it, I—" Daniel's thoughts wandered towards their initial purpose of visiting this peculiar city. The first reports of plantlife dying unusually quickly in recent weeks in the proximity of Nowa Oleszna were ironically one of the few good things to happen in a long time — a quick background check on it revealed that surprisingly, Dr. MacCarthy Jr. was seen there shortly after his dissapearence.
Site-120, being the only "big" Foundation Site within the region was, of course, alerted rather quickly. It was nothing special, seeing that reports of unusual events like this were passed on almost every week, though the Regional Command caught attention with it quickly.
Shortly after, all of 120's staff were alerted due to "possible connections with PoI-5936." (or Damien Nowak as every sane person called him). Due to Asheworth's strong obsession with the man, he immediately volunteered. O4 though obviously wouldn't let him go alone into a mission like this, especially due to his… ability to get carried away during Nowak-related activities. Thus, him and Rivera were dispatched onto the site of the operation.
The duo then questioned a couple of people living within the town about the whole situation, disguising themselves as geologists investigating a soil poisoning scenario. From what they found out, it was clear that all plants within a five-kilometer radius had started dying, regardless of any other factors, after an event that took place two months ago. During that time, multiple hooded figures gathered in the forest for a night and were never seen again. Stuff like that wasn't really investigated by locals, due to multiple disappearances being associated with putting your nose in all of that magic nonsense over the years.
Some more snooping around quickly let them understand that plantlife situated closer to the center of the city died quicker. Naturally, they started to look around said center much more closely, and upon a day of searching in the basements of abandoned buildings, they found an entrance to a crypt. A crypt that showed signs of recent activities and had multiple entrances, with one of them leading into the local forests. Everything made more sense then, and so the team thought investigating further was a good idea. Well, it wasn't. Upon Asheworth touching one of the runes he didn't recognize which were engraved onto the walls of the place, the entire floor collapsed.
As the flashback swarmed Asheworth's mind, everything made logical sense now. He snapped back to reality and their current situation.
"Look, if you'll have to leave me behind, I'm fine with that. If that's what needs to be done, I'll understand." Rivera stopped Asheworth's racing thoughts. Though she was never the sacrificial type, she was one of those people that could be extreme when the situation required it.
"That's not even a goddamn option, Jes. I-I think I know of a way to postpone it. It will still affect you, yes, but the thing won't spread from your hand to the rest of your body. I-I think," he said nervously, stuttering a bit.
"A-Anything will work."
As Asheworth touched Jessie's arm, her eyes closed out of sheer tiredness. A humming, drilling yet peaceful sound filled the atmosphere, making its way into her ears. She felt a gentle warmth enter her body, and after three seconds, Daniel told her it was done. The grey infection suddenly stopped hurting, with a numb feeling entering her limbs.
"So, uhh, it will stop the infection from spreading for something like fifteen hours, I'm guessing," her savior said, scratching his head in the process.
"Alright."
Having dealt with their biggest (or smallest, depending on the point of view) problem, the duo headed down the seemingly endless corridor. Seconds turned into minutes, minutes into hours.
"Daniel, not to be an asshole, but we're going in circles," River said in an exhausted monotone. "We've been going non-stop for five hours now, don't you think we could use a little rest? I've been creating this map of the whole cave system and it seems for the most part, we've been looping."
"Look; the sooner we get out from here, the sooner we'll be able to rest, alright?" he replied, attempting to persuade her to his prime ideology: the sooner something is dealt with, the more you can think about how to not have to deal with it in the future.
"Yes, I know," she said, trying to sound as little sarcastic as possible. "Look, I don't care what you're doing, but I'm having a break."
"Alright, alright…" Although Daniel wasn't the easiest person to persuade, he couldn't mask his exhaustion any longer. "You think you could give me one of those sandwiches?"
"Sure."
As Asheworth was about to give the sandwich a first bite, he heard something. His most primal senses started to scream at him. "Someone's coming. Get behind that pillar, now!" he whispered, quickly hiding behind said pillar.
"…which only proves my point, Mark - this whole operation is bullshit," a manly voice muffled by the orange walls came from behind the one the scientists were standing by.
"Look, I'm not the one who gives orders, alright? If you're having a problem with them, ask Now—, I mean, the Grand Master, or better yet - Father. Though I doubt any will listen. Especially after that traitor incident…" Just as those sounds reached the ears of Daniel and Jessie, one of the wall segments opened up to reveal two robed figures: one short, standing approximately a meter and a half meters tall, the other one being around two meters tall. The exact characteristics of their faces were hidden by the hoods of their clothing.
"Also, may I ask how again our work here has anything to do with Lord? This is not the work of our Father, I assure you — that thing is very not what He had in mi—"
"Look, Father takes weird ways to get to his truth, alright? Heaven requires sacrifices, and it seems you aren't one that likes to sacrifice anything."
"I know, but that's not the problem here — the problem here is that everyone'll think we're assholes, goddamnit. Look, if I were a normal person, just minding their own life, thinking about coming home from work, then I would literally hate us. Plus, like, the ritual in Częstochowa doesn't really help our image, you know? People don't really like genocides. Also also, if we're trying to bring Heaven, then wouldn't it just be smarter to reach out to normal pe—" The man stopped halfway through his sentence, looking directly at Asheworth. He pointed his hand at the scientist, and proceeded to look at his colleague and then back at Daniel, repeating the process five times.
"Is-is-is that who I think it is?!" the small person stuttered in confusion.
"Uh, I-I think so…" the taller one replied, looking rather concerned.
"Oh Jesus, oh my Jesus fucking Christ, and he'd heard what we've been talking about—"
"Stop whining, bitchass, and get to actually killing them!"
"That's exactly what I've been trying to say!" the short cultist said as he proceeded to reach out for a pistol.
"Hey, hey-ey! Hey-ey-ey-ey! No need to do that, gentlemen! I'm sure it must be a misunderstanding!" Rivera said, waving her hands in the air, trying to show that she had no weaponry upon her. "There must be some way we can help each other, right?" Her past sociological training attempted to help her in the situation.
"Oh, you know there's a need for that, motherfuckers!" the taller one replied, trying to find his weapon too. "What are you even waiting for, idiot?! Shoot him!"
As the deafening sound of two pistols firing filled the air around the group, the bullets suddenly disappeared. Everyone looked at each other in disbelief. When all four backed up from their previous stances, a deafening, pulsing sound, reminiscent of a security system alarm filled the air around them. As the siren's scream filled their ears, the gun was gone. A shard of glass off of Asheworth's phone he'd been keeping in his pocket — erased. Every single item that could be considered sharp or somewhat threatening disappeared.
Even if the scientists tried their hardest to precisely describe what happened next, they would fail. The best way for a human to talk about the following event would be to say that "reality started to fail," but that wouldn't describe it well enough. One could say the cultists disappeared — that would, of course, be a valid description. Another: that Asheworth and Rivera suddenly found themselves in multiple places at the same time, then suddenly landing in a previously unexplored tunnel. If a particularly perceptive observer were to witness the event, they would say that it would be impossible for them to truly say what their eyes are looking at.

* * *

The duo of Site-120 scientists woke up approximately twenty meters from their previous location. As they stood up from the cold, stone floor, their heads started to be filled with a numb pain. They both looked around themselves, trying to locate where they landed. Luckily, it looked like they hadn't traveled far.
The everpresent blue light started to glow much stronger — the feeling of nausea and weakness threw the duo off, making them back off a little. Though it felt like the entire world turned against them, the only true choice they had was to continue onward.
After what felt like literal centuries, both finally made it into what they could only think of as the center of the entire structure they've been lost in for so long. The hall which they entered was a hemispherical one, measuring approximately fifty meters in every direction, with all of the vein-like blue lights coming together near the center of the room. In the exact geometrical middle of the place there was a glowing, blue orb, slowly but surely growing, pulsing, like a human heart. With every single centimeter of its growth, the light around the hallways felt brighter and more powerful. At the exact moment of them noticing the place, something… felt different. Something felt like it didn't belong here. Something was inside of it. Something that should not be there.
"HARTHHHH'ASO-LEEEEEEE," a murderous scream filled the very being of Asheworth and Rivera's souls. There was no need to search for the source of it; it wasn't a sound, but a direct invasion of their brains.
While their consciousnesses were still adapting to the thought of words being literally put in their minds, thirteen monumentally large limbs emerged from the center of the glowing object in the middle of the room. Alongside them, a disgustingly malformed head and carcass greeted their eyes. Although its precise characteristics were unclear due to the sheer distance between the scientists and the monstrosity, from their current position it seemed like the body of their adversary was made up of multiple human bodies. Around it, multiple unidentified bodies of humanoids with long limbs and skulls were located; all grey, with their lifeforce seemingly sucked away.
"Jesus fucking Christ—" Jessie attempted to say.
"HOW DARE YOU SPEAK TO ME, YOU FILTHY PEASANT?" the creature cut her off, starting to make its way forward. "YOU DARE ENTER MY PLACE OF RESTING, THE PLACE I'VE BEEN SUMMONED TO, THE PLACE I TAPPED INTO THE POWER OF?!" The being's body was filled with multiple thaumaturgic symbols scattered throughout the many cadavers. Though they seemed to be still pulsating with pure magical energy, they all meant a single sentence: "to be summoned (to a place)."
"A-are ancient creatures always this straightforward about their, uh, properties and stuff?" It was dumb, but it was the only way she could react to what she'd just witnessed.
"Uh… n-no, I don't think so! Why would I know?!" Asheworth answered.
"I don't know, you're the know-it-all when it comes to magic bullshit!" Rivera screamed at him, almost running from the place. "What the fuck do we do?!"
"Official answer — no idea!" Asheworth tried to be as reasonable as he could. "But… maybe! Buy me some time!" the man said, starting to whisper something to himself. He was clearly doing something, or rather, preparing to do something, though Rivera had no idea what it was.
She immediately knew what had to be done. Picking the biggest stone she could find on the floor, she threw it with the last ounce of her withering strength at the being, screaming in a vain attempt to give herself more courage.
The demon looked at her in confusion. For a second, its attention was focused completely on her; the sheer thought of something so little trying to attack it in such an idiotic manner made it stop for a moment, trying to understand.
Trembling in every limb, Asheworth, finally prepared it seemed, stepped forward. His hands touched the ground, which suddenly started to flicker around his limbs. From what was mere seconds ago a floor composed of the orange material, a spear came out, creating a small crater around its entry point.
He screamed, with his glove rune starting to flicker frantically. "L-leave, now!" As these words exited his mouth, a flaming circle surrounded both his weapon and his hands.
Upon seeing the little human threatening it like it was equal, the creature laughed.
"Oh?" it said, coming one step closer to Daniel. "Do you think a measly human like you could threaten ME? AFTER ALL THAT TIME GAINING POWER FROM THIS RITUAL, THIS RITUAL THAT CONNECTED ME TO THE LIFE OF BEINGS HERE AND EMPOWERED ME BY THEIR LIFE ENERGY, YOU THINK YOU ARE ENOUGH TO STOP ME?!" The words were stopped by the giant arm swinging at Asheworth, who rolled back in fear.
"Y-yes!" he said as he threw his spear exactly where the being's face would be. Upon coming into contact with skin, the item immediately caught fire, engulfing the being in fire. It screamed. It screamed like nothing the scientists have ever heard before. The sheer force of the hatred and pain and suffering the voice inhabited caused the hall to tremble. Walls started falling alongside stalactites, which greeted the floor of the chamber. Upon the north wall of the room, however, a single crack in the wall filled the place with light; light that seemed like a fury of a thousand suns, light which was unmistakeably that of the surface.
And as Daniel pointed out to the crack in the wall, Jessie's head was filled with a single sentence.
"Let's go!"

* * *

After finally arriving near the surface seen for so long — it might have been literal days — as merely a dying light at the end of the tunnel, the duo of scientists emerged from the dark depths of the caverns. Though that light was brighter than they expected, after a couple of minutes, their eyes were fully adjusted.
"So, uh… what do we do next?" Asheworth asked, scratching his head and looking around the field surrounding the place they had emerged from.
"Obviously attempt contact with the rest." Just as Rivera was about to press the call button on her finally working messaging device, an unknown man, resembling one of the junior researchers Daniel had met at Site-120 approached them quickly.
"I never thought you guys would be so quick to arrive at a one-day disappearance," Daniel said, laughing at the man. The burden of not being responsible for anyone finally escaped his mind, which was one of the greatest reliefs he could've felt.
"How… where…" The man was clearly still catching his breath.
"No, it's alright, we're already fine," Rivera answered the unasked question. "There's no need for any further help, really."
"M-Micheals, we got them. No, I don't know how either. I'll ask them," the newcomer said to his recently pulled out phone.
"What seems to be the issue, though?" Daniel asked, confused. "We've been missing for like, two days."
"Doctor Asheworth, you were off Foundation radars for six months."

* * *

9th of March, 1985
Site-120's research laboratory, 5 kilometers south-west of Częstochowa, Poland

Though the general consensus was that leaving work in the Foundation for later was rarely a good idea, James Micheals decided he was done for today; staying in the research lab for longer than ten hours would most likely result in permanent brain damage sooner or later. After all, it's not like staying here would make any sort of difference; the Department of Analitycs wouldn't just magically finish their work faster with one more useless person looking hanging about.
As the man finished packing his things up, he stood up from his workplace and grabbed his coat, heading for the door.
When Micheals touched the panel that controlled it however, he heard and felt the familiar sound and vibration of receiving a message. He pulled the work phone from the pocket of his jeans and froze, looking at the screen.
"J-Jeremy, have you absolutely made sure the scanners were properly functioning before I requested the tests?"
"Yes, what seems to be the problem?"
"And are you absolutely sure they ran the tests with those anomalous scanners we got from Regional Command a couple of months ago? You know, the super-accurate ones?"
"What? Why?"
"The results say that the recovered material is both extraterrestrial and twenty-three billion years old."

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by Ethagon

"All clear?"
"All clear."
"Open the tunnel."
"Tunnel is opened. Tunnel diameter is increasing to 1000 Attometer, 1500 Attometer, stabilizing at 2000 Attometer."
Dr Connor MacWarren took his eyes off the large and noisy device behind the glass and looked at his researchers. They were all on edge.
"What do we measure? Is anything coming through?"
"Yes, all kinds of particles are coming through, we're currently measuring the frequency, and… they're extradimensional."
A sigh of relief went across the room. The interdimensional tunnel was functional. However, MacWarren was only half-satisfied.
"Alright, time to check it the other way around. Send something through. We'll start by shooting particles at the tunnel."
All were waiting while the computer calculated the data of the event.
But the particles did not interact with the tunnel, still in this dimension.
Over time a lot of other particles were shot at the tunnel again and again, but the outcome remained the same.
MacWarren sighed. "So the tunnel is one-sided. Let's figure out why things only come through at our end."

She could hear the machine calming down and the tunnel collapsing, but it was of no matter to her. How could it? Concerns were mere imperfections, they had no place to fit into her state of being. The only thought that occupied every fibre of her existence was ESCAPE. So her focus remained on the tunnel even long after it was gone. Soon, it would open again.

Connor was lost in thought on his way to the Director's office of Site-98. No phenomenon he could think of would result in a one-way tunnel. Normally he'd have talked it over with Dr Phoenix, but she was on vacation right now. What does a bird from another universe even do on vacation? Anyway, he-
The Doctor stopped in his tracks. He nearly missed his destination. Why had the layout of Foundation-Facilities always been so complicated?
He knocked on the door. "Dr Henshaw?"
"Come in."
"I hope I'm not interrupting anything?"
Henshaw put down a paper that he was currently reading. "Not really. Memetics still doesn't want to hand over anything related to purely conceptual worlds."
MacWarren let out a sigh. "I really don't get why they do that. It's not like they wouldn't benefit from the insight of extradimensional workings. Anyway, that's not why I'm here; I'd like to request to move the interdimensional tunnel generator to a new lab, preferably one that is not as close to Sector-C."
The Director leaned back. "And why is that?"
"Well for one, it could be, that the extradimensional anomalies affect the tunnel."
"And?"
"The corridors become less maze-like the further you go from the containment sector."
Director Henshaw raised an eyebrow. "I see, you're still hung up about that theory of yours."
"I don't see why our spatial constructions shouldn't influence some echelons of existence. Even if I couldn't prove it yet, these are still two possible reasons for interference with the experiment."
"Alright, we still have another lab that fulfils all the needed conditions. As long as you don't move the machine again, I'll allow it."

This was unacceptable. Instead of reopening the tunnel, like it was meant to be, the machine was taken beyond her reach, behind the walls. Not that mere walls could stop her. After all, walls were just manifestations of separation. It did not matter to a wall whether one was on the one side or the other. But these walls served not only separation. A separate ideal was imbued into them: the LABYRINTH. Were she capable of still feeling annoyance, she would. She could not simply follow the machine, as it was the purpose of the labyrinth for her to get lost. She did not have to prevail for long, as she soon found another ideal most suitable for the occasion in the heads of the scientists under her: DIRECTION. Maybe a simple switch of ideals would suffice.

While the interdimensional tunnel generator was brought to a different room to run the same tests again, MacWarren was staring at the hunks of data the last tests had generated.
With his eyes still on the computer, he asked: "Are the results for dimensional frequency in?"
"No, that's still going to take a while."
Connor looked away from the screen and thought a bit. "Just to make sure, also check for extra universal factors."
The researcher looked confused at him. "Yes, I can do that in a minute. May I ask why?"
"I just want to make sure that the tunnel generator does really connect to dimensions and not something entirely different, regardless of how unlikely it is."
MacWarren turned back to the Data. As aspected baseline levels of EVE energy, hume level was slightly above average, standard temperature-
Wait. "Mr Brown, you need to perform a hume reading in this room."
Mr Brown took out his Kant-Counter and started to measure.
95 Hume, as expected.
MacWarren cursed. "This is bad. We may have to contact Tactical Theology."
"Tactical Theology, Doctor?"
MacWarren turned to Mr Brown. "Well, normally every experiment that opens a portal of some kind gives a slight drop in Hume. It's easier to connect if less reality is in the way. But the tunnel had a slightly higher rating. The only way that is possible, is that the other side has a higher than average hume level. There are only a few things that could do this. It could be a reality bender, it could be a god, or it's just a fluctuation. Either way, it can't hurt to make sure-"
It was at this moment, that the walls gave in.

Connor found himself on the floor, staring directly at some other researcher's unconscious face. He was in a straight corridor, that stretched longer than any corridor in Site-98. His head hurt. What was he doing again? Ah, right.
The Doctor, still on the floor, reached for his phone and called one of the researchers who should be working on the tests. "Stop the experiment! The tunnel caused a breach!"
It came confused from the other side: "What? That's impossible. The tunnel isn't even working."
"What do you mean the tunnel isn't working?!"
"Just that, I'm sorry, Doctor. No matter what we do, there is just no tunnel to other dimensions."
"Damn it!" MacWarren hung up. He tried standing up but wasn't sure if what he was leaning on, was the floor or a wall and started to crawl in the direction he was facing. He did not understand. The machine should have worked in theory. And it had worked in the original room. How could that be? It seems there must have been something on the other side, that made the tunnel work at least partly. He would know for sure if he could reach the machine.
The Doctor crawled past other researchers, not knowing where to go in a straight line, confused about everything. Wait, where exactly was he going? He couldn't just walk aimlessly. He took out paper and pen and sketched the path where he needed to go. It was a straight line. It seemed so easy on paper, but for some reason, it just wouldn't go into his head. At least he had a method of moving forward now. That was until he hit a dead end.
When he tried to turn around, the floor or wall gave way, resulting in MacWarren colliding into what he thought was Mr Brown.
"Argh, my head! Sorry, Brown."
The person he collided with was still out of breath. "I'm not Mr Brown. But I got the reading you requested, before, whatever this is, happened."
MacWarren put his hand to his forehead. "Yeah, I don't think that's important."
"The particles are from another universe."
He stopped in his tracks. "Wait, what universe are these particles from exactly?"

Even with the walls directed and the labyrinth subdued in the researchers' minds, it was still not an easy task for her to find the machine. But it did not matter. She had already started to change the ideals around her. It was an easy task to do it again. But then a new ideal formed from a paper that a researcher was just writing on. It was COOPERATION.

"So you started, to communicate with the other side on the assumption that it was Dr Phoenix, who caused this incident?"
Dr Henshaw was lucky, that his office remained unaffected, unlike the person opposite to him. MacWarren could still feel the headache.
"Well it wasn't completely her at that point, more like a crystallized ideal version of her, but yes, as soon as I knew what universe the particles were from it was not hard to guess."
Henshaw spoke slowly. "So she was herself an ideal, just like everything else in that place, which is why she was able to interact with other ideals from this facility, is that correct?"
MacWarren nodded.
"I still don't understand how you got her out. Didn't you say the interdimensional tunnel generator wasn't working?"
"Yes, it wasn't working in reality. But it was working in theory, which was enough to kickstart the ideal version of the machine if we put it on in this dimension."
"How did she get stuck there in the first place?"
MacWarren shrugged. "That one we don't really know. Dr Phoenix said she was about to go on vacation when it happened. The last thought she had was about some philosophical concept before entering that place."
"Oh well, I suppose there's something good about it too."
MacWarren raised an eyebrow. "And what would that be?"
Henshaw smiled. "With something like this happening, the Central Memetics Department can't hide their files from us anymore."


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"Georgian Gothic"
In a dark, dark house…

More by this author!

2021

January
Site-91: Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom

Zavia Morse awoke with a jolt to a low buzzing in her skull. The daily litany of unwelcome thoughts, and a suddenly queasy stomach fought for her attention as she reached behind her left ear and dislodged the thin strip of bone bonded to it. She picked up her Foundation-issued PDA from the nightstand, stuck in the all-natural computer chip, and thumbed the power switch. As her eyes adjusted, she read the new message three times.
It was the end. The end she'd been waiting for, hoping and praying for, for fifteen years. That was a long time to wait, hope and pray. She'd gotten used to the routine, to the lies, to not getting what she'd once been sure she wanted.
It was time to get used to betrayal.

Eckhart House was technically a castle. Its three storeys of age-blackened brick terminated in fortifications, bestowing an imposing imperial presence to the eighteenth-century manor. Only the bobbed hurricane fencing around the crenelated house, its snow-covered lawn and frozen ponds distinguished this from any number of surplus estates sans gentry dotting the English countryside.
The sky was a uniform grey, and the air was freezing. Dr. Udo Okorie could sense the possibility of sleet in the air, and squirmed in her labcoat.
"Not used to the cold, huh?" her escort, a tall agent built like a football player, asked sympathetically. "I thought you were from Canada."
Okorie shook her head as he led her to the house. "I'm from here, I only live in Canada. But really I live underground, where it never gets cold unless I want it to."
The agent nodded as they walked past an ancient wooden door, painted blue. It was set into a rough plaster lath wall, crude against the Yorkshire vernacular architecture. She felt a compulsion, very faint, to look away from the door as they passed. That, and the worsening weather, dampened some of her enthusiasm for the secret lab in the palatial manor.
This isn't a fairy tale. A lot of people have died here, because they couldn't get that straight. Among them the house's namesake, who had called down fire from the heavens and been badly burned just beyond that mismatched portal.
She wasn't sorry when they walked under an engraved stone portico, through a set of thick wooden doors and into the castle proper. She almost expected a hidden passage behind a bookcase, or an ornate settee on a lowering platform; she was only slightly disappointed to instead be confronted with a grand Georgian staircase.
Thought they'd at least have an elevator. She grimaced. Lift. We call them lifts, here.
"No lift?" she asked, smiling up at the agent.
He frowned. "You want me to carry you?"
It was all she could do to avoid slapping her own forehead. The Foundation was the Foundation worldwide, and the English represented maybe one percent of the Earth's population; even at a facility in England, they were unlikely to form a majority.
And you're not in England. You're at Site-91. It might as well be in Belarus.
When they were halfway up the stairs, he laughed. "Oh, you meant a lift."
Well now I just don't know.
They reached the central landing, and she briefly inspected the tall painting hanging there. A man dressed in finery sneered down at her with obvious contempt; the artist had made a bold choice, capturing his air of genteel malice like that.
She wondered, just for a moment, why they'd left the portrait up.
He's an object lesson. Knowledge isn't free.

Knowledge must be free. Morse stepped out of the shower and rubbed her face vigorously with a towel. Knowledge is not property. All intellectual property is theft.
The pithy little phrases were exhausting, a dozen tiny whips with which to flagellate her reluctant mind. Ideas are not crimes to be punished. Ideas are not criminals to be incarcerated. Ideas are sparks, to be fanned into flames of change. Each of these proverbs was true, demonstrably, totally true, but she was tired of having to slot them in before and after her every original thought.
"Cognitive dissonance is a bitch," she muttered, as she pulled on her uniform.
Her colleagues would be saying something similar about her, by the end of the day.

Dr. Iona Varga examined Okorie across the ornate desk, so she returned the favour. The Director of Site-91 was tall, pale, silver-haired and immaculate. Her every breath and blink seemed deliberately timed. Here was a woman who was always in control, and liked it that way.
How very English.
"Dr. Okorie," Varga remarked with just the barest hint of a Romanian accent. "The one who got away."
Okorie smiled, wanting the woman to like her, to stop being so intimidating. "Only for eighteen years, and you've got plenty of Okories already." Her own Midlands accent was already more pronounced after only an hour back in the mother country.
Varga inclined her head and the agent left the office, closing the door behind him. "You have the password?"
Okorie nodded. "I'm to deliver it to Zavia Morse. You've been briefed?"
"Yes. You suspect her of treason, and this is your plan to prove it. Morse is one of our security agents, formerly MTF. She's been with us almost fifteen years." There was no anger or regret in Varga's voice; she was keeping a remarkably even keel.
She's furious.
"What else can you tell me about her?"
Varga steepled her fingers on the desk, and Okorie made a mental note to mimic the gesture back at Site-43. "She was one of the non-Thaumics in her unit. There were disciplinary issues from the start; life on the moors isn't for everyone, and she always seemed depressed. Psych evaluations suggest jealousy towards her esoterically-gifted colleagues, and frustration that she was unable to develop similar abilities."
"She tried?"
"Oh, yes, she tried. The only thing unusual about her is her failure rate. We've never seen someone so extraordinarily mundane."
"That might have been the angle of attack," Okorie mused. "The Serpent's Hand could have offered her real magical training." She noticed Varga wincing at the use of the word 'magical', and resolved not to use it again. "With the Library at their disposal, I'm sure they could find some way of making her… special."
Varga collapsed her tented fingers and plucked a sheet of paper from the desktop. Okorie marveled at how quick and nimble the older woman's movements were. Please don't get a schoolgirl crush on the Site Director.
Varga handed her the paper. "This is Morse's proposal for the one-time password."
Okorie scanned it quickly. "Yeah, they showed me this on the jetliner. Wants to use it to lock up some ma—" She cleared her throat. "Some esoteric artifacts. We've done something similar before." She handed the sheet back. "Presumably it's bullshit."
Varga's eyes widened, and for a second Okorie thought the cursing had offended her. "Presumably," she said, "it is bullshit. Yes. So you and I will spend the next hour going through her personnel file, and then you will meet with her to hand over 5109, and then you will present me with your analysis and recommendations." She didn't smile, in a smiling kind of way. "I have every confidence in you, Dr. Okorie."
I feel like James Bond, she thought. I just hope nobody expects me to shoot anyone.

There's a lock on their library, Morse told herself as she walked into the security office. There's a lock on their library. She willed herself to feel indignant.
"Ay up, Zavia." Another agent was manning the checkpoint counter, looking out on what had once been one of many servant passages criss-crossing the manor. The security office had been a kitchen, and the exterior hallway had led to the tradesman's entrance; the checkpoint counter had been used to deliver supplies to the kitchen staff, and cooked food to the wait staff. The sensibilities of eighteenth-century English manorial society, an orderly life lived by degrees of separation, was an easy fit for the Foundation.
And for traitors.
"Hi, Fahd. Anything to report?"
Fahd Naaji picked up his data pad and stood up, shaking his head. "Slow morning. Nobody wants to go out in the snow." He grinned. "A Canadian spy came in from the cold, though. Know anything about that?"
Morse shook her head, keeping her expression carefully neutral. "No. Should I?"
"Yes, since she's here to see you. We still on for supper at 5?"
"Absolutely." She smiled warmly at him, more warmly than she ever had in all the months he'd carefully tried to court her and she'd half-consciously encouraged it. "Maybe we'll watch The Professional afterward. Get you off my case."
The look on his face nearly broke her heart. "It's called Léon." He looked so hopeful.
"Still a shitty title." She poked him in the shoulder as he headed for the door. "Hope the movie's better."
She watched him leave the office, wondering why she'd done what she'd just done. She'd kept everyone at arm's length for years, ignoring her feelings, focusing on the job at hand. Distance was all too easy at Eckhart House; it was baked into the very bricks. Only knowledge connects us. Only books bind us. She wasn't a friend to these people, and she certainly wasn't anything more.
She signed in at the checkpoint terminal, frowning. I'm just throwing the poor guy a bone. Give him a bit of joy before it all comes crashing down.
She leaned against the counter and massaged her temples. Alternatively, you're trying to give yourself excuses to not go through with the plan.
"No," she said. "That's not an option."
"What's not an option?"
Morse nearly tripped as she spun, and saw the slim, dark woman with the Coke-bottle glasses on the other side of the plexiglass divider. "Just thinking aloud," she said. "Can I help you?'
The other woman smiled. "You can stop thinking aloud, for one thing. That's a great way to lose 5109."
Morse felt her colour rising. "You're my contact? Dr. Okorie?" The woman nodded. "I'll buzz you in, take the corner on the left and you'll see the door to the security office."
When Okorie was out of sight, Morse took a deep, shuddering breath and cleared her mind. Knowledge that isn't shared can be lost. Knowledge that isn't spread can be destroyed.
She already believed it; by the time the door opened, it almost felt like a justification.

The hand-over took mere moments, and within ten minutes Okorie knew everything she needed to know about Zavia Morse. That left her plenty of time to confer with a pair of noted expert occultists before checking back with Varga.
She placed a hand on the clear containment cell wall and watched her parents hard at work. The reddish creature they were dissecting was no bigger than a child, but it had as many legs as a millipede, and all of them were dripping a steady stream of yellow ichor through the wire mesh floor.
"You're doing good work," her mother remarked, making a crosswise incision while her father held the corpse steady. "I read your last paper, should raise awareness nicely."
"Not that we need it," her father responded, peeling back the creature's exoskeleton. "I understand we're neutralizing all esoteric matter produced by every subject in containment, ounce for ounce, for the first time since the fifties." He glanced up at her, smiling through the mask of his hazmat suit. "Doesn't quite make up for losing our magic wunderkind to McInnis, but it helps."
"How is Allan?" her mother asked, reaching into the pus-filled cavity.
Okorie sighed, taking her hand off the glass. "I'd tell you he says 'hi', but he never says 'hi' to anybody."
Her father chuckled. "His upper lip always was rather stiff." There was a wet crack from inside the corpse, and he winced. "Site Directors are a different breed anyway. Even quieter and more secretive than researchers."
"You can't last long in this business without thinking two steps ahead of everyone else," her mother added, squeezing something Okorie couldn't see inside the creature's belly. After a moment, the flow of fluid stopped entirely.
"And keeping them guessing," her father agreed. "It's a lot like being a spy."

Morse glanced over her quarters, looking for something, anything, to take with her. She looked down at the empty backpack. She looked up at the clock. She looked down at the wholly insufficient note she'd left on the bedspread. She sighed, and zipped the pack shut.
Probably a stupid movie anyway. Nothing like a good book.

Okorie stared at the dead god on the stone slab. It looked like a gigantic gutted slug, except for the half-dozen arms with ten-fingered hands. "You've got the best occult library this side of the Library," she muttered. "That'll be Morse's target. If she can open a Way in there, the Librarians will get free access to Eckhart's collection."
Varga leaned on the wall, arms crossed. "Except she can't open a Way in there."
"Because she has no thaumic capability?"
Varga smirked. "That's one reason, yes."
Okorie shook her head, still staring at 4612. Investigating the giant slug corpse for Applied Occultism was a good cover for her presence at 91; more than one Group of Interest was surveilling the Site, and Sokolsky didn't want them getting suspicious. Okorie hadn't certainly objected, although now that she was standing in the dank basement chamber she suddenly wished she'd pressed for a library visit instead. This ambience is a bit too Horace Walpole for my tastes. She wasn't even sure this wasn't a detailed decoy, and Varga had declined to set her suspicions to rest. "There might be more than one mole. Is Morse close to anyone?"
Varga shook her head, too. "No. All her relationships are… instrumental. I'm starting to think she might have fabricated the conflict in her unit to get assigned to the security detail."
"That makes sense. From the checkpoint she can change keycard permissions so that nobody but her can get through the swipe lock on the library. We won't be able to get in without blowing a hole, as far as she knows, and according to the schematics you've strengthened the walls enough that it would still take too long. Lots of time to check out some books." She shivered, and glanced up the staircase longingly.
Varga sighed. "Call Sokolsky, get the second password iteration, and let's get this over with."
Okorie shook her head. "He left clear instructions: I can't get the second iteration until I absolutely need it."
Was she imagining things, or did the director flush slightly? "I don't like uncontrolled variables, Dr. Okorie."
"Neither do I." She adjusted her glasses. "I've got a very strict rulebook for dealing with my usual magic nonsense problems." She winced. Magic again.
Surprisingly, Varga smiled. "I'm going to need you to write up a new magic nonsense rulebook for this situation, and I'm going to need you to do it fast."

The veil of ignorance obscures our universal fellowship. Morse crept down the passage, flashlight in hand, watching the wall-mounted cameras flicker off one by one as she passed beneath the dark fluorescents. There can be no common ground where understanding is uncommon.
Fahd won't understand.
She loped up the stairway to the second floor, where the library was located. He won't understand because they won't let him understand. Because they hoard understanding like a dragon, burning everything they can't control.
There were no guards in the halls, presumably because someone expected her treachery and thought she'd need an accessory to her crime. This was almost too easy; she wished she'd encountered some resistance. Anything to occupy her mind, to shake off the guilt and focus her anger. Locking away the truth leaves us all shivering in the dark.
"Bugger off," she muttered.
The keycard reader was waiting for her, blinking softly.
She completely ignored it. A bright, actinic flash lit up the hallway, and every electronic device in the room was extinguished in a hail of sparks.
The doors swung open, as if breeze-blown.

Varga hung up the phone, and nodded. "All MTF personnel and security agents are sequestered and accounted for, except Morse. You were right about her."
Okorie's muscles tingled with nervous energy. "Okay, but… who's she working with? If it's not one of the agents, could it be a researcher? That doesn't make sense."
Varga walked out of the office, and Okorie followed her. The agent she'd met earlier fell into step behind them. "You're not going to make me regret this, are you?" Varga asked.
Okorie didn't know what to say about that. They crossed the second floor in silence, stalking through galleries converted into office blocks and past sitting rooms converted into dormitories. Every time they passed an arched window, and she glanced out at the darkened gardens, she expected a sudden bolt of lightning.
When they reached the thick oak doors of the library, Varga passed her a security tablet. "Time to make the call. You can re-set our keycards from here."
Okorie shook her head, staring at thin crack between the doors. "The keycards are fine. She didn't use 5109 for that."
In the dim light, they could just make out a faint glow emanating from the wood.
"She used it as a word of power," Okorie breathed. "On a spell of warding."
Varga stared at her.
"I guess she's not so mundane after all."

Character Development

The Time After Time Password

Who Framed Ralph Roget?