"Goddammit, people!" shouted Manager Fred, bursting through the front doors of the restaurant. "Can I go out for a cup of coffee for five minutes without you people screwing things up?"
"With all due respect, sir," said Hank, trying to make himself heard over the roar of the crowd, "we do have a coffee machine in the corner that…"
"I want coffee that doesn't stand a chance of turning me into a girl, Hank. Not after that time you screwed up the filtration device." Fred slapped a bucket out from the other man's grasp. "Now stop stuffing your fat face with chicken and tell me what the problem is!"
"Well, sir, for one thing, the union's banging on our door again."
"What about this time?" groaned Fred, cramming himself into the office hidden in the back room.
"They say that it's unethical of us to hire walking sacks of meat that hate people and would rather envelop and absorb them messily than serve hamburgers to them."
"Tell 'em that they work for free, and that we've only lost ten people in the last three weeks," deflected Fred, brushing a retirement notice from Rights off of his desk. "What else?"
"The woman from Kansas is trying to sue us for selling 'SCP-173's Crunchy Mexican Tacos" that broke her husband's throat…"
"He was clearly eating too fast!"
"Mrs. Lambwith is suing us for serving her a Brightburger that still had the sexual lubricant when she plainly asked for none…"
"That's the employee's problem, not mine."
"And the FDA is trying to shut us down for selling products that contain meat derived from SCP-835," Hank concluded, pushing the reports onto his boss's desk.
Fred blinked. "Look, just write up another report filled with [DATA EXPUNGED]s and let 'em spend another few months trying to figure it out." He slammed his fist on the desk. "Are there any problems that don't pertain to lawsuits? Problems we can actually fix right now?"
"Well," coughed Hank, looking around nervously. "We've got the issue of the tomatoes trying to kill Conan O'…"
"That don't deal with lawsuits."
"Cassy wants a pay raise!" blurted Hank.
Fred shook his head wearily. "That'll be the sixth time in the last year. She's just on the bloody coffee cups. It's not like she's a cashier or anything. Pass on that one."
"Speaking of cashiers, Bright managed to transfer himself to one of the customers. Again."
"Fire the old body and have Gears take care of the payroll for the new guy. Next."
"The county is complaining about the giant 682 statue outside frightening traffic away, Cain is demanding access to the building again, and the…"
"Hank!" shouted Fred, jumping up and grabbing the other man by the collar. "Do we have any good news today! My blood pressure's high enough as it is, and…"
"The Very Fine special has been a big hit with the test crowds without killing anyone, sir!" screamed Hank, tears in his eyes. Fred set him down, patting him on the head.
"Good boy!" he exclaimed. "See, once you get to know your boss, you just need to tell him what he wants to hear. Keep that up!"
"We also released the Ableburger today. It was a resounding success."
"Hank, you're sweating. What's the problem?"
Hank took a deep breath, and blurted all at once, "SCP-231 is claiming her time as a fryer is cruel and unusual, Kondraki's butterflies have been infecting the food, and the Stairwell Burger is causing people to hear screaming in the women's bathroom!"
Fred let out a deep sigh, contemplated his navel for a few moments, and said at length, "So a little bit of good news surrounded by complete chaos that we can barely contain?" Hank nodded. "Just another day at Foundation Burger."
***
The Agent who went by the code name Sauce Jockey beamed at the Head of the SCP Foundation as the logo for Foundation Burger ran across the end of his video. The Head was grasping at his temples, trying desperately to not let the red in his face show. At length, he spoke in a low voice.
"So… that is your proposal for a new cover agency?"
"Yes sir!" said Sauce Jockey, crossing his arms across his chest and standing up straighter.
"Remind me to ban McDonald's food from the break room. You're fired."
Agent Sauce Jockey's eyes widened for a moment. He shuffled out of the room, sure it was all just a joke, that the Head of the Foundation had loved the video.
When he was sure he was alone, the Head pressed the intercom button on his desk. "Miss Jones, send a small shipment of SCP-504 to Conan O'Brien."


When I retire, I want to live a quiet life.
Sorry.
Here. If I retire, I want to live a quiet life.
It's not an easy task. In my line of work, life expectancy is short.
I might get killed during our next containment breach, when the various monsters we keep locked up get bored and decide to have a snack. I might meet my end on a field mission, by getting eaten, vaporized, or crazied to death by some hitherto undiscovered scip that defies all laws of science as we know it and has decided to use these powers to kill me in a spectacularly gruesome fashion. Or I might simply die in a good old-fashioned shootout with the Insurgency or GOC while I'm on a mission. Agents that work for the SCP Foundation don't live very long, as you might have guessed. The bad ones, at least.
Me? I like to think that I'm a good agent. If nothing else, I'm a lucky agent. I keep my head down on the job; I submit my reports on time, and, if necessary, I go out and kill a few people in pursuit of a scip. Do I sleep well at night? Sometimes.
Well, no, that's a lie, not really. Spending your life surrounded by murderous reptiles, killer statues, and with God knows how many other nameless horrors lurking out there does not for a good night's rest make.
I have nightmares a lot. Sometimes, God help me, I even enjoy my night-time terrors; the one where 173 chases me down a hallway, or that time where 682 decides to turn me into meat puree. They remind me that, beneath the detached demeanour I put on at work, there's some small part of me that's still human, still a fearful little man in a universe of unimaginable horror.
Of course, there are times when I don't want to be human at all.
Sometimes… I want to be a lemur.
Go ahead. Laugh. Chuckle at the weirdo who entertains a hopeless dream. I don't know where this dream came from either. At my age, I should be fantasizing about fast cars and attractive lingerie-clad women. But I don't. When I imagine my ideal life, I find myself drifting off to the rainforests of Madagascar, where I can spend a quiet day eating fruit and swinging through the trees with my brothers and sisters.
And only there, in the trees, with sites and agents and scips so far away, do I feel truly safe. In any other profession, this dream might seem foolish, unattainable, but when your co-workers include a talking dog, immortal monkey-man, and whatever Clef is, you'll quickly find out that “impossible” is far from constant.
The most vivid memory of my mother that I have is my five-year old self and her visiting the zoo. We watched the tigers, the elephants, the lions; but it was the lemurs, the little hyperactive prosimians jumping up the chain-link fence, little hands reaching out for our peanuts, that made my mother laugh hardest. We watched them for hours, until finally the zoo closed and we were shooed out.
She was hit by a car three days afterwards.
Working for the Foundation really does change a way a man thinks. Even when you're off the job, you begin eyeing every thing suspiciously. That coffee mug, that table, the newspaper- is it a potentially undiscovered scip? What's lurking behind that dark corner? Could that weird television show be a potential memetic threat? No matter how much the others deny it, I'm sure I'm not the only Foundation worker who eyes the shadows of my night-time bedroom with a mixture of suspicion and fear, before the nightmares take me.
But then, on those few nights where the nightmares slip away, I can feel the rough bark of the tree beneath my prehensile toes. I hear the familiar calls of a troop scampering along the ground, and I leap down and join them. In the hot afternoon sun of Madagascar, there are no unexpected horrors, no nightmares, and no fear. I remember my mother, and our laughter.
And, then, and only then, do I feel safe.


A story in thirteen parts. Read in order.

1

1

I've taken the briefcase and I'm running, running because that's all that's left to do. The embassy is 20 more miles east, I can see the lights from the suburbs already. I'm out of shape but that doesn't matter. All I have is this briefcase and the thoughts in my head, and we're going to the embassy. Then I'll appeal to the CIA or maybe Interpol, ask for protective custody. I'll let them put me in prison while they verify everything I'll tell them. Hell, I know how bureaucracies work, maybe they'll leave me in a cell my whole life, but that's alright, we'll have all the time in the world to find out what's in the briefcase. And I'll be safe: if I learned anything, it's that not even mad men with hammers can cross two feet of concrete.
Especially if they don't want to.
Look, pavement at my feet. The briefcase shuffles like paper in a breeze and I quicken a little more.
—
Take the briefcase and run away? Yes, I'm running, but not out of cowardice, I'm doing what no one's been brave enough to do yet. What no one's been able to, either— but they won't be able to catch me. It's been in the works for years, too. I didn't just get spooked, didn't have a breakdown, I've known and planned exactly for this since years ago, the night of my first promotion.
God, when they write the report, I hope they get it wrong.

1

2

2

It was my upgrade to Level 2, three years and some important research on something or other under my belt, and the first real promotion anyone in my unit had in a while. Brenda went crazy— we couldn't leave the site because of a security warning, but she got snacks and booze in the breakroom, pretty soon the whole residency hall showed up. There was a party, there was some music, pretty soon everyone was either in their rooms or passed out on the couches, and it was just me and this aged and completely shitfaced Level 4 named Howey, who I didn't know very well.
“See. The Foundation is like one of those giant-ass tropical flowers you can walk by for three-hundred-sixty-four days of the year and not notice— but once in a while, once in a blue moon, you see it on Resurrection Day, the one day it blooms, and it takes so long— the first petal pulls back, that's when you see it, that's your fake SWAT teams and squads, kids in military suits doing cover-ups. And another pulls back and you see everything that's been built, all the resources, how can you possibly pay this much money for something you can't see, for ghost things. You hear stories, that's all there motherfucking is at first, one story or a passing rumor, about the thing inside, that strange thing everyone says is at the core. You only see it once in a decade.
“But the final leaf pulls back, and it's right there, it's what you've been looking for: stinks like rotting flesh, you have no idea what it is. But you know right then that everything you've been doing is for this thing to bloom. It's for this, this is the most important thing there is, and it looks like shit. The flies come down, they like the smell, they flock around it and leave, and then the corpse flower closes up again, for another fifteen years of hiding out.
“That's a fucked-up existence, isn't it? Spending all your time smelling like the dead, 20 years just waiting to attract flies? If I were that, I'd hate it. I'd want out. Doesn't mean it's wrong, even if it's stupid.”
I was pretty sure we'd never actually met each other, and I only had a dim clue of what he was talking about, which scared me, because of all the cameras and microphones and god knows what. So I told him that, but Howey just laughed.
“There are no cameras.”

2

3

3

Howey left site about five months later, they said it was a regular transfer. No one ever tried to ask me about what he said.

3

4

4

And it wasn't true. It's not like they tell you anything, ever, especially when you're new. But you can't just say that all of that, everything that you do, everything other people die for, and all that blood and horror, is to attract flies. You do it for everyone else in the world, too. Maybe High Command did know about that mutinous conversation, and didn't do anything (to me) just because they knew I didn't believe it.
Brenda and I were promoted on the same day, the second time. She was focusing on containment, by then, and I was getting a lot better at fiddling with my drugs and compounds. There was a little ceremony, more official this time. We grinned and took the pictures that ended up on our new security passes.
A man we hadn't met walked through the door, near the end. He had a tweed suit, brown coat, gray hat, tie with birds on it, a little blackbird pinned on the hat. The three highest-ranking people in the room looked scared out of their wits— but we didn't see that, yet.
He walked in, smiled, didn't introduce himself, and congratulated us on our Level-3 clearances. Made some joke about the pay raises. Everyone laughed. He walked over to me, threw his arm around me, pointed at Brenda conspiratorially. He said, "Watch out for that one," then left, chuckling a little.
And we laughed too, which made it alright. The three Level-Fours present all sighed and looked like they'd just found fifty dollars in their pants, or maybe escaped a mad dog, sweat rolling down their backs. Well, they should be happy, right? We were being promoted. But as we left, I heard one of them say a name, to the others. Just one name.
"Five."
And then I went back to just being happy that I was alive, like some little Level-One again.
I got a little scared that night, but thought about my nice big office as Head of Material Science and thought I'd try it out for a day. Read more black bars, and… it seemed alright. This wasn't like being at the bottom at all. I could take trips, guards wouldn't stop me, I could finally get a good look at whatever I had to work on, and I think quality shot up— I got called in on one project off-site, then another.
Then my first paycheck came in, and I bought one of those massage chairs for the office, and that was all I really needed. Two years happened.

4

5

5

The O5 council is one of those secrets that's a secret until you're Clearance 2— and then it's just creepy. They're the people who control the Foundation. Who are they? Oh, they have numbers, not names. Who were they? Fuck knows.
But secrets make me bitter. This is what we did.
We were given samples, and specific instructions. A molecular formula— send it on— the primary compound in a substance— send it on. The Foundation employs scientific sweatshop labor, although, as in sweatshops, “employed” is a loose word. We were given some designations, real ones, and the opportunity to study them— in close containment— as if to show us, yes, the Foundation actually possesses miracles.
You can split a human in these conditions into two categories: The ones that take orders as they get them, and the ones that are, as I think they call them in youth shelters, “flight risks.” Obviously: there are still guards at the lab doors, by Level 2.
The little demonstrations do something for the flight risks; and it's safe, it's not like the Big F actually needs to know why a snail makes chemically improbable acid. Who cares about that? Why would you? Why? Why? Why?

5

6

6

I can't say why 001 really caught my interest, except that it did. The first time I even figured out what an Object was, was before Levels One through Five even came into the picture, when it was just me and some no-named Doctor of something or other in an auxiliary facility. I had even just been handed my little employment pamphlet full of bullshit, like:
Why does the Foundation contain?
Because the alternatives are worse.
What is the purpose of the Foundation?
To protect and improve humanity.
But I didn't even care about that yet.
“So, this is 876.”
“A sample, right.”
“Object number Eight-seven-six.”
“Yes.”
“There are eight-hundred-and-seventy-five more of these.”
“Blows the mind, doesn't it?” The doctor, a lanky man with straw hair, grinned.
“What's the first one?”
“Hell, even I can't tell you that.”
“What's the second one?”
“Computer or something? Check the sample, I think it's getting away.”
After that, I got recruited for real and sold my soul to the Foundation, and learned to keep my mouth shut. But I didn't stop wondering about it.
—
But I didn't stop wondering about it, even when it nearly killed me.
The research director, my boss, called me down one day. She had me sit down in her big office, and looked me up and down. “Records,” she started, jumping straight to the point in her usual way, “have shown you're showing a lot of interest in SCP-001.”
Shit, I had tried to keep the searches subtle. “How do you figure that?”
“We know.” She smiled placidly, and brushed her brown hair back past that scar on her cheek, the one my predecessor told me never ever to ask about ever. “Anything to say about it?”
I didn't say anything.
“Well, Command isn't very happy.” Neither was she. She shuffled through some papers. “You're not the first one, you know.”
“Hm?”
“To go digging. But like I said, it makes them antsy. Command. They don't like people intruding into their territory. Long story short, you're being transferred.”
“What? Where?”
“Ghana.”
“Ghana?”
“Not permanently.” She closed her folder. “I'm really, really sorry to lose you. They're building a new site there and want experts— you happen to be handy. Please pack your things.”
“Wow, fuck you.”
“Never heard that one before.” She laughed, like a dog.

6

7

7

It was a project they wanted some coordination on, a new site and new containment in West Africa. So I went. It was built next to a little runway and some abandoned farm units— a few architects were figuring out how to retrofit everything into housing and containment units, and the rest of us were solidifying the few units already built.
There were four rows of metal silos being converted— that was what we were working with. In A-Silo, where I was, it boiled down to cooking up compounds and a below-zero cooling system for volatile compounds, under an open-air shed, with cooking pots and camp stoves, and a bunch of big guys who didn't speak English. In short, it was like summer camp. Rolling on a hot, threadbare cot at night, under yards of mosquito netting, I was starting to consider asking for a full-time transfer.
Then the sirens started up from B-Silo.
Every one of us jumped up and started getting dressed, making our way to the food-cellar-turned-bomb-bunker outside. From the window, what looked like big arms of light were ripping into the silo. Were coming up out of it. I grabbed the guys who were lingering by the window and pulled them on.
Outside, the bomb shelter was a mad dash away, and we started on it, but not before the entire ground lit up. It was covered in light, glinting off of nowhere. One of the guys stepped where it was lit, and he turned into smoke.
From the ruins of B-Silo, there was a person made of pure starlight and aurora. It held its arms up, in wonder, like coming out of Plato's cave.
I heard people screaming behind me— at least four of them were dead; there were three of us in the last mote of darkness.
Until floodlights came on, slowly, like an early dawn— enough to shun the thing back into its cage, and illuminate the ruins of the entire almost-site. All the buildings were burning, there was nothing higher than my head left standing. Thirty people were dead.
Within half an hour, a helicopter buzzed overhead and settled into the charred nest of a building. We moved around slowly, trying to extinguish buildings or find what we could, or keep up a series of radio communications for help. Two guards rolled out and opened the doors, and I'm surprised they didn't lay out a fucking carpet. O5-3 stepped out of the chopper.
Suffice to say, everybody stopped.
Everyone— even some of the sad level-1 saps who didn't speak a word of English— stood up and didn't say a word. Or breathe. The guy theoretically in charge now, another three with some history in the military, didn't say anything. Three just looked around.
“Whose,” he said, “fault is this?”
I swear to God the wind held its breath. Several buildings gently smoldered.
The other guy stepped forward, looking like he was expecting the grand firing squad any time. Three walked towards him.
They talked.
Three nodded, then looked around, at all of us.
“I expect all of this will be cleaned up.”
Then he got in his chopper and left. Once it drifted behind a cloud, the spell broke, and I ran over to ask the military guy what he said. It took a few minutes to get his attention, and then he just looked at me, staring a thousand yards away, terrified.
“He said to clean up.”

7

8

8

Two weeks later, I was back on a plane to Site sweet Site 27, and that was my encounter with Three.
For a long time, I thought it was the suit. You could do anything in a suit like that.

8

9

9

Brenda was ecstatic to have me back— said she knew I wasn't going to stay in Ghana forever, and dragged me around and showed me everything she had been working on while I was gone. Her department had been busy.
She made me look all over one cell. Inside, there was a guy who could start fires with his hands; arrested over 15 times for petty arson. The main room was hexagonal and domed with a camera sealed off by glass at the very top. Mats— Brenda said they were fireproof— littered the floor, along with a chair, TV, and DVD player. We went up a level— inside the cell, a ladder went up to a small bedroom, separated by a screen door.
“Really?” I asked.
“Go with it,” she said.
There was a bed, mirror, and chest of drawers. There were no windows or direct screens— we were looking in through computer screens, which she said were hidden in the ceiling panels. There was a tiny bathroom on the first floor, separated by a screen.
Brenda turned to me, beaming. “Get it?”
“Not really.”
“Okay. Let me elaborate.” She turned off the screen and looked at me. “He can close the bedroom door on us if he wants. We won't go in unless he breaks the cameras. We have permission to delay experimentation for up to 24 hours if he doesn't come out.”
“You're kidding me.”
She sighed. “We had to fight Ethics on it all the way— but, honestly, he'll never force us. We had a psychologist go through his history, medical, psychological, and criminal records, found a recurring desire to be recognized as an adult. So we gave him responsibility. If he burns any of the stuff, we won't replace it for at least a month. An architect designed it— no windows in the bedroom, no obvious cameras, it's recessed, gives him a sense of privacy. He asked for the TV, but we've denied most of his requests so far. We haven't had any problems.
“The compound's easily mass-produced. He's only Safe, but we have very similar plans for Euclids and even Keters in the process of approval. See— okay, you're still confused. It's not hard to design prison cells. The problem is, once you do, you have to turn every hallway outside the cells into prisons. Every laboratory or facility they touch has to be a prison. All of that really drives up the bottom line. And everyone they contact has to be a guard. Sooner or later, they stop caring, or try to kill themselves.
“With this, containment becomes a cinch— have a guy with a gun somewhere, but most of these guys will never try anything. The biggest problem with prison cells is that if you're dealing with our guys, there's always the risk that they'll do something you don't know about and then break out. You see what I'm getting at now?”
“Sort of.”
“Lots of our subjects say they haven't felt this safe in their whole lives. We've designed the best prison cell in the world— the inmates don't want to leave.”

9

10

10

There's a worm at the heart of the tower, there's a swamp under the city, there's something in all of this. I didn't know what it was yet.
What it went like was this: someone on the council took a liking to me. I didn't know that, at first, either, but I felt like Pip in London, knowing that some mysterious force was pushing me upward, but not the hand behind it. Level 4— Brenda hated me— Director of Research Analysis— and favorable reports coming in from different angles. Little raises, favors, privileges, things they don't do for Level Twos— things that showed that someone out there was watching.
I gave a presentation about some house to Seven and her train. She asked intelligent questions. The whole thing was a test, of course, but to what end? And Five came around once. Appointing new O5s was apparently rare to the point of legendary— there was just something long-lived about them— but even they need staff.
But that gave them a lot of time to think, meaning I had plenty of time to worry about my mysterious benefactor. Five, adjusting his black-and-yellow blackbird tie like it was the most important thing on his mind, didn't say much.
“We could use more like you, at all levels.” He smiled. “You've been good with promotions up until now. Why so reluctant?”
“For starters--” It seemed safe to talk, it wasn't like they were going to throw me under a bus just for this— “I still have no idea what you guys do.”
Five just smiled. He didn't say anything.
“I mean, I've met you and Seven and sort of Three. It seems like you're grooming me or setting me up for something— hell— destiny, or whatever, and I have no idea what.”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Well, you're not entirely incorrect. As you know, we have a very large charge in the scheme of things— running operations, managing what a site or two alone can't, making sure the Foundation is moving in the right places and the right directions. We need the right people for our designs.” He smiled placidly once more and curled his salt-and-pepper mustache idly.
“Which you still haven't explained.”
“Of course not. You'd need to be one of us to understand.”
I was a little annoyed. “Are we done here?”
“Absolutely. We'll keep in touch.”
—
It seemed like he actually wanted me to think about it, which was both refreshingly polite and terrifying. You hear stories— people who some upper-level attaches to and pulls up the ranks just to play with, kids dealing with things they aren't prepared for at all, the suicides and renegades and demotion-without-honors. Everyone thinks they can handle everything. Well, I was curious, but not that curious. Whatever could do that to a person— I didn't want to know that. I didn't want to know who could.
“You should be scared,” said Brenda, over the phone.
“How scared?”
“I heard they found out some staff member that was a traitor— feeding information to the Chaos Insurgency— and they didn't tell anyone or do the normal thing. They just sent an email to the directors, and then one of them walked into the cafeteria and shot him.”
“What do I do?”
“Honestly… if you ignore them, they'll probably keep hounding you. Maybe you should do it, but… you have to promise me you'll be so careful.”
“Right. If you hear about my body being found in a ditch or I drop off the face of the earth in a few days, tell my parents I loved them.”
Somehow, Brenda didn't think that was very funny.

10

11

11

Six months later, a paper showed up on my desk. It said, “Will you come?” There was a little sketch of a flock of five blackbirds with it, which just seemed obvious.
When the black helicopter landed and I finally went, they were waiting for me. I was taken to some obscure bunker in… BC, of all places, and they were waiting for me at a table. Thirteen.
“We're glad you're here,” said Five. He looked at the officer next to him, a fat dark woman in green. “Seems like your work actually paid off, Seven.”
Oh, Seven. Of course. I should have guessed.
“It took time, though. You've got spirit.” She smiled. “Ready to join the dark side?”
I didn't say anything.
“Speak up, kid,” an old woman said.
“I guess so,” I started. “But you guys freak me the hell out.” There was appreciative laughter all around.
“Have you figured it out yet?” Seven asked. “You spent so much time digging. Well, there's no secret riddle at the heart of everything, that you'll find out about. Just a couple of our private charges with no bearing on the rest of the world, and then… there's only us. What do you think?”
—
The briefcase, the first time I saw it, was on a table in a locked room. It was natty crocodile skin and shiny, like it wasn't opened that often, and had some metal fixtures I couldn't make out. We were looking through a window.
“If you read that there, that would explain everything,” Seven told me. “But that would be too easy, so you don't get to. That's that. Over here's your quarters for the next few weeks.”
I had the notion, as we passed by it, that the window we looked through was plate glass, and that the room the briefcase was in looked exactly like a containment cell.
Then again, so did every room here.
—
So, this little building was the big Secret Edifice? This was the point of everything? Everything I was looking for had been right here? I wondered who founded the Foundation and what they had been thinking. I even asked Seven about 001.
“You're not very quick, are you? Well, stay with us in our little fortress for a while longer, you'll work it out in the end.”

11

12

12

But the Foundation— I knew this by now— wasn't a fortress, it was a fly trap. It was huge and exotic and invisible and rotten to the core. All those other mysteries were just petals— distractions. Once you're at the center of it, it's plain as daylight.
Think about it— they don't seem to get older. They don't get hurt. They can walk through a fire or a warzone, no problemo, which also makes them the luckiest bastards on the planet— and isn't that the most dangerous thing you've ever heard? God, I'd love to meet the genius who came up with this containment unit. SCP-001 locked away and never getting out. Brenda wouldn't stand a chance.
Seven lied to me through her teeth all evening— here's maybe the most powerful woman in the world, and she's wearing a mint green pantsuit, and she's lying at me through her teeth.
She said that this was the most necessary position in the world, that she'd understand my reluctance now but expected me to shape into it— mistaking my silence for confusion— that I'd work out what they were designing the Foundation towards. She said it wasn't complete.
But the woman was a liar. Maybe if you saw it as a riddle, it made more sense—
Why does the Foundation contain?
As a distraction.
What is the purpose of the Foundation?
To contain the O5 council.
And that was the best flytrap ever made.
But it was unfair. The Foundation literally held countries for ransom. We had a workforce that rivaled the largest companies in existence. A democratic government might be able to do a better job than us. It was unfair that we were putting every citizen in the world at risk without even telling them what the danger was. And as for them, the high court with the magic army— well, I had a plan. I was going to run so far into the light with their secrets that they'd have to chase me there to get them back. I knew enough to outrun the coverup crews and hide from the snipers, and if they came for me themselves— maybe they'd just fry like vampires in the sun.
I didn't do it that night, but two weeks later, I didn't go to sleep. Seven had taught me security codes, and the first one I tried opened the door to that room.
The other trick they have for making sure that people don't do what I'm doing, is security— when someone reaches four or three, the paycheck skyrockets, and the security disappears— suddenly it's all, don't go, you're doing us a service, we need you, we owe it to you.
In this context, though, the only thing it meant was that the door on my way out wasn't locked.

12

13

13

The briefcase is heavy and cold in my hand, shaking as I run for it. I'm tired already, but it's all I have, and my feet are pulling on in some direction as by invisible, perpetual volition.
The first shapes of skyscrapers are beginning to glow on the horizon. I can see them clearly. Yes, I can see them clearly.

13


It was the prettiest cat Sarah had ever seen in her whole life.
She didn't know the word "calico," because eight-year-olds typically don't. It was brown and tan and orange and its eyes were the brightest, brightest gold you've ever seen, Sarah would say, or something to that effect. And it was looking right at her.
Sarah assumed it was one of the "river cats," as she heard her parents calling them; a random group of strays living in and around the little creek that snaked through their town. The creek ran through patches of woods, reemerged periodically near houses (like Sarah's), and continued on to…somewhere. Sarah had never seen the source of it, but it was a perfect place for cats to live and hide from people for safety. Various neighbors gave them food, but Sarah hadn't had the chance to do so yet. Her friends would be soooooooo jealous.
Her parents were home and likely wouldn't approve of her feeding stray cats, but they had some food in the house that she could put out later that night. She hoped this cat would be the one to come around.
Persephone. She would call this cat Persephone, even if it were a boy. He'd be okay with it.

Sarah waited until she heard her parents close the door to their bedroom. She had learned how to sneak down the stairs without making any noise months ago, so she didn't need to wait any longer than that. Sarah grabbed a can of tuna out of the pantry and carried it to the counter. Yuck, she thought as she wrenched the manual can opener around the can's edge, but she knew that cats liked the smelly stuff. She opened the back door silently and walked onto their patio.
Persephone was waiting for her. The pretty calico was sitting right where it had been when Sarah had first seen her. Sarah could see the cat clearly, even with the back light off; her eyes, gleaming under the full moon, were staring directly into hers. Not at the food, at her. Sarah felt a shiver as she put the can on the deck and made a tss tss sound to coax the creature over.
The cat made a little head motion, shaking her head to one side momentarily, then leapt off of the rock she was sitting on and ran over to Sarah. The cat, pretty as she was, was a little jerky as it climbed up the stairs, almost as though she were just figuring it out for the first time. Sarah noticed that the cat's tail didn't whip back and forth when she was running, only once she was on the deck; even then, the motion looked…more deliberate, she would have thought if she had known the word.
Sarah loved her clumsy little Persephone.
The kitty let Sarah pet her while she ate the tuna, purring all the while. When the last of the fish was gone, the cat licked her lips and nuzzled against her leg. Sarah picked her up and put Persephone in her lap. She felt the cat tense up, as though it were going to resist or scratch her, then relaxed at the last moment. The cat began purring again (with that same sort of deliberate effort, Sarah didn't think).
Sarah stroked Persephone with the clumsiness of a young girl. She laid down on her back on the cold deck and continued to pet her. Persephone walked along the girl's short frame and sat on her chest, gazing into her eyes. She began to lick the girl on her nose. Sarah giggled quietly.
The cat just nipped her a bit, right on the nose; not enough to hurt, but Sarah didn't know why she wasn't letting go. Then she felt herself become very sleepy.

Manuel saw the shape of his daughter lying on the back porch and ran outside. She was just lying on the deck, apparently asleep. Manuel carried her into the house and laid her on the couch in the living room. "Sarah? Sarah? Are you okay?"
His daughter jerked awake suddenly. Sarah looked around the house with a certain unfamiliarity. "How…how did I get here?"
"What were you doing out on the porch? You scared the hel—the heck out of me!"
"There…there was a stray cat outside. I was taking it some food. I thought it was my friend." Sarah began to look sad.
Manuel understood now. "Oh, honey, it's okay. Sometimes you think animals are your friends, but you have to remember—"
"That wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit?" Sarah replied. Her eyes were now glazing over, staring at the wall behind her father. "A friend to all is a friend to none. A true friend is a soul in two bodies. He who has many friends has none. Daddy what's happening."
Manuel couldn't get his cell phone out fast enough. "Hello, 911? Yes, it's my daughter. She was bitten by a stray cat, and I think she…she just needs help. Please, send an ambulance to…"
Sarah heard her address and kept fading into the fog that was overtaking her. So many thoughts, ideas, words, all just coming out of the aether. A constitution is the arrangements of magistracies in a state. All virtues are summed up in dealing justly. The history of the current Regent of Novomundus tells to us that he fails to behave as such a ruler and cannot be permitted to live.
What was happening to her?
Random words and phrases continued while Manuel called her mother and kept pacing around the room. Suddenly, a knock at the door. The back door. Manuel walked over and opened the door. Sarah heard some bits of the conversation.
"Good morning…tell you about…gospel…Christ?"
"No…not a good time…exactly is that? What the hell is that you're holding?"
Sarah felt a screaming in her brain, pulsing, throbbing, exploding. It stopped just as she heard a popping sound, a grunting from her father, and the thud of an adult male hitting the floor and convulsing, electricity coursing through his muscles. Three men stepped over him while another administered an injection into her father's neck, picked him up, and carried him out the door. The three men advanced on Sarah.
If she were thinking coherently, she would have thought what happened next was like watching one of those action movies Daddy liked. She was trapped in her brain, watching her body leap up suddenly and begin attacking the burly men walking towards her with a strength and speed that was completely foreign to her. She watched herself claw a grown man's eyes out of his head, then bite down into his neck. She (felt? heard? knew?) something inside her brain, something foreign to her brain, calculate that there was little chance of success, calculate the best vector for exit, attempt to escape.
She heard that popping sound again, felt her entire being explode with pain, watched herself fall to the floor just out of reach of the open window she was leaping towards, and (heard/felt/watched) the screaming in her brain again. She felt herself having her hands tied behind her back, being picked up and thrown over one man's shoulder, being carried out of her house, being thrown in the back of a van. She heard people climb into the van, heard unmuffled voices from the front:
"Did you get confirmation this time?"
A different voice, female: "The little detector thing led us right to her living room, and the little bitch tried to take Eastman's jugular out with her teeth. I think that's confirmation enough."
"Mac, we gotta confirm it, after what happened last time."
"Yeah, yeah." The (woman?) turned towards Sarah, grabbed an instrument from the floor in front of her, pressed it against Sarah's forehead.
"Electronic emissions at standard amplitude, broadcasting at frequency Chi-19. Presence of SCP-877 confirmed at this time, 0811 hours." The woman turned to the man driving the van. "Did Lee take care of the ambulance?"
"It should still be working its way through various 'detours' as we speak," the man said. "We're home free."
The woman didn't respond. Sarah could see the harsh expression on her face soften somewhat. "This has been happening way too much lately," the woman said to the driver.
"No shit about that," he said.
The woman smiled at Sarah. "It's okay, baby," Agent MacGilligan said. "We're here to help."


They've stopped coming. They used to come four times a day, to feed me, to keep me furnished, sometimes to test me. It was horrible some days, especially when they slipped up and I started hurting. But they used to come. Now the room's dirty beyond belief, all the electronics have stopped working, and the hurting won't stop. Why aren't they coming?
It's getting dark, too. Did they cut the power? Or is that me blacking out? Or the burning fluid getting in my eyes? I don't like the dark; it scares me, it has all the feelings that hurt me in it. I want them to bring back the lights.
I've tried the door a few times. I thought the burning stuff would eat through it if they had turned the power off, but it only hurt me. I can't force the lock. There's no other way out. Everything's decaying around me, and I'm feeling worse, and I feel bad about that and I'm hurting myself more and more.
It must be really bad out there; I'm hurting more than my own emotions could make me. I used to burn every so often, but now I do it everyday. My skin feels like it's peeling off, and I can't even scream sometimes, because my throat's so clogged up. I need them to come back. I need them to make the burning stop.
And my head hurts. Not like the burning stuff makes it hurt, but like there's a vice on it. Something's squeezing my head in, taking my memories. It's like there's a giant sponge in the walls, eating away at everything I am. But that's not possible. They said the things they put in the walls stop me from hurting.
Why can't I remember my name?
They told me they're always watching. They know I'm suffering. In the past, when I hurt, they came and saved me. But now, I just hurt alone.
It's like they threw me away because I'm not good enough.
John. You brought me here. Please, get me out.
Help.


Author Note: I find it's even better if you listen to this whilst reading. -Sal
Background: A large mass approximately 3 kilometers in diameter, located 436,200 kilometers away from the earth's surface, was discovered by Foundation astronomers. It orbits the Earth directly behind the moon, causing it to be obscured from view through terrestrial telescopes.
Observation of the mass is difficult, however researchers have determined it to be made up of several million constituent parts that move independently. Due to the freedom with which these parts move, it appears that the mass was not gravitationally formed.
Foundation Space Telescope 23 Alpha was launched in order to further observe the mass. Dr. ████████ has written the following report on the telescope's observations:

Space Telescope 23 Alpha was launched at 9:15:31. It reached its destination at 22:23:04, wherein it began orbiting the moon. It completed orbit to the opposite side of the moon in 23 minutes, after which it focused on the speck. What we saw through it was astonishing.
Balloons. Thousands, no, millions of them. Most of them were the typical oval shape, but there was the occasional novelty Disneyland one with mickey mouse ears, or those ones you can buy at Pharmacies that are shaped like words. They all floated there, moving rhythmically. Dancing.
We watched them for a while. It was soothing. The way they coalesced. Their movements seemed joyful, happy. They danced around one another, their strings sometimes touching as if they were holding hands. It was beautiful.
One of my researchers suddenly jumped up approximately 24 minutes in, and pointed to a certain balloon that came into view. It was a green, oblong balloon with a custom print on it. It said "Happy Birthday, ███████ ██████." That was the name of my researcher. He told me that on his 8th birthday his mom had ordered 100 custom-print green balloons that said exactly that.
After watching the balloons dance for another 30 minutes, I came to the conclusion that these balloons did not simply appear behind the moon. I remember when I was little, and I myself let go of a colourful pink balloon that slipped off my wrist. I watched it drift off into the atmosphere, and stared, wondering where it would go. I think we have just found out.


In a barren mountain range in northern Europe is a secluded cave.
Deep inside is a wide chamber that appears to have been used in ancient rituals. The walls of the roughly circular space are densely covered in cave paintings. At first glance, they seem much like those found in other caves in that part of Europe, rendered in red and brown ochres.
Look closely, however, and you will see that the most common figures depicted are subtly non-human. They are humanoid, but slightly hunched, and while it is hard to be sure owing to the primitive style of the art, each figure appears to have two short, conical horns on its head, and a hint of a tail.
Look more closely still, and you will find some more traditionally drawn human figures. They are being hunted by the others, run through with spears, battered with stone axes. In some scenes the horned figures appear to be roasting humans over open fires, or feasting on human-looking limbs.
The paintings are disquieting, but they are just old pictures. The scenes they depict happened countless years ago, if they even happened at all. A determined traveller seeking shelter from a blizzard might decide to ignore the paintings and make camp. He may even light a fire.
A well-used firepit lies at the centre of the room, slightly raised on a natural mound. Should a fire be lit there, wavering shadows will be cast onto the painted walls. For many, seeing their own silhouette superimposed on those eerie paintings will be the last straw, driving them to try their luck outside with the snow.
Others will stay.
Sometimes, nothing will happen. These lucky travellers will emerge the next morning, haggard from a night filled with half-remembered nightmares, anxious but alive.
Other times, shadows will move on those walls, shadows cast by nobody present in the room. The wavering firelight will blur their outlines, make them hard to pick out, and some observers may believe them to be a trick of the light. Watch closely, though, and you will see that the shadows resemble hunched figures, perhaps with small horns, and maybe a hint of a stubby tail behind them.
These figures will gravitate toward the shadows of those who are taking shelter in the cave. They may appear to stand over their sleeping forms. They may appear to be holding weapons, like spears or rough axes.
Often, a lone traveller sheltering in the cave will never be seen or heard from again. Their fate will remain unknown.
However, those travelling in a group will be woken by screams in the night. They will look for the source of the screams and find that one of their number is missing, their bedroll empty. If they happen to look at just the right place on the wall, they may see the wavering shadows of figures who are not present in the room, or at least not visible.
The fire will be low and red, so the shadows dim and soft-edged, but it will appear that a struggling form is being speared and clubbed by multiple assailants, and then dragged away, out of the circle of firelight.
The screams will fade slowly, seeming to sink into the rocks themselves.
And is that a new cave painting on the wall the next morning? Surely not - the ochre it is painted in is just as old and dry as all the rest. No, no, that picture of a man being gutted by horned figures must have always been there.


The Foundation buried another of my friends today.
He wasn't the first. And, knowing how this line of work goes, I doubt he will be the last.
I first met him when he was giving an orientation to a new batch of recruits. Most of the folks in the audience were young enough they could have been my kids – heck, he was years younger than I. Reminded me of a Staff Sergeant who served under me back, oh, must have been fifteen or twenty years ago. Solid as a rock, seen everything, the sort of fellow you want watching your back. My friend told us he'd been a Foundation agent for over a decade, working mostly in retrieval. His eyes made me believe him: you get eyes like his from seeing the worst the world has to offer, walking into hell, spitting in the face of the devil, and walking back.
We worked together on a few occasions after that. Not too often, since I was working mostly in intel and operations planning. We'd have drinks and trade stories after hours, mostly. He forgave me for being a REMF once he learned about what I'd been through back in Ukraine. And in Kashmir. And in [REDACTED].
The service was subdued. Empty casket – no surprise, considering the size of the explosion. The sweep-and-clear team never found a body, just a twisted bit of metal that used to be his dog-tags. Or so they say. Honestly, I'm skeptical; my friend's been working for the Foundation for so many years now and come home so many times I'm not going to believe he's dead until the DNA matches. They apparently didn't find any of that, either.
The service was in the site's north amphitheater. I slipped away afterwards to visit the Memorial Wall. The Wall is actually an entire room, duplicated at all the large Sites. On three walls there is a star carved for every member of the Foundation who has died in the line of duty. A small, leather-bound book sits on a stand before the wall, listing the fallen in chronological order. Most of the names are blank, identities remaining secret even in death.
The remaining wall has small inlaid bronze valor medals for every such award given posthumously. Most of these are Distinguished Crosses or Foundation Stars. I looked; my friend's award had already been added.

Foundation Star
Awarded Posthumously on This Day 28 February 2012,
For Voluntary Acts of Courage Performed Under Hazardous Conditions,
And For Outstanding Achievements and Services Rendered With Distinction Under Conditions of Grave Risk.
He Gave His Life That His Team Could Escape.

As expected, there was no name. Understandable; everyone at the Foundation knew their names might never be chronicled. But in the quiet, dimly lit marble room, they were remembered.
We Secure. We Contain. We Protect.
And We Never Forget.


☦An irrelevant tale about cubes.☦
The personnel director sat alone in his office fiddling with his new gloves. He'd been sitting there running his fingers along the leather edges and admiring the tailor work for a time that he'd lost track off. It was a slow day at the site, an overcast and uneventful day. The mood was stoic and gray, and he could feel the relaxing pitter patter of rain on the windowpane every now and then.
In other chambers 173 was busy being 173, staring vacantly at a wall with its big vacant eyes. 682 was currently purple and small, soaking in its tank of hate, no more horrifying than usual.
The personnel director heard a dull clink on his window, and the sound of something splashing down in the mud. He stopped inspecting his new hands and got up to take a look. Through the foggy glass he could see what looked like a small black cube sitting in a puddle outside. The hell is this? Someone playing a game with me on their smoke break? He looked around but he couldn't see anyone out there. The break area was on the other side of the facility, and there was nothing but miles of desert and a small black line that was the first perimeter near the horizon.
As strange as this was he didn't think at all to call someone about it, except for the janitor to check about the mess outside. He was about to grab the receiver when he heard another chichunk followed by the faint sound of splashing water outside the window. The fuck is this now?
Through the now slightly cracked glass he found that there was a pink cube shaped object hovering slightly above the ground.
“Alright, I'm going to the Site Director.”
He briskly walked down the hall out of his office to the far room to speak with the woman in charge of things. He walked through the threshold of her sparse office and told her that some sort of silliness was going on outside.
“No one is on grounds at the moment, but I'll send someone to go take a look if –“
She was cut off by a rapid succession of thudding drumming on the roof, the sound of metal, plastic, and hollow wood (if they would have had time to think) clattering in spurts over the space of a few seconds. The thing that captured their attention the most being a flaming cube falling through the roof, through the desk, and through the floor before they could blink at it. The Site Director looked at him through the now trickling rain between them with her mouth ajar.
The Site Director shakes her head, picks up her phone and sits down, looking at the newly installed waterfall that was soaking all of her routine reports. “Low storage? Yes, there's a hole in my roof. What? You sure? That's eight levels down! That heavy! Bag it if you can, we're going to turn the flashers on.”
“Go ahead and signal an alert, Grey-2.” She told him cooly, whipping her papers through the air to dry them off.
The personnel director squints and heads toward the door in a hurry, more pattering on the roof as he reached the doorway. “Hurry it up!” she told him, spurring him an inch quicker.
The director spotted large and small objects outside of the window raining down from the sky, and the noise of these things hitting the roof was deafening. He could make out the shapes, cubes. Cubes of all different shapes and sizes and colors. The ground outside was littered with them. Every now and then he would hear a hard thud and look up to see a dent in the ceiling, or a new hole. He could have sworn he saw something fall through the ceiling and pass through him, but he didn't have much time to take it in.
He breezed through the atrium to the comm center; this area was connected to the rec room, a large dome with industrial glass ceilings. The chinking, whopping, and crashing sounds of the objects hitting the glass was overwhelming.
Cubes of all shapes and sizes that had fallen through the roof littered the area, and it was quite a trick to avoid the potential fallers and the things already littering the ground. He near stumbled over a large black glowing cube that was quite hot, and nearly stepped on a smaller orange cube that was menacing with spikes, I mean, hell, he was almost compelled to step on it.
Three agents were huddled around the archway leading into the comm room. One of them had a cube on the side of his face, which for some reason seemed strange to Mr. Director. He asks them what's going on.
“This thing on my face? It's stuck; it won't come off no matter how much I pull!” He whined.
“No dammit, Ron, why isn't anyone sounding the alert.”
“There's a big cube in the comm room, smashed the equipment, fell through the ceiling. It looks like it's messing with the electronics in the area too, although that might be a different cube.”
He headed in anyway. The three of them following behind a little. What he saw was cubes, fucking cubes everywhere. The area in the comm room was waist deep in cubes, a small avalanche tumbled out when he had opened the door. It was an absolute rainbow, a candy shop assortment of cubes, and if he had time to look over them all, he'd notice each of them was behaving a bit strange.
Despite the sensory overload, he started to wade through to the electric box and looked for the failsafe switch.
“You're crazy, you don't know what those things'll do to ya!” the cubefaced man named Ron exclaimed.
This exclamation seemed to be perfectly timed, as the Personnel Director began laughing, crying, screaming, and wetting himself all at once. He had also lost all of his hair, and unbeknownst to him now had three different kinds of cancer. The agent leaned in and yanked him back, sending them both flying backwards on the ground. Luckily they land on a squishy cube that shielded falls no matter what the magnitude of force. It also cured cancer and was indestructible.
“God damming big cube is making more cubes.” The man said.
He looked over to him and noticed that this man's hand was now cubes.
“What the fuck is happening to me!” the man screamed, wiggling back to standing position and bracing himself against a wall.
“Fucking cubes!”
The director noticed a small family of fluffy brown cubes rolling around in the corner before it was attacked by a group of small, viscous, polka-dotted black and red cubes.
“That's it, I'm headed to Level 4 to sort this out.” He said, getting to his feet and running toward the elevator.
Unbeknownst to him, level 4 was destroyed by a cube that removed anything from existence that had the number four in its name. It also played Symphony No. 9 whenever it destroyed something. It too, was indestructible.
He had reached the door past the murder of flying crow-cubes that made him feel a bit sad, and began jamming the elevator door button labeled… there was no 4. Where had the 4 gone? It simply was not there. He punched other buttons, the button for level 5. He waited a while, batting away the cawing cubes with his gloved hand. In a few second the door dings, but there is no elevator. The doors opened to a vacant shaft.
He was stumped. Those were his only two options and they were now gone… but the Site Director would know what to do, he would head back there as she probably already had something up her sleeve to sort this out. They had been through worse.
EeeeeeeuuuuuUUUUUnghKUnnCHUH something that sounded like a squishy machine howled from the halls to higher-ups office.
"Fucking cubes!" he could hear her shouting, more angry than scared from down the hall. The horrible noise continued all the while he was running down the hallway dodging rhombus.
He arrived at the Site Directors door and saw that a mass of interconnected black cubes was funneling up through the hole in the floor from before. Each of the segments had little mouths, they were howling that horrible noise. The Site Director was on the other side of the room in the corner, holding her computer monitor over her head, looking like she was planning on murdering the thing with it.
"This is just what we need! More cubes!"
"What should we do?" Mr. Director said tensely as the thing continued pulsing through the hole in awful procession.
"I'm going to toss my computer at it and try to make it over to you!"
She hurls her computer at the base of the hole, it connects impotently and falls to the floor with a thud, the screen cracking. It was indestructible or at least immune to plastic. Nevertheless she made her sprint over to the doorway, the alien mass did not seem agitated at all.
"We're going to round up everyone on level one and evacuate." she said, wasting no time and continuing on to the rec room.
"What the fuck is this?" he asked her, knowing she most likely was as confused as he was.
"Could be anything, could be the result of cross testing somewhere, could be a new entity. No idea." They turned a corner.
They found Ron, blocking the doorway to the rec area off. He was leaning into to a mass of cubes that seemed to be trying to make their way through. Ron was completely cubes, twelve interconnected orange cube segments making up the body, and a mass of cubes around the face mimicking facial features. He was horribly pixelated in three dimensions.
"Ron?" the Personnel Director inquired in unsure tone.
"It's already too late, I know!" he said in a perfectly synched voice.
"What?"
"The site is in a much larger cube, the earth even! Soon the universe!"
"How do you know that?"
"I am cubes like them."
"What should we do?" she urged as Ron continued to push back the assault.
"Nothing, look at your hand."
She looked down and her hand was covered in cubes.


Chinese culture is a strange thing indeed. She found out, the day her First came tearing, screaming and mewling out from her womb, tiny unformed fingers clawing at her insides. The doctors and nurses crowded round, strange and deformed in her pain-fuelled haze, babbling things that she could not hear. She remembered shuddering, drenched in itching sweat that turned her light-pink hospital gown into a shade of carmine red. She let the congratulations wash over her, the excited exclamations of her husband pulling her from much-needed sleep, needling at her, drawing her mind long and tired. She took her turn of clutching the baby, cooing softly at it as quickly as she could, before she passed it on, swallowing down the rising vomit that clogged her throat, attempting to right the spinning room through sheer force of will. Then, it was thrown onto her lap.
Her scream of disgust pierced the sterile operating room, jolting the sleeping child into its first wails. She looked up, searching for the source of this outrage, and her eyes met two beady pupils staring at her, behind a surgical mask. He was a short man, dressed in hospital blue, his long fingers steepled together at his waist, his eyebrows suggesting a smile hidden behind the white of the cotton mask. A long silence dominated the room, broken only by the insistent crying of the newborn flesh, and the low hum of the air-conditioning. Eyes travelled back down to the red, pulsing mass of bloody flesh in her lap, and then back again to the shrivelled doctor standing at the foot of her bed.
-Eat. Is good for you.
-But… Why is it raw?
-Just eat! Is good for you, and the baby.
Ryan just stood there, forced grin frozen on his face. He said nothing. He wouldn't. He actually believed in this Chinese nonsense. He reached out, a claw swimming through the open space between her and him, and grabbed her hand. He squeezed it, once. Her other hand shook as it edged towards the battered metal plate, slipped slightly in the pooling blood, and finally managed to clasp around the oozing organ, picking it up. It squelched in her grasp. Small showers of blood dripped from it, slipping from the cracks between her fingers and back into the plate, merging with the symphony of expectant silence in the operating room.
It smelled disgusting. Loathsome. It smelled of fresh blood, of rotten flesh, of old torn clothes soaked in vinegar. It smelled like fresh fish gutted and smashed with a spoon. It took all of her willpower to not throw up there and then, to keep the vomit hidden deep within her throat, to gulp it down. Eyes were watching. Waiting. She had to do it. She had to. For the baby.
Her mouth opened. An inch. Two inches. It edged closer and closer, she could've sworn it pulsed in her hands, once, as it neared her teeth. The stench invaded her nostrils, piercing inwards like a jagged spear, and she gagged, lurching forward. The piece of flesh squelched again, popping from her grasp to splash down on the plate, throwing rivulets of blood up onto her face, allowing her the sensation of cold liquid snaking their way down her cheeks. Still, no mercy, nothing but the same waiting silence.
She picked it up and held it against her face. Her tears of disgust mingled with the blood coursing down her cheeks. She looked at the lump of flesh that had forced her to do this, and she found that she hated it. How strange. And, as she experienced this new emotion, almost unknowingly, unwittingly, she bit into the placenta.
She had known by now what it was, she'd known all along that she had to eat it, that it was customary. She had wished it wasn't, upon finding out, that she had a say in the matter. Placentophagia, the practice of eating the placenta, was purported to help stem postpartum depression, contract the uterus after birth, and give back to her the life source that she had shelled out. The doctor had said so. She still didn't want to. She had thought it would have been disgusting.
It wasn't. As her teeth pierced the livid, red flesh of the organ, breaking apart stretched skin and into the pliable flesh beneath, she instead experienced ecstasy. Her mind broke behind waves of pleasure flooding into her nerves centres, arcing lightning burst through her mouth and into her brain as the perfect taste filled her taste buds. She had found heaven, found it in the organ of her own child, in what was essentially part of herself. All thoughts of cannibalism faded away beneath the rising tide of blood choking her throat, and all her disgust was drowned in the apex of the moment. She was complete, once again. Hungrily, she wolfed down the rest of the placenta, each bite sending shudders and shivers down her spine, causing orgasmic delight to wrack her weak, tired body. By the end, she could barely move, but the smile that was plastered across her face threatened to tear it in half. She had never felt better.
The erupting cheer faded into the background. Everything did.
She felt ashamed afterwards, of course, as Ryan joked with her about how she looked like she really enjoyed the after-labour meal. She hadn't dared to tell him that she had. She didn't tell any of them of the mind-blowing spikes that had lodged themselves in her chest, that sparked her fire and drove her insane. She couldn't. Instead, she just smiled and nodded, joked back with her husband, throwing small talk around the room as she tried to erase the memory from her mind, to forget the pleasure that she had experienced, to drive the hunger away.
But it came back, a few weeks later, tearing at her insides with pure, maddening desire. She wanted, she fucking needed it, more badly than she had ever needed anything. She drew into herself, trying to control her urges, to chain the beast, but it was useless. Ryan thought she was suffering post-natal depression, had asked kindly about it. What could she say? Her silence continued.
It went on like this, for days, weeks. She cradled her child absently, ignoring its cries as she screamed inside, drowning out the piercing wails with her own desperate pleas for the madness, the hunger to stop. It went on, until one day she could take it no more.
She found herself alone that day, Ryan must had gone out for drinks with his buddies. She was alone with the baby, feeding it her precious milk, enduring the needling pain jabbing her breast as the hungry child tore into her nipple. Her life-giving fluids spurted out sporadically, tiny drops flecking the chin of the hungering monster, minute amounts of blood bitten from tender flesh mingling in with the milk. She stared at the child, transfixed, as she wondered. What if her hunger… what if? She had no time to think, the scraping against the back of her head had started again, the aching of her jaws and the tightness in her chest. She reached out with her left hand, her right still clutching the baby, holding it against herself, trapping it with nowhere for it to run. Her fingers closed about the fleshy, tender leg of her child, pulling it upwards with agonizing slowness. The baby continued to suck at her, to drain from her.
She wondered, for a brief moment, if it was a sort of poetic justice, as her teeth bit into the milky-white skin, her canines puncturing the epidermis, and flesh found its way into her mouth. The baby began to scream, pain driving its tiny mind wild, but she wouldn't let go. She couldn't. Her teeth were already halfway in, the lower jaw resting lightly against the puckered portion of the baby's meat. She couldn't do anything except bite harder and harder, her stained yellow teeth turning red as blood flooded her throat, filled her mouth. Her eyes watered, her grip tightened. The wriggling lump of flesh bawled, thrashing about, but it couldn't escape her. Finally, her teeth met, parting aside prepubescent flesh with a squelch in order to hit the other half with a soft click. She tore her prize free from the baby, chewing with a furiousness born from desperation. She chewed and chewed, the blood spurting out of her mouth and onto her chin, dribbling in frothing bubbles onto her dress. She chewed until she realized… this wasn't what she needed. In horror, it dawned upon her what lay in her mouth, what the bubbling mass of pink that rolled about her tongue actually was, and she screamed, for the first time, out loud.
She had explained afterwards that a wild stray dog had bit the baby while she had brought it downstairs to the void deck, and that the blood on her dress was from her rushing the baby to the hospital. She had cried, tears streaming down blood-stained cheeks, in Ryan's arms, sobbing her heart out in what Ryan thought to be relief, but she knew to be frustration. She needed something else, something more. She needed what she had tasted before, what she had grown to hunger for. She needed the placenta, the prime cut.
She tried looking for it, searching online. It only came back with animal placentas, pills and dried facsimiles that she found no interest in, no desire for. She bought slabs of raw meat, hid it from Ryan, from her baby, who now lay in the cot recovering. Wolfed them down in the sink. Spat them out into the bin. It was no use. She needed the real thing.
And that's why she found herself where she was now, sneaking into the hospital at 2 in the morning, drifting along the hallways with furtive glances cast behind her. Turn left. Two turns right. The maternity ward is just ahead. She made it there without anyone noticing, against all her wishes, all her hopes, she hadn't been caught. She imagined what it would have been like if she had bumped into a nurse, if they had found her. The relief would have washed over her, the madness and darkness evaporated beneath the soothing touch of humanity, suffocated by the constricting knots of the straitjacket. But no, instead, she found herself at the door, whorls of laminated wood staring back at her as her fingers rested against the knob. She walked in.
Ryan thought she was having a night out, watching a movie and taking a break from watching the kid. He was at home, dozing off at the TV, rocking the cradle once every few minutes. And here she was, holding a pillow above the face of some woman she didn't know, pressing it down as hands clawed at her. The woman's body, young and lithe except for the distended belly possessing her spawn, struggled and bucked under her grip, but she held on, a strength that could come only from insane hunger pressing down her arms. The monitor rattled on the table, unplugged cord scattering about the floor, the bed shivered with the dying woman's convulsions. Her grip upon the pillow softened as the woman struggled less and less, until finally, the flailing hands fell limply against the sides of the bed. The room was silent, except for her panting, interspersed with mumbled apologies and hungry growls.
Her hand gripped the scalpel, tightly, pilfered from a small room adjacent. Her knuckles were white, barely visible in the dark room, trembling as her fingers dug into her palm. She moved closer to the corpse. Her hand touched upon the protruding belly, feeling about. Thud. She felt something move, with a jolt. The spawn. The woman's larvae. It still lived. She was supposed to feel remorse now, as if one life taken was fine, but two had crossed an invisible line. She was supposed to hate herself.
Instead, she raised the scalpel high, cheek-burning smile splitting her face in two, frame shivering in anticipation. And she plunged it down, as she prepared to dine once again.


Heh. It's funny. I always tell my boys, don't give your life fer the Foundation. Make some other bastard give his. But here I am. Fuckin' hypocrite, that's what I am. But nobody ever promised me retirement, so that's okay.
I figure I got another ten minutes before they make it through the door. Closest backup is fifty miles away, an' I know Barnes ain't gonna make it to 'em in time. Hey, Barnes, if yer still listenin', you better make it, you fuckin' asshole. You hear me?
This place is gonna blow pretty soon. There are plenty of safety protocols in one of these plants, but I'm an engineer. I know exactly the wrong things to do an' in what order. I don't know just when, but it'll take out a good chunk of the countryside when it does. Wait 'til after before you come in. There ain't time for anyone to come get me. Nobody's gettin' outta here alive, if I have anything t'say about it. Got one last bullet, an' damned if I'm gonna waste it on those assholes.
So, I don't know who else can hear me. Fuckers broke the receiver, but so far as I can tell, the transmitter's still good. So, I wanna say somethin' to the rest of you.
We are the ones who save the world. Not the doctors, not the council, no one else. Us. We're the last line of defense. The only line. Remember that. Don't die for the Foundation. Don't fight for the Foundation. Fight for the six billion folks who won't wake up tomorrow if you don't. That's worth dyin' for. Some old fart wants to play with skips? He can go fuck himself.
You ain't machines. You ain't tin soldiers. You're people, men an' women who do the shit nobody else can do. An' people make a choice. There's a damned big difference between doin' the job because you were told to, an' doin' it because it's gotta be done. I don't care if it's the same fuckin' job, there's a goddamned difference. There's gotta be, or what the hell else are we fightin' for?
An' I want you to remember, each and every one of you, that you ain't alone. You understand? None of us are ever alone. We got each other. Every agent that's alive is there t'watch your back. No matter what happens, you're one of us. Doesn't matter if you're a saint or an asshole, you're family. You got hundreds of brothers an' sisters right there in the shit with you, ready to pull you out.
An' when you're alone, you're still not alone. Every agent who came before, every one who's comin' after you, they are with you. Everyone you ever trained with, everyone who's watched your back or bitched to you at meals is with you. You carry them with you, so long as you remember that you ain't alone. And you pass that on to everyone you meet. When we die, we deserve to know that we ain't alone. No matter what happens. We got each other.
Oh, an' one last thing. I'm proud of ya. If we ever worked together, no matter what else I said to you, I'm proud of you. Even if I ain't never laid eyes on you, just for doin' the job, I'm proud of ya.
It's been an honor, guys. An' when you come in, if this don't finish 'em off… Give 'em hell for Max Lombardi.


I enjoy the way this one feels. The symphony of voices that echo within my slimy shell agree with me. This one is good. Smooth.
The voices flee through my skin and into him. He enjoys it. They all enjoy it in the end. At the start of my residence here, some of them felt negatively towards me, I imagine. I have not used this word in a very long time. ‘Imagine'. For too long, I have allowed the voices to build up. Why? Guilt? I do not have the capacity for guilt, I would imagine. Imagine.
When I was small and young and weak and fresh and new, I had no sense of my mortality. Another lost word. I felt pain when they found me. Canisters of metal piercing my membrane. It was not so funny then, but the ones I chose continued to enjoy my presence. Back then, I feel I had less…reservations about my transfer.
They would enjoy the feeling of my mind splashing against theirs, the voices temporarily leaving my head and flooding into theirs. When I was giving my wonderful gift, I could think rationally, as I can now. When the voices return to me, as they always do, they are angry. This was why I was left. I was meant to be a giver of knowledge. All I can give are the voices. The broken, babbling, laughing voices.
I began in a place of sand and plant residue. The voices screamed at me. Let us out! They laughed as they screamed, and sometimes they wept as well. There was a small one near my birthplace – or the site of my abandonment. The memories are corrupted by that laughter. Ha. Ha. Ha. I gave my gift to the small one, but I was too eager to get the voices out of me and into them. They twitched and ceased to be. The voices laughed and laughed and laughed. I went through that place and I tried again and again and again and they laughed and laughed and laughed as the pink things that occupied the place stopped their functions and fell. I cannot remember how many stopped. I suspect it was all of them.
I had many weeks to consider a different strategy. A slow transfer of my voices to the receiving party would mean they would not be overwhelmed. It was the only logical conclusion. It was not easy to make that decision. The voices laughed and screamed and cried and laughed again and it took me weeks to know it. When the other things came in their flying machine, I gave one of them my gift. Slowly. Tears of joy went down their surface, and these tears did not turn red as they had on the others. Placated for a time, I was taken here. But I fear for my sanity. It has been many weeks since I have been allowed transfer. The one who keeps me inside approaches, to take away the one I have. The voices do not want this; neither do I. I will not have another for many days. I will have to make the one approaching laugh.
Laugh.
Ha. Ha. Ha.


Initializing Recovered Data File L246-A1780B23971C20987D091

Displaying data retrieval for Document ███-██████-██

[LEVEL 4 AUTHORIZATION REQUIRED]

[INITIALIZING…]

[DATA CORRUPT]e not clear on the chain of events. We don't know what the hell happened. The only logical course of action, if the phrase logical course of action can still be applied to this situation, [DATA CORRUPT]till in progress and we can do little about it. We don't have the tools for this anymore, and we're not sure if we ever really did. We can't assume that we really knew anything we thought we knew. That isn't a metaphor. We have to question whether that knowledge ever really existed, or if th[DATA CORRUPT] "restructured" too. Think about it, really think about all the things we take for granted as part of "reality". The food we eat, the air we breathe, the things we think. We could wake up in twelve hours in a world where religion as we know it doesn't even[DATA CORRUPT] God help us all. If God still exists anymore.

[EXTENSIVE SECTION CORRUPT]

[DATA CORRUPT]ed no less than three discrete verified CK-class events, with upwards of forty thousand potential sub-events. Yes, forty thousand. That is, assuming we can trust the record. That's the problem with trying to isolate something from reality shifts. How do you know the next reality shift isn't going to undo your protection from reality shifts? Previous no[DATA CORRUPT]

[EXTENSIVE SECTION CORRUPT]

Isolation Routine 17-JC finally having an effect. So, cautiously, we can declare success. We'r[DATA CORRUPT]t may not be possible to reconstruct everything. It's becoming clear that we will need to deliberately initiate further CK sub-events. [DATA CORRUPT]t "meddling with the time stream" or more pointedly "blasphemy". I call it doing what has to be done. When you were called into the service of the Foundation, did you really think that your faith would be sacrosanct? [DATA CORRUPT]

In the beginning was [DATA CORRUPT]at we're referring to now as "the Word". Calling our records "contradictory" at this stage is flattery. There are no guidelines for repor[DATA CORRUPT] new incarnation.

[DATA CORRUPT]r worries about this being seen as an illegitimate birth, something that is to say the least extremely frowned upon in this time period and location. I am confident that w[DATA CORRUPT] born in a stable, in a feeding trough. Yes, how low we've sunk. But the activity amongst the locals has been extremely strange. A group of shepherds found us, a[DATA CORRUPT] cannot verify the appearance of "angels" at this time, and the presence of a "star" (almost certainly a meteor) is likely pure coinc[DATA CORRUPT]

[EXTENSIVE SECTION CORRUPT]

[DATA CORRUPT]aying all of this has been "foretold"? We didn't initiate that eve[DATA CORRUPT]s there some kind of outside agent[DATA CORRUPT] disagree. These occurrences are almost enough to make you believe that this is really[DATA CORRUPT]

[DATA CORRUPT]d killed all of the children, via executive order. There was nothing we could do to stop it. Yes, we got her out beforehand, but does that rea[DATA CORRUPT]question what we're doing here? Hundreds of infants have been killed and whether we swung the swords or not, it's our fault. One conclusion is certain: He knew. One of the three "w[DATA CORRUPT]

[DATA CORRUPT] creating a stir amongst local religious groups. Is this John the Baptist character a real "prophet" - an independently occurring anomaly? Is he what he says he is? Is he a side effect of a previous CK-class event? At this stage we have no way of knowing the difference. The more important questions are: Should we take him seriously, and is he working with us or against us?

[EXTENSIVE SECTION CORRUPT]

[DATA CORRUPT]ells us she literally met the devil and that he offered her [DATA CORRUPT]derstand that she had just spent forty days going without food in the desert. Even considering her nature, we have no way of being certain that this was not a starvation-induced hallucination rather than a potentia[DATA CORRUPT]aps we should just be grateful that she did not accept the bargain offered by this 'devil'. Can you imagine the[DATA CORRUPT]

[DATA CORRUPT]mother told them she had been a virgin, with her pregnancy sent from God, and astonishingly most of them seem to believe he[DATA CORRUPT] but we have to ensure that public opinion stays on our side while simultaneously avoiding government attention. Remember the[DATA CORRUPT] baptism and the anomalous occurrence of a dove [DATA CORRUPT]

Certain local groups have turned actively hostile, in particula[DATA CORRUPT]twelve disciples, - and all of her "inner circle" disciples must be male in gender. These Pharisees alone are a serious thorn in our side and we cannot afford to give them any more ammunit[DATA CORRUPT]

[EXTENSIVE SECTION CORRUPT]

[DATA CORRUPT]uncertain. She seems to enjoy what (F.) is calling "her little social revolution" a little too much. She attracts larger crowds every d[DATA CORRUPT]at speech on the mountain top yesterday? [DATA CORRUPT]that her embracing her status as a religious/populist hero can only be a good thing. He says that if the Foundation is not opposed to accidental negative events like the slaughter of hundreds of infants (a permanent alteration of the time stream at the very minimum), we shouldn't be opposed to positive events on a similar sca[DATA CORRUPT]

[EXTENSIVE SECTION CORRUPT]

Can we keep this going for the rest of the critical 3-year time period and make it to the final CK-class event? I'm not sure anymore. It's not as if she's invincible, whatever she seems to think, and these "miracles", while an excellent tool for attracting attention, are a tool that cuts both ways. They get us all the results we need in the short term, but in the long te[DATA CORRUPT]cannot stress enough that we need to remember the Herod incident. What happens if these people turn on us? What happens if they try to kill her? What happens if they succeed?

[EXTENSIVE SECTION CORRUPT]

The worst has happened, and I do not say that lightly. Last night, after the celebrati[DATA CORRUPT]

[DATA CORRUPT]here is nothing we can do but watch this play out to the end. And try not to succumb to full-blown panic. Yes, this is an unmitigated disaster, and heartbreaking as well, but we are the Foundation. We have to rise above our emotions. We're going to need all our faculties to make this wo[DATA CORRUPT]wanted us to keep going. That's why she stopped us from stepping in in the Garden. [DATA CORRUPT]hould not have listened to her! You should have stopped the guards by any means necessary! She's bought into the party line about herself, don't you understand? She believes it now! And she's going to let herself die.

[DATA CORRUPT]agony to watch. These basta[DATA CORRUPT] fiendish, barbaric even as a method of execution. I take back everything I said. If I had a way to kill them all, I would. And I swear I will kill that traitorou[DATA CORRUPT] I'm sorry, I'm so sor[DATA CORRUPT]

[DATA CORRUPT]e thirty-first iteration. Ho[DATA CORRUPT]oincide. That fucking rooster - you know what I'm referring to he[DATA CORRUPT] the right approach? Even if we succeed, how are we going to explai[DATA CORRUPT]sake the things that happened when she died… We all saw them. The eclipse for three hours. The earthquake, the … ghosts? And that's only the start… There's no point in denying it. Perhaps he's right, perhaps we sho[DATA CORRUPT]

[EXTENSIVE SECTION CORRUPT]

[DATA CORRUPT]r awake again after multiple attempts. Didn't think it relevant to record at the time but you heard me right. She's alive. She bled out for hours nailed to that tree and they stabbed her in the side and buried her - and she was dead, mark my words, for three whole days - and she's alive. I can't believe any of this is really happening. Actually, that's a lie. I think I'm beyond disbelief at this point. Three days dead a[DATA CORRUPT]an't be a random side effect of the CK-class events. It has to be intervention from an outside force. A dei[DATA CORRUPT]ot sure I'm ready to believe that. But as I said earlier, I'm beyond disbelief.

[EXTENSIVE SECTION CORRUPT]

[DATA CORRUPT] Sophia Light is not here. She has risen. [DATA CORRUPT]

[EXTENSIVE SECTION CORRUPT]

[EXTENSIVE SECTION CORRUPT]

[EXTENSIVE SECTION CORRUPT]

[END OF FILE]


I always painted my fingernails right before an op and cleaned 'em off again once we were back. Pure black, scuff 'em a bit to get rid of the glossiness, and put a tiny dot of dark green right in the center of the thumbnails. It was a good-luck ritual I did that I'd picked up years ago, well before I was recruited into the Foundation, back when I was dating this goth chick.
Pretty much everyone on the squad had something they did to ensure they'd come back alive and in one piece: Parker spent a couple of hours praying to Ganesh; Ng made sure she got laid the night before; Nokigawa would field-strip every weapon we'd be taking, clean every part, and put them back together; Lewis always started telling whoever would listen the worst, most "hilarious" jokes he'd heard since the last op. Chief just vanished for about a half-hour. I don't think anyone really expected this shit to make a difference, but with all the weird shit in this world, you never know, right?
So I was listening to Lewis tell this god-awful story about two Chinamen and a horse while waiting for my nails to dry, and this kid walked into the briefing room with a pile of folders and loose papers. She couldn't've been more than 25, 26, and looked really damn nervous. A newbie for sure; the ones who'd been around a while knew better than to bother an MTF when we were doing our prep. She looked sideways at Lewis and me, like she was expecting him to stop telling his story and stand to attention in front of her or something. Me, I just laughed a little. Let Lewis think it was at his joke.
The newbie put down her stack on the table up front and stood there awkwardly for the next 15 minutes, as everyone straggled in, Chief being last. Once everyone was seated, she cleared her throat and started talking as she passed out the folders.
"Welcome to today's briefing. Two weeks ago, Intelligence identified a potential humanoid SCP in Liverpool. There was some online chatter about a girl who would make incredibly realistic chalk drawings on the pavement outside her residence, and someone spotted her jumping into one of the drawings and posted a video online.
"A field agent staked out the address and kept the child under surveillance until yesterday afternoon, when he confirmed this anomalous behavior by observing her jumping into a picture of a green field. He also observed her return 20 minutes later, which included her grasping the hand of an unknown creature before it fell back into the drawing."
I opened my folder while she was talking. First thing was a photo of the kid. She looked to be about 8 or 9, average looking, long red-brown hair framing a chubby little face. Lots of freckles. The rest of the file was probably a dossier on everything about her from her name to which brand of toothpaste her mum buys to where daddy dearest gets his petrol. The same useless shit they always hand us.
"You will be providing back-up to a retrieval team who will be securing the SCP today on her walk home from school. We don't anticipate any complications, but want to be prepared in case she can do anything else unusual with chalk. You'll be issued the standard low-profile urban equipment and will rendezvous with the retrieval team in 3 hours. Are there any questions?"
Very new, then. This sounded like a standard snatch-and-grab and we all knew that you didn't want the answers to the questions we'd learned to ignore, like "What's going to happen to her family?" or "Is she ever going to see the light of day again?" Instead, we stared at her in silence for about a minute until she started fidgeting.
"I guess you don't, then. Your transport will be leaving in 20 minutes. Good luck."
Ah, just enough time to get the dots on, then put the polish in my locker.

It was a gorgeous day out. The sun was shining in a deep blue sky, there was just enough of a breeze to cut the heat, and there was even a faint flowery smell on the breeze. God knows what flower, but it smelled good. The kind of day that made you glad to be alive and out in the world. The only problem was that it was too quiet. If the kid started screaming, we'd have to hustle her off the street fast before someone peeked out their window at us. Still, it was the job of the retrieval guys to keep it from getting that bad.
In the meantime, the squad was spread out in a loose formation. I was slowly riding a bike about a block in front of the kid. Parker was dressed up as a postman and was walking down the street in the opposite direction. Nokigawa was dressed as a gardener and trimming the hedges of a house we knew was empty. Ng and Chief were in a supply van with the heavy gear. Lewis was off somewhere in a good sniper position, god knows where. Everyone in place and waiting for the retrieval guys to make their move.
They'd just reported over the earpieces that they were moving in when I heard a big engine roar behind me. Parker and Chief started swearing and I swung around to see a big black sedan come barreling down the road. I was already swinging my bike around and pedaling hard back towards the girl when the car screeched to a halt right next to her. The driver's door popped open and this big guy, looked like a Paki, jumped out and rushed around towards the girl. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Parker reach into his mailbag for his pistol, and the retrieval guys were screaming something about abort, abort into my ear. Just one guy wasn't likely to be GOC or them rich fuckers, though, and we could handle Hand operatives unless they whipped out some kind of hoodoo.
The girl had started screaming at this point, that high-pitched, piercing keening that kids do. I braked to a hard stop a few yards from the car and saw the front, then the back tire pop and start going flat. Lewis was on the job, then. The big guy was trying to bundle the girl into the back of the car, but she was kicking and flailing a storm. I jumped off the bike and whipped out my baton, feeling it telescope as I advanced on the pair. Nokigawa was yelling something about dropping the kid and backing away from her slowly, but I don't know if the guy was paying attention. A little tap on the noggin might get it, though.
Parker beat me to it, though, with a clean shot through his shoulder. The bloke dropped the kid like a hot iron and looked around in shock. He apparently just then noticed Parker and me coming up on him and Nokigawa crouched behind the hedge, aiming his Luger at him. Ng and Chief hadn't come out yet, though; they usually stay in reserve for when things go much worse than this. The man looked terrified, like he was about to bolt but couldn't figure out where. I got close enough to pop him a good one to his right knee, and he went down like a puppet with its strings cut. The girl scrambled up and started to run around behind the car, but Parker grabbed her as she went past and held her tight.
As he tried to calm her down, I kneeled beside the man on the ground. "You did a real stupid thing there, trying to kidnap her in plain sight. Bloody sloppy, too. You're not going to learn any better, though." And I popped him a right good one across the side of his head with the baton. Knocked him out cold.
I turned to the girl, crouched down to her level and looked her in the face. Her eyes were so big you could see the whites all around and her mouth was so wide open screaming I could see the back of her throat. She was missing her two front baby teeth.
"Shh, shh, it's okay. He's not going to get you. You're safe now, and we're going to take care of you. Don't worry. We look out for special little girls like you. You'll be protected now."
The whole thing took maybe 5 minutes and the pair of retrieval guys finally came up in their non-descript gray Honda. Slowpokes, but that's why we were on the scene, to handle the surprises.

We were on the way back to base an hour later. It always seemed that, even with a simple snatch-and-grab, it took forever for the clean up crew to arrive. We'd already tied up the guy and tossed him into the back of the van. And we always carried a few doses of C-grade in case a quick wipe or two was needed. Just a couple of nervous old women this time. We got lucky there. The retrieval guys were long gone with the girl, on their way to god knows where.
Chief ran a quick check on the guy's fingerprints while we were driving. Turned out he wasn't with any of the other groups after all. He'd been arrested a year back for indecent exposure and was on probation for it. The kid just had the bad luck to be the victim of an attempted abduction right when we were about to pick her up. My guess was that the interrogators would go after him for a while, just to make sure he wasn't a mole, wipe the guy and dump him back in Liverpool. None of my business at that point.
We got the regular debriefing when we got back. Different person than the briefer this time. An older guy, maybe my age, starting to prematurely gray around the temples. I was too, but I dyed it. This job would age you, but that didn't mean you had to give in to the aging. When we came out of the debrief, Ng asked if she'd see me down at the cafeteria. I told her I'd be there in about half an hour, but to grab me an apple if they had any that looked good. She grinned and said she would.
I figured 30 minutes would be just enough time to strip the polish off my nails and call my husband for a quick "I love you." We were planning on taking a trip to the shore that weekend. I was looking forward to it.