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3.
Darkness falls over the island of Penang as the strange cars surround Number 32. On both ends of the street, dark sedans with tinted windows pull up to a halt. In front of the house, a police car with the lights turned down. Behind, watching the exits, a nondescript white van. Emblazoned on its side is a logo, with a name: Sun Ching Plumbing.
Two men in suits step out of the police car, low and quick, pistols drawn -
- but the two of them are already gone. "Left," says Isa, as streetlight shadows wash across her face. "Right here, go ahead." The Nissan trudges over uneven gravel, leaving the old house behind. It's back on the highway now, and on this side of the island, on this side of the road, there's no one with them. Cars rush past, headlights blaring. But no sirens have followed yet: that must be a good thing.
"Where are we going?" asks Hannah.
"Away from here," says Isa.
"Give me a break. Those were cops. We're running away from cops."
"Not cops, no."
"Then who?"
Isa hesitates. "Relevant authorities."
"What relevant authorities? What kind of trouble is this?"
They pull into a side road. Branches scrape glass, and the engine grinds to a stop. "If you don't tell me, we're not going." The air quivers with a liminal tension.
Isa stares ahead. Slowly, she rolls up the sleeve of her blouse. Up the length of her forearm is the trail of a centipede, a jagged, crooked scar.
"It's nothing," she mutters. "Just the relevant authorities."
Hannah turns down the engine and winds down the windows, letting the warm air sweep in. Softly, she asks. "Was Mother a part of this?"
"Did they take her, you mean?"
Hannah nods.
"Maybe. But I do not think so. If they did, we would not have known. They are thorough. They make no mistakes and leave no trace."
And they're not leaving any trace untraced at Number 32, turning stones and scraping floors for prints. A technician unscrews the cameras, checks the lights, scratches his head at fried wires and degaussed tapes. Scraps of conversation, hushed and low: " … a clean cut, insides, like, welded together … couldn't shut off the transmitter, so there's that … maybe escaped by a known Way, the readings check out … yes, yes. Might be her. Yeah." Surreptitious flashes of cameras around the concrete body on the floor. Dust is scraped off and sealed in little bags. Another one holds out a device like a searchlight, peering at the digital readout; she follows the beeps as they lead her up the stairs, into a room where a mirror is there and not there. "Found one," she announces. "Boss'll wanna see this."
Director Rahman is an easy, light-stepping man who stoops his head to enter the room. He points at the body and a subordinate nods, hurrying over with a trolley. Turning, he examines the impossible mirror surface with bemused eyes. "Somebody give me a light."
A short while later, past the brick-lined tunnel, he stands in the skylit room with its hidden gallery spinning around him on its axes. He gapes, smiles, and - for the first time in a long time - he laughs.
The men and women in suits and blues fan out into the room. The subordinate delegates further orders: "Hold. Watch your step. Don't touch what we don't have to." They nod, and get to work: More cameras flash. More little bags are brought out. Bit by bit, the room is covered, documented, filed away in a dozen flashes and little bags. The men and women are professionals, and they are nothing if not meticulous, as professionals are wont to be.
It doesn't take long for them to find the other body. Rahman purses his lips and whistles. "Liyin, get forensics. Tell them it's not pretty."
"What about the body?" asks Hannah.
"Occam's razor, conservation of detail. Missing woman, break-in, dead body. It's either her, or the person who did it."
"Or an accomplice, or someone else entirely. Or you were right, and your 'authorities' took her. How are you so sure?"
Isa thinks. "Gut feeling."
"Really, gut feeling? It didn't even look like her, anyway. The size was all… wrong, it just - look, it just wasn't, okay. I know that." Isa smirks. "Okay, okay. But my guess isn't any better than yours."
"The symbol. On her forehead. Do you remember that?"
"The double rings, interlocking - what about it?" Of all the facts present, it's the twisted sigil carved into the bloodied forehead of the corpse that Hannah finds the least disconcerting. That goes to show something, she supposes. But there was something about it, something that might have been a detail lost, a missing part -
Isa shakes her head. "Not double rings." She traces on the windshield, looping an 'S' clockwise, then counterclockwise, in two unbroken motions. "Snakes, two of them, at each other's tails."
"That's… some kind of magic thing. Right? An ourobouros."
"You know the word?"
"One of Mother's works, maybe… one of them, I don't know."
"It was their symbol. The Pengembalian."
"Restoration?'" Her Malay is spotty, but the name trickles into the crevices of memory, bringing to mind events, edges indistinct. Of what, exactly… ?
"It's what they called their group, back in the day. Beatrice never told you, I can tell."
Hannah breathes sharply. "Tell me about it," she says. "No more secrets."
"Of course, all this was secret," continues the subordinate. Around her are the shadowed faces of colleagues, illuminated by the glare of the projector. "It was a sensitive time." Slides flash on the screen, sepia'd shots of jungles stormed by heliborne men. A crowd in a kampung, fists raised; a bombed-out coffeeshop. "This," he says, "is what the rest of Malaysia saw."
The men and women peer at the projection. Rahman stands in a corner, leaning against a wall, deferring to the subordinate's archival expertise. There isn't space for enough seats, as most of the briefing room has been occupied over the years with stacks of yellowed files and ancient papers, shelved away in rusty lockers. In them are the records of days long past, with secrets, mysteries, and inexplicabilities, and many of them remain unfamiliar to most of Rahman's colleagues. Their business runs through people like fuel, and the relatively benign posting of Site-111 has found a niche in recent years as a convenient staging area for new blood. As a side effect, budgets are tight, and the room is warm and stuffy, buzzing with the uneasy whir of a ventilation fan.
Click. A series of designations, code words, a cluttered timeline. "What we saw - what those before us fought, was a different war. According to the archives, there were several groups of interest formed during this time period, many of which were hostile: one-forty-five, one-fifty-nine, one-sixty, et cetera. There are a few more if you want to look them up, but our focus today is on this one group, in particular." Click. Four women, in various attires, seated around a potter's wheel. "One-sixty-five. Euclid's Daughters, consisting of four documented persons of interest. Whether they were aware of our classification system, or whether they were just big fans of geometry, is not a matter that's been documented in the records."
Click. A scene of a marketplace in Kedah. Its centrepiece is a sculpted stone globe, about the size of a small car, frozen tendrils wreathed across each other around an unseen core. Around the object, whirling lines of stone furrow the ground, spreading out in the shape of a small galaxy. Fractal-like branches mimic the original schema, spreading further still; squinting, one catches the wreckage of stalls, carts, and questionably dark-coloured detritus. The area has been cordoned off, and men in full-body suits are inspecting the wreck with bulkier-looking versions of the searchlight-shaped probe.
Someone raises his hand. "Previous slide, ma'am?" Click. "Thanks. Yeah. If there were four of them, why's there a gap on the left?"
She recites the names clearly and deliberately, with great concentration. "Amira Tarudin. Ari Aberlin. Makcik Tan. And, of course, your mother, Beatrice."
Hannah is still confused. "You said there was a conflict, some kind of split. "
"Something bad happened." Isa stops, chooses her words. "Things - did not go to plan, and words were exchanged. People went their own ways."
So grudges were born. If anyone had a reason to do something to her, it would have to be one of them.
"Makcik… Makcik Tan died in 1994, in a home in Singapore. Liver failure. She used to drink a lot." She furrows her brows, and taps her finger on the sideboard. "Amira never made it out. I remember, I remember someone saying the suits got her, in eighty-something, and she fought, tried to fight back… "
"And then? And then what?" Then she notices the wetness in Isa's eyes, the trembling in her throat. "Hey. Are you okay?"
Isa turns to face her with an expression of lost serenity. The yellow passenger light floods her face in oblique relief, and the shadows carve out the cracks of her face. Slowly, she speaks. "What happened to me did not happen to her."
In that brief instant, something clicks inside Hannah, and she forces herself to react. "Hey, hey. It's okay. Here." She reaches into the glove compartment, and passes her a tissue. "What about Ari Aberlin? The last name you mentioned. What about her?"
Her voice catches on something, but she manages to whisper: "She's - she's alive."
A possible lead. "Can we find her?"
"… yes. But is it really a good idea… "
"Where is she? Where does she live?"
"I… I do not know." Isa composes herself, wiping the last of the wetness off her cheeks. "My place. We will think of something."
The car turns out of the cul-de-sac and twilight gives way to night as the path loops back into familiar directions known to the Penang highway system, and the two of them head back from the unseen road into charted reality.
"Do we know where they are?" asks a man in the group to no one in particular. "Ama? What's surveillance say?"
Ama raises her hand. "Yeah, I gotcha. We haven't heard anything of this group ever since we got the new system set up. If they show up on anything digital, we'd have known. But none of these gals ring a bell."
The young man next to her pitches in with a voice like a harmonica. "Half the island's covered in jungle. I keep saying we should step up our measures, but no… "
The subordinate speaks up. "A number of them are dead or senile. This was confirmed during a routine sweep a few years back. But it's best we make sure. We have a list of last known locations and addresses of associates. I've prepared the files. "
"Right, we know more-or-less what we're dealing with and with whom," says Rahman, squeezing to the front of the room. "We don't know what's gone on with the House, if it's an isolated breach, or if it's the beginning of something bigger. I'm not taking any chances. Just because thirty years have passed, doesn't make these persons of interest any less dangerous. These are not baselines we're dealing with. Any questions?"
"Yeah." Ama again, grin plastered on her face. "When do we start?"
Hannah's been waiting outside with the engine running for the better part of fifteen minutes. No lights are on in the dingy semi-detached; she supposes Isa can see in the dark. It wouldn't be surprising, anyhow.
Her watch ticks on. Eight fifty-nine fifty-eight, eight fifty-nine fifty-nine, nine o'clock. Still no response. Isa said the suits would be looking for them. Were they in the house already? If so, should she leave? Already she finds herself peeking at the rear view every few seconds, hoping the lights at the rear are just another pair of headlights, belonging to someone returning home, or that of an errant motorbike out late… Besides, leaving the engine running isn't doing any favours for the Nissan's engine - at least, that's what she thinks the mechanic last said.
The swing of a rusty gate. The turn of a key, and what sounds like a full arsenal of latches snapping tight. The passenger door opens, and Isa places something small and dense on the dashboard, cigar-shaped and wrapped in colourful patterned cloth. It makes a sound like something hollow. "Done," she says, easing herself into the seat.
"What's this?"
Isa holds up the bundle to the light and mouths a phrase, which is more like a sound. Immediately, the bundle begins to vibrate, and she lets it swing to and fro like the head of a snake, sensing the air, turning with purpose, left and right. It orients itself when she places it back on the dashboard. A compass.
"What part of the art is not in the artist? How much of the artist in the art?" she recites. "Sympathetic magic, Hannah. We will find her."
Hannah turns off the light, and brings the Nissan into gear. "We must be careful when we meet her," continues Isa.
"Mm? Why?"
"Personal reasons."
Nine-thirty. Rahman sticks his head into the armoury. "Jon, command just cleared us," he says. "We mount in five, m'kay?" The agent nods, and unclips the pistols from the rack. Tonight was going to be a hell of a night.

The old artist takes the kettle off the fire for the night, and wraps it with layers of coloured cloth. It would be warm when she woke, likely warm enough for tea. Light comes from a lone bulb; while she has electricity tapped from a power line, any more than that could start a fire, and she doesn't want that - for her house is wood and filled with cloth.
In the meager light, her skin is fair as snow, and her eyes reflect a crystal clear blue. Though her hair is fading, one can tell that it used to be the colour of bronze, a strong colour, firey and brazen. She is a lost soul from another land, but lives here, nonetheless, in the tiny hut at the edge of the Penang jungle. There are villagers nearby who speak of old witches in the woods; thankfully, they live some distance away, and do not bother her.
She sits down by the light and examines her work through squinted eyes. Dragons, butterflies, weave through the scarlet cloth in her hands, threading through gaps of embroided gold. Carefully, her hands pull another gleaming strand through imperfections unseen, making a ribbon of gold ever-so-slightly fuller, mending minuscule gilded scales. The thread is thin, almost imperceptible, and the work, impeccably detailed, has yet to be done. It has been a work in progress for over a year now, but out here, in the backwoods, Ari Aberlin has had nothing but time.
Slowly, her hands weave fins, claws, eyes. The dragon runs a river through the cloth, trailing behind a ragtag menagerie of silken creatures that leave embroidery in their wake. Behind them is chaos still. Incomplete threads crisscross each other, leaving holes and moth-eaten gaps; but together, like a honeycomb, the gaps themselves form a kind of cadence in their imperfection, a fractal unravelling that resolves itself in reverse under the guiding needle of the artist. Ari Aberlin now does not create as much as she follows, goes through the motions of prod-pull-thread-prod, for the gaps in the cloth are set in stone. Deviation would spell asymmetry, incompletion, chaos. And so patterns come to being and repeat themselves in the weave. In truth, the pattern is not so much created as it is simply coming into view, emerging from deep inside the cloth, where it has laid patiently ever since the first threads of Ari Aberlin's golden dragon reared its head. The things we do leave traces, rivulets for further successive acts and words that run themselves to a close. Ari Aberlin knows this as much as the next weaver.
A noise from the front, and another light - in the sudden distraction, her fingers shake, and the thread snaps. Footsteps on dirt. Sounds she hasn't heard for a long time. Muffled speech.
Cursing, she turns her head to the door and croaks, "Siapa dia?"
The answer is a name that fills her with dread.
In an instant, she whispers wispy syllables far too fine to be audible to the human ear. But they are not too fine for other things to catch. A slithering about her, a rustling, as blood-woven thread wakes to life.
The door bursts open into a rainbow of fabric.
The first bolt sends the first body flying, into the bush; there is a scream and a thump as it lands. And the second body, the second woman, the woman who got away, the traitor, goes up and up and up as the second bolt constricts her against her struggling, wringing, contracting, and someone's screaming curses and syllables that go nowhere and -
"For God's sake, Ari, I'm sorry!"
Isa Noorizan squirms in the rapidly tightening swathe of cloth, as Ari tightens her fist and squeezes away the last of her breath. "You're sorry? Adakah anda bodoh? After all this time and you come crying to me saying you're sorry. Did you say sorry to Amira? To Makcik? But it's too late, isn't it? And you come to me. Go to hell."
She flicks her wizened wrist and Isa winces in anticipation of the final gesture, the execution -
The bolts of cloth loosen, and Isa falls to the ground.
She wheezes, regaining her breath. "I never came to you before. Or any of - any of the others. I was scared. Scared of this happening. I'm sorry. It was a - a misunderstanding."
"Misunderstanding. That was what it was, hah?"
From the shadowed doorway, Ari Aberlin wheels herself out. The towel over her legs slips, revealing her disfigured thighs, her calves embedded with crust, with stone claws, gouging into each other inside her flesh.
Isa's face grows pale. "I - I did not… "
"When you pulled your little joke, you didn't mean for this to happen?"
"I had nothing to do with this. I never saw Beatrice again when I left. I was - I was bitter. Angry, sure. But I promised myself. I would never see any of you again. I would never cross paths with the Pengembalian."
"Lies. The bomb was safed, warded thrice over. It was sabotage, and you know it." Her mouth twists with rage. "You left us, betrayed us. And you dare come back to apologise about it."
"You planned to kill."
"Don't moralise with me, Isa. It was a demonstration. Set off under cover of night. Show the big players what we could do. What we were made of."
Isa coughs, staggering to her feet. She approaches Ari slowly, with her palms spread. "I did not betray you. Please, believe me."
"Oh, really?" Ari raises her left hand in a fist and a stray cloth bolt blooms towards Isa, coiling and tightening and narrowing to a point centimetres from her chest. Isa stops dead in her tracks. "Give me one good reason why."
She nods. From a pocket, she slowly raises the cigar-shaped bundle. It unravels in a slip of her thumb into lengths of black thread, unspooling impossibly into more and more strands - yet, somehow, remaining impeccably dense in her grasp. With a flick, the unspooling stops, and the whole thing coils itself up tight as a rock in the blink of an eye.
"You… you kept this?" stammers Ari. The woven lance slackens along its length, releasing its coiled energy with a sigh. "How did you find it?"
Isa drops to her knees, and places the bundle into Ari's lap. "Beatrice is gone. Someone might have killed her. We need to talk."

Previous / Next


Stillwell poked his head up, slowly, peering through the grimy window pane down at the surgical theater below their perch in the mezzanine. He sank back down. Coogan was busy tying the sheets they had raided from the supply closet into knots. Nechayeva was cleaning the scavenged AK-47 from the Foundation crew's misadventure earlier in the day. Two weapons, the contents of a laundry room, nine rounds of ammunition remaining. And no plan.
"That was definitely Geissler down there. I can't be certain what he's doing, but it sure looks like assisting with whatever they're doing to 1041. I think we need to move now."
Nechayeva frowned at the disassembled parts spread out before her. She picked up the bolt and carefully dabbed at some unseen grit with a rag. "How did he look?"
"Pretty bruised up."
She returned the bolt to a larger assembly, picking it up and turning it over to inspect it. "So he resisted. That's good news for us."
"I don't think whatever he's doing down there is going to be good news."
"He thought of 1041 as a colleague. That was one of the reasons he kept so much of what we were doing from your command. He wouldn't willingly participate in Chernikov's experiment. No, he's planning something."
Stillwell crept up again for another look at the scene below. "You seem awfully certain of that."
Nechayeva slid the bolt carrier assembly back into place, the rifle's assembled parts clicking and sliding cleanly. "There is no certainty. But there's probability. That's why we're here together, no?"
Stillwell conceded the point silently.
Nechayeva continued. "Sometimes things aren't scientific. You have to look in a man's heart and make the best guess. What do you see, when you look at Herr Doktor Geissler?"
He lowered himself back down below the window ledge. "I see a Nazi war criminal whose expertise we happened to need in 1945," said Stillwell.
Nechayeva continued re-assembling the rifle. "No, you're letting emotion cloud your thinking. Look deeper."
Coogan looked up from his knot-tying. "Geissler's a Nazi?"
Stillwell thought, working to tamp down his initial revulsion. He thought of the scene in front of him, and added the facts. It didn't make sense. But then much of what he had seen didn't, either. "He's driven. He wouldn't have agreed to sever all ties and come work for us if he didn't have something to continue working on. He would have just went with the guys from Paperclip."
The young KGB operative nodded. "He's tied to the work. He sees nothing else. That is his loyalty."
"GRU-P has a purpose in mind for his work. He just wants it to exist. But what can he do to stop them?"
Nechayeva had finished assembling the rifle. "You are aware of what SCP-1041 does. But not who she is. And the answer to that is that she is the vessel for the souls of dozens of people. She's a living laboratory for Dr. Geissler's work. It was in that laboratory that he learned how to isolate and manipulate a human soul."
Coogan had stopped tying sheets together, entranced now in the conversation.
Stillwell was watching the scene below again. "So what is Chernikov doing down there?"
"He is extracting one of those souls. One that he's identified specifically for his needs."
"December," responded Stillwell.
Nechayeva nodded. "Dr. Geissler is the only one who fully understands the process, and it's too complex to just torture out of someone and hand off. But there is no way he will willingly do what Chernikov is asking. By now, he would have had half a dozen opportunities to kill himself with the equipment down there, and no one could have stopped him. Something is coming."
Stillwell kept his eyes on Geissler. He was affixing something to SCP-1041's head. "And so we wait."
Nechayeva slammed home the magazine into the reassembled rifle. "And so we wait," she replied. "You have combat experience?"
Stillwell nodded. "From Tarawa to Okinawa."
She considered his answer. She concluded her thoughts by reaching into her coat, and retrieving her pistol. She offered it to Stillwell, the grip facing him. Stillwell took it, opening it to take a look.
"Three bullets," he said. "Thank you." His voice was sincere.
Nechayeva nodded at his sling. "That arm's not of much use to you. I'll take the rifle."
Coogan checked his handiwork. He cracked his knuckles.

She can only stand by as the energy courses through her. For the first time, her movement in this place is not her own. She feels pulled, away from the procession of the others. The entirety of this place, its rules never clear to begin with, was being thrown into disorder. Snippets of other lives so brief as to be snapshots flutter past, no sense or context to any of the memories being scattered aloft into an endless sky. A birthday cake. Three men in an alley. A dog jumping into a river. The scent of aftershave. Bombers over a village.
A dull, red beacon in the darkness. It looks like a person. She floats, or runs, or swims or scrabbles to it, and it isn't long before it is clear that it's one of her. The one that Chernikov wants. The one that should not be let out.
The memory-images intensify here. A giant man looming overhead, fists on their way to crashing down. A forgotten cell, open to the winds of a blizzard. Bloodstained 500 rubles notes spilling from a briefcase. A man having stars tattooed on his knees. Guns. Knives. Fire. She steps closer, trembling from the feelings of hate pulsating from the red apparition, sickening her to her core. The images all start to coalesce into the same scene. Frozen earth. Craters. Twisted corpses, burned-out tanks. Columns of smoke on the horizon, a city block pounded into rubble, the tallest stack three meters high. She's close enough to see that she's screaming.
Of all the connections in this place, this may be the one she wished to be rid of before. But that is dwarfed into nothingness by the suffusion of terror that she is now feeling, watching herself be ripped forcibly from the unknown into the unknowable. The energy that is reordering everything is focused on the red woman before her, inside her. She is being called elsewhere. She feels like she is being held upside down over a cliff. She watches herself, the only thing more fearsome than what is happening being the thought of touching the faint red specter, radiating its fear-enhanced rage.
Her chest is hammering, watching the scene. She feels faint. She feels as though as she is going to pass out, but reptile impulses fight the feeling of consciousness slipping away. She dare not let her eyes close, must keep her awareness before it's stolen away forever into the dark. She is on her knees, her hands over her ears to block out the silent screaming from her identical sister as she is plucked away, the darkness swimming before her eyes, feeling drawn up to the same place but rooted to the spot that she is in at the same time.
On the most basic level that living beings can know, she knows that this is dying. It is not peaceful.
The red woman ascends, or descends, or dissipates, and her terror at contact evaporates as she claws at the apparition, desperate to keep it in place, afraid of the hole that will be left inside her. Her hands pass through nothing, the cheerful voice of the hateful man echoing now as something in her realm is breached, an opening tearing asunder, silent thunder that would shake the hills to pieces if it ever struck in the real world. Searing light floods her world, light that was never meant to shine here, the light of an alien star stripping its worlds of the sky and the ground and everything in between. The piece of her that has been chosen expands suddenly, her fury turned to a background radiation burning the entirety of this interior universe, consuming everything but not killing it, inexplicably. If there were any sense to this world her flesh would have been blasted away by the energy sustaining this hatred, but here she is, watching her own annihilation, and just when all other concepts and ideas and anything is overwhelmed by singular, burning animus to everything that has ever lived and ever will live, the red woman is gone. The world is back.
She has died. This is the first time one of her has died. She cannot comprehend it. All she is able to do is hold her hands to her face, her eyes squeezed shut so hard that she does not want to open them to see if her palms are covered in tears or blood. All she can speak is a hitching, stifled screech when she finds her breath, somewhere between a sob and a scream.
A thought, supplied by one of the others here, the first to recover their wits.
God help whoever is out there.

EYES ONLY - GRU-P DECEMBER CLEARENCE
RECOVERED FOOTAGE SUMMARY - SITE-7 INCIDENT
0113 - MAJ. CHERNIKOV FINISHES INTRO. REMARKS
0115 - PROCEDURE INITIATED
0117 - VISIBLE RED HAZE FORMS AROUND RESEARCH SUBJECT
0121 - ARCS OF ELECTRICITY SPORADICALLY APPEAR BETWEEN RESEARCH SUBJECT AND TRANSPLANT SUBJECT. VOICES OFF-CAMERA ARE HEARD TO STATE THAT ACTIVITY IS NORMAL
0123 - RED HAZE APPEARS TO MOVE FROM RESEARCH SUBJECT TO TRANSPLANT SUBJECT
0124 - TRANSPLANT SUBJECT EXPLODES
0125 - FOOTAGE ENDS
0126 to approx. 0230 - REMAINDER OF SITE-7 INCIDENT PRESUMABLY TRANSPIRES
END

I am showered in human blood. The whole theater is painted red by the intended recipient. He was an unsuitable vessel for the experiment. Or Geissler sabotaged the experiment. Impossible for me to find out now. I don't need to reach into him to know that he's dead. The ring of bodies around the Foundation's freak is assurance of that.
The Major needs my protection. He is still alive. That I did need to confirm. Not sure what I would have done. Terrible thoughts. Suppress them.
I am a political officer of the people of the Soviet Union. I must protect the people who would protect them from themselves. I must endure if we are to endure.
Better. There is a flap of skin stuck to my boot. I will remove it.
I am holding the Major. I cannot carry him the way he carried me out, but I can move him away from this. Consequences of this failure are terrible thoughts. Zherdev will be angry. Suppress them.
The Major must survive. That is my duty. I will allow these thoughts because they help me to do my duty. Several people in the back are still alive. They are in great distress. Screaming. Attacking each other. Bleeding. They have given their lives to the people, one way or another. I will honor them later. I must get the Major out.
He is not heavy like the dead are heavy. I am grateful for that as I drag him to the exit.
Glass is breaking. An entire window is breaking. Two…no, three people. Guns. Scaling ropes. They mean harm. The Major will not be harmed. I will harm them. I will do my-

Coogan hit the ground, letting go of the improvised ropes made of tied bed sheets. His shoes crunched on broken glass. He did not remember how he got here.
"What the hell was that? Who's the Major, why am I-"
"Stay close! Stay focused!" Stillwell barked to make himself heard over the horrific din. The people who had survived were shrieking, or screaming, or growling like animals as they tore at each other with their bare hands. A man missing his eyes was making ungodly noises that stood out above the fray.
"Right, right! Yes sir!" Coogan moved closer to Stillwell, Nechayeva on his other side, guns in their hands.
"Remember! Keep the mission in your head! What's your job?"
"Grab 1041!"
"Even if?"
"Even if I don't remember why! Even if I'm somebody else!"
Nechayeva barked now. "Until we're out of here, there aren't any boundaries between minds! We have to concentrate!"
The word "concentrate" started to echo in Coogan's mind. A ruined church appeared in his mind. He was a little girl now, an older man, someone he trusted, yelling the word "concentrate" at him, over and over. The memory passed to Stillwell, who recognized the church. The Cathedral of Saints Boris and Gleb, destroyed in the Siege of Leningrad. The memory kindled fear in him, a kind he had not felt in a long time. He tried to keep the images from coming back.
Nechayeva clapped Coogan on the back as the signal to go. She saw Stillwell hesitate. She nudged him gently. Even in the midst of death she knew what he had just remembered; she was sympathetic. He stirred, refocused, and advanced. She moved aside and covered the other line of site. The commissar was dragging Chernikov away. Perfect. She lined up her rifle and took aim.
Suddenly she was in the jungle. The cold instantly replaced by sweltering, crushing heat, creatures buzzing and hissing in the trees. Her sights were a scope now. A man's head, facing away, dead in her sights. What was she waiting for?
Couldn't do it. Not in the back of the head. The act was treacherous enough, she needed to see his face. He was her commanding officer. It was what she owed him. The man turned around, talking to someone unseen. The bars on his collar identified him as an American lieutenant. She could tell that independently of the memory holder. She caught herself again as she felt the memory squeeze the trigger, and she was back in the present.
Suddenly she was aiming at nothing. Out of the corner of her vision she saw that Coogan had freed 1041, who was not conscious. Please let her not be dead. The large Foundation operative had hoisted her over his shoulder and making his way out. She could not see where Stillwell went. She looked over-
Pain. White-hot lancing pain as a piece of metal lanced into her thigh, making her crumple reflexively, screaming despite herself as she fell to the ground. She glanced downward and saw a crooked piece of thick wiring protruding from her leg, snapped off from an assembly somewhere in the explosion that ended the man in the cage. She scanned her surroundings quickly, grunting in pain with every movement as she struggled to sit upright. Movement focused her eyes as a woman stepped into view, impassively surveying her. A wreath of twisted metal shards and lethal flechettes of discarded wiring circled in the air over her head, eddying and swirling like a small dust devil. She looked down at Nechayeva. Another piece of wiring flew from the mass over her head, headed for her face.
Nechayeva rolled over in a quick spasm of movement, the piece of wiring burying itself in the tiled floor right next to her head. She brought the rifle to bear at her adversary's heart, no time at all to think. She squeezed the trigger. The gun clicked uselessly.
Cursing, she tried to throw the gun aside, only to have it shoot out of her hands, drawn to the infernal commissar that stood over her now as though she had had it on a string the whole time. Calmly, the metal detritus still circling overhead, Commissar Rosenstein looked curiously at the rifle, before detaching the magazine, looking at it, and putting it back in.
"Very easy to jam these," the commissar said. "Just a machine. Like everything else."
The commissar aimed the rifle at Nechayeva. The sights now on her heart. She scrabbled behind her for anything that might be a weapon. There were three shots.
Red splashes bloomed on the front of the commissar's uniform, in the midsection. Small droplets of blood as she reflexively coughed, falling to the ground. Stillwell rushing from behind as shards of ruined metal rained down on the three of them from the air. He bent down to Nechayeva, wrapping his functional arm around her, helping her to her feet. Her leg was afire with agony every time she tried to put weight on it. Through the pain, she focused on Stillwell's words.
"Let's go! Coogan is out with 1041! Let's move!"
He dropped the gun, now useless with its ammunition expended, and moved to help her support her weight on her left side. They hurried to the exit, her hobbling as fast she could, trailing blood behind her, not bothering to check the moaning from behind her. If the commissar could gather any sort of self-awareness through her wounds, they would be instantly dead. No point in looking back.
Thoughts flashed involuntarily between the two operatives as they shuffled hurriedly to the site exit. Jungles. Ruins. Artillery fire, mortar rounds. Survival. Treachery. As they raced for survival, defining memories for both came involuntarily, other acquaintances with death. Two lives briefly shared. She knew from Leningrad that one could never truly be prepared for death, but she had made as much peace as she could. That didn't stop her from desperately hoping that the extraction team had answered her emergency signal. If things had gone well, they would be met by Petrov's men, as well as Spinella and Juhasz. If not, the exit did not truly matter.
Sweat beaded on her forehead. She decided that she would not throw up, no matter the circumstances. Every step was a new threshold of pain. They had reached the main entrance.
"Keep going," she told Stillwell.
He nodded his assent. Screams, moaning and suffering were the sounds from behind them. In front of them, Coogan waited, the unconscious SCP-1041 in his arms.
Reunited, the group of operatives opened the blast doors of the entrance. They stepped out into the cold.

« | Part Eight | Matryoshka | Epilogue | »


On 10/18/20██ the following unauthorized modifications to the experimental data of SCP-2719 were logged by the external monitoring server. Based on the information gained from the logs, and the successful recovery of Site-81, Dr. Watkins has been given a posthumous commendation.

Pointer
Outcome

Site-81
Became inside.

SCP-184
Went inside.

Inside
Went inside.

Inside
Went inside.

Inside
Went inside.

Data Corruption
Went inside.

Population of Site-81
Went inside.

Meanwhile, inside…
Dr. Watkins ran. He didn't know whether he was running away from something, or towards something, but he ran. Other people ran on the ceiling beneath him. One of them was struck by a dozen glass books falling from a room on Dr. Watkins' right. No one stopped to help the fallen man. No one could reach him. He was There, and they were Here. Wherever Here was for them at the time. Managing to get from Here to There would have been quite the feat.
He ran for another hour. Ten seconds. Three years. He wasn't sure. Sometimes the doors whizzed past in a blur, and other times the halls stretched out for an eternity. A voice called out from somewhere else.
"Help me! I'm stuck!"
Dr. Watkins spun, trying to follow the voice. "Where are you?"
"Inside."
Some part of Dr. Watkins began to ask "inside what," but the thought was lost as he stepped through a door into a room full of origami locks. Of course the voice was inside. Where else would it be? "Don't worry, I'm coming," he shouted. He opened another door, into another, identical room. He turned to look at the room behind him, but saw instead a new hallway. There was someone moving at the end.
Dr. Watkins left the origami room and ran down the hall. The someone was above him, sitting cross-legged with its eyes closed. Dr. Watkins stopped and looked up at him. "Are you who was calling for help?"
The someone opened one eye and looked back. "No. I do not need help. Others would stop me from being inside." The eye closed again, and the someone was silent. Before Dr. Watkins could tell the someone that they were already inside, that they were still inside, a door opened, and the someone tumbled through it serenely. The door was too high up for Dr. Watkins to follow, so he settled for the one that had appeared in front of him while he spoke to the someone, and began running again.
The hall twisted in every direction as Dr. Watkins ran. Left, right, up, down, back upon itself. He checked every door he saw, looking for a light, a place that wasn't this building. Room full of steel furniture. Room like the site break room, but everything was upside-down. No room, just a block of warm putty behind the door. For a moment the doctor was sure that he was running inside a giant wheel, as each door led to the same empty interrogation chamber, tinted a pastel pink. But none of them had more doors. Each one was a dead end.
Dr. Watkins gasped as he opened another door, and nearly leapt through it into the open sky before him. He caught himself on the frame as he realized that the sky extended to the ground as well. Across the room was another door. It wasn't out, but at least it was progress. But how was he supposed to get across the sky? Dr. Watkins removed his watch and held it out, slowly letting it slip from his grasp. It fell onto the sky at his feet with a soft thump. He crouched and touched the area near the watch, and did not fall though either. It was warm to the touch. It was plastic, a giant computer screen with a background of skies. Dr. Watkins laughed, high-pitched and tense, and ran across the room, through the next door.
The running continued for a long time. Doors were opened, rooms were crossed, halls were walked, but no exit. No exit. There was no out. Was there an outside? Did an outside even exist? There may not be, but Dr. Watkins kept going.
The doctor's run had slowed to a trudge, breathing heavily. He was tired, he was thirsty, but he could not stop. The was nothing more important than getting out. He stepped on a platform made of notepads and slid across a room full of water, unblinking. Outside was the only goal. There was nothing more important than outside. If he could get outside, he could report this, maybe find a way save the others inside. He just had to find the outside. He stepped off the platform and into another hallway. Find outside, get out of inside, save the inside. Out of in, into outside, outside-in.
Dr. Watkins stopped dead in his tracks. Maybe that wasn't the answer. Maybe the someone was right. Maybe he needed to be inside. Maybe to be more outside, he had to be more inside. Maybe the outside was inside. Yes, that was it. He just needed to be more inside. More inside. He took a few steps, then stopped and turned, walking back the other direction. If he didn't know where outside was, how would he know where inside is? Where is inside? What is more inside?
More inside.
Inside.
In…
Inside?

Pointer
Outcome

Dr. Watkins
Became inside.

Inside
Went inside.

SCP-184
Outside.

Dr. Watkins
Inside-out.


He lies in darkness, no sound but his own heartbeat in his ears.
The sickly warm air inside the bag suffocates him; the plastic sticks to his skin, making him sweat.
How long has it been? Hours? Days?
How much longer?
He waits—he doesn't dare do anything else. To pass the time he tries falling asleep again; for a long time he hovers on the edge of consciousness, eyes slowly growing heavier…
BANG!
A door opens, the sound gunshot-like in the stillness—his body tenses up, fully awake. Fluorescent lamps flicker to life on the ceiling, harsh light stabbing at his eyes through cracks in the bag's zipper. He hears footsteps nearby, echoing, growing louder, closer, no doubt about it now, they're coming for me…
The footsteps stop, not two feet from him.
He goes deathly still, afraid to even breathe: a dark shape lowers itself over him, blotting out what little light filters into the bag. He hears movement, feels hands move over the plastic—
With a screech-like sound the bag's zipper is yanked open—light floods his entire field of vision; he gasps, blind, defenseless.
“It's all right, Xiang,” a voice says. “I'm a friend.”
He blinks, his eyes gradually adjusting to the light; slowly, the figure standing over him is revealed in more detail—an older man in a white lab coat, his gray balding head shining under the lamps. His plump features are impeccably shaved, his eyes tiny-looking through the thick lenses of his glasses.
“Who… who are you?” he croaks at the man, his voice feeble from lack of use.
“I'm a doctor,” the man in the lab coat says. “I work here.”
“You called me ‘Xiang'.”
“I thought you'd prefer that to ‘D-239009'.”
“How do you know my name?”
“I read your file.” The doctor holds out his hand. “I suggest you come out now if you want to stretch your legs, I can't stay long.”
After a moment's hesitation Xiang takes the extended hand, and the other man helps him out of the body bag, then off the gurney. Wincing at the stiffness in his joints, the sweat-drenched fabric of his jumpsuit clinging uncomfortably to his skin, Xiang takes in his surroundings. He's standing in a pristine-looking room, its floor and walls covered in white ceramic tiling; there are counters, metal tables loaded with shiny surgical tools. About twenty black body bags like the one he's just come out of are placed on gurneys on either side of a central aisle, each of them with a cadaver inside.
“Where am I?” Xiang asks, nervously eyeing the bodies. “How long have I been here?”
“You're still in Site-97, I'm afraid. In the morgue, to be precise. And it is…” the doctor looks at his watch, “…two thirty a.m., which means you've been here roughly… nineteen hours. I imagine you're hungry, I brought you some food.”
He reaches into the pockets of his lab coat, takes out a plastic-wrapped sandwich and a bottle of water. “I hope you don't mind egg salad, it's all they had left at the cafeteria.”
His eyes widening, Xiang takes the offered items and, without a word, unwraps the sandwich and devours it in a few bites; finished, he opens the bottle and begins guzzling down its contents.
Between two gulps he looks up at the doctor. “That woman… that guard… she brought me here…”
“Yes, she's a friend.”
“I don't understand… She came to my cell, said she had to bring me to the lab for tests… on the way there she pushed me into a room, told me to get in the bag. She said not to move, not to come out, whatever happened.”
The doctor nods. “I'm sorry we had to leave you here for so long, but it couldn't be helped. You won't have to do this much longer. Your autopsy is scheduled for later this morning. I'm the one supposed to perform it, but I'll simply sign the documents attesting you were killed in an experiment with SCP-1993. Then you'll be taken via underground tunnels to another building, to be incinerated. One of the employees there is with us. I don't have all the details, but he'll help you get out.”
Xiang frowns. “Get out?”
The older man blinks, taken aback. “You mean… the guard, she didn't tell you?”
Xiang shakes his head, confused.
“I'm sorry, I'd assumed…” the doctor says. “Well, then I suppose I have some good news for you. We're getting you out of Site-97. If all goes well, by this time tomorrow you'll be a free man.”
Xiang stares blankly at the man. “You're… helping me?”
“That's right.”
“…why?”
“We run periodic checks through our databases, and your name came up last month. You fit the parameters.”
“What parameters?”
“You haven't been involved in any tests posing a statistically-significant risk of contamination by anomalous agents or entities. Also, you pose no threat to the public based on your past history. That is to say, you're innocent of the charges you were convicted of.”
“How do you…”
“I told you, I read your file. You were an activist, your only crime was standing up to an oppressive regime. You didn't deserve the death sentence, just like you don't deserve to be here now. We can only help so many people if we want to remain unnoticed, so we try to make each one count.”
“You're… you're serious.” Xiang realizes his heart is racing.
“Yes.”
“You're getting me out.”
“Yes.”
Xiang considers this, not yet daring to believe it. “What happens after… when I'm outside?”
“Someone, an agent, will be waiting for you. You'll be given papers, a new identity, a little money. The tattoo with your designation will be removed. You'll also be given amnestics, that's uh, pills to make you forget your time at Site-97, and false memories will be implanted in your mind. Probably some story about you spending the last year in jail, being tortured, but then escaping and seeking political asylum. Sorry, but we simply can't allow you to leave with any knowledge of what goes on here, some people would go to great lengths to obtain that kind of information.”
“Then after that… I'm free?”
“You're free,” the doctor says, giving him a brief smile. He looks at his watch. “Now unfortunately I have to leave very soon, but if you need to relieve yourself before you go back in the bag, there's a bathroom at the back, there.”
In a daze, Xiang wanders over to the small bathroom and closes the door behind him; turning to the small mirror he nearly jumps—it's a full second before he realizes the man in the orange jumpsuit looking back at him is himself. In shock, he stares into those haunted, sunken eyes, their sheer darkness making him shudder; his face, too, is unrecognizable, a taut emaciated mask of pale, sun-deprived skin, its features blurred, deformed by all the scars, by the burns, the six or seven missing teeth lending the mouth a sinister air…
He looks like a corpse.
I'm dying, he thinks. They're killing me.
Then it hits him—then it becomes real.
I'm getting out.
The first sob takes him unaware, rattling him from head to toe—another one comes, then another, and soon he's weeping so loudly he has to cover his mouth so the man outside won't hear him. Through his tears he stares at his own ravaged face in the mirror, the sight conjuring up memories of all the horrors, the indignities, the death from the past year, raw, unfiltered images flitting before his mind's eye in quick succession, like scenes from some sick snuff film.
It's over, he tells himself, desperately holding on to the thought. I'm getting out.
I'm getting out.
When he finally manages to stop crying he steps out of the bathroom.
The doctor is waiting for him, pacing up and down the aisle—he looks up when he hears him. “Ah, good. Come, I'll help you back in.”
Xiang walks to the gurney—he's about to get on it when he turns to the doctor instead. “Why are you doing this?” he asks, looking into the man's eyes, trying to understand. “Surely you're running a huge risk helping me.”
The doctor pauses—for the first time he seems at a loss for words. “Because none of this is necessary,” he says at last, gesturing to the nearby cadavers.
"What do you mean?"
The man shakes his head. “We tell ourselves that everything we do here, we do for a reason, but that's not the truth. Every single day we do things we don't have to do. We throw prisoners at anomalies that are already contained, just to see what happens. We drop them with a flashlight and a camera in godforsaken places we have no need to explore. We test deadly objects on them that wouldn't pose a threat to anyone if they were just left alone in some storage locker.”
“Then… why?” Xiang asks.
“They say scientific curiosity has a way of running amok. We're certainly proof of that, it's become a damned compulsion with us. We have to know everything, no matter the cost. We've come to value empirical knowledge above human life, to the point where our whole way of conducting research hinges on the idea that a certain type of people are expendable.” The doctor pauses, visibly agitated; when he speaks again it's in a quieter voice. “Well, I disagree. Guilty or innocent, I say people like you aren't just things to be used and then discarded. I say you matter. And I'm not alone.”
Xiang stares at the man, wanting to say something, trying to, the words not coming.
“Now,” the doctor says after a moment, “I really do have to go. If you could just…"
Xiang complies, climbing onto the gurney; he leans back, and the other man begins pulling the body bag over his legs, his chest, then around his head—through the still-open zipper Xiang, a lump in his throat, looks up at the other man.
“Thank you,” he manages to say, his voice breaking. “I'll never forget this.”
The doctor smiles at him. “You will, but I appreciate the sentiment all the same.” He reaches for the bag's zipper, then pauses. “I wish you all the best, Xiang. Have a good life.”
Too close to tears to speak, Xiang can only nod as the man zips the body bag shut over his face.

When he's finished the doctor heads for the door; reaching it, he looks back—whatever sense of accomplishment he'd been feeling at having helped Xiang instantly crumbles at the sight of those nearly two dozen body bags neatly placed along the aisle.
How many of them were mine? he asks himself, the familiar feelings of guilt and self-loathing, never far from his mind, returning in full force. How many of them did I send here? Three? Four? More?
He realizes he can't even remember.
With a bitter sigh he turns around and leaves the room, locking the door behind him.


A Price to be Paid
"It's one of the enduring myths of the Foundation," said the redheaded woman in the snappy suit, stabbing idly at her salad with her cafeteria-issued plastic fork. "'D for disposable.' "
Fifteen minutes later I handed her back a clipboard and a pen, rather in a daze.
"You're doing a great thing, John," she murmured. "This can actually be very good for your career. Volunteering for the program shows the higher-ups you're ethical, brave, and devoted to the Foundation's cause. Having it on your record can do wonders for your advancement, though we obviously don't advertise that. Anyway- you have ten days to transfer the projects you're working on to your colleagues, and to prepare. You won't need to pack- we provide everything."
"Can I tell people what I'm doing?"
"If you like," she shrugged. "Most won't believe you, and those that do will think it's a demotion and a death sentence. Up to you." She slid the clipboard back in her back and stood, smiling. "Well, I'll see you in ten days, John," and shook my hand.
I shook my head; it was buzzing at the tide of revelations I'd just received, over salads in the Site-104 cafeteria. You join the Foundation, and your world stands on its head. Monsters are real; magic is being done in a lab just down the hall; and men and women in white labcoats and safety glasses, bearing clipboards and stern expressions, are the last line of defense between the world and the Eschaton.
Now, my world was on its head again; a wind-mill I had been tilting at for months, since I had learned of its appalling, sleep-destroying existence, was gone. Or was it? Were the facts so well-known among my colleagues- the damned among us clad in orange jumpsuits, given numbers rather than names- was it all lies? Or was I about to join them on the steep slope to hell? I sat under humming fluorescent lighting, staring at a bowl of kale, head swimming. Was I going to wind up dead in the most ignominious way imaginable?
Or was I really, as my lunch date said, doing a great thing?
Later that day, I spoke with my supervisor. The boss was a Level Three, with a Doctorate and all, a man I really respected. Whose input I desperately needed. He gave me nothing; just agreed to reassign my scheduled tasks. He gave me a long, level stare when I told him what I would be doing in that time: not reassuring, nor intimidating.
Over the next ten days, I updated my will, talked to my coworkers about what I had volunteered for, tried to finish up any projects I could. I had no wife or kids to worry about, thank God.
Stella Nelson, Level One Zoology Researcher and one of my best friends, cried when I told her- and damned near every time I saw her over the next nine days. She was sure it was a demotion, that I was being punished: that I was going to die. Dr. Arnold Scotti, Level Two and Site Psychiatrist, nodded thoughtfully at my story, and immediately placed a bunch of calls to see if he could confirm what the woman had told me. After several days, he reported glumly that he couldn't tell conclusively whether it was true or false. Richie Wilkins, my sometime drinking buddy and Level One Anomalous Literary Analysis Researcher, blew the hell up, calling out superiors Nazis, insisting I had to fight back, to run, that he would…
That he would what? He usually trailed off at this point, looking uncomfortable. Which itself became a pattern. When someone learned I would shortly become a D-Class, they grew uncomfortable, avoided eye contact, and quickly changed the subject. In the eyes of damned near everyone, I was a condemned man.
The ten days were up on a Sunday. I lived off-site, in a little nearby village populated entirely by Foundation employees and their families. A knock came at around noon; I was expecting a couple men in black suits and dark glasses when I opened the door of my apartment, come to drag me off: the terrified convictions of my coworkers had sunk in.
But, instead, there stood only my lunch buddy, Magdeleine 'Don't call me Maggie' Watts; a middle-aged woman with brilliant, curly red hair, a level, ice-blue gaze, and very nice pinstripe business attire. Level Three, Ethics Committee Liaison. "Ready to go, John?" she asked.
"…I suppose so." I stepped out and locked the door behind me. We walked down the hall and out into the brilliant sun of mid-day. "So, I can't find anyone that can confirm or deny what you told me," I said.
"Not all that surprising," she replied, as she led us to an SUV. "There's a culture of silence around the D-Class program."
"Why?" I asked. "Why not just tell people the truth?"
Magdeleine laughed outright. "We tried, back in the mid-eighties. We sent some memos out, had testimonials, the whole bit. It didn't work. People thought it was all fabrication. The denials gave the rumors validity, you see? So, now we let people whisper and believe we're all Nazis. It's a fine tool for weeding out actual fascists and sadists in the ranks. Also, when someone speaks out- like you, John- we recruit 'em."
She opened the passenger door for me. "It ought to be obvious that we're not Nazis, John. The Foundation has an Ethics Committee, for God's sake! But, if you're really worried, it isn't too late to back out. You can turn around and go right back to your apartment, right now, if you like."
"I'm…fine, thanks." I slid in the car, and she walked around to the driver's seat. If she was lying, she was smoother than a greased snake; and even if she was, I needed to know. I needed to see what was behind the curtain.
We drove in silence to the airport on the edge of the tiny, nameless town.
"You aren't coming?" I asked her, as I boarded the small plane.
"I'm the Committee Liaison for Site-207, John," she said. "You're going to Site-301. You'll be met by their Site Liaison when you touch down."
I nodded, said goodbye rather awkwardly, and ducked into the plane. I suppose it was narcissistic to assume I would be the only volunteer from my site; two others were already aboard the plane. One, a very thin black woman in her thirties, was sitting at a window seat, staring silently out. Beside her, talking at her (rather than with her), was a short, twitchy, rather monkey-like man of indeterminable age- he could have been twenty, and he could just as easily have been forty. He had dark hair and glimmering brown eyes, and a face that was a febrile mass of laugh lines, crooked teeth in a crooked smile, and heavy, expressively cocked eyebrows. A high, constant stream of words, strained through a Brooklyn accent, flowed from him.
I sat nearby, listening. He seemed about halfway through a colorful story about three venomously jealous women he had been juggling back home.
Takeoff was uneventful. About an hour in, I interrupted my fellow passenger's unending diatribe (which, by now, had become a very entertaining tale of a containment breach that could only be stopped with the power of funky dance), to ask, "Hey- what did you two do before this?"
The fellow's story ground to a blinking, grinning halt, and I was afraid I was about to hear the grim story of a pair of unstable death row inmates, or Foundation demotees, when he piped up, "Retrieval specialist!"
"Retrieval?" I asked.
"Fuckin' A, brother! Foundation's own gawddamn bloodhounds! Retrieval Team Four-Oh-Nine! Best o' the best!" His smile was bright enough to put burning white phosphorus to shame.
"…Alright. How about you, miss?"
The thin woman turned to me, and gave me a long, cool, measured look. I hadn't seen her so much as glance at me previously (I would have remembered); she had a stare that could shut a man down from a hundred yard, get his complete measure, and inform him with contemptuous clarity that she was not impressed.
"…Theoretical Physics Division, Level Two."
Well, that explained why I'd never seen either of them. Retrieval teams spent all their time either on assignment or in their own dorms, and the Theoretical Physics Division were the Site-207 phantoms; memos and research drifted from their carefully secured wing, occasionally, but they didn't mingle with us soft-science plebians.
"I'm Level One, Memetics," I said. "My name's John."
"Pleased ta meetcha, brother! I'm Nicky, that's Nicholas Scotti on paper," burbled the monkey-faced man irrepressibly.
"Annette," murmured the woman, her attention drifting back out the window. "Annette Milgram. Pleased to meet you."
"So you're both volunteers?" I asked.
"Yep," said Nicky. "Second tour, I'm told. Nonconsecutive, of course. Shooting people up with amnestics on a regular basis can mess you up pretty bad, apparently."
"Yeah," I said. I'm Memetics: I know all about amnestics. "There's a lot of cognitive and physiological side-effects to long-term amnestics use. Seizures, brain damage, loss of long-term memories, anterograde amnesias, aphasia…"
"Yeesh. Sounds like fun." Nicky mugged a cartoonishly overdone grimace, and chuckled. "So, how about you? First time?"
"Yes," I said. "I've never been a D-Class, before. I didn't know volunteering was an option until ten days ago. I wasn't even aware you could do it more than once."
"Oh, sure. Lots of people do it more than once; that myth that D-Class get executed every month started because our shifts are thirty days, and wound up falling apart 'cause some of us volunteer more than once. Now they say us poor doomed souls get amnesticized and shuffled around…which, I guess is kinda true. So….how'dja get into it, anyway? Try to expose 'em, or something?"
"Wrote an essay, actually. Posted it on the Foundation intranet. I said that anyone with authority that supported the D-Class program was guilty of war crimes." I paused, as Nicky laughed at that. "…I'm still not sure that I'm not being punished."
"You aren't," chipped in Annette quietly. "This is the fourth time I've volunteered over the last eleven years. When I first volunteered, I was Level One. I made Level Two in half the time most would have, and I've been fast-tracked for Deputy Director of the Theoretical Physics Division." She paused. "I was going to expose them. I was going to reveal the existence of the Foundation and the D-Class program to a journalist. They caught me. I thought they were going to execute me, or at least amnesticize me. Instead…"
"I wonder why they do that?" said Nicky ruminatively. "Recruit people who, uh, you know, buck against the D-Class program? Grant us amnesty, too. I mean, conspiring to reveal the Foundation- that's a straight-up capital crime."
"Conscience," said Annette. "Who else would volunteer to do this once, let alone many times? You have to feel a moral responsibility. After all, causes are made up of individuals. Most can just look away- the bystander effect. 'Someone else will take care of it,' is the attitude. They target the people who can't look away."
We digested that in silence, and she went back to staring out the window.
A few hours later, we landed. The differences between Site-207 and Site-301 were immediately apparent. 207 is a relatively small facility, all out in the open: it looked like a factory of moderate size supporting a small nearby town.
301 is in the middle of nowhere, in patchy scrublands, and distributed. Infrastructure, be it buildings, satellite dishes, or heavy pipes, were everywhere; but it was obviously supporting an underground structure which formed the larger part of the facility. The landing strip was outside the gates of the barbed-wire perimeter fence; we were met when we disembarked by a scholarly-looking gentleman with a cue-ball-bald pate, milky blue eyes peering myopically from behind spectacles, a sharply-trimmed white van-dyke, and a rather archaic three-piece suit.
"Hello, hello," he said to us. "My name is Myron Frazier, Ethics Committee Liaison to Site-301. Greetings! I understand you must all be quite tired, and likely a little frazzled. I understand one of you is new to the program, a Mr…" Frazier squinted at a clipboard in his hand, clearing his throat. "…Ah, a Mr. Leary? John Leary?"
"That's me," I said.
"Yes, indeed, pleased to meet you. I understand that you must have some misgivings, and a lot of questions; but I'm afraid intake day is always a bit busy for me. I'll show you all to the D-Class dorm, and you can change into your uniforms and have your dinner. I have a few more volunteers to meet, and then I'll be about to give you your orientation. If you would kindly follow me? Thank you." He gave an 'after you' gesture, and began walking quickly toward the gates.
We were led through a heavy steel hatch and down a long flight of stairs, to an elevator that took us God only knows how much farther down. It opened directly into the dormitory; rather than a bunch of cramped bunks, as I had been imagining, it was a hall with a series of spartan, but not uncomfortable-looking rooms (though each with a bunk bed; it looked as though we'd be doubling up). I'd slept in worse places, in my college years.
Most of the rooms were already taken; there were fifteen, and only two left vacant, and one that already had one resident: a rather pudgy, serious-faced young woman with spectacles. It was decided that Annette would bunk with her; Nicky and I picked another. Our orange jumpsuits were on our bunks, in little folded bundles.
I picked mine up. "Why do we have to wear these?" I asked Nicky.
"Lotsa reasons. Most of em pretty unlikely individually- civvie clothes could be used by a skip to track you, might get some permanent stain or something on 'em that could cause a security breach, you get it. Just a bad idea. These are easy to clean, very visible in emergency situations, completely disposable, and-" he pointed to his bundle, which bore the number D-3961, "-They got your number on 'em." He grabbed his bundle and trundled off to the adjoined bathroom to change. Once he was done, I did the same.
They might have been ugly, but they were actually pretty comfortable. The things could breathe. We went out, met a few of our fellow D-Class, chatted a bit, and after a few minutes, we were all called to the little cafeteria adjoined to the dormitory for dinner.
We sat on plastic chairs at long tables, and ate our food. It wasn't bad; not great, but solid, nutritious fare. Salad, chicken, potatoes, bread.
A few more new D-Class came in and filled their plates during the meal; soon we had a full house, fully thirty jumpsuited men and women. As we sat around, talking after the meal, Myron Frazier strode into the room. Standing by the doorway, he cleared his throat.
"Ahem. Ladies and gentlemen? If I could have your attention, please. Thank you. I believe we have all already been introduced, yes? Well, in case anyone failed to catch it the first time around, my name is Myron Frazier, and I am the Ethics Committee Liaison, here at Site-301, and I am in charge of the D-Class program here. Now, while some of you may be old hands at this- I see from your files that sixty percent of you have volunteered before- none of you have any memory of it, and further, there are some new faces. So, we'll dive right into the orientation, shall we?"
"The Foundation, as I'm sure you are all aware, was founded in the mid-Nineteenth Century to contain and research phenomena beyond the pale of ordinary science. It became quickly obvious that many such phenomena were quite dangerous; I'm sure you have all dealt with objects with transmissible effects, or particular lethality, or similar unpleasantness.
"I am very sorry to say that the Foundation's initial response to this problem was to utilize slaves of African descent. It was a dark time for our organization. We did terrible things.
"Following the abolition of slavery in America in 1865 (the Foundation was, at that time, primarily an American organization), there was something of an ethical renaissance in our organization. It was decided that no separate group, especially no coerced group, was needed for this task. Instead, brave men and women of the Foundation would be asked to volunteer to interact with the anomalous, when needed.
"These days, virtually all interaction with anomalous phenomena is performed by machines: remote-control drones, and the like. Between this fact and the safety measures that have been evolving for well over a century, we have managed to reduce D-Class casualties significantly: only two percent of all D-Class are severely injured or killed on duty. That's still much, much higher than we would like, but it's much better than the old days."
Nicky, who had been sitting next to me, elbowed me in the ribs. "Hear that?" he muttered out of the side of his mouth. "Only sixty percent of one of us is gonna get got. Someone's gonna get everything below the tits amputated!"
I made an impatient little 'shut the hell up' gesture and turned my attention back to Frazier. He was still talking: "I'd like to, for the sake of those new to the program, address a few of the rumors that surround the D-Class, if I may.
"Of course, you are all well-aware we don't press-gang convicts and refugees into the program, and it is never used as a punishment. Of course not: you will be dealing with anomalies! Leaving aside the ethical lunacy of that proposition, we would never let untrained, unstable, and grudge-bearing individuals handle what we are entrusting to you. Further, the logistics of obtaining such individuals, and subsequently executing or amnesticizing them is quite staggering. It would likely constitute an ongoing information breach in and of itself. How in God's name would we hide a gas chamber in a facility? Do you know what amnestics do to the human body over prolonged consecutive uses? Madness."
I raised my hand. Frazier blinked owlishly at me. "Yes? We have a question? Mr. Leary?"
"Yes," I said. "Uh…I was just wondering…I mean, you know how those rumors get started, don't you? D-Class aren't allowed to speak to researchers outside of testing, and vice-versa, and even then, only regarding the testing, and are only referred to by number…if you don't mind me asking, why is that necessary?"
"Good question, Mr. Leary, thank you," responded Frazier with a punctilious nod. "You are a memetics researcher, are you not?" I nodded. "Well, then, the answer should be fairly obvious to you: certain anomalies have transmissible effects, or else can use a person's name to affect them. Sympathy and contagion. The policies you have mentioned are in place for the safety of both the researchers and the D-Class."
Ah. Well, that made sense. I nodded an abashed acknowledgement, and Frazier smiled thinly. "Also, of course, we don't deploy D-Class volunteers at the Sites they usually work at, for obvious reasons- it would be a terrible conflict of interest for their coworkers, wouldn't it- and we amnesticize you afterward, both for informational security- outside of D-Class exemptions, you don't have the clearance to know about the objects you will be working with- and in order to purge you of any lingering memetic infections our end-of-the-month inspections may have missed. No stories from survivors, no D-Class recognizable as comrade personnel… it is quite understandable that rumors start, as well as inevitable."
"Anyway, my last speaking point: most interaction with anomalies, as I've already mentioned, is handled by remote controlled machines…"
"Gawdamn robots are takin' our jobs," chuckled Nicky.
"…There are only, broadly speaking, two ways D-Class personnel are utilized, these days. Firstly, the testing of new items whose properties are largely unknown. We perform most tests via drone, but eventually we need to discover how an anomaly reacts to human interaction. Most of your time here will be spent interacting, under controlled circumstances, with RAOs- recovered anomalous objects. The second is interacting with SCP objects whose containment procedures contraindicate the use of drones. Perhaps machines are disrupted or destroyed around the anomaly; perhaps a human touch is needed to activate its properties. As D-Class, you are entitled to only deal with Safe- and Euclid-class anomalies.
"If there is an emergency, if a human is needed to interact with a Keter-class object, typically that duty will fall to containment specialists or mobile task-force personnel assigned to it; however, if you are needed, you may be asked to volunteer to take on temporary 'G-class' status and interact with it. This is strictly voluntary, and I should warn you, casualty rates for G-class personnel near 50% in their term of service.
"That said, such an emergency is unlikely to occur here. Site-301 is a processing facility for RAOs, and serves as long-term storage for inert Safe-class items. Virtually all of your time will be spent interacting with harmless anomalies.
"Anyway, your shifts start tomorrow. I'll be down in the morning with your first assignments. Good evening- and sleep well tonight, you all have a busy day ahead of you."
He left, and we, as a group, went back to talking, drinking coffee and picking our teeth. Mostly, we spoke about innocuous subjects: our families and friends, dumb stories and dumber jokes, that sort of thing. It was surprisingly soothing, that banality: the frightened-ape anxiety that had been clawing around the back of my brain for the past eight hours or so mostly quieted down. Eventually, one by one, we all went to our rooms to crash.
Unsurprisingly, I had difficulty sleeping. After about three hours of tossing and turning, I sat up. "Yo," I heard from the top bunk, which had been claimed by Nicky. "You up, brother?"
"Yeah," I said. "Can't seem to sleep."
"I smuggled in some darts," he said, "Not that they search us. You smoke?"
"When I'm stressed," I admitted. "I think now qualifies." Nicky hopped nimbly from the top bunk, and offered me a cigarette pack in the gloom. "Thanks," I said, and took a smoke.
"No worries, pay it forward." He took the pack back, handing me a lighter and fishing himself out a cigarette.
"Do we just smoke in here?" I asked. "Someone will smell it."
"Naw. Just like all Foundation facilities, they got a top-notch air filtration system in here. You're good: smoke 'em if ya got 'em." I lit the smoke and took a drag.
"Hey- I didn't ask when Frazier was talking- but what does the D stand for? And what the hell is G-Class? Do you know?"
"Oh, yeah, right. Yeah, I know. It's this classification system, they got. We use it in retrieval, and I think they use it in containment. Prolly RAISA, too. When you apply it to skips, it tells you what kind of threat they are. When you apply it to Foundation employees, it tells you what kind of duties they got.
"Goes like this: from the letter A, which means weird, you know, but not a threat of any kind. Like the list of anomalous items, you know? A for anomalous, you ever heard that? Anyway, then you get nine more- they classify em in two ways, you know, like uh, axis: minor, moderate, and serious, and then physical threats and information threats (or security clearance, for us). Then there's K- you've heard of K-class scenarios, right? Yeah, global catastrophe kinda shit.
"D-Class, with personnel, means minimal security clearance and moderate physical threat. G-Class means minimal clearance and maximum danger. Euclid up to Keter. I wouldn't worry about it. Like the man said, it's unlikely to come up."
"Yeah, of course," I replied. "So…what did you do to wind up here?" He chuckled.
"Working in retrieval, I never ran across D-Class. Spent most of the time in the barracks, training, or in the field, you know? One day I ran into one. Asked someone what it was about. Then I held the Site Director at gunpoint for an hour and a half, demanding they be freed."
"Jesus!" I said. He laughed harder.
"Yeah, I'm lucky I didn't get shot. The Ethics Committee and my commanding officer got everything smoothed over, and then all of the sudden, I had a new job offer." He shrugged, grinning. "It's a good job, man, and someone's gotta do it."
"True enough," I said, stubbing out the smoke and walking to the bathroom to drop the butt in the toilet. "Thanks for the smoke, man."
"Sure," he said, and flicked his own still-burning smoke into the toilet-bowl. "Better crash, man. They like us to be up and working pretty early around here."
Damn it, was he ever right. Six o'clock, a bell rang out in the hall, and we all hustled out of our rooms into the little cafeteria-slash-common room. Frazier was there, looking crisp and perfectly alert. Bastard. Then I caught the scent of coffee. Magnificent bastard. "Come and get some coffee and breakfast, people," he said. "I have your assignments here." He waved a clipboard. "Come on, early bird gets the worm."
I poured myself a cup of coffee. There were a handful of guards, present, as well. Probably to escort us to our assignments. I watched my fellow D-Class eat their breakfasts- I'd never in my life been able to eat before noon- and listened to Frazier read out the assignments. "D-3961-" Nicky's number, "-RAO-7234, RAO-2290, and SCP-6710." So on and so fourth, until he reached D-3962. My number.
"D-3962: RAO-8122, RAO-4872, RAO-7861." Well, alright. Three pieces to work with.
Once breakfast had tapered off, the guards began escorting people out. "Remember, you are not permitted to be unsupervised outside the D-Class barracks. You may not interact with other personnel. You must obey all instructions during item interaction. This is for your own safety!" said Frazier.
A guard escorted me out of the dormitory, down long concrete halls lit by ominous fluorescent lighting- if you've been in one secure paragovernmental facility, you've been in all of them. Occasionally we passed a lab-coated researcher. They always, very studiously, avoided eye contact.
Except for one very young Asian researcher, who stared at me with wide, terrified, pitying eyes, clutching his clipboard tightly to his chest. I couldn't talk to him, but I tried to give him a reassuring smile. It didn't seem to help. He just cast his gaze to the floor.
Oh, well. First test: in a white, sterile room (my heart pounding as the door shut behind me), researchers staring at me from behind glass, and a… white face-cloth floating in the air in the center of the room, rippling slowly, apparently unaffected by gravity.
A sternly clipped voice came over an intercom. "D-3962, please approach the object." I stepped to what I had to assume was RAO-8122. My first anomaly of the day: a zero-gee rag.
"Touch the object, please," said the voice. I gingerly poked the rag. It rippled away from my finger, as a zero-gravity cloth would. "Please take hold of the object." I pinched two corners of it in my fingers, holding it away from me in case it…did something. "Please fold the object." Gently as I could, I halved the cloth, and quartered it.
This went on for some time. It acted exactly like a cloth unaffected by gravity would, without exception. After an hour or so of tests that had gotten fairly silly after the first five minutes, a guard arrived to escort me to my next assignment.
I ran into Nicky, also being escorted to his next assignment. He had a gadget clipped to his neck that I recognized as a Nimrod Mark VII; a miniature computer designed to analyze human speech (really well, too: the Foundation's speech recognition software was decades ahead of civilian technology) and detect if it contained memetic content. Usually pretty reliable, though they sometimes went off at good jokes or particularly catchy ear-worms.
He saw me looking at it, and grinned at me. "Ucking-fay omalies-anay," he said.
His guard said, "No talking, D-3961." He looked at me and my guard, and said sheepishly, "He got a little pig statue that apparently makes to talk in Pig Latin. They've got a counter-meme, and it doesn't seem to be transmissible."
"That's good," said my guard, and I gave Nicky a 'good luck, man' sort of nod as I was led away.
Next room was identical to the first, except this one had a battered little flask in it. A similar series of silly tests ensued, none of which bore any fruit. As far as I could see, it was just a simple, non-anomalous flask. Right up until I said, "Shame this is empty. I'm kind of thirsty." Whereupon the damned thing started spurting blood like a decapitated chicken for about ten seconds. Ruined my jumpsuit. Thank god it was disposable.
A little testing soon established that whenever the word thirsty, in any language or context, was used around the flask, it started outputting blood. What kind of blood would be determined from the collected samples in the lab.
This wasn't too bad, I thought as I was led to my third assignment. I'm glad I did this. I thought back to Magdeleine, at Site-207.
"You want me to volunteer? To be a D-class?"
"Yes," she said, giving me that level, clear-as-day and cold-as-absolute-zero look again. "If it isn't you, John, it has to be someone else. That's the rub. But you already know that: you volunteer twice a week at a soup kitchen, and give a third your pay to charity. You understand that causes are made up of individuals, and if as individuals we don't do our part- well, bad things happen. Here at the Foundation, those bad things are particularly nasty."
I nod, slowly. "Hell. Sounds like I don't have a choice."
"Of course you have a choice," she said, exasperated.
"A moral choice, I mean," I replied. I took a pen out of my pocket and signed the documents wherever I needed to.
"You're doing a great thing, John," she murmured.
***
Incident Report 5509-01
Anomalies Involved: SCP-5509, formerly RAO-7861
Personnel Involved: Doctor Bruce Addison, Site-301 Anomalous Macrobiology Division (RC-2), D-3962 (Researcher John Leary, AB-1)
Incident Tags: Testing; Casualty; Cognitohazard; Euclid; Fatality; Animal; SCP-5509
Details: On 19 June, 2015, Doctor Addison was acting as handler during the testing of a Recovered Anomalous Object (RAO-7861), an anomalous form of partially metamorphic rodentia, previously believed to be harmless, due to the limited capacity of its metamorphism, small size, and lack of hostile behaviors. During testing, RAO-7861 displayed an ability to create cognitohazardous patterns on its skin with its metamorphism. D-3962, as a trained memetics researcher, was able to identify the threat and warn his handler. Unfortunately, infection by two identified cognitohazard agents and an atypical reaction to Class-B amnestics caused the death of D-3962 via grand mal seizure within two hours of the incident.
Outcome: Researcher John Leary (formerly D-3962) posthumously granted the Foundation Star of Bravery, and buried with full honors. Surviving family granted full pension package. RAO-7861 re-categorized as SCP-5509, granted Euclid-RA/-AF classification.


This was definitely not D-3748's cell.
For one thing, the room was silent. During the day, his cellmates were constantly shuffling, scribbling on the blank paper they were generously given, getting into stupid arguments, and doing whatever else they could to alleviate the boredom. At night, there was tossing, turning, snoring (he really wanted to stuff a pillow in the mouth of the guy who slept above him), and the muted scratching of pens from those who refused to sleep at normal hours. For another thing, it was colder. They didn't exactly have luxury heating in the D-class blocks, but D-3748 swore he could almost see his breath. He tugged at the sleeves of his ill-fitting jumpsuit and curled himself up as tightly as possible.
Blinking the sleep from his eyes revealed further differences: the walls were multicolored tile, not the grayish-white cinderblock-like surroundings he was familiar with. The metallic bunk beds were absent. The opening that led to the common bathroom area was missing. In fact, looking around, there didn't seem to be an entrance or exit to the room at all. There was only a person, asleep against the same wall D-3748 had woken up on, wearing a collared shirt and khakis. Not another D-class, then. He couldn't tell if the person was male or female; their hair obscured their face from his viewing angle. They, unlike him, had clearly seen a qualified barber in the last several years, though like their clothing, their hair was slightly unkempt, presumably from whoever or whatever had brought them here in their sleep.
D-3748's eyes roved around the tile on the opposite wall. He wondered whether he should prod the other person awake. Maybe then he'd at least have someone to talk to.
He didn't have to wonder for long, though. Soon he heard the other person shifting next to him, and turned his head slightly to see them (he still couldn't discern their gender) looking around blearily and rolling their shoulders. He caught them muttering something under their breath about falling asleep in the bathroom again.
Yeah, definitely not another D-class.
The other person shivered and pulled their knees up to their chest. More awake now, they noticed D-3748, and confusion briefly passed over their face before it settled into a stoic (if tired-looking) expression. They sighed. "I don't suppose you're responsible for…our…current situation," they said, more of a question than a statement. D-3748 furrowed his brow and shook his head. How could he have brought them here? He didn't even know who this other person was. Or where they were. And last he'd checked, he didn't have the magical power to enter rooms without doors.
"Some of the things here can go through walls," he said, thinking aloud. "Maybe it was one of them."
"It better not be," the other person mumbled. "That'll be a hell of a lot of paperwork."
D-3748, still unable to figure it out himself, finally asked, "So are you a man or a woman?" That was probably rude, but politeness was a habit lost to the uncounted months he had spent doing odd chores and following nonsensical orders for experiments in a magic science lab…place…thing.
The person seemed unfazed. "Neither. I'm O5-6." They paused and felt around in their shirt pocket. "Not much harm in telling you that," they added, after they'd found whatever they were looking for.
What the hell kind of name is that? was D-3748's first thought, but he could hardly talk. He barely remembered his original name. He was pretty sure the Foundation people had wiped his memory more than a few times. Maybe that was what the person had found in their pocket: something to wipe his mind when they escaped so he wouldn't remember anything they told him. Well, that wasn't so bad; it was better than sitting in freezing silence with this stranger, anyway.
So he asked his second question. "Are you a robot?" It would certainly fit, with the person's numeric designation, apparent lack of gender, and slightly stilted demeanor.
The person — O5-6 — snorted, the first appreciable bit of emotion D-3748 had seen. "No." They shook their head. "The O5 stands for Overseer, clearance level five. The six is just to identify which one I am."
"Level five?" D-3748 asked. He'd seen a rare few ID tags showing a clearance level of four (those people tended to be far too important to even glance at him). "Is that the highest?"
A nod. "People like you don't usually see us. I'm assuming you're unaware of how far the Foundation reaches, but there are thirteen of us, and we're in charge. We're the most powerful people in the world" — D-3748 raised his eyebrows incredulously — "There are meant to be safeguards against us being trapped in isolated rooms with…" They glanced at him, implying with people like you. "There was a time when you were all criminals serving life terms or awaiting death sentences. That got unfeasible pretty quickly. There just aren't enough felons in the world."
D-3748 tried to think back to when he had first arrived at the Foundation. His memory was foggy, but he vaguely recalled…no, no he didn't. "Where else do you get us, then?" he asked, not daring to voice the real question on his mind: where did I come from?
"Here and there," the O5 said. "Many of you are nobodies. No friends, no family, no job, nobody to miss you. So we just pick you up off the street and give you something to do."
"You think you're a savior?"
"I didn't say that."
D-3748 had known others who'd come back from testing with their eyes wide and their whole bodies shaking, some who had returned with strange and disturbing injuries, and of course, those who hadn't come back at all. He felt a twinge of anger as he looked at this stranger who claimed to be in control of all that. Being alone in the world was one thing, but being whatever he was — a cross between a prisoner and a guinea pig, maybe — couldn't possibly be any better.
O5-6 continued. "Some of you are clones. We don't do too much of that, though. The process is overly complex, and then we have to spread them out so we don't end up with an entire cell full of lookalikes who'll figure out what's going on." They reflexively felt their chest pocket again. They were no longer huddled into a ball; D-3748 realized he hadn't noticed the room getting warmer, but now it was a suitable room temperature, and he stretched his legs out in front of him. Maybe the cold had just been to wake them up.
And what happens if someone does figure it out? D-3748 almost asked, but the answer came to him too quickly: they get their memory erased, that's what. They're forced back into ignorance. Everything stays in its place. What on earth had he gotten himself into? Or was he born into it? The thought that he might exist solely for these people's interests repulsed him. Then again, it was true either way at this point, he realized with a surge of disgust.
"Then there are the people who shouldn't exist in the first place. Some anomalies output human beings."
D-3748 couldn't take it anymore. "Human beings?" he burst out. "You think we're human beings? Because if you do, you might want to tell your Foundation to treat us like it. We're not people. We don't even have our own names. D-3748. What the hell kind of name is that?" he scoffed, echoing his own thought from earlier. He threw up his hands. "Sure, we've got food and shelter, that's great. So do zoo animals. So do lab rats. I've seen the looks. I know what you guys think of us. We're not people. We're numbers. We're tools. We're…disposable." He paused for breath. "Is that what the D stands for? Is it?"
The O5 was calm, which only irritated him more. "No," they said. "That's a common misconception. We initially designated personnel classes by letters, and when we switched to a numerical system, D was the only one we stuck with." They paused. "Your feelings are misguided, but not unfounded. Yes, we do consider you numbers in a filing system. To do otherwise would be…" O5-6 paused again, but didn't continue.
"Would be what?" D-3748 demanded. "Humane? Normal? You people are freaks, you know that? What is it with the stuff you keep locked up? Who even are you?"
"It would pose a risk of developing emotions regarding you. We recycle you as long as we can, but we can hardly afford to care about your well-being."
D-3748 stared, not quite expecting such open callousness. "So you're aware of it? You do this on purpose? You just sit there and…block out any part of reality that makes you guilty of anything?"
"We're no saviors," O5-6 said, face and tone hardening. "We do what we have to. Of course you don't understand the scope of what we deal with. Do you know," they said, starting to echo D-3748's vehemence, "what would happen if we didn't do our jobs? Everything. Total obliteration of the universe. A complete rewriting of history. The reduction of humanity to a lesser species. War. Death. Plague. Famine. We stop it all, and we do it whether or not you are there to be part of it."
A moment passed.
"Wow," D-3748 said matter-of-factly. "I've never heard so much bullshit in my life."
Deflating slightly, O5-6 sighed. "I may have gotten ahead of myself there," they said. "They say a lot of things about power. How it comes with great responsibility. We…perhaps tend to think of ourselves as something greater than we are." They sighed again. "Not that it means much for us. We're thirteen faceless administrators pulling strings we can't see the ends of. We don't see what we do — what our people do. We don't even meet with them in person, not below el-four. We're just as inhuman as you are."
"What makes you say that?" D-3748 scoffed.
"We don't think about it often. We're too preoccupied to reflect on our existence. But when you work your way up through the ranks, your job becomes your life." The words came out erratically, as if O5-6's mouth were running faster than their brain. "We have to stay removed — from everything. People respect us because they don't know us as people, only as a string of numbers and letters and a blacked-out silhouette on a monitor. We probably had lives before this. We probably had names." They patted their pocket again. D-3748 didn't need to be told that this was definitely not a rant he was supposed to hear. "I don't remember mine." The O5 sighed yet again. "I don't know you all by number. I couldn't tell you where you're from. But on the slim chance you were a criminal…"
"What could I possibly have done?" finished D-3748. "What could I have done that's worse than what you do? Using everyone as objects for some higher purpose you won't even tell us about…because I get the feeling we're not the only 'disposable' ones. Your guards and your scientists and your field agents, they're all just game pieces to you. You sit in your tower and you play God." He shook his head incredulously. "And you made yourself this way. You gave up your lives and your names to be oh-five-something who used to be a person who's dead now."
"We're more alike than we think, aren't we?" mused O5-6, with a slight laugh. "No names. No lives. No freedom. No moral code." They raised a hand to stop D-3748 from interrupting to say that he had a moral code, thank you very much. "No," they said, suddenly sounding sharp. "Knowing the difference between right and wrong means nothing. Your morality is based on what you're told to do and the consequences if you don't. That's it." With each phrase, the O5 sat up straighter and seemed to stride further back into their professional, 'removed' demeanor.
D-3748 opened his mouth, but he didn't say anything. Memories of his work for the Foundation rolled through his mind. How many times had he gone along with things that struck him as unethical, just because it was his job? Just because he'd seen a few people shot for disobeying? Just because someone with a name told him to do it? But that was exactly it, wasn't it? Nobody gave the O5s their orders…"I'm not like you," he said, and folded his arms.
O5-6's eyes shot from his face to his attire. "No. No you're not," they said with a self-righteous finality. I'm more human than you'll ever be, D-3748 swore he could hear them thinking. Funny. He was pretty sure it was the other way around.
He stared ahead at the wall, scanning it from top to bottom. The pattern was indecipherable. He was pretty sure it wasn't a pattern at all, that the colors weren't in any uniform order, but that was it. The top and the bottom were the only sections that were distinguishable, with borders touching the blank white floor and ceiling; the rest of it was a mass of tiles. He shook himself. He was looking for a distraction, not a metaphor. He closed his eyes and tried to go back to sleep. He thought he might have felt a pinch in his neck, but he ignored it.
He looked forward to not remembering any of this later.