I met Death for the second time in the basement of Site-19.
Before I entered the room where I was to meet Death, I took out my phone. The email from my Site Director was two days old and read:

Claire,
Apologies for the short notice. O5 wants a meeting so please be at EB17 Wed. 9 AM. You are meeting O5-13, which is Death.
Regards,
M

I checked twice to make sure that I had the right room. When the time turned to 8:59, I turned off my phone and tucked it into my pant pocket. I gave myself a moment to close my eyes, before pushing the door open and stepping inside.
There was a table for two, with a swivel chair on one side for me. Connie was sitting on the other side.
She looked up and regarded me in exactly the same way I remembered—angling her eyes to avoid mine and tilting her head downwards to let her bangs veil her expression. Everything about this situation was familiar: I could never grow distant from the sensation of looking into Connie's face and seeing my own round cheeks, my thin eyebrows, my eyes.
“Why are you looking so closely at me?” she asked.
I sat down in the swivel chair, the slight buckling of my knees under me making me fall into the seat. I couldn't answer.
“You're thinking that I'm your sister. I'm not. Don't you know that, Claire?”
Slowly, I nodded at Death.
“Okay,” I said.
There was a short silence. Then, I reached out my hand. “Claire Ma. Senior researcher, cultural anomalies.”
“I know. I'm Death,” she said, taking the handshake. Her skin was soft, and I could feel a pulse coursing beneath the surface.
“Why…this?” I asked.
“It's how you know me best,” Death said. She shifted in her seat. “I'm sorry it had to be like this.”
“I don't—stop it. Stop apologizing. I came here to talk to O5-13, not my teenage sister. Be someone else.”
Death scrunched her nose. “I told you,” she said, “I'm not your sister. She is gone and Death took her place. I'm just me and I can't do anything about that. The only thing either of us can do is for you to deal with me.”
“How do I do that?”
“Like I know.”
I leaned back into my seat. Death started chewing her nails, and I bit back the urge to tell her to cut it out, do you want Ma to yell at you again for it?
“Why did you want to talk to me?” I asked.
“I didn't,” Death said. “You're being moved to work with the O5, and we usually sit down and chat with people before they start. The job got passed on to me, which is a hassle, but it's fine, because you'd have to meet with me eventually.”
Death took her fingers out of her mouth and examined her reddened fingertips.
“Should probably stop,” she said.
My head pulsed. I'd barely had the patience to deal with Connie when we were children, and I had even less now. “Was there anything in particular that you wanted to talk about?”
“Well,” Death said, “I wanted to get to know you.”

Ma always told us to be careful when neither of us were in any immediate danger. Both Connie and I were competent in the kitchen, but Ma still felt the need to hover over us when we cooked. When we started dicing a carrot—careful, it's sharp. When we reached for a pot that had been over the stove for a while—careful, it's hot.
What made Ma's constant worry even more ironic was that this was the safest she'd been in her entire life. I had an uncle that Ma never knew—all she had of him was a small, black-and-white photo of a smiling boy, around ten, in a school uniform. Grandfather was a doctor, with knowledge of both Western thaumatology and the traditional occult arts. If a Chinese solider survived an IJAMEA attack, grandfather treated them when no other doctor could, so IJAMEA came after him. He and his infant daughter survived; my uncle did not.
The rest of Ma's life went similarly. Until she was ten our family was on the run, first from the Japanese and then the Communists. She remembered few of the details, but when pressed, she'd cough up what she could. The way the air rippled when a Green manipulated reality. The snapping and snarling of monsters in the night.
While there was no war in Taipei, Ma still worked a factory job that ended up killing or seriously injuring at least two of her young coworkers. Eventually, she made it out on government scholarships, before finding herself in America.
I had trouble reconciling this image of Ma's childhood with the woman who now worried over knives and pots while we lived in the shelter of suburban Los Angeles. I didn't realize that Ma did so not in spite of her past, but because of it.
Ma worried about our academic futures, too. Successful applicants to the top ICSUT campuses excelled in studies on both sides of the masquerade, so Connie and I took normal classes during the day while Ma tutored us in the occult at night. For me, Ma's worries were over A-‘s and the occasional slip-up in one of her quizzes, but it was worse for Connie. Unlike our other Chinese friends' parents, Ma didn't beat us. She just yelled and yelled.
The day Connie got her seventh grade mid-term report card, I tried holing myself up in my room with a book.
“What's wrong with you, huh? You know how hard your mother works so we can live here, so you can go to this school. This is how you repay me?”
I could hear Ma's voice through both the thin walls and my hands over my ears.
“You think I don't see you being lazy? Not doing your work, not studying, just doodling, wasting your time?”
There was a short silence, and I thought, for a moment, that Ma was just running out of steam. Then a loud bang: Ma's hand striking the dinner table, followed by the sound of ceramic bowls jumping against the wood and a muffled yelp from Connie.
Ma's yell: “Answer me!”
I threw my book against the wall and jumped out of bed, heading straight for the dining room. I closed my door, hard, and stomped my feet so they'd both know I was coming.
“Jesus, Ma,” I shouted, “can't you just give it a rest?”
The argument could have easily escalated from there, but my entry into the scene shocked Ma out of her blind anger and gave her a second to think.
When Ma spoke again, her voice was low. “What do you care, huh? Why—”
“—I wanna be able to sit in my room in peace—”
“This is my house,” Ma said, “and I'll make you regret it if you interrupt me again. Understand?”
I lowered my eyes. “Okay, Ma.”
“I'm asking you why you care now. I have a job, you know. And I can't help your sister with English, history. Where are you? If you care about this, why aren't you helping her succeed?”
Connie's cheeks were sticky with tears, and her hair was plastered to her face. I hadn't heard her crying over Ma's yelling. When I looked at her, she refused to meet my eyes.
“Come on, Ma, she's right there.”
“And?”
“And—and, look, she's smart, she can figure things out, okay? I'm her sister, not her tutor.”
Connie mumbled something. Ma and I both turned; before Ma could yell at her to speak up, she said, more clearly, “I'm not.”
“Not what?” I asked.
“Not smart. I'm not lazy, either. I'm sitting there, looking at my homework, because I don't know how to do it. And I'm trying to figure it out. But I can't.”
She got up and left, and when she closed the door to our room behind her it barely made any noise. Ma and I were too tired to argue with each other any further, so we sat there in silence.

“Who'd you blame for her death?”
I looked at Death sideways. “That's a loaded question.”
“Sure,” Death said. “Maybe there are people who wouldn't blame someone. But you're not one of them.”
“Fine,” I said. “In order of least to most: you, Ma, myself. Happy?”
“I don't think Connie would have been very happy about you blaming yourself.”
Beneath the table, I clenched and released my fists. My frustration was obvious; Death did what Connie would've done and ignored it.
“How do you know Connie wouldn't have liked it?” I asked.
Death brought her knees up to her chest, resting her bare feet against the chair. “I know it because I took her,” she said. “Her thoughts, memories, personality—all of it is within me.”
I exhaled. “If you have all of those, what's the difference between you and her?”
Death shrugged. She rocked forwards on her feet, reaching forwards to grab a pen and notebook halfway across the table, and ripped out a page. With the pen, she drew a smiley face and wrote, “Connie”. Then, she put the page over her face.
“Who am I?”
I stared at Death. “What's the point of this?”
Death ignored me again. “Not Connie, right?”
“No.”
Death removed the paper and waved it in my face. “To me, a dead soul is like this paper. So, I really, really have no idea why you keep confusing me with your sister.”
I kept staring.

I actually wasn't sure, between myself and Ma, who I blamed more.
Eight years after our argument in the kitchen, I destroyed my relationship with Ma without her even knowing it. When I visited her after graduation, Ma still lived in the same Los Angeles home, but now, the room that Connie and I had once shared was stacked high with cardboard boxes. There was a new picture of Connie and me, dressed in winter clothing, on the mantle that hadn't been there when Connie was alive.
Ma had made a curry chicken soup—a Burmese recipe she'd picked up from a neighbor in Taiwan. I ate my food with rhythm: strip the meat from the bone, dip in soup, add noodles, slurp. I did it all with my eyes fixed on the soup itself. Ma was eating slowly, and her chopsticks clattered around the soup bowl as she stirred her food.
“Claire, is something wrong?”
It took me a moment to finish chewing, and I swallowed heavily. “I'm fine, Ma.”
I had decided weeks ago that I was going to accept the Foundation's offer, because I knew I couldn't tolerate any more time in the occult community. I'd be a rare defector, and I knew that I would make an outcast of my mother in doing so—a woman who raised two daughters, one dead and the other a traitor.
In between bites of chicken, I wondered how I would tell her what I was planning on doing. All I could think of were questions of blame. Would she understand if I told her I blamed the occult community? Or that I blamed the two of us? Would she blame me for running away? Would she forgive me?
I bit into a chunk of potato, pulverized it, and then realized that the soup was gone. I hadn't told Ma anything.
“Your lease in New York is settled, right?” Ma asked. “And your tickets…”
“Yeah. Everything's fine, Ma, don't worry.”
“And your job?”
I laughed. “PTOLEMY Division pays a lot, Ma. I'll be able to send you money.”
“I don't care about the money. Will you be happy, Claire?”
Maybe I hesitated a moment too long before answering, but I kept the smile on my face. “The work is interesting. The people seem driven. I will, Ma.”
“Good,” Ma said. She slurped up another spoonful of noodles and chewed on it slowly. “That's good.”
After we exchanged more small talk, I hugged Ma good-bye and gathered my things to leave. I was set to rendezvous with my Foundation contact a four-hour drive away, and I wanted to make it before nightfall. My bags were in my trunk and I was five exits down the freeway before I realized that I would never eat that soup again.

Connie ended up going to the ICSUT campus in Washington state. I'd posted the test scores to get into the San Francisco campus, the most prestigious one west of the Mississippi, but if I'd known how often Ma would make me take the eight-hour drive up to the Washington campus to check on Connie, I might've decided to just go there instead.
After what had happened in high school, Ma hadn't even wanted Connie to go up to Washington. It came down, as always, to another argument—Connie wanted to work for the Coalition, and the Coalition rarely recruited specialists outside ICSUT. She didn't want to stay in LA and get a Bachelor's. She wanted to live in the same world that grandfather, Ma, and I did.
Things didn't go well. Connie took a semester off after her first year. When I came home that summer, Ma cornered me and told me that I needed to persuade Connie to not go back to Washington.
I didn't want to talk to her in our room, with the door closed—I didn't want her to feel trapped. Instead, I approached her after dinner.
“Wanna go out for a walk?”
Connie glanced at me sideways. It was an expression she'd picked up from me.
I ran a hand through my hair. “Come on. I want to talk.”
“Fine,” she said.
Living in the San Francisco campus had made me forget how uneventful the suburbs were. Every couple minutes a minivan would glide past us, or we'd see a group of kids clustered around a basketball net in the street, messing around and trying to dunk. Nobody paid us much attention.
Connie started chewing her nails almost as soon as we stepped outside the house. I waited a few minutes before saying, “Jesus, can you stop that?”
She hesitated before taking them out. “Probably should.”
“Then stop.”
She shoved her hands into her pockets for the rest of the walk.
“Why do you want to go back to Washington so badly?” I asked.
I stared at Connie for a few seconds before she gave me a noncommittal shrug. “Why not?”
We crossed the street, Connie lagging a few steps behind me. I kept slowing down so that she could catch up and I could look her in the eyes.
“You know,” I said. “So you can stay out of trouble.”
She snorted. “It's not like I'm getting any better here. Ma just wants me close because she's worrying. It doesn't make a difference.”
“I thought you were feeling better.”
“Not really. I just haven't tried anything again, because Mom keeps the med cabinet locked so I can't really—”
“Stop it,” I said.
“Stop what.”
Both of us were standing still in the middle of the sidewalk. There was nobody around us; all I could see of people were their television screens flickering behind their windows. The sun overhead was beginning to set.
“Do you not want me to talk about it?” Connie asked. “Is that what this is?”
Her eyes were fixed on me. She hadn't raised her voice and her hands were still stuffed in her pockets, but she didn't move her eyes from my face.
“Why do you want to talk to me about going back to school if you can't even talk about me trying to kill myself?”
I clenched and released my fists. “Connie…”
She shook her head. “You don't get it.”
“What don't I get?”
“What it's like to be on the edge of dropping out from an entire society,” she said. “You and Ma always had a place.”
She turned around. “I'm going back.”
“Home?” I asked.
“Washington. I can't stay here anymore.”
She walked away, leaving me alone on the sidewalk. Overhead, the sky was beginning to ignite in reds and oranges. I crouched down on the curb, stuck my elbows on my knees, and planted my chin on my hands. I was thinking about so many things at once—what it'd be like for Connie back in Washington, what to tell Ma, what I was supposed to do about it all—but the predominant thing running through my head was white noise.

“Fine,” I said. “I get it. You can put the paper down.”
Death balled the paper up and tossed it behind her chair. “Sorry. I got frustrated.”
I winced when Death apologized again, but I tried not to let it show. Instead, I asked, “So what exactly are you? Some kind of psychopomp guide?”
“No,” Death said. “The dead never see me, not that they see anything.”
“A personification, then? A God?”
Death shrugged. “I'm what happens to everything. Stars, people, ideas. I'm a universal constant. Like, well, gravity.”
“Ideas?”
“Yeah. The Mandarin you don't have anymore. The way you loved Ma when you were a kid. I took those too.”
I examined Death. On the surface, and even to the level of personality, everything about her was intimately familiar. But in a deeper sense that I could not entirely understand, she was alien. The girl in front of me who seemed to be my sister was an illusion, what my mind perceived when confronted with an all-powerful force of nature.
The room felt colder. “You already know a lot about me, then.”
“Yeah. But, like I said, not on a personal level.”
“Well,” I said, “I do, despite the rocky conversation, want to know you too. Do you have a will of your own?”
Death shook her head.
“You just do your thing, then? You never stay your hand or take something before its time?”
“That, you know, breaks things. Like, well…” Death said. She furrowed her brow while she thought of an analogy. “Like gravity acting on something more or less than it should.”
“Well,” I said, shrugging, “that happens all the time. They're anomalies. We contain them.”
“An anomaly like that would have to act on a level higher than fate and causality.”
I felt strangely comforted. “So it doesn't happen, which means you don't have your own will.”
“Oh. Well, it happens.”
I blinked. “What?”
“The O5 Council.”
“But,” I said. My palms were gripping the armrests, and I could feel sweat beginning to gather underneath them. “How?”
“Well, I'm in a unique position where I don't actually vote,” Death said. “So when they pass a measure that involves me, I just do it.”
“No, I mean…look, I don't care about the voting,” I said. “The O5 Council alters the course of Death—your course—in defiance of causality, a fundamental force of, what, reality? How?”
“Well, yeah,” Death said. She was giving me the same look that Connie would give me when she'd try explaining one of her sci-fi books and I couldn't get it. “I mean, you're right, causality is fundamental, but so is the O5, and more so.”
I made a choking noise.
Death snorted. “I guess it was good to get this out of the way before you started working with them. I'm not an outlier among the O5. The rest of them are also like me.”
“And they want me to work under them?” I said. “Why?”
“Uh, your expertise in East Asian occult history. The others have pet projects that they think you'd be pretty useful for.”
I didn't say anything for a while. After some time sitting in silence, Death squirmed. “Hey,” she said. “Don't be intimidated. You're smart, and you'll do your work well.”
“Thanks,” I said, without thinking. I remembered too late to whom I was speaking and felt strange.
“I think Connie would've said something like that, at least.”
This time, I thought about it for a bit, and then let myself smile. Death looked vaguely pleased with herself.
“You know,” I said, “this doesn't really matter, but if you don't vote, then how does the O5 tiebreak?”
“They don't. They use consensus.”
My smile cracked, and I burst out laughing.

I apprehended causality lying face-down on my dorm mattress, listening to the clock tower play the latest pop hit. Outside my window, the sun melted through the San Francisco fog and baked the inside of my room. I could hear people outside, laughing, getting ready to graduate.
A glossy pamphlet and letter from the GOC's PTOLEMY division sat on my desk. I hadn't touched either of them since they'd arrived.
My roommate peeked her head in through the door. “Hey, Claire! They've got a grill set up on the slope, wanna go check it out?”
I rolled over onto my back and smiled. “Nah, I'm good. Feeling kinda off.”
“Oh. Well, hope you feel better. Seeya!”
She didn't know. Nobody did, and it wasn't their fault; I just hadn't talked about Connie at all. If I went to work for PTOLEMY, I could do the same thing. Barring the off-chance that I ended up working with anybody who'd known her from Washington, it'd be like my sister had never been alive at all.
I thought about how badly Connie had wanted to go back to school in Washington, and how she'd said that I'd always had a place. I wished that I'd told her she was wrong, and that I had as much of a place here, in my dorm room, on this campus, as her ashes did in an urn.
Everything made sense when I thought about it like that. Tracing the line of my grandfather and Ma through China, to Taiwan, then Ma across the Pacific to America, then me from Los Angeles to this room, every decision and event had, if not purpose, then weight. When it came to the question that had brewed in my mind for the past several months—whether or not I would work for PTOLEMY—things made sense because I realized that, just the same way only one path had led to where Connie and I were now, only one path led out. I could only ever make the same choice.
I never wrote back to PTOLEMY. A week later, in one of the Foundation's front companies, a man in a suit shook my hand and began to interview me.

I drove up to Washington immediately the day I learned that Connie had jumped off one of the campus bridges. My drive started in the afternoon, and I was only halfway there when it was midnight. As I fought off sleep, I reminded myself to keep my eyes on the road, to stay alert—to be careful. I realized that I only ever told myself to be careful in the same Mandarin that Ma had used: 小心.”Small” and “heart”, side by side.
I spent a lot of my time in Washington taking care of business: figuring out which of Connie's belongings to send to Ma and which to throw away, talking to the campus police and ICSUT administrators and counselors, organizing a cremation. I was in Washington for a week, not thinking of class, not thinking of anything. I called Ma every single night.

Death waited until I was finished laughing before she said, “I don't really get what's so funny.”
“Nothing,” I said. I wiped my eyes. “It's nothing.”
She shrugged. “Whatever. Can I ask you something?”
I noticed that Death wasn't hiding behind her bangs anymore. She looked at me directly.
“Yeah,” I said. Okay.”
“Do you regret what happened?” Death asked. “Do you ever wish that you could change things?”
It took me a while to answer Death's question; I immediately knew what my answer was, but I didn't know how to put it.
Finally, I said, “No. Connie's life wasn't a mistake for me to fix. There are things I wish I'd said or done, but…I guess those are with you now, too. And I don't like the idea of bringing what's dead back to life.”
Death shrugged. “Not many people answer like that, you know. But I get it.”
“I'm glad,” I said.
“Well,” Death said, standing up and stretching. “This was a good talk. The Red Right Hand'll help you get settled in at your new location. We'll see each other around, Claire.”
I nodded. “Thanks for checking in.”
Death left the room before me; when I stepped outside, the hallway was empty, save for two members of the Red Right Hand, ready to escort me away.

I met Death for the first time as I stood above the bridge that Connie had jumped from. Her death had prompted ICSUT to install safety nets, big green meshes that stretched out and covered the view of the gorge. Below, where they'd recovered Connie's body, there was yellow police tape to ward away the inquisitive. It was the middle of winter, and the river was frozen.
When I looked down, past the green safety net, past the swirling snow, I could see something in the river. It was right where Connie had fallen. As I watched, Death rose from the ice and rushed towards me. I saw it catch on the safety net; I saw its fingers squeeze through the holes as it reached upwards.
The wind whipped at my hair, splaying it behind my head. I could feel my heart unfolding and expanding in the presence of Death, opening to invite it into me. I kept my eyes fixed on Death. I did not turn away.
I stayed there like that for a long time, my fingers growing numb on the frozen railing, looking on the impassive face of Death as it strained at the net separating us.


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SCP-173 has a human brain - or at least, a human-like brain. I know this because I have possessed it. My name is Carmen Lopez. I was born on January 17, 1951, in Santa Clara, California. I joined the army in 1970 and was deployed to Vietnam in 1971 before being plucked into the ranks of the Foundation in 1972. I am a member of Mobile Task Force Lambda-9, nicknamed "Mind over Matter". Lambda-9 is an offensive branch of the Foundation's Psionics Division; we are tasked with investigating, containing, and in some cases, terminating psionic phenomena. I am only thirty-two years old, the youngest and newest member of Lambda-9 by far. This also makes me the most expendable. Therefore, I was the least risky choice for possessing SCP-173 to see whether or not the Foundation can put it to use as an effective assassination tool in a highly classified weapons testing program.
I'm so goddamn horny.
It's crucial for me to know who I am, where I come from, and why I have possessed this concrete monster - otherwise, the memories, instincts, and other unconscious brain functions of what I'm supposed to possess could possess me instead. Mental fortitude - willpower - is everything. And right now, I want nothing more than to go to town on my non-existent genitals. It's a pounding itch in my skull. It's hard to remember why I agreed to this or even why the Foundation wanted to try this. I vaguely remember something about hunter-killer flies, whatever those are, but I can hardly think for want of need to beat my cock like it owes me money. It's the first time in my life I've ever felt this way - one of the reasons I was shortlisted to join Psionics was my apparent lack of libido.
I force it down and focus on what I'm doing in here. I would take a deep breath but I can't breathe. I can't move my limbs at all. I can't even move my eyes - I'm locked into place in this concrete room, standing upright and staring straight ahead, because I am under observation by three women wearing orange jumpsuits and trying to avoid blinking at the same time. There are comms in their ears, undoubtedly telling them to look away at the same time. The people behind the comms want to see if I can stop myself from killing them instantly or if I am just a passenger along for the ride.
Whoever's negotiating with them must be a hell of a talker, because they're moving to take up positions around me. Two of them move out of my line of sight; the third stays where she is. Then she closes her eyes.
I'm so fucking horny. I thought it was bad before but it's excruciating now. Christ, is this what life is like for ordinary people?
But I haven't moved - not even my eyes. And it only then occurs to me that I should try moving. Breathe in - or imagine breathing in. Focus. Lesson one of being a psionic is maintaining focus. I focus on the woman in front of me. She's trembling but her eyes are closed. I try to remember my training. Start small. Diagnose my movement capabilities.
I start by rolling my eyes. I'm not sure if they're actually moving - this room has no mirror - but I can see into the corners of my eyes. Then I rotate my head. I don't actually feel it rotating - there's no feeling of movement or muscle or really anything besides my goddamn libido - but I can look to my left, where one other woman is trembling with her eyes closed, and my right, where a third woman is trembling with her eyes closed.
They're trembling. So I haven't killed them. That's good. That means I have some control.
I try to move my arms. I look directly at my concrete appendages and there's no movement whatsoever, but I can feel them. It feels as if I have two phantom arms, but I can move them and flex them and rotate them. I can even feel my hands moving around. I pump my left fist - the concrete doesn't budge an inch, but I can feel my phantom elbow popping slightly. The same goes for my right fist.
Can I walk? I'm not sure. I try to move my legs but it feels, with some irony I note, like they're stuck in concrete. Again, it feels as if I'm controlling phantom legs that are flexing and bending and walking around. These concrete ones aren't going anywhere. Or so it seems. I've taken twenty nonexistent steps before feeling resistance, like I bumped into something. The woman standing in front of me opens her eyes and all of a sudden it's like I teleported from one end of the room to the other. I loom over her and I'm frozen in place again and she screams and falls back on her ass but she's alive.
I'm feeling pretty proud of myself for not killing any of the D's when it hits me that the whole reason they put me in this thing is to kill people. And I'm still horny.
Lovely.

I wonder how much more productive humanity would be if they weren't so concerned with sexing each other. Still, I can hardly fault them if this is what they feel like all the time. It's horrible: a yawing hunger in my stomach coupled with a heavy itch in my loins that seems to be occupying all of my higher brain functions. My meditative exercises can barely keep it under control.
The tingling gets worse when the D-Class enters the room, which makes things even more fucked up since said D is a he. The loudspeaker says something about a terminal disease, and then the words "Sergeant Lopez, proceed as discussed."
The poor jumpsuited bastard blinks and then it's like my genitals and brain have swapped places. And as much as I want to have lost control of the concrete fucker, it's 100% me that imagines myself lunging across the room and wrapping my concrete stubs around his neck. I can feel his throat compressing; it's firm yet squishy and the itching in my loins is getting worse and I can feel myself getting closer and then his arteries burst from the pressure and there's an invisible crunch as his vertebrae give way and I come.
If I had a cock there would be semen on the floor. But there isn't. The only thing on the ground is a dead man. I feel exhilarated, elated, exhausted, and empty. The tingling is gone. The hunger is gone. In their place is shame. I think I just got off on murdering someone. I hope to God that Abuela isn't looking down on me from heaven; she might die from shame and become the first person to do that up there. The only good thing is that my head is finally clear again. I can think properly for the first time in I don't even remember how long. I say a few prayers in my head, but I doubt that even the Lord will be able to forgive what I just did.
I take these moments of lucidity to think. I just killed the D-Class. That time I was actually able to visualize myself crossing the room and throttling him. Which is odd because the whole time I was testing not killing the D's I had to imagine what it would be like to walk and move around. There's two reasons for that I can think of - either I've gotten better at controlling the concrete fucker or it reacts differently when it's actually in murder mode. I very much want it to be the latter. I don't want to be responsible for what I just did.
The doors open and I take a look at the next poor fucker to enter the killing room; her face is puffy and weeping. There are little pustules all over her face, dripping onto her jumpsuit and streaking it. She looks resigned to her fate. God help me, the itching in my head starts again.
"Sergeant Lopez? You may proceed."
She blinks. I do the only thing I can.

I've stopped counting how many D's - how many people I've murdered at this point. I'm not even sure it's that many - the Foundation doesn't have the resources to just throw people into a meat grinder - but I don't want to make the number any bigger than I have to. It helps me sleep better, and considering how many dreams I've had recently that ended with my hands wrapped around my mother's throat, I'll take what I can get.
I have to keep telling myself I don't like killing. Not even in Vietnam; that was sixteen months of tropical disease and shooting at plants that shot back. I didn't sign up with the Foundation out of a sense of duty or righteousness - I just wanted away from that jungle. Away from all the killing.
So that turned out all right.
I don't even remember why I agreed to this. I had to have known I was going to be murdering people, right? Why else would I have agreed to possess a fucking murderous statue? There's so many things about this project and myself that don't add up but I can barely tear myself away from these fantasies of sex and death to think about them. This isn't me. This is the influence of the statue. My meditation and focus exercises are becoming less and less effective. Whatever passes for a mind inside this fucker is nothing more than a bundle of sexual and killer instinct. And it's worming its way into mine.
But there's a light at the end of the tunnel. The shrinks have decided that my dreams aren't too problematic and I've been cleared for active duty. I don't feel ready at all but, ironically enough, I guess I know less about my own brain than they do.
The target is a drug dealer with a passion for fine art. I keep hearing the words 'reality bender' and 'bixby' and 'Type Green' being thrown around but it feels like they're going in one ear and out the other. This whole thing is way too convoluted for an assassination - they could snipe him or bomb his chateau or poison his dinner or literally anything easier than training a psychic to possess a fucking killer statue - but apparently those won't work.
The next few days pass by in a haze as I spend all my mental energy on ignoring my lower body. There are a couple more terminal D-class to kill. There is a box and the rumbling of shipping and handling. Then there's moonlight. I can't move at all but something is moving me through a garden. I'm staring at a marble fountain, surrounded by fancy topiary.
And then I'm alone with a man in a fancy suit. He's admiring me - the statue. He's admiring the statue. This must be the target. He looks beautiful.
He blinks. I do the only thing that I can.

I don't remember what happened next. I don't remember how I got out of there or how I came back to the Foundation or anything that happened after I squeezed the life out of the man in the suit. All I remember is the rush of watching the life drain out of his eyes and the relief of my head clearing.
I can't wait to get out of this body. I can't wait to get out of this prison of fucking concrete that's stripping my mind from me. I can't wait to not dream about killing people. I can't wait to not fantasize about murder.
They wheel my body - me - into view. I'm separated from myself by a thick glass window and there are fifteen people staring at me from the other side. I've been placed into a coma and have been kept on life support for the last few days.
The people behind the comms tell me that they're going to deactivate my life support within five minutes. I only need five seconds to jump out of this concrete fucker and
and
and
and five seconds later I'm still stuck in the concrete. I can't stop thinking about how much I want to break them all. How much I want to break myself. My exercises aren't working. I can't think properly. I can't focus. I can't breathe.
The people behind the glass look increasingly worried. I can't talk to them. I can't tell them what's going on. I can't beg them to help me. I can't do anything but stand there and suffocate inside of my own mind. There's a pressure building up in my head.
Then I see them put an oxygen mask back onto my body and wheel me away. I'm stuck. I'm trapped. I'm buried inside of a concrete prison and there's a pressure in my head and my crotch and I can't think straight and I need to kill I want to kill give me someone, anyone to break and watch the life drain out of them please.
The doors open. A D-Class walks in.
She blinks. I do the only thing I want to.


As I touched the face of the body with a single gloved hand, the first thought that ran through my mind was that it had a face, and that was never an especially common sight around here.
Our Jane Doe was pinned to the pavement like a butterfly on a cork, her head pierced by a perfectly-cylindrical metal rod twice the length of my arm. That in itself might not have killed your average Alagaddan citizen, but what would have was the intricate script running around its circumference — tangentially, that script should've sent me and any Alagaddan without years of discipline reeling from a mile off, but I wasn't an Alagaddan. Hence why I'd been called in today.
Carefully, thoughtfully, I brushed the length of the spear jutting out of her head and dispatched a hesitant ping of energy into its core: as expected, even through the latex I felt a jolt of energy refresh me and a brief flash of blue light from the runes on the cylinder.
I picked myself up from my kneeling position and peeled the gloves off, tossing them to the sidewalk where they'd be absorbed by one of the fleshy flagstones eventually. Karcist Nadya noted that I'd finished with my inspection and affixed me with her twenty-eyed gaze: "What information did you gather from the monolith?" she chittered, teeth in her mouth rearranging themselves as she spit the syllables in my direction.
"Definitely a Mekhanite perp from Flipside, you're right." I fumbled for a bottle of antiseptic in my pocket and gave my hands a quick slather just to get the feeling of the fetid oils off my nerves. "First glance, that thing has a couple verses from the First Tract of Trunnion round the circumference; all things being equal, our murderer's a Cogwork Orthodoxy member, though railgun weaponry points to Maxwellists."
"The brass residue would suggest that." By the time I was done with my handwashing ritual, I'd looked up just in time to see the Karcist retracting her rope-like tongue into her mouth, residue of Jane's brain still dripping from its surface. "Tannins from Oregon…" She licked a stray droplet of grey matter hanging off the edge of what counted as her lip. "…no, she's an Indiana native. Most recently she's got traces of the Black Quarter, though."
I grimaced and wrinkled my nose. The Black Quarter was one of those places filled with enough theologically, morally and mathematically abhorrent behaviour that the thought of having touched anything that'd come from it made the both of us equally nauseous, if our almost identical expressions of disgust were any indicator. "Signal Above cut me out, a Grade-A theoweapon and a Black Quarter runaway in the same case, huh." The thought that I hadn't actually got a name for this body crossed my mind — that combined with the sketchhy providence of said body set me on-edge. "Speaking of, you actually have any idea who this girl is?"
Another deep taste of the corpse: had the majority of Mekhanites not shed their fingerprints in the first parts of their conversion, I would've complained my partner turning them into streaks on the china-like skin of the cadaver. "Maybe 'runaway' is the wrong word, Inquisitor Xiang. More a passer-through, if anything: you know the trade in gallbladders, exotic organics… all the usual smuggler's vices."
"Travelling girl, then. Still haven't given me an ID, though."
She took a deep sniff, fluttered grey eyes that would've been pretty on a face with fewer eyes and an actual skull in it. "Allison. Allison Chao," she concluded, after some thought. Eyes turned to slits, nostrils flared again. "Did you do something to the body in your little inspection, Inquisitor?"
My brow furrowed and my hand itched to release its payload. "Nothing more than a quick ping to test if the artifact was still active, which it is. You sure you're not just picking up on the after-effect of that thing?"
"No. The metal." She turned to the side, spat out a gob of gold-stained blood. "It doesn't get any less disgusting the further you get from the weapon, you know? The distribution's too even for it to be just the monolith."
"If you say so, I guess." I knelt back down. "Let's take a closer look, check if she's not lead-lined or some shit…"
As I did, the first thought I'd had upon seeing the body came unbidden to the front of my mind — her face looked too close to a Flipside citizen, too close to my baseline for it to resemble anyone who'd been wandering the City of a Million Right Angles for enough time a Karcist knew her taste. Pondering the interpretations, my eyes scanned the body one more time, noticed the expensive-looking coat swaddling it like she was floating on a sea of velvet.
Hell of a thing to go to your grave in.
Slowly, gingerly, I peeled the coat from her shoulders. She was wearing a tank top, already something odd in the freezing winters even the city had to put on padding for, and I noted the tattoo of a chess piece on her shoulder: the black queen, the colour a striking contrast against the deathly-pale shade of her post-mortem complexion.
As I kept going with it, the coat peeled away to reveal more of the shoulder, then the arm, then—
A hand, delicately filigreed with silver trim and humming softly with the tick of gears moving under its skin. The first sign of a recent convert to Mekhane.
My breath caught in my throat. "Nadya!"
"That's Karcist Na…" The command faded, to be replaced by the guttural fury of Low Sarkic creole. "Shit! She bought in—!"
"She's a bioterrorist drug mule at best, world-ending extremist at worst," I responded, hurriedly covering what I'd seen in the coat's rich folds and getting back to my feet. "You need to set up quarantine. Fast. The theoweapon was bad enough, but if she's got a live sample of the Conversion you could be seeing a full-on eschatonic event at worst, XK in a bottle…"
"Understood." Nadya clawed at her neck, exposing an array of fleshy nodules growing along the musculature there like plants on display in a greenhouse: picking one between finger and thumb, she burst it with a sudden burst of force and the state-designated smell of emergency filled the air. As it did, the alleyway around us began to get closed off by curtains of newly-forming muscle and bone, the walls of Alagadda itself responding to the pheronome signal with a sudden overdrive of growth. "Where will you be off to, Inquisitor?"
"Flipside." I began sprinting for my car while the road to where it was parked was still open. "I have to see a lady about a priest!"
And with that, I clambered into the driver's seat, hammered the keys home and revved the throttle. The tyres of the Argo squealed on striated gristle as I tore down the highway, heading towards the woman who I'd loved and damned to hell in the same year.

Next: Crossing the Frame »


And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she yearned to take of the fruit thereof, and eat.
But instead, the woman said unto the serpent, If your words be true:
Then let my eyes forever be closed.

- Genesis (KJV), 3:4-9

With just a word, Rebecca Love popped the door out of existence.
Was 'pop' the right word? It definitely made a 'pop' sound. Kind of satisfying, actually — like snapping bubble-wrap. Why did it make that noise, she wondered? Maybe it was air rushing in to fill the gap where the door now wasn't? That made sense.
Behind the gap, three men sat at their desks and toiled over alien machines. Their hands were stretched across symbol-enscribed boards, stroking out patterns like spiders delicately navigating a complex web. Each dip of a finger produced a pleasing 'click'. In front of them, green runes glowed upon panels of glass. Given enough time, they could weave those runes into a particular kind of 'magic' — the most dangerous kind.
All three men heard the 'pop'. They turned to face Rebecca — a short, petite woman with burnt sienna skin and a smile as wide as the sky. One of them reached for his piece.
Right away, Rebecca could tell that the wand was high-end — not one of those mass-produced imitation knock-offs. It was the color of moon-light; exquisitely carved ash-wood with a silver-capped tip. Probably a semi-automagic.
Again, Rebecca spoke a word. POP. The wand disappeared from his hand.
They froze in their chairs.
"Now," Rebecca said, "I know what you're thinking. I mean, not literally." She held up her hands. "I can't read your minds or anything like that. But right now, I suspect you're thinking something like: 'Okay, she can pop doors out of existence. And she can pop wands out of existence. But… can she pop us out of existence?'"
All three exchanged glances, then turned back to her. Rebecca lowered her hands, cracked her knuckles, and gave them her best 'come-at-me' grin.
"To which I say… wanna find out?"
Silence stretched out across the room. After what felt like a half minute of deliberation, the one who pulled the weapon rose to stand and lifted his arms. The other two quickly followed suit.
"Pfsh." Rebecca wrinkled her nose. "And here I thought you guys were all about empiricism. Whatever happened to the spirit of inquiry?" She reached up to tap the carved bone piercing in her ear, then focused her thoughts into the magical thread that wove through it:
«Room's secure. Three lil' snakes. Looks like they're giving up peacefully.»
«Good. Upstairs is secure. A little tech, nothing major. Anything down there?»
«Yep. High-end hardware. Processing machines — the works. At a glance…» Rebecca looked past the men. There was a large block-like device in the corner, with dozens of interlocking parts arranged across a table. «3D printer. I'd guess they were trying to build robots? Small drones, maybe.»
«Great. Mechanical engineers.» Denise's sarcasm buzzed through the thread. «Just be careful. Clean-up crew is on its way.»
The man who had pulled a wand on her spat at Rebecca's feet. "You can't stop us. Knowledge wants to be free."
Rebecca raised an eyebrow. "Mmhm." In her experience, members of the Serpent's Hand came in two flavors: Curious people in way over their heads, and die-hard fanatics. This guy was clearly the latter. Trying to reason with his type was like reasoning with a brick wall. A very angry, very teenage brick wall.
"You will fall. The torch of progress will prevail."
«Think you can hurry up? One of them is monologuing.» Rebecca tried very hard not to roll her eyes. Stay focused, she told herself. Don't let your guard down.
"You cannot keep the world in —"
The man sprang forward, pulling something out from behind his back. Rebecca hopped away and lifted her hand toward him. Everything happened so fast — she didn't have time to pull herself out of the channel. Her unconscious thoughts vibrated through the bone and into the thread:
«Bomb!»
«Rebecca?»
POP.
Rebecca's hand trembled; her outstretched palm now occupied the empty space where he had been a moment before. His two comrades stared at that space with mute, wide-eyed shock.
She turned her focus to them: "Run."
They kept staring.
"I said run!" Rebecca snatched both of them by their wrists and pulled them close.
«Rebecca! Report!»
«One of them pulled a bomb. I popped him.» Both men stumbled behind her; she just dragged them along. After a few steps, they finally remembered that they had feet and started running with her toward the door.
«I thought you couldn't—»
«Can, but only for 12 seconds. Everyone, GET DOWN.»
Rebecca gritted her teeth and pushed both men through the doorway, diving after them. Somewhere behind her, the air crackled with released magic.
…POP.
"—darkness forever! Wait… where did —?"
The blast alone slammed into her spine like a massive fist. Claws of fire scraped up and down her back; every inch of her was bathed in a scorching heat. The sheer force flung her into both men, crashing with them into a tangled heap atop of the floor.
Her ears rang. Pieces of debris fell from above, tumbling to the ground. Rebecca groaned in pain. Still alive? Check. She tried to pull herself up, then — as several searing bolts of anguish flashed through her back — decided she ought to give herself a minute.
«Everyone, report.»
«This is Jack, clear and okay.»
«Vernon, I'm good.»
«Dai — shaken, but not stirred.»
«Good.» They could all feel Denise's relief swelling with each voice that replied. But it was accompanied with a prickling anxiety. «Becca?»
«I'm hurt, but not dead.» Rebecca grimaced. The two guys under her were wriggling; one of them groaned. «One's definitely dead, other two are stunned. Don't think they were in on their fearless leader's exit strategy.»
«Good. Stay down. Don't engage. Coming to you now. Dai, with me.» Denise's urgency squeezed down on Rebecca; it was the mental equivalent of a hug. Even though it wasn't real, just thinking about being touched sent another spasm of agony lancing through her spine.
One of the men under her sputtered, twisting to sit up. "A-ah," he cried out. "What just —"
"Stay down. Just stay down," Rebecca warned him, trying not to let the pain seep into her voice.
"— I just — what just happened?"
"It's alright. You'll be fine. Just don't move."
"How did you…? I didn't know spells like that even existed."
Fighting through the pain, Rebecca pulled herself up and gave him a half-smile. It hardly mattered at this point. Better to keep him distracted; by the time the memeticists were through with him, he wouldn't remember a thing. "Paramagic."
His brow crumpled down into a tight, wrinkled knot as he tried to parse the word. "Para… magic? What the hell is… who are you?"
"I'm with the Foundation," she told him. "We contain science."


WARNING:
This file has alerted Informational Temporal
Disruption Textual Analysis (ITDTA) IntSCPFN
security programs to the presence of
a potentially anomalous file origin.
_
CODE:
AC-3: MEMETIC HAZARD: TYPE V
_
This file was archived and flagged as
potentially hazardous on July 22nd, 2017.
If you do not recognize this file, do not proceed
without the inclusion of one or more
approved textual analysis scripts.

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retrieving…
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loading original page content…
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…file analyzed. Show hazard filters?
Y / N
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Your Answer: N
Accepted. Displaying text…
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If you're in these pages looking for facts and logic, I can give you a little of both.
Remarkably, I can tell you that there was no "first SCP", because I wasn't there for it to happen. The first anomaly was of course long before us, and the document format came long after we figured out what we were doing anyway; the more I ponder it, the more I realize that perhaps it was also several decades before there was even a 'we' to begin with. This organization wasn't formed out of bureaucracy, but rather out of a unanimous agreement among humanity that it simply needed to exist. The world wasn't safe without us, and thus, the world brought us together and formed us out of a need for self-protection. We didn't have a name until years later.
Of course, someone had to lead us. Several admirable public figures in industry and government alike stepped up during that time period. A few of them are still Overseers to this day. In the early years, we entrusted the oligarchical nature of the O5 Council with leading us as safely as was possible, and for the first several decades it worked: Sites were built and reports were made and things were contained and people were killed and we got everything into working order, seemingly under the balanced and equal guidance of twelve — or thirteen, depending on who you ask — people.
It only took us a few decades to realize that some aspects of our origin didn't add up. We could trace our history back to the founders, but for the longest time, we couldn't trace why several influential and independent people had the same idea at the same time for the same reasons; was it really as simple as all of humanity demanding protection from forces outside of their control, and powerful people responding to that demand without question? As more years passed and the Foundation grew into the monolith it is now, it became more and more concretely evidenced that it was, more or less, more complicated than that. The human species needed protection, and so they created it, through direct action or otherwise.
If you were to travel back to the early 20th century and ask an Overseer who the Administrator is, they'd tell you that it's classified information, that his identity is secret for good reason, so on and so forth. I'm sure that if you were to ask an O5 today, they'd say the same, but you'd probably get detained and interrogated afterward. At this point in our history, everyone in the Foundation is aware that there at least was an Administrator at some point, even if not still; we know he existed, but maybe not since the beginning. Maybe, if he's still alive, he's on near-anomalously advanced life support systems and no one but the O5 Council is permitted to speak to or interact with him. Maybe he's a former field agent or a former US government official, someone who means what he says even if it's tough to say because he's been there and done that and seen what happens when no action is taken in times of need. Maybe he knows every single detail of the Foundation's atrocities committed in the name of protection and he wakes up every morning and wonders if he is a good man or not.
In reality, that is not the case.
I do not wake up every morning and question whether I am a good man or not. The notion is inapplicable to the nature of my existence, because I do not wake up and I am not a man. I am an idea, forged into a sapience by over a hundred and fifty years of humanity's desperation concentrated into the most forceful energy in existence: intention. And that intention was and is to protect the human species — or any species, or this planet itself — from forces of this universe out of our range of understanding and those that bring harm to humans and animals or their world.
To this day, I do not know what exactly caused such a powerful event to occur. It had to be large and public enough to cause what I estimate to be 85 percent of the human population to realize they were objectively unsafe in an anomalous world. Enough people figured out that if anomalous events and activities and entities were truly a problem, humanity would do what it always does and create a defense against it. Maybe only a few hundred people had the idea of an organization at first, but their idea coalesced into the early version of me: a shared notion between desperate people, with enough energy directed at it by force of will alone that it began to grow upon and collect said energy until it was a freestanding entity built from decades of dedication to one concept. And that concept is myself.
I have no stronger sense of purpose than what this organization accomplishes, because I am this organization. I am not a mysterious man sitting in the lower levels of Site-01 surrounded by guards. I am the original, unaltered manifestation of the Foundation's ideology and intent, formed from a collective desire for a specific type of security. I feel every single thing that every single Foundation member and employee feels and says and does — though you cannot talk to me directly, even if it were permitted — and the resulting collection of history becomes the substance of what we are. I am the experiences of the Foundation, from inception onward, and thus, I am the Administrator.
Now, if you're in any way adequately trained, everything I'm stating here should conflict with your beliefs about effective containment to a degree that physically induces a headache. I exist because humanity had a collective intention to protect itself from the anomalous, and in doing so, the energy of that intention created an anomaly whose sole purpose is containing anomalies. If the Foundation exists for the task of containing anomalies, then logically, it's counterproductive and hypocritical to have an anomalous entity forming and then leading the Foundation. Right?
It took me at least a few decades to answer the question — I estimate it came to me around the time I gained enough collective information to be fully sapient, fifty years ago — and I believe the key element of the question lies in the nuances of our trademark: containment. My purpose is suggesting to thousands of people, through anomalous methods, the goal of containing the anomalous. Containment, conceptually, is carried out by means of preventing an anomalous entity or effect from causing anomalous effects or actions to occur. And yet, the nature of my anomalous effect lies in compelling myself and others to contain that which has anomalous effects.
After years — and after every O5 had figured out that I was not a human, but rather a memetic vector gaining sapience with the continued collection of information — my realization was the following: By definition, the only option that is in the Foundation's best interests is for me to stop allowing myself to anomalously influence people and, in doing so, contain myself. It is the only logical option for dealing with this type of dilemma: the Foundation will protect itself, and the Administrator will retire.
I may have said at the beginning that there was no first SCP, but I suppose it depends on the way you look at the concept; you may know me as the Administrator, but for the sake of myself and this organization, I am reclassifying myself as a Class V Memetic Hazard and assigning a team of the Foundation's most renowned memeticists to the task of my containment. If it works, my absence and my lack of memetic influence over personnel will jumpstart the next period of this organization's history for the better: a period during which we serve humanity without contradiction, emotion, and confusion affecting actions integral to this organization's continued survival.
Indefinitely — or until that point is reached — I am relinquishing my database access, stepping down as Administrator of this organization, and signing off for all intents and purposes. This document will display in the network database at random ten years from now, on July 22nd, 2017; after that point, it will alert the proper channels through the network and you, the reader, will be amnesticized due to exposure to one or more memetic hazards. You'll wake up tomorrow and wonder if you're a good person just the same as any other day, don't worry.
And so, as a parting favor, and while you wait for the page analyzer to tell you to remain at your computer, tell me — no, ask yourself — is the Foundation thriving still?

revision: 0
posted from Unknown Location by Unknown Author at 12:13 on 07/22/07

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ANALYSIS COMPLETED.
RESULTS:
(4) potential textual cognitohazard(s) detected.
(1) conceptual memetic anomaly(/-ies) detected.
Your Site's Memetics & Cognitohazards
Department Director has been notified of
your access to this file. Remain at your
terminal and await further instruction.


Previous: Hartliss Detective Agency

I'm sinking.
And sinking.
And sinking.
And sinking.
And sinking.
And sinking.
And sinking.
And sinking.
And sinking.
And sinking.
And sinking.
And sinking.
And sinking.
And…
…
…
…
—the hell am I?
I yell: "Hello?"
huh?
Nothing. Not even the sound of my voice. At least, I don't think—
hello?
—wait. Did I hear something?
is someone there?
No. Just endless white void, as far as my eyes can see. It's like an ocean — or maybe a desert. There's no texture, no sound, not even the steady thud of my own heart. I try to look at my hands — can't see them, can't even feel them. It's like they're not there. I try to close my eyes, but I still see white.
please talk to me.
Am I dead?
i'm so alone.
Think. I've got to think. I try coaxing up some memory, some thought of how I might have ended up in this miserable place. There was a room — right. A room, and an old woman, and her wheezing laughter, and then there was the grenade, and…
i'm so scared.
…oh.
please say something.
Right.
i've been here so long.
Shit.
i just want to hear a voice.
There was an explosion, and — without even thinking — I dove down through the veil to escape. As deep as I could. Deeper than I even knew was possible. And now, I'm…
maybe you're scared too?
Shit.
don't be scared.
What the hell is this place? How many layers deep have I gone? I concentrate, focusing — searching for the invisible tether that connects me to my world. I wrap my consciousness around it — and start to pull.
wait what are you — no.
I drag myself out of this endless ocean of white — inch by excruciating inch. I feel myself press against the boundaries of this place. I feel myself pushing through them…
please, don't go.
…and then I feel something grab me.
YOU FUCKING WHORE HOW FUCKING DARE YOU
I can feel my limbs. My hands, my feet, my body — I still can't see them, but I can sense them. Something has me by my ankle. It's trying to pull me 'down' — deeper into the layers beneath this one. A level below whatever this… emptiness is.
THIS IS MY REALM HERE I AM GOD
I pull with everything I've got. It feels like an anchor tied to my foot — my muscles spasm as a sharp stabbing pain lances up through my calf and knee. It feels like whatever's pulling on me might take my whole foot with it.
I WILL RIP OUT YOUR FUCKING EYES
If it means getting the hell out of here, it can have my foot. Hell, it can have the whole damn leg. I rear my other boot up and slam down, feeling the heel collide with… something. Suddenly, my ankle slips free.
AAAUGH FUCK FUCK FUCK
I reel myself up, squeezing against the membrane, pressing through it —
please no please i'm so sorry i'll be good don't go —

— and into an apartment.
Thick, plush brown carpet coats the floor. The walls are a hideous shade of peach-pink. The air is stale and old. I squeeze the pommel of my .45 and give the room a quick sweep, looking for anything out of place. Am I back? Is this Chicago? My Chicago?
Everything looks ordinary: Table, desk, sunlight pouring in through a window. I take a step toward the light.
Outside, I see a small corner diner; further in the distance, I see a hot-dog cart. I see sidewalks and lamp-posts, store-fronts and automobiles…
…but not a single soul.
When I take a step back, my boot sinks deep into that thick carpet. I look down. It's not just brown; there's streaks of black, gold — even an occasional wispy curl of copper-red. Something about it catches my eye. I crouch down to examine the fibers. They're fine — too fine. The material is…
Hair.
My eyes drift to that grotesquely pink wall. I start to notice the imperfections — blemishes, pock-marks, scars… beauty marks.
Skin. It's made of goddamn skin.
I close my eyes, grab hold of that tether, and climb as fast as I can. I feel myself slip through —

— a world of rotting, putrid flesh filled with the deafening roar of billions upon billions of buzzing flies, gathered into blankets of writhing black so dense they blot out the sky —
— an abandoned factory so immense that it contains all of Chicago, contains the entire sky, contains the sun itself —
— Chicago, but choked with smoke and flame; the sound of gunfire rattling off in the distance, with every single door throughout the city flung open wide —
— a sea of screaming faces, all squeezed together so tightly that they constantly burst into a bright pink-red pulp, only to reform an instant later —
— and then —

— I'm in what looks like a hospital room. There's only one door, and it's behind me; solid steel. It looks like the sort of thing you'd use to keep the monsters out.
A wizened old woman stands in front of me, cloaked in dark fabric.
Or maybe it's for keeping the monsters in.
I point my .45 straight at her ugly mug. "Alright, lady. Talk." I'm trying to pull on my tether, but it's not working. I can't sense it — as if it's just been snipped.
Her eyes brighten with amusement. Something snakes its way out from beneath her clothes — it looks like… hair. Dozens and dozens of strands of gray hair, writhing out past her feet and slowly extending across the floor.
She clucks her tongue. "Really, now. You don't recognize me? After you went through so much trouble to find me."
Iga Volodya. My eyes narrow. "Your face is different. Also? Pretty sure you're dead."
"I have many faces. More than there are stars in the sky." She chortles to herself, then grins. Her teeth gleam like a platter full of steak-knives. "Today you have seen two. Perhaps — if you are very clever — you will see more."
Alarms shriek around us. The room is flooded with a bright, flashing red light.
"But enough reminiscing. I did not pull you here to chatter. We have business to attend to, you and I. Follow me — I will show you the way back to your precious city, Yashenka."
She turns, and we —

— are back in Chicago. The city is in a state of decay. Buildings have come crashing down; cars are flung over to their sides, torn asunder. The streets are covered in rubble.
In the distance, I see the Roanoke Building. It's littered with dozens of human-sized holes, with the contents of each room dangling out like flapping tongues. I feel a dry, scorching wind blowing against my back. A strange force tugs at me — drawing me toward the source of that heat.
Iga Volodya walks ahead, moving with a surreal calm.
I look back. The sky is a horrible shade of tangerine; in the distance — far past the city — there is a bright, burning light. It is toward this light I feel myself being pulled.
I turn to Iga. A newspaper brushes past my ankle; I catch the snippet of a headline before it blows away.
MYSTERIOUS FORCE DRAWS CORPSES TOWARD—
We keep walking. "What the hell is this?"
"Have you ever thought about how many ways the world can end?"
"Is that what this is? The end?"
"It is every end." She looks back to me with that horrible grin. "And do you know why none of them have come to pass?"
I open my mouth to reply, and —

— we're standing in a kitchen. A family of four sits in front of us, preparing to enjoy a warm meal.
But the family isn't right. They aren't people — not anymore. They're made of pink, pulsating flesh; heaps of it, piled into the vague semblance of human beings. Too many arms, too few legs. Bulging mounds of meat that throb with every heartbeat.
The food is the same. Plates full of quivering tumors, spreading their tendrils out across the table. To my left, I think I see the family dog — just a mound of rolling, convulsing muscle. It extends a ribbon-like 'tongue' out to lick at a bowl filled with wriggling, squealing tissue.
Iga Volodya surveys the scene beside me. She looks annoyed.
"Your work?" I ask.
"People always think so. But no — we did not do this."
"'We'?"
She looks to me. "Practitioners of Nälkä. The Children of Ion."
"Sarkites."
She nods. "Like yourself."
I tighten my grip on the .45. "I ain't one of you."
The flesh around us stirs. Although they have no eyes, the family seems to have noticed us. A deep, dark, hateful growl emerges from their bodies. I point my pistol at the biggest one.
"But you are, Yashenka. You see it just as clearly as me. The corruption. The wrongness. And you fight it."
With a horrible, gurgling roar, the family lunge to their feet. I squeeze the trigger, and —

— I'm pointing my gun at a wall. We're back on the city streets. It's night-time; there are people here, running past us and yelling. I glance behind me — we're standing in front of the Chicago Theater. I can hear the sounds of screams coming from inside.
"Again: Do you know why these ends do not come to pass?"
A man in a suit leads a squad of police past us, charging for the theater's doors. They're packing serious heat — and their faces are all business. I turn to the city skyline. It's dark, but I can make out distant fires. The screams aren't just coming from inside the theater. I think I hear them everywhere. All around us.
My eyes drift toward the theater's marquee:
FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY — THE HANGED KING, LIVE ON RADIO
"They do not come because they are ends. Because to end is to cease. And our suffering is not meant to cease. Our suffering is to be eternal."
I turn back to her, lowering my pistol. "You done with the cryptograms, grandma?"
She smiles, exposing those sharpened teeth. "And so we fight fire with fire; corruption with corruption. The universe is sick — and we seek to use that sickness against it."
"Enough. Tell me who —"

" — cut you open. Who's using you to harvest the worms — to help Weiss? Who's — ugh —"
The ground beneath us is a spongy mishmash of colors churned together into a mush-like brown. The smell of sweetness is overpowering; it leaves me doubled over and choking. The earth gives underneath my weight. My left foot sinks down into the loamy soil with a horrible schlrp. A thick, white froth seeps up from around my ankle. That sickening sweet odor intensifies.
Iga looks down at me.
"Someone who perverts our beliefs. Someone you will find. Someone you will stop."
"I don't —" The earth beneath me is slowly sucking me in. My ankles are gone; my calves are sinking. More of that cream gushes out, rising up past my knees. I try to push myself up, but my palms sink down. "I don't — work for you." My eyes focus on the landscape behind her. Rolling hills, plateaus, mountains of mush. I think I see a rock formation poking up somewhere — no, not rocks. That's the top of a steeple —
"You do not work for me, but we are on the same side. The side of the angels. The side of Ikunaan."
Down to my waist, now. I try to move my legs, but the mush just squishes out of the way — and I sink faster. "That's the side that eats babies, right? Just checking. I read your file. You're a goddamn monster." I'm about to drown in a sea of sugary mush and she's Baba Yaga. Pissing her off feels like the right move.
She doesn't seem offended. Instead, she just smiles and reaches down to stroke my cheek with one of her gnarled, wrinkled fingers. "Oh, my dear, dear little Yashenka," she coos. "Of course I'm a monster. What else but a monster could ever hope to defy the stars themselves?"
Down to my shoulders, now. Her cruel hand snaps up and seizes me by the hair, forcing my head back; I open my lips to say something — maybe just to yell — but she spits straight into my mouth. Something wet and awful hits the back of my throat. I feel it burning — everything is burning. I feel like I'm on fire. Her voice rumbles above me, crooning with a hateful, loving snarl.
"Avenge me, Jacob Hartliss. Do it as a favor — from one monster to another."
She whispers into my ear.
The universe dissolves.

The remains of a cramped little tenement room smolder around me. A wispy haze of smoke fills the space; the scent of burnt meat and burning wood is everywhere. The canisters have all shattered, spilling nauseous chemicals and glass shards across the floor. A fresh coat of charred Iga Volodya — with some scorched worm-meat thrown in — decorates the walls.
Sirens wail in the distance.
The wall behind me has all but disintegrated; I step over what's left of the door and into the hall. A family of four — ma, pa, two kids — stand at the other end of the hall, staring at me.
I glance back at the ruin, then look to them. "What?"
They rush back into their apartment, slamming the door behind them.
I make my way down the stairs, out the door, and back into the bustling streets of Chicago. I take a good, long moment to savor the sights and smells of the Windy City — and then I go hunt down the nearest pay-phone.

"So it's not Sarkites." September sounds annoyed.
"I didn't say that." I rub at my neck. My voice is hoarse; I keep having to clear my throat. "Just saying it ain't Iga Volodya."
"You're sure?"
"About as sure as I am about anything. I got a name," I tell her, fishing in my pocket for another stick of gum.
"You already had a name."
"Well, now I got a better one." My fingers tremble a little as I struggle to unwrap the foil, jamming the stick into my mouth. "Wilhelm Reinhardt."
"Doctor Reinhardt?"
"Yeah. You know him?" I stop to chew and give a smile to the flat-foots running by. They're chasing the fire-truck on its way to Volodya's former residence.
"He's a highly respected alienist and physician."
Waitasec — physician. Didn't Weiss bring his personal physician with him to visit the stoolie who pulled that one-day Lazarus act? "He ever work for Weiss?"
"He's a private physician. It's possible, but…" She sounds unconvinced.
"Pull whatever you got on him — send it to my office. Also, I'm gonna need…" I take in a deep breath and steady myself. "I'm gonna need a favor, September. Need you to arrange a meet-and-greet for me."
"With who?"
"Richard Chappell."
The line goes quiet for a little. I let her have that one — hell, I wouldn't know what to say either.
"Are you… uh, are you sure?"
"I don't like it, but yeah. I'm sure."
"Alright. Uh…"
"Call my office tomorrow with the details. I'll be in."

Next: Red Harvest


A TRAILER
0:00-0:05:
Darkness. Short, gasping breaths.
Close up on DR. OBROV's flickering eyes. They snap open.
0:06-0:08:
Dr. Obrov stands rigid next to his bed, looking at his sleeping wife. It is dark outside.
0:09-0:12:
ERIN storms into the office of ELLY, her superior. She slams a black and white photograph of a group of men and women down on the table.
0:13-0:20:
Pan down a row of battle weary soldiers standing in a muddy trench. They are dressed in filthy cleric uniforms, holding rifles. A giant, sentient piece of origami stands behind them, cocking its head.
Voice-over, an old man: "So from what we can see, he was killed right before starting his work."
0:21-0:25:
Dr. Obrov is making coffee in his neat bare kitchen. Then, he is driving along a dark highway in a truck, looking intense.
0:27-0:31:
The truck pulls off down a dirt road surrounded by fence. A sign warns of trespassing on private land.
Voice-over, old man: "Not that that matters, now."
0:28-0:31:
Erin jabs at a man in the photograph.
She says "Now I want an explanation."
0:32-0:34:
Elly photographing SCP-173.
0:35-0:36:
A gloved hand slips a pill in a percolator.
0:37-0:43:
DIANA OLIVIER hurries through a Church of The Second Hytoth office, panting. She carries papers in her arms.
Voice-over, Erin: "If this is him in the photo, then he would have been eighty at the time of his death."
0:44-0:47:
Something heavy and just out of view drags itself around a containment chamber. A canine howl.
0:48-0:50:
Dr. Obrov, USB stick in hand, grabs a cup of lukewarm coffee before returning to his desk.
0:51-0:52:
A camera flash.
0:53-0:55:
Close-up on Dr. Obrov's lips as he takes a sip.
0:56-0:57:
A second camera flash.
0:58-1:07:
A crowd of Foundation investigators crowd around Dr. Obrov's corpse.
Voice-over, old man: "So it was cyanide poisoning, was it?"
1:08-1:15:
Diana is praying.
Voice-over, a younger man: "Yes, but who cares? He was a nonentity."
1:16-1:20:
Members of Mobile Task Force Psi-9 burst in on a Sarkic masked orgy. Distant laughter.
Voice over, the younger man again: "Nothing matters."
1:21-1:26:
Elly, Erin, and a Japanese doctor are setting up an experimental camera in a field. The laughter builds.
1:27-1:31:
Dr. Obrov's wife is sitting in a room, weeping violently. The walls drip blood. The laughter gets louder.
1:32-1:35:
Researchers look through glass at some sort of wounded animal. The laughter gets more manic.
1:36-1:40:
Erin stands in a suburban kitchen, slowly turning to look at an air conditioner. The air conditioner twitches. The laughter is now loud, whooping, and completely deranged.
1:41-1:42:
Continuing laughter. A building on fire.
1:42-1:43:
Continuing laughter. A doctor peeling off his face.
1:44-1:45:
Continuing laughter. A bare foot steps on concrete.
1:46-1:47:
Continuing laughter. A man in an orange jumpsuit chained to a chair in a concrete room, watching something on a television.
1:48-1:49:
Laughter builds to an insane peak. A camera lens in close-up, filming something it is not meant to see.
1:50-1:51:
SCP-2006, in its Robot-Man form, jumps out from behind a door. It says "Boo!" Cut to black.
1:53-2:01:
Title slowly fades in: THE UNDOING.
Voice over, Elly: "You can see the outlines of it now, can't you? Something lurking at the edges. He tried to unmake himself, you see?
2:02-2:15:
Cut to Elly entering her house. She turns and sees DIRECTOR VAN TURNER standing in the shadows. He flashes a brilliant smile, his eyes hidden. Elly screams in absolute terror. End trailer.

Next: Out of Frame


Life, for as long as he could remember, was simple. Exactly how long, he could not know. He could not remember when it all started, nor did he know of any stable cycles for the measurement. The rotation of stars and planets were too insignificant, as they themselves are mere specks on the cosmic background.
It didn't matter, however, as he didn't care. Life, after all, was consuming and digesting and growing. Driven by hunger, he swam around aimlessly in the dark void, and devoured all the smaller meaty things he encountered. He fought and won and gradually became bigger. Eventually, he grew so huge that for as far as his many eyes could see, there were only beings smaller than him. Eventually, he found a great abyss and nested there. A breeding ground where the tiny entities spawned and died and were born again.
Life was simple, and he was contented. He became less hungry, as food was plenty. He no longer had to hunt things down with great effort. All he needed to do was to open his countless mouths and those meaty things, newly-born, blind and dumb, would swarm in, mistaking them as sanctuaries. He was just like them, but much larger. He did not consider this, however. He only relished the taste of the withering flesh in his mouths, and longed for more.
But one day, he found something else. He didn't understand it at first, as he bit into the being's body and found it tasteless and solid. He released it, as he was not interested in tasteless things. Then, with his many eyes, he registered that the being was almost as gigantic as him, but quite different.
Different how, he could not describe. He only understood that the other giant being was tasteless and not flesh. The being, unlike all the other living things he had seen, had a regular shape, and a smooth, reflecting surface. The being — she turned and took a quick glance at him. In that moment, she examined him briefly, with a sort of curiosity. Then, she simply looked away, and left.
He too, looked away and left. He had food to consume and taste to relish, and wished no quarrel with tasteless non-flesh. They crossed their paths many times after, only briefly each time, and he understood that the abyss was her home too.
Unlike him, life didn't seem simple for her. She was always busy, engaged in her task. He didn't understand what her task was, until he found that wherever she went, the tiny beings were trapped and helpless, unable to move. Tiny barriers she had put up, an insane effort to patch up the great abyss, the abyss many times bigger than both of them combined.
He was happy to see this however, as his hunt for more flesh was made even easier. The hunger was almost negligible. The barriers wouldn't even hinder his steps, but made his prey completely helpless. So he followed her around, consumed the packed meat she had left behind, and was able to observe her more.
She registered his existence, of course. Cautious at first, but gradually got accustomed to it. She needed not be cautious though, he contemplated, as he would not eat things that are not flesh. In the end, she allowed him to take the tiny things she had trapped, and observed him in return.
Unlike him, she didn't consume, but instead, created things. Eerie structures, intricate webs, that would spin and hum and tick and move in cycles. But eventually, they all succumbed to the pull of the great abyss, and broke apart. She built these things again and again, every time more intricate and elegant. But each time, her work was rendered useless. He could not understand why she did this, yet, she continued. An endless cycle of futility.
One day, the things she built, the machines, as she would call them, broke once more, and were never built again. The small meaty things roamed free, and she was nowhere to be found. Life was suddenly no longer simple and free, and he was not happy. He sought her out, and found her at the deep end of the abyss. She said things to him, things intricate as the machines she made that he could not understand. But he didn't need to, as he pulled her out of the dead center of the void.
He told her about the life, the hunger, and other things he knew. She listened, but there was only so much she could understand. They were so different, after all. But she contemplated, and then cut a piece of flesh off him. It hurt him, as he had not fought and been hurt in a long long time, but he withstood it. He understood that unlike the creatures of meat, she had no need to eat him, and he had no need to hurt her.
Again, she began to create. Not out of the shiny or intangible things she was so used to, but with the piece of flesh, that small part of him. Six small creatures were born, and they were not like things out of the abyss, as they were part of him. Their minds connected with his, and they communicated, whispering words so intricate that only she would know. They discussed and calculated, and led him to wherever prey was the most abundant .
Life was simple again. All he needed to do was to listen to the six machines she crafted out of his flesh. He did not cross her path until much later, and found that she was attending to the tiny stars, and the smaller rocks around them. She again built many different things, but no longer around the abyss, but around these spheres. This time, her creation was somewhat stable. He was happy for her, as she no longer had to engage in futility and that her life could be simple as well. Their path crossed less and less, but they would often nod in regard to each other when they do. He was happy with his new life, and so was she.
But it all changed. As he one day passed by some of the spheres, she attacked him. She cut him and it was not friendly, and the machines all spun wild and ticked loudly. In confusion and fury, he fought back, but she was only trying to force him away.
She screamed and begged but he didn't know what she was asking, and didn't know what he had done wrong. He knew of her creations, and would never attempt to damage them. And he knew that she always built them tough and solid, so that his passing by wouldn't disturb them.
He felt confused and angry. It was unfair that she attacked him, when he wanted no quarrel with her. So he attacked, and she could not stand against him. After all, he was much larger now, and ages of creating exhausted her.
She looked at him, and begged for one last time, which he could not know the meaning of, before suddenly, breaking apart. And suddenly, the world swirled around him, and the dark void was gone, the abyss was gone, and the spheres were gone. He did not recognize this new place.
She was all around him now, but not all of her, just one large piece. He could not understand this. He called out her but she didn't respond, he shook her but she would not let him go. She seemed very much like the things she had created now, but more silent and still.
Life was suddenly complicated, so he asked his six advisors, his archons. They informed him that the spheres were important to her, and that she was angry at what he would have wrought. He didn't fully understand, and had less of a clue of what happened to her. Finally, he decided that like her machines, she was merely broken. And machines, unlike the things of flesh, can be built again. He would wait here, until she was no longer angry with him, and decided let to him go.
He left the decisions to his archons, as they know better than him. They linked him to one of the spheres, a blue one, and passed out pieces of him. They brought tiny creatures from the spheres, even smaller than those of the abyss, so that they may one day serve as bridges and tools. They lived on his back, and he tolerated this, as the archons promised that he would be out of here, and things would be fine again. He always trusted them.
And so Yaldabaoth slept in the Great Brass Cage, and dreamt of a time when life was simple.